Cobb

The Mexican Surge

I had no idea that the new Mexican President was doing this much.

"We recognise that the enemy is inside our house and for this reason we are purging the ranks - we need to have confidence in our police," Baja California state police chief Daniel de la Rosa said.

Drug gangs are strong in Mexico's border region, which includes Rosarito, a beach resort town south of Tijuana.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has deployed about 25,000 troops to the region, and to the western state of Michoacan, since taking office 12 months ago.

I can recall going down to Rosarito Beach several years ago. The place looked fairly shady, more of a tourist trap of the pushy variety - like you owe people an explanation why you're not buying everything they have.

The Last ID

A month or so ago, I chanced upon a website that advocated a new kind of contract between persons. They called it a limited liability persona. It was a very cool thing and I think it's the future of identity. At least I hope so.

Part of the problem with identity theft these days is that ultimately it all boils down to a few small keys and then you're busted. Most of your most significant IDs are keyed by your mother's maiden name and your social security number. Most people should know by now that there are duplicates. It also doesn't take much to forge a number. The idea that's cool about the LLP is that you can establish your own authentication independently of every other kind of contract you have.

When it comes to a national ID, there's a certain amount of paranoia and ignorance. It's probably something I should get involved in a bit more in. I checked out a video not long ago - the guy from Sxip talked about identity 2.0, but that whole conversation seems to have disappeared, or at least some of the experts have gone to secret projects. It rather reminds me of the time several years ago when we were talking about micropayments and the 'impossibility' of setting up that thing which has become PayPal. There's a certain inevitability to it, you just don't know where it's going to come from.

I had a conversation with myself the other day merging the four factors, GWOT, LLP, Immigration and Identity Theft all into one.

One of the interesting things I discovered is that one of the reasons we know there are about 12 million illegal immigrants living in the US is because the credit bureaus know. They keep databases and they share databases. Let's think about the capability right now, and let's do it in terms of voter fraud. In approximately 30 seconds, from a million locations, I can create a connection that talks to some number of computers and gets 40 bucks out of my bank account. I'm not talking about ATMs, I'm talking about cash registers. I have a PIN, I have a 16 digit ID number, I have an expiration date and a three digit code on the back of the card for additional validation. Your kids and my kids are used to getting gift cards that just sit in large displays at the local supermarket ready to be activated for 25 bucks worth of iTunes downloads. That's kind of like the LLP, it is a persona you create just for the purposes of music downloads, and the security system allows you to activate it for a preset maximum. There are never going to be concerns about duplicate numbers on gift cards. You just use big numbers.

If I were president, the first thing I would do is to initiate a worldwide census. I would direct the State Department to publish all of the kinds of persons we recognize and start keeping tabs. One of the great difficulties we have in dealing with the War on Terror is that we haven't dealt with a couple realities. Consider them:

1. Detention is the Ultimate Solution

As Edward Luttwak points out, all guerrilla wars, urban or rural (urban guerrilla is a common euphemism, meaning terrorist) can be won by detaining every human being who might possibly be an enemy, holding them securely until the war is over and the winner is clear, and then releasing them without punishment. Like, duh, man. Which has more negative impact on innocent civilians: internment in a civilized detention center, or involvement in a civil war?

2. The Population Is Fixed

...The insurgents require the population to act in a certain way -- support, sympathy, intimidation, sometimes just reaction to provocation, you know? And if you can take that reaction of the population away from them, it's extremely difficult for them to achieve anything.

That's why the surge is not only a matter of putting extra troops into the country, it's what they do when they get there. And what they're doing is going into areas and not leaving. And they sit with the population, partner with them, help them defend themselves. Keep the enemy away. Prevent them from coming back. And if you like, restructure the environment to hard-wire the insurgent out of it.

Three movies come to mind when I think about how difficult it is to find ones family in war, Blood Diamond, Schindler's List and Hotel Rwanda. Forget about American civil liberties for a moment and think about what an enormous service to the world it would be if we went made a huge locater database for every human on the planet. I'm willing to suggest that a proper system wold be of tremendous benefit to humanity if it were done with the LLP concept in mind. That is to say you could absolutely and positively identify people but that through LLP, the people themselves would be in control of the associations known to the system of authentication.

Now for the purposes of GWOT and Immigration, I imagine that there would be certain absolutes built into the system - which represents the capacity to replicate authentication that we have today. The best ID anyone has, or any garden variety civilian has, is a national passport. That's the thing that is recognized worldwide. So perhaps as a minimum, in the Last ID, your nation of citizenship and all things that State Departments attach to that, would be retained. IE I would have no control, when identifying myself, that I would reveal my nationality and consequently my status with my home country - all the stuff that an immigration control agent would have at customs. But whether or not I wish to give permission to associate my credit report or medical records would be entirely up to me.

Ultimately, the cost of not doing this is what we are up against. Americans will have a very low tolerance, given the openness of our society, to domestic terrorism should it rise above a certain point. I have every expectation that we will, for the sake of security, submit to a regime of national identification which supercedes the present system, warts and all.

Racial Appeals: An Interesting Parallel

Following up on a couple things that I've been thinking behind the scenes of recent debates, I've been making sure that my Conservatism category is up to date. I happened across two interesting posts.

The first is GOP Rent A Negro. Having my lost my patience monentarily with FN and his crew, its a good reference for those trying to dissect my thought process. I sum up my attitude in issuing the challenge in this first paragraph that I wrote more than 18 months ago:

..most blackfolks who are antagonistic towards the GOP are pitifully ignorant of it. They don't distinguish between the various factions within the Party, they don't know the differences between Bush & Reagan, they don't know the difference between Fiscal and Social conservatives, they don't distinguish between Neocons and Paleocons, and they inclined to believe that any garbage that sticks to Donald Rumsfeld for example, sticks to every black Republican. So instead of them listening to what it is we're actually saying, they're pitching whatever garbage they can dream up and saying 'what about this?'. In other words they have been educated by gibberish and they believe it enough to consider their antagonism logical and proper. Most of the time it is broadly prejudicial, flatly ignorant and quite frankly embarrassing. People who don't bother to consider the intellectual distinctions between blackfolks are pains. Likewise more often then not I am likely to ignore such people, or tell them they are full of dookie. To which they generally respond that their dookie doesn't stink as much as my dookie, the problem being they have no idea which dookie I claim, to what extent, to what ends and for what motivation. So basically, I'm not going to chase down that monkey business because it's like arguing with people who think all rap sounds the same. They're never going to get it, so to hell with them. My message to you is learn to speak in politically coherent terms and you'll get real feedback, in the meantime all of your questions sound like stupid questions to me.

OK so now you know where my bad attitude comes from, but I do give props to Zimbel for meeting me halfway on the challenge.

But the reason I would go fight FN in the first place might seem puzzling and 'anti-black'. Here's the rationale from a pretty good and recent discussion about black racial self-interest:

For 15 years, my answer has been "Don't second-guess black people." So from that perspective the answer would be no, that phrase is a non-starter that I immediately discount.

Today I am second guessing the intent and capacity of those who would address African Americans with a black political agenda. Today, I'm interested to investigate the claims of those who *do* use that phrase, with the purpose in mind to disabuse them of their moral authority. I do so because I think there are two fundamental errors. The first is that they are arrogating authority in biologically racialist ways. The second is that they are violating the spirit of previous successful movements and values of African Americans.

I tend to believe today, that 'blackness' has lost its coherent meaning in the context of contemporary politics. That there is an unbridgable gap between the Black of the 60s and any meaning it has today 40 years later. I think African Americans are left in the lurch without a clear road.

Now here's what seems to be a very interesting parallel when it comes to racial politics. Especially when it comes to the Southern Strategy and Black Nationalism. I believe that both of them are ineffective, outdated and institutionally bankrupt. I haven't really held them up side by side and said so straight out, but it has been implied in everything I've been saying this week.

So now I'll say it more directly. Black Nationalists are still fighting Southern Strategists.  So there are several questions which ought to be answered.

1. Does it matter?
2. How do party politics play into this?
3. How influential is this battle?
4. Where is it taking place?

I have a few brief answers.
1. Sorta. To the extent that Americans are drawn into and stay in politics based on racial appeals, it is the demarcation line of a failure of real democracy. It is a throwback to tribalism, only proving our society is not as righteous as it could be. I am convinced that the strength of the nation is not in jeopardy because of this - there are no great ethnic conflicts in store, especially when talk in current events say things like "R. Kelly is the new OJ".

2. Marginally. Everyone acknowledges that overt racial appeals have no place in significant political campaigns. There are no replacements for the Southern Strategy. Everything is now racial dog-whistle politics with nothing but rhetorical patronage on the back end.

3. More than marginal. I figure that 15% of America is racist and another 15% are insufficiently moral to combat bigotry at any level. So while few people cop to thinking stupidly, plenty are. There are plenty of crackpots bloviating and sheep out there who are ready to listen to the latest racial bloviation. Both parties think they are more central to American politics than they really are, and that's primarily because they can and will be manipulated as useful idiots. I don't think there's much of a way around this aside from the racial smackdown - (c.f. Jessie Owens, Joe Louis...)

4. Online. In Sherwood Forest. In ghettoes of all sorts. It's not taking place in the mainstream and the combattants aren't meeting face to face.

--
In any case, I think these movements are ships passing in the night. I think their influence is less pressing than the expectation of its influence. And I think that expectation is manifest implicitly in expressions like "Why don't Republicans reach out to blacks?". There is a general expectation that some racial self-interest politics are supposed to be played in America, and when people ignore it, they get called on it. There is *supposed* to be a white vote. There is *supposed* to be a black vote. There is *supposed* to be a latino vote. Therefore there are racial appeals, and racial rhetorical patronage.

Again, I think both Southern Strategists and Black Nationalists are woefully out of date.

Denzel Doesn't Represent

Denzel Washington is one of my favorite actors, it's not because he's black but because of the kind of roles he plays. It's easy to tell this because as I start listing my other favorite actors, a clear pattern emerges. Tell me if you see it: Bruce Willis, Gene Hackman, Ricky Jay, Jason Statham, Ed Harris. Hmm. Men with large foreheads?

Still, nobody can deny the effect that DW has had in American imagination for the standup black man. There is nobody in American film history who has been such a widely accepted black authority figure, and man of action & integrity. Denzel Washington is a heroic leading man, and that's everything a lot of us have been hungering for in film for a long time. We never seem to get enough. Then, I suppose I part company. Washington has indeed been something of a race man, I wish he would quit. In some ways I think he's wandered some degrees off that plantation, but not completely.

Mark Anthony Neal writes:

In his collaborations with director Spike Lee, Washington complicated the race-man ethos. No longer defined solely by their willingness to stand up for their race, characters such as Bleek Gilliam ("Mo' Better Blues"), Jake Shuttlesworth ("He Got Game") and Detective Keith Frazier ("Inside Man") represented the new race man, whose main emphasis was on being manly. These characters were self-absorbed and selfish and demanded the respect they thought they deserved. Still, many black audiences embraced them, if only because Washington had earned their trust, especially after his signature collaboration with Lee on the film "Malcolm X."

But that trust began to erode with Washington's portrayal of Alonzo in "Training Day." When he finally won the coveted Best Actor Oscar for that role, on the same night that Halle Berry won Best Actress, much was made of their being rewarded for portraying characters who demeaned African Americans. And yet it was easy to give Washington a pass, because the Motion Picture Academy had ignored his more celebrated roles as Rubin "Hurricane" Carter and Malcolm X.

