Pantheon

Pantheon
I remember, back when I was embroiled with the whole discussion about Harry Belafonte accusing Colin Powell of being a house slave, my brother & I bantered back & forth about the need for role models. At the time, I really scoffed at the notion. I couldn't think of any living, breathing person that I'd idolized & tried to emulate as a child (Captain Kirk most certainly didn't count).

But an odd confluence of news helped me to realize that, it wasn't that I didn't have role models, but, in fact, they were so important to me that I'd taken them for granted. They were a part of who I am.

So, after doing a bit of excavation, here are some of my own personal heroes.


Kurt Schmoke
Kurt Schmoke was the first elected Black mayor of my hometown, Baltimore, MD. We'd actually had a Black mayor just prior to Schmoke, namely Clarence "Du" Burns, an old-school veteran of big city machine politics who inherited the job when the current mayor, William Donald Schaffer, became the Governor of Maryland in the middle of his seemingly billionth term. Schmoke, a Yale man (nobody's perfect) and former Rhodes scholar, was intelligent & urbane, a stark contrast to Clarence Burns, who butchered the King's English and barely had a high school education. Needless to say, as a nerdy Black kid in a good old boy school in a crumbling urban city, Mayor Schmoke was an inspiration. He took a real drubbing in the press for advocating the legalization of hardcore drugs, but, given the urban disaster that was the crack epidemic of the late 80's & early '90's, I know the mayor saw what a joke the drug war was. After over a decade in city hall, Mayor Schmoke is now the dean of the law school at Howard University. He's also been rumored to have been seen on the campaign trail with fellow Yale classmate, Howard Dean.

You know I had to work his name in here SOMEWHERE, didn't you?


Kweisi Mfume
OK, so, first, disclaimer: this brother is family. My brother's wife is his cousin and they were raised like siblings. But I doubt he would recognize me outside of the presence of my family.

Having said that, most people know him as the current President of the NAACP, or perhaps as the former head of the Congressional Black Caucus. To me, he was my Congressman. In many ways, Mfume is the exact opposite of Kurt Schmoke. While Schmoke was the golden boy of Baltimore City College, en route to the Ivy League, Mfume was running the streets and staying in trouble under his slave name of Frissel Gray. He eventually found some sense and, apparently, the motherland, at Morgan State before venturing into a career of community activism & politics. My first memory of Mfume was when he ran for congress against St. George Cross, a fatter, shadier, and less-eloquent Baltimore version of Al Sharpton. Cross tried to derail Mfume's campaign by revealing to the public that he had several children out of wedlock. Little did he realize that massive portions of the Baltimore City populace have several children out of wedlock themselves, and they were more offended that Cross thought it was a bad thing. Mfume won in a landslide. If he wanted, he could have become mayor after Schmoke stepped down in a landslide, but he felt his energies were best devoted to a national agenda at the NAACP. Of course, the fact that the NAACP HQ is in Northwest Baltimore probably didn't hurt either. He grew up as a ne're-do-well in a bad neighborhood in a bad city and was able to recontruct himself from the grown up into a titanic figure on the American scene. Mfume, to me, is a living embodiment of what is possible.


Eddie Murray
Baltimore had been a one-sport town years before the Colts left like thieves in the night on a Mayflower moving truck. To put it mildly, they sucked. And, since losing to Broadway Joe & the Jets in 1969, they'd only been back to the Super Bowl once.

In that same stretch of time, the Baltimore Orioles had been to the World Series five times, and won twice. The Orioles ruled the city, and, long before anyone had ever even heard of any of those guys named Ripken, the king of Memorial Stadium was Eddie Murray.

Talk about a black icon. Eddie didn't talk to the press. Eddie didn't smile. He didn't even like it when the crowd went crazy and chanted his name "Ed-die! Ed-die! Ed-die! Ed-die!". The brother just went out there and hit home runs. Just a pissed-off Black man in a tighty-whitey '70's baseball uniform who absolutely did not give a damn that his afro did not fit inside the cap with the cartoon bird on it. What, you got something to say? I didn't think so. Man, when I was 10 years old, watching the O's smack around the Phillies in the Fall Classic, Eddie was better than Shaft in Africa.


Benjamin Banneker
I pretty much summed up my feelings about Benjamin Banneker in an old Macroscope post entitled "The Brother Who Trumped Einstein". But, just for the whirlwind version: Banneker was a free black farmer in a slave state a century before the Civil War who taught himself mathematics so that he was able to public his own almanacs, predict a theory that, in many was, was a precursor to special relativity, do the surveying & design of Washington D.C., and even attempted to predict his own death. I was a little black boy in a Gifted & Talented Math program in the same slave state when I read this. I LOVED this man.

