Feudalism

You know, I try to keep my inner "crazy-conspiracy-theorist" in check, but sometimes....

So, if the United States government assumes sweeping authority to actually take ownership of millions of mortgages, essentially becoming the landowner for vast tracks of the American landscape....

I mean, isn't this kind of "eminent domain" taking to its absolutely worst extreme?

Tina Fay as Sarah Palin was great, BUT....

...what I'm really waiting for is for Saturday Night Live to bring back Jon Lovitz so he can do John McCain as Tommy Flanagan, Pathological Liar.

"Yeah, when I said the economy was strong, I was talking about the biceps on the workers. Yeah, that's the ticket."

Living in a Post-Rational World

So, before all of you liberals, progressives, and Democrats start doing the electoral victory dance because the failing economy has turned the tide presumably in Obama's favor, let me make one observation:

Although most people don't want to admit it, the vast majority of the electorate does not cast a vote for a specific policy or issue, even when they say they do. They're not voting for the issue, but for their emotional response to the issue.

They're not voting FOR a pro-life platform - they're voting because aligning themselves with the pro-life platform makes them FEEL better about their relationship with God.

They're not voting FOR environmental platform - they're voting because aligning with conservationism makes them FEEL like responsible stewards of the planet.

They're not voting FOR gun control - they're voting because the idea of gun control makes them FEEL safer.

As I mentioned earlier, Republicans figured this out a long time ago and decided to just cut out the middle man: they don't even really bother to run on issues anymore. Their campaigns are almost like reality TV shows, with characters cast in the roles as candidates to elicit specific emotional responses.

"The Maverick"

"The Hockey Mom"

"The Guy You'd Like To Have A Beer With"

Bill Clinton got it. He was "The Man From A Place Called 'Hope'".

Obama gets it, too. Just look at the early speeches.

The point is, if you're pinning your hopes for the election on convincing people with a rational argument about taxes and incentives and plans and such, I've got news for you: the average American is not listening.

They're feeling.

And if you want to win, you'd better start feeling and sharing and eliciting those feelings right along with them.

The Place Where Dreams Are Born

Let me wax poetic for a moment.

A few days ago, I wrote a blog post about the use of both negative and positive manifestation through the manipulation of collective emotional energy in the election process. I titled it "Before Sunrise", to hearken back to my Election '04 postmortem, "The Sun WILL Rise" (with a little nod to Richard Linklater), but also because so many of us seemed to be in a dark, scary place during this part of the election cycle, and, as they say, it's always darkest before the dawn.

But what else happens in the dark before the dawn?

We dream.

One of my dreams as I wrote that blog was that there would be a place where people could share their dreams and hopes and aspirations for the future of this country and the world, and where that collective, beautiful, joyous energy could coalesce into powerful, inspired action.

So, imagine my shock when a friend pointed me to this brand new blog:

Change. Hope. Dream.

Yes, a new blog, inspired by MY blog, that does exactly what I was hoping for.

Talk about a manifestation!

Dreams do become real.

So, GO THERE. Share your dreams. Share the blog. Help us all conjure the real magic that will transform the world around us.

Before Sunrise

I love logic.

That comes from my training and natural inclinations towards math, science, and the rational process. I like to know how and why things work.

I have also always been a creature of faith.

Perhaps it's the rural roots of my family and our own brushes with the esoteric and unseen.

And I don't consider these to be mutually exclusive.

One of my all-time favorite books is "Fire In The Mind" by George Johnson. In it, he examines a pair of seemingly mutually exclusive systems of thought in Santa Fe, New Mexico - the nuclear physics labs in Los Alamos and the traditional religions of the local Native American tribes - and shows that, in many ways, they have much more in common than the average person would think. After all, whether it's a sky god or an electron, they both use a series of instruments and tools to predict the behavior of things we cannot experience directly with our 5 senses, but which they both assume have a direct impact on your everyday life.

So, let's start with a somewhat lazy logical argument:

I'm an enormous believer in Arthur C. Clarke's so-called Third Law of Prediction:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

And by "technology", I'm pretty much in agreement with Wikipedia's initial definition that it is "a broad concept that deals with a species' usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt to its environment."

Now, if that's true, than the logic student in me would also posit a corollary - that anything that appears to be magic is simply the usage and knowledge of a series of tools and crafts that the observer does not fully understand.

In short, magic is simply a science you haven't figured out yet.

Which is why I'm a big fan of John Dee.