Those are Spike Lee movies which are bigger than Denzel, and rightly so. You ask me my favorite Denzel Washington movies, they are as follows:

• Fallen
• The Siege
• Man on Fire
• Devil in a Blue Dress
• Crimson Tide

I am tempted to write an ode to each of these films as they represent to me the best of Denzel's acting in a different way. Fallen, probably the worst performing film of the bunch showed Washington at his most tender. He may have topped it in John Q, but I never saw that one. To me, his role as caring for his retarded brother in Fallen was one of the most touching roles he has ever done. It showed him as genuinely confused and forced to believe something that defies reason - the Denzel you almost never see.

I have yet to see American Gangster for a number of trivial reasons, but I have been wanting to see Denzel break out of his goody role for a long time. He has played dicey characters, but never completely let go of the the soul of integrity. In 'Virtuosity', he played a convict with some badass perfection which he finally fully realized in 'Training Day'. Now once again opposite Russell Crowe, as in Virtuosity, he's also a bad guy. So part of me cannot wait to see it. And yet I still have the sense that he is going to go down swinging either right or wrong, Washington has yet to play a broken man. The closest he comes to that is in 'Man on Fire' which I would probably say is his best role ever. A broken man redeemed by a child yet doomed to die.

It's almost impossible to distinguish Denzel from his work in Hollywood and his place in black American and American imagination. There is always speculation about how much he gets to decide the details of how he is portrayed in the movies. There has always been a rumor that in his contracts he has made it clear that he will not fall for a white woman. This was a big controversy in his role in John Grisham's "The Pelican Brief" in which he starred opposite Julia Roberts. Everyone knows that Denzel has a large faithful audience in African America, and there is no reason to break their hearts. As Neal writes, there's no reason to believe that a black backlash won't hurt Washington.

My desire to see Denzel play against his history is based not so much on his role as a race man in Hollywood as his range as an actor. But because of this impossibility, I can only guess, but I suspect that it is Washington that is holding Washington back. He is already a monstrous success in Hollywood, and can do whatever he wants. There are plenty of roles that are offered to black men that he might have considered, and of course he could have one written for him if he so desired.  I think of those Larry Fishburne has played - way closer to the edge of madness than Denzel has ever wandered. The same is true of Forrest Whitaker, . As he ages, there are classes of roles I expect he will need to play, I hope

I could see how Denzel might have played in the role done by Mel Gibson in 'The Man Without a Face'. Or perhaps in the role done by Tom Hanks in 'The Terminal'. Has Denzel ever done a 'fish out of water' film?

I say that the jury is out on Denzel. He will have, uniquely, a very long career for us to look at him in a variety of roles. The older Denzel will be the key. In that regard, I am prepared to compare him to Harrison Ford with regard to how his early career doesn't define his later one. Looking at him as Han Solo does not compare to him in Air Force One or more recently in Firewall, or back in The Mosquito Coast. I happen to think that Denzel is a finer actor than Harrison, as is Bruce Willis. But the three of them are somewhat constrained by the fact that, as leading men, they are going to be cast as archetypal American men. In that way, Denzel's acting ability is often overshadowed by who he represents. The same was the case with John Wayne, and with the phenomenon that was James Dean. It is my opinion that Denzel represents American manhood more than he plays the role of a race man. That does constrain the way we look at him and changes how we perceive his talent but I don't think he's carrying racial baggage the way that Sidney Poitier did before.

Rather, I look at Denzel in the same way I look at Michael Jordan. He's dominant in his element and yes blackfolks take a lot of pride in him and he doesn't disappoint. But he's not being manipulated into being a symbol for the sake of a racial idea, he's bigger than that. He is representing American manhood, and there's really no way around that reality.

Obama's Veep

I have yet to hear any credible candidates for Obama's Vice President. Who do you think could be good and why?

Paring and Pruning

I'm too broadminded. I gotta get back my sense of humor. I'm carrying too much head on my shoulders and I need to trim the hell down.

In 2008 I intend to do a lot more carousing with friends. I simply didn't get enough of that this year, spending too much damned time in Illadelphia, Fart Worth, and the Armpit of the South, better known as Houston. Freakin' backwater towns. If it ain't New York, it's got to be LA. To hell with the rest of y'all.

I'm also going to watch a lot more sports. I sat and watched 30 minutes of the NFL channel last night and it was pure heaven. I'm house sitting at the Joneses suburban manse, and they've got that Direct TV thingy where they can record two channels on the Tivo at once. So I didn't have to worry about missing Mythbusters while I discovered #20 for the Iggles, they strong safety who never curses. Weapon X, Wolverine. Hell I can't remember his real name, but who cares. I was entertained. And Colin Cowherd is going to be one of my patron saints.

Speaking of radidio, I wonder if Dennis Miller is actually such a miniscule pip in market share that he actually knows all of his callers by name. It seems that way, or perhaps he's only live in two cities. I love his show, and there's never an episode I catch where he doesn't make me laugh out loud, but sometimes he just does some very unradio shit. I have never heard a more stumblebum shill. Whenever he's reading copy, you can hear him desperately trying to sound sincere. It doesn't freaking work, you know that in back of his head there's a bonobo ape swinging by his nuts and doing an impersonation of Jerry Lewis and aiming shit bombs at his frontal lobe screaming make a joke make a joke! I'll continue to listen, if only for the lists of movies.

Speaking of which, I practically died laughing this week at Achmed the Dead Terrorist. YouTube that. Holy smokes that's funny. Also, I now get Jimmy Durante. I've never seen the guy younger than 60 before I saw him play 'Banjo' in 'The Man Who Came to Dinner' with Bette Davis. But of course the star of the show, playing a delightfully crusty blowhard by the name of Whiteside was the heretofore unknown Monty Woolley. They don't make movies like that any more.

So I'm not going to do any more projects. I'm rather fed up with my own goody-two-shoes. I'm not yet fifty, but it's time for me to become the old crank I need to be, with a healthy dash of holly jolly and a rapier wit. The trick, as Woolley has shown, is to have a quip for every cliche that the rabble idly toss. Generally, boring language kills conversation, but if you can manage to have the last snide word even in the presence of boors, well that's saying something. And so, I'm off to recover the sharpness of my tongue. Erudition for the purposes of enlightenment? Bah. I'm just going to snap on people. Loads more fun, that.

Pops tried to get me into the creme sherry. God how do you drink that stuff? It's entirely too nasty to sip, and too volatile to slug down. Toilet's the place for it. Which means that I'm going to have to modify my Angry Black Man drink once more, to rid the concoction of that noxious poison.

Christmas was nice. This year it was full of less spirit than any in memory. Just lots of great gifts. We hardly sang any songs. But the kids were so besides themselves with pageants, concerts, plays and recitals, we hardly had time to sing about wonderland conspiracies, let alone mutant reindeer. The great news is that now that Boy has a mute for his trumpet and music from the Duke, there are actually pleasant sounds emanating from his practice. We're doing duos, and you'll see a YouTube of that for sure in 08. Maybe Caravan, maybe Mood Indigo. Me, I got a new amp for my bass, and finally Cameo sounds like Cameo. Word up.

On a sadder but obscured and abbreviated note, the extended Bowen clan took an L with the death of a certain someone in a fatal car accident. The day after Christmas, we were in a mad scramble to manage that calamity, and flights were booked and arrangements are being made. Death is always sobering, and there is nothing like it to provide clarity. Am I doing what I need to be doing? Yes, for the most part. Except for all this damnable baggage of 'responsible' blogging. From here on out it's going to be fun, and Gerard is my spiritual guide. In a few weeks, I might even un-ban the N word. Who knows?

At the very least, I'll try to revive the comic. It has been a while.

Bhutto Bombed

I fear the day when Pakistan becomes more of a liability than an asset in the GWOT. We already know that the SIS, their CIA, is very dicey and has manipulated a lot of intel on Bin Laden and others. I am coming to think that their turnover of AQ Khan was basically all the quid they were willing and able to pro quo the US.

Just last week when Musharraf announced that he would end the state of emergency, I was beginning to think optimistically. His allowing of Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif back into the political process was a crucial step in linking his Presidency to a future democracy. Plus he took off the uniform. Sure there was and is still a huge issue with the Supreme Court mess, but I think he was making progress. Now with the assassination of Bhutto, Musharraf and Pakistan have taken a body blow.

Somebody needs to be the figurehead for a huge crackdown on terror, and I think it has to be Musharraf's biggest ally in the SIS. The question is whether or not that institution can be trusted to do anything in the interest of a secular democracy. They may hold the key.

We know that Pakistanis have great trust in the Army, but the Army was not called out in response to the protests and gnashing of teeth over the death of Bhutto. That's a good move. But the Army and the SIS together are not going to save Pakistan. Could it be Sharif? Could it be one of the figures still under house arrest in the state of emergency?

This gets uglier every week. Pray that civil war does not begin.

Jazz Never Dies

I have very little to say about the death of Oscar Peterson primarily because although I guess I know his music, I don't know that I know it. In time I will, I'll experience it and that will be that.

A huge vibe that I learned long ago was expressed by Ishmael Reed in one of his many books I read all at once. It had to do with an African mask hung on a wall in an American museum. The great crime was not that it was some antiquity stolen from the motherland - that was the kindergarten gripe. The real tragedy was that it was designed to be worn and danced. It was not some objet d'art to be admired at a distance, it was a tool to be employed in a working society. The nature of the 'theft' of the art was born of a fundamental misunderstanding of its purpose. To be in possession of a ceremonial mask is an abuse only to the extent that the mask is not used.

The last live jazz performance I saw, I have forgotten, but I have seen some of the greats. I saw Miles Davis the year before he died. I saw George Duke a few years back. The greatest in recent memory was of Michael Wolff at Carolina's in Hollywood. But it's something that I am now far away from. The writing I did at the time captured more of the performance than I can recall now, and even re-reading it brings no music into my mind, just words about music. The best I can do is listen to the CD.

It was Vernon Reid who precociously said into the ear of my cousin, "The music you fell in love to  was a commodity before you ever heard it." as a summary indictment of the music business and a swipe at the emotional depth of people who do dedications on the radio. Yes, music is a business and most of us are consumers. Having never seen Oscar Peterson perform live, the best I could possibly be is an informed consumer. I will make A Selection, and that will be that.  But I think of the static mask. What is music to be even when performed live? We buy the tickets, we sit in our assigned seats, we clap more or less on cue, we nod approvingly to our neighbors.

What Peterson and others did was compose and perform. Jazz never dies because the cycle of composition and performance never dies. Where Peterson will live on is in the influence he has on composers and performers, many we may never know.

For Christmas this year, I bought myself a new amp for my bass guitar. Boy and I cracked a Duke Ellington songbook and attempted to perform some of the classics. It's an astonishing thing to hear from the chaos of our fumbling, something that approximates 'Caravan', but I can tell you the act of discovery is an order of magnitude more exciting that running that phrase through your head in silence. I should hope that one day I might approach Peterson in the same way, with a bit more skill. But my two cents of trying is only a drop in the bucket of reverent creativity that makes Jazz a living art.

I cannot be sad that Peterson is gone. The transience of any performance cannot be captured. There will never be the great reconstructive computer related by Douglas R. Hofstadter that will be able to capture the echoes of all of the Peterson music as it bounced into the air and moved us all ever so slightly and then assembled the original sounds. All those vibrations have been damped and canceled, the motions in sound are long dead. But the reverberations in mind are held with great potential energy to be transformed in the future to new waves traveling at the speed of sound. Somebody somewhere will make the attempt, and we will hear Oscar again. It is, because of who he was, inevitable.

Life is that cycle. In all of our living and remembering, there are masks on the walls of our museums which await the day they are liberated for their proper use as tools in our society. But instruments are only tools and performance is merely sound. The music is within us.

