Check The Diagonal

Its So Hard

2010-05-22T16:26:00-04:00

I’m still around and will be back in time once I get some more time to do it in. With the little spare time I do have I’ve been working on a developing a sales curriculum for inner city community centers to teach kids how to use very basic sales technique to chameleon based on audience in order to fit in anywhere and to sell themselves and their ideas with confidence regardless of background and economic circumstance.

I give it to people who blog full time without getting paid to do it. It is hard.

They get it. Come around my way

2010-04-02T17:53:00-04:00

Postbourgie’s Friday’s Random Ten is the perfect cap to a week filled with misunderstandings, generalizations and assumptions on the subject of interracial relationships. My basic take on the subject is: if you don’t like interracial relationships then don’t get into one. And that still stands. But, the posting of LL’s “Around the Way Girl” just sums it all up beautifully for me, they get it. Its that feeling you get after a long day downtown and you finally step off that train into your neighborhood, your battery is instantly recharged, you’re home. And so I’m not sure race is the correct dissection point of interracial relationships, it’s culture. We gravitate to what we are most comfortable with because we need, love and appreciate it.

But now thanks to that LL joint, I’m feeling all Spring feverish and homesick for the sounds and people from Uptown. I want a cold Presidente, and a park bench at Bennett, and I want to hear some merengue tipico and just hang with my people.

More after the jump if you like…

Influential Books- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

2010-03-22T22:16:00-04:00

Ta-Nehisi has a fun thread up right now with his 8 most influential books. His thread got me thinking about some of the books that had the greatest impact on me. I am a bone fide book lover. When I was a kid it was my best escape from a miserable reality and I devoured everything from Dante to Dr. Seuss. I don’t discriminate either, I’ll read just about anything from bubble gum romances to comic books to Sherlock Holmes. One exception, I don’t re-read any John Steinbeck. IMO, he is the single most overrated American author who preferred to peddle in unnecessary and cheap shock tragedies in order to mask the fact that he wasn’t very talented.

Maybe I’ll share some of my favorites passages from time to time.

If I had to pick just one book, or character that was most influential to me as a child it has to be “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” Tom Sawyer is the single greatest hustler every written into a book. There is one passage in particular that is single-handedly responsible for me learning to sell at such a young age. In fact, this is exactly what I do for a living. I convince people to paint my fence every single day.

From Chapter 2:

“Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it -- namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.”

Yes We Can and Why I Did

2010-03-22T18:56:00-04:00

“But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been
anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible
odds; when we've been told that we're not ready, or that we shouldn't
try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a
simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people.

Yes we can.”

-Barack Obama, New Hampshire 2008

There are dozens of recaps and impact analysis stories on yesterday’s historic health care reform vote in the House so I’m not going to do that today. I am ecstatic that affordable health care is now a right for all Americans. This is what change looks like and is exactly why I voted and worked so hard to elect President Obama.

Instead I’m going to tell a story about why I care so much. Those of you who believe in fate or even dumb luck might appreciate it.

I’d never been to Iowa before, yet there I was, freezing my ass off in the December arctic cold in front of Des Moines International. I was waiting for my new boss who had invited me to a customer call to assist in my ramp up. That’s typical for life in sales, August worldwide sales meetings in Arizona, or winters in Chicago or Des Moines; it’s never South Beach in January. The company we visited were not good prospects but we were flying out the next morning and they were really nice guys, so at the end of the call we invited them out for dinner. They declined, a Democratic Presidential candidate named Barack Obama was speaking at a local high school and they wanted to go hear him. After some education on how seriously Iowans take their civic responsibility we could only accept their invitation to join them.

At this point I have to admit that I was seriously unhappy with this turn of events. I was cold, there was no sale, and I wasn’t going to get a cocktail to soak my miseries with.

As corny as it may sound what happened next literally changed my life forever. It wasn’t the speech itself, which was a combination of his red state-blue state speech from the 2004 Democratic Convention and his Iowa victory speech. This was the first time I’d ever heard a politician speak without depending on personal pronouns to carry the point. The speech wasn’t about him or the shiny new job he wanted to get his hands on or how he was going to single handedly make my life better because he was so great. The speech was about the people in that gym and it was about personal responsibility and accountability and perseverance and accomplishment in the face of the longest odds. It was about the failures of cynicism and the power of hope and what could be accomplished if Americans would stand up and work for change, because we must, not selfishly, but on behalf of each other.