For those of you who don't know, Dee was, officially, the queen's surgeon, as in Queen Elizabeth I of England, way back in the 16th century. Not only was Dee a scientist and a mathematician of the first order, he was also a specialist in mysticism and the occult. So, not only did the queen turn to Dee for his scientific acumen, but she relied on him to interpret her dreams, to check the path and influence of the stars, etc. Because, of course, back in those days, if you were a scholar, you studied everything and treated it all with equal weight based on the actual results, without having a bias to one system of thought over another (e.g. rational science over mysticism).

But, you'll notice, individuals in positions of power almost always have someone next to them, just behind the scenes, who is doing.... something that the average layman doesn't quite understand.

Every King Arthur has a Merlin behind him to "work the roots", as they used to say back in "the country", to help him stay in power.

Now, I'm sure some of you have read this and said "wow, Day really hides his insanity quite well. I had no idea he was such a madman."

And that's OK, because I needed to put what I'm about to say in some context first.

I want to talk about Karl Rove.

I know what you're thinking.

And, yes, you're 100% right - I AM saying that Rove is to Bush as Merlin is to King Arthur or Gandalf is to Aragorn and so on and so on.

And it didn't fully click for me until today. Here's why.

Right after the 2004 Presidential election, I wrote a post called "The Sun WILL Rise", in which I said the reason why Bush won was because he was, literally, The Candidate of Fear (tm). The entire electorate had bought into the fear paradigm - Republicans were afraid of what might happen to them if Bush lost, and Democrats were afraid of what might happen if Bush won. But the fact of the matter was that everyone's attention and emotional energy was all focused on Bush. Our collective national fear put him in office.

So, as I wrote in a 2006 blog called "The California Democratic Party Sucks", I was no longer going to vote out of fear ever again, even if the absence of my vote for Phil Angelides meant that Arnold would get re-elected governor. I was only going to vote FOR what I believed in, not AGAINST anything.

And, yes, Arnold was re-elected, but, if you look at his record since then, for all intents and purposes, he may as well have been a blue-dog Democrat for the last two years.

Now, consider what's happened this year - there had been a tremendous amount of positive energy flowing in Barack Obama's direction. He figured out that it wasn't enough to have good policies. You also had to inspire people and activate their hearts. Luckily, he also has the skills to do that. The Democrats were on their way to a landslide victory.

Until McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Oh, wait - let me clarify that.

Until Karl Rove and his surrogates who are now running McCain's campaign forced him to choose Sarah Palin as his running mate.

And, while everyone on the left and in the media is screaming "but she's completely unqualified!!! She's a right-wing ideologue!!! She has a history of misuse of power!!!", they've all completely missed the point.

The Rovians made McCain pick her BECAUSE she's unqualified. BECAUSE she's an ideologue. BECAUSE she has a history of misusing power.

They picked her because she terrifies us.

Sarah Palin is The New Candidate of Fear (tm).

And now, instead of all this talk about hope and the future, we get Democrats and Obama supporters running around with their hair literally on fire over the possibility of President Palin.

I mean, people who've been completely silent over the course of this entire campaign have suddenly been bombarding me with crazed e-mails, sounding like Randy Quaid in "Independence Day":

"We've got to stop them!!!!!!"

The entire focus of the campaign is now on her - those who love her, and those who're afraid of her. And, at the moment, our collective national fear is putting her in office.

The manipulation of the emotional state of a group of people as large as a voting electorate is a science that Rove has employed for decades to adjust and control the political landscape to his liking. A science that the average person simply doesn't understand.

It's magic.

So, for those of you who support Barack Obama like I do, here's the plan - remember how you felt when you saw this?


Don't be misled by the news or the opposition: Our candidate gets it. He knows the power of the collective American spirit is what has propelled him this far and is what can bring him to victory.

So, from now until Election Day, stop forwarding all of those e-mails about how crazy Sarah Palin is.

Instead, tell me stories about the America you dream about.

The President and leadership you hope for.

The Future you believe in.

Write about your own faith in tomorrow, and forward THAT email to everybody in your address book. Re-ignite your belief in the horizon and pass those on to everyone you know.

There's a reason why this is Obama's logo:


To paraphrase Harvey Dent, it's always darkest before the dawn, but keep dreaming about the warmth of the sun on your face, and I promise you, THE DAWN IS COMING.

And remember to vote FOR Obama.

Lords of Illusions

I think both the haphazard process McCain employed to pick her as well as her own general lightweightness as a national candidate, not to mention McCain's proposed trip to the Gulf Coast while local officials are trying to prepare for a freakin' hurricane.... all of this simply reinforces the reality that the modern Republican party (at least, at the national level) is far more interested in symbolism and appearances than in actually, you know, doing what they're elected to do.

