baldilocks

Go Fund Me Bleg

UPDATE (9/27/2013): Eight donations for $275 so far, and I'm grateful for that. Please let your friends know about this campaign.

 UPDATE (9/25/2013): Excerpt from Arlen's Harem. Language alert.

ORIGINAL POST:

Can we consider this a bleg? I think we can. What do I need? I’d like fans to help me be able to finish my second novel, tentatively titled Arlen’s Harem.

At the top of the left sidebar, you can see the Go Fund Me image which has an embedded link. The widget doesn’t fit there and it is uneditable but, of course, it will fit here.

 

What I’m trying to do:

My latest project is a novel entitled Arlen’s Harem. Its main protagonists are Arlen Tortelli, Cordelia Okoto and Deanna Desmond. The three are friends and are refugees from heartbreak.

When Arlen’s ex-wife Monica continues to needle him after leaving him for another man, he, Cordelia and Deanna devise a plot to get back at her.

The story is set in Los Angeles and Fullerton.

Arlen’s Harem is my second book. My first is Tale of the Tigers: Love is not a Game. Like Tale of the Tigers, Arlen’s Harem will be a self-published effort in both ebook and paperback formats.

I have six chapters of Arlen’s Harem finished, and plan on having at least fifteen chapters.

I have one person working for me: a graphic artist and maintainer of my book site. [Right now, he’s working for free.]

And, at the link, there’s an itemized list of the things I need to finish this project.

Some immediate needs:

• Fees for my two websites, this one and my book site, created with Adobe Muse. It’s $14.95 per month for each and I’d like to pre-pay them for a year. That amounts to $358.80.
• Fees for Stamps.com, which enables me mail out autographed copies of my book(s): $192 per year, not including postage.
• Self-publishing fees for my old novel, Tale of the Tigers (So I can sell it in person): $1200
• And one month’s phone and Internet fee: $250
• Coffee!…tea just isn’t cutting it.(Gevalia, Dunkin or any brand; whole bean or ground; any flavor as long as it's not French roast or Amaretto.)

As soon as I get enough additional donations to take care of the two websites and the phone, I will post an excerpt of Arlen’s Harem here and link to it on the Go Fund Me page.

If Adam Carolla can crowdfund a movie, why can’t I do the same for a book? Right? And did I mention that it will be my second book?

And, okay, okay! I have already started blogging regularly again. :)

Book Review - "After America" by Mark Steyn (KingShamus)

Let's face facts. Dystopian non-fiction can be a total buzzkill. People generally like happy endings in their summer reading. Most pessimistic interpretations of tomorrow don't have the kind of emotionally uplifting finale the paying customers are used to. In tales of the disasters to come, the reader doesn't often get the relief of a grand reversal of civilizational decline. The story's third act usually doesn't include a great reawakening where the citizenry regain their bearings and right the ship of state just in the nick of time. Instead, it's all pandemic death counts, epic societal collapse and lurid Thunderdome scenarios.

If one is going to travel deep into the territories of pessimism about the future, it helps if the tour guide is quick with the jokes as you pass by the scenic civilizational wreckage. In "After America", prominent conservative writer Mark Steyn employs his masterful satiric wit and playful use of language to craft the most laugh-out-loud funny postapocalyptic nightmare since his last piece of doom "America Alone".

In many ways "After America" is the logical extension of Steyn's older work. "Alone" was the author's reaction to the 9/11 attacks, the depopulation of Europe and the ascension of Islam in the West. It's main theme was that the demographic collapse of native Europeans was not going to occur in a vacuum, that the rise of Eurabia was going to have serious consequences on America's future. "After America", on the other hand, discusses a USA that doesn't have a future, at least not a future most Americans would want for their country.

What will be the cause of Old Glory's demise? Conservatives are familiar with many of the reasons: smothering bureaucracy, insane federal spending, the overwhelming arrogance of elected officials, the rise of the dependency state. What Steyn does so well is wrap his worrisome statistics and downward spiral trend lines in jaunty wit. If a little bit of sugar helps the medicine go down, a healthy shovelful of high fructose corn syrup makes the cure seem like laughing gas, even as the book goes from bleak to bleaker.

What is most bleak isn't the list of horribles Steyn recites. These are mere symptoms of the fatal disease. What really ails America? It's not all about the money or the dopey leaders we elect. It's the cultural rot that's killing us. Ponder this passage:

Incidentally, over half the illegal population supposedly came into America after September 11, 2001. That's to say, they broke into a country on Code Orange alert. Odd that. Even under the panoptic surveillance of the "security state", certain identity groups seem to be indulged by Big Government. In California one notices that the same regulatory leviathan that thinks nothing of sending in the heavies if a hardware store is offering complimentary coffee to its customers seems somewhat shyer of enforcing its bazillions of building code/food prep/environmental/health and safety rules against ad hoc mobile kitchens serving piping hot Mexican dishes up and down the highway...

This multicultural squeamishness is most instructive. Illegal immigrants are providing a model for survival in an impoverished statist America, and on the whole the state is
happy to let them do so.

On the surface, the issues wrapped up in illegal immigration involve hard tangible things like borders, fences and security architecture. Dig deeper and one sees the schizoid nature of a government too eager to punish the rule-abiders and too ready to ignore the rule-breakers. At the bottom however, it's about a society that's so confused it has trouble determining why it has laws or what it would mean to reform them.

Along the way, "After America" doesn't just point out the ideological incoherence of American life, it names names. The feckless Barack Obama and the smug incompetent Mike Bloomberg take much deserved lumps but appropriately for a book about culture, the author doesn't just stick it to our elected leaders. The whiny liberal thumbsucker Joe Klein and The New York Time's resident ChiCom fluffer Thomas Friedman--among others in the pantheon of American fail--take their hits in utterly enjoyable ways. It's one thing to take the bark off knee-jerk statist tools. It's quite another to break down the preening vanity of the cultural vanguard while having a hearty laugh at their expense.

Ultimately, Mark Steyn's "After America" hasn't just posited a future we must do everything in our power to avoid. Although it is a far different book in tone and subject matter, "After America" is just as critical as Mark Levin's "Liberty and Tyranny" if one seeks to understand the current trajectory of the Untied States. Most importantly, it gives readers an idea of how to pull away from the brink of disaster and retake their nation.

Book Review- "The Wrong War" by Bing West (KingShamus)

 

The Afghan War has been a constant part of America's political and cultural landscape for almost ten years. Like catching sand in a sieve, victory has been incredibly hard to grasp. The war has bedeviled two presidents, two Secretaries of Defense (soon to be three) and numerous top commanders. Unlike Iraq, where American perceptions have shifted to see it as a victory for the US military, Afghanistan is seen as a confusing morass where winning just might be impossible.

Into this muddled situation comes "The Wrong War" by Bing West. The author, a former Marine, lays out the details on the ground in stark terms. By putting himself directly into battles alongside the American and Afghan troops, West gives the reader a view of the fighting from the eye of the soldiers themselves. West focuses on two areas, the Konar Province in the northeast and the Helmand province in the southwest. Each has it's own tribal tensions, linguistic diversity, economic issues, geographical challenges and political difficulties.

Reading "The Wrong War" makes it clear just how foolish our nation-building efforts have been in Afghanistan. The country--and calling Afghanistan a 'country' is almost comical-- is spectacularly unsuited for the kind of Western political reforms we've been trying to graft onto it. West details several ways that Hamid Karzai, our hand-picked 'democrat', has undercut much of what we are trying to accomplish. The battle of Barge Mattal, where Americans fought and bled not to secure a military objective but to secure votes for Karzai's reelection, is an especially infuriating portion of the book.

