Cobb

Today's Ode To Buckley

I can only begin to describe my admiration for Buckley which began back in 1983-84 as a college sophomore. I've tended to forget the great Buckley and what a dashing figure he cut back in the day.

This debate with Noam Chomsky is not as good or in depth as the other that I saw on YouTube (I will be watching all day), but it does illustrate brilliantly how Chomsky has become rather prototypical of the Left's criticize America first policy with regard to the broad scope of terrorism that happens in the world.

The Morality of War

I'm really going to have to turn to CS Lewis on this matter. He and Chesterton as well as Tolkien are the most accessible writers on matters of Christian ethics and war. But here is briefly where I am.

I look at religion in the same way I look at philosophy. I am of the considered opinion that Christianity is reconciled with human morality and philosophy by dint of its rational works. I am thinking specifically of the way with which Christianity is continually rationalized, that it evolves its theology towards a Deist minimalism as human knowledge advances. The axioms of faith remain - the only serious question Christianity has to answer is whether or not Christ himself were Socialist. Another time perhaps...

I cannot imagine that Christianity's theological locus can be morally wrong, it can merely make errors of interpretation. That is because within and without I am satisfied with the essential axiom that the morality of God and man are identical - ie, we human beings do fundamentally have the same capacity of God to discern good and evil in the world. We can merely say that God is always right and we are mostly right, and only our own failings make us wrong.

If it is our duty to protect our own souls, and indeed we have the capacity to understand good and evil, then it is certainly our duty to protect the souls of others and we can be right about it. It follows then, from this that we should meet evil with superior force if good is to triumph. We are thus morally obligated to defend Christendom itself, rather in the way that the Pope assisted Poland against the godless commies.

I think that it is inevitable in a democracy, even with the separation of Church and State, that religious moral impulses to combat evil will operate through the apparatus of state armies, but they will be unable to make such actions pure. These will be deals with the polis but not with the devil. Wars have, of course, their own logic and their own rules and rationales, but you cannot separate the moral impulse to support a war (or to withdraw support from a war) from the inevitable duty of religious injunctions.

Therefore Christians and people of all beliefs are faced with the inevitable choice of fighting (or proxy fighting) and their own destruction at the hands of the enemy. A church is wise to make alliances with a state, and it ever has been such, if only for the most expedient understanding that so many will be faced with profound questions of the meaning of life during wartime. War is good for religion in that crass way.

It seems to me that a pacifist religion may be equally effective in matters of war and peace. War could be good for pacifist as well as bellicose faiths. The message to submit to one's mortal enemy in order to transcend them in martyrdom, it is one that is well understood in all societies - all the way to Obi Wan Kenobi.

Let us discuss this.

Prescription

Diebold Spoils It

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

On Photoshopping Obama

I heard a story on Monday afternoon about some picture of Barry that had been photoshopped (or not) showing him in some somehow insulting getup. Having seen the picture finally today, I don't see what the big deal is. Then I found another version which must be the photoshopped version which shows... well you can see for yourself the difference.
The version I got was too small for me to even tell if it was Obama. But there's certainly a difference between the two.

What's cleverly insidious about the shopped picture is that it's too small for me to detect photoshopping.  Generally these things are easy to spot. This one is not.

At any rate there's some controversy about who is circulating this picture, but again I don't find it particularly offensive. It's a simple lie. Considering the dozens of monkey pictures I've seen of GWBush over the past few years, I'm waiting for that level of caricature to surface. This is, after all, the same country that made P.T. Barnum & Flavor Flav rich. There are few levels of uncivil ridicule to which Americans will not stoop. This is just low rent stupid stuff. Let it go people.   

Two Other Reasons

I have thought of two other reasons why Microsoft would be interested in buying Yahoo - things I simply haven't yet heard in the endless speculation.

Server Farms
This is pseudo insider information. When I was up in Redmond last fall, Microsoft was seriously hard up for server farms. Internal projects that had been working for months would be ready to roll out into production and suddenly people would find their projects facing no-go decisions because there are simply not enough servers to go around.

How does a company the size of Microsoft run out of server farms? It's complicated, but the short answer is that Microsoft internal security is extraordinarily demanding on end-users. Remember what Schneier said about benevolent worms? This is essentially what MS does to everyone on their intranet - they use benevolent worms to keep everybody on the inside inoculated and safe from the barbarian hordes who obviously want to hack Microsoft.

The other insider bit of info I happen to know is that Microsoft has initiated a new capex system to manage their current server farms better, and this plan is due for a major expansion. So if you were an internal client to the service that doles out servers you get a bill from this internal group. That particular internal group is expanding their capability to manage server resources by a factor of about 20.

The addition and annexation of Yahoo server properties and management would be a huge boon to Microsoft which is rather behind the 8 ball internally and acutely aware of a need to expand. There's a new high tech colocation facility in Seattle, I forget the name of it, but people talk about it in hushed tones - and they are booked to capacity out a year. Nobody has the state of the art server farms that Microsoft needs right now, and I'm sure that is a strategic necessity for them.

Hotmail + Yahoo Mail = Giant Captive Audience.
Sometimes it's just that simple. Microsoft wants the eyeballs. Forget search, just think assets and alliances but focus it on the Yahoo customer. I would probably never think of Microsoft if I wanted to get DSL, but I'd think of Yahoo.

Yahoo's customers - the people who use my.yahoo.com and maybe host their homepage at Yahoo, have been around for a long time, and from what I infer from my own high tech crowd, are not the same class of users who would do that MSN butterfly browser thing. In other words, they are a more upscale demographic in terms of their likelihood to purchase additional services, whereas your MSN and AOL guys are just passive eyeballs.

Only an IED

Bigger than anything you'll ever see in a Hollywood movie. Think about it.

Flicks With Bullets

This weekend I saw a couple action flicks of a very different orientation, and as an action flick connoisseur, I was amply rewarded.

Vantage Point
Vantage Point as to be the most emotionally gripping action movie since, well there's got to be something since 'The Long Kiss Goodnight' aside from 'Mercury Rising' but I can't think of what it might be. While it's certainly not quite in the class of 'Unbreakable' it almost gets there. But maybe that's just because I'm a patriot and the emotional commitment of Secret Service agents kind of gets me right here.

As you know, VP consists of an almost tiresome repetition of the scene of an extraordinary terrorist plot to assassinate the President of the United States at a world peace conference in Spain, all taken from different points of view. What you know depends upon what you've seen and what you're seeing next that you haven't seen. The film does a fairly good job of keeping all the actors, motives and actions hidden from view fairly far into the movie, even for fairly sophisticated mystery buffs like myself. There's a little bit of the old 'look at the expression in people's faces as they see something incredible but don't show it to the camera' trick, but this time it actually works to good effect.

The entire setup is a seriously done film with no throwaway stereotypes, neither good guys nor bad guys, and without being slyly political. The acting is very good, there are relatively few suspensions of disbelief necessary.

Shoot Em Up
This is, hands down, the second funniest action spoof ever. Right behind 'Kung Fu Shuffle', this is a real rib-splitter. The only way it could have been improved is if the Coen Brothers did it, even so, I doubt they could have pulled it off. I only read one review, and they said if you like Snatch or Crank, you'll love this. Hmm. Now that I think about it, we'll have to put this at number three behind Snatch. But still ahead of Hot Fuzz, Crank, In Bruges, and Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels on the hilarity scale. This one is played purely for cant. Not a bunch of sophisticated humor, but what perfect timing, what action farce.

You've got the most improbable gun battles imaginable captured on film. It's almost like Sin City meets Jackie Chan, except everything is with guns. In fact, there's even a gun battle inside a warehouse full of guns, and if you think old Western movies had the lock on humor about a guy with crazy gun skills, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Shoot Em Up opens with our improbable hero sitting on a bus stop in the cold heart of the heartless city and a pregnant woman runs by. Some dirtbag is chasing her, and the hero saves her, in a manner of speaking. But you have never, ever seen a gun battle happening when a woman is giving birth, which is basically your clue. If you're not laughing out loud by the kind of black humor that evokes, then you need to forget it now, because it only gets more twisted and absurd. The dialog is just right, and the running joke of the entire movie works the entire movie.

This is one that I rented, the first ever, from iTunes movie rentals. Definitely worth the four bucks. I downloaded and played it on my iPod. Just right.

Bloomberg & Government Transparency

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a pioneer who is at the very beginning of a revolution started simultaneously with Walter Wriston. The second fruits of his pioneering spirit are beginning to bloom. The first fruits were, of course, his fortune in the securities information industry created by the machine and company that bear his name. The second fruits can be seen here in Citywide Performance Management.

Jonah Goldberg's Signature Moment

I have just had the good fortune to have run across the set of ideas that are going to help me in properly contextualizing that thing which Nulan has accused GWBush of, which is 'war socialism'. It comes from Jonah Goldberg of the LA Times and National Review. His new book, Liberal Fascism, contains the thread of context. I think that it is likely to be the third and last intellectual history I read.

The first was Paul Johnson's Intellectuals which didn't help me a whole lot other than heat up my interest on the subject and set me up for the second which was Cornel West's American Evasion of Philosophy. Since then, and without any assistance from much more than at long last disgust with the kind of bohemian The Nation was turning me into and a realization that I had babies to feed, I have saved myself from Leftist foolishness. And with the small regret that I have yet to get any decent material into me on the philosopher with hiking boots,

What I believe that I will find in parsing Goldberg's history is some clue as why black nationalists have largely turned progressive and embraced identity politics instead of embracing patriotism and embraced the conservative idea of the republic and the mainstream. That is because of affiliations between their intellectual heroes, duBois in particular and his affinity for William James who is back through Rousseau one of those who believes that we can do what we want to. Of course I'm not stating this properly - I have yet to read the book and Hewitt's interview with Goldberg is flooding me with associations.

American liberalism is a totalitarian, political religion, but not necessarily an Orwellian one. It is nice, not brutal. Nannying, not bullying, but it is definitely totalitarian, or holistic, if you prefer, and that liberalism today sees no realm of human life that is beyond political significance, from what you eat to what you smoke to what you say. Sex is political. Food is political. Sports, entertainment, your inner motives and your outer appearances all have political salience for liberal fascists.

Yes, yes, yes.
What I've always been talking about is liberal overproduction, but when it becomes clear of the ambit of power of the will to power of the Left, it puts everything in clear perspective. I heard it in Michelle Obama's UCLA speech, I heard it in the arguments of activists for the cause of Gay Marriage, I hear it in the ambitions of the Greens for planetary planning and I hear it in identity politics. It is the urge towards a holism, it is the totalitarian temptation, it is the attempt to soaking politics through and through with 'solutions' for every aspect of life.

Who is the war socialist? That's easy. The socialist at war, and that was FDR who wisely moderated his ambition, but Walter Lippman wanted him to go further, and his descendants and a number of others desire highly to create a new statist religion which makes the citizen a new man in a new well-wrapped universe. Goldberg shows the ways in which FDR was like Hitler as well as the way GWBush's compassionate conservatism was.

If there is a discussion to be kicked off here which is of particular interest to me among the many things that will flow from this is the extent to which my neoconservative bent towards nation-building following in the tradition of Wilson, apparently a liberal fascist of the first order, should find its theoretical limits. This will force me to reconsider the differences between neoconservatism and paleoconservatism in foreign policy and upon which principles I should guide intervention yet stay away from protectionism and isolationism.