Let's LOOK like I'm doing something to respond to the hurricane.

Let's LOOK like I actually vetted my potential running mate.

Let's pick someone who literally LOOKS like she could appeal to the Hilary voters.

Let's drill for oil off our shores so that we LOOK like we're doing something for high gas prices.

Let's pass a law called "No Child Left Behind" so that it LOOKS like we're not leaving any children behing.

Let's pass a law called "Clear Skies" or something so that it LOOKS like we're doing something about the environment.

The GOP is just a massive sleight of hand being perpetrated on the American populace. There's no "there" there.

Human Shield

Given the verbal smackdown he received at the hands of Obama last night, isn't McCain's selection of Gov. Palin kind of the equivalent of The Macho Man Randy Savage pulling Miss Elizabeth between himself and the Ultimate Warrior and saying "you wouldn't hit a girl, would you?"

Of course, if he'd picked Kay Bailey Hutchinson, the GOP version of Sensational Sherri, it might be a different story....

What You Got To Say NOW?

Watching that Obama acceptance speech tonight, I kept thinking back to the end of "8 Mile", with Eminem in the final MC battle against his nemesis, Papa Doc, the head of the so-called "Leaders of the Free World" clique.

Now, for those of you who've never seen an MC Battle before, it's basically a competitive performance where two rappers are given a fixed period of time in a hip-hop club to mock each other with rhyming lyrics they make up on the spot, i.e. freestyle. The crowd decides which one dissed the other the hardest, and awards him the victory.

By this point in the film, Eminem, who lived in a trailer park with his broke down mom (Kim Basinger) had just gotten his ass kicked by the entire Free World crew in a team beatdown, after one of them had had sex with his new girlfriend. And his own crew were so lame that one of them had even shot himself in the foot trying to be tough.

But watch how it all plays out. It's profane, but, man, is it worth it.


 After that total tongue lashing, where Eminem basically threw every attack he knew was coming right back in Papa Doc's face, he as completely speechless and was booed off stage. Eminem wins.

I'm saying all of that to say, what could John McCain and the Republicans possibly say next week in response to Obama tonight that could have any weight or value?

Obama just asked McCain and the Rovians "Is THAT the best you've got?"

The balls in your court, boys.

Saving Superman

Warner Bets on Fewer, Bigger Movies - WSJ.com

I think the WSJ article above is somewhat encouraging to me, as both a movie fan and a comic fan on a number of levels:

1. I think we can all finally agree that "Superman Returns" was a failure.
2. I think we can all finally agree that a "JLA" movie as a spin-off spaminator is a bad idea.
3. I think we're all starting to agree that comic book movies do not have to be aimed at small children, since comic books themselves stopped being aimed at them at least 20 years ago.

I'm still a bit antsy about this "Green Arrow/SuperMax" movie, because I'd rather see Green Arrow as Green Arrow, not as the superhero version of Tom Selleck in "An Innocent Man". I'm also concerned that the studio may be making the same mistaken assumption about superhero storytelling that the comic industry made in the late '80's in the wake of the success of "The Dark Knight Returns" and "Watchmen": namely, that all superheroes need to be dark, grim, and gritty. Yes, it can work for certain characters - Batman, Wolverine, The Punisher, Green Arrow, even Wonder Woman to an extent (I mean, the S&M aspects built into that character from the very beginning are just too rich to ignore).

But Superman is different.

And, frankly, all this talk about how Superman is no longer relevant in today's world is a bunch of B.S. In fact, I think Superman is even MORE relevant than ever.

What most don't seem to get is that the best Superman stories are, essentially, morality plays. When you can do ANYTHING, it's not the physical obstacles that are the challenges, it's the CHOICES you must make.

Moreover, Superman's purpose is not just to save us physically, but to save our spirits by inspiring us to be better.

Honestly, in my dream version of "Superman Returns", he comes back and finds that the Earth has turned into....

naw. Can't give that one away. I may still get the call. :-)

Point being, you don't hire Paul Greengrass to direct a Superman movie. With the right script, I actually really like the idea of Tim Burton - the Tim Burton who did "Big Fish" and "Mars Attacks", not "Nightmare Before Christmas" Burton - making it into a sort of modern fairytale.

On second thought, the guy who could REALLY do it right would have been Luc Besson from about 10 years ago - Leelo Dallas was basically a female version of Superman.


