Eighty-Eight

© 13 June 2009, The Griot Poet

He is 88… and 8 is in the English alphabet the letter “H.” So to shout his age, Vonn Brunn also gave homage to his muse and dark sage: “Heil, Hitler!”

He coldly mowed down a gentle giant, Stephen T. Johns, whose only real crime was “HWB”: helping while black.

Now the brazen act is celebrated in hypertext transfer protocol on sites reflective of his dark meditations, disavowed by the heralds of T.E.A. parties: what twisted, dark, demented dreams does Vonn Brunn have while in critical condition, the consequence of his sick mission?

“44” is not the Messiah. At 2% of the total population of presidents, he is the pariah of groups that blame their conditions on “the government” or “the other,” failing to read the first words of the Preamble of the Constitution: “We the people” are what they despise! Their conditions are the result of decisions “We the people” make in November and don’t follow-up in December (and beyond)… Elections matter!

And, it matters if your country’s leader has a C average throughout a pampered, academic career or graduates Magna Cum Laude and edits the Harvard Law Review.

It matters if your country’s leader was bailed out throughout his life by “Pappy,” or pulled himself up as the son of a single mother by his own academic bootstraps.

It matters when your wealthy friends play the same games around Memorial Day and summer vacation with the price of gas.

It matters when lay offs and outsourcing makes the middle class last FAST!

It matters when the sheer concentration of wealth never “trickled down” in David Stockton’s wet dream fantasies, but steadily for eight long years TRICKLED UP!

It matters…
It matters…
IT MATTERS!

I pray that as he dreams Vonn Brunn has vivid visions of Paradise and Tartarus (the latter the result of his choice extreme), and that he is not the root of a salvo aiming at low hanging fruit.

I pray that his generation ages, demography and eschatology favors the “meek inheriting the earth,” and like former Hebrew slaves before he possibly lives to see Canaan: his kind and his hate passes away.

Homegrown Terrorism and Low Hanging Fruit

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I voted for Obama. I did not wear any buttons, banners, bumper stickers to identify me as an "Obamaite." Yet... my neighbors give me as wide a berth as they do my other white neighbors that PROUDLY displayed their "Obama for America" banner on their front lawns. I guess I am my own banner. If they are Supermen, my family is Kryptonite.

I had neighbors that had Obama banners complain that other neighbors...Palin/McCain supporters - came in to either steal, debase, damage or toss their banners from their yards. And, this is supposed to make us vote Republican?

I remember the accusations of his being a Muslim. The McCain rallies where his supporters announced "off with his head"; "kill him." I'm old enough to remember the deaths of Medgar Evers, John and Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.

The spike in hate groups since his inauguration. The question about his birth in the US coming in the thinly-veiled GOP sponsored birthers bill. The "audacity of dopes" that follow the likes of Hannity, O'Reilly and boss Limbaugh, who compared Von Brunn to a leftist, see: Limbaugh blames liberals for Von Brunn.

How practical is it for them to go after Obama, with a contingent of Secret Service dedicated to his survival?

My fear is we are the "low hanging fruit" of the deranged, the nutcases that are threatened by a world that does not favor their right to power engineered from birth throughout the twisted history of this nation, to favor them. Somehow, their sense of self-worth is based squarely on our debasement, that our second (or third class) citizenship is tantamount to their own sense of well-being. The one thing Limbaugh and I can agree on: this mentality is deranged. The one thing we will never agree on is he and his kind feed the knuckle-draggers.

My prayer is that they consistently MISS their targets (us), and eventually, like the first generation of Hebrews freed from Egypt - die out.

Domestic Terrorism

See: Quitting, this blog, © 22 January 2009, The Griot Poet

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[Badly] Needed to be Said (Again!)

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Originally on this blog:
Monday, November 29, 2004
[Badly] Needed to be Said

© 28 June 2004, The Griot Poet

"I think that most of my colleagues felt that what I had said badly needed to be said, that it was long overdue."

VP Cheney, defending his use of vulgarity in remarks to Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy in the Senate chamber.

Fornication
Under
Consent
of the
King... George W. Bush
and his
"Fellowship of the Ring"
of Ali Baba thieves
Conceived a
Project for a
New American Century
That needed
No ties to
Reality or
Democracy
In the hypocrisy
Of FOX-y’s
“Fair and Balanced”
JedI
Mind trick
Declaration of
The latest KKK
Florida
Election
Fix!

We were
Dick-ed as
Harris, Jeb,
Baker-Botts
And Cheney
Fixed some election
Chicanery
Tossing out the
Sons and daughters
Of former slaves
Ballots
That weren’t going
To vote for them
Anyway!

Yet,
These are the
Adults
Who
Promised
“Honor and integrity”
And a return to
Civility
After a
$54 million dollar
Kenn Starr
War
Witch hunt
That took our eyes off
The ball of
Twin tower
Fires planned
By former
Bin Laden
And Saudi family
“Friends”
Closely tied
In oil business
And government
Cabals.

“We the People”
Have no right at all
To read those
Who YOU felt
Needed on
Energy policies
WE pay for!

I deplore
Garrisoned
Governments with
Snipers on the
People’s house
Resembling
Ancient & fallen
Babylon governments
Making death
Covenants
With
Orwellian
Perpetual wars
And bogeyman
Threats.

Yet,
These are the
Adults
Who
Promised
“Honor and integrity”
And a return to
Civility…

I have not
Found the
“F-word”
In the
66 books of
The canonized
Bible.

Yet,
You
Vet vulgarity
Without libel or
Apology,
As my brother and sister
Astrologies
Put star dreams
On hold
Fighting over
Sands of Eden
For an ancient
Resource: OIL!

Yet,
The party that
“Co-opted God”
Won’t apologize
Or recoil
From the obvious
Avoidance
Of Halliburton
Contrivance
In no-bid
Contracts.

Since
“Honor and integrity”
Are locked away
On a dark shelf:

Mr. Cheney -

Why don’t you
Make a plaster cast of
Your
Napoleonic,
Less-than-an-inch long
Insignificant
Male member,

Pull your pants
Down in your
Secret bunker
And joyfully

SCREW yourself!

Rachel Maddow & Keith Olbermann Shows-Words and Murder

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For Tossed Salads, and Other Human Wastes

© 1 June 2009, The Griot Poet
(Written assisting a middle school class in East Austin)

I
Am
Infuriated at
Seed donors
That for one night’s
Pleasure
Refused to measure beyond
Liters
Or
Years
The
Impact
Of
Their
Actions…
They might as well as put the gun to their son’s heads.

1 in 3
Will spend their
Time in the penitentiary
(Instead of a university),
Becoming a useful
Member to society…
Rather than a menace and dark
Statistic…

1 in 4
Will follow 2 PAC
& Biggie,
Unraveling the mystery if “Heaven’s got a ghetto” (not!).
I want 5 minutes with
The WANNA-be
Gang-banger,
That measures his manhood, by collecting “baby mammas” repeating the desperate, death drama

Making Martin (like Marvin) “WANNA HOLLA, and throw up both his hands…,”

Laying hands on him SWIFTLY,

With the background of intellectually coming out of this kind of hell and a full 30 years of martial arts FURY!

Your baby is still crying, brother!

In a harsh world:

Bloods, CRIPS, Latin Kings, Gangster Disciples, MS 13s…

Bluffing and Bogarting his way through because he doesn’t understand: his model is “missing in action” on HOW to be a man!

George Orwell rolls in his grave

We Are The Ones We've Been Waiting For...Remember?

Related_Article

"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.'' 1 Corinthians 13:11

I attended Galilee Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, NC well within the cultural demarcation point of US Highway 52, a.k.a. ''the hood.''

Every November, like clockwork, we'd get a visit from a local white politician. You can imagine, they weren't hard to miss.

They'd invariably get time at the pulpit, courtesy of our Pastor, Reverend Dr. Warnie C. Hay (deceased). Some of them had mastered ''call and response'' preaching, yes PREACHING and could really whoop! After getting us excited, calling forth Lazarus and every other near-do-wells for the power of resurrection, they would shake hands and leave... until next November. The politicians that mastered this methodology of voter registration were Democrats.

Noting the success enjoyed by their political rivals, Republicans began ''walking the walk'' after Pat Robertson's failed presidential attempt in 1988, noting his vast mail lists (pre Internet) and the power of the right placed ''spoken word.'' Never mind that the things they promised evangelicals never materialized: a ban on gay marriage (unconstitutional); a ban on abortions (would be abrogated to the lower courts if no longer federally supported); conservatism that never conserved anything except the status quo. My premise is that we all have become - Democrats and Republicans - the willing participants of a class war that pits us against one another for the sole purpose of control. As long as we have the attitude of ''us''; ''them'' we never get anything accomplished.

