First Casualty of the Obama Administration

(AP-BHO Newswire) - In what is being referred to as the first casualty of the Obama Presidency, a promising young political cartoonist, Kay Suerte, was found dead today of an apparent suicide. Ms Suerte was 28 years old and had been the Chicago-Hyde Park Tribune's political cartoonist since 2004. She was known as a harsh critic of the Bush Administration and a defender of liberal causes.

Political cartoon industry leader, Creators Syndicate, posted a tribute to her work online and referred to her as, 'a real sparkplug with no conscious, she'll be missed.' Her most famous cartoon depicted a nude President Bush selecting Pakistani orphans to be executed through the use of 'tasers' popularized by the Buzz Lightyear ride at Disney World.

A spokeswoman for the Hyde Park police said Ms. Suerte's sister, Jane Smith, returned home to find that her sister had hung herself using only bio-degradable materials [Ms. Suerte was also known as fierce environmentalist]. Ms. Suerte's father, Nomar Suerte, claimed in an interview on Sunday that his daughter's depression had been job related.

Since Barack Obama's candidacy began, Ms. Suerte had been informed by her bosses that her fellow Hyde Park resident was off limits as a subject for her editorial cartoons until after the election. Details are sketchy, but it is believed that she was informed early last week that the 'special period' would extend throughout his Presidency, including the 2nd term!

A friend who asked not to be identified commented, 'Look we ALL share Barack's dream, but here you have the next president who bears an uncanny resemblance to a beloved children's cartoon character [Curious George], he's from her back yard and she can't go there? Just because some racist pigs tried to hijack the idea! In the hands of a sympathetic cartoonist, it could have been special. Cartoonists live for moments and resemblances like this. She thought she had earned their trust and it was going to be her masterpiece. Their refusal to compromise was just plain cold.'

Through a posting on her Facebook page, the family communicated that in lieu of flowers and especially in lieu of commercial greeting cards, non-denominational, non-ecumenical and non-judgmental prayers were requested. The message was punctuated by a 'HITH [Him or It or Them or Her] will be done' sign-off.

All articles referenced are copied in full at end of post.


Matthew 14:36 - And sought him that they might only touch the hem of his garment: and as many as touched were made perfectly whole.

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Fund Investors Face Risk of Tax Hit Despite Losses

WSJ Tax article
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Fund Investors Face Risk of Tax Hit Despite Losses Many Managers Are Planning Capital-Gains Distributions Before the End of This Year

OCTOBER 22, 2008

By TOM HERMAN

For most mutual-fund investors, it's been an abysmal year. The average U.S. diversified stock fund is down 33% through Monday, according to Morningstar Inc. Foreign stock funds have also posted steep declines, as have funds in most other categories.

And some investors may have to pay hefty tax bills on their losing funds anyway.

At issue are year-end capital-gains distributions. Mutual funds typically pay net capital gains to investors around the end of each year. These payments generally are taxable if the investments are held in a taxable account, rather than in a 401(k) plan or other tax-favored retirement account.

Considering diving back into a stock fund in the coming weeks? Keep these points in mind:

* Contact the fund first to see if it's planning a taxable capital- gains payout.
* If the payout is significant, consider buying another fund or waiting until after the qualifying date.
* You also can invest in the fund in a tax- advantaged account.

Despite the stock market's nose dive, many funds are likely to make year-end capital-gains distributions this year, fund managers and financial advisers predict. That means it may be a good time to consider selling some underperforming funds before they make a taxable distribution. It also means that bargain-hunters looking to get back into the market now need to be careful. Otherwise they could be saddled with a stiff tax bill that could easily have been avoided.

"Many people are looking for a time to step back into the market," says Gary Schatsky, a fee-only financial adviser based in New York. If they're planning on doing so through a taxable account at mutual funds, "they'd better be aware of the distribution dates of the mutual fund -- and either wait to invest until after that date or find an alternative that doesn't have onerous tax consequences."

Most capital-gains payouts are made in December, and some fund families have already published preliminary 2008 payout estimates, based on results through late September, or will do so soon. For example, OppenheimerFunds says its Developing Markets fund, based on results through late September, had estimated short- and long-term capital gains of nearly $7.20 a share, or almost 20% of net asset value.

Why? "Emerging markets as a whole have done extremely well over the past three to five years, and as a result, the manager decided to close out some long-term holdings," a spokesman says. Another reason: A new portfolio manager joined the fund last year, and the fund "underwent a significant reorientation and consolidation of its holdings," he says. The company also says its Global Opportunities fund had estimated gains of around $3 a share, or more than 11% of its net asset value.

At T. Rowe Price Group, the number of funds making capital-gains distributions this year "has not declined very much," says Greg Hinkle, treasurer of the T. Rowe Price Funds. "We had 50 funds that made capital-gains distributions last year." Right now, he estimates that 42 funds will make distributions this year. But the total amount of those payments "is estimated to be less than half of last year's total," he says.

Vanguard Group "doesn't expect more than a handful of capital-gains distributions for 2008, and those distributions will be on the modest side," a spokesman says.

A Fidelity Investments spokesman says it's difficult to give details on capital-gains payouts just yet. "However, broadly speaking, we believe only a few Fidelity funds will pay distributions of capital gains this year, unlike in recent years, and that the amount of the distributions will generally be significantly lower," the spokesman says.

Some of Capital Research and Management Co.'s American Funds are likely to make year-end payouts, says Maura Griffin, a spokeswoman. Among them is the New Perspective fund, a global blue-chip stock fund. Based on Sept. 30 results, the fund estimates a payout of 7% to 9% of its net asset value, according to the group's Web site. The distribution will be paid Dec. 24 to shareholders of record Dec. 23.

Similarly, the company expects its New World fund, a global growth fund, to pay out around 4% to 6% of its net asset value, with the same distribution and record dates as the New Perspective fund, Ms. Griffin says. Most other funds in the family are expected to make much smaller payouts, or none at all, she says.

"Investors may wonder why, in a declining market, capital gains could be possible," Ms. Griffin says. "These realized gains are not short-term but are correlated to stocks we held for several years that had strengthened before fund managers chose to sell them."

Before investing a significant amount of money in a fund in coming weeks, check to see if the fund is likely to be making a year-end payout, and if so, how much and when. Many fund organizations post this information on their Web sites. Then crunch the numbers to see if the payout will increase your taxes significantly. If the answer is yes, consider another fund -- or wait to invest until after the date to qualify for the payment.

This doesn't mean investors should automatically shy away from any fund planning year-end distributions. After all, one of the easiest ways to make a bad mistake is to make an investment decision based solely on tax considerations, instead of investment fundamentals.

"In markets with big daily moves, keep investment considerations foremost," says T. Rowe Price's Mr. Hinkle. "If you stay out of a fund for one day to avoid a 5% distribution, but lose out on a 6% or 7% upward market move that day, you've lost ground."

Nobody knows the exact amount of gains that will be handed out this year, or even how many funds will be making them, since the accounting period for the year isn't over yet. But fund managers say the total number of funds making payments, as well as the dollar amounts, are expected to be far below a year ago, when funds made their largest payouts in history.

According to the Investment Company Institute, mutual funds distributed nearly $415 billion in capital gains to shareholders in 2007. That total, which includes both paid and reinvested capital gains, was up sharply from about $257 billion in 2006. About 36% of the 2007 distributions were paid to taxable household accounts, the ICI says. Stock funds typically account for the bulk of the distributions.

Investors can offset capital gains and losses on a dollar-for-dollar basis, with no limit. If your losses exceed your gains, or if you have no gains at all, you typically can deduct as much as $3,000 of net capital losses ($1,500 if you're married and filing separately from your spouse) from wages and other ordinary income. Additional losses are carried over into future years.

But if you sell and decide to reinvest the proceeds quickly, be careful you don't run afoul of what are known as the "wash sale" rules. You can't deduct losses from sales of stock or other securities in a wash sale, which typically occurs when you sell or trade securities at a loss and buy the same, or "substantially identical," securities within 30 days before or after a sale.

If an investor does sink money into a fund just before a sizable year-end distribution, there is at least one consolation, according to the Ernst & Young Tax Guide 2008. Your higher basis will reduce the amount of any capital gain on a later sale -- or, if you sell the fund at a loss, it will increase the size of your capital loss. However, the guide says, "if you want to limit your current tax liability and lower your basis in the shares, you should delay your purchase of fund shares until after the record date for the distribution."

Many workers will pay higher Social Security taxes next year.

The maximum amount of earnings subject to the Social Security tax in 2009 will be $106,800, the Social Security Administration said. That's up $4,800, or 4.7%, from $102,000 this year. This dollar threshold is adjusted annually to reflect changes in average wages.

Thus the maximum additional Social Security tax that might be collected on an employee earning above the 2008 wage base will be $297.60, says Avram Sacks, Social Security law analyst at CCH, which provides tax and payroll information and software and is part of Wolters Kluwer Law & Business.

"Taxes for self-employed individuals use the same earnings base, but the rates are double those of employees, since the self-employed must also pay the 'employer' portion of the taxes," says Mr. Sacks. "This means that high-earning, self-employed individuals may owe as much as $595.20 in additional self-employment tax in 2009. However, they can recoup some of this amount through a deduction on their federal income tax."

Of the estimated 164 million workers who will pay Social Security taxes in 2009, about 11 million will pay higher taxes due to this increase in the taxable minimum, the Social Security Administration said.

The rate for the "hospital insurance," or Medicare, tax stays at 1.45%. This applies to every dollar you earn.
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Powell's Exit Strategy on Obama

Well at least Colin Powell practices what he preaches. Just as in his advice to President Bush about the Iraq war, his endorsement of Obama contained an exit strategy. I come at this from the following perspective, everything Powell said on Sunday was carefully thought out and executed. If you don't believe that, and assume that he answered off-the-cuff, then I am making too much of this. But remember that this is someone who is used to having his words carefully parsed. Here is what Powell said on separate occasions:

• ... trying to suggest that, because of this very, very limited relationship that Senator Obama has had with Mr. Ayers
• ... because Mr. Barack Obama had some contacts of a very casual nature--they sat on a educational board--over time is somehow connected to his thinking or his actions

Here is what Powell could have said that would not have made his endorsement of Obama conditional on the depth of the alliance between Obama and Ayers:

• Look Tom, I know that in politics people make all sorts of contacts and associations which don't reflect their beliefs, it's one of the reasons I'm not a politician [chuckle]
• I've read about the Ayers allegations and I don't find them persuasive, what I do find persuasive ...
• Tom, I'm very uncomfortable with the whole guilt by association mentality implicit in the Ayers attacks.

I believe that over time the Ayers alliance will be proven to be much more than casual. Perhaps even at the level of Ayers having helped Obama write his first book [ghost-writers are very common for politicians]. I also believe that practically all who support Obama today will shrug their shoulders when that happens. But it will matter then if he's lying now and I suspect it matters to Powell as well.

All articles referenced are copied in full at end of post.

