Cobb

Effective Resonance & Price Discrimination

A reader points to a controversy over a Chinese restaurant that was found to discriminate against non-Chinese speakers. They had one menu in English where the fried rice cost 3 bucks and another in Mandarin where it cost 2. Big Deal or No Big Deal?

It's no big deal but it's still wrong and should be corrected by law if not lawsuit. A restaurant is, as far as I know by definition, a public accommodation. An important principle is being violated here.

My theory of Effective Resonance suggests that the costs and remedies related to discrimination should vary according to the social power of the affected class. And I think it is may very well be a reasonable stereotype that Chinese speakers in America who eat at such restaurants are less well off economically speaking than those English speaking Americans (tourists?) who use the same restaurants. So I can accept that caveat and say that it's no big deal. We're not going to degrade liberty because Americans are priced out of hot and sour soup. Nevertheless, I would get hot and sour if I were to discover such pricing.

Understand that there is no fundamental difference here between saying that the rent for an apartment is 800 for English speakers and 900 for Spanish speakers. You offer the same goods for different prices, and so you are purposefully favoring one sort of customer over another. There really is no other excuse.

Some folks have mentioned matters of colorblindness are under attack from critical race theorists, that there are not generally times where it is appropriate to ignore race. This is a mixed bag which makes the most sense in academic settings. In this case colorblindness is appropriate. But I'll deal with that mixed bag later.

Bottom line. The restaurateur must equalize the prices or be prepared to get cursed out in Chinese by people he never expected.

Sean O'Sullivan

One more of the thousand points of light doing the right thing to shrink the gap.

O'Sullivan's latest venture is called JumpStart International. JumpStart designs and builds housing developments and rebuilds Iraqi homes one house at a time--sort of like Habitat for Humanity--all with Iraqi labor.

At its peak, JumpStart had 3,500 employees clearing more than 500 destroyed buildings and rebuilding homes at 80 sites. Workers make about $109 a month; the engineers who supervise them make nearly three times that amount, O'Sullivan says JumpStart's salaries are about 20 percent higher than the market wage, for those who can find jobs.

This is another example of American capital and know how working globalization towards just ends.

Jesus & Maria

Obligatory seriousness on James Cameron's new discovery. Uhm... he says that the chances are 600 to 1 that there could be another Jesus & Mary in Jerusalem. I can't believe that he made such a boneheaded claim. I made the mistake of thinking these were unusual names when I was a kid. My nickel says he'll be debunked in short order.

Giuliani & The New Middle Right

I'm going to say this now, and will probably be saying it again in another way, but what I think needs to happen in 2008 is Triangulation from the Right.

I haven't had a lot to say about Giuliani but his name comes up in conversation often and I do have one or two things to say. The first is that I don't think he's a Uniter. But I know for a fact that he is a better communicator than GW Bush. I think that's better than a wash. People are going to decide, evidently, whether they like someone often in spite of the facts they present. So if you can hate Bush and Giuliani, at least Rudy gives a smaller target. That's because if Rudy does anything, he'll argue toe to toe and leave you clear on which way you can go. I think Bush tells too many dumb jokes that really aren't funny, but Giuliani will cut to the quick on any issue.

I have said that Rudy as the mayor of NYC is likely to have an appropriate amount of executive experience requisite for the Executive Branch. He's also got the inside track to a Constitutional scholar who has a lot of experience dealing with the Supreme Court. He's obviously going to be hard on crime since worked as a US attorney and basically destroyed the Mob in NYC. That's a huge plus as far as I'm concerned. He used RICO. Bam. So he understands how to go after the money and put criminal organizations out of business.

Thirdly, Giuliani is not a social conservative. I say that puts him in the same boat as Schwartzeneggar and of course he's in the mainstream of NY Republicans + Christie Whitman. As you know I'm a fan of the Manhattan Institute and the Main Street Republicans. So to the extent that a Giuliani candidacy puts the social engineers of the Right on notice that they cannot hijack the party with their vertical issues, it's all good.

Still, I need to hear Rudy say the right things on the war and foreign policy. But you know what, he's a grownup. That's the best thing about him.

Ceasefire: Then & Now

I watched yet another documentary about MLK this weekend. What was centrally interesting was the attempt by the fine liberal folks at PBS to place his words in context with what's going on today. To that end the narrator intoned how relevant King's words against the Vietnam War was to the situation in which we find ourselves today. They then cued the Mike Douglas Show with King vs some cat named Tony Martin.

Several things impressed me about King. The first set of observations was about the man himself. I made a conscious effort to make a distinction between his preaching voice and his normal voice. It was clear to me that he did well in soundbites in a way that has impressed a generation of politicians in his wake. Even in his normal voice he used a different set of rhetorical devices to good effect.

Secondly, he appeared to me to be a very selfless person in that he set himself up to embody conscience. King disappears into his ethics and reflects not much of himself as a man, but himself as a symbol of what conscience does to a man. It is an effect that I think he couldn't long have maintained without becoming a monk. I try to imagine what might have been were King to have survived the shooting attack that took his life. If he had a scar on his face, he would have been less able to disappear into the abstract. I'd say his disappearing only worked in the context of a moral hardline on behalf of the Negro of whose attitudes and frustrations he became the leading exponent. I can see how talking to King, who was always willing to say so, led many white commentators to ask and repeat such questions: What does the Negro want today? How is the Negro feeling today?

His style of representation did not challenge the Negro so much as it challenged whitefolks to idealize their own consciousness and ask themselves if they would bear up as well as King does. It is an interesting and brilliant tactic, but I don't think it would work at all in today's racial environment. That is a good thing, and I think it is also why Malcolm X resonates differently.

So much for the man, now to the content. As practical matters of turning Christian cheeks on the violence of war, King offered two alternatives in the context of Vietnam. One was a 'unilateral withdrawal' and the other was a 'negotiated settlement'. It seems to me that if King has any pull with Democrat, anti-war, liberal or Left constituencies today they might consider these options. Of the two, I've only heard tell of the first. Now I don't spend enough time at Daily Kos to know better, but I've never heard anything of the second option. Why not? Why is there no call for a negotiated settlement in Iraq?

Unilateral Withdrawal
The US Armed Forces remain in Iraq not only at the pleasure of the Iraqi government but at the behest of the Iraqi government. If we unilaterally left, it is my opinion that we would do more to hurt Iraq than we did by pre-emption. I think that at this point we have made good on our unfulfilled promise to the Kurdish population of Iraq, but we would repeat the same mistake of Desert Storm if we were to leave. Naturally, the American polity will determine in some form or fashion the type of withdrawal. If Congress has the intestinal fortitude (guts, but not brains) to defund the troops, then that's one way to go. If the Commander in Chief draws down to zero that sends a different message. 

Ceasefire & Negotiated Settlement
There is no negotiation to be done with rebels. There is no civil war so much as there are suicide bombers on the Sunni side and Death Squads on the Shia side. Since we only do business via the State Department with de facto governments, then the only one who we would negotiate with is the Maliki Administration. They want us to stay.

So if peaceniks would suggest that the US start negotiating, with whom would we draw up a separate peace? Such people are nameless, but I would surely like to see if Sy Hersh names any such names. I am under the impression that there are no Americans with the cojones to go to Iraq and join or even birddog any suicide cells or death squads. None have really named any of the insurgent groups other than the Mahdi Army.

Are there any followers of the Iraq Study Group who are calling for a ceasefire? Any of the Democrat candidates breach such an idea, seriously?

Female Suffrage Timeline

Women only got the right to vote in France after WW2. I'm surprised. Here are some other interesting notes from this website:

1788 United States of America (to stand for election)

1944	Bulgaria, France, Jamaica
1945	Croatia, Guyana (to stand for election), Indonesia, Italy, Japan1, Senegal, Slovenia, Togo
1946	Cameroon, D.P.R. of Korea, Djibouti (to vote), Guatemala, Liberia, Myanmar (to stand for election), Panama**, Romania**, The F.Y.R. of Macedonia, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Yugoslavia
1947	Argentina, Japan1, Malta, Mexico (to vote), Pakistan, Singapore

1980	Iraq, Vanuatu1
1984	Liechtenstein, South Africa (Coloureds + Indians)
1986	Central African Republic, Djibouti (to stand for election)
1989	Namibia
1990	Samoa
1993	Kazakhstan1, Republic of Moldova1
1994	South Africa (Blacks)
2005	Kuwait

Bill Clinton's Trickle Down

I just got off the phone with my cousin who is a big shot hospital administrator in the midwest. I asked him off the cuff if he had dinner with Donna Shalala, but that's because I confuse various parts of flyover country. He told me that he liked Russ Feingold, and I agree that he has done admirable things. Since Richardson is on my mind today, I'm thinking why him and why not Hazel O'Leary?

In fact, now that I think about it, where has the class of 1996 gone? Specifically, has the patronage to black cabinet members - all part of that crew that "looks like America" paid off?

For The Skeptic

In my travels, I've gotten to meet some interesting people. One of them, a high level staffer in Harrisburg PA made me some kind of bet the stakes of which I forget. Generally I bet a nickel, but I think this one is worth a dinner at least. Make that a seafood dinner.

These stats are from Booker Rising:

2004 University of Georgia Selig Center study, U.S. Census Bureau, National Black Chamber of Commerce, Target Market News, 2004 NUL "State of Black America" Report

74% live above the poverty line (vs. 10% in 1940 and 45% in 1960). All-time high above poverty: 79% in 2001

5% rich, 44% middle class, 27% working class, 24% poor (2004)

Overall median household income: $$37,000 (2000). Median income for married households: $48,000 (2002)

Top 5 states with highest median black household income: New Hampshire $43,574, Alaska $42,887, Maryland $41,652, Hawaii $41,032, New Jersey $38,513

This comes in the context of the denial of the significance and permanence of the black upper middle class.

The Liberal Impulse

William Wilberforce was a young man who was wealthy and ambitious. He wanted to change the world, and according to the film, Amazing Grace (which is excellent), he did so. I'm not sure that he's a hero though. His life story is a convenient narrative onto which we may attribute many great things, which of course have a lot to do with him, but might have happened otherwise. My point is not to denigrate Wilberforce in ay way but to examine the impulse towards changing the world for the better.

I contend that if we are heading towards a world in which war is to be minimalized as thinkers like Barnett would strategize, we are going to have a philosophical and even metaphysical crisis. We are going to have to make might right. Because while it's clear that we have the might, we are not clear on how or why we should use it. And liberal thinkers among us are faced with (not that conservatives aren't) an awesome task of determining the reasons why our causes matter anywhere outside of our own heads. Here's the way to think about it.

If there are no human rights in Ghana, why should we care?

This is a very fundamental question. I'll answer from a liberal Christian perspective. We are all children of God and in God's eyes he sees us all as equals. We all have souls and no soul is more valuable than another. The New Testament compels us to treat others as we would be treated ourselves. So, for example, if I have the expectation to live to be 70 years old, then I should expect that the Ghanaians should have the same expectations. Whatever that thing is which is keeping us apart as brothers in the Body of Christ should be moved. Our security should be their security, our justice should be their justice, our rights should be their rights. We should be all equal.

So I ask again, by what right do we impose our vision of human rights, civil rights, education, health care, and security upon the people of Ghana? We would obviously be destroying something of theirs - that thing that has allowed them the self-esteem to have babies and smile they have been able to do presumeably for hundreds of years without us. Why should we bother with them? What indeed is the aegis of our morality?

If a man is a slave, what is our responsibility to free him from bondage we didn't create? What is our responsibility to free him from bondage we did have a hand in creating?

