Racial Overtones - Will Your Vote be Influenced?

Just how angry was the American public at the Bush Administration? We elected a black President. That day was hailed as a seminal point in U.S. history, a sea change in race relations. Yet four-years after an election that inspired hopes of a post-racial future, the Republican Party seems hell-bent on dragging the nation backwards. 

"We're at a tipping point", said Susan Glisson, director of the Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi. "But I don't know which way we're going to tip."

Her concern is based on something called "implicit bias" - prejudices that people don't realize they have. Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to prejudice because of my Hispanic roots. My mother had a dark, olive skin tone. She was a beautiful young woman bearing a resemblance to Lena Horne. As a child my friends would often ask if my mother was Puerto Rican or black. Not that it matters, but we were told that she was Spanish. I never really knew. Regardless, I've always been very sensitive to prejudice and have taken a strong stand when I think an injustice has been done. 

Implicit bias is a curious thing. I've known people who make patently racist remarks and then vehemently object to be characterized as racist. They are so blind to the affliction and shocked to be confronted that they react as if they're defending their very life. I have first-hand experience with just such an incident. A Michigan field hockey parent that I was very close to ended our friendship because I objected to the raciest stereotypes he posted on Facebook. It was a sad day, and I miss my friend, but there are some wrongs that are too important to ignore.

So what does this have to do with the election? Sorry. My readers will come to realize that I have yet to completely master the ability to distill colliding thoughts into a coherent message. Tangential diversions from the theme may occasionally confuse the audience, but I'm hoping that you'll come to realize that nothing I do is ever a simple process.

Anyway, back to the election and implicit bias. Studies show that longstanding negative stereotypes about African Americans have produced a segment of the population that harbors anti-back biases yet don't even know it. You've heard the stereotypes. Blacks are inherently dangerous, unintelligent, or prefer welfare to work. Such unconscious biases are present in people of all backgrounds, not just whites. The disturbing thing is that the Republican Party knows it, and is fanning the fame of prejudice for political advantage.

Turn on the television. The Republican ticket is flooding the airwaves with racially-charged commercials designed to pit middle class whites against the minority poor. Republican ads accuse President Obama of gutting the work requirements enacted in the 1996 Welfare Reform Act.  Another alleges that Obama redistributed $716 billion from Medicare - a program serving an overwhelmingly white constituency - in order to fund ObamaCare - a program for poor blacks and Hispanics. The ads are intended to reinforce each other's claims, and to exploit the implicit bias of whites. 

If the claims were true I would not be condemning the ads as repugnant falsification of the President's policies. Unfortunately for you and me, they Republican Party will stoop to any depth to win back the Oval Office, even if it means inciting a new race war in this country. But don't take my word for it! The Washington Post's fact checker, Glenn Kessler, gave the ads his lowest rating - "Four Pinocchios".  Politifact was equally critical, describing the ads as "a drastic distortion" deserving of a "pants on fire" rating. 

There are so many reasons that I could not vote for Mitt Romney. My issues with his economic policies are paramount, but no less objectionable to me is his total lack of character. As if his position du jour is not enough to question his character, I cannot rationalize how a supposed "man of faith" could be so flexible with the truth. Flexible is the new Republican word for lie. Nor can I fathom how he could willingly endorse a campaign strategy that is intentionally divisive. 

If I influence just one person to take a stand, and cast a vote against racism and divisiveness, this post will have been worth the effort. I'm not suggesting that Obama is perfect, or that the Democratic ticket does not stretch the truth in its ads. They most certainly do. The difference is that the Republicans are inflaming old resentments. The Romney campaign is ignoring criticism about accuracy and veracity in favor of  blowing the dog-whistle of racism. We all know what "take our country back really means.

You may know me, but you don't KNOW me.

I just returned from an annual golf trip with my brother. My family has been going to Luray Caverns Country Club every year since 1980. Over the years the size of the outing has varied, peaking at 44. Today we shoot for 16. About 15 years ago my brother assumed the reins and began coordinating the outing. I didn't go for many years because he and I were not close. To say that we enjoyed a superficial relationship would be an overstatement. About five years ago my brother asked that I come back to Luray, that we use the trip to reestablish some kind of brotherly bond. Needless to say I agreed.   

Since my father's passing the trip has become a gathering of my brother's friends. Only my Uncle Walt and I remain from the original group. The trip is no less fun, just a different social experience than in the past. Golfing with 14 of my brother's friends is always a blast. I genuinely like all of them. That said, a common theme has emerged - it's become the Mike Mathews show. Mike, a former MLB journeyman pitcher, carries a 2 or 3 handicap. He beat me by 30 strokes in the three-round competition, destroying the field. He's the best golfer of the group by a wide margin. During the evenings Mike regales the group with graphic accounts of his off-the-field exploits. His retelling is hilarious, especially for the one or two newcomers each year that haven't heard the stories before. It's the typical "glory days" cliche', but a laughfest nonetheless.