Mission: Christmas

Our mission is to spread the joy of the season and share the blessings of Jesus Christ with you.
Merry Christmas!

35 Years of Inflation

From InflationData.com

Southern Strategy Challenge: The Straw Blogosphere

Craig Nulan gets on my case for being 'anti-black'. It's a rather simplistic label that I accept in a complicated way. In fact, I don't do much to criticize blackfolks, but rather black politics. I pay almost zero attention to what one might consider the psychology of African Americans. But today I'm going to take a swipe because I've witnessed something rather pathetic and it's got my goat.

The Field Negro found it necessary to quote some windbag named Dave Neiwart who is hyperventilating about 'Noose Incidents' in the wake of the 'original' in Jena, LA. And so FN takes a stab at 'the re-puke-lican party' with a picture of a Klansman at the top of his completely retarded, ass-backward, piecemeal post.

The defense of white privilege has been a cornerstone of the GOP's electoral appeal ever since the its ardent adoption of the Southern Strategy, dating back to Goldwater and Nixon and continiuing through the Reagan and Bush years. Even Republican strategists acknowledge this to be the case.Joseph Aistrup, in his book The Southern Strategy Revisited: Republican Top-Down Advancement in the South -- a text written primarily to influence GOP politicos -- observes the following: When a GOP presidential candidate's campaign strategy emphasizes racially conservative appeals, he identifies not only himself but his party as the one that protects white interests.

I happen to think Field and his pseudonymous and anonymous pinhead synchophants are a blight to the spirit of the blogosphere. Why? Because they're shadowboxing. They lack the testicular and intestinal fortitude to find a real Republican and do battle. There isn't a Southern Strategist living. The closest tangent to a hint of a smidgen of white privilege working in Republican politics is the Ron Paul candidacy, and that adds up to about $500 worth of influence. But do you think FN or any of his spooked-out whiners might care to do battle with a real Republican blogger? Hells no. Instead that wallow in a trough of paranoid self-pity.

It's a pathetic shame that so called defenders of black civil rights or whatever dog food they're eating at the black self-back pat society called The Field Negro blog don't have the cojones of Cheney, Goodman and Schwermer who actually left their homes and dealt with the real Klan. They don't even have the stones to find the white supremacists in the blogosphere and call them out. Instead, they raise spectres of ghosts and then slander 're-puke-licans' as if such monkey business were courageous work worthy of respect.

If they rise to this challenge, I expect to get a some spittle as the messenger. Fine. But let's see if they can find, and I have twenty bucks that says they cannot, a real Republican blogger at the Mammal level or higher in the TTLB Ecosystem who will respond defending the Southern Strategy or white privilege as a Republican strategy.

It's time to put up or shut up. We've been through this four different ways before. Let's see what's new.

• Southern Strategy: Dead
• Cousin Pookie
• Southern Strategy and Goldwater Revisited
• First Annual Internet Racist Hunt

The Unbelievable Black Man

And if you think it's easy that's only 'cause
You ain't me. And I ain't you.
-- Earnie Isley

When I took this picture, I was just over 30 years old. I lived in Prospect Heights in Brooklyn in a brownstone on the top floor. I had a two bedroom flat with an EIK at 7th Avenue and Flatbush. Wooden floors, exposed brick, roof access. I worked in Midtown, was single and had no kids. I didn't do drugs and had basically no bad habits, except one. I wrote a different personal ad every week, but never bothered to send it to the Village Voice.

I had a stereo, NAD and Souncraftsmen components and Infiniti speakers. I was into Prokofiev and Arrested Development. My two bookshelves were full. I was into Charles Wright and Umberto Eco. I had Chianti and steaks in the fridge, although I'd just as soon get sushi right up the block. One of the bedrooms was an office with my computer, desk and files. I had French doors, mood lighting and a king size bed. The only reason I didn't have a BMW was because I just sold it back in LA.

It was very difficult, back in those days to get any young lady to visit my apartment. I actually had the conversation that helped me understand why. I was told that because I was well-dressed, didn't curse, was 30 years old and had never been married and had no kids that most black women in Brooklyn would think I was gay. I was also a poet you see. I was doing the performance poetry circuit at various joints in NYC, and I also wrote rap lyrics. Hmm. I don't know if I've ever published them at Cobb. How about a sample? I had the nerve to show up at an open mic for rap producers. They thought I was going to sing ballads.

I have been him, the Unbelievable Black Man.

I have been that man whose statistics didn't add up, whose raison d'etre was not supposed to be anything resembling a raison d'etre. I have been the man unexpected and uncompensated, at the right place at the right time to the chagrin of those present. I have been that man to make women flinch in fear of beating when I was only reaching to swat a fly from her area. I have been that man to sit quietly in complete bored understanding only to have them repeat themselves to me more slowly. I have had the landlord collect rent at my front door, amazed that it was me. I have had the check delivered to my subordinates at the restaurants, and have had the police ask me if I know how to operate the high beams on my BMW because most car thieves don't understand such sophisticated vehicles. I programmed computers before Apple existed. I climbed mountains many hours from the 'hood and slept in redneck forests. I have hugged Republican statesmen and saluted the flag. I have performed inward 2 1/2s from the 3 meter board.

I wrestled with my Unbelievability with the consolation that at least I refused to be Invisible. And after a time, I made peace with my individuality. So it doesn't really matter why I have been that unbelievable black man. Long ago I accepted something Baldwin wrote:

All you are ever told in this country about being black is that it is a terrible, terrible thing to be. Now, in order to survive this, you have to really dig down into yourself and re-create yourself, really, according to no image which yet exists in America. You have to impose, in fact - this may sound very strange - you have to decide who you are, and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.

So I went about forcing the world and imposing my identity on the world, whether the world liked it or not. I had Greg Tate in mind.

Perhaps the supreme irony of black American existence is how broadly black people debate the question of cultural identity among themselves while getting branded as a cultural monolith by those who would deny us the complexity and complexion of a community, let alone a nation. If Afro Americans have never settled for the racist reductions imposed upon them -- from chattel slaves to cinematic stereotype to sociological myth -- it's because the black collective conscious not only knew better but also knew more than enough ethnic diversity to subsume those fictions.

I could never settle for the racist reduction. Not spiritual. Not political. Not cultural. Not economic. If I could have been said to have a motto it might have been "I will not be reduced."  I never was, and it doesn't matter. There isn't an easy way to be believed. One shouldn't try so hard to be believed. Maybe I didn't believe that I could be believed because I didn't believe myself. None of that matters any longer. I'm the man I was trying to be.

Ron Paul: Crackpot

Ron Paul is a Libertarian, which means essentially that he trusts that people, left to their own devices, will do the right thing. This contrasts with Leftists who believe that government, given enough resources and control, will do the right thing for the people.We Conservatives balance these two extremes on principles of Liberty - freedom under the law. Plus we inject some morality into the mix because we believe government should be more than just business. One of the prime reasons I have beefs with Libertarians is that they believe that government should be just business - they shy away from concepts like patriotic duty, honoring one's nation and the like. Secondly, Libertarians think privatization cures everything, they believe market forces without regulation will provide the best solutions. They are cluelessly impractical in that regard.

Ron Paul evidences all the hallmarks of a Libertarian, and so we Republicans have to share the party with him. I find no irony whatsoever in the fact that Libertarians are pathetically unable to get candidates elected into government. They are, for all intents and purposes, terminally unorganizable. Libertarian groups are splinter groups by definition. They distrust collaboration and negotiations, preferring small independent and consequently unaccountable groups.

Like white supremacists.

The news today is that Ron Paul regularly hung out with the cast of characters from American Renaissance, a white rights group that pretends to be about social justice. I've boxed several rounds with AmRen types and their basic beef is typical white resentment - but when the rubber meets the road, they are in many ways the mirror image of the worst aspects of Sharpton.com: media hustlers who wish to try the courts and government in the media sowing seeds of paranoia and distrust. Ask any AmRen supporter about the 'Zebra Murders' and you'll find their emotional ground zero.

Stormfront sent a few hundred dollars over to Ron Paul and he kept the money, lamely saying that he's converting it to good out of the hands of baddies. I haven't made up my mind about that logic in general, but you'd think a bit of common sense would be in order. Stormfront is as extreme a white supremacist group as could legally exist in America - it doesn't get any skinheadier than that. These are the guys who sell racial holy war speedmetal CDs on their website.

soft rap returns from the home for the sane persecuted class

Music spins, charged verbals majestically hop
unchallenging to pressed plastic specs
brilliance transformed through
unfathomable electronics attainable
only by credit - a gift of fiscal innocence
around xmas time when lenders get liberal
collecting potential debt service
from an internal third world.

Compacted clips of revolution, rebroadcast
sampled sounds of malcolm,
civil drug war villagers claim casualties.
Ghetto hype makes a media star of bored econ majors
with still enough accent to fool suburban police
bad joke, bro.

Enough to be called enuf
and nine days at County; mom cries
at shattered expectations to the rhythm of
other discs in a pile trying to reconcile this turn
to probable cause, scanning liner note shout outs
funky cartoons, tape foldouts in
an off-campus apartment rented month to month
on government guaranteed loans.
Right resenting mainstreamies
bang the wall calling for speedmetal Barabas;
death to jeep beats by elision's decree.
Minority grants are now repaid
by systemic injustice she reasons,
and turns down the bass.

Lynch-quick, fashion-swift
linearly unrecognizable to the nons,
but this pattern etched
wrinkles and scars of a different dignity
plain as backbeats, pursed lips and mean strolls
unstoppable by one family,
too obvious to unity-loathing county trustees
the idea is tossed to the dread heap.

Humming silences, swallowing bile
thinking positive science, dope dropped
once on the burgle barred bus
in transit to the streets from hell's other home
Soft Rap whistled dixie.

The Kingdom

My brothers and I had a discussion about who the best movie actors are in America. There was fairly wide consensus among us. Christian Bale, Denzel Washington, Johnny Depp, Russell Crowe. The conversation went sideways and we started talking about a number of others, but one name never came up. Jamie Foxx.

I don't really have it in for Jamie Foxx, no more than I do for Chris Tucker. I still haven't seen 'Ray' and so I still haven't seen Foxx act. I just did see The Kingdom. It was OK. The most memorable line in the film didn't come from any of the main chracters, it was from the FBI director. Anyway, I'm one of those movie guys who recognizes the lengths Hollywood goes to portray the FBI as pretty much the only federal agency worth spit. You'd be hard pressed to find a story where the nod goes to the CIA or the regular armed forces. The best ever in this regard, as far as I'm concerned is 'The Siege' with Denzel as the FBI guy, Bruce as the Army dude and Annette Benning as the CIA spy. It's probably the only one I can think of where the three tangle. And so with that in mind, half the plot of The Kingdom is managing to get FBI good guys on the ground in Saudi Arabia, so that they can then pursue your standard action flick.

The Kingdom is above average for pulling together some moderately decent performances from actual talented actors who have basically no rapport whatsoever. I don't know who directed this or how the picture came about, but it looked like all of the stars had somewhere else to be. Chris Cooper is in it. But he plays a loner best. Jennifer Garner is in it, she's best hogging the spotlight too. Jamie Foxx is in it, and he gets to hog the spotlight, but he is totally unconvincing as the leader of his crew. If you compare his big briefing in the wake of the calamity, with the similar scene in 'The Siege', you just know this whole movie is going to be a flop.

But it didn't flop. At least it was worth the 10 bucks for Spectravision on the wide screen in my hotel room on a Tuesday night. There's some honest to goodness drama and pathos in the flick. There's a decent buddy vibe going on between Foxx and his Saudi host, and there's a good scene where Foxx goes straight for the nuts of the prince at whose pleasure they remain in Saudi Arabia.