''We Are The Ones We've Been Waiting For''... remember? The $5, $10, $25 here and there we gave to the Obama campaign when we all decided, he might, just MIGHT have a chance. We were right. However, as vastly profound as pundits like to make the Founding Fathers, they had no political parties, Internet, 24 hour news, Talk Radio (Marconi hadn't been born yet) nor K Street Lobbyist to deal with. And yes, like those politicians of my early formative years, Prez can whoop a speech when he wants to!

So he won't forget his promises, don't forget to call your Senators and Congressional Representatives. They take polls of the for and against calls. It's relatively cheaper and just as efficacious as a lobbying firm. ''Be the change you seek in your world.''Gandhi

A quote by Dickens and thoughts on the joint address to Congress...

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, English novelist (1812 - 1870)

I had two very strong reactions to President Obama's speech to the Joint Session of Congress last night: weeping and cheering.

I teared a little at the beautiful young lady next to First Lady Michele Obama: "We're not quitters." As a nation, we're not quitters, but we have been cowards, meaning we have not as Attorney General Eric Holder stated, acknowledged the impact of our past on our present global competitiveness.

Langston Hughes said in the poem "I Too": "they tell me to 'eat in the kitchen' when company comes. But I laugh and eat well and grow strong. Tomorrow, I will set at table when company comes, no one will dare tell me to 'eat in the kitchen' then."

Company has come. In the Jim Crow, segregated past, our economies were segregated as well. The world wasn't as interconnected as it is now. We are in competition with European and Asian countries that for the most part are homogeneous and had no need for a Civil Rights or Voting Rights movements due to that fact and the structure of their governments. One noted exception would be China's human rights struggles in general and specifically Tienanmen Square.

The president articulated such in his speech last night. We need "everyone at table" to be competitive globally. A failing school in a predominately African American or Hispanic district is a failure for America as a whole. To use a sports metaphor, there are less people to compete on the floor of the global basketball court and the same players are getting outrun and outgunned. When the drop out rates increase in such municipalities, the recidivism of the prison-industrial-complex is not the solution. So, everyone at table means we're going to have to solve the legacy of segregation and "Separate, but (Un) Equal" not only for this nation to be competitive, produce and sell, but to survive.

I cheered when President Obama stated we're going to stop giving tax breaks to companies that outsource American jobs. I have an Engineering Physics Bachelors from North Carolina A&T State University. I am a US Air Force veteran. I worked in the semiconductor industry in Process, Device, Manufacturing. Yield Enhancement and Product Engineering for 15 years. I was laid off August 26, 2003, my wife May 31, 2001. Our income has never recovered from our highest earnings at that point in time.

I now run into a lot of engineers and tech types that can't find employment. They may hear as I have that I'm "overqualified based on my years of experience." Technically, that's not saying I'm old, but the result of the twisted flattery is I'm currently underemployed as a commission-only sales rep and drawing on unemployment benefits. That's not the best usage of mine nor my fellow comrade's considerable talents.

I can be and a lot of others can be better utilized employed in this country, paying taxes and buying STUFF! This economy has slowed to a crawl because a lot of people like me - tech, HR and management types - have to do the delicate balancing act between dwindling assets, gearing up to pay for college and keeping a roof over the heads of our families. I honestly don't care how much cheaper you made it overseas: I eat and live over here!

I wrote an open letter on another blog regarding this to the previous administration. It's also published in the book: "Unemployed: A Memoir." I end this essay with the link to it. I doubt President Bush nor Congress read it. My hope is that it makes us all think about what we're creating for our grandchildren:

Chapter 19: Open Letter

Self-Portrait

(Homage to Langston Hughes and his poem, “I, Too”) © 31 January 2002, The Griot Poet

Langston Hughes said: “I, too sing America.
I am the darker brother.”

I am the one
Burning under the hot sun
You derisively nicknamed
“Buffalo soldier”
Because of my Afro?

I am also the Cherokee:
Befriending the runaway,
Giving my daughter to him in marriage,
Joining him to my tribe,
Creating the Seminole.

I am the Irish overseer:
Bursting into the slave quarters,
Raping my own great-great grandmother,
Siring Julius Goodwin and a host more mulatto children.

I am the offspring of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemming:
Some of us destined for the last class,
Others hair so straight; skin so bright to crossover as white

So, when you call me “n----r”
You obviously
Can’t see
You vituperate
A pureed pedigree
As everyone has had
Their piece of African me!

As would be the case
Someone related to Egyptian race
Would decipher the hieroglyph
“America”
Into three distinct words:
“I am race?”

Check your attitude!

For pride in
My negritude
Allows me to enlighten your case

As you point your
Jeering finger
At me through space,
You will inevitably
Pimp-slap your own damn face!

Without me, though you wouldn’t hear it
Would you have the hairstyle “The Bo Derek?”
Would dreadlocks, locks and fades have left the east side venturing to the west side?
And hip hop become hip POP?

Forced here in chains and cargo crates,
It was you who gave me great chase
Bring me to this place
That by GOD’S
Grace
The cane came together
Where Ezekiel’s dry bones
Dotted the landscape:
“Son of man: can these bones live? O Lord GOD, thou knowest! *”

I am the darker brother:

I am the Mende; the Ashanti; the Yoruba; the Igbo.
I am the Seminole; the Cherokee; the Choktaw; the Sioux;
I am the Irish; the Italian; the German; the Arab; the Jew.

I am the melting pot: I am all of you!

As Langston Hughes said,

I say again to you:

“I, too sing America.
I too am America.”

I, too!

* Ezekiel 37:3

A Ground-Breaking Opportunity-A Ministry of Commerce and Wealth Transfer

Quitting

© 22 January 2009, The Griot Poet

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Unfortunately: there are some really sick people. That can look at the First Family – Barack, Michele, and our little angels Malia and Sasha – that look more like the Huxtables than the Sanford’s or burnt cork face Step-in-Fetch stereotype fantasies and pronounce the head: Antichrist.

From pulpits and talk radio shows over airwaves and the Internet… yet, I didn’t hear these self-righteous ingrates berate: Enron, World-Comm., Tyco, Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, Wall Street, AIG and Bank bailouts!

While modern-day Robber Barons and fat cats made out like greedy fat rats and fleeced the economy negatively affecting both Republicans and Democrats!

Idolatry is a dementia that ascribes non-human status so that threats to the life of the current Commander-in-Chief INCREASE after a landslide election and an economic recession caused by the Junta cabal that preceded his administration whose only current sin is an inclination towards the promise of CHANGE.

The slew-footed, knuckle-dragging, un-evolved, deranged Cro-Magnon cavemen that listen to Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and Sean Hannity (minus Combs), like their every twisted, politically-poled-to-manipulate-the-base word came from Mt. Sinai on holy tablet writ!

I QUIT trying to make sense of people whose twisted self-esteem is based on my Step-in-Fetch debasement.

Speaking of Holy Writ: The Scriptures says Antichrist appears after the rapture of the church from the earth, so my question to all those esteemed, evangelical, political biblical scholars: “Why are YOU still here?”

Shaun Boothe-Unauthorized Biography of Martin and Barack

Something to chew on...

Happy New Year!

Long live "the Boogie Man!" TGP

After Jericho

(c) 6 November 2008, The Griot Poet

The significance of the election of the first African American president holds meaning in the biblical story of Moses and his protégée Joshua.

Moses could not go into the Promised Land but was allowed to see it from a mountaintop. The nation of Israel, freshly freed from Egyptian slavery, still had a “slave’s mentality.” They esteemed themselves “as grasshoppers” in the sight of their adversaries as ten out of twelve spies reported. The minority – Caleb and Joshua – said for all intents and purposes: “Forget that! We can take them!”

The new nation’s lack of faith gained them the chastisement of wandering the wilderness for 40 years until Joshua and a new generation walked through a parted Jordan in similar fashion to parting the Red Sea into the Promised Land. The land “flowing with milk and honey” was rich in resources that needed workers to harness them, and had many battles – starting with Jericho – to maintain their claim to it. The new, younger nation had to WORK for their reward.

