Before I begin, I’d like to say that I’ve been watching Nigerian football since Sam Okwaragi’s time, back when Jay-Jay Okocha was still playing for Rangers FC in Enugu, Nigeria.
That being said, I’d like to take this time to re-iterate what I’ve said in the past. Nigerian soccer performance has been awful since France ‘98. The last impressing performance by Nigeria was beating Spain with that lovely shot from Sunday Oliseh during the 1998 World Cup. Ever since, they’ve been nothing more than just another average African team. Not to mention the fact, they didn’t even make the World Cup in 2006.
Why I’m I writing about this? Because I’m tired of all the hype and people (Nigerians and non-Nigerians) telling me Nigeria is really good in soccer. No, they used to be 10 years ago. Now, they suck.
How have they been able to win some games? Easy, regular teams are still haunted by the performances in USA ‘94, Atlanta ‘96, and France ‘98. As a result, they are defending more, and attacking less. Great teams like Argentina, Brazil, Spain and more destroys Nigeria in matches. They attack Nigeria’s unconditioned defense full of mistakes, especially after the 70th minute. Well, maybe the fatigue that shows at that time is due to African soccer players reducing their ages by 5-10 years in order to make it pro. So while they are listed as 30, they are possibly 40 year old men…lol
I woke up this morning and watched the Nigeria/USA game and was not impressed. With USA playing with only 10 men, Nigeria barely squeezed out a 2-1 win. First, we know Africans can’t shoot…at least not from outside the 18-yard line. They were shanking shots wide away from target. On a break away, they lack individual skills to make a counter attack deadly. In most cases, the attacks were slowed down and waited for the other team’s defense to get back. In other cases, people were trying to do moves and losing the ball. On the offensive third, it looked like they were playing monkey post (Ban all Monkey Post games in Africa now!…lol). Players held the ball long enough to draw 2-3 players in the attack and were still passing it around, trickly within the same little area.
Late in the game, U.S learned that they needed to score a goal and began pushing. The defense was totally exposed and U.S could’ve capitalized especially with the one that hit the cross-bar.  The next round will be very tough for them. Even the goalie was caught off his line a couple of times, I can imagine what the likes of Messi and other stars can do to that defense.
Just tired of hearing that Nigeria is good. Personally, I’ve never been a fan of false praises whether it benefits me or not so I had to tell the truth if no one else will.
Do you care? Yes, you do because you made it to the end of this article

Of course, I can’t say  the same for CMR because, well we win Olympics medals in soccer and were second in the more recent African Cup.  I will admit that our performance in the last couple of world cups have been less than stellar.

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I don’t care if you give ALL your voters an incentive to come out and vote.  However, I do have a HUGE problem when you give selective incentives and it appears to cut across racial lines.  I am under the belief that voting should be its own reward.  The carrot should not be chicken dinners, but civic duty and pride.  It got fuzzy for me when the people with the dinners went in and voted for him.

Moreover, the process was completely screwed up.  People presenting themselves were not not even asked for IDs when they came in to vote.  So basically there was no way for people to check if the people voting the endorsement were indeed Ward 2 residents.   From talking to one person that was bused in by our opponent , she said she was a resident of “ward 1, Ward 2, Ward 3 and Ward 4… Whatever you want me to be.”  Something like that should have easily caught. What’s the point of calling it a ward 2 Endorsement, if people from around the bused in?

The most frustrating part of last night was the realization I can’t vote while  people who don’t care about this election and would gladly give their vote for a KFC dinner are allowed to participate in the election.

Despite all of this there is a silver lining to last night meeting.  We can win this election. Had we convinced 15 more people to show we would have blocked him from receiving this endorsement.  So despite our opponent’s questionable tactics, we can still win on Sep 9th.

You read comments from other frustrated voters in the dcwire blog post.

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After an away weekends, I try to capture the beautiry of the Cherry Blossoms. I’m not quite sure what I’m going for there.

Lastly, this year’s DUB ball. Always a good times.

You can fid the rest of my pictues on the photo section.

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Recently, Wei had idea for  another website.  Instead of just talking about like we used to, he researched the idea more and when he decided it was feasible to implement it, he quit his job and started working on it.  That’s how easyautosales.com came to be.  The site is a place where people can sell cars as well as buy new or used cars.  Based on his research, Wei decided his latest idea was good enough to compete with the likes of cars.com, carmax.com, vehix.com and even craigslist.  It’s hard to know whether or not Wei and his team are going to be successful but since their launch 2.5 months ago they managed to  have a million cars listed, have over 100,000 pages indexed in Google, achieve over 100,000 visits to the page and as he put it “spend a crap load of money with Amazon Web Services”.  If you’re bored enough, you can follow the trials and tribulations of Wei and his team over at http://comefortheride.com/.  Of course if you’re in the market for a car, you should include http://www.easyautosales.com as one the websites that you visit.

