Tag Archives | President Obama
November 7, 2012

1



Current Events

Nope, we ain’t riding in the way back machine…

It is over, so very over and in the end America must accept that she is not the nation she once was, times have changed. Obama will have another four years in office and while many people including yours truly are feeling pretty good about that; for many millions of Americans this morning they are shaking their heads in dismay.

In the end I am not convinced that Obama won again because he was awesome but more because the alternative was stuck in a time warp and many of us simply had no desire to get back in the way-way machine.

When your only strategy is to stir up ugliness, it will eventually backfire on you. In the end the GOP has shown itself to be increasingly disconnected from America in 2012. America is more than Christian heterosexual white men (and women), America is a diverse salad bowl filled with people of all stripes and colors. Oddly enough all these diverse people do not think the same no matter what the GOP would like to think, believe it or not, Black people can be some of the most socially conservative folks around (Black preachers and gay marriage anyone?). Yet even with all that diversity most of us are not interested in having leaders who openly disregard us. We aren’t self-deporting, shutting our own uterus’s down or any of that nonsense.

America is at a crossroads, it happens to all of us, when we reach that point where we need to decide to make changes. Despite Obama’s win, one look at the electoral map shows that there are large chunks of America where being a Black person this morning might not be too good while people process this lost.

Yet in order to have true growth, we need to have a willingness to get raggedy and name our demons so that we can truly move on. In the end I am not sure how realistic that is, but a changing demographic in America means that the old ways of being don’t work anymore.

So while there are many winners this morning and I congratulate them, I can’t help but feeling we still lost and that until the majority of Americans truly accept that the face of America is a gorgeous tapestry, this ride will be rocky.

 

October 23, 2012

3



class, Current Events

Race to the cell, the only thing America excels at in 2012

I really did not want anything to do with the final presidential debate; frankly these debates are starting to make me rage. Of course circumstances put me in a situation where I ended up listening to parts of the last debate and catching the running commentary on twitter.

The debates are simply good theater, the candidates are putting on a show for us and since most Americans are too busy to actually read/research the candidates we look to the debates to tell us all we need to know about the candidates. The funny thing, is that the debates and the entire election season with the campaigning and the billions of dollars being spent to one up the competition, shows us just how not exceptional we are as a nation despite this belief we hold that we are an exceptional nation.

I will take Obama any day over Romney, but that doesn’t mean I am jumping with joy because the truth is presidents for all the power they hold are essentially Cheerleaders in Chief. As this recent piece in the New York Times covers, no one who wants to truly make deep, systemic changes in this country is going to be elected and if they do, they will learn real soon, that we as a nation only like surface change. To create change is to acknowledge publicly that we have problems and when you think America is the “hope of the world” it can be hard to admit that the only thing we are excelling at these days locking up our citizens. Yep, America is the winner in the “Race to the Cell”.

For those of us who work with the most vulnerable among us, there is a growing sense of frustration as we see that poverty in this nation has changed. The face of poverty has changed and it looks more and more like us. Our smartphones and cars may hide those facts and the stiff upper lipped American way of keeping our financial lives private, hides a great deal. Ask any social service provider what they are seeing and they will tell you, that today’s client in need is just as likely to be a college educated person with no easily solvable problems and a solid work history as the stereotypical single mother with no education. It’s just easier to have the appearance of still being financially stable when we who are experiencing the economic downturn personally, still have the accoutrements and trappings from our formerly middle class lives. It also doesn’t hurt that many of us and I include myself since in recent years I have struggled financially are reluctant to share our business and talk about how bad things have gotten for us.

To some degree we have no one to blame but ourselves when we see politicians not discussing the issues that affect the millions who struggle daily to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. After all why would politicians want to discuss those issues when we ourselves can barely admit to family and friends that we have hit hard times? Yet in a nation that is sinking, we need to talk, and talk often on these issues.