A wall has fallen, just as significant as the Jericho wall that a new nation marched around in silence for seven days, increasing their circuit proportionately matching each day’s number, shouting on the seventh and fighting to claim their prize.

I was five-years-old and a month from graduating Bethlehem Community Center, a still mostly all-black kindergarten in Winston-Salem, North Carolina when Martin – our Moses – ended his address to the Sanitation Worker’s Union in Tennessee with “I’ve been to the mountain top.” History reports he afterward collapsed in the arms of his aids, exhausted and depressed due to death threats and self-inflicted stress from his extramarital affairs. Tearfully, my class would learn from our teachers our Moses prophesied his own demise to the coincidental annual date of his opposition to the Vietnam War.

It has been forty years since Martin, and Obama is inaugurated the day after we celebrate Martin Luther King Day. Joshua. Obama as our first man of color as Chief Executive represents a mere 2.3%: 1/44 presidents in the office.

We are the remnant that has wandered the wilderness after forty years of measured progress in Civil Rights post Emmitt Till: separate water fountains and schools, forced integration, prison recidivism, black exploitation films, de facto re-segregation, the Rodney King Riots, O.J. Simpson, James Byrd in Jasper, Texas, questionable police killings, Oscar snubs, negative images in the media and seeing others progress their own agendas – women, immigrants, Hispanics, Gays and Lesbians – using the same tactics birthed in the basements of black churches. Now they with us are a coalition along with seventeen percent Republican voters that supported the candidacy of Obama and are the first evidence that maybe, we as a nation have “grown up” a little from our ignorant past.

However, Google “anti-Obama sites” and see what you pick up. The right-wing is in a dual quandary of an identity crisis and the open sores of a significant political loss. No less than Newt Gingrich is poised to oppose any Obama policy that is even center-right. As I see it: the identity crisis Republicans suffer are from the confusing mix of (1) traditional fiscal conservatism (a stance I think they should return to), (2) evangelicalism and its aversion to science, (3) neo-liberalism and its devotion to laissez-faire “trickle-down” Stockton, Chicago Friedman style economics and (4) neo-conservatism and its now defunct “Project for a New American Century” which staffed much of Bush 43’s foreign policy philosophy in the quest to expand the American Empire in a post-modern version of the Pax Romana (Peace of Rome) to a Pax Americana by force of arms.

So, it’s up to us.

As Maya Angelo stated poetically, we are truly on this new “Pulse of Morning,” the black, the white, the straight, the gay, young and old, men and women that supported this historic election can’t just shrink away and think Obama can govern by himself. He can no more do that than raise record sums in campaign contributions by himself.

Walls fall after a might shout. Victories are won after effort, struggle and a fight. You’ll still need to be engaged after the glow of the election is over. Email President Obama from www.whitehouse.gov after January 20, 2009; call your local Congressional Representatives and Senators.

Stay engaged: pray for Obama. We have a history of martyrs and a culture of violence that must change. Politics in the age of the Internet is no longer a bench-warmer sport; you can’t just vote and hope everything works out OK. Blog and email; chat and post; write poetry and essays. Your ideas are viral contagion, as has been observed and can be spread and shared by all of us benefiting all of us.

The old model observed by Noam Chomsky – Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at M.I.T. – was defined as “the bewildered herd” reacting to sloganeering, mantra, rumor and dogma versus making informed decisions as an electorate. This, of course, benefited business interests that controlled the electoral process with their well-heeled dollar donations to the campaigns. YOU shattered that. This was without a doubt, the most informed decision as an electorate we’ve made for our future. We survived the specter of Jeremiah Wright and charges of socialism, communism and “Joe the Plumber.” That herd was expected to respond like Pavlov’s dogs, then “fade away” after the election and let the business chosen elites govern them. You are not helpless anymore and President Elect Obama needs our help. The economy is in a shambles, the jobless number is bound to be terrible tomorrow and since two-thirds of our economy is dependant on consumerism, it’s unfortunately going to get worse before it starts to get better.

Your mission is simple: make President Obama not only a barrier breaker, but he and Vice President Joe Biden the most successful administration in the history of this nation that proved on November 4, 2008 that we are as good as our promise to all peoples; “We the people.”

Tomorrow

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
”To the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools
the way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!

”Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Tomorrow.

Not just tomorrow: November 5th.

I explained to a friend: Martin for all intents and purposes became "Moses" with his "I've been to the mountaintop" sermon. Prophetically uttered the day before his assassination.

In "April 4, 1968" by Michael Eric Dyson, Martin was said to be suffering from depression. Possibly preaching lifted his spirits a bit, but the constant death threats and juggling what was by history's reckoning a very recreational extra marital sex life, he was approaching a nervous breakdown.

40 years.

We've likened ourselves to the ancient Hebrews in so many ways: about 12 million Jews in the entire world today; we're about 12 percent of the US population. They were enslaved in Egypt 400 years; we were enslaved in a new Egypt 400 years. God sent Moses; we assume He sent Martin. Joshua and Caleb took the remnant into the Promised Land after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.

40 years ago I was five years old. Mrs. Wooten and the teachers sat our kindergarten class down and explained "Dr. King was killed."

I learned later, coincidentally it was one year to-the-date he spoke out against the Vietnam war. I knew that this significant personality would not be around to see my formative academic years: we all cried at the news, and graduated the next month in May. We all started the fall in a world without our saints: Medgar, Malcolm and Martin.

Forty years: Blacksploitation movies, Vietnam protests, all-volunteer force, recession, Reagan, "trickle-down" economics, the Republican Revolution, 45% of the prison-industrial-complex, recidivism, lack of self-help, still lacking education, not taking care of the babies we make, blamed for welfare while giving corporate welfare, the usual suspect for rape, murder, theft, frisked in King's Department store at 14 ("shut up, boy! I know niggra's steal"), a reprieve from the Bill Cosby show, booty-call-I'm-gonna-get-you-sucka-blacksploitation-movies (again), a few Oscars from liberal Hollywood, a brief solace under the Clinton years, "Oruborous [the world eater] unfettered" as every crazy Friedman/Stockton/trickle-down theory got its day under DUBYA.

400 years. 40 years. 8 years in purgatory. Moses. Martin. Joshua. Obama.

We have this reverential fear of "tomorrow." What will it mean on November 5th?

Rain

© 29 October 2008, The Griot Poet

I hear the coming sound of rain…

Rain touches my face
after 40 years of wandering the Wilderness of Sin – lynch ropes to frighten us from education, beatings for votes, bombing churches and buses, police batons, German Shepherds, pressure hoses, poll taxes and marching – round and round Mount Sinai,
outside the Promised Land promised by
Moses


who had "been to the mountaintop"
and prophesied
his own demise
but that you and I
Vickie
would see
this Promised Land.

But, we were "as grasshoppers" in our own sight
and we assumed, those of our adversaries,
those that would use devils devices
and apothecary
to defame
a new Joshua
that would refrain
a hope that the slaves
of previous generations
could not conceive
because their yoke
could only be thrown off
by a "renewal of their minds"

for in the economy of God
what is unseen is more real
than Wall Street

Main Street
is under His sovereignty and
CEOs
His feet.

Your husband and your children
rise up and call you blessed,
and you are the wife
dressed in white
of Leon's youth.

What the world will see
is what you have taught
the fruit of your womb
that when they are old
"they will not depart from it"

for we/they are this new
generation

that finally emerges
from this Wilderness of Sin
into a future
of

HOPE.

For Mrs. Vickie Nowlin’s birthday, NC A & T Alumni, English Major, Principal, and friend (I was best man in their wedding)...

James 5:7 "Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain."

Enough!

© 25 October 2008, The Griot Poet

First: he’s accused of being a “closet Muslim” (no one asked my NOI cousin),

Then: a pedophile (for a while).

They’ve run the gambit: eight-years-old when Ayers was so rudely bold and “pals around with terrorists,”

Explaining his heart to “spread the wealth” to “Joe the plumber”: Aha! He’s a socialist!

Even though the Berlin Wall (like Jericho’s) did fall: he’s now a communist!

They haven’t tried Satanist (yet), though after previously being labeled “the antichrist” on right-wing blogs, I think technically that would be a demotion!

A former, noted military man and statesman’s devotion to his party turned on its head as he endorses without fear or dread: “one with style and substance,” “a transformative figure,” “steadiness” with “intellectual curiosity”

According to Rush, though the general wrestled for months before his decision, obviously racially motivated (And…: Scott McClellan’s endorsement?).

