© 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!
Monday, June 01, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
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
"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
Friday, February 27, 2009
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
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
Monday, February 02, 2009
Self-Portrait
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
Friday, January 23, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Quitting
© 22 January 2009, The Griot Poet
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?”
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?”
Monday, January 19, 2009
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Thursday, November 06, 2008
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.”
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.”
Monday, November 03, 2008
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?
”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?
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Rain
© 29 October 2008, The Griot Poet
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."
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."
Saturday, October 25, 2008
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!
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!
Friday, October 24, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, October 03, 2008
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."
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."
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Bootleg
© 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!
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Friday, September 05, 2008
A Very Selective Amnesia
© 5 September 2008, The Griot Poet
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”
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”
Thursday, September 04, 2008
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."
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
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.
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