National Rifle Association gearing up for a fight - CNN

“We are mobilizing for a fight,” NRA President David Keene told CNN. “We will engage our members.”

The association is planning to send mailings to its members urging them to contact members of Congress with their opposition to new gun laws. “Let them know you feel strongly,” is how Keene summarized the group’s message to member.

Kids of Australia: 'It sure is hot, but we're not shot!'

So my question to you my friends in the public safety movement is, “What are you going to do to beat them?”

The NRA went into yesterday’s meeting with Vice-President Biden knowing they weren’t going to agree to any suggestions or make any concessions.  How do I know? They had their statement written to send out before the meeting even started.  Although I don’t have a time stamped copy, I’ve worked with organizations who put out statements. It takes days, sometimes weeks to get one put together.  They are working hard to get the discussion back on their terms and on their turf. The NRA says, “Come on America, stop focusing on dead kids! Think of yourself!” I’m going to bet 200 Quatloos that there wasn’t a press release version that said, “It was a very productive meeting, we are looking forward to co-authoring bills that will save lives and reduced gun deaths and gun violence.”

Keen and the NRA leadership are going into this in the same way that the right wing has been going into governing meetings for years.  They start as hardline as can be, even to the point of suggesting that they are the true victims. No crumbs given, no hint of compromise, because it makes their base angry.  The key is to activate their base on something scary (even something that will not be done, something they will be willing to die, or even kill for.) What are they really saying to their base?

“They are going to take all of your guns! They are going to limit your rights! If you let them do that you are weak. Will you let that, that… woman, Feinstein, take your gun? She is taking your mancard! What do we do when someone tries to take what is ours? We don’t just defend, we attack.”

Note how they move from the issue at hand to:

“This is about you.  You need to act. You are under attack. You don’t want to be a victim, you want to be the victor. You need to be in control. Don’t listen to them talking about how your gun wouldn’t make a difference. YOU know you could have saved the day if you were there in Sandy Hook. Don’t you want to have that chance to save lives? Think about how bad you would feel if that woman takes away your guns and you couldn’t protect yourself or family. She uses guns to protect herself! Hypocrite! If she was really brave she wouldn’t let her security guards carry.”

It has been documented that the lack of empathy is a trait of hardcore conservatives. The NRA wants to move the debate away from situations where normal people show empathy. (And by the way, hardcore conservatives do show empathy, but primarily for members of their own family, tribe.) They are going to ask their enthusiasts to show up at debates, write letters and comment on this issue from the position of focusing on their own lifestyle and needs rather than those of someone else in another place.

Now my question to you  is, “What would it take for you to have this same level of activism?” Is it because you don’t care enough or you have come to accept that we just have to live with this level of death by way of guns? Is it because you have accepted the frames of the people who are having this discussion? Do you even use their terms? “Pro-gun, anti-gun? “Gun rights?”

Now I’ve been cautioned not to evoke the individual names of the dead children in getting people to act. So I won’t. But I also know that reluctance to return the focus on humans and their decisions and consequences fits perfectly into the status quo the NRA extremists want. Don’t talk about the dead and the specific reasons for their death. Move the focus elsewhere.  Talk about being under siege, throw around  numbers, statistics, slogans, choice to focus on only one part of the constitution. There was an example of this just this week.

How the NRA Activist Base Attempts to Skew the Reality of a Majority Read the rest of this entry →

Congressman Mike Thompson (CA-5) is the chair of a congressional Gun Violence Prevention Task Force. Last night he started holding three town hall meetings in Northern California on reducing and preventing gun violence. From his Facebook page:

 I will be holding a series of town hall meetings on reducing and preventing gun violence.
On Tuesday at 7 p.m. we will be at Napa City Hall in the Council Chambers at 955 School Street. (done)

On Wednesday at 7 p.m. we will be at Vallejo City Hall at 555 Santa Clara Street.
And on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. we will be at the Board of Supervisors meeting room in Santa Rosa at 575 Administration Drive. I want to hear from you. Please join us if you can.

Illustration by Peter Stevens, via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution license

If you live in these areas I encourage you to attend. I’d love to hear about it. If you are pro-public safety and want to talk, please go and get your body and voice on the record. I can guarantee you that the people at Cal Guns are going to turn out the bodies, their noble talking points and their subtle intimidation comments. Since they don’t have control of all their members they will also have extremists speak. These are the ones I’d really like to hear from, since they represent the leadership of the NRA.

I don’t really like “Town Hall” style meetings. Politicians like to hold them to give the illusion of listening. Usually their minds are made up in advance by looking at the polling data or which “very serious people” have set up meetings to discuss the issue with them.