I'm going to leave the question open because I think there are profound implications lurking. But I would add one more question.

What is the framework for equality? That is to say, what materially establishes mutual brotherhood? How do we know that somebody is not an enemy but a peer worthy of mutual respect and protection? How are such points established and on what basis? When do we know that we stand in equality?

Streets of Philly

I walked all over Philly today. I still don't know all the places I've been.

I started at my hotel and went around the corner to The Bourse. A bunch of kids were out of school evidently. I couldn't find a sweatshirt appropriate for my collection. So I circled the place a couple times. then I headed downstairs to the little bookshop. I figured they could tell me where I could get to a public internet place. None of the branches of the Philadelphia Public Library shows up on Google Maps, and me without a functional air card or power cord for my laptop. That was at Fourth and Ranstead. She said the library was at 7th and Chestnut. OK. Easy enough.

So I headed out and wound up at the Mall. I decided to snap some pictures since this time I brought the Olympus. I walked around the Liberty Bell building and acted suspiciously in front of the guards. I don't know why I do that, but whenever I enter a security situation, I start evaluating the security. There were guards on every corner and I got pictures of most of their positions without looking as if I was. Actually, I think the security is pretty good around Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. From what's visible however, a determined assailant team could do damage. Anyway. I got a phone call and handled some business as I walked around the Liberty Bell building. Then I headed up to 7th.

At 7th there was no library, but there was a police station. So I went into the lobby and asked for directions. The library was half a block north. There were three officers in the substation. One had his feet up on the desk.

The library was closed earlier that week because of a broken water pipe but it was open and I sat down to the terminal. I needed a library card, but they gave me a visitors pass after eyeballing my California drivers license. The pin code was 5688. I logged on. There was a 33 minute timer. My assignment was to find a FedEx code to send to the Spousal Unit in order for her to mail a borrowed laptop (the one whose high quality wireless and battery life would have obviated this trip to the library) back to the vendor. The desktop was wrapped in a secure wrapper and I pulled up IE. The connection was so pitifully slow that it took me about 20 minutes to do just a few things. I couldn't even use Google chat for a moment. But I did get the addresses of some real internet cafes. I put them in the Treo and booked up.

Next thing I need is a little lunch, so I stopped at a Quiznos. My destination was the Cosi at 12th and Walnut. According to the website I found, this was an internet Cafe. I got there, but it was basically just like the other Cosis I'd seen. A coffee shop with big comfy chairs. So I snapped some pictures. The other locations were way over at U Penn and not within walking distance, so I'd need some cash. I looked up Bank of America. Walnut and Broad. Good. I can walk there.

At Walnut and Broad, there is no B of A, but there is a Wachovia, a huge one. I walk in singing Sade and check out the huge slabs of marble. Nice. Looks like a bank. I get 80 bucks and curse under my breath for having to pay the 2.50 fee. This time it's getting kind of cold, and I'm still just wearing a t-Shirt under my ski jacket. The wind is cutting me up. Fortunately, there's a Banana Republic across the street and today is payday. What the heck.

While I'm shopping, Spence calls me up. I'll probably be hooking up with him tomorrow or Sunday in Baltimore. That's going to be off the hook. Meanwhile I got me a sweater. So now I'm warm and am heading towards Rittenhouse Square. I snapped many pictures on the way including two of my favorite joints, Mahogany and Alfa. By the time I got to the square my camera hand was frozen stiff. I took a few more of Trinity Church which was closed and continued down towards my destination, the Ants Pants Cafe on South Street near 22nd.

I turned the wrong way on 22nd, and for some reason I thought that Ants Pants was near U Penn. So I ended up all the way over at Race Street before I pulled out the Palm and tried to get my bearings. I thought I was going West but I was going North. Now I'm at the Franklin Institute. What? I grab a cab and 7 bucks later I'm at Ants Pants. It's 4pm and they're closing. It's just a coffee shop hole in the wall, not a real internet cafe. Crap. I buy a coffee and head towards Digital Age. That's got to be the right place. 1818 S 13th Street right? That's a hike from 22nd and South Street. But I start hiking.

By the time I get to Passyunk and 13th, I can tell that this cafe does not exist. Now my feet hurt, and I'm pissed. So I head back to Broad Street where at least I know that I'm only a few minutes away from a cab. So I cab it back to my office and I write this.

Ahh. that's better. Safe indoors. Warm. Found. Speaking of which, it's time to go watch Amazing Grace...

No. Not Iran!

What a shock!

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 — In open defiance of the United Nations, Iran is steadily expanding — rather than freezing — its efforts to enrich uranium, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported today. The findings have prompted the Bush Administration to press for more severe sanctions against Iran, at a moment of greatly increased tensions between Washington and Tehran.

In a mild surprise to outside experts, the nuclear agency reported that Iran is now operating, or is about to switch on, roughly 1,000 centrifuges, the high-speed devices that enrich uranium, at its main nuclear facility at Natanz.

Coming on the heels of the Bush Administration’s accusations that Iran’s Quds force is sending arms and explosive devices into Iraq, the report heightens a growing confrontation.

How long before the Democrats call this an 'intelligence failure'?

      

Second Class Middle Class Redux

A thoughtful reader passed along some URLs for my consideration. The gravity of the three have to do with a black middle class that wants to play basketball instead of becoming a doctor or a lawyer or a PhD. I say that's a middle class problem, but people are just not used to blacks being middle class.

My kids just brought back 3.8 GPAs. So that's two semesters (or quarters or whatever) in a row for all three to be on the honor role. I suspect that they may slack off somewhere down the line, but right now they seem to be self-motivated. That's because we never gave them a choice, plus as is the case with my wife, we've been around too many rich people to think that the upper middle class is an endgame. So as long as we can get them to stick close to perfection, it's all good. But help them to understand the extent to which their fellow students are slackers and how I expect them to be leaders. It helps that they're all good looking, but basically I get no guff about the stuff that 'nerds' and geeks do.

Suburuban integration works.  I think it's relatively easy for black kids to get the compliment 'you rock'. I get them to pursue excellence not because I expect them to rock, but because I expect them to rule. Furthermore I expect them to get those expectations about themselves. That's because they're my kids and they have Bowen family expectations on their shoulders.

So when I hear about black mediocrity in the American middle class, it really doesn't bother me. The American middle class is mediocre by definition. I mean we have people who can sit on their butts all day and just talk to people on the telephone answering questions about cereal, and they make 30k a year. Go ahead, get a box of Cheerios and see if I'm lying. There's an 800 number on it. That's somebody's middle class job.

The second think I think about, aside from the old Ohio study, is this little ad on the back of the Negro Digest from  the mid 60s.  What indeed is the need for blackfolks to comport themselves in a particularly uplifting way? That's the elephant in the room. If they don't, then you know.. well.. uh white people are going to think you're .. and uhm you know... I can't say that word.. you know...but  well, can you blame them?

At some point people are going to have to learn like I learned 15 years ago. You just have to stop second-guessing blackfolks. Every one of us. We are exactly who we want to be, every day. Nobody is holding us back, nobody is helping us out. We are at racial equilibrium. All you can do is look at the economy add the demographics and extrapolate, if that's your bag. But there are no new racial issues. There are no new racial insights. It's just as it has always been, new people are finding out about it and that's all the noise you hear. The scuffle of new shoes treading over old ground.   

Now I know all of this stuff feels and sounds important, but that's a middle class phenomenon as well. As I said before, the difference between the Middle Classes are not very wide, but they are very very deep. We are more accepting of a man with no shoes, than the man who wears the wrong shoes. This scuffle is not so critical to the discussion of black progress in America as it is with age-old bourgie snot.

Bill Richardson, Finally

Bill Richardson is, finally, a Democrat candidate that I can take seriously. He's mostly right on energy and I believe he can do what he says he will do. He's right on immigration. He's got experience and he's come this far without mangling his reputation. Best yet, he's telling Obama and Clinton to take some chill pills.

Now it gets interesting.

Oh The Agony

I just discovered that my old boss is rich. We lost track of each other when I quit my company to go get married and handle my business with my son. But I can still remember a conversation we had one evening in a hotel lobby in San Francisco about our prospects in the industry. I can't believe that it has been 14 years and I haven't heard anything about him.

It turns out that he's a partner in a private equity firm - the same firm that bought out our old company - the same old company whose options I used to buy a Happy Meal. I think I'm cursed. And this isn't a run of the mill firm either. They're big. Argh. It's killing me. You know what else is killing me? I know a few of the other guys there too.

Oh man. Unless and until he returns my call, I'm going to walk around with my skull on fire.

Who's Your Daddy

Invisible Tech

Lee Archer on Fox

My Kinda Nationalist, Lee Archer, will be on the Oliver North show Sunday night on Fox.

In July of 1941, a small group of Americans, all of them volunteers, gathered at a tiny airfield in Tuskegee, Alabama. Their goal? To build a special fighter unit for the US Army Air Corps. It was not the planes they flew or the weapons they employed that made them unique. It was the color of their skin. In the 1940's our military, like our country, was segregated. And many inside Washington power circles believed black men didn’t have the courage or the skill to fly combat aircraft. Forced to train and serve in a segregated unit, the Tuskegee Airmen would have to prove them wrong. And they did.

 

They overcame racism at home and abroad and by the end World War II, these pilots earned military respect for their air prowess. Nicknamed the "Red Tails" for the color painted on their aircraft, over 1,000 black aviators and thousands of mechanics and technicians were trained at Tuskegee. The Red Tails flew over 15,000 combat missions and destroyed over 250 enemy planes. But perhaps their most impressive accomplishment didn’t involve destruction or death. They saved lives. As you will hear in this Sunday's episode, during Allied escort missions over Europe, these men never lost a bomber to the enemy.

Set your Tivos.

The Solar Edge of Dyson's Utopia

The basic idea behind Dyson's Utopia is this. If we decentralize energy production then the whole world works more efficiently because we take transportation and maintenance of transportation of energy out of the equation. Further, you decentralize society and disempower big cities by allowing humans to live at a more personal scale. Plus you have an even further energy efficiency because people won't commute. Given that peer networks span all that and you keep all the knowledge, the endgame is really sweet.

SunPower has announced that their residential solar power system for an average home cost about 20k. It's guaranteed for 25 years so it can be amortized into your standard mortgage package. At the current electricity rate, the system pays for itself and becomes net cash positive after 10 years. It's actually good looking and doesn't take up your whole roof making you look like some crackpot treehugger. I think it's a good deal. This looks like one of the first conditions for Dyson's Utopia. Could there be solar in your future? I think so.

As you can see, the CEOs appearance on CNBC this morning is very likely the cause for the jump in the stock price. Notwithstanding, my thinking on this is that we are already into 'Solar 2.0' and the construction industry is getting more and more used to it.

The cumulative effect of having more houses have solar generation is that it reduces peak demand for electricity. Folks in the power business understand that electricity demand is generally something we are able to plan for years in advance, and it hasn't generally been a problem handling that. (I built some systems for 3 different energy companies over the years. I know they do commodities hedging up to 20 years in advance). What's difficult is managing freaky weather and peak demand. When this happens, utilities bring small plants, called 'peakers' online. The trick is timing. All power generation plants have to go down for periodic maintenance. What you don't want is to get stuck with peak demand when your peakers are down. When that happens you have to buy power from out of state or out of the region. Hopefully you've had an agreement that allows you to do so, but if you don't and have to buy energy on the spot market, then you lose a huge amount of money - because electricty prices are regulated. You can't sell peak power at too much of a premium over regular power. This gap is essentially what broke PG&E and Edison seven years ago in California.

