One giant Ponzi Scheme

For the last couple months i've been thinking about the spiraling downfall of the American economy as based on the loosening of credit standards. In a conversation with my father, he reminded me that historically, banks only made business and corporate loans. For the majority of the American experience, if you wanted to buy a house, you talked to the person that owned the land and made some kind of deal that you could build a house on his land and make payments to buy that parcel of land. If the house already existed, we would in modern terms call this a rent-to-own agreement.

But somehow, someone got the idea that it would be a good thing if people owned their own homes, and Uncle Sam got in the act of creating Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to help 'average' Americans get enough credit to purchase their own homes. Sometime around the eighties, two things happened that i think laid down the infrastructure of our current downfall. First, lending institutions started lending to a lot more homeowners. Second, the widespread application of the 401(k).

The growth of the 401(k) meant that there were tens of thousands of more new investors in the stock market. This steady influx of money for the next two or three decades fueled the average increase of the price of a stock. The growth of access to consumer credit for home ownership enabled people to purchase houses that were formerly unattainable, not just too expensive. As more and more people got home loans, prices for those homes steadily rose [above historical norms - but that's speculation on my part].

So what's happening, is that people are investing their money and 401(k) are putting money into an inflated product simply because the market price is higher. The same thing for home ownership. But with homeownership its worse.

With home ownership, even though historically prices have been rising (for the reason i mentioned above plus inflation), there is a modicum of risk that you'll owe more than you're worth. This isn't a problem with stocks because you buy stocks outright. Back to homeownership . . .

Now, if you default on your home loan, both you are out of a home, and the bank is out of both its money and its profits. So by giving more people the ability to borrow from banks, this puts them at greater and greater risk the more loans they have. Hence our bubble.

So what was happening in the mortgage industry is that banks would make unsubstantiated loans (see this NYT article). But they weren't left holding the bag because they then sold these loans to investors (whose company smaller investors invested in).

Now, the structure of a Ponzi scheme is that i tell one guy to give me ten dollars and i'll give him twenty next week. then i get two more people to give me ten, and i pay the first guy off. That first guy then re-invests, and gets his friends to invest too. Then i pay off the second group with the new money and the re-investment. Now, what happens is that I then have more and more people coming in to get their guaranteed returns. And the cycle perpetuates until i get less people coming to pay the people already in.

So, we hear of this with the Madoff scandal, which rocked to the tune of 50Billion large (well, small these days). The reason Madoff made off with so much money is that he didn't do the doubling in a week. He paid relatively stead premiums let's say once a month. So if you get a guaranteed return of 12% a year despite what the market does, and over the course of ten years this is guaranteed money, of course you'll tell your friends and associates. That was the wonderment of his Ponzi scheme, the slow but steady returns.

Some folk, including myself, realize or say that the Social Security system has the same structure, and that's why there's what we call an 'unfunded mandate'. But more or less on that later.

Now, though this scheme was working flawlessly for Madoff for his twenty or whatever years in business. I'm saying that that's child's play. I'm saying that the bailout is really a response to a larger uninentional Ponzi scheme. This larger unintentional Ponzi scheme was a direct result of the loosening of available credit using automated software. This automated software that allowed banks to process hundreds of times more loans than before, making 'competition' against the next guy not finding the good borrowers but lending to more and more people. So the housing bubble was perpetrated on selling the higher priced house to the next schlep that comes along. The sorry thing was that the next schlep didn't have to certify that they made enough money to pay the bills, but only that they had half-way decent credit?!

Another thing that accelerated the increase in housing prices was that the couple of schleps in the middle borrowed against and pulled equity out of their houses to pay down unsecured credit card debt (who the hell would trade unsecured credit for secured credit? just stop paying the suckers). So these consumer/homeowners were robbing Peter to Pay paul, and making Timothy foot the bill.

So the confluence of the increase in available credit, automated loan-processing software, laxer lending standards, unsecured credit

The Housing collapse is evidence of the greatest Ponzi scheme ever perpetrated.

we elected the auto bailout

Every once in a while a couple things swirl into a theme. I was listening to NPR earlier today and they were interviewing people who went overwhelmingly for McCain, and are still weary, not hopeful, of an Obama presidency. That was one. Two, i read about the Madoff scandal, I only got interested due to another story on NPR, but that is besides the point, so that's not actually point #2.

The real point #2 is i read on Slate, my favorite e-rag (bad pun on electronic rag/magazine . . . no google hits) a nifty article about the foreign car companies doing wonderful business in the American South. They say it was partly because of the fact that these are 'right-to-work' states. Right-to-work states are those that make illegal the 'forced' collective bargaining rules of some unions that make deals with employers that say that all employees have to at some time sign-up for the union. [the wikipedia article has arguments for and against].

But what got me was when i saw a graphic of the right-to-work states:


as compared to the outcome of the 2008 election:


I found it interesting that the vast majority of right-to-work states went for McCain and the union-friendly states went democratic. This just sparked some thinking along the lines that there's a fundamental schism in American politics, and this shows it. It is the economy stupid. But people vote their wallets, not what's actually in them, but they vote according to how they can and are able to make money.

I still find this hard to swallow, on account of reading the rise of the corporate class across America in the book Who Rules America by William Domhoff and how there is a union vs corporate 'class war' going on and how the white shirts and bean counters got the upper hand. The comparison between these two maps doesn't sit well with the white vs blue collar warfare, as overwhelmingly i don't think of the southern and mid-western states as anything close to wall-street business owner types.

ah well, such are the contradictions and nuances of life. I had the thought it would be nice to have some deep insight that solved this problem, but i've got better things to do than heal the American schism, i just put a guy in office to handle that.

typalizer

i just happened upon a link to the typealyzer website. It analyzes blogs to figure out where they sit on the Myers-Briggs typology scale.

I'm an ISTP, or rather my blog is an ISTP. Not bad, in college i was an INTJ. So this means that i'm more connected to the world than my intuition, and i'm less judgmental. Not bad. Not good either. Just is.

being in communication

So this weekend i helped out on production for a communication course run by Landmark Education. It was fantastic. I already took the course, and it was nice to be able to be a gadfly enough to be able to leave the room, but in there enough to sample the course again.

What i want to talk about is the different perspectives of NLP and LE (Landmark Education). They both deal with humanity, NLP deals with a more scientific/epistemological filter, while LE takes the metaphysical/ontological tack. Both 'systems', if you will, look at the development of humans as individuals, and as communicators. NLP focuses much more on developing effective communication skills than self-development.

NLP suggests that highly effective communicators are adept at creating rapport with people. This means that they can create an experience of familiarity with others. NLPers came to this by looking at and imitating the behavior of highly social folks. What they notice was that people who were in rapport, performed similar behaviors, gestures and sometimes in a nice little rhythm.