Goldberg's Liberal Fascism also will get us closer to a workable definition of American Fascism that we really never resolved in this old debate. But it is a sterling warning against what Americans buy into for the sake of unity, and few topics can be as contemporarily pressing as that.
 

 

Death of Taxes

Megan McArdle talks about a 'collective action problem'. I don't know the origins or intent of her full conversation but this graf sure does grab me:

But if you think that you have more money than is fair--money that the government should, by rights, be using for some more noble purpose--then there is no collective action problem. You can send the money to the government. They will spend that money on either actual public goods, or things that you think should be paid for out of the common weal. (Or at least, they will do this to exactly the extent that they would if you plus 20 million of your fellow citizens were forced to send them money via a new tax bill.) There is no strategic value to withholding the money from the government; your fellow citizens are not going to say to themselves, "Oh, Henry's paying extra, so I guess it's okay if I vote for McCain." There is no interactivity here. You, alone, can secure more public goods by putting your extra dollars in the treasury--exactly as many public goods as your dollars will secure if you vote for a politician who extracts that tax money, plus the same amount from other similarly affluent people, via the tax code.

I've been thinking about voluntary direction of taxes for a long time. There ought to be some percentage of the federal income tax which is directable. Which is to say some set of public services which are non-essential ought to be direct beneficiaries of what taxpayers desire. But McArdle's suggestion implies something more interesting still. Why not cap all personal federal income tax at say 25% and let the people who think that the government ought to be doing more, pay with their own money? Would this interfere with the commons? Aren't many government benefits charity?

I'll just take one example. If people believed that the disaster of Katrina was the government's fault, would they spend more or less of their voluntary tax on the parts of government responsible?

Le Monde Interview

Is here. The thrust of what she took from my interview is that I like how McCain moderates the social conservatives.

Threat

This is, essentially, the Angry Black Man thread.

I would say that the signal difference between the ordinary Joe and the Angry Black Man is that the ABM wants to keep whitey on the hook. Specifically, he wants to extract something from the white man that the white man doesn't want to give up himself. Perhaps a better way to say it is that he wants whites to pay an existential penalty. It is not enough for whites to meet blacks halfway. The Angry Black Man wants the Guilty White Man and he wants that relationship permanently so the black man can play his race card arbitrarily and have it accepted without question.

Again, I understand where he's coming from, but I am not particularly sympathetic.

I mention all of this in the context of Obama because I believe Obamian rhetoric is assuring Americans that our problems are not going to require us to play that tired old game between angry blacks and angry whites. It's something many Americans have realized on their own, but he's another, larger symbol of that equanimity. My personal opinion is that Michael Jordan was the man who broke that barrier more than a decade ago.

The matter of threat is important, which is to say at the heart of the American racial dilemma, what threat is implicit in a black man's success? I would say that our society has matured to the point at which most people agree that a black man's success should have no limit and they aren't threatened by it - rather that they encourage it. But none of that changes the fact that competition can be fierce and even ugly.

There are two more points I want to make that are related in terms of the way this anger spreads.

The first is the rather obvious one illustrated by the comic which is that the Angry Black Man, like the Angry White Man digs his own grave by polluting his own character. I think it's impossible not to be mad at America if you are Angry, and obviously you are going to be mad at folks for not seeing things your way. That's going to get you in trouble in your personal life, and of course you'll have to blame the enemy. 

My second curious observation is that the black vs white battle may be fundamentally and permanently imbalanced. Racial bigotry, in theory, is equal to terrorism in that it works when a terrible example is made. That is to say it must be communicated to a wider audience. It's the difference between a murder and a lynching. But what about at the personal level? Let me provide an example that sprang to mind as soon as I wrote about fierce competition.

Two men, one black one white are hired into a company. They are rivals for promotion. Privately, the white man tells the black man that there is no way he's going to get beat by a nigger. But that white man tells nobody else in the company and acts in every way perceptible that he doesn't have a racist bone in his body. In other words there has been only one conscious racist action. Has he crippled the black man? There is only one way he can, which is if that single act undermines the black man's confidence.

This example makes it quite obvious, I think, that a black man's self-confidence is key which is my point. If he crumbles under that threat, there is no hope for him. That's precisely because that is the smallest threat possible. Both racism and anti-racism are enabled by network effects - you've got to tell somebody and somebody has to respond in kind. Neither white bigotry nor black self-confidence are worth a damn unless they are multiplied in the environment.

So here's the asymmetry. Ignoring self-confidence for a moment. What is a more accurate assessment of the environment? Is it more accurate to say that racism will echo and multiply or that anti-racism will echo and multiply? That assessment may be the kernel that either contestant uses to play their card. Which is to say people must evaluate the culture and decide whether or not it is robust enough to sustain meritocracy if and when a racist element is introduced. Americans, of course, do this all the time. But in survey after survey, for as far back as I can remember, blacks have always shown themselves to be more pessimistic. For the sake of brevity, blacks say that the prospects for racism to be sustained is high, whites say that the prospects for racism to be sustained is not high.  All sorts of cultures get evaluated. The NFL, the Congress, the local PTA, the car dealership, the supermarket. (And I would suggest that blacks evaluate more cultures than whites, as well as evaluate them more skeptically).

So the final question remains. What can the individual black person do, with regard to self-confidence, given a general black pessimism about the propensity for racism to be sustained? The answer is that absolute self-confidence is required regardless, because if the single private act wrecks you, you have no choice but to claim victimhood and attempt to communicate that meme, which, depending on the culture, can backfire or leave you indebted. The second choice is to reinforce the culture to sustain meritocracy and fairness, so that whether or not you have absolute self-confidence, you can rely on others to help remedy the situation. Clearly, we prefer a combination of both.

I could go on here. There are obviously complexities as you add different actors into the mix. But I did want to put this framework up to talk about how an Angry Black Man or Angry White Man, depending on the culture, can poison themselves by making assumptions about how the culture will respond to a racist act.  Implicit in any act of racism or anti-racism is an expectation of collaborators, and what you expect of your fellows really determines the effect your own self-confidence.

In conclusion, black fear of racism in the context of constant threat assessment can become a self-fulfilling prophesy. This is how 'subtle racism' has become a reality, because whites are doing the same kind of threat assessment. Everybody wants fair play, and everyone has a stake in meritocracy, but whatever gap there is between black aspiration and black achievement can become the racism gap. If few people expect a black President is possible but most everybody expects a black Vice President is possible, that difference becomes 'subtle racism'. It isn't until the self-confidence and trust in the environment is established that such differentials in assessment become negligible.

 

Et Tu Huckabee?

Christopher Hitchens has directed me to an interesting incident heretofore unknown to me: a defense of the Confederate Battle Flag in South Carolina. I'm a month late. Hitchens notes:

Gov. Mike Huckabee made the following unambiguously racist and demagogic appeal in Myrtle Beach, S.C., last week:

You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag. In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell 'em what to do with the pole; that's what we'd do.

This is a straightforward racist appeal for the following reasons:

1) The South Carolina flag is a perfectly nice flag, featuring the palmetto plant, about which no "outsider" has ever offered any free advice.

2) The Confederate battle flag, to which Gov. Huckabee was alluding, was first flown over the South Carolina state Capitol in 1962, as a deliberately belligerent riposte to the civil rights movement, and is not now, and never has been, the flag of that great state.

3) By a vote of both South Carolina houses in the year 2000, the Confederate battle flag ceased to be flown over the state capitol and now only waves (as quite possibly it should) over the memorial to fallen Confederate soldiers.

WTF Huck?

The Angry White Man

The Angry White Man is a man I understand. He's the one that's not racist but feels that he has to be in order to even the score. I don't particularly sympathize with him but I know where he's coming from. Here's the way I see it.

The Angry White Man has no racist voice in Right Radio or anywhere else in the mainstream but the privacy of his own heart and with the supremacist wankers. So he's in an interesting conundrum, that is, if he's smart. If he's stupid, then he falls to his demons and becomes a simpleminded racist bigot. If he's moral, he's rather circumspect - but I think he comes around to the Right. Not because the Right offers any sophisticated racial ethics, but because the Right mocks and derides the sophisticated racial ethics of the Left.

By the way, it is Shelby Steele's job to give aid and comfort to the Guilty White Man, who is basically the more sheepish and inert version of the Angry White Man. I'm not up for that job. If the AWM can't learn to walk upright of his own volition, he'll get no coddling from me. Why? Because this matter falls into the category of race relations, and I don't care about race relations.

 

I do care how racial appeals are made to the electorate and how people get involved in politics for racial reasons, but I don't care how blackfolks & whitefolks get along in their own daily lives. That is primarily because we do. I think Shelby Steele is more interested in race relations but is irresponsible to the political implications. But I should also say that the reason I don't particularly sympathize with the Angry or Guilty White Man is because he should know, or try to find a better way to know how to step out of such a stereotypical role, as a patriot, as an intellectual, as a Christian - there are many different ways. I think this responsibility lies primarily with the individual, however I am concerned with how the clueless are exploited and the thoughtful are left hanging by a relative absence of forward, moral melioration.

For eample you can listen to Right Radio at length and find the same kind of dissonance in anti-racist politics as ever. Ordinary people understand little about the technical vocabulary of race, and academics and post-modernist pundits are always tripping them up and the rest of the media is no help whatsoever. So the average Joe looks at a situation prepared to be unprepared and says, something to the effect "I might get called a racist for saying this... but I'm really not a racist", and then they go on. Right Radio uses this mocking and derisive context in a mirror image of more non-partisan and left leaning comics like Bill Maher and Jon Stewart.

There is no successful anti-racist politics on the left or the right, and that is primarily because multiculturalism and political correctness essentially dominate the ethics of the broad center. It is a compromise and we are in something of an equilibrium there. But it is an uneasy equilibrium which is easily upset by any moderately important issue dealing with race and ethnicity. We are at a point at which even jokes and offhand comments can upset this equilibrium, which is a perfect indication that multiculturalism is actually broke.

One of the reasons that it is broke is because people don't really believe that multiculturalism serves national unity. The NAACP is not for people of color, it is for blacks. Everyone who plays that game expects that there is to be a black franchise, a brown franchise, a yellow franchise, a gay franchise, etc and that all are justified in fighting for their own percieved in-group self-interest. There is no existing multicultural coalition. It is nominally the Democrat Party, but you've already heard me say that's collapsing. Because that premise of multicultural franchise remains unquestioned on the Left, people cast about for the white franchise in the Republican party. And this trope has dominated the conversation to the extent that white people respond from a somewhat disinterested, somewhat timid and somewhat peeved perspective. The Angry White Man is the man who has seen through the contradictions inherent in the political demands from the multiculturalist center and left and has decided to withdraw support from both.

The only satisfaction the Angry White Man gets is from the mocking and derisive attitude of the Right which continually pokes at the usual suspects to no real policy or educational effect. The Angry White Man does not want to *be* racist, but he is past caring if multiculturalists perceive him as racist. Because in fact, multiculturalists are strident in defending self-interested buckets of identity. In the multiculturalist world, the white man is the defacto enemy, especially one who bucks the trend of post-modern palaver attending the obvious double-standards of multiculturalist 'non-discrimination'. If the red, or the yellow, or the brown, or the black man has a gripe - they are not directed at each other, but to the white man.

