Dwayne Wade, Miami "Heat."

Basketball player. Basketball team.

Wade is wondrously talented, 33 years old and has gimpy knees. Reportedly, he would re-sign to play for Miami for a three-year contract and $47 million. He has forgone $27 million in past contracts with Miami to help management win championships which they and he have done thrice which is one time more than I have been married (and divorced). Miami should not pay Wade $47 million over the next three years to play for them. Miami should sign Dwayne Wade to be a part of management, as it did Alonzo Mourning. As part of the management contract Miami should give Dwyane Wade the $27 he gave up as a player plus a reasonable management contract, comparable to Mourning's.

"As a husband, I failed." (twice)

The only thing worse than having failed as a husband is to have succeeded and still to have a wife. For me.

Greece.

Wait a minute-$1.8 billion? Dude, the Los Angeles "Clippers" sold for $2 billion. There is nobody who can give Greece $1.8 bil? That is absurb. I just read an editorial in the Quasis, there is all this shit predicted, ripple effects on other economies, "If the Euro fails, Europe fails." Over $1.8 b? We're going to have ripples, frigging waves, tsunamis, over less than the price of the "Clippers?" ARE YOU FUCKING STUPID? Write the fucking thing off! Take a tax deduction or something, take up a collection, ask Steve Ballmer to write another check! PUT A FUCKING FOR-SALE SIGN OUT:

"FOR SALE
ONE GREEK ISLAND, THE WHOLE GODDAMNED GREEK ISLAND
$1.8 BILLION."

E.U., come here for a second, I wish to have speaks with you:

THERE ARE TO BE NO RIPPLES! THE WORLD ECONOMY IS A FRIGGING NO-WAKE ZONE, NOT THE FRIGGING EUROZONE! YOU FUCK THIS UP AND ONE FRIGGING LITTLE PEE-PEE RIPPLE LAPS UP AND YOU WILL SINK UNDERNEATH IT! WE'LL PUT ALL OF GODDAMNED EUROPE UP FOR SALE FOR $1.8 BILLION!

Thank you.

Grecian formula.

Greece has 45 minutes as of this writing to pay back the International Monetary Fund $1.8 billion on it's loan agreement. They're not going to do it and there are no other good formulas.

I am just reading of the tensions experienced by Roosevelt and Churchill as H-Hour of D-Day approached. That, however, was planned. Far worse, for me, would have been the shock of Pearl Harbor. Or of 9/11.

I watched not too long ago a documentary of Bush on 9/11. At least FDR knew who had hit him! Bush did not know what had hit him, initially the first plane was thought to be an accident, nor, at first, when Card told him of the second plane and that "America is under attack," who had attacked. Putting myself in Bush's position, I do not think I could have functioned. I would not have known what decisions to make.

That is the worst as far as I can imagine, 9/11 was the worst, not knowing what or who had hit you is the worst position I can imagine being in as a decision-maker.

Mainstream Islam.

"[Najem] Gharsalli, the Tunisian interior minister, said his government might close mosques "that use an anti-democratic language and that use a language of hatred."

Capital idea there, Najem, capital idea, says I. Get right on that. 

"Schwarzenegger: 'As a husband, I failed'"-USA Today.

Harris: "As a husband (dos) and a boyfriend (a zillion), I failed.

Shadows and Light.*

One consciously in the shadows ceding the dwindling sunlight to the other: The remarkable photograph of Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt at Marrakesh Morocco, January 1943.

From past viewings I had had such a definite image fixed in my mind of the expression on Churchill's face as one of adoration but now I don't see that, I see contemplation.

* "There is a photograph of this moment at the pinnacle, with a seated Roosevelt gazing out and a gentle Churchill looking at Roosevelt with tenderness in his eyes."-Jon Meacham, Franklin and Winston, p.211. That is where I got that "fixed" mental image. My brain did some weird transference of written word onto image. Fuck. I can go with "gentle" and "tenderness"...I guess. That is just not what I see now. That is not the face of Churchill I had fixed in my mind. I can still see it in my mind's eye! If you alter Churchill's expression just slightly, unknit the brows just a little, squeeze the eyes together a millimeter, turn the corners of the mouth up just a bit, you'd have it. But that image only exists in my brain. Meacham is correct that there is "a" photograph of that moment, not more than one. I have looked at a half dozen or so tonight and they are the same photograph. The mind plays tricks on you when you are old. Fuck!

"I guarantee you at this very moment his fiendish yellow brain is plotting an attack."

"No surprise if some technical details on Iran deal are solved after June 30."-Tehran Times.

When that is the headline coming out of Iran, that is a compelling indication there is going to be a deal. 

Intolerance of intolerance.

“We must be more intolerant of intolerance – rejecting anyone whose views condone the Islamist extremist narrative and create the conditions for it to flourish."

-British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Just right.

Fucking sitting here picking wings off flies, watching porn, watching Pink Panther, nothing to read. 

No books.

C'mon, man.

There you go, Googs. Up there is Mohammad's head. Below is the head of Herve Cordara, severed by a follower of Mo, and used to decorate a fence in Lyon. Nice!

The upsets of the last couple of days came after President Obama had his Iftar Dinner, marking the close of Ramadan at the White House, at which the prez made the following pertinent remarks:

The Quran teaches that God’s children should tread gently upon the earth and, when confronted by ignorance, reply “peace.” 

I think some of God's children, or the prez, must needs take a remedial reading course in the Quran. That's what I think must needs. 

In honoring these familiar values together -- of peace and charity and forgiveness -- we affirm that, whatever our faith, we’re all one family.

Yes, we are, all one family. It's a beautiful thing, family, with all those familiar values, peace and charity and forgiveness and hate, it's a beautiful thing, says I. 

When our values are threatened, we come together as one nation.

True, that. We all come together, Catholics, Presbyterians, Jews, Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims, the whole nine yards, we come together and massage each other's prostates and just have...one big collective orgasm spewing our bodily essence of peace and charity and forgiveness all over each other. It's a messy affair these Iftar dinners.

As Americans, we insist that nobody should be targeted because of who they are, or what they look like, who they love, how they worship. We stand united against these hateful acts.