What's weird is that people are cautioned to not literally mimic the actions of the other person, but to do miniature motions that approximate the gestures of the person they want to be in rapport with. This is funny, because apparently people have a filter that tells them when others are mocking them, and matching (what NLP calls it) the person's behavior might set of these alarms.

LE, on the other hand, asserts that being in communication or affinity is a way of being, not a set of gestures. A more new-agey take would say that a 'way of being' is the way that your consciousness resonates (pun not intended) throughout your behaviors to influence it. So when you are being related to someone, you overtly and subtly behave in a way that that person picks up on your comfort and connection with them, but they probably couldn't put their finger, nose or ear on just what it is about how you're acting that tells them your comfortable with them. As opposed to, say, you doing the same things while being bad. It isn't the inflection of the voice, its the inflections of the inflections that resonate and broadcast our 'way of being' or emotional state. [note to reader: i wrote the section you just read after having written the section you're about to read]

Both of these positions seem different, and seemingly irreconciliable. But i think the clue is something i learned in high-school chemistry. My teacher (a real nerdy physicist with a sense of humor, man i forgot his name) asked us when we were learning about waves and stuff "if a flute and a piano both make the same note, let's say 'middle C', why do they sound different". I blurted out sub-cycles somehow, and he said 'correct'.

what?

Yeah, notes vibrate at different frequencies. When two different instruments make the same note, the vibrations have their own set of vibrations (see fractals if you're bored). I think this gives a clue as to the seeming discrepancy.

So, if i'm being angry, then my behavior is going to go one way. But if i'm being delighted, then my behavior might go another way. I'm asserting that even if i perform the same 'exact' gesture while being those different states, you'll be able to tell that there's a difference between the two 'mental states' or 'ways of being'.

What i'm supposing is that embedded in human behavior, there is another layer of behavior that's a little deeper than we may be able to consciously notice. Sure, i can 'sound' like i'm delighted or angry, but that may not be the case. How you can know when i'm faking is the fact that you can pick on the 'sub-cycles' of my communications.

I think that's all i wanted to say. That being an expert at creating rapport, attempting to not 'be in rapport' has a limit past which you cannot go because the NLPers are unable to convince the other person of their 'congruency' without actually being congruent (word choice unintended).

network of conversations 'bout marriage

So, i'm engaged. And i was exchanging messages with an old friend on facebook, and she asked why i didn't respond to her "congrats". At first, i thought not much of it and said that i started to take the congrats for granted. Then i left it at that.

Not two minutes later i realized why i take the congrats with a grain of salt. What happens is that i find that a lot of people my age are getting married. And, it seems that people i know about ten or so years older, are getting divorced. So it seems like people are getting divorced like its a new pair of hot shoes. And i don't want those shoes. So i'm a little scared (when looking from the outside, at statistics, not from the quality of my relationship) that it's predictable that i'd get divorced sometime in the future.

I thought a few seconds later (and wrote this too) that saying congrats to someone getting married is like congratulating someone on getting a new job at Ford or Goldman Sachs. Granted, the job is great, but the environment surrounding the job seems toxic. knamean?

Now, about being married for a long time. There's a group (i'm too lazy to find them) that tape record a couple having an argument, while hooked up to all kinds of machines which measure heart rate, blood pressure etc, who can predict with like 90% accuracy whether a couple will stay married or get a divorce. Apparently, how people habitually react to the other person's communications stabilizes, and if their reactions are negative, then it predicts a tumultuous relationship leading to divorce.

My remedy is my knowledge of communication that i've learned from Neuro-Linguisitic Programming (NLP) and my experience as an introduction leader for Landmark Education. Both of these technologies/educational methodologies place a premium on open, honest and flexible communication. I figure that i'm a bit insulated from getting stuck in too many patterns, cuz i see them in a matter of weeks (even though sometimes i leave them alone, and don't do nothin about them). So i figure i'm good. But that's just my opinion. The proof will be in the 50 year anniversary. 2059, here we come!!!

busy busy busy

I worked on the Philadelphia Marathon last week(end). I also told my friend Johnathan that i would do the Philadelphia Triathlon with him in June. Right now I'm leaning toward doing the sprint triathlon, but in the back of my mind i'm thinking that the sprint triathlon is for suckers, i might just do the whole thing. The thing i've got going for me is that i'm a decent swimmer, and apparently that's where people's weak points are. Since i only have to quicken how i swim, i think i might be able to remotely place, nothing significant cuz my running and biking would be sub-optimal, but still, nice prospects. I even bought goggles!

***
What else? I'm committed to writing articles for my website. I set my pace at one per day. I've got tons to say, so i might as well get writing. I also realize that this is a little slow, i should be aiming for like 2-5 per day since i don't have anything else to do. I wrote one this morning on communication. umm. And i want to scrap the whole thing and rebuild it. i don't know why, i just do.

***
I'm starting to talk more to my fiancee. I realize (after she tells me of course) that i don't talk to her a lot about the things going on in my head, so i'm making more of an effort to be in communication with her about things. It's not as hard as i thought. Though secretly i don't want this communication to get her into my decision-making process, just more of a sounding-board. That's because i'm a man, and men are more comfortable making solitary decisions . . . or at least that's the story i'm sticking to.

no overtime for you

Hey, i like the idea of spreading the wealth around. In the upcoming weeks, there will be tons of discussions about how to bail this economy out. It will center heavily on rebuilding the physical infrastructure of the company, and promoting green jobs. I have something to add to this to make sure that everything is cool:

1. that no one person can recieve from a company more than 30 times the amount of the lowest paid and third-tier subcontractor. That means that if the lowest paid person in the company (janitor or secretary) makes $10 an hour, no other employee can make in total compensation more than $300 an hour.

Now, when people get government contracts, they usually subcontract out a lot of the work to other companies. What we don't want is shell corporations being created so that the second-tier suppliers do the real work, the requirement for second tier suppliers (including lawyers and accountants) makes sure that the money isn't sitting at the top of the foodchain.

2. that there are percentage limits on overtime. That is to say that no one person can work more than 50 hours per week. Why this? because i'm afraid that you'll have the skills and work hogged by a, though competent, few people. by limiting the overtime, what companies will have to do is to hire more people.

been workin hard for no money

I've been working hard on my website Keystone Business Systems. I'm building it so that i can create a community of professionals, business-owners and non-profit organizations that will create a black business class in philadelphia.

When looking around at the state of Philadelphia politics and economics, we're drastically behind the curve. What i want to do is create a centralized location that aggregates the different organizations and 'movements' around black Philadelphia so that it is easy to find people, communicate with them and of course to plan and cooperate with them.