Kicking Ass

Kicking Ass
I can't make this stuff up. After receiving a second mail from the Republican National Committee asking for my support (no, I have never voted for nor registered as a Republican), I decided to see what my silent friends the Democrats were up to, and maybe encourage them to try some direct marketing to their constituency instead of sitting on their, er, ass. So I get to the web site at www.democrats.org and I see that the Democrats have started a blog called. . . Kicking Ass. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I do know I'm annoyed by the fact that between me one of my friends in particular, we have been contacted approximately 7 times by the Republican party and not once by the Democrats. You want me? Don't count on my black-ness or my labor-ness or my liberal-ness. Come get me. That's what Dean's doing.

-C. G. Brown

SOMEONE PLEASE SHUT HIM UP!
So, any true fan of Ian Fleming's seminal superspy knows that James Bond's cover when he travels around the world is that he's a business executive for Universal Exports, a fictitious company that serves as a front for Her Majesty's Secret Service.

In the same vein, Joseph Wilson's wife, a real-life intelligence agent under non-official cover, used to travel on missions regarding WMDs under the cover of being an energy expert in the employ of a company without a real office or telephone - i.e. a facade to hide her real employers, the C.I.A.

Now, why do I know about this?

BECAUSE ROBERT NOVAK NAMED THE FREAKING COMPANY ON CNN!

Novak, in an attempt to prove that this whole scandal is just a left-wing witchhunt, looked up the Wilson's political contributions, and saw that Wilson's wife gave to Gore's 2000 campaign under the name of said company. Novak went on to say that, since it wasn't a real company, she clearly wasn't undercover because, as far as he knew, they're not supposed to give the names of a false employer.

So, now, the North Korean, Iranian, Pakistani, and Libyan intelligence services can see if there were any other American citizens doing business in their countries for this company and can reasonably assume than those people are CIA operatives and any natives associated with them are probably spies for the Americans. Those agents will get kicked out, and those people will be killed. And the CIA will have to retire that company front and start a new one.

Is he such a stupid conservative lap dog that he doesn't understand he's jeopardizing national security every time he opens his mouth?!?!?!

Arnold Unplugged - It's hasta la vista to $9 billion if the Governator is selected

The New Puppet
For those of you who are considering voting for Arnold Schwarzenegger next Tuesday, consider this:

Gray Davis is trying to get the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to force Enron and the other power companies to give back to California the $9 billion dollars they sucked out of the state during the energy crisis. And Cruz Bustamante is the plantiff in a lawsuit against Enron for the same debacle. Also for $9 billion dollars.

In May of 2001, one month after Bustamante's suit was introduced into the courts, Arnold had a meeting with Ken Lay, the CEO of Enron, here in Los Angeles.

Did I mention that next year's budget shortfall in California is expected to be about $8 billion dollars?

So, since the governor & the lt. governor are the the guys making all the noise about the energy crisis, Bush's people at FERC are pushing for an out-of-court settlement for roughly a 3rd of the money they stole from the state.

Gray Davis won't go for it. Suddenly, there's a campaign to recall Davis.

Cruz Bustamante won't go for it. Suddenly, Bustamante is being smeared for taking money from Native Americans.

But everyone who's at least read this far has to know that Arnold is going to go for it, hook line and sinker. They make him governor, he OK's the theft of $9 billion dollars from the State of California.

PLEASE read this article by Greg Palast.

And then, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE vote NO on the Recall.

Fiscal Doomsday in the Offing (washingtonpost.com)

That's not the horizon ahead.....
David Broder is a syndicated political columnist for the Washington Post, and, as far as pundits go, he's pretty tame. I think he's just to old & conservative to get too partisan in either direction. I tend to read him when I want to get the voice of reason's perspective.

And now, even Broder is saying that Bush's tax policy has engineered a time bomb in the American economy that's going to go off a decade from now. Quoting a consortium of three bi-partisan economic research groups, Broder states:

if current policies remain, balancing the budget by 2013 will require raising individual and corporate income taxes by 27 percent, cutting Social Security by 60 percent, cutting defense by 73 percent or cutting all programs -- except defense, homeland security, Social Security and Medicare -- by 40 percent.

Fresh Air: Friday - October 3, 2003

The Other Side
Grover Norquist is the head of Americans for Tax Reform, and organization that, as you might have guessed, thinks we pay too much in taxes and devotes tons of time, money, & influence to reduce the Federal tax rates.

Grover Norquist has also said he really wants to reduce the size of government until it's small enough to, "drown in the bathtub".

Hmmn.

Norquist is, in many ways, the mastermind behind the Bush tax policy.

Here, in an interview he conducted on NPR this week, Norquist states such gems as
the American people and The Government are two separate and antagonist entities. I guess he missed that whole "of the people, by the people, for the people" business, huh?

I'm always a little scared of really rich guys who think the government does too much. I wonder what's illegal now that Grover & his buddies really want to do. Paul Krugman seems to have an idea, and it's not pretty.

Who's Sordid Now?