For my entire life I equated my own personal success with wealth creation, with hustling to get ahead and get by. I had escaped the ghetto of my childhood and never looked back. At that moment I realized that I learned all the wrong things, and that I’d lived my life in a very shallow and meaningless way. Now I feel very strongly that if all I do with the balance of my life is to create more wealth in order to create more distance between myself and where I came from, I will have failed miserably.

I was 39 years old the day I voted for Barack Obama in the Georgia Democratic Primary. It was the first time I’d ever voted in my life and looking back I have a lot of guilt associated with my non-participation in our government, especially considering the Bush 8 years. Understand though, where I come from parental guidance was a daily lesson in what not to do and politicians only pandered in my neighborhood during the closest of elections only to disappear again the day afterwards. In my eyes, and in the eyes of my community, voting was a privilege reserved for downtown people, rich people and more specifically, rich white people and so I never wasted my time or my energy on voting. The only thing registering to vote got you was jury duty. I was wrong.

Those nice Iowans I met that day took their responsibility seriously because it is. Elections matter. If President Obama has taught me anything over the past two years its that one person CAN make a difference. Perfect isn’t achievable, waiting is untenable and ambivalence, in the way I was, is inexcusable. But if we each get up and try to do only what we can, great things can be accomplished.

“When faced with crisis, we did not shrink from our challenge -- we overcame it. We did not avoid our responsibility -- we embraced it. We did not fear our future -- we shaped it.”

-President Barack Obama, White House 2010

Dude, Black is Black

2010-03-16T01:43:00-04:00

I heard about this story last Friday. Torii Hunter, the 11th highest paid MLB baseball player in 2009 provides us yet another example of why athletes should stick to sports and leave the social commentary to others. Article here

"As African-American players, we have a theory that baseball can go get an imitator and pass them off as us," Hunter says. "It's like they had to get some kind of dark faces, so they go to the Dominican or Venezuela because you can get them cheaper. It's like, 'Why should I get this kid from the South Side of Chicago and have Scott Boras represent him and pay him $5 million when you can get a Dominican guy for a bag of chips?'

The consensus seem to be that Hunter will get a pass for this. Baseball people have come to his defense and many have said his comments were out of context and misinterpreted. The quote above is pretty emphatic and so I’m finding it difficult to find any context where Hunter is worthy his pass. I found his entire rant racist in a way that feels inspired by jealousy and envy and ignorance. School Daze was a 1988 flick.

Readers already know my wife and children are Dominican and I’ve spent a lot of time in D.R so I say this from experience. The Dominican Republic is a black country because they have the blood of African slaves running through their veins the same way Torii Hunter does. Dominicans, who are a fiercely proud and patriotic people, consider themselves Dominican first and Latino second but it doesn’t diminish the fact that the slavery history of the country makes it impossible for them to be called black imposters in any context.

Additionally, Hunter should summer league in D.R soon because his baseball knowledge is severely lacking as well. Baseball is the national sport in the Dominican Republic in a way it will never be on the south side of Chicago or anywhere else in America. Some Dominicans play a little basketball (my wife’s father was a basketball player) and Dominicans love to watch a good boxing match but aside from that there is nothing else but baseball. There’s no football, soccer, tennis, lacrosse or track. Kids of all ages play baseball. They start with a stick and few rocks as soon as they can stand on their own two feet and if they’re lucky, they get invited to participate in one of the many baseball schools on the island where they do nothing else their entire childhood but get better at playing baseball.

As for the dumb ass bag of chips comment, Torii should check that list of MLB salaries, there are multiple Dominicans who make at least what he makes and the top two highest paid in players in 2009, who make double what he does, are both Dominican and represented by Scott Boras.

UPDATE: Speaking of Dominican Baseball, I caught Sugar again last night. While I have problems with the movie and its portrayal of Dominican tenacity and temperment there is no question this is a movie about boys who are poor as dirt trying to make something of themselves through baseball. It is their hoop dreams. Let me know if you see a white Dominican face in the vid. Maybe Vlad should rent this for Torii?