The solar edge of Dyson's Utopia is pretty much here.

The Redneck, The Cracker & The Texan

This is a joke I haven't heard in a long time. I found it over at Michael Yon. I made a small correction so that it sounds like the one I know, but the point is the same. It is a letter from a commander in the field. This is exactly the attitude I expect from commanders and it is a blessing to hear it.

A Redneck, a Cracker and a Texan were sitting around a small catfish pond and noticed some catfish. They felt it would be a good idea to have a fish fry, but they didn’t have a fishing pole or net. They started to ponder techniques to catch some fish for the fish fry, when the Georgia redneck boy dove in the water and tried to catch one. He dove in, splashed around and after 5 minutes of no luck he got out, frustrated and sat back down. The Florida cracker boy then got up, went to his truck and got a shotgun. He began shooting at the catfish. He expended over 30 rounds and he too was unsuccessful. Frustrated, he sat back down. The Texas boy sat for a bit, finished his beer, and cut the top of the beer can off with his pocket knife. Then he calmly stood up and walked over to the small pond and dipped his empty beer can in the water and filled it up. Then he walked to the top of the dam and poured the water on the ground on the back side of the dam. He walked back to the pond and got another can full of water and as he walked by the 2 other boys, he stated with a drawl, “You boys better git comfortable, this may take awhile.”

This story relates to this war on terror. We may not realize many tangible results from this war, especially not if we have a timeline based on a news cycle or an election. But it’s worth every can full of water every day we fight over here. I am resolved to fight these bastards for however long it takes, every day until my retirement.

Amen brother.

Marie Antoinette En Passant

'Hiring a wife' is necessary. If men and women of high powered marriages are going to have a real home life with children, there is going to have to be a nanny at some point.

At various points my wife and I have been just about every combination from dual wage earner to dual entrepreneur to one each way to me unemployed with her working or her staying at home when I made enough or when I didn't make enough.

There has never been a time when we were both working that we didn't depend on some external resources, from live-in relative, to housekeeper, to babysitter, to day care center. This is a reality of the upper middle class, and I think it is a reality that goes beyond the contemporary back to my sorta-focus on Royalty. In other words there are age-old traditional solutions to these problems and Feminism has just trashed them for egotistical reasons that have distorted a lot of people's basic ideas about family and home life.

I say that the traditional work of nannies, nursemaids, midwives, domestics and cooks of all sorts has been diminished by feminists in American society. In order to give the contemporary woman everything she wants (which is nothing more or less than being a princess), feminism has made a foolish error which is to assert that every woman can be a princess. Oh irony of cruel ironies that they will ultimately discover that in order to accomplish the power and privilege of queens that the bonds of sisterhood will be feudal.

All About Diversity

I thought that I had some kind of vaguely coherent statement on matters of 'diversity'. The more I look around in this site, the more it appears that I've been taking swipes at it from various angles. Well, I'll try to summarize and add a few more angles here.

A thoughtful reader sent the following reference:

CNN’s “In the Money” crew placed the blame on corporate America for a lack of diversity in the workplace in its February 17 show, saying businesses have a long way to go on something “so simple.”

 

The segment featured two African-American guests. However, “In the Money’s” treatment of minorities in the workplace failed to address such foundational issues as family, culture and education in determining people’s interests, career choices and ultimate success.

On this very topic I just wrote the following over at Tigerhawk.

The purpose of diversity training is to dismantle, or severely cripple white male patriarchy which has made quite enough stupid mistakes to disgrace itself.

The presumption of people who 'are not America' is that this dysfunctional patriarchy has had many generations to straighten itself out and has not. It must therefore be premised on a singular set of false values. There is no other reasonable explanation for x hundred years of non-white males being on the outs. In otherwords, for whatever and presumeably inefficient if not evil reasons, the leadership class of America has tolerated white male mediocrity at the express cost of the rest. And you really didn't get it until people like Rosa Parks slapped you in the face.

So why do we need values that come from folks other than all the things white males have put out there? Because.

But that's just explaining one aspect of it, ie its raison d'etre in a multiculturally politicized world.

So here's my bottom line on diversity and diversity training.

The Empowerment Perspective
This perspective is that the economic prospects of the protected classes and beneficiaries of diversity initiatives will goose them along. I call BS on that. There is no diversity program that is is as hardball as any affirmative action program, whether you are talking zero-sum quotas pre-Bakke, smartly administered racial preferences post-Bakke, or whatever toothless crap passes for Affirmative Action today. Usually diversity is something 'valued' by its own right. It's like having blue flowers in the garden, not for the sake of the flowers but that it makes the garden more attractive overall. If the incentives for blacks to trust in the fleeting political sensitivities of liberal whites who would support Affirmative Action by voting is shaky (and it is) imagine how much more shaky it is when it doesn't depend on the law, but on the bottom lines of corporations. Show me a corporation filing for bankruptcy that makes it a policy to fire white males first and I'll begin to consider such things empowering. Otherwise.. poop.

Now, to the extent that Diversity Training substitutes for home training in the halls of the more dysfunctional companies, it might be empowering, but no more so than Alcoholics Anonymous. I cannot see it as a national political priority. Then again, I never had a problem looking whitefolks in the eye and telling them exactly what I think. Well, not since 8th grade.

No matter what, the amount of power established by diversity training in a corporate context is subservient to the power of any line manager. You can monkey with overhead all you want, if it's not a profit center it's not central to the self-interest of the funding entity and therefore subject to whimsy. That's flimsy.

The Market Perspective
Diversity training in this regard is about properly peppering your corporate face with demographically targeted artifacts. I think that this was inevitable given the passage of the Civil Rights laws and it is one that has been most obviously carried forward by pure business sense. There have been a number of black and latino marketing firms that have carried this business forward but I think their hold on the market will fade over time but not disappear.

I also think that all of the gusto in this is gone, and there are very few dramatic gains to be made in the mainstream. Everybody has a black female model on their corporate website. It's old hat. There's no more efficiency in market penetration to be gained; there's almost nowhere in America where I can't hear black music.

What remains are some interesting upscale niches. I'm still waiting for the Diamond is Forever people who do those silhouette commercials to put some Obama-esque beautiful people in camera, but the folks at Kay Jewelers did it all Valentines.

Bottom line. Blackfolks are in the market at pretty much all levels and they are being marketed to. What's left to complain about are 'positive images' kinds of chauvinistic arguments. Not much there there.

The Political Perspective

What is the difference between 'variety' and 'diversity'? The straight answer is that variety is for things and diversity is for people. The proper clarifying analogy is that variety is difference between Kellogg's Corn Flakes and everybody elses, which is to say that there is essentially no difference. Except when you want to add political diversity and talk about people's race and gender, you expect there to be an essential difference. That's a problem, and the problem is manifest by the use of 'diversity' as a codeword for just that: essential difference by race and gender.

The multiculturalism gone horribly wrong is that 'a lack of diversity' as pejorative assessment of any deciding body means that some race and gender politics must be injected into the mix for it to have any legitimacy. Which is to imply that any consensus which is met without some quota of racial/gender-persons & passions injected is not to be trusted. This is a perversion of democracy which has been tolerated too long. It is destructive of modernity (the good classic Liberal stuff) and corrosive of all institutions which allow such logic to creep slowly in. And of course it sets up premises of permanent gender issues and permanent racial issues, which is ripe for exploitation.

At some point such exploitation will become clear in all of our institutions, and we will then soon be rid of it. Call it  'Sharpton Jumps The Shark'.

Diversity in Retrospect

Diversity in retrospect is something we can all be proud of. It is the recognition that we no longer have racial or gender expectations of various aspects of American life. What immediately comes to mind are the public accomodations of movies. While we may guess that certain movies appeal to certain people and we could certainly prove it were we to drill down for affinities, there is never the assumption that we don't let blackfolks into certain movies. And so on any day we can go to any theatre and eyeball the crowd. We are likely to find, just as with the composition of a McDonalds drive-through that we have a lovely diversity of people. In otherwords a reflection of who we are.

Summary

Diversity is a substitute for talking about race and gender. There is no easy way to talk about such things. I think instead we ought to talk about race and gender, and I think at the end of the day we won't have much new or interesting to say except that we expect no artificial barriers or boundaries. The people dedicated to goosing the system have had plenty opportunity and I think such market-makers will continue to ply their trade. An honest suggestion that racial preferences should be established or upheld for the purposes of integration will have honest support and honest opposition. But I expect the importance of such discussions to decline over time, and that is primarily because the existential barriers of the protected classes have long been removed. That means people on the outs will fend for themselves, and they will be better equipped to empower themselves than do-gooders on their behalf will.

The work of the Civil Rights Movement is done. It is an irreversible success. Diversity is mostly icing, don't mistake it for cake.

Leaving The Stone Age

Barnett pokes the Peak Oilers:

Some oil analysts employ this observation to extrapolate a global oil peak, declaring we've already passed the point of no return. The problem with this theory is that it discounts unconventional sources of oil, such as tar sands and oil shale, as well as non-oil sources for transportation energy (e.g, ethanol, biodiesel, coal liquefaction, hydrogen, fuel cells).

Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a highly respected industry authority, estimates that if unconventional sources are added into the mix our planet's currently known oil reserves are actually three times larger than that predicted by "peak oil," suggesting that alleged doomsday is decades off _ Asia's skyrocketing requirements notwithstanding.

The logic here is market-derived: persistently higher prices drive new exploration and boost R&D in both energy extraction and the technology of transportation. That means we'll go deeper and farther to access new reserves while extracting better yields from both existing and future fields while upgrading our automotive fleet.

We didn't leave the Stone Age because we ran out of stones, and we won't leave the Oil Age because we've run out of oil. Instead, humanity moves progressively "down" the carbon chain (wood to coal to oil to gas to nukes and hydrogen) for the sheer reason that each step we take brings us higher efficiency and less pollution _ a total win-win.

World Coal Production

1999 production of top 10 countries (in 1000 tonnes)

Country	Total	Percent to Total
China	1030000	23.72
United States of America	997090	22.96
India	314415	7.24
Australia	304000	7
Russian Federation	249400	5.74
South Africa	223510	5.15
Germany	201782	4.65
Poland	171000	3.94
Ukraine	82229	1.89
Korea (Democratic People's Rep.)	81500	1.88
World Total	4343151	84.15

Source: http://www.mapsofworld.com

It's Not About Iraq

I'm about halfway through TPM Barnett's "The Pentagon's New Map", and it has given me a way to think about 'the war in Iraq' in the context that I have been trying to triangulate for a long time. I use the scare quotes because one of the deepest assumptions that both sides make is that there is an exit strategy in the GWOT. There is none, just as there wasn't an exit strategy to the Cold War. One side has to win, one side has to lose.  But the way the arguments are generally presented, we have Americans believing that America has to lose (in order to win?).

What hasn't been articulated by either party is the context to which Iraq is just a very large battle in a larger conflict. Nor has the battle for Iraq been appropriately contextualized with regard to regional affairs. That is why both sides are rather obsessed with reporting on the ground and trying to box the conflict into a nice standalone package (which is either a disaster or 'yet still winnable'). To talk about Iraq alone is the mistake because then you can devolve questions to the probity of GWBush's pre-emption. The problem is all of those metrics hang on whether or not we 'win' in Iraq. Both sides cannot agree on the terms of victory because both sides just want to be right about Iraq.

It's not about Iraq.

And now that is becoming clear, and the focus has changed somewhat to Iran, the anti-war contingent is suggesting that Bush's 'warmongering' pre-emption is now just casting about for a new target. Iranians believe precisely the same thing.

