Building Social Muscles

Empire State

I had an appointment with someone in that building earlier in the day. After that was over, I decided to walk north. By the time I was done, I was at the northern tip of Harlem, by the water. I was wearing my new shoes, decent leather, otherwise I had been wearing my funky pair that I had bought for five bucks: Third World pride. I took the three train back. It is like you put on a white shirt for an event in a black neighborhood, you put on funky shoes for an event in Manhattan.

Bye Bye Drinking Liberally

Rudy's is not going to work for me.

Obama 2008

I go to Obama 2008 events. I participate more, learn names, engage in more talk, build social muscles. That will be better. You also end up with varied locations, a few different boroughs.

Justin Krebs

He obviously does not feel the Harvard thing for Barack. He instead feels the white guy thing for John Edwards and Chris Dodd. That is not Jewish angst, that is white guy angst.

Martha Kenton

When I crunch the numbers I realize I have spent more time in Kentucky than in the village I call my homevillage, kind of. But Berea and Lexington are night and day. Berea is Bible Belt with a strong small academic town feel. Lexington is a cute city, cosmopolitan. Martha is from Lexington. She knows the street I lived on for about six months after Berea, less than six.

She gave some time to when Cesnik ran for City Council. He had also been a Deaniac from 2004.

Barackface: Eric Cesnik For City Council
Barackface: Some Suggestions To The Cesnik Campaign

I think I have a lingering interest in the committee she is on, Women's Issues. If you are into group dynamics, gender is a goldmine as a topic. The first meeting I mostly listened. My enthusiasm for 2.0 might not have been shared though. Most people are like, I am here to socialize, and if I am here for an hour, that is all the time I have for it, not before or after. Understandable.

I guess I come from a little more hard core political action angle. NYC is the progressive capital of America and the world. If you are a group of women in NYC gungho on women's issues, I think you have an audience out there in small town America. Got to reach out to them.

But it's a free country, and I should put out my ideas in person at a meeting, and if the idea is rejected, I should just accept it. I think there is some discomfort among some people about putting your photos and videos online. Some people feel uneasy, maybe even a little unsafe: privacy issue.

At this last meeting, one person present said, "This is Hillary country."

I said, "I am a hard core Barack Obama guy in the city, but the good news is I am rooting for Hillary for vice president."

Martha stepped in saying she was supporting Edwards out of "Southern pride." She did that for the only man present. Only women do things like that, at least most of the time. Guys don't even notice half the time.

Martha Outed Kenton And Women With Issues

It was curious to me though as to why the meeting was at what would be church time. Was there a method to the madness?

I am still undecided about this next event of Martha's committee. Is this one where you get to meet local women politicians? That would be great. Like that woman who beat Cesnik, for example.

Thursday, February 7

6:00 pm

Planned Parenthood and DL21C's Women's Issues Committee present

A Night Out with Women in Politics
6:00-9:00pm
The Zipper Factory, 336 W. 37th St. between 8th & 9th

Please RSVP!

At some level I feel this committee might also fizzle out for me. I have no interest in event planning. There might not be enough policy talk. Or the chemistry might go awry: that is always the interesting part. Or I might not even show up. Or Martha might try to act the bridge back to DFNYC. That is always a possibility.

DFNYC

I am surprised that organization has not endorsed Deaniac Barack.

Caputo

I see a few different organizations in the rear view window. DFNYC, MYD, Drinking Liberally, and DL21C. Although Martha's committee is affiliated with DL21C, it is a satellite to the planet.

Somewhere along the way it struck me of all the people at all the organizations in the city, perhaps Caputo is one who might run for office at some point. Or maybe not so. I would still bet on it, but running for office is one of those things noone can decide for you. My judgment comes from a five second snapshot here, a five second snapshot there. But then all that might be rearview window stuff by now. I find that curious.

She has a way of wielding power, an instinct for it.

One

I got to know so many people running so many organizations, I have been to so many events, including Obama events. Caputo stands out as major office candidate material like nobody else. That is just a statement my political eyes want to make as if to show off my political instincts.

She could be the woman Barack.

Or I might be totally off the mark. Politics might just be a good, nice thing to do on the side.

My Hood



You walk one way and it is a Hasidic neighborhood, you walk another way and it is Little Bangladesh, best of both worlds. Yesterday evening I went to a local eatery and struck a conversation with a random Bengali over tea. I face a language barrier. I understand very little Bengali, and speak none at all. And we could barely follow each other's English. But it felt good afterwards, like nourishment.

Free Hand Exercise

It can feel like meditation. I am lucky in the slim department, the high metabolism department. The free hand exercise is a core component to building social muscles.