We have experienced eight long years of an “Oedipus complex” run amuck. Ross Perot’s “sucking sound” now NAFTA plus 10 billion bucks a month to a war that shouldn’t have been, nearly 5,000 lives and 500,000 mortgages owned by the bailed-out banks (still failing), potentially replaced by another who’s grandfather and father finished their naval careers at flag ranks above his Captain.

He MUST one-up them and insight the nightmare of President George Washington’s “warring factions” invoking the worst in us, skewing unity beneath the Orwellian sign: “Country First.”

This is a referendum on 25 plus years of Friedman/Stockton “trickle down” schlock economics, divisive politics birthed from “the great communicator”: “welfare queens,” “Willie Horton,” “the ’92 LA riots,” “the lesser of two evils,” “right-to-life,” “PNAC Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” “tax cuts for the wealthy,” “swift boating,” “lipstick politics,” “ROBO calls from Giuliani,” “Unpatriotic,” “Traitor,” “terrorist…” ENOUGH!

I invoke Langston Hughes as I say to you all:

We too, are America! VOTE!

Epiphany

http://blackmenformccain.com/2008/10/18/barack-obama-for-president/#comment-747

Stephen King in "On Writing" often referred to writing, or the process of writing as I believe "excavation"; "sculpting."

Ray Bradburry in an interview on the 50th anniversary of "Fahreinheit 451" noted a lot of his stories "wrote him," and that he relied on his "secret voice" to make sense of the worlds he created.

There is a boldness in penmanship that you otherwise would find yourself tongue-tied to express. In politics, that makes you "unsure," 'unsteady," "not ready." In academia, you may just be thinking of a reply.

I do not know this writer at all. He is/was a black republican. I respected his views as I read them even if in many cases I did not nor could I not agree.

He (the writer), like a lot of pundits and republicans, struggled mightiliy to excavate the "2000 maverick McCain" from now distant memory. Once labeling the religious right as "agents of intolerance," McCain embraced them at Jerry Farwell's Lincoln University. Once saying he "fought for the stars and stipes, not the stars and bars," McCain allows the vilest vitriol to emanate from his supporters: "terrorist, kill him, socialist, communist," evidence of a campaign that like the man at the helm of the ship has clearly lost control of the rudder that should guide it. A cool iceberg, unrelenting is in front of him off the bow of the sinking ship. He need not hit the behemoth: his Titanic is sinking.

The writer knows this, and I sympathize with him because of the mention of the pending death of his father. Mortality has a way of taking the sureity out of your lifespace, the inevitable memory of the last conversation you had with your loved one before their demise, the helplessness of staring at a coffin when the essence of themselves - their laughter, their warmth, their smile, their hugs and their tears - no longer exists in this realm. Reviewing the tape over again in your mind: "this person used to be alive, and I loved them." It births anger and raises doubts.

What is poignant is the evolution of his whole person: political, emotional and yes spiritual.

Like Bradbury, this blog "wrote the writer." One of the reasons I [personally] voted for Obama was frankly how well he wrote in "Dreams from My Father." I feel if you can write, you can think, therefore reason and then apply critical thinking skills to a myriad of situations. The political and sadly, the American education system "soundbites" this process into meaningless "gotcha" momemts.

I also voted on a cool Monday morning at 7:10 AM in Cedar Park, Texas because http://outsourcedamerican.blogspot.com is more than my story now. It's no longer just me and doubts about whether I "played the game" or "pleased the right people." No. The system is broken, and someone needs to fix it.

Writing is almost a lie detector test even in fiction: the worlds you create must have rules, "make sense" in those rules and follow them to the end. In nonfiction, you try to be narrative and honest and trust where the story leads. The writer swung wildly from blind support, to doubt about Sarah Palin, to applauding her speech at the RNC, to doubt again and to switching his support.

He has excavated the corridors of his mind and found more questions than answers. The whole blog, good points and not-so-good, irreverant, reflective and sometimes funny, is a scuplted masterpiece. Don't just read the most recent post: take time to paruse them all.

One-Fifty

© 3 October 2008, the Griot Poet

What was socialism on Monday became capitalism on Friday.

What we needed was some pork barrel spending to sweeten the stinking pot of gruel:

- A provision repealing a 39-cent excise tax on wooden arrows designed for children.

- subsidize renovations of restaurant franchises

- cut import duties on wool and wood

- Virgin Island and Puerto Rican Rum (Section 308)

- American Samoa (Sec. 309)

- Mine Rescue Teams (Sec. 310)

- Mine Safety Equipment (Sec. 311)

- Domestic Production Activities in Puerto Rico (Sec. 312)

- Indian Tribes (Sec. 314, 315)

- Railroads (Sec. 316)

- Auto Racing Tracks that will save Nascar track builders $109 million this year(317)

- District of Columbia (Sec. 322)

- Wool Research (Sec. 325)

- A research tax credit worth about $8.3 billion PER year for:
- Microsoft Corporation
- Harley-Davidson Inc.
- and subsidies for the overseas financial services earnings of U.S.-based multinational corporations such as General Electric Co. and Citigroup Inc.

also known as: the same old offshore SHELL game!


Do they take us for fools?


Hank Paulson originated this while chairman in thief of Goldman Sacks.
And, he's ransacked
the futures of our great-grandchildren knowing full well this will only delay the inevitable:

recession.

"Dick" is currently at an undisclosed location adding up how he's set up

the economy to fund his retirement.

Check Bush and Cheney's exchequer after "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" ride off into the sunset.

What was socialism on Monday became capitalism on Friday
with bipartisan support from both parties
as they flipped-the-script
and made this
150 BILLION dollars
MORE of our tax dollars spent!

And yet: I can't forget the prophetic utterance one of the Founding Father's advised:

"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty."

President George Washington, 1796 farewell speech

Bootleg

[paraphrase] ..."when he gets in trouble, you see the razzle-dazzle... the bootleg play..." Chris Matthews, Hardball host on the Rachel Maddow show...

© 25 September 2008, TGP

Chinua Achebe would say “Things Fall Apart”:
Big government bureaucrats become socialists and print $700 billion dollars not supported by gold or mint and give Hank Paulson a blank check with no oversight attachments…

When you have no spirituality: you enlist an evangelical leggy, ex-beauty queen; political Viagra for a limp, flaccid campaign as your poll numbers had you fading from the scene, that’s herself under an investigation for ethics violations: either firing the top cop for not firing her ex-brother-in-law or his zeal to appeal to Congress to redress the impact of sexual predators in Alaska – take your pick! “Roads to nowhere” end where “bridges to nowhere” should have begun!

Three interviews – Charles Gibson (Hard); Sean Hannity (Soft) – avoiding the Yin/Yang calamity by using leggy photo ops with Heads of State at the UN (talked about Hamid Karzai’s new baby to my chagrin), Katie Couric made the girl WORK because she couldn’t pull her usual Jedi skirt-above-knee testosterone mind trick…(“Why don’t I research that, Katie and get back with YA!”) avoiding at all cost tête-à-tête with the diminished 4th estate, now known in its epitaph as “yellow journalism.”

- Cheney first on the search committee for his candidate, then changing his residency from Texas to Cheyenne, Wyoming so HE could run (for shadow president);
- Hurricane Gustav used to conveniently “un-invite” Bush and Cheney from their own party’s convention;
- Palin selected as last-minute intervention after one meeting, a phone call and calling that vetting a Vice Presidential Candidate;
- The deregulator-cum-regulator-cum-“the economy is sound”-cum-“I meant the American worker is sound”-cum-current crisis manipulator…

Throws his most recent “Hail Mary” pass because he’s a PUNK running completely scared and out of gas faster than price-gouged pumps on the east coast! Winning, not “Country First” is what matters to him most.

Because: political life is scary when you bootleg a “mandate for change” because you were part of the need FOR it, that’s why lipstick politics, bitter comments and charges of elitism – when YOU have 7 houses and 13 cars – matter more than reality, and you have on your own, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to say!

No apology for Hillary...

Some hypocracy
requires poetry not
too long to the point. TGP

A Very Selective Amnesia

© 5 September 2008, The Griot Poet

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dear John: One of the first stages of dementia is a mild case of amnesia.
So, it was unpleasing to me NOT to hear anything about the economy during the RNC
Spiteful spit fest that jested against community organizers trying to fix this mess that bureaucracies like yours and Karl Rove’s attempted permanent Republican Majority rule chose to ignore…

So, John:
How do you implore us to “throw the bums out”… when you were ONE?
Voting 90% of the time on tax cuts, oil drilling and what you have intimate experience with: torture. Each of which you were against before you were FOR (flip-flop)!