What is lost in most of this is the neoconservative geopolitical project, now almost casually dismissed as debunked, which situated the US into the position of nation-building bodyguard for the world in the first place. This debate has been cast aside and no lessons learned really applied to it other than 'Feith was an idiot' and 'Fukyama quit' and 'Bremer screwed up' and 'Where is Wolfowitz now?'. This failure to answer the fundamental question of what America is doing engaging the world in the first place, leaves all foreign policy decisions at the level of partisan blame. Partisan blame is enough when the long view isnt' discussed. That's where we are now - with four year old arguments about WMD.

It is right to consider what the American strategic vision is with regard to our shared interest in defeating terrorism. And until that is articulated clearly within America, the possibilities of establishing a global coalition are slim. I find that Democrats, would willingly undermine the Bush Administration in order to try to establish almost any diplomatic brownie points outside of the US. The Republicans will gloat over any battlefield victory (or downplay any defeat) in order to justify the Administration's moves, whether or not they work coherently at a high level. Each party claims to be the true Americans, but neither can agree on American interests. As soon as the argument devolves to body counts and Vietnam codewords, we may as well start talking about Nazis again. (Godwin's Law).

I like Barnett's strategic vision, and it is never too late to talk about strategic worldviews. But until we do that, we do little more than Shi'a and Sunni ourselves, and it ought to be obvious how we are thusly weakening our central government.

More Juice for the 21C

Roland Piquepaille writes:

"Today, about 90 percent of the world's electricity is created through an indirect and inefficient conversion of heat. It is estimated that two thirds of the heat used by thermoelectric converters are wasted and released. But now, researchers from the University of California at Berkeley have found a new way to convert this wasted heat into electricity by trapping organic molecules between metal nanoparticles. So far, this method of creating electricity creation is in its very early stage, but if it can scale up to mass production it may lead to a new and inexpensive source of energy."

Alphas Make a Break

What!? Apparently the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity chapter at the University of Virginia has seceded from the Black Fraternity Council and joined the Interfrat council. In one way it is a stunning development, in another way it is something that might have been predicted. Even when I was in college 20 years ago, our chapter flirted with the idea.

EARLIER this February, Office of African-American Affairs Dean M. Rick Turner kicked off Black History Month with a scathing critique that whites in Charlottesville won't "do anything for black folks." At the same time, the Iota Beta chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. made history by leaving the Black Fraternity Council for the nonracial Inter-Fraternity Council. Given the stark contrast in worldviews underlying these actions, it was inevitable they would come to a head. And come to a head they did.

In characteristically flamboyant fashion, Turner went around Grounds and in classrooms publicly berating the decision as "disgraceful." After words were exchanged, letters and editorials were written and administrators and students weighed in, the two sides have now apparently decided to keep their dirty laundry between themselves. Turner and members of the Alphas could not be reached for comment. An administrator who had chimed in now refused to talk, as did an Alpha alumnus. Notwithstanding their reticence, the whole hullabaloo and the response to it represent everything that is wrong with how we approach race.

At the heart of this controversy is the concept of community. The Alphas' move was seen as a sellout to the "black community." Likewise, the media coverage that ensued was seen as an effort to exploit a schism in the black community. However, putting up a wall of silence now will not repair the breach. This is a problem that is here to stay as long as African-Americans are expected to march in lockstep with a leadership that is out of step. As long as they are led to believe in a racial ideology that imposes uniformity over individuality and "peoplehood" over personhood, neither the individuals nor the community will succeed.

This is an interesting moment for the prospects of the Talented Tenth. I'll be talking about the Talented Tenth this week in the context of the permanence of the Black Upper Middle Class and the Black Upper Class. I referred to them earlier in reference to the State of Black America conference. This also ties into Barack Obama's blackness, and the fate of blackness in black politics and black politics in America.

My preliminary assessment is that there is a continuing and perhaps an accelerating disintegration of black racial solidarity along class lines and that the success of integration is only a part of the reason. We may very well be seeing the beginnings of a blacklash that makes Ward Connorly seem mild by comparison.

Black Republicans and conservatives have been accused, often fairly, of adding insult to the injury of the continual black brain drain from underserved black communities by spiting the politics of ethnic social uplift. Is that merely the tip of an iceberg of resentment that's seething under the covers of black political debate? Is the war between blackfolks and 'niggers' about to begin as Chris Rock predicted? Was Bill Cosby's shot across the bow more than just a shot in the dark, but the beginning of an all out offensive?

Stay tuned. It could get ugly.

The Current and Future Black Church

Ahh the Black Church. What a huge subject. Let's dive in.

The Spousal Unit and I are dealing with our issues of traditions. I like angelic choirs and organ fugues, she likes rocking gospel and tambourines. We both love God but we cannot find a house with the right flavor. We have both experienced the humiliation and embarrassment of watching each other be uncomfortable and alienated in the other's house of worship. I think that our petty differences serve to illustrate something of the alienation of many people from Church and it brings me close to some fundamental questions that I have decided to deal with at length during this period of my life. It is not the cause, but a serious reason for me to undertake matters of theology.

It was therefore providential that at the last minute, the topic of debate for my episode of 'Black Men Revealed' was switched to 'Why Black Men Don't Church'. While I would much rather have talked about politics or culture I had to deal with how I thought other black men deal with such matters of the spirit in relation to the Black Church.

I'm Episcopalian. There aren't many black Episcopalians, but the Anglican Church is ascendant in Africa, and the number two man in the Episcopal Church (which we often refer to as the Body of Christ), the Archbishop of York, is too African. As with every other branch of Christianity, what Africans bring to worship ultimately changes the character of church. Churches change. Christ remains the same. How do we reconcile the two?

When we talked about this, my wife and I, she said something that I think very well exemplifies the problems of the Black Church. At least, I can get my head around it. I'd like to share that insight with you and kick off a bunch of discussion. But first let me give you one of my overriding concerns.

The biggest concern I have with Christian Churches are their flexibility. I can't explain exactly how it makes me feel (other than awful) to read Bible verses today in something other than the King James Version. So I don't. I grew up getting gold stars first in Bible School, by memorizing the denotation and the connotation of Bible verses. I did so in the Foursquare Church, which was a Pentacostal Evangelical sect of Christianity. Everything I knew about God, and I was a precocious little twerp, meant people getting the Holy Ghost, speaking in tongues, dancing all over, faith healing and the whole kinetic experience. My Bible was a black leather King James red letter edition with a zipper that had a cross on it. That was, unquestionably, The Word of GOD! The same yesterday, today and tomorrow.

And then I went to Catholic School.

So who was this Virgin Mary, and how come we didn't talk to Jesus any more? What are these Stations of the Cross and what is Confession all about? I asked every question and I got every answer and I realized there was more to God than I had ever known. Because if God could accept these Catholics into his Heavenly Kingdom, there are more ways to God than I could ever believe possible. And I watched Catholics writhe and pain at the passage of Vatican II, and lament the fact that Mass was said in English instead of Latin. And I freaked out when they said the Lord's Prayer with different words. These things were happening at the same time that President Nixon was being kicked out of office and air raid drills rang out every first Friday at 10am. The world was upside down, and they even changed the Bible.

How could all of God's people be so misled when deep down in their hearts they wanted to be faithful? How could an entire church be wrong? How could a minister, oops I mean priest be wrong? The Catholics had an answer that satisfied me in the definition of a Sacrament. A Sacrament is an outward expression of an inward commitment. Suddenly I understood that it was the inward commitment to God that mattered most. Churches could change, Bibles could change, prayers could change, but one's love for God and God's love could never change. Church then, is all about getting you to that moment. To quiet your mind and open up your heart to be at one with the Holy Trinity.

I can't know that this is what brings other people to tears as it does to me when I write it. But that beauty and peacefulness of the Spirit is here with me now as I do. It's difficult for me to understand why everybody wouldn't want that same blessing. But I know that people don't. I acknowledge that there are many different traditions that get different people to that holy moment, those moments of numinous oneness with God. And so when we are brought to speak about black people, we must know that amongst all of us those differences are real. Which brings me to the Spousal Unit.

She says that the problem facing the Black Church is what to do with young people. She knows as we all know that there are far too many blackfolks who need God in a desperate way, but are not getting churched. And she says that the Church is struggling with that mightily.

When I was a child, she said, it was inconceivable that some kid with baggy pants, sneakers, football jersey, gold chain and a baseball hat could come into Church. "You don't come in here looking like that." And therein lies the paradox because this is the child who needs church most. Because they don't have spritual guidance and they don't have decent community and they don't have people they can trust when America doesn't have their back. These are the people, she said, that we are losing. And that is the core dilemma faced by black Churches. Do they take these people in as they are? Do they change the music to attract them? Do they change the way Church is done to accommodate the sinner? How does the black minister of today appeal to the black youth of today? What difference does it make?

I'm conservative. I think the Catholic Church is more conservative than the Episcopal Church and I have half a mind to switch to it. I do so because I want my church to be unchanging as God. I want to feel conformed with the infinite in the company of men and women who feel the same. For me that means ritual. I can meditate and pray and reach God when I feel like it. I don't need church for that. I need church for those other things - to reach that holy moment in communion with others. So for me the very idea of changing any church for the sake of black youth or Serbian grandmothers or Chinese farmers or Malaysian miners is crazy foolish in the extreme. Church isn't supposed to change for you, church is supposed to change you. And yet I acknowledge and recognize that every church is different. God gets through.

When it comes to the Black Church, the dilemma then is who should initiate the change. Given that change is inevitable and that the church will reflect the desires of the people to express themselves as they do, which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Who picks which version of the Bible? Who says whom is certified to be a minister? All these things are changing dynamically in African America. People here in Los Angeles are going to church where the Lakers used to play basketball. In my world, that's unthinkable. But it's real. By the thousands it's real. Church is marketed. Congregations are target markets. Reaching out with the Word means reaching the masses, by radio, by television, by podcast, by email, by video game. Have it your way. Why not?

The Conservative in me says that something is amiss. There is something about the harvesting of souls that's not quite right. The fishers of men are using huge nets and dumping all of the souls on the decks to be processed.

My indictment goes to the minister who does not have a sect. I see nothing wrong with the storefront church. Every ministry starts somewhere. But I have a hard time understanding where the Methodists disagree with the Mormons or the Baptists with the Anabaptist and the Presbyterians with the Seventh Day Adventists. I have a hard time understanding how these Protestant traditions are losing ground to today's Faith Domes. I have a hard time understanding how the institution of the black church is changing and why and which direction it is headed.

I understand that the Black Church has been overloaded with responsibilities it alone shouldered in the days before civil rights. I understand that a great deal of black tradition has been lost to integration, that our freedom and empowerment to employ mainstream institutions has weakened and specialized the Black Church to be little more than a church. Where it once might have been a school and a political organization and a graveyard, blacks can now use the public facilities.

But is the Black Church on the right track? Are the traditions growing stronger or is it all a New Jack thing? What's the difference? Is that old time religion good enough for anyone? On the whole are blacks closer to God because of the Black Church or is black America losing spiritual ground? I think there is a looming crisis. What is the institutional future? Is it bright? If not, what is to be done?

Hardaway vs Amaechi: Keep It To Yourselves

I sat at the airport the other day for several hours waiting for my plane. So I experienced one of those rare times when I have to suffer through the unrarified news hours that are the mediocrity of the mainstream. And so I learned that one NBA star dissed another NBA star over some gay thing.

Since the volume was turned down, I could only read the closed caption text of Hardaway as he spoke to the CNN guy outside at night through some pink metal bars, vs those words of the accused Amaechi as he sat in a well-lit studio.