So tell me where you from

2010-03-10T22:19:00-05:00

We will be in Georgia 3 full years this June. We moved here for the house you can buy in the suburbs with grass and trees and a yard, the quality public schools, the safety and the milder winters. We did get all that, but with a price. I sometimes lament the fact that in exchange for all the benefit this suburb offers my kids won’t get to grow up in place that is worthy of their being defined by. I watch folks in our subdivision rocking front license plate covers that shout out our neighborhood and just shake my head. That’s one of my fears. This place cannot be allowed to define my children. They cannot strive to want a license plate of a homogenized suburb to define them like so many of the people around us whose primary goal is to blend in by acting and looking as much like the next person as humanly possible. No. Not for mine.

Judgmental much? Indeed. But understand, New Yorkers are insanely proud and territorial animals. Any kid from Uptown to Coney Island can tell you why their 12-48 sq block hood is the greatest in the known universe. And any New Yorker worth his bones can tell you why NYC > anywhere else on the planet. These things are fact. From pizza to haute cuisine, hip-hop to punk rock, graffiti to MOMA, Denzel to DiNiro to Old Timers Day in El Barrio. NYC is the fount from which all great things flow. And if you’re still talking you might just get mushed with Yankees Baseball.

Me, I’m from the single most shout out hood in hip-hop history. While I’ve cleaned up well and graduated to these affluent suburbs for the betterment of my children you can take the kid out of the hood but can never take the hood out of the kid.

Poem for Sunday

2010-03-07T15:37:00-05:00

and for my daughter, and her two friends who will hopefully take the lesson away from the mistake.

do not be afraid of no

“Do not be afraid of no,
Who has so very far to go”:

New caution to occur
To one whose inner scream set her to cede, for softer lapping and smooth fur!

Whose esoteric need
Was merely to avoid the nettle, to not-bleed.

Stupid, like a street
That beats into a dead end and dies there, with nothing left to reprimand or meet.

And like a candle fixed
Against dismay and countershine of mixed

Wild moon and sun. And like
A flying furniture, or bird with lattice wing; or gaunt thing, a-stammer down a nightmare neon peopled with condor, hawk and shrike.

To say yes is to die.
A lot or a little. The dead wear capably their wry

Enabled emblems. They smell.
But that and that they do not altogether yell is all that we know well.

It is brave to be involved,
To be not fearful to be unresolved.

Her new wish was to smile
When answers took no airships, walked a while.

Gwendolyn Brooks

Lightening Up

2010-03-05T19:38:00-05:00

It’s Friday. Enough of racism and politics and disagreements and inflexibility and preconceptions. I always just try to start from a point where I happily admit I don’t know shit and absorb from there. Its served me well my entire career. Being wrong is the best opportunity to learn. But my brain needs a break.

More than anything right now, I wish I was in D.R., feeling that sweet sun, drinking una Presidente vestida de novia and listening to this…

Who Am I?

2010-03-04T22:37:00-05:00

I talk about racism a lot. That is basically how I spend my free time lately; thinking and talking about race and racism. I attribute this new trend to the overabundance of racism we’ve experienced since moving to Georgia from New York City 3 years ago. This new negative exposure has made me both hypersensitive and aware like never before. But I like talking about it. It raises my passion and it’s clearly necessary. We do not talk about the subject honestly or nearly enough as far as I’m concerned.

That said, let me be upfront, regardless of your own background, if you are framing your approach to the conversation of race and racism based on what you think you see in me, before you attempt to get to know me, you are going to be wrong. I’m not not that guy. If we could only agree on that one point before we begin I think we would be framing the conversation in the right way from jump. Let’s agree that we don’t know each other. And let’s us not be like those street corner MCs who try to act like they’re spitting freestyle when you know they wrote that shit at home last month.

If we can agree to make our conversation about race and racism about us getting to know each other than we might be able diffuse what I think are the two wrong ways to go about talking about race, which unsurprisingly happen to be the two most common ways to talk about race. The first is making the conversation be confrontational. If someone has got to “win”, or if I’ve got to feel like we might be throwing joints before its all over, we aren’t going to learn anything and someone is going to get their feelings hurt. The second is stereotyping and we all do it when talking about race. Its so easy to regurgitate all those things we’ve learned about someone we aren’t talking to at the moment if we can paint the person we are talking to with the broadest brush and then turn it on ourselves, its safe. But we’ve heard it all before and its boring and won’t accomplish anything. Talk to me about something I might not have already heard, something that will make me think, feel uncomfortable or happy. But talk.