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Meet the Press - 10/19/08
MSNBC.com - Oct. 19: Former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell (Ret.), Chuck Todd, political roundtable
Former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell (Ret.), Chuck Todd, David Brooks, Jon Meacham, Andrea Mitchell, Joe Scarborough
updated 12:04 p.m. ET, Sun., Oct. 19, 2008

MR. TOM BROKAW: Our issues this Sunday: He served as President George W. Bush's secretary of state and was once called the man most likely to become the nation's first African-American president. He has been courted by both the Obama and McCain presidential campaigns and said this last month:

(Videotape)

GEN. COLIN POWELL (RET.): I have been watching both of these individuals. I know them both extremely well, and I have not decided who I'm going to vote for yet.

(End videotape)

MR. BROKAW: Is he now ready to make an endorsement in this presidential race? What are his thoughts on the major issues facing the country and the world? Our exclusive guest this Sunday, former Secretary of State General Colin Powell.

Then, with 16 days to go, Decision 2008 heads into the home stretch. What states still are in play? We will hear the latest on some new state polls with NBC's political director, Chuck Todd. Also, insights and analysis on the race to the White House with David Brooks of The New York Times, Jon Meacham of Newsweek magazine, Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, and Joe Scarborough of MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

But first, General Colin Powell, welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.

GEN. POWELL: Thank, thank you, Tom.

MR. BROKAW: We indicated in that opening, there is a lot of anticipation and speculation about your take on this presidential campaign. We'll get to that in a moment. But in your old business we might call this a tour of the horizon. Whoever's elected president of the United States, that first day in the Oval Office on January 21st will face this: an American economy that's in a near paralytic state at this time; we're at war in two different countries, Afghanistan and Iraq; we have an energy crisis; we have big decisions to make about health care and about global climate change. The president of the United States and the Congress of the United States now have the highest disapproval ratings that we have seen in many years. In all your years of public service, have you ever seen an incoming president face such daunting challenges?

GEN. POWELL: No. I have seen more difficult times in our history. I think about the early '70s when we were going through Watergate, Spiro Agnew, Nixon period, that was not a good time. But right now we're also facing a very daunting period. And I think the number one issue the president's going to have to deal with is the economy. That's what the American people are worried about. And, frankly, it's not just an American problem, it's an international problem. We can see how all of these economies are now linked in this globalized system. And I think that'll be number one. The president will also have to make decisions quickly as to how to deal with Iraq and Afghanistan. And also I think the president has to reach out to the world and show that there is a new president, a new administration that is looking forward to working with our friends and allies. And in my judgment, also willing to talk to people who we have not been willing to talk to before. Because this is a time for outreach.

MR. BROKAW: Given the state of the American economy, can we continue our military commitments around the world at the level that they now exist?

GEN. POWELL: We can. I think we have to look as to whether they have to be at that level. But we have the wealth, we have the wherewithal to do that. (Clears throat) Excuse me, Tom. We have the ability to do that. And so, first and foremost, we have to review those commitments, see what they are, see what else is needed, and make sure we give our troops what they need to get the job done as we have defined the job. We have that ability.

MR. BROKAW: If you were called into the Oval Office on January 21st by the new president, whoever it happens to be, and he said to you, "General Powell, I need from you your recommendation on where I begin. What should be my priorities?" Where would you start?

GEN. POWELL: I would start with talking to the American people and talking to the world, and conveying a new image of American leadership, a new image of America's role in the world.

The problems will always be there, and there's going to be a crisis come along in the 21st or 22nd of January that we don't even know about right now. And so I think what the president has to do is to start using the power of the Oval Office and the power of his personality to convince the American people and to convince the world that America is solid, America is going to move forward, and we're going to fix our economic problems, we're going to meet our overseas obligations. But restoring a sense of purpose, a sense of confidence in the American people and, in the international community, in America.

MR. BROKAW: What's not on the screen right now that concerns you that should be more prominent in the minds of the American people and the people running for president?

GEN. POWELL: I think the American people and the gentlemen running for president will have to, early on, focus on education more than we have seen in the campaign so far. America has a terrible educational problem in the sense that we have too many youngsters not finishing school. A third of our kids don't finish high school, 50 percent of minorities don't finish high school. We've got to work on this, and my, my wife and I are leading a campaign with this purpose.

Also, I think, the new president has to realize that the world looks to America for leadership, and so we have to show leadership on some issues that the world is expecting us to, whether it's energy, global warming and the environment. And I think we have to do a lot more with respect to poverty alleviation and helping the needy people of the world. We need to increase the amount of resources we put into our development programs to help the rest of the world. Because when you help the poorest in the world, you start to move them up an economic and social ladder, and they're not going to be moving toward violence or terrorism of the kind that we worry about.

MR. BROKAW: Well, let's move to the American presidential campaign now, if we can. We saw at the beginning of this broadcast a short tease of what you had to say just a month ago. Let's share with our viewers now a little more of Colin Powell on these two candidates and your position.

(Videotape, September 20, 2008)

GEN. POWELL: I'm an American, first and foremost, and I'm very proud--I said, I've said, I've said to my beloved friend and colleague John McCain, a friend of 25 years, "John, I love you, but I'm not just going to vote for you on the basis of our affection or friendship." And I've said to Barack Obama, "I admire you. I'll give you all the advice I can. But I'm not going to vote for you just because you're black." We, we have to move beyond this.

(End videotape)

MR. BROKAW: General Powell, actually you gave a campaign contribution to Senator McCain. You have met twice at least with Barack Obama. Are you prepared to make a public declaration of which of these two candidates that you're prepared to support?

GEN. POWELL: Yes, but let me lead into it this way. I know both of these individuals very well now. I've known John for 25 years as your setup said. And I've gotten to know Mr. Obama quite well over the past two years. Both of them are distinguished Americans who are patriotic, who are dedicated to the welfare of our country. Either one of them, I think, would be a good president. I have said to Mr. McCain that I admire all he has done. I have some concerns about the direction that the party has taken in recent years. It has moved more to the right than I would like to see it, but that's a choice the party makes. And I've said to Mr. Obama, "You have to pass a test of do you have enough experience, and do you bring the judgment to the table that would give us confidence that you would be a good president."

And I've watched him over the past two years, frankly, and I've had this conversation with him. I have especially watched over the last six of seven weeks as both of them have really taken a final exam with respect to this economic crisis that we are in and coming out of the conventions. And I must say that I've gotten a good measure of both. In the case of Mr. McCain, I found that he was a little unsure as to deal with the economic problems that we were having and almost every day there was a different approach to the problem. And that concerned me, sensing that he didn't have a complete grasp of the economic problems that we had. And I was also concerned at the selection of Governor Palin. She's a very distinguished woman, and she's to be admired; but at the same time, now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don't believe she's ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president. And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Senator McCain made.

On the Obama side, I watched Mr. Obama and I watched him during this seven-week period. And he displayed a steadiness, an intellectual curiosity, a depth of knowledge and an approach to looking at problems like this and picking a vice president that, I think, is ready to be president on day one. And also, in not just jumping in and changing every day, but showing intellectual vigor. I think that he has a, a definitive way of doing business that would serve us well. I also believe that on the Republican side over the last seven weeks, the approach of the Republican Party and Mr. McCain has become narrower and narrower. Mr. Obama, at the same time, has given us a more inclusive, broader reach into the needs and aspirations of our people. He's crossing lines--ethnic lines, racial lines, generational lines. He's thinking about all villages have values, all towns have values, not just small towns have values.

And I've also been disappointed, frankly, by some of the approaches that Senator McCain has taken recently, or his campaign ads, on issues that are not really central to the problems that the American people are worried about. This Bill Ayers situation that's been going on for weeks became something of a central point of the campaign. But Mr. McCain says that he's a washed-out terrorist. Well, then, why do we keep talking about him? And why do we have these robocalls going on around the country trying to suggest that, because of this very, very limited relationship that Senator Obama has had with Mr. Ayers, somehow, Mr. Obama is tainted. What they're trying to connect him to is some kind of terrorist feelings. And I think that's inappropriate.

Now, I understand what politics is all about. I know how you can go after one another, and that's good. But I think this goes too far. And I think it has made the McCain campaign look a little narrow. It's not what the American people are looking for. And I look at these kinds of approaches to the campaign and they trouble me. And the party has moved even further to the right, and Governor Palin has indicated a further rightward shift. I would have difficulty with two more conservative appointments to the Supreme Court, but that's what we'd be looking at in a McCain administration. I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, "He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists." This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards--Purple Heart, Bronze Star--showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn't have a Christian cross, it didn't have the Star of David, it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life. Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way. And John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know. But I'm troubled about the fact that, within the party, we have these kinds of expressions.

So, when I look at all of this and I think back to my Army career, we've got two individuals, either one of them could be a good president. But which is the president that we need now? Which is the individual that serves the needs of the nation for the next period of time? And I come to the conclusion that because of his ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of his campaign, because he is reaching out all across America, because of who he is and his rhetorical abilities--and we have to take that into account--as well as his substance--he has both style and substance--he has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president. I think he is a transformational figure. He is a new generation coming into the world--onto the world stage, onto the American stage, and for that reason I'll be voting for Senator Barack Obama.

MR. BROKAW: Will you be campaigning for him as well?

GEN. POWELL: I don't plan to. Two weeks left, let them go at each other in the finest tradition. But I will be voting for him.

MR. BROKAW: I can already anticipate some of the reaction to this. Let's begin with the charge that John McCain has continued to make against Barack Obama. You sit there, as a man who served in Vietnam, you commanded a battalion of 101st, you were chairman of the Joint Chiefs, you were a national security adviser and secretary of state. There is nothing in Barack Obama's history that nearly paralyze any--parallels any of the experiences that you've had. And while he has performed impressively in the context of the campaign, there's a vast difference between sitting in the Oval Office and making tough decisions and doing well in a campaign.

GEN. POWELL: And he knows that. And I have watched him over the last two years as he has educated himself, as he has become very familiar with these issues. He speaks authoritatively. He speaks with great insight into the challenges we're facing of a military and political and economic nature. And he is surrounding himself, I'm confident, with people who'll be able to give him the expertise that he, at the moment, does not have. And so I have watched an individual who has intellectual vigor and who dives deeply into issues and approaches issues with a very, very steady hand. And so I'm confident that he will be ready to take on these challenges on January 21st.

MR. BROKAW: And you are fully aware that there will be some--how many, no one can say for sure--but there will be some who will say this is an African-American, distinguished American, supporting another African-American because of race.

GEN. POWELL: If I had only had that in mind, I could have done this six, eight, 10 months ago. I really have been going back and forth between somebody I have the highest respect and regard for, John McCain, and somebody I was getting to know, Barack Obama. And it was only in the last couple of months that I settled on this. And I can't deny that it will be a historic event for an African-American to become president. And should that happen, all Americans should be proud--not just African-Americans, but all Americans--that we have reached this point in our national history where such a thing could happen. It will also not only electrify our country, I think it'll electrify the world.

MR. BROKAW: You have some differences with Barack Obama. He has said that once he takes office, he wants to begin removing American troops from Iraq. Here's what you had to say about that: "I have found in my many years of service, to set arbitrary dates that don't coincide with the situation on the ground or what actually is happening tends not to be a useful strategy. ... Arbitrary deadlines that are snatched out of the air and are based on some lunar calculation is not the way to run a military or a strategic operation of this type." That was on February 10th of this year on CNN. Now that you have Barack Obama's ear in a new fashion, will you say to him, "Drop your idea of setting a deadline of some kind to pull the troops out of Iraq"?