There might be some sense of justice in all that. After all, multiculturalists do want to improve things. The problem is that their gripes should be directed at The Man, and not the average Joe. And even when Joe converts to the Angry White Man, he can get no satisfaction from The Man with whom he is associated in demonification. The effect is that the Angry White Man has to suck it up and have his own ideas about fairness dismissed by the multicultural elite, or actually make the move towards being racist. Of course this is a failure of character but there is a 'racial realist' track in America that has the self-satisfaction of being honest.

In the meantime, platitudes and support for pre-fab policy statements substitute for the real heavy lifting of work to be done on the American identity. Obama's magical status stands as an indication that the right amount of persuasion can make the ugly problems of race go away - but that will yield no changes in the multiculturalist facade. McCain's blunt force trauma of military honor bulldozes over any such mushy sentiments, but obviously such honor is not available to the average Joe.

So we are left with a Left who sees the Angry Black Man as virtuous and the Angry White Man as ominous, a Right that comforts itself with snide remarks and cynicism paving a way towards reactionary ends, and a center that skates on a thin veneer of virtue which is of no principled use to anyone.

If I weren't me, I'd be angry too.

Public Education Policy

We have come to a point at which our large debate and witch hunt has thrown off some interesting sparks. The insistence of Republicans to dump the Department of Education is the latest tangent. I think we've reached the point at which verbatim quotes and excerpts from congressional deliberations and statements to the press are necessary, if not actual policy statements. I have none but will continue to layout this simple argument:

On the Department of Education, I can assure you, for what it's worth, that Republican antipathy to the teacher's union is the greatest source of friction. Republicans don't like unions. Plain and simple.

Republicans and conservatives prefer private action. We believe that it is swift, competitive and less apt to compromise. Our best schools are private schools. Yet public schools spend as much per capita as private schools. The difference are the work rules. The fundamental Republican argument is that union collective bargaining and work rules create an insurmountable barrier to the changes required to make public schools function as well as their private competitors. Most specifically, the hiring and firing of teachers and administrators.

If you follow the real activities of the Republicans, rather than pursue the racial conspiracy theory you are bound to face the question of vouchers. The idea behind them was simple, if you can't change the public school system, allow more kids trapped in that inferior system escape to private schools with the same tax money.

The second front in this war against inferior public idea of charter schools was originated to prove that excellence could be achieved if exceptions to union controlled processes were granted.

I was involved in these debates and can remember a time, specifically when the LA Unified School District would not allow kids in poor neighborhoods to go to public schools in more affluent areas, even though they were under the same school administration. I believe that it was Republican pressure that changed that rule.

It has also always made sense to me that busing kids in poor neighborhoods to better schools elsewhere was a foolish idea, and that one should bus teachers instead. But the city of Charlotte, NC has probably the most notorious system in the country, that for the sake of racial balance, has its public school children bussed all over the city. Under the regime in Charlotte, parents have little idea and no control over which school their children will attend. It's a startling experiment.  But this is the kind of remedy imposed because the union rules forbid the busing of teachers and the bureaucratic system of funding school improvements is byzantine. It is no wonder that charter schools are successful ones.

NCLB is the third prong in the attack against public schools resistance to change. It essentially makes schools accountable to a standard and creates a situation in which a failing school can lose its charter, in which case the sclerotic standards and practices of the teachers' union can be challenged.

In all of these efforts the quality of the children's education suffers, because the more schools change, the more difficult it is to have a baseline understanding of what kids should know and when. Now more than ever, homeschooling is becoming a reasonable alternative. I can assure you that I'm doing it on a part-time basis, just in case. Our public elementary school, for example, does not teach English grammar, and students do not know how to diagram sentences. It is just astounding that it has come to this.

Ashong's Guerrilla Video

The Derrick Ashong video here at YouTube is freaking people out all over the place. I was sitting here reading The Economist the other morning and their Lexington column intros their story on moderates and independents with his video. That's how I found out his name, although lots of folks are discovering him too.

When I first watched the video, I had no idea that Ashong was a policy wonk, actor and media assassin and so got the same giddy feeling I imagine most people did as he made his perfect guerrilla video moment. Kinda reminds me of me when I was single and ran around to public political events, protests and seminars. Unfortunately back in the days I used to run around in my homeboy suit, there was no such thing as YouTube. Now I'm not saying that the whole thing was a setup, but I am saying that when I was a progressive activist, there was nothing so delicious as exactly this opportunity to outthink reporters. Every opportunity I had to do so, I did. Especially during Desert Storm which I actually opposed. Now that I think about it, it's a good thing there wasn't YouTube. Anyway, the motivation is as old as dirt, intelligent blackfolks are always pissed about how the TV cameras always seem to get the ign'ent brothers.

The Fairmont Conference

Thomas Sowell

Percy Sutton

Milton Friedman

Pride

Marry or Die

A. Charles is a thoughtful, diligent and provocative new commenter at Cobb who has done a great deal to help illustrate the difference between perceptions and principles of the American Left and Right. As part of his vision for the aim and role of government, which he now sees as going in the wrong direction, he quotes from Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1965. There is one very salient point I would like to highlight as I do below.

But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates. This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result. For the task is to give 20 million Negroes the same chance as every other American to learn and grow, to work and share in society, to develop their abilities--physical, mental and spiritual, and to pursue their individual happiness. To this end equal opportunity is essential, but not enough, not enough. So, unless we work to strengthen the family, to create conditions under which most parents will stay together--all the rest: schools, and playgrounds, and public assistance, and private concern, will never be enough to cut completely the circle of despair and deprivation.

There is no single easy answer to all of these problems. Jobs are part of the answer. They bring the income which permits a man to provide for his family. Decent homes in decent surroundings and a chance to learn--an equal chance to learn--are part of the answer. Welfare and social programs better designed to hold families together are part of the answer. Care for the sick is part of the answer. An understanding heart by all Americans is another big part of the answer. And to all of these fronts--and a dozen more--I will dedicate the expanding efforts of the Johnson administration.

Johnson made this speech in the same year that the Moynihan Report was published. I cannot imagine that he was unaware of Moynihan's position as a fellow Democrat. Moynihan was right and Johnson was right about the health of the family being key to success in America. Today, only the Right is right in the same way.

Who made black people stop getting married? Countercultural hippy liberals, gays and feminists. Who wants to make black people get married? Conservatives. Johnson said a government revolution was necessary to keep black families together. Conservatives say a social revolution is necessary to keep black families together.

So here's my crazy idea that I know conservatives would vote for in a heartbeat, a big tax break for marriage, as a matter of fact a big regressive tax break. Starting in 2010, you get a $500 tax break for every year you stay married. Liberals would hit the ceiling. It would be hugely and disproportionately beneficial for blacks, the group that has the most to gain from getting married because we are, I think, the most unmarried group next to homosexuals. But for the sake of gays, I think liberals would trash the idea.

All that aside, it's important to bring Hymowitz into the discussion, because the status of the black family is indeed a huge debate in which the Left and Right differ greatly.

Given the legacy of slavery that made marriage impossible for blacks and Jim Crow laws that emasculated men, the unmarriage revolution was bound to hit blacks especially hard. When Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote his controversial report "The Negro Family", he was warning the country about a 25% illegitimacy rate among blacks.  In one chapter of my book, I tell the story of how black leaders and black and white academics accused Moynihan of every sin in the p.c. book.  He was a racist who could not possibly understand "the strengths of the black family."  He was a sexist who failed to appreciate the "strong black woman" and her "extended kinship networks." It became impossible to have an honest conversation about what was happening in the black community for the next twenty years even as black welfare rolls, crime rates, and teen births were soaring.

Well, now the rupture between marriage and black childbearing is just about complete.  Seventy percent of black births are to single mothers. Seventy percent.  This has had a disastrous effect on men, who have lost their major social roles as provider and father. It is also a tragedy for the country because it makes the goal of full black equality unachievable. Growing up in single parent homes, black kids are destined to stay behind.

As a black conservative I ask the profound question why should blacks petition the government for programs to assist us in keeping black families together when we could do it for ourselves? 

Quote of the Day

From Michael Totten, in the ugliest jail imaginable.

“I prefer these small and morally ambiguous wars to the big morally black-and-white wars,” he said to me later. “It would be nice if we had more support back home like we did during World War II. But look at how many people were killed in World War II. If a bunch of unpopular small wars prevent another popular big war, I'll take ’em.”

Stuff Black People Like

You know I had to do it.

#1. Black People
Black people like black people. Mostly because we actually do, other times because we have to. Most of the time it's because we want to like black people, and since black people want to like black people, we generally meet black people who want to like us. The liking is mutual and self-replicating. This is especially the case whenever we are in areas that are predominantly white. We immediately find some other black people to like and we go and like each other. When we're mostly around black people, then we tend to only like certain black people. Some people like to talk about black love, but in fact, black love is at a premium. Black like is all over the place. So much so that even white people like black people.

#2. Freedom
Black people like freedom. We're never really sure if we have it or if we have freedom-lite, you know, that freedom that they sell down at the corner store. We have plenty of it, but it always seems to be that discount freedom that breaks when you really need it. It's plain wrap freedom, not the expensive good kind like they sell at Macy's. Still, we love the freedom that we have, and we tend to be a bit showy with it. Plus we always invent new kinds of freedom. Problem is, not everybody digs black freedom, like the freedom to interrupt anything any actor in any movie is saying, or the freedom to tell anybody anything at anytime. But that won't stop us from really, really liking freedom. Do yourself a favor and try not to get between us and freedom.

#3. Mama
I'll always love my mama, she's my favorite girl - the onliest one. Black people like mama, and also momma, and moms. We like big mama, skinny mama, foine mama and bad mama jamma. But we only like our mama, we don't like your mama. In fact, your mama is so old she pees rust and poots dust. OK now I dare you to say something about my mama. 

#4. Education
Ask any black man woman or child what's the solution to the problem and sit down and prepare yourself for a lecture on the benefits of education. It all started when mama, yeah mama, walked five miles to and from school in the snow with no shoes, uphill both ways. And before that with Carter G. Woodson. Black people love education so much that we've decided that every American ought to wake up with night sweats over a dream that they forgot to study for the test, and that test is Black History Month. Education is that thing we know that can be denied but once achieved can never be stolen. Sure it would be nice just to have enough to buy, but we are Saturday's child, we have to learn for a living.

#5. Hair Preparations
It could be Glover's Mange or Creme of Nature, but it's certainly not Prell or Head and Shoulders. There is no reason at any time for any black person of any stripe not to have a very specific regimen for hair care. That goes double for those who have to travel. We make doubly sure that we bring the right dose and boy are we persnickety about it.  If somebody were to document all of the stories about curling irons, #1 clipper guards, barbershops & beauty salons, jheri curls, doo rags, pressed hair vs natural, dreads vs braids and other aspects of black hair preparation, it would strain the capacity of Google.

#6. Cell Phones
I don't know if you've noticed, but ever since cell phones were invented, there has been no color line. Black people got them as soon as they became available. We didn't get cable TV when it first came out and we didn't get the internet right away. We also didn't get invited to Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, but we actually didn't miss it much. But when it came to a cell phones, black people would not put up with being left behind on that score. So we made it known, with our awesome consumer clout in these United States, that we would not be ignored. We even got a hiphop phone company just for texting with flavor. Unfortunately for Kwame Kilpatrick... ahh but that's another story.  What's your ringtone?