They also will note calls, emails, tweets (@RepThompson), and Facebook posts (FB page). You get more points if you are in their district, but being a rich rich donor helps.  Yes, politicians are “listening” but they mostly listen to people who are important to them, those who can deliver votes or money. For years the NRA produced both. But that’s changing.  If the politicians start hearing from dedicated, ferocious public-safety enthusiasts they will notice.

I personally don’t like the Town Hall format. Partly because too often progressives don’t know how to use it effectively in the media (hint, don’t wait for the media’s coverage–make your own. Don’t go for high profile events where the media will be there with their standard frame, “He shouted She shouted the Truth lies somewhere in the middle.”)

One of the things I learned by taking on and successfully defunding right wing media is that even if you could “win the conversation” if there is no leverage that leads to actual change, you won’t reach your ultimate goal. Especially when they constantly lie, change the subject, change the definition of words,  move the goalposts and yell to “win.”

The TV media coverage only looks at the extremes at Town Hall events, so unless the other side does something stupid (bring their guns?) or your side does something clever (like the Silent Student Protest after the pepper spraying in Davis) the media always does the same story  Here is my prediction:

Segment opens on long shot of pro and anti signs. Zoom in or people in costume or with props. One or two clever signs. Let people get an idea of number of bodies per side. Cut to someone dressed in camouflage saying something contrary, “I’m a vet and I say ban AR-15s and semi-automatics!” Cut to woman saying her hand gun saved her life. Cut to Thompson listening during meeting. Cut to head of “Gun Rights” group for 7 second quote. Cut to someone from Brady Campaign group for 7 second quote. Include a educator or mental health professional talking. End with Live stand up after the meeting is over to explain, “This hotly contested issue will be continued tomorrow in blank. Reporting live from Orange County I’m Gustavo Almadovar.“

Does this mean you shouldn’t attend? No. If we can’t control the message we can at least not let their extremists flood the venue.  Because this is exactly the kind of thing where the NRA gets their extreme members organized to attend. It is one of the many communications strategies they use. But it’s not their most powerful.  The powerful stuff is hidden.

You have probably noticed that the NRA stays quiet after a major shooting, but they didn’t stop talking in the background in states to expand laws that help more guns get sold or weaken laws that prevent guns from getting sold.  They won’t stop on the work they can control. They can’t totally control the media,  but they do a pretty good job.

Did you notice that the media respected the NRA’s wishes to not speak following a major shooting? It’s like he’s Al Capone in The Untouchables the way the media keep respecting weapons lobbyist Wayne LaPierre’s feelings.  A “press conference” with no questions?  LaPierre’s policies and actions helped facilitate a mass shooting, why should he be spared the uncomfortable hot seat right after the shooting? Why does he get time to collect his thoughts and write his speech? The mothers and fathers of the dead didn’t. Besides, isn’t that why they pay him so well?  I know that journalists feel that it wasn’t fair to ambush him with questions until he was ready. But it’s not fair that the people ambushed at a mass shooting can’t ask questions either.

I’ve already told you what kind of media coverage I expect to come out of the Town Halls. If there are some real extremists there will the media downplay them? I doubt it, this time it’s different. Based on my experience the guns everywhere people will make threatening comments, comments showing their selfishness and lack of empathy and brag about the steps they will take if anyone tried to confiscate their guns. They will talk about killing people, usually the black clad government agents who are coming to take their legal hunting shotgun or rifle. If they do talk to the press and it makes the news nobody will challenge them on these comments.  ”Really? Your desires for ‘target practice’ with an AR-15 or other semi-automatize weapon outweigh the health and safety of others? Really?” They will say they are joking if asked seriously, but they aren’t.

They do not care about your children’s safety, they do not care about other’s safety in public,  if they did they would be trying to help rather than making threats.  These are the kind of people that I hope Mike Thompson and his task force vice chairs meet tonight and over the next few weeks.

Sales of AR-style rifles, ammo spike up

–Walla Walla Washington Union-Bulletin

Right now the NRA is primarily a marketing and sales organization. Sure they do other things like offer gun safety training programs and threaten politicians to push some laws and crush others. But I believe a lot of their power comes from the development and training of their members in communication skills and providing them with the right words, phrases and concepts to achieve their current goal: guns everywhere.

If you have become pro-public safety, like I have, you’ll want to figure out ways to convince others of your views and then develop ways to reach your goals. Also, when you see the NRA for what it really is, how they make the public less safe, and can work on ways to increase public safety.

The NRA has a $300 million budget, a large portion of that goes to “education and communications.”  And they are good. Very good. Tobacco industry good.  In a recent LA Times Op-Ed there is a story from a former NRA trainer about the psychological and linguistic techniques used on NRA members.

