Michelle Obama: Be not afraid

Is It Over Yet?

I don't watch TV news, I don't turn on the radio ... and still I am just so bloody sick of the Clintons as people. Well, and as politicians, too.

Leaflets, FCS. Hillary waving a fistful of leaflets, and accusing Obama of some kind of betrayal, completely a video bite. Seeing as how said leaflets were identical to her own, and not particularly interesting at that.

After her immense graciousness on Monday night. Took, what, forty-eight hours for that to wear off.

We all been wretched, we all been fools when the dream love walked out. Not going to tell you what I've done. But that's what campaign managers are for! Keep you from being foolish on national TV! What the hell are those people doing besides billing her astonishing amounts of money. Truly record-breaking amounts. I smell cross-purposes.

Latest foolishness, circulating this photo of Obama, on a visit to Kenya, wearing Kenyan dress and headwrap.

Oh my god, he's wearing a TURBAN, people! You know what TURBAN means!

The reason I don't watch TV news is because stupidity hurts, and political campaigns are stupidity bronzed.

Drudge : Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams responds: ‘If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed.’

Doin' the double-smack, what, me, swift-boating?

Oh yeah. Way to win superdelegate hearts and minds.

Speaking of heads, mine hurts. Do campaigns have to be this way? Mr. Obama says no, and it's that as much as anything that attracts so many of us. To listen to Barak or Michelle speak is balm to the listening mind. Never mind they so cute to look at. I think my heart would just burst to see them on the stand, taking the oath.

Even with me being so epitome of white. Doesn't matter. It's been along time since that kind of excitement's been around. Since Jack Kennedy's campaign and election, to be exact.The excitement of, Something different's going to happen.

I think we are all excited over the idea of something different, something better, and I think the name of that excitement is Hope.

Freetards: Boom or Bust?

That nice Doc Searls, I realized today with a slightly queasy sense of deja vu, is a radical of exactly the kind I used to know in Berkeley in the Sixties. Idealistic, passionately invested in an entirely imaginary group future, rather touchingly ignoring the nature of a capitalist society what has already et him and his Linux buddies and spit 'em back out.

Or, to put it another way (I could do these forever): Run 'em right over with the giant money truck, just like the rest of us, but the beauty (?) of Linux geeks is, They never even notice.

The Intention Economy will happen first with public media. This is the economy that will grow around customers' and users' actual intentions—rather than guesswork about those intentions, or efforts to capture or drive people's attention. As a result, the advertising boom will come to an end, simply because the supply side will know more about what the demand side wants, and will have better ways of relating to it. Advertising won't go away,and never will. But wasting money time and money with guesswork about what people might want will fade as a value system, simply because a system that starts the actual intentions of users and customers will be in place.

Tho I am guessing freetard is too harsh a word for someone like Doc. Since AFAIK Fake Steve made it up. (If he didn't, it's his now. See below.) Besides, does Richard Stallman take photos to die for? (Die over, apparently.)

Today FakeSteve rags on Woz again, nailing poor Woz (where's Kathy?) in his inimitable steel-marshmallow way, namaste.

Writers do that, they hand out justice without mercy, and don't give a fuck if they're “correct,” which is why the best of them, like Dan, are so often uncannily right.

Folks please read the entire article. It's a gem. Except the parts where Woz says the company has changed and we put too much emphasis on making products look cool. That part you can just skip right over.

Now, here's an item from Doc's list I agree with.

Brands and reputations will matter more than ever.

More's the pity.

How Can People Be So Stupid?

Okay, maybe that isn't the line from that heartbreaking ballad in Hair. Maybe it is. Like I am under some obligation to google every detail this constantly-associating, hard-at-work mind spits out? Hey, this is the land beyond right and wrong!

Clever, wot? But them's the perks—and there ain't many, honey—of being a writer. The privilege of defining your own turf, which you had fucking better well do. Be you writer or woman. Swim out beyond the breaks.

So listen, you really want a president who has so much integrity, he can't discern right from wrong when it comes to a piece of ass? As my dearly beloved ex used to say?

Hell, no. We already had Billy-boy, and that was way-annoying enough. Besides (oh, right, Zo, like this matters) McCain has a pretty young wife, yes? Talk about stupid: when have I ever seen the ass-chaser who thought that one was enough.

Or perhaps this evening's chautauqua should be entitled: A Sex Addict? In The White House? Again?

So here's my beef with the New York Times: I don't like the style with which they pussyfoot. I believe it could be done better.

As his relationship with a female lobbyist underscores, John McCain’s confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potential conflicts of interest.

Talk about oxymorons. Jesus, I got whiplash.