Feeding Frenzy
So, the President wants $87 Billion dollars to rebuild Iraq.

But what does that money actually pay for?

Sure, most if it is intended to go for military operations and such, but, as many of you know, an enormous chunk of military operations and services in the field are now being handled by private companies.

Companies like Bechtel & Haliburton. Companies that got contracts that were not submitted to the public for competitive bids, which basically means these company's get to charge the Pentagon as if they were a monopoly power.

How much do you think this bag of money Bush could be shrink if other firms were allowed to challenge Haliburton?

And let's not even get into the Iraq reconstruction budget. Consider this: An Arabic cell phone company set up towers in Iraq after Bagdad fell. They actually had the phones working for a while. Then Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority kicked them out and offered Iraq' cell phone market to Worldcom without a competitive bid.

Excuse me, that's right. Worldcom. As in "Biggest Bankruptcy As A Result of Corporate Malfeasance In History" Worldcom. Or, more importantly, "Has No Experience Setting Up A Wireless Network, Let Alone In A War Ravaged Country" Worldcom.

Talk about "transfer of wealth".

National Security? Reshaping the Middle East? Yeah, right. This whole thing is the biggest f'n boondoogle the world's ever seen.

United Press International: Coalition losing war for Iraqi arms

Dealing In Lead
Part of the problem with Iraq is that it's one of the most heavily armed countries in the world. And I'm not talking about Scuds and WMDs. I mean everybody and their grandma has at least an AK-47, and more than a few people have a working knowledge of explosives and small ordinance.

In response, the US Military and the Coalition Provisional Authority have initiated a sort of Iraqi gun buy-back program to try to make the streets safer.

The only problem is, Saddam's agents, the foreign terrorists, and all the international gun runners who flocked to Iraq once Bagdad collapsed all offer more money for these weapons to the civilians than the Americans are offering.

So the resistance stays heavily armed, in part, because the bad guys are out-bidding the U.S.

This would almost be laughable if it wasn't for the stench of dead bodies that permeates every strand of news that comes out of that country.

Fingerprints
So, as the President's situation grows increasingly tenuous, I've found myself "digging in the crates", so to speak, pulling all sorts of goodies out of the Macroscope archives that now have relevance in today's climate.

Case in point, last December, I made a post entitled "The Man Behind The Curtain", about an Esquire article by Ron Susskind that gives the skinny on Karl Rove, the President's Svengali. At the time, I just wanted to point out what a ruthless and scary guy Rove had managed to become without an actual official job in the White House. But, lo and behold, after scanning the Howard Dean blog, I came across this little quote in that December article:

Sources close to the former president say Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush presidential campaign after he planted a negative story with columnist Robert Novak about dissatisfaction with campaign fundraising chief and Bush loyalist Robert Mosbacher Jr. It was smoked out, and he was summarily ousted.

Hmn.

Karl Rove.

Robert Novak.

Planted negative story.
Where have I heard THAT before?

CIA seeks probe of White House

Catching Up
Months back, in a post entitled "The Plumbers Would Be Proud", I talked about how Joseph Wilson, the last US ambassador to Iraq (who was decorated with, I believe, the congressional medal or honor or something like that for giving people refuge inside the US embassy during the Gulf War) was sent by the White House to confirm the "Iraq bought Uranium from Niger" claims. He told them it was bogus back in 2002, and when Bush & Co. tried to say they didn't know better, Wilson went public and said that he'd told them it was bogus. Well, not long after that, SOMEBODY in the White House told Robert Novak of the Chicago Sun-Times that Wilson's wife was an undercover CIA agent specializing in WMDs, and Novak printed as much in his column.

In other words, the White House blew the cover of one of our own agents to get back at her husband.

Well, now, it looks like George Tenet and the CIA have had enough. According to this MSNBC article, they're asking the Justice Department to investigate exactly who did the outing, because, my friends, that is a violation of at least two Federal laws.

Once again, the only reason I know about this is because Howard Dean made a statement about it today. But mark my words, Dean's on Face the Nation tomorrow morning and this is going to be all over the news come Monday.

This is going to be huge. To quote Joseph Wilson "I hope to see Karl Rove lead out of the White House in handcuffs."

Balance Sheets
As part of the $87 billion dollars they want to spend in Iraq, the White House is planning to devote $878 million towards providing health care to needy Iraqis.

Uhm. I'd like to point out that there are something like several million AMERICCAN citizens without health care.

This is just one of the many obscene disparities present in Bush's current policies, as outlined here by the Washington Post.

Quote of the Day

“A true Patriot Act is not born out of fear, but out of trust; it is not born out of division, but out of community; it is not born out of suspicion, but out of faith in each of us."

- Howard Dean, at a rally today in Boston, in a speech entitled "Democracy, Freedom, Action".

Hate for Hate's Sake
OK, I admit it.