Somehow the subject matter always shifts to me and the volatile escapades that dominated my 20's and 30's. Either my brother or one of his friends will mention an incident, using me as a prop to keep the conversation lively. I don't particularly care what people think or believe they know about me. In all candor, it's truly amusing to me that anyone that's been in my presence less than ten times over the past decade could believe they know anything about me, but that's a different post altogether. For my part, I'm happy to play the fool and share the incidents that troubled my past. If painting me as the family black sheep is somehow an affirmation of my brother's stature, I'm quite content to let his friends believe what they will.

Although the golf outing is the inspiration for this post, it's not my intent to poke any of them in the chest and say "you don't know me." Instead, it's to illustrate the challenge that I'll face in writing this blog. The trip with my brother heightened my awareness that people leap to conclusions on the basis of minuscule amounts of information. None of them, my brother included, has the vaguest notion what makes me tick, how I support my family, or the principals I hold dear. I'm simply Patrick's crazy brother.

It's possible that readers of my blog will also form opinions about me solely on the basis of my posts. In writing this blog I plan to chronicle family events, share photos, and talk about personal struggles past and present. In so doing - people may assume that's my whole life, and believe they'll know me because I put my whole life out there for all to see. Let me assure you that's not the case! It's not all out there and never will be. I won't share everything. There have been and will be moments and struggles that will remain deeply private. 

In a prior post I stated that I blog because it's cathartic. It allows me to purge many thoughts that rattle inside my head. Instead of struggling to find the right words to verbalize what I'm feeling, I can construct the message I want to convey, click the Publish button, and BOOM it's out there for everyone to see. The downside is that there is no editing process; no one reading the post prior to publishing to fact check or simply verify that I really want to say what I'm saying. It's just me and my writing.

My blog is an attempt to put my life and thoughts into context, to provide a clearer picture of what makes me tick than I typically do in social settings. I've been told that I lack a filter, that's true, but only half the story. The truth is that I always have a million thoughts colliding in my brain. My initial verbalization is typically out of context, a purely emotional reaction to a situation which doesn't accurately reflect the totality of my perspective. Therein lays the challenge. I've learned to harness my emotions and to apply situational awareness, but if I don't like or respect the audience, I have no inhibition in delivering unfiltered content . If I say something irreverent it's not because I lack the ability to filter, but because I have so little regard for what the person thinks of me. I'm simply playing a role. It's my way to telling them to fuck off, I can't wait for this to over, without them knowing. That makes me an asshole, not crazy!

The flip-side is that if I do care what you think, my default is to say nothing until I know exactly what it is I want to convey. The trouble is that I don't immediately know. I've got to homogenize the millions of colliding images in my head into a concise, rational, thought. Despite my 140  IQ, I can't process all of the data on the fly. This poem most accurately represents what it's like to be me:

I am an enigma unto myself.
Who lives behind these dull orbs of bright blue?
Someone or something I don't even know.
Who is this "I" I keep referring to?

I am an enigma unto myself.
I do things and say things I don't understand.
Strange thoughts race around inside my head.
Is it ever possible to know me?

I am an enigma unto myself.
I look in the mirror, and wonder who
Could be staring back at me. A stranger
Who's vaguely familiar. Is it really me?

I am something no one can comprehend.
In that respect I'm no different than you.

This post would be incomplete without an illustration. Several weeks ago I hosted a Baptismal celebration for my nephew's son at my home. During the party a woman, friend of my nephew's father-in-law, approached me to inform me that she thought I was an asshole but had revised her opinion and wanted me to know that she now believed me to be a sweet and generous person. Apparently this woman was offended by the "hard ass" persona I exhibited during my daughters high school athletic careers. I say apparently because we rarely spoke and didn't share a common social network. Her opinion was formed solely on the basis of how she perceived me, and I was unaware. The key point is that on the basis of very limited interaction she decided that I was an asshole. Now, on the basis of far more limited data, entirely based on 3rd-party input, she feels compelled to tell me that her opinion of me has dramatically improved.

All I could say to her was "thank you. You know me, but you don't really know me."


  

Why do I Blog?

There are days that I think I have something important to say. Yet most days I realize that no one reads my post, and worse, very few care what I believe to be right or true.

So why do I sit behind the computer in my spare time and stare at an empty screen, trying to gather my thoughts and make the effort of putting them into words? Why does any blogger publish their thoughts into cyberspace? What do we expect to get out of it? My wife certainly wants to know. She considers it a personal affront that I chose to blog instead of sharing my thoughts with her.