GEN. POWELL: First of all, I think that's a great line, and thanks for pulling it up. And I believe that. But as I watch what's happening right now, the United States is negotiating the--an agreement with the Iraqi government that will call for most major combat operations to cease by next June and for American forces to start withdrawing to their bases. And that agreement will also provide for all American troops to be gone by 2011, but conditioned on the situation as it exists at that time. So there already is a timeline that's being developed between the Iraqis and the United States government. So I think whoever becomes the president, whether it's John McCain or whether it's Barack Obama, we're going to see a continued drawdown. And when, you know, which day so many troops come out or what units come out, that'll be determined by the commanders and the new president. But I think we are on a glide path to reducing our presence in Iraq over the next couple of years. Increasingly, this problem's going to be solved by the Iraqis. They're going to make the political decisions, their security forces are going to take over, and they're going to have to create an environment of reconciliation where all the people can come together and make Iraq a much, much better place.

MR. BROKAW: Let me go back to something that you raised just a moment ago, and that's William Ayers, a former member of the Weathermen who's now active in school issues in Illinois. He had some past association with Barack Obama. Wouldn't it have been more helpful for William Ayers to, on his own, to have renounced his own past? Here was a man who was a part of the most radical group that existed in America at a time when you were serving in Vietnam, targeting the Pentagon, the Capitol. He wrote a book about it that came out on 2001, on September 11th that said, "We didn't bomb enough."

GEN. POWELL: It's despicable, and I have no truck for William Ayers. I think what he did was despicable, and to continue to talk about it in 2001 is also despicable. But to suggest that because Mr. Barack Obama had some contacts of a very casual nature--they sat on a educational board--over time is somehow connected to his thinking or his actions, I think, is a, a terrible stretch. It's demagoguery.

MR. BROKAW: I want to ask you about your own role in the decision to go to war in Iraq. Barack Obama has been critical of your appearance before the United Nations at that time. Bob Woodward has a new book out called "The War Within," and here's what he had to say about Colin Powell and his place in the administration: "Powell ... didn't think [Iraq] was a necessary war, and yet he had gone along in a hundred ways, large and small. He had resisted at times but had succumbed to the momentum and his own sense of deference--even obedience--to the president. ... Perhaps more than anyone else in the administration, Powell had been the `closer' for the president's case on war."

And then you were invited to appear before the Iraq Study Group. "`Why did we go into Iraq with so few people?' [former Secretary of State James] Baker asked. ... `Colin just exploded at that point,' [former Secretary of Defense William] Perry recalled later. `He unloaded,' Former White House Chief of Staff] Leon Panetta added. `He was angry. He was mad as hell.' ... Powell left [the Study Group meeting]. Baker turned to Panetta and said solemnly, `He's the one guy who could have perhaps prevented this from happening.'"

What's the lesson in all of that for a former--for a new secretary of state or for a new national security adviser, based on your own experience?

GEN. POWELL: Well, let's start at the beginning. I said to the president in 2002, we should try to solve this diplomatically and avoid war. The president accepted that recommendation, we took it to the U.N. But the president, by the end of 2002, believed that the U.N. was not going to solve the problem, and he made a decision that we had to prepare for military action. I fully supported that. And I have never said anything to suggest I did not support going to war. I thought the evidence was there. And it is not just my closing of the whole deal with my U.N. speech. I know the importance of that speech, and I regret a lot of the information that the intelligence community provided us was wrong. But three months before my speech, with a heavy majority, the United States Congress expressed its support to use military force if it was necessary. And so we went in and used military force. My unhappiness was that we didn't do it right. It was easy to get to Baghdad, but then we forgot that there was a lot more that had to be done. And we didn't have enough force to impose our will in the country or to deal with the insurgency when it broke out, and that I regret.

MR. BROKAW: Removing the weapons of mass destruction from the equation...

GEN. POWELL: I also assure you that it was not a correct assessment by anybody that my statements or my leaving the administration would have stopped it.

MR. BROKAW: Removing the weapons of mass destruction from the equation, because we now know that they did not exist, was it then a war of necessity or just a war of choice?

GEN. POWELL: Without the weapons of mass destruction present, as conveyed to us by the intelligence community in the most powerful way, I don't think there would have been a war. It was the reason we took it to the public, it was the reason we took it to the American people to the Congress, who supported it on that basis, and it's the presentation I made to the United Nations. Without those weapons of mass destruction then Iraq did not present to the world the kind of threat that it did if it had weapons of mass destruction.

MR. BROKAW: You do know that there are supporters of Barack Obama who feel very strongly about his candidacy because he was opposed to the war from the beginning, and they're going to say, "Who needs Colin Powell? He was the guy who helped get us into this mess."

GEN. POWELL: I'm not here to get their approval or lack of approval. I am here to express my view as to who I'm going to vote for.

MR. BROKAW: There's a summing up going on now as, as the Bush/Cheney administration winds down. We'd like to share with our audience some of what you had to say about the two men who are at the top of the administration. At the convention in 2000, this is Colin Powell on President Bush and Dick Cheney at that time.

(Videotape, July 31, 2000)

GEN. POWELL: Dick Cheney is one of the most distinguished and dedicated public servants this nation has ever had. He will be a superb vice president.

The Bush/Cheney team will be a great team for America. They will put our nation on a course of hope and optimism for this new century.

(End videotape)

MR. BROKAW: Was that prophetic or wrong?

GEN. POWELL: It's what I believed. It reflected the agenda of the new president, compassionate conservatism. And some of it worked out. I think we have advanced our freedom agenda, I think we've done a lot to help people around the world with our programs of development. I think we've done a lot to solve some conflicts such as in Liberia and elsewhere. But, at the same time, we have managed to convey to the world that we are more unilateral than we really are. We have not explained ourself well enough. And we, unfortunately, have left an impression with the world that is not a good one. And the new president is going to have to fix the reputation that we've left with the rest of the world.

Now, let me make a point here. The United States is still seen as the leader at the world that wants to be free. Even though the numbers are down with respect to favorability ratings, at every embassy and consular office tomorrow morning that we have, people will be lined up, and they'll all say the same thing, "We want to go to America." So we're still the leader of the world that wants to be free. We are still the inspiration of the rest of the world. And we can come back. In 2000, it was moment where I believed that the new administration coming in would be able to achieve the agenda that President-elect Bush had set out of compassionate conservatism.

MR. BROKAW: But it failed?

GEN. POWELL: I don't think it was as successful--excuse me (clears throat)--I don't think it was as successful as it might have been. And, as you see from the presidential approval ratings, the American people have found the administration wanting.

MR. BROKAW: Let me as, you a couple of questions--quick questions as we wrap all of this up. I know you're very close to President Bush 41. Are you still in touch with him on a regular basis? And what do you think he'll think about you this morning endorsing Barack Obama?

GEN. POWELL: I will let President Bush 41, speak for himself and let others speak for themselves, just as I have spoken for myself. Let me make one point, Tom, both Senator McCain and Senator Obama will be good presidents. It isn't easy for me to disappoint Senator McCain in the way that I have this morning, and I regret that. But I strongly believe that at this point in America's history, we need a president that will not just continue, even with a new face and with some changes and with some maverick aspects, who will not just continue, basically, the policies that we have been following in recent years. I think we need a transformational figure. I need--think we need a president who is a generational change. And that's why I'm supporting Barack Obama. Not out of any lack of respect or admiration for Senator John McCain.

MR. BROKAW: And finally, how much of a factor do you think race will be when voters go into that booth on November 4th?

GEN. POWELL: I don't know the answer to that question. One may say that it's going to be a big factor, and a lot of people say they will vote for Senator Obama but they won't pull a lever. Others might say that has already happened. People are already finding other reasons to say they're not voting for him. "Well, he's a Muslim," "He's this." So we have already seen the so-called "Bradley factor" in the current--in the current spread between the candidates. And so that remains to be seen. I hope it is not the case. I think we have advanced considerably in this country since the days of Tom Bradley. And I hope that is not the case. It would be very unfortunate if it were the case.

MR. BROKAW: Finally, if Senator Obama is elected president, will there be a place for Colin Powell in that administration? Maybe as the ambassador at large in Africa or to take on the daunting task of resolving the Israeli/Palestinian issue?

GEN. POWELL: I served 40 years in government, and I--I'm not looking forward to a position or an assignment. Of course, I have always said if a president asks you to do something, you have to consider it. But I am in no way interested in returning to government. But I, of course, would sit and talk to any president who wishes to talk to me.

MR. BROKAW: You're not ruling it out?

GEN. POWELL: I would sit and talk to any president who wishes to talk to me, but I'm not anxious to rule it in.

MR. BROKAW: General Colin Powell, thank you very much for being with us this morning. Appreciate it.

GEN. POWELL: Thank you, Tom.
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Why the Amish Don't Have Mustaches

Clearly, I am referring to the men.

Anyways, I was flipping through the Miami Herald yesterday and spot a full-page ad for an Amish 'Miracle' Heater. Their uniformity of appearance triggered my curiosity and within 3 seconds unproductive neurons planted the the mustache question in my brain. The web and my lack of discipline being what they are, within 43 seconds I had my answer. Then the fun began, they have a web site, a toll-free number and a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. This was weird on so many levels;

1. Yes, they can justify the web site because they don't maintain it. I'm sure this distinction was inspired during the Clinton years.
2. I'm hoping the Herald ad was part of a national ad buy, otherwise some black hats will have to roll over pushing the heater idea for the South Florida market.
3. Post Title question - A long beard is the mark of an adult Amishman. Mustaches, on the other hand, have a long history of being associated with the military, and therefore are forbidden among the Amish people.
4. It's hard to see, but in the ad picture, an Amish worker in the background had the following crocheted on the back of her bonnet, 'McCain reminds me of W.' It's been that kind of week for the McCain campaign....

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Hopkins Win

Miami Herald boxing article by Santos Perez on Bernard Hopkins.
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Hopkins looks like his old self in win against Pavlik

Posted on Mon, Oct. 20, 2008

BY SANTOS A. PEREZ

As New Jersey boxing officials counted the scorecards of Bernard Hopkins' inevitable victory, Hopkins found the appropriate occasion to stand near those who predict outcomes of fights.

Hopkins stared without saying a word. His silent yet forceful glare at media members sitting at press row spoke volumes.

``Never underestimate Bernard Hopkins.''

Given minimal opportunity to win, Hopkins taught Kelly Pavlik a boxing lesson in their light-heavyweight fight late Saturday in Atlantic City. The 43-year-old Hopkins controlled the pace in a convincing unanimous decision.

''I wanted to stop him because [media] have been saying I've been playing it safe because of my age,'' Hopkins said. ``So [Saturday] I wanted to pick it up.''

Hopkins didn't knock out Pavlik but inflicted enough damage on the previously unbeaten middleweight champion. Hopkins' effective and quick combinations left Pavlik bruised, bloodied and bewildered.

All three judges verified Hopkins' near-flawless performance, scoring the bout 119-106, 118-108 and 117-109.

''Styles make fights,'' Hopkins said. ``He is a great fighter but I knew my style and quickness was being underrated.''