There are too many captions for the film to be a subtle look at the dynamic. It's basically a find the jihadi game of three mosque monte played in some very authentic looking locales. While at least one firefight looks like something out of an 80s Tom Clancy movie, there's some other pretty good shoot-em-up tactics that make it to the screen.

It's a good movie that doesn't insult my sensibilities, like that idiot one with Jake Gyllenhall. It's still not as good as Three Kings or even George Clooney's Syriana, but it's good enough to be mentioned in the same paragraph. Also, by the way, it's not as good as Rules of Engagement either.

Sanctions & Inspections

I ask the rhetorical question, where is the sanctions and inspection crowd today? You know who you are - you lovers of El Baradei, you bootlickers of Scott Ritter. Whatever your prior status, you may come out of your holes and find common cause with those of a more red-blooded American sort by bleating your tooters towards the Iranian regime.

The first Democrat candidate to call for a tightening regime of nuclear inspections and sanctions on Iran gets props from this side. Who will it be?

Matthew Levitt leads my charge:

The latest U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear intentions and capabilities has been the subject of much analysis, most of which has been off point. The new estimate opens with the startling judgment that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003, which has led some to conclude sanctions are no longer necessary. They are. Indeed, the estimate's more significant conclusion is that the most likely tool to successfully alter Iran's nuclear calculus is targeted political and economic pressure, not military action.

Put That Bitch Down

I cannot make this up. A dog from the NYT attacked one of Blackwater's bomb sniffing dogs in Iraq a few days ago. A Blackwater staffer had to put the bitch down.

Responding to the charges, a Blackwater spokesperson told Reuters that the Times' dog (named Hentish) attacked one of the firm's bomb-sniffing dogs, during a security sweep of the compound. According to Blackwater's Anne Tyrrell:

"The K-9 handler made several unsuccessful attempts to get the dog to retreat, including placing himself between the dogs. When those efforts failed, the K-9 handler unfortunately was forced to use a pistol to protect the company's K-9 and himself," she said in an e-mail to Reuters.

And, there may be a bit more to this story than we first thought. Eason Jordan at the Huffington Post (literally) had some first-hand experience with the Times' compound dogs. Last spring, he suffered a serious bite from a dog named Scratch, who left three deep gashes in Jordan's hand, requiring treatment at a U.S. Army hospital in Baghdad.

Gives new meaning to the phrase liberal attack dog. Hilarious.

Huckabee Praying

I don't know what the big deal about Mike Huckabee is. I'm glad he's in the race, just so I can publicly diss him. My entire take on the guy is dismissal, but a somewhat less harsh dismissal than Ron Paul deserves. I happen to think Ron Paul is a crackpot - you get one in every cycle, but Huckabee. Hmm.

Of course you know that Huckabee has been making a name for himself in an ass backwards manner by being associated with the Christians Who Don't Trust Mormons. Of course he won't come straight out and say so, neither will he dismiss the support. In fact, Huckabee is becoming the defacto messenger of the Christian Right. Good. Let him be that and lose.

Novak hedges the bet - not all Southern Baptists fall in line behind the Arkansas Gov, but demonstrates that Huckabee wants them to:

Criticism from co-religionists stands apart from criticism by the Club for Growth, the Cato Institute and the Arkansas Eagle Forum of Huckabee's 10 big-government, high-tax years as governor. Because no Republican candidate since Pat Robertson in 1988 has depended so much on support from evangelicals, opposition by Huckabee's fellow Southern Baptists is significant.

Huckabee's base is reflected by sponsors of Tuesday's fundraising luncheon (requesting up to $4,600 a couple) at the Houston home of Steven Hotze, a leader in the highly conservative Christian Reconstruction movement. State Rep. Debbie Riddle was the only elected official on the host committee, most of whose members were not familiar names in Texas politics. David Welch is executive director of the Houston Area Pastor Council. Jack Tompkins heads a firm providing Internet services to the Christian community. Entrepreneur J. Keet Lewis is an active Southern Baptist.

A better-known committee member was Baptist minister Rick Scarborough, founder of Vision America. In endorsing Huckabee on Nov. 1, Scarborough said, "I acknowledge that Huckabee is not the perfect candidate" but one "who will listen to wise counsel." Scarborough and Huckabee clashed during the Baptist wars. Fighting to drive the liberals from the temple, Scarborough was badly defeated for president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas while Huckabee embraced the liberal church establishment to become president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention.

I think it's kind of sad that it has come to this, that a Republican candidate actually believes that Rove's game of inches with the Christian Right was indeed what made the Party great. But to have a candidate who is playing that card as his trump should give Americans a clearer picture of what the GOP is and is not. It is not going to roll over for the Christian Right. It will respectfully assimilate it just like every other libertarian, conservative and vaguely conservative political group. But Republicans are not Huckabee and Huckabee's failure will hopefully make that clear.

Quiet Storm Prayer Meeting

From the Literary Thug

QUIET STORM PRAYER MEETING: ODE TO LUTHER VANDROSS

The house in which we used to dance
Was sold last month
It’s ragged box frame stands out
In the face of new startup’s
And gentrified Victorian sprawl
Old and new Tacoman’s
Pass warily on the sidewalk
And a boy chases a girl on the streets
Aping a people that never existed
And a time he was too young to remember

Here, Luther. Can you believe it? Here.
On the streets where we stole away to hear you
On night where we wove through corners
Crossed old ladies yards
Sneaking past arid thicket brush
And risking the chance of being at the wrong place
At the wrong time, just to listen
And love you and love each other
At the house of the blue lava light

The Jesus Maneuver

The Jesus Maneuver is the act of letting go of a situation you've been trying to control to no avail. Donald Sensing employed it not long ago. It's sending a few ripples through the 'sphere. I think it has bonked me in the head.

I've been in my heads up job for about 4 months now and I'm getting rather used to the rhythm of it. But I haven't had my Neo moment, when I stop the bullets. I'm still fast, but still breathing oxygen. I have yet to merge with the fabric of the thing, I'm still acting on it. The new kind of headache doesn't hurt any longer, but it is not yet food. I still hate that I wake up in the morning thinking about how to succeed. I still hate that I have to pat myself on the back at the end of every day. There's still a book I see on the shelves in bookstores that I'm afraid to pick up and read, 'Three Signs of a Lousy Job'.

Now is a moment of personal chaos and I haven't resolved the conflicting desires. I could blog politics and current events. I could set up a group blog. But what I really want is dinner conversation and I know that. I've been wanting that for 10 years, and it is now officially 10 years since I moved back to Los Angeles. I cannot get four intelligent black men to sit down to dinner on a Friday night that are not my own brothers and father. Not even men I've known for 20 years. It feels like the effects of slavery. I can tell you about the night that Spence and I sat down to talk with his Renaissance friend in Baltimore. I can tell you about the last Barbershop recording. But four? In one physical place? As friends? Over good food? I'm going to take a moment to think about the last time that happened with black men who were not family, and I would have to say... probably 3 years ago at this birthday party, but that was with a crowd. No wait, I know. It was last summer when I was hanging with my Hollywood buddies. After a film at LACMA over at Gengis Cohen. The subject was single life after divorce. Painful conversation, but the food was really good.

When I left Hyperion in 2001, I ended up blogging because I had too much time on my hands. I didn't have 1800 minutes of cellphone calls any longer. But now I do again. So now what?

St. Claire Bourne is dead. George told me. I haven't been paying attention to George. He's got Negrophile all atwitter. I'm not sure what Twitter is or what it does, but there are some interesting links over there. They come up fast and make you jump. Maybe Twitter turns you into a twit, except that George has extraordinary good taste, and plays acoustic guitar. I asked him in the context of Bourne's death:

when i think of st claire bourne, i think of a girl i almost met in brooklyn. she ran the black film festival out there but already had a boyfriend. i lost patience with her, and the room full of wannabe film makers.  who has the patience to wait for a majority to understand what you know to be true? impatient people always end up being subversive or self-destructive. maybe that's why we americans like dirty harry. we're impatient. or passive aggressive more likely.

Sam Pollard speaks. He was Bourne's editor. He was there in Brooklyn, lecturing. He was a bright and articulate man. Everybody in the audience was enthralled. He didn't tell any stories about how difficult it was to beat Hollywood, or at least I don't remember any. Instead he talked about the craft - what it was like to be an editor. Everybody had meta-political questions. Everybody wanted black images on film. Everybody wanted that story to be told, and everybody was pissed at Spike Lee for not telling it. I was reading Gina Dent at the time. It was one of those things that made me feel like a outcast within a minority within a fraction of a splinter group.

The entire problem with being a cultural producer is that you need an audience, and the need for an audience drives the medium for the message and the money for the making of the message. The more you have to explain, the more expensive it becomes, the bigger audience you need, the more you need to water down the message. We all just wait for the book to be the movie to be the DVD to be the YouTube clip. Nobody figures it out for themselves and just acts right. Nobody wants to have the conversation where they are the geek with the strangely un-universal discipline. Well, lots of us do. Lots of us disconnected and perverse characters living in our own little nasty passive aggressive worlds.

John Sandford is still my favorite fiction writer. He writes detective stories. The good guy drives a Porsche and curses. He has had to bust people up. He's not afraid of his instincts. So he's solving a crime with the assistance of a Russian woman. She says of America that there are too many signs, as if we Americans didn't know what everything was without being told. I notice that a lot nowadays, all the signs and warning labels and fine print and disclaimers and TV commercials about Cialis. Too much fucking information. People have lost the ability to tell themselves the truth. We teach critical thinking skills in schools, but that's just another way of instructing paranoia and cynicism. The effect is the same, sybaritic obsession - gazing into others' naked navels and losing track of the emergent qualities of nature. No wonder people can be convinced that the Planet is in Peril, as the eye candy on CNN boldly proclaims via their new documentary.

Does anybody make real documentaries? Is there a way to watch the movie instead of take the class? I don't think so.

I Am Legend

I Am Legend is the Omega Man, done better.

It's a special effects movie, a horror movie, an action movie and a sci-fi movie wrapped into a pretty decent package. Will Smith is nobody in the movie - just the guy you would expect him to be, which is you. "If it were me" drives some of the force of this film.

The film is basically held together by some extraordinarily cool scenes. You wouldn't think that chasing deer around might be something cool, but chasing deer in a Shelby Cobra with an automatic rifle, that's cool. Even though the zombies in this film are the fastest, strongest most fearsome zombies ever, there is little in Legend that's cheesy. There is one set of scenes that seems to borrow a bit from Speilberg's riverside evacuation in War of the Worlds, but that just goes to show how well done this movie is, for an action/horror flick.

As sci-fi coolness goes, Legend is rather spare. It makes for a very believable near future, and it makes one believe that this kind of thing could actually happen. I actually have some of the exact same Porsche Design external USB drives that Smith uses in his lab. Hmm. Echoes of The Wall. Legend doesn't need to get all of its science right, it's less techy than I Robot - I could see why Smith went this way. Yet somehow there is a different kind of emotional vibe, in one way less than you would expect from a movie with so much solo time by an actor.

We never get to see how Smith develops the discipline that he needs to survive in zombieland. We just come to see him, from the start of the film, as master of the domain. We know that his dog means everything, we are assured that he's not about to lose his mind - that he has made some peace with his solitude. He has his work. He has Bob Marley. He has his dog. He has his daily routine. And so in that way, the film is more flat than it should be. Smith's interior life is not like that of Heston's Omega Man who plays chess, drinks fine wine and has philosophical debates with himself. Smith's last man on earth wants to be where the blood is, he wants to singlehandedly be the man of action that turns that blood into serum. There is nothing for Smith - he is subdued to the task. Save humanity.

