The Taste of Crow
Bill O'Reilly admits that maybe, just maybe, Bush was wrong about that whole "Iraqi WMDs" thing.

Boy, who knew that ice could form this quickly in Hell?

"I'm Out!"
Randall Robinson, founder of the multicultural advocacy group TransAfrica and outspoken activist in support of heavy duty issues of racial justice like slavery reparations and corporate hegemony in the African continent, has, quite frankly, had enough of your shit, America.

And, with that, he is Quitting America, as he describes in his new book (which you can buy for yourself by clicking the nifty red text). "Quitting" as in, leaving for the greener pastures of his wife's native St. Kitts, much like W.E.B. DuBois broke out on the U.S. of A. for Ghana after nearly a 100 years of trying to tell white people about themselves.

Quite honestly, I can't say I blame either of them. There are days when Toronto sounds real appealing.

But, personally, I don't think he should give the Powers-That-Be the satisfaction of running him out of town. Africa may be where our roots are, but America is our country. After all, we built this crap with our bare hands. I'll be damned if I let somebody exploit me and then tell me to get out. How about "kiss my ass"? How does that work for you, Mr. Powers-That-Be?

I'm reminded of Cedric the Entertainer in The Original Kings of Comedy:
"White people think they're just gonna leave us all back here. If y'all go to the moon, damnit, WE ARE GOIN' TO THE MOON."

ABC apologizes. Dean says "Thanks for nothing, jerks!"
ABC & Diane Sawyer finally admit that not only was Dean's scream taken out of context when they played it a billion times last month, but it was also played without the benefit of the deafening roar of 3500 people in the room with Dean at the same time. Could it be that he was actually trying to talk loud enough just so he could be heard?

No, of course not. Dean's a dangerous loon who can't be trusted with our national security. Who knows what that nut job might do? He might, oh, I dunno, INVADE A COUNTRY FOR NO GOOD REASON.

Yeah, right.

Bloodline
Did you know that John Hinckley Sr., the father of the man who shot Reagan within a month of the Gipper's inauguration, was one of the biggest contributors to George H.W. Bush's first presidential campaign back in 1980?

Bush lost the G.O.P. nomination that year, of course, to Reagan and was forced to sign on as Reagan's V.P. Bush was the establishment candidate and many thought that Reagan's excessively partisan stances made him unelectable.



Sound familiar?

Now, why no one seems to want to report this, who can say. But I have recently found myself wondering "how does a former director of the CIA become the President of the United States"? What campaign, especially in the post-Watergate era, was he expecting to run on?

Anyway, Kevin Phillips was a former Nixon staffer who, surprisingly, has nothing but contempt for his old boss's hand-picked spy chief and his son, our current Chief Executive. Here, in this scathing book, he scrutinizes a laundry list of Bush family atrocities, dating all the way back to the 2nd World War.

Black Power Quote of the Day


"I wrote it as a training manual so that people would do it right."


- Sam Greenlee, referring to his novel, The Spook Who Sat By The Door, in which the first Black man trained as a C.I.A. field operative returns to his native Chicago to train street gangs to become the basis of an underground armed insurgency against the U.S. government.

After years of languishing in bootleg Hell, the film version of the book, directed by Ivan Dixon (whom you may recognize as the brother in "Hogan's Heroes") is now being released as a DVD by Tim Reid's Obsidian Home Entertainment.

Many of you may only remember Tim as Venus Flytrap from "WKRP in Cinncinati", or as Frank in "Frank's Place", but ever since the cancellation of that great show, the brother has been working tireless to build an infrastructure to support thoughtful and original black films. Not only has he stepped behind the camera to direct the films Asunder and Once Upon A Time.... When We Were Colored, but he's also been trying to construct a studio lot in Northern Virgina as an economic development project.

Dixon, who is now enjoying a quiet retirement in Hawaii, also directed the Blaxploitation classic "Trouble Man".

But, in a bit of sad irony, the actor who played the epymonious "Spook", Lawrence Cook, just died on December 27th, 2003, exactly one month before the DVD release of this film.

We'll miss you, brother.


For those of you who've never seen this movie or read this book, I cannot stress enough what a powerful effect it had on me. I saw it for the first time as an undergrad, where it was buried in a nearly forgotten video library in Princeton's late and lamented Third World Center. At the time, the Rodney King verdict and the L.A. riots were still very fresh memories. Hip-hop had yet to turn into the bling-bling pablum pop crap that it's devolved into today. Most of what we were listening to in college hovered somewhere between the consciousness of Digable Planets & A Tribe Called Quest and the absolute unbridled anger of Ice Cube, Onyx, & occasionally Paris. Malcolm X had just come out in theatres. EVERYBODY had some article of clothing with a Kinte pattern.

It's only now, with the decade of hindsight, that I see the early '90's for what it was - a minor rebirth of Black Power among the Talented 10th.

For a bunch of overly educated Black 19-year-olds living literally in the belly of the white establishment beast, the idea of an armed rebellion was more than plausible.

It was intoxicating.

Which only makes me sadder to realize how much of a fad that really was. Three years later, instead of red, black, and green, Black college students all around the country had discovered Tommy Hilfiger, Polo, and the red, white, and blue. The 5% wisdom of the Wu-Tang Clan loses to Puffy Daddy at the Grammys.

And the world has been poorer since.

Somewhere, I think we decided that cash=justice. But I think we've skipped a step in between, where cash must transform into power before justice can roll down like a mighty stream. Folks like Greenlee and Huey and Stokely got the power=justice part, but they also missed the point. Sure, there's power in a shotgun, but the establishment will almost always have better firepower. Something tells me that the real answer lies somewhere between Rockafella and the Black Panthers.....

