Artbrock's Photo-blog and Occasional Ramblings

Jasper Jars

2009-08-24T19:09:00.002-06:00

Mickki needs pictures of her special little man. And this blog is the current transport from my phone.

Differences Between "Open Source" and "Open Currency"

2009-05-12T23:19:00.002-06:00

[Cross posted from New Currency Frontiers]

Alan’s last couple of posts have attempted to address confusion Openness and what we mean when we talk about that with respect to currencies or the new economy. Responses from various folks indicate that more clarification would be useful.

Let’s start by talking about Open Source Software.

Basically this means the source code of a software program is available and licensed in a way that would allow people to download it and adapt it for their own use, and possibly republish modifications for others use.

Open Source is a HUGE BREAKTHROUGH in terms of an Information Age gift economy. Software developers have learned that we can actually produce better software which evolves and adapts more quickly by freely sharing the product of our labor and asking others who use it and adapt it to also share their changes back to the community.

This is a huge strategic advantage over closed and proprietary software applications. In the currency space, Cyclos is probably the most feature-rich and mature example of an Open Source application. It continues to evolve and grow because of the Strohalm Foundation and a supportive base of users and geeks. However, it is built in the traditional siloed computing paradigm.

Traditional Siloed Computing

The traditional approach in pretty much all computing and information technologies is to separate applications into very distinct silos. This means, we run our applications in a very controlled environment (whether the original source code is open or closed). We keep our applications secure by limiting access to our server and databases.

If somebody penetrates the "castle walls" which protect our applications, they can wreak all kinds of havoc: change permissions, modify source code, delete files or records, modify data in the database, change accounts or passwords, etc.

This whole approach creates an inherent power imbalance between a very clearly defined "us" and "them." There are those who control the server, applications and settings, and then there is everyone else (such as users of those applications). The people who can go inside the castle walls control everything, the people outside the walls don’t.

Currently all software applications, whether open source (like Cyclos) or proprietary (like Paypal, banking software, the Visa Network, ACH or GETS) operate inside this siloed approach.

Why We Need Open Computing

What we are undertaking with the Metacurrency project is no small feat, because we are talking about a whole new architecture for software applications and information technologies. And this is why we’re spending so much energy clarifying what we mean by OPEN.

What happens if you want to write a check against your bank account, but there is a discrepancy between what you believe your balance is and what the bank says? Who is the authority? Who decides whether the check clears? Who decides what fees you’ll be charged if it doesn’t? What interest rates you’ll earn or pay? What other random fees and charges may happen? What the rules are and when they change? How much you can withdraw from an ATM in a single day? Etc…

The short answer: THEY do. Your only option is to move to another bank. Another bank where you'll be in the exact same position again. One group of people holds all the cards, makes all the rules, sets all the policies. And you have no authority to represent your own account, your balance, the rules you’ve agreed to, etc.

So, I ask you... If we are making a whole new model for currencies, do we want to repeat that pattern? Are we going to just trust that well-meaning, community-minded folks will never abuse the inherent power imbalance built into that approach to computing?

There's a reason for the saying: "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Currencies are extremely powerful tools. If we want to break the pattern of humanity serving currencies and instead have currencies serve us, then we must break the architectural pattern of power imbalance which gives one group ABSOLUTE POWER and withholds it from the bulk of participants. It is an inherently corruptible structure. If we build the new economy on this inherently corruptible foundation, can we expect any outcome other than corruption?

Exactly how naïve are we?

We need a whole new model of computing which allows BOTH individuals and communities to be sovereign entities and maximizes the freedom of independence of both for a truly Open Economy.

Currencies Are Like Games

We find that currencies operate very similar to games. Currencies are a shared set of agreements about value, counting and transacting with each other just like games function by a shared set of rules, scorekeeping and making plays. Players choose which games they want to play, their strategies, their own moves and they should be able to see the part of the game relevant to their play. Each player is sovereign.

The rules may evolve, but players should not be able to change them willy-nilly. The rule-changing function operates at a different layer of governance than players making plays. BOTH levels need to have their own sovereignty. College football and professional football leagues can and do make different rules. And it’s important for players, spectators and referees to know the rules the game is being played by at any time.