Child poverty is a very real issue in this country; I see it every day at my job. Child poverty is the only reason I have a job at the moment. Out of the 35 most economically advantaged nations, America and her exceptional self, ranks number 34 in child poverty. That means you see child poverty too but don’t notice it because we expect child poverty to be a black, brown or tan face in a third world country. However ask any school teacher in America and they will tell you what child poverty looks like because they see it in the classroom. It’s Suzie who comes to school and has a bellyache every morning, because she is not getting enough to eat and her parents are too pride filled with American exceptional-ism to fill out the paperwork that would officially label them needy so that Suzie can actually have a full belly and focus at school. Instead we say Suzie has attention deficit issues, which is easier to acknowledge than the fact that Suzie is going hungry in a nation of plenty.  Ask Suzie how exceptional America is when at a tender young age she knows food is not a given. I see American exceptional-ism every day at my center when the same group of kids is more eager to eat the snack then to play in a fun activity after school. Not too damn exceptional if you ask me.

Our infant mortality rates are horrid for such an exceptional nation and social mobility here is a myth compared to most of Europe, Canada and Australia. Yet half of America is looking at Mitt Romney and his “success” and despite the fact that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have no fucks to give for the little guy, they will vote for these guys because the Horatio Alger myth is deeply ingrained in our psyche. This belief that hard work will turn us into millionaires is the lie we tell ourselves because we can’t handle the truth.

The problem with avoiding the real discussion on how unexceptional America and what our real issues are is that we keep putting a patch on the roof when really what is needed is a new roof. Eventually the patch job will fail and when it does, it is taking the whole damn house with it.

 

 

October 17, 2012

1



Current Events

Obama, Mitt and how we can create real change…reflections on the debate

The last thing I should be doing today is writing a blog post since I have oodles of work for the day job and I am trying to wrap up a submission for paying work and these days I need all the paying work I can get. But after watching last night’s debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney, I just had to blog. Shit, Mitty is the gift that keeps on giving a like a case of untreated clap.

For starters can I just say that at the end of the day, I feel like almost all politicians are disconnected from the realities of modern life in America. Instead we are being sold this dream that one day good jobs and prosperity will be ours again and frankly, I think that shit is gone with the wind. We are all Scarlett O’Hara looking for tomorrow and well, we will just be waiting. Modern technology and advancement has made many jobs obsolete, it’s really not that hard of a concept to grasp. Most of the growth industries are low paying service jobs that are actually very much needed, someone needs to wipe our asses in the nursing home and it’s the type of gig that can’t be outsourced. Yet we will dance around the fact that these types of jobs need higher wages.

Politicians love to speak to the middle class and I am sure at one point in time that was a great strategy, the problem is the true middle class is almost dead. Most of us have slid down into the working class but in a nation that only likes upward mobility, none of us are addressing the elephant in the room. So, we allow our politicians to talk of this middle class and we still believe the dream that we ourselves are middle class. Funny thing is today’s middle class looks a lot like the working class of decades past. For most of us in the so-called middle class, if we lost our jobs and didn’t replace them right away, within a year or two if we were lucky, we would be taking up resident in the local homeless shelter or living in a cardboard box. Today’s middle class has little in the way of real assets with our homes that are often worth a lot less than they used to be, serving as our only real asset.  Wages are stagnant and the cost of everything is up, most of us play the bill shuffle game which is better than our friends in the real poor class who can’t even play that game; but let’s stop being delusional, we aren’t middle class. In 2012 in America, there are the rich and then there are the rest of us with a few levels of the rest of us. However as long as we can buy that $4.59 pumpkin latte occasionally, still use our credit cards and present as middle class, that’s our story and we are sticking to it.

So it’s no surprise that politicians play along with us since we ourselves aren’t comfortable with truth then again Americans in general don’t like the truth. We like myths and fairy tales, they make us feel better. It’s why being a wedding planner is a great business and from my view damn near recession proof; we will go into debt to have one perfect day because we somehow believe that one perfect day will make for a great life.

On that note, politicians are funny and Mitt Romney is even funnier. I think it’s clear that he and running mate Paul “pump me up” Ryan think that women need to know their place (get yo ass home by 5pm to cook dinner now, ya here) after all Mitt cares about you broads. Mitt cares so much so that when he was governor of Massachusetts he had a binder full of women to find good ones to work in his administration.