Vote in The Invisible Primary
It's amazing what you can learn when you start actively participating in a political campaign.

The term "invisible primary" is used among pundits and politicos to describe the chase by political candidates to raise money for their campaigns. The conventional wisdom, of course, has always been that the candidate with the most money almost always wins the party nomination.

Of course, up until this year, I suspect that only a small number of average citizens actually give money to candidates, and, even then, only the extremely wealthy or active, who usually end up maxing out at the $2000 limit.

Of course, Howard Dean has changed alot of that by being the first candidate to really take off from small contributions from a ton of individual donors. Dean's raised roughly $40 million dollars, where the average contribution is something like $80 per person. Part of why this has happened is that he's inspired such a passionate following among the rank & file. The other part is that they've taken advantage of the internet to make it exceedingly easy for anyone with a credit card to contribute to the political process.

And Amazon.com has never met an internet business model they didn't like.

Which is why Amazon is now providing a page where anyone can make any contribution up to $200 for anyone of ALL the registered Presidential candidates. Yes, now, even the crazed Lyndon Larouche supporters can get in on the act.

Needless to say, you all know where I stand on the issue, but far be it from us here at Macroscope to stifle dissent. So, for anyone who's not ready to commit troops and treasure to Dean's crusade here, use the link above to find and support the candidate of your choice. I'd rather that everybody was actively supporting someone than sitting back, just waiting for the 2nd Tuesday in November before they start to think about the future of this country.

Misinterpreted Quote of the Week

[crowd response from 3,500 campaign volunteers, some from as far away as Tokyo, in bold]

"Well, you guys, you have already got the picture here. I was about to say, you know, I'm sure there are some disappointed people here. You know what? You know something? You know something? If you had told us one year ago that we were gonna come in third in Iowa, we would have given anything for that. And you know something? You know something? Not only are we going to New Hamphire, Tom Harkin, we're going to South Carolina, and Oklahoma, and Arizona, and North Dakota, and New Mexico! We're going to California, and Texas, and New York! And then we're going to South Dakota, and Oregon, and Washington, and Michigan! And then we're going to Washington D.C. to take back the White House!

Yeah!!!!

YEEEAAAHHHH!!!!

We will not give up!

Yeah!

We will not give up in New Hampshire!
We will not give up in South Carolina!
We will not give up in Arizona!
Yeah!
Or New Mexico!
Yeah!
Oklahoma!
Yeah!
North Dakota!
Yeah!
Delaware!
Yeah!
Pennsylvania!
Yeah!
Ohio!
Yeah!
Michigan!
Yeah!

We will not quit now or ever! We want our country back for ordinary Americans.

Yeah!!!


I.... and we're gonna .... win in Massachussetts!
And North Carolina!
And Missouri!
And Arkansas!
Yeah!
And Conneticutt!
Yeah!
And New York!
Yeah!
And Ohio!
Yeah!

Let me.... let me... let me.... Wait a minute, wait a minute, waaait a minute. There are some polite things we need to do here. And the first is to thank some people......"

- The entire text of the speech Howard Dean gave to his disgruntled supporters following his third place finish in the Iowa Caucuses last week.

Of course, my transcript can't actually do it justice. If you actually watch the video in the link above, you'll see that it was not a concession, but more like the St. Crispin's Day speech in Shakespeare's Henry V (e.g. "Once more into the breech, dear friends!!!!")

And, consider this: Dean's charm offensive Thursday night, with the help of David Letterman, Diane Sawyer, and especially his wife, Miss Crushed Cupcakes herself, Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean, has brought him back within the margin of error in polls relative to John "Vote for Me Because I Already Look Like The President" Kerry.

Which brings me to a really personal peeve of mine.

I've made my thoughts on so-called "Electability" known months ago. But let's get at something that seems to be on everybody's mind this week, namely, what exactly constitutes "Presidential" behavior.

Dean has taken alot of heat this week for not looking presidential for giving a loud, rousing speech to his supporters instead of hanging his head and sulking off into the night after his Iowa loss. But Dean stil has tremendous structural advantages over his Democratic opponents. In addition, Dean has the strongest, most compelling message in the entire Democratic field. How can I say that? Well, simply listen to the other candidates: they all SOUND LIKE DEAN. Even the Congressional Democratic response to the State of the Union lifted whole chunks from Dean's standard stump speech.

Dean is already leading the Democratic party, even as he takes the slings and arrows that come from leadership. Because he believes he's right.

With 600,000 people publicly hanging their hopes on Dean, it would have been irresponsible on his part to give a sheepish concession. These people were relying on him. And, whether they know it yet, so is the rest of the country.

Courage. Conviction. Responsibility. Leadership.

Those sound like Presidential qualities to me.

So, to those who're really big on pomp, circumstance, appearances, ceremonies, facades, and pretense - go ahead and vote for Kerry. Bush will thank you in the end.

But if you just want the country to work, vote for Dean.

So, while I'm waxing nostalgic about Shakespeare, let me simply quote Kenneth Branagh from Dean Again, the film he made after his own version of Henry V:

"This is all faaaaar from over............."

Five Years Late
When I was in elementary school, I had a Space: 1999 lunchbox. For those of you who aren't up on your '70's sci-fi, the premise of the show is that the moon is being used as both a scientific, military, & industrial center by the year 1999. Everything is cool until a bunch of toxic waste left on the dark side of the moon blows up and knocks it out of Earth orbit, sending it into deep space and leaving the poor humans stranded on Moonbase Alpha to wander the cosmos forever.