It's a hard job being a web developer. I'm installing, updating, migrating and doing all kinds of things. I'm also working on a book on networking that i put down for a week cuz i went headlong into this. On the book note, i did get a book that i've been wanting for a good while: Emergence: the connected lives of ants, cities, software and brains. I read it a few years ago and loved it. On its current second read, it's funny how i'm appreciating his writing style a lot more than the first go-round. Hopefully i'll be able to pick a few things up for my own book.

America's New Weapon, the slingshot

Apparently, people are saying the Pentagon's budget is bloated. You don't say! in a relatively detailed article that i read on reference from another article i realized that Obama can really cut the budget deficit down by shedding overly-expensive, and frivolous military spending. Though the article says that a lot of the budget is for personnel, there's still gonna be a lot of cost-cutting for experimental weapons programs.

I think that the army will eventually have to downgrade its advanced weaponry to the slingshot. Well, maybe not that much, but you can bet your AR'15s that joe soldier won't be getting any new toys for xmas next year.

What has me delighted about this is that our military spending is the highest per-capita on the planet, unless you count Waco back in the 90's, and needs to be reduced. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be equipped for wars that we should be fighting, i'm saying that sometimes the hottest technologies don't beat old-fashioned know-how.

I read in the book Moving Mountains by the Quartermaster in the Gulf War that he won a mock battle against high-tech weaponry using uninterceptable messages and orders written on 3x5 cards! The high-tech part of the army got routed. So there's room for non-high tech weaponry if our strategy and execution is novel.

I also read in the Pentagon's new map by Thomas Barnett which predicted the tranformation of the American fighting forces towards more of a peace-keeping and nation-building force. Granted, this was dismal since the third year in Iraq, but was glimpsed in India after the Tsunami when the Aircraft carrier came into port and was cheered by the indian populace, and commenced to produce massive quantities of clean water for the people whos water supply was now mixed with millions of gallons of salty ocean water.

So when i say the slingshot, i both mean the reduction in the complexity of vehicles, and a reduction in the government-financed research into them as well as the predilection for America to avoid fighting a war, armed with more of a pitchfork (for farming) and a slingshot than a cannon

Obama-lovin' late

I bumped into some people and they asked why i haven't blogged in a while. I stared at them with disbelief that they knew i had a blog, much less read it.

Well, i'm almost stunned that Obama won. I thought that when he beat Hillary, he had it in the bag. So that's why i'm not stunned. But i get the shivers at thinking that he actually won. A facebook friend of mine, which means he knows people i know but i don't remember the dude, Khari wrote a wonderful article about how and why i'm awe-struck. Couldn't have said it better myself, and i think i'm a good writer.

Recently, also on the Obama wagon, i read that Obama will have 48 appellate court seats to fill. The reason there were so many was that Bush couldn't push through his ultra-conservatives, and Clinton dropped the ball. you can find the rehashing of the same article if you search for 'obama' 'court' and 'fill'. This, i am excited about.

I wrote earlier here about Obama's thinking about the courts and strategy, which basically said that civil rights movements should look to creating legislation, and not the courts, to get their way, much like the conservative movement. I also told people that i was excited to have Obama as president, not only because he's black but because he brings to the presidency the subtle and profound thinking of a constitutional-law professor.

new-age linkin

i just recently read the book The New Influencers by Paul Gilliam (sorry the website looks cheezy, but the book is okay) and learned the wonderful benefits of linking.

He says that linking to other websites and articles are good for growing your blog followers and thought community etc. I think linking to other websites is good to remember where exactly i came up with the crap thoughts i have.

so, from now on you can kind of expect me to link to articles and such that i find interesting. The benefit is only half so you can verify that i'm completely not off my rocker and making stuff up. The other half of the benefit is so that i can do the same.

this blog is now my external hard drive

As you can see from my wide variety of topics in my posts, i think a lot about a lot of things. I have been looking for a way to organize, collect and categorize my thoughts on a wide array of subjects. I have found delicious to be a wonderful way to organize stuff on the web, however, it didn't fit my off-the-cuff thoughts because i couldn't tag books, thoughts and the like. So, what i'll be doing from now on is using my blog as my 'external hard drive' or 'outboard brain' as one Wired writer pontificated.

Obama on civil rights & equality strategy

I got this from Slate, one of my regular rags. i found a real insightful observation (in bold below) about the different attitudes that conservatives and liberals have on the role of the courts. I relate it to what i learned from the book Who Rules America by Domhoff.

begin quote"
In some states, like California, judges instructed the state to take steps to equalize school funding from district to district. In others, like Kansas and Kentucky, and in ongoing litigation in Connecticut, the court decisions are framed in terms of adequacy of funding—making sure each district has enough, rather than the same amount. Either way, it's redistribution of what's become a rather routine sort. This is what Obama was talking about when he said in the radio interview, "Suddenly, a whole bunch of folks start bringing these claims in state court under state constitutions that call for equal educational opportunity, and you see state courts with mixed results being more responsive to it."

What comes through far more clearly in the interview is a tactical point: Obama thinks it's a mistake to rely too much on courts to further any broad agenda. He says, "I think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was that the civil rights movement became so court-focused. I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and organizing activities on the ground that are able to bring about the coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways we still suffer from that." And then he continues, "Maybe I am showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor, but you know … the institution just isn't structured that way."

This is a whole separate, bitter, ongoing fight in legal circles—over when to turn to courts as a means of change and when to turn to the legislature, which is directly accountable to the voters and so perhaps the safer and more stable route. It's a truism that conservatives favor legislative change and see the courts as an undemocratic end run around it. They especially think that about any push for "redistributive change," Obama's subject here. In this interview, Obama comes down on the traditionally conservative side, albeit for presumably different reasons. He thinks the civil rights movement misjudged the courts' utility—they were good for providing for a right to vote and for black people to sit with white people at a lunch counter, to use Obama's examples, but they're not good for deciding who's entitled to what government benefits or property rights. "Obama is with Bork on this," Cass Sunstein, an Obama adviser, told me, referring, of course, to the arch-conservative, famously not-confirmed-to-the-Supreme Court Judge Robert Bork.
copied from this Slate article
"end quote

What i found interesting was that Domhoff outlines how the 'elite' class influences America, but i don't remember any explicit contrast between the legislative and court-based strategies of getting what you want done. I think if more liberals look at passing laws (liberal majority yeah!) instead of waiting for the courts, then America would be a much more balanced society.

oh how we have forgotten

In the past few days, i really get upset for periods of time thinking about how short a memory the media has. It seems that during the bailout blame-game, not many people stop to think about who is the originating culprit of this mess.