I hate George W. Bush. He's a liar and an elitist who has tricked the majority of Americans into thinking he has their best interests in mind when he's really raiding the fortunes & prestige of this country to line the pockets of the richest 1% of the population while wrapping himself in a false cloak of Christian piety.

I know lots of people on the opposite side of the political spectrum hate Bill Clinton. They think he's a liar and an elitist who had tricked the majority of Americans into thinking he has their best interests in mind he's really giving their hard earned money away to people who don't deserve it while simultaneously receiving adulterous oral sex.

See how, in this article from the New Republic, why we all hate at least one of these guys, although some hate is more legitimate than others.

The Bad Guy Returns
I don't think I fully appreciated the phenomenon that is the 1983 remake of Scarface, written by Oliver Stone and directed by Brian DePalma, until I went to see it on the big screen.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the film's release, so Universal & Focus Features is releasing a special edition DVD and a digitally remastered 35 mm print of the film in select theatres around the country. Here in L.A., it's playing for a few more days as the late show at the Cinerama Dome (imagine sitting inside a golf-ball the size of a small stadium, with a curved, three pane movie screen) at Arclight Cinemas.

Now, I've seen the movie before, and I love it, but I hadn't seen it with a crowd before. Last Saturday night, waiting in this sea of predominantly Latino teenagers & Gen-Xers, where an usher only allowed a handful of people into the theatre at the time, where LOTS of these kids wore Scarface T-shirts (mind you, most of them where only a couple of years older than the movie itself), I really felt like I was going to an Al Pacino rock concert. It was surreal.

I overheard one guy say to his girlfriend, "Aww, see! I knew I should have worn my Scarface shirt. Or at least the black one."

"At least the black one."

Everytime I see a show like Cribs go behind the scenes in the home of some rapper or Black pro athlete, the ALL have at least one picture of Tony Montana on the wall.

But, underneath the drugs and the violence and the rediculous financial excess of the film, there is a fundamental statement about the American dream, and it's deeply cynical.

Or, to quote Scarface himself, after he's finally acquired the outrageous wealth that he craves:

"Is this all there is? Eating? Drinking? Fucking? Sucking? Your 50. You got a bag for a belly. You got tits, that need a bra, they got hair on 'em. You got a liver, with spots all over it, and your eatin' dis fuckin' shit and lookin' like these fuckin' rich mummies...."

Something Tony never understood until the very end: Money does not necessarily guarantee you power. Observe Microsoft.

Anyway, this NY Times article touches a little bit on the pervasiveness of this film in hip-hop culture, which has it's own problems with capitalist excess.

Personally, I just wanted an excuse to put a picture of Tony Montana up on my blog. Guilty as charged.

Let 'Em Loose

They Only Want Me For My...


Fancy that my first contribution to Macroscope has something to do with the aesthetics and iconography of that classic figure from black culture...the pimp. Perhaps I'm late into this game, but I only recently heard of this new venture of Nelly's. Pimp Juice. And I must admit that I have mixed feelings about it.

Just to rewind things a bit here, I suppose I should first acknowledge my mixed feelings about Nelly in general. When he first came on the scene with "Country Grammar", I didn't really have strong feelings either way, and was as likely as anyone else to turn up the car radio a bit when it came on. Of course, with subsequent offerings like "#1", I began to feel like he was just a little too comfortable with his "pop" location in the mix of things for me to personally stomach. Then, I heard "Pimp Juice". And man...I loved it. There may be a host of reasons why...personal issues at the time, a funky guitar riff in the hook that I could really get my mind into, whatever. But if nothing else, it at the very least got me to publicly stop hating on this cat, and allow him to comfortably settle somewhere into my landscape of black culture.

So, when I heard that an "energy drink" was being marketed under the name Pimp Juice, I didn't quite know how to react, particularly in the context of my mixed feelings about it's front man. My first reaction was to be upset about yet further appropriation of cultural iconography by, well, the Man.

But then, I began to read the criticism of Pimp Juice from what I guess is the official Anti-Pimp Juice-Brigade. Featuring the likes of such notables as Clarence Page (okay, maybe that was just hateful...read up on Mr. Page and draw your own conclusions). And now I'm quite confusedly caught up trying to decide whether my enemy's enemy is my friend. Because on the one hand, I'm not quite sure that I like the undertones of why a large commercial beverage concern would want to use the imagery of a black pimp to sell products to black people. But on the other hand, the religious right is almost always wrong (as far as I'm concerned) on these type of issues. Which isn't to say that there are some valid points on their side of the argument. Women being physically, sexually and emotionally abused by pimps (or men responding to some sort of pimp-influenced masculinity) is surely not a good thing. And alcoholism (brushing aside the minor point that Pimp Juice isn't actually an acloholic beverage for a moment) is certainly a problem in the black community.