Pretty bleak, I know. And, let's face it, rediculous. Any explosion on the moon's surface strong enough to knock it out of orbit is also likely to turn Moonbase Alpha into a giant-sized garlic press for the people inside. But science fiction has always fibbed just a little bit with the science. Between the refreshingly realistic Eagle landers, Martin Landau as a very un-Kirk-like Commander Koenig, Barry Morse, the original Lt. Gerald from "The Fugitive", as the resident loopy scientist, and a super-hot shape-changing alien babe, the show was waaaay cool.

And, judging by today's announcement, slightly prescient.

I must admit, I have mixed feelings about Bush's announcement of NASA's new goals. I'm a science baby, so anything that can return us to active space exploration gives me a nice warm fuzzy. In addition, a number of scientists suggest that the moon may have vast depositories of the element Helium-3, that I believe some say could be used to actually make cold fusion a reality, thus replacing our need for fossil fuels, eliminating the stranglehold that Saudi Arabia & Co. have on the world economy, and removing virtually all funding resources for Islamic terrorists. The moon could be the next gold rush while simultaneously bringing Mid-East peace.

Of course, the operative term there is "could".

Remember, these are the same people who don't believe in global warming, so their science may be, shall we say, "questionable", if you know what I mean.

And let's get down to brass tacks: who's going to pay for all of this? According to the International Monetary Fund, Bush's fiscal policy will have bankrupted the world economy long before any next generation space vehicle has even had the chance to roll off of an assembly line.

Who knows, maybe we'll just be a global monarchy by then and God-King Jorge Epiphanes the Second will just decree all personal property forfeit in pursuit of the Holy Pilgrimage to the Heavens and above.....

A Full Accounting
Next Tuesday, the day after what is shaping up to be a bloodbath in the Iowa Democratic Caucuses, is the State of the Union Address. Now, while I suspect everything Bush has proposed in the last week, such as making it legal to exploit undocumented workers (and just what do you think that's going to do to your wages & benefits when IBM can hire illegal aliens who'll work for peanuts just as well as the California grape growers?), or going to the Moon (more on THAT later), there are other things that are actually part of his job. You know, little things like promoting the general welfare and ensuring the blessings of liberty. All that jazz.

So, the good folks at www.TomPaine.com have compiled a little score card of what's actually happened since Bush took office, relative to what he's actually talking about. Use at your leisure.

Oh, and, just in case you have some real horror stories on the state of your own personal union, Howard Dean wants to hear them.

"Open For Business" or "How I learned to stop worrying and love Amazons"
I'm sure I've lost count of how many books, authors, movies and other forms of media I've linked to, recommended, or otherwise mentioned here on Macroscope. After all, how can one be a Spaminator without endless sources of information? So I'm sure I've generated more than my fair share of traffic at Amazon.com, intentionally or otherwise.

Well, since it's a new year, I figured, why should I advertise for Amazon for free? With that in mind, Macroscope has officially become an Amazon associate - in other words, everytime you link to a book or whatever at Amazon from Macroscope and actually buy something, The Royal We here get a tiny kickback. Just so you know, I'm highlighting all those Amazon links in previous threads in RED.

Now, would it be completely shameless of me to recommend that, even if you aren't buying a book I'm recommending on Macroscope, to go ahead and use this button

for ALL your Amazon purchasing needs? I'd certainly appreciate the business, just as I'm sure the good folks at Sallie Mae would appreciate it, too.

Please note that this particular post will stay on the main page for the forseeable future, just for your shopping convenience.....

Night of the Long Knives

"It's time for 'no more Mr. Nice Guy'. All those people shouting, 'Down with America!' and dancing in the street when Americans are attacked? We have to kill them."

Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for a New American Century, encouraging the White House to forget about all this "win the hearts and minds of the Iraqis" crap.

And the White House, as usual, is listening. Apparently, they've secretly tucked away millions of dollars in the Iraqi War appropriation to fund paramilitary units loyal to the Iraqi National Congress to start assassinating people that they BELIEVE are ex-Baathists supporting the insurgency, much like the CIA did in Vietnam in an operation called the Phoenix program.

And we all know what a resounding success that was.....

Painfully Honest Quote of the Day

"Listen, here's the thing about politics: It's not an expression of your moral purity and your ethics and your probity and your fond dreams of some utopian future. Progressive people constantly fail to get this......The system isn't about ideals. The country doesn't elect great leaders. It elects fucked-up people who for reasons of ego want to run the world. Then the citizenry makes them become great. "

- Tony Kushner, playwright for, among other things, Angels in America, about why it was foolish for progressives to vote for Nader in 2000, and why it would be even more foolish for them to vote for anyone other than the Democratic nominee, no matter who it is (including Lieberman) in 2004.

Needless to say, I don't completely agree with this point of view, but his statement about the nature of Presidential candidates is definitely spot on.

The Atlantic | December 2003 | The Bubble of American Supremacy | Soros

The Next Bubble
How rich is George Soros? He was just fined $2.2 million by a French court for insider trading. For the average American citizen, who's median net worth was ~$71,000 in 1998, the equivalent fine would be about $22.

So, for a dude who came to the US as an immigrant, he clearly knows a thing or two.

In his latest book, The Bubble of American Supremacy (excerpted here in The Atlantic Monthly, he compares the current push for global American hegemony (otherwise known as The Bush Doctrine), as a geopolitical equivalent of the dot.com boom of the late '90's. In other words, it seems like a good thing on the surface, but it's totally unsustainable, with equally disastrous results.