I learned last night that if we want to decrease violence in our society that we need more two parent households, again 2 parents in a shared space is magical, bad shit never ever happens when you have two parents in a home. Never mind that half the guys in recent decades, who have snapped and committed mass murder, generally came from 2 parent households. Perhaps there is violence because we are a violent nation, we care less about the least among us instead paying lip service to the least among us but stripping away every useful service that people need to not be violent. Treatment for mental health, real services to lift the poor up, again, all shit that is gone with the wind and while I am talking about Mitt Romney, our friends in blue the Democrats don’t do much for the truly poor either.

Maybe I am growing old and losing my own shit, but I am starting to think that to create real and humane change that creates an environment where we all can thrive is for us, that’s you and me to be an active part of the community. It means more than watching a debate and voting, it’s about being present in our communities, knowing our neighbors, doing business with our neighbors and with millions of people creating change at a micro level maybe just maybe we will see some change at the macro level. Yet to take even that step means we need to put away the fairy tales and stop waiting for others to save us.

July 8, 2012

0



Current Events, Money, Poverty, Random babble

How to get America working again? Bring back the humans!

The unemployment rate isn’t going down and President Obama and his merry crew are wondering what to do. Of course Mitt “flip flop” Romney says if he gets elected he will get the unemployment rate down and see to it that Americans can have things like vacations! Look, I like Obama and I don’t care for Mittens, but the truth is no one is going to decrease the unemployment rate because corporations in the quest for efficiency have made the American worker obsolete.

If you think I am kidding, read this piece from the New York Times and think about it. On the surface it might make sense that technology companies being all cutting edge and shit, don’t have mere customer service reps but really the decrease of humans goes beyond technology companies.

Remember when companies first automated their systems back in the quaint dark ages; if the menu didn’t have what you needed, you could always press 0 for an operator. Guess what! You pressed 0 and a real live human came on the line and helped you. Those were the good ole days when your problems could get solved. However some rocket scientist decided do away with the operator, we don’t need no stinking operator…now you get stuck in a loop waiting and hoping that your problem can be solved since no matter how detailed the menu, I always have a problem that needs that human touch.

Just this past week, I had to call that big scary agency that makes Americans shake in their boots better known the Internal Revenue Service. Let me backtrack, I actually went to their website to see if we could work out a plan since according to their site, if you owe a small amount now defined as $50,000 or less you don’t need to jump through any hoops to get a payment plan. By the way, they doubled that figure, used to be if you owed more than $25,000 you had to deal with the really special department made up of super agents, but with the economic collapse I guess too many people owed money so that raised the limits.

Anyhoo, despite going all bankrupt and shit last year, I still owe these fine folks some cash and wanted to make a payment plan. The online system couldn’t help me since my situation is apparently unusual and it didn’t register all my account information. After two attempts online I bit the bullet and called them and waited 45 minutes to talk to a human, that was after calling one day and waiting 20 minutes and just saying screw it. Hellooooo! Big government agency that handles incoming cash, get more humans! Seriously! I can’t even imagine how someone who has a job that isn’t flexible could place a call to these folks. In the past year every time I have called I am on hold anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour before I speak to a human being.

Next up, I had cable woes this week and again, no humans and the automated voice couldn’t register my complaint, thankfully after 15 minutes I was finally connected to humans. I will say that my local cable company that behemoth known as Time Warner Cable while they lack on the customer service side, they rock on the technician side! My tech came out this morning…Sunday morning and fixed all my problems. The problem is in order to get to the technicians I have to deal with customer service and that is where they fail.

Also what’s up with all this outsourcing, I have called large companies in Maine and the people at the other end of the line clearly are not Mainers. What? No Mainers in need of jobs? I think not.

My point is, too many times companies in a quest to make sure they maintain profitability for their shareholders and owners decrease staff, outsource to cheaper areas or automate and when this happens, someone is going to be jobless.