I mean sure, wall street messed up. They bought the securities, the seemingly objective rating firms gave the rubber stamp to these securities and then AIG insured them, based on the ratings firms stamp of approval.

So, the blame partly goes on the ratings firms such as Standard & Poors, and Moody's and so forth. They were supposed to be the watchdogs. However, like an article i recently read put it, the watchdogs stopped watching. This led to the quick unraveling of wall street's cohesion, both within individual firms, and across the board.

But, the question begs: who did they buy these securities from? From Countrywide. Haven't heard much about them lately? Because they went belly-up almost first! So, countrywide was pamphletting California with mortgages structured not in the best interest of either the lender nor the borrower. They made their money on the transaction fees! So, their profits came not from the integrity of the deal, but from the transaction of the deal.

For instance, VISA makes money everytime you use your Visa card. So, of course they're going to advocate the use of your credit card, whether you have good credit or not! The same with Countrywide's strategy to make its dough on the transaction, and then get the mortgage, like a hot potato, out of its hands as quickly as possible.

So, the primary blame lies with Countrywide. Secondarily, the blame lies with the ratings bodies such as Standard & Poor's and Moody's who gave their rubber stamp of approval to those shoddy investments.

imagine if the crash-test rating system was flawed and they started giving five-stars to anyone for attempting safety, not for actually creating safe vehicles. Pretty soon the country wouldn't trust them right? There would be a call to overhaul the system. The problem i see is that not many people are asking for oversight for the ratings bureaus, the bureaus that attempt to assure the trust, honesty and integrity of the financial realm. That's who we have to monitor.

Monitor the monitors, then society will start to build trust again.

up and running

I've been tooling around with the website (keybussys) by getting a new template (face) and shoring some stuff up on the backend. My current website is like non-functional. I forgot passwords and all that. The reason it sucks is because i blew my computer away and re-installed everything. But before i got the passwords to the website, i deleted the VPC before i got my passwords and website out of it.

In the last perhaps week or so i've been working on the website again cuz i'm trying to do it big. I was gung-ho about it but i couldn't find a good user interface for it. However, i've found a great template (interface) that fits my needs and i can customize it using some of the thrown-together skills that i've accumulated in the past couple months.

I'll be putting it up in a couple days, soon as i remember my godaddy account info!!!

also, i'm running the backend on joomla in case you were wondering

the dow tanking

i just made some rough calculations and it looks like the dow lost about 60% of its value in the past year or so. I think this has been the largest percentage decline in history in the course of a year. Moving that cool little chart on finance.google.com it looks like the only other time something like this happened was in 73-74 but that took two years! WOW.

What's MORE IMPORTANT is the S&P 500 which tracks a much wider variety of stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average) DJIA only tracks about the top 30 stocks of the largest companies. The S&P 500 tracks, you guessed it, 500 stocks across a range of industries. That's a better thermometer of what's going on in the economy. Think about it like this, its the difference between measuring in feet (DJIA) or inches (S&P 500). If you're going to build a bridge, you better have some really small measurements. I do think that the S&P has a wider index, but its not followed as much because there are mutual fund indexes that closely follow the S&P 500 (they're called 'spiders' -S&P InDexeRs).

I also think that one of the problems with the market's growth since the nineties was the creation of automated buy-sell programs that fund managers and perhaps enterprising individuals created that would buy stock at a certain price and sell it at another. This enables you to set a rate of return with a long window without looking at the short-term.

I also wonder what has happened to the prohibition on short-selling stocks. The other day i saw a comment about margin calls but i'm note clear as to whether the margin calls are related to short selling, i gotta investigate that.

on writing

Its funny how when writing a book you want to balance everything. I've written the first section (of five) and wanted to 'nail' that section before i get to the next one. So, what i did was wrote it, and edited it. I wanted to nail the first section, then polish it so that if/when i wrote the second section, that builds on but doesn't depend on the first, then i'd have something coherent to refer back to.

But now it seems that i'm in too deep. I've got too many books to re-read, decipher and re-organize than i can manage. I'm also itching to create a phase-by-phase and a step-by-step section so that readers can grasp not just the abstract structure, but the how to do it.

I think i'm just whinning about trying to do three things at once. I figure when i get the second section mostly knocked out (instead of just the one chapter i keep trying to re-write) then i'll sit back and relax.

I think it's hard trying to juggle and shift in and out of the forrest-trees views that i put myself in sometimes

netweaving

So, i'll merge it all. consequences be damned.

NetWeaving is my likkle coinage for weaving a network. Weaving a newtork is qualitatively different from networking. Networking is the art of making connections so that you benefit from your network(s). Network weaving is the art of making connections so that other people benefit from the network(s). This is what Malcolm Gladwell was pointing to when he wrote The Tipping Point (great book).

So my latest craze in the book (yeah, no backstory) is based on seven books: Emergence, Tipping Point, Keystone Advantage, Never Eat Alone, Why Things Bite Back, The Hidden Power of Social Networks and one or two more that i don't feel like remembering. What i'm doing is creating short chapter-long vignettes of each book, so that at the end of each chapter i can summarize (and hopefully capture) the different viewpoints from each book. I hope that this section of mine will give 'networkers' a larger appreciation of the networks within which they play.

manage it all?

How do i manage it all. Shoot, how does anyone. I'm typing away at my computer mostly on a book on building networks that i'm writing. In the interim i'm interrupted by thoughts about the other fires i have burning, some out of control, in other areas of my life. Half of me is resigned to the fate i've created for myself, and the other half is content with making small but plentiful contributions to boosting my development, hoping that it will all cascade and crystalize into a whole new beautiful life.

The other more pressing issue of 'managing it all' is that i think i'm really into this bloggin thing, but i've got a few blogs in mind. That is to say i want to talk about anything and everything all in one blog. And of course i want it to be a little popular, so how dost i balance the smorgasborg of ideas churning and rushing through my 3-pounds of grey matter but . . . yeah, that thought kinda just ended.

Waxman, my new hero

This just in . . . Lehman executives made off with about $10 billion in bonuses as they cried wolf to the feds about how they were going down the tubes. I repeat, as Lehman Brothers asked the Fed to step in and help, they at the same time gave their top executives about $10 billion in golden parachutes, bonuses and other kinds of compensation.

Livid is such a bland word to describe what i feel. Criminal is not adequate to describe the debased morality of those executives.

Now, i'm livid that relationally the kids on my block who get 3-5 years for assault and battery (well, it happens) get way less time than white-collar criminals who get nothing but a slap on the wrist for mis-managing BILLIONS of dollars of other people's money.