And so when Smith encounters a woman and a child, he only stops to explain his world and why it is the only world that matters. His mission has left him no way out. There is no love nor hope aside from that he controls, and he already had to kill his best friend.

Legend satisfies the thirst to see it. It is self-contained and doesn't attempt to be preachy. It says what we already know. Science can go wrong. That thing in which we place the greatest hope can suddenly and inexplicably turn against us. Fight for the light against the darkness. Life is survival. Survival is life.

The Coolest Family in Redondo

This is actually and outtake. Our actual Christmas card picture this year is cooler than this. Well, I'm the Dad, so yeah obviously I think so. Last year's picture was so wholesome that I thought we should do one with attitude. But you can see that the Spousal Unit is about to crack up laughing. We took about 70 shots and this was one of the better ones. So this is just the first time I'm going to say it. Merry Christmas from all of us to all of you.

Agsa Parvez

A father kills his daughter. Why?

A 57-year-old Canadian man suspected of strangling his teenage daughter for not wearing her traditional Muslim head wear will appear in court later today for a bail hearing.

Authorities said cabdriver Muhammad Parvez admitting killing 16-year-old Agsa Parvez. The teenager died Tuesday in a Toronto suburb.

Agsa's older brother also will appear in court today because police said he obstructed their investigation.

I just heard this story on the radio, and so I have also heard that people will pretend that this is about something other than Islam. Well, Agsa did have a black boyfriend. Does that make some muslims more comfortable? I think that it is reasonable for the prosecutor to arrest this guy's imam as an unindicted co-conspirator.  Watch this one.

 

• More reporting on the matter

Manicure

Clinton vs Obama

Hewitt is asking his audience of Republicans who we'd rather see win the Democratic nomination and why.

I say Obama.
The primary reason behind my choice is that I think Obama represents a real change in Democrat politics and I really cannot stand Hillary Clinton. Several points.

Rom Emmanuel is an ex Clinton staffer, and one of the more rational folks in the Clinton White House. I can remember a long interview with him in which he finally says that he just couldn't work with Bill Clinton any longer. It was his conscience talking. The disorganization, the scandal. They were too much. Limbaugh mentioned the other day that a lot of ex-Clintonistas are working for Obama now. I've got to believe that they are people like Emmanuel.

Even if they are not, I want somebody else beside all the old Clinton hacks ride into power in the Democrat Party.

What I cannot stand about Hillary Clinton is that she's such a transparent careerist. The Clinton campaign is combative. Under Hillary, it's passive-aggressive - holding character assassination cards close to the vest but announcing their presence. 'The War Room' is how they call it. They go for the jugular. And when it's their turn in the barrel they deny and whine.

There's an odd undercurrent in the argument against Obama for President. And it's true that he has made some stupid remarks on foreign policy, but that undercurrent pretends that he won't get smart fast. It implies that Clinton, as much as we hate her, will be better for the nation. We know she'll triangulate. We know she'll pay more attention to polls then her gut - hell she doesn't have one, other than ambition. We know she'll cave in to the right kind of pressure, particularly on national security. It's something most Republicans believe about her. But we also think that Obama is different enough to really do something stupid. That there's something, perhaps unsober enough about him, that he'd try an Andrew Young move - embracing Arafat, because he's the golden boy capable of seeing a new vision for the future.

I'm not necessarily convinced that Obama is unreliable for politics as usual. I think that he is an original thinker and is ready to try new approaches, but that there's something conservative about him underneath the appeal that won't make certain mistakes.

Now here's the catch. It's wishful thinking on my part. I wanted GWBush as a lover and not a fighter. I wanted a break from inside the beltway politics in 2000. I wanted an end to the divisive politics back then. I didn't vote for Bush, and I knew when it came to governing, Texas is a lightweight state. So when he hunkered down in the White House and we got exactly zero out of the domestic agencies, and his direction grated with the Pentagon and the State Department on matters of war and diplomacy I swore I'd never vote for a presidential candidate that I thought could not manage the federal bureaucracy with mastery. Obama doesn't strike anyone as an organizational genius. So how is he going to get his agenda cracking in DC? He needs hardball insiders that he runs, not them running him. Precarious balance.

On the African American side, I'd be pleased to see Obama shut down a parcel of whiners who can't manage to get over their race paranoia. With Obama as the nominee, it pretty much guarantees that all of that noise against the GOP as the party of the KKK will be cemented, but at least people will stop pretending some things are still impossible.

Whatever Obama does win, as the Barbershop guys said last week, will come out of the flesh of white liberals. You know, the ones who actually love Sharpton and Jackson (just where they are). That reckoning is coming, and I think it augers well for the GOP. Listen for the word 'plantation' in upcoming debates about the black vote within the Democrat Party if Obama loses the nomination. It is inevitable.

I remember when Maxine Waters lined up behind Bill Clinton and not behind fellow liberal Californian Jerry Brown in 92. Watch very carefully to see where black Democrats are putting their endorsements. It's a story nobody is covering, but it's about to get hot.

The Wall

The Sprite is now eleven.

On the way back from picking her up from her grandfather's house, she asked me the following question. If you could be the boss of any business, what business would that be? The answer was Bowen Labs. The idea is that I make custom secret laboratories for my clients. I have never gotten over Batman.

Most of what I've done in my career, the most fun I've had, was designing information systems for executives to augment their decision making. But that's primarily because it is what we have designed computer systems to do. There are public methodologies for doing so. It's an art, but there are professional practitioners. But I've been a DJ as well, and it is just as fun. I've also been a blogger, cartoonist, photographer and composer - all augmented with digital technology. It's architecture for the mind. That is my passion.

In my less than stellar life, I've only amassed a minimum of components for my own secret laboratory. But the dream has always been called 'The Wall'. I've always envisioned a solid wall of electronics - floor to ceiling. Blinking lights, whirring tapes, glowing dials, spinning hard drives, rows of cables, antennae, potentiometers of the sliding variety, pulsing VU meters, of Krell dimensions and complexity. Shortwave, CB, morse code, packet radio, BBS, fido-nodes, telegraphs, telex, ethernet, token ring, ATM and three dozen other protocols. PGP, stego, hashes, blowfish, triple DES and self-destructing files. Every video and audio and text and database format. A full complete library, cross-referenced, indexed and mobile-capable. Today all I have is one Terabyte in two operating systems. I should have more, much more. The Wall is incomplete.

I think I've come to that part of my life where my kids are asking the kinds of questions I've been writing down answers for over the years. And I've been thinking about recording more of them, on video, to be served up at precise dates in their future. Naturally, I was of the sort who wrote out a full curricula for my children to be when I was back in my single 20s. I don't know where the list is, but you can hear me gloating when I speak of the Little Bowens. I need to embed my own special messages to them in The Wall. I need to capture them speaking with me there too, as I have been doing since before they could speak.

But I wonder if I could make this a living. Is there anyone besides me <strike>crazy</strike> passionate enough to want their own secret lab? Would they trust me to build it? The whole enterprise came into binary focus when I found this drop zone at the B&W website. I was throwing away an old Thinkpad 600X that is now a worthless piece of junk and wondering if there were other Thinkpads I might buy for the family, used. Somehow I ended up looking at audiophile equipment and last night's conversation and the old dream surfaced high enough to merit blogging. The Society of Sound. Yeah. I would be in that. I can play a little Isley Brothers on the Ibanez. I used to idolize Bob Carver. I know why TDK Ds say '120'. There might be some guys, somewhere with whom I could hook this up. Some guys.

Friday morning like most mornings that I head to the office, I walk past two shining black automobiles in the parking garage. They are parked in their usual reserved spots. One is a BMW 650, the other a Porches Carerra S. I cannot decide which of the two I'd rather have, but I think, ultimately it would have to be the Porsche. As I was thinking that, another Porsche driver parked nearby. He looked to be around my age, shaved bald looking something like a Middle Eastern Mark Mobius. We exchanged pleasantries waiting for the elevator. I suddenly decided that my next boss would be a Porsche driver. I've got to work for the guy who already has his. I've got to finish the job I started and then do the executive thing. I get tired of the renegade software work. The world doesn't need to be reinvented, merely recorded properly. There's got to be something heritable in that vector - I can't imagine that so many people have to think so hard and work so diligently on problems that have never been solved the way I do.

When The Wall is built, there will be heavy iron components in the garage and remote human interfaces in the living room and library. In the garage next to the Porsche, and the oscilloscope bench. Sprite will still be living at home and I will have learned how to play fast enough to do 'Climbing the Ladder Parts 1 & 2'. It will be a notable Thanksgiving.

No Country for Old Men

No Country For Old Men is a great small movie in large boxy clothes. It's a cross between Fargo and Kill Bill 2; the best I've seen in a long time.

It is a classic Coen Brothers film. There is death. There is greed. There is relentless connivance. There is mystery. It is a slow chase across Texas that begins in the aftermath of a drug deal gone horribly wrong and ends completely out of the plot.

NCFOM becomes a kind of reality film in that there is no clever plot that whips you around like a rollercoaster. Instead it actually goes off track and fulfills unexpected expectations, defying the convention that a movie controls the audience. Death is a mystery. Human brutality is a mystery. We know it when we see it, but we don't know why or exactly how. This film shows us deadly pursuit and its implicit brilliant survival. It shows the oddments of gumshoe reckoning. But all of it happens and none of it is resolved. It creates a pattern in that intellectually odd way of listening to the silence in between the notes of a symphony, of clocking trajectories of objects that never land, of making meaning of lives that end abruptly before they finish their purpose. In all these ways No Country becomes great, by not telling a story, but recounting the logic of an accelerated death.

Death in this film is played with chilling sangfroid by Javier Bardem. He is the killer who kills because it's Death's job to be deadly. It's what he promises to do. It's his trick. He has no other purpose, no sublime motivation. He uses a cattle ram. He uses a silenced shotgun. He uses mysterious weapons that come and go. He is only deliberate and devoid of mercy. He is the best symbolic bad guy ever played, because he ceases to be a bad guy with a character arc. He is merely the bringer of the ultimate, unforgiving pain. Everyone in the film keeps trying to figure him out - to find him, to thwart him, to survive him. Nobody does.

No Country promises to be a film to be rewatched. It promises to reward a second look, to offer connections to the prose which fails to be expository or prescient the first time around. It is not so much a story as it is a framework as big as Texas. It's a framework for wondering what evil looks like today.

Maxambit: Gone Too Soon

EC Hopkins is calling it quits.

It's a dark day for the 'sphere. EC was the last existential partner, and I feel like I ought to build a group blog just for the purposes of accomodating his absence as an expository writer. I want to call it Existential Partners. But for now, I've already built one called The Brother's Cup. I'm going to invite a bunch of brothers to it and if it fails, I'll build EP.

Hopkins is one of the most rigorous minds ever to inhabit the online world of black writers. He made a splash in a very short period of time, and like with Aaron McGruder, I felt a personal burden lifted from my expository burden just by his mere presence. There was a point of view I could depend on being expressed with Hopkins around.

Hopkins (was) precise to a fault. His deep grounding in philosophy and law and his extensive reading practically overwhelmed his personality. I imagine him a large erect kind of fellow with exquisite manners and a merciful demeanor - like Colin Powell without ever a scowl. He was a man vitally engaged in developing an ethos which made clear his own love for righteousness and mankind. In that regard I think he explained too much - I could take it all just being EC. But then there he was, Mr. E. C. Hopkins. Ask me his first and middle name and I wouldn't be able to tell you. Dennis Miller over uses the phrase but I like the cut of his jib.

