President O'Bama. The unluck of the Irish.

Funny how an apostrophe could possibly change someone's mindset.

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Are liberals thin-skinned or is it just me?

So I sent people a link to my blog post about the Obama inaugural gala costing $150 million. Apparently there are conflicting reports on what the actual cost was. Some are saying it was less. Guess it depends on who you talk to. Here's my original post. Isn't anything you haven't read on the Internet already. That's not the point of this post.

I'm flabbergasted at the reaction of some of my liberal friends. I'm dead serious - it's like I beat a baby harp seal (which I'm against) in front of a group of 1st graders. I'm a moderate who leans more toward the conservative side. But I believe in a woman's right to choose, that we should get out of Iraq, more funding for the arts, and gay rights/gay marriage. Now the reaction I've received - honestly, leaves me scratching my head. It's like the liberals won - Obama's in office - and everyone else's opinion counts for shit. Shut up - they don't wanna hear anything negative about Obama. They ripped on McCain the entire campaign but now that Obama's in office, all negative diatribe must cease.

1. One friend called me "a grump" - and she ripped on McCain throughout the campaign process. I love this person - go back a long way and I respect her tremendously. But I'm a grump because I complained that millions of dollars (whatever the figure was) were spent on Obama's inauguration while the American economy is in such dire straits?

2. One friend asked that I take him off my email list if I continue to send "inane" emails about Obama. My opinion is now considered "inane". Another long-time friend whom I love.

3. Another friend kindly said that I'm entitled to my opinion and that she can just hit DELETE - referring to my email to her. She's very busy so we don't do much together.

What the fuck? Are you shitting me? This is disconcerting, to say the least. Politics have never come between me and my friends - or my friends and I. But my God, now that Obama is President are the liberals going to totally follow him like lemmings? I mean, I'm rooting for the guy too, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna kiss his ass (no disrespect to our President) regarding everything he does. If I wasn't supposed to take everything as Gospel truth regarding George W. Bush and the Republicans, why is it any different when it concerns Obama?

And why is OK for the liberals to attack conservatives regarding their loyalties but the liberal's way is now seemingly the only way and they don't wanna hear anything to the contrary? I sort of feel like every issue that I lean liberal on - I wanna switch to the conservative side just to spite these people. These people WHO ARE MY FRIENDS.

If you know me or have visited this blog, you know I LOVE Brett Favre. Regardless of what he does, I've always stuck by the man. You'd think I'd just killed BF and that these guys are BF fans out for my blood. Perception's reality and that's the vibe I received. I love my friends - and I didn't use their names out of respect to them - and we're all entitled to our opinions (that's why I started this blog - and I'm extremely opinionated). But differing in opinion and getting really pissy about it to the point where I'm going, "what the fuck did I do?" are two different things. I'm truly sorry if I pissed a few people off, but I won't apologize for it. And if they get mad because I blogged about them (didn't name names) and wanna write me off, then I'm prepared to deal with that. Then they weren't the friends I thought they were, in the first place? They won't. Will they? No...

Would this new administration want me, you - us - to stifle our right to question? To demand accountability? I would think President Obama would say, "no".

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It's all in the headlines, Obama supporters.

From my best friend: Headlines On This Date and Same Occasion 4 Years Ago:

"Republicans spending $42 million on inauguration while troops Die in unarmored HumVees"
"Bush extravagance exceeds any reason during tough economic times"
"Fat cats get their $42 million inauguration party, Ordinary Americans get the shaft"

Headlines Today:

"Historic Obama Inauguration will cost only $150 million"
"Obama Spends $150 million on inauguration; America Needs A Big Party"
"Everyman Obama shows America how to celebrate."
"Citibank executives contribute $8 million to Obama Inauguration."


Who said there's no hypocrisy in politics. Ain't no CHANGE that I can see.

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Was it really worth THIS, Mr. Henry Louis Gates?

The lynching of Laura Nelson in Oklahoma on May 25, 1911. Her son was being lynched and she tried to protect him. So they were lynched together.

Was it really worth all THIS, Mr. Henry Louis Gates Jr.?

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities at Harvard and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research there. He was educated at Yale and the University of Cambridge, taught at Yale and Cornell and joined Harvard in 1991. He is an educated man. He is a black man. I feel awkward attempting to question something he said on the radio. Some feel a white man has no business commenting on the trials and tribulations of the black man. I have no beef with Mr. Gates or what he said generally - just one sentence. I heard him on NPR this past Wednesday, the day after Barack Obama won the presidential election.