If you want to play football with a group of friends in the park, you all can make your own rules deciding to play touch football instead of tackle. Each community of play is also sovereign. But a player on the field never make decisions via community governance, they choose for themselves where to run, throw or block.

Should the game of currencies provide any less? Under the current system, you are playing a game of earning dollars, but for most of the players, the rules are not visible, the state of the game is not visible and they are not even an authority able to represent plays they’ve made or their current status in the game.

Imagine trying to play chess where the rules change without your knowledge or consent, you can’t see the state of the board, you don’t know what plays your opponent is making, you aren’t even authorized to represent the plays that you yourself have made, and you're not allowed to quit the stupid game. Does that even sound fun?

Our Approach to Open Computing

We identify three core components for an open, distributed, and decentralized approach to computing and currency architectures:

1. Open Transport: A protocol which can be used for participants to directly interact with each other and for any currency to interact with any other currency.

2. Open Rules: A means of representing the rules so players know what game they’re playing, what plays are valid to make, how those plays are handled and how any game/currency interacts with other games/currencies.

3. Open Data: A tamper-proof way of distributing data so there is no centralized point of failure nor power imbalance between the participants and the management/governance of a currency.

Digging Deeper into Open Data

Alan has mostly spoken about items 1 & 2 (using the metaphor of HTTP and HTML). This metaphor falls a bit short because, generally speaking, web pages don’t alter the state of other web pages, but connected games or currencies do. As mentioned, this certainly includes the ability to have universal IDs, but that is fairly negligible part of the problem we're addressing (so we don’t even mention it in our list). We can use something like OpenID for now, but in the long run we need a completely un-enclosable namespace with no central or top authority. [But that is a conversation we’ll reserve for another time.]

I believe that the most groundbreaking part of the model has to do with item 3 – Open Data. Instead of managing data integrity and security through exclusion and obfuscation, we need an inclusive architecture THAT BUILDS INTEGRITY AND SECURITY INTO THE STRUCTURE OF THE DATA ITSELF. (Sorry for shouting, but I want to underscore that last point.) That is the only way to transcend the technological power imbalance between admins and users which is inherent in siloed computing architectures. [See previous post about Open Data]

The mechanisms for doing this involve new technologies that have never been assembled in this manner before. It means having a distributed, segmentable data engine which can store chains of linked, digitally-signed transactions. You can sort of think of this as using the digital signature validation that GIT uses for source code repositories, but for a distributed database application. It would also be helpful to the means to run signed instances of distributed applications and embed them in this distributed data engine.

This enables you to validate any play (via its digital signatures and copies from various players, governance bodies or 3rd party notaries/auditors) and to see the state of play for any player. However, this does not necessarily mean complete transparency of all data. You can encrypt secret data into the transactions, or couple private entries in your own private data store to transactions via their transaction id as a foreign key. This is just like how in some games, you receive cards that are face-down, for that player’s eyes only. Other players can see that they’ve received a card (that a transaction was made), but cannot see the content of that card.

If the governance of a currency gets bogged down in bad politics, makes bad decisions about rules, or even gets shut down, the players can pick right up where they left off with their own tamper-proof account statuses by selecting an old rules version (or forking with a new version) and deciding to continue the play. In this kind of true peered architecture, there’s no way to force a game to shut down as long as there are players that want to keep playing it.

Twollars as a Open System

Twollars gives us a glimpse of this power. You can define a new currency and anybody can use it via a public transaction medium (Twitter). Everybody can keep their own records (or record ALL transactions in the currency), transactions are transparent in the twitterstream, and if the twollars tools went away, you could keep using twitter on your own and track the transactions yourself.

Twollars have an open transport, and completely transparent transactions, Unfortunately, they still rely on centralized Twitter servers, the method for defining rules is rudimentary and not transparent to users, the data is not distributed, there is no accommodation for privacy (cards face-down), you have to compete for names in a limited twitter-account-namespace, and the currencies don't interact with each other.

Even so, it's a beautiful step toward an open transaction architecture. Through it, you can begin to imagine new types of currencies and easy ways of transacting which don't involve too much effort for the start-up team or currency participants.

Final Conclusions about Open Currencies

Open Source Software in siloed architectures still creates closed games with a clear division of us/them between system managers and players.