#7. Telling White People Off
One of the most fun thing about being black is that white people listen to you, especially when you get all up in their grill. They act like they hate it and they get all huffy about it, but in the end they're always grateful for the experience. White people tend to forget who they are and what they're doing on this planet. That's why they watch foreign films. They know that they live two inches off the ground, and of course they often forget whether or not they are living in reality. They ask themselves stupid questions like, how do I know everything I'm experiencing is not an illusion and maybe when I'm asleep, that's reality. That's why white people made The Matrix. And who did they turn to in The Matrix? A black man, of course. Morpheus. White people need black people to ground them in reality, so the next time you feel like slapping the taste out of some white person's mouth for doing something spacey, go ahead and give them a neck shaking verbal beatdown. They'll act offended, but deep down they're really glad you did it. They call it an intervention, and we really like to give them.

#8. Church
Black people legendarily sin on Saturday night and make up for it on Sunday morning, which stretches into Sunday afternoon half the time. Don't forget Bible Study on Wednesday night. Now I was originally motivated to say that black people love Jesus, and a lot of us do, but not as much as we love Church. You and I both know there's a lot of black people in Church who don't really love Jesus as much as they say they do, but I suppose that's pretty much universal. Black people church. Which is to say we have turned it into a verb. Next to education, church will get you right. It is more than a ritual, it is a way of life, you've got worship, praise, singing, dancing, dressing up, eating, socializing of all sorts, gossip, showing off, redemption, celebration. There isn't much that doesn't go on in Church. Yes even that.

#9. Loose Clothing
Some people think that drooping pants is a new trend among young black teens. In fact, it is a tradition dating ancient Egypt, or should I say Kemet. The Man won't let you know but recently archaeologists found some hieroglyphs showing Pharaoh Ramses Extra II sagging big time. Of course our Arab brothers in North Africa still wear the flowing robes today and we are gradually making the full circle complete as our white t-shirts get longer and longer.

#10. Basketball
I know. I know. I know. We like track and field and we like baseball, and we really like football. We like tennis and golf now, but maybe that's just an infatuation. But basketball? That borders on something unhealthy. We like the sound of the ball on a hardwood floor and the echo off the cinderblock walls of the gym. We like the squeak of the sneakers on a pivot foot at the high post. We like sounds and the energy and the fact that in the blink of an eye you can go from being on offense to being on defense. We like the drama of the final seconds of possession and the elbows down in the paint. We like the swish of the net and the metallic clank of the spring loaded rim snapping back after a monster dunk. We like the improbable little men, the stylish guards and the miraculous ball control. We like the unstoppable big man charging the lane and snatching rebounds with authority. Ahh. you get the picture. What's not to like?

#11 Dap
Dap is a fudamental element of black greeting and communication. It can be as subtle as a split-second head bob between strangers crossing paths in a city street. It can be as complicated as a hand game between blood sisters. It can be as sassy as a neck working snap from a man in tight jeans on  Greenwich Village or as decorous as a triple cheek kiss at the after party at a Paris couture event. It could be a father and son rubbing foreheads at bedtime or fraternity sisters making triangles with their fingers. I can be as sinister as a gang sign or as welcoming as warm embrace. Every American baby learns to high five before it can speak. Dap says acknowledge me and a language of gesture that is a black gift to the world, we like that everybody likes dap.

Stuff White People Like

So I'm trying to work out how to communicate this interesting conundrum. I'm using that word a lot, not because I like ambiguity and puzzles, but that's just kind of a theme this weekend. The paradox is that people believe that black conservatives are trying to be white and that the core principle of Republicanism is deny government stuff to blacks, and I can't think of a logical way to disprove them. I mean it would be logical to tell them to go soak their heads, but I am trying to be informative too. I realize I'm being baited, but I'm sure there are people out there who are genuinely confused.

So I went and made a silly video. So silly that I'm not linking to it. You see the problem is that part of my writing thing is self-referential. So I need to involve myself in the answer to make it all personable. Then I'm also dealing with other interesting questions about black culture. So I decided to talk about things that I think that they think are white and black people don't do, but I'm black and I do. The problem is that I don't think of them as 'white' things. So I try class things, upper middle class, and then I come across like a floss rapper.

I cannot guess those things that black people don't do because they think they are too white, but I do. And at this point it's all so confusing that I don't know what any of it means or proves. Lucky for me I read white blogs. And one of those white blogs pointed me to another white blog about stuff white people like.

Here it is.

Now here's the semi-serious question. Do black people who worry about white people actually believe that white people have things that black people ought to have? Do they think that white people use racism to keep black people away from those things they like? If so, then the list of things white people like ought perhaps to be on that list of holes in the level playing field. Thus if black people could get those things that white people like, we'd know we are making progress.

On the other hand, white people might just like things that black people find irritating, offensive or just plain stupid and therefore not worth liking. Well it seems to me that there's only one way to find out, which is to ask some black people if they like the things that this white person says white people like. And then inevitably, there would have to be a blog about things black people like.

A Domestic Surveillance Conundrum

One of the implications left hanging in the discussion of habeas corpus and a reasonable right to security in my proposal of a domestic intelligence organization similar in charter to MI5 is this, the regularization of surveillance.

The basic problem with injunctions against surveying known innocents and protecting those same innocents from local threats is that the latter requires the former. Let us take an analogy of toddlers at the playground.

Most of us are familiar with the dreaded parental duty of taking kids to the park. It is a dreaded duty because it requires that parents generate a new set of skills, which is to be able to see when and if your kids are getting into trouble without obsessing and driving yourself or the kids crazy in the process. I have three kids which are very close in age and so I have been tested to the limit. You take them to the playground and let them go and then you go sit on a bench and try to get some peace and quiet. Every minute or so, you look up to find out if your kid is still doing the relatively safe thing they were doing a minute ago or if they've wandered towards the edge of danger. This is surveillance.

As a part of this surveillance, you're also watching other people's kids who may be playing by other sets of rules. For example, if your kids are not permitted climb trees or are unskilled at the task, you have to watch out for kids who do, as they will seduce your kids into this dangerous fun. Two of my kids are adept, one is a little slower. I have watched other parents go Defcon 1 when they find my kids have treed their kids. I know my kids don't curse, so I watch out for kids who do. Same thing with throwing sand, losing shoes, etc etc. A good parent knows how diligent to be and when to intervene, when to panic, when their instructions will be followed or defied. A bad parent leaves their kids unsupervised. Then again, this depends upon the threat level. Are the swings full? Is there a teenager spinning the merry-go-round at 100 RPM? Are kids going up the slide the wrong way? Are you the only parent? The dynamism of this situation is extraordinary. Just ask any parent.

Sooner or later you get good, and your kids grow their own sense of security. But that only happens because you have a big fat history of surveillance to know the little things that end up being big things. Soon you can spot a trouble-maker kid in 20 seconds.

The problem with America's domestic surveillance is that we don't really have any, and because we want some, we are suddenly forced into a situation rather like having your cousin Pookie watch over the kids for you in the park. He doesn't have the skills. If you want to understand when abnormal activity is happening over a communications medium, you have to know what normal activity is. In other words unless the watchdogs have established some kind of baseline as to what non-terrorist activity looks like over our nation's telecommunications networks, we are hard-pressed to find out what terrorist activity looks like. It is a fundamental conundrum that must be resolved.

It seems to me that the solution is to develop a protocol for our own MI5 that allows them to look and holds their information in escrow of some sort. The problem isn't what the Bush Administration is doing, it's that too many people simply don't trust them to do what it is they do. We've had a series of FISA reforms since this problem broke, and the Administration has almost always gotten their way each time. That's because nobody in Congress, rightly, wants to be held responsible for foot-dragging on the connect-the-dots enterprise. Quite frankly, I don't like the broken firewalls and the hugeness of Homeland Security. So I say create something relatively new and let it do what needs to be done.

A Dude Works on a Ranch

Aha. So I saw the YouTube of the officer that went dead off on a skateboard kid. It's hilarious that right at the end of the video he asks if the camera is on. It sounds like he's about to say "If I find myself on YouTube.." and considering the abuse he heaps on the kid, some further abuse is forthcoming. I've been hearing about this deal in the sphere, but never paid it any mind all last week.

The first thing I thought when I watched the video was that this cop was a rookie. Because one of the first things cops learn as a rookie is that you are not allowed to take any shit from anyone. Never. Not one inch. You are the law and people are not at liberty to disrespect the law. So as he came out of his 'dont disrespect me, this badge or the department' thing I said - ahh rookie.

The video is kind of shocking, but the more I listen to it, the more I side with the cop. The kid loses his skateboard and gets a verbal beatdown and has to deal with his mother being called by the cop. It's rather obvious that the kid could have been cited for boarding there - can't tell if he was arrested or not. You definitely need the PR from the department's standpoint that the officer gets suspended.
But what really went down? A kid learning in no uncertain terms that the chubby man in yellow driving an electric scooter is not to be trifled with. Yes, precisely because he is an officer of the law.

It turns out that Officer Rivieri is a veteran on the force, which implies to me that when he said that the kid needs to learn about respect if he expects to live long in this world, that Rivieri has probably seen some ugly shit. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he had to deal with some grave situation recently. Anyway.

The real commentary on our society can be found in the comments.   
Support your local police.

Obama: Disabilities

The Old School position is that crippled people find ways to make themselves useful, we should help them out. There is more than enough white collar work in this nation to get some kind of productive employment to the physically disabled. I'd onshore a bunch of call centers and take my points from that.

From Obama's site:

First, provide Americans with disabilities with the educational opportunities they need to succeed.

Second, end discrimination and promote equal opportunity.

Third, increase the employment rate of workers with disabilities.

And fourth, support independent, community-based living for Americans with disabilities.

All noble sentiments. No noble sentiment should get any more than COLA at the Federal spending level. Maintain what's there.

Obama: Civil Rights

My Old School position is that African Americans need to focus their forward thinking on the politics of social power. Implicit in this is that civil rights guarantees for all Americans are pretty much in tact and that there is only marginal maintenance to be done. The idea of expanding civil rights is an overproduction which cheapens and demeans the entire practice and specifically that there is no 'Latina' Rosa Parks and that what illegal immigrants demand is not civil rights because civil rights should only be granted to citizens. Furthermore that the economic and political problems of African Americans today are not largely due to any denial of civil rights.

From Obama's site:

Strengthen Civil Rights Enforcement

Obama will reverse the politicization that has occurred in the Bush Administration's Department of Justice. He will put an end to the ideological litmus tests used to fill positions within the Civil Rights Division.

If indeed Obama ends ideological litmus tests to fill those positions, he will be left with a conundrum of sorts. One hopes that he will. But the conundrum is that in fact, the applicant pool at the CRD has been largely white and the big stink generated last year was that there wasn't proportional racial representation. IE not enough blacks and assertions of a 'hostile workforce'. Some stifling of that BS would be a welcome change. But you have to remember that people who want to work in the CRD are already self-selected ideologically. Changing some questions on a form doesn't mean a whole lot.

Combat Employment Discrimination

Obama will work to overturn the Supreme Court's recent ruling that curtails racial minorities' and women's ability to challenge pay discrimination. Obama will also pass the Fair Pay Act to ensure that women receive equal pay for equal work.