By the way - the photograph above. I know...it hurts. The history of black people in our country includes some of the most horrific events in U.S. history. It pained me to put that picture on my website. I thought about it three or four times...'should i or shouldn't i?' - thinking perhaps that I could make my point without the photograph. But I can't. I apologize if I offend anyone. That is not my intention. I don't like looking at it either. But it directly addresses the contention I have with Mr. Gates' one statement. Click on READ MORE! to read an excerpt of Gates' statement, as well as my retort.

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Gates stated, "How many of our ancestors have given their lives—how many millions of slaves toiled in the fields in endlessly thankless and mindless labor—before this generation could live to see a black person become president? "How long, Lord?" the spiritual goes; "not long!" is the resounding response. What would Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois say if they could know what our people had at long last achieved? What would Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman say? What would Dr. King himself say? Would they say that all those lost hours of brutalizing toil and labor leading to spent, half-fulfilled lives, all those humiliations that our ancestors had to suffer through each and every day, all those slights and rebuffs and recriminations, all those rapes and murders, lynchings and assassinations, all those Jim Crow laws and protest marches, those snarling dogs and bone-breaking water hoses, all of those beatings and all of those killings, all of those black collective dreams deferred—that the unbearable pain of all of those tragedies had, in the end, been assuaged at least somewhat through Barack Obama's election?

...His victory is not redemption for all of this suffering; rather, it is the symbolic culmination of the black freedom struggle, the grand achievement of a great, collective dream.

Would they (ancestors) say that surviving these horrors, hope against hope, was the price we had to pay to become truly free...that "great gettin' up morning" in 2008 when a black man—Barack Hussein Obama—was elected the first African-American president of the United States?

I think they would, resoundingly and with one voice proclaim, "Yes! Yes! And yes, again!" I believe they would tell us that it had been worth the price that we, collectively, have had to pay—the price of President-elect Obama's ticket."

See - this very last statement by Gates is the one I have a problem with. He should have stopped after paragraph #2.

According to the Tuskegee Institute figures, between the years 1882 and 1951, 4730 people were lynched in the United States - 73 percent were black. On the average, a black man, woman, or child was murdered nearly once a week, every week, between 1882 and 1930 by a hate-driven white mob. Unthinkable by today's standards. It should've been unthinkable by ANY DAY'S standards.

Barack Obama's presidential win is, without question, a monumental and historic event. As would be any issue that helps move forward the advancement of black people or other minority. Fine. But to say, in so many words, that it was worth the murders, beatings, and discrimination...I mean, is anything really worth all that? Given the choice, what do you think Laura Nelson's (pictured above) family would've done back then? Would they have preferred to have Laura and her son safe at home - alive, or would they have chosen to have a black man as President in 1911?

Yes - Mr. Gates, the sufferings of black people in our country's history and the discriminatory practices and brutality toward them has culminated, finally, to the first black man being elected President of the United States. For that reason, the black culture should be proud. Yes - blacks have struggled and this event certainly is light at the end of the tunnel. Yes - it has put an exclamation on the point that anyone can dream and dreams do come true. Dr. Martin Luther King's dream was a hope that "all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last!..."

But no - having a black president of these United States of America does not suddenly set the black man "free". Nor does it set free other minorities from their oppressors or the things they are oppressed by. What it gives black people is hope - as Dr. King stated - just like the hope I have and my family has. I commented on a Wall Street Journal article written by another black man which stated the Obama's promise of "change" during his election does not mean "change" for blacks. Any rational person would concur that a black president would not say, "for too many years we've been beaten and murdered and discriminated against and just plain treated like shit; black people everywhere will, from now on, have a free ride to make up for all the injustices we as a people have suffered".

Advancing that thought might be the equivalent of me saying my opportunities as a white man have lessened now that Barack Obama is President OR my opportunities would have been greater had John McCain been elected. Is that lady swinging from the tree limb above really worth it just to say "we now have a black man sitting in the White House?"

Gates is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities at Harvard and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research there. Educated at Yale and Clare College of the University of Cambridge, he taught English literature and Afro-American studies at Yale and at Cornell before joining Harvard in 1991.

Gates co-edited Africana; The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience and is general editor of The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, co-editor of Transition magazine, a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of essays, reviews and profiles in other magazines, scholarly periodicals and newspapers. Gates' honors include the George Polk Award for Social Commentary and the Tikkun National Ethics Award. He has been a Mellon Fellow at Cambridge and the National Humanities Center, a Ford Foundation National Fellow and a MacArthur Prize Fellow. He is also a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board.

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President-Elect Barack Obama. A "friend" to the black man?

The tide has taken a definite turn and a Democrat will sit in the White House for the first time in 8 years. And - Obama's the first black man to do it (well, 1/2 black, 1/2 white, with a questionable smattering of Middle Eastern for good measure). Interesting election.

