Cobb

Disneyland

Sudan: You're Gonna Get Yours

The way I see things, the Government of Sudan is going to have a more and more difficult time unless they find a big brother. This week a judge found them liable in the bombing of the USS Cole.

The first thing I think is what? I thought that was Yemeni doing. After all, it happened in Yemen. I've always had this nagging feeling that Yemen has got something on us. You may recall the controversial movie about John O'Neill, The Path to 9/11, in which Barbara Bodine, the Ambassador to Yemen, kicks O'Neill out of her office like he was a foaming dog. And not long after that the Cole gets bombed. So I'm figuring that Bodine was out of a job. But no scandal has attached to Bodine and she's doing just fine. Obviously, the Ambassador wasn't responsible but she clearly didn't help the FBI discover what might have been discovered.

Now the other thing about Yemen was that I can recall a story about North Korean missle parts heading that way. In fact, it was 15 Scuds. Our friend Ari Fliescher said:

"There is no provision under international law prohibiting Yemen from accepting delivery of missiles from North Korea," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. "While there is authority to stop and search, in this instance there is no clear authority to seize the shipment of Scud missiles from North Korea to Yemen. Therefore, the merchant vessel is being released." (The law on sea searches)

One U.S. military official said, "The merchant vessel has now been released, yet the boarding should send a strong message to proliferators everywhere."

Yeah right. Anyway, I think Yemenis are getting away with murder as the Sudanese have, but at least there is this good news.

A federal judge ruled yesterday that the Sudanese government caused the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and will be liable for paying damages to the families of the 17 sailors killed in the attack. U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar said in Norfolk, Va., that he would issue a written opinion later. The families of the Cole sailors sued Sudan, contending that the attack could not have happened without the nation's support of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida  network. Sudan tried to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that too much time had passed between the bombing and the filing of the lawsuit in 2004.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that although lawyers for the plaintiffs asked for something over 100 milion, the judgment will be around 25 million, and it will come out of accounts already frozen but US banks.

The pressure is building.

 

Twitter

AS/400 OMG!!

I can remember System 32, OK? Then came System 36 and I think there was a System 38 in there too. But I can really remember when IBM announced the AS/400 as the godbox of all end-user computing. Can you believe that I got certified in LU 6.2?

Because I'm so long in the system tooth. I've had the pleasure of getting data from an AS/400 source and putting it into a client/server interface. You realize of course that people had to be convinced. There are fewer things more aggravating that having to put up with the nonsense of AS/400 gurus as they begin fulminating about the inferiority of every other API and what a waste of time it is to replicate data from the 400 onto another platform. I patiently explain to them that their bosses bosses boss wants historical information charted in color and they give me one of these grimaces usually found on the face of Michael Moore when the security guards escort him from the premises. Yeah but I'm right, they smirk to themselves.

It is at times like these when I think of my girlfriend's sister's boyfriend who married her and moved up to Stockton, California. He was the god or RPG and drove a Mitsubishi Starion. Whoa. OK I exaggerate, it was a Sapporo. But I still couldn't bring myself, ghetto child that I was, to give up life in Los Angeles, even though he had a house and made 36 Thousand Dollars. That was 1980, and I had to hold on to my dreams. I knew RPG, in fact I knew RPG II. It was torture, I couldn't submit to its petty demands, and I wasn't ready to get married.

If you happen to find yourself staring into the wall eyes of an AS/400 guru, do as I do. Count backwards from 10 slowly and tell them how much respect you have for the innovative microcode of the AS/400 instruction set. Then turn around and run like the wind. If you actually have a mandate to work with this dweeb then keep a stiff upper lip and do what you need to do to get your data. Prostrate yourself.

Seriously, you should do whatever possible to get all necessary AS/400 data into SQL Server. You should get a nightly job to push transactions from the 400 onto a separate NT server and then use the ODS on NT.

Generally a customer will have green screens running against the 400. I know there's something of a conceit that the 400s are big hardware, but there really are no 400 databases out there that are too large for MSSQL. The 400 is really all about capturing transactions and they can't afford to run ad-hoc queries.

The best way to manage it is to add a native query job on the 400 side and dump that into a flat file on the 400 in a new outbucket directory. You can then FTP or map to the outbucket and initiate a transfer from the NT machine.

This has three primary advantages.

1. The 400 administrator will have control of the query and when it runs and where the output goes. He can optimize all that on his side. Nothing leaves his control.

2. The only thing that is initiated from the outside is a file transfer. That shouldn't interrupt anything on the 400 side.

3. Once you have the data on NT you can Perl it, DTS it into MSSQL and manipulate it any way you please. You get out of the 400's hair and you're essentially free.

The important thing is to make sure you get everything you need in that one big fat nightly query. Chances are you won't be able to get master data but ask anyway. Your better chance is to run master data from the data itself.

Now go have a chai spice. You win.

Blues Starter Kit

1. Most Blues begin "Woke up this morning..."

2. "I got a good woman" is a bad way to begin the Blues, 'less you stick something nasty in the next line like, "I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town."

3. The Blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it.

Then find something that rhymes...sort of: "Got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Yes, I got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Got teeth like Margaret Thatcher, and she weigh 500 pound."

4. The Blues is not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch--ain't no way out.

5. Blues cars: Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs, and broke-down trucks.
Blues don't travel in Volvos, BMWs, or Sport Utility Vehicles. Most Blues transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Jet aircraft an' state-sponsored motor pools ain't even in the runnin'.
Walkin' plays a major part in the Blues lifestyle. So does fixin' to die.

6. Teenagers can't sing the Blues. They ain't fixin' to die yet.
Adults sing the Blues. In Blues, "adulthood" means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis.

7. Blues can take place in New York City, but not in Hawaii or any place in Canada. Hard times in Minneapolis or Seattle is probably just clinical depression. Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City are still the best places to have the Blues. You cannot have the Blues in any place that don't get rain.

8. A man with male pattern baldness ain't the Blues. A woman with male pattern baldness is. Breaking your leg 'cause you skiing is not the Blues. Breaking your leg 'cause a alligator be chompin' on it is.

9. You can't have no Blues in a office or a shopping mall. The lighting is wrong. Go outside to the parking lot or sit by the dumpster.

10. Good places for the Blues:
a. highway
b. jailhouse
c. empty bed
d. bottom of a whiskey glass

Bad places:
a. Dillard's
b. gallery openings
c. Ivy League institutions
d. golf courses

11. No one will believe it's the Blues if you wear a suit, 'less you happen to be an old person, and you sleep in it.

12. Do you have the right to sing the Blues? Yes, if:
a. you older than dirt
b. you blind
c. you shot a man in Memphis
d. you can't be satisfied

No, if:
a. you have all your teeth
b. you were once blind but now can see
c. the man in Memphis lived
d. you have a 401K or trust fund

13. Blues is not a matter of color. It's a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the Blues. Sonny Liston could. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the Blues.