Openness is NOT the same as Transparency. Privacy can still be accommodated as appropriate to the rules of the game being played.

New platforms and data structures are required to for truly Open Currencies, and we’re busily building them.

I hope this helps with the outstanding questions. :)

P.S. Not to confuse matters, but we are also releasing all of the Metacurrency tools and platforms as Open Source Software. We also believe that is still an important part of Openness.

We use currencies to keep records of currents...

2009-05-04T16:44:00.004-06:00

I originally posted this to the Complementary Currencies discussion group on Skype in response to a question from Christoph Hensch. But it probably merits inclusion here.

Christoph, I believe we are in the lazy habit of thinking that the flow of the currency itself is the one that matters instead of the actual flow of goods, services, resources, knowledge or participation which flows COUNTER to an exchange currency.

Those real-world currents shaped and enabled by currencies are what make them so valuable and powerful.

The currency itself is actually just a flow of information. But there are two reasons we myopically focus our attention on the currency flow as if it is the one that matters.

1) We are big-brained, symbol-using creatures, and it's much simpler to us to deal with those nice clean symbols than the actual sloppy flows (dollars are easier to account for than time, various units of various things and other stuff which doesn't even unitize well (such as the state of relationships)) and

2) The REAL flow is an event which happens in a moment and is gone. If you were NOT there to witness the service being performed, the good being exchanged or the participation of that person, then once that moment has passed, the only consistent way we have of knowing what occurred is the record we keep of the event. We use currencies to keep records of currents.

I believe this is the single MOST CRITICAL CONCEPT for currency practitioners to grasp. It allows us to break out of bad habits of thinking about currencies in very outdated ways (such as believing they have or should have intrinsic value because precious metals were once used as coins). This allows us to see currencies for what they truly are: formal systems which shape, enable and measure currents which allow communities to interact with those currents.

Let me paint a more concrete picture. Imagine being out for a walk in the snow, and you see a set of small animal tracks where it bounded out from under a hedge and crossed a field toward another shrub. Then you see them end in a sudden deep indentation, with some wingtip marks on extending out from either side. These tracks tell a story -- a flow of resources and relationships that took place in that field.

Of course, the story itself has passed. All we have left are the tracks. But the tracks can tell quite a lot to the right set of eyes: what types of animals were involved, how long ago it happened, which direction the bird flew off, etc. This is the role that currencies play in our economy. Actual currents of resources and relationships occurred and currencies are the tracks they left behind. The tracks are very informative to the right eyes, so we use them to make business and policy decisions.

Different currencies leave different tracks. The design of the currency makes certain things visible and leaves others invisible. It also determines who has what ranges of movement and track-laying powers.

LETS and Time Dollars have flows of currencies as units are transferred from account to account even if they are a mutual credit currency with a NET total of zero units at all times. Individual account balances are not necessarily zero, and the changes of these balances tell a story about relationships and resources as they moved within the community. It is those counter-flows which the currencies enabled and also the different mobility and track-laying powers that they gave to people who may be disenfranchised from dollar access.

The real power that we gain from these insights is that MONEY is not the only kind of CURRENCY. There are many other currencies that we use. We know that we use currencies as a medium of exchange, but also as units of account or measure, as stores of value, and even as tokens of status, worth or reputation.

Our real power as currency practitioners comes in understanding how we currently use these tools in our communities to lay value-tracks and all the ways that currencies can (and should) be used to track our stories of value.

We value excellence in a chosen domain. For many, winning an Olympic Gold Medal stands as the ultimate symbol of achievement within a sport. But it is not the gold that makes it valuable. In fact, different gold medals have been traded and sold. Their price has been determined by who won it when and how noteworthy their accomplishments were. Olympic medals are a token of status currency which tell us a story about races which have long been run.

Even though they can’t be traded, the points, scores and times achieved in each Olympic competition are also currencies which tell a more detailed and nuanced story of participation which has passed. The possibility of winning a Gold Medal shapes the flow of participation of millions of athletes all over the world. Scores are our official way of keeping TRACK. There is a formalized system of agreements about what counts and how it is counted. Certain people or roles are the ones allowed to ISSUE scores and medals. You cannot issue them yourself.