A Poem for Sunday

2010-02-28T14:09:00-05:00

Yesterday marked the day that Dominicans celebrate as the day their country was freed from Haitian rule and became independent. This poem is in honor of La Trinitaria, because it is important to remember a story of three men, Juan Pablo Duarte, Ramon Matias Mella, and Francisco del Rosario Sanchez, who inspired their country to become free. “We are the change we’ve been waiting for” wasn’t a campaign slogan to win an election, it was wake up call to rescue a country. While the NAACP and other so called leadership organizations opt to play along to get along, the crisis for the working poor and minorities in this country grows worse every day. Where we at?

You Who Sleep Soundly Through Our Bleakest Hour

You who sleep soundly through our bleakest hour,
who hear the meekest cry, and turn away,
who ride the river, blessing it with power
to cancel what we've made day by slow day;
You whom we cannot know nor flee, who hide
behind your countless aliases, who bear
the weapon of your absence like a tide
against our helplessness, and fail to care;
You who stand by while madness picks the lock,
stroke cuts the wires, tumor rigs the mine:
Look how we scour the earth to find--in rock,
in fire, in word--your signature, some sign
of you in thought that quarrels with your will,
and as it quarrels, hungers for you still.

-Rhina Espaillat

The Failure of the NAACP

2010-02-27T20:12:00-05:00

My twitter feed and inbox was full of cheers over the NAACP Image Awards last night. Most people loved it. @NAACP retweeted comments which they were most proud of during and after the show, most of which equated to this year’s Image Awards being the best one of all time. The only consistent criticism I saw was either in protest of Sandra Bullock’s nomination for her work in “The Blind Side” (both because she is white and the movie is one big racist stereotype) or against the stereotypical freight train that is Tyler Perry Inc. And THAT is exactly why the NAACP is an absolute failure in its current incarnation and how it has utterly failed people of color and America.

From The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People website, some history:

“The NAACP was formed partly in response to the continuing horrific practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, the capital of Illinois and resting place of President Abraham Lincoln. Appalled at the violence that was committed against blacks, a group of white liberals that included Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard, both the descendants of abolitionists, William English Walling and Dr. Henry Moscowitz issued a call for a meeting to discuss racial justice. Some 60 people, seven of whom were African American (including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell), signed the call, which was released on the centennial of Lincoln's birth.”

And the organizations mission statement, also from the NAACP website”

“The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.”

The NAACP was formed 102 years ago in response to the appalling violence and injustice committed against people of color in America. And in that past 102 years the NAACP has been responsible for a countless number of great accomplishments, including but by no means not limited to:

The first African Americans to be commissioned officers in World War I
IN 1920 taught America to be brave in the face of injustice and hate by holding their annual conference in Atlanta, Georgia-Stronghold of the Klan
First broke segregation at the University of Maryland in 1935
The Kerr Principle
Morgan vs. Virginia
Brown vs. the Board of Education
The Civil and Voting Rights Acts

If the goal was to assimilate then I am sadly mistaken and you can stop reading now. If the goal was to be accepted into the big house, through the front door, not because it’s our house, but because we have grown to look and act the same as they who now accept us, then the mission was accomplished, you can stop now, there is nothing left to fight over.

I hope to fucking God, not. I spend a majority of my day feeling like ALL I ever do is complain. My three beautiful babies are inheriting a world that is racially less diverse, more segregated and more insensitive than the one they might have been forced to navigate 40 years ago. Racism and hatred in the form of perverse nationalism and populism has become mainstream and acceptable and it is broadcast live on Fox every single day. A United States Senator, just yesterday said that Black people were better off as slaves than they are now and CNN won’t even give that two minutes of airtime, Fox News will applaud him for saying it every 30 minutes for the next week. There will be no constructive outrage. We are officially desensitized.

Last night I watched the only organization in America with the size, history and experience capable of mobilizing Americans against this growing surge in racial hatred as an acceptable political weapon condone it by paying the very people responsible for cultivating that same racism and hatred to host their Image Awards. The millions of African American advertising dollars spent on the NAACP Image Awards broadcast are free to be used to fund Roger Ailes campaign against minorities in America via Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. In prouder days the NAACP would be at the forefront of the war against Fox and their exploitation of minority athletes on Fox Sports as a vehicle to fund racism and hatred on Fox News. Today the NAACP merely makes its own contributes to the fund.