But is there any denying that the figure of the pimp is deeply intertwined with whatever black masculinity is? Not to say that it's defining of black masculinity, but in some sense, should not the pimp be regarded in the same way as the jazz musician, the athlete, and the rapper? Complicated for sure, certainly reactionary in part, but subversive in the context of a would-be hegemonic white-masculine power structure nonetheless. And not to give Nelly too much credit for this, but did anyone actually listen to the lyrics of the original song? Sure, they don't totally make sense, but it should be plain to the casual observer that the figure of the pimp embedded in these words is somewhat more nuanced than the one that his critics are reacting against.

Which brings me back to my point of departure. Perhaps I'm overidentifying with Nelly here (g-d forbid), but it seems to me that in some sense this is a microcosm of the struggle to define a black masculine identity. On the one had you have a (presumably?) largely white economic interest trying to market black male identity in a somewhat irresponsible way. And on the other you have a reactionary element of the black community struggling so hard to prove that they're not different that they miss the opportunity to define themselves. And in the middle you have the one creative person in the mix, who (though he quite possibly does not) might actually have something new and interesting to say.

Let 'em loose.

Headshaking Colloquy of the Day

"Do you know, Charlie, why we're hated so much?"

"I really don't know, Mr. President"

"Because they're evil, Charlie. Because they're evil."

- George W. Bush and Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY). Rangel has been trying to introduce legislation to re-instate the draft, under the assumption that the President & Co. will be less eager to send their own children to go get the evildoers and maybe put a little more thought into this thing.

And the moral of this story? "It's easy to be a crusader when your blood isn't being shed."

Incidentally, Rangel, a decorated Korean War vet, is a strong supporter of Wesley Clark for President.

Soft Light
This came to my attention through Warren Ellis's mailing list, Bad Signal
A Softer World is a series of poems set to pictures from a couple in the UK, and I think every single one of these has it's own exquisite beauty. Enjoy.

Playing To Win
Howard Dean wants to raise $5 million in the next 10 days.

For just a little perspective, consider this: Dean raised a total of $7 million for the entire 2nd quarter of 2003.

Now, I could rattle off a bunch of statistics on how many online supporters Dean has in his rolodex (412,000 at last count), or in how many states he's leading in the polls (such as Iowa & New Hampshire), or how many other candidates are so scared of Dean that he's the only one who's taken significant fire in the debates (Dick Gephardt has an entire website, Dean Facts, devoted to cutting on Dean. Doesn't he have better ways to spend his time, like explaining how he lead congressional Democrats to vote for the Iraq war resolution that he now calls a miserable failure? But I digress...).

Instead, I'm going to tell you why I'M supporting Howard Dean.

I hate sacred cows.

But I hate their worshippers even more.

One of my all time favorite basketball players was John Starks when he played for the New York Knicks. During their heyday in the early to mid '90's, the rough & tumble Knicks of Charles Oakley, Patrick Ewing, Anthony Mason and the like had legendary battles with Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls. What I loved about the Knicks, and Starks in particular, was that they had absolutely no respect for Jordan. Yes, MJ is probably the greatest player in the history of the NBA. But, everybody in the league just rolled over for him. Bowed down to him. Couldn't wait to be in a poster where he dunked on them.

And I always used to say to myself, "Are the other guys in this league trying to win the F'n championship or not?!?!?" Why not just hand the goddamn trophy to Jordan at the beginning of the season? Players, coaches, commentators. They all treated Jordan like he was about to turn water into wine.

All except The Knicks. The Knicks wanted the championship and were absolutely not going to play dead for the Bulls. And every playoff series, Starks drew the awful task of guarding against Jordan. Did Starks make excuses? Did he play back on his heels and give Jordan respect?

No. He dunked on Jordan's neck and said "Fuck you! I want to be the champion, motherfucker!"



Starks wanted to win. And he played like it.

Now if only Charles Smith had that same attitude. But that's a different discussion.

George W. Bush has pulled the Democratic Party's punk card for almost 3 years. He's made people ashamed of wanting things like support for the working poor, respect for the bill of rights, international sovereignty & cooperation, fiscal responsibility, and the like. The whole party has been cowering the corner, afraid to face the electorate with what they really believe. Afraid to even face their own constituents on what they're even fighting for.

Case in point: Gephardt, John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, and John Edwards all voted for the Iraq war resolution. And, except for possibly Lieberman, they all did it because they were scared. And these people actually expect me to vote for them as my leader?

And Wesley Clark? Let's just say that asking for your mommy in the middle of a press briefing doesn't exactly give me confidence either, Mr. Supreme Commander.

And let's be honest: the other folks in the race are NOT running for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.
Bob Graham is running for Vice-President.
Carol Mosley-Braun is running for Governor of Illinois.
Al Sharpton is running for Jesse Jackson's job (whatever that is).
Dennis Kucinich running for the Green Party or Reform Party nomination (watch what I tell you. This guy is not going away...)