I do! I worship the Confederates who fought for the preservation of slavery just as I worship Sgt. Nathan Bracken who was killed at Fredericksburg trying to exterminate slavery. The important thing is that we not hate slavery or slaveholders or the Ku Klux Klan or lynchings or Jim Crow. The important thing is that each side did their duty and could have switched sides and done their duty without regard to who they were killing with and who they were killing. The important thing is to kill, to kill those who did their duty and believed just as strongly in the Divine Right of slaveholding as those who believed slavery was Original Sin. There is no qualitative difference between a sincerely, firmly held belief in slavery and lynching and an equal belief that slavery and lynching were a curse on America. 

Here in America, many people personally don’t know someone who is Muslim. They mostly hear about Muslims in the news -- and that can obviously lead to a very distorted impression.

I think that's right. I know two Muslim lawyers personally, I think they are honorable people, they are friends. It's ignorance that keeps us apart, that is all it is. 

We saw this play out recently at a mosque in Arizona. A group of protesters gathered outside with offensive signs against Islam and Muslims. And then the mosque’s leaders invited them inside to share in the evening prayer. One demonstrator, who accepted the invitation later, described how the experience changed him; how he finally saw the Muslim American community for what it is -- 
peaceful and welcoming. That’s what can happen when we stop yelling and start listening.

That is truly a beautiful story, very inspirational, but there were some details that the prez elided over in relating that inspirational story. The mosque in Arizona has been under constant FBI surveillance for no good reason, for the only reason that the two Sons of Mo who made the mistook of attacking the Garland Texas "Draw Mohammad" contest, and who were sent to meet the 47 virgins by a crack-shot off duty police officer, those ardent students of the Quran's teachings of peace and charity and forgiveness and how to construct pressure cooker bombs, acquired their reading comprehension skills of the Quran from this self-same Muslim holy tabernacle. The prez elided over that inconvenient truth. 

I have stood four-square, you can look it up, for verbal provocation of Islam. We should lure the snakes out of their holes, to borrow from Mao Zedong, lure them to free-speech "Draw Mohammad" events all over the country, every day of the week. We should be locked and loaded and when we see someone who is what he is, a Muslim murderer, and looks like who he is, a Muslim murderer, and he worships Mohammad and he is armed, we should kill him preemptively as soon as we see the blacks of his eyes. I am for the kind of verbal provocation that we saw in Garland and we need more such verbal provocations and we should kill all Muslims who come to our verbal provocations. Draw the snakes out of their holes, Maoie said, and then cut off their heads. That is what America should do. 

America won't.

Googs, I'm going to put an image that constitutes hate speech for you on the header in a moment so you can go ahead now and restrict the circulation of this blog.

Mainstream Islam Attacks in 3 Countries Kill Dozens.

A man was beheaded in Lyon France by an employee. Twenty-five were murdered at a Shiite Mosque in Kuwait City, and, accurate numbers not available, about forty, mainly foreigners, many Britons killed at a hotel in Tunisia.

It is what they do.

It's Saturday night...

Saturday night's alright for fighting.

It's Friday night...

Let's dance.

Scalia's Dissent.

Prediction: It will be long remembered as a low point in Supreme Court jurisprudence. There is little citation to legal authority, it is more political, ad hominem screed than judicial opinion. It embarrasses the Court. It will embarrass Scalia's reputation as a Supreme Court Justice forever.

Pageviews by country (today):

Iran, 2.

Scalia Goes Nuts.

Oh my God, Justice Scalia went postal on Chief Justice Roberts in his dissent in King v Burwell:

This case requires us to decide whether someone who buys insurance on an Exchange established by the Secretary gets tax credits. You would think the answer would be obvious—so obvious there would hardly be a need for the Supreme Court to hear a case about it. In order to receive any money under §36B, an individual must enroll in an insurance plan through an “Exchange established by
the State.” The Secretary of Health and Human Services is not a State. So an Exchange established by the Secretary is not an Exchange established by the State...
...
Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is “established by the State.” Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved. 

                                               
[WEAPONS check over here please! Thank you.]

...

The Court...accepts that the “most natural sense” of the phrase “Exchange established by the

State” is an Exchange established by a State. Ante, at 11. (Understatement, thy name is an opinion on the Affordable Care Act!). Yet the opinion continues, with no semblance of shame, that “it is also possible that the phrase refers to all Exchanges—both State and Federal.” Ante, at 13. (Impossible possibility, thy name is an opinion on the Affordable Care Act!) 

...

Who would ever have dreamt that “Exchange established by the State” means “Exchange established by the State or the Federal Government”?

...

Today’s opinion changes the usual rules of statutory interpretation for the sake of the Affordable Care Act. That, alas, is not a novelty. In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 567 U. S. ___, this Court revised major components of the statute in order to save them from unconstitutionality.

     "Knock-knock, is the Chief Justice in chambers?"

The Act that Congress passed provides that every individual “shall” maintain insurance or else pay a “penalty.”...This Court, however, saw that the Commerce Clause does not authorize a federal mandate to buy health insurance. So it rewrote the mandate-cum-penalty as a tax. ...The Act that Congress passed also requires every State to accept an expansion of its Medicaid program, or else risk losing all Medicaid funding. ...This Court, however, saw that the Spending Clause does not authorize this coercive condition. So it rewrote the law to withhold only the incremental funds associated with the Medicaid expansion. Having transformed two major parts of the law, the Court today has turned its attention to a third. The Act that Congress passed makes tax credits available only on an “Exchange established by the State.” This Court, however, concludes that this limitation would prevent the rest of the Act from working as well as hoped. So it rewrites the law to make tax credits available everywhere. We should start calling this law SCOTUScare. 

"Wanna get away?" Roberts went out of town immediately after Sebelius.

...

And the cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites. 

[Words can be hurtful, Antonin.]

I dissent. 

Oooo-doggie!

Obama Wins Again.

(Good week for the prez). The Supremes today rejected the last remaining serious challenge to Obamacare which means "ACA is here to stay." In the case of King v Burwell plaintiff argued that ACA did not apply to those states that refused to cooperate with the law by setting up insurance marketplaces. If that view had prevailed, 34 million people would have been disenfranchised of health insurance. It did not prevail which means another plus-1 for Obama's legacy, which was also predicted here. The only legacy item Publocc predicted and fervently wished Obama would lose was the Iran deal and that's looking more hopeful for him after yesterday, too.