Why isn't this a crime again? Why won't they be thrown in Jail? I'm thinking RICO act or something, collusion, market manipulation etc. And when they do go to jail, they should go to county jails with hardened violent criminals, not the 'country club' federal jails that we hear so little about.

I want the head of lehman to be next to a guy named bubba who has tatoos, not a Martha Stewart jail.

speechless . . . or debateless even.

i want to cry.

i am underwhelmed at the level of disgust and outrage that people don't exhibit about how completely incompetent Palin is to be a prospective vice president.

Why we're not in a (economic) depression already

I've been wondering that with the largest five investment banks going under, why isn't the economy in a full tailspin already? I mean we've seen this coming for two years, and though hopefully half of the crisis is in our rearview mirror, i've been wondering why we haven't gone into a recession by now, or even a depression.

I mean, some of the major indicators are harrowing: the rate of new housing and price of new housing is dropping (but mainly driven down in over-inflated markets like cali and florida, my little neighborhood of West Philadelphia is treading water with a little bump here and there).

What's saved us? Toyota and Wal-Mart. Well, not exactly that company, but the things that make them great: lean thinking. To get what's going on, you have to understand the difference between the construction of supply chains now versus twenty years ago, and much of the change can be attributed to businesses inhaling the notion of lean thinking or JIT (just-in-time) production that was imported from Japan.

So the scenario twenty years ago was that if i was in manufacturing, and i had a couple clients, i would make large batches of products so that i had 'inventory'. Now, i had to make enough inventory so that stuff wouldn't be on back-order for 3 months, so i also had to buy space for this inventory. Now, when my main buyer went out of business, i lost thousands or millions because i had no place to sell my goods.

This may seem bad for A business, but it was even worse for the supply chain. How? Well, i then reduce my orders from my suppliers who feel the same reverberation. But, since i supplied the company that just closed its doors, i also supplied them along with my competitors and other companies who created complementary products. Now, since i got a reduction in orders, also my competitors and complementors did, so OUR supplier is now out not just the business of one business (mine) but multiple businesses (my competition and complementers).

This is a process called amplification. So a disturbance closer to the consumer end of the supply chain, amplifies its consequences down the supply chain. And vice versa . . . when the midwest suffers a drought, all the products relying on corn suffer from higher prices, and lower profit margins.

So what has changed? Wal-mart. Wal-mart got on the IT train real early, and all-in. What they did was set up a system so that their suppliers had real-time access to the current and historical rate of sales of their products. What that meant was that companies instead of creating abstract and guess-based forecasts, they could accurately predict how much an item would sell, and in what seasons, and in what quanitties. So, they no longer had to go through miniature boom-bust cycles for their inventory, they could create a relatively consistent stream of production.

If they then transmit this information to their suppliers, then their suppliers have more realistic information and goals for production. So the amplification factor is minimized or at least reduced drastically due to better communication. Two days ago i saw a graph from another blogger that charted the price of fish in coastal African markets and the volatile fluctuations, until cells phones came in. Now, fishers can call ahead to see the price of fish and can choose to go where the best price is instead of waiting to get all the way to the market and gambling on price. In the graph, the variation was about a third of what it was before!

I remember back in the early-mid nineties when i watched NBR (nightly business report) over my father's shoulder how they would report fluctuations in manufacturing. I would assume that the fluctuations aren't as volatile as before most of the economy started with this IT thing. Now, the situation is far from over, many manufacturing and a few other sectors of the economy are far from investing and/or utilizing their IT departments in such a way as to communicate back through their supply chain, but it is happening, and this fact has enabled the contraction in credit to not adversely affect the rest of the economy. Why? Because you don't need a loan for guaranteed money, you need a loan for speculative money.

Since businesses are relying less on borrowed money for their core production, what's suffering is the creation of new business, not the sustaining of old business. Well, that's my half-pence of analysis anyway

Better idea than i had

I was talking to a student in one of my courses and he proposed a novel idea. Instead of giving these corporations all this bailout money ($700 Billion), which would leave the average American still in debt, the government should give each taxpayer making less than $75,000 per year a check for $40,000. Now, the condition is that these taxpayers could only apply this to their debts (so no shopping at Home Depot)!

So, if this is done, instead of only the risky and swindling banks getting bailed out, we'll have millions of Americans in a better financial position with reduced and/or no debt. This would increase our basic net worth and how much money we have available to buy other stuff, hence keep the economy going! And the vulturous credit companies (mortgages and cards) would still sort-of be rescued because they'd get all this money on their balance sheet!

So, instead of bailing out just the companies, we'd be bailing out John Q. Public!

He also mentioned that in a bargain for this, the Americans trade this for higher taxes for the next 5 years. I think that's a bargain, don't you?

Send this to five people if you agree.

anotherdirtysoapbox.blogspot.com

i need a bailout too

Yo, i need a bailout. My company lost 3.6 billion and all i'm getting is a 11.6 million compensation package. . . of course i'm lying, and so are they!

Really though? I've been reeling at this crisis, and there's a lot i don't get about it. We have two parallel crises on our hands. the first crisis is the home mortgage crisis, and the second is the Wall Street business credit crisis.

The supposed bailout that is being proposed on Wall Street bails out the Wall Street behemoths who bought and re-packaged bad loans to each other, and lent money based on the profits from their swindling ways. But, there doesn't seem to be a bailout being proposed for the mortgagees of the swindling sub-prime loans that were taken to be fleeced and are now left with loans they can't afford.

Now, there seems to be a real problem in the financial sector, that makes everyone nervous. But that's just the thing . . . it sounds only like its in the financial sector. I don't see how the contraction in credit will churn the economy to a grinding halt. But then again, i'm not in finance, but i do know a little bit. I just think the world economy needs a little sobering up on building a solid and stable economy versus the rampant unsubstantial 'growth' and profits that corporate business has had, while the rest of us struggle to pay our bills.

I know that it seems very short-sighted of me to want to tell those investment bankers to go jump out of a building (see crash of 1929) but i mean, they swindle joe homebuyer and want jane taxpayer to bail them out! They robbed peter, gambled and lost, and want paul to pay for it. How ludicrous is that!?

where do i plug in my hybrid

Living in the city has me thinking of all these articles promising and projecting plug-in hybrid vehicles in the next 10 years. My me-centric line of thinking asks: where do i plug in my hybrid.

I live in the city with no garage. So how will i insure that some young enterprising youth won't sell my outlet by the hour or use when i'm either sleeping at night or away at work. For that to work there would have to be some sort of data exchange to identify what car plugs into what outlet.

If that's the case, then i can go anywhere without overtly paying for my transportation. Why? because this little data-exhcange could be country-wide. I mean, visa is country wide, gas stations are country-wide, why not electric outlets? I would predict that some company is going to make hand-over-fist money creating little protocols and boxes for hotels and restaurants to install so that their customers can hook up to the electric grid for a small percentage (like visa).

