Category Archives: news

blog, news, politics

Wake of the week: Kim Jong-il still dead

Kim Jong-il is still dead.  Let’s all have a meal?

There are just three ways North Korea can go after the death of the despot. .

It can get worse. Much worse. Or it can get better. But not that  much better. Or it can stay the same. That’s probably the best of the three options. No heavy lifting required by the U.S., China. The U.S. doesn’t know what to do. And China likes to keep an ideal vision of repression around as it develops its hybrid capitalistic communism.

So it doesn’t look great for North Korea. But we can always hope for a little bit more.

http://aaldef.org/blog/yearning-for-a-north-korean-spring.html

Unlikely that Kim Jong-un is the “Un-Kim Jong-il.

Although, he seems to have a similar hair-thing going on.

What I find strange is that food has become a bargaining chip as governments try to assess the future.

People are starving over there.  The warnings have been out for sometime by UNICEF about the gravity of the situation.

Putting any plans for food aid on hold while the U.S. comes up with a political strategy, isn’t very humane.  Get the people something to eat.  Food first, then politics. 

www.aaldef.org/blog

Happy Holidays to all. I like Christmas, maybe even more than Tim Tebow. But I respect your holiday too.

New things coming up in 2012 on the amok.blog

Thanks for checking in.

blog, diversity, journalism, news, politics, race

Wake of the week: Lowe’s “Muslim Interruptus,” NDAA, and a farewell to Christopher Hitchens

My amok column on Lowe’s and its ad pullout, which I call an example of “Muslim Interruptus,” is up on

www.aaldef.org/blog

Frankly, the issue is worth making a big deal about, though its a basic capitalistic right to pull out whenever you feel like it. Barring contracts, free markets are free, right?

Taking that tack  just means you have to be ready for the political firestorm, and the potential loss in dollars. Though right now, Lowe’s seems to be positioning itself well to be the hardware store of choice for bigots, racists, and haters. Where do I get the supplies I need for the next cross-burning, hate-graffiti spree, or anti-diversity celebration requiring mild incendiary devices? 

I bet at Lowe’s, it’s service with a smile.

www.aaldef.org

The Lowe’s issue was a nice distraction from the The National Defense Authorization Bill, which passed this week with only minor changes that doesn’t really wipe out all the civil liberties concerns.

Maybe the payroll tax issue was used as a smokescreen to further distract attention.

Doesn’t anyone care the law would enable government to detain indefinitely anyone with suspected terrorisist ties, specifically to Al Qaeda, but given loopholes,  likely to include any terrorist organization the government wants to link you to.

The bigger deal is if it’s in the law and “codified.”  That’s the thing that makes all the gatekeepers sleep well  at night, because now they can pretty use this as a starting point for more extreme actions, and feel totally justified. They can lock you up, and now they can throw away the key. Before they had to at least remember there was a key.

Seems like with the NDAA, the American people lose a  whole lot more than Al Qaeda does.

And I thought the Iraq war ended this week.

When it did, I had no feeling. The war destroyed a presidency, our economy, and a sense of what our democracy’s all about. 

Maybe that’s why people aren’t up in arms about the NDAA.

But then there’s another distraction this week… at least for me.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

I was privileged to have Hitchens as a guest on my AM radio show in Washington, DC back in the ’90s. He was intelligent, brash, and provocative. The kind of guest that made radio fun and automatic. He’d call in and I could picture him with the tie undone,  ready with a snarky comment at my prompting.  I know he could seem like a pompous ass at times. But he could turn on the charm when his brilliance failed. And fortunately, or unfortunately,  it rarely did.  And he knew it.

When I moved on from D.C., we  never spoke again. But in recent years because of his writing, I knew he was sick and knew it was all coming to an end. But it doesn’t make it any less shocking when the news arrives via e-alert as it did last night, how the bad boy was quieted once and for all. I preferred the New York Times lead line to the Post’s. You can describe him as a great acerbic writer, but the Times put it in context by mentioning him in the same breath as Thomas Paine and George Orwell.

In the opinion ranks, those two are the Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. They’re not in heaven, but in the great Hall of Peruasive Essayists, somewhere in the equivalent of Cooperstown or Canton, a place where most of us who toil as columnists and bloggers hope to be laid to rest when we no longer have a pulse to register our opinion any longer. 

Hitchens knew the next stop is not a weekly column for a publication in the after life.

That’s the finality of this final deadline for Hitchens. Spirituality? Religion? Death bed conversion? Are you kidding.

So here’s where I just flat out say I hope he was wrong. 

I hope in the end, his belief system was turned upside down, and that faith turned out be fact.

That would have been a ripe opportunity for Hitchens. Because now he would know,or not know,the answer for real. 

 It would have made the utmost tragedy and shame his inability to share the truth with us all, one last time.

blog, diversity, news, politics, race

To fuel his rise, Newt Gingrich loves the undocumented– but just a little bit; Plus, a few thoughts on Herman Cain and the unofficial HCSAI—Herman Cain Sexual Appetite Index.