My friend was listening to talk radio on his way into work this morning. A black woman was being interviewed. No doubt, she was excited about Obama's election. Her comments, however, left me - well, flabbergasted. I'm paraphrasing her, but she said something along the lines of, "I won't have to pay my gas. I won't have to pay my mortgage. President Obama's gonna help me out!".

Ignorance, unfortunately, knows no barriers.

I read an article last week, "What Obama Can't Change: Lives of Blacks", written by Jason Riley, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial staff. Riley quotes economist Thomas Sowell, who spent decades researching racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. and abroad. Sowells's findings - in books like "Race and Culture: A World View," "Affirmative Action Around the World" and "Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?" - show that political activity generally has not been a factor in the rise of groups from poverty to prosperity.

"Empirically, political activity and political success have been neither necessary nor sufficient for economic advancement," writes Sowell. "Nor has eager political participation or outstanding success in politics translated into faster group achievement."

One of Riley's examples points out Obama's stance on educational - Obama opposes educational choice. This will have a negative impact on poor blacks, who tend to be the ones stuck in America's worst public schools. Mr. Obama opposes school vouchers that would allow low-income black parents to send their children to the type of private school where he sends his own daughters.

If the jubilant, black lady on the radio was hoping she'd get a school voucher from Obama in order to improve her lack of education, she's screwed. And by the way...Jason Riley is black.

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Wonder who'll be our new president????

And don't ask me who I vote for because it's none of your business.

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Redestribution of Wealth, according to Obama.

This real-life account is from an ex-homicide detective in CA. Got it from a friend. Not sure if the "first person" narrator is the ex-detective or if he got it from somewhere else. Regardless - I thought it was interesting.

"In a local restaurant my server had on a "Obama 08" tie, again I laughed as he had given away his political preference--just imagine the coincidence.

When the bill came I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need--the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight.

I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I've decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful.

At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient needed the money more.

I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application."

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I'm leaning toward voting for McCain and here's my reason why.

According to attorney *David Hardy's article, "Obama and the Attempt to Destroy the 2nd Amendment", Barack Obama remains strangely silent about his eight years (1994-2002) as a director of the Joyce Foundation, a billion dollar tax-exempt organization that, while he was its director, spent millions creating and supporting anti-gun organizations.

During Obama’s tenure, the Joyce Foundation board planned and implemented a program targeting the Supreme Court. The work began five years into Obama’s directorship, when the Foundation had experience in turning its millions into anti-gun “grassroots” organizations, but none at converting cash into legal scholarship. The plan’s objective: "the judicial obliteration of the Second Amendment".

I couldn't find Obama's viewpoints on gun control spelled out clearly on his website; perhaps I didn't delve deep enough. It is a major issue though and I felt that his stance should be readily accessible under his major bullet points. Anyway, I found one article which summarizes where Obama stands in relation to the 2nd Amendment.

I don't own firearms and I don't hunt with guns (I fish and bow hunt), but I have numerous family members and friends that do. No - the NRA and its members aren't defending 2nd Amendment rights just so that they can own assault weapons and anyone who thinks that is extremely naive and stupid. The NRA's stance is very simple: at any point where you start to regulate an individual's rights to bear ANY type of arms, the door is opened by law to enact more stringent laws for gun ownership until you reach a point where NO CITIZENS are allowed to own firearms - for protection, for hunting...nothing. This is the exact reason the 2nd Amendment was written by our Founding Fathers. For more 2nd Amendment and gun rights issues information, here's the National Rifle Association site. Brush up here on the 2nd Amendment.

If you think about, it's not such an unrealistic concern. If environmentalists can peer into their magic ball and predict what will happen to our planet 50, 100 or 200+ years into the future if we continue to pollute it the way we do, why can't gun rights activists be concerned with the "what-if" scenario if the 2nd Amendment as we know it today is rewritten, restructured or revamped?

(*David T. Hardy has practiced law since 1975. He has five books and thirteen law review articles in print, and blogs at Of Arms and the Law. He's also the producer of the documentary In Search of the Second Amendment. )

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Jack's take on the presidential election.

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To ACORN or not to ACORN; that's the question.

When Obama met with ACORN leaders in November, he reminded them of his history with ACORN and his beginnings in Illinois as a Project Vote organizer, a nonprofit focused on voter rights and education.

Senator Obama stated, "I come out of a grassroots organizing background. That's what I did for three and half years before I went to law school. That's the reason I moved to Chicago was to organize. So this is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it. I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”


During last night's final presidential debate, this was Obama's response to John McCain's questioning of Obama's involvement with ACORN: "Now, with respect to ACORN, ACORN is a community organization. Apparently what they've done is they were paying people to go out and register folks, and apparently some of the people who were out there didn't really register people, they just filled out a bunch of names. It had nothing to do with us. We were not involved. The only involvement I've had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs. "

So did Obama work with ACORN just on the motor voter law OR has he been "fighting alongside ACORN on issues you (speaking to assembled ACORN representatives) care about my entire career"? Certainly these quotes contradict each other, leading one to question the depth of Obama's involvement with ACORN. No?