Obama Wins.

Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), i.e. "fast-track" authorization, was passed in the United States Senate today. House Democrats said also that they would give up fighting the president on Trade Adjustment Assistance, that's TAA, that's worker retraining and that's what House Demos "deserted their president on" (that's the New York Times) about two weeks ago. WHICH MEANS, the Trans-sexual-Pacific Partnership, TPP, is going to get done, which was predicted here about two weeks ago, which means Obama wins.

Over and out.

"Rebekah Strong."

Yes, she is.

Yes, we are.

"We are Boston strong and we are America strong, and choosing to mess with us was a terrible idea."

Thus spake Rebekah Gregory today at mainstream Muslim Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's sentencing. Ms. Gregory, one of those injured, decided to have her leg amputated 18 months after the attack due to constant pain. She never lost her optimism or sense of humor.

Strong, strong statement from Ms. Gregory. What an amazing woman.

"Iran nuclear talks: Khamenei rejects key US demands."-BBC.

I was just about to write "Hey! What's going on with the Iran talks, tick-tock tick-tock?" last night when I saw Phil Jackson lighting up again and then done forgot.

That BBC headline is good but then I read something else, in Bloomberg I think, that said the talks are going to be extended.

I thought that had been ruled out. Oh well. Guess they'll just wheel John-John back over to Geneva.

Phil Jackson.

"I would come home from work, and he'd be reading cookbooks," Jeanie Buss, the Los Angeles Lakerspresident, said of Jackson, her fiance. "He became fascinated with the chemical [reaction], like how food plays off each other and the different ways that you prepared food, whether it's in the oven or over a fire."

He became fascinated with the chemical reaction.


"I don't want to say that I had a life that wasn't with purpose—I thought I had a life that was purposeful," Jackson said, "But…"I saw a change in the society that follows winning teams," Jackson said. "Something happens to the community that enlivens a lot of the relations that people have with each other, simply because they have a common denominator which they can enjoy. And the inspiration that a team provides them is sometimes remarkable."

"I saw it happen in Chicago, and it happened in L.A.," he continued. "And New York has had such a doleful period of time, that's lasted for so long, that the challenge came out here, and it was"—he pauses to take another hit to find the right words—"something that I thought was more than just purpose. It was more like there's a doctrine of belief that goes along with this."

Huh?

I don't like Phil Jackson.

http://m.bleacherreport.com/articles/2488958-phil-jackson-nbas-lord-of-the-rings-faces-ultimate-test-saving-the-knicks

Oh my fucking God. You fucking fuck! What are you doing! Was that taken from some snuff film or something? How do they do that? Jesus Christ, I don't understand that, WHERE are the cables holding her in place, WHERE is the safety net, WHERE is there evidence of photoshopping? She is beyond the "tipping point" there, there is no recovery! She cannot regain her balance. I don't care how athletic or limber or gymnastic or WHATEVER she may be she's too far gone to recover her balance from there.

So what happened to her? WHERE is the evidence that she didn't fall to her death? But she couldn't have, otherwise it wouldn't be on tumblr, it would be Exhibit A in some unlawful homicide trial. HOW do they do that? I don't know. WHY do they do that. To me. I don't know, the fucking fucks.

"LeBron's power grows in Cleveland."-Dan LeBatard, ESPN, Miami Herald.

"James is a paradigm shifter who believes in player empowerment."

Wrong. He believes in doing whatever it takes to win.

There are four basketball beat writers in south Florida, LeBatard, Ira Winderman, Greg Cote, Dave Hyde. Every one of those pencils missed the 2014 Decision because the only people they talked to were "Heat" people; they did not talk to, had no line of trusted communication open to, LeBron James' camp. So all you read after the exit interview last summer, after Pat Riley's appalling "I'm pissed" press conference was the "Heat's" insulated, out-of-touch spin and this gang of four chortled that Pat Riley had made James a challenge he couldn't refuse. They wrote that without talking to James. That is poor journalism.

In the 2014 Finals Greg Cote made an observation that was ominous: James was disengaged, his body language betrayed him in a game in Miami against San Antonio. He had seen the light. He was the same in a playoff game in his first stint in Cleveland and that was his last season there. "We need upgrades at every position," James said after the 2014 Finals, and he was right. Then Riley slapped the desk and said he was "pissed" and challenged James' "guts" and said the "Heat" didn't need wholesale change, just some retooling. That was bullshit. The gang of four gave Riley a circle jerk four man handjob and let Riley spew his bodily essence all over their faces after that insulting press conference. "LeBron, how'd you like that, huh? Gave you wood, I bet, huh?" No it didn't. He didn't take it as a challenge he couldn't refuse at all. He looked with those supremely intelligent eyes and decided "They need glasses and they don't make lenses that powerful." That was the beginning of James' exit. James wants to win every year and he saw, and he was right to see, that without upgrade at every position, he would not win again with Miami. They had no point guard, Dwyane Wade was too creaky, not dependable enough, not Wade's fault, just a fact. Chris Bosh was good but the Big 3 had been reduced to a Big 1 1/2.

"James, alleged employee, wanted to be a boss and the boss while taking an axe to some familiar constructs. He got that power in Cleveland in a way he never could have it in Miami."

Wrong again. There is consistency in what James did in leaving Cleveland for Miami and Miami for Cleveland: he wants to win. If he has to be "boss" to win he will do that but Cleveland 2014-15 was not to James' liking. It was too much responsibility as player/coach/assistant general manager, it drained him physically and mentally. James would like to have a coach who knows how many time outs he has, who knows when to call time out, who can draw up plausible winning plays, who can manage the minutes of players who determine winning and losing over a 100-game season, in short, he wants a competent basketball coach and instead he got David Blatt.

"There is this insulted feeling in the Heat organization that James used Riley as legendary leverage at the end, as a public pawn, flying him across the country and making him wait in Las Vegas for a short meeting with an already-determined outcome -- so James' men could negotiate all the power they wanted from Cleveland in the interim with the very public lie that Miami was still in play -- and to show Riley who was really in charge. That may or may not be accurate..."