In 2009, Karzai put pressure on the American commander General Stanley McCrystal to retake Barge Mattal. The town, deep in the Nuristan Province and close to the wide-open Pakistan border, served as an optimal location for insurgents to jump between the two countries and conduct operations. However, Karzai didn't really care about the military importance of Barge Mattal so much as the political expediency of taking back the town to look tough and get votes.

This put heavy constraints on what the Americans could and could not do to achieve the mission. Worse, there was no counterinsurgency goal to be had there. Instead, the US was forced to land Batallion 1-32 into the middle of Barge Mattal's 'punchbowl' location, surrounded by high cliffs from which the enemy could shoot from the high ground onto the American forces. Predictably, this resulted in the needless deaths of American troops.

West offers Barge Mattal up as an example of the incompetence and corruption of Hamid Karzai's cronyed-up leadership. But it's not just the Afghan elite that is suspect. The rules of engagement that the Western forces labor under are constructed so poorly that the enemy uses them to their own advantage. In a stunning passage, West finds himself in a firefight alongside American, British and Afghan security forces against an insurgent group.

"I see one over here, ' Cpl. Gareth Robson yelled from a side wall. Le ran over and peered through his M4 scope at a man dressed in black who was running bent over to the west end of the building, presenting an easy target.

"Should I shoot him?" Le [Ed.-Pfc. Khanh Le] asked me.

"I'm just a writer," I said. "It's your call."

A few meters away, Roxy [Ed.-Sgt. Scott Roxborough, a British soldier] pursed his lips to emit a farting sound, amplified by jeers from the two Marines and several Brits.

"Okay, okay, " I relented. "In Vietnam, I'd light him up. Now, what's your ROE?"

"I don't see a weapon," Le said.

"Our rule," Roxy shouted, "is that you have to testify at your hearing that the shooting was justified."

The absurdity of that conversation is mind-boggling. "The Wrong War" is littered with the frustration, lost opportunities and senseless American deaths brought about due to horrible ROEs. Not only do we send our troops into harms way, we readily tie their hands while gleefully patting ourselves on the back for our humanitarianism. War is already insane; how we have forced our troops to conduct themselves in Afghanistan borders on the suicidal.

When the American armed forces are not busy looking through the Yellow Pages for lawyers to defend them at the court-martial they could be subject to for accidentally farting on an insurgent's pet goat/next meal/best friend with benefits, the Afghan civilians often do their best to kill our troops as well.

 

 

Picture credit: Bing West

The picture above shows Afghan teenagers strewing rocks into the path of the 1-32 during an ambush at the village of Ganjigal. They did this in order to hem the Americans into a narrow area so that insurgents could have a better chance of killing US forces. Remember that these are the people the US taxpayer has invested billions of dollars in order to turn them into democrats. Worse, these are the people the US citizen has sacrificed its sons and daughters in order to turn Afghanistan away from international terrorism.

Why has Afghanistan gone so horribly wrong? In West's estimation, it's because America has tried to run a counterinsurgency operation that focuses on protecting the civilian population rather than killing the enemy. This brings into question what the American civilian leadership and the generals believe the US military is meant to do. The fact that there are people in positions of power who see our military as just a heavily armed Peace Corps is an indictment on the American military command, the civilian leadership and the American voter who puts up with monumentally incompetent leaders talking massively wrong-headed strategies.

"The Wrong War" is not just a scathing indictment of the current debacle in Afghanistan. West offers up stories that highlight the tremendous professionalism, deadly skill and selfless courage that are critical assets of our military men and women. The ambush at Ganjigal might've been an unmitigated American tragedy. Instead, the courageous actions of Corporal Dakotah Meyer--which West documents here--are nothing short of breathtaking. For every tale of misery in "The Wrong War", there are incidences of American heroism and resolve that should be part of our national mythos.

Moreover, West offers his solutions for an exit strategy. The final chapter should be required reading for anybody even remotely connected to the decision-making process in Afghanistan. His ideas help the American troops maintain their reputation for being the most deadly fighting force on the planet. Better still, they remove the American military from being pawns of Hamid Karzai and the scumfuck Afghan elite's tribal machinations.

In light of Barack Obama's unrealistic dewy-eyed dreamer's speech last week, "The Wrong War" becomes only that much more vital. Bing West's book is a cold honest assessment that counter-balances the President's partisan political agenda with facts, insight and real workable solutions. For anybody that cares about the global war on terror, the American military and our national security, "The Wrong War" is vital to understanding where we are now and where we should be in the future.

Tale of the Tigers: Second Edition

It's almost ready.  Wait until you see the new front cover!

Because my publisher is a POD publisher, there will be some fees for the re-edit and from the distributor for the revision, around $500. So I'm selling the original version of Tale of the Tigers at the low price of $12.99 at my book site only.  Get it now and help me get the new one going!  If you buy the old version, I'll throw in the new one for free with proof of purchase from today, March 30, or later.

Or you can donate to my revision fund!

What else do I have in the works? A new novel (what's a little dystopia between friends?) And a book of short stories. It's amazing what one can come up with using the assistance of memory and imagination.

Bill Ayers: "I Wrote 'Dreams From My Father'" (KingShamus)

The great Jerome Corsi documents yet another shrapnel fragment flying off the continuing Obama train wreck. 

 

Bill Ayers: One more, one more (question)

Question:Thank you sir, thank you, thank you. Time magazine columnist Joe Klein wrote that President Obama's book, "Dreams from My Father," quote: "may be the best written memoir ever produced by an American politician."

Ayers: I agree with that.

Question:What is your opinion of Barack Obama's style as a writer and uh …

Ayers: I think the book is very good, the second book ("The Audacity of Hope") is more of a political hack book, but uh, the first book is quite good.

Question: Also, you just mentioned the Pentagon and Tomahawk …

Ayers: Did you know that I wrote it, incidentally?

Question: What's that?

Ayers: I wrote that book.

Several audience members: Yeah, we know that.

Question: You wrote that?

Ayers: Yeah, yeah. And if you help me prove it, I’ll split the royalties with you. Thank you very much.

Oooooof.

WND contributor Jack Cashill seems to thinkthis is a shot across Barack Obama's bow.  In his opinion, the very anti-war Bill Ayers is angry at Obama for the President's Libyan war kinetic military action.  I think that's a pretty good assessment.

I don't believe that's the entire story here though.  I think Bill Ayers is suffering from a classic case of 'Tire Tracks From Under Obama's Bus' Syndrome.  Peace Prize Barry basically used Ayers like a kleenex.  Instead of Ayers catching at least a little credit for penning Dreams--something like 'By Barack Obama and William Ayers'--homeboy got a whole lot of nothing.   

It might have been easier on Ayers to get no props for Dreamswhen Obambi was a hack community rabble-rouser or a benchwarming Illinois state Senator.  When the former Weatherman watched Obama become a Democrat Party show-horse and media-created President, without ever acknowledging Bill Ayers' full contribution to the St. Bambi mythos, that was probably incredibly grating.  Obama's North African adventurism may have been simply the last straw.