Palin-drones

http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/cc_insider/2008/09/jon-stewart-ann.html

Jon Stewart kills it. He shows how republicans did a complete 180 about the gender card. When Hillary was talking that gender stuff, they said, as Bruce Said in die hard 143: "cowboy the fuck up". When the spotlight is on Palin, they say its unfair.

Well, that's to be expected.

But its not just overt comedy shows that don't like her:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/03/peggy-noonan-mike-murphy_n_123647.html


But i tell you. I read a yahoo article about how Palin fits the bill for the conservative right. We've got a pentacostal (fundamentalist is one of the two words in first sentence of the wikipedia article on it), a gun nut (she hunts with AR-15s), an anti-abortion advocate (birthed a down syndrome kid) and well, apparently a snappy speaker. And to us liberal-leaning folk, her being a pick is rather foolish. But to Republicans, this is the first breath of life the McCain campaign has gotten since, well since it started.

what i said elsewhere

i'm on a discussion list where it seems that i'm on the losing side of the debate team (if you count numbers) but winning in terms of analyzing issues. So, somebody posted a list of things they'd like the next prez (they're assuming its the big O) to solve. I remixed it and put it in a ranking. I modified #3 to be what i said, what's in parentheses is what he put.

lists are cool, but rankings are better:

1. Alternative fuel source development - this comes first cuz like Barack said, you can't outsource that. Not only would that build indigenous energy sources, it would also build a technical research infrastructure (hopefully filled by #3)
   
2. Equitable income distribution - i think there should be an earning cap where the highest paid person can only be paid some multiple of times as the lowest paid person in the same company (including subcontractors), options and fringe benefits included. That would be the quickest way to spread the love. I also think that there should be taxes on net worth and perhaps not income (which is only constitutional due to an amendmen). And i support the estate tax. I also think the payroll tax should be eliminated in favor of other options such as a revenue tax and/or an increased business energy tax.
   
3. Rigorous Math and Science Education (precursor to developing the prosperous 21st century economy) - number one on this is to halve the number of children in a classroom. Having been a teacher, the more kids, the more complex. Simply halving the number of kids in a class would greatly enhance the ability of teachers to teach. Raising the salary of teachers but keeping them teaching so many children is just paying more for masochism, however noble we may all think. An analogy would be would you instead pay more for soldiers or invest in ways to not have to go to war? I think that a quarter of the Iraq occupation budget should go to education: specifically school construction and teacher pay, not administration nor muddled in state sieves.
   
4. Social Security restructuring (to be a supplement not a source) - i think we should have an OPTION for people to put a portion of their SS against an index (like the S&P) of the stock market. That's what pretty safe investors end up doing in many 401Ks anyway. If people opt out of SS and the market tanks, then they're SOL because of their own decision. They gambled on their allowance. Tough noogies.
   
5. Immigration - build the great wall of texas
   
6. Restoring US world leadership in things that matter instead of war - i think a superfluous goal. The first goal is integrity, simply by getting our own stuff straight and minding less of other countries busienss would be the generator of clout on the international scene. Sufficiently doing 1-3 would satisfy most of this goal i think.
   
7. Elimination of disease like Aids and Cancer - i don't know. From a evolutionary standpoint, disease is a natural part of being an organism. The problem with curing diseases is that people live longer and thereby exert more strain on the environment, so it's like robbing peter to pay paul. Being scared of your own or the mortality of others doesn't demandmoney from the government, but i support private donations and research.
   

Actually, i was kidding with number five, but i couldn't pass that up. In order to curb immigration we actually have to invest in some ways that make third world countries (mexico for instance) on some kind of par with the US, thus lessening the attractiveness of coming to US. On the flip side, i find it funny that people believe in human-created borders as if they are an aspect of reality and not an aspect of governmental dealmaking based on war capacity. Borders were created to tell tribes who can tax what people on what land, not necessarily who could or could not come in. Historically, the merchant class has free reign across borders, but perhaps not the peons and serfs like us (RAB).

B$

Hope for President

'bout to be a big

I went to a meeting last night with the heads of UPPN and about 30-50 specially hand-picked people. Basically, its a movement within UPPN to start giving back to the community, so they picked about 50 guys and invited them to become . . . Bigs!

What's a Big? Its a nick-name for a Big Brother/Sister. So, i'm real excited about it. I put in an application, and if they can get past my armed robbery, extortion and other assorted charges, i'll be fine. Just kidding of course. It was a wonderful thing to see about 30 solid black men about to become Bigs. The organizers on the BBBS side of things said that in their years (about ten for the most senior employee) they haven't seen anything like last night.

They're also pushing that we invite other black men to become Bigs. So i called one, who said no, and i'll call another. I think that it would be more potent if/when i actually am a Big, you know, it's easeir to lead from the front, then you know where you're going.

Jesse . . WTF?

Yo, in the news, Jesse and other supposed 'civil rights leaders' are complaining that Obama is talking down to blacks when he talks of personal responsibility. Apparently they've never heard of anyone besides themselves. Now i don't like this, but i understand it. You, well really me, has got to realize that they are 'civil rights leaders', which by definition points their attitudes and attentions toward government and business policies and actions. They aren't 'personal responsibility leaders' which has them focus on what's happening inside of the black community. They are attending to what's happening to the black community.

This is a real important distinction. There's a big difference between figuring out what's happening inside of a context (community, business, etc) and what's happening outside of that context, and especially how that entity/context is interacting with its environment.

So, most of the media is forgetting that the role of Jesse and Al and others is not to speak to black folk about what black folk 'should be' or 'ougth to be' doing. Their role is to speak to non-black communities and institutions and telling them what they 'should' or 'ought' to be doing in relation to the black community.

So its is no wonder than people in the role of civil rights leaders would have a problem with Obama talking to his own folk about their behavior, simply because Obama isn't towing the civil rights part line. Makes sense to me, I see what the fuss is about, but i see what causes the confusion amidst the fuss also.

I also heard that Jesse's out-of-wedlock baby's aunt wrote a letter detailing how Jesse himself is a dead-beat dad. And by extension it is no wonder that Jesse doesn't want to look at personal and parental responsibility, simply because he has little ground or integrity to stand on and speak from.

is it what it is?

I just read a good article against the 'semantic web' which basically says that thinking and language are too fluid to categorize. It's a pretty layman termed article for such a heavy topic. Not a lot of jargon. you can find it here:
http://shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html

sometimes giving up is the best option

Please tell Hillary. I mean for real. I know we tell everyone that if there's a slimmer of hope (pun intended), then keep up the good fight. But i have a hard time believing that she thinks she's a better candidate. i think that she's trying to undermine him as an electable president and say "i told you so" so she can run in four years and hopefully win.