No, that "may or may not be accurate," that is inaccurate. James did not negotiate power with Cleveland to decide his coach, he accepted the one knucklehead Dan Gilbert hired. James did not "use" Riley, James decided after that press conference that Riley was a blind tinkerer when what was needed was a visionary who saw what he saw, the truth, that Miami didn't need mere "retooling," Miami needed a new tool box entirely. If Riley had gotten that 20/20 vision and had overhauled instead of retooled, James would still be in Miami. Instead Miami is in the lottery and LeBron James carried the Mistake by the Lake closer to the brink of a world championship than Miami got in 2014. It's "the vision thing." James has it, Riley did not. And so "With the 10th pick in the 2015 NBA draft the Miami "Heat" select"--who cares?

"LeBron James Is Officially NBA's Hardest Player to Coach."-Bleacherreport.

Oh, bullshit. That is utter nonsense.

Obama on Charleston.

"At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn't happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it. I say that recognizing the politics in this town foreclose a lot of those avenues right now. But it would be wrong for us not to acknowledge it. And at some point, it's going to be important for the American people to come to grips with it and for us to be able to shift how we think about the issue of gun violence collectively."

Guns? That is the oddest statement I have read on this and it comes from the president who personalized Trayvon Martin and who has spoken movingly about racial discrimination that he has experienced personally.

This is not about guns, for crissakes, it's about RACEEEEE! That was obvious from the moment we learned that the murderer was White. This happened in an A.M.E. church. Word association: murders in Black church. Birmingham, 1963. Would he be calling for bomb control if that had been the Charleston murderer's M.O?

You are NEVER going to prevent Charleston or Birmingham with controlled access to weapons. This was a RACE murder and it would have happened with poisoned arrows if necessary. 

Oddest statement I've read.

Sunday service at Emanuel A.M.E., Charleston, just about an hour ago. I can hardly think. It is overwhelming. I cannot feel, I am numb.

International Yoga Day.

Today is also International Yoga Day. Happy International Yoga Day to all Yogis.

Father's Day.

Today is also Father's Day. Happy Father's Day to all fathers.

Summer Solstice.

Today is the longest day of the year, the official beginning to summer. The days of 90 degrees and 900% humidity are over. Now it gets hot.

Hate, Hate, Hate.

The event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case. I kept hearing and seeing his name, and eventually I decided to look him up. I read the Wikipedia article and right away I was unable to understand what the big deal was. It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right. But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words “black on White crime” into Google, and I have never been the same since that day. The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages upon pages of these brutal black on White murders. I was in disbelief. At this moment I realized that something was very wrong. How could the news be blowing up the Trayvon Martin case while hundreds of these black on White murders got ignored?

This is from the "manifesto" of the Charleston race murderer. It can be found here. http://newsone.com/3128742/dylan-roof-racially-awakened-by-trayvon-martin/

I hate these "manifestos," remember Ted Kaczynski's?, I hate these things because there is always some truth in them. I hate this murderer even more now.

Trayvon Martin, in my opinion, did not deserve to die, he was targeted for "walking while Black," was followed by Zimmerman, but Trayvon Martin then laid in wait for Zimmerman, hid from him and then attacked him. I might have done the same had I been Trayvon, I would have been so enraged. Trayvon got some good licks in on Zimmerman before Zimmerman shot him, there is no doubt of that. I can understand how a jury could acquit Zimmerman although I would not have and did not think the jury would acquit him.

The Ferguson Missouri killing, I forget the victim's name, was justified. "Hands up, Don't shoot" was a lie told by Black supporters of the victim. 

The Trayvon Martin case did not effect a change in my, very sympathetic, feeling toward Black people in America, I noticed and was offended by the supporters' rhetoric but it did not work a change in my feelings. It was one case, one Black youth, one, to me, in the wrong, White man, and the usual suspects of supporters of Black victims. Nor was it Ferguson that effected my views so, though there the rhetoric was more intense, more untrue, and there was real violence before and after in the Black community. One Black man, one White man, there a police officer, and the Usual Suspects.

Then came Baltimore. It changed the attitude of a lot of White Americans toward their fellow Black Americans. I was shocked, appalled. Here was not one man, here was an entire city!, a majority-Black city, a near totally Black-led city and Black residents permitted by the Black city leadership, to riot--White people and White businesses targeted because they were White! I hate the city of Baltimore now; I hate the Black people from the Mayor to the City Council president who met with gang leaders, to the Black people of Baltimore who rioted, I hate them.

I do not generalize my feelings toward Black Baltimore to Black America, however, I could not ignore the actions of an entire city in my attitudes toward Black America. So how did Baltimore effect my attitude generally? I paid more attention to Black on White crime. I recalled the O.J. Simpson case, how there was cheering among the Black employees in the prosecutor's office where I then worked at the verdict of acquittal. That shocked me, hurt me, angered me. I could not ignore so many Black people in the office who racially cheered a racial injustice. It made me conscious of race, that is how I would put it, it made me conscious of race as a divider in my life in America, it divided me from some, a lot, of Black people in America. Like the race rioting in Baltimore, I had not seen the cheering for the acquittal coming, never anticipated it, didn't think anybody in a prosecutor's office would cheer it. I felt that I did not know the Black people who cheered the acquittal but it was one case and until writing this I had not given it a moment's thought in years. It did not change my attitude of...identification really, that is what it is, I identified with my co-workers, I did not think of them as Black co-workers until that day, they were my co-workers and I identified with them as underdogs against the office hierarchy.

It has always made me cynical that, as I wrote after Baltimore, when the suspect in crime is Black, the media sometimes does not report race in the description they provide the public. Imagine that! It does seem to me that a hateful Black on White crime of violence goes under-reported by the media. There was recently the murder of a wealthy White family in Washington D.C. The father was tortured and among the murdered was his young son and an Hispanic housekeeper. I forget now if the
wife/mother was murdered also. The house was torched. The suspect, since arrested, was a Black
man, formerly an employee of the father! Others have been arrested as accomplices, I do not know their race. The suspect was just a violent man, had previously threatened his own father. I wrote a post on that but then didn't publish it. I hate that man, the murderer, whatever his name is, I have forgotten. 