If I recall correctly, there was a basic statute of limitations placed upon lawsuits for discrimination that was set to about two or three years after the fact. It was reduced to about a year. I could be wrong and am too lazy to double check. I think the effect would be negligible and that the Supreme Court was making common sense. If you're being discriminated against at work, it doesn't take a year to figure it out.

The Fair Pay Act sounds reasonable, but it could be anything. I think it opens up a can of worms. Specifically the worm discussed in one Cobb thread that got no comments. Basically, an American employer cannot ask a woman if she plans to become pregnant. Women who have no plans to get pregnant are better employees as compared to those who do plan to get pregnant. It is entirely reasonable to reward those women who will be more reliable and productive on the job than those who will take time off for other purposes. Why can that not be considered? It is only logical to treat women like women, to pretend that pregnancy has no effect on productivity is disingenuous.

Expand Hate Crimes Statutes

Obama will strengthen federal hate crimes legislation and reinvigorate enforcement at the Department of Justice's Criminal Section.

Strengthening is not necessary. He should focus on standardization as a Democrat. As a Republican, I would leave it to the states, each of which, like Georgia, has its own set of criteria for 'bias crime' or 'hate crime'. He can raise the profile if he likes but this is not really a civil rights issue. It's a marginal subset of crime anyway. If he were to attempt to strengthen sentencing guidelines, mandatory minimums or in any way force judges' hands, I'd oppose it. Again, this looks just like standard talking points. Nevertheless, it sounds like an expensive way to make a Federal Case out of the kinds of crimes that aren't even capital crimes. Nobody is going to get death for a hate crime under Obama, so what's the point? It just expands the prison-industrial complex. (heh) BTW, would a jihadist at GTMO be considered perpetrators of hate crimes?

End Deceptive Voting Practices

Obama will sign into law his legislation that establishes harsh penalties for those who have engaged in voter fraud and provides voters who have been misinformed with accurate and full information so they can vote.

Who could be against that? Is it really a problem?

End Racial Profiling

Obama will ban racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies and provide federal incentives to state and local police departments to prohibit the practice.

Double edged sword.  Ward Connorly would be the strange bedfellow if Obama was serious about this. You can't "end racial profiling" without generating more racial paperwork. I know exactly how the Feds have gone about this before. They force officers to fill out a new race form at the bottom of all of their citations and traffic stops. Then they analyze the results in spreadsheets. They are forcing a greater racial consciousness into the daily work of officers and generating a bureaucracy to monitor it. LA has been the great experiment and the results have been mixed. I say simplify.

Reduce Crime Recidivism by Providing Ex-Offender Support

Obama will provide job training, substance abuse and mental health counseling to ex-offenders, so that they are successfully re-integrated into society. Obama will also create a prison-to-work incentive program to improve ex-offender employment and job retention rates.

Bullshit waste of money. Provide that to non-criminals who are already integrated into society, you twerp.

Eliminate Sentencing Disparities

Obama believes the disparity between sentencing crack and powder-based cocaine is wrong and should be completely eliminated.

It has already been done. Obama needs to update his website. Or is he going to take credit for a decision made during the Bush Administration?

Expand Use of Drug Courts

Obama will give first-time, non-violent offenders a chance to serve their sentence, where appropriate, in the type of drug rehabilitation programs that have proven to work better than a prison term in changing bad behavior.

Somewhat reasonable for a kinder, gentler America. However the devil is in the details. I think you should call losers losers. I don't see how he puts this under the rubric of civil rights. It should be under crime and punishment or health care.

Michelle Obama's Got Soul

But don't let her get yours. Michelle Obama recently spoke to students at UCLA. Hugh Hewitt's radio show gave some poleaxing polemics on some of her exclamation points. But it didn't take a media assassin to hear that she was really out there.

Here's what she actually said:

We have lost the understanding that in a democracy, we have a mutual obligation to one another -- that we cannot measure the greatness of our society by the strongest and richest of us, but we have to measure our greatness by the least of these. That we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done. That is why I am here, because Barack Obama is the only person in this who understands that. That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls.  Our souls are broken in this nation.

Check out the comments from Mark Dais over at an Obama fansite:

This is a frightening populist speech that one usually doesn’t see except in Latin America. Now wonder, the Marxist Danielle Ortega came out in support of Obama. In one part, Michelle talks about the government healing our souls. I don’t want the government to heal my soul. I thought that was Jesus who heals souls and Obama is no Jesus.

This is the kind of stuff that conservatives pick up on very quickly. It's covered over at CQ as well.

If you listen to the entire speech, you can hear her talk about sacrifice, and she really bursts a blood vessel talking about how Barry sacrificed to go work in the ghetto on the Southside instead of going to make some money on Wall Street. Surely that's what she'd have all of us do in the new Federal Soul Redemption Program. Who sacrifices for whom, do you think? How much sacrifice is enough?

In Bruges

'In Bruges' is rather like a Guy Ritchie film with half the cast, twice the heart, at half the pace. You'd think that would add up a bit short but you'd be wrong. That's because Guy Ritchie films are rather like Snickers bars. It's simply ridiculous to think about having one and never having another. Hell I've watched 'Snatch' at least a half dozen times, and that dog still cracks me up. But there is something about a high quality drama and 'In Bruges' is that with a twist, that makes a second watching something you'd rather avoid, like a second prix fixe meal at the same restaurant on another weekend. I can't imagine sitting through 'There Will Be Blood' again, and I have that same, very good and respectful feeling about this dark, dramatic comedy.

'In Bruges' has a very real sense of unreality to it. You're not likely to see gunfighting gangsters decide to take a battle outside because the pregnant proprietor of an inn tells them so. But it's just the kind of thing that happens in this charming film. It plays a lot less wanky than did 'Hot Fuzz' but its got some of the same vibe going for it - all sorts of improbable action happening in an ordinarily sleepy European town.

The acting is superb and there are plenty of close-ups and memorable dialog and the casting is great. The poof skinhead, the carousing midget, the cranky Canuck, and the fat Americans all make this a really hilarious film. Do see it.

Three Questions for Cobb

I would like to open the floor for three questions on any subject that I will answer fully and honestly. It's starting to get stuffy in here, but I've been writing all day and I'm really in stride.

Punching Yourself in the Nose

When my kids exhibit self-doubt I tell them that they are punching themselves in the nose. They all know this story I told them.

The story I tell starts once upon a time there was a princess (or prince) who woke up one day to find a small pimple on her nose. All through breakfast nobody said aything but it was all she could think of. She thought that everyone at the table could see her nose and was simply being polite. Immediately after breakfast, she ran to the bathroom to check her nose again. She decided to pick at the pimple and as she did it began to bleed - so that day she had to go to school with a bandage on her nose.

All that day she adjusted her hair so that it would take away attention from her nose, but her hair got in her eyes and she walked into a pole. Smack on the nose. Now her nose was in pain and started to swell. That evening at home she looked even worse. She took off the bandage and the pimple was mostly gone but now her nose was very sore and a little bit red. The following morning her nose was pretty much back to normal but it felt horrible. She put extra makeup on it, just to make sure and she wore some very loud colors to distract from her face.

All this time, people noticed she was acting strange but not about her nose. Only she knew that her nose was making her behave this way - and yet she never told a soul because by now her story was just too embarrassing. Sure enough some kids laughed at her clothes and pointed their fingers at her. She went into the bathroom and cried. She was so mad at herself that she began to punch herself in the nose. She ran home and checked again in the mirror. She had given herself a bloody nose. The more she tried to fix her nose, the more things went wrong, the more she punished herself, the more embarrassed she became. It went on for a week until she finally broke her own nose. Now it became obvious to everyone that her nose was indeed ugly, swollen and slightly crooked.

There are several lessons to be learned from this story. The first is that perfect is the enemy of good. The second is that vanity is self-destructive. The third is not to second-guess what people think about you. The most important is that you can be your own worst enemy because only you know exactly what torments you most.

The story can obviously be changed around or extended to more tragic lengths, but I always like the punch in the nose idea because as a kid I had a lot of fights. I would come home after crying with my face in pain, and unless I had a black eye or my nose was still bleeding, I could feel the pain but nothing would show. The same thing was true after a really good game of football. And so it always fascinated me that people could feel pain and not convey it - that nobody really knows what's going on with you unless you tell, that overcoming the fear of telling releases you from the pain of your insecurity.

Of course you can become a pain in the ass, but that's another story.

Tavis, Meet Sistah Souljah

Well my dumbass comment for the day is that Barry's decision to stand up Tavis Smiley's State of the Black Union convention is a moment of Clintonesque Triangulation.

Because it's actually not, but I could understand if it was. After all, Clinton - being the 'first black president' must have known he was dissing the sister and all the hurt and pain that entails. Ahh black men and black women - the drama never ceases. But between Barry and Tavis? No such pain. At least Barry doesn't feel it.

Smiley is, of course, making reconciliation noises because his nead negro status is in jeopardy, and he can scarcely afford to diss Obama in return. In fact everybody's head negro status is in jeopardy when Obama is around. Surely Barry didn't ask for this. He doesn't want to be the number one head negro of America, he wants to be President of the United States. He didn't want to inherit all the hopes and dreams and long suffering sorrows of the African American nation. He doesn't want to be Malcolm or Martin or Louis Farrakhan. He doesn't want to be Marcus Garvey, and I'd bet a nickel that if Toni Morrison never endorsed him as the real first black president he wouldn't have asked her to. All he wants to do is take his Hope train to the White House and get about the business of running America.

Right about now, Tiger Woods is breathing a sigh of relief. Glad it ain't me. Now I can just play golf in peace. I'm sure Tiger is chilling with Michael Jordan, telling him how he could get used to that. I can see the conversation now, Tiger says, "You know Alma Powell was right about all that". The pressure is off them, but it's all on Barry, and black men like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan are feeling a perverse moment of "please don't let the black guy screw up", because if he does, then it will be back on them. That is at least until they are as old as Muhammad Ali.

How many head negroes will America need until the need is no more? Can Barry obviate the need without winning the prize? There's at least one dude who has had his Hajj Moment looking at whitefolks show passionate support for Barry. You know the Hajj Moment, when Malcolm X realized that he didn't actually hate the white man, that he was in love with all mankind? Some of us Americans have to have that epiphany, you know because we've still got all of these people who have very specific ideas about race. A lot of us still get it. Moreover many of us still feel it and have to fight the feeling to be properly social. But a lot of young people don't get it - you know that race thing. They don't understand the fixation on the past, the pre-Michael Jordan, pre-Tiger Woods, pre-Barry Obama world of black manhood, when it was a scary thing. Maybe they get it, but they don't feel it and they've got no racial instincts to wrestle with.

I read some parts of Barry's book, and he didn't strike me as the kind of guy who is wrestling with racial instincts. He just managed it all without feeling it too deeply. And because of that, he'll dismiss Tavis' little group as just another head negro thing that he never really wanted. Barry wants to be President, and I don't think he feels that head negro thing as much as Tiger and Michael. I could certainly be wrong about that feeling in his gut, but he's certainly managing it well.