In short, I'm cautiously optimistic. I'll relax when I see someone with real DC Comic street cred step up to be the Warner's equivalent of Avi Arad.

The Half-Way Mark

According to the CDC, as of 2004, the average life expectancy for a Black Man in the United States is 69.8 years.

Three days ago, I turned 35.

It's sobering to know that my government now considers my life half over.

Especially since I feel like it's really just getting started.

But then, I suppose I've been beating the statistics since the day I was born. A girl once pointed out to me on a date some 15 years ago, I was young black man from Baltimore who'd never been to jail, had no children, and was in the process of receiving an Ivy League education. "You don't realize how unique you are", she said.

Wow. 15 years ago.

My best friend just pointed out in his birthday wishes on my Facebook page that we've been friends for nearly 30 years. I can barely process the fact that I can measure anything over such a long period of time.

I can vividly remember my brother pumping his fists in the hospital the day that his son was born. Three months ago, that little baby just graduated from college. In the pictures from my recent trip to Comic-Con, my young cousin the photographer made a point of acknowledging me as "his older cousin".

But, for all of this talk about age, why can't I stop smiling this week?

Why do I feel so.... alive?

I feel like I've waited my entire life to be this age.

All week long, as people ask me how was my birthday and how do I feel to be another year older, I keep telling them the same thing:

I feel GRAND. In every sense of the word.

This has been a great year. And the next one? Even better.

Thank you everyone for all of the calls, emails, notes, well wishes, free drinks, cards, unmentionables, and everything else I've gotten in tribute this week. You all make every single moment sparkle like new money, and I appreciate every second.

Now, time to get back to it!

I should have listened to my mother

Last Christmas, when we were all sitting around chatting about the upcoming election over some Yultide dessert, my mother, a fairly reliable progressive Democrat, said that, while she was a Hilary girl who found herself falling head over heels for Obama, under no circumstances whatsoever would she vote for John Edwards.

I was shocked.

That's when several of my cousins also nodded in agreement.

"Why?" I asked my family. "Why not Edwards?"

The response?

"There's just something about him. He just seems shifty".

I couldn't see it. I'd been a fan of Edwards from back in '04 - he was actually my choice before I became a Deaniac. He seemed to be the guy who'd be forceful in his defense of progressive beliefs and values, almost to the point of recklessness. No one could deny how passionate he was. Surely no one could doubt that, given the chance, he'd be a good advocate for that other America he kept talking about.

No, let's be honest.

I didn't WANT to see it.

Not even subconsciously.

This election has been a real education as to how so many negative traits aren't just inherent in members of a given party.

Because a man who'll do anything for a given cause, no matter how noble it may be, is, by definition, a man who cannot be trusted. And it's just as true of John Edwards as it is about George W. Bush.

Eight Months To Midnight

The clock is officially ticking.

It took 22 years for the seminal graphic novel "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns" to give birth to a movie version of the Caped Crusader that truly matched its sensibilities both in tone and substance, namely Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight".

Although, to be fair, "The Dark Knight"'s actual literary reference points are "Batman: The Killing Joke" and "Batman: The Long Halloween", featuring The Joker and Two-Face, respectively, but "The Dark Knight Returns" really reshaped the character into something much more rich and essential.


Three months after the last issue of "The Dark Knight Returns" shipped to comic stores, a comic with a blood-stained smiley face on the cover appeared on the newsstands that asked a very simple question:

How would the world that we know actually have changed if a man gained superhuman powers and declared himself our protector?

That was the beginning of "Watchmen", by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. And what Frank Miller did for Batman in "The Dark Knight Returns", Moore & Gibbons did for the entire genre of superheroes.

So, now that this is the year that the superhero movie has finally arrived (thank you Iron Man, Hulk, Hellboy, and Batman), it's only fitting that the story that dismantled superheroes should follow right behind.

Friends, the trailer for Zack Snyder's movie adaptation of "Watchmen":



Will this be as rich and satisfying and as qualitative a film as "The Dark Knight" appears to be? Doubtful. Chris Nolan is a singular storyteller who wrestles every single aspect of the film to make it tell the story, and nothing more. Zack Snyder is a director with a tremendous visual eye and a great sense for good stories. But the difference between them is Nolan is also a writer, and Snyder is not. In fact, when Snyder says that he's absolutely committed to everything put on the page in the Watchmen graphic novel, that actually makes me MORE nervous about the final film. Slavish devotion to a literary piece is not what makes for a great film.