So Baltimore effected my attitude toward Black people in the same way but on a wider scale now, as did the O.J. Simpson case. It made more conscious of race as a divider. Most of the time I do not even think of Barack Obama as a Black man, not even a Black president, he is the president, he's my president and I would have felt him my president even if I had not twice voted for him, I think of him as "the president" in the same way I thought of my co-workers as co-workers not as Black co-workers. After Baltimore, I remembered Obama personalizing Trayvon Martin, I did not like that then, I do not like it now. I felt race as a divider even from my president.

So I would say Baltimore temporarily made me more race conscious again, race became a divider again, Baltimore made me more cynical again, and I hate that, it will pass, but I hate it. Now this murderer of nine Black people who were totally unconnected to what enraged the murderer goes into a Black church...I hate him, I hate hating. I hate the people who have made me hate.

Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Charleston, will hold regular Sunday service tomorrow.

Oh my God: General O.O. Howard, routed at both Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, was nicknamed "Uh-Oh Howard." Oh my God. I just read that on Wikipedia and laughed out loud. He later founded Howard University. 

Reading again (after twenty-one years!) Chancellorsville, 1863 reminds me of Johnstown, 1889. The sensory impressions of those who were struck are similar, the foreshadowing of impending disaster similar, the inexorableness of the force the same. Most of all it is sensory impressions, the physical sensations, the sights, sounds and feelings:

"Johnstown is going to be destroyed today."
...
SOUTH FORK DAM IS LIABLE TO BREAK: NOTIFY THE
PEOPLE OF JOHNSTOWN TO PREPARE FOR THE WORST.

Two men who were shown the message...read it and laughed out loud.
...
"It is erroneous opinion that the dam burst. It simply moved away."

"Not a break, just one big push."
...
"Oh, it seemed to me as if all the destructive elements of the Creator had been turned loose at once..."

When the dam let go, the lake seemed to leap into the valley like a living thing, "roaring like a mighty battle"...

"Look at the people running! I wonder what's wrong?"

Then they saw it coming, spread across the full width of the valley.
...
"It just seemed like a mountain coming."
...
"Run for your lives!"
...
It began as a deep, steady rumble, they would say; then it grew louder and louder until it became an avalanche of sound, "a roar like thunder"...
...
But what seemed to make the most lasting impression was the cloud of dark spray that hung over the front of the wave..."a blur, an advance guard, as it were a mist, like dust that precedes a cavalry charge."
####
"Colonel, the Institute will be heard from today!"
...
Three times the 55th brought this news to Devens, who was lying down resting at the Talley house, and Devens disdained it. The third time, he told [Colonel John C.] Lee, "You are frightened, sir"...

[Lt. Col. C.W.] Friend] promptly went on to [General O.O.] Howard's headquarters---where he was laughed at, and warned not to start a panic.

After...listening a while, Lt. A.B. Searles "began to hear a queer jumble of sounds"...He even thought he remembered "their bugles sounding the call to deploy...we could hear an order occasionally, too, quite planly."Searles sent a sergeant in to warn von Amsberg of "an immense mass of men on our flank," but got no response...General Howard had scoffed, "Lieutenant Searles must not be scared at a few bushwackers."
...
Jackson...would go at Hooker on such a broad front that whenever his troops hit a strongpoint they would flow around and envelop it--so broad...
...
"Are you ready, General Rodes?"
"Yes, sir."
"You can go forward, then."
...
Outside his Eleventh Corps command post...Oliver Otis Howard told a battery of gunners to "Unharness those horses, boys, give them a good feed of oats. We'll be off for Richmond at daylight."...Devens's division headquarters passed the word to eat supper...

Music began to drift from clearing to clearing...
...
The thickness of the forest, some trick of the breeze, kept the sound of the fighting from the ears of Joe Hooker at Chancellorsville. On the pillared veranda of the house, he and his aides, Captains William Candler and Harry Russell, were sitting chatting in the balmy dusk...[S]omething caught Russell's eye west toward Dowdall's Tavern. Stepping off the porch, he lifted and focused his spyglass.

"My God!" he said. "Here they come!"
...
As [Hollis Brooks] bit into the hot, crisp roll, somebody shouted, "A deer!"...this deer was bounding away in panic. There came another out of the thickets...A flock of turkeys flapped out of the woods. Songbirds and scared rabbits followed. A crackle of rifle fire sounded beyond them.
...
"Like a cloud of dust driven before a coming shower."*
...

"Johnnies! Johnnies!"

The underbursh before them cam alive, trembling and crackling as if a storm of buffalo were rolling onto the Union positions.
...
"[The Rebels] swept forward like a cyclone...the fierce momentum of an army in three-fold folume of masses, all saturated with the spirit...that massive attack...The wrath of God pervaded it..."
...
"a confused roaring sound seemd to penetrate the air, ominous and alarming, but mysterious withal...a curious sight met the eye, for all the world like a stampeded of cattle, a multitude of yelling, struggling men...panting for breath, their faces distorted by fear..."
...
With Rebels coming from front and flank, his men could neither change front nor fire back. [Maj. Allen G.] Brady told them to take to the woods---and as young Justus Silliman said, "I believe there were [a] few who started before the order was given."
...
"So sudden was our appearance...that they did not even rise from over their steaming suppers...[and] surrendered seated or half-bent, in speechless wonderment."


*General O. O. Howard, from Chancellorsville, 2nd Edition, Stackpole, chapter title "The Storm Breaks.". All other quotes from Chancellorsville, 1863, Furgurson.

" Rick Perry refers to Charleston church shooting as 'accident'."-KENS5.com.

"This is the M.O. of this administration anytime there is a accident like this," Perry told Newsmax's Steve Malzberg in an interview published Friday. "You know, the president's clear. He doesn't like for Americans to have guns, and so he uses every opportunity, this being another one, to basically go parrot that message."

Shortly after Perry's remark began making headlines and ricocheting around social media, spokesman Travis Considine indicated the former governor misspoke. "From the context of his comments, it is clear Gov. Perry meant incident," Considine said in a statement.

If memory serves...I have to own Donald Trump, too, right? All right, then.