Anyway, I don’t want to wax at length about the various non-monetary currencies we actually use and why they are in fact currencies, there will probably be disagreement enough over this one example.

But let me leave you with one thought. There is incredible power in this model of understanding currencies which is largely untapped. Money is so powerful, because it is a currency, not just because it is a medium of exchange. Currencies are the means by we collectively interact with real flows of real resources. Healthy design and implementation of truly powerful currencies at all levels of endeavor gives us so much more than we get from money substitutes.

I look forward to partnering with you all in that context.

The Tangled Web We Weave

2009-04-28T21:11:00.005-06:00

We used big balls of colored embroidery floss, so the web is a bit fine and hard to see with my camera phone pictures. You may need to click on the picture to see a zoomed in version.

The web extended its reach beyond the living room, into the kitchen, dining room and front and side halls! Timothy is very proud of our work together.

Currencies as DNA of Social Organisms

2009-04-26T21:57:00.001-06:00

I just posted a reply to a post about currencies as the DNA of social organisms on New Currency Frontiers Blog and wanted to cross-post it here.

Many people seem to struggle with the "social organism" metaphor. I think that might be a function of two things: 1) loose boundaries which make it difficult to see social level organisms in the usual way we see "things" and 2) wanting to be individually more important than we are.

Boundaries: We are in the habit of seeing the world as objects and identifying objects by their boundaries. Normally, you're sitting across the table over there, and I'm sitting over here, and the boundaries seem pretty obvious and inviolable. Of course, that's an illusion. We're breathing the same air, drinking the same water, eating from the same biological food supplies. We might even go so far has to have a blood transfusion or organ transplant.

Because of the level on which we participate in them, it is hard for us to see the boundaries of social organisms. We are like air/water/bacteria/nutrients or at best like cells with the capacity to move between social organisms. Even more confusing, is the fact that we participate in MULTIPLE social organisms. Surely, my cells are in an exclusive relationship with me, aren't they? (No, in fact they are not.)

Importance: To really see this picture, makes us feel small. To see a company as a social critter, and its departments as organs fulfilling different functions to keep the critter alive, and people as replaceable cells who may come and go with little effect... Surely, that's not right. I'm more important than that!

Unfortunately, this leads us to some very bad ways of thinking. We labor under the illusion that changing the people changes the organism. That good people, will run a company responsibly... or that electing a different President will magically create change.

The only way that real change (other than death/collapse) happens in a social organism is when its structure or DNA is significantly modified. Sometimes a new leader actually does that, but frequently they don't. And what's worse is that some of what needs the most changing is deeply embedded in our assumptions about how things work.

Think of it this way. No matter how creative and enlightened a CEO is, his company is still fueled by the same money as all the other companies. Without the ability to change the fundamental lifeblood of the organism, how much change is actually possible? How much does the structure of that lifeblood force certain responses and behaviors?

Until we embrace our capacities as DNA-constructors of the social organisms we inhabit, they will continue to run amok, be diseased, collapse and deplete our planet.

It's time for us to step up.

Hmm

2009-04-14T22:35:00.001-06:00

Samantha Black

2009-03-29T02:09:00.003-06:00

Tracy Love - Earth Jam Goddess

2009-03-28T22:57:00.002-06:00

Serial Mike

2009-03-09T22:01:00.002-06:00

Aspen's 2nd birthday

2008-11-23T18:53:00.001-07:00

Triple Bottom Line Currency

2008-10-22T10:51:00.005-06:00

Inspired to action by the Google 10^100 proposal I wrote, I created a new web site for engaging people in the design, implementation, promotion and launch of threebles (from Triple Bottom Line Economics - 3ble).

Come learn more and join in the fun at Threebles.com

Shaw ecovillage project

2008-10-08T18:02:00.002-06:00

Pancake kitty

2008-10-08T17:55:00.002-06:00

Timothy

2008-10-05T08:35:00.002-06:00

Creating a Dream Team

2008-09-18T20:50:00.002-06:00

Over a decade ago, as I looked at what I wanted to be doing with my life and creating in the world, I realized that I wanted to try an experiment. I wanted to create community that worked together, created together and was out to make a difference in the world. And I meant “worked” together literally – as in co-operating a business.

