Cowboy Confessional

Barack Obama is playing the race canard … again.

Responding to a reporter, Obama claimed that the McCain camp was “… going to try to … make you scared of me … you know, ‘he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”‘

This is not the first time that Obama has accused his opposition of being racist without any proof thereof. This particular form of falsehood is not new but it is clever. Race has always been an issue in this campaign, primarily because Obama and the media make such a fuss about it (frankly, who cares if an unrepentant socialist is black, white, half-toned, or purple with pink polka dots — his authoritarian tendencies are the issue). The interesting aspect is Obama’s externalization.

For anyone fortunate enough to have not delved into the pseudoscience of Freudian psychology, externalization is the process whereby a person projects their own self loathing onto other people, perhaps the only principle that fraud Freud developed. This defense mechanism makes it possible for weak minded people to deal with what they dislike most about themselves by perceiving the same fault in others.

We do not have to look far to find the origins of Obama’s externalization. In his own book he relates tales of being at odds with his own identities and his difficulty with selecting one. The process was greatly slowed by his admitted narcotic abuse. Being uncertain of his race (either one), drugged out of his skull, inflicted by the insane logic of an openly racist reverend … it is little wonder that Obama has a certain sense of self hatred or that he would rapidly externalize it upon his opponents.

Undecided voters will decide this election. Analysis of independents throughout recent history shows they research more deeply than the average voter and that they base much of their decision on their gut instinct about the integrity (or lack thereof) of the candidate. Obama’s externalizations will be his undoing as independent voters evaluate who is the true racist in this race.

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Well, I’m evidently not the only cowboy in San Francisco these days, but I am the one with his clothing on and not in trouble with the law.

Robert Burck has ample New York notoriety for being the “Naked Cowboy”.  He roams around Times Square in his tighty-whities, strumming on a guitar and posing for photos.  It’s an odd living, but I won’t begrudge a busker who makes an honest buck.

Burck made his way here to San Francisco and was quickly arrested.  His Frisco rap sheet gives you an idea about what constitutes offensive behavior in San Fran.  Burck was not busted for bearing his bum - public nudity is practically mandatory in the Modern Sodom.  Nor was he arrested for singing badly which is offensive to anyone.

Burck was cited for “violating a posted sign” which informed people with reading skills that soliciting and playing musical instruments is unforgivable in Union Square and thus disturbing the downtown retail trade.

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The ability to laugh remove can remove pain … mainly by preventing us from telling people what we really think about them.

A book I’m peddling to publishers titled Catalog of Canards describes how political lies are created and spread. My tongue-in-cheek prose help mollify the reader who otherwise would self-destruct from anger inflicted by the realization of how thoroughly hoodwinked they have been. In outlining the book I was reasonably sure that I described nearly every form of fib in the dirty dregs of democracy.

I may be wrong.

Attending a meeting of the American Constitution Society — a conclave of left-wing people interested in rigging the judiciary to defeat the will of the people — I heard a form of lie that I am uncertain how to codify. The panel composed of law professors and civil rights litigators (including a lone libertarian from the Pacific Legal Foundation) opened their review of the 2007/2008 Supreme Court season with a discussion of D.C. v. Heller, the now famous gun ban case.

The discussion was academic, which was entertaining for a constitutional autodidact like myself (incidentally, never use the word autodidact when speaking to your congressional representative … I did that to mine and his limited intellect kept him from understanding the concept). Most commentators conducted light ridicule of the majority decision in the case, disliking a ruling that said the Second Amendment does secure an individual right.

A seeming sane legal strumpet from Stanford lobbed a lie which I’m still struggling to classify. In referring to the Heller decision she claimed the court “created a new right.”

If I wanted to torture my readers, I could wax for hours on the nature of reserved rights, preexisting rights, 10th Amendment prerogative and any number of conlaw constructions confirming that everything in the Bill of Rights was purposefully composed and ratified to document sacrosanct individual rights jealously guarded by “the people.” It is mechanically impossible for a judge to create a new right since the basic theory of the American legal system is that all rights are reserved by the people and that we grant government select powers in order to maintain a more-or-less civil society.