You want to get Americans working again; you need Americans to have access to jobs that pay real living wages and not this service economy shit we are all in. Sure a few of us have good jobs with bennies but most of us are piecing our shit together. Our standards have decreased too, fuck a vacation, we just want to earn enough to pay all our bills, and not have to do the bill shuffle game and maybe even have some dental insurance so we won’t be wearing dentures by 50.

April 27, 2011

2



Current Events

No escaping racism…

Just as I sat down to type this post, I listened to a voice-mail message my Dad had just left a few minutes ago…to say he was heated was an understatement. To paraphrase this message from ole dad, racism in America is not dead…I repeat racism is not dead.

The sitting president of the United States, Barack Obama just held a press conference to release the long form of his birth certificate. Why? Because a guy with a bad toupee and a few shekels was making the choir sing louder and louder on the issue of whether or not the president is a real American. Yep the Donald , the embodiment of all that is wrong in this country who now tells us he is thinking of setting his sights on the presidency apparently made the choir of wing nuts sing so loud that Obama really had no choice but to address this issue once and for all.

All jokes aside it’s a sad day for America and serves as a reminder for something most people of color in these divided states have long known, racism is not dead; it simply has taken a new form. We don’t put up signs that say Colored Only, or lynch folks but damn it if this new racism is not equally as tiring and dangerous to the those who deal with it on a daily basis.

In some ways I am reminded of how good white privilege is, it’s the tastiest dish on the menu. After all only with white privilege can folks who at times seem borderline illiterate (I am talking to you Sarah Palin, Trump, and others of their ilk) run around making baseless statements yet a substantial enough amount of the general population will buy into their tripe. Why? Because the white folks said it, so it must be true.

I weep for this nation yet I am convinced that perhaps through our younger generations things will indeed change. Eventually the color of a person’s skin will be no more important than eye color when judging content of character until that time, pass the wine!

September 21, 2010

4



Current Events, Random babble

Uprising with the People

Last night as I was drifting off to sleep I caught this clip on the local news. What do we have here? A Black woman expressing discontent with President Obama. Now having had a chance to make the rounds to some of my favorite bloggers this morning like Field Negro and a few others, there are some that want to down play what this woman had to say. To recap in case you aren’t up for link clicking, this gal expressed her unhappiness that her financial situation has actually worsened since Obama took office. Now anyone who thought that Obama becoming POTUS was going to magically make America a happy and prosperous place for all clearly had been smoking herbals. No one man can be all things to all people. Clearly Obama has faced some challenges that his predecessors never had to face namely the rise of nut jobs aka Palin, Beck, etc. There is also the fact that a certain segment of the American population will never see this man as a legitimate president. Hell, a video could be shown clearly showing Obama being born and well folks will still believe what they want to believe.

However I thought what this woman said was brave and for many millions of American a true statement. Is she literally eating hot dogs and beans? My guess is no but more like the comfortable standard of life she thought would be rightfully hers by a certain age is no longer a sure thing. Instead of financial stability my guess is there is financial instability. In fact just before my local news showed that clip, there was a piece about how food pantry use was up in some of Maine’s most well heeled towns. I am talking places with multi million dollar homes and views of the ocean and the inhabitants of such spaces needing to go to a food pantry for food. Don’t know about you but that shit doesn’t compute, of course thanks to my job I am regularly in touch with members of the formerly middle class who need some help.

For many when Obama was elected back in 2008 we felt the spirit of change, problem is we had no idea what change would look like. While we are now being told the recession officially ended last year, the fact remains that for millions there are no jobs and what jobs exist do not pay a living wage. If the economy is stagnant it’s because people who are financially fearful tend to hang on to their money. Marketers and retailers are starting to realize that frugality is not a passing thing, it’s the new reality yet for an economy driven by consumption it’s a bad thing.

As far as Obama while he has had many barriers the fact remains he and his economic team did not take the economy seriously enough and frankly I think that is going to bite the Democrats in the ass come November. No, our President and leaders are not meant to be our friends yet in America we have a silly habit of wanting the powers to be to relate to us, to make us feel good. If you think I am lying think about the last POTUS, dude wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box but he made folks (well some folks, the ones who vote apparently) feel good. So to reward those good feelings he in return got 8 years to fuck up our nation. Spent all the money on silly wars but damn it he made us feel good.