Dean's Real Opponent
In 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War protest, following the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and months of protests, riots, & political unrest, GOP presidential candidate Richard Nixon began several morally dubious strategies to ensure his election to the Oval Office, such as using Henry Kissinger to undermine President Johnson's peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese. But one of the cornerstones of his campaign was the so-called "Southern Strategy". Poor rural whites had traditionally been Democrats until the advent of the Civil Rights Movement. Nixon appealled to their prejudices and fears about the Blacks asking for their rights through the use of code words like "law and order" and "the great silent majority" and the old Confederacy has been in the pocket of the elephants ever since.

Which is ironic, when you consider that Nixon & his predecessors have largely treated these people like their subjects instead of their constituents. They do nothing to improve the economic fortunes of the South, and then point to affirmative action & Willie Horton as the root of all their woes.

It's also worked for so long because so many Democrats look down their noses at poor whites, overtly treating them as inhumanly as their Republican representatives do behind closed doors.

So, in yet another move where he attempts to actually follow the ideals of the Democratic Party instead of just it's rhetoric, Howard Dean has decided to address this issue head-on.

Bush & Co. are offering poor Southern whites prayer in the school, a ten commandments monument, and the comfort of knowing that no homosexuals are running around getting married behind our backs.

Dean is offering them health insurance, better schools, and better jobs.

In other words, the same thing he's offering everybody else in the country. The radical nature of what he's doing is that he's a Democrat who's actually acknowledging these people as a part of the country.

Let's see if they'd rather have a monument instead of a paycheck.

Rope-A-Dope
Scott Ritter is a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq during the mid to late '90's. Here, he talks about how, although the never found weapons of mass destruction, they kept stumbling across plans to hide conventional weapons & small arms, how to make improvised explosive devices, and all the other elements of an insurgency campaign. But, since their mandate was just to look for WMDs, they really couldn't do anything about it.

Too bad, because, despite what the talking heads would have you believe, the attacks on coalition troops in Iraq is looking less and less like Al Qaeda & foreign fighters, and more and more like Phase II of Saddam Hussein's Plan to Defeat The Americans - fall back, draw them into the country & cities where their tactical & technological advantages are negated, and just bee-sting them to death.

Why, Oh why can't people learn from Vietnam?

Bush Fears Dean
After all, why would the GOP start running ads in Iowa to question the patriotism of political war critics?

And if he doesn't, according to these Republican strategists, he should. In this memo, they come to the conclusion that Howard Dean could even spot the President Florida's 27 electoral votes, PLUS most of the Old Confederate South, and STILL become the new President of the United States in 2005.

In their words, "Let us not be fooled by misguided conventional wisdom. Dean is a threat and Republicans better not ignore him."

Music to my ears.

Dirty Pop
There are many lessons to be learned from this entire Michael Jackson fiasco.

The first is, if people THINK you're a child molester, maybe you shouldn't hold sleepovers with the children of complete strangers. It just might not look too good.

I really, really, really want to believe Michael. I really want to believe that he's innocent and that this is all a witch hunt. But the fact that the sleepovers continued for a decade, even after he'd been publicly accused of being a pedophile, with a gravy train of dozens of random children......

I recently watched The Wiz for the first time in nearly 20 years, and Michael as the Scarecrow was a simply mesmerizing musical/dance performance. Every time I think about the Motown 25 special, I get goosebumps. I mean, people lost their minds watching Michael perform that night ("Oh, my God! He's walking...... BACKWARDS?!?!?!?!?!?!")

Michael was magic.

A black Harry Potter in penny loafers.

I am part of a generation of Black children who grew up in the age of "Billy Jean" and Thriller and Off The Wall, where Michael seemed to be a living embodiment of all of the promise and hope that our community had placed in us for the future.

And maybe that's the point. Maybe Michael's madness (and, believe you me, I'm still not convinced he's a child molester, but Michael Jackson is clearly insane, perhaps dangerously so) is a visible, visceral symbol of the sickness that still pervades young Black America. He had the world at his fingertips, yet his mental scars run so deep that, instead of using a razor on his arms like most cutters, he's opted for a plastic surgeon's scalpel to help externalize his suffering. He claws jealously for the closeness of babies, as if he can become young through association.

I pray he didn't do it.

But I still hope for some court-mandated therapy.

God knows he needs it.

Return of the Press Gang
Why is the Army suddenly looking to recruit a bunch of volunteers to work on local draft boards?

And, in other news, how long have those 130,000 troops been getting shot at while wearing full combat gear under desert heat?

Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack

Junta
retired General Tommy Franks, in an interview with, of all places, Cigar Afficianado, suggests that the U.S. Constitution could not survive the use by a terrorist of a Weapon of Mass Destruction in mainland America, and that the resulting public outcry for security would force, in his words, "a military style of government" to replace it.

Scariest quote from General Franks:

"It's not in the history of civilization for peace ever to reign. Never has in the history of man. ... I doubt that we’ll ever have a time when the world will actually be at peace."

Unfiltered Quote of the Day

"In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other. "

- Benjamin Franklin, in a speech he gave at the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, on where he thought American democracy was ultimately headed if we adopted the Constitution of the United States of America that had just been approved. That very document, along with it's 27 revisions or, as we say, Amendments, is still in use to this day.

Gore Vidal, in this interview with L.A. Weekly to promote his new book, Inventing A Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, looks around at the current Bush administration and, speaking for Franklin, says "I told you so!"

Diary of a Bad Man
Some of you may recognize the name "C.G. Brown" from the occasional post he's made as a part of Team Macroscope, although I'm sure there are a number of you who would never recognize him on the street as he sports his best "shaken, not stirred, mofo!" look above.

