I'm Voting Republican

If you're still an undecided voter, see if this doesn't motivate you to make a decision...

Has Hillary Clinton Naderized this year's election?

I didn't like what I saw during the primaries with the negative attacks out of the Clinton camp and I'm not surprised by its outcome. So Hillary Clinton is out and Barack Obama is in as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate. I'd be overjoyed if it weren't for the impending doom that I feel coming on.

When it became all but 100% certain that Clinton could not keep up with Obama's delegate numbers, the grumbling from her camp started ramping up. She whined of sexism all the while launching a Karl Rove-worthy racist-tinged whisper-campaign against Obama. Her fanbase is so incensed by the media's supposed love-affair with Obama that they're ready to hand their vote over to the other party. Now I have to wonder how they can blame Obama for the media's behaviour. This I find mind-boggling. This is totally in line with their thinking that a white female should win over a black (male or female) candidate. Their sour grapes are nothing but racist and sexist bigotry.

Before this was apparent, I would have handed my vote to whomever as long as she or he appeared to be the most reliable, trust-worthy and competent to lead the country through the mess that Bush and cohorts are leaving.

Hillary has managed to poison the well to such the extent that her supporters don't care that she is now preaching the party unity message. They are outraged and blame Obama for the apparent media and political bashing of Clinton. From most news outlets, about half have announced their support of McCain, a.k.a. Bush version 2.0. McCain is wooing their vote. In past elections, Republicans wouldn't even consider trying to persuade staunch Democrats to come over to their side. With Hillary's help, they don't even have to try so hard this time.

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.