Ever since reading,  the brilliant and funny book by Christopher Buckley, “Thank you for Smoking.”  I’ve been impressed with the tobacco industry’s communications strategies.  Those of a certain age can complete this line, while singing the melody. “You can take Salem out of the country but…” If you sang the rest of the line in your head, their marketing worked.  In the book the guns, alcohol and tobacco lobbyists all meet and talk about their work as “MODs” (Merchants of Death.) The tobacco industry’s savvy communications, PR, advertising and lobbying led to their primary goal. Sell more tobacco.

The NRA didn’t just “take a page from the tobacco industries book” they went deep into the hearts and minds of men (and women) and so they could keep answering the same question of their actions, “How will this help sell more guns?”

The methods of the NRA-trained operatives vary from the subtle–like ALEC bill authoring and strategic lobbying/threatening of politicians; to the crass –”Cold Dead Hands” bumper stickers and rhyming “logic” for the masses. The New York Times says they also have “virtually unmatched ferocity in advancing [their] political and legislative interests.”

Anyone who has ever engaged someone on this issue knows they can expect debate techniques ranging from aggressive, threatening logic that blames the victims for not carrying a weapon, to well-thought-out positions. I’ve  seen how they use clever parsing of words in laws they create and how they attack terms or definitions to defeat laws they hate.  ”It’s not an automatic, it’s a semi-automatic. There is no such thing as an assault rifle! You have no credibility with me! (unless you use the terms exactly as we have defined them…)”

Bringing Words to a Word Fight

Over the years the NRA has gone from selling ideas like the importance of gun safety to selling the idea that your identity is tied to your possession of a gun. Linking your identity to a product is a very powerful thing to do, and marketers try to do this all the time.  ”We say the product is cool, when you own it you become cool –and women will want to have sex with you.” (I just added that last part because it usually goes unspoken, but it’s implied.) Because of this linking of identity to product, people are willing to pay more for a product, as well as create multiple reasons why they must have this product. But the marketers at the NRA also recognize that it’s childish for people to say, “I want it because I want it!”  Therefore, they suggest quoting parts of the 2nd Amendment and hypothetical life or death scenarios where the gun owner is the hero to prove their case to anyone who questions them.

But what happens when the thing that makes you cool or defines you is taken away? That will make them angry. And when they are angry they stop using polite words and turn to threats.  I sometimes wonder if the reason pro-public safety people don’t like to engage gun enthusiasts is because of this unstated (or stated) threat. For every responsible gun owner who will explain to me, “I’m not threatening you with my gun, I’m just having a discussion.” there are two who will tell me about their “2nd Amendment solutions” to “anti-gunners.”

Will You Become Ferocious in Advancing Your Political, Cultural and Legislative Interests?

Now let’s say that people have finally had enough with the way the NRA leadership is driving “the discussion”. Let’s also say that words like mine and the new pro-public safety public starts having a cognitive impact on the public at large.  What can you, (insert your own name here) do, to make a difference?  Well to begin, start thinking of what you are for, as well as what you are against.

I’m pro-public safety so when the details about the latest shooting comes out, I apply that view to the problem. In some cases the shooter will have a mental health problem. A pro-public safety person can push the states to have better laws that get violent mentally ill into the National Instant Criminal background check System. My doctor hunting friends in the midwest could easily get behind that action. If their buddies, who are extremists in the NRA, call them “anti-gunners” they can make it clear you want to protect people from those who are violently mentally ill, even if they also were going to kill someone with a knife, hammer or car, (since they love to bring up those examples of other “killing tools.”)

If the shooter obtained weapons though a gun show loophole you could support state and federal efforts to ban specific items as well as support the need for better tracking in general.

Every shooting is an opportunity for change for a safer future, if we act.

Here are some specific actions you can take to match your personality:

Like to march? Go to the January 26th March on Washington.

Want to help pass better laws and close loopholes? Donate or volunteer for my friends at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. I worked with them when I was trying to figure out how to get NRA board member Ted Nugent busted for bringing guns to the Pima County Fair, right outside the town Gabby Gifford was shot.

Want to help convince corporations, other than gun manufacturers, to get in the game? Try my friends at The National Gun Victims Action Council.  Personally I always thought that Mars Corporation should be donating big corporate dollars to end gun violence, after all, there were Skittles in the hands of Trayvon Martin when he was shot. They might want more kids to grow up to eat candy rather than a bullet.

Want to help change some of the “Shoot First” laws that got Trayvon Martin killed? Try the The Second Chance on Shoot First campaign.

Want to know what your city is doing? Check out Mayors Against Illegal Guns.  See if your city’s mayor is a member, (list) If not, drop your mayor a line. My friends at MAIG would love more member mayors. That’s a four minute doable action. Go!

Want to get educated on issues and on policy? Go look at the Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence. Get on their mailing list, they provide great information if you want to engage a gun enthusiasts. If you want to simply go over the gun enthusiasts heads they have easy ways to help you go directly to people who can change laws.