With a draft-dodging drunk and a punk that had “other priorities” during the same war you refrain again and again that shaped you.

It was quite a coup using Gustav to make them “stay away.” (Wink, wink) They did less this time with FEMA than Katrina, but at least you kept The Penguin away from booze, buckshot; his best friend’s face: and quail hunts in Austin, Texas!

As you tortured our common senses with some uncommon verbal Ju-Jitsu:
You both praised George W. Bush and Dick-the-stick Cheney and damned the last eight years of their administration: 6 of which YOURS was the dominate party!

So, you and the e-Bay, hockey mom, beauty queen, “Hot Governor/Cool State (slogan button), born-again DOMINIONIST that you picked at the last minute are supposed to ignite your party base – Rural, Suburban and Blue Collar Archie Bunker on the street – while Cindy McCain wears $350,000 of dress and jewelry and Barack and Michelle are the uppity elites?

Did you think we forgot the last 8 years and 7 houses that you can’t remember?

Unlike my cousin, your father’s station gave you a choice to leave your Hanoi Hilton. The same privilege that got you into Annapolis and graduated in the bottom fifth!

And, Cindy was your 25-year-old hootchie when your first wife Cathy’s injuries no longer made her worthy to be married to you: for better or for worse; in sickness and in health. You had to BEG Nancy Reagan for her endorsement she’d locked away on a pissed-off shelf!

But, like Bristol Palin’s teen pregnancy, that spiritual baggage has been put on the shelf, even James Dobson and Bill O’Reilly has had second thoughts about the subject, when if the teen was named Sasha or Malia Obama they’d be having conniption fits!

One of the first stages of dementia is a mild case of amnesia.

So, John:
How do you implore us to “throw the bums out”… when you were ONE?

I guess that’s what fits when your real fear is what year 2050 demographers and Public Enemy prophesied:

“Fear of a Black Planet”

Sarah Palin-Gender Card (Comedy Central)

Doublespeak Good

Originally published on this blog: © 20 November 2004, The Griot Poet

Inspired by Jonathan Schell article, “What Happened to Hearts?”:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2014_

we will fight
with the steadfast resolve
of an unusual, artful draft dodger-in-chief
along with his veep
who both couldn't be bothered
when they were young men
to shed blood
for a war in Vietnam
that they steadfastly
believed…
in others bleedings.

we will fight
with strong delusions
guiding our common sense,
lies becoming truth
as greater than seventy percent
still believe Saddam was a threat
and involved in the attacks of 9-11
despite his rival Osama
referring to him
as an infidel.
oh, well!

we will fight
the constitution
with Patriot Acts I, II, and III,
calling it democracy.

we will fight
and twist words of peace
from Palestinian Prophets
into what Cornell West would call
"Constantine Christian"
diatribes, slogans and dogmas
to shepherd
Noam Chomsky's
"bewildered herd"
into the accepted
brainwashed,
corporate-controlled
network germ:

"war is peace.
"freedom is slavery.
"ignorance is strength."

we who bubble forth like fountains
see George Orwell's prophesy
becoming reality,

and General Tacitus'
observations
becoming most poignant in this season:

"they made a wasteland, and called it peace."

Sarah Palin-Wonder Woman

Source: Moveon.org email.

Transcript follows (TGP):

TRANSCRIPT:
Mike Murphy, former McCain advisor: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor work. Engler, Whitman, Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. And these guys, this is all like how you want to (inaudible) this race. You know, just run it up. And it's not gonna work.

Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speechwriter: It's over.

Murphy: Still, McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

NBC's Chuck Todd: Don't you think the Palin pick was insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too (inaudible)

Noonan: I saw Kay this morning.

Murphy: They're all bummed out.


Todd: I mean, is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

Noonan: The most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political [B.S.] about narratives and (inaudible) the picture.

Murphy: I totally agree.

Noonan: Every time the Republicans do that because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at and they blow it.

Murphy: You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism and this is cynical.

Todd: And as you called it, gimmicky.

The Reluctant Eulogist

© 10 August 2008, The Griot Poet

Like "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card
I find I am a "Speaker for the Dead"
speaking of endings
and beginnings
in two days having lost
Bernie Mac,
Now Isaac Hayes

"He was a bad mother... shut your mouth!"

He brought style to baldness before MJ,
Chocolate was never as sweet as when he sang,
Back in the day
If you HAD no luck with babes... you played a 45" by Isaac Hayes,
And she, felt gorgeous for his refrain...

He wore chains before Run DMC, Mr. T or gangster wannabe's,
He rapped before Ludacris or Nelly,
He was the foundation for disco, urban contemporary music,
midnight love videos, Marvin Gaye, Luther Vandross and Barry White...

Yes, I am a speaker for the dead,
and something about us is passing fast
into the past,
into oblivion,
into the cloud of witnesses...

I quote myself in the piece "Last Days":

I lament the death of soul music:
born of marches,
riots,
Civil Rights songs.

It was OUR marching music,
the beat of OUR drums,
when we sang out
we gave NEPHESH *
back in spirit-filled medley.

I lament the death of soul music
and the architects of its pentameter,
journeymen and master musicians
as capable of 'da FUNK'
as arranging a Philharmonic Orchestra
without sampling past hits,
shocking lyrics
or "lip sync."

I lament the death of soul music
with the sincerest tears...

In twenty years:

Music that calls our women "hootchies, B's and 'hos,"
Music that calls our men gangsters, N's and thugs,

Lyrics so FOUL as to attain the label "parental advisory"...

will

BE

the oldies!

* NEPHESH - Etymology, Hebrew: "Living soul."
Soul, self, life, seat of the appetites, seat of emotions and passions, activity of mind, activity of the will, activity of the character

Soul Music
Date: 1961
: music that originated in black American gospel singing, is closely related to rhythm and blues, and is characterized by intensity of feeling and earthiness

Bernie Mac - Celestial Effervescence

© 9 August 2008, The Griot Poet

Heaven just got a little funnier,
For a time, our memories
of Bernie will be the only sunny
things that brings smiles to our
visages.

He
was on a mission
to dismiss
his previous
existence
in poverty:
raised on Chicago's south side
by mother, grandmother, Deacon grandfather,
being "from the 'hood" he wore with pride
and a badge of honor:
not dropping his drawers
and acting thuggish
(OK, a few films in a sophisticated way, maybe)
but acting and making people laugh
that garnered him and fellow comedians Cedric the Entertainer, Steve Harvey and DL Hughley
nomination for a Grammy.

Doting father and grandfather,
he carried himself with dignity, honor
and wide-eyed
delight
with laughter
and a joke behind
each smile:
"I ain't scared of nobody!"

And nobody need be afraid:

Heaven just got a little funnier.

The Chitlin' Era: an essay on TheRoot.com article

On the Chitlin' Era: I never ate them as a child, having the notable experience of seeing (and smelling) fresh-slaughtered bowels at a family reunion: as I recall, flies avoided the aroma. Hot sauce does not cure every taste.

On Obama: I was a late convert to the "Obama bandwagon," and I never viewed myself as a swooner, nor a disciple looking for a political Avatar to follow. I decided on his first book: "Dreams From My Father." Recall that our first stab at commentary about him was that he wasn't "black enough." My observation is the same as Carter G. Woodson [paraphrased]: we are well-conditioned to “know our place,” and react almost violently (Jesse’s “cut his nuts off” comment) when one of us looks to move beyond the crab bucket. It takes all the excuses away for sure. Anyone who can write well is a person with organized thought patterns that can take new information, make an informed decision and go in a particular positive direction. Also, that same intellectual prowess allows one, president or pauper, to admit to mistakes and learn from them.

We've had eight years of "stay-the-course-steadfast-non-flip-flopper-decider" mentality from a person who's not the least bit intellectually curious, the only person in his family (from Connecticut) to speak with a southern drawl; an economy that's been a boon for his REAL masters and our reputation abroad evidenced by the boos and cat calls when our president shows up and the rock star attendance when Mr. Obama speaks in Europe.

Michael Eric Dyson said on Larry King that Mrs. Clinton all but had the nomination sewed up except that "history broke out in the person of Barack Obama," and you want to label this the "Chitlin' Era?"

Forty years ago, we lost Martin; a few years before that Malcolm and Medgar. We owe a debt to them as well as the women in the movement for the kind of world we have now: not perfect, but without the overt signs on bathroom stalls and restaurants.