But, in addition to being a fairly shrewd businessman, a visionary poet, and a waaaaay better commuter scientist than I ever even aspired to be, he, apparently, still has alot to get off his chest. And most of the time, he does it to a pretty good beat, too. Therefore, BEHOLD Corregan Brown's Broken Beatnik Blog. Tres` stylish, no?

Passion Play
The New York Post seems to have illicitly gotten their hands on a copy of the latest cut of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Christ" and given it to a broad cross section of folks for review. In looking at this, and other responses from people to the as-yet unreleased film, it seems to me that your level of offense from the film is inversely proportional to how close you are to Gibson's own beliefs on the religious spectrum. It seems that many devote Christians don't seem to see anything in it that would offend or castigate Jews, while a number of Jews who have seen it are VERY worried about the less forward-thinking members of the Christian community taking this film as new marching orders to beat up some Semites.

Since I haven't seen the film, I can't speak on it. Although, as a firm believer in karma, I think the fact that Gibson's Jesus, actor Jim Caviezel, was the SECOND person to be struck by lightning during the course of filming is telling, to say the least. At the end of the day, I'm curious. I want to see it, so I'll probably check it out.

Having said that, the one thing that struck me about all the statements on the film in the Post (and, in other places) is that everyone seems focused on the brutality & violence of the Crucifixion. I find myself reminded of an Easter sermon where the pastor took great pains to illustrate the gory details of Christ's death, as if to say "he endured all that for you, so don't make his death in vain."

Somehow, this all seems to miss the point, to me. The point wasn't that he suffered a horrible, blood drenched, prolonged death. The point was that he died. Period. And was then resurrected. I once had a theory that the whole exercise of the Christ, of the divine becoming incarnate in the flesh, was that God had to comprehend and experience sin in order to abolish it. If sin is a state of being separate from God, God would have to shear off a piece of his or herself in order to comprehend that. Which raises a number of interesting issues for me. First of all, it suggests that, omnipotence does not mean the absence of process. Yes, God may be capable of doing anything, but everything has a procedure to be followed to accomplish it. If God's goal is to save humanity from sin, that very process may have a very specific set of inputs, procedures, outcomes, and, most importantly, timetables.

Also, if God/Jesus could have died in any manner of his or her choosing to experience death (the opposite of omnipresence, perhaps), why choose a public, brutal death? Could it be because it was an image and a story that will never leave our minds?

Anyway, whatever flaws there may be in Mad Max's movie, I think it will at least get a number of Christians to scrutinize their own faith. Like I said, I'm curious.

Horse Whisperers
I love the Classics.

And when I say "Classics", I don't mean Bach & Beethoven. I mean the history & literature of ancient Greece & Rome. And one of the many reasons why is because I love how pervasive a good story can become in a culture, especially if it's old enough.

Consider this: an "odyssey"; your Achilles tendon; a "Cassandra syndrome"; "the face that launched a thousand ships"; "Ajax"; and of course, the obvious one, a "Trojan horse".

All of these memes where first seeded in the gardens of our collective imaginations by one single story - The Iliad, Homer's epic poem where Helen, the insanely hot queen to the Spartan sovereign, Menelaus, runs off with Paris, the prince of the fortified city-state of Troy in Asia Minor (now, I believe today's Turkey). In turn, and in what must be the biggest case of ignoring that whole "don't hate the playa, hate the game" mentality in the history of mankind, Menelaus gets ALL the other Greek city states to join him in a mass invasion of Troy (see the previously mentioned thousand ships) as payback.

Anyway, Warner Bros., in their quest to re-establish themselves as a company that does more than make bad action movies with DMX and Steven Seagal, are giving this story the full-on, post-Gladiator, Hollywood treatment next summer. And I must say, I'm REALLY digging the casting:

* Brad Pitt as obnoxious Greek super-soldier Achilles (and we ALL know how his story ends)
* Orlando Bloom as Trojan pretty-boy Paris
* Brendan Gleeson (who's been in everything from 28 Days Later to Gangs of New York, lately) as player-hatin' Menelaus
* Sean Bean as sneaky Trojan horse architect Odysseus
* Eric Bana as the Trojan champion Hector (poor bastard)
* and Brian Cox as power-hungry Greek "boss of bosses", so to speak, Agamemnon

Between this, Spider-Man 2 and the return or director Roland Emmerich to his "Independence Day"-style stomping grounds in The Day After Tomorrow, next summer's movie slate is sounding extra saucy.

Why We Separate Church and State
So, first things first.

I am a Christian. I was raised as a protestant in the United Methodist Church. I pray daily and I try to read my Bible daily. I believe in God, heavenly grace, and that there's divinity to be found in all life.

So, to me, when Jesus is asked what is the most important commandment, and he replies "to love the lord God with all your heart and to love your fellow man as if he were yourself", I take that as strict marching orders.

Which, in my mind, means, I must respect the right of every individual to come to their own understanding of existence because I defy anyone to tell me that my own personal relationship with God is wrong.

I also take to heart the moment where Jesus tells his disciplines not to wear their religion like a badge of honor. If I may paraphrase, he says something to the effect of "don't stand up and pray loudly in public like the hypocrites do". You don't need a bull horn to preach the Gospels. If you live your life according to the Word, that, in and of itself, will speak volumes. Your very existence as a Christian is all the evangelism necessary.

Which is why it always makes my blood boil when other Christians start demanding that the government do more to promote their faith. Have they forgotten that this country was founded by people who wanted freedom from oppressive religions with state powers like the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches during the Colonial Age? Don't they know we just went to war with a theocracy that gave state power to fundamentalist extremists called the Taliban?

