Yeah, that's my Dad, we're very proud.

In a previous post I mentioned my White Aunt, who married a very white man and produced my mostly white cousins (yeah, I should talk). One of whom married a translucent blonde freckled guy. They'd been trying for several years to have kids, been to see fertility doctors, the whole nine yards. They ended up doing the in vitro fertilization thang, and she wound up giving birth to twins about six months ago.

Today I'm talking on the phone with my Dad, who mentioned she'd been in town visiting my grandparents and had brought the twins with her. I asked him how they looked.

"Like two percent milk."

Error 404

Is it just me, or is anyone else pissed off when they try to surf the BIA website and find that it's still down due to Cobell v. Norton? Not about the lawsuit, but the epic incompetence which led to this sorry state of affairs, meaning me not being able to conduct a simple piece of research without it turning into a chore.

Next week we'll discuss how the information age has turned people into petulant information gluttons.

Deadline, /ded.laIn/, noun

1 : a line drawn within or around a prison that a prisoner passes at the risk of being shot
2 a : a date or time before which something must be done

I like the first one better.

For future reference, is something was due August 31st and I escalate the issue to your boss, don't give me hurt puppy dog eyes and ask why I was talking to them when this is your responsibility. Particularly when I have five unreturned phone calls on my damned phone log. I'm pushing for the shooting.

First Amendment? We're the federal government son, we don't traffic in hippie crap.

Good afternoon youngsters, todays sermon is about the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. The Act was passed in 1978, and guarantess indigenous people the right to hold and practice traditional beliefs.

No doubt you're saying to yourself "Self, I thought that Indians were American citizens."

This is true, Congress unilaterally imposed US citizenship on Indians in 1924. Your next thought is probably "Self, how come there isn't a Baptist Religious Freedom Act? Aren't the religious beliefs and practices of US citizens protected by the First Amendment?"

You would think so.

In 1921 the CIA (that's Commissioner of Indian Affairs, not the spooks) Charles Burke issued what was know as Circular 1665, a directive to Indian agents in which he stated "'The sundance and all other similar dances and so called religious ceremonies are considered 'Indian Offenses' under existing regulations and corrective penalties are provided." In 1923 supplemental instructions were issued requesting ""That a careful propaganda be undertaken to educate public opinion against the (Indian religious) dance."

This was followed by an open letter to Indians declaring "'I could issue an order against these useless and harmful performances (he already had...ed), but I would rather have you give them up of your own free will, and, therefore, I ask you in this letter to do so. If at the end of one year the reports which I receive show that you are doing as requested, I shall be glad, for I shall know that you are making progress -- but if the reports show that you reject this plea, then some other course will have to be taken."

The suppression of Indian religions thus became official federal policy, enforced at the sole discretion of agents on reservations, who could arrest and prosecute those participating as being "in violation of regulations." This policy remained until AIRFA was passed.

Hey Baby, why don't you come by my place for some Blood Quantum?*

I've been spending a little bit of time lately thinking about some issues I've dredged up in response to a post by The Hot Librarian which I reference earlier; her post was concerning the double standard involved in viewing male vs. female sexuality. There's a lot to that involving human evolutionary ecology and maximal reproductive strategies, which is pretty boring stuff, almost sufficient to put me to sleep merely by thinking about typing it.

There's a weird subculture of white people (or melanin challenged, I'm not sure how they like to be addressed these days, somebody help me out) out there who are sort of Indian groupies. They're probably more common than Indians. Most of them are New Age types who are looking for some sort of spiritual validation they feel they can find by living out their pop culture stereotypes. Sometimes those are referred to as Twinkies - all sugar and chemicals, but no real value. Heh.

Anyway, there's this whole population of mostly young people trying to "find" themselves through identifying with Indians they've seen on television or read about in novels written by non-Indians. The groupie aspect relates to young white women who make a practice of banging young Indian men, which is sometimes referred to as becoming "Indian by injection." It's pretty purely transactional, but if there are any hot librarians out there I wouldn't mind hearing some discussion on the issue of sexual barter.

*Blood Quantum is the means by which the US government assign racial quantity to Indians. One Indian parent makes you.5 or 1/2 by blood quantum. Any ladies wanting a temporary BQ, send pictures and a 50 word essay to mimbreno@gmail.com. Those seeking enlightenment, I'm still working on PayPal, no Genuine Indian Names(tm) or Power Animals will be issued until that time. Thank you for your patience.

