"You know d@&^ well what you are capable of doing..." Michelle Obama TIME article

Some political thoughts in this election cycle -- TGP

Read the article: Link in the title above.

Is it me, or do I detect a "crab mentality" in our senior saints?

The Clinton's did a lot for us in the eight years he was in office. We had a balanced budget WITH a surplus. We all had money in our pockets. Unemployment was 3.1%, so if you couldn't get a job, something was wrong with you.

I admit: I didn't think this contest would get so vitriolic between DEMOCRATS. My strategy was to vote for Barack in the Texas primary. He'd probably come in second and get the nod for Vice President. I did the same for John Edwards back in 2004.

When Toni Morrison spoke of brother Bill as being our first "black president," I'm sure she meant it metaphorically and not necessarily literally (then, there is that nose and the swagger...).

Couple of things to remember:

1. George HW Bush brought up NAFTA and Ross Perot lampooned him (and it) as the "large sucking sound" on the American taxpayer.

2. Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law and the "chickens have come home to roost" in the loss of manufacturing jobs and the middle class to cheaper jobs overseas, like China and Mexico. My job was affected: was yours?

3. Under Clinton/Gore draconian laws that incarcerated first-time drug offenders INCREASED the population of African Americans behind bars -- the so-called "war on drugs" is a "war on US!" Read the Thirteenth Amendment:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

4. Hillary voted for the Iraq war and appropriations bills to fund this international debacle.

5. Barack is inexperienced (so's W after 8 years of practice: he was a C student after all), and did buy property and accept contributions from a Chicago "slum lord." One of Hillary's contributors is indicted for fraud.

6. It's impossible, I think, to be a "closet Muslim": http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp. That Internet myth has been debunked.

7. We haven't had this chance since Colin (Colon) Powell PUNKED out, backed out of the '96 race, settled for/let himself get screwed into a cabinet position and positioned his legacy to be the one who lied knowingly to the UN before the Iraq war: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1302834,00.html.

Don't get me wrong: we were living large in comparison to now. "When the country [financially] has a cold, black people have pneumonia."

However, I find it creepy that two families from the same university -- Yale -- control the White House for, if Hillary gets elected and re-elected, 24 - 28 total years!

Barack is around our age. He saw the things we've seen and to some extent we all experienced hip hop in its infancy -- The Fatback Band and the Sugar Hill Gang -- to it's current state in bearing no resemblance to the original intent. Since Powell, hell since 1776 this is our best shot.

Before Doug Williams, every expert from "Jimmy the Greek" and others explained WHY we couldn't quarterback an NFL team. Now, we've graduated to Michael Vick doing something STUPID with illegal dog fighting and it not smearing us as a people. (I don't feel smeared. He could have bought a racetrack for Greyhounds if he liked dogs so much, but I digress...)

No, he didn't grow up in "the 'hood." Michelle did. She describes herself as a working-class wife whose parents, though never going to college themselves got both of their children to Princeton.

I teach teens in our church ministry and they feel they somehow have to "explain" a black president to their friends. Excuse me: anybody "explaining" W to their conservative friends? Fiscally a disaster; socially inept, "erring on the side of life" (and committing many others), got a photo op for the Terry Schiavo bill, blocked stem cell research (that might HELP him someday), with a conservative 5/4 Supreme Court that hasn't stopped a single, lucrative abortion (makes more money than birthing) but shot their middle fingers at Enron employees and investors trying to recover their 401 (k). "Kenny Boy" got off light in comparison: dead men have no debts. His victims have the rest of their financially uncertain lives.

Yes, they'd have to explain a black president. Beyond NFL or NBA ambitions with odds of 1:50,000 of making it, the White House would suddenly be... a possibility. Obama, like Williams need not be the only one.

I feel our senior saints are reaching to what's comfortable and familiar. I don't argue with them. I listen and I've made up my mind on how I'm voting.

Those are my two cents. Hit me back if you have any thoughts. I'd like a dialogue, even if you don't agree.

I might, repeat MIGHT put it on my blog. I'll contact you before I do and post it "anonymous" per your request. TGP

Re: Microsoft seeks patent for office 'spy' software

Dueling Banjos - an instrumental song made famous in the movie "Deliverance" (circa 1972), see http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Dueling_Banjos..... Dueling Poetry - a free verse conversation between two or more poets; the extension of social and/or political thoughts or ideas; a collaborative, creative work between two or more poets…. Definition by TGP

© 15 January 2008, Thom the World Poet, © 18 January 2008, The Griot Poet

BIG BROTHERING
already here-corporate monitoring
for astronauts,airline pilots,firefighters-
where professionalism allows no error margin

CCCTV a fixture in every Mall
wiretaps and surveillance available
for all law enforcement
the question is not use-more abuse

cell phones bred upskirt porn
Chuck Berry toilet cams
privacy violations

yet GOOGL:E EARTH still reveals details
of military installations
and data mining continues in waves
like identity theft

technology compounds ethics
atrocities get documented

like Khymer Rouge killing fields
and Darfur massacres

we find the corpses
ex post facto

the trick of democracy is to allow rights
not violations
DAMOCLES POINTS Jan 15,2008