More importantly than Bill Ayers needing to recover from his skinned knee and bruised ego, this episode is just one more nail in the coffin for the Barack Obama 2008 campaign narrative.  Dreams From My Fatherwas a big piece of Obama's intellectual curriculum vitae.  As opposed to the supposedly illiterate Dubya or the crusty old warrior John McCain, Candidate Lightbringer was a serious author who had written not one, but two books.  Dreams and The Audacity of Hope were meant to display Barry's intellectual firepower.  While the junior Senator from Illinois had almost no legislative accomplishments, his alleged mastery of the written word was supposed to assure nervous voters that they were supporting a true Renaissance man.

And now we see the myth of Obama's intellectualism crumbling.  All it took was one of the key enablers in Bamster's web of lies to get pissed off at his former protegé.  Barry's chickens are finally coming home to roost.

But really, one can't be completely shocked when a politician as weaselly as Barack Obama is found out to have inflated his resume.  To paraphrase Winston Churchill's comments about Clement Atlee, Senator HopeyChangey's barely-there congressional record had much to be humble about.  No empty-suit candidate with a similar doughnut hole in his history could do anything else.  Obama is clearly no exception to this fibbing phenomenon.

The blame for Obama being able to pull off this sham rests not with the president, but with the American mainstream press.  The New York Times/MSNBC/Washington Post Axis of Fail constantly pats itself on the crotch for brave truth-telling.  Instead of digging into Obama's shady past, they did everything they could to bury damaging details about their preferred candidate and attacked his opposition.

Better still, this MSM willful blindness also reveals just how badly they suck at the one job in which they're supposed to be experts.  They're the ones who were supposed to figure out just how much Bill Ayers figured into Barack Obama's narrative.  The lamestream press allowed the illusion of Barack Obama's superior intelligence--a major component of his appeal to voters--to flourish without a question.  By doing that, they set themselves up to be punked by bloggers who have shown more initiative in the last two years than Big Media has shown in the last two decades.

UPDATE: Now a big ole' Memeorandum thread too. Time to pile on while the piling on is good, I say.

UPDATE II:  Allahpundit offers a dissenting view:

Via the American Thinker. I think John Hawkins is spot on in detecting the sarcasm here, but if you’re inclined to believe that Ayers is The One’s ghostwriter, you’re bound to detect a “deeper truth” in his tone.

... I think he enjoys mocking people who push this idea and enjoys it doubly when they can’t detect the mockery. In fact, I’d bet that this is his stock response anytime the book is mentioned in his presence — insisting that he wrote it to see if the listener laughs and then toying with them if they seem credulous. But as I say, your mileage may vary.

Yeah, this doesn't exactly work for me.  AP's analysis blithely discounts Jack Cashill's work that pretty much proves that Bill Ayers wrote "Dreams".  Cashill lays out the bones of his argument here.

To credit Dreamsto Obama alone, one has to posit any number of near miraculous variables: he somehow found the time; he somewhere mastered nautical jargon and postmodern jabberwocky; he in some sudden, inexplicable way developed the technique and the talent to transform himself from stumbling amateur to literary superstar without any stops in between.

If anything, the last few years should make Cashill's thesis even more believable.  The Duffer-in-Chief is not exactly breaking his back as President.  Dude works harder on his NCAA basketball brackets than on seemingly anything else.   The guy requires a teleprompter for both formal and informal occasions.  It seems highly unlikely that Barack Obama would put in the work necessary to become a strong writer.       

Moreover, why can't two things be true at once?  Why can't Bill Ayers be sarcastic and be telling the truth at the same time?  I mean, it's sorta weird, but it's not such a strange thing.  Ayers is a squirrelly lib hack.  It makes weird sense that he'd do something so goofy and underhanded.  Homeboy probably gets a little thrill thinking how clever he is laying out this secret in plain view.

Tale of the Tigers-Impressions (KingShamus)

I dunno if I've mentioned this before, but FYI--a great blogger has become a great author.  I just finished "Tale of The Tigers".  It's a tremendous piece of writing.    

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng, who writes great commentary under the nom de blog Baldilocks, recently took the plunge and published her debut novel.  And what an interesting first swing of the bat Ms. Ochieng takes.

"Tale of The Tigers" is a story of two college kids who fall in love.  It's about race and racism.  It's a time capsule of the early 90's.  It looks at the dynamics of family relationships.  It examines sex and sexuality.  It reassesses sacred cows of the cult of the politically correct.  It makes important statements about friendship, loyalty and trust.

Like her blog writing, Ms. Ochieng's novel is chock full of subtleties.  Her characters could've turned into cardboard cut-outs.  Instead, the folks that inhabit "Tale" are flesh and blood people, full of admirable traits and painful weaknesses.  The outline of the plot never devolves into a cliché romance.  Thankfully, Baldilocks takes the story in unexpected directions.  "Tale" studiously avoids telegraphing it's punches, which makes for an exciting read.                     

Beyond these great things, for me the best part of the book is the fact that the story stays with you long after you've finished it.  You'll find yourself replaying sequences from the book in your mind.  Moreover, you'll catch yourself pondering the book's themes long after you've put it down.                  

In short, "Tale of The Tigers" is a damn fine piece of work from a writer with a powerful voice.  Get in on the ground floor, folks.  Buy the book.  You won't regret it.

Cross-posted at Blog De KingShamus. 

Heroines

 

A rendering of Felice LeCroix, protagonist of Tale of the Tigers. Fine work done by Chris Muir.

I haven't reached my sales goals from a few weeks back, but Tale of the Tigers is selling steadily, if slowly, and gaining great reports and a following. Here's a great report from caveman:

I read it in one sitting.....stayed up late, only stopped once to take a leak and have a smoke. I must confess it ran the entire gauntlet with me...... a rare thought indeed when I have read a book I know will change my life. I just did. Somehow I am glad I know you somewhat. It messed with my head at work the day after..... You masterfully led one into a pleasant relation, abruptly shattered by the realities of unreasoned racism, jealousy and hatred. Then the belated epiphany of the ramifications of such behaviors. My gut was steel, my eyes wet..........for I know and have seen in my life what you related, both the greatest and worst in humanity. Fortunately I have never felt it, either given or received. I really think you should see about getting some reviews, say the NY Times? Well done, my friend...very well done!!!!!!!

Thank you, friend.

As for the situation with my great-aunt, there have been ups and downs (today is an 'up' day), but I want to be a little bit more detailed when I come back from visiting her today.

FYI: my online friends--like Chris and like Ric Locke--are some of the best people in the world.

Book Delivery News

For those of you who have bought Tale of the Tigers via its website, I will get my next delivery of books next week, on Friday the 17th at the very latest.  I have all the mailers addressed and ready to go, so when the books arrive, all I have to do is sign them, put them in the mailers, and send them.

My apologies for the delay, but being out of stock is a good sign, no? Thanks for buying and for your patience.

BTW, I've posted a new excerpt at the site.

The Day by Day Crew Reads Tale of The Tigers: Finale

 

Chris Muir’s Day-by-Day Cartoon Strip concerns itself mostly with political topics.  But its main characters, Zed, Sam, Damon and Jan--white, Asian, black and Hispanic--demonstrate what America is by their love and friendship. 

It’s one of those serendipitous occurrences that my novel, a book featuring several relationships between Americans of different races, fits perfectly with Chris’s characters. And it’s one of those blessed occurrences that Chris reached out to me to put my book in his characters’ hands.

Never underestimate the power of faith and love.