My Life in Porn

This isn't really about porn, but I'm not afraid to whore myself out to attract a reader. There are bajillions of milblogs out there, and god knows I don't want to be confused for one of those, but it's been long enough since I got out that I mostly remember the funny stuff.

Like this one time we went to the field, it was the first time for a cherry private in my squad, the guy was from New York City and had never been out in the woods before he joined the army. Chiggers were pretty common in Georgia, although thank God I was never afflicted, but it was common enough that some guys would carry this goop called Chig-a-way. During our time out this kid had developed some sort of jock itch but was embarrassed and didn't let anyone know, instead he smeared a liberal handful of Chig-a-way on his scrotum while nobody was looking. I guess his logic was that chiggers caused itching, and his balls itched, therefore he must have chiggers... on his sack.

Needless to say the Chig-a-way did not help, so he finally told me his shit was scratchy and I sent him to see the Doc, who fished through his medic's pack and came up with a bottle of Calamine lotion. Off Mr. Cherry Private goes into the bushes and smears a liberal handful calamine lotion on top of the Chig-a-way, creating a soupy mess in his shorts.

I should back up a bit... by this time we had finished running our missions, and were gearing up for a fifteen mile foot movement to our extraction point. It was hot as hell and humid to boot, Georgia in July and all that happy shit, so we were taking it easy until sundown and were going to hump it out that night. We were in admin mode, meaning we were not acting as though we were in a combat environment. Sort of a war time out.

Back to soupy nuts. He's now got this total mess in his drawers and is desperately thinking about what to do with the wet, lotion-like mess in his pants, and his genius brain comes up with baby powder. Baby powder absorbs moisture, right? Right. But he didn't have baby powder. He did have foot powder.

I don't know if there was an actual chemical reaction occurring or if the combination was just wrong when in contact with human skin, but I'm kicking back on my ruck watching this dufus standing in the middle of a small clearing, pants down around his ankles, shaking his fists at the sky and screaming "MY...NUTS...ARE...ON...FIRE!"

That's "Mr. Slapping" thankyouverymuch

I just received a spam porn email from Monoliths O. Slapping. And after I already chose an alias for blogging. Damn.

Notes from the Upper Paleolithic

The Hot Librarian has a post up asking why there is a double standard concerning men's and women's sexuality; men who sleep around are studs, but women who do so are sluts, etc.

I have no meaningful insights to contribute, I just wanted to mention this model I dated a number of years ago. I took her to the Museum of Natural History to see a traveling exhibit titled "From the Land of the Dragons," featuring dinosaur remains which had been unearthed in China. Very nice exhibit, but right in the middle of the thing, after we'd been there an hour or so and completely out of the blue, she announces "I think dinosaurs are a hoax."

Back up the truck. I asked her to elaborate; are paleontologists manufacturing bones in their workshops and displaying them in museums, or is someone out there making these bones and burying them for foolish paleontologists to find? Apparently someone, maybe Howard Hughes when he was still kicking, is making dinosaur bones and burying them to amaze and delight paleontologists. Pretty much on the spot I realized exactly how into her body I was, so I had to break it off after a few more weeks. Oink oink.

My Girlfriend is Ever so Dreamy

Energy Spatula has a post up about her Best Kiss With a Dreamy Hunk, which made me think about posting either about the time I spent two weeks in an El Paso jail (totally true), or my hot girlfriend.

She is totally hot, but we actually fit together really well, which is saying something. I joke (halfway joke) that she knows me for who I really am and isn't afraid, and she says pretty much the same thing about me. We have a great sex life, which is a total plus. One day we're lying in bed, and I'm whispering the most obscene, nasty shit I can think up, and she gives me this dreamy smile and says "I love you so much." Bliss.

IGRA

"Feinstein to attempt to block big tribal casino in San Pablo."

Indian gaming in the United States is regulated by a crappy law know as the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. I say a crappy law for several reasons; as tribes are sovereign entities relations with tribes are Constitutionally required to be carried out by the Federal government, the law in this case kicks the relationship down to the state level. One problem this creates is that states in which Indians reside are much more hostile towards those resident tribes than the federal government as a whole (if such a thing can be imagined), so regulatory responsibility is delegated to entities considerably more antagonistic toward individual tribes than Congress. A good analogy would be for the Federal government to have passed Civil Rights legislation in principle, but left the particulars of rights and enforcement to the states. It was the individual states which were the problem in the first place, right?