Clubbing

That would be the nonstructured way to do it. Meet people, build social muscles. I like big, rowdy kinds. Not small, gentle kinds. Opal and Red Lion are good stuff.

Street

I will take a street parade over some event at some bar any day. That is why summer is so much fun. I remember this parade I went to in the Bronx. Uh, that was so amazing.



Street Food

Street food makes you street smart.

Never A Corporate Job

I have never held a corporate job in America. I think the number one reason is I find it eery that so many people end up with this very narrow range of expressions on their faces. Easy, careless, smiles, loud laughs, mischievous looks go out the window. I have seen it happen to a high school classmate of mine who is a Citi guy.

So it gets unnerving when a political organization starts acting like it were some kind of a corporation. No, political events are like going clubbing. That is as far as I am willing to go.

Cloud Group Dynamics

That is what it was for Nepal work, for Obama work, and the young tech startup is an extension.

I love New York City, but I have to think Global South and so my career necessarily has to be online. I have to think of my people, my Global South people, in an active way, on a daily basis.

New York City

This is one place in America where it is the world at your doorsteps. If you are someone of my background, the outer boroughs are so very endlessly fascinating. It is like going on a world tour.

There is rest of America, and there is New York City. It is as if NYC were a different country altogether.

When I walk the streets, the city gets me. I see the full spectrum in my mind, from my homevillage to Times Square.

Third World To Times Square

My village I am going to call the center of the unknown universe, because it is your typical Third World village. Times Square claims to be the center of the known universe.

You get to call me Global South.

Spitzer

I was thinking about him today. He is a little bit in the doldrums right now. This guy is high on intellectual intelligence, relatively low on emotional intelligence. He is right, the point is not that he is not right. And he likes to take on big issues.

I have met Paterson in person and of course Pollak. These two are smart people, sure, but they happen to be high on emotional intelligence, both. If Spitzer were to form a close troika with these two - closer - I think these two will more than compensate in the emotional intelligence department.

But then nobody thought Bill Clinton was low on emotional intelligence, and the dude had rough years in 1993 and 1994.

Christianity, Buddhism

In the Christian worldview, it is your one soul, unique to eternity, it is one way street. In the Buddhist worldview, things get recycled endlessly. I think the two worldviews collide in social settings. In one worldview, you have hit the wall, crossed the line, in another you take what you take, you throw away what you throw away, and you start all over again, you recycle. It can feel like a culture clash, or it can feel like a power differential. I have the power to say I am done with you. Now, here I go off to eternity.

Observations like these on culture are also what get me about gender talk. They are fascinating to watch unfold. Women are hardwired different, and I mean in the mind. They see richer textures on the face. They bring different perspectives. And the gender power differential in general out there in the world is something to look at.

Bank

NYC thinks like a bank. From here to Silicon City is to be a major cultural challenge. You are trying to change the culture. The bank culture asks for a 50 page business plan. From there how do you move on to ideas scratched on napkins?

Barack Is Deaniac From 2004: His Anti-War Image Is No Fairytale
Progressive Political Religion: No Place For Superpowers
Tackling Race As An Issue The Average Person Way
Why Bill Clinton Is Misbehaving
An Ode To White Women: I Think I Am Going Hispanic
5.0 With Manhattan Organizations

Amardeep Singh: Tunku Varadarajan: on Amartya Sen, Racial Profiling Mr. Sen, now a professor at Harvard, was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in economics for his contributions to the field of welfare economics. He has a CV so seriously good that everyone, surely, knows of his being (in his previous post) the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, the apex of the British academic pyramid. Everyone, that is, except a British immigration official at Heathrow Airport a few years ago who, on looking at Mr. Sen's Indian passport and then at his home address on the immigration form--"Master's Lodge, Trinity College, Cambridge"--asked whether Mr. Sen was a close friend of the Master. This question made Mr. Sen enter into a private contemplation, rather self-indulgent in the circumstances, of whether "I could claim to be a friend of myself." As the seconds ticked away without answer, the immigration officer asked whether there was an "irregularity" with Mr. Sen's immigration status. And can you blame the man? Yet Mr. Sen--in his amused-but-chippy recall of the episode--says that the encounter was "a reminder, if one were needed, that identity can be a complicated matter." Well of course it can, professor. But in the 700-odd years of its existence, Cambridge had never before had a nonwhite head of college. Cannot immigration officers be just as empirical as economists?

Howard Dean Was Grassroots 1.0, Barack Is Grassroots 2.0

Time: Tuesday, February 5 at 7:00 PM
Duration: 4 hours
Host: katherine bernhardt
Location:
cafe enduro (Brooklyn, NY)
51 lincoln road
Brooklyn, NY 11226
Directions: take the Q train to Prospect Park station, exit Lincoln road. cafe is just to the left.