Well, I did so. I gathered together a dream team of folks that I loved creating with. I didn’t get everyone I wanted on board, and there were even some surprise partners that showed up, but what we created over the next seven years was miraculous. I learned more about myself, people, groups, business and co-creation than I would have imagined possible.

Other people also recognized how extraordinary we were. Dream Team Technologies won ethics awards, invented new technologies, volunteered in the community, made major contributions to education and to non-profit organizations, and even started an alternative currency. The experience of being a team member also transformed many people’s lives.

It was not all roses… or at least there were plenty of thorns, but the experience of our creative energy and ability to tackle challenges, solve problems and pioneer new frontiers has never been paralleled.

As a number of the vision holders left, the company spiraled downward. It was fueled by vision not money, and without the people generating new vision, it became something I wouldn’t even want to be associated with (and I’m not).

After spending a few years with a more inward orientation, I can feel that I’m moving toward co-creating with an inspiring team again. Although I am informed by my previous experience, I am not seeking to rebirth a former endeavor, or create a sequel. That would stifle the authentic creativity available in a new group and a new chemistry. I just know it’s time for that kind of magic, intention and power of co-creative genius to be truly unleashed.

I know that I’m more productive, more creative and more powerful when I’m co-creating with an inspired team. So consider this fair warning: I’m setting out to start creating one again. If you think you want to be a part of it let me know. Let me know what part you’d be most inspired to play and who you most love co-creating with.

There is much to be done. The planet needs our untrammeled inspiration

[Leave a comment here if you want to be a part of this picture.]

Marczyk for Market

2008-09-02T15:03:00.003-06:00

Aaron and Barb's Wedding

2008-07-05T19:52:00.003-06:00

That's right. It's the beautiful bride and blushing groom.

Shawn twisting into quadregenarianism

2008-05-21T19:11:00.002-06:00

Timothy balloon monster

2008-05-09T20:29:00.003-06:00

Kitteh snuggels

2008-05-04T09:21:00.002-06:00

Spirituality Snippet

2008-05-03T09:28:00.002-06:00

Excerpted from MySpace correspendence with Donia Lilly:

Regarding being Wiccan... I'm not exactly Wiccan, although I have been a member of a most excellent coven. I experienced a great deal of spiritual growth and exploration there. But that was over a decade ago.

I have difficulties with reductivist philosophies. In the same way that I resent the western "scientific" worldview for reducing all things to purely material terms, I am not at home with a religion that does the same thing -- reducing all that is real to Spirit.

Imagine that we sat down together and had a lovely, deep and engaging conversation over tea. What part of that experience is spiritual? Which part material? Which parts are psychological, social, real or unreal?

Just because we have the capacity to use language to divide our experience into little pieces, it does not make those divisions real. In fact I believe that this very divisiveness is at the core of most of what ails us on the planet right now.

Do you know that the word "science" comes from the same root as the words "scissors," "schism" and "schitzo" (as in phrenia). It means to divide. It refers to a kind of knowledge that comes from discriminating, dissecting and analyzing things.

This division is what disconnects us from each other, from ourselves, from nature, from the planet and from the consequenses of our actions. I do not choose "science" whether academic or christian. I prefer a more holistic approach which embraces wholeness and encompasses the whole of human experience.

Fundamentally, I still share much of the perspective that I learned in Christian Science. That we are perfect. That harmony is the natural way of things and disharmony merely evidence of our disconnection from that deeper harmony.

However, I understand these things in terms of energy. Both matter and spirit are energy. Some of the most powerful tools for humans to connect with and interact with energy are the symbols found in nature, art and magic. So... in that vein, I studied earth based religion, much as I studied all other religions. (One of my degrees is in Comparative Religion.)

To this day, I live inside a worldview that is more about the harmonous flow of energy than it is about Spirit's primacy and Matter's unreality. So, it's is pretty close to the cosmology of Wicca, but has a bit of my own twist.

I could go deeper with this, but I fear I may have already provided a longer answer than you anticipated.

Little snippets

2008-05-03T09:10:00.004-06:00

I may not be reliable about blogging, but I realized that sometimes in correspondence with folks I type things that are worth keeping. So since this blog seems to be fairly random anyway, I'm going to start putting them in here.