* * * * *

The freest poet on the planet
Is a terrorist named Osama
Who eschews technology
And presto! Transforms himself into
An Islamic invisible boogie man
That like willow-the-wisp, big foot and UFOs can't be detected,
Yet... we leave cookie crumbs in cyberspace
And our tele-screens give us chase
ATM and credit transactions
Our buying patterns
That is data mined
For junk e- and snail mail
From: (take your pick) Nigerian, Russian, European princes
Loaded with unbelievable fortunes
Or lotteries you've never entered
For which you may claim your "prize"
Just give your: name, address and SSN
And like pastor's naive wives
Get robbed cybernetic blind
Until like Winston Smith we'll have a date
For our place beyond the sun
Festooned with rat-caged masks
In our very own "room 101."

This Butterfly

Dueling poetry between myself, Jason Crowson and Thom the World Poet. © 10 January 2008, TGP

Dueling Banjos - an instrumental song made famous in the movie "Deliverance" (circa 1972), see http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Dueling_Banjos..... Dueling Poetry - a free verse conversation between two or more poets; the extension of social and/or political thoughts or ideas; a collaborative, creative work between two or more poets..... Definition by TGP

First: a comment from a poet in Australia (friend of Thom)

truly wonderous
needs to be spread - truth everywhere in cyberspace
splashed red on every highway billboard
shouted loud in every sacred boardroom
recited holy chant at bell-ring stock exchange
rapped in cafes on street
prayed from pulpits of churches
instructed solemnly before every high school student
emailed in font 24 flaming gold to every politician
learnt by heart so we may remember
not to forget

pamela mimi ..............rock on

* * * * *

Now, Thom:

this butterfly is 1000 years old
it weighs 40 tons

it will never fly again
like 400 F18A fighter bombers

never scrambled on September 11,2001
a la orders Dick Cheney

it is the new gold standard
(it will never fly again)

it is Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich
excluded from Presidential debates

it is Dien Bien Phu and Gulf of Tonkin
Straits of Hormutz resurrecting

it is saber-rattling,gunboat diplomacy
brinkmanship and Manifest Destiny

it is a New World Odor
spiraling out of control

like an Amero
or 100 dollar oil

like eagle as threatened species
it is weighed down with pasts

it will never fly
a gain.
BROKEN WING PROMISES Jan 10,2008

Next up, Jason:

it is the myth
that american tensions with iran
started in 1979

and not in the 1950s
when we overthrew a democratically elected government
for a british oil company

it is the delusion
that the weapons and training
we are providing to iraq

will not be used
to kill americans

it is the dementia
to not recall

that the man in pakistan
who spread nuclear technology
across the globe
is a free man

(sure maybe he was under house arrest so please forgive my exaggeration; he did get a slap on the wrist)

it is the insanity to believe
that perpetual war
will result in peace

and what to say
about the weapons

imagine if every disgruntled american teenager
had a AK-47

imagine if every pissed off twenty-something
had a surface to air missile

imagine that
and you can understand what it's like
to live in Sierra Leone

imagine that
and you can imagine Thom’s
one-thousand-year-old butterfly
weighing forty tons

it's wings beating down on us
like the memory of Ronald Reagan

January 10, 2007, reply to Thom

Lastly, moi:

Every butterfly starts as a chrysalis
Suspended animation over the river, Styx.
Skull-faced potentates, blood cousins running "against" each other in elections fixed
By Bilderberg conferences from Oosterbeck:

Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower
John F. Kennedy
LBJ
Richard M. Nixon
Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
Ronald Reagan
George H. W. Bush
Bill Clinton
George W. Bush
Hillary Clinton
John Kerry
John Edwards
Barack Obama
The Senate...
The Congress...
CEOs...
Ad Nauseam...

All graduates!

This "gentlemen's club" began
When the rights of man were waived due to over-pigmentation of melanin
And African/Arab/Asian/Persian origins
So, moving 700,000 Arabs off Palestine in '48 to form Israel was of no chagrin...
Pimping the Vietnam war on the Gulf on Tonkin lie - no big!
Overthrowing a DEMOCRATICALLY elected government in Iran the beginning of:

Mullah rulers in Iran,
The Taliban
Osama Bin Laden
Al-Quaeda
9-11

To keep us divided: they hold "elections"
When since 2000 the veil has been lifted to arcane selection
Processes so occult that they coded it in 1 and 0 hieroglyphs
Arguing the "lesser of evils" between Republicans and Democrats
When they are the left and right wings of Moloch

Owl-faced, wings wide to let the innocent
Fall through
As sacrifice: a "Cremation of Care..."

Over the flames consuming the chrysalis
Of our youth's future ...
Birthing instead of a New World Order
A dark, smoldering cinder
That passing starships will find... and no longer remember!