So i think someone should sit Hillary down and give her a good long talk about cutting her losses. And it shouldn't be Bill. He's liable to come out the room bleeding for more than one reason. She needs to listen to that old song that i love with the refrain "you got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold them, know when to walk away. . ."

really simple RSS

I'm into recursiveness

http://www.slate.com/id/2184810

it's an article about an improved RSS feed that filters out what you do and don't like in your RSS inbox based on your reading preferences. Think RSS and netflix ratings mashed up, based on textual analysis. Hot. I might try it.

a life worth living

The past couple days, i've been meandering around town with the thought/question in my head "am i living a life that's worth living?". This i think is a little different than the question "what do you want to be known for" because the latter question speaks about your long-term impact on the people around you, while the first question asks about the quality of your life in-the-moment.

So, there's not a resounding no, but there's a cold 'not really' truth ring to my answer. I have a couple opportunities to create the programs and movements that i want to, but i'm not driving them to become actualities, much less driving them to completion.

what are they:
a black economic empowerment network
a program to develop computer literacy skills in African-american youth

going down in flames

Clinton

Why vote for Obama

here's something that i left on a forum thread whose title was Obama vs Clinton

here's why i am and think you (and everyone) should vote for Obama:

At least internally, he's resolved what many of us see as dualities. It sounds like to him there is no race, gender or class, despite the media attention and pigeonholing of democratic candidates into race (Obama), gender (Hillary) and class (Edwards) [and isn't that ironic that we have(d) all three discussions in our face and didn't know to comment on that].

Obama seems to have touched what it is to be human. He seems to know what it is to have your heart broken because of chance, racism, happenstance, economics and gender. When he talks, he talks to the core of what it is to be human. He's not thinking of you, me and others as individuals with different shades and shapes, he's talking to the fact that we're cut from the same cloth. He takes into account that after years, decades and centuries of injustice, still we live and toil. He talks to humans of what is possible for humanity and mankind [and possibilities create opportunities for action]. And i think that what he talks about is a reflection of his thoughts. He speaks hope. He is hope.

I'm somewhat hesitant to say it but . . . him being in the political arena, he's playing a game that's beneath him. He's Plato's philosopher-king, Rand's Galt and Neo after the Oracle. His true voice would probably be found, mined, smelted and formed in the halls of academia, but since philosophy has been so long divorced from politics, his craft and words would fall on deaf ears. So he's doubly equipped as a philosophical non-dualist clashing swords in the halls of academia and an expert in the game of politics clashing in the halls of congress. You'll not find another benevolent warrior-king inside the world of politics since Ghengis Khan and perhaps Mansa Musa.

When i argue with people who've known me for a while, I tell them that every four or five years i get a new paradigm. I've been afrocentric, socialist, capitalist and perhaps a few shades of other stuff. My problem was that many times, these paradigms for me would be an intellectual exercise, rather than something that spoke from my Being, both as a human, and as a blackman. But for the last couple years, since i have distinguished this, i've grown to know an cherish how to speak from my experience as a human, and occassionally managed to talk to others in terms of their experiences as humans too. And i'm no master, i falter. Obama is a master, and he falters too.

It seems like for Obama, the unrelenting aspiration for the expression of love and fairness in the lives of everyone is the only life he wants to live, not a dog-and-pony show for votes. I can't help but support that. This is in stark contrast to Hillary who emotes some of this on cue and Edwards who really feels it, but isn't it. Shit, i even like McCain. McCain has the same qualities that i describe in Obama, but living his life in the machiavellian world of politics (as an honorable politicisan, not the derogatory intonation that we think of today) McCain is anchored in this realm of passion for love and fairness, but as a ship, not as an anchor. Obama is the anchor, the mooring of hope.

So for me, at least, not voting for Obama and the hope that he exudes, exhorts and represents would be perhaps the most traitorous thing i could do as a human.

Hope for President

Okay Jeff, that's not why you should vote for Obama, but why i am. And i hope that looking through the particular glasses that i look through in life, you'll start to see what it is about Obama that i know you feel, but just can't distinguish.

tagging movies

I've always wanted to know how i can find a movie just like the one i watched. For instance, compare the two movies about magicians: the illusionist and the prestige. Both involved magicians, but it's hard to focus in on just magicians if you look in the more general category 'magic'. In that category, you'd find things like harry potter and the hobbit trilogy (whatever that name is). So i've been wanting some kind of tagging system that enables a person to add tags that are relevant to a movie so you can search for things like "plot twist" and "double-cross" if you like to watch that sort of thing.

That call has been almost answered in the form of the IMDB taggin feature. It's good, i' only tried it out on one or two movies and it got them (the aforementioned magician leading to those two movies). What i'd really like is that being cross-referenced with Netflix's user preference ratings. It would help netflix offer "movies like" that actually incorporated deeper elements of a movie than simple user likings . .. it would help users like me find movies that i'm almost guaranteed to like for the right reasons.

It would be like the pandora of movies!

peace

On Obama . . is there anything else?

I invited my dad over so he could wax poetic about how important the Kennedy endorsements were. Being a youngster, i hear about the literal adoration that a whole nation had for the Kennedy's (something that Bill C. didn't achieve). So i had to tap someone who actually lived through those times to weigh in on how important this was, and the ramifications in that generation.

So in this analysis, my dad said (you'll hear a lot of that in this post) that Hillary was counting on the white baby-boomer women to be at least a solid backbone to her campaign. So the Kennedy endorsement flies in the face of that. The 'princess' and heir apparent to the Kennedy legacy (that would be Caroline folks) has just endorsed Obama. What was important about that was that Caroline isn't a politician. Analogously, that's like Princess Di supporting a candidate for Prime Minister over.

And Ted/Edward Kennedy coming out behind Obama does something serious to the race. Even though my dad says Ed is a wildcard, his weighing in makes New York a battleground for Hillary and not a walk-over. The Kennedy's are heavy in the Northeast, and their name carries weight in both political and social circles, so this is really big folks.

I've got my eye on New York's numbers in the upcoming days. What about you?