Want to keep informed on the issue? Subscribe to The GVP Report -It’s a comprehensive, every other week e-newsletter. Sign up here or read it online.

I try to help a lot of non-profit groups in this area beyond the Brady Campaign because I believe in multiple strategies to reach difference audiences.   Donate or volunteer depending on your interests and how active you want to be. Remember, if you don’t do anything the terrorists NRA wins.

LLAP

Spocko

Well I wanted to see where this affair fit into General Petraeus’ “Rules for living” (link to rules in The Daily Beast/Newsweek)
Here are my thoughts, maybe you have funnier ones.

Remember,  Love is a battlefield. – Pat Benatar

1. Lead by example from the front of the formation. Take your performance personally—if you are proud to be average, so too will be your troops.

Hey Grunts, I lead from the front but I start at the back, if you know what I mean.This was no average affair, it was a GREAT affair. I was able to perform 3 times a night with only 1/2 a Viagra!

2. A leader must provide a vision—clear and achievable “big ideas” combined in a strategic concept—and communicate those ideas throughout the entire organization and to all other stakeholders.

My vision? Looking into a great set of tits! Let me tell you about ‘em, they were epic, high and firm. And you could bounce a metal of honor off her ass.

3. A leader needs to give energy; don’t be an oxygen thief.

I have her a hot energy injection, if you know what I mean. Someone was sucking something out of the room, but it wasn’t me.

4. There is an exception to every rule, standard operating procedure, and poli­cy; it is up to leaders to determine when exceptions should be made and to explain why they made them.

I determined my wife wasn’t satisfying me and the army rule about adultery should go the way of don’t ask don’t tell. The rule about not cheating on my wife? This was my exception! So all you H O M Os can suck it.

5. We all will make mistakes. The key is to recognize them and admit them, to learn from them, and to take off the rear­ view mirrors—drive on and avoid making them again.

Okay. My mistake? I didn’t do it sooner! Then I could make Obama look worse before the election! As least I’m being honest, unlike those politicians who hide their affairs and lie. I’m looking at you John Edwards (insert other names of politicians who had affairs here)

6. Be humble. The people you’ll be lead­ing already have on-the-ground conflict experience. “Listen and learn.”

I don’t like to brag, but I’ve got a 101 millimeter cock and a 9mm Glock.

7. Be a team player. “Your team’s triumphs and failures will, obviously, be yours.” Take ownership of both.

I didn’t have this affair alone, there were a lot of people who made the cover up possible, including the CIA, MSM, Fox News, my aide-de-camp, my body man, my personal admins, several commanders who looked the other way and of course my wife.

8. Don’t rely on rank. If you rely on rank, rather than on the persuasiveness of your logic, the problem could be you and either your thinking or your com­munication skills. Likewise, sometimes the best ideas come from bottom-up information sharing (i.e., “Need to share” not “Need to know”). Use “direct­ed telescopes” to improve situational awareness.

Speaking of bottom-up sharing? Reverse cowgirl for the win! I think we all know where I directed my “telescope.”

9. Leaders should be thoughtful but decisive Listen to subordinates’ input, evaluate courses of action and second- and third-order effects, but be OK with an “80 percent solution.” “There will be many moments when all eyes turn to you for a decision. Be prepared for them. Don’t shrink from them. Embrace them.” Sometimes the best move is the bold move.

All eyes will be on me, especially when the photos come out! I’m going to embrace my affair, and those eyeballs, and sell the photos to OK Magazine or that French rag that had the nudes of Pippi’s sister.

10. Stay fit to fight. Your body is your ultimate weapons system. Physical fitness for your body is essential for mental fitness.

I’ve got rock hard abs, go ahead and feel ‘em. Come on, feel ‘em you maggot!

11. The only thing better than a little competition is a lot of competition. Set challenges for your subordinates to encourage them to excel.

Guess who leads the “joint” chiefs in affairs? ME! I’m doing better in the sack time department too if we don’t count ol’ Rummy, the man has stamina. Do you know he stands at his desk all day? Same with his women, he never even has to remake the cots. And for the men and women serving under me? What are you waiting for, especially you gay ones, time to let your freak flag fly!

12. Everyone on the team is mission critical Instill in your team members a sense of great self-worth—that each, at any given time, can be the most important on the battlefield.

Love is a battlefield. – Pat Benatar.

UPDATED: Slate has confirmed that the woman who had the affair with the General is Paula Broadwell, co-author of All In: The Education of General David,

I know that you all want to know what she looks like (because it has to be about looks, right?) so you can start your imagination. Link to photo at Gawker

Starting Monday I’ve been politicizing #Sandy. Specifically I tweeted.