Yes, the founding fathers were very much men of faith. And their faith formed the basis of their sense of equity and justice, which is why the 1st Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

If faith is a believe in things unseen, than religion is an inherently irrational thing. There is no reasoning with someone's faith. No bargaining. No equity. By putting the government outside the reach of the instruments of faith, they gave everyone the opportunity to come to God on their own terms, not someone else's. It keeps the power to coerce out of the hands of those who may not necessarily be bound by the constraints of the law if they believe their faith calls them to break it.

Why am I saying all this?

Consider, for a moment, the article in the link above: An extremist minister wants to put up a monument in a public square to Matthew Sheppard, a homosexual who was killed in a hate crime, that basically says Sheppard is burning in Hell because he violated God's will.

Do you really want to invite the possibility of putting governmental powers behind this kind of rhetoric by, say, for instance, having teachers leading elementary students in prayer, and this guy is the one sitting on the school board, setting policy?

Just an example that's been on my mind lately.

As far as Matthew Sheppard goes, I'll get into my thoughts on God, the church, and homosexuality at a later date. My short answer on that subject is this: If you think homosexuals are going to Hell because of the verse this guy Phelps quotes in his condemnation of Sheppard, I really hope, for your sake, you don't shave. Ever. Because it's also outlawed in the same section of Leviticus.

Sweet dreams, Shaggy.

Billionaire Soros takes on Bush

Measure for Measure
Does the term "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" ring a bell? Well, if such a thing really did exist, Richard Mellon Scaife, publishing magnate & conservative philanthropist, would unquestionably be the spider at the center of the web. And there in lies the rub about the neo-conservative movement: all those little right wing foot soldiers who campaign & vote against their self-interest are fueled by the funding of the uber-rich like Scaife, who are, unquestionably acting in their own narrow self-interest.

Which is why I love George Soros.

Now, don't get me wrong: Soros, the insanely rich financier behind hedge funds like the Quantum Fund, is very much a ruthless capitalist. An argument can be made that he single-handedly crashed the British currency market in 1993 and made a Billion dollars (yes, "B". "BILLION") in a single day as a result.

But as a man who loves the promise of capitalism & the American dream (let alone his ownwallet) , Soros is pained, I mean, physically ill, about what George Bush is doing to this country.

Soros just gave $5 million to Moveon.org. He's given millions more to other progressive & liberal organizations. All for one, single purpose - to get Bush out of office.

When asked if he would trade his entire fortune (estimated to be about $7 billion) to remove Bush, he replied "If someone guaranteed it".

Forces are gathering, friends. Next November is starting to sound more and more like the Mother of All Battles.

The Bully Pulpit
So, this rather dry article from a P'town scholar on why people tend not to vote in their own interests barely scratches the surface. I agree that, clearly, there are a number of people who simply don't understand how certain politicians and political movements will, in the long run, effect their lives.

But I think the author, like so many in the media, seem to miss the glaringly obvious point.

Despite what people will tell you, most of them actually do assume that politicians are telling them the truth. Contrary to all the verbage that's been spilled on the subject, most voters will simply take an elected official at their word because they believe they don't have the luxury of fact-checking.

So, these folks only vote against their self-interest because they believe their actually voting FOR their self-interest.

They have been lied to.

And this is a concept that really needs to get some more airplay.

There are people, in positions of power in our country, right now, who will get on national TV, and simply lie to the American people.

Yes, there is such a thing as spin, but there is also such a thing as a lie, and I, for one, cannot wait for the moment in next year's debate, when Howard Dean calls President Bush a liar, to his face, on national television.

Rebel Yell
So, fellow blogger John Scalzi has really kicked up a storm on his side of the universe from his series of articles regarding the legacy of the Confederate States of America and the meaning of their battle flag. His basic points?

A. The Confederacy was a fundamentally evil political entity, because the only difference between it's constitution and the Constitution of the United States was that it explicitly asserted the rights of one human being to treat another human being like property.

B. There's no pride to legitimately be found in the symbols of the CSA because it was evil and, at the end of the day, they lost.

C. The South and The Confederacy are not the same thing. There are far more things to be proud of for Americans living in those states than the political insanity that precipitated the Civil War, so Southerners should look into their heritage to find less divisive symbols.

Personally, I agree with just about everything that he said. On the flip side, I also agree with Howard Dean's assertion that the people who find pride in the Stars & Bars cannot simply be dismissed from the body politic. Certainly, there are people who would very much like to put people such as yours truly back in chains so I can bale some of their cotton, but there are also a lot of folks who cling to the identity the Confederate flag gives them while trying to distance themselves from the amorality of the nation it represents.

Which brings me to a larger point, which I will call, for lack of a better term, cultural psychosis. I believe that a community that experiences a traumatic event will have the same reaction as an individual who experiences a traumatic event. Namely, some version of post traumatic stress disorder. You can't tell a rape victim to simply get over it and get on with her life. In the same way, when taken within the context of Hiroshima, no one should be surprised that city-wide destruction is one of the most common recurring themes in Anime. Or, the various & sundry psychological shackles still on the minds of many African-Americans, a full 150 years after the end of slavery.

When you consider that the South is the only segment of the American population that's lost a war on it's own soil, and that it's now an economically struggling portion of the very same nation that burned its cities to the ground..... well, I think you can see where I'm going with this. I'm sure, to some of them, it's like getting a divorce, only to have your ex-husband smack you around and drag you back to the chapel to get remarried at gunpoint.