On his blog, EC engaged subjects that flew over most of our heads, but he was never far from touching vital nerves in my way of thinking. I feel, of all the bloggers, I owe him and New Black Man the most for keeping the highbrow touch alive despite the rest of our eagerness to get more gully on occasion. And in that regard EC obliged us with his patience in offering his blog as a grand arena for debate. It might have become a regular thing, but in one way I'm glad EC had not been reduced to being a referee and interpreter for an audience too lazy to decrypt the running debates and great controversies in the black haunts of the blogosphere. He was the right man for the job, but perhaps the job should never have existed. And now it certainly won't.

For every EC Hopkins who ventures out to speak, I imagine and hope that there are dozens in silence who audit our bloviation. Feeburner tells me that I get the most hits on the keyword "doggy style" at my blog, and so perhaps all my fervent hope is wishful thinking. But from those anonymous mists, he arose and for many bright moments he brought us a piece of his mind. We are grateful for those moments, and look forward to the future he'll be ushering in through his real world works.

All of Baseball is an Asterisk

Steroid use in baseball is de facto legitimate, but everybody is embarrassed about it. Now the charade is over.

It shouldn't take grand jury investigations or a whole bunch of time or money to find out who is using what in order to play baseball any better. All we have to do is drop the phony 'enforcement' regime and bring the whole practice into the open, which is to say legalize it. The game everybody has been watching and enjoying, they have been doing so under false premises. Instead of just Barry Bonds, it was him and a sizable fraction of the entire league, including coaches, doctors, owners, and other associated weed carriers. If you thought baseball was 'pure', now you must live with knowing you've been in love with a fake.

Everybody should admit that it doesn't get any worse than this. All of major league baseball is an asterisk. Not literally all, but symbolically all. There is no longer a situation in which performance enhancing drug uses can be asterisked into compartmentalized areas. The stink permeates the entire sport and there is no more walling it off. You can now add baseball as the fourth horse. It is now sex, drugs, rock & roll and baseball. Mom and apple pie stand alone.

From this moment forward, the only hypocrisy left is a crackdown. I've have said it before. Professional baseball needs performance enhancement because of the very nature of the competition. Chess, for example, does not. In golf, it's the technology of the tools that undergo the change. Basketball, is the 'purest' major sport left. As for the nobility of sport itself and messages to kids:

There seems to me nothing inherent in the values we seek to revere in sport which limit them to football or baseball. If there is a such thing as athletic nobility, surely it can't be limited to a handful of contests. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, the human drama of athletic competition, certainly all of these are found in sports other than those we dote upon. So it seems to me that some of our ethical dilemma in picking the wrong sports heroes because we are picking the wrong sports. Think about it this way, there was once a time when boxing was considered the domain of athletic nobility. That is no longer the case. Although some would argue that we have lost something permanently as a showcase for heroism, I say it has just moved on to another sport. We are not at a loss for heroes, they just work another arena. Or maybe our society doesn't value courage, strength and speed as much as we thought.

But let's say we allowed drugs in our pro sports. Whatever the values our society places on its mastery I think it is absurd to assume that the critical elements of every sport would become threatened by generally allowing dope. I could be wrong, but I don't believe that we know so much about long distance running as we know about weightlifting. Every highschool kid knows that steroids will grow the kind of muscle mass that makes for a better weightlifter, but what kind of drug makes one a better ski jumper, a better hockey goalie, a better golfer a better video gamer?

So I think that people should admit that it's not the drugs, but the cheating that makes the difference in athletic nobility. If we allowed it, the drug regimen would become just another part of the diet and training discipline athletes use. For those who believe that a drug free purity is necessary, create another class of competition. I happen to think that the Olympic Games best suits the class of competition which should be drug free. After all, many of these are the sports which have little else going for them but the prestige of athletic nobility.

This is baseball is on drugs. Get over it.

Tiger Shirt

Omega Man Redux

If you asked me, during all the time I was a teen and a young man. In fact until I was about 22 what was my favorite movie, I would have told you The Omega Man with Charlton Heston. What an awesome movie that was. That, and the Andromeda Strain and 2001.. and I suppose Colossus, the Forbin Project, were all my vision of the future movies. I was prepared for the best and for the worst. But there was always something about being able to walk through Los Angeles and have anything you wanted that appealed to me about The Omega Man. I'll leave it at that.

The other day I saw the trailer for Will Smith's new joint. It's the Omega Man all over again. Wow. I love it. The overhead shot of him going down Broadway reminded me of another favorite sci-fi, the animated Final Fantasy. I wondered immediately how Will Smith would do it, and I thought how I would. I would start off the film with Smith crying. I would want it to be the longest montage of a man crying that has ever been put on film. I want him crying for his own personal loss. I want him crying for the loss of his friends, his family, for strangers, for work, for meaning, for all of humanity. I want him two steps beyond Tom Hanks on that desert island. Beyond hope. I want him to fall asleep crying in the middle of the street and wake up in the morning crying. I want him listless and pitiful. Until a mosquito bites him and he slaps it. Impulse. He actually hit it. He looks closely at the blood in the ridges of his fingerprints. He discovers his own body. He discovers his own mind. He becomes inventive for the sake of his own life.

A dog would help, of course.

So I really can't wait to see this movie. It was bad timing last night, and so I went to see 'No Country for Old Men' instead.

Geth Hunting

Mass Effect has been pretty much everything it was cracked up to be. Now that I'm just about to finish what I think is the last boss battle, I'm very much considering playing it again.

This latest RPG has all of the good stuff from the Knights of the Old Republic game, and little of the more tedious stuff that turned it into an epic. It's a lot more straightforward and doesn't get me as a player completely bogged down in the arcane wonderment of a spacefaring battle story. In many ways, the tedium of Mass Effect plays directly into its appeal. You honestly get a good sense of, ho brother yet another planet we gotta deal with, as the protagonist.

Another thing that Mass Effect has got going for it is a broad assortment of characters to take with you as your battle squad. They do a good amount of work as AIs and don't need a lot of extra tinkering. Every once in a while, you point them at a particularly nasty baddie, but for the most part they handle their business. Additionally, most battles are a good deal more spontaneous than those of the Star Wars series. A rudimentary cover system, plus a basic squad control system add to the spontaneity. Good job on that.

The environments and characters are high quality as is the voice over acting. The fact of the matter is that if BioWare can crank out this level of quality on a regular basis, this kind of adventure will satisfy my sci-fi fix. Now I'm only about 15 or so hours into the adventure, and I find it highly unlikely that I'll ever do an Oblivion-length RPG again (But I said that about Morrowind) so this is about the right length. I'll probably double that time by playing it again at the fast pace, but because of the richness of the story I'm actually happy having played that relatively short period of time. Interestingly enough, I'm watching my boy play Half Life 2 for the first time and there is no way I could endure that full game.

The best thing about Mass Effect is its well-conceived plot and well-integrated universe. It's really one of the best in RPG land, not that I play that many. It feels very much like a television series which is why I think of it as a sci-fi fix. I could come back to the Mass Effect universe, and considering how little I interacted with a number of the species of it, I'm guessing that the Bioware folks have that in mind. If so, great. I'll be back.

CIA Interrogation Tapes: Methods

What part of 'compartmentalization of sources and methods' do you not understand?

As I think about the destruction of tapes of CIA interrogations, the thing that strikes me is that this seems to be the kind of thing you absolutely don't want to fall into enemy hands. So I think it stands to reason that there are very few 'need to know' folks outside of those whose job it is to make sense of the intelligence provided by any recordings of interrogations.

As a CIA officer, I could not imagine that I'd have much confidence that in today's political climate, that congressional oversight in matters regarding interrogration is much more than a witch hunt. It's all anybody seems to care about. We've weasel-worded waterboarding into the torture category and all of the -gate hunters are trying to find evidence of who boarded whom and when with no regard to the aims or the standard hiding practices of sources and methods expected of the CIA.

I predict that it won't be long until the Democrat candidates promise to use the full force of their office to expose and punish any and everybody in the Agency who ever used or approved the use of some overbroad interpretation of the word 'torture'. It will be called cleaning house. It will in fact be a purge. It will come at the expense of the faith of CIA career people that their own sources and methods will not be exploited for poltical gain.

35 Seconds of Torture

It actually sounds oxymoronic. Is there anything which is not permanently disfuguring that you would not endure for 35 seconds? Yeah, I can think of some dental or spinal pain that I would not volunteer for. Then again I'm a civilian. If I were a soldier, maybe I'd think differently. To save my family from harm, I'd probably endure a lot of suffering.

Anyway. Patterico comes up with some boring details. Like it worked.

ABC reported yesterday that John Kiriakou, a former CIA agent who interrogated al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah, claims that subjecting Zubaydah to 35 seconds of waterboarding produced valuable information that thwarted terrorist attacks … and it was necessary torture:

A lot of conjecture over the questions surrounding torture and waterboarding have been over theoreticals. Now that some Critters are fussing over the possibility that there may be interrogation tapes available, some of this may come to light. It's awful second-guessing, and probably an abuse of politics, but I don't suppose it can be stopped. If the political opposition can minimize this real story and come up with an egregious counter-example (and they will if they can), what sense does it make to open up the actual can of worms?

I have pretty much always assumed that you could call what we do torture, but I don't because I think aim makes the difference, as does the short leash. If we get cases, we'll have to evaluate them individually and inn aggregate. How many seconds of torture are worth how many lives? More statistical morality. It's exactly why the Harry Reid contingent thinks it's more reasonable to negotiate with terrorists - in other words appease them and buy them off. Because at least it's not killing or torture.

You know the bumper sticker. "Why to we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?"

Old School Songs in Review

I've been listening to a different cut of music lately. Much of it is music from my youth. It's interesting thinking about them now, some 20 to 30 years later.

Stevie
Almost everybody called the song 'Jammin', but it was really called 'Master Blaster'. I was listening to it the other day thinking about whether or not I should try to learn the bass line. Suddenly the lyrics made me think, wow. "Peace has come to Zimbabwe / Third World's right on the one / Now's the time for celebration. / Cause we've only just begun". Yike. No Stevie we didn't know that we would be in the middle of the makings of a master blaster jamming, and we took your word for it. Now look.

'Do I Do' is still, still, the happiest song in the world.

Lionel
Lionel Ritchie has been silent for a long time, and I think that silence serves him well. Of all the now non-performing legendary artists of the 70s, Lionel Ritchie has maintained more of his dignity by staying out of the limelight than just about any other I can think of. He has not become a parody of himself. OK Jeffery Osborne has actually improved, but what I say about Ritchie stands.

'Hello' was one of Ritchie's last hits. I can still remember the video. This is just the kind of song that doesn't get made any longer. It's so touching and tender. "Tell me how to win your heart / For I haven't got a clue". Is there any male singer in America that would say that on a record today?

'Zoom'. When I was in high school, this was just about the deepest song I could fathom. Among the brothers, we squabbled over who could use it for their senior quote. That and 'Easy'.

When I think of those lyrics today, and I think of where Lionel is today and where I am today I am faced with the unavoidable conclusion that they are deeply held desires to escape the pain of ghetto life. On a very romantic level, you'd have to put 'Sail On' in that same category. Call it 'Black Flight Romanticism'. I know that's reading a lot into the lyrics of those songs, but man, it just makes sense. I wouldn't suggest that Ritchie was political. He was anything but. But he was the lead singer for the Commodores, one of the kings of funk in the 70s. When he broke out in 78-79, he was the king of crossover. 'Three Times a Lady' was just an unstoppable ballad. Was Lionel trying to escape?