The Day by Day Crew Reads Tale of the Tigers: Men and Women

Day by Day

Tale of the Tigers

Book and Solvency Report

Knock and the door shall be opened.

Here is today’s Tale of the Tigers/keep Ochieng off the pole dole report:

32 books sold at the Tale of the Tigers site;

48 dead tree books and 122 Kindle Editions sold at the commercial booksellers site;

And the donations combined for a total of: $4,177.

There have been some very generous donations—not just in amount, but in value.  Then, there have been the intangibles like Chris Muir’s series at Day by Day--and there has been the love and the encouragement.

BTW; any monetary donations received over the goal of $10,000 will go here.

The Day by Day Crew Reads Tale of the Tigers

Day by Day

by

Chris Muir

A Good Morning (UPDATE)

A quick report: 23 books sold from the Tale of the Tigers website, $2,100 in sales and donations, 74 Kindle Editions sold (the price is right!) and an untold number of copies sold at Amazon!  I've got books to autograph and send, thank-you notes to send out and some blogging to do.  This is my kind of morning!

UPDATE: Amazon rank was 270K+ this morning; now it's down to 2,732...it's overwhelming...

Tale of the Tigers: My Personal Debt and Ours (UPDATE: Yes!!)

At Real Clear Politics this morning, the Top 5 Stories are as follows:

Record Number in Government Anti-Poverty Programs

More than 40 million people get food stamps, an increase of nearly 50% during the economic downturn, according to government data through May. The program has grown steadily for three years.

The Folly of Subsidizing Unemployment

The unemployment-insurance program involves a balance between compassion—providing for persons temporarily without work—and efficiency. The loss in efficiency results partly because the program subsidizes unemployment, causing insufficient job-search, job-acceptance and levels of employment. A further inefficiency concerns the distortions from the increases in taxes required to pay for the program.

Why the Recovery Lags

The recovery is a creature of confidence, or its absence. "In normal times, psychology doesn't matter much. It reflects economic conditions," says Zandi. "But in abnormal times, it's the reverse. Psychology determines economic conditions." What the boom and bust left is a massive case of collective doubt.

The Obama Vision of Federal Government

[President Obama gave] a stirring Sunday secular sermon [in New Orleans on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina] on the value of the federal government—and on the idea of national community that, in its best incarnations, it does or should represent to us all.

He wanted to prove not only to the people of the [Louisiana] but the people of the nation that the feds can be a source for good.

70% of Americans Know They’ve Been Conned

Two years into what had been sold as a new politics and a new approach, the 70 percent are fully aware that they have been conned, suckered, and taken to the cleaners by a hyper-ideological amalgam of leftist public intellectuals, snarling bloggers, career politicians with limited abilities who are often corrupt, and a president wholly inexperienced in the management of complex problems who is in way over his head and prisoner to slogans and schemes that make for great campus debates -- but for disaster in the real world.

The Total Outstanding Public Debt as of today: 13 trillion dollars and change. (See what I did there?)

It’s a High-Tech Looting of We, the People; it’s reparations to the "deserving" from the "undeserving."  Forget about the injustice and the immorality of it all and follow the mass dependence on public funding to its logical conclusion:  what happens when there are no jobs to service this debt via tax revenue?  What happens to all and sundry who are fed, clothed and sheltered by American treasury monies when the treasury money is gone?

Speaking of unemployment, I’ve been laid off from my position as Social Media Consultant at Carmel Coast Publishing Enterprises—no worries; it’s a friendly parting and but a sign of the times.  And even though it was only a part-time job, it was sufficient for my needs.  But now, my only source of income is…you guessed it, my novel.

I’ll get right to the point: I need to raise $10,000 to pay my bills and my taxes.  So far, I’ve sold 23 books from Amazon and Barnes & Noble, 15 via Kindle and 150+ via my novel’s website.  Here’s what I need:

556 books sold from Amazon and B&N;

589 books sold from the Tale of the Tigers website;

2000 Kindle Editions sold. (Only $5.00!)

I will accept any combination thereof and, of course, donations will be much appreciated.

You can do so here:

It’s tough for me to get out and do the hard-core, in-person marketing I need to do because I’m the sole caregiver for my great-aunt.  (My inability to be away from home for long periods stands as one of the reasons that I finished the novel and took the chance on self-publishing.  Therefore, nearly all of my marketing has been online, word-of-mouth and reputational.)  All of the reviewers have judged Tale of the Tigers to be an exceptional work and I am grateful to those who have bought, read and commented.  But now I need more.

About the national debt:  many observers conclude that it is impossible for the United States to recover from such a crushing weight.  I’m not sure that I believe this, though.  Oh, it isn’t that I don’t believe that the debt isn’t lethal or isn’t meant to be so.  It’s merely that God-inspired human inventiveness and ingenuity always seem to save the day.  Sometimes we see through a glass darkly as to how, but, with faith, hope, love—and work—the light can be turned on.

God gifted to me an allotment of talents and I chose to invest them rather than bury them.  I know for a fact that I am far from being the only recipient.

UPDATE: Love ya, Jeff.

UPDATE: To the fine gentlemen at the RoadRaceAutoX.com message boards: I would say that my work isn't "chick book," but others might be a better judge.  There's no bodice-ripping and there's some cussing and violence, so there's that. :)  At any rate, welcome and thanks for the link!  I think you will enjoy it; my reviewers are mostly men.

UPDATE:  Welcome Instapundit and Ace of Spades HQ readers! I'm humbled by your purchases, donations and good wishes.  As for the tally: 37 additional Kindle Editions sold and $1,100 in sales and donations!  As for Amazon, I have to get a report from my publisher but I can tell that the book is selling when my rank drops.  More report--and blogging tomorrow.  I'm very grateful!

Let's Try This Again (Update: Success!)

Hopefully Blog Talk Radio is ready for the Fausta show this morning after our false start on Monday.  I'll be on today at 8am PDT/11am EDT to talk about Tale of the Tigers.

UPDATE: I had a great time talking with Fausta about the novel, about writing and, of course, about politics--in spite of the fact that my laptop decided to overheat while I was in the middle of a sentence. That's why God made cell phones.

If you want to listen to the interview again, go here!

Love ya, Fausta!

Don't Forget to Listen (UPDATE: Re-sked Due to BTR issues)

I'll be on Fausta's Blog Talk Radio Show at the top of the hour to talk about the book.  I'm having technical difficulties with my wifi so I will probably have to use my cell phone.

UPDATE: Fausta and I are going to re-sked the interview for Wednesday morning at 11EDT/8PDT; BTR and AT&T are on our list--not the good one!!!

Interview with Fausta Monday Morning

Join us at Fausta Wertz' Blog Talk Radio Show tomorrow at 11am EDT/8am PDT where we'll talk about my novel Tale of the Tigers!  Also check out all the great posts at Fausta's blog.

My marketing campaign has picked up. Thirteen Kindle Editions, seven copies of the paperback from my book site, and an untold number of paperbacks from Amazon were sold on Saturday alone, dropping my Amazon ranking down under 100K for the first time!   There will be no letting up though.  However, don't worry about every post having my shameless self-promotion as its subject.

I just want to live my dream while I can.

To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time. --Leonard Bernstein

Not Much of a Reader

...is the President of the United States. 

Karl Rove once claimed that President George W. Bush read 95 books in a year as part of a bet.

...

[President Obama:] "Yeah, you have very little chance to really read. I basically floss my teeth and watch Sports Center."