Yet another problem is that a tribe must first secure a gaming compact with the state. This doesn't appear to be a problem, except that every compact which I've seen contains "revenue sharing" provisions. This is another way of saying "tax," except that as sovereign entities tribes cannot be taxed by the states, so a different term had to be used. The compact provision of IGRA allows states to hold gaming tribes hostage by withholding approval until a suitable "sharing" agreement can be reached. In colonial times this would have been known as taxation without representation. Tribes must bear the expenses of starting and maintaining a gaming enterprise, and the states do not provide services on reservations (this is a federal responsibility), so this is basically free money for which the state does nothing in return.

But back to Feinstein. Unhappy with the way in which gaming is being handled by the State of California - which incidentally has extorted an unprecedented 25 percent "share" of revenues - Feinstein is attempting to procedurally hamstring the casino plans. In a quoted statement Feinstein says "If you're going to put a gaming casino of a sovereign nation in the middle of an urban community, the urban community should have a say." Californians twice approved casino gaming when it was up for referendum.

Beyond that, the Senator seems to have a rather tenuous grasp of the meaning of "sovereign." Sovereign means not having to gain an urban community's approval in advance of your actions. This attitude is not particularly surprising, as it is endemic to the US in general, sort of a "now you see it, now you don't" approach to tribal sovereignty. Tribes can have gaming regardless of state practices because they're sovereign, but they have to get state approval because, well, they're not sovereign.

This is part of what I meant earlier when I said federal Indian policy needs to be thrown out and rebuilt from the ground up.

Lil' Kim

I like to scan The Daou Report, as it contains some good stuff from the whole of the political spectrum. I found this steamy piece of crapulence from a blog by a gun nut named Kim du Toit: "And let's be honest: if the menfolk are away in the mountains, the women need to know how to protect the home and kiddies from the Evil Ones. They did it before, during the various wars and campaigns fought on our soil, and they should be able to do it again. It's a good thing to know, even when there's no national emergency -- because if Dad is at work, Mom needs to be able to waste a goblin if need be."

This is pretty interesting stuff. Evil Ones? Goblins? Those are new; I've heard Devil, Red Devil, Redskin, Injun, Prairie Nigger, and Bloody Handed Savage, but those are definitely new. Just goes to show that bigotry truly knows no bounds.

What I find particularly interesting is that this tool argues that guns are necessary for a Man (or in his absence the next best thing, a woman) to protect his family and property against intruders. Unless he's an Indian, in which case through some race-based alchemy the gun owner becomes an Evil One, and the intruders then have the right, nay, the obligation to shoot him as he is a Big Bad Scary Person.

Lil' Kim continues: "As for the men, let me add this: during World War II, Admiral Yamamoto shrank from ever invading the continental United States, because, he said of Americans, '[the Japanese Army would encounter] a rifleman behind every blade of grass.' Unfortunately, that's not the case today -- and I'm not even sure that it was the case in 1941, either."

If I'm reading this correctly, what deters hostile nations is not our highly trained and well equipped military, which knows no peer, it is instead a legion of fat, sweaty white men completely lacking anything resembling critical thinking skills, with a six pack and a Winchester Model 70 in their laps. Ye gods.

I like guns and own several, but the reason any sort of pro-gun movement immediately conjures negative images is that many who are avidly pro gun are also nutjobs who manage to throw in other radical agendas. I'm just saying.

Ravishing Rude

The Rude Pundit writes about inauguration: "Hey, gang, let's take a couple of segments of Bush's speech and replace the word 'freedom' with the word 'cock,' and then it'll all be perfectly clear what the next four years will be about."

Indeed.

What's Your Style?

I have an aunt who always wanted to be white. I think she goes home every night and scrubs herself with bleach and brillo pads.