The point is, there is a trauma there. And, quite honestly, the psychological & historical battles of the Civil War have been fought by the South, albeit in secret, ever since. I think it's long past time to actually have a conversation to get all this junk out into the open and deal with it as a country.

What He Really Thinks
I know there are times when Chris Matthews, the long time politico, syndicated columnist, and host of Hardball, can seem like a Conservative shill. But, let's not forget that Matthews roots are with such Democratic stalwarts as Tip O'Neill & Co.

So, imagine my pleasant surprise to hear about his recent speech at Brown University. The salient points being:
A. The White House's rationale for war in Iraq was totally dishonest.
B. Dick Cheney is the real man behind the curtain.
C. Before Cheney & Co. came up with "The Bush Doctrine", the President had never had a deep thought in his life. Needless to say, he's a little protective about his first one.
D. His personal favorite among the Democratic nominees is, yes, that's right, Howard Dean.

On A Pedestal
I think I've gotten pretty good at ignoring David Blaine. Most of the time that I heard about his various attempts at becoming the New millennium Houdini, I usually thought "what's the point?" and just moved on. I mean, Houdini had a Wolverine haircut and spent his spare time debunking psychics. Who could ever top THAT?

But Blaine's latest stunt, where he locked himself inside a glass box suspended over London for 44 days straight without food caught my attention. Not so much for the feet itself, but for the reactions to it.

For instance, there is a website called "Wake David Blaine", which is a rally point for people who want to take turns keeping Blaine awake by shouting at him for the full 44 days. They even hand out air horns. People have pelted the box with food. One man tried to rip off his air tube. The list goes on and on.

The sense I have is that many of them were angered by the notion that Blaine's stunt could in anyway be construed as magical or miraculous. So, they took it upon themselves to proof that there was no miracle. I wonder if those were folks who loved magic so much that they thought Blaine was defaming it. Or were they people who cannot tolerate the idea of the fantastic at all?

However, as the stunt progressed, the hecklers & saboteurs gave way to more supportive, and eventually, cheering onlookers.

Blaine was in tears by the time he left the booth. He spoke about learning more in the last month than he has in his entire life. And he talked about love.

Personally, I'm just fascinated by the sociology of it all. One man stands up and does something out of the ordinary. Almost immediately, a whole host of people rise up in reaction to him, both for and against.

Is leadership really that easy?

Changing The Game
So, unlike any number of Protestants out there, I actually happen to like Pope John Paul II. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the work that man has accomplished in God's name, and I have a special reverence for the Catholic Church because, hey, it's the wellspring from which the rest of the Christian world flows.

But sometimes the Vatican does things that are just downright evil.

And I'm not talking about the excesses of the Borgas or the Crusades or anything nice and medieval like that.

I mean today, right here, right now, in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Three.

According to the BBC, among other news outlets, The Vatican is instructing its missionaries in Africa to tell the local population that condoms have tiny holes in them that allow the AIDS virus to pass from one person to the next in the course of sex. In other words, they're saying that condoms don't stop the transmission of STDs so don't use them.

In fact, they're actually claiming to have scientific evidence to support that fact.

If there was scientific research to support such a claim, it would be plastered all over the Western press. If the Vatican really had such evidence, why are they only telling people where the AIDS epidemic is wreaking havoc?

It's a lie.

A bold faced lie intended to discourage the use of condoms in a misguided attempt to curb recreational sex, and it's targeted at the people who rely on the church the most - the world's poor and sick and disadvantaged.

It's a lie that's going to cost MILLIONS of people their lives, while the Church is claiming to save their souls.

I have no other word to use to describe it other than "evil".

Moreover, I think it's just the latest example of how conservative elements in the world, when faced with scientific evidence & procedure that refutes their narrow view of life on planet Earth, are now adopting the trappings of science, minus the actual procedures, to perpetuate lies that support the status quo.

They've lost the argument on it's merits, so they've just degenerated into an "Is not!"/"Is, too!" shouting match.

They Know
Greg Theilman is the former director of the Office of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs for the State Department under Colin Powell. As you might surmise from his title, his office was directly responsible for evaluating intelligence regarding Iraq's WMD programs.

In this interview for 60 Minutes, Theilman says that he'd known for months prior to the invasion that there was no evidence to support the Bush administration's claims that Iraq proposed an imminent threat.

And he told Powell, who should have told the President.

Now, while this is just the latest example of White House lies by omission & exaggeration, I think it's part of a larger trend in our culture. (see above)

Willie Lynch is Dead (1712?-2003)

There is No Willie Lynch
OK, this is something I've believed for years, so I'm glad to see someone has finally done a little research to support my theory.

For those of you who don't know, allegedly, there's a copy of a speech written by a slave holder named Willie Lynch to instruct his peers on ways to foster disunity among the slaves as a means of nonviolent pacification. The basic idea is that, if you're too busy fighting your brother, you won't worry about the boot of the oppressor on your neck.

OK, so, for the moment, let's ignore the rather absurd image of the keynote speaker at the Colonial Slavedrivers Convention.

This gentleman, Dr. William Jelani Cobb of Spelman College, points out the obvious inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and anachronisms in the letter itself in this column.

But, at a deeper level, when have young people ever needed someone to tell them to hate old people? When have men ever needed to be formally instructed to hate women? And when have people ever needed a coach to instruct them how to hate people who look different than them? The crux of the Willie Lynch argument is that, if it wasn't for the damned white man, all Black people everywhere would all just love each other and work in spiritual-humming unison towards our common goal.