I can almost hear in my head the right wing radio blowhards responding to this comment with their mocking strawman  “The left want you to believe that WE are responsible for hurricane Sandy! Preposterous! It’s like when they blamed Bush for Katrina! My friends, these are “Acts of God! We had nothing to do with it!”

My second tweet was in response to their probably response:

Climate change is an Act of Humans and it contributed to #Sandy therefore #Sandy is no longer just an Act of God.

Monday, Maggie Koerth-Baker, the science writer at Boing Boing, wrote this wonderful post:  Did climate change cause Hurricane Sandy? The answer depends on why you’re asking. It really is a brilliant piece and I encourage you to read it. It addresses the questions that many have as well as the innocent and not so innocent reasons people ask.  (BTW Maggie owes me some Boing Boing swag for a contest I won, if you see her tell her I’m still waiting. Her excuse was she was busy with her book tour Before the Lights Go Out but it’s over now. P.S. I take an XL.)

 Was this [hurricane Sandy] an unavoidable act of nature? Or was this something caused directly by changes to Earth’s climate that have happened because we burn fossil fuels which increase the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

Again, there’s not an easy answer. And, again, part of the problem here is that we’re expecting science to operate on the scale of American media news cycles, which doesn’t really work. We want to talk about this while the storm is raging or, barring that, at least immediately afterwards. But scientists aren’t really going to have anything particularly deep to say about this specific storm for months, if not years. During that time, data will be analyzed and compared, and other events will happen, and that’s really the stuff that we need in order to say much of anything other than, “We don’t know for certain.” In some ways, expecting anything else means forcing scientists to speculate and extrapolate in ways they aren’t usually comfortable with and that aren’t a terribly great way to understand the big picture.

[Emphasis mine because that is a really important insight.]

I was once explaining the American media to a Ph.D. in physics I was working with, he got very annoyed with the way the media worked. “But Spocko, in science things rarely are 100% certain, yes there is a high correlation of this cause with that effect, but it is only one factor in a complex system.”   Another creator of high-end technology didn’t like the way his comments about scientific reality got twisted by his competition and picked up by the media. I helped them both find metaphors they felt comfortable with and then helped them switch to teaching mode to educate the different media outlets they were going to talk to.  But they both wanted the media to be something it wasn’t and something they wished it was.

Later in Koerth-Baker’ s piece she quotes Greg Laden, an anthropologist who does some very good blogging on climate science, had a lot to say on this topic — particularly, the fact that even though we can’t say “Hurricane Sandy was caused solely by climate change”, we can say that climate change is probably affecting several factors that probably influence the development, growth, and movement of hurricanes.

She makes the case that weather is complex, “Hurricane Sandy could be both a completely natural occurrence and a product of climate change. Simultaneously. Some of the factors that caused this storm might be nature-made. Others might be man-made. And teasing apart which factors were responsible for which aspect of the storm’s damage is incredibly hard.”

So if scientists can’t  tell you whether Sandy, specifically, was caused by climate change does that mean we just wait for the all the data to come out years from now? No. Because in the mean time the people who want to deny that climate change is real and impacts us will exploit anything less than 100% certainty. That’s what they do. That is their job. That is why they are getting paid millions.

If you knew that a group of people – through their attitudes, actions and policies, led to the death of someone you loved would you want to tell people about this group? Would you want to talk about them and what they are doing right now, when you are feeling the anger and pain of loss? Would you demand change? Or would you listen to the same group of  people telling you, “Now is not the time for recrimination and blame.”

Anger can change the configuration of your thoughts. If moves people. It gets people to change their attitudes, actions and sometimes their politics. And if you are on the other side of righteous anger you will use all sorts of methods to calm the angry people down. Because angry people demand change.

One of the games the right plays is when something happens that they know could lead to change, “in the heat of the moment”  they start screaming.”Let’s not politicize this tragedy!”  I see it after every single mass shooting. Why do they do that? Does it really come from their deep feelings of respect for the family of the dead?  I’m sure there are some who think this way. But I think it is more about using “respect for the family of the dead” as a shield to prevent change.

The other group of people who worry about talking about the root cause of some event are people who think that change happens only with reasoned debate “in the cold light of day.”  They don’t want to be accused of exploiting the tragedy. They believe that it is distasteful and disrespectful or that it dishonors the death of the person.  This works out great for the people who want the status quo to continue.  Personally, if someone can use my death to make changes so others don’t die I say, “Do it! Make it so! Engage!”

So how can we actually politicize #Sandy? I’m starting by calling them out.

 ”Hey right wingers who deny climate change, blood from this storm  is on your hands. This is not a simple “Act of God”. Men and woman who have your attitudes, have taken your actions and implemented your policies have led to this. Changes need to be made.