14. If you ask for water and your darlin' give you gasoline, it's the Blues.

Other acceptable Blues beverages are:
a. cheap wine
b. whiskey or bourbon
c. muddy water
d. nasty black coffee

The following are NOT Blues beverages:
a. Perrier
b. Chardonnay
c. Snapple
d. Slim Fast

15. If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it's a Blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another Blues way to die. So is the electric chair, substance abuse, and dying lonely on a broke-down cot. You can't have a Blues death if you die during a tennis match or getting liposuction.

16. Some Blues names for women:
a. Sadie
b. Big Mama
c. Bessie
d. Fat River Dumpling

17. Some Blues names for men:
a. Joe
b. Willie
c. Little Willie
d. Big Willie

18. Persons with names like Michelle, Amber, Debbie, and Heather can't sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis.

19. Make-Your-Own-Blues-Name Starter Kit:
a. name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, etc.)
b. first name (see above) plus name of fruit (Lemon, Lime, Kiwi,etc.)
c. last name of President (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore,etc.)

For example: Blind Lime Jefferson, Jakeleg Lemon Johnson or Cripple Kiwi Fillmore.

20. I don't care how tragic your life: if you own a computer, you cannot sing the Blues.

Chances Are

I did something yesterday that I have never done before in my life. I bought a lottery ticket.

During my sojourn here in Philadelphia I've had ample time to be a little different from the ordinary me. I've been wearing a suit and tie every day, something I haven't done in about seven years at work. I'm taking cabs in cold weather and I haven't done that since 1993, and I'm fraternizing with the staff.

It is this staff fraternization that has lead me to the purchase of the lottery ticket. I did this back in the early 90s, but at that time it was more or less mandatory considering I was the manager of the staff. At that time I started watching 'Seinfeld' and 'The Late Show' with David Letterman in order to have some daily water cooler talk. Going all the way to brews at the pub in Somerville would have been pushing it way too far for the me of those days. I had none of the physical attributes of today's me that make me the kind of approachable guy I am. Plus I had a very different attitude. I get a lot less snotty in my old age. For example, although I still don't watch much television, I'm not one of those asshats that who, unbidden brags that he only watches Charlie Rose and has never had a television in his living room, ever.

But there's also the aspect of chance, and I really think that I can win $165 million. For reals.

I'm also taking another new chance. I filled out an NCAA bracket. I've made a bunch of choices about which of the teams will win in the March Madness tournament. I've never done it before. I haven't paid any attention, I haven't watched ESPN, but I'm taking my picks seriously.

I predict the following for the Elite Eight:  Maryland, Oregon, USC, Georgetown, Kansas, UCLA, Ohio State and Texas A&M. What does it mean? Who knows? I say Georgtown is going to win in a high scoring game against UCLA. I also predict some upsets in the lower brackets. I like Holy Cross over Duke. I like Long Beach State. I like Vanderbilt.

I'm fascinated by the possibility of winning an iPod or a Plasma TV or even a Mini Cooper, or 165 million bucks. What's happening to me?

The Pleasure of the President

Bud Cummins and seven other attorneys were fired some time ago. Congress thinks it was lied to about the reasons. They are considering issuing subpoenas to people in the White House. They want to talk to Karl Rove.

These attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President. Oh well. We all know that anything that makes Bush feel good can't be good for the country right. And so on the heels of the Libby verdict, there's another witch hunt all over the news.

Who knew what and when?

I think this one is a waste of time, and yet another attempt for the Democratic Congress to impugn Bush for making judgment calls which are the purview of his office. The more people they can pressure to resign, the better their case looks that the White House is corrupt. Here's the plan. Look for something that requires a bit of discretion, gin up a controversy and see if you can find any inconsistency. Pub up the inconsistency and send a senior Critter to the networks with a conspiratorial outrage. Ask huge sweeping questions about a probable error and then, as Senator Feinstein did yesterday, call it a 'strategy'. Somewhere in that stew pot, you are bound to find a lie. Hype up the administrative intrigues and then drag people in front of juries or committees. Manufactured drama for the cynical masses.

The Derangement Syndrome has taken root in the Congress.

Today or tomorrow this 'scandal' will have a name.

The Blacks In The Doors

Every big city has the street. It's Pine Street in Seattle. It's In Boston, it's Huntington Ave. In Atlanta it's Paces Ferry. Collins Ave is where you'll find them in Miami and of course everyone knows Fifth Avenue, Rodeo Drive and Michigan Avenue in the First, Second and Third Cities. Here in Philadelphia it's Walnut. The area of town is called Rittenhouse Square after the gent who was one of America's first astronomers.

I've had my second ridiculously expensive dinner here in the City of Brotherly Love at a joint called Barclay Prime. Soup. Steak. Spinach. Water. Margarita. Bearnaise Sauce. 100 bucks. That was actually a deal. They have a Kobe Cheesesteak for $100.

I moved into my new apartment as a huge cost-cutting move that I expect will be recognized and praised. Whereas I had been staying in $300/night hotels for the past 5 weeks I found a month to month lease deal that costs only about 1/3 of that. They really didn't object to my other hotel bills, so I can actually justify eating 200 bucks a day, but even I have one or two scruples left. Besides, there's something very weird about having all these expensive meals alone. I feel rather like an old retired cowboy star complete with hat and bolo tie or like James Garner. I come into the restaurant and they know I'm alright somehow but they ask if I've ever eaten there before, as if there were some level of sophistication they're just not sure I have. Of course I know how to dress and act like a restaurant critic, but I haven't bothered with that ruse since three trips to Salt Lake City ago. This time at Barkley Prime they actually did have a little sophisticated trick up their sleeve. You get to pick your style of steak knife. From the selection of four, I took the one I imagined would be best thrown by Dick Marcinko. It was a very modern looking well balanced affair. I twirled it through my fingers absent-mindedly without watching to see if the waiter was impressed.

I made a mistake getting to Barclay Prime. They have two doors you see. One for private dining and one for those of us who can only afford 100 bucks per meal. I didn't expect that there would be two and coming as I was from Walnut I opened the first door that said Barclay. There were a couple large parties milling about in that foyer but no familiar Maitre'D or hostess. I wondered if this was the joint that someone told me required a jacket. I was wearing Hollywood Black and a leather jacket. I ducked out and found the right door with a minimum of embarrassment. Still.

I had been walking all around Walnut and the Rittenhouse areas figuring out what exactly I felt like eating. Daylight savings had given all of us extra light and there was finally no more frozen anything in the streets. I stopped by the Episcopal Church on the square to find it closed but beckoning with a noon concert on Wednesday as well as evening services. I avoided being knocked over by a limo and crossed over to the square where joggers and small dog women shared the sunlight. This is definitely a slice of urban rich America; I watched intently trying to figure out which of the stroller pushing young women were tending to their own infants and which were mothers for hire. I made similar assessments of the dog walkers. For my own bit of posturing I note with a chuckle how many dorks were wearing Borg-style wireless bluetooth headseats and how many wore the white iPod headsets. Me, I'd just purchased the latest Martin Amis as my signifying fetish. I took the dust jacket off already, naturally. Nor do I ever use bookmarks, I'll have you know.