That is the best image I could find of all nine Charleston victims. Such beautiful people, inside and out. Gone. Just because they were Black. Just because they were Black. In a church. How do you hate that much at age 20 or 21, the age of the murderer? He is a dyed-in-the-wool racist, a white supremacist. How does your wool get dyed so deeply at that age? I have read next to nothing about him. Can't. He doesn't look insane. He doesn't look nuts like that asshole who murdered all those kids at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Doesn't look nuts like that asshole at the Colorado theater. Remember that guy? Oh, he didn't look too nuts, not at all, with the purple hair and wide eyes. He doesn't look like Charles Manson, yet, yet he had the same motivation as Manson did for Helter Skelter, to start a race war. You know who this guy, I don't even know his name, you know who he reminds me of, with his grim tight face? Mohammad Atta, the lead 9/11 terrorist.

This has not been a good week for the White race, you know that? Not a good week at all. I am thoroughly disgusted to be White right now. Embarrassed before, with Rachel Dolezal, disgusted now. Every one of those motherfuckers in the paragraph above is White, too. Except Mo. Every one of them White. Name me a Black mass murderer? Name me one. All I can think of are White! Jesus Christ. John Wayne Gacy, that Whittman guy at the University of Texas, Albert Disalvo, Richard Peck. Hell, why stop at Lone Wolves, how about Hits? Fucking cornered the market on fucking mass murder. Uncle Joe! Can't get much more White than a fucking German and a fucking Russian. Slobadon Milosevic: White again! Maoie, ok fine, not White, not Black either! Idi Amin? Yes, right? I think he murdered in mass. What was the name of that guy, from Atlanta, who murdered all those Black kids? Damn, I can see his...Wayne Williams! He was definitely Black. Okay, that's one, but name me a racist Black mass murderer. I think we White people got that market all to ourselves. God DAMN it, there has to be ONE! Doesn't there?...SHIT! Thoroughly disgusted, I am thoroughly disgusted tonight. I will give, I am serious, I will give $10 to the first person who writes me, publocc@gmail.com, with the name of ONE Black racist mass murderer. 

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I did not know that the Iraqi Information Minister had left Al Jazeera to work for the Cleveland "Cavaliers."

Today, as a well-respected ESPN reporter wrote on what he had seen in the relationship between LeBron James and coach David Blatt in the NBA Finals,--James had "emasculated" the Blatter--Blatt and team general manager David Griffin held a surreal end-of-Finals news conference where they pronounced their happiness with the state of the Mistake by the Lake. It was not very convincing.

David Blatt was not a good coach in the traditional meaning of the term this year. He sucked in the contemporary meaning of that word and he was criticized and disrespected by any definition by James and other players all year. 

It is said Blatt had an unenviable task, he knowingly bought a piece of fool's gold only to have an alchemist change it into 24 karat. That is said to be rough and, in a sense, one can see how it was. James came back to Cleveland with some super-human secret motivation and he was not going to let the head coach of Maccabi Tel Aviv mellow his harsh. He would win with David Blatt, without David Blatt, by respecting David Blatt or by disrespecting David Blatt. He won a lot but couldn't win it all without Kyrie Irving, Anderson Varejao and Kevin Love.

David Blatt won just as much and lost just that little, in the traditional meaning of "win," meaning scoring more points than the other team. Blatt does not get much credit for all that winning, nor should he. However it remains an inconvenient truth that the team nominally coached by David Blatt did all that winning and all that little losing and did it without those three great or very good injured players. If he is willing to win that war while losing the battle for his manhood, well, as a Jewish male, he may be used to being "emasculated."

Sometimes that power is greatest which is not exercised and David Blatt swallowed his pride and deferred to LeBron James. Hard thing for the person nominally the boss to do but it was a smart, a very smart, thing for Blatt to do. The bottom line is winning, is it not? They won. Blatt was "in charge" of that. The fact of the matter is that LeBron James is the most intelligent basketball player in the history of the sport. He simply sees things others do not, especially David Blatt. Were Blatt to have insisted that the coach is right because he's the coach, David Blatt would have lost that fight with LeBron James first of all, so it was good for Blatt's survival that he did not go there, but it was also smart of Blatt to realize that he had Albert Einstein correcting Blatt's equations and substituting his own. Smart coaching.

We all play roles in life. Our Chinese friends walked to their struggle sessions, Bian Zhongyun walked to her death. All in the name of a Greater China. We have a saying in America, "Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug." Another ESPN LeBron-ologist wrote that he thinks James wants Blatt to return as coach, to have someone who James "can kick around." Comrade Blatt, your turn for a struggle session.

There is precedent for the kind of emasculated, backseat role Blatt acclimated himself to this season and not just in the player's league of the NBA. The NBA had the original zen master Phil Jackson be wildly successful. Michael Jordan got Doug Collins replaced as coach of the "Bulls." Magic Johnson did the same to Paul Westhead on the "Lakers." Westhead's replacement was Pat Riley. How'd that turn out?

But Blatt bird pumped a lot this year and he brings to my mind not an NBA coach but a Major League Baseball manager, Jack McKeon. Some years ago the Florida "Marlins" were floundering, appropriate verb for fish, and in mid-season they replaced whoever-it-was with McKeon. McKeon was seventy-two years old. In his dotage. He couldn't remember players' names, mispronounced them. He was over this hill and every hill in the range. McKeon could not have imposed his will, if he still had a baseball will, if he had wanted to. So he just stumbled and malapropismed and that got the manager out of the way of the players. Damn if those 2003 "Marlins" didn't go on to win the World Series. Baseball people winced when McKeon was named Manager of the Year. You could sympathize with the wincing! But the bottom line was that--somehow--with Jack McKeon "in charge" the "Marlins" won the World Serious. Refusing (or unable) to exercise authority that is your contractual right, sometimes that is the best use of authority. 

What David Blatt has to do in his second year is read LeBron James better and stay out of his way. With Kyrie Irving, Anderson Varajao and Kevin Love healthy and back next season Cleveland has already been named favorite by Las Vegas to win the championship in 2016. Las Vegas knows from bottom lines.