Dean is the ONLY candidate who has stood up to Bush from the very beginning. In an article in the Boston Globe, he told a close friend that he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he didn't run. Dean is the ONLY candidate who's taken a stand on principles, taken the slings & arrows, and still managed to avoid personal attacks on his opponents. Dean is the ONLY candidate who's not only asking to restore the sense of community in this country, he's actively recruited his supporters to engage directly in the country's problems without even being in office.

Dean wants the America we dream about. And he's not afraid to say so.

And that means, when it comes to George W. Bush, you call a spade "a spade".

Personally, I'm relishing the idea of a Dean/Bush debate. Because there is eventually going to be a point where they will say two things that are mutually exclusive. Bush's version of what's happened in America since 2000 simply cannot co-exist with Dean's version.

At some point in that debate, it will be undeniable that ONE of them is lying.

And then the real fun begins.

Now, if you like what's happened since the 2000 election, go ahead and support the President. You may also want to cash in all your saving & treasury bonds while you're at it, because, if the government finances continue on the same path, those things won't be worth the paper their printed on.

But if you want a better country, the country we all THOUGHT we were living in, can I suggest giving a few dollars to Dean for America?

Doomed To Repetition
Max Cleland is a Vietnam war veteran who lost both legs and an arm as a result of that conflict.

He also was, up until the 2002 election, a U.S. senator from Georgia. Needless to say, Vietnam is a living, breathing memory for him each and every day of his life, so it was with great conviction that he voted against authorizing the President to use military force against Iraq.

Cleland's opponent in the election, Saxby Chambliss, the President's hand-picked candidate, ran a campaign where they painted this man who gave 3 out of 4 limbs for his country as a coward and a traitor for not supporting the Iraq war resolution.

Cleland lost by 7%.

Supporters of Wesley Clark, take note. Your candidates credentials are not necessarily enough to drown out the lies.

In this op-ed Cleland wrote for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he draws a direct line between Donald Rumsfeld and Robert MacNamara, LBJ's Secretary of Defense who lobbied the President to follow a policy that led to the needless deaths of hundreds of American soldiers. My brother, a solid Republican military guy, says MacNamara should burn in Hell for what he did. And he's not too keen on Rumsfeld either.

Supports of President Bush, take note: Don't assume the Army will let your President needlessly march them to their deaths and still vote for him in droves by absentee ballot next year.

Ultimately, Cleland's predicament drives home a point about Vietnam. The military learned their lessons there all too well. Vets as diverse as Wesley Clark, Colin Powell, John Kerry, Anthony Zinni, & Cleland have all voiced various levels of opposition to the way Iraq was handled. Only the draft dodgers like Bush, Cheney, Rumfeld, Wolfowitz, etc. who want to prove how tough they are without firing a shot themselves are all pumped up to "bring it on".

Repugnant.

Revolution

So, you've heard me mention Paul Krugman, New York Times economic columnist, on more than one occasion. I just recently learned that he's also on faculty at dear Old Nassau, which, of course, is instant brownie points in my book.

He's a very precise and consistant critic of the insanity of the Bush fiscal policy (see previous Macroscope posts "Turning Back The Clock" and "Great Expectations")

There were two things in this article from the Guardian about Krugman himself that really caught my attention:

1. Krugman has been receiving death threats for his criticism of President Bush.

And I thought for a moment: have I ever heard of anyone on the right receiving death threats for criticizing, for instance, Bill Clinton? I mean, Clinton has a very deep reservoir of love and good will among his constituents, but I've never, ever heard of anyone who was willing to even suggest they would hurt someone for talking bad about him.

Who are these people who love George Bush so much that they would threaten death if you dare impune his character? See, this is the part of American politics that I find the most disturbing. Sure, we can all talk about the importance of voting and going to rallies and wearing butttons and contributing money (see above) to support parties & platforms & politicians. But it's all predicated on the assumption that we're all playing by the same rules.

We've forgotten that there was a time that people not unlike yours truly were abducted, beaten, mutilated, killed, and hung from a tree like a f'n pinata for trying to vote. Those kinds of things didn't happen that long ago, and alot of the people who did that are still alive & kicking. They have friends. They have money. They have an agenda. And, most importantly, they are willing to do ANYTHING to get what they want.

I'm reminded of a Watergate retrospective I saw on PBS, where a reporter said he asked Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell if he was willing to commit murder to keep Nixon in office. The guy said he puffed on his pipe, thought about it, and said with a straight face "let me get back to you on that".

I understand crimes of passion. I understand killing out of hunger-induced desperation. I understand revenge. I simply have a hard time fitting my brain around killing innocent strangers for political power. But, as they say, power is it's own narcotic. And, at that point, John Mitchell putting out a hit on someone is the moral equivalent of a crackhead busting you with a pipe to steal your last nickel.

