junior, cook something up

and remember that tina brooks no unhealthy meals at her table. and get those blue lights out of the closet. those lights were a war haul, but iraq my brains in vain to recall where they were taken from. yes, eating at home is the way to go. it certainly beats going to the middle east via central station. bob porter likes to go there, but he is square, and nothing he has the stones to say should be believed.

mccain's vp selection will palin comparison to other concerns. meanwhile, i am biden my time, waiting for this political nader to come to an end. perhaps a new era will flower shortly. till then, i will continue to smell the rosa's, and listen to my dad talk about clemente. i realize that last line was out of right field, but i figured i would throw it in, in the hopes you will have a ball reading it. sadly, i likely struck out, as you probably felt the statement was off base. well, you can't hit them all out of the park.

alot has been made of the fact that obama gave his acceptance speech 45 years to the day of the march on washington. i realize the march on washington was an important day, but what about the april on philadelphia? it seems no one remembers that equally powerful day, when medgar evers said that he had a day dream.

to think that there is any connection between king and obama, other than the fact that the work of king and others in the civil rights movement helped to create a society where individuals of color could rise in their fields if they were deemed acceptable by the power elite, is ludicrous. condolezza rice and colin powell have come pretty far in the realms of political and military power as well, and no one seems to link them to king. granted, obama is more progressive then them, but then again, you could say the same for a brick wall. obama is a mainstream politician, king was a progressive activist, and mainstream politicians and progressive activists have little to nothing in common. and by the way, i wonder how king would feel about obama's plan to put 10,000 more troops in afghanistan? would he not remind him that we need to defeat the evil triplet of racism, militarism, and economic exploitation? i, for one, wonder how we can defeat militarism by increasing the military budget, adding more troops to afghanistan, and threatening pakistan and iran? i have a hunch that king would wonder the same thing.

having said that, i acknowledge that obama could not have received this nomination before, and that this surely speaks to some improvements in the racial ideas of millions of americans. however, while that is a good thing, it doesn't mean that obama himself is good. i have always said that perhaps the main difference between the democrats and the republicans are the people who vote for them. the democratic voter tends to be rather progressive on a number of issues, including war, health care, and abortion, but the democratic candidates don't come close to giving voice to the ideas of the people that vote for them. the republican politician, on the other hand, is much closer to the average republican voter, (ie, racist, pro-war, christian fundamentalist) though of course, i am generalizing.

furthermore, it is my strong belief that obama has succeeded to the extent he has with middle of the road whites because he has convinced them that he "transcends race," while remaining black in the eyes of black voters. again, obama is not a black man in the sense that that word is usually understood. he was raised by a white woman, and his father was african. i have often heard white people say that africans are "different" than american born blacks, meaning that they "work harder" and "don't complain" about racism like american born blacks do. of course, it is true that immigrants work hard; they always have. i suppose one could argue that jews, italians, and other white immigrants worked harder than their wasp counterparts, and didn't complain as much as native whites about work conditions and other concerns. the thing is, the favoring of black immigrants by whites over american born blacks is in and of itself racism. again, obama does not come out of the black american experience, and it is this experience that white americans continue to do their best to deny and degrade.

an example; a few years back, my mom was at her sister's house. her sister had a friend and her husband over. it came up that my mom lives in boston. the man replied that he went to college there, "and that he loved it there because there are no blacks." my mom was stunned, but decided to keep quiet because just a few hours before she had started a fight with another friend of her sister's by defending the palestinians in their conflict with israel. my aunt and uncle said nothing. now, fast forward to the obama campaign. both my aunt and uncle are obama supporters. they had a friend over who began to attack obama. my uncle called the person a racist! somehow, they thought an attack against one man to be racist, but not so the remark about a town being good because it lacks blacks (ie, american, city blacks) by the way, i cordially invite this man to take a walk with me through roxbury, dorchester, and mattapan to better allow him to judge the number of blacks in boston.

so, to some extent (we shall see if it's enough) obama has been able to cross over and appeal to millions of whites, as oprah, tiger woods, michael jordan, and for that matter, rice and powell, have already done. again, i don't think this to be of no import, but let us not fool ourselves. obama has been at pains throughout this campaign to show that he is not "too black." he refused to condemn the police murder of sean bell, i have not heard him utter a word about justice for katrina victims, he supports the death penalty, he has said not a word about police brutality, and to top it off, he has said many a racist remark about blacks, telling them to stop acting like "boys," to stop throwing trash out of their car windows, and to stop feeding their children cold popeyes chicken for breakfast. in short, he has said nothing that would mark him as a "black" candidate, and it is to the extent that he has done this that he has succeeded. it reminds me of the lenny line, "he's a refomed rabbi, so reformed that he's ashamed he is jewish."

man, i just wrote a lot of shit, when i suppose all i had to write was...

bullshit as usual.