If you aren’t the kind of person who gets angry and makes demands for change there is still something you can do. Keep linking climate change  to extreme weather events and specifically the human related actions that lead to it.  Because as Maggie concludes, climate change is real and we need to care about it.  I say, let’s do something about it.

Lots of talk about jobs, jobs, jobs for the infamous small businesses. But not all jobs are good jobs and as Anat Shenker-Osorio would say, how you define small businesses matters. During the debate lots of numbers were thrown around and “average people” were discussed. (BTW, wouldn’t it be fun to track down the woman who grabbed Mitt’s arm to ask about jobs and hear if this really happened and what he said to her at the time? Might he have tweaked the story a bit?)

It’s hard to get the media to write about unemployment because it’s a downer, I know it depresses the hell out of me. Recently Boing Boing put up a photo of  E. Horton Kinsman, with the job title Shoe Consultant and asked,

Share stories of your experiences with E. Horton Kinsman, Shoe Consultant, in the comments.

Here’s mine:

I remember the day my dad took me down to Buck’s Shoes on 24th street in the old south part of town. This part of town still smelled of cow manure because it was only 1/2 a mile from the stockyards. “Why do we have to go down there Daddy, it smells!” My father replied, as he always did, “That’s the smell of money!” since that was where his immigrant parents worked after coming over from Ireland. The packing plants and stockyards were one of the few places that would hire the Irish.

Buck’s Shoes was run and owned by a nice Polish family, the Stanek’s, and they employed several men who took the work very seriously. They always dressed in a suit and tie (bow ties for some) and understood that shoes were an expensive item, especially for new immigrants who often didn’t have a lot of money. They wanted people to understand that if you bought your shoes at Buck’s they were an investment in quality footwear that you would have for years.

As a kid, I knew nothing of all that, just that my dad felt loyal to this shoe store in the old neighborhood and to men who worked there.  One of whom was E. Horton Kinsman.

My dad took me there to get my first pair of “adult” shoes.
“Let’s go to Buck’s and get you some Florsheim’s” he said and off we went into the direction of cow manure smell.
When we got into the store the smell instantly changed to leather and shoe polish with just a bit of aftershave.

E. Horton, or Eddie as my dad called him, came over and greeted my dad. “Time to get my son some serious shoes.”

“You bet. He looks just like you, except the hairline,” said Eddie, making the first bald joke of the day to my dad. “Let’s get you measured up.” He got out the special measuring stick and I stood in it. “Size 8 and 1/2″ he said  “Too bad you weren’t a size 8 like your Uncle, then we could have sold you the floor samples. He’s a perfect size 8 and we always sell him last season’s shoes.”

I tried on a number of black “Florsheim’s” and I walked around in them.  I wasn’t used to hard leather and they felt very uncomfortable. “Are they supposed to feel like this?”

“Like what?” Eddie said. “Like hard and pinchy.” I replied.

“Hmm.” Eddie said, then went in the back and came out with a different kind of shoe. “This shoe is from Europe. They use different foot molds there and these might fit you better.”
I tried them on and they were great.  Of course they were much more expensive that the usual shoes, but Eddie knew my dad was a regular customer and I think he gave him a deep discount.

I saw Mr. Kinsman again the next day. I was wearing my new shoes, dress pants and blazer as I stood in the back of the church.

He was one of the many men and women who were attending my grandmother’s funeral at the Catholic Church in the south part of town. He gave me a wink when he saw me, like a lot of friends of my dad did. It was like they were telling me, “You’re one of us kid.”

When I moved away I would buy shoes from generic department stores because I didn’t understand my father’s loyalty. It seemed expensive to me when I was counting every penny. I finally realized that he wasn’t loyal to a “brand” or a store or even a neighborhood, but to the people whose livelihood depended on each other. You would see the guy who sold you your shoes at church. If you were shopping at some generic discount store to save a few bucks you knew you were hurting real people in your community.

I’m reminded that the dollars you save wouldn’t make up for the times when a special connection is needed.  What angers me is the worship of the corporate  bottom line, where money is the main deciding factor in most actions, because it doesn’t account for making sure a boy could have a decent pair of shoes on the day he was taking his grandmother to the cemetery.

Corporations don’t understand, but people like Eddie Kinsman do.

LLAP,
Spocko

(photo: edenpictures / flickr)

Last year I used my time-travel capability to describe what to look for in the Occupy Wall Street movement, how the media will cover it, how opponents will try to destroy it,  with suggestions on how to change the narrative by understanding the media. I’ll do it again this year. So, back to the future, today!

97.3 percent of the time the media are as predictable as Borgovian Land worms*. They are attracted to movement or noise. Like mina birds and toddlers they like shiny objects. Like Klingons they like a fight and conflict. They look for novelty because they are bored. And of course TV media love action – bonus coverage for blood! “Holy crap, the cops are throwing flash bang grenades? Scramble the Action News van, we’ve got our lead story!”