Ray
I gave a listen to Ray Parker again, and he's such a sly devil. I mean we all know he was a dog, but it wasn't until I listened to 'A Woman Needs Love' that it occurred to me what a load of crap he was selling. When you buy into that liberated woman stuff, you realize how easy it is for men who are dogs to justify their irresponsible lady killing. I'm not saying that Parker invented it, but he put a face on it.

His latest album "I'm Free" is a refreshing grownup man's album. And this Ray Parker faces his demons with a good hard middle age man's twinkle in his eye. Parker has landed right side up. He must cringe looking back on when he was a little nappy headed boy. 

Yay For Crackheads!

The Supreme Court has reversed some Federal district courts complaints over leniency in federal guidelines applied by lower court judges against criminals. So it's official, the War on Drugs is over. The NYT reports:

One decision was particularly emphatic in saying judges are free to disagree with guidelines that call for much longer sentences for offenses involving crack cocaine than for crimes involving an equivalent amount of cocaine in powdered form.

Both cases, each decided by the same 7-to-2 alignment, chided federal appeals courts for failing to give district judges sufficient leeway. The appeals court had in each case overturned a sentence that was lower than that provided by the guidelines. The two dissenters were Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

I haven't read the decisions but I greet them with pleasure. Federal sentencing guidelines are exactly that, guidelines, and they shouldn't tie judges' hands when it comes to them making the appropriate determination as to whether a convict is getting enough time. When 'defying' a Federal guideline results in court battles over who is being tough on crime and who is not, time's up. These guidelines were established by Congress in what some would call an overstep of their boundaries in the first place. But so long as they weren't binding, like mandatory minimums, it would be OK.

I'm not particularly fond of mandatory minimum sentencing either, quite frankly. If you have enough experience to become a judge handling capital cases, you're probably smart enough to recognize how heinous a crime can be. Mandatory minimum sentencing sounds to me like warning labels on cups of hot coffee. Are judges really that stupid and sloppy?

At any rate, the Supreme Court has spoken, and some independence has been returned to the judiciary. Amen.

As for the defenders of crack dealers and crackheads worldwide, you may rejoice now. Your golden moment has arrived. What's interesting now is whether or not this vindication can or will be applied retroactively.

Excellence in Volleyball

This weekend, I spent about 10 over two days hours watching kids play volleyball. It was Boy's first two day tournament. Their team, which is a club team, got eliminated in the second round of the Bronze bracket, which was better than they expected. They have only been together as a team for about two months. Not surprisingly as with many youth sports, they were playing against 'professionals' who have been in the game for five years by the age of 14.

This is the second time in my life as a parent that I have seen young kids be very impressive in sport. The first time was about 6 years ago at a basketball camp at a high school in Pasadena. Ex pros were coaching and these little kids were dribbling with both hands and sinking free throws. I mean little, when the basketball is wider than their torsos. I was thinking, how do they do it? Those kids had fire.

At the volleyball tournament, there was a much broader mix of talent and a whole lot more parents and kids in attendance. The best teams were awesome, and again I found myself really amazed at the little ones who were doing jump serves and digging 60 mph hits.

I first started playing volleyball back in 1974. After I got my nose broken by an errant pitch, we didn't play baseball any longer. So it was going to be volleyball, and I would have been pretty good, except it was a Catholic school. I lost my uniform sweater and got kicked off the team which thereafter collapsed from a lack of interest. There was a lot of 'you kids don't deserve to play' attitude going around because of petty rule violations. There are few things more oppressive than poor Catholic schools. In high school, I ignored the sport, trading up for soccer. It wasn't until I moved to Hermosa Beach in 1988 that I took it up again, and I was hooked. I played two man beach as well as court, and continued to play on a regular basis until about 1992.

I haven't played a really good court game in about four years. It was 2003 that I was last in really good shape, and I get mad at myself thinking about it. But all this weekend I couldn't keep still. It felt really difficult not to get up and hit the ball around. I would have embarrassed myself. These were clearly some of California's best young players, a few with really star potential. Our club, the Riptides, has eight teams. Boy is in 14 Red SB, which is one of two 14 and under teams for the South Bay. Theirs is a big squad with 14 players.

Watching these kids, especially the best of them, put me in the mind of excellence. Our coach, rightfully so, is rotating in all 14 players on the team. But that's a big squad, and they are just beginning to get their rhythm. Boy plays a middle blocker, since he's got some height on his peers, but he rotates out when he's off the front line. Many of the better teams have 7 or 8 players, maybe nine, and were much better coordinated and accustomed to their positions. I'm sure some of the teams have some hard cuts in order to field the best. It's also not cheap to play club ball, so some winnowing is done. Obviously the coach puts in the combination of players that he thinks will be advantageous.

Volleyball is one of those odd sports that looks completely different when played at a high level than when played by families on picnics. You cannot get accidentally good in it. That is the case with so many American endeavors. We make things into multimillion dollar enterprises, and there become proficiencies that seem almost obscenely arcane. In New York City, you might think that you are one in a million, but even so, there are 15 others just like you. More likely no matter what you're doing in NYC at any moment there are 10,000 more exactly like you doing the same thing at the same time. That's certainly the case when you are searching for an apartment, job, date or parking space. We have created insane levels of competition in everything, but I mean insane in a good way, extreme and beyond what common sense or ordinary talent would bear.

This weekend reminded me that this is something that can only happen in an open society, where enough of our needs are met so that we feel safe enough to get 'into' something as strange, exciting and unnecessary as volleyball. It is the ethos which generates this extreme competition that is valuable and necessary, not the sport itself. It is that same ethos which generates excellence itself, and I feel fortunate that my son is learning that at age 13 in jersey number 14.

Back in the Barbershop

A really good session for me. I got to say pretty much everything I wanted to.

Mitt Romney
Medved said today that the Mormon Moment went well and that it was the proper speech for the proper subject. I'll wait until I hear some waggier angle at it before I'm swayed. I did believe it was a make or break moment and the word is that he's not broken. That doesn't change the fact that he's all bloodied about the face and head over his 'sanctuary mansion', and takes an L for illegal immigration.

It's true that it's easier to talk about applying the spirit of the law than it is to actually follow the letter of the law, but you can't be a President in this season without having some initiative on immigration. Mitt did indeed drop the ball on this one. Twice. If some newspaper does a better job investigating his contractors than he does, that's a sorry endorsement of Mitt's leadership.

Sean Taylor
There is no such thing as black on black crime. Just put the perps under the jail and let's be done with this.

Omaha Shooter
Fortunately for all of us, this nutcase Hawkins turned the barrel on himself, and saved us the media hours, heartache and bloviation of his trial, incarceration and incineration. I don't know actually if Nebraska has the death penalty, but they'd be hard pressed to find a better candidate for execution. In a nation of 300 million, you're bound to step into the undergrowth and bogs swamp netherworlds of the minds of homicidal maniacs. This one was suicidal too.

Victoria's Secret
Porno. Yeah well there's not much else to say about it than what I said, and I repeat. When I was a kid, I couldn't imagine that nurses and teachers could be half naked. Now that I'm an adult I can't imagine that these half naked video hoes could be nurses or teachers.

Jesse vs Jesse
I'm with Jr on this one. Jackson is still trying to wrest power and glory from the next generation. Can't he just retire?

Saletan Bites Rushton: More Than He Can Chew

If there's any evidence that you shouldn't send a boy to do a man's job, it's the doo doo sticking to the feet of Slate's William Saletan.

The NYT Reports:

On Wednesday, Mr. Saletan posted a fourth article labeled “Regrets,” confessing that he had not realized that J. Philippe Rushton, a researcher on whom he had heavily relied, is the president of an organization that has financed a segregationist group. He also amended his previous position, stating that it was too early to come to any firm conclusions about the causes of racial differences in intelligence.

“If I had to do it again, I would have been much more circumspect about judging” the evidence, Mr. Saletan said in an interview. He later added that he should have written about inequality and left race completely out of it.

Nulan reports:

Part of me is rather weary of playing race man. It's a blunder of the first order for Saletan or anyone who wishes to be taken seriously would not have any idea of who Rushton is. He's not the first talking head to find himself in over his head.

This is something of a classic liberal / progressive error. There are some folks who believe that society can always be perfected 'if we only understood' something better. The problem is that some things are not so very understandable. Not only that, the presumption that a solution exists for every social problem.. well isn't that the very definition of scientific socialism?  At the back of every eugenecist's head is such socially palatable palaver. There's a good history of Margaret Sanger that people don't really want to pay sufficient attention.

America's obsession with racial equality has found ample play in this relatively shallow playground. That is why the majority of Americans probably view racial equality with some liberal or progressive agenda. I'm not so sure that racial equality should be about perfection of society. I'm tending to think the agenda is somewhere else. I'm not suggesting that conservatives understand it, but I am coming to understand some of the fundamental difficulties with attempting to combat racism with a progressive mindset. Basically I would say 'black power' is probably a more realistic and attainable way. So it's on me to show how progressive, perfecting-of-society thought is not black power and never could be. Hmmm

Signs & Suits

Right around the corner from my office in West LA is a new jumbotron billboard. This is the new outdoor advertising. It's very impressive to see. The guys with the crane were out here last week and they put this together in just a couple days. On the current rotation are three movie ads. There are two for Sweeney Todd, and this one for a movie called 'Cloverfield'. (Is that the JJ Abrams thing? Yes.) I noticed the crout of suits staring up at the billboard today at lunch. I figure they're from CBS Outdoor or one of the movies or ad agencies involved. This is a marquee sign in a really great location. Next to Sunset Blvd, I can't think of many better places for a movie billboard.

Fish on Trial

Apparently Fish has insulted Nulan to the point of an impending duel. Nulan says:

Had my unedited cerebellar reaction to your preposterous offer here on this thread been deemed out of bounds - E.C. would’ve called me on it and exercised his editorial prerogative. You should really think about that because this brother is about as fair and sober a judge as you’re ever likely to encounter.

See, this really isn’t all that complicated. You did the same thing to Cobb, but much worse. If I had it to do over again, I would call you on the abuse you heaped on Cobb instead of letting it devolve the way it did. For not doing the right thing with respect to your behavior then, I owe Cobb an apology. What you did went beyond the pale. You tried to injure him personally and professionally on the Assault. Had it been me, I would’ve had you shut down for content policy violations the very same day. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

When you decided that I had broached your standard of fundamentalist ideological compliance - I was summarily reduced to being a “white ass-kisser”. Simple deja vu. Your fundamental character flaw had gotten the better of you once again, but this time - instead of my long time rhetorical and political sparring partner Cobb, I was now to be the target of your ritual habitual. That was two mistakes for the price of one.

1. By repeating yourself you confirmed your modus operandi and in the process disclosed something rather nasty about your psychological makeup.

2. You simply picked the wrong one to attempt it with - cause in this medium - I’m about as close a thing to Elegba as you’re ever likely to encounter.

So this is where it’s at today. You’re off on some deeply addicted knuckle-dragging type racialist shit that has no place in the company of clear-headed Black men with a shared purpose and reasonably well established trust subsystem. There may be a lot that we don’t agree on, but fundamentally we’re working toward the same ends and want to see one another succeed.

You, on the other hand, are so far gone into the sickness of your GSWS convictions, that you not only have no qualms about personally injuring other Black men with whom you disagree, but even given the benefit of time and hindsight - you’re incapable of discerning exactly where you stepped over the line. I don’t need to debate you - you’ve already demonstrated beyond any doubt whatsoever - that you’re lost.

I made the mistake of believing that you operate in good faith, but you’ve gone to great lengths to prove me wrong. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…

That's curious. I didn't realize that Fish was dragging my name in the dirt over at his website, and so I read what I presume to be the offending thread a few minutes ago. I actually only care what Ed, P6, Nulan and Mehkeru said. The rest are Fish's butt boys for the most part.