In a facebook message with Jeff Grossberg:

Regarding community tools... I'm glad to see technology not being used solely for money-making but also for friend-making.

Fundamentally, community has changed. Most of us will never have the nostalgic small village existence that is imprinted in our deeper social patterns. We are too mobile, absorbing too much news from too many sources, and interacting with too many people flung too widely. Our social fabric has been stretched beyond its former limits, so it is high time that we learn new ways of weaving it.

Bliss kitty

2008-05-02T23:13:00.004-06:00

"Juss 5 more minnits, I can win WoW."

A World Without Small Business...

2008-04-26T10:51:00.004-06:00

Ashley Kingsley originally posted this article and David Sandusky started some discussion of it here where I posted this response.

Some of us are actively doing something about this.

We are not dealing with an even playing field. The federal government spends about $300 billion a year in incentives and subsidies to big business, and that was BEFORE the Bush administration started increasing this pattern and doesn't even reference massive contracting (like Halliburton). State and local governments bend over backwards with tax-reductions and subsidies trying to attract big businesses in order to create jobs. Everyone (including government employees) have our investments and retirement funds tied up in financial vehicles that provide trillions more of public funding for big business.

We live inside of a cultural myth that big business is more efficient, provides more consistent quality, more competitive prices, and is the backbone of our economy, yet in spite of the $trillions of additional funding they receive, 85% of new jobs created in the past 5 years were in the small - medium business sector. Most real innovation comes from small business (and tends to later be purchased by the big boys).

However, much of our core infrastructure has been gobbled up by big business with their additional public funding. Wal-mart is the biggest grocery distributor in the country now, and all the slots behind it Kroger Corp., Safeway, etc. are not much better. What happens to these massively globalized business models when gas is $10/gallon? $25/gallon? $50/gallon? It's already bankrupting the business model of the airlines as it approaches $4/gallon. We need to start rebuilding our LOCAL capacities and LOCAL economy.

----- Okay, so what are we doing about it? --------

In Denver we have started the Mile High Business Alliance (www.MileHighBiz.org) to support local businesses. We are taking on a huge array of ambitious programs for promoting local business, increasing relationships and trust in the community, shifting people's awareness, shifting governmental practices and policies, creating local investment funds, and so on.

We have created a series of walking guides for neighborhoods with a high-density of local businesses to help shift people's big mall and big box buying habits. So far we have published Local Flavor Guides (www.LocalFlavorGuides.com) for East Colfax, S. Pearl St., S. Gaylord St., and the Santa Fe Arts District. We have two more guides coming out over the next few weeks for SoBo (S. Broadway) and Uptown (17th & 18th Ave from Grant to York). We've got about 20 guides currently in the plans.

To help compete with national advertising hoopla we got mayor Hickenlooper to declare the week following Thanksgiving "Buy Local Week" and are starting to promote the local alternatives to big-box holiday shopping patterns.

In the next couple weeks we are launching a large Local First campaign (www.ColoradoLocalFirst.com). One portion of this is media exposure and viral & grass-roots marketing, another is our online business directory with only Colorado-based businesses in it. Although you can search for business by name, category or proximity, this is not just fancy phone book, it is a place of full community engagement and transparency. We are collecting ratings and feedback for all the businesses as well as information about their community involvement, environmental sustainability, employment practices, customer care, social responsibility, etc. You can see metrics, ratings and rankings of how local businesses are doing on all these things.

The directory is launching with basic information for 432,000 Colorado businesses. A few thousand will also have extended information and we'll have the business practice infor for the first few hundred. But we need YOUR participation to make it really work. Tell us your favorite businesses. Rate your experiences. Tell us about your priorities. Help us take back the streets for local business!

And others are working on this too.

I realized I should post some more resources for non-Denverites.

The Mile High Business Alliance is a BALLE Network (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies - www.LivingEconomies.org) and is part of a whole relocalization movement (www.relocalize.net)

In the past couple years we've had a handful of other BALLE networks crop up in Colorado: Boulder Going Local, Longmont Small Business Association, Be Local Northern Colorado (Ft. Collins) and LaPlata Organization Cooperative Advocating Local (LOCAL in Durango).