Statistical Morality: The Logic of Life

Tim Harford has written an interesting book called The Logic of Life. I may check it out. It is, after all, intrinsic to my interests in BI and Knowledge Management, which is for those of you who may not be aware, the art and science of figuring out what information is computable and collecting, assembling and disseminating it for the purposes of augmenting decision making. Over the past 20 years, this area of computing has been commercially successful primarily in the form of financial management and reporting because people are fairly disciplined when it comes to money, but it also applies more generally. My interests and career are in the specifics of Business Intelligence, but also in the general of computer augmentation of human decision making. If you ever wanted a formal framework for why I've been writing online for 15 years, that would be a good start.

At any rate, Bryan Caplan (brought to my attention via Marginal Revolution) made a few interesting points about stereotypes and how people react to them both positively and negatively. He writes:

3. In response, Tim could object that I've overlooked a subtler way for statistical discrimination to harm a group. After all, he heavily emphasizes a few experiments showing that statistical discrimination could be a "self-fulfilling prophesy." For example, he describes a resume experiment where otherwise identical fake resumes with "black names" were less likely to get a response. "High-quality applicants were more likely to be invited for an interview, but only if they were white. Employers didn't seem to notice whether black applicants had extra skills or experience." If that is how employers treat black applicants, what's the point of trying? As Tim asks, "Why bother to get a degree or work experience if you are young, gifted, and black?"

But is it really true that the market fails to reward blacks for getting more education? Is it even true that the market rewards them less? I tested these claims using one of the world's best labor data sets, the NLSY.  The results directly contradict Tim's self-fulfilling prophesy story.  Blacks actually get a substantially larger return to education than non-blacks! The same goes for experience, though the result is not statistically significant. The real lesson of the data is that if you are young, gifted, and black, you should get a ton of education, because it has an exceptionally large pay-off.

Why would this be so?  I'm not sure, but one simple story is that counter-stereotypical behavior stands out. When my sons were young, my wife was working a lot, so I often took my kids places on my own. Funny thing: Time and again, strangers came up and said, "Wow, you're such a great dad!" But there were moms of young kids doing the same thing in plain sight, and the strangers rarely praised them.  Why not?  Because a dad taking care of two babies is counter-stereotypical, which grabs people's attention. 

Purely anecdotal, yes. But it is consistent with the small academic literature on counter-stereotypical behavior. If you clearly violate expectations, people not only notice; they often over-react.

The upshot is that stereotypes may actually be self-reversing rather than self-fulfilling. The marginal payoff of distinguishing yourself from the pack is high if people think poorly of the typical member of the pack.

My response:

Black on black discrimination for 'acting-white' does have an intrinsic link to statistical discrimination, you may just be unaware of the statistics. Roland Fryer did the study several years ago.

In any case I tend to look at all matters of this type of research to exhibit a sort of confirmation bias and the bits about self-fulfillment or self-reversal to be post-hoc rationalizations. Stereotypes are, after all, a shorthand way of thinking and in the interests of generating policy, so are statistics. There are very few aspects of human behavior that can be accounted for on the basis of key performance indicators, nor are statistics likely to be taken on the rationale. And so we tend to focus on the few statistics that can be collected reliably and then, post-hoc, try to make sense of them.

Take the example of the federal consent decree set for the LAPD in the wake of the CRASH scandal and general public concern about the beating of Rodney King. There was a stereotypical assumption that white police officers were stopping black motorists because of racist reasons. And so in order to monitor this, a set of new reporting regime & requirements involving racial checkboxes was established. At some point, we would have a fairly representative sample of which officers were citing which people by race, but none of that statistical information gives any outsider a better understanding of the reasons why police do what they do. In otherwords we created a statistical abstract, an incomplete model of officer behavior, which is much more complex than can ever be statistaclly represented - especially on moral questions like discrimination.

So we can generate statistics on discriminations, but can we generate statistics on the rationales behind those discriminations?

It seems to me, that for the purposes of policy and remedy, we are always going to be at a loss with our abstractions, and that those who are close enough to the transactions in question cannot be both efficient at their jobs and effective in generating documentation bringing the layman close enough. We will always use some stereotypical and reverse-stereotypical thinking. It's how human mind copes with realtime performance without crashing.

--

I believe there are intuitive ways to deal with even counter-intuition. Partisanship is a fairly reliable way to establish a finely tuned and coherent set of double standards, and we are all very familiar with how that works.

But moreover the question of statistical morality is one that I keep coming back to over and over. My prelimnary conclusion is this: If we are to rid ourselves of the human abstraction problem, then we must work within a framework that subordinates our our natural thought processes to its own logic. I often think of Allen Wheelis' Spirit, as the essence of that tale, but one could think of religion or science equally so, or more commonly that process that happens to a teenager when they walk around all day listening to their iPod. We systematically 'let go' of our judgments in order to have some measure of fidelity to external imperatives and in this we find consistency of a sort despite the fact that we defy aspects of our own nature.

spirit is the traveller, passes now through the realm of man. we did not create spirit, do not possess it, cannot define it, are but the bearers. we take it up from unmourned and forgotten forms, carry it through our span, will pass it on, enlarged or diminished, to those who follow. spirit is the voyager, man is the vessel.

So in writing this I have added a new entry of Statistical Morality to my Cobb notebook. (Deprecated in 2010, see oother entries below (mdcb 2020))

Americans tend to speak about the status of groups of people in statistical terms in order to introduce themselves to subjects concerning them. This is troublesome for two reasons. On the one hand it traffics in stereotypes and reverse-stereotypes about in-groups and out-groups, but does not deal with causality or individuals. It therefore cheapens the quality of discussion and sets up litmus tests and glass ceilings and false dichotomies. Secondly it does not begin to approach with respect to which the dynamic in question is transient. It goes against the principle of discovery.

For these reasons I find sociology to be a discipline that warrants suspicion, the same kind of suspicion economics warrants. However I find that economists tend to be a bit less dogmatic and more self-deprecating in their predictions than sociologists. That is because I believe economists have a great deal more accurate and detailed data than sociologists and thus realize how contingent their models are on complexities beyond reckoning.

Note also these two blog entries:

• Stats and Morals
• More Statistical Morality
• Murdered Women

Obama Love, Black Love & Self Esteem

Cheney Surprises

Now that I've gotten into the 9/11 and post sections of Hayes' Cheney biography there are a number of rocking surprises,

Wolfowitz' Reticence
Paul Wolfowitz, in discussing military options for Iraq was a bit ahead of the game after 9/11 and Cheney told him to keep his shirt on. But Wolfowitz' most ambitious plan was to essentially put US in the role that the UK ultimately filled, which was to take control of southern Iraq and stay out of the capitol. The would have the effect of cutting Hussein off from his ports and changing the nature of the sanctions to those we could monitor as being effective on the regime and not hurting the people. It could still be said that this was interventionist and pre-emptive, but it was on a much smaller scale and may have been an adequate compromise.

Andrew Lundquist's ETF
The flack raised over the substance of Cheney's energy policy was entirely political demagoguery. David Addington, the head of Cheney's staff and chief counsel warned Cheney early on that he should pay attention to the guidlines of FACA. This was the rule that applied to disclosure of task force work in the executive branch. The warning was that FACA was the rule that tripped up Hillary Clinton's health care task force during their time in the White House. Essentially, if you have any non-governmental members of the task force, they are subject to disclosure. There are two important points. One, Cheney didn't run the task force, and two the task force did not run afoul of the FACA ordinance.

Cheney was already aware of the Halliburton jokes and so decided to hire on Andrew Lundquist to be the executive director of the task force. Lundquist took some time to decide but finally left the private sector and signed on. Cheney was in a bit of a pinch to get started because he needed someone already in the energy business to explain exactly the kind of thing that prompted the need for the task force - the energy crisis in California which involved the foolishness of some deregulation and California having to buy electricity on the spot market. (a bit about that)

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

Several utilities in California had no contracts in place to reserve energy at a low price from outside providers. The DWP in Los Angeles did, and they got through that period with no changes in rates or interruptions in service. Cheney wanted somebody besides himself to do that explaining and run the task force. Lundquist was the man.

The energy policy task force was a 'checkbox' committee. Which is to say, the Bush Administration had already formulated their energy policy and already had their priorities in hand - nothing particularly surprising at all, your standard "expand energy resources, reduce dependence on foreign oil, energy independence stuff". The job of the committee was to run all of that by various interest groups and have them essentially rubber stamp or modify slightly what the Administration had already decided, which was another reason Cheney punted to Lundquist. Naturally, the renewables people were disappointed at their marginal standing and began pitching their bitch. At some point the noise overcame the signal and various individuals ratcheted up the controversy. Specifically, the NRDC sued.

Cheney was simply stubborn and had Addington make the point, and fight on that point, that the energy task force was compliant with the FACA rule on disclosure and there was no legal right nor precedent for full disclosure. Lundquist himself didn't care one way or another, he'd just as soon turn over the papers. Cheney had nothing to hide, but he also had something to prove which is that you simply can't boss the executive around when they are already in compliance.

In the end, the decision to force Cheney to turn over all their papers was vacated.

The current candidate positions are here.

Clinton's Law
Bill Clinton signed into law a little-remarked upon bill which oriented his administration towards regime change. It was known as the Iraq Liberation Act. For a long time in the lead up to the war and justification for it, I was unaware of the existence of this law and its policy implications, which are specifically for regime change.

Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 - Declares that it should be the policy of the United States to seek to remove the Saddam Hussein regime from power in Iraq and to replace it with a democratic government.

It doesn't get any clearer than that. All the time I wasted talking about No Fly Zones, I could have gone directly here. Wow. Furthermore, it was revealed in the book, and this is something I pay some attention to a little bit better, that the CIA was a shy party to an attempted coup. Some Iraqi whose name I cannot recall, basically told the US that he was, in light of our stance, going to try to take Saddam out himself. It was a disaster and he lost his life. So how exactly did people expect regime change to take place? My point is that regime change was not a strictly PNACian idea. The more I repeat the phrase, the more I recall Colin Powell saying it, but in fact it was American foreign policy three years before 9/11.

Nigerian Uranium
Yes Iraq was trying to get uranium from Niger. So the whole thing about the 16 words, in the end, were justified. I still haven't been able to wrap my head around everything relating to  Wilson & Plame and I'm not through that section of the book yet, but the bottom line was the Bush didn't deserve getting bashed on that point.

Powell's UN Presentation
The biggest surprise of all is that the decision to make WMD the focus of the presentation to the UN was Colin Powell's. Cheney and Wolfowitz' idea was to have two whole days of testimony which included the more substantial documentation on how Saddam was supporting terrorism. Their take as that the best case for war against Iraq was the full case, which would take a substantial amount of time to present. Their tack would be to make it clear that even despite some possibly dodgy intelligence on Iraq, the full context of Saddam's threat to the world had not really been made to the UN Security Council, and they needed to be fully embarrassed into action considering their relative passivity in the past. So they made three six inch binders of the full briefing which included extensive documentation of the role of AQ in Iraq, and the extent to which Saddam was funding suicide bombers in Palestine, using WMD on his own people, and selling technology and arms to AQ and other Saudi terrorist groups. Powell took one look at that pile and threw it out.

Of course the great irony in all this was that the anti-war crowd and the containment crowd would have had their most oft-used rationale more satisfied had Powell not gone for the quick slam dunk. Surely those determined opponents of the Bush Administration would have come up with something else, but I think those who were most pressing for continued sanctions would have had a much more difficult go had the long form prevailed.