My dad also dropped some science on the racial politics of "'ol miss" and how the Jack Kennedy (Jack was his nickname) sent troops to ol miss. Apparently after Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock, a few years later Kennedy sent some federal marshals to "Ol Miss". Apparently 60 of those marshals were hospitalized!!! In response, Kennedy sent parts of the 82nd airborne and the 101st (both of which landed in Normandy) down to Mississippi to show the Gubna of Miss just what country he was in. And apparently it was that that had black America fall in love with the Kennedy's . . . troops in mississippi, whodathunkit

Euler's Identity theorem

[posted in response to marty's comment on "ooh, an existentialist discussion arises" on the Darkush blog yesterday]

I learned about "i" (the imaginary number, not myself) from a retired math professor who was tutoring a young kid in a school i was working in. He was teaching the kid about cycles and negative roots and many of the things you're talking about. This guy had three pieces of paper and was teaching the kid by switching between the uses of some combination of the two papers. I was interested in his little tutelage session after he was done with the kid and the retired professor enjoyed talking to me.

So, after he explained some things and i was quick on the uptake (which is why he enjoyed talking to me), i asked if i could have the papers, he wasn't going to use them so he gave them to me. Over the weekend, i sat for about 45 min trying to figure out the relationship between them. After a bit of shuffling, i realized that "i" showed up on one plane only when it intersected the plane (duh). When i correlated all the planes, i realized that the path that "i" was drawing was sort of a spiral. So, basically, "i" hits our normal number plane only once in a while, while the rest of its plotting is on the z axis, hence the spiral and its relative 'non-existence' other than when it was on that other plane. [He was absolutely thrilled when i showed him this and asked a few times (once overtly and twice implicating) whether someone helped me with this insight]

Now what i'm not getting from Euler's identity theorem is the diagram next to it, which is a circle that is hemi-inscribed. I'd be very interested to see that same proof plotted on a 3-D surface, and i'd wager that though the diagram on wikipedia is 'right', but only from the perspective of 'above'. What i'm saying is that the proof isn't saying anything about 'identity' because the end plot of the point is further up the axis that we're standing on, and from our vantage point we can't see that the 'circle' is really being inscribed on a spiral, and the start and end points are not in the same position.

Now that i re-read this post, and looked at the website again i'll be even bolder. I'll assert that the starting point for the diagram is (1,1,0) and ending point is (-1,-1,0) and that the hemi-circle IS traveling through the plane Z, and that the "+1" is moving diagonally toward the (0,0,0) point. It's all about perspective man, all about perspective. (and hence relevant to Steve's original discussion about race and gender . . . and when can we throw class into the mix?).

After saying that, what's really got my undies in a bunch is that i originally expected the identity theorem to have something that leaves and arrives at the same point (which it doesn't). But what the theorem is really stating is the proportional relationship between the numbers. Is this a correct interpretation marty?


Also, if i remember correctly, this was the same formula that Lakoff dealt with in the end of his book "where mathematics comes from". I understood the book, but with no math teacher to help, i didn't get the grit of his point for this particular equation.

watched my first debate

. . . of this election cycle that is. And i think that Obama fricasseed (had to look that spelling up) them how do you spell that word? I think the only fault that i have with Obama is that his speech is choppy. He has a lot of 'uh's and what i think is a mild stutter. I think it's cuz he's actually thinking about what he says, which is actually becoming of him.

I did find that he doesn't support universal healthcare, which i TOTALLY agree with. And when it came down to it, Hillary came out in full dig-her-heels in force for universal healthcare (which Obama calls 'mandatory') and that's just what i don't like about her. Sure, i like mandates. But she's not going after a mandate. She said that universal healthcare is a core democratic value. That's a mis-statement. Universal Healthcare is a core liberal value, and unfortunately she's confused the two, just as many other people have.

I think Edwards is fighting a real good fight. Honestly, i like his honesty and his fight for poverty. But i just don't think his fight against poverty is ripe yet for the picking. I'm for an Obama Edwards ticket. I think Obama would serve as a wonderful uniter, and Edwards with a good groundwork during those years can come with the knock-out punch to help end poverty and its brother: overconsumption, in the next eight years. All the while, i do think that we should have at least one republican congress during that sixteen years to keep those pesky democrats (i'd say 'asses' but i mean that in the symbolic not literal sense) honest and not too wild.

I think Hillary has an axe to grind, and i neither agree with her particular axes, how she's grinding them or why she's grinding them. I think Obama's message of hope and unity hasn't been heard within the beltway for a long time, and it's time to hear it again. And i think Edwards has a passionate empathy for the underdog . . . it's too bad he's a white man having to stress how he's for the 'little man' against two 'minorities'. I think in a playing field of all white men he'd be doing MUCH better, but his message of empathy 'for' someone is much different than a message of empathy 'from' someone. I just hope his love for people doesn't get lost in the fact that he's a white guy.

In this corner

I've been sorta watching the Obama-Clinton fiasco. What was really interesting was to hear Bill Clinton come out on radio (heard on the Tom Joyner show) not really attacking Obama, but really taking the man's campaign to task. It was funny, i started to think about the fight as a boxing match and thought of what was going on. What i thought was Bill was definitely a past champion, on the ropes fighting against Obama, but not really wanting to blow the guy out of the water. For some reason, in his diatribe, it just didn't sound like Bill had the poise he once had as president and expert politician. He sounded like he was on the defensive, but not in terms of being pummeled, but in terms of trying to get the sympathy for him that black folk so desperately want to give him for being married to that tyrant in heels.

Also, i read a great article on a website that i used to read a bit, but haven't lately (slate) which is decidedly anti-Hillary. It's almost slanderous (not really, i just wanted to say that word). My favorite is an article that says that she's actually not more experienced than Obama. Bascially, her elected official tenure is six years, compared to Obama's 11 when you include his stint in the Illinois State legislature. So what Hillary has been trading on is her proximity to Bill!!! http://www.slate.com/id/2182073/ there's the link

ps: note to self, i gotta learn to embed links in html so they come up snazzy like in other blogs. If anyone knows how to do this, drop me a line

some shit i wrote

i submitted this as a comment on the Darkush blog

loved the explanation of the superdelegate system, i was wondering what that was. And Obama and hillary basically tied in NH, the term 'win' is malleable and over-hyped.

Many people are also missing the fact that many independents played their cards in the republican primary. So, i'm thinking that McCain beat Obama much the way that they say Nader beat Gore

And i think the republican race is actually fighting for the 'soul' of the party, therefore it was actually more important to outline a republican mandate for McCain in New Hampshire to make a good showing than whether Obama or Hillary won.

Hope for Obama

I'm an avid supporter. I think he's the great black hope, the great white hope and just the great hope. But i'm scared. I don't want to think it . .. but i was just looking at the video of him after the Iowa win . . . he's inspiring, he makes me want to believe, and i do believe. . . he makes me think that i can make a change. But i also know that there are people out there hating their fear of him. But they don' t know that they hate their fear, they think that they hate him. And they may try to take it out on him, instead of doing 'work' on themselves.

nothing much

i don't have anything important to say, but i wanted to post something because i want to feel like a good blogger.