Time:	Thursday, January 24 at 6:30 PM
Duration:	7 hours
Host:	Martin Sutler
Location:	Madame X (Upstairs Lounge) (Manhattan, NY) 94 West Houston Street (between LaGuardia and Thompson) Manhattan, NY 11217

Barack Is Deaniac From 2004: His Anti-War Image Is No Fairytale

When Bill Clinton called Barack "the biggest fairytale I have ever seen," he meant the totality of Barack. The person, his lifestory, his candidacy, his blackness, his whiteness, his Boston convention speech, everything, the package deal.

Then the remark backfired a little, especially among leading African Americans across the country, especially after Hillary went right ahead and belittled none other than MLK himself (And The British Left India On Their Own), and she topped it off with her use of the word "slum" to describe a black Chicago neighborhood. And Bill Clinton backpeddled. I just meant his Iraq War thing, he said. As in, his image of being an anti-war person is a fairytale.

Fairytale, now that is a loaded racial codeword. Suggestion: don't take this guy seriously. People who don't take my blog seriously call it The Onion. If once in a while I am funny, I am glad. But this blog is no Onion. There is some cutting edge stuff going on at this blog.

Bill Clinton has not backpeddled enough. He needs to go ahead and eat his words. When Bill Clinton is talking about Barack and Iraq, he is lying. Again. Is there anything Bill Clinton has not lied about over the vast expanse of his career? He probably calls it political skill. I call him a guy who just does not get it. He does not get the politics of hope, the new kind of politics. What Barack is preaching is a new religion, and Bill Clinton has not the slightest clue. Bill Clinton is acting like a holdover from the 1990s that he is.

Barack's new kind of politics is a foreign language to Bill Clinton, he does not get it. Hillary is the same way, she must be married to Bill: she talks derisively of "false hopes" and "hoping for change."

Barack's hope message is not one that is naive, it is a muscular message that will deliver as many states to him in fall as Reagan managed in 1984, his muscular hope is the kind that can take you to the moon. This is not a weak hope of hoping the computers crash at the credit card company headquarters and all your credit card debt goes away. This is the kind of hope that ends slavery, the kind of hope finds the polio vaccine, the kind of vote that takes you to the moon.

This is also the kind of hope that ends a war that should never have been authorized - Hillary? - and never have been waged. Bush?

Barack was a staunch Dean 2004 person. When that organization became Democracy For America, it got behind the Senate candidate Barack Obama. Today Barack is the most prominent Deaniac there is.

Howard Dean Was Grassroots 1.0, Barack Is Grassroots 2.0

Guess what defined Dean 2004 more than any other thing: Howard Dean's anti-war stand. If anti-war is cool today, all the credit goes to Howard Dean. Barack took the right anti-war stand in 2002, but he did not have Howard Dean's clout at the time to go national with it.

Howard Dean made anti-war cool in 2004, Barack Obama gave the Dems a big victory with it in 2006. Dean was anti-war 1.0, Barack was anti-war 2.0 in 2006. The Dems took the House and the Senate in 2006, thanks to Barack.

To doubt Barack's anti-war stand is to doubt Howard Dean's anti-war credentials. That is like saying George Washington is not the Father of the Nation, Ernest Hemingway did not write The Old Man And The Sea. It really is that basic.

Barack was anti-war in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and this year too. Barack will be anti-war in 2009 as president. Barack will stay anti-war until the war is over, until he brings it to an end as president.

Barack was the most sought after Democrat during the 2006 election that turned the tide for Democrats in this country after six lonely years. The anti-war plank is what got the Dems the victory in 2006 and there was general consensus that Barack was the mascot nationally for that anti-war theme.



So how do you explain a few things?

Why did Barack say right before the 2004 convention that he did not know how he might have voted on the war if he were Senator in 2002? Duh. He was trying to enhance the chances of the Kerry-Edwards ticket. Both Kerry and Edwards had voted for the war, but now they were the candidates who were going to end it. So if your goal is to end the war, you do all you can to enhance the chances of a Kerry-Edwards ticket. So Barack said what he said. That was still an anti-war stand. Don't you get it?

And why has Barack voted to fund the war? That is what any responsible Senator would do. You don't say because I am opposed to the war, now I am going to cut the funds to starve the American troops out in that desert.

You still want to end the war, and you take the necessary political steps. It was not the mistake of the armed men and women who have done everything that has been asked of them. It was the mistake of George Bush, it was the mistake of the Republican Party.