2. Henry Kissinger is an evil genius. And that's not a good thing.

Let's not even get into Christopher Hitchens' book, "The Trial of Henry Kissinger", where the author makes the case that Nixon's former Secretary of State should be tried as a war criminal for, among other things, sabotaging LBJ's peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese to solidify Tricky Dick's position as the only candidate who could end the war in 1968.

But, for his part, Krugman was the most terrified by the seeming prescience showed in the introduction to A World Restored, a history text Kissinger penned in the 1950s. Kissinger referred to Napoleon in 18th & 19th Century France as a revolutionary power that fundamentally rejected the basic tenants of the stable system the dictator sought to control. But Napoleon's greatest advantage was that no one in the opposition could ever fully accept that Napoleon wanted to completely undo the system, despite all the evidence to the contrary, until he had actually undone the system.

So, if Hitler is too incendiary a model to use for the way the Bush neo-conservatives are deconstructing America, perhaps a 200 year old French dictator is, ironically, more appropriate.

Mightier Than Swords
The Writers Guild of America is launching an ad campaign to promote the roles of screenwriters as the well-spring of the great stories of our time. So, here's my contribution to the effort. Free ad space for the guild. Everybody gives directors credit for creating the films, but, if you think about it for a moment, the directors, the cast, the crew, the producers, were all originally inspired by the work of us screenwrights. Every movie starts as a blank page under a waiting pen.

And, just to drive the point home, here are the screenwriters credited for the top movies at the box office last weekend:

written by Robert Rodriguez

screenplay by Nicholas Griffin & Ted Griffin
based on the book by Eric Garcia

story by Eli Roth
written by Eli Roth and Randy Pearlstein

written by Fred Wolf & David Spade

So the next time you go to the cinema, take a moment to check out whp gets the writing credit. Over time, when you start seeing names repeated, you might just find a pattern. Who knows how many of your favorite movies are all written by the same people?

Clarifying Quote of the Day

"We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th."

- George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States, on September 17th, 2003.

There you have it. Straight from the horse's mouth.

Forfeiting the Fourth Estate
Christianne Amanpour, CNN's go-to Mid East correspondent, says that the American media was too intimidated by the Bush war machine to be truly critical of the war in Iraq.

And in other news, water is wet.

Counting Cards
So, I recently had a conversation with a friend about voting booths. Ever since the Florida fiasco in 2000, everyone's all fired up about how bad punch card ballots are. So, there's a big push for electronic voting, in all it's various shapes and forms (internet voting, touch pad voting, etc.).

As a former techie, I'd like to give you all a cold slap of conspiracy-laden reality:

It is FAR easier to rig an election when the votes are only stored in the memory of a computer program, instead of on a physical, certified piece of paper.

Quite honestly, the employees of any company that provides hardware or software for electronic voting machines should be subjected to the utmost scrutiny. Heaven forbid an unscrupulous politician bribed some poor programmer to build an easter egg into the tabulation modules that guarantees a landslide victory for him with no paper trail.

But I digress. Because, according to David Broder, the Constitution gives the state governments the power to determine how their delegates to the Electoral College should be selected. And it doesn't have to be by a vote of the public. That's why some folks are talking about a constitutional amendment to guarantee all citizens the right to vote.

Yes, that's right. You DO NOT have that now. You vote for President at the pleasure of Gray Davis, George Pataki, Jeb Bush, and the 47 other state governors around the country.

Did I Mention That I Love This Woman?
So my rediculously talented (and mind-numbingly hot) significant other, Miss Kobina Wright, has decided to jump onto the blog bandwagon. Check this site out for regularly scheduled updates from her prolific pen, then go ahead and buy a copy of, Growth Spurt, the 1st book in her three volume set of collected poetry, for $15.00 through PayPal.com, using her e-mail at likizo@hotmail.com.

Needless to say, I get brownie points if you mention Macroscope when you buy one. And, if you're feeling really inspired, ask how to subscribe to her newsletter, too.

Turning Back The Clock
For those of you who have not seen it, the movie Seabiscuit gives one of the starkest portrayals I can remember about the reversal of economic fortunes that occurred as a result of The Great Depression. Early in the film, when horse jockey Red Pollard was still a boy, his family seemed to live the American Dream. Mom, Dad, a bunch of well-bred kids, sitting around a sumptuous dinner table in a nice, affluent house.

When the Depression hits, his parents were left with nothing but the clothes on their backs, warming their hands over fires in steel trashcans, as they tried to find the least objectionable people to at least give their children a roof over their heads.

Families destroyed. Lives ruined. A country full of desperate people willing to do anything to survive. Working slave wages just to get a can of beans.

So, imagine a world without Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment benefits, Medicaid, or even Welfare. A world with a minimum wage that would give an annual salary well below the poverty level. A world without overtime pay. A world where only the affluent can afford health care.

A world populated with desperate people.

Desperate people will work for any price. I guess, in the end, that's the point.