And so was Hopkins' future in the sport.

A loss against Joe Calzaghe on April 19 seemingly had Hopkins headed for extinction. Uncertainty about his career further escalated when Hopkins agreed to fight the 26-year-old Pavlik, who had stopped 30 of his first 34 opponents.

But Hopkins was intent on disproving the doubters. With co-trainers Nazim Richardson and John David Jackson, Hopkins prepared for the fight at Normandy Gym in Miami Beach, devising strategy and undergoing an arduous physical regimen for a bout many of the so-called experts expected him to lose.

Hopkins (49-5-1) was far from a finished fighter Saturday. From the opening round, Hopkins set the tone with quick shots to the head. Pavlik (34-1) pursued and sought to initiate action but Hopkins adeptly slipped his combinations or clinched in limiting Pavlik's punch volume.

''I just couldn't get off, I don't know why,'' Pavlik said. ``It wasn't because of Bernard's slickness. There was something wrong with me [Saturday].''

Considered a rising star, Pavlik moved up 10 pounds to face Hopkins. After the fight, Pavlik confirmed a return to the 160-pound middleweight class, where he currently holds the World Boxing Council and World Boxing Organization titles.

Instead of retirement, Hopkins feels energized and expects to prolong his Hall of Fame-bound career. Hopkins now has appealing fight options, including rematches with Calzaghe or Roy Jones Jr. Calzaghe and Jones will fight Nov. 8 in New York.

Before his 10-year run as middleweight champion, Hopkins lost a decision against Jones in 1993.

''I would fight Roy but I'd also go to England to fight Calzaghe,'' Hopkins said. ``I'd fight either one of those guys, but fighting Roy would be huge and that's the one that people would want to see.''

ANDRADE BOUT SET

Demetrius Andrade will be the first member of the 2008 U.S. Olympic boxing team to fight professionally Thursday night in Spokane, Wash.

Andrade will make his debut against Patrick Cape in a scheduled four-round junior-middleweight fight.
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MTV Speaks, The Miami Herald [Just] Listens

In the Miami Herald's Business Monday, they published an interview with an MTV executive conducted by Douglas Hanks. Below an excerpt:

Q: Is Cuba the only country where you don't have a channel?

A: We talked about it. We were prevented. I talked with [Fidel] Castro directly.

I met him in my AIDS work because he hosted a lot of Caribbean countries at an AIDS conference several years ago. [Cuba] turned the whole epidemic around. They had no deaths one year from AIDS.

(Roedy explained Castro cited two priorities in their conversations: medical care and literacy.)

In China they have a show called MTV English. Where we actually stop the lyrics midstream and go back and put English on the screen. He loved the idea in Cuba because he wanted, a couple years ago, for everyone to speak English.

We didn't [pursue] it any further . . . There's been some talk over the years of music events. But no MTV Cuba.

No deaths attributable to such a deadly disease? Leaving aside the fact that the year was not specified, that is not believable. Where is the interviewer's follow-up or why the lack of editing on that answer? If you are going to print an MTV executive's thoughts about AIDS in Cuba, go the logical next step and follow up. If it's meant to be a puff piece with some corporate mouth-piece, then please avoid serious topics and stick to celebrating MTV's success in ridding an entire generation of superfluous and fatty brain cells.

Since I clearly have the space, let's address that next question here. First, let's assume that the rate of AIDS in Cuba is much lower than other Caribbean countries. The normal--or unsycophantic--question would be to ask why. Is Cuba claiming to have lower rates of homosexuality among its people than other Caribbean nations? I would assume no. How does their treatment of AIDS differ different from other countries? Better medicine? No, the absence of even basic medicine--like aspirin, let alone expensive AIDS medication--has long been a problem for the dictatorship.

It is much more likely that their success in battling AIDS is tied to the absence of freedom in Cuba. Turns out that when you do not have to worry about human rights, the odds of 'success' for government 'campaigns' dramatically improve. Let Reinaldo Arenas describe it:

The system of parameterization was imposed; that is, every gay writer, every gay artist, every gay dramatist, received a telegram telling him that his behavior did not fall within the political and moral parameters necessary for his job, and that he was therefore either terminated or offered another job in the forced-labor camps… the island became a maximum-security jail, where everybody, according to Castro, was happy to stay.

Perhaps that reality is a little too 'real world' for Mr. Roedy, whose pretentiousness is apparently only exceeded by his gullibility. Please see this link from Babalu, which describes a recently canceled gay parade. Mr. Arenas was the subject of the film, Before Night Falls.

[Post-post - Oct 22] - I sent a letter to the Herald based on this post and they printed the following:

AIDS in Cuba

In the Oct. 20 Business Monday article Top MTV exec in tune with Miami, Bill Roedy says that Cuba ``had no deaths one year from AIDS.''

There were no deaths attributable to this deadly disease? Leaving aside the fact that the year was not specified, that is not believable. Where was the follow-up question from the reporter or an editor? If the story was meant to be a puff piece, then it should have avoided serious topics and stuck to celebrating MTV's success in ridding many a child of superfluous brain cells.

Whatever success Cuba may have experienced in treating AIDS is likely attributable to its willingness to quarantine homosexuals. Roedy's pretentiousness apparently is exceeded only by his gullibility.

JORGE COSTALES, Miami

Just another day on the Cuba dilettantes watch.

All articles referenced are copied in full at end of post.

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Top MTV exec in tune with Miami

Miami Herald - Posted on Mon, Oct. 20, 2008

BY DOUGLAS HANKS

Bill Roedy can tell you about pop videos in Bombay, comedy news spoofs in Holland and educational television in Beijing. He's in charge of all of them.

The head of MTV Networks International has fought on the front lines of the music network's spread around the world, an expansion driven by a ''localization'' strategy Roedy championed in the 1980s. That approach calls for building each foreign MTV operation from the ground up, with local personalities hosting a stream of programs designed for that country's audience.

''It shrunk the margins initially,'' Roedy said during an interview at his summertime residence in South Beach. ``But the basic driving force has been local product, local sensitivity, local attitude. . . . There's no one out there who does it to the magnitude [we do] because we've been doing it for so long.''

Roedy, 59, lives in London, but he's from Miami. The North Miami High graduate got his start in the media as a copy boy at The Miami Herald (in those times of sprawling newspaper staffs, Roedy used to go on coffee runs for 56 people). The West Point graduate (and holder of a Harvard MBA) earned the Bronze Star in Vietnam and went on to command NATO missile bases in Italy.

After the Army, Roedy took a job at the fledging Home Box Office network, eventually rising to a vice president. He joined MTV in the 1980s as CEO of the network's European division, then became its chairman five years later.

Now he's socializing with Bono and mingling with world leaders through MTV's ''Staying Alive'' campaign aimed at HIV prevention. He's also served as the chairman of the United Nation's Global Media AIDS Initiative. (Among the heads of state he's chatted with: Fidel Castro.)

The father of four (ages 5 to 12) sat down with Business Monday in the lobby of the South Beach condo he owns with his wife, Alex. It overlooks the ocean and is about a 10-minute walk from MTV's Lincoln Road office.

The history of that location reflects Miami's diminished relationship with MTV. Once the creative hub for the network's Latin American unit, it now only holds the corporate side of the division. Creative moved to Argentina last year.

And while MTV held back-to-back awards shows in 2004 and 2005, the spectacle hasn't returned after a string of hurricane complications for those late-summer events.

But Roedy says Miami's gravitational pull on the music industry doesn't seem to be waning. Like the music video, he says, Miami has a knack for retaining star power.

Q: What is the state of the music video?

A: It's not like it was in the '80s, or even the '90s.

Over the years, the MTV channel has evolved into a much bigger thing than just music videos, although it's in our name so we still feel that in many ways it's the heart and soul of what we do.

When you combine [MTV and VH-1] with our digital channels, we play more music videos than we have at any time in our history, ironically. The music video is still alive and well. We tend to get better ratings with the long-form youth programming. But we still generate a lot of good ratings from music videos.

You have so many different sources of music videos now. While you may not see a lot of music videos produced in Miami, you see it produced in India -- big time -- and China, never more than now. If you look at it globally, there's probably more music videos being produced now than there ever was.

Q: Is Miami's role as a creative hub for Latin America being diluted? You guys have moved your creative operations for the region out of Miami.

A: I don't think it diminishes Miami. For us, we've always been driven by the premise of staying as close as possible to our audience. In that context, Miami was a bit of an anomaly for us. But it worked because of the whole thing we're talking about: the Latin connection. . . . I wouldn't worry about [MTV's move] too much. All of us will continue to do a lot of 'creative' in Miami.

It's a very friendly environment. And the weather is just among all the great benefits. Plus you have all the [production] infrastructure.

Q: When you talk about the social ills MTV focuses on -- violence, irresponsible sexual behavior, AIDS -- do you see a conflict between the programs that air on MTV, which lots of times do glorify violence and sex?

A: That's a fair question. We deal with it all the time, obviously.

The best answer on that is our success has been to establish an audience that we have credibility with and who trust us for straight talk.

And when you have that connection with an audience, then you have a great opportunity to deliver the message. Because you have the trust.

So yeah, we do push the envelope, no question. We try very hard not to have a point of view.

We don't preach. We can't -- they'll turn us off in a second. We try to give them the straight information.

Q: Is Cuba the only country where you don't have a channel?

A: We talked about it. We were prevented. I talked with [Fidel] Castro directly.

I met him in my AIDS work because he hosted a lot of Caribbean countries at an AIDS conference several years ago. [Cuba] turned the whole epidemic around. They had no deaths one year from AIDS.

(Roedy explained Castro cited two priorities in their conversations: medical care and literacy.)

In China they have a show called MTV English. Where we actually stop the lyrics midstream and go back and put English on the screen. He loved the idea in Cuba because he wanted, a couple years ago, for everyone to speak English.

We didn't [pursue] it any further . . . There's been some talk over the years of music events. But no MTV Cuba.

Q: Is there any international market where the MTV format has not worked, where it hasn't caught on?

A: Uh . . . no.
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Faith Informing Our Politics

As the elections approach, today's Gospel is a reminder of that our politics and our faith have a division.

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 22,15-21.

Then the Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap him in speech. They sent their disciples to him, with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. And you are not concerned with anyone's opinion, for you do not regard a person's status. Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?" Knowing their malice, Jesus said, "Why are you testing me, you hypocrites? Show me the coin that pays the census tax." Then they handed him the Roman coin. He said to them, "Whose image is this and whose inscription?" They replied, "Caesar's." At that he said to them, "Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God."

With that reading in mind, a local Catholic priest, Rev. Vallee, provides some perspective. He weighs in on how Catholics should avoid putting God in any political party:

We as Catholics must inform ourselves and vote our consciences. We must not do what Jerry Farwell and the Moral Majority did which is to turn our religion into a partisan political party. Such a tactic conflates the place of God and Caesar in society. I am not going tell you who to vote for; don't let anyone else tell you who to vote for. Here is the point. This pulpit is here that we might preach the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ, not the agenda of Obama or the platform of McCain. To use religion in such a cynical way renders everything unto Caesar and leaves nothing for God. That is a decision you must make in good conscience, in your own mind and heart. And remember these issues are not simple. It is not a matter of souls or no souls. It is usually more like 'little souls.' We need to turn down the vicious rhetoric and turn up the wisdom and charity. Which side is right? They are both wrong when they fight like bratty children calling one another nasty names.

