(Some of) the ugliness of the Clinton campaign. Where does Bill get off spitting on the support he’s been given by the African-American community and start lining up Obama as part of a tradition of “black” contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination and can’t find anything of greater substance one which to criticize Obama? The following is a quote from a CNN.com commentary by Roland S. Martin:
As reported on Jake Tapper’s ABCNews.com blog, at a stop in Columbia, South Carolina, the former president was asked to respond to Obama's comment that it “took two people to beat him.”
Instead of answering the question, he said, “Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in ‘84 and ‘88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here.”
Tapper said no one asked about Jackson. His name never came up. Yet Clinton had no problem invoking it.
Here is a link to the original video snippet being referred to here. The only thing about this that is even remotely satisfying is to read Bill’s body language and to realize how pissed he is at the question of why it takes both he and Hillary to beat Obama. Watch for the shake of his head before he scoops his hand into the racial mud and flings it.
This is shaming to watch. This is racism in action and if you heard it coming from Bush’s mouth you would be incensed or, so dispirited by the repetition of it, you’d say, “Well, there he goes again.”
Meet the Press did have a intelligent discussion of this matter and the phenomenon of Bill Clinton going into feeding frenzy. The discussion of Obama and the Clinton's performance in South Carolina starts 27:25 into the show.
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While I’m on the subject of campaigns, politics and such. I have a hard time understanding a few of the assumptions that people make regarding a candidate’s suitability to meet hypothetical situations. The assumptions these judgments are based on are often faulty or, conveniently, nonexistent.
Assumption: Barack Obama cannot be competent in the role of US President because he doesn’t have any foreign policy experience. Question: What foreign policy experience does Hillary Clinton have? What foreign policy did Bill Clinton have at the beginning of his first term?
Assumption: Mitt Romney has claimed his business experience is a requirement for functioning as President in a competent manner. Therefore, goes his calculus, a candidate like McCain, who lacks business experience, can’t be given credence. Question: How has George W. Bush’s business experience translated into an economic climate which has benefited America as a whole?
One good thing that’s come out of the past two weeks of political campaigning: I know who I’m going to caucus for on February 5 now.
What are five words you really like?
Submitted by purplesque.
Squelch, squirm, squamous, squirrel and Squinko's (the last is not really a word, but the president of a software company I used to work for used to use this word instead of Kinko's, which he evidently couldn't say).
I don’t think that I’ve done this yet—simply copied and pasted an article wholesale and called it a post. The reason why I’ve done so today is because what is described in this article is something that is a deeply held value for me: keep it fresh, dawg. Here’s a man who’s reached the century mark, a truly rare milestone for any human being, and he’s not going to sit on the porch and watch the cars go by.
One of the “Science Friday” radio shows on NPR talked about the possibility that we will live to be 150 years old beginning in the near future. Of course, to endure that much existence requires that you keep your body and mind in some kind of good condition. And the rest of that show was dedicated to the potential medical advances which could lead us to an unimagined ability to turn back, or at least blunt, the worst which the aging process can dish out to us
I take the fish oil capsules, vitamin C and, occasionally, ginseng of one type or another. I think I’m blessed with some good genes but I can’t rest on all of this. This article, published at the beginning of 2008, reminds me that I need to exercise more and work at keeping my spirits up. Depression and stress are clinically proven to have a negative effect on your health[¹][²].
I mean to cultivate and grow the attitude displayed by these two beautiful kids featured in this article. I can ask that much from myself. If I am truly keeping that beautiful bird named Optimism on my shoulder daily it won’t matter if I reach 100 years, 150, or even eighty. Because I will have lived so much more than if I simply spend my time counting my troubles.
The article from Reuters:
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Fri Jan 4, 2008 11:01pm GMT
LONDON (Reuters) - A 102-year-old will become Britain’s oldest emigrant this weekend when he leaves to start a new life with his wife in New Zealand.
Eric and Doris King-Turner, 87, will start their “wonderful new adventure” on Saturday when they set off on a cruise liner from Southampton.
“I would say to anyone that if you want to do something you should do it straight away while you can,” the retired dentist told Friday’s Daily Mail.
“What’s important is that when I’m 105 I don’t want to be thinking: ‘I wish I had moved to the other side of the world when I was 102.’”
New Zealand’s better weather, excellent fly-fishing and lack of crowds attracted King-Turner, although he admits he will miss his friends in Britain.
The couple, who are both widowers, have lived in Hampshire since their marriage 12 years ago.
Doris King-Turner is a New Zealander and still has a bungalow in the South Island town of Nelson, where they will live. She sponsored his application to emigrate.
“It’s going to be a great adventure,” she said.
(Reporting by Peter Griffiths; Editing by Steve Addison)
I am not an unadulterated fan of Radiohead in the same way as I am a fan of The Kinks, for example. The Kinks have done some horrible stuff, a few great things, some of their good stuff is even schmaltzy and a bit juvenile, admittedly. But, they hold a special place in my heart. Ray is an unusual person. He is the father of a child with Chrissie Hynde, one of my favorite female songwriters and rock performers.