There is another gauntlet on Walnut. This one consists primarily of black men. There are four types. The primary sort are doormen and security men. This being the most uptight section of town, one presumes they're better than mere bouncers. All have short afros. They are calm, they are watching. The secondary sort are found closer to Broad. They are hawkers of various entertainments or deals. As I passed one in a cab several days ago, he was exhorting another black man "..it's free money!" he said. The third sort are the most annoying in symbiosis with the first. They are the beggars who are not beneath identifying the doggie bag in your hand as something you should feel guilty of if it sits in the fridge for any length of time. This is the best begging spot, these men are not slouches. They are a staple of the neighborhood, well the shopping part not the residential part. The fourth type of black man is the sort of which I am, comfortably ambling from one part of the area to another, occasionally impressed by the babes. Not many black couples. Not many at all.

In my new building over on JFK there is one bum at the 7/11. But he was no trouble at all. Through the security doors of the upscale apartment block is a different matter. Behind the desk there stood a black woman who let me know in no uncertain terms that she was the head of security and she didn't recognize me. I almost used my Starbucks name out of habit; Michael is so common I'm known to baristas as Max. I was distractedly needing to go to my bathroom, no I'm not visiting, I moved in yesterday, it's 'Michael', the twelfth floor thank you goodnight. She wasn't on duty Sunday when I came in and the black man who ran things then was much more accommodating although his Hispanic partner didn't recognize me the second time I passed the desk. He was there this morning and called hello to me by first name.

I'm not quite sure of the protocol for doormen. I never like to be called by my first name. In fact at work, I much prefer it when I'm called 'Bowen'. It's how I answer my phone; it's an old habit from Jesuit school and my wife and I call each other Bowen as well. There's something very debate-team, military discipline, and responsibility oriented about being addressed by your last name. It's very deep in me. I'd rather have a nickname than be called by my first name and it annoys me in almost every context. I don't think I'm going to get over it.

Today I wore my glasses. I don't want to be handsome and approachable. I want to appear stodgy, fussy, implacable. Even though it got into the sixties, I wore the trench coat. Cabs are harder to get over on this end of town. It's very busy and there's not a big hotel. I'm going to be annoyed for a while even though the weather is nice. I'm grouchy like Oscar Madison and persnickety like Felix Unger all at once, living in the same kind of building, except Murray the doorman is black and he's playing me too close.

Shrink the Gap

The thing that most folks don't understand about us neoconservatives is that we are humanitarian. That's why you get sloppy folks who don't the difference between pre-emption and 'warmongering'. I have yet to figure out what technically makes somebody a warmonger, but I understand what pre-emption is all about. Pre-emption is basically the practical end of the dictum 'Where there is no hero, you be the hero'. Sooner or later, even Lefties are going to understand that.

To that end of consensus, you will hear me in most of the future refer to 'shrinking the gap', which is basically the practical end of a war on extreme poverty, dictatorship and the existence of the third world. I think that devotees of Karl Marx have a quote of his that they use when they recognize their altruism failing. It goes a little something like 'Capitalism will fill the planet before it fails'.  This is their way of saying that we'll all eventually become commies after everybody gets rich and then ultimately goes broke. Whether this is 50 or 500 years in the future doesn't matter because it gives them the last word. In the meantime they can explain away things like West African women owning businesses for the first time. "Oh sure, capitalism will come to West Africa before the worldwide collapse, Marx said it was inevitable". But that's not good news in their eyes. Feh. Some pessimists just can't be helped. I will call it what it is, Shrinking the Gap. Like human rights and civil rights, economic development is a gift of the strong. And unless and until environments are created for the fostering of such fundamentals, they will continue to be scarce.

Over at AlterNet, there's at least one lefty who has backed his way into some truth. He recognizes the fundamental good of nation-building. I think he even recognizes that we're going to have to conk some bad guys over the head in order to make that happen.

I understand that BDS victims are so deeply invested in saying that George W. Bush is evil that they wouldn't acknowledge that he's trying to be a nation-builder and a gap-shrinker. That's why you're not hearing any news about the Surge. It's working. People in Sadr City are re-opening their shops.

While many Iraqi families are returning to the homes they once were forced to leave, there are also Baghdadis who are reopening their stores, ending the months they spent out of business because of violence and intimidation. Some streets that were virtually deserted a few months ago are slowly showing signs of returning to life.
The reopening stores even include some liquor shops! There are two stores on one street that I used to shop that closed early last year when their owners received death threats from the insurgents and the militias. Yesterday I walked through that street and, to my amazement, I found both stores open and back in business.

This is what progress looks like, one small step at a time. Shrinking the Gap means kicking bad guys to the curb and allowing modern life to flourish. Everybody should know we've done it in Northern Iraq, Baghdad is slooowly improving. We know what to do militarily, it's just a matter of time and commitment. One of these days, even our Lefty Americans will recognize, because it's what they expect for themselves.

Obligatory Seriousness on Sandy Berger

While I acknowledge that something is amiss with regards to the non-prosecution of Sandy Berger, I've not made much of a big deal about it. In the back of my head, I've always suspected that he has been a very successful blackmailer. Tigerhawk's speculation mirrors my speculation:

My rank speculation is that Sandy Berger had information which would have made his trial even more painful for the Bush administration than for, well, Berger. I have no idea what that information would have been, except perhaps more detailed evidence that some Clintonite somewhere "warned" the Bush administration about al Qaeda or the specific tactics deployed on 9/11. Or perhaps Berger's defense would have required that the administration compromise information of current tactical or intelligence value, in which case the trial of Sandy Berger would have hurt the United States. Either way, it seems to me silly to complain about Libby's treatment compared to Berger's without knowing why we let Berger off with the equivalent of after-school detention.

The next question of course is, why don't we know? This is a mystery that begs for investigation by the best reporters in the Washington press corps. That our vaunted mainstream media has failed to uncover the story of Berger's absurd sentencing reflects very poorly on their ambition, their competence, or their objectivity.

Berger will go to his grave with the secrets intact, unless and until he is approached by the next Democrat president needing to deal dirt retroactively on Bush.

The Friends of Genocide

I want you to pay very close attention to these paragraphs from the NYTimes.

The Khartoum government “has manifestly failed to protect the population of Darfur from large-scale international crimes and has itself orchestrated and participated in these crimes,” according to the 35-page report from the mission of the United Nations Human Rights Council. It added that antigovernment rebels were also to blame for abuses, including the rape and torture of civilians.

It urged the implementation of all resolutions from the Security Council and the African Union “including those relating to travel bans and the freezing of funds, assets, and economic resources of those who commit violations.”

Human rights advocates welcomed the unusually tough tone of the report and its recommendations, but they warned that steps were already under way to block its effect when the report comes up for adoption on Friday in Geneva.

The Human Rights Council has been widely criticized for being no more effective than the discredited Human Rights Commission it replaced this year, and whether it takes action on Darfur or not is being seen as a measure of whether it can start to build credibility during its formal session, the fourth it has held, that began Monday.

Understand that we neocons would argue for putting US troops there, pre-emptively. Right now, however we haven't updated the structure of the Pentagon and armed forces in order to handle this kind of situation righteously. I am hopeful that such reforms will take place in the mid term - within the next 10 years.

The United States of America has the ability, but not the political will, to end all genocide in our lifetimes. Understand the extent to which those who currently rally against the war in Iraq are on the side of letting tyrannical dogs run. We've seen them before.