Congrats Wei, Way to go all out.

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Over the last year and half, I’ve looked for various YouTube videos on Obama.  Of course some where in complete utter distaste and should prolly be take down, but the vast majority were inspirational and depict the American genius and  creativity.  Below are my favorite YouTube videos about Obama with a few honorable mentions.

Barack Obama/Bobby Kennedy - Hope

Work to Do Remix

Yes We Can - Barack Obama Music Video

Barack Obama: Reflections of Bobby Kennedy

Barack Obama: We Shall Overcome

The Obama Dream

The “Obama Movement”

BARACK OBAMA YES WE CAN RAP SONG

Honorable Mention

Baby Got Barack

Sing for Obama Grassroots Music Video

Barack Obama: Poetic Politics

For Obama: “Si Se Puede Cambiar” by Andres Useche

What are your favorites?

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Someone once said all politics is local.  I don’t know who that person is (I suppose I could Google it) or why that they said that, but it turns out they must have been right because people have been repeating it ever since.   Since I enjoy politics and all politics are local, I figured it’s about time to get involved in local politics. I have thus decided to join the campaign of Cary Silverman running for Ward 2 DC Council seat.  We are looking a unseat current 17 yr Council member Jack Evans.. what can I say? Go  big or go home. I’m not going to seat and tell you why my candidate is better Ward 2 residents than Mr. Evans, nor am I going to tell you that He will solve every issue facing Ward  2 and the rest of the city.  What I will tell you is that he is a person dedicated to the DC neighborhoods and it is reflected in the involvement the years.  His presence on the council will be a breath of fresh air and new ideas to what has become an old boys club serving developers instead of citizens (yes I’m talking about the DC council). One thing I’ve learned so far is that local politics isn’t sexy but it matters. It matters because it affects our daily lives, from recycling to schools, from liquor licenses to gentrification and from sidewalk construction to zoning restrictions.   The campaign currently  has a small staff thus my role will vary greatly. Regardless, I look forward to meeting many of the residents of Ward 2 and making the case why it’s time for change in Ward 2 Seat.  If you’re in DC and would like to meeting Cary Silverman, please join us at a Happy Hour this Wed at Wednesday 6/4  at 1625 17th Street, NW from 5:30pm - 8 PM.  If you have any other questions about the Campaign feel free to e-mail henri at caryforcouncil dot org.

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The gist  of Mr. Benett’s presentation is that he has developed a technique that will more accurately group emails that each representative receives from various advocacy group so that s/he will not waste staff time reading all the emails and will have a better tally of where constituents stands on any particular issue by looking at the total number of emailed received.  According to him but unverified by anyone in the room, the system works with 95-99% accuracy and is easy to install and works with current e-mail systems on the Hill.  He claims to have tested in some offices with great result and received positive feedback.  In plain English, the system group letters according to a token or URL included each email.  So any given e-mailing campaign would have the same token. For the techie crowd, see some documentation at http://advocatehope.org/tech-tidbits. Mr. Bennett then called on all the orgs present at the lecture to lobby the vendors to start implementing this new system. He claims that there is no financial benefit to him and I don’t have any reason not to believe him. Lastly, Mr. Bennett claims staffer don’t read the letters already so his solution would a least make sure they have a accurate count before the vote.

I have two thoughts about this improvement by Mr. Benett.  As someone whose organization is trying to lobby congress to get legislation passed, this is fabulous. It’s a great tool and we can use to hopefully sway a representative’s mind and maybe get to move away from voting along party lines when we can get people from his district to e-mail him or her.  As person that has friends that work on the Hill, I know this will make their live easier and they will be a little more efficient while at the office and maybe get a few more things done.

As a private citizen, this “improvement” is outrageous.  Call me be crazy but I’d like to think that my representative or his staff would read the vast majority of e-mails and letters that come to them.  It’s their job! They  were elected to serve the people of their district and that includes reading constituent’s mail how ever outrageous they are.  The Reps and their staff are supposed to do what is good for the constituents and the for the country as a whole.  Just because 4999 people emailed about one side of the issue and 50001 email about the other side, doesn’t mean the rep should cast a vote in favor of  the highest bidder. While I appreciate Mr. Benett’s persistence and hard work (he’s been working on this solo for 5 years), I think his solution is the wrong way to go.   His solution is fixing the wrong problem.  I would even go as far as to say it’s making Congress worse.  We, as citizen and their employers, should not accept the fact Reps don’t read our mail or letters. We should def not make it easier for them not to read our letters.    While Mr. Benett’s claim about staffers not reading mail may be true, I refuse to give in his cynicism and make easier for them not to so.  And I sincerely hope others won’t either.

Was that too harsh?…….Naaaaaaaaaah.

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