No, this is sickening tragedy, Shakespearian in quality. The NAACP has turned its cheek and claimed great success as measured by how many people watched an award show. An award show which included the nomination of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” and Michael Jackson’s Funeral Services. Since when do we celebrate stereotypes or perpetuate them ourselves? I don’t get the sense that the NAACP is paying attention to the needs of minorities in America. Maybe they are waiting for President Obama to their job for them ala Tavis Smiley’s search for a Black agenda. Don’t search, lead. Either way, the NAACP is currently worse than irrelevant, they are complicity part of the problem, and should therefore no longer be supported by minorities in America . Those accomplishments I listed above were a really long time ago. Those laurels done died.

On the off chance someone at the NAACP reads this, there is an army of intelligent, angry and frustrated Americans waiting for someone to organize them in the cause against racism and hatred as a weapon in America if you would only show the courage and vision to do the work your founders so vigilantly did before you. In other words, wake the fuck up por favor.

Racism cannot be politically correct

2010-02-26T19:39:00-05:00

By now everyone has heard that George Lopez is going to be making a modern day version of Speedy Gonzales. Some in the Latino community are pleased because there are so few Latino directors and producers that any hire, regardless of content, should be looked on favorably. Correct, there is a complete absence of Latino executives in Hollywood but talk to me when a Latino gets a shot that doesn’t also include reviving one of the worst racist stereotypes of Latinos in television history. The next Oscar Indie flick was obviously unavailable for Lopez to produce. The anger, which I share, has led many in the Latino community have come out and call Lopez Tio Tomas. I’m not even sure what Uncle Tom represents anymore and dislike how carelessly its thrown around. Is that what people think is boilerplate for sellout? It’s not. This is about Lopez getting straight up paid at the expense of his people. The man sold out and should be fucking ashamed of himself. Call him a sell-out. And he should go ahead get paid, but don’t try to fool the Latino community into thinking racism can be remade to be politically correct in order to sell tickets and save face. You’re in the anti-circle holmes.

“We wanted to make sure that it was not the Speedy of the 1950s — the racist Speedy,” said Ann Lopez, George’s wife, who will serve alongside him as a producer.”

Mrs. Lopez, how do you intend to politically remake this?

Just Nothing

2010-02-26T12:33:00-05:00

I had this re-launch of me all mapped out. It took long enough. I have so many different versions of what I was going to say, all long winded and elaborate. It was going to be full of autobiography and cleverness so that people who came here by accident could understand where I come from and stay. It was going to be wrapped in old school hip-hop and urban myths explaining why my particular ghetto is better than any other ghetto. At one point I think LL was even gonna remind folks not to call it a comeback. And then I heard Joe Unger died. He was a 41 year old father of five in the best shape of his life and he died of a heart attack. Big Joe was the biggest kid in my JHS class at 187 and I was the smallest and he was my friend. And in missing the man I never got to know Big Joe to be I just can’t bring myself to write the look at how unique I am post that I was planning and instead am just going to continue my experience here the way I started it.

A Poem for Sunday- RIP Lucile Clifton

2010-02-14T08:48:08-05:00

The whole site design thing is taking a little longer than I anticipated. I feel like I should say that since this feels like having guests over for dinner and I forgot to tidy up.

This is the poem that most connects me to Lucile Clifton-those same somethings have failed here too. R.I.P wonderful, wonderful woman.

Also, Stacia Brown reposted a wonderful tribute peice she wrote last December here.

A Poem for Sunday

2010-02-07T15:06:00-05:00

and for Sarah Palin and her Tea Party revelers who attempt to co-op the revolution of change that belongs to my children in the name of a white God that does not love them.

Enemy

It would be nice
In any case,
To someday meet you
Face to face
Walking down
The road to hell...
As I come up
Feeling swell.

Langston Hughes

Black History Month Reading Project

2010-02-04T19:44:00-05:00

I’m still going back and forth on how the site will look when it’s done but while I’m going through that, the list of things I thought I wanted to write about is growing quickly and quickly becoming irrelevant and the little hater is starting to play tricks on me.