As it turned out, I left Fish in peace after our debate. I don't read his blog, and I haven't given any consideration to the original insult since then.

But now I have to seriously consider reconsidering my neutrality on him because of what he has obviously done to get on Craig Nulan's last nerve. I was aware that Craig was peeved at him for pissing on Tim Wise for no good reason. Some of those comments were here. But I didn't realize that it had come to this. So now it's definitely on, and I think some judgment is going to be made. Nulan's a full time blogger now and Earl P6 Dunovant is surely going to pay attention as are other respectable gents, some of whom dismiss me as graciously as can be expected.

I can hardly imagine more cans of whoopass being opened than this. I feel kind of sorry that it has to take place on EC's front porch, but EC's really the only man who can add any sensible discipline and decorum to what is basically going to get very, very heated. I lack the history to describe the matchup in either boxing or in the Comic Book Universe. Well, on second thought maybe it's Fish's Incredible Hulk to Nulan's Spawn.

My prediction? Fish will walk away without realizing he will have suffered massive brain damage and he will continue Hulking out in misery for the rest of his days.

Tolson

I'm trying to appreciate my father's enigmatic thought process which is laced through with whimsy. That's because every once in a while he hopscotches to a rather profound place. I wish he would blog so that I could share some of the awesome and bizarre dynamic that occurs when we start debating, but I'm certain that he's being perverse on that note according to some ineffable internal consistency. After all, he doesn't have cable TV either.

What he does have is a library of rather interesting dimensions which has introduced me to some angles of his intellectual world. While he has been rather deep into music lately, every once in a while he is digging on a book or three. Me, I've fallen off. I haven't even finished Legacy of Ashes or Spook Country which I started at least a month ago. So while I could get him to ramble ad nauseum over the mere mention of Coltrane or Keith Jarrett more recently, it has come as a surprise to both of us that now he is deeply back into Melvin B. Tolson.

I'm of the firm impression that Pops and Tolson enjoyed a long correspondance. His name is legend in my father's mind and so consequently very familiar to me. Although I never read any of Tolson, he was way over my head when I discovered Pops' passion, I know 'all about' his work. When Pops ran the Institute for Black Studies in LA in the late 60s and early 70s, our poetry workshop was named after Tolson. I seem to recall he called it the Tolson Gallery after Tolson's Harlem Gallery. The odd thing here is that I know there was also a Tillson and I often confused the two. The distinction was clear in Pops' mind and he always looked at me sideways when I couldn't say which was which. But this was part of being a kid and staring, on boring summer mornings, at the rows and rows of books on the homemade shelves that lined the Bowen house. These were the hundreds of portals into my father's mind. It made no sense to try to approach him that way, however, but it was good to know the names.

Tolson is the subject of Denzel's directorial debut 'The Debaters' coming this month. Just looking at the previews tells me that it's going to out-Akeelah Akeelah and the Bee. There is something essentially impossible about something going wrong with a film starring Washington and Forrest Whittaker. It's got a sepia glaze to it. We know it's going to be a smart, inspirational movie, and we know Denzel is going to aim at upstaging his own legacy from Remember the Titans. Chances are, it's a sure bet.

What kind of poet is Tolson? I imagine we are bound to find out. I expect it to be vaguely familiar. Pops, now in retirement, will dedicate some hours to the project:

Over the years, I have purchased everything I became aware of that Tolson wrote.  And I have at least 3 books about him written by others.  That info will likewise be shared later.when I can track down the books.  I gave a very well received presentation on Tolson for Antioch's Black Student Union a while back when that organization was alive and well.  Anyway, I was really invigorated to get Ray's initial memo about the flick and then, just this morning I got the attached. 

Here's why this is so important to me:  In my uncontrollable fervor to do many new and exciting things - and I make no apology for that - I too often leave other equally or more important matters unfinished.  Actually, at the time this happens it doesn't occur to me that "time" will give these same matters/issues added value.  In fact, I often find myself ahead of the curve or, at least, ahead of myself.  So, finding few, if any, cohorts to share my personal madness, I simply move on.  Oh, to be sure, a lot of my so-called pursuits amount to junk and I willingly laugh at my misdirected passion and, again, move on.  Life's countless lessons are, after all, often unpredictable but always worthwhile.  Thus, some of Tolson's genius sits unattended to collecting dust in the Elbow Room.  That will no longer be the case.  I will indeed and in fact revisit what I have and put that into some kind of meaningful perspective and action.  Here's what that means from a Bob Bowen agenda whatever:

I'll set up a Tolson binder.  That, to be sure, is close to trivial for most folks and perhaps rightly so.  But for me, it means something different.  It means a consolidation of existing info/data, a continuing collection of new stuff, a check of (now heavily online) resources - including but not limited to Google and wikipedia; the generation of appropriate academia-directed correspondence to relevant parties.and other quasi-academic stuff.  But there is another dimension which tells me, if nobody else, that I'm onto something.  I plan to send a letter to Denzel (as if he'll get it!) and commend him for his role in this.  Plus, I'll send a small donation to WileyCollege.[along with the next regular (again small) check to Obama's campaign.]

Pops, in his own ideosyncratic way, is on fire. He'll be making connections between the past and the present. It will all be offline in the Elbow Room section of the Bowen Library. But I promise that one of these days in the far future, I will make this passionate work available to you.

What Health Care Ought to Be in America

The economics of healthcare insurance and medical care are very confusing to me, and I think to most Americans. We know what we can get and what we pay, but when it comes to being smart shoppers, we're probably not. There are a lot of things to consider.

1. I think we should all consider the high cost of catastrophic health care. It is an outrage to me that we are spending billions to save people with heretofore incurable diseases and not spending much on universal pre-natal care. It's reasonable for the average American to live to be 80, but not if the average 30 year old isn't healthy.

2. Following on my opening point, what should it cost to fix a broken arm? Does anyone have any idea? Where is the price list and coverage? It's easier to fix my car than to fix my body, not because my body is any more complicated, but because I know a good mechanic when I see one, and I can comparison shop. Why can't I pick any doctor I want? Any hospital I want and do comparison shopping. It shouldn't cost me more to save money.

3. There should be a basic, basic plan. Take the top 50 things that happen to people who actually *do* get sick and cover that. Broken arms, pneumonia, flu, immunizations, pre-natal, etc. and guarantee service for that. How hard can that be?

I'm going to go back to Dr. Lou's recommendations as we discuss this.

A Middle Class Squeeze

There's a family of five who cannot afford healthcare insurance. Who cares?

Here are the details. Dad works. Mom stays at home. Dad pulls 70k per year. Healthcare insurance costs $500 a month. They have a negative amortization loan on a half-million dollar house in Orange County California, one of the wealthiest counties in America. Their son can't play football. Too much risk of injury.

There is a government program for which they cannot qualify because their income is too high. And yet they scrimp and live simply just to afford their mortgage payment. They have been without health insurance for over a year.

Is this a problem?

Two, You Idiot

The question is, how many American soldiers are in this picture?

I suppose that I don't have nearly enough patience to Google-gurgitate the arguments that "The US is never going to respect the local culture in Iraq". But you know they exist. Michael Yon provides some details.

Shots Fired

In a country of 300 million, somebody is bound to get shot. This week the media's attention has focused on three black men who were among the many.

In the first case, two men were burglars who got busted by a belligerent and nosy neighbor. This guy named Joe Horn in Texas essentially called 911 and informed them that a burglary was happening next door. He then proceded to get his shotgun, leave his house and chase down the burglars with deadly force despite being warned not to.

The call started off calmly enough.

"(There are) burglars breaking into a house next door," the caller is heard on the 911 tape telling a police dispatcher.
Pasadena resident reportedly shoots suspected thieves.

"I've got a shotgun do you want me to stop 'em?" The dispatcher was quick to respond.

"Nope don't do that. Ain't no property worth shooting somebody over OK?," the Pasadena dispatcher said as he called out officers to the scene.

What Joe Horn did was entirely predictable. In his heightened state of panic, he shot the two men dead without any regard to the appropriate rules of engagement. This is exactly the kind of result I predicted would happen in the case of the Philadelphia Black Militia. Fortunately, it hasn't happened in Philly, yet. It's always a bad idea to send civilians to do a cop's job whether you are in Texas, Philadelphia or Iraq. Every civilized country has police. We know how to do this. Joe Horn was a fool for taking the law into his own hands and he's going to live with regret for killing those men for the rest of his life. He's a somewhat sympathetic fool, but a dangerous fool nonetheless.

Police tend to be on the scene for the aftermath. It's easy to say 'too little too late' when it comes to second guessing the cops. It's easy to connect the dots and say something ugly going on should have been prevented. That was the case for the star football player who was shot and killed last week. It seems everyone everywhere is mourning his death and thinking, that could have been me. I bet they're also thinking, why there wasn't somebody there with a shotgun at the ready. I know I did. But Joe Horn reminds us of the ever-present downside.

There is a narrow window of time between the beginning of a potentially deadly crime and the time that cops can arrive on scene. Call it the Red Zone. Civilians get caught in the Red Zone all the time. What can we do? What should we do? There's no telling or predicting when or where you might be stuck in this zone. It happened to me. I know my instincts are to defend my neighbors and myself. But I've thought long and hard about whether it's my job to use deadly force. It's not an easy question, because the responsibility is, by definition, the biggest responsibility anyone can face - life or death. In my maturity, I've come to accept more of that responsibility. I wrote:

I have come to accept something about my civil duty and responsibility to the public to my fellow countrymen. In dropping the persona of my bohemian self, in becoming a husband and father, in becoming a middle aged man, I had to acknowledge my own power to be an example, more than I ever thought I'd have to be. Way deep down inside I knew the truth of the phrase 'civilization is where you put it', but I always thought when it came down to it, it would fall to the professionals and experts. I should have known better. It takes all of us, not just rhetorically, but really.

I couldn't say I wanted to be a police officer. I wanted to be a 'bhuddist cop'. I didn't want to disturb my inner peace through the action of bringing peace into the world. I was a bumpersticker pacifist. And because of that I inverted that latent desire in people I didn't respect from courage to cowardice.

Yes I want to own a gun, not to be any old pistol-packing vigilante. But I start to wonder about the men who do, just as I wonder about the men who drive Porsches in my neighborhood, and the men whose sons I admire in the local Scout troop. What is my relationship to my neighbor, and how have I let them down by not knowing them better? What are the slim tendrils of curiosity that I can work into bonds of mutual interdependence? Today I know something I didn't know in 2000 or in 1992.

I'm responsible for war and peace in my community, and I have no right to cry over a loss that I never invested in.

So I'm saying that I understand, I think, what the better part of Joe Horn was thinking. I understand what many people are saying when they call for us to take more responsibility for the safety of our communities. Our sense of violation is physical and visceral. We want to act, and stop that bad thing from happening. It's such a basic human attribute that it's universal. But we tend to forget that this is the same feeling that cops and soldiers have, and why they do what they do every day. We tend to forget that because we get involved in political micromanagement. We look at  bureaucracies and start up with the statistical morality game. How many men could have been saved if only...[insert politically motivated, yet heartfelt institutional reform here].

There is a subtle kind of victimology going on here. We complain that the System ain't good enough - that it doesn't protect us from murdering crooks, gun-happy vigilantes, corrupt cops, stupid judges or overzealous prosecutors. It's very hard to get that System to give us true satisfaction, because that only comes from revenge. What we have is a Justice System, not a Revenge System. Lucky for us.

So all we can do is take out verbal revenge and try to get our satisfaction. Here is as good a place as any.