And play, golf, of course. 

This isn't surprising, however.  There's a segment of the so-called highly-educated populace which never reads anything unless there's some immediate gain involved--usually monetary in nature. Additionally, President Obama strikes me as someone who believes he knows all of the things he needs to know.

I'm guessing that means that he won't read my book.  Too bad; he might learn something.

(Thanks to Instapundit)

Tale of the Tigers: A Bit of a Bleg (Update: New Review Comments)

According to my publisher, between Amazon and Barnes&Noble, I have sold a grand total of ten copies of my novel, Tale of the Tigers.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Counting the copies that were sold via the novels website, Kindle copies [UPDATE: Kindle price dropped to $5!] and copies which I’ve sold in person, that’s approaching only about 200.  Included in this number are giveaways for review purposes—none of which have been yet published that I know of—and giveaways to family and close friends.

Because I self-published (POD publisher), marketing is up to me and, no, it isn’t my strong suit.  However, I will continue urge readers of this blog to buy the novel.  To be honest, we won’t be able to have the book release party unless sales pick up dramatically.

I know that this is a time of great economic uncertainty, but buying my book will not only provide the reader with an inexpensive form of entertainment, it will give the reader a bit of insight with what’s happening right now in America.  Well, at least I think so. A morality play? You could call it that, but, as all successful novelists attempt to do, I tried to show more than tell.  I hope that I succeeded.

And, naturally, I want to have an independent source of income using whatever talent and inspiration that God gave me.  But I can’t do that without your help. 

Buy my novel.  You won’t be sorry.  And if you’ve already bought it, please put up a review at Amazon or B&N; those can contribute greatly to my sales and publicity.

By the way: I have fifteen copies here at home for sale.  When a customer buys a copy via the novel's website, that’s its origin and it’s the reason that a copy arrives so quickly at its destination.

UPDATE: And, right on cue, here’s another five-star review!

And, from a fan of the Tale of the Tigers Facebook page:

You know what I really enjoyed about this book? It didn't skirt politically correct comments, afraid of offending anyone. What a pleasure to read how people actually speak. Great first novel!!!!

Tale of the Tigers: Book Release Party

Buy, Donate, Read, Review.  Details below the fold.

Tale of the Tigers: High Praise

Here are six reviews at my novel's website, including one just posted at Amazon today.

Cheap, easy entertainment. And they keep telling me they can't put it down until they finish!

You'll like it, too.

Tale of The Tigers: Review from Dustbury

Old blog friend Charles G. Hill posts a review at his place and at Amazon.

If you've read my novel, please post a review at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

All Pre-ordered Copies of 'Tale of the Tigers' Sent

As of Wednesday, all pre-ordered, autographed copies of Tale of the Tigers were sent to those of you who ordered them.  If you didn't received your copy yesterday, please let me know and I will correct that oversight. 

And if you haven't bought it yet, it's available at Amazon (Kindle, too) and Barnes and Noble, along with being available at the Tale of the Tigers website.

After you read the novel, I would appreciate it if you went over to Amazon or B&N and put up a review.  And if you are inclined to post a review on your own site, send me a link and I will post it, even if it's a negative verdict (which I know it won't be).

Thank you all for your patience and for reading my work.

And...thanks, Glenn!

Anyone Know About Amazon Ranking?

Okay, Tale of the Tigers was at 1M and a half on the Best Seller ranking when it first debuted on Amazon.  Then it dropped waaay down to 240,000 plus.  Now it's at nearly 2M! :(

Of course you could rectify that.  If you've received a copy, please put up a review.  A one-liner will do. Or if you don't want to buy my book, you could contribute to the writing of the next two--one fiction, the other not.

But, of course, I'd rather exchange goods for your monies; the American way.

Change of topic:  have you ever fisked a relative?

Moving the Product (UPDATED)

Tale of the Tigers: Now available via Kindle!

The first autograph-able copies are due to arrive at my house today.  Cross all digits.

*****

Nashville Red Cross

UPDATE: They're here!!!

  For all of the early adopters, they'll be in the mail tomorrow morning.  Thank you for believing in me! And as a sort of testimonial, I gifted my great-aunt and our neighbor--who has known me since I was a toddler--their copies and they began to read.  Do you know how tough it is to silence a pair of seasoned-citizen black ladies? Tale of the Tigers managed to do that.

Keep the good people at Lightning Source (the printers) and all other Tennesseans in your prayers, please.

(Thanks to Lamar)

Fun Weekend

I'm going to have some commentary this weekend regarding Sarah Palin's words--but it won't be what's expected.  Meanwhile, excuse me while I start on this stack of books.

Practice Evil Capitalism

If not now, when?

Tale of the Tigers is now available at Amazon, at Barnes & Noble and at Books-a-Million.

However, you can still buy it at the Tale of the Tigers website.

For those who pre-ordered the autographed copies, they will arrive at my house this week.  I will email you when they get here, sign them and then get them in the mail to you that same day or the following business morning.

And check out the Tale of the Tigers Facebook fan page!

What I'm Reading (December 2, 2009)

Via Glenn Reynolds, I became aware of the existence of the Encounter Broadsides.  (Encounter's publisher is Roger Kimball.)  There are seven of them--so far--Outdentand they are penned by conservative thinkers and opiners like Michael Ledeen and Victor Davis Hanson.

Because the first couple are on back order, I have received and am reading the following. One need only take a look at the title of this third one in the series to discover the upshot.

It's only thirty-five pages long which I would guess is about the average length of the rest. Taking their cue from the founders, the authors of these broadsides intend to

make the case for liberty and the institutions of democratic capitalism at a time when they are under siege from the resurgence of collectivist sentiment.

And yesterday I received another book regarding a topic that seems to be on the back-burner of Internet political discussion but I contend is one of the main ideologies fueling the present leaders of our government.

The title refers a segment of a 1956 Martin Luther King Jr. speech in which he asserted that 11:00 Sunday mornings (church attendance time) was the most segregated hour of the week. But that assertion is preceded by these accusatory statements:

There is another thing that disturbs me to no end about the American church. You have a white church and you have a Negro church. You have allowed segregation to creep into the doors of the church.

Therefore I applaud Jeremy D. Lucas for his sense of irony when choosing the title of his book.  Why? Because of the book's subject matter. Here's the subtitle:  A Layman's Guide to the History of Black Liberation Theology.

This one is short also--only seventy-five pages long.  Perhaps I'll get to finish a book for a change!  And these two most definitely need finishing.

Snowberry's Veil

Christopher Taylor has been as busy as I've been, penning Snowberry's Veil, a fantasy novel:

Snowberry's Veil is a departure from the usual world-changing multi-part fantasy epic, taking a more personal look at a smaller adventure. Instead of saving the world from vast evil, this is a more intimate look at one man's struggle to survive and help those around him.

The fruit of Christopher's labor is available at Amazon and Barnes&Noble.

The fruit of my labor will be at the online sellers this week next month.

Tale of the Tigers: Video

Here's my first promotional video for Tale of the Tigers.

Find more videos like this on The Professional Black Writer

I will admit to having to ask who the rapper was (Lupe Fiasco).

Friday is that day of shameless capitalism known as Black Friday. You will have a good deal of your shopping done when you purchase my novel for your family and friends. And yes, guys, I predict that you will like it too.