My paternal grandfather is fullblooded Indian, but my grandmother is a Hispanic lady who's pretty darned milky, and this particular aunt is fairskinned as well. While my grandfather worked two jobs so he could send all of his kids to private schools and give them decent educations (he dropped out after the eighth grade to provide for his parents after my great-grandfather had a stroke), my aunt worked summers to save up and buy a car so she could drive herself to a public school on the paler side of town. She avoids the ethnicity question like it has cooties, but if she has to she says the family is Spanish. Spanish surname, you see. Not Latino, or Hispanic, or Mexican, or anything of that sort, but Spanish. Indian is strictly verboten, in that neck of the woods Indians are the heavily discriminated against minority.

See how convoluted these things get?

Anyway, a long time ago she was dating this Army officer who was stationed nearby - she'd later marry him- and things got serious enough that my grandparents wanted to meet him, so she brought him by on a Family Night. He was a little taken aback by the chromatic shock, but recovered well. At one point he mentioned that he enjoyed fishing, but hadn't been since he'd been transferred to his current post (big desert, you see), so my grandfather offered to take him and a few of his buddies out for a little day trip the following weekend.

And off we went. The particular place we'd decided upon was quite a haul from any roads, and we were going to have to hike up a pretty steep trail and across a plateau to get there. These guys brought this big ice chest full of beer, which my grandfather strongly advised against trying to hump up this trail, but being very manly men as well as dedicated drinkers, they decided they could do it. About halfway up the trail they pretty much died, so we took a long break to let them recover. My grandfather wasn't particularly tired so he didn't sit, just planted one foot on top of their cooler and leaned his elbows across his knee while he looked out over the valley from which we'd just climbed.

One of these guys said "Hey, standing there like that you look just like an Indian."
My grandfather looked surprised as hell, and replied "I am an Indian, dumbass."
The guy looked shocked and a little alarmed, and said "Are you hostile?"*

My grandfather thought about that a minute.

"Sure. Hostile, doggy style, any syle."


*Incidentally, one of the top ten most ignorant things I've ever heard in my life.

The Perils of Reformatting

I converted to Haloscan so I could have access to the magical trackback function, and I lost my comment. Bastards.

MLK

Martin Luther King Day is one of my favorites, I think because many people don't like it. I remember when Gov. Meacham of Arizona rescinded the holiday in 1987 and took a super sized beating, culminating in a class A bitch slapping at the hands of Ted Koppel. Never challenge Ted's fact checking, that should be tattooed on the flabby butt cheeks of everyone who appears on his show.

At work today one of my cohorts mentioned in a rather offhand way that MLK Day should somehow be a little more special to me, seeing as how it's really a civil rights holiday. Pissed me off a little bit, but rather than go into that I mentioned that Martin Luther King represented rights for blacks, not Indians or Latinos. I'm phrasing badly, but I don't by any stretch mean to imply that he was not seeking equal treatment for everyone, just that there was not One Big Civil Rights Movement in the '60's, there were several which were attempting to achieve separate goals.

Whites in this country (or the dominant culture, whatever's more reverse-PC for you) have treated blacks and Indians in completely different ways. The goal towards blacks was always to exclude, keep them separate. The goal in regards to Indians was to force us to assimilate and become whites (that is, when the goal was not genocide). Vine Deloria characterized it as the difference between being viewed as domestic animals which must be kept outside vs. wild animals which must be tamed. In terms of civil rights movements, blacks were seeking equal status, while we were seeking to be left the hell alone.

I'm not really going anywhere with this, except to point out that minorities are not all the same and should not be treated as such.

Calling the kettle Blackfive.

I am Brad Pitt's body double.

Interesting week. Following the revelation that the Bush administration paid Armstrong Williams a cool quarter million to shill the No Child Left Behind Act, there has been a campaign from the right attempting to smear two bloggers on the left as having similarly benefitted from pay-for-play scenarios. I'm not going to discuss that here, I wanted to concentrate for a moment on a post over at Blackfive, a prominent milblogger with a decided conservative bent. His post is simply titled "Credibility."

I've been reading Blackfive for a little over a year now, and while I think his politics and views in general are crap, his support of the military is unwavering. When I first find a blog which interests me I tend to read all the archives, and while reading through his I found some conflicts and problems in his biographical posts which started to nag at me. I've assembled a chronology pieced together from different posts, you can see what I mean. All pages which had been cached I've linked to via Google's cache, because hey, you can't edit those bad boys.*

Enlisted and went to Basic in the summer of 1985, and trained to be a mechanic.
Attended Airborne School early 1986.
Served with the 82nd Airborne as an m60 gunner.
Left active duty as a Sergeant in 1986 and was assigned to the 12th Special Forces Group in the Army Reserve.
Attended college 1986-1990, commissioned 1989.