And so Barack took the political step of being the most visible Democrat in the country for the 2006 elections. Victory came along, but he realized that had not been enough to end the war. So he changed his mind on not running in 2008, and he ran. He ran to end the war.

So, if a guy was anti-war in 2002 when he was a nobody trying to be a somebody and anti-war was not how you became somebody in 2002, if a guy was a Deaniac in 2004, the most prominent Deaniac in the country, and the guy was The Anti-War Mascot Of The Democratic Party for the 2006 elections, and the guy became the only prominent Dem running in 2007 who had actually opposed the war from the very start, what I would like to know is when did he become not anti-war.

I respect and admire Bill Clinton. He gave good eight years. Personally I am thankful for the dot com boom. So I will give him the benefit of doubt. It might have happened in 2003. 2003 is the year that escapes attention. Barack might have made a pro-war lapse as a desperate nobody that year. Somebody go do the digging on this one and help Billie Clinton out.

Barackface: Critiquing A Critique Of The Iraq War Critiques
Barackface: Obama's Weapon On Clinton: Iraq
Barackface: Barack's Fairytale Position On Iraq War, Fairytale ...
Barackface: Complicated Iraq
Barackface: Hillary Messed Up On Iraq, And Al Qaeda Is Strong ...
Barackface: Movie: Iraq For Sale
Barackface: Iraq Movie, Liberally, But Not Drinking
Barackface: Obama Gameplan: Stable, Democratic Iraq
Barackface: Impeach Bush-Cheney, Nancy Pelosi Gets To Become First ...
Barackface: Iraq Intel: The Spy Who Failed Me
Barackface: Lamont: The Iraq War Ferment In The Democratic Party
Barackface: Iraq: Dumb War
Barackface: Iraq Did Not Have The Bomb, Iran Does Not Either
Barackface: Hillary's Iran Vote, Not That Different From The Iraq Vote
Barackface: Lieberman, Lamont
Barackface: Flatten It Out
Barackface: The Unthinkable: Nuclear Weapons Are Not Made To Be Used
Barackface: I Don't Doubt Hillary's Compassion Overall, Just Her ...
Barackface: Barack's Politics Of Hope, Hillary's Politics Of Fear
Barackface: Hillary's Pro-War, Anti-Immigration Plank







Barackface: Howard Dean Was Grassroots 1.0, Barack Is Grassroots 2.0
Barackface: Dick Cheney, Nelson Mandela, Howard Dean
Barackface: Dean-Hillary-Obama Ticket
Barackface: Messages To Dean, Ferrer
Barackface: I Am Running For Dean 2008 Campaign Chair
Barackface: Dean Was In Town Yesterday
Barackface: Dean, DFNYC, Daily Kos, Justin, Brooklyn, Nepal
Barackface: Bill Clinton Is Now Anti War Like Dean

Progressive Political Religion: No Place For Superpowers

The spectrum concept is a powerful concept, and it can be used to create a near permanent progressive majority. You map the electorate on each issue, 1 to 10. So 5-10 is 60% of the electorate. You are trying to get them to vote for you. One person's map might not agree with that of another. And candidates might differ on exactly what position to take to get all of 5-10 to vote for you.

And you make the 1-4 feel like you have really really heard them. You have listened to them and you have understood what they have to say and why. This makes for a compassionate progressive. You are being respectful of the fact that in a democracy, a voter, no matter how wrong, is still rightly entitled to one vote. All votes are equal. Your ideology does not, should not, determine the weight of a vote.

Barackface: Health Care As A Spectrum
Barackface: The Spectrum/Dialogue Concept Is Key To Power
Barackface: The Spectrum Concept: Wide Applications

So mapping is step one. Positioning is step two. What position can someone running for office take to get the 5-10 to vote for them? And it is not like there is only one issue. There are a host of issues. Your positions on one issue might make you lose someone who might agree with you on something else. So you have to account for that. Mapping might be great material for the brains, the intellectuals, the pollsters, the think tank types. But positioning will be best done by the professional politicians, people who go out there and shake hands.

So there is the spectrum. And then there is The Matrix that is an ideal. It will not take shape just like I have outlined. But in a scenario when near everyone is online, The Matrix will come alive. The democracy will become almost direct. I don't think the political offices will go away, there is no replacing humans, but all the offices will become fundamentally transformed.

You introduce democracy into a country with a Big Bang.

Spread Democracy
Revolution

Then you introduce the spectrum and The Matrix, if the country is online enough.

Basically what you are doing is you are building political infrastructure. Political, and social, and economic infrastructure. A state, any state, a country, any country, a government, any government, is but a tool to building that political, social, economic infrastructure, the goal always being to benefit the individual.