(Thanks to Carmel Coast Publishing)

Tale of The Tigers: Not a Romance Novel

And Little Miss Attila will prove it! Here's the synopsis:

At a southwestern university, a young man and a young woman do something that’s done every day: they fall in love. There’s just one thing--he’s white and she’s black.

Set in the early 1990s, Tale of the Tigers tells the story of how the tables have turned on race relations and sexual jealousy and of how two young Americans weather the storm of that heritage in the post-Civil Rights Era.

Interview (UPDATED)

I'll be on The Ed Morrissey Show today at 12:15 PST to talk about Tale of the Tigers.  Go to Hot Air or to UStream.

UPDATE: (12:10) On in Five!

UPDATE: If you missed the show, you can listen here. Start at 18:40.

Tale of The Tigers

Leftists say that we on the right make things up.  Well, some of us do.

My new novel is entitled Tale of the Tigers!

 

(Click the Image)

I'm taking pre-orders at discount price of $20.00 for the moment--available in 4 to 6 weeks--and I will autograph the first one hundred copies ordered.  It should be available at Amazon by mid November.

Yes, this is the project that has been in the works for longer than I've let on.   But, yanno? There's no time like the present to live one's dreams.

(Thanks to Lamar Powell, author of Bad and Worse: A Tale of Men)

UPDATE:

Thanks for the link, Don Surber.

What I'm Reading (October 8, 2009)

Airlift to America: How Barack Obama Sr., John F. Kennedy, Tom Mboya and 800 East African Students Changed Their world and Ours by Tom Schachtman

To refresh your memories, the Tom Mboya Airlift is the endeavor that brought Barack Obama Senior and hundreds of other young Kenyans to America to be given Western higher education and to return to their home and be prepared to lead their nation in the wake of its independence from the United Kingdom.

Before you curse the day that fate brought Barack Obama Sr. to America, don't forget that if the Airlift hadn't occurred, I wouldn't exist either.

One of the many disconcerting facts that I've run across since discovering the existence of Barack Obama Jr. is how much the students of the Mboya airlift were nurtured and supported by prominent individuals of the hard Left of that era and this one--Cora Weiss of the Institute for Policy Studies and entertainer Harry Belafonte, to give a pair of seemingly divergent examples.

When I mentioned this to my mother, she said "oh yes, Roosevelt [University, Chicago where my parents met] was crawling with Communists back then."  Mom never quite saw the attraction of Leftism, lucky blessedly for me and my siblings.

However, one can't imagine how eerie it is to feel as though your existence was engineered by someone other than God and one's parents.

Bad and Worse

A very good friend of mine has a novel coming out soon. Don't miss it.

Lucking Out

Two people have recommended the book The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene to me. So I did what seemed logical when two are in agreement about a book: I went ahead and ordered it from Amazon yesterday and it shipped a few hours after I did so. (I had read the book partially but I had checked the book out of the library.  And because I’m usually reading a minimum of two books simultaneously, I didn’t get to read it before I had to take the book back.)

One of the proponents of the book--Tamon Pearson, a Facebook friend--called the following law ‘the most memorable’ for him: “Avoid the unhappy and the unlucky.” Am I intrigued by this caution? You bet.  But, at the same time, the admonition seems almost redundant.

As a Christian, I try to stay away from certain words; words that indicate a life ruled by chance; words which imply that that any force has power over the power of God—words like ‘lucky,’ ‘fortunate’ ‘unfortunate,’ even words like ‘coincidence.’  I stay away from those words because they indicate disbelief, doubt and/or non-belief in the identity and character of the God of the Bible.

But thinking about the word ‘unlucky’ and joining it to the concept of unhappiness, those who are “unlucky” seem to be those who believe that nothing good will happen to them.  As a result, usually, nothing does and even when they "luck up" and something good does happen to them, they find some flaw in that good thing and complain about it.

There are those who believe that things will never turn out all right.   In other words, there are those who have little to no faith in God and, therefore, such people don’t believe that God loves them, wants them to be happy *and* has the power to make that happen.  

Now I’m not saying that God is going to let even those who consistently have faith in Him have anything and everything that they want, because God knows that not everything that an individual wants is necessarily going to be good for that individual.  But those who are “unlucky” can’t even take pleasure in getting lucky (if you’ll pardon the expression).  No.  The "unlucky" will remain under that dark cloud, refuse to be moved and, as a result, the unholy union of unluckiness and unhappiness is joined together.  

Further, the "unlucky" often have removed themselves from the Providence of God, either by omission or commission.  Rather than being “unlucky” what such people are subject to are the forces of Chaos.  They are outside of the Order that God provides which means, as the saying goes, feces will happen to that person.  So this leads us back to the law which Tamon found so remarkable: if you know an Unhappy-Unlucky person, you want to stay far away from them because you don’t want feces to happen to you merely because of proximity.

Conversely, those of us who believe in God’s Providence, who believe in the Bible’s promises, who believe in the power of God, are always “lucky,” are always “fortunate” and are, therefore, always “happy” even in sorrow, because the one thing that we know and are always happy about is that our souls are saved—that everything will come out alright in the end for us.  We have our Blessed Assurance in Jesus Christ.  

And ultimately, if we have faith, things are going to turn out alright not just in the end but while we are trying to get to the end.

My pastor, learned in the languages of the Bible—ancient Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic--taught us that the word for ‘power’in Greek when discussing God’s power is ‘dynamis,’ obviously the origin of the words ‘dynamite’ and ‘dynamic’—the agent and description of radical change. It is the type of change that certain earthly politicians can’t begin to fathom. God can change things; like your “luck”—but only if you ask and believe that it will happen.

(‘Power’ Reference: Strong’s Strongest Concordance 1411)

"COINCIDENTALLY": Went to the barber shop today. When one of the other barbers--not mine--noticed that I was reading Prayers for the Assassin, he remarked: "You should read this book 48 Laws of Power...." Boom!

What I'm Reading (July 27, 2009)

I once had an amusing email exchange with Mr. Ferrigno about a fun article he wrote for National Review Online. Since then I suppose that I've been on his mailing list because I received notice from him that his Heart of the Assassin came out to favorable reviews last month. However, since I hadn't read Prayers yet (which came highly recommended), I figured that I'd start at the beginning.

What's the the series about? Let's just say that a lot of disbelief must be suspended--and I don't mean that the plot, set in the future, is implausible. Thing is, without faith, it's all too plausible.

What I'm Reading (This Month)

In preparation for a momentous Independence Day...

An excerpt, page 47:

The judiciary today behaves in the manner of an ongoing constitutional convention, unilaterally amending the Constitution almost at will. A majority of Supreme Court justices have, on occasion, even justified the use of foreign law in interpreting the Constitution.The application of customs, traditions and values that attach to foreign cultures and laws provides no legitimate insight into America’s Constitution and diminishes the contemporary role of the state and federal representative branches in writing America’s laws and amending (or not) the Constitution.The arbitrary application of foreign law—which provides and activist justice with an infinite smorgasbord of legal options—is a rejection of the predicate for America’s governmental system.And it lasts only as long as the next opinion.

As the wind blows sand, the basis for these opinions and the opinions themselves will shift in relation to whomever is wielding power and how coercive that power is. That is what will become the law's basis: a person or persons.

Aren't the Iranian people battling their government over such an arrangement at this very moment?

What I'm Reading

Subtitle: Resurgent Russia, The Global New Left, and Radical Islam. Not a terribly scintillating read considering the subject matter, but it is indeed the subject matter keeps me interested, for obvious reasons.