-

So. We have been adjusted.

The Beginning of the End of Multiculturalism

RattlerGator has seen the future unraveling of Democrats and it begins with their disputes over the meaning of the fight between Hillary and Obama. I believe he's onto something. He observes the fire and brimstone in comments from a Frank Rich article critical of Hillary Clinton. Really, read his whole thing.

I had an extended discussion with a friend this morning about the Barack v. Hillary situation. Your comment [The 50+ crowd that created him [RattlerGator: meaning, Barack Obama] now feels a kind of obligation to kill him, as he has been obliged to try and kill them.] highlights a problem likely unseen by much of America but very much bubbling in the black community -- people don't know what to think of how they feel about this Barack Obama guy, and they don't know what to think of their feelings vis-a-vis the manner in which white folks view him and respond to him.

We don't often think of Barack Obama as a creation of the Democrat Machine, and it's really stunning to know that we haven't. But he is indeed the petard upon which Democrats have tried to hoist Republicans since his arrival on the scene. But where did he come from, really? The Democrats have given Obama an inch and he has taken a mile. With his recent four state sweep, the Clintons are really stumbling to keep up. Plus, Obama is pulling in more money. Who let the dogs out? This is the deep trouble in the Left that is forcing them to grapple with two attributes they have invested so much meaning and value in, race and gender. It's going to make their heads explode.

RattlerGator has brought to my attention something about the Boomers' inability to get over their own roots, where the most significant moral chit was 'marching with Dr King'. I mean really, how scary is that? It is probably one of the last best significant things your garden variety white person could do of moral significance by virtue of the color of their skin. We, on the other hand, merely had to succeed against the odds - which is a lifetime endeavor. A march some Sunday weekend? Ha! It's like me saying 'I shook Barney Frank's hand!'. That may have been hugely significant in breaking the cultural barriers of the 50s, but then again, the 50s weren't all that retarded and lots and lots of Boomers were doing the same thing. The rewards of doing the adolescent rebellious yet moral thing against a regressive background of racist parenting should only count so much, and yet the Clintons of the world have been banking on it for decades.

This is the origin of multiculturalism. It is rooted in the basic countercultural idea that Boomer parents (and America by extension) were so incredibly wrong about race and war that they couldn't be morally right about anything. And the exploration (some Sunday march) that a generation of white youth had during the Summer of Love to find that blacks and hispanics and all the other 'others' were actually human destroyed their faith in their parents' American culture. The very humanity of 'others' came as a shock to these poor naifs and they haven't been right since. The problem is that such Boomers have been on stage too long, and their basic reversion to their signature memes, without any appreciation for what the Conservative revolution has long stood for, has left them derailed from the real track of liberty.

The Baby Boom is a market phenomenon. I'm one of that minority of Americans who never thought much of Dustin Hoffman or the Rolling Stones. Quite frankly I've never seen The Graduate and I only know three or four songs by the Stones. When Bill Clinton came rolling around in 1992, I didn't trust him, but I was glad to see the torch of the Presidency finally get to someone within 20 years of my age. Bill Clinton spoke my language and recognized the same parts of America I did, like the Arsenio Hall Show. But this was just a market phenomenon. He never got down to Constitutional purity. He never got down to core principles of America and he did nothing to bring me, or anyone, to a truer conscious patriotism as a citizenship. He never demanded sacrifice, instead he just gave us the flavor we desired. He was all about movement, and in 1992 that's what I wanted to see and hear - movement to a new generation, a Pepsi Generation.

Now it's easy for me to see all that movement was just agitation. If it took triangulation strategies, if it took bombing Serbia, then that was the cost. The point was that he could market us a Cabinet 'that looks like America'. What anybody did in those seats was not our concern, we just knew to let multicultural ethics force us not to look past race and gender. As Clinton took a whack at military policy, we knew he was going for the trifecta of sexual preference as well. He consciously politicized and brought front and center something that wasn't broke and should have been left alone.

Cheney So Far

I'm about halfway through Hayes' biography of Dick Cheney. It's rather a good thing that I'm listening to it rather than reading it. I think I might be a bit more bored by the book. I thought that perhaps Dick Cheney was going to be a fascinatingly complex guy, but it turns out that he's not. He's got a very strong stripe of Midwestern competence, of cowboy grit, of puritan low-key. In other words, he is nowhere near as dubious or extraordinary a character as we've all be led to believe. Perhaps what is most extraordinary about Cheney is that he makes perfect sense as a straight character of exceptional competence who hasn't been distracted by power. At least not halfway through the book.

He's very likable but in a non-heroic way. If Colin Powell were to have had someone else write his book, it might have been half as long and very much like Cheney's, I think. What's common between them is that they simply do all the work and they don't spend a lot of time complaining about it. Where are Colin Powell's rules?

1.  It ain't as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.
2.  Get mad, then get over it.
3.  Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
4.  It can be done!
5.  Be careful what you choose. You may get it.
6.  Don't let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision.
7.  You can't make someone else's choices. You shouldn't let someone else make yours.
8.  Check small things.
9.  Share credit.
10.  Remain calm. Be kind.
11.  Have a vision. Be demanding.
12.  Don't take counsel of your fears or naysayers.
13.  Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

You wouldn't think that such a small set of terse axioms could create the kind of success that Powell created. And yet I think Cheney's set would be smaller still.

What's striking about Cheney is his apparent lack of personal political ambition. He seems to be something of a machine - he just does what's set in front of him without any arch schemes. One is put in mind of a kid walking through a snow field looking only a few yards ahead of their own feet instead of at the fencepost over yonder. Cheney does so and yet makes very straight lines.

There's also an expectation of competence instead of ideology that comes from Cheney's direction. Working for Gerald Ford seems to have set him on a path that seems to defy partisanship. There seem to have been a set of reliable Democrats, notably Henry Hyde, that made Cheney's sensibilities not seem so extraordinary as they seem in today's red vs blue landscape. I notice some of the same names that I'd
always respected, Sam Nunn, George Schultz popping up from time to time as well as others I've never heard written about in ways you don't often hear. Neutrally and with regard to their skills, rather than the appeal of their political profile and opinions. One notices of Cheney, he's not the sort who tells funny little stories that illuminate the character of his peers, superiors or subordinates. For him, it's all about the work.

More later.

Black Cultural Transparency: Part 7

A couple years ago we got into a fairly interesting discussion about 'acting white' at the provocation of our new favorite new jack economist: Roland Fryer. Fryer has dropped off the map in blogospheric conversation for one reason or another - our inattention is probably the best explanation. But his more famous Freakonomical colleagues still poke their head up into my radar from time to time. Most recently, undercover brother from another mother Sudhir Venkatesh has appeared on the horizon. He's the dude who did a lot of the footwork leading to an economic empiricism about thug life in the drug business. Recently, he was chilling with some hardheads watching HBO's The Wire:

After a final shot to the head claimed Butchie’s life, Flavor couldn’t hide his disappointment. “I say we find Snoop and that other [guy, Chris], beat their black a– to death.”

“It’s a TV show,” I said, sarcastically. I was surprised at the display of pro-Butchie sentiment.

I was thrown a “f–k you” stare that only men with deep knowledge of hand-to-hand combat could give.

Now I know I'm going to be the last one, or perhaps I might have been more inclined to be the last, last year, to say that 'The Wire' is anything representative of Black Culture, but I say this is significant. Me, I've had issues with 'The Wire' as cinema verite most of the time because I have a grudge against HBO's style of fiction, and secondly because it blows a big hole in my political appeal. On the one hand, if I'm ready to concede that The Wire is an accurate depiction of reality, I have to face the fact that it is most definitely some area of Sherwood Forest that I have no interest in visiting whatsoever. And yeah I know those are real people with real souls whose hard times are real tragedies. I don't have to look so I don't have to care. I could be a better Christian but most of the time I don't want to be. Instead, I'm more likely to say that HBO is exploitive and if a bunch of bleeding heart suckers are mesmerized by their flavor of drama, that's too bad - it doesn't mean that their politics are reality-based.

But let us concede the sake of argument that Vankatesh and Flavor and the writers at HBO are all on the same wavelength? Where does that leave old Cobb and the applicability of his Right wing world view?

Well at least one safe place which is that place that says black culture is transparent, and if HBO got it right then good. At least there's another place that blackness can't hide and black politics cannot generate inscrutable cred.

Which kind of brings us back to Fryer and why we haven't heard from him, and also some significance about the place for the Cobb-like in the 'sphere. First off, we don't need to hear from Fryer as a black voice, because if he's doing his thing the way he should it's going to be transparent one way or another. Furthermore, a clear eyed view of anything and everything that's going on in whatever community can be there to be had for those willing to look. Maybe that's not so difficult as everybody has been making it out to be. So it all boils down to the integrity of the storytellers. The truth is out there.

Campaign 2008: The Most Important Thing

Kane & Lynch

In the category of badass, Kane & Lynch is way up there in attitude but mediocre in gameplay.

I think that the producers of badass videogames, you know the kind, know that there's only so much they can get away with. In the end, it's difficult to compete with gangster movies, John Woo and Jerry Bruckheimer. But there is still some room for creativity in this arena as the makers of Kane & Lynch have discovered.

The premise is simple, the theme is classic, the execution complex, the results both better and worse than expected. You are Kane, a man who has been busted out of prison by a dude named Lynch. You soon discover that Kane you are a mercenary who has betrayed (perhaps not intentionally) a set of kingpins collectively known as The Seven. Lynch is assigned by the Seven to get you out of prison precisely to recover that thing that you stole, otherwise your family gets it. It turns out that Lynch is a semi-psychopath who goes postal when he's off his meds. You play a squad-based shooter that starts out with just Lynch in search of the precious stolen artifact. When Lynch, in a bank robbery kills dozens of hostages, you realize that you will both be hunted to death.

It turns out that Lynch may not always listen to your commands, and you discover exactly how creepy he is as time goes by. You pick up various henchmen and find that they have personality conflicts as well. The them of Kane & Lynch is loyalty and betrayal, and at any time, the smoothness of the narrative gets interrupted by somebody hesitating and not obeying your commands.

That's bad enough because Kane & Lynch is a very ambitious game with partially destructible environments (a la Black, a la Matrix movie lobby scene with the exploding tile columns), a cover system and squad commands. None of which work as nicely as any of the Tom Clancy titles (Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon). The controls are somewhat awkward  - it's sloppier than

Viguerie's Numbers

CPAC folks were asked what they would do it McCain wins the nomination:

           299      29.9%  “strongly support McCain”

            279      27.9%  “I will vote for McCain, but do not expect to work or contribute”

             35       3.5%  “I will vote for the Democratic nominee”

             90       9.0%  “I will vote for a conservative third party candidate if one is on

                                     the ballot in my state”

             40       4.0%  “I will not vote”

            257      25.7%  “I am undecided at this time—I need to see if Senator McCain

                                     reaches out to conservatives in a serious and meaningful way”

 

            “From these results, it is clear that Senator McCain has a challenge in gaining the conservative support he needs in order to win the general election,” says David Franke of ConservativeHQ.com. “Only 3 in 10 conservative activists strongly support him. Even if you add in the people who will limit their activity to voting for him, and all of the undecided conservatives (not likely), he will have only 83.5% of the conservative vote. Historically, the Republican presidential candidate needs more than 80% of the conservative vote in order to win. The poll results show he can possibly reach that level of conservative support, but it will be dauntingly hard.”

