Sex, lies and text messages Motown-style

Ok, so Detroit is back in the headlines (yet again) but not about its murder-rate but over a sex scandal. But this time it is about an extramarital affair between the city's 30-something mayor Kwame Kilpatrick who is married with children and Christine Beatty, his divorced chief of staff. Sexually-charged text messages between the two came to light a year ago in local newspapers and then came back with a vengeance just recently.

For those who live in or around Detroit, this is just another idiotic situation that Kilpatrick has caught himself in. It seems like from day one of his first term as the mayor of Detroit, he's been in trouble. There was the $56,0000 SUV that he bought for his wife, using city funds, as well as constant rumours of wild, raunchy parties at the mayor's city-owned mansion, at local strip or night clubs and escapades on taxpayer-funded supposedly political out-of-state trips that involved him and his entourage of bodyguards, friends and policemen. But you could only consider a lot of the stories as rumours, because no one could present any real evidence before this, except when he left a money-trail.

Kwame and Beatty got caught and in a Bill-Clintonesque-style denied it in front of a judge. Bad move. They've been indicted for perjury and are now on the hook to serve a few years for that and more. So reports have come out that Kilpatrick might have tried to cover up the whole thing before by paying off a $9 million dollar lawsuit by two fired police officers. He lost an empoverished major industrial city $9 million! City workers have been getting laid off since about 2002. 2003 maybe. I still hear about layoffs. City services have been cut left and right. There was no appeal of the judgment to lower the amount of money being asked for, just a "quick" payoff and sealing of records. Thank goodness for the Freedom of Information Act in this case. This mayor is living large on the backs of the poor or the barely-getting-by.

Of course, he's howling about how innocent he is. How the media is out to get him. How much (I'd say little) he's done for the city. And how the (sex) messages between him and his underling, over a taxpayer-paid cellphone, should be considered private not public.

I just really hope that Detroiters are not insane to believe the stuff he is spouting. He claims to have brought in $43 million dollars worth of business annually into the city. He hasn't done anything that no other politician, city official or business person hadn't thought of before. Most of the "progress" that has happened in Detroit, well mostly in the downtown/mid-town/New Center areas of Detroit, it was all well underway before his first term. He thinks that he is above the law and more important than the citizens of Detroit. He came into the office large and in-charge. Now, he needs to just suck it up, apologize, submit his resignation, tuck his tail between his legs and get out of Detroit's way.

Start reading about it here at The Free Press: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080327/NEWS01/803270390/1001/NEWS01

Not a word

Wow! Incredible! This whole month has practically gone by and not a post the entire time. I. I. I just don't know what to say. A lot has gone on, but I haven't written a word to recount any of it. Not a word. Oh well.

We Are The Ones Song by will.i.am

Here is the second Obama tribute video from will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas. The sentiment of this series of videos is so positive, it makes a person feel almost optimistic about the future of the upcoming presidential election and this country. One can only hope at least.

The Annual State of the Black Union

I'm sitting here watching the annual "State of the Black Union" on C-SPAN (God bless them folks for showing this every year). Based on what I am seeing and hearing from the second panel, I absolutely regret missing the live broadcast of the first panel, assuming they were just as fired up, passionate, eloquent as the second one was.

I must say, even though I believe I'm just being redundant, Dick Gregory, who is part of the second panel, is a genius. He just responded to Tavis Smiley's question about the current political landscape vis-à-vis the Black community, but Mr. Gregory decided to go off on a tangent for a minute or two. His initial response had me (and the live audience) rolling on the floor laughing. When he rounded back around to the original question, he spoke about how he had learned compassion from his wife. He brought tears to my eyes. I know him as a social and political activist, vegetarian proponent and comedian. But I did not know that he is also a feminist. He spoke at length of Black women as victims of racial and sexual discrimination. But not only as victims of the society from without the Black community, but also from within. About the lack of respect for Black women, he brought up how Dr. Condoleeza Rice is referred to as "Condi" where Madeleine Albright is "Madame Albright". This conference doesn't just speak to what has been and continues to be done to us from those outside of the community, but also what we do to ourselves. In a nutshell, be accountable to yourself and to others.

And thank you Rev. Al Sharpton for shining the light on Hillary Clinton's camp using loaded (i.e. bordering on racist) language when speaking of Barack Obama.

Obama cleans up in the Potomac primaries

The counts aren't yet finished but it looks like Obama is taking all three of the Potomac primaries (Washington D.C., Maryland and Virginia). He's got a slim lead over Hillary Clinton, but it's a lead that he continues to maintain. But according to a lot of news agencies, that might not mean a whole lot with the super-delegate votes that are still to be counted. And those votes can go any which way. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to this part of the primary race.

Boycott Beijing Olympics

'Nuff said.

Do I really need to say more? I plan to skip out on any and all things related to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China. I can't in good conscience vouch for any event that will help bolster China's reputation in the world. They want to be partners with Sudan who has turned a blind eye to the genocide going on in its country; there is no way I am going to give attention to the Olympics. It's a complete joke that the Olympics are even taking place in this country.

The organization Reporters sans frontieres has more to say on other reasons to support a boycott.

Spielberg says no to China Olympics

Good for you Spielberg. I've not really had a reason to have immense respect for Steven Spielberg, until now. Up until recently, he was serving as artistic director or advisor to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Well that's over now. He resigned his position as a protest to the Chinese government's involvement in selling arms to the Sudanese government.

China is bound and determined to only use their superpowers for evil instead of good. They make money arming Sudan's government while investing in their oil industry which has been dragging ass on ending the violence against non-Arab Sudanese. The Chinese government wants their cake and to eat it too. They want respect as an industrial country while doing dealings like this. I think it is high time to call for a boycott of the Olympics. What the Olympics stand for, China sure doesn't fit the spirit of it.

Check out the story at the BBC.