What will change with an Obama Administration? Nothing overnight except the possibility of young black males growing up to be president and not "ballers and rappers"… An Obama Administration should be held accountable to the US Constitution, unlike the current one that circumvents it almost daily and at will. Pulling the lever, filling the square, punching the chad is not the end: politics is a participatory sport and there are no bench warmers when your premise is rule by the people. If he fails, that's called a term limit and it has no reflection on us as a people or culture. Senators and Congressmen fail and get reelected: that's called apathy.

Though I found your comments witty, “Chitlin’ Era” is almost an apology: a conciliatory mea culpa to the waning majority now moving from the suburbs back to gentrify the inner city to feel a sense of control and lower their outlay of money at the gas pump, and that [majority] will be decidedly browner by the year 2050. It is apologizing for a black man having the audacity to run a credible presidential campaign raising funds and breaking records with the power of the Internet.

If Mr. Obama wins it will be because the last eight years gave him the framework to “break out in history”: now was his time. If McCain wins, then the US richly deserves the inheritance it will get from that decision and the continuation of Bush’s policies: the whirlwind.

“Chitlin’ Era” is on par with his opponent comparing him to Brittany Spears and Paris Hilton: it’s what you say when you’ve run out of material.

Father's Day - a Letter to Sons of the Promised Land

Fatherly angst blogged - TGP

I grew up in a ghetto, glorified in rap videos and CDs that demonstrably are urban reservations for the systemic problems of a society that hasn't grasped the concept of cause and effect, reaping and sowing, chickens coming home to roost.

I now live in a suburb with better access to more expensive drugs and white high school students convicted of counterfeiting - a federal offense - and not serving a day in jail.

I live in a time where the office of father is camp buffoonery in "Good Times", "All in the Family," "The Cosby Show," "Fresh Prince of Bel Air," "The Wayans Brothers," "Family Guy," "American Dad," "The Simpson's" and "The Boondocks." I list them as I've watched them and laughed at them all, similar to blacks laughing at the minstrel show "Step-n-Fetch" in burnt cork faced self-derision.

Then, I demand respect.

But I do live in a time where the Democratic Party decided to be the first to field an African American as their candidate - the Republicans had their chance with Colin Powell in '96 (his wife's mental illness a litmus to his "fitness to command," despite having been National Security Advisor and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Reagan and Bush), and Alan Keyes who said and believed what evangelicals like candidates to say and believe - was summarily thrown out of the Republican National Convention in 2000, though he "still believed in the party." I applaud his faith.

My motivation to be a father was from my example of fatherhood: a man who had no recompense when the supervisor called him "nigger Bob" at work. Human Resources did not exist. They had personnel then, that only served as on-site bean counters, intervention only solicited when things at the workplace got almost hopelessly bad and out of control. I treated him with respect in his home because outside to bring a paycheck home, he literally went through hell...

What do I want for father's day?

I don't want to feel like I'm living by myself anymore.

- If the lawn needs mowing, mow it.
- If done with the computer, shut it off (before midnight preferably).
- If done with video systems, turn them off.
- If done viewing television, ditto.
- If the sink's dishes need washing, wash them (and put them up).
- If your clothing in the laundry room needs folding, fold them.
- If done, then ask "what's next?"

All should be done without thought of compensation. No one calls me "nigger" to my face as my martial skills are well known and respected.

I am the only one in a small company that does not have much in the way of diversity training. Since we're tied to the defense industry, I am not political at all as my candidate is insulted daily, especially since he won his party's nomination. I am making 20% less than my pre-lay off salary, but I have a mortgage and college tuition to pay. My daily hell is less overt than grandpa's, but I, like he, have responsibilities.

You will each be fathers someday, managing your own households. How you behave now is what you [should] tolerate from your own offspring without complaint.

All I ask is not extraordinary or expensive. In a 24 hour day, we each have 1,440 minutes. All I ask is a few minutes of your time, 20 per day at the least of tasks listed above, 120 for the lawn. 1,320 - 1,420 minutes left to sleep, eat, play videos, surf the Internet and generally lead your lives as the values your mother and I model should govern you accordingly.

That is more priceless than a Hallmark card given on a contrived day of "respect."

1 Corinthians 13:13
"And now abides faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these [is] charity (love in action)."

November 5, 2008

Today is May 29, 2008. I am blogging this in the San Diego Airport on business.

I passed a newstand that had a Newsweek cover: "Obama, Race and Us" with Barack's smiling face on the cover. As I broused the bookstore, I saw predictions like "Will Michelle Obama hurt her husband's chances in the fall?" I opted for a Chai Frappacino at Starbucks (fattening, I know).

I title this November 5, 2008. It is meant to save as draft and on that date I will post it after Obama's election. I boldly make this claim after my business trip with two very staunch republicans that don't mince their words about: Saddam having the capability of becoming operational with regards to weopons of mass destruction, finding Sarin gas, which most experts state have a shelf life of two years (this was manufactured in 1991 or 95), because we're in the business of war, they wholeheartedly support this was that drains our economy and cost us $4 at the pump and increased cost at the grocer.

I am not the result of Obama's victory. My vote is one.

No. Mr. Obama won because of the youth he mobilized that suddenly realize the maddness their parents' made will inexorably be their world.

I type this because I will be charged up, challenged on my vote as much as Mr. Obama can expect to be attacked, threatened and lampooned for the next 8 years as he tries to rebuild from the ashes of the economy, the rubble of Katrina "a more perfect union."

I type this because my vote is one and his win is the result of cumulative votes, cumulative angst and cumulative hope for the future. Oprah didn't cast a spell on us. Michelle didn't embarass us. Jerimiah Wright didn't appaul us. We were better than that.

So I formally thank Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney: without your favoritism of the rich, without your gutting of the abundant surplus, without your invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 (that the Pentagon and 600,000 PROVED didn't and you've even said it yourself on many occasions), Mr. Obama's win would not be possible.

By fear and tyranny, you've made us a "more perfect union." Democracy isn't automatic: we found it to be a team sport.

Parsec's Measure

Bush on the Constitution: ‘It’s just a goddamned piece of paper’

I spoke on this 1/17/06 in the piece "Imperious Unum." Since he's an "expert" on foreign policy ala his comments in the Israeli Knesset, I thought we should review his thoughts on the US Constitution:



From Capitol Hill Blue

The Rant
Bush on the Constitution: ‘It’s just a goddamned piece of paper’
By By DOUG THOMPSON
Dec 5, 2005, 07:53



Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act.

Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal.

GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”

“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.”

And, to the Bush Administration, the Constitution of the United States is little more than toilet paper stained from all the shit that this group of power-mad despots have dumped on the freedoms that “goddamned piece of paper” used to guarantee.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, while still White House counsel, wrote that the “Constitution is an outdated document.”

Put aside, for a moment, political affiliation or personal beliefs. It doesn’t matter if you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent. It doesn’t matter if you support the invasion or Iraq or not. Despite our differences, the Constitution has stood for two centuries as the defining document of our government, the final source to determine “in the end ” if something is legal or right.

Every federal official - including the President - who takes an oath of office swears to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says he cringes when someone calls the Constitution a “living document.”

“Oh, how I hate the phrase we have “a 'living document,'” Scalia says. “We now have a Constitution that means whatever we want it to mean. The Constitution is not a living organism, for Pete’s sake.”

As a judge, Scalia says, “I don’t have to prove that the Constitution is perfect; I just have to prove that it’s better than anything else.”

President Bush has proposed seven amendments to the Constitution over the last five years, including a controversial amendment to define marriage as a “union between a man and woman.” Members of Congress have proposed some 11,000 amendments over the last decade, ranging from repeal of the right to bear arms to a Constitutional ban on abortion.

Scalia says the danger of tinkering with the Constitution comes from a loss of rights.

“We can take away rights just as we can grant new ones,” Scalia warns. “Don’t think that it’s a one-way street.”

And don’t buy the White House hype that the USA Patriot Act is a necessary tool to fight terrorism. It is a dangerous law that infringes on the rights of every American citizen and, as one brave aide told President Bush, something that undermines the Constitution of the United States.

But why should Bush care? After all, the Constitution is just “a goddamned piece of paper.”

© Copyright 2005 Capitol Hill Blue

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Period

© 14 May 2008, The Griot Poet

The best description of our dilemma was spent by the candidate’s “magnificent other,” to coin a phrase from the prophetic sage known as Rev G:

“Black America will wake up,” Michelle said. “We have a problem with self-esteem.”