Save Flickr!

sfgate.com: “A suit filed in Santa Clara Superior Court on Feb. 1 accuses Yahoo's board of failing to look after shareholder interests. It centers on an offer Microsoft made to buy Yahoo last year, that the board rejected.

The suit alleges that Yahoo's directors voted against the merger so that they could continue to collect their lucrative positions, which paid $588,424 to $649,788 in 2006. In fact, the board should have gone through with the acquisition to maximize shareholder value, according to the complaint.”

You know what, Jer? (I may call you Jer, mayn't I?) I don't care how you manage to do it—just keep those Borg fuckers out of Flickr.

Anyone deny that they would trash it in a trice? No. That Flickr is one of the single great—what is it, certainly not just a web site, not just a photo share ...

Well no wonder the word eluded me: here this is the FIW (fucking inter webs) and yet, and yet ... Flickr is a place where art goes on.

Next thing you know, someone will invent blogging as art, and call it Writing. 

Hating Hillary

Frank writes on Listics: “Stanley Fish fishes around the Jason Horowitz article in GQ, but neither man can quite bring himself to call the Hillary hating what it is. Jason? Stanley? It’s MISOGYNY ... I am puzzled about how the topic of “hating Hillary Clinton” could be addressed without either writer (or their editors) making a single call-out regarding the misogyny and sexism that underlie so much of the vituperative ad feminam critiques.”

Way to go, Frank! And here I thought the only man who could really "get" what it's like, being on the receiving end, would have to be black.

Like Chuck D, who elaborates so well on John Lennon's somewhat prescient, “Women are the niggers of the world.”

Yessah boss, we is. We's mighty careful what we do, where we go, how we talk.

Remember, however low a man, there is always some one lower than he. Whom, as he wishes, he may treat like dirt, ignore like dirt, take for granted like the dirt beneath his feet.

If Hillary is elected, this will be more interesting than Obama drawing racists out of the woodword—they already been drawn. But the weird silence of men on the ugliness of misogyny, the horror feminae ... know any guy who speaks up on that?

Besides Frank?

The Few, The Proud

It was just like the old days. People chaining themselves to things. Draping themselves with rolls of film. Okay, I forget the significance of the film, but it was raining buckets, do you hear me, buckets, when these brave souls heard the call of duty. When you chain yourself to something, remember: no lunch, no bathroom breaks. That's revolutionary commitment! Chairman Mao would be proud. Oh, wait, that whole Mao thing went belly up. Sorry, deja vue is a powerful thing. One of the last peace marches I remember going on was organized by the Viet Nam Day Committee. Everyone marched, families—I brought my children, and wore an itchy crocheted miniature skirt. The march was powerful in its quiet size; just massive, the street all people as far as you could see. Outside the Copper Penny (insert your own joke,) police from all over California stood in an unending, slowly moving line, rather like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Who knew what these crazy hippies might freak out and do.

Yet we were just people, families—it had gone that far, the whole city was sick to death of a pointless War. Come together like that, I suppose we did out a powerful scare in law enforcement. I mean, so far we had been a thoroughly unpredictable bunch, inventing faster than socia context could keep up. The police, the Suits, the establishment all much like Great-Aunt Winifred when my father handed her the Roman Candle. "Mercy sakes! " she cried, as she ran about the yard, not knowing which way to point, "Mercy! Mercy!"

Mostly I find it—I don't know, is it sad or eminently laughable? I guess you had to be there. Once the Black Panthers armed themselves, those were serious, violent times, when both peace and justice seemed at hand.

Kudos to anyone who manages to find a radical act, really, never mind carry it out. The tree-sitters still sit, halting the University of California in its tracks. And the three brave souls who withstood a really tremendous downpour to chain themselves to the door of the Marine Officers Recruiting Station—there are three, look in the corner. Stand for what you believe in. Possibly even more courageous, the kind of courage so easily confused with the misbegotten impulse, stand when you seem a fool.

(formerly published as The Berkeley Three)

Yes, We Can

will.i.am,jesse dylan,scarlett johanson, common, kate walsh, herbie hancock, john legend, kareem abdul jabbar, kelly ju, adam rodriquez, amber valetta, nick cannon ...

                

take this song and blog it!

Wave Bye

Quantum physics says goodbye to reality :

“Some physicists are uncomfortable with the idea that all individual quantum events are innately random. This is why many have proposed more complete theories, which suggest that events are at least partially governed by extra 'hidden variables'. Now physicists from Austria claim to have performed an experiment that rules out a broad class of hidden-variables theories that focus on realism—giving the uneasy consequence that reality does not exist when we are not observing it (Nature 446 871).”

Kinda reassuring while it lasted, but let this be a lesson to ya, we don't need nobody to lean on. Now if the universe would just not spin out of control please on my watch, fer Chris sake, I am sposed to write these words not eat em.

Not all.

— “ ”