The answer to this question will be different for everyone. My answer is simple - I write for myself. It's cathartic. My mind races constantly, reflecting on the day's events, and trying to figure everything out. Writing is my way of harnessing a million different thoughts, scenarios, or permutations, so that I can derive a logical conclusion. Writing is the process I use to ensure that I can accurately communicate verbally. I wouldn’t describe myself as a verbal kind of person. In fact, words don’t come easy to me. I think in images or concepts.  Ideas form as images in my mind and when they are ready, I put them onto paper.

Well now you know why I write, but the question remains - why Blog? I'm asked this often. I also hear the 'your daughter is going to be so pissed when she reads all that you've shared on the internet'. A childhood friend implied that I'm being self-centered, selfish and thinking the world revolves around me. Maybe writing a blog is a bit indulgent but there are some good reasons why I chose to do it.

First, as described above, writing helps me to translate my visual learning style, to covert pictures to words, so that I can interface with a world that is principally verbally-oriented.

Second, blogging satisfies a creative need. I never knew how much I loved to write until I started writing professionally about twelve years ago.  I started writing business plans, collateral, and website content as a marketing consultant back in 2000. Much to my surprise, I was good at it.  That was it.  Once I started and I was hooked.  Today I need to write to work something out in my head. It feels good.

Third, I believe that it's really important to write about my struggles in life. You'll have to continue to read my posts if you want any more dirt.

But, the most important reason why I blog is my family.  This is for them.  This is a chronicle of our life together.  If, god forbid, something were to happen to me, they will always have these stories of our adventures, struggles, triumphs, failures.  I know that I'm an enigma to most. I don't want them to have as many unanswered questions about me as I've lived with.

Romney Won the Debate - Sort of

If we elect the President purely on their debate performances then Obama is in trouble. He looked disinterested most of the evening. The great James Lipton described POTUS performance as "listless, anxious for it to be over". There is no doubt that Romney had a better night - stylistically.

The good news is that the electorate has had the benefit of watching Romney campaign all year. Although Obama failed to challenge any of Romney's "new" positions or outrageous claims, fact checkers are hard at work clearing the smoke so that we can focus on the realities of his positions.

Romney may have had a better performance, but his lies will surface to cripple him in the long run. Here are a few examples:

ROMNEY: "What would I cut from spending? Well, first of all, I will eliminate all programs by this test, if they pass it: Is the program so critical it's worth borrowing money from China to pay for it?"

THE FACTS: China continues to be portrayed by Romney and many other Republicans as the poster child for runaway federal deficits. It's true that China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, but it only represents about an 8 percent stake. And China has recently been decreasing its holdings, according to the Treasury Department. Some two-thirds of the $16 trillion national debt is owed to the federal government, with the largest single stake the Federal Reserve, as well as American investors and the Social Security Trust Fund.

THE FACTS: Romney is referring to the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a panel of experts that would have the power to force Medicare cuts if costs rise beyond certain levels and Congress fails to act. But Obama's health care law explicitly prohibits the board from rationing care, shifting costs to retirees, restricting benefits or raising the Medicare eligibility age. So the board doesn't have the power to dictate to doctors what treatments they can prescribe.

Romney seems to be resurrecting the assertion that Obama's law would lead to rationing, made famous by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's widely debunked allegation that it would create "death panels."
The board has yet to be named, and its members would ultimately have to be confirmed by the Senate. Health care inflation has been modest in the last few years, so cuts would be unlikely for most of the rest of this decade.

ROMNEY on the failure of Obama's economic policy: "And the proof of that is 23 million people out of work. The proof of that is 1 out of 6 people in poverty. The proof of that is we've gone from 32 million on food stamps to 47 million on food stamps. The proof of that is that 50 percent of college graduates this year can't find work."

THE FACTS: The number of unemployed is 12.5 million, not 23 million. Romney was also counting 8 million people who are working part time but would like a full-time job and 2.6 million who have stopped looking for work, either because they are discouraged or because they are going back to school or for other reasons.

He got the figure closer to right earlier in the debate, leaving out only the part-timers when he said the U.S. has "23 million people out of work or stopped looking for work." But he was wrong in asserting that Obama came into office "facing 23 million people out of work." At the start of Obama's presidency, 12

million were out of work.

His claim that half of college graduates can't find work now also was problematic. A Northeastern University analysis for The Associated Press found that a quarter of graduates were probably unemployed and another quarter were underemployed, which means working in jobs that didn't make full use of their skills or experience.

ROMNEY: "At the same time, gasoline prices have doubled under the president. Electric rates are up."

THE FACTS: He's right that the average price has doubled, and a little more, since Obama was sworn in. But presidents have almost no influence on gasoline prices, and certainly not in the near term. Gasoline prices are set on financial exchanges around the world and are based on a host of factors, most importantly the price of crude oil used to make gasoline, the amount of finished gasoline ready to be shipped and the capacity of refiners to make enough to meet market demand.