Harsh words were dished out by Hardaway who, said as I read that he's really sorry for the harsh words. Amaechi said that Hardaway had a platform and now that his words were out there and they give license to more hate. This reminds me very much of the soul food incident with Tiger Woods and Fuzzy Zoeller. What I remember was that Tiger said that he got his apology from Zoeller and that was the end of it. This is why Tiger Woods is a better man than this Amaechi character. Woods handled his business and defended himself, whereas Amaechi is seeking for the public to fight in his own behalf.

It doesn't take more than 15 minutes worth of thought that if you are going to be gay, or anti-gay, there are certain ethics of deportment. What we have here is a breach of ethics, not an extraordinary revelation. The NBA players don't want gayness spread all over the place. Gays in the NBA don't want homophobic remarks spread all over the place. So shutup already. Problem solved.

Some would argue that silence hurts the gay player. But isn't that what he's now demanding? Obviously a man to man apology has not sufficed. I'm not in a position to say that Hardaway did or did not offer one, but that's really all that needed to happen. Neither Hardaway nor anyone else on the planet can offer up an apology that is going to satisfy the world of bloviators who wish to make larger points on matters of 'gay relations'. Forget it. The very requirement is, by definition, impossible to meet - which is one of the reasons that gay activists always say (or hope) that the homophobic man is secretly gay and just stupendously conflicted. You will note that you will have to strain your ears to ever hear any gay activists give two beans about whether or not straight women are homophobic. I mean after all, they're just women. If it's fair to say that male homophobes do what they do because of conflicts over their own sexuality, it's equally fair to plumb the psychology of gay men's dismissal of het sex and all that could imply. Whatever to all that, the box we should be playing in is personal offense, personal apology.

So now instead of just a sporto, Amaechi has to be a sex symbol too. Respect the gay sex symbol! Instead of just a sporto, Hardaway has to be a goodwill ambassador.  Aww poor babies. You can't always get what you want in the public sphere. Next time keep it to yourselves.

Barack Obama, American Respect & Black Love

"We're gonna move on up one by one
We ain't gonna stop until the job is done
Can I say am I black enough for ya
Am I black-a black-a black enough for ya?"
-- Billy Paul

Next to 'Me and Mrs. Jones', that was my favorite song on 'The 360 Degrees of Billy Paul', the first LP I ever owned. I was in the 6th or 7th grade and I used to sing that song to my schoolmates who had no freaking clue what I was talking about. It didn't matter to me. I was black enough. I knew the melody and the lyrics not only for Billy Paul but for Curtis Mayfield too.

When Oklahoma Republican JC Watts interviewed on the Chris Rock Show, he famously made an ass of himself because he didn't recognize the lyrics to a George Clinton song. All of us cool blackfolks declared Watts, a good guy, but woefully square and out of touch. In many ways it was his political death knell, at least among those I would tentatively call the 'bicoastal black bourgeoisie'. If you're one of us college educated, civil libertarian blackfolks with a sense of style and humor who understands and uses the phrase 'flyover country', death at the hands of Chris Rock is death indeed. This is the kind of death Barack Obama shows signs of showing, but for a slightly different reason.

I've only read the slightest bit of Obama's self-mythologizing best-seller, but I've seen enough to recognize that like JC Watts, he doesn't come from an immediately recognizable backstory. He's not an existential archtype and he doesn't pretend to be (thus far in the book). But everybody expects some obeisance to that when you're telling your black American story. Colin Powell had some, Brent Staples had some, Henry Louis Gates Jr had some. Some what? Some down home with ma and pa, or some inner-city grit. When you don't have that, ethnic black America doesn't love you. You gotta have some Color Purple love or some NWA love. You gotta have some Eyes Were Watching God or some Poppa Was a Rolling Stone to fit into the playbook. Just like we know Mitt Romney is going to trot up his family and stand in front of the Red White and Blue bunting, just like we know Hillary Clinton is going to do her brainy girls' school thing, all the candidates that work their way into American hearts have to run along lines we know. Obama has a question mark.

Obama's question mark is familiar to me. It is the black suburban question mark, and there are plenty of examples of talented blackfolks who have had to deal with that same question mark. And there are unfortunately only a few ways to play it. In my generation, America is not quite dealing with it well and that's why you have to play it - you can't just leave it alone. The black suburban question mark goes back to the fundamental monolithic question of politics and society. You're new, you're dark. You look like you could be successful in the mainstream, but what do you really want? Are you really like us or are you really like them? Blackfolks and whitefolks both ask this question. It's a question of loyalty. And they infer an answer from your tone of voice or your walk or your taste in music. If you get the question mark, you have to prove something. It's a monkey on the back. John McWhorter had it. Marcus Mabry had it. Trey Ellis had it. Joseph C. Phillips had it. Bobby Rivers had it. Tiger Woods had it. David Robinson had it.

There's really only one way to win, and that is to give both 'sides' a reason to claim you, a reason to believe that your glory is their glory. Sometimes you can do that but still be too black or too white. Whoopi Goldberg is a perfect example. Blacks and whites respect her but she's still too black to get automatic white love. You couldn't elect Whoopi to anything without love. Darius Rucker is another example. Black as he looks, most blackfolks don't claim him, and they never will. He's still too white to love. Sometimes you can win by disappearing into America, and becoming iconic of American love. That's what we all love the best. You could become a Michael Jordan. You could become an Oprah.  When it comes to politics and racial loyalty and love there are two styles at the top of the black leadership foodchain. There is the Colin Powell and there is the Muhammad Ali.

Politically, many blackfolks still hunger for an Ali, somebody whose talk makes whitefolks uncomfortable but whose position and power cannot be denied. It is, for better or worse, a sign of political integrity. But short of having that, blackfolks will settle for someone whose feels racial pain. For every black public figure in America today some balance is struck that endears them to the black body politic. Their acceptance comes through a combination of underdog empathy and arrogant pride given by blackfolks. They have their 'blackness moment' We know it when we see it, and the loyalty flows one way or another. That deciding moment of blackness is sometime initiated by the candidate themselves, sometimes it is thrust upon them. But one way or another, it always comes, and nobody is quite satisfied until it does. Sometimes it take a little bit of white racism to satisfy this loyalty test, sometimes it takes a lot. A host of older black politicians got black love because they did that Ali thing. Harold Washington. David Dinkins. Andrew Young. Sharpe James. Marion Berry. Blackfolks loved them because they had power and they made whitefolks mad. It worked.

Understand that black political love is a different thing than respect. I say black and white respect run identically. We respect folks for the same reasons. Although blacks might never love Clarence Thomas, they'd certainly respect him more if his reputation as a jurist if he wrote the deciding opinion more often. Blacks respect Dr. Rice more, because she tells the classic black overachiever story. But she doesn't get much love.

When there are black candidates who get a standard measure of respect for their talents and abilities, it all comes down to love. That's especially poignant when there are black candidates who can crossover, and it's downright critical for those who garner the question mark.  Alan Keyes gets no love because whitefolks don't hate him enough and the 'wrong' kind of whitefolks love him too much. Harold Ford got some love because the spectre of miscegenation was supposedly raised against him, but he didn't get that love before. 

So here we have Barack Obama, a Democrat in the mold of Paul Simon who must in the course of his campaign face the question mark and his blackness moment. While the very fact of him running for President gives many in the black polity the only reason they need, it is not enough. He will have to add to the measure of respect he gets now, some measure of love. For Obama, I say that it has to be Colin Powell love as opposed to Muhammad Ali love. When Powell stood up for Affirmative Action on the floor of the GOP Convention, he got booed, but everywhere blacks knew that he got more love from the African American electorate. We accepted that tiny bit of victimhood as loyalty, and it was enough. Obama already has the black suburban question mark, so he has to earn his inner city and blue collar bones. He'll do so in the same vein as white liberals, not through the black man existentials, but through civil rights credentials. Nobody expects Obama to shave his head and wear a moustache and goatee and even bother to look like an average black man. He has that much to prove.

The 'articulate' moment provided by Joe Biden was just the prelude. We all could expect that. That's not a curveball capable of defining Obama for the purposes of black love. He needs something more. And something tells me that he's not going to start it, he's going to finish it. I say Obama's moment will be found in his reaction to some racial event in America sometime between now and election day. He'll use the same words that Bill Clinton might use, but he'll say it blackly, and the whoops from the crowd will be pronounced. That moment will make Obama vice-president.

The Dollar Coin

New dollar coins are coming out today. Whooha! I love it.

I've been digging on dollar coins for about 6 months now. I always did like them, but something happened that made me start using them on the regular. Now I'm a big fan. I basically went to the hand car wash to buff up the Transporter, and put in a 20 by accident. I got 20 golden dollars. I only needed 5 to do the wash, I put the rest in my armrest-tray in the car. Not long after that, I found myself at the drive through at Carl's Jr. I had a five in my pocket which I wrestled out with some difficulty at the driveup window and I paid the rest with the coins. When I got home, the magic trifecta imprinted the usefulness on my head. I paid my daughter's allowance with the gleaming discs.

Since then I go out of my way, OK well just to that same car wash, every week to load up on the coins. I buy 40 at a time, and now I'm finding them in all the usual places. In my backpack, in my desk tray at home, in the car. It's a real treat, and they are actually a lot more convenient than dollars especially to have in the car. You just have to make a conscious effort to use them and you'll find them useful.

I have to say that the novelty hasn't worn off, and I find myself kinda upset when I find vending machines that don't accept them. I'm always using them at Starbucks and they're really great for tipping. The idea of having all of the presidents in fairly rapid succession, like the state quarters, is a great idea and we'll surely get the kids to collecting them. It would be nice if there was a short middle-school level 20 page book available for each president that cost a buck or two. That is if we really want to be educational about all this. Even without that, I'm sticking with the coins. I lose a lot fewer coins than bills to my wife and kids in the washing machine.

Misdemeanor

The Clocksite

Here's an idea and a term to coin. Clocksite.

A clocksite is a website put together to establish or debunk any economic or social theory that makes predictions about some important occurrence or keeps track of some indicator of public interest.

The term originates from the now familiar practice of billboard advertisements which are calibrated at a certain rate to estimate some important metric of public interest, like the number of smokers who die from lung cancer, the estimated number of dead in war, the number of dollars in the federal deficit or most famously the 'number of minutes to nuclear holocaust'.

A clocksite however, would employ multiple metrics and varying types of analysis and would allow for a more sophisticated and nuanced analysis of the issue at hand.  It might be open for collaboration or some officially sponsored by a partisan group.

As more open source tools become available to present analytic data on websites, we should expect more clocksites to follow the open publishing models that are now being experimented with by the folks at Swivel and ManyEyes. I have been interested in this matter for many years as I have been involved with building such sites with proprietary tools for business.

Giuliani: Armed Disarmer

I don't think Rudy Giuliani would make for a great president, and I think it might be hard for him to get elected in the country. But there are some undeniable strengths he has that may become more important over time. Andrew McCarthy has some thoughts:

Meanwhile, the once-shining clarity of the Bush Doctrine has dimmed. The great calling of our age, President Bush declared while smoke billowed from 9/11’s wreckage, was to defeat jihadists and quell the rogues who might abet them. He couldn’t have been more right. Five weary years later, though, the administration seems at times to be running on empty. The answer to our great calling has tapered to stabilizing Baghdad — while we abide Russia and China’s enabling of Iran, promote Fatah terrorists in their standoff with Hamas terrorists, and indulge Kim Jong-il’s remaking of the same dozen-year old promises whose flouting has graduated North Korea from extortionist to nuclear extortionist.