Occupy Wall Street is coming up on an anniversary and the media LOVE anniversaries, they can revisit the action with ‘perspective’ which is often a rehash of their conventional wisdom.  Here are some of stories you will see, and not see.

Overarching Story Line: “What has Occupy Wall Street accomplished?”

On one hand this seems a natural story line, but the problem is that the MSM looks at accomplishments only through certain narrow lenses.  Advertisers and marketing people have drummed into their thin skins and thick heads to only look at certain metrics by category such as:

Numbers and dollars: If you are selling a product they want to know how many cap snafflers were sold. What is the profit per cap snaffler?The media will pick the metrics that they think are important or have been told is important.

Expect stories about how much the Oakland Occupy cost the city in police overtime and clean up.

The media will contact the police and city public information people because they are easy to reach. What they won’t be doing is calling them liars when they exaggerate numbers because they will need to talk to them again in the future. They don’t know if they will ever talk to Ketchup again. 

They won’t be covering how much the financial sector’s illegal activities have cost the city in revenue. For example, how much more money would the city have if the LIBOR scandal didn’t hurt them? How much did the foreclosure misdealings cost the city in revenue? Did they back the state’s Attorney General in cases against banks? How much did the city lose in revenue compared to what the states got back for them?

Who is impacted? Say you are a TV show like Leverage, it’s good to have lots of people watching but it’s better to have the “right kind” of people tuned in.  Expect the media to categorize the Occupy attendees as “real Americans” with jobs vs. hippies in a drum circle. 

They won’t be explaining how the Wall Street financial crisis impacted employment. I was asked by one reporter. “How many of the Occupy people are unemployed?”  The MSM has this idea that “real Americans” with jobs protesting trumps students or unemployed. You don’t become less of an American when you lose your job. Unemployment driven by the financial lawbreaking and misdealing of Wall Street is an essential part of the protest. How lucky for the protestors that economic destruction has lead to having “free time” to protest! Read the rest of this entry →

Daniel Suarez’s book Kill Decision takes on the topic of drones, especially autonomous drones that can make their own, “Kill Decisions” as in, “Identify and Kill that person” with no human in the loop. (Gee, with no humans in the loop, drones with guns will screw up the NRA slogan. “Guns don’t kill people, autonomous drones with guns and kill decision programming, kill people.”)

I was excited to read Daniel Suarez’s new book, “Kill Decision” because Daemon and Freedom (TM) were the two best SF books I read last year. While this book doesn’t rise to their heights it is still a good techno-thriller that contains a few of the big issues Suarez developed in Daemon and Freedom.

The Kill Decision characters aren’t totally stock, but still follow some of the same guidelines of caste that I’ve seen in other techno-thrillers.

• Military caste interfaces with civilians.
• Civilian scientists caste learn how great the military folks are.
• Military folks grudgingly learn to respect the civilians.
• Together they trace down the bad guys.

Tension! Action! Gadgets! Guns! Things that explode! Thrills!

It’s a real “page turner” as they used to say before eBooks. (I wonder what they say now?” Kill Decision is a really exciting screen toucher” or “Kill Decision is a really fast scroller!” )

Spoilers ahead, but nothing specific. You can still enjoy the book after reading them (especially if you like these kinds of book in the first place.)
Read the rest of this entry →

This week Darcy Burner, a candidate I supported got beat by a rich candidate. Recently, some groups I supported, SF Ocean Edge, The Sierra Club and The Audubon Society lost an appeal to stop seven acres of natural grass from being ripped out of the west end of Golden Gate Park  and replaced with artificial turf and 150,000 watts of stadium lights for soccer fields. The project is funded by a rich family, the Fishers, whose father founded the Gap.

It’s rough when the rich beat us, not just because we lost, but because it can be used as an encouragement for the idea that being rich should be your first and main goal — since it seems to prove that everything you want flows from that. “Want to win an election?” be rich. Then buy what you need to win. “What to break the law?” be rich, then pay the lawyers to make it a civil case so you just pay the fine. “Want to not break the law? Buy the lobbyist, who pays the lawmakers to fix the law so you don’t break them–it’s cheaper than the fine and then you are a “law abiding citizen.”

Money can’t buy you love? Yeah, but plenty of rich people find people to love them. It isn’t always a “if you are rich you can’t get love” equation. Poor people can’t find people to love them either. And being poor can get in the way of way of love just like being rich supposedly does.