I also addressed my confusion over how to properly address a priest.

All homilies referenced are copied in full at end of post.

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Fr Vallee's 10/19/08 Homily

I. Caesar, elections
As we approach the November elections, Jesus tells us to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's, let me attempt to preach the Gospel without making either the democrats or the republicans out there too angry. The best way to do that, I guess is with a story. It is a true story of St. Teresa of Avila. By the end of her life, she was nearly universally acclaimed as a saint.

II. Story of missionary
Anyhow, it came to pass that a missionary had been traveling in Africa. He was a kindly man but not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He had seen so many strange and wondrous things that, one day, while walking on the beach, he saw a flock of very large birds, speaking what he took to be a strange and exotic language. The dim young priest, presuming them to be a tribe of people, with great zeal and little intelligence, baptized the entire flock of birds. When he got back to Rome, they figured out what happened and a debate among the learned theologians broke out. The Franciscans, with their well known love for animals, argued that the birds were infused with souls capable of being saved by virtue of the grace of baptism. The Dominicans, with their well known love of precision, argued that whatever is received is received according to the capacity of the receiver. Hence, the birds did not need and could not receive salvation.

III. Teresa's decision
Things finally got so out of hand that a fist-fight broke out on the streets of Rome between a Franciscan and a Dominican theologian. Finally the pope intervened. He got both sides to agree that they would submit themselves to the binding arbitration of Teresa of Avila. Whatever she decided, they would accept and no more fighting. They gave Teresa hundreds of pages they had written and she took a few weeks to read it all. When she had finished the Dominicans and Franciscans came back to her and asked: “Well, which is it? Do they have souls or not? Teresa sighed a weary sigh and said: “Well, alright but little souls.�

IV. The current debates
I don't know about you but, as for me, political discourse in this country has descended into just such a war of little boys and little girls. So much of what we hear is absolute and fanatical. Let us be very clear. Neither the democrats nor the republicans are on the side of the angels. Even, if I may be so bold, this whole economic mess is the not fault of only one party. Both democrats and republicans are plenty guilty. Where is the nuance and where is the wisdom? Let us be even more clear. There is no one Catholic party in this country. This is because both sides have very serious moral issues they fall on the wrong side of: for the democrats, abortion and for the republicans, just war. Both abortion and unjust war are intrinsically disordered. Don't take my word for it; they both have been explicitly and repeated condemned by the last two popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

V. Conscience
We as Catholics must inform ourselves and vote our consciences. We must not do what Jerry Farwell and the Moral Majority did which is to turn our religion into a partisan political party. Such a tactic conflates the place of God and Caesar in society. I am not going tell you who to vote for; don't let anyone else tell you who to vote for. Here is the point. This pulpit is here that we might preach the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ, not the agenda of Obama or the platform of McCain. To use religion in such a cynical way renders everything unto Caesar and leaves nothing for God. That is a decision you must make in good conscience, in your own mind and heart. And remember these issues are not simple. It is not a matter of souls or no souls. It is usually more like 'little souls.' We need to turn down the vicious rhetoric and turn up the wisdom and charity. Which side is right? They are both wrong when they fight like bratty children calling one another nasty names.
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Roberto Acevedo

Miami Herald boxing article by Santos Perez on Roberto Acevedo.
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Puerto Rico's Acevedo wins his fourth consecutive fight

Posted on Sat, Oct. 18, 2008

BY SANTOS A. PEREZ

Motivated by new management and encouragement from an older brother who is a former Olympic medalist, Roberto Acevedo increased his victory streak Friday night.

Acevedo, of Puerto Rico, won his fourth consecutive fight with a majority decision over Miami resident Lenin Arroyo in an undercard bout at Miccosukee Resort and Gaming.

''Hopefully this victory opens the door for bigger fights,'' Acevedo said. ``I am very satisfied with how my career is going on right now.''

Acevedo, whose brother, Anibal, won a silver medal in the 1992 Olympics, used effective boxing skills throughout the six-round junior-welterweight bout against a charging Lenin Arroyo.

Judges Mark Streisand and John Ruppert scored the bout 59-57 for Acevedo, and Rocky Young scored it 57-57.

''I was told that he was going to come right at me and initiate the action,'' Acevedo said. ``But I was able to trade as well as box with him.''

Acevedo (9-4-3) controlled the pace early, connecting with combinations to the head. Late in the first round, Acevedo scored with short combinations that temporarily staggered Arroyo.

Arroyo (20-8-1) tried to pressure Acevedo into the ropes but Acevedo slipped most of Arroyo's shots by moving in angles.

In the fifth, Arroyo finally found shorter punching range and pinned Acevedo on the ropes, where he connected with combinations to the body and a right uppercut.

But Acevedo still found openings in the middle of the ring and forced Arroyo to briefly retreat with rights and lefts to the head.

Arroyo again pursued Acevedo in the final round, keeping him on the ropes with combinations to the body.

The card's main event, between Mexico's Jorge Lacierva and Colombia's Feider Viloria for a regional super-bantamweight title, was fought late Friday.

In another undercard bout, Miami resident Sergio Garcia won a unanimous decision against Carlos Pena.

Garcia turned the tight four-round welterweight bout in his favor after staggering Pena with a right to the head. Pena briefly clinched but Garcia kept the pressure with rights and lefts to the head.

A six-round lightweight bout between Homestead resident Orlando Gonzalez and Pittsburgh's Daniel Mitchell was canceled after Mitchell complained of back spasms hours before the bout.

In other bouts: featherweight Daniel Lorezano scored a technical knockout over Jose Martinez at 2:07 of the second round; lightweight Ricardo Reyes won by a unanimous decision over Jesus Garcia; junior welterweights Amaury Torres and Michael Mendez fought to a draw; junior welterweights Devaris Crayton and Jones Petit-Homes fought to a draw.
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Tom Wolfe in Miami, Cooooññño

Tom Wolfe! The other day it hit me, one of the great American writers ever is in the process of researching and writing a book, Back to Blood, based in our town. The book's topic is immigration and it's focus will be on our Cuban-American community and how it has evolved in and with Miami. Mr. Wolfe sees the experience of the Cuban exodus into the Miami community as a great 'only in America' success story.

If I had to try to describe what it's been like to read him, I would say that he is a written word version of a Google Earth aerial map. A consistently unique, funny and insightful way to look at various subjects and people. As a young conservative drawn initially to William F Buckley, it would be hard to exaggerate the pleasure in learning that there was another intellectual out there who, if not a conservative politically, was unfazed by the prevailing liberal orthodoxy. He came, he saw and he skewered unmercifully and hilariously. Man was he fun to discover.

Back before I became a parent, I greatly enjoyed the Great Books Discussion Group which met, and still does, on a biweekly basis at the Coral Gables Library. I hope to recruit a similar type group to take advantage of this unique opportunity to either acquaint or reacquaint ourselves with Mr. Wolfe's work prior to the publication of his Miami-based book, scheduled for the Fall of 2009. So please pass this idea along to anyone who might be interested.

For an example of his work, see the excerpt below from his Forbes 1996 article, 'Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died' -- the focus of which was neuroscience:

Which brings us to the second most famous statement in all of modern philosophy: Nietzsche's "God is dead." The year was 1882. (The book was Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft [The Gay Science].) Nietzsche said this was not a declaration of atheism, although he was in fact an atheist, but simply the news of an event. He called the death of God a "tremendous event," the greatest event of modern history. The news was that educated people no longer believed in God, as a result of the rise of rationalism and scientific thought, including Darwinism, over the preceding 250 years. But before you atheists run up your flags of triumph, he said, think of the implications. "The story I have to tell," wrote Nietzsche, "is the history of the next two centuries." He predicted (in Ecce Homo) that the twentieth century would be a century of "wars such as have never happened on earth," wars catastrophic beyond all imagining. And why? Because human beings would no longer have a god to turn to, to absolve them of their guilt; but they would still be racked by guilt, since guilt is an impulse instilled in children when they are very young, before the age of reason. As a result, people would loathe not only one another but themselves. The blind and reassuring faith they formerly poured into their belief in God, said Nietzsche, they would now pour into a belief in barbaric nationalistic brotherhoods: "If the doctrines...of the lack of any cardinal distinction between man and animal, doctrines I consider true but deadly"--he says in an allusion to Darwinism in Untimely Meditations --"are hurled into the people for another generation...then nobody should be surprised when...brotherhoods with the aim of the robbery and exploitation of the non-brothers...will appear in the arena of the future."

Nietzsche's view of guilt, incidentally, is also that of neuro-scientists a century later. They regard guilt as one of those tendencies imprinted in the brain at birth. In some people the genetic work is not complete, and they engage in criminal behavior without a twinge of remorse--thereby intriguing criminologists, who then want to create Violence Initiatives and hold conferences on the subject.

Nietzsche said that mankind would limp on through the twentieth century "on the mere pittance" of the old decaying God-based moral codes. But then, in the twenty-first, would come a period more dreadful than the great wars, a time of "the total eclipse of all values" (in The Will to Power ). This would also be a frantic period of "revaluation," in which people would try to find new systems of values to replace the osteoporotic skeletons of the old. But you will fail, he warned, because you cannot believe in moral codes without simultaneously believing in a god who points at you with his fearsome forefinger and says "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt not."

Why should we bother ourselves with a dire prediction that seems so far-fetched as "the total eclipse of all values"? Because of man's track record, I should think. After all, in Europe, in the peaceful decade of the 1880s, it must have seemed even more far-fetched to predict the world wars of the twentieth century and the barbaric brotherhoods of Nazism and Communism. Ecce vates! Ecce vates! Behold the prophet! How much more proof can one demand of a man's powers of prediction?

See the video below or go the actual link of Mr. Wolfe discussing his Miami based book.

Another link for the Soul Just Died article, in Orthodoxy Today.

All articles referenced are copied in full at end of post.

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Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died / Tom Wolfe / Forbes 1996

From neuroscience to Nietzsche. A sobering look at how man may perceive himself in the future, particularly as ideas about genetic predeterminism takes the place of dying Darwinism.

Being a bit behind the curve, I had only just heard of the digital revolution last February when Louis Rossetto, cofounder of Wired magazine, wearing a shirt with no collar and his hair as long as Felix Mendelssohn's, looking every inch the young California visionary, gave a speech before the Cato Institute announcing the dawn of the twenty-first century's digital civilization. As his text, he chose the maverick Jesuit scientist and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who fifty years ago prophesied that radio, television, and computers would create a "noösphere," an electronic membrane covering the earth and wiring all humanity together in a single nervous system. Geographic locations, national boundaries, the old notions of markets and political processes--all would become irrelevant. With the Internet spreading over the globe at an astonishing pace, said Rossetto, that marvelous modem-driven moment is almost at hand.

Could be. But something tells me that within ten years, by 2006, the entire digital universe is going to seem like pretty mundane stuff compared to a new technology that right now is but a mere glow radiating from a tiny number of American and Cuban (yes, Cuban) hospitals and laboratories. It is called brain imaging, and anyone who cares to get up early and catch a truly blinding twenty-first-century dawn will want to keep an eye on it.