It’s hard to blame the president. He’s got to fight for every inch now. He is trying to move forward by meeting his critics halfway — decency they meet with bile. But he is in this fix because his administration has failed to rally the American people to the cause, to make them own it, rather than delegate it to 150,000 of our best and bravest while the rest of us go shopping. The Left has gleefully filled that void. With the help of its media allies, it daily saps the national will to stay on guard and take the fight to those determined to kill us.

I don’t think a President Giuliani would let them get away with it.

As a young prosecutor in the 1980s, I was privileged to work for him when he was the United States Attorney in New York City. By the sheer force of his intellect, his energy and his ability to inspire, he accomplished things that others before him had dared not try — like vanquishing the long entrenched mafia, which has been an epigone ever since his onslaught.

But Giuliani’s greatest asset may have been his unique understanding that success in any great endeavor hinges on the capacity to explain, relentlessly, what you are doing and why. With that, the public can understand and support you, the bad actors are under no illusions about your commitment, and those on the fence are apt to think better about choosing the wrong side. It is a Reaganesque gift.

He's right, and in a fight between good and evil, I'll take Giuliani's guts over everybody else in the field. I'm just not certain that Rudy is studying everything I'd want him to. He's also right about Rudy on the podium. He leaves absolutely no questions open to BS interpretation, and he doesn't tell dumb jokes like Bush. You know exactly where you stand with Rudy and there's no question that the buck stops with him (even if he's taking credit for somebody else's work - hmm, very presidential).

If you think the country is divided now over the war, believe me that Rudy will take no shorts. What do I think? I think we need to win more than we need warm fuzzy feelings at home. Rudy has no problem holding the hardline on law and order but I don't trust his geopolitical vision right now.

That said, I have no confidence in any other of the candidates at this moment. Clinton may have some experience but she'd throw everybody under her symbolic bus.

What softens me on all of the negatives and nullities on the question of Rudy is that he's a moderate Republican like myself. Right in there with Arnold and Christie, he's not playing any holy roller games with American society. He's a New Yorker and he knows that you can lay down rules but you cannot enforce social conventions. That will disarm all the obsessives over the faux evangelist conservatism infecting the GOP, and it will confirm that the Republicans have turned the corner back towards Reagan.

So I'm going to be interpolating between him and Romney. Romney talks a very good game and has a youthful appeal. I haven't heard him slip yet, but I'm thinking maybe he's a little bit too smooth. We'll see. The problem is that I've only heard him field question from Matt Lauer. I've seen nothing of Romney under pressure. 

The Cognitive Bias

I grew up as a liberal scientist. There's a lot of altruistic, whizbang, Carl Sagan germs still lying deep within my mental genetics. I grew up in California and was a member of the Sierra Club. When I was a kid I used to go hiking just about every weekend during the summer. Our family even invented an anti-pollution song which follows the tune of Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer:

Back to the dirty city where the smog pollutes the air
And if you ever saw it, I bet you wouldn't even care
Some people throw their rubbish all around the neighborhood
We ought to start a program and make them do the things they should

Cigarette butts and paper cups thrown into the street
Candy bars and jelly jars right beneath your feet

We gotta catch polluters and help to keep the city clean
Lock them in jail and beat them; serve them rotten bread and beans

As you can imagine, I was something of a longhaired radical environmentalist as a youth. The liberal impulse towards utopia is a strong one, and it can obviously be authoritarian. I had the bug for wilderness and blue skies, less for furry animals. I'm a bit less defensive of the planet these days, and I have more confidence that the criminalization of polluters can only be partially effective. But there are a number of assumptions buried deep within this ethos which temper my vision of the future and of the relative peril of oil dependency, and I'm not sure I've given them all up. Many are bound up in my choice of profession.

I'm living in the information age. I feed my children and my ego on dollars made in the business of negotiating information which is and industry inheriting of all of the arts and letters of literate people since the cave drawing. Law, philosophy, religion, literature, language arts, social studies, history... all of these are being sustained by the new media of information technology. That's my business. It is practically inconceivable that the continuity of this human enterprise will ever be broken.

I have always looked at the invention of computer mediated communication in the same context as that of the printing press, that is to say with an eye towards what universal computing can do in the future as universal literacy has done in the past. Martin Luther's Reformation is Stuart Brand's Disintermediation. I'm going to hand it to Brand & Rheingold because we talked about this a long time ago on The Well.

So I've always been interested in promoting the idea of universal computing in the same way I promote universal literacy and the rise of democracy. Empowerment by mind. In every regard I see the progress of mankind in terms of the rising opportunity of more and more people to live the intellectual life and profit from the life of the mind, and the quality of life is directly tied to their ability to access newly created economic markets for processing and handling of this intellective work. As far back as 1986 I was predicting the possibility of things like eBay and Amazon.com, because these were the kinds of transactions we did socially with each other at Xerox. We had client server email long before the masses, back when selling typewriters was still a profitable business.

Working at Xerox was a microcosm of the replacement of physical with virtual economies. It was perfectly evident to large numbers of us that there were reasons to send emails beyond 'saving a tree' by not typing a memo or a large document, but the environmental implications were not lost on us. It was perfectly evident to us that there were reasons to use distributed computing instead of large data centers beyond the costs of housing and air conditioning waste, but we were aware of relative power consumption advantages. It was perfectly evident to us that there were reasons to champion telecommuting beyond the environmental benefit of obviating oil-dependent transportation, but we were certainly not blind to that particular impact. The same thing goes for videoconferencing, online banking, e-commerce and gaming. There has rarely been a time when I was stuck in traffic because of a sports event when I didn't think derisively of all the blue collar bohunks and their pickup trucks that could all be home playing a virtual baseball game instead of wasting, time, money, space and fuel going to sit on their asses to watch somebody else play.

However, as some romanticize the fate of subsistence farmers in Chiapas as poor victims of globalization, I recognize that there are legions of people around the planet who are two generations less digital than I. And I realize that they still fall in love and have babies. I'm cool with that, but I am not blind to their evolution and it doesn't surprise me at all that they continue to adopt to the paradigms that my peers have established in the digital realms. I continue to scoff at 'digital divide' critics. The very existence of their criticism underscores how right we are thought leaders on the cutting edge have been. Too bad they didn't quite understand Moore's Law.

So understand that I have seen the digital economy grow by leaps and bounds and take larger and larger shares of an expanding GDP. We are the engine of worker productivity and we continue to grow.

Oil is just fuel for automobiles. We don't need automobiles. We need trucks and trains and jets and tanks, but we need autos and motorcycles much less. We need RVs, sports watercraft and snowmobiles even less. Understand that I know and predict that virtual gaming will be for my children everything that NASCAR is today and more. So I really, really don't worry about oil shocks. I've seen the future of the work of literate societies, I'm part of making that future.

So all the oil dries up. So what? So long as there is enough coal and hydro to keep the computers and networks running, I'm cool. And so are you. You just don't know it yet.

Joint Resolution (HJ 114 IH)

(for reference)

October 12, 2002

To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.

Whereas in 1990 in response to Iraq's war of aggression against and illegal occupation of Kuwait, the United States forged a coalition of nations to liberate Kuwait and its people in order to defend the national security of the United States and enforce United Nations Security Council resolutions relating to Iraq;

Whereas after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, Iraq entered into a United Nations sponsored cease-fire agreement pursuant to which Iraq unequivocally agreed, among other things, to eliminate its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs and the means to deliver and develop them, and to end its support for international terrorism;

Whereas the efforts of international weapons inspectors, United States intelligence agencies, and Iraqi defectors led to the discovery that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons and a large scale biological weapons program, and that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program that was much closer to producing a nuclear weapon than intelligence reporting had previously indicated;

Whereas Iraq, in direct and flagrant violation of the cease-fire, attempted to thwart the efforts of weapons inspectors to identify and destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and development capabilities, which finally resulted in the withdrawal of inspectors from Iraq on October 31, 1998;

Whereas in 1998 Congress concluded that Iraq's continuing weapons of mass destruction programs threatened vital United States interests and international peace and security, declared Iraq to be in `material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations' and urged the President `to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations' (Public Law 105-235);

Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations;

Whereas Iraq persists in violating resolutions of the United Nations Security Council by continuing to engage in brutal repression of its civilian population thereby threatening international peace and security in the region, by refusing to release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq, including an American serviceman, and by failing to return property wrongfully seized by Iraq from Kuwait;

Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people;

Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council;

Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;

Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens;

Whereas the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, underscored the gravity of the threat posed by the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by international terrorist organizations;

Whereas Iraq's demonstrated capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, the risk that the current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces or provide them to international terrorists who would do so, and the extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack, combine to justify action by the United States to defend itself;

Whereas United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 authorizes the use of all necessary means to enforce United Nations Security Council Resolution 660 and subsequent relevant resolutions and to compel Iraq to cease certain activities that threaten international peace and security, including the development of weapons of mass destruction and refusal or obstruction of United Nations weapons inspections in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, repression of its civilian population in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688, and threatening its neighbors or United Nations operations in Iraq in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 949;

Whereas Congress in the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1) has authorized the President `to use United States Armed Forces pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 (1990) in order to achieve implementation of Security Council Resolutions 660, 661, 662, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 674, and 677';

Whereas in December 1991, Congress expressed its sense that it `supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 as being consistent with the Authorization of Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1),' that Iraq's repression of its civilian population violates United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 and `constitutes a continuing threat to the peace, security, and stability of the Persian Gulf region,' and that Congress, `supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688';

Whereas the Iraq Liberation Act (Public Law 105-338) expressed the sense of Congress that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime;

Whereas on September 12, 2002, President Bush committed the United States to `work with the United Nations Security Council to meet our common challenge' posed by Iraq and to `work for the necessary resolutions,' while also making clear that `the Security Council resolutions will be enforced, and the just demands of peace and security will be met, or action will be unavoidable';

Whereas the United States is determined to prosecute the war on terrorism and Iraq's ongoing support for international terrorist groups combined with its development of weapons of mass destruction in direct violation of its obligations under the 1991 cease-fire and other United Nations Security Council resolutions make clear that it is in the national security interests of the United States and in furtherance of the war on terrorism that all

relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions be enforced, including through the use of force if necessary;

Whereas Congress has taken steps to pursue vigorously the war on terrorism through the provision of authorities and funding requested by the President to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;

Whereas the President and Congress are determined to continue to take all appropriate actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;

Whereas the President has authority under the Constitution to take action in order to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States, as Congress recognized in the joint resolution on Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40); and

Whereas it is in the national security of the United States to restore international peace and security to the Persian Gulf region: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

What's interesting in reading this is how reasonable it sounds, even in defiance of what opponents of the Bush Administration say Bush had been saying. Which is to say that signers to this authorization claim that Bush says things that this bill doesn't stipulate.

The Nightmare Before Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day Y'All.

I should have published this yesterday because today it might be too late. But whatever you do, don't use FTD to deliver your flowers online. Some of you may have already learned your lesson the hard way, but their system is kaput. FTD SUCKS!

I ordered a dozen roses for the Spousal Unit on Monday for same day delivery, not only to beat the rush, but to let her know that she was on my mind before the holiday. I thought it would be great considering that she was at home that day feeling a bit under the weather. So I make my order online at FTD.com at about 11am Eastern Time. Within 15 minutes my bank account was looted of 75 bucks.

So I check to see if my package has been delivered given the order number I got in my email shortly thereafter. After 3 hours there is still no confirmation number in my email. Fine, maybe they'll deliver it in the afternoon Pacific time. So I called at 9:15 pm Eastern to check by phone. I wait on hold for 40 minutes before they even pick up the phone. I'm getting hot now. Before I even say one word, the sissy on the phone lisps to me that they had now way of telling me. Huh? What? Their system is down.