So he's got better than half the CPAC vote, but perhaps not their money, nor their spirit. Will 50% be enough? I think so and I'm happy for the clarity in difference. I am pleased that McCain is not sucking up but clarifying his positions in order for respectful disagreement. Again I note that McCain-Kennedy was subjected to the will of the people through Congress and that is the thing that made McCain change his tune - not the love-hate relationship with think tanks and activist groups.

About That Black President Thing

Why exactly do you think it was that Bill Clinton was called 'the first black president'? Who started the idea and how exactly did it catch on? I was thinking about it humorously and then began to wonder if Hillary Clinton herself might actually use the phrase. I can't imagine that she would have the nerve to, but considering the creepiness in her fake black southern accent this poltical season, you never quite know.

I found the following text from 1998 about Bill Clinton as 'the first black president' from the NYT. I cannot help but think that the characterization and its explanation are embarrassingly shallow:

'What he has been able to project, unlike any other President in recent memory, is that he is completely and totally comfortable with black Americans,'' said George C. Wolfe, producer of the Joseph Papp Public Theater-New York Shakespeare Festival. ''It is not something that had to be negotiated or learned.''

The Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, the recently retired president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said he knew perfectly well why black Americans were more forgiving of Mr. Clinton's transgressions than white Americans.

''It's the saxophone,'' Mr. Lowery said, with an impish sound in his voice. ''The man has soul.''

Most minorities clearly admire the President's defense of affirmative action, his appointments of black officials and judges and his eagerness to confront racism. But their support for him is not simply a reflection of loyalty and political self-interest. It is also the product of distinct cultural traits born of the black experience in the United States, including a broad distrust of prosecutors, an instinctive empathy for the persecuted and a spiritual emphasis on forgiveness and redemption, many African-Americans said.

Mr. Rock, the hot young comedian, goes so far as to describe Mr. Clinton as ''the first black President'' because, he said, his every move is scrutinized. ''He got his hair cut for $200 and people lost their minds,'' Mr. Rock said in his trademark screech. ''It's very simple. Black people are used to being persecuted. Hence, they relate to Clinton.''

Alvin F. Poussaint, a black professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said some minorities were so aware of Mr. Clinton's seeming affinity with black people that ''they circulate rumors that he must have had black ancestry.'' And in a poll last year, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found that Mr. Clinton was more popular among blacks than either Mr. Jackson or Gen. Colin L. Powell, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

What's more, many of those interviewed said they not only subscribed to Hillary Rodham Clinton's statement that a ''vast right-wing conspiracy'' had been directed against her husband but also that they believed the conspirators were motivated by a desire to reverse the gains made by blacks during the Clinton Administration.

''You just can't help but think that some of this is race-based,'' said Mr. Bond. ''In civil rights terms, this guy's a liberal, and there's a part of the body politic that just can't stand this. They have been determined to bring him down from the very first.''

Super Tuesday Barbershop

Cool beans.

A little irony noted in retrospect that Obama supporters think that racist Americans are more likely to take a shot a Obama because he's black, than AQ is going to take a shot at American because they are Americans.

 

Randal Simmons

The LA Daily News reports on the death of SWAT Officer Randal Simmons:

If I had a kid and he told me he wanted to be an officer, I would have told him this is someone you should aspire to be like," said LAPD Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell, who knew Simmons for 15 years.

"He was the consummate SWAT officer."    

A minister, the 51-year-old Simmons was affectionately called "The Deacon" by fellow officers.    

Born in San Bernardino, he worked in the LAPD for 27 years and was shot in the line of duty early in his career.    

He was often seen playing basketball in the front yard of his Rancho Palos Verdes home, or jogging through the neighborhood.    

"I couldn't believe it when I saw it," neighbor Mary Bobic said. "When I saw his picture, I said, `Oh, my God!' I told my husband. He said, `He's a good man."'

Simmons' father was in the Air Force, and the family lived in Germany and Long Island, N.Y., for a time before relocating to Southern California, said his sister, Valjean Adams of Winona, Minn.    

He graduated from Fairfax High School, Adams said, and was a standout athlete who played football at Washington State University, where there was a moment of silence for him Thursday night before the basketball game against UCLA. He had a tryout with the Dallas Cowboys, but didn't quite make it.

Helping youths    

While Simmons' weekdays were consumed primarily by police work, his weekends were dedicated to helping youths in seven South Los Angeles housing projects as a minister for the Glory Christian Fellowship church in Carson.

When he wasn't doing that, he was coaching his son's football team.    

What Free Societies Generate

When I found this video over at Emergent Chaos I was shocked a bit at how familiar the moves are. I think history will show that Michael Jackson's Thriller video, along with the introduction of the Mac 1984 commercial are going to be recalled as some of the greatest cultural icons of our generation, indeed of our age. Moreover, replications of the dance, which are much more likely to happen than replications of the hammer throw in the Mac commercial, may very well be another signature of our age.

This morning I happened upon dueling videos by 'youth' talking heads. I have to admit that it was one of the saddest things I've seen in a long time. I'm more dispirited by the picking up of these cudgels by America's youth than I am about medical marijuana. It's not that I find political engagement by young people to be creepy, but that they do it so identically to the cynical bastards already on TV and in the blogosphere. The young woman from the Progressive end was clearly envious of other talking heads who got a headstart on campus: like Dinesh D Sousa and Laura Ingraham. What? There is nothing so pathetic and transparent as the honest pursuit of mediocrity. The spud Republican was no better - peppering his high pitched monologue with a weird New Jersey accent and words like 'hype' and speaking of the values of churchgoing and soldiering. Why not just have Spongebob do it? It was totally icky in an unfunny way.

As I drove Sprite to school, it occurred to me that the WHAT of society never changes. One of the whats of society is confusion which is permanent too, but primarily constructive human activity is all pretty much the same over our history. What makes us interesting is the HOW. The substance of meaning is always the same for human life, but in the discovery process lies the uncommon beauty. That is why dancers who replicate Michael Jackson on a subway get applause and why mini-me political commentators with professionally produced YouTube videos are nauseating.

We are, in our society, a bit paranoid, for we are under attack and what we ought to be defending isn't clear to a plurality of us. As when I walk with my daughters in unfamiliar places they draw closer to me and walk as I do, youth are following a bit to closely in our footsteps. We aren't giving them what they need to walk on their own and so they are becoming less admirable. A free society generates more confusion because the WHAT of substance doesn't show a HOW of joy, but rather a MUST of fear and duty.

We must endow our society with dance. And there I said 'must', because I too am one of the fearful ones. We generate opportunities to know and enable flavors of HOW when we have confidence. Here's to hoping that confidence is forthcoming.

SEAL Fitness Challenge

Ever wonder how you stack up to America's elite? Take the Navy SEAL Fitness Challenge and see how fit you really are.

The Navy SEAL Fitness Challenge is a series of physical fitness events challenging participants to maximize their performance in individual tests of strength and endurance. It closely mirrors the initial physical screening test given to anyone who desires to become a SEAL.

All competitors will be scored and ranked against each other, with all participants receiving a complimentary commemorative t-shirt and dog tag.

*    *     *

               Standard         Competitive
500yd Swim - 12:30 Minutes     10:00 minutes
Push-Ups          42                 80
Sit-Ups             50                 80
Pull-Ups            6                  11
1.5 Mile Run  11:00 minutes    10:00 minutes

Suspense

Mac's Majority

I tried to get on the Hugh Hewitt show this afternoon in the first hour but that was dedicated to callers who were originally Romney supporters, I guess. So I got screened. The point I wanted to make was simple and I think it should be obvious, and that is that the people have spoken and they ought to get some props for that. What people? That's exactly the question nobody seems to want to talk about - instead we get all this belated hagiography of what a great concession speech Romney made.

Hugh was being gracious to the front-runner and it didn't seem much of a stretch for him to do it, but he reduced McCain's viability down to precisely the single point that Romney conceded to him, the War. I know it's difficult for pundits to back off and give the benefit of the doubt to the herrenvolk, but in this case I think the rank and file Republicans were dead right to give Super Tuesday to McCain.

In many ways, this kind of snubbing is parallel to the kind of Christians that get all of the props by the Conservative Movement are those evangelicals who flock to Dobson and Pat Robertson. I can remember a couple weeks ago when a Right Radio caller asked their conservative host precisely what 'evangelical' meant, as if she thought Born Again Christians were the only kind and that label was a secular pejorative. It took the host several guesses to get around to Catholics were examples of Christians who were not evangelical.  At times it seems that conservative activists believe that to be the case and that the temperament of evangelicals is the only temperament suitable for Republican politics. Similarly they don't seem to recognize those Americans to whom conservative ideas appeal, but who are not driven to zealotry. It doesn't take much zeal to cast a thoughtful vote and Super Tuesday should stand as a reminder that a majority of Republicans have not found the 'true' conservative candidate to their liking. Instead the Republican who doesn't spend his days evangelizing for the conservative movement has Republican America's confidence. This is Mac's Majority.

It is fundamentally impossible to express conservative principles in lockstep, that is because one of the principles is liberty. We cannot be constrained in our passions, and they will find their way out in a million ways - as of Monday, in three major ways. Now it's down to two. Those who fight truly for the principles will recognize what's best is McCain's victory - the majority of Republicans already have, which is why we are where we are today.

Forging together the new face and expression of Mac's Majority is the task at hand. Romney supporters will be here next week. What they will say is that they're holding their nose. When you hold your nose, you cannot be swayed by flavor. The flavor of contenders no longer counts, but rather the nutritious substance of the front-runner and eventual party nominee.

Finished

Three Waterboards

You all now have permission to gnash the rest of your teeth out, but here's the news.

In testimony before Congress on Tuesday, both the CIA Director, General Michael Hayden, and the Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, confirmed that water-boarding was used only on three high-ranking detainees, previously linked to the controversial interrogation technique. They are: Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who led the attack on the USS Cole in 1999; Abu Zubaydah, leader of the foiled "Millenium Plot" aimed at Los Angeles International Airport (and other transportation targets), and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, architect of the 9-11 attacks.

Do I believe this? I give it 80% confidence. It means that whatever else is known, since this is Congressional testimony, it is as well-protected and compartmentalized as can be. Obviously if these two are caught in a lie, it's doomsday. So there was surely more than a cursory investigation into the matter. How could anyone in the interrogations departments not know? I mean you and I both remember when the interrogator interviewed on NPR was talking about stress positions and the naked pyramid.

Now here's something to test your memory, all ye of little faith. Can you recall when it was reported that there was an old man who had come in contact with a hot trunklid of a US military vehicle upon his arrest and detention at Abu Graibh? Of course you do, because you were outraged. Outraged! Well, you were probably right to be outraged because, in light of this testimony, that was about as bad as it got, with these few exceptions.

Anyone who followed the chronicles of Staishu at Patterico's blog understands that interrogations have not been generally harsh. My position is and has been that the US has the right to employ violently stressful techniques of interrogation so long as we keep that Monster on a short leash. I do not consider waterboarding to be torture and I condone its use primarily because I understand it to leave no permanent physical or psychological damage and we apply it to our own soldiers in training.