My childhood home was filled with great books and if nothing else inspired a great love for reading in me that has thankfully passed on to my twins. About a year ago I realized that they are able to read just about anything I do. Since then we have had great fun reading together and have made a bit of a game out of it. Here's what we do: I read everything they read when they are reading it and then we have lots to talk about together. It's magical really, I essentially never run out of things to talk to the twins about, in fact we are always talking about something (for you parents out there, trust me, communication is everything). Every other book (or series of books) they read is recommended by me that way I can introduce my favorites to them and vise versa. I’ve painfully suffered through the Twilight series with Cassandra (in keeping up my end I’ve read a lot of 12 yr old popular fiction!) but I’ve handed them “Candide”, “Sidhartha”, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, “A Lesson Before Dying”, “The Last Lecture”, “The Alchemist”, “Oscar Wao” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.” I felt I had arrived at a really good place with the twins when Cassandra slammed Candide for ridiculously marrying Cunegonde in the end or when Nicky got the point of Santiago’s return to exactly where his journey began. 12 is such an amazing age for little people. They are wide open and asking all the right questions.

Now February is Black History Month but I’m not really sure what that means exactly. The public schools here in the suburbs of Atlanta have not acknowledged it in any way. There hasn’t been a single book or movie recommendation to come home from the twins’ English or History classes. To me, this is much worse than what has happened to Dr. King’s day, everyone is so happy to have the day off without caring why they’ve got it off in the first place. Isn’t is bad enough Black History Month is during the shortest month of the year, now it has to be completely ignored? My wife Andrea and I feel like the institutions here work very hard to help our children forget their minority heritage. Not my three. This weekend we decided to modify our reading game in honor of Black History Month. For the month of February I will recommend all the books we read. This weekend we finished “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” and after their kicks and screams and tears of disbelief I am pleased and encouraged by their ability to understand. We are going to read “A-Train-Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman” by Charles Dryden next.

I’m collecting recommendations. Drop me a note or a comment.

Me all 2.0 and ish

2010-01-28T00:02:00-05:00

After about 6 months of mostly talking to myself on here and enjoying it, I’m going to stick around. Some of the good folks at Typepad are doing some redecorating for me so I feel more at home. In the meanwhile I’m testing some of my new connections to Facebook and Twitter. Interesting live flow going on tonight for the President’s SOTU at Postbourgie.

I’ll be back.

Fucking Progressives

2010-01-21T14:49:00-05:00

The entire country was able to see the Brown win coming a mile away. Coakley was without game, period. The people of Massachusetts, the American public and even the winning Republican Senator Elect Brown all confirm what we also already knew; this was NOT a referendum on President Obama or his agenda.

The big story of the week isn’t Brown and his big win, it is the collective collapse of the Democratic spine spurred on by Progressives who seem capable of only thinking in terms of Utopia and cannot tell the difference between what is best and what can be accomplished. In the absence of Utopia they simply throw up their hands and quit. Weak.

Here is Krugman from yesterday making me ill.

But I have to say, I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in.

And your alternative is what? Get a backbone and do your job as a leading Progressive voice in America. Present alternatives. You are a Nobel Prize winner, get out there and explain to Joe Democrat what the angles are. There are countless angles. Prescribe don’t whine and cry. If you can’t do that, get out of the way and STFU.

Brown is not really important.

2010-01-20T12:49:00-05:00

My head is full from the pundits and experts and palm readers on the MSM and the blogosphere selling the American people conflict. Our MSM is the greatest reality TV show. People need to go back to thinking about Haiti because this story doesn’t really have legs. Brown does not have to be important and here’s why:

· It is easy for a candidate to pull a Sarah Palin by pretending to be something he is not, say he drives a truck and co-op Obama’s message of change to get elected by a wave of populist anger when the person he is campaigning against forgets to campaign and takes a Caribbean vacation with the fam. He basically ran uncontested. But now he has to show up for work and vote and his record says he is to the left of the other New England Republicans.

· The Democrats didn’t have a supermajority when Obama was elected and frankly it has been used as a curtain for Republicans to hide their obstructionism behind or obstructionist behinds or both. Message to Democrats: Call them on their bullshit. The average American doesn’t even know what a filibuster is and has never seen one. Make Republicans filibuster everything live on CNN; climate change, Wall Street reform, healthcare. Create more shit for them to stand up and filibuster. The key is not to run away but to run ahead faster. Force them to reconcile the misleading untruths of their populist messages with the truth of governing.

· For the record Obama’s agenda polls at a 60% approval rating in Massachusetts. This was a referendum on Coakley, and frankly she earned every bit of the ass-kicking she got last night. Chokeley should stick, it fits.

We all know the Republicans are unfit to lead America but now we are going to find out if Democrats have the balls to.

Happy Birthday Dr. King

2010-01-18T10:30:41-05:00

Michael Cronin