It seems I hear that from the young – too young to recall Medgar Evers, Malcolm X or Dr. King except from a term paper essay assigned to them – or the old, that think “he’s too young and/or black” to run their country.

Somewhere in the middle are the intelligent white liberals, the educated black masses, the McGovern Democrats that pundits say can’t win: so, the political salvation of this nation is in the hands of – as his opponent has stated – white, uneducated, blue collar workers that can’t do the math on gas holidays?

Don’t let FOX-Y, MSNBC, 60 Minutes, CNN, and ABC (especially) or Disney, try to sell us on the notion that we are casting our vote because Barack is “black.”

Recall that at the outset, he wasn’t “black enough.” That he didn’t have the stuff of growing up in the south, in the ghetto, in the Civil Rights Movement, in the black church. That he was possibly a closet radical Muslim (an oxymoron), or the latest rift: the antichrist. See: www.bushisantichrist.com or your current bank account and wallet!

That he’d be the stuff of other candidates in the past like: Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Alan Keyes (Republican) and currently Cynthia McKinney for the Green Party – all show and no substance.

But his campaign has had the panache of seasoned veterans, the strength of gladiators and the grass roots organization that can only stem from immersion in Chicago politics.

So, please don’t let the news, owned by only eight media conglomerates that the only time African Americans are in the Board of Directors meetings are with Hispanics as janitors, that cheer about the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Wall Street and haven’t talked much about YOUR Main Street, that lecture us on the “good things outsourcing accomplishes,” which have ties to the military-industrial-Congressional-complex, that sanitize the lasting effects of the middle passage, slavery, Jim Crow and discrimination – Amadu Diallo and Sean Bell – that cheerlead us into a war in Iraq with no weapons of mass destruction present tell us that we are casting our vote because Barack is “black.”

Tell them to “step back.”

We’re casting it because like any American with sense, we’ve been convinced by his fundraising, his business acumen and his management style he can DO the job of president… period.

The Tie That Binds - Commentary

First, a review I posted on Michael Eric Dyson's web site regarding "April 4, 1968":

I was exactly 5 years old April 4, 1968.

It was April 3, 1968 I was sitting with my dad listening to Dr. King deliver "I've been to the mountain top." I remember asking my father "what does longevity mean?"

I also remember seeing him, a man that had been a golden gloves boxer in his youth and in the Navy, crumpled over in front of the television. It was like someone had punched him hard in the gut. His eyes were red. I remember my mother wailing like Rachael. April 4, 1968 was a Thursday.

That Friday, I was dropped off at my daycare, Bethlehem Community Center in Winston-Salem, NC. I later learned when I took my youngest son there on a home visit, the United Methodist Church designated "Bethlehem" to kindergartens on the east/black side of town and "Wesley Community Center" to facilities on the west side of town.

The teachers sat us down and explained what happened. I think it was more for them than for us. Amazingly, we understood and responded with hot tears, anger and genuine hurt. I personally felt like I'd lost an uncle or close relative. We were to graduate from kindergarten that June. I thought "I don't have him with me," and I knew that fall I would start first grade and the beginning of my academic life, still in a segregated society - forced busing would integrate us in the fourth grade - without him. I tear up as I type this.

Everyone I graduated college with has a memory of that day and the reactions, the gunshots, the news coverage. We are the last generation that will hold such memories.

I remember confederate flags flying and horns honking as others were happy apparently that Dr. King had died. This was also repeated apparently in Vietnam, a war he spoke out against, according to black veterans I've spoken with. What they could not have fathomed is the seeds planted by the assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King would germinate into a harvest in history in the personage of Barack Obama.

I bought the audio version of the book and listened to it at work. I plan to expose my sons - 25 and 15 - to your words. Thank you.

***************************

Since the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, I've picked up my copy of James H. Cones' "A Black Theology of Liberation." I bought it while home in Winston-Salem, NC at a local black bookstore. I'd thumbed through some pages and like many books I mean to complete, other priorities took effect. It's an interesting read.

I've also read commentary about the so-called apostasy of "prosperity gospel."

(I mention this because Dr. Dyson lists himself as an opponent of it and opines/personifies Dr. King as one in his final chapter.)

Lastly, by Karl Evanzz "The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad."

So, what is the tie that binds Liberation, Prosperity and Nation of Islam theology?

Racism.

In "The Messenger," the crucible that built The Nation was the racial climate of the times, even to the point Evanzz (yes, his name is spelled with 2 z's) suggests that the Klan helped finance them since their stated goal is (still) a separate black state or states within the US.

In a lot of the commentary about prosperity gospel, like Dyson in "April 4, 1968," the author and the commentators site quite clearly what they think the ministries are doing wrong as in: the display of wealth, a God that only cares for the wealthy, etc. Absent from their critique is what they actually think and can admit the ministries are doing right.

TD Jakes preached to about 14 people for over a decade until a conference he thought he'd do one time called "Woman, Thou Art Loosed." He wrote it up and tried to go the conventional route of publishing. He ended up self-publishing it, and that was the start of his business empire. Had that fortune not occurred, we probably would not be hearing about a TD Jakes. He rightly points out the 50 ministries his church sponsors like HIV/AIDS, the reduction of recidivism and financial education to name a few.

Cone sites only that prosperity gospel makes you feel good but "fails to help those in need." He also fails to site - other than Jeremiah Wright and Trinity Church of Christ - where the Black Liberation Theology model yields similar results.

My Socratic question:

What if: our so-called Founding Fathers freed the slaves? Would that not typify a "Christian nation?"

Our founding fathers were "deist," which Webster defines as " a movement or system of thought advocating natural religion, emphasizing morality, and in the 18th century denying the interference of the Creator with the laws of the universe." The perfect religious philosophy for defining Africans as 3/5 human in the Constitution. Jefferson went so far as to write his own bible, excising every miracle Jesus ever performed: http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/.

Manumission was granted to Africans in the United Kingdom in 1872. There are no "African British" or "African English" as they've had full citizenship as Americans of African descent have experienced the Jim Crow version of apartheid until recent history.

The answer, in my mind, is that typifying the Christian values of mercy and charity, the seeds of a Nation of Islam, Black Liberation Theology and Prosperity Gospel would not have been planted and these "chickens would not have come home to roost," and these variants would not exist on US soil.

It is hope that we reach for. History and self-esteem (Nation), Liberation and Prosperity had so long been denied us, we will gravitate towards centers of worship that answers those vital questions. It is acerbic to suggest the Nation is only populated with hate speech, since they have by all regards an effective ministry towards the reduction of recidivism in the black community. It is a sound bite we hear when Reverend Wright says "G-D America" without the supporting text to the sermon that he was preaching post 9/11/2001 (9/16/2001), albeit over-the-top, it took a journalist and researcher to FIND this sermon seven years later and loop it on You Tube. It is naive to suggest prosperity ministers have no care for the poor since many of them have the same type of ministries as their Liberation Theology brothers, as Liberation Theology has to concentrate somewhat on financial wealth building techniques. The "Balm in Gilead" are the constructs we've made to bind the wounds we receive as numerical minorities in Corporate America and in political races.

No repudiation asked of the Clinton's for their pastor - convicted for pedophilia with a seven-year-old girl LAST year, or John Hagee - the Roman Church as the "whore of Babylon" and "Jesus never claiming to be the Messiah" has been asked of McCain.

So I say: if the establishment wants the monies to these ministries to dry up, if they want them to cease to function as they do against white supremacy, a bumper sticker says ERACISM.

Obama would be questioned if TD Jakes were his pastor. If he wore a tie pin every day, the news would be the one time he didn't!

And, if our deistic Founding Fathers had made like Spike Lee and done "The Right Thing" would we be having this conversation at all?

Remember: the president that got us into this war that's cost us $4 per gallon gas, increased grocery and utility bills wears a flag pin and supposedly goes to church.

"Uppity" - poetry piece

Kinda late - apologies. TGP

© 20 April 2008, The Griot Poet

Sound bites like nanotech NANITES flip-flop through cyberspace at light speed pace, “elite” is the twenty-first century code for “uppity” Negro. So let me be the first cultural hero to admit:

I am bitter!