Hair-raising? Yes. But not nearly as hair-raising as the goings-on of the last seventy or so days. I'd like to jump back into real blogging but I barely know where to begin.

We'll see what happens tomorrow.

BTW, I don't know how the non-praying can keep sane in the midst of national (world?) insanity. Judging by the news of late, I guess some of them don't.

Presents From Home

For the intellectual and the physical; birthday presents from my mom and my American dad.

Thanks, Parental Units!

'Know Your Power' Bombs (UPDATED)

When I said that Nancy Pelosi's book would probably not make any bestseller lists, I was just going by the few posted Amazon ratings. Turns out that the there have been only 2,737 copies of the book sold anywhere. I can smell *that* stinker from here.

(Thanks to Hot Air)

UPDATE: The Speaker can't even console herself with her advance money.

The sad part for Pelosi is that the practice by which publishers bestow massive donations on their favored politicians via utterly unrecoverable publishing “advances” was barred by the House of Representatives. Therefore she could not get even a fraction of the phenomenal sweetheart advance paid to then Senator-elect Hillary Clinton for her various scribblings — which, while they were bought by many, still did not come close to earning out the advance paid by a publishing industry supposedly beset by economic crisis.

I hear you laughing. That's not very nice. :-)

(Thanks to Instapundit)

Nancy's Book

Timing is everything: Michelle Malkin entertainingly reviews Nancy Pelosi’s cliché laden “Know Your Power,” which the Speaker designated as a message to “America’s daughters.” The Malkin verdict? Guess.

With congressional approval ratings at an all-time low and the Democratic Congress under fire for taking a five-week vacation instead of working on energy policy, perhaps this wasn't the best time to send Nancy Pelosi jetting from coast to coast to tell our daughters how to save the planet, manage our households and run our government.

Sorry, Nan. There aren't enough carbon offsets to compensate for this tree-wasting dud and its accompanying gas-guzzling, hot air-emitting publicity tour.

The Speaker is holding an online book discussion today at 3PM EDT/12PM PDT. We'll see how long that gathering lasts.

One thing about the book's Amazon reviews: last week there were over 400, with the average rating being one star. Well, for whatever reason, the vast majority of them have been purged.

I'm less than willing, however, to ascribe sinister motives to Amazon's actions; it's their site and we all know how persistent the bum-rushers can be. At any rate, there are only 48 reviews as of this moment and 37 of the reviewers have given the Speaker's advice to our country's young women but a single star, so it's doubtful that the Speaker will make any entity's bestseller list. Just a hunch.

But now we have a clearer view as to what the Speaker's priorities are for the month of August, don't we?

School for Kogelo Update and Book Gift

UPDATE (September 18, 2009): More is forthcoming about the outcome of this campaign.

Don't worry, my little project is still on the move. Your donations designated to 'Save Senator Obama Kogelo School' amount to over $3000. The two issues--the non-profit corporation and the website are in the works and should be finished by the end of this week. Of course I will post any new information here each day. [Button deleted; see update below.]

On a person note, thanks to HT for the gift of

As is so for most books of length borrowed from the Los Angeles Public Library, I never have enough time to finish them before giving them back if they are in high demand and short supply. LF is one such book, so this gift is especially appreciated.

UPDATE: Fixing the donation button...

UPDATE: For now, the HTML buttons won't work for the School cause. If you have a Paypal account you can donate by using the email address: obamaschool-at-gmail-dot-com.

PREVIOUSLY:

Save Obama School: The Funding

Obama Kogelo School Update: Non-Profit Done!
Save Obama School: The Site and The Non-profit
Saving Obama School
Raising A Village

What I'm Reading

It was written by Hog on Ice's Steve H. who is an Internet friend and a good guy who links to me and who enjoys it takes it with good humor when I beat up on him rhetorically.

Actually I bought the book a few years back but Steve is asking people to promote it again for whatever reason and I'm happy to do it.

I'm not reading it like one would read some other piece of non-fiction, of course. What I'm probably going to do, however, is pick some dish out of it and cook it for my great-aunt's eighty-seventh birthday tomorrow.

As you can imagine, Aunt A. pretty much eats what she wants at this point, allowing for salt content and dentures. As for me, I will be making my pilgrimage to a base gym tomorrow morning, as I have been doing every morning for the last three weeks, Sundays excepted. So we're throwin' down on Auntie's and the USA's birthday tomorrow.

Any suggestions, Steve?

What I'm Reading, May 7, 2008

I hope that I don't have to explain who James Cone is again.

The copy of the book I have is the only one in the Los Angeles Public Library system and I was surprised to be able to get ahold of it so quickly. One might have thought that, after Jeremiah Wright's publicity tour last weekend people, would want to know more about Black Liberation Theology. But again I have overestimated human curiosity.

The book was originally published in 1969 but has a 1989 preface for that year's edition. In it, the author contends that the language used in the original version would be different than twenty years hence (and one assumes, an additional twenty years after that) to address contemporaneous problems faced by blacks--and to remedy perceived sexism of the author. One also assumes, however, that the basic ideas remain the same: that God is a partisan on the side of the "victims"--in this case, blacks--and that He will ensure that these victims have victory over the white oppressor.

We'll see.

One thing: a very interesting quote attributed to Cone and found on the web is said to appear in this book: "Black Theology is the theological arm of Black Power, and Black Power is the political arm of Black Theology." If it is in this book, the proper references, however, are improper--meaning they're wrong. Anyone have a page number?

Fallen King Wallows in Ignorance

Stephen King tells Newsbusters’ Noel Sheppard to shut up about the former's insult to the troops--while reiterating the same exact insult.

From King's site:

That a right-wing-blog would impugn my patriotism because I said children should learn to read, and could get better jobs by doing so, is beneath contempt. Noel Sheppard says, “Nice sentiment when the nation is at war, Stephen.” I guess he feels ignorance and illiteracy are OK when the country needs cannon-fodder. I guess he also feels that the war in Iraq has nationwide approval. Well, it doesn’t have mine. It is a waste of national resources. . . and that includes the youth and blood of the 4,000 American troops who have lost their lives there and for the tens of thousands who have been wounded. I live in a national guard town, and I support our troops, but I don’t support either the war or educational policies that limit the options of young men and women to any one career—military or otherwise. If you agree, find Sheppard on the internet, and send him an email:

“Hi, Noel—Stephen King says to shut up and I agree.”

Steve

(Emphasis mine.)

King's upshot is that these phantom "educational policies" cause illiteracy in young men and women and that these illiterate young men and women are limited to a singular career--the military.

Keep talking, Steve. You've lost this "illiterate" veteran for good and I'm sure that I'm not alone.

BACKGROUND: King Falls From Throne

UPDATE: I was going to leave a comment on the message boards at King's site, but they're shut down for some reason. Heh.

King Falls From Throne (UPDATED)

Stephen King:

I don't want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got, the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that. It's, it's not as bright. So, that's my little commercial for that.

Should I burn my copies of The Stand and It? After all, Mr. King thinks that people like me cannot read them. :::cough:::ASVAB:::cough::::

Did that car accident do something to him or was he always this idiotic? Being a Leftist is one thing, but claiming that persons in the military can't read? I became hooked on his books while stationed in Germany--because my fellow GIs were telling me how great they were.

One would assume that King hasn't read his marketing reports over the years, else he would have known better than to alienate a large portion of his fan-base.