Cousin Pookie

"If Cousin Pookie would vote, if Uncle Jethro would get off the couch and stop watching SportsCenter and go register some folks and go to the polls, we might have a different kind of politics.''
-- Barack Obama

You wish.

One of the problems with being Old School is that you refuse to be appropriated. But Obama and Clinton are all about appropriation. This quote, more than anything I could invent, is just the evidence that Obama is trying to create a new political class and ride the wave of their unsophistication right into the halls of power. It's a classic Democrat strategy, and they will take any new idea that has sticking power, whether or not it makes sense strategically, and pub up any so-oriented coalition. Whether you believe that half of Mexico should live here by any means necessary or that Mother Earth is being serially raped by Big Whomever (as long as they're Big), Obama and the Democrats will put your outrage into an echo chamber and make you sound louder than you deserve to be.

This is the classic 60s strategy. The problem is that the 60s wasn't the 60s. The 60s was a period in American history where many different movements were working at their own purposes and that the Democrats took advantage of the chaos and appropriated it all towards their political purposes. Was MLK a Communist or did Lefty Democrats try to jump on board the Civil Rights Movement with their counter-cultural agenda? The latter was more true than the former. And so you will hear me complain that black politics that demanded much of America did not demand it for Leftist reasons, and yet the assumption is made that the future of black America depends on the strength of Left populism.  You cannot appropriate the Old School and conservative black values by appealing to reprobates. We won't have it.

Yes we all know that 'Pookie' is trifling. Why should he be emblematic of black empowerment? If Obama really believes that the future of black political empowerment depends upon the enfranchisement of the Pookies and Jethros of the world, this is where I cut him off at the knees. There is no future in that, or rather I should say, Obama is the future of that. Because he is just the kind of politician such encouragement makes. After all, didn't white liberals think we were all Pookies back in the 60s? Wasn't that how they addressed us? And didn't they make Obama who he is? Doesn't Obama stand directly in the tradition of the empowerment schemes of the Democrats? Doesn't he represent their triumph?

I think people have to really listen closely to what Obama is asking for and why he thinks he can talk about Pookie in Selma, Alabama and have that somehow resonate to all of Black America.

Tell you what Obama. You and Pookie can hang out. I leave you two together. But don't be paying him a make-work job out of my taxes.

TV vs Reasonableness

I finally saw my episode of Black Men Revealed. Damn I was weak.

The experience of having a discussion and making point between brothers face to face and that being good television are two different things. I'm not going to get into a whole big discussion about it, but the bottom line is that soundbites work. The way to come off great on television is to make short declarative sentences and digs after every pause (whether or not it's your turn), or to hog the camera. What is totally offputting and obnoxious in person works perfectly after editing.

One of the freaky things I noticed was that when I was talking about the separation of church and state, I said I would take the Constitution, then Zo made a completely off the wall comment which actually sounded credible. If you listen, you'll find that he said that I was basing my argument premised on the idea of the Church and State based on the Constitution which made me a hypocrite, which is completely dumb because I was defending the Constitution in the first place. My point was that black ministers and congregations have a history of getting played by slick politicians and campaign masterminds and that blackfolks cannot be effective in politics by following church programs.

I also noted that I came off looking like I made an excuse for not going to Church, and I was generally of the position that I'm cool. My killer point should have been the one that I made here at the blog which was black churches, as much money as they make, haven't done squat in terms of building schools. In that, they have a lot to learn from the Catholics. But that would have made it sound like there are no Black Catholics which I was trying to represent myself. It's a subtlety that doesn't make a difference for TV, I should have taken the reverend's head on that. I also should have taken Zo's head for just being a psuedo-mystical skeptic. Tre self-destructed so taking his manhood wasn't mandatory.

Lessons learned for my media career. Next time you hear me, I'm going to be caustic.

Black Culture: No Secrets

I occurs to me as I watch and giggle at the low-rent humor of this stand up comedienne, that there are very few things remaining indigenous to black culture that haven't been exposed. If there is novel black comedy or cultural baggage out there, it's because it's new.  I truly think we have reached the moment in American history when the preponderance of black business is out on the street.

It's a bit surprising if not abrupt, and I'm sure that I have read similar sentiments apropos the Oscars this year. So I would suggest that WEB DuBois' prediction about the color line is more or less confined to the prior century. Obviously as an Old School partisan I'm suggesting that ideology and class are taking the place of race in the context of bourgeois struggle but I recognize the reinscription of those into old racial stereotypes as well. Still, I think it's a lot easier to resist than ever, because on the whole there is a lot less bitterness in those tropes. American kids who are not ethnic play with ethnicity in a way that really defies the old hatreds. There's a much lower bar for calling something 'racist' - sensitivities are up. Yet at the same time playing in that space is a lot less deadly for all concerned.

An open black ethnic source may or may not be useful. I'm accepting the idea of black caste as a self-replicating culture. In this I think I may be signing on to Thomas Sowell's idea of black rednecks.

The title essay posits a "black redneck" culture inherited from the white redneck culture of the South and characterized by violent machismo, shiftlessness and disdain for schooling. White liberals, gangsta-rap aficionados and others who lionize its ghetto remnants as an authentic black identity, Sowell contends, have their history wrong and help perpetuate cultural pathologies that hold blacks back.

While I think it's good that this is open source, I don't think it's good for 'progress'. That is to say that with a completely known black culture, the power of black cultural comparison to illumnate anything is reduced to zero. We're basically back to the line from 'The Message' where Grandmaster Flash says 'and everybody knows what you've been through'. So maybe this is it. Maybe we have reached a point, at long last in American culture, where there are precious few black things that you can't understand.

Think about it. Are there really any truly obscure kinds of black knowledge being dropped anywhere? I think not. I think our generation has aired all the laundry. We have milked it for all it's worth. All that's left are current events and new waves of revisionism.

Obama's trip to Selma is indicative of this. Selma has officially become a cliche. Obama went, so Clinton had to go. Coincidence? Hardly. Now it's Americana. Hillary put on her old fake(?) southern accent and told the cowed crowd that she was in "no ways tired", proving how tired her act actually was. If Obama needed some blackness credibility cookies, all he has to do is get his Black Snake Moan on. Maybe he could get his wife to read a quote from "The Bluest Eye". It doesn't take much.

What else leads me in this direction? 'Happy Feet'. Once again I had to watch this penguin movie on the plane, and the only 'foriegn' thing in it is Hispanic. All the Prince songs and Earth Wind and Fire songs are mainstream. (Prince, by the way, is a Las Vegas act. Did you ever think you would live to see the day?). Speaking of movies, are there any PG movies anywhere in America that don't have a happy hiphop song at the end? I'm thinking no. My last plane trip made the example of "Night at the Museum'.

Black culture is not losing its dynamism, but it has lost its mystery.  It's an American thing and everybody understands.

Three Hundred

I've been trying to take it light.