The system that takes my money works like a charm, and I understand that order processing is a different ball of wax than customer service but this is ridiculous. So I end up calling my house several times clandestinely asking the kids if the flowers got there. No dice.

I got the following email approximately 39 hours after I place my order:

Dear Michael

We regret to inform you that due to holiday volumes, we are unable to process your request for delivery confirmation at this time.
Thank you for purchasing your order through FTD.COM

Sincerely

FTD.COM.
Customer Service

Two full days after they guaranteed delivery, they can neither confirm nor deny that the delivery has been made. I'm livid. Never again in life will I use FTD and I recommend that you take your business elsewhere. If you are feeling especially fed up with incompetence and in the mood to break things, you could do a lot worse than a brick through any FTD logo you see.

Guess what. Lots of people have experienced the extreme sucking suckitude and suckholiness that is FTD.

You have been warned.

If I don't get my money back there will be blogger hell to pay.

Iran's Plausible Deniability

OK I confess. I watched Fox News this evening. It was about 15 minutes altogether as I was flipping through the channels. And so I have learned that some reporter was giving Tony Snow a hard time about the interpretation of 'the highest levels of government' of Iran that were directing forces in Iraq. Apparently there was enough dissonance between the administration position and that of the Chair of the Joint Chiefs for perennial skeptics to go off on their 'faulty intelligence' rants.

Reading Michael Yon tonight, bored with that spectacle, I learned something about the military that I only vaguely appreciated before which is the size of a battalion. Generally, a Lieutenant Colonel would lead a combat battalion which is about 700 soldiers. Suddenly Oliver North doesn't seem to be such a small guy.

Snow's answer, that seemed to shut down the pesky reporter, was that the Quds Forces were Iranian. No question? No question. The IEDs were Iranian. No question? No question. So how big are the Quds Forces? Nobody's saying, but they are led by a Brigadier General. Even my 13 year old boy knows that a General is bigger than a Colonel, and if a LT Colonel can direct 700 troops.. well you do the estimation.

I do a lot of thinking these days about what organizations can accomplish, and I'm aiming to do some leadership of ever larger teams. It's a hunger I feel especially as a software guy and as a writer. What can you do with 100 soldiers? 300? 700? You can train them way beneath the nose of the executive, especially if you try. For all we know, the Parliament of Iran has explicitly passed legislation forbidding their supreme leader from funding any troops in Iraq. But we oughta know what ideologues can get away with, at least for a short period of time.

Say it with me: Hasenfus.

Good now say 'Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism'. I knew you could.

What Would Malcolm Say?

This speculation is probably more appropriate for the Comic, but since I use Stripcreator and don't have a lot of control of how the drawings look, I'll put it as a scenario in written form.

You are an affluent black man walking down the street in an upscale shopping district on your way to get dinner. Twice in three blocks you are approached by other black men down on their luck who ask for 'spare change'. You have a standard answer for the times you don't give, because sometimes you do. It is 'Not Today'. After saying it the third time in ten minutes, you begin to wonder what's up, but after it's too late the question pops up in your head. What would Malcolm X say?

Of course I think he would reiterate the following:

The platform that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, our religious leader, stands on is the platfrom of complete freedom, justice and equality for the 20 million black people or so-called Negroes here in America. And he teaches us that because of the seriousness of the condition that our people now find themselves in that it is absolutely impossible to solve our problems with means other than religion. And he teaches us that the religion of Islam is the only religion that will instill within our people the incentive to stand on our own feet. And instead of trying to force ourselves upon whites or force ourselves into the white society or blame the white man for our predicament and constantly beg him for what he has, he says that the only way that we can solve our problem is to unite together among ourselves, among our own kind, clean ourselves up, rid ourselves of the evils that we've become addicted to here in this society and try and solve our problem ourselves.

Which begs the question: "Who you you mean 'ourselves'?"

Would Malcolm entreaty the begging stranger to join Islam and clean himself up, or is he putting the burden on affluent blacks in a socialist way?

Of course Malcolm is dead and it doesn't really matter much, but it's an interesting question to ask.

Purity Balls & Marrying Well

I've never been to or even heard of a 'purity ball' until I read this:

 "Okay, I'm all for purity and crap like that. Kids, including high school kids, should not be having sex for too many reasons to go into. But things like this are very odd to me. Purity balls are where a father pledges to fight for his daughter's virtue and the girl pledges to her father to keep her virginity until marriage. WTF with making a formal gala out of it? What ever happened to keeping your personal stuff, personal? And your father doesn't own your vagina, so why are you pledging to him? I thought this was a promise to God or yourself. Also, what is this glaring double standard? It's nice and all that you want to keep your daughter pure, but girls don't have sex with themselves. Uhm...well, you know what I mean. What about the boy's purity balls? Okay, that didn't sound right, but you know what I mean there too. Stop putting on the pressure to be virtuous on the girls and stop making a public display of your sexual values." — Angela Winters, black moderate blogger

When I was a single rogue, I would target Angela for down low action. Between you and I, there is nothing like a girl with daddy issues to be a target of seduction. See if her vagina belongs to her, what's she going to do with it? If you're not going to use it and nobody else is, you shouldn't mind if I borrow it for a couple hours a week.  Vagina as property. There are so many schemes built on that premise that all the Teddy Pendergrasses in all of the languages of every era couldn't put it to music. But let's get down to cases, shall we?

First things first. The boy's purity ball is the baseball bat in the girl's father's hands. And when pops is sloppy, it's the law. You may have noticed that in the history of the world there have been very few laws on the books that protect men from the sexual predation of women. Sooner or later you people are going to get it, we're not the same. Women need some things. Men need different things. The reason marriage works is because it's a negotiated settlement.

"Making a public display of sexual values" is what everybody does every day when we put on clothing. From an aliens'-eye view of humanity we're just procreating machines are we not?

What I really want to say in all this is that I think it's a very healthy thing to make social events and publicly ritualize values. A purity ball is a good thing for the very same reasons a big church wedding is a good thing. The underlying values are good and the symbolism that it communicates is important. We should do things which underline the value of marrying well which is a phrase I'd like to hear a bit more often in our society.

I read something rather funny in the past few weeks. The guy says "Don't marry for money. Hang around rich girls and marry for love." I can tell you that my folks' advice about marriage could fit inside a box of crackers. A small box.

I was also never the type to go to a lot of weddings as a young single man. I might go as far as to say that I was largely a stranger to the world of weddings. I understood that I wanted to be married, but I spent a great deal of time in pursuit of the woman and not the wedding. I can't say out loud that it was a mistake but it certainly did shape the way most of my single life went. It wasn't until after 30 that I took 'dating' seriously - that is to say it was only in the context of marriage that my single life began to assume a more rational shape. At that particular time in my life I vowed to myself that I wanted to restrain myself from breaking hearts and that I would not kiss any woman that I couldn't see myself marrying. What changed dramatically was the frequency with which I could find and deal with women. It made me more honest and I could break off relationships before they became 'entanglements' which although I managed myself fairly well before, made a very important difference for me and the women as well.

If I haven't said it before, I think there's something radically wrong with boyfriends or girlfriends that hang around in 'relationships' for years although I will admit that it's more radically wrong for young people. I think that the idea that marriage offers nothing more is the primary cause for the preponderance of these strange affairs, and yes I want to get into that from my own arrogant perspective. Although I don't listen to morning radio I've heard enough of the advice shows to know that there's a big market out there for 'relationships'. Me, I like Lykis and Dr. Laura. They are on different sides of the same coin. Lykis slams young people who slide down the slippery slope of live-in relationships and Laura slams wedded people who can't keep their heads on straight about the rules and the consequence of breaking them. Both are in their own way very pro-marriage. They establish a high standard by debunking every half-assed and failing relationship that people rationalize their ways into.

In my defense of marriage and these standards I do not do so to revile those who don't. I will talk smack about you just as I would people who have no sense of style. I will cop a superior attitude when it suits me. I may be above making anything out of it, but I am not above thinking it and I do believe it's reasonable to make social hay out of such. Still there is the formal definition of hubris which is the arrogance to punish people who are already failing. This is what I don't do. I note the failure and I move on. You will notice at Cobb that I don't spend a lot of time talking about relationships and all that. But in this regard, that is to say the extent to which respect for marriage itself and the actions required in preparation for marrying well affect the behavior of single men and women, I do think there is much to be said.

I'm not sure how much causality there is in marrying well when it comes to the Old School project. It's certainly significant but I don't know how much. So I'm not sure whether it's a big deal to talk about it politically.

Barnett's World

I love to say I told you so.
TPM Barnett says that the US spends roughly half of the world's money in absolute terms, on military spending. That is to say 1.4 Trillion is expended per year, the US spends 700 Billion. That's a mere 3-4% of GDP.

Adding subtly to my geopolitical sophistication are two of TPM Barnett's terms, Functional Core and Non-Integrating Gap.

In this is a subtle change between older concepts like First World, Second World and Third World.  In fact, it would be interesting to remind ourselves where those ideas came from in the first place. In addition, I have used 'Internal Third World' and 'Internal Second World' to make class distinctions between Americans, but there is a presumption of mobility within those classes.

Similarly, Barnett's Functional Core and Non-Integrating Gap represent some measure of national will int integrate into the global economy. Indeed we could think of the global economy as the planetary mainstream, except that it is perhaps not a popular majority of the human population. More importantly membership in the Functional Core represents the willingness of nations to be integrated and therefore share values, trade, culture with international movers and shakers. Membership represents a willingness to give up control of certain privileges heretofore assigned to national sovereignty. Nations are still Westphalian actors, but their ability and willingness to share responsibilities are more important.

Our interests going forward militarily then are to defend the global status quo and this is inherently a function of the values of nations and their orientation to globalism, thus core versus non-integrated. The US obviously fits in big time, and we can afford it.

The Ducktators

Nothing like them good old cartoons.

Oil for Nukes

On first blush, the news seems all good. Props are due for the appropriateness of the six-way deal worked out yesterday with the Norks. In exchange for international inspections and closing down of production at The nuclear facility, diplomatic relations are forthcoming with the US as well as several thousand tons of oil.

The Norks have been taken down a peg and whatever fizzly and undeliverable nukes they still possess are nullified by their commitment to step down from the provocations of secret development. This is a step in the right direction and deserves carrots.

It was right and proper and wise for the Bush Administration to demand six party talks instead of a bilateral agreement. The fruits of this diplomatic victory should make State and Bush both smell like a rose. Today, the Axis appears to be a bit less evil.

According to the NYT

The accord sets a 60-day deadline for North Korea to accomplish the first steps toward disarmament, and leaves until an undefined moment — and to another negotiation — the actual removal of North Korea's nuclear weapons and the fuel manufactured to produce them.

Under the agreement, the first part of the aid -- 50,000 tons of fuel oil, or an equivalent value of economic or humanitarian aid -- would be provided by South Korea, Russia, China and the United States; in the case of the United States , that would require congressional approval, which is likely to be difficult to get.

And the WaPo

The accord, described as "initial actions," left for further negotiations the question of what to do with North Korea's declared nuclear weapons, estimated at a half-dozen bombs, and a stockpile of perhaps 50 kilograms of plutonium. In addition, it postponed discussions on a separate highly enriched uranium program that the Bush administration contends -- but North Korea denies -- was undertaken in secret as a second source of nuclear weapons fuel.