Okay, so far we have a few problems. He claims to have entered the Army as a mechanic in 1985, served on active duty with the 82nd but as an infantryman (he specifies a line infantry company and that he was a '60 gunner), and by the fall of 1986 is no longer on active duty but has been assigned to a reserve unit and is going to college. One year of active duty and two MOS's? One year tours are a no-go; three is pretty standard and two is rare, particularly if the Army is teaching you a trade (mechanic). You cannot reclassify your MOS until you have completed a tour of duty.

He later states that as an elisted man he served as a Special Forces Weapons Sergeant (although he refers to "Special Forces Light Weapons Expert"). There is a problem here in that the reserve Special Forces (now National Guard) personnel are required to successfully negotiate the same training pipeline as their active duty counterparts. Completing selection, the Q course, MOS course, language school, and so on requires a year and a half on active duty at Ft. Bragg, NC. Doing this while going to college full time in Illinois would be an impressive feat.

I am William Wallace!

Let's move on. Elsewhere Mr. Blackfive states that he deployed to Iraq in 1990 as the XO of a Special Forces Team (the buzzwords here are "Team Sergeant," as in Special Forces A Team). Special Forces officers with previous SF experience as an enlisted man must start over in regards to qualification and training, since the roles have little in common. Another year in the training pipeline (presumably he would not have had to repeat language school). Special Forces officer candidates must also be Captains or promotable First Lieutenants, which requires a cumulative minimum (under law) of three and a half years time in grade, 18 months as a 2lt and 2 years as a 1lt. Yet he was commissioned in 1989 and is an SF officer in 1990.

He recently gave an interview in which he was asked what he did with his time between 1985 and 1991. The answer says nothing about any Special Forces training, either as an enlisted man or officer. When did this training take place? Enquiring minds want to know.

This crap has been bothering me for a while, but frankly I didn't really care enough to do anything about it. But I'll tell you, reading this garbage titled "Credibility" after seeing these sorts of credibility issues on the blog pissed me off. Maybe this guy is a former Special Forces dude, in which case I would gladly and publicly apologize, but his story does not add up the way he's posted it.

I am Spartacus!

*I am a former 11B1P, and I endorse this message.

Cobell v. Norton

Most people are either not aware, or are only peripherally aware of the class-action lawsuit Cobell v. Norton currently wending its way through the courts, if you have no familiarity I would recommend checking out the website and gaining a quick overview.

I won't go into the details of the lawsuit here, I just wanted to comment on the clown show involving the federal government granting itself a trust relationship over Indian lands and affairs, systematically abusing that relationship over 100-plus years, then attempting to stymie at every turn an investigation into its mismanagement in its own courts.

The entire history of Indian/US relations is toxic almost from day one, certainly from the point when the Marshall Court issued the pipe dream ruling regarding Cherokee Nation v. Georgia; it's been downhill since. Indian policy in this country needs to be thrown out in its entirety and reconstructed from the ground up, hopefully in an environment less colored by racism and paternalism than previously. What is genuinely scary is that we currently have a Supreme Court populated by the likes of Scalia (see previous post titled "Marshall Sucks." See how it all comes together?) and seemingly dedicated to destroying what remains of tribal sovereignty and reducing Indians to mere second class US citizens. Smiling happy faces, everyone!

Squeeze me! Grunt! Grunt!

Not dialogue from a porn film, that came from a sticker I peeled off a toy I bought for my dog today. It's a little stuffed hedgehog which actually does grunt when you squeeze it, really a little disturbing when the mutt is going at the thing like there's actually meat inside. I hope this doesn't give her ideas about the cats.

Opinions are like hairstyles – everybody has one, and yours is just wrong.

One of my pet bitches working in a “soft” science is the common misconception that everyone’s opinions carry equal weight. More specifically, that a working hypothesis based on systematic research and careful evaluation of known facts is no better than the mouthings of the, um, less informed (example).