In this article from the New York Times, Paul Krugman studies the motivation behind people like Grover Norquist, who are providing the intellectual muscle behind the Bush tax policy. While Bush himself may actually believe that cutting taxes will someday create more revenue for the government, Norquist & his buddies are trying to engineer a fiscal catastrophy by cutting the funding far below the government's capacity to pay for itself. In their mind, the only alternative will be to cut out all of the social programs that aren't directly tied to military spending & the operations of the government itself.

Let me restate that: these guys want to get rid of the New Deal & the Great Society.

All those programs put in place to provide a safety net for the working class have an enormous bullseye on their backs.

Why on Earth would anyone want to that?

Because desperate people will work below minimum wage.

It's all about lowering the cost of doing business.

Think about that.

He's Batman
They may have finally gotten it right.

First, Warner Bros. hired Christopher Nolan, writer/director of Memento, to direct a brand new Batman movie.

Then they hired David Goyer, the screenwriter of the "Blade" trilogy, to pen the script.

NOW, the final piece of the puzzle: they've cast Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne.


For those of you who don't recognize the name, Christian Bale played the lead, a blood-thirsty, homicidal yuppie with an obsession for physical perfection in "American Psycho" a few years back. You can also see him in the most recent version of Shaft and in Reign of Fire.

My next casting suggestion? Get Guy Pearce as the Joker.

Sharp As A Tack
Can I say, I miss the old-school, fat, medallion-wearing Al Sharpton. If I could find that picture of him in the jogging suit, walking the streets of Harlem, I would have posted it. Straight-up, Ghetto Warrior. I love it.

But, beyond the pompadour, the gut, and the rhetoric, I must admit that I didn't know a whole lot about the details of Al Sharpton's life. But I must admit, Sharpton has been on G.W. Bush's case since Inauguration Day 2001, where he hosted a kind of shadow inauguration in D.C. to condemn the Supreme Court Decision on the 2000 Presidential Election.

Demagogue? Perhaps.

But the brother does say alot that needs to be said, particularly on issues of power, race, & class in America.

Will he be President? Not a chance in Hell.

SHOULD he be President? Not as long as he isn't putting together a serious platform or strategy on how he'll govern. But, to paraphrase what Public Enemy said about Farrakhan, I think we ought to listen to he has to say. Some of it really is gospel.

Kleptocracy
from Dictionary.com:
klep·toc·ra·cy ( P ) Pronunciation Key (klp-tkr-s)
n. pl. klep·toc·ra·cies
A government characterized by rampant greed and corruption.


[Greek kleptein, to steal + -cracy.]

klepto·crat (-t-krt) n.
klepto·cratic adj.

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

While I definitely dig where this article by Jim Hightower in The Nation is coming from, I have one point of contention with him.

In my mind, the idea of America has always been greater and loftier than Americans themselves. Consider the Founding Fathers: the ideals put forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were not really indicative of their lives, given that the vast majority of them where extremely wealthy landowners (or, in some cases, slave-holders). I suppose the trajectory of the American dream is some great asymptotic curve, always reaching for perfection, but never quite reaching it.

Never Let Them See You Sweat
There is a theory arising among weapons experts that Iraq may not have had any WMDs since 1995, but that they defectors who claimed that there were may have been double agents, dispatched by Saddam, to propagate the illusion as a deterrent to his enemies.

And what is the source of this theory? The captured Iraqi scientists & officials that the coalition has been holding for the last 4-5 months.

In an Appearance With Davis, Dean Denounces Recall Effort

You wanna piece of me, Arnold?!?!?!
This picture actually has very little to do with this NY Times article, where Howard Dean officially endorses Gray Davis for the Recall election next month.

But how often do you get to see the Governor of California acting like he's in a John Woo movie?

Oh, yeah, Dean and Davis both say that Karl Rove is the puppet master behind Schwarzenegger, Issa, and the whole recall fiasco.

Please Tell Me We're Not Really This Stupid
OK. Here's a little public service announcement.

This is Saddam Hussein.


This is Osama Bin Laden.


Hussein is the former dictator of Iraq. Bin Laden is the leader of Al Qaeda, an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist network.

Hussein instigated the original Gulf War in 1991 by invading Kuwait while Bin Laden was fighting with the Taliban to assume control of Afganistan after the Soviet retreat.

Notice how these are two completely different people.

Now, listen very, very carefully.

Bin Laden masterminded the attacks of September 11, 2001. Saddam Hussein did not.

They are not allies. As a matter of fact, they hate each other's guts. Bin Laden has spoken at length about the decadence of Iraq's secular society. And Hussein has slaughtered Shiite Muslims, those who share Bin Laden's faith, by the tens of thousands.

Why is this concept so hard for the American people to grasp?
I don't know, but, according to this Washington Post article, a majority of Americans STILL think Hussein was involved in 9/11.

Come on, America. I'm trying to give y'all the benefit of the doubt. Work with me, people.