Their U.S. appearance in St. Paul, MN, in September, 1981 was my very first rock concert. And—“L-O-L-A”—I was not disappointed. To this day, I want my women to have dark-brown voices and, should they squeeze me tight, want them to nearly break my spine, oh, my Lola. La-la-la-lay Lola.
Radiohead has appeared on the scene long after I can give my heart and a good chunk of nostalgic memory over so readily. Yet, they battle for ground within my head. And, goddamn them, they’re doing pretty well at setting up their musical shop there.
Since I’m not knowledgeable about musical structure I’m unable to tell you why I hear some of the things about Radiohead that I’ve heard. NPR did a short piece last year about a classical musical composer who is attempting to create arrangements of Radiohead songs that can be performed by orchestra. He feels that their music—the chord structures, time signatures, etc.—are challenging and inventive enough to create interest for a classical music audience.
For me, the attraction is watching Thom Yorke, that overexcitable elf (and I mean that in the best sense, Mr. Yorke), as he gets punk–rock‘n’roll–crazy while performing his songs. There’s an energy there that is infectious. And even with my limited musical understanding I can feel that the songs are not just verse–chorus–verse–chorus, etc., and all of it made of one slab of the same-colored plastic 95% of radio’s pop trash is built from. And by that I mean pop trash that has no feeling, no righteous groove and no development of lyric, mood or tempo.
Radiohead’s songs don’t even wander close to that kind of pop boneyard and yet they maintain some pop accessibility which, according to the more complicated qualities I’ve said they possess, they have no right to encourage this kind of happy, uncritical enjoyment by the listener.
Rather than go on all day about what their music is or is not like, let me post a new Radiohead song from their latest album, “In Rainbows.” Did I mention that Radiohead had a marketing experiment going on in which people could buy their latest album buy naming their own price (until 12/2007)?
Here’s a link for an interview with Thom Yorke (Thom Yorke Interview 3) talking about the problem of global warming and how ignorant and sold-out we look from the U.K.’s side of the Atlantic.
The video, “Bodysnatchers,” from Radiohead.
P.S. Mr. Yorke and company, if you read this, please share the wealth and send me one of those older Fender guitars, OK?
From,
A guitarless, guitarist wannabe.
I just put a link on this blog to one called Black Male Appreciation. The title of this blog struck me immediately. Here in Minnesota, there was a home invasion and shooting over the New Year’s holiday. The only information on the suspects to date is: “The two suspects are described as ‘black’ and thought to be in their twenties. One is slight of build and the other is heavy.” Now, unless Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy have been reincarnated in African ancestry, this description offers more in the way of misdirection and racial bias than it does in providing specificity and the identity of the assailants.
I’ve worked with black, white, Latino, Asian and Native American boys who were in in-patient facilities. There was very little to distinguish them in terms of intelligence, maliciousness, etc. The biggest difference was in terms of rural vs. urban with very few of the non-white kids coming from a rural background. And although the Native American kids were often from reservations in Minnesota, the kids I ran into had primarily adopted urban attitudes in terms of clothing and music. And, within a month of their arrival, almost all of the rural kids did the same.
The biggest differences, of course, were in the attitudes that staff held toward each group of kids they
were dealing with. Often, even when we were dealing with the boys on an individual basis, our attitudes toward their ethnic backgrounds came through. A lot of assumptions were made that aside from no longer committing crimes and having better mental health, the 16-year-old boys who could recite every Tupac Shakur rap would drop this “pretense” and pick up on some other heroes if they were white kids but would stay true to their “culture” and only appreciate rap music if they were African-American.
My dirty little secret is that I wanted all of the kids exposed to classical music, jazz and Elvis Costello and The Jam, no matter what their ethnic background.
In the pursuit of meditation and Buddhist ideals, the thought is that you are really pursuing liberation from the limiting structures of this world and the structures in your own consciousness that limit how you experience the world. I don’t know which is harder, liberating myself from my biases about myself and what I’m capable of, or liberating myself from the biases I have regarding what others are capable of.
I will try to do what I can to equate brown skin with truth and beauty. I know that putting one more link on my blog–as positive as it may be–is just a small part of the changes I need to make in seeing that people who look different than I do have much to offer me if I’m willing to make myself their student.
Have a great and prosperous New Year, everyone!
This entry is some kind of declaration. It’s my way of talking out loud to myself, hoping that you will listen in. I am in need of love–not just the love of a woman who really cares for me, though that would be a tonic–I’m in need of my love for myself and making myself a part of the universe. Just as importantly, I am in need of a change in the way I define myself. I’ve got to start identifying myself as a writer first and foremost. Then describe my occupation as whatever I do to pay bills.
I have to finish my children’s story that I’m working on. Then it’s time to find a place where it can get a warm reception and be published. That’s the long-term goal, anyway. For now, if I get it finished to my satisfaction
and sent to a potential publisher I’ll have to allow myself to feel that I’ve done my job to the best of my (present) ability.
Do any of you wonderful people out there know where a person is supposed to send the text of a picture book for children ages 3-6?
This is going to be a continuing entry as I learn more about myself and my creative process or myself and my understanding of the place writing has in my life. I included a couple of images of scribes as totems for myself.
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agree with you totally when will we all grow up and embrace each other as brothers and sisters instead of... read more
on We don’t need more negative images of black men.