Brain imaging refers to techniques for watching the human brain as it functions, in real time. The most advanced forms currently are three-dimensional electroencephalography using mathematical models; the more familiar PET scan (positron-emission tomography); the new fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), which shows brain blood-flow patterns, and MRS (magnetic resonance spectroscopy), which measures biochemical changes in the brain; and the even newer PET reporter gene/PET reporter probe, which is, in fact, so new that it still has that length of heavy lumber for a name. Used so far only in animals and a few desperately sick children, the PET reporter gene/PET reporter probe pinpoints and follows the activity of specific genes. On a scanner screen you can actually see the genes light up inside the brain.

By 1996 standards, these are sophisticated devices. Ten years from now, however, they may seem primitive compared to the stunning new windows into the brain that will have been developed.

Brain imaging was invented for medical diagnosis. But its far greater importance is that it may very well confirm, in ways too precise to be disputed, certain theories about "the mind," "the self," "the soul," and "free will" that are already devoutly believed in by scholars in what is now the hottest field in the academic world, neuroscience. Granted, all those skeptical quotation marks are enough to put anybody on the qui vive right away, but Ultimate Skepticism is part of the brilliance of the dawn I have promised.

Neuroscience, the science of the brain and the central nervous system, is on the threshold of a unified theory that will have an impact as powerful as that of Darwinism a hundred years ago. Already there is a new Darwin, or perhaps I should say an updated Darwin, since no one ever believed more religiously in Darwin I than he does. His name is Edward O. Wilson. He teaches zoology at Harvard, and he is the author of two books of extraordinary influence, The Insect Societies and Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Not "A" new synthesis but "The" new synthesis; in terms of his stature in neuroscience, it is not a mere boast.

Wilson has created and named the new field of sociobiology, and he has compressed its underlying premise into a single sentence. Every human brain, he says, is born not as a blank tablet (a tabula rasa) waiting to be filled in by experience but as "an exposed negative waiting to be slipped into developer fluid." You can develop the negative well or you can develop it poorly, but either way you are going to get precious little that is not already imprinted on the film. The print is the individual's genetic history, over thousands of years of evolution, and there is not much anybody can do about it. Furthermore, says Wilson, genetics determine not only things such as temperament, role preferences, emotional responses, and levels of aggression, but also many of our most revered moral choices, which are not choices at all in any free-will sense but tendencies imprinted in the hypothalamus and limbic regions of the brain, a concept expanded upon in 1993 in a much-talked-about book, The Moral Sense , by James Q. Wilson (no kin to Edward O.).

The neuroscientific view of life

This, the neuroscientific view of life, has become the strategic high ground in the academic world, and the battle for it has already spread well beyond the scientific disciplines and, for that matter, out into the general public. Both liberals and conservatives without a scientific bone in their bodies are busy trying to seize the terrain. The gay rights movement, for example, has fastened onto a study published in July of 1993 by the highly respected Dean Hamer of the National Institutes of Health, announcing the discovery of "the gay gene." Obviously, if homosexuality is a genetically determined trait, like left-handedness or hazel eyes, then laws and sanctions against it are attempts to legislate against Nature. Conservatives, meantime, have fastened upon studies indicating that men's and women's brains are wired so differently, thanks to the long haul of evolution, that feminist attempts to open up traditionally male roles to women are the same thing: a doomed violation of Nature.

Wilson himself has wound up in deep water on this score; or cold water, if one need edit. In his personal life Wilson is a conventional liberal, PC, as the saying goes--he is , after all, a member of the Harvard faculty--concerned about environmental issues and all the usual things. But he has said that "forcing similar role identities" on both men and women "flies in the face of thousands of years in which mammals demonstrated a strong tendency for sexual division of labor. Since this division of labor is persistent from hunter-gatherer through agricultural and industrial societies, it suggests a genetic origin. We do not know when this trait evolved in human evolution or how resistant it is to the continuing and justified pressures for human rights."

"Resistant" was Darwin II, the neuroscientist, speaking. "Justified" was the PC Harvard liberal. He was not PC or liberal enough. Feminist protesters invaded a conference where Wilson was appearing, dumped a pitcher of ice water, cubes and all, over his head, and began chanting, "You're all wet! You're all wet!" The most prominent feminist in America, Gloria Steinem, went on television and, in an interview with John Stossel of ABC, insisted that studies of genetic differences between male and female nervous systems should cease forthwith.

But that turned out to be mild stuff in the current political panic over neuroscience. In February of 1992, Frederick K. Goodwin, a renowned psychiatrist, head of the federal Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration, and a certified yokel in the field of public relations, made the mistake of describing, at a public meeting in Washington, the National Institute of Mental Health's ten-year-old Violence Initiative. This was an experimental program whose hypothesis was that, as among monkeys in the jungle--Goodwin was noted for his monkey studies--much of the criminal mayhem in the United States was caused by a relatively few young males who were genetically predisposed to it; who were hardwired for violent crime, in short. Out in the jungle, among mankind's closest animal relatives, the chimpanzees, it seemed that a handful of genetically twisted young males were the ones who committed practically all of the wanton murders of other males and the physical abuse of females. What if the same were true among human beings? What if, in any given community, it turned out to be a handful of young males with toxic DNA who were pushing statistics for violent crime up to such high levels? The Violence Initiative envisioned identifying these individuals in childhood, somehow, some way, someday, and treating them therapeutically with drugs. The notion that crime-ridden urban America was a "jungle," said Goodwin, was perhaps more than just a tired old metaphor.

That did it. That may have been the stupidest single word uttered by an American public official in the year 1992. The outcry was immediate. Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representative John Dingell of Michigan (who, it became obvious later, suffered from hydrophobia when it came to science projects) not only condemned Goodwin's remarks as racist but also delivered their scientific verdict: Research among primates "is a preposterous basis" for analyzing anything as complex as "the crime and violence that plagues our country today." (This came as surprising news to NASA scientists who had first trained and sent a chimpanzee called Ham up on top of a Redstone rocket into suborbital space flight and then trained and sent another one, called Enos, which is Greek for "man," up on an Atlas rocket and around the earth in orbital space flight and had thereby accurately and completely predicted the physical, psychological, and task-motor responses of the human astronauts, Alan Shepard and John Glenn, who repeated the chimpanzees' flights and tasks months later.) The Violence Initiative was compared to Nazi eugenic proposals for the extermination of undesirables. Dingell's Michigan colleague, Representative John Conyers, then chairman of the Government Operations Committee and senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus, demanded Goodwin's resignation--and got it two days later, whereupon the government, with the Department of Health and Human Services now doing the talking, denied that the Violence Initiative had ever existed. It disappeared down the memory hole, to use Orwell's term.

A conference of criminologists and other academics interested in the neuroscientific studies done so far for the Violence Initiative--a conference underwritten in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health--had been scheduled for May of 1993 at the University of Maryland. Down went the conference, too; the NIH drowned it like a kitten. Last year, a University of Maryland legal scholar named David Wasserman tried to reassemble the troops on the QT, as it were, in a hall all but hidden from human purview in a hamlet called Queenstown in the foggy, boggy boondocks of Queen Annes County on Maryland's Eastern Shore. The NIH, proving it was a hard learner, quietly provided $133,000 for the event but only after Wasserman promised to fireproof the proceedings by also inviting scholars who rejected the notion of a possible genetic genesis of crime and scheduling a cold-shower session dwelling on the evils of the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century. No use, boys! An army of protesters found the poor cringing devils anyway and stormed into the auditorium chanting, "Maryland conference, you can't hide--we know you're pushing genocide!" It took two hours for them to get bored enough to leave, and the conference ended in a complete muddle with the specially recruited fireproofing PC faction issuing a statement that said: "Scientists as well as historians and sociologists must not allow themselves to provide academic respectability for racist pseudoscience." Today, at the NIH, the term Violence Initiative is a synonym for taboo . The present moment resembles that moment in the Middle Ages when the Catholic Church forbade the dissection of human bodies, for fear that what was discovered inside might cast doubt on the Christian doctrine that God created man in his own image.

Even more radio-active is the matter of intelligence, as measured by IQ tests. Privately--not many care to speak out--the vast majority of neuroscientists believe the genetic component of an individual's intelligence is remarkably high. Your intelligence can be improved upon, by skilled and devoted mentors, or it can be held back by a poor upbringing--i.e., the negative can be well developed or poorly developed--but your genes are what really make the difference. The recent ruckus over Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein's The Bell Curve is probably just the beginning of the bitterness the subject is going to create.

Not long ago, according to two neuroscientists I interviewed, a firm called Neurometrics sought out investors and tried to market an amazing but simple invention known as the IQ Cap. The idea was to provide a way of testing intelligence that would be free of "cultural bias," one that would not force anyone to deal with words or concepts that might be familiar to people from one culture but not to people from another. The IQ Cap recorded only brain waves; and a computer, not a potentially biased human test-giver, analyzed the results. It was based on the work of neuroscientists such as E. Roy John 1 , who is now one of the major pioneers of electroencephalographic brain imaging; Duilio Giannitrapani, author of The Electrophysiology of Intellectual Functions ; and David Robinson, author of The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and Personality Assessment: Toward a Biologically Based Theory of Intelligence and Cognition and many other monographs famous among neuroscientists. I spoke to one researcher who had devised an IQ Cap himself by replicating an experiment described by Giannitrapani in The Electrophysiology of Intellectual Functions. It was not a complicated process. You attached sixteen electrodes to the scalp of the person you wanted to test. You had to muss up his hair a little, but you didn't have to cut it, much less shave it. Then you had him stare at a marker on a blank wall. This particular researcher used a raspberry- red thumbtack. Then you pushed a toggle switch. In sixteen seconds the Cap's computer box gave you an accurate prediction (within one-half of a standard deviation) of what the subject would score on all eleven subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale or, in the case of children, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--all from sixteen seconds' worth of brain waves. There was nothing culturally biased about the test whatsoever. What could be cultural about staring at a thumbtack on a wall? The savings in time and money were breathtaking. The conventional IQ test took two hours to complete; and the overhead, in terms of paying test-givers, test-scorers, test-preparers, and the rent, was $100 an hour at the very least. The IQ Cap required about fifteen minutes and sixteen seconds--it took about fifteen minutes to put the electrodes on the scalp--and about a tenth of a penny's worth of electricity. Neurometrics's investors were rubbing their hands and licking their chops. They were about to make a killing.

In fact-- nobody wanted their damnable IQ Cap!

It wasn't simply that no one believed you could derive IQ scores from brainwaves--it was that nobody wanted to believe it could be done. Nobody wanted to believe that human brainpower is... that hardwired . Nobody wanted to learn in a flash that... the genetic fix is in . Nobody wanted to learn that he was... a hardwired genetic mediocrity ...and that the best he could hope for in this Trough of Mortal Error was to live out his mediocre life as a stress-free dim bulb. Barry Sterman of UCLA, chief scientist for a firm called Cognitive Neurometrics, who has devised his own brain-wave technology for market research and focus groups, regards brain-wave IQ testing as possible--but in the current atmosphere you "wouldn't have a Chinaman's chance of getting a grant" to develop it.