Money is not everything, money can buy you bed but not sleep, and they say the best things in life are all free, but money just so happens to be a big, big chunk of all policy talk. And so, to keep things simple, I am going to put a dollar figure on every human forehead. That is how much money that person makes in a year.

The progressive goal is to acquire power to build the political, social, economic infrastructure so as to make the dollar figure go up on every forehead.

It is about the individual. It is not about this or that country being a superpower. If all of humanity were engulfed in a one person one vote arrangement, there would be no superpower at all.

So, no, I am not someone plotting to have America replaced by India and China as superpowers. I am a progressive. That is my political religion.

I think the spectrum concept is particularly well suited to handle social issues that have been the trickiest for progressives generally.

I am going to work much more on the Democracy Spreading Mechanism (Spread Democracy). It was forged through work on Nepal's April Revolution 2006, with some collaboration, but it failed me during the Burma protests, primarily because I just did not have the network and the penetration that I had with Nepal. In Nepal's case I had managed to penetrate all the political parties, top human rights NGOs, and diaspora organizations. This Democracy Spreading Mechanism (Spread Democracy) is the weakest link in the chain right now. I think I need to define it more, and add ways to measure readiness level. For example, at what point do you finally call people out into the streets? Too early, and you fail, like in Burma. But then there is also such a thing called too late.

In The News

Obama cannot beat Republican attack machine, says Clinton Guardian Unlimited She presents herself as a battle-hardened veteran, having weathered whole books full of smears, innuendo, half-truths and unfortunate facts. ........ The possible lines of attack against Obama are already being rehearsed on rightwing websites and talkshows. A claim on InsightMag.com - owned by the Unification Church - that he had attended a radical Islamic madrasa as a boy, was repeated on Fox News and other conservative outlets. In fact, the primary school Obama went to for two years when growing up in Jakarta, Indonesia, was a state school with a largely secular curriculum.
Barack Obama targets southern barbershops Telegraph.co.uk
Clinton, Obama shake up politics of identity Reuters 40 percent of blacks in South Carolina are likely to vote for Clinton ..... Obama scored well among women in Iowa and around 40 percent of blacks in South Carolina are likely to vote for Clinton ...... No black candidate has been elected to the Senate in the U.S. South for over a century, a fact seen as evidence that black candidates are at a disadvantage in a region where the legacy of slavery and racial segregation remains visible. ...... the Democratic race has turned assumptions of the role of race and gender in presidential campaigns on their head and helped energize the voting base .... the Democratic nominee in 2004, John Kerry, won just 30 percent of the white vote in the south
Momentum turns toward Obama in SC Chicago Sun-Times National polls may show Hillary Clinton slightly ahead of Barack Obama .... In New Hampshire, an Obama win was mistakenly predicted. ..... Obama's heady win in Iowa and his close seconds in New Hampshire and Nevada ...... No one cares about the Rezko issue outside Chicago ..... Young is a "has-been," one of the old guard of civil rights workers whose hard struggles have become just history book anecdotes for the younger African-American generation that has embraced Obama as an icon of change. .... Obama now leads among African Americans in South Carolina by 64 percent to Clinton's 20 percent.
Clintons lying about Obama's Reagan remark Baltimore Sun
Bill Clinton raises eyebrows as campaign surrogate for his wife The Canadian Press Obama made it clear he was going to hit back. ..... "This has become a habit and one of the things that we're going to do is to directly confront Bill Clinton when he's making statements that are not factually accurate."
Pitbull Bill - the 'other' Clinton revelling in his return to the fray Guardian Unlimited It has come down to Obama versus Clinton in the key southern state of South Carolina - but the Clinton that Barack Obama is up against is Bill, not Hillary. ....... At Lizard's Thicket diner, beside the Columbia highway yesterday, he let his breakfast of omelette and grits grow cold. He was enjoying taking questions from reporters far too much to care about food. After weeks of Hillary and Barack Obama being top of the news agenda, he was the story. ...... Arguments were inevitable in politics, he said. "This is a contact sport." ...... as he put it, the First Laddie ...... he took time to work the room ..... The Clintons have a reputation in Washington for ruthlessness. Their research team has spent a year digging through Obama's background, examining in detail his upbringing and, more specifically, his voting record while a senator in the Illinois legislature. ....... negative campaigning, no matter how often the public claims to dislike it, is effective ...... Bill Clinton is a brilliant and intelligent politician who makes no chance remarks: it's all deliberately worked out.
Obama Offered Dance Test for Clinton The Associated Press
Bill gets some shut-eye at MLK day event Boston Herald