That someone so clueless teaches law should scare everyone.

So I’m stuck. Throughout my book I cite the various forms of falsehoods as the lie of … For example, when the media omits pertinent information from a news story it is called The Lie of Context. The Stanford professor’s perjury is difficult to classify. It is in essence Orwellian but defies even George’s subterfuge schema.

Suggestions for a codification are welcome.

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I stand corrected.  The New York Times can be honest after all, but only when confessing to their dishonesty.

In this election year, publishing presidential policy proposals helps to inform voters so they can make intelligent decisions.  The Old Gray Broad recently ran a Barack Obama missive on his plans concerning Iraq.  Fair enough.  The Times also sought a similar piece from John McCain (though I doubt they have the stomach to ask Bob Barr).  Also fair.

The Times declined to publish McCain’s op/ed because he refused to change his policy to match those held by the Times’ editorial board.  In their rejection letter to the McCain camp they wrote:

“Let me suggest an approach … the article would have to … lay out a clear plan for achieving victory — with troops levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate.”

(emphasis mine)

The newspaper has in effect required a candidate to change his position on an issue to get equal coverage.   McCain has discounted fixed timetables for withdraw, preferring to base withdraw on when the safety of the Iraqi people can be reasonably assured.  They know McCain’s position and this reply cannot be a simple minded mistake (though I have no doubt of the simple mindedness of New York Times editors).

This may be unprecedented in the tortured history of journalism and explains why major metro newspaper subscription rates are dropping faster than Congress’s popularity with voters.

Now you know who you can’t trust with perfect clarity.

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I hacked out a slightly different version of Cajun Queen over the weekend. It is still a work in progress and I sorely need to find a better drummer than me. For a song that was whelped as a solo slide guitar piece, this tune is evolving in unexpected ways.

There are parallels for writers. I chatting with Dear Old Dad over the weekend. He started writing his first book and got stuck constructing the outline, having no idea where he was going with his memoir (the old man is leading a damn interesting life). He has lots of good stories to tell but he didn’t know what the theme and point of his book would be.

Sometimes the written word is like a song that you are monkeying with in studio. In Cajun Queen I knew something was missing — it did not sound complete. I started grabbing the odd and assorted percussion instruments laying about. Not liking tambourines much at all I grabbed that last.

Much to my dismay it was exactly what I needed.

My advice to Pop was to write nothing but different high-level outlines no deeper than two levels. I suggested organizing each outline around different centers of topic. After hacking through three or four, he would start to see patterns emerge — common themes that would tie the book together. I also suggested starting at the end — finding the one story that made the biggest impression on him personally — and opening the book with it. That would automagically set the tone and theme tight away.

Cajun Queen is a case study of setting the tone. As originally performed, it was a slash-and-burn blues bit focusing on slide guitar riffs, which themselves were much different than what has now been recorded. But for some unexplained reason I wanted conga drums in the song and laid that track first. That changed the center — the focus — of the song leading to the dueling guitars you hear now.

Sometimes you gotta go where the universe tells you to go.

I hope Dad starts his memoir with a meeting he had. It was with a colonel who serving in Vietnam during that troubled little war. Dad and his band of engineers worked some typical magic, rigging up motion detectors and shoving them into bamboo stalks (bamboo in Nam is about the size of a man’s thigh and grows tall enough to obscure the sun). At night, huey choppers would fly down the Ho Chi Minh trail tossing sharp-ended bamboo stalks loaded with Dad’s invention along the trail. These electronic stalks could discern the difference between an ox cart or an infantry division rolling down the road. They could tell the difference between marching boots and tank treads. The bamboo would radio this intelligence to U.S. commanders.

After a very business-like briefing, the colonel came over to my old man and said “We see them coming now. You saved a lot of my men’s lives. Thanks.”

Now that’s a theme we all can live with.

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