Science is a court from which there is no appeal

Here we begin to sense the chill that emanates from the hottest field in the academic world. The unspoken and largely unconscious premise of the wrangling over neuroscience's strategic high ground is: We now live in an age in which science is a court from which there is no appeal. And the issue this time around, at the end of the twentieth century, is not the evolution of the species, which can seem a remote business, but the nature of our own precious inner selves.

The elders of the field, such as Wilson, are well aware of all this and are cautious, or cautious compared to the new generation. Wilson still holds out the possibility--I think he doubts it, but he still holds out the possibility--that at some point in evolutionary history, culture began to influence the development of the human brain in ways that cannot be explained by strict Darwinian theory. But the new generation of neuroscientists are not cautious for a second. In private conversations, the bull sessions, as it were, that create the mental atmosphere of any hot new science--and I love talking to these people--they express an uncompromising determinism.

They start with the most famous statement in all of modern philosophy, Descartes's "Cogito ergo sum," "I think, therefore I am," which they regard as the essence of "dualism," the old-fashioned notion that the mind is something distinct from its mechanism, the brain and the body. (I will get to the second most famous statement in a moment.) This is also known as the "ghost in the machine" fallacy, the quaint belief that there is a ghostly "self" somewhere inside the brain that interprets and directs its operations. Neuroscientists involved in three-dimensional electroencephalography will tell you that there is not even any one place in the brain where consciousness or self-consciousness ( Cogito ergo sum ) is located. This is merely an illusion created by a medley of neurological systems acting in concert. The young generation takes this yet one step further. Since consciousness and thought are entirely physical products of your brain and nervous system--and since your brain arrived fully imprinted at birth--what makes you think you have free will? Where is it going to come from? What "ghost," what "mind," what "self," what "soul," what anything that will not be immediately grabbed by those scornful quotation marks, is going to bubble up your brain stem to give it to you? I have heard neuroscientists theorize that, given computers of sufficient power and sophistication, it would be possible to predict the course of any human being's life moment by moment, including the fact that the poor devil was about to shake his head over the very idea. I doubt that any Calvinist of the sixteenth century ever believed so completely in predestination as these, the hottest and most intensely rational young scientists in the United States at the end of the twentieth.

Since the late 1970s, in the Age of Wilson, college students have been heading into neuroscience in job lots. The Society for Neuroscience was founded in 1970 with 1,100 members. Today, one generation later, its membership exceeds 26,000. The Society's latest convention, in San Diego, drew 23,052 souls, making it one of the biggest professional conventions in the country. In the venerable field of academic philosophy, young faculty members are jumping ship in embarrassing numbers and shifting into neuroscience. They are heading for the laboratories. Why wrestle with Kant's God, Freedom, and Immortality when it is only a matter of time before neuroscience, probably through brain imaging, reveals the actual physical mechanism that sends these mental constructs, these illusions, synapsing up into the Broca's and Wernicke's areas of the brain?

Which brings us to the second most famous statement in all of modern philosophy: Nietzsche's "God is dead." The year was 1882. (The book was Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft [ The Gay Science ].) Nietzsche said this was not a declaration of atheism, although he was in fact an atheist, but simply the news of an event. He called the death of God a "tremendous event," the greatest event of modern history. The news was that educated people no longer believed in God, as a result of the rise of rationalism and scientific thought, including Darwinism, over the preceding 250 years. But before you atheists run up your flags of triumph, he said, think of the implications. "The story I have to tell," wrote Nietzsche, "is the history of the next two centuries." He predicted (in Ecce Homo ) that the twentieth century would be a century of "wars such as have never happened on earth," wars catastrophic beyond all imagining. And why? Because human beings would no longer have a god to turn to, to absolve them of their guilt; but they would still be racked by guilt, since guilt is an impulse instilled in children when they are very young, before the age of reason. As a result, people would loathe not only one another but themselves. The blind and reassuring faith they formerly poured into their belief in God, said Nietzsche, they would now pour into a belief in barbaric nationalistic brotherhoods: "If the doctrines...of the lack of any cardinal distinction between man and animal, doctrines I consider true but deadly"--he says in an allusion to Darwinism in Untimely Meditations --"are hurled into the people for another generation...then nobody should be surprised when...brotherhoods with the aim of the robbery and exploitation of the non-brothers...will appear in the arena of the future."

Nietzsche's view of guilt, incidentally, is also that of neuro-scientists a century later. They regard guilt as one of those tendencies imprinted in the brain at birth. In some people the genetic work is not complete, and they engage in criminal behavior without a twinge of remorse--thereby intriguing criminologists, who then want to create Violence Initiatives and hold conferences on the subject.

Nietzsche said that mankind would limp on through the twentieth century "on the mere pittance" of the old decaying God-based moral codes. But then, in the twenty-first, would come a period more dreadful than the great wars, a time of "the total eclipse of all values" (in The Will to Power ). This would also be a frantic period of "revaluation," in which people would try to find new systems of values to replace the osteoporotic skeletons of the old. But you will fail, he warned, because you cannot believe in moral codes without simultaneously believing in a god who points at you with his fearsome forefinger and says "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt not."

Why should we bother ourselves with a dire prediction that seems so far-fetched as "the total eclipse of all values"? Because of man's track record, I should think. After all, in Europe, in the peaceful decade of the 1880s, it must have seemed even more far-fetched to predict the world wars of the twentieth century and the barbaric brotherhoods of Nazism and Communism. Ecce vates! Ecce vates! Behold the prophet! How much more proof can one demand of a man's powers of prediction?

A hundred years ago those who worried about the death of God could console one another with the fact that they still had their own bright selves and their own inviolable souls for moral ballast and the marvels of modern science to chart the way. But what if, as seems likely, the greatest marvel of modern science turns out to be brain imaging? And what if, ten years from now, brain imaging has proved, beyond any doubt, that not only Edward O. Wilson but also the young generation are, in fact, correct?

The elders, such as Wilson himself and Daniel C. Dennett, the author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life , and Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker , insist that there is nothing to fear from the truth, from the ultimate extension of Darwin's dangerous idea. They present elegant arguments as to why neuroscience should in no way diminish the richness of life, the magic of art, or the righteousness of political causes, including, if one need edit, political correctness at Harvard or Tufts, where Dennett is Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, or Oxford, where Dawkins is something called Professor of Public Understanding of Science. (Dennett and Dawkins, every bit as much as Wilson, are earnestly, feverishly, politically correct.) Despite their best efforts, however, neuroscience is not rippling out into the public on waves of scholarly reassurance. But rippling out it is, rapidly. The conclusion people out beyond the laboratory walls are drawing is: The fix is in! We're all hardwired! That, and: Don't blame me! I'm wired wrong!

From nurture to nature

This sudden switch from a belief in Nurture, in the form of social conditioning, to Nature, in the form of genetics and brain physiology, is the great intellectual event, to borrow Nietzsche's term, of the late twentieth century. Up to now the two most influential ideas of the century have been Marxism and Freudianism. Both were founded upon the premise that human beings and their "ideals"--Marx and Freud knew about quotation marks, too--are completely molded by their environment. To Marx, the crucial environment was one's social class; "ideals" and "faiths" were notions foisted by the upper orders upon the lower as instruments of social control. To Freud, the crucial environment was the Oedipal drama, the unconscious sexual plot that was played out in the family early in a child's existence. The "ideals" and "faiths" you prize so much are merely the parlor furniture you feature for receiving your guests, said Freud; I will show you the cellar, the furnace, the pipes, the sexual steam that actually runs the house. By the mid-1950s even anti-Marxists and anti-Freudians had come to assume the centrality of class domination and Oedipally conditioned sexual drives. On top of this came Pavlov, with his "stimulus-response bonds," and B. F. Skinner, with his "operant conditioning," turning the supremacy of conditioning into something approaching a precise form of engineering.

So how did this brilliant intellectual fashion come to so screeching and ignominious an end?

The demise of Freudianism can be summed up in a single word: lithium. In 1949 an Australian psychiatrist, John Cade, gave five days of lithium therapy--for entirely the wrong reasons--to a fifty-one-year-old mental patient who was so manic-depressive, so hyperactive, unintelligible, and uncontrollable, he had been kept locked up in asylums for twenty years. By the sixth day, thanks to the lithium buildup in his blood, he was a normal human being. Three months later he was released and lived happily ever after in his own home. This was a man who had been locked up and subjected to two decades of Freudian logorrhea to no avail whatsoever. Over the next twenty years antidepressant and tranquilizing drugs completely replaced Freudian talk-talk as treatment for serious mental disturbances. By the mid-1980s, neuroscientists looked upon Freudian psychiatry as a quaint relic based largely upon superstition (such as dream analysis -- dream analysis!), like phrenology or mesmerism. In fact, among neuroscientists, phrenology now has a higher reputation than Freudian psychiatry, since phrenology was in a certain crude way a precursor of electroencephalography. Freudian psychiatrists are now regarded as old crocks with sham medical degrees, as ears with wire hairs sprouting out of them that people with more money than sense can hire to talk into.

Marxism was finished off even more suddenly--in a single year, 1973--with the smuggling out of the Soviet Union and the publication in France of the first of the three volumes of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago . Other writers, notably the British historian Robert Conquest, had already exposed the Soviet Union's vast network of concentration camps, but their work was based largely on the testimony of refugees, and refugees were routinely discounted as biased and bitter observers. Solzhenitsyn, on the other hand, was a Soviet citizen, still living on Soviet soil, a zek himself for eleven years, zek being Russian slang for concentration camp prisoner. His credibility had been vouched for by none other than Nikita Khrushchev, who in 1962 had permitted the publication of Solzhenitsyn's novella of the gulag, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich , as a means of cutting down to size the daunting shadow of his predecessor Stalin. "Yes," Khrushchev had said in effect, "what this man Solzhenitsyn has to say is true. Such were Stalin's crimes." Solzhenitsyn's brief fictional description of the Soviet slave labor system was damaging enough. But The Gulag Archipelago , a two-thousand-page, densely detailed, nonfiction account of the Soviet Communist Party's systematic extermination of its enemies, real and imagined, of its own countrymen, by the tens of millions through an enormous, methodical, bureaucratically controlled "human sewage disposal system," as Solzhenitsyn called it-- The Gulag Archipelago was devastating. After all, this was a century in which there was no longer any possible ideological detour around the concentration camp. Among European intellectuals, even French intellectuals, Marxism collapsed as a spiritual force immediately. Ironically, it survived longer in the United States before suffering a final, merciful coup de gr ce on November 9, 1989, with the breaching of the Berlin Wall, which signaled in an unmistakable fashion what a debacle the Soviets' seventy-two-year field experiment in socialism had been. (Marxism still hangs on, barely, acrobatically, in American universities in a Mannerist form known as Deconstruction, a literary doctrine that depicts language itself as an insidious tool used by The Powers That Be to deceive the proles and peasants.)

Freudianism and Marxism--and with them, the entire belief in social conditioning--were demolished so swiftly, so suddenly, that neuroscience has surged in, as if into an intellectual vacuum. Nor do you have to be a scientist to detect the rush.