No new books so when I came home I picked one off the bookshelf, Chancellorsville 1863...Wow, according to the inside flap I bought that book in 1994...Opened it pretty much at random, read some of the pages I had tabbed and then wanted to get to the "good" part. Didn't get there. What happened to Hooker?:

In boyhood games and in the White House, he had advanced himself by puffing his chest and saying "Look at me." In the field, from Mexico onward, his performance had backed up his bluster. But it is easier, in a way, to ride a white horse out front in battle, where all can see, than it is to command from an army headquarters. Out front, the display of bravery is seen as bravery itself. There a man can subdue inner doubts by putting himself where hesitation would be obvious to all, and so impermissible. There the enemy is shells and ranks of soldiers, brightly visible with regimental flags; before them, impetuosity is cheered more than calculation.

Like that you mean! I focused on the first clause of that first bolded sentence and it immediately struck me as true, or plausible, for a certain "type," Holmes' word, like Humphreys and Abbott, the type that's really secretly scared shitless but who sees a battle as an "opportunity" (Humphreys word, on F-burg) to prove one's "manhood" (both Humphreys and Abbott at F-burg), to their doubters, one's father (Abbott) and preeminently oneself.  We've all heard guys say "I ain't scared-a nuthin!"

They are the type who then go out and murder nine people and maybe get killed themselves. False bravado. Fake courage. To expose yourself gratuitously to getting killed is not courage, or it's beyond courage, it is to act as a "maniac." That is the word of somebody who observed Humphreys at F-burg.For that "type," I could see acting as did Humphreys and Abbott, who were of that type! 

But then I read the second clause of that first sentence, "...than it is to command from an army headquarters," and I instantly grasped the applicability to "Fighting" Joe:

At headquarters, a commander is surrounded by other officers, but he is alone in command. 

Can't you just see Hooker sitting there--alone--with the bottle, liquid courage...

...and it hitting him all of a sudden: Lee is out there, not just an abstract "enemy," but Robert E. Lee himself. Gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp. And Jackson!

Hooker, especially, was alone with the knowledge that now at last, the battle was his own to win or lose. There would be no one above for him to blame later. He had given himself such a buildup that his soldiers and his country expected great things from him. 

He had outmaneuvered the vaunted Lee, and led the applause for himself...But Hooker hesitated, waiting for still more reinforcements. While he waited, Lee acted. When Hooker then moved on May 1...Hooker himself, in his mind, met Robert E. Lee. 

At the moment of truth, he folded. 

"You can go forward, then." Now...back to the good part.

Nine Black people were murdered last night in an historic Black church, a church, in Charleston, South Carolina. The murderer, captured today, is a 21-year old white guy.

It's beyond feeling. I don't know what to say. 

Insufferable, long-suffering Cleveland is now 51 years without a championship in anything except algae bloom. Congratulations to the new NBA "World Champion" "Warriors," condolences to LeBron James, bite me Dan Gilbert.

That's the guy! Didn't know there were still memes or whatever about him. 

Rachel Dolezal.

This reminds me of the Iraqi Information Minister. Remember him? During Bush-43's invasion the media were of course covering every step of the Coalition's moves. The Iraqi Information Minister, I forget his name, was ubiquitous, holding news briefings denying the whole thing. He became a comic legend. There was a website WeLovetheIraqiInformationMinister.com, mugs you could buy, I remember, emblazoned with the guy's...mug under "We Love the Iraqi Information Minister!" When Coalition forces landed at Baghdad airport! the Iraqi Information Minister told the media, who had just been at Baghdad airport! "There are no foreign forces at Baghdad airport, come I will take you there."

Next day, he didn't show up for his news briefing. Last I heard he was working for Al Jazeera. 

"I haven’t had a DNA test. There’s been no biological proof that Larry and Ruthanne are my biological parents.”-Rachel Dolezal, NBC News.

This is excruciating.

Please stop. Media, c'mon, you don't interview a mentally imbalanced person, it is not fair to the person, it is not news, it is just causing pain to everyone. It is causing Rachel Dolezal pain, she does not know that now, she has lived a lie the last few years, she is in deep denial and the media are projecting the voice of a disturbed person all over the world. Rachel will come out of her lie at some point, and then she will have these interviews bring it all back to her. The only person she should be talking with now is her psychotherapist.

I feel the pain that these interviews have caused Rachel's parents.

I am embarrassed as a White person.

If I were a Black person I would be humiliated, insulted and angry. This is inflicting more pain on Black people in America--what did they do to deserve this?

Please stop.

Donald Trump is running for president. Of the United States.

And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.

-Revelation Chapter 19.

And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet... and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.

And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.

And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God;

That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.

And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

His truth is marching on.

And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses,...

His eyes were as a flame of fire,...

And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.

And he saith unto me, Write,...

Thus we go on. Necessity hastens the progress of civilization and freedom. Desolating war--protracted by mistaken leniency--has educated the nation to a proper sense of the treason, and nerved it to the determination to crush it by all possible means and at every hazard. The man who has heretofore objected to Negro enlistments, acquiesces when his own name appears upon the list of the Enrolling Officer. The day that saw the change in the miserable, not to say treasonable, policy of alienating the only real friends we have had in the South, and their successful employment as soldiers, stands first in the decline of the Rebellion. Its suppression is fixed, and is to be measured by the vigor with which we press the war. 

"Vengeance is secure to him
Who doth arm himself with right."

Wow. Powerful stuff, no? That is William H. Armstrong's concluding paragraph in Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals. "Thus we go on." Love that. Armstrong wrote the book as the war was ongoing, in 1863.

"Mistaken leniency;" "crush;" "the only real friends we have had in the South;" "suppression is fixed," "measured by...vigor...press the war." "Vengeance"! Armstrong hated the South. Shouldn't one kill out of hatred? Shouldn't one feel when one kills? What sort of man kills out of a sense of duty? A Nazi. Eichmann. Just following orders, doing my duty. Nothing personal, old boy.

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Vladimir Gotlibovsky's wardrobe malfunction after his firearm malfunction at the Waldorf.

Just like a Russian to be playing with a loaded gun in his pants. At a wedding reception. At the Waldorf. "But, I didn't mean to!" It doesn't look to me like the police officer is buying Vlad's explanation, does it to you? Lmao.

Priceless photograph. Hosannas to the New York Post photographer who got it.

Identity crises. (Updated*#)

Black

White

Hispanic

Indian.

Female.

Male.

Straight

George Sand.