And books.... Micheal Shuman's books _Going Local_ and _The Small-Mart Revolution_

There's a lot of great stuff happening to help tip the scales back from the hands of big business. Come get involved!

Politics and Kool-Aid

2008-03-21T18:19:00.004-06:00

I just read something an 'article' about Obama's recent speech, "A More Perfect Union," addressing issues of race in our country. This 'article' consisted largely of name-calling saying Obama was a big fraud and was playing the race card and trying to guilt whites into voting for him.

Of course, this leads me to believe the writer couldn't possibly have actually seen or read the speech. It was one of the most eloquent, direct and blame-free discussions of race I've heard. He addresses a history of past inequities but puts it into the context of our countries ongoing process of perfecting our democracy. Alluding the to Preamble of the Constitution, ("We the people, of the United States of America, in order to form a perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility...) he enjoins us all to be responsible, compassionate and work together in the great American experiment.

If you haven't seen/heard it you can find the video and text here: http://my.barackobama.com/hisownwords

Anyway, back to the article... The reader comments cheered the author on for his "insightful analysis" and lamented the cultish Obamaniacs. "Can't the see this guy is all pretty talk with no substance. They've all drunk some powerful cool aid."

So... I felt compelled to respond.

Posted by: Artemystic - Mar 21, 02:05 AM

It makes me sad to see the (lack of useful) dialogue happening here.

Why did Obama give a speech addressing race? Because his opponents and the media were making it an issue. Yes, he did it while running for President. That does not make straight-talk about the topic any less useful.

While other candidates are mud-slinging, name-calling and trying to polarize people, Obama responds not by saying, "Poor me. They're picking on the black guy again." Rather he opens a thoughtful dialogue about the situation with race in the country.

So let's look at it.

Fraud:
An intentional perversion of truth; deceitful practice or device resorted to with intent to deprive another of property or other right.

The Clinton campaign calls Jeremiah Wright anti-American and depicts him as a dangerous fringe element. "Ooops... We forgot we invited him to the White House dinner we organized for our nation's religious leaders. Uh-oh... and there are pictures of Bill Clinton shaking his hand with Al Gore standing in the background and Hillary at a nearby table?"

The Clinton campaign circulates the NAFTA news from Canada calling Obama a liar on the days before the OH and TX elections. "Oops... the quote was actually from somebody on our campaign staff and the Obama folks never said anything inconsistent with Obama's stand on NAFTA."

And while campaigning in OH (where industry jobs have been lost overseas) Hillary speaks out against NAFTA saying she wouldn't support it as it is and has always been opposed to it. "Oops... I want to count my husband's time in the White House as part of my experience but not be held to account for what we actually did during that time." "Double Oops... My tour schedule and speaking engagements where I was promoting NAFTA and how great it will be for the country are on record?"

McCain saying he will always stand firm against the use of torture because he's experienced it and knows the depths of its inhumanity. "Oops... You mean for me to play with the big boys and get the endorsement from the White House I have to vote for torture? Okay, torture it is, then."

McCain saying he's for political reform and holding politicitians to account. "Oops... You mean I'm not supposed to use public funds of my office to pay for my fundraising trips?" "Oops... I'll take millions of public campaign funds and then when I reach the spending limit just break the rules and take the RNC money."

After being one of the 5 Senators involved in S & L bailout fraud, he says he'll never abuse the influence of his position again to interfere with regulatory bodies. "Oops... You mean I can't tell the FCC they have to process my lobbyist friend's application by X date?" Then after claiming he never sent the letter to the FCC pushing them for approval. "Double Oops... You have my sworn testimony at Senate hearing talking about the contents of the letter I just said I never sent?"

You say Obama is all pretty talk. Read his Blueprint for Change and criticize him on the merits of his plan, rather than blindly saying he doesn't have one.

Many here seem to get their jollies with the name-calling of Obama and saying that he's a fraud. But if you're shouting "fraud" while supporting one of the other corrupt politicians, you really have to wonder who's been drinking the Kool-Aid.

Feel free to comment. (But I'm hoping for something other than name-calling and ideological righteousness.)