Because you see, I didn’t turn the other cheek on August 26, 2003 – date of my lay-off and coincidentally the four-year anniversary of my beloved father’s death. So, though I bravely ventured into the unknown, I was baptized “kicking and screaming” into the Dead Sea of depression, landing on the sandy shores with the taste of salt on my tongue,

I “walked through the valley of the shadow of death” as “fiery darts” wickedly assaulted my dreams and my means to survive, giving me a plausible script for my own demise. No help from my spiritual mother and father who at the time had their own issues…

I was alone.

Until I was challenged to wrestle from sundown to morn,

I mourned less the life I led and would not let Him leave me until I said: “bless ME!”

I walked away, limping, battle-scarred and with the title of P-R-I-N-C-E.

To keep my mind and my sense,

I recorded my angst on blog-to-book: “Unemployed: A Memoir.”

LOOK!

I’m not white. I’m not blue collar.

My father was, and he had that and the other side of the double-edged sword in his back how he was treated: starting with “n” and rhymed with “figure.”

The gas pump;
The checkout line;
My bills;
My mortgage doesn’t really give a rat’s whether I’m an Independent, Republican or Democrat!

So, just maybe I’m a little “uppity” to think Richard Dawkins has NOTHING for me, even though he may number me among Whitman’s “fleas”: Cambridge professors-cum-NY Times bestsellers can’t list on their curriculum vitae:

- Bus boycotts;
- Marches on Washington;
- Nobel Peace Prizes;
- Opposition to Vietnam/Iraq;
- Poor Peoples’ Campaigns…

So, maybe I’m a little “uppity” clinging to my spirituality (and sometimes my guns) because the three functionalities left to me of dysfunctional PNAC governments the unholy trinity of:

- Apathy;
- Suicide;
- Or Anarchy

From which we are a hair-trigger, so let me be the first cultural hero to admit:

I’m an “uppity” Negro that’s bitter!

Last Stand for Jonah

Jonah’s not backing down!
Having been divinely clowned in the digestive bile of Orca,
He’s had a revelation
Praying in the belly
Of the beast
That the only thing
More unpleasant
Than disturbed digestion
Is for the full cycle manifested
And he
Recycled
As fertilizer for
Seaweeds on
Corporate
Coral
Reefs!

Barack's Former Pastor on a Roll - Stay Tuned!

I admit: this has been an exhaustive campaign, even for one that claims to be a "political agnostic" (or, at least I did) because I didn't want to be bothered with office debates and vitriol. So, the following email posted below was my "fresh breath of political air."

However, the comments below are not mine: Reverend Frank Garrett, Jr. runs http://www.garrettradio.net/, which evolved from a local Austin, Texas talk show "The Wake Up Call" that still plays in the city.

So, he has the perspective of being a political and social rights activist as well as a commentator on the body politic.

The Kerner Commission said we were becoming two Americas: Black and White, separate and unequal http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6545/. Recent data suggests in our school systems, we are no more integrated now than we were back then and/or resegregating by dropping court-ordered mandate http://theintegrationreport.wordpress.com/2008/01/.

Restrictive covenants have been removed and some of us rise to the middle and upper classes due to education. So, we can hide a problem behind class and preparation now, make those lucky enough to have prepared to feel "special," significant "the one."

Go to a school on the east side or the south side of any major city: go to the computer room, the locker room, the library. Then go to the same facilities in the suburbs to complete the experiment.

Then, go to a gas pump for $4 a gallon, a grocery store for $80 worth of food in fewer bags than you remember it covering. Call your loved one in the Iraq War we should not now or ever be fighting. Ask someone who's lost their job and has to file for bankruptcy. As someone whose house hasn't sold in over a year and their carrying two notes. If one thing has unified us now, is the boat we find ourselves in together...

*******************************************************

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is enjoying a second helping of 15 minutes of fame, and many Americans are seeing it as detrimental to Barack Obama's race for the presidential nomination. The Internet is loaded down with posts by blacks online lamenting the preacher's effort to defend himself against a barrage of media coverage very negative and racist. Rather than wring our hands and wish he would shut up and sit down, I feel invigorated by his candor, intellect, and yes, showmanship. Of course we all know white folk looking for a reason to not vote for Barack will use this as an excuse, but they never intended to give him their vote in the first place. Let's at least be honest about one major thing here - America is still a very racist nation.

Senator Obama is smart enough, ready enough, and organized enough to ride this tide to a conclusion in about a week or ten days when escalating gasoline prices will replace Rev. Wright as America's biggest problem. All you have to do is listen to right-wing talk radio to know who is most affected by the reverends dialog - rednecks and intellectually challenged white Americans too stupid to determine for themselves what truth is. Those are the useful idiots listening to the likes of Rush, Sean, Laura, Mike, Bill, and the troglodytes on the FOX News network. Intelligent white people don't take their cues from bombastic racist, sexist, homophobic draft dodgers on talk radio - only the brain dead gun loving, Bible thumping redneck hicks do that. Unfortunately, they all have voters registration cards too so it poses a problem.

Mainstream media is now fully engaged in the "beat back Obama" movement so you can expect them to keep Rev. Wright front and center long after he goes home satisfied with his effort to exonerate himself. Dogs that they are, mainstream media has become nothing more than electronic tabloids more interested in sensationalism than national security, health care, housing, and education. Sick puppies that a lot of us are, we wring our hands and watch the boob tube religiously. Now is the time for we the people to do the smart thing and keep up with the issues that impact our pocket books, homes, and employment, rather than what a retired preacher said about America in one of his sermons. What is America saying to us is the question of today - do we matter or has Iraq replaced our nation as the governments responsibility?

I personally have no problem with what Rev. Wright is doing now. I agree with him - preachers must do what God wants done regardless of the impact it has on those running for office, or trying to win the Super Bowl, or the Lotto, or the Masters. The Lord's thoughts are not our thoughts, and our thoughts seem to border on what others think rather than what God thinks. That is why pundits and dunderheads are saying Rev. Wright is hurting Barack Obama's campaign. If our nation is stupid enough to not elect a man because of his skin color, or former pastors rhetoric so be it. Barack Obama's biggest liability is not really Rev. Wright - it is instead his honesty and lack of baggage. He is not a phony. In a nation of phony patriots, phony Christians, phony politicians, and phony citizens - he is odd and hard to compromise. That is why guilt by association is being used against him - if you can't pin something on the man you want to beat down, blame it on his former pastor.

Peace - RevG

Directive 51

© 19 August 2007, The Griot Poet

Directive 51 might as well be Order 66 given by an Emperor bent on shredding the Constitution and his Dark Lord apprentice…

We started this with a night of cyber-terror: the error of throwing out thousands of African American votes, calling all criminal rogues when no such records existed, (thanks to Choice Point, Incorporated), overseas military ballots mysteriously vanished, arguments over hanging chads and chaff, disenfranchising their rights as Americans…

The vote count was halted by the Supremes, five of which deemed themselves more qualified to select a president than “We the people…”

Then, we had 9-11, birthed by a poet named Osama Bin Laden, knowing the international code for distress and that in the Koran, “darkness was created on a Tuesday…”

Remember when gas was .98 a gallon?
Remember when we had a budget surplus in 2000?
Remember when a house on the market selling in more than one week was… too slow?
These things weren’t that long ago…

Then we had “Code Orange” alerts, Hurricanes’ Katrina, Rita: when fear is your diet, you’ll gladly allow your civil liberties violated by the NSA/CIA military-industrial-complex in violation of Posse Comitatus!

Now, to my point: Google Directive 51 on your own computer and it will take you to www.WhiteHouse.gov…

It was posted without fanfare and knowledge that you wouldn’t search or care…

The gist of five pages of legalese is this: if there is another catastrophe, which is the president’s – and not Bobby Brown’s – prerogative to define what catastrophe is, HE becomes the government!

And will restore governmental powers at such time in the future as HE deems fit.

“If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, (chuckle) just so long as I'm the dictator!”

All hail, Caesar!

And now we have the sixth anniversary of a “day of darkness, horror and dread”; we’ve lost more dead in Iraq that had nothing to do with 9-11 than we lost in those twin towers.

The chatter increasing as that Monday on August 6, 2001 when the grinning chip heard from his intelligence brief “Bin Laden Determined to Attack US with Planes” and refrained from doing anything except… get back to his chores and photo ops at the ranch.

On this particular anniversary, 9-11 reoccurs… on Tuesday.

“In the Koran, DARKNESS was created… on a Tuesday!”

Directive 51 might as well be Order 66 given by an Emperor bent on shredding the Constitution and his Dark Lord apprentice!