Some people say we can "self-identify." If that is true then we can self-misrepresent. That isn't bad in every case. Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin wrote under a male pen name to avoid misogyny. Rock Hudson hid his homosexuality as virtually all men did in his era to avoid Hollywood discrimination. Some women did all they could to alter their appearance to serve in the Civil War. Rachel Dolezal was raised in a multi-racial family. She came to identify with the adopted Black children in her
family. She received a full scholarship at Howard University and changed her appearance to resemble a Black woman. Jeb Bush so internalized his wife's ancestry that he convinced himself that he was Hispanic! Bruce Jenner underwent sex change operations to become Caitlyn Jenner.

Lying about one's identity is probably a sign that something is wrong somewhere but it is protective of who you really are: "If they find out who I really am they'll arrest me." Or fire me, or beat me or kill me. You are lying to others, primarily. Changing one's identity however shows that one is deeply uncomfortable with oneself. Poor Michael Jackson. So unhappy.You know who you are and you don't like that person. You want to be a different person. You are destroying who you are, killing that person. Neither lying about identity nor changing identity is a "mistake," it is a conscious decision, but changing is extreme.

Bruce Jenner was deeply uncomfortable with himself but he did not lie about his identity, he changed it. His choice! Caitlyn asks us to accept her as we did Bruce. Our choice now:

Accept:

-to give admittance or approval to . 

No.

-to endure without protest or reaction

Yes.

-to regard as proper, normal, or inevitable

No.

-to recognize as true :  believe>refused to accept the explanation<

I don't know. That one comes at me from different directions. Do I recognize as "true" that Jenner is now a woman? Can "true" identity, in this case gender, really, "truly" be changed? It's the same human being. Caitlyn is the same one who won the gold medal in the men's decathlon in the 1976 Olympics. If we recognize Caitlyn, 2015, as true do we recognize Bruce, 1976, as true? How can we "recognize" both of those "as true?"

The example given by Merriam Webster, "believe, e.g. refused to accept the explanation," is not the same, to me, as the definition, "to recognize as true." I "accept" Jenner's "explanation" that he had a sex change and is now Caitlyn, a female. Do I "believe" that, "recognize" that "as true." I don't know. I "accept" it as a fact.

Jenner did not lie to us but (s)he is asking us to believe opposite things. That is unfair and it seems to me to be some form of misrepresentation.

Rachel Dolezal is the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Spokane, Washington. She is colored White. She self-identified on an application as Indian as well as being Black. She is comfortable being anything other than White. The NAACP does not have any race restriction to head a local chapter and the subject of Rachel's "true" race came up in the hiring process. Her White parents were insulted that she was claiming to be Black (and Indian)
and told on her. One of her (Black) adopted siblings has said that he finds Rachel's self-identification to be a form of racism. You can self-identify with the cause of African-American advancement, many, many people do, without having black skin or being of African descent (I don't like "African-American," I don't consider any of my Black friends to be of African descent, they're of American descent to me.), but if you self-identify as Black in America then you are saying that you share in the particular history of being Black in America, of being descended from slaves, the most painful thing I can imagine; you are saying, when you self-identify as Black in America, that you are descended from Jim Crow and Bull Connor and lynchings. That you cannot do if you are White and it is an insult to what it means to be Black in America for a White American to self-identify as Black. I would be insulted, and hurt if my White daughter was passing herself off as Black (or Indian). And I would be insulted and angry if I were Black.

When we choose, we also reject. "Rachel, don't you want to be White? Don't you want to be our daughter?" It is hurtful! "What was so wrong with being a guy, Caitlyn?" When you choose to be
something you are not, you are lying, to yourself and to others and you are revealing self-hatred and
hatred of those who made you a self.*

There is the insult just of the lie. Lying is absolutely justifiable sometimes, necessary even, excusable sometimes when it is not necessary, but people do not like to be lied to! I think to some extent the more transparent the lie the more insulting it is. It is not that other people didn't know and would never have known that Rachel Dolezal was White. It was obvious! But in addition she had parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, a husband, who knew that she was White. Did she take them for fools? People don't like being made to be fools.

Take Ward Churchill. Please. Another pale face. "Ward Churchill": good old Indian name, huh! Thought if he grew his hair long and got involved in AIM he could pass as an Indian. That's insulting! Became a professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado. Fools. Shame on them.

I do not say "Viva Bush" as the New York Times said. I can't condemn Jeb Bush either, I don't know what to make of him checking the Hispanic box on his voter registration form. It was not a mistake, a literal slip of the pen. It was not a lie either, he does not go around saying "I am Hispanic," he clearly feels himself to be one with Hispanic people, speaks Spanish fluently, Mexican wife, children half-Hispanic, and like with Rachel Dolezal, it was one of Jeb's family, one of his half-Hispanic children who first called him on the voter registration form. Jeb does not deny his "old family" roots (may like to distance himself from his brother, though)... I don't know what that is about. I feel confident what it is not about but not what it is about. I wish a candidate for president hadn't done that.

#I have never had an identity crisis, never had a sex change operation. Never changed my name, put on blackface or bleached my skin; never claimed to be a dispossessed Duke or Dauphin. I bet you haven't either. I am comfortable with myself. Even if other people aren't. Bet you are too.

The individuals profiled above present a wide range of identity crises. They chose and we have the right but not the obligation to choose to "accept" or not to accept their changes. Acceptance or rejection is individual to each of them and with each of us. These are mine:

-Rachel Dolezal: Reject.
-Michael Jackson: Reject.
-Jeb Bush: Reject.
-Ward Churchill: Reject.
-Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner: The only one I evaluated in detail according to the several definitions of "accept." Accept.
-Female soldiers in the Civil War: Accept.
-Rock Hudson: Accept.
-Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin aka George Sand: Accept.

*Saturday People magazine published an article with these quotes from Rachel's Black brother: "It's like what psychologists call self-hating," he continued. "She had no reason not to like herself being white. She was an awesome artist and she could have accomplished everything she did, if she had stayed exactly the same."...Ezra told Buzzfeed he felt that Rachel's alleged deception was a "slap in the face" to African Americans and their struggles."She puts dark makeup on her face and says she black," he said. "It's basically blackface," he said.