This morning I was listening to a local radio station and the jocks were discussing the discovery of a 45,000 year old flute crafted by Neandertals, the earliest musical instrument found to date. Discount for a moment the ongoing discussion as to whether this is actually a flute and accept the discovery at face value. The opinion forwarded by the learned air personalities is that 45 kya was the critical moment in human evolution when “spare time” appeared. Excuse me a moment, I have to go wash my brain out with soap.

I’m not picking on these guys (although really I am), they’re entertainers and certainly entitled to mouth whatever bonehead crap they like, what bugs me is when the “spare time” hypothesis is given equal consideration with discussions concerning technology and cognitive development. This leads to stickers in textbooks telling us that theories concerning cognition are only theories, and should be carefully considered, along with spare time. Because invention is a product of the leisure class, Veblen said so.

Where Every Day is the Fourth of July

I made the mistake last night of telling the little woman I had started a blog. Her first response: “Great, so when are the cops showing up to haul you away?”

Me: “Huh?”
Her: “How many times have you trashed the government already?”
Me: “I haven’t! Wait, I did mention the Supreme Court.”
Her: “Yeah, I thought so.”
Me: “Oh, and Sen. Domenici.”
Her: “Uh huh. And how many times have you posted?”
Me: “Three. What’s your point?”

Okay, it needs Victorian shadow puppets to flesh it out.

Heck, I’ve been doing this sort of thing a long time now, only back in the day it was Usenet and it was more of a conversation thing (if you’re having a conversation with some normal people plus a bunch of unruly kids who can’t construct complete sentences). And any newsgroup with “native” in the description was the target of endless loonies: white supremacists, animal rights activists, new age whackjobs, CERA, and the beta version of the FBI’s Carnivore program.

I miss them all, so I’m having a keyword fest:

COINTELPRO
Whaling
Rainbow Tribe
Shaman
Kennewick Man
Sovereignty
Casino

For you spiritual wanderers drawn by my Google trolling, I’m working on installing PayPal, when that’s completed for a small donation I will be happy to assign Genuine Indian Names™ and power animals (rate schedule available upon request). Dago te!

Marshall sucks. Yeah, I said it.

"Scalia Fears Chaos if Tribe Wins Tax Case."

That pretty much sums up the history of Indian law in this country. Constitution? Rule of law? Basic freaking fairness? Hold on there big shooter, let's think for a moment how inconvenient this ruling might be for the dominant culture.

I'm not a lawyer so if the person reading my blog is (yeah, you know who you are), help a brother out and let me know exactly how common it is for a court (any court, much less the SC) to consider to what extent a decision would be "creating governmental chaos" before ruling on the law.

Conservatism

There was a lot of hair pulling over minority votes during the recent election. I tend to think that people on both sides of the aisle miss the relevant issue. Take a look at Senator Pete Domenici, who I regret to say represents my home state: "At a Bush-Cheney rally in Farmington on Saturday, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., took a rare public swipe at some prominent Navajo leaders who back Kerry, saying President Joe Shirley Jr. and members of the Tribal Council are "out of touch with reality" and "just don't get it."

In my experience this is a fair representation of conservative rhetoric, in that it is paternalistic and condescending to an extreme. Hey Indians, shut up and let me tell you what should be important to you.

That aside, the reason why I tend to support Democrats is that liberals are open to change, while conservatives support the status quo. The status quo is fine if it's working for you, but if the status quo sucks on your end you tend not to want to hear about why it should be maintained.

Bush added $45 million to diabetes treatment, which is good. But while the federal government is spending half as much (on a per capita basis) on the Indian Health Service as it does providing healthcare for inmates in federal prisons, that's not acceptable. Big picture, people! Or maybe I'm out of touch with reality.

Ready.....Go!

So, I've been toying with the idea of starting a blog for quite some time now, but unfortunately haven't felt particularly relevant, funny, insightful, or hot. Fortunately while there seems to be a surfeit of law, literature, and political weblogs, there is a pronounced shortage of blogs making even tangential mention of Indian issues or issues from the Indian perspective (the outstanding Wampum being the rare exception), or blogs with an anthropological bent. Two subjects which will no doubt serve to catapult me to the top of the blogheap and the accompanying fame, riches, and groupies.

Speaking of Wampum, they host the Koufax awards for best lefty blogs and could use contributions to support their outstanding efforts, please head over to their site and leave a little something in the tip jar if at all possible.