Retail electricity prices have risen since Obama took office — barely. They've grown by an average of less than 1 percent per year, less than the rate of inflation and slower than the historical growth in electricity prices. The unexpectedly modest rise in electricity prices is because of the plummeting cost of natural gas, which is used to generate electricity.

ROMNEY on cutting the deficit: "Obamacare's on my list. ... I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS. ... I'll make government more efficient."

THE FACTS: Romney has promised to balance the budget in eight years to 10 years, but he hasn't offered a complete plan. Instead, he's promised a set of principles, some of which — like increasing Pentagon spending and restoring more than $700 billion in cuts that Democrats made in Medicare over the coming decade — work against his goal. He also has said he will not consider tax increases.

He pledges to shrink the government to 20 percent of the size of the economy, as opposed to more than 23 percent of gross domestic product now, by the end of his first term. The Romney campaign estimates that would require cuts of $500 billion from the 2016 budget alone. He also has pledged to cut tax rates by 20 percent, paying for them by eliminating tax breaks for the wealthiest and through economic growth.

To fulfill his promise, then, Romney would require cuts to other programs so deep — under one calculation requiring cutting many areas of the domestic budget by one-third within four years — that they could never get through Congress. Cuts to domestic agencies would have to be particularly deep.
But he's offered only a few modest examples of government programs he'd be willing to squeeze, like subsidies to PBS and Amtrak. He does want to repeal Obama's big health care law, but that law is actually forecast to reduce the deficit.

It's been a while.

I haven't posted in quite a while. It's not that I didin't have anything to say, I've just been too busy building a new organization to invest any time formulating a post. I won't make post for the sake of making a post. When I do, I try to base it on my interpetations of the facts.

You may not always agree with me. That's OK. If you want to challenge any of my assertions, feel free. I love a good debate.  Debate is an essential process in reaching decisive awareness. If I take a position and expose it to be challenged from many points of view, I'll be forced to defend that position against all objections. When all is said and done, I want any topic I opine to be free of logical inconsistencies or contradictions.

So let the games begin.

Casey Anthony - Involved but Not Guilty

Now that the emotion has dissipated, I believe the jury reached the proper verdict. Common sense suggests that Casey Anthony was involved in and covered up her daughter’s death. Yet we don’t know how Caylee died. I believe that she was accidently killed by her narcissistic mother, but I saw no evidence to prove it. The State's entire case was supposition and circumstantial.

As a parent I cannot begin to understand the behavior Casey Anthony exhibited. Nor can I fathom a scenario where a father would allow his daughter to face a murder trial if he were involved.  When considering these two issues in concert, I can think of no plausible explanation for how Caylee died other than Ms. Anthony was “involved”.  Unfortunately my beliefs are only proof of my bias, my thought process. The manner in which I would respond to a situation is not the standard by which someone else should be judged.

Yes. I am angry that there will be no justice for Caylee. Yes. I despise Casey Anthony and her parents. From the beginning I have felt that there is something very wrong with that family. There are more skelletons to be found. Yet the bulk of my frustration is directed to the Prosecutor.  The State over-reached. I would have preferred that Ms. Anthony was charged with Criminal Obstruction, Failing to Report a Death, Lying to a Police Officer, and Unlawful Disposal of Human Remains. They had ample evidence to put Ms. Anthony away for years while building a criminal negligence manslaughter or Felony murder case.

My only hope that Caylee did not die in vain is that her mother’s life becomes a living hell. In my eyes she will forever be known as the woman who partied whiles her daughter lay rotting in a swamp.  

Sometimes the Grass is Greener

I haven't posed in a couple of months. Life at Fluke Networks has been great thus far. Although there are challenges, life is much less stressful.


I'm leading a team responsible for delivering $25M in revenue. Today we are the "name brand" for network test equipment. Our OptiView network engineering tablets are unrivaled in the market. 

• Tablet form factor providing automated analysis for 10/100 Mbps, 1/10 Gbps and 802.11a/b/g/n wireless LANs
• Intuitive user interface with smart navigation and built-in guided problem solving plus user customizable dashboards to view data as needed
• Application-centric analysis for a high level view of network application health
• Network infrastructure performance analysis shows the underlying business critical applications (path analysis) to ensure consistent end-user experience
• Automated diagnostics and granular data to solve problems before they escalate
• Detailed, fast Network Discovery for instant visibility of what's out there and where it’s connected in minutes

http://www.flukenetworks.com/enterprise-network/network-testing/optiview-xg-network-analysis-tablet

The OpitView has been the key product in FNET portfolio, but Network Time Machine, AirMagnate and our recent acquired Visual Networks is opening new doors, allowing Fluke Networks to offer a much broader set of network fault, troubleshooting and application performance management solutions. I'm particularly excited about the applicability of the VNS product for Cloud initiatives.

Stay tuned. I plan regular posts from this point forward.