Anyone with a child in school knows the signs all too well. I have children in school, and I am intrigued by the faith parents now invest--the craze began about 1990--in psychologists who diagnose their children as suffering from a defect known as attention deficit disorder, or ADD. Of course, I have no way of knowing whether this "disorder" is an actual, physical, neurological condition or not, but neither does anybody else in this early stage of neuroscience. The symptoms of this supposed malady are always the same. The child, or, rather, the boy--forty-nine out of fifty cases are boys--fidgets around in school, slides off his chair, doesn't pay attention, distracts his classmates during class, and performs poorly. In an earlier era he would have been pressured to pay attention, work harder, show some self-discipline. To parents caught up in the new intellectual climate of the 1990s, that approach seems cruel, because my little boy's problem is... he's wired wrong! The poor little tyke --the fix has been in since birth! Invariably the parents complain, "All he wants to do is sit in front of the television set and watch cartoons and play Sega Genesis." For how long? "How long? For hours at a time." Hours at a time; as even any young neuroscientist will tell you, that boy may have a problem, but it is not an attention deficit.

Nevertheless, all across America we have the spectacle of an entire generation of little boys, by the tens of thousands, being dosed up on ADD's magic bullet of choice, Ritalin, the CIBA-Geneva Corporation's brand name for the stimulant methylphenidate. I first encountered Ritalin in 1966 when I was in San Francisco doing research for a book on the psychedelic or hippie movement. A certain species of the genus hippie was known as the Speed Freak, and a certain strain of Speed Freak was known as the Ritalin Head. The Ritalin Heads loved Ritalin. You'd see them in the throes of absolute Ritalin raptures...Not a wiggle, not a peep...They would sit engrossed in anything at all...a manhole cover, their own palm wrinkles...indefinitely...through shoulda-been mealtime after mealtime...through raging insomnias...Pure methyl-phenidate nirvana...From 1990 to 1995, CIBA-Geneva's sales of Ritalin rose 600 percent; and not because of the appetites of subsets of the species Speed Freak in San Francisco, either. It was because an entire generation of American boys, from the best private schools of the Northeast to the worst sludge-trap public schools of Los Angeles and San Diego, was now strung out on methylphenidate, diligently doled out to them every day by their connection, the school nurse. America is a wonderful country! I mean it! No honest writer would challenge that statement! The human comedy never runs out of material! It never lets you down!

Meantime, the notion of a self--a self who exercises self-discipline, postpones gratification, curbs the sexual appetite, stops short of aggression and criminal behavior--a self who can become more intelligent and lift itself to the very peaks of life by its own bootstraps through study, practice, perseverance, and refusal to give up in the face of great odds--this old-fashioned notion (what's a boot strap, for God's sake?) of success through enterprise and true grit is already slipping away, slipping away...slipping away...The peculiarly American faith in the power of the individual to transform himself from a helpless cypher into a giant among men, a faith that ran from Emerson ("Self-Reliance") to Horatio Alger's Luck and Pluck stories to Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People to Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking to Og Mandino's The Greatest Salesman in the World --that faith is now as moribund as the god for whom Nietzsche wrote an obituary in 1882. It lives on today only in the decrepit form of the "motivational talk," as lecture agents refer to it, given by retired football stars such as Fran Tarkenton to audiences of businessmen, most of them woulda-been athletes (like the author of this article), about how life is like a football game. "It's late in the fourth period and you're down by thirteen points and the Cowboys got you hemmed in on your own one-yard line and it's third and twenty-three. Whaddaya do?..."

Sorry, Fran, but it's third and twenty-three and the genetic fix is in, and the new message is now being pumped out into the popular press and onto television at a stupefying rate. Who are the pumps? They are a new breed who call themselves "evolutionary psychologists." You can be sure that twenty years ago the same people would have been calling themselves Freudian; but today they are genetic determinists, and the press has a voracious appetite for whatever they come up with.

The most popular study currently--it is still being featured on television news shows, months later--is David Lykken and Auke Tellegen's study at the University of Minnesota of two thousand twins that shows, according to these two evolutionary psychologists, that an individual's happiness is largely genetic. Some people are hardwired to be happy and some are not. Success (or failure) in matters of love, money, reputation, or power is transient stuff; you soon settle back down (or up) to the level of happiness you were born with genetically. Three months ago Fortune devoted a long takeout, elaborately illustrated, of a study by evolutionary psychologists at Britain's University of Saint Andrews showing that you judge the facial beauty or handsomeness of people you meet not by any social standards of the age you live in but by criteria hardwired in your brain from the moment you were born. Or, to put it another way, beauty is not in the eye of the beholder but embedded in his genes. In fact, today, in the year 1996, barely three years before the end of the millennium, if your appetite for newspapers, magazines, and television is big enough, you will quickly get the impression that there is nothing in your life, including the fat content of your body, that is not genetically predetermined. If I may mention just a few things the evolutionary psychologists have illuminated for me over the past two months:

The male of the human species is genetically hardwired to be polygamous, i.e., unfaithful to his legal mate. Any magazine-reading male gets the picture soon enough. (Three million years of evolution made me do it!) Women lust after male celebrities, because they are genetically hardwired to sense that alpha males will take better care of their offspring. (I'm just a lifeguard in the gene pool, honey.) Teenage girls are genetically hardwired to be promiscuous and are as helpless to stop themselves as dogs in the park. (The school provides the condoms.) Most murders are the result of genetically hardwired compulsions. (Convicts can read, too, and they report to the prison psychiatrist: "Something came over me...and then the knife went in." 2 )

Where does that leave self-control? Where, indeed, if people believe this ghostly self does not even exist, and brain imaging proves it, once and for all?

So far, neuroscientific theory is based largely on indirect evidence, from studies of animals or of how a normal brain changes when it is invaded (by accidents, disease, radical surgery, or experimental needles). Darwin II himself, Edward O. Wilson, has only limited direct knowledge of the human brain. He is a zoologist, not a neurologist, and his theories are extrapolations from the exhaustive work he has done in his specialty, the study of insects. The French surgeon Paul Broca discovered Broca's area, one of the two speech centers of the left hemisphere of the brain, only after one of his patients suffered a stroke. Even the PET scan and the PET reporter gene/PET reporter probe are technically medical invasions, since they require the injection of chemicals or viruses into the body. But they offer glimpses of what the noninvasive imaging of the future will probably look like. A neuroradiologist can read a list of topics out loud to a person being given a PET scan, topics pertaining to sports, music, business, history, whatever, and when he finally hits one the person is interested in, a particular area of the cerebral cortex actually lights up on the screen. Eventually, as brain imaging is refined, the picture may become as clear and complete as those see-through exhibitions, at auto shows, of the inner workings of the internal combustion engine. At that point it may become obvious to everyone that all we are looking at is a piece of machinery, an analog chemical computer, that processes information from the environment. "All," since you can look and look and you will not find any ghostly self inside, or any mind, or any soul.

Thereupon, in the year 2006 or 2026, some new Nietzsche will step forward to announce: "The self is dead"--except that being prone to the poetic, like Nietzsche I, he will probably say: "The soul is dead." He will say that he is merely bringing the news, the news of the greatest event of the millennium: "The soul, that last refuge of values, is dead, because educated people no longer believe it exists." Unless the assurances of the Wilsons and the Dennetts and the Dawkinses also start rippling out, the lurid carnival that will ensue may make the phrase "the total eclipse of all values" seem tame.

The two most fascinating riddles of the 21st century

If I were a college student today, I don't think I could resist going into neuroscience. Here we have the two most fascinating riddles of the twenty-first century: the riddle of the human mind and the riddle of what happens to the human mind when it comes to know itself absolutely. In any case, we live in an age in which it is impossible and pointless to avert your eyes from the truth.

Ironically, said Nietzsche, this unflinching eye for truth, this zest for skepticism, is the legacy of Christianity (for complicated reasons that needn't detain us here). Then he added one final and perhaps ultimate piece of irony in a fragmentary passage in a notebook shortly before he lost his mind (to the late-nineteenth-century's great venereal scourge, syphilis). He predicted that eventually modern science would turn its juggernaut of skepticism upon itself, question the validity of its own foundations, tear them apart, and self-destruct. I thought about that in the summer of 1994 when a group of mathematicians and computer scientists held a conference at the Santa Fe Institute on "Limits to Scientific Knowledge." The consensus was that since the human mind is, after all, an entirely physical apparatus, a form of computer, the product of a particular genetic history, it is finite in its capabilities. Being finite, hardwired, it will probably never have the power to comprehend human existence in any complete way. It would be as if a group of dogs were to call a conference to try to understand The Dog. They could try as hard as they wanted, but they wouldn't get very far. Dogs can communicate only about forty notions, all of them primitive, and they can't record anything. The project would be doomed from the start. The human brain is far superior to the dog's, but it is limited nonetheless. So any hope of human beings arriving at some final, complete, self-enclosed theory of human existence is doomed, too.

This, science's Ultimate Skepticism, has been spreading ever since then. Over the past two years even Darwinism, a sacred tenet among American scientists for the past seventy years, has been beset by...doubts. Scientists--not religiosi--notably the mathematician David Berlinski ("The Deniable Darwin," Commentary , June 1996) and the biochemist Michael Behe (Darwin's Black Box , 1996), have begun attacking Darwinism as a mere theory, not a scientific discovery, a theory woefully unsupported by fossil evidence and featuring, at the core of its logic, sheer mush. (Dennett and Dawkins, for whom Darwin is the Only Begotten, the Messiah, are already screaming. They're beside themselves, utterly apoplectic. Wilson, the giant, keeping his cool, has remained above the battle.) By 1990 the physicist Petr Beckmann of the University of Colorado had already begun going after Einstein. He greatly admired Einstein for his famous equation of matter and energy, E=mc2 , but called his theory of relativity mostly absurd and grotesquely untestable. Beckmann died in 1993. His Fool Killer's cudgel has been taken up by Howard Hayden of the University of Connecticut, who has many admirers among the upcoming generation of Ultimately Skeptical young physicists. The scorn the new breed heaps upon quantum mechanics ("has no real-world applications"..."depends entirely on fairies sprinkling goofball equations in your eyes"), Unified Field Theory ("Nobel worm bait"), and the Big Bang Theory ("creationism for nerds") has become withering. If only Nietzsche were alive! He would have relished every minute of it!

Recently I happened to be talking to a prominent California geologist, and she told me: "When I first went into geology, we all thought that in science you create a solid layer of findings, through experiment and careful investigation, and then you add a second layer, like a second layer of bricks, all very carefully, and so on. Occasionally some adventurous scientist stacks the bricks up in towers, and these towers turn out to be insubstantial and they get torn down, and you proceed again with the careful layers. But we now realize that the very first layers aren't even resting on solid ground. They are balanced on bubbles, on concepts that are full of air, and those bubbles are being burst today, one after the other."

I suddenly had a picture of the entire astonishing edifice collapsing and modern man plunging headlong back into the primordial ooze. He's floundering, sloshing about, gulping for air, frantically treading ooze, when he feels something huge and smooth swim beneath him and boost him up, like some almighty dolphin. He can't see it, but he's much impressed. He names it God.

Tom Wolfe has chronicled American popular culture for more than three decades. His best-selling books include The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, and The Bonfire of the Vanities.

This article can be found on the Tetrica website (link closed). Reprinted with permission.
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