(Thanks to Lucianne)

UPDATE: Apparently Mr. King never learned the First Rule of Holes: stop digging.

Geekage

Cool five-year old Lord of the Rings Geekage, to be specific. Be advised: having read the The Silmarillion helps the understanding. (Yes, I am hardcore.)

(Thanks to Just One Minute)

Hole in His Soul (UPDATE: Interview Excerpt)

Shelby Steele’s 1991 book The Content of Our Character started me on my journey to conservatism. It was what first made me actively consider that being a Liberal or a Democrat were yea/nay choices rather than states of existence which were as fixed as my skin color. So I consider him one of my political fathers and have a tendency to pay attention when I see one of his essays or catch him on TV.

I did read Steele’s A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win--and I got his descriptions of the two personality masks that black people wear around white people and how few people—black or white—appreciate it when a black person takes off his/her mask. However, I didn’t really understand his description of Obama until this Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC)/Jeremiah Wright brouhaha began to heat up.

In January, Peter Robinson interviewed Steele on A Bound Man over at NRO TV’s Uncommon Knowledge. TUCC is discussed in the third part in the five parter, but the whole thing is interesting. Steele pretty much predicted how things have played out and says the same thing that I said here: that Obama's biracial-ness coupled with parental abandonment has wrecked havoc on how he sees himself and how he projects himself to others. Basically, Steele explains why there’s very little ‘there’ there. An excerpt of that third part is needed to illustrate Steele's point, I think; a transcription of it is forthcoming.

UPDATE: Here are the most perceptive observations of the interview's third part.

SHELBY STEELE: He was abandoned by his African father at the age of two. So in one stroke he lost both a father and a racial identity. So here in this all white household is this little kid who is being held accountable in the world as a black—being raised by a mother who’s white, a grandmother who’s white [and] a grandfather who is white; almost no experience whatsoever with other blacks.

And so, as I talk about in the book, as there’s a longing to know the father in Barack Obama there’s also a longing to know himself as a black; to feel that he belongs, that simple sense that other blacks take for granted, where it’s not a question at all.

For him, it’s a life-long angst. And so he’s driven in that direction and ends up on the Southside of Chicago doing community organizing when he could have gone straight ahead to law school and so forth [after earning an undergrad from Columbia]. [SNIP]

PETER ROBINSON: In any event, from Columbia he could have gone to Wall Street if he wanted to.

SS: He could have gone…and did for a brief moment. And quite, can’t take it. Wants to…this call, it’s there. This need. And so he takes this job at…below minimum wage as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago.

PR: As we have this conversation and as I read A Bound Man, I’m evaluating this man as a candidate. There’s a fascinating story, merely as a matter of character study and what it says about the state of race in the United States; but he’s running for president. So this notion of seeking out a black identity—the way it struck me was understandable and even commendable. Does it strike you the same way? Or is it still too much race? He’s doing something because of race? How do you understand it? How do you evaluate it?

SS: I went through something of it myself. Again [I’m] from that kind of a background. [Steele's father is black and his mother is white. --Ed.] I was lucky [that] I had my father. So…and I grew up in segregation and that will give you a clear sense of identity. (laughs)

PR: He was raised in a white world.

SS: Yeah.

PR: But you were raised in a black world.

SS: An entirely black world.

PR: Alright.

SS: So I didn’t feel the pressure, I don’t think, in the way that he did. But it was there. I’m aware of it. There’s a vulnerability that you have that people can see. As Christopher Hitchens says there, “why is he really black?” So somebody who doesn’t know you can walk up and say, “well you’re not really who you seem to be.” And always along with that goes this suggestion that you’re a phony; that you’re a bit of a fraud because of your birthright…your fate.

So it’s a vulnerability and there’s this desire to resolve it. And that’s, I think, Obama’s compulsion really: to establish himself as an authentic black [and] failing all along.

PR: You write: He goes to the Illinois state legislature, he’s now a member of the United States Senate for the last couple of years. He affiliates himself with a specifically black church in Chicago called Trinity United Church of Christ. You write about it at some length. So, incidentally, does Christopher Hitchens.

Quote--Christopher now: “Run by the sort of minister that the press often guardedly describes as ‘flamboyant,’ this bizarre outfit the church describes itself as” now he’s quoting from their website, “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian and speaks of a Chosen People whose nature we are allow to assume is afrocentric.” Operative sentence: “Nobody who wants to be taken seriously can possibly be associated with such a sub-standard and shade-oriented place.”

Now there’s a point there. This is a graduate of Columbia and of Harvard Law School who’s going to a place that it’s reasonable to suppose that, in one way or another, is intellectually beneath him. Right?

SS: Absolutely.

PR: So how…do we cut him slack because he needs this? How do you understand that one?

SS: That’s one of the questions that I think the press…he’s been in this what I call ‘White Guilt Bubble’ where they never ask him anything meaningful.

How is it that you go to an afrocentric, Black Nationalist church, where everything is black—morality, "black"; community, "black"; family values, "black"; a church that your mother would not be comfortable in, if she would be welcome at all—how do you reconcile…

Could you stand up in this church and say, “It wasn’t 'blackness' that created Barack Obama. It was the 'midwestern' values of my mother. That’s how it got done. So maybe the people in this church might spend a little more time talking about those values than about 'blackness.'” I don’t think that Obama is likely to do that. But, how does he resolve it? How does he reconcile? [SNIP]

SS: When you are born as he was, you endure this abandonment and [it] leaves these wounds. And there is going to be—for anybody—an attempt to sort of fill up that void in some way or another.

The only way you can do it is through a thousand little self-betrayals; where you go to that church and you turn a blind eye to the fact that it’s beneath you intellectually, that it subscribes to an ideology that would exclude the loving family that you had. You betray yourself. You get used to self-betrayal as a survival mechanism, as a way of getting through the world, getting through society. And that’s where you pay the price, because when you’re doing that, you’re not developing a self. You’re not individuating.

And there clearly is some of that with Obama—this habit of self-betrayal.

For the first time, I feel a great deal of pity for Obama, along with empathy, of course since I grew up in a kind of a "mirror universe" in relation to his own. (I can't decide which one contains the bearded Spock.)

Be that as it may, Obama's background wouldn't be such a big deal if it didn't seem as though his particular brand of neuroses played out in nearly every relationship that he has--personal and professional. His campaign is the very model of two-facedness and the absence of self which Steele points to. Obama isn't crazy but something more frightening--a vessel to be filled.

What kind of damage could such a president do?

Lost Book Bleg (UPDATE)

Weeks ago, I lost a copy of John Bolton's Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations--a copy which belongs to the Los Angeles Public Library's Robertson branch.

Now, I'm sure that people who are familiar with the book are wondering how I could misplace such a thick book. Well, it's easy to do after you've sat in an emergency room for seven hours, as I did with my great-aunt. (She had a bad burn, courtesy of an errant cup of microwaved coffee; she's fine). There's no sign of the book at the hospital in question. One hopes that it's being read, at any rate.

I wrote an email to Mr. Bolton's assistant at the American Enterprise Institute to see whether he'd be amenable to replacing the book. However, I know that there are some folks out there reading who have some acquaintance with the former ambassador and who could, perhaps, get his assistant to at least open my email--entitled "Lost Library Copy of 'Surrender is Not an Option.'"

Can't hurt to ask.

UPDATE: I got a swift reply. (Thanks.) Unless one of you fine folks does me a good deed, I'm going to query the publisher.