Obama on the other hand does not make us feel good, shit we look at him and some of us get mad. Some of us support him on the basis of his Blackness (I’m talking about my fellow Black folks) but lately even Blackness is not enough to keep us from grumbling. If you can’t make the people feel good and or deliver some change that results in a few shekels in folk’s pockets so Friday dinners can be had, well you have a problem.

As I see the Tea Party growing in this country despite the clear level of stupidity of most of its members that tells me we as a nation are getting ready for some change. Yet for some reason this change feels a lot less positive than the change we witnessed in November 2008.

January 28, 2010

0



Current Events, Random babble

It was a good speech but……

Like many Americans, last night I stayed up (despite being in agonizing pain from a massage gone awry but that’s another post) to catch President Obama’s first state of the Union of the Union address. Thanks to the marvels of technology no longer do we have to watch a speech in the privacy of our home and wonder what others are thinking, hell you don’t have to wait to get to the water cooler to chew it over. Nope, thanks to Facebook and Twitter you can have a running discussions with a bunch of other people. I have to say I might have enjoyed that aspect of things more than the entire speech as it gives insight into how my fellow Americans (and others) are thinking when it comes to the state of things in this nation.

For starters, Obama came bringing a bit more fire than he has in a while. But really is this a surprise? Shit, this man has a way with words, he has a gift for speaking, no one not even his opponents will deny that unless they are completely ape shit crazy. As someone who’s early career was in sales and marketing, I would say he has a great knack for selling us what we want to hear. I can only imagine how hard it is being the nation’s first Black president…the expecations. There are those who while they may never admit it, thought when Obama was elected he would be magical like a Will Smith character…I think Larry the Senior Black correspondent on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show recently gave a great summary about the expectation of Obama being the Magical Negro. Go Google it, it’s a good piece.

I want to talk though a bit about why I am personally a tad somber about my expectations for the country. See, I noticed on my Twitter feed it was almost an even split between folks who are also feeling a smidge disillusioned about things and those who said well he’s inherited a mess and how can anyone expect such a mess to be cleaned up in a year.

Look, I can’t imagine anyone other than someone who truly felt Obama was going to be the Magical Negro would expect to have shit cleaned up in a year. Hell, that’s not realistic at all. But I have a theory, hear me out. Everyone I know either online or in life who is getting impatient tends to be in the camp that is feeling the sting of the great recession. Right now jobs are scarce and to be honest they got a lot more scarce in the past year. None of the original estimates had unemployment reaching 10%…um, we are there. Shit last I heard wasn’t it 10.2%? Who knows what the real figure is but chances are if you are unemployed, you are competing with at least 5-6 other people for every available job. If you are Black well shit, your chances of finding a job are even harder. One of the figures I have seen bandied around is 15.6% for Blacks who are unemployed but like regular unemployment those figures are hard to get a handle on since unemployment rates don’t truly factor in things like when folks stop collecting unemployment benefits, they cease to be counted. Then there are those folks like myself who are underemployed…we got jobs but they are less than 40 hours a week so as you can imagine it makes life a tad tight.

Now I heard a plan last night that seems focused on creating some jobs and surely the stimulus plan did stop more folks from becoming unemployed but the reality is we need more, we need a lot more. Folks are embracing frugality and no one is going  spending (which is really what we as a nation seem to be about, what the fuck do we produce here anymore other than spenders?) until they know that are financially secure again. Yeah, we will loosen the belts now and then but by and large our eyes have been opened and we know we are broke. See, no money means no spending which keeps us as a nation in the financial doghouse since our economy is sadly based on the notion that we must consume.