I know I have a bad attitude toward how some rich people use their money. (Note I didn’t say toward all rich or all money. I’m directing my ire at behaviors.) This is one of the reasons that I designed the Spocko Method program to go after the right wing media. It was designed to take away their money. Because, like Eddie Murphy said in the movie Trading Places, “You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people. ” And there are certain kind of rich people I wanted to hurt by making them less rich. They were the ones who believed in violence directed toward Muslims, journalists, Democrats and liberals. Race-baiters, bigots, racists and homophobes all care as much about money as most Americans. If I know I’m not going to change their mind and I don’t want to censor their views then I want to ensure they don’t get rich espousing those views. They have a right to say what they want, they don’t have a right to get rich doing it.

Now if I was smarter I could have figured out a way to not just cost the disgusting rich money, but get their ill gotten gains to flow to me. Why? Because as we have learned in America, being rich should be your first and main goal since everything you want flows from that. I could then use this money to keep costing the disgusting rich money.

In my life I’ve helped people create millions and I’ve helped people lose millions. I’ve enjoyed helping people create millions more, partly because the people I helped were creating good things and they valued my help. When I’ve cost people money, there is satisfaction because I hurt people who were creating bad things, but my work wasn’t valued beyond, “Atta boys.” I think that I, like a lot of, people in America are still locked in to the idea that, “First get rich. If you can’t get rich then there is something wrong with you.  Being a “good man” doesn’t get you much beyond an occasional warm feeling while shaving.

I think of all the students who will have huge debt coming out of college. Their mandate will need to be, “First get rich.” Will they have the ability to see beyond that need? I don’t think I could. It’s hard enough to get a job, let alone one that will make you rich.

But maybe it is a fallacy that everything you want flows from being rich.   How do you prove it? How many people, after hearing the stories of how money doesn’t buy lottery winners’ happiness, say, “Let me try it and win the lottery and then we’ll see. I’ll be different. Money WILL make me happy. I can buy what I want and be happy.”

Should I be just as delusional (and have the same poor understanding of math) as other Americans and buy lottery tickets? Should I “buy” into the “first get rich” attitude? I’m already been part of the “first be poor” attitude and its been pretty crummy.

I’m very frustrated right now. Pointing to the defeat of Meg Whitman who spent millions doesn’t help much right now. The shortcut of buying elections is appealing. But it’s not just that they are buying ads, they are cashing in on the attitudes that someone spent 40 years inculcating.

Here is what 40 years of buying smart communicators, the media, regulators and legislators seem to prove:

• ♦  Money CAN buy you your election (even if that isn’t true all the time- “Let me show you a bunch of stories where it happened, ignore the times it didn’t.”).

• ♦ Guns CAN protect you (even if that isn’t true all the time – “Let me tell you a bunch of stories where guns protected people, ignore the times they didn’t, besides if more people had guns there would be more protection!”)

• ♦ Wall Street CAN fix the problems they created (even if that isn’t true most the time – “Read about a bunch of Very Serious People ™ who believe self regulation works, even though they have been wrong almost 100 percent of the time”.)

So in the face of this ‘evidence’ we should be going out and buying elections, getting guns and letting Wall Street regulate themselves.

But I’m not buying their evidence. I’m going to work to show the failure of their evidence, to change attitudes and prove them wrong. Or maybe I’ll grow back my goatee and accept that I can’t be that one man with a vision.

Very Serious People is a ™ of Duncan Black, Atrios

“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

No Fake Grass in Golden Gate Park - photo by Jean Barish

Did you know that over 10 acres of beautiful parkland in Golden Gate Park might be bulldozed, scraped ofall organic life and converted into a soccer complex? (With a parking lot!)

The planned development would feature artificial turf with toxic shredded rubber tires for in-fill, ten 60-foot tall towers beaming AT&T Park-like lights into the night–right across from Ocean Beach.  These lights would blaze from dusk until 10:00 p.m. every night of the year. Oh, and you know how fog magnifies and glows around car lights in the dark?  Envision 150,000 watts of those babies glowing in the night sky on a foggy San Francisco night. (Fog in San Francisco? That’s crazy talk!” )

Now you might ask, “How the hell did this proposed project get this far in San Francisco? Isn’t San Francisco the greenest city in the US.  Didn’t they ban plastic bags so you no longer have to answer the dreaded “Paper or plastic” question?

Those were my questions, and so I went to find out some of the answers. And, since I like to understand how things work and what to do about them I dug in further for actions to take and solutions to offer.

Last week I went on Angie Coiro’s great new radio show, ‘In Deep’ and discussed how this project was marketed to the people (Surprise! To the public they used the classic, “It’s for the children!” to sell ripping out natural grass and paving over the park. To the insiders they used the classic, “You can get something for nothing!”  ) Here’s a direct link to the podcast.

But first, if you want to stop this plastic and concrete abomination go here and tell Ed Lee, the Mayor of SF, and the board of supervisors to stop it. If you live in SF and want to speak out about this to the Board of Supervisors there is a hearing on July 10th at 4:00pm.

Read the rest of this entry →