Elizabeth Wright has some unkind words, namely 'sanctimonious', for people whose philosophy she barely grasps, especially mine. But I've been trying to be chilled out about that. I have a forthcoming essay on pansy pundits which should handle some of her outrage and perhaps put her in a box. But I think she's trying to moderate a fight whose purposes she finds strange and thus is being moderate for the sake of moderation. Fortunately she only hurls her ponderous punditry every six weeks or so. You might wade through it but I doubt you'll learn much. Me, I just got annoyed.

I'm much more comfortable saying what I'm for than what I'm against. Unfortunately what I'm for is very complex so you're only likely to get it in bits and pieces. One nice chunk of it I found much to my surprise in the subtext of the movie that's going to kill at the box office this weekend; 300. Because of this, I find it much easier to chill. The more people that get the import of this film, the happier I will be, and the less I have to pontificate.

There are going to be frat boys and girls all around this country from Michigan State to San Jose State to Sudbury, Ontario who are going to be hooting it up as diehard cultists for this film. You see when all is said and done, this is going to be celebrated as one of the best sword battle flicks of all time, but beyond that it is a story of warriors who would dare defy and defend their home against attack. The defense of liberty is so deeply woven into this tale you'd think it was scripted in order to remind the Nancy Pelosis of the world what free men are made of. I expected to see a combination of Gladiator and Sin City, but that was just the look, instead I got all that and the feel of a classic for those who understand that the price for freedom is courage.

What's even astounding about this flick as you watch the backgrounding and mythologizing of the Spartan code is that as brutal as these warriors are, you still cannot but marvel at their courage and bravery. One must know that a fearless man cannot be courageous, and yet you realize that indeed they remain men and that they must contemplate at all times the meaning, value and weight of their lives. What a stern reminder. I haven't been able to find a quote given by the Queen of Sparta in her appeal to the better judgement of the complacent Spartan Senate, but that's one for the books.

If I haven't mentioned it, my sojourn in Philly has given me a new taste for military history and the History Channel, which at least these days isn't totally dominated by the same archive footage of things going boom in the mid 40s Pacific Theatre. Of course my renewed appreciation of Washington helped and so too 300 has given me a swift kick in that direction. This is a worthy film that will raise a critical ruckus in the 'sphere, millions of eyebrows around the country and dozens of millions of dollars in its lifetime. I'll gladly buy this one when it comes around.

Now I'm going to relish asking my liberal brother if he prefers this one to Sin City.

After Amazing Grace this makes two great movies this year so far. I'm thrilled. I very may well go see it again. Best sword fight scenes since... Die Another Day. More gritty battle than Gladiator and Braveheart. No overwrought acting, although the narration gets a little airy. Way, way better than 'Troy' which I actually found enjoyable if long, and really excellent martial arts choreography here - on the level of top notch Chinese action.

This film is just luxuriously lurid with images that are soaked in color. There are nearly as many spectacular warriors, monsters and beasts as in LOTR. It is flat gorgeous filmmaking, and the audience cheers. There's not more you can ask for from a movie. It makes me feel good, it will make my ideological foes squirm and babble, it will make the nation talk.

Incremental Famousity

I have reached a plateau of sorts.

I'm going to have to acknowledge the fact of my media career and shape it into something. I have been blogging for a number of reasons for the past several years. Originally, believe it or not, it was to overcome the deafening silence of my cell phone. My last big corporate job had me spending 1500 to 1800 minutes a month on the phone, and when they killed the division it was rather amazing that nobody returned my calls any longer. So I started building websites.

Now the volume is up and I'm getting lots of hits on the websites and blogging has been a very rewarding sideline for me. I'm still going to continue my Western Civ stuff as well as my theology and my Old School partisanship. But I think I need to be prepared for the possibility that I might become more successful in that than I might think. In other words, I may have to step up. This is what's on my mind this morning in light of my inclusion in the honor of the Normblog Profile.

Just like any newsmaker hopes to be interviewed by Charlie Rose, just as any author craves the attention of Brian Lamb's Booknotes (which is now defunct I think), every blogger will count their blessings when Norm Geras profiles them. I now join that august bunch of lucky bloggers and add one more facet of the most difficult kind.

I say difficult because as much as I bloviate, one of the most impossible tasks for me is to describe myself in any short order, nor am I a good self-promoter. Anyway, I even want to leave that subject alone. The Normblog profile is here. Enjoy.

Now I'm off to see 300.

FutureWeapons

I'm a boy and I like things that go boom. So I have been enjoying watching the Discovery Channel's new show called FutureWeapons.

If there is anything in Hollywood that comes close to operating a propaganda machine which is clearly pro-American, it is the Discovery Channel. The way in which it describes our military capabilities with relish borders on the obscene. But I admit that there's no guilt in my pleasure.

I described to daughter number one the other night what our military hegemony means as we watched stories about the new F-18 Super Hornet and the USS Eisenhower. And I kept in mind what Barnett was saying about force projection as the big red circle with the 440 mile diameter described the aegis of the Ike's area of operations. That's so serious. Nobody challenges our carrier groups. Nobody even thinks about building a counterforce. Our brilliant strategy is working. We outspend the world so the world doesn't have to - and we get all these cool Japanese cars and Chinese investments for it (among other bennies).

But FW is concentrating on the second force, and they were precient in hiring 'Mack', a former Navy Seal, to be the host. A majority of the weaponry advances they cover are more oriented towards close combat.  A return to boots on the ground is going to be the legacy of American military action in the 21C, and if we learn our lessons well in Iraq, we'll be able to turn away catastrophes of the sort we've not grown accustomed to handling. I want you to think about Hotel Rwanda and what we might have done. It is a moral lesson I cannot forget, nor that of Tears of the Sun. While I expect there is broad agreement in America on such moral questions, we still are far from a political consensus. Still the Pentagon is moving forward in fielding weapons that are going to take us into the Gap and win. Special Forces operators like Mack are going to be more numerous in the future.

You Are What You Vote

Dealing With Murder

As you may know, the LA Times is keeping track of the homicides in LA as reported by the LAPD. Of all the things to deal with, there are few things more overwhelmingly frustrating than dealing with the worst thing that can happen to somebody.

As I read through the names, descriptions and locations, a series of images flash through my head. I know that area of town, or there's someplace I know about but never go. I imagine the man walking home from the bus stop, or in the barfight out in the parking lot, or surprised by a shot in the back. I imagine the woman smothered in her sleep by the son she threatened to kick out of the house. Or just these slim two:

Lewis Carter, 35
Lewis Carter, a 35-year-old black man, was shot at 1119 East 88th St. in Florence and died at 10:22 a.m. Feb. 13.

Fred Luna, 50
Fred Luna, 50, a Latino man, was shot several times at 1236 East Avenue Q in Palmdale, and died at 8:05 p.m. Feb. 12.

That's all we know. Fill in the blanks. How, why, who?

I mailed the Times to suggest that they get with the times and paste red spots on Google Maps when they have the addresses. Maybe a pattern would emerge and we could say 'here is a bad neighborhood - lots of murders'. Maybe. Murder doesn't take much of a reason, but whatever reason it takes, geography isn't going to matter much. Maybe I'm out cruising and I see somebody who looks like the man hitting on my girlfriend. Maybe that kid on the bicycle looks like he's from the wrong gang. The bullet has your name on it, not your address. More importantly, it has a killer's motive behind it and that is not subject to our desire to abstract it onto maps.