See, those folks (myself included) who are working hard to survive are not feeling as generous about time. Now I will admit my own personal situation is looking up, things are going better for the Spousal Unit and his clients, which would be a good thing except that soon we will be without health insurance. This past year we were able to access state health coverage thanks to the drop in income, well that drop is over and in a few weeks so is my coverage. Now that might be a good thing except that the rise while good still won’t allow me to buy any decent coverage. Remember the Spousal Unit is a self-employed contractor so there is no company sponsored plan and I work at an agency that does not offer insurance because we barely keep the doors open and unless our funding grows the money is not there to offer me coverage.  Right now a policy with a $30,000 deductible will cost me over $400 a month! Translation I have to run up and pay for $30,000 in bills before the policy kicks in…sure I got 30G’s sitting around. To get a real policy with a $500 deductible is over $1000 a month, pretty much making that increase in income void.

Thing is my plight is the plight of millions, that would be why so many wanted some type of meaningful reform that might make coverage accessible. So when we hear that after a year we might need to slow down the health care reform wagon well, some of us start getting mighty pissed off. Now to be fair this is the fault of the GOP but bottom line we got a fucked up system.

I think it’s easier for folks who still have access to good or even adequate healthcare and decent jobs to say let’s be patient where folks who are struggling are getting mad. It’s not about unreal expectations but about the fact that we literally have millions who are barely existing and many of these folks used to be members of the middle class. In my work I literally see folks who used to give now having to receive and this is not just in my corner of the world, its happening all over this country.

We need some radical change, we need lawmakers to come together by hook or crook to help folks. I like President Obama but what I really want now is for him to channel Sam Jackson and start cracking heads or whatever it takes to create some change and help for the folks who are struggling just to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.  I think last night’s speech was great but at the same time I look back over the past year and think dude at times it feels like you forgot the little folks who worked so hard to get you elected. (Of course some of my sister bloggers, ya’ll know who you are say really he never stated he was down for the little folks in the first place but I’m gonna leave that alone for now) Folks who believed so much in change that they gave money $5, $10 at a time, they knocked on doors because when you spoke we wanted to answer that call for change we could believe in.

I imagine there are some who will read this and think I am being hasty and yes he has 3 more years to create change but are you aware there are some who don’t have 3 more years or 8 years, those folks need help now. I must admit when he spoke of freezing budgets I wonder what that will mean for folks already struggling but of course we won’t know till it happens.

Anyway, what were your thoughts on the SOTU? Even if you don’t agree with me, I would love to hear what you have to say. By the way what about that Chris Matthews?

September 30, 2009

0



Current Events, Racial and Cultural, Random babble

Where is the hope and the change?

Like millions of other Americans, during the last presidential campaign, I got swept up in the tide of believing that yes we could make change in this country. I believe I have shared before I was not initially gung-ho about Barack Obama, in fact I was way more into John Edwards who I felt really had a better sense of caring about the working men and women in this country. Of course we know ole Johnnie had to drop out and turns out he would have had way too much on his plate to effectively govern this country, seeing as how his life vaguely resembles a character you would find on the Maury Povich Show…

So I started to take a look at candidate Obama and figured hey this could be the guy. I truly liked the fact he had been a community organizer, having started my switch to the non-profit world eons ago as a community organizer, I know its good work that really creates change if you work hard at it. I was also reminded by my son who fell in love with Obama early on of how quick he had risen. Back in 2004, we were in Chicago when Obama was running for the Senate and both recalled how we had read about him when we were in town.

I grew to like Obama so much last year that I financially supported his campaign, granted my few dollars were a drop in the bucket but after the years of the Bush regime, I wanted to believe in him. Which brings me to my point today…now I know many folks especially Black folks will say don’t judge him, he had a mess to clean up, give him time. I agree lets give him time, my problem is in the work world generally by the time you have been on a job over 6 months, your employer expects to have a sense of who you are as an employee.

Well President Obama has been on the job long enough for me to wonder what the hell is going on? Right now as I type this I understand the President and First Lady are off trying to bring the Olympics to our hometown, Chicago. Um…is that really a good idea?

This past week back in my hometown a young man was savagely killed just down the street from his school, he was a decent kid from what I have read, reports are that he was an honor roll student who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe it’s because my son is 17 but this story really touched a nerve in me, even good kids will do dumb shit and being in the midst of a gang fight trying to see what is going on is the type of thing kids do especially in urban areas.