As a result, the agreement seemed likely to face opposition in Washington by conservatives who remain unconvinced that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, ever intends to relinquish his nuclear weapons. Similarly, the Bush administration faces criticism from Democrats who charge that the administration, after breaking away from the Agreed Framework in 2002, ended up five years later with a roughly similar accord.

Which basically means that Congress is going to have plenty opportunity to screw up the deal as it stands and bloviate our way towards diplomatic failure. We'll wait and see what the key mouths start saying, but it seems to me that the Democrats of all people should be overjoyed at this measure of success. Republicans will be overly cautious unless the whole deal can be spun as a victory for Rice & company reflecting positively on Bush's ability to bring rogue states to heel. But there is ample precedent for the US not to trust the Norks at their word, and the matter of plutonium remains of gravest concern.

I say give the Norks their chance and move quickly forward to the next round building on this initial success. We need to get that plutonium and the enrichment stuff under control.

Where Have I Heard This Before?

Whatever he's saying, he sure does sound as if he means it. This is 'Hassan Abassi' who is said to have been captured by the US in Irbil. Maybe.

Forty Five Down

Support the troops, they say. I say support the mission and let troops do what troops are supposed to do. But there is a mission that they have taken up which, although it is still unfinished, has been largely successful. It is the elimination of the Iraqi Deck of Cards. As of today, according to Wikipedia, 45 of the 55 have been captured or killed. That's good work.

I mention this because, in light of the John Burns interview, I came to be aware of this character - Izzat ad-Douri.  At this moment, he's the kingpin of the Sunni Baathists in Iraq and he's no amateur. Burns visibly winced just talking about him. I'd like to see if we can capture or kill this sucker during the Surge. Of course he'll probably duck out of Baghdad if he's smart, and he's obviously smart enough to have survived all the war thus far.

It takes a lot of determined doing to create the conditions for ethnic cleansing. Few would have any doubts that these particular Sunnis would engaged in the kind of campaign of terror that would shame Bosnia, if only the US got out of their way. I'm one of the Americans that cannot stand losing faith with Iraq and will use my vote and voice to insure that leaders of these vicious insurgencies are put down and their followers pacified. I'm following Petraeus a bit closer now and my interest in the conflict is rising again.

Stakes is high.

Slapping Odom

I have at the moment one particular beatdown argument for William Odom, anti-Bush doomsayer du jour who asserts:

The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.

I wonder what evidence Odom has to support the idea that some unnamed European states might send troops into the region in order to stabilize it. With all his talk about the region...

Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the Middle East.

..one wonders if he has ever considered the military of Israel. This is the fundamental elephant in the corner. Stability is, apparently in Odom's mind, a function of European collaboration. But the nation who has dogs in the fight, the one that is most willing to collaborate with America for the sake of stability in the region is Israel.

So answer this Odom and all your supporters. If the US, Israel and Great Britain called a cease-fire for immediate talks about the future of the region, do you think that Iran would come to the table and recognize Israel? Do you think Syria would agree to any treaty honoring the territorial integrity of Lebanon - that is if we're really talking about stability in the region.

You cannot talk about 'stability in the region' without talking about Lebanon, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan and the Gulf States. Europe and Russia backed out of their commitment to all of that three years ago.

Iran Caught Red Handed

Today marks a notable milestone in the timeline of the Iraq War. I brashly mentioned several weeks ago that we really ought to be thinking about the conflict regionally. As Roggio comes with the the hardline proof that Iran is culpable, the evidence continues to mount that there's no easy way out for the US or any of the regional countries.

The Irbil raid in early January netted the most significant evidence, as well as a senior member of the Iranian Qods Force. Six Iranians were detained in Irbil, including Mohsin Chizari, the operational commander of the Qods Force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps specialized force that is equivalent to U.S. Special Forces. During the Irbil raid, "the Iranians were caught trying to flush documents down the toilet," and "bags of their hair were found... indicating they had tried to change their appearance." Chizari was "apprehended after slipping back into Iraq after a 10-month absence." Earlier it was reported Chizari was detained in the Baghdad raid, and subsequently released.

The smuggling routes have largely been identified, with "most of the components are entering Iraq near Amarah, the Iranian border city of Meran, and the Basra area of southern Iraq."

Add this to the growing list of factors which make for a very interesting picture recalling the long term view of a Shia presence in Mesopotamia. Aside from the radical fringe that want no such thing as Israel from the Iranian POV, the refusal of the new Fatah-Hamas governing body to recognize Israel and the guarantee that Saudi money will pour into a Sunni insurgency should Iraq collapse, and you have increasingly significant long-term stakes.

The Genius of Weird Al

Somebody asked the question of why, if Neil Diamond is so great a songwriter, does he not have any contemporary hits even as his skills increase over time. And it was actually a serious conversation.

I think the answer lies in the fact that popular music is all about capturing the moment, and there is nothing transcendent about the moments we celebrate in popular culture. Neil Diamond was put on this earth for ordinary men and women who don't know how to declare their love for each other without the aid of radio broadcasts. That's about as deep as it gets.

Given that, the only real genius in popular culture are those gentle debunkers of stardom. There is but one gentle parodist in our America whose soul is not full of cynical, snarky anarchy. His name is Al. In fact if you have the patience to watch them, you can see how he rips two of those symbols (Michael Stipe, Eminem) apart in these mock interviews. In so doing, he transcends the self-important with ludicrous self-deprecation.

Weird Al is the answer to Borat, except Weird Al is more talented and predates the question. Unlike Neil Diamond, Yankovich gets better with time.

Obama Announces

Nice looking website too.

Interesting talk. He's got everybody chanting at him and not listening to him. There don't seem to be any touchpoints, no soundbites. He's authentically different in that he sounds like a reformer but right now he's very outsiderish. I don't listen to announcement speeches (I mean how many are there?) so it's hard for me to say, but he sounds like he gets two degrees of separation from the details.

• On the biggest question he's against the Iraq War. He wants to kill the commitment by a hard date of March 2008.
• Reclaiming the value of citizenship. That's a strong message and it's the one I'd carry.

This is the longest time I've listened to Obama, a 17 minute speech bracketed by music. He strikes an interesting chord, in a major key but oddly dissonant. He understands the quixotic nature of his ambition to bring the country around to his generation's priorities. But his list of usual suspects seems to triangulate him into stereotypical waters, although not quite.

For example, he talks about lobbyists who take over after elections and politics that returns to business as usual after candidates gain office. How does he change that? He says specifically that he will get braodband into inner cities and rural towns. If the government isn't going to build it, what else are they going to do but hand out tax abatements to AT&T, Verizon and Sprint and the industry that nobody calls 'big communications'? I don't think there's anyway or at lease Obama hasn't shown me a way that hes' going to change the way that the Federal government gets things done in America. I believe that there is no fundamental reform in that regard at all from either party. What there can be and very likely will be is a new set of negotiations with different politicians and the same corporations and a new spin department on the state of those negotiations.

Disclosure of all that is very burdensome, and I'd like to see it work differently, but we have to ask ourselves how it's disclosed today. I don't know. Let me give one good example and then break.

I got into a very interesting conversation with a Democrat in PA's Dept of Health last night. Early on in the conversation before we had any good reasons to respect each other's intellect, she rather dismissively told me that of course Bush and Cheney were all about big oil and of course they used their influence to get more money to big oil. So I asked her to name the bill signed by Congress or the Executive Order given by Bush which enabled their record profits. She couldn't, nor could she tell me the price of a barrel of oil, nor would she admit that consumer demand had anything to do with it, or OPECs decision-making process, and she's a policy wonk. Now I understand she was being partisan, but she could do better as could we all. But part and parcel of that means recognizing that government policy can and should only work around the margins of big established markets like those for gasoline. The real difference it can play is with emerging markets.

Imagine if President Obama in his universal health care plan was able to work some miracle out that forced 'big insurance' to pay for everyone. If we were to discover that he talked to lobbyists for the insurance industry would that be good or bad? What if his plan failed? If he talked to lobbyists would that be good or bad? What if he made that deal, it worked, and in 2010 insurance companies suddenly showed record profits? Good or bad?  Think about it. Unless Obama has a cousin on the board of directors of every insurance company, his staff or any politicians staff is going to have to deal with the attorneys, accountants and consultants who know that industry best. They are going to negotiate over something and the companies will be about trying to cover costs and make money on the new scheme. If they can't do it, if they can't hire new people and expand operations and do all the things that businesses like to do, then they will continue business as usual and say that the other side is being unrealistic. If Obama doesn't like what the insurance companies are doing, what's he going to do, issue orders as the Commander in Chief?

Sooner or later as I listen to all of the candidates I'm going to be paying attention to whether or not they are 'open to negotiations' or if they are aiming to fight a unliateral pre-emptive war on a particular part of American society.

The Covenant Blog

Tavis Smiley has gotten a little momentum going with his annual parade of black academics and other non-profit celebrities involved in the State of Black America conference. This year, I happened upon it by way of the ever-present Prometheus 6 who has posted some compelling video up at YouTube.

But before we go there, let me direct your attention to EbonyJet Online, where their community forum has about 30 comments. What's wrong with this picture?

The problem with the picture is that even in decrying the lack of a grass roots black political movement and stressing the need for process over personality, the divas of this directorate are still not digital. The lead luddite is, as always, Professor Cornel West. But wait, there's hope. There is the Covenant Blog. I'm going to head over there and kick up some sand and see what gives.

It's probably not fair for me to engage them in such a half-assed way because truth be told I'm not particularly focused on domestic politics as I am with the War and my investigations into Western Civ and Christian Theology and the rapproachment of them all in threads of American political philosophy. But, I do have to represent and get into the middle of any debate that touches on these issues as they relate to directions in black politics.

I could be convinced at length to resurrect Vision Circle in some form or fashion in order to capture a bit more of the development of black political discourse on line. I struggle to think where all of Dell Gines captive audience went. I know they haven't come over here. I also think that The Conservative Brotherhood could use some new recruits and maybe it's time once again to consider The Black Hole. I don't know maybe it's because it's Black History Month or maybe because I'm in Philly which is certainly a blacker town than LA where I hang. But I have a nagging sensation that there are millions of blackfolks as of yet unserved and unrepresented online. It us just that kind of revival meeting flavor shown at the SOBA convention that prompts me toward that gut feeling. Surely those people have more to say than just 'Amen'. Maybe they just don't know about how influential online blogs can be.

In any case, while I've failed to keep up with Blackprof and dropped them from my RSS feed, I might put them on (like Bonita, Bonita, Bonita) as well as the Covenant and see how amenable are such people to markets, non-anti-corporatism and the acceptance of a permanent black upper middle class. Who knows, there may even be more Old Schoolers drawn into the conversation and debate.

As for this Covenant with Black America itself, I haven't read its particulars, so despite my initial skepticism, I'm willing to give it a fair hearing. I am always interested to see how a negotiated black agenda compares and differs from the Democratic platform in substantive ways. It would behoove us all to make references to a genuine other-than-Civil Rights agenda from African Americans that would allow us to ignore the oxygen sucking few.

Again I wonder out loud, in light of my undertaking to believe 'black' is caste, if such an agenda could be maintained without the racial reference. So long as a blowhard like Hare can exhort the throngs to twist and shout in blind opposition to ABC, and CBS as Always Broadcasts Caucasians and the Caucasian Broadcasting System, we're going to have problematic conflations when clarity is called for. It's theatre of the absurd to be sure but that double standard needs to be slapped to the curb straight out. Y'all ought to be ashamed.

The John Burns Interview

                 

An hour with John F. Burns of The New York Times.  He's just returned from Iraq and he'll talk about the current conditions in the country and discusses the possibilities for the future.