Whether we like it or not, people find wholly random reasons worth killing for. Every day. It's something that's easy to forget when we are engaged in the political intrigue that surrounds the prosecution of a war halfway across the globe. The death and destruction of war far outstrip the terror of murder, but a war is always more clearly arguable. There's always a foreign policy agenda. There's always a failure of diplomacy. There's always a pro and con debate where the two sides talk about the same thing. There's always a clearly defined arena in which that talk about the war takes place. The URL, the TV channel, radio stations, will all be on schedule and take up the topic. But nobody knows you when you're Lewis Carter. Nobody even knows how you were shot, much less the reasons why.

Patton said of war that all of mankind's other inventions pale beside it. War appropriates all rationale. Every reason eventually attaches itself to war, therefore war belongs to civilization. Murder belongs to the two and only a few can know, or will care to know the reasons why.

I am struck this morning about the human ability to find a reason, to give a name to every passion. I note with sadness how much we do together, how much we do apart and how little it means to the dead.

                             

I am struck this morning about the human ability to find a reason, to give a name to every passion. I note with sadness how much we do together, how much we do apart and how little it means to the dead.

How To Win At Charades

The 5% Nation of Blonde Implosive Devices

Britney Spears Tries To Hang Herself!

This news cycle is too short. In a world where Western Civ is in a dither about whether or not the global economy is worth preserving, we have no shortage of time on the airwaves to broadcast impropaganda on the state of our pop culture. But wait. There may be just the right sentiment out there. It's a good thing that we want to see Britney dead. It's a good thing that we want to see Anna Nichole Smith unrested in peace. Ann Coulter's imminent demise makes for the trifecta. All we can do is cross our fingers and hope to God that Madonna gets shot in the face. Nothing addresses the American fascination with empty celebrity like our even greater desires to see these wastrels get theirs in the end. The only problem is that it takes too long.

What we need is a new kind of pop star. Somebody who can rocket to insane levels of wealth and fame in very short order, and who having done the perfect glitz tour of all our equally insane fantasies, plunge to the depths of despair, crash and burn, burn, burn. The only real question is exactly how long this process should take from peak to valley.

There's ample precedent and a soft place in the American heart for one-hit wonders. The phenomenon just needs a little amping up. Now it takes about six months on the pop charts and the news shows for any celebrity to seep into most of the nation's heads. Short of blowing up a building or a high speed police chase, there's probably not a quicker way. American Idol, The Apprentice and Survivor are some fairly snappy ways to feed the celebrity machine. They generate just the right kind of publicity. The problem is that that doesn't help us address the political end. We need a good amateur or reality show about local politicians. You know, the housewife who makes the leap from PTA to Board of Ed, the retired Vietnam vet whose succesful fight against a zoning ordinance gets him to city council, the articulate black woman who breaks the old boy network in the City Assessor's office, the outspoken blogger who makes it onto a radio talk show. Such are lightweight American heroes too. We need them to get in way over their heads just like every other kind of celebrity. Why? Because we wanna understand it too. We, the great American middle class whose unmitigated desire for whiter teeth and slimmer hips bankrolls a multibillion dollar industry and dozens of hours of television weekly. We can do this!

Then we need a set of taboos and brightlines for our newfound heroes to trip up on. Forget N, F and C, we need at least a whole alphabet of X-words that we can train our satellites and paparazzi on for 24/7 surveillance. The moment they trip, text messages are broadcast, regularly scheduled programs are interrupted and alerts break into every broadcast and podcast. Except for infomercials. Nothing, I repeat nothing under any circumstances are ever allowed to interrupt infomercials. They are the electric grid underlying great engines like CNBC. If they are ever stopped, then the terrorists win.

The world stands still. People will remember the moment. "I was getting a coffee at Dunkin Donuts but they didn't have any hazelnut. I always get hazelnut. I had a bad feeling about this." You can see the hazy black and white photo zoomed grainy on the History Channel docudrama. You hear the 911 call. You speed your Tivo through the commercial break for the money shot.. and there it is, over and over, like planes through Manhattan, like Jesse Jackson pointing to the shooter, like Jackie O spinning in her seat, the most valuable piece of intellectual property a nation can own. A Historic Moment.

Cut to weeping families. Our favorite anchor's dramatic pause. "America's Sweetheart Is Dead".

God this is great. Man every two years. We run them back to back like Winter and Summer Olympics. Somebody from the political world in midterm years and somebody from entertainment in election years.

Hey Sumner Redstone. Call me, I'll build you a whole media network on this idea alone.

More on the Merger

I've had a chance to ponder as well as listen to other folks talk. Here are some of the best ideas of mine and theirs.

1. In the short term, nothing will happen.
We always forget this, and then reality sinks in. Nothing significant is going to happen in the next 4 to 6 months in the product lines. People will be getting over the shock in the marketplace and in the organizations. Associated companies will be getting their bearings and the very few people who knew about this blockbuster of a deal will surprise us again. From what I hear, this secret was kept very well. Although it has been rumored for years (and I wish I could find some of my old comments and speculations on those rumors) it blew everybody away.

2. Current Hyperion customers might upgrade, just to be on the safe side.
If you're sitting on an older version of Hyperion software, chances are you'll upgrade just to buy yourself time. This means busy work for the consulting sector. It's easy if you're already in System 9 of Hyperion, and easy if you're pure Essbase. But if you have a mix of Hyperion products moving all of them up will take a little doing. Still this is the only downside hedging I would expect current Hyperion customers to do.

3. Brio guys aren't breathing hard.
Somebody needs to really sit me down and explain what it is that Business Objects has that Brio doesn't. Whatever BO might have, or Oracle Discoverer might have the Brio folks aren't sweating it. The Brio customers were loyal in their transition to Hyperion and they weren't disappointed. Oracle rebranding doesn't seem to concern them much at all. That's interesting.

4. Product Integration takes time.
Peoplesoft people are still calling Peoplesoft Peoplesoft. So for the time being, it's entirely reasonable to expect that Hyperion will be a 'wholly owned subsidiary' as far as customers are concerned. It's going to take a while for Oracle to learn what Hyperion customers like about Hyperion and what they don't like. So in order to do product integration smartly, they'll most likely run out the current planned release schedule on the Hyperion suite and then start looking to merge. Again, I'm thinking Data Integration Manager (Informatica OEM) and Analytic Integration Server will be the first likely casualties to all of Oracle's data pump tech. Then again, current customers must be served. Perhaps by Solutions 2007 in Orlando in a couple months, we'll hear a few more specifics.

5. IT objections mitigated.
Already, dithering customers have committed to Hyperion based on the fact of the merger. Oracle shops are now open to Hyperion BI. This is bad news for Business Objects seeds in particular. This is one issue that has been the bane of my existence, being one of those rare individuals who thinks both relationally and multidimensionally I have suffered endless tirades about what MOLAP can't do, by people who have no hands-on. When I explain to people that Essbase is a modular database technology that has Hybrid, MOLAP and Aggregate Storage, that it is partitionable both logically and physically, they still find it hard to believe because nobody thinks of Hyperion as a database company. Now instead of showing them case studies with 500 concurrent databases or 50,000 concurrent queries I can just say two words to cease all hostilities. "It's Oracle".