I'm sorry, but that's simply rediculous. All you have to do is look at the example in the master's house itself. Even rich white people can't get along with each other. As long as human beings have individual & conflicting needs, there will never be a united hive mind where we all agree to do our part & not hate on each other. It's human nature.

But this gets at the larger problem with conspiracy theorists. I think alot of people would much rather that there actually was an all-powerful boogeyman who has some massive document stored on his laptop called toying_with_everyone_elses_lives_for_my_amusement.pps. The idea of a malavolent controller can be far more comforting than the alternative: a world where, sometimes, bad things happen that are completely outside of anyone's control. After all, a bad daddy is better than no daddy at all, right?

Willie Lynch is a fairy tale. Rather than expending our energy assigning blame, maybe everyone (black, white, etc.) should devote their time to doing the things WE ALREADY KNOW WE"RE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING, i.e. treating members of the opposite sex with at least courtesy to give folks the chance to earn our respect; honoring the elders who've been where you're going while respecting the young for their fresh energy; KNOWING (and I don't mean just saying it, KWOWING) that you have intrinsic value because you are a living, breathing human being and not worrying whether some other person is more valuable than you because they're lighter/darker/taller/shorter/skinnier/fatter/etc.

To Hell with Willie Lynch.

Keep working on yourself.

Ole!
There's something wrong with me. I must be a bad person. Because, as much as I love baseball, I think I may love baseball fights even more.

So, the sight of Don Zimmer, the New York Yankees' septegenarian bench coach with a metal plate in his head from being hit with a fastball in his youth, charging asshole Red Sox ace Pedro Martinez during a team brawl, is, well...

It's funny.

Alright. I said it. It's freaking hilarious. I mean, I can just imagine Zimmer just sitting on the bench. Just waitin'. "As soon as these benches clear, his ass is MINE!"

It's rediculous. But I love it. This series just keeps getting crazier. Personally, I'm waiting for Mel Stotlemeyer to crack Nomar Garciaparra with a folding chair. Then, my baseball life will truly be complete.

In case you haven't noticed, there's going to be alot more baseball posts for the next two weeks.

Karmic Justice
The only thing worse than being an Orioles fan in Dodger country, is being an Orioles fan in Yankee country. I had the distinct displeasure of watching 12-year old Jeffrey Maier pull a fair ball out of play during the 1996 ALCS between the Yanks & the O's. The cheating New York umps ruled it a home run, allowing the pinstripe mafia to win the game, the series, and, eventually, the world championship.

Jeffrey Maier.

I almost could have gone to that game. I would have been in the bleachers, not far from that kid. And I can tell you this: any lynching that I might receive at the hands of rabid Bronx baseball fans would have been well worth the satisfaction of snapping that little punk's neck like a twig for robbing Cal Ripken of his best chance to retire with a 2nd World Series ring.

Sorry. Did I think that or write that? My bad. That was the rabid Orioles fan in me. I try not to let it out too much. It's not pretty.

Anyway, if there's any justice in the world, last night's little mishap in the Yankees/Red Sox game was just the beginning of the cosmic chickens coming home to roost for those S.O.B.s.

Go Sox!

Day of the Locusts
The average person who voted for Arnold Schwarzenegger last night was a white Republican woman with a college education whose household made at least $50,000 a year.

Rich, educated white women made a man with a 30 year history of sexual misconduct, but who has a great body and makes fun movies, into the governor of the 5th largest economy in the world.

Most blacks & hispanics basically stayed home. Most of the poor stayed home. The people with the most to gain or lose through their dependence on government programs, decided to leave the decision of the upper class.

That noise you hear is the sound of America's caste system fusing into place.

Report Offered Bleak Outlook About Iraq Oil

What Do You Mean There's No Oil?!?!?
OK, this just seems more and more insane as time goes on.

According to this NY Times report, the White House had commissioned a report months before the war to find out exactly how much money they could get from Iraqi oil sales.

Let's not even get into how this flies in the face of all that "it's not about oil" trash they were talking.

The point is, the report, which came out MONTHS before we invaded Iraq, told them that the Iraqi oil industry was in such disrepair that, without enormous capital investment, there was no way it could cover the costs of rebuilding the country.

And yet Paul Wolfowitz constantly said that Iraq would pay for itself through oil.

What possible reason would they have for doing this, then, in the face of all the evidence telling them why this was a bad idea? Are Bush & Co. really THAT stupid? Is it really about transfer of wealth, and to hell with the Iraqi people? Or were they looking for a really spectacular way to justify bankrupting the government?

George W. Bush's Medieval Presidency

Anachronistic Quote of the Day

"So it is written. So it shall be done."

-Ramses (Yul Brenner) in The Ten Commandments

Just a vivid example of a head of state who is driven by what he wants, as opposed to the empirical evidence of what he actually has (e.g. locusts, rivers of blood, killer hail, and a country full of dead firstborns).

As Neal Gabler points out in this L.A. Times editorial, denial was a fundamental element of monarchy rule back in the bad old days. It didn't matter what was happening, or what the people wanted. All that mattered was what the king thought.

Stupid, right?

Which is why a bunch of guys back in 1776, children of The Enlightenment, rationalism & the value of empirical evidence, thumbed their nose at King George III and decided they'd try making a government of the people, for the people, and by the people.

It's times like this that I wish George W. Bush had been a better student, or had at least bothered to pay attention in history class. At least then he'd know that he was perverting the system instead of thinking that he, himself, is the living embodiment of the will of the people.

The moral of this story: the President is a REPRESENTATIVE of the people. How the Hell do you know what the people want if you don't read the paper and don't listen to polls?

Oh, I forgot. God tells him.

Nevermind.

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.