Newt Gingrich knows how to polarize, so why wouldn’t he be the guy on the right talking about some kind immigration reform? No one else is on the left,or the right.

Check out my Amok comments on the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund blog :

www.aaldef.org/blog

Gingrich’s ploy is really a smart way for the GOP to seem diverse without really being diverse. People in Washington are already talking about the demographic edge with people of color that Obama has. But the Democrats have a bad habit of ignoring the people they love. 

Newt needs to give some people of color an alternative–even if it’s a laughbly bad alternative, this idea of giving some undocumented immigrants legal status,but not citizenship.

It also gives GOP hardliners on immigration a softer edge.  Newt needs that to appeal to the Marco Rubio wing.

So the legalization idea is just  Gingrich using extreme wedge politics that’s more self-serving than humanitarian.

Legalization for some undocumented isn’t amnesty, but Newt will get the effect he wants:  Differentiation from Romney, Perry and the others.

For more check out my Amok column on the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund blog….

www.aaldef.org/blog

NOW ABOUT THAT HERMAN CAIN FELLOW….

He”s “suspending” his campaign. Just like a student gets suspended, there’s always hope the Principal will let him back him for something.

A fly-by at the GOP convention? But yes, it’s over. And isn’t this all Cain wanted anyway?  It was just a chance to pimp his book and sell his speeches so he can command Gingrich level $60,000 and up fees. He didn’t really want to be president. Like the Redford candidate in the film of the same name, he surely didn’t want to win the nomination and be put in the position of “Now what?”  He just wanted a platform a presidential campagin could give him, sort of like a super Facebook page.

So the Cain Train is suspended, but I still sort of see him as the lone guy riding on the subway at night, looping around waiting for an audience to appear, muttering “9-9-9.”  Books and speeches for sale. Maybe a reality show. Maybe Fox Business will hire him.

As the campaign ends, so ends the relevance of the HCSAI: The Herman Cain Sexual Appetite Index.  (It seems to be healthier than his appetite for pizza).

On the bright side, Cain’s left with his family intact, for now.

And we are only left to wonder what an Obama/Cain post-racial American presidential fantasy might have been.

blog, news, politics

Update: How the West was won? Mayor Ed Lee’s an elected after a Ranked Choice victory in San Francisco

 I’ve lauded Ed Lee for reaching “Gold Mountain,” when he was named interim. That alone was a tremendous accomplishment for the community lawyer turned bureaucrat. But his evolution to “elected” is all the more fascinating because of Ranked Choice Voting.

RCV is process that redistributes the votes, working from the bottom up.  Each time a last placed candidate was eliminated in the field of 16, a voter’s second choice is distributed accordingly to the named candidate still alive in the race.

Lee, who led at the end of election night Tuesday with  31 percent of the vote to Avalos’ 18 percent, was stalled with just 38 percent of the vote as the RCV vote count was underway Wednesday.

But Lee’s stock rose in round 7 when Public Defender Jeff Adachi was eliminated.

Adachi’s second place votes went mostly to City Attorney Ed Herrera, who got 2,100. Board President David Chiu had  1,721. But Lee did better with 1,935.

Lee’s ability to amass a large number of No.2 votes, particularly from the other top Asian American candidates’ ballots was significant.

In round 8, when State Senator Leland Yee was eliminated,  Herrera took 2,092 of Yee’s second choice votes.  Chiu took 2,275.  But again, Lee got the most from Yee:  2,992 second place votes.

In round 9, Chiu, who raised more than a million dollars and won the endorsement of the San Francisco Chronicle, was eliminated.  The winner of Chiu’s second choice votes were Herrera at 2,376, Avalos with 3,832.  And again, there was Lee getting a huge chunk, 5,894.

Remember Chiu ran only after Lee promised not to run, but then Lee ran anyway.  Lee was like a siphon on Chiu for first and second choice votes. In fact, Chiu’s seconds got Lee close to a majority with 49.02 percent of the votes, but it would take one more round to win it all.

In round 10, when Herrera was eliminated, 6,883 of his second place votes went to Avalos, the top name on the Democratic Party’s slate.  But again, there was Lee who took 4,705 No.2s from Herrera.

That’s all Lee needed to enter the 11th round with a whopping 61 percent, more than enough votes for a majority.

And that’s how the sausage was made.

Update: The above analysis was after first 11 rounds of Ranked Choice counts and re-distributions from Wednesday. 

Thursday’s  count added a 12th round which changed the numbers only slightly as Lee virtually held the same lead, 61 percent to Avalos’ 39 percent. But the race technically is over when Lee got 50 percent and 1 vote.

One interesting fact: Lee padded his vote count significantly by being the second choice for backers of Chiu, Yee and Adachi. Those sloppy seconds added nearly 20 percent to Lee’s total vote.

See my Amok column on the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund blog at www.aaldef.org/blog