People forget that Hyperion Essbase was Teradata's choice for marting in their Active Data Warehouse strategy. So I will reiterate my trash talk against MSTR. You guys are in for a surprise. The database guy in me is just giggling silly, and I haven't been so pleased since IBM OEM'd Essbase for DB2OLAP.

6. Verticals
Back when I was talking with people who oughta know, the idea for the killer Essbase apps was a certification program. That is to say Essbase had (and still has) the capability of being a brandable kind of analytic engine, as in Analytics powered by Essbase. I was personally involved with the deal that almost got Essbase embedded into Siebel, and I've since heard where the strengths and weaknesses of the chosen technology are. In any case, Hyperion has dreamed of moving towards verticals and now with Oracle's coverage of vertical markets, there are opportunities galore for Essbase to be exactly that. Of course it will require some thoughtful people to make it happen, but the Oracle introduction can be there. The technology is ready. Today.

Boy Makes First Class

Brooks Sees Richardson Too

David Brooks sees the same things I do in Bill Richardson. A damned fine candidate.

When you think that way, it becomes absurdly easy to picture him rising toward the top. He is, after all, the most experienced person running for president. He served in Congress for 14 years. He was the energy secretary (energy’s kind of vital).

He’s a successful two-term governor who was re-elected with 69 percent of the vote in New Mexico, a red state. Moreover, he’s a governor with foreign policy experience. He was U.N. ambassador. He worked in the State Department. He’s made a second career of negotiating on special assignments with dictators like Saddam, Castro and Kim Jong Il. He negotiated a truce in Sudan.

When Professor Kim asked last year what kind of Democrat I'd vote for, I gave my answer here, and although Richardson doesn't have the moustache, he does have most of the other particulars.

In other news I watched about 3 unbearable minutes of Mitt Romney on a Charlie Rose interview from last year. Every time I look at him, he appears more and more plastic. I'm not quite ready to ditch him yet, but the more he talks about social issues the more he gets on my nerves.

Candidates This Week

My attention span may not be so great when it comes to the candidates. I see things and react to them quickly, and long analyses aren't really that necessary. So there's my qualification, and so I will go into 'barbershop mode' with reactions to the acts of the candidates on a more or less weekly basis.

Guiliani
This is his week. Rudy is ahead in some polls and is making people think twice about what Republicans will 'tolerate'. Again, with me as a moderate, civil libertarian Republican, Giuliani doesn't have to overcome any major barriers with respect to his acceptability as a candidate, but he still has to come correct on geopolitical matters. I still think that Rudy will do very well in debates; the more people see him and hear him, he will come through as a 'real' person, the kind that can instill confidence.

Clinton
Clinton is ensnared with Obama in a semi-tawdry way. She's seemed stiff and combative. I think she's going to have to come up with a new way of expressing her appeal to America without coming across as Democratic Destiny. Obviously the Clinton campaign will be a force to reckon with, but Hillary has got to transcend and be the woman that America admires. Nothing in that direction this week.

Obama
Obama is fast becoming the candidate for the NOTA electorate. He seems to be able to effortlessly reap the benefits of being a fresh face who is good enough. I think he's beyond all the suspicions of being 'good enough' for his constituency, moreover his question will be votes enough. Oddly, I feel compelled to make a long-term prediction on Obama. He will become the Nader of 2008. If he doesn't buckle under and become Clinton's Veep, then Democrats are going to have to face that whole Nader thing again. People who have invested their hope in Obama are going to stick it out. BTW, MyObama.com is brilliant, and now people who are receiving form letter emails in reply to their heartfelt sympathies are beginning to wake up and smell the corporatism.

Edwards
This whole thing with Ann Coulter is ridiculous. Count me as unrepresentative but if Edwards is gay, I had no idea about it. It brings him out to the foreground. Let's see what he does.

Romney
No news is bad news. What have you done for us lately Mitt?

McCain
McCain is crashing and burning hard among Righties I respect. I haven't seen him do anything to rescue himself and so it seems that prospects are getting worse and worse.

Oprah's Academy: Shrinking the Gap

I have been asking about the Liberal Impulse as an open set of questions, but there hasn't been much doubt in my mind that there is something we have in the West, in the Functioning Core, in Christian Charity that gives us plenty of good reasons to be do-gooders around the globe. Having been immersed in matters of security, I got a little imbalanced and various other parts of my brain went dead during a fascinating discussion in Baltimore. As soon as I got home from that discussion I remembered that I forgot to 'hew'.

HEW is Health, Education and Welfare, and these are products of the great engines of commerce we spin in America. Since I don't concentrate on these particular matters, although with Health I may begin, I wanted to hear from you all for giving some appeal and flavor to the utopian imperative - doing the most good for the most amount of people. When I speak about the superiority of America, I do so in the context of these liberal benefits which I view as infrastructural to nationhood.

With that background I have to say that what Oprah has done in her gift to South Africa is not only a quintessentially American act of generosity, but it is geopolitically sound too. This is exactly the kind of effort that gives me confidence that at long last Americans will see our potential to change the world for the better.

Oprah has been in this regard, a one woman drop squad. It is a sentiment that I think most successful African Americans harbor - this understanding that at one time in our lives we labored in obscurity waiting and hoping that somebody would recognize our potential and lift us from our sad environments. We have felt this on both sides, as the patron as well. So much effort is spent on an ineffective patronage though. We lack the capital, but not the intent. Oprah, lacking neither has done the absolute right thing. I see her completion in this, and her place in history.

I didn't join the controversy over her decision not to place her academy in the US. I basically have nothing to add on that score. She did right.

Coulter, At Long Last & Finally

Ann Coulter has burned her last bridge apparently. I never did like her, and roundly disabused here along with other righties I don't like. Something she spewed recently has got under the skin of even her loyal fans. Good.

Patterico has a roundup of the Right who are kicking her to the curb. Booyah.

Bastards of the Party

Like a train wreck unfolding I could not draw myself away from the screening of Bastards of the Party on HBO last night. I'm sure I caught it very near the beginning. There are a lot of things to say and some interesting questions.

First of all my overall impression is that it was a very well done documentary which stitches together what would ordinarily sound incoherent into very much the narrative of bangers. Even though the story is more than a decade old, I can tell you without question that this is precisely the political position that those who knew and cared to defend the deeper meaning of LA black gangbanging put forward. That would include me to the extent that I cared back in 90-91.

Next I want to recount my first impression to mention of the show before I saw it. The thread was from Humiliation and Fortitude.

I thought Mike Davis was dead. Oh well, I guess not.

I don't watch HBO any longer. Still, I caught a bit of the preview channel flipping in the hotel room, luxurious prisoner that I am without a 'hood guide here in Philly. The first thing that popped into my head was 'The Return of Donald Bakeer'.

The short story is that I used to hang out at with the Watts Poets at the Aquarian Bookstore in the early 90s when the the performance poetry scene was jumping off in LA. I have heard everything Bakeer has to say, him being an OG historian. The bottom line is that he and everyone around him had written off the political implications of banging 15 years ago. The only reason people like Bakeer and Quincy Troupe were frontin' was because Leon Bing was getting PAID to write about Monster Kody and they couldn't even get a call from NPR.