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McCain on Obama and "Chicago politics".

"...Senator Obama will try to distract you from noticing that he never answers the serious and legitimate questions he has been asked. But let me reply in the plainest terms that I know. I don’t need lessons about telling the truth to American people. And were I ever to need any improvement in that regard, I probably wouldn’t seek advice from a Chicago politician.”

I'm not saying Obama is like other Chicago politicians. But everyone knows that Chicago politics are among the shadiest. I recently talked to two Chicago cops (I believe I may have mentioned this in a previous post), and they agree wholeheartedly.

Once again, both candidates in Tuesday's debate spent much of their allotted time ripping on each other - and beating the issues like a dead horse. Shame...when there's so much to talk about (I thought).

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3 Ex-Fannie Mae crooks working for the Obama campaign?

I know - this may be old news. But it's pertinent.

Franklin Raines - ex-Chairman and CEO of Fannie Mae. Forced to retire from Fannie Mae and the federal government filed suit against him regarding the FM accounting scandal. Received $50 million in bonuses based on bogus accounting numbers. Golden parachute = $240 million in benefits.

Tim Howard - ex-CFO of Fannie Mae. Resigned from FM. Golden parachute = $20 million.

Jim Johnson - another CEO of Fannie Mae. Currently under investigation for taking illegal loans from Countrywide. Golden parachute = $28 million.

All three are working or have worked in some capacity for Barack Obama's presidential campaign - whether on Obama's payroll or in an advisory capacity. I'm suddenly leery. Shouldn't I be? Is this wrong information? Please tell me otherwise. I think it's amusing that OUR Federal Government bails out these stinking, fucking crooks and they immediately gravitate to one of the candidates who is vying for the presidency. That's hilarious. They're all bastards. They all know each other.

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Gwen Ifill, Moderator of Biden/Palin debate, pens Pro-Obama book???

Gwen Ifill, who is moderating Thursday's vice-presidential debate, is releasing a book on Barack Obama and other young black politicians who are "forging a bold new path to political power."

How can she possibly be objective? And why isn't an objective moderator in place? Same could be said for the liberal moderator of the McCain/Obama debate, Jim Lehrer.

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David Foster Wallace and "The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys and The Shrub".

Author David Foster Wallace hung himself this past Friday. I had never heard of him nor read anything he had written. This excerpt is taken from his Rolling Stone article, "The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys and The Shrub", dated sometime in 2000 when John McCain was making a bid for the White House.

"Probably the last real leader we had as U.S. President was JFK, forty years ago. It's not that Kennedy was a better human being than the seven presidents we've had since: we know he lied about his WWII record, and had spooky Mob ties, and screwed around more in the White House than poor Clinton could ever dream of. But JFK had that weird leader-type magic, and when he said things like, "Ask not what our country can do for you - ask what you can do for our country", nobody rolled their eyes or saw it as just political bullshit. Instead, a lot of them felt inspired. And the decade that followed, however fucked up it was in other ways, saw millions of Young Voters devote themselves to social and political causes that had nothing to do with getting a great job or owning nice stuff or finding the best parties; and the 60's were, by most accounts, a generally cleaner and happier time than now.

So it's worth thinking about why, when John McCain says he wants to be president in order to inspire a generation of young Americans to devote themselves to causes greater than their own self-interest, a great many of those young Americans will yawn or roll their eyes or make some ironic joke instead of feeling totally inspired the way they did with Kennedy."

The media and critics keep alluding to his genius. Maybe he was. But if people are so smart (genius) why do they take the easy way out? What do they know that most of don't know? And is that what makes them a "genius" - in part?

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My mother just called me to say I was OFFICIALLY born at 2:34 CST TODAY. Also, John McCain is a virgin...Virgo, I mean.

The Republican Presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, celebrates his birthday today as well (see my birthday posts below) - I wasn't aware of that. And his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, is my age.

Here are some other celebs with an August 29 birthday: Sir Richard Attenborough (in military hat), Rebecca De Mornay, Ingrid Bergman, Elliott Gould, Michael Jackson and the warrior King of England, HenryV, who delivered the rousing St. Crispin's Day speech before the Battle of Agincourt, which was fought in northern France as part of the Hundred Years' War against France. Oops - can't forget the great Michael Chekhov (pictured on very bottom), nephew of the playwright Anton Chekhov and widely recognized as one of the greatest actors of the 20th century. He studied under Stanislavsky and developed his own physical acting technique which is still studied by actors today.

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