The thing is this is not the first time this year that a kid has gotten killed in Chicago near their school, hell this shit is an epidemic and now thanks to technology we can watch a life being snuffed out and get so desensitized to it that we do nothing.

Now it’s my understanding that President Obama is throwing around the idea that making the school year longer will actually help our kids, maybe it will for a few but considering that kids already spend most of their time in school or working on school work. I see this as a bad idea. I most certainly am not sold on the idea that increasing school days will help our inner city youth. Instead they will leave school at 5pm even more frustrated and I see violence increasing. I admit there is a lot more to the talk of increasing the time spent in school but I see it as a bad idea.

Pretty much the same way I have not cared for Obama’s pep speeches he seems to like to give when talking to predominantly Black audiences, after all, we all feed our kids fried chicken in the morning…talks like these sound good and yes people need to take more responsiblity for themselves but maybe we need to address the societal barriers that create dysfunctional families. If he thinks folks should eat better, maybe we need less junk food places in the hood. Maybe there needs to be more Whole Foods and less bodegas where you can’t even find fresh produce. He spent time on the south-side of Chicago and he knows as I do that in many parts of the south side of Chicago and urban areas across this land that fried chicken is a lot more accessible than a baked chicken. Shit, the ole corner store in my Granny’s area didn’t even sell whole chickens.

My pont of this rant is that we need more than speeches that sound good, we need actual change and sorry but knowing what is happening back home. I think Chicago needs to spend the money that would be spent hosting the Olympics to go towards funding programs that could help actual people. If he cares so much about the hometown then create some change that will better everyone rather than making Mayor Daley feel good.

While we are at, what about real healthcare reform? I just spoke with a professional colleague whose partner had bypass surgery recently and the bill they got, mind you these folks are retired military with damn good insurance was for thirty two thousand dollars after insurance! After insurance! Yet more and more people are facing bills like that, yet what will probably come to pass for health insurance reform in this country is likely to be nothing more than a band aid solution.

Look, I haven’t given up entirely on the President yet but I will say if he was one of my employees, we would be sitting down discussing whether or not he needs help to do his job because so far things are a tad off track.

September 10, 2009

0



Current Events, Random babble

Why I am not the president

If nothing else I admire President Obama for being able to stay focused and on task. I only caught bit and pieces of the President’s speech last night but thanks to the internet, I have the broad strokes. I also caught that clip of Rep Joe Wilson from South Carolina essentially heckling the president with his indignant outburst of you lie. Wow! Let me repeat that wow! Whatever happened to respecting the office of president even if you didn’t care for the person personally holding the position?

I like how Obama continued to roll with his speech because as a Chicago girl, let me tell you, had Wilson been heckling me as president in such a fashion, I would have not only brought out that brash style many Chicagoans are known for but I would have done one better.

Here goes, with BGIM as president…”You lie” Wilson shouts. BGIM “Who said that” Once I spotted the offender, I would have politely said to everyone wait a second. At that point I would have got up walked over to Wilson looked him in the face and said if you ever disrespect me like that again in such a venue I will personally kick your ass. Then I would have taken his Blackberry, stomped on it, walked back up to the podium and politely explained that while I have no problem with civil disagreement, I will not stand for blatant disrespect and the next time anyone decides to act an ass they will either receive a presidential ass kicking or I will unleash Rahm off that short lease he has been on. (if you are not familiar with Rahm Emmanuel’s personality, do a Google search).

Then again, this is why I am not president because my ability to put up with shit is not that great. So Obama while I am still not in love with what you are proposing, I have to say you do live up to that joke about having a Zen like quality.

If you want more deep analysis of what went down though last night, well…I am not that blogger but I would suggest perusing the blogosphere since there are some folks who had fantastic coverage, right now I am loving Jack and Jill politics.

ETA: I am not a violent person, I don’t hit my kids and pretty much avoid needing to get physical with anyone but Wilson’s actions were so offensive to me that really threatning to kick his ass and stomping on his Blackberry would hopefully send a message that the time for games and bullshit is over.