On my bookshelf lies one of the most unreadable self-published books I ever laid my hands on. It is Bakeer's book. But he would be the first to admit that he's not all about the literary, but about the being face to face down dirty in the ghetto. So if you want to know which OGs are in which jail and where their networks lead in Los Angeles County, Bakeer is the man.

I have no reason to believe that all the new HBO bloviation is anything more than recycled conspiracy theory peppered with prurient graphics complete with a hiphop soundtrack from some Dr Dre wannabe. I'm not going to waste my time finding out one way or another. The fact of the matter is that credible and sensible activists like Najee Ali aren't getting any backup from the Coalition of the Damned. That's because Ali really cares when black kids get shot or raped for no good reason, and is not at all above snitchin' when it comes to the security and safety of black souls.

So I say the Crips deserve every bullet they get from the PD, and while I'd rather that their interdiction be more weighted toward batons, pepper spray, flashlights, tazers and other non-lethal sorts of beatdowns, they need to be removed from the streets. If it's going to be low intensity conflict, then it will.

I'll still listen to Kody Scott because he understands the martial fundamentals of the warrior code. He has also been smart enough to recognize he couldn't subvert America's law and order, nor could he lead his soldiers to a promised land, nor could he gain any trust of the civilians in his turf. Anybody who wants to pin their hopes on that kind of politics is welcome to it. I'll take rednecks from Alabama, even at your level of condescention of 'basically decent'. If they aint electedt, you can only trust them so far.

BTW. Didn't we talk about this matter of succession over at P6? 50 Billion later, McDonalds is still making lunch. Where is the Crips breakfast program?

The Joneses

I am not particularly astounded by how many times the discussion of the merits of the N word arise. That is because people have fundamentally not recognized the absolute validity of the solution, which is not to use it if you're a civil person and consider everyone who does use it to be uncivil. Simple. Here's another twist on the debate:

"Leaving aside, for the moment, my thoughts on the merits of the n-word debate, I thought I'd suggest an alternative linguistic ban -- a ban of a phrase that I think is far more destructive to the psychological, emotional, and aspirational lives of Black folk than the dreaded n-word. The phrase? White people. I tend to believe that Black people use White folks as a benchmark entirely too much in our social, political, and cultural lives. Are Black kids learning? Do too many Black people have AIDS? Are too many Black men unemployed? Are Black features beautiful? Our answers to these and a host of other questions informing our quality of life too often turn, first, on an assessment of how we compare to White folks. That is debilitating to our sense of esteem, as it implies the inability to generate, and hold ourselves accountable against, self-directed standards of behavior and performance. I have two children, and I want them to do nothing less (and nothing more) than to achieve absolutely everything they're capable of achieving. Whether that means they out-perform White children is utterly irrelevant to me (indeed, it's less than irrelevant; it's simply not even a part of my thinking). I fear that too often folks of color seem on a permanent race to catch White folks -- irrespective of whether White folks, in any particular circumstance, are worth catching in the first place. I therefore propose a friendly amendment to the pending petitions to ban the n-world: Let's ban the w-words instead."

Wrong.

The obvious black cult-nat answer to this proposal is that we should, instead of focusing on what whitefolks do is that we should focus on what blackfolks do. That is essentially solopsist, because the black caste decides and determines what is properly black, and that always ends up degraded. Furthermore, the very idea of ignoring whites insures that one is unable to distinguish between them. The end result is that the proudest of the proud blacks end up merely being the top crabs in the same old barrel. Their refusal to assess themselves in terms of anyone but blacks makes for an increasingly hostile environment between different groups of blacks all of which are irrelevant to the world at large.

The Old School solution is to keep up with your own family tree and work the hierarchy. Lean on the strongest branches, put down roots and watch your seeds. It is impossible to do right by the black caste - they are those left behind, and in the long view Americans of African descent will look back on them as their true ancestors.

Oracle + Hyperion = Gorilla

Oracle is buying Hyperion. SAP is buying Pilot. Cognos and Business Objects stand alone.

This is huge. I'm still overwhelmed by the implications.

I don't doubt anything this article says:

Hyperion and its popular Essbase product, has "almost no overlap" with existing Oracle products, Phillips said. But, there is overlap between the PeopleSoft's performance management products Oracle acquired in 2003 and Hyperion's products. The PeopleSoft products will become part of a new enterprise performance management division, Phillips said. Oracle has had a "small" performance management product that "wasn't that pervasive in the market," it considers Hyperion a complementary, best-of-breed vendor, he said.

Instead, Oracle has focused on building out the underlying infrastructure required for BI, he said, and the Hyperion acquisition will give it critical analytical applications to layer on top of its data management and BI technologies. Specifically, the acquisition gives Oracle an enterprise planning system, a financial consolidation product, a powerful OLAP engine and a "dedicated" field sales organization. It also believes the move will help it in its battle's with rival SAP. Many SAP customers use Hyperion, Phillips said, and Oracle is achieving "critical mass" within SAP accounts.

"Now Oracle's Hyperion software will be the lens through which SAP's most important customers view and analyze their underlying SAP ERP data," he said in an earlier statement.

From my perspective as a consultant it's all good. I'm confident that Hyperion's BPM apps are going to go through pretty much as is. It puts the Informatica OEM in a wobbly position, and it will probably delay integration of the more recent product acquisitions like Crystal Ball and Upstream. The integration of Hyperion MDM works technically but it will have to compete with Oracle's Customer Data Hub. I don't know how successful that product is. MDM hasn't sold well on the Hyperion side although everybody who gets it loves it.

There's basically no question that this is excellent news for us core Essbase folks and for those applications based on Essbase. The war between Essbase and Oracle's Express is ages old, and while performance wise, old hackers like myself and those on the Express side could get into lengthy debates, there was no question the Essbase was the more interoperable product. Now that it is plug-compatible with the new Yukon DTS, Oracle will have another way to kick MSFT around.

I say this is really bad news for Microstrategy. When the Oracle technical folks recognize what they'll be able to do with Oracle + Essbase, Microstrategy's whole high end BI story will crumble. In many ways this is a technical match made in heaven.

What's iffy is of course matters of marketing and product synergy. That is to say if I were a product marketing manager at Hyperion, I would get that resume out. Sullivan, in his letter to customers this morning declared in about as obvious as is possible to say that Hyperion sales reps have some security. So that whole organizational end of Hyperion is in jeopardy.

There have been a lot of us who have been worried about Hyperion development, ie without Gersten where would the engineering organization be. I think that Oracle would make a huge mistake to do anything but hang onto a lot of that engineering staff and keep them happy. Obviously System 9 integration will become a priority as product feature planning levels off. The good news is that there are not many major flaws in System 9.

Hyperion's tech support has taken a dive in recent years. The Oracle Developer Network will be a huge boost for that end of the business. If I were smart, I'd probably spin off a training business and start raking in dough for anybody out there who wants to become certified.

There's a lot more to think about, but on the whole there's basically one thing to know. There is now a new gorilla in the BI and BPM space.