Just ask Mark Steven Johnson, who directed Daredevil and Ghost Rider.

In fact, I would even suggest that the reason why The Dark Knight surpasses Spider-Man and Iron Man is that Nolan was willing to jettison whatever didn't fully support what he felt was the basic premise of Batman - a regular man who makes himself into a superhero through the application of his wealth and force of will in self-mastery. It's the absolute commitment to reality that makes The Dark Knight transcend other films in the genre.

And, frankly, given the basic premise of "Watchmen", that should be the same basis of that film as well.

At least, that's what I would do. :-)

In other words, I seriously doubt there will be any Oscar buzz around Watchmen.

But I DO think it it will be a fabulously fun movie, with the potential to be a very provocative film in the vein of "The Dark Knight" if they stay true to the heart of the story itself.

In short, I'm excited! Can't wait.

"Meet My FIST!!!" 2008

It seems like, in every election, there's someone who really needs to get their ass kicked.

Back in 2004, it was Ralph Nader - enter Howard Dean to administer the verbal beatdown in a debate, as I described here.

Ultimately, the debate I really wanted that year was Dean v. Bush, which I just knew would devolve into a fist fight on national TV.

But this year, my friends, we may get the next best thing.

Because someone somewhere had the delicious foresight to pit Karl Rove against John Edwards in a debate. Excuse me, potentially, in a SERIES of debates.

Just the thought of watching Turd Blossom getting his teeth kicked in verbally by this year's Angry Man Progressive is far too juicy to ignore.

I can't WAIT!

Standing Still

I am such a sucker for a good movie trailer. Case in point:

Counting Down on Oil

I'm reminded of my days back in Princeton, when many students of color were passionately lobbying the university to add an Ethnic Studies program to the curriculum through a series of rallies, protests, even a sit-in of the President's office. In the midst of this, were were a number of students who, at best, acted as devil's advocates that actively engaged the protesters on these issues. On many occasions, these Devil's advocates would make statements that were often contradictory, but were all individually inflammatory. As a result, some of these passionate protesters would become so incensed that they'd loose sight of their ultimate goal as they tried to shout down the inherent stupidness of elements of the opposition.

These so-called Devil's advocates, of course, grow up to be the Tucker Carlsons of the world.

And, in many cases, these well-intentioned passionates grow up to be Keith Olberman.

As much as I love and enjoy "Countdown with Keith Olberman", I suppose I must remind myself that, as often insightful and passionate as he can be, he can often loose sight of the forest for those damned trees.

Case in point: my recent post about his recent segment, laying much of the blame for high oil prices at the feet of Enron, oil speculators, former Senator & Mrs. Phil Graham, and, by proxy and omission, John McCain. As a number of commentators pointed out in that post, and, as this New Yorker article linked in the title addresses, while speculators can assume some of the blame, much of it must be laid at the feet of the insane growth of oil demand. Now, I'm still not entirely convinced that there isn't whole scale market manipulation, but I would not be doing my due diligence to not give voice to these other, potentially stronger factors.

And, as the New Yorker points out, these regulatory measures against speculators may, in some ways, be as much of a political stunt as the gas tax holiday proposal from the spring. While I believe it's clearly a more substantive stunt, it still beats up a familiar bogeyman for the public while not addressing the fundamental, underlying issues.

There Has Been Blood

Whenever I've been watching one of the billions of presidential debates over the last few months, my roommate has occasionally asked me "what are they going to do to bring these gas prices down?" And my answer has been pretty pathetic: "uhm, there's not enough refineries, and China's increasing the demand, so it's out of their control until we switch to renewable fuels.... I think".

But the more I really thought about it, the more that simply didn't make sense. If Exxon is making a BILLION dollars in profit for the first three months of this year, that means that their revenues have vastly outpaced their expenditures. So, even if the processing of crude oil had become so much more expensive because of bottlenecks in the pipeline, which would, presumably, drive up the price of a barrel of oil, it still doesn't account for the huge profit disparity.

And then I saw this segment on "Countdown with Keith Olberman" last night.



In short, it's all Enron's fault. Enron and Phil Graham.

So, the question is, if the so-called "Enron Loophole", that allows energy speculators to simultaneously drive up the price of oil while hording it as an investment and then reaping insane profits, has single-handedly caused the price of oil to double since it's inception, why haven't ANY of the Presidential candidates talked about it this year? After all, you would think that Enron is a pretty easy boogeyman to present for further public flogging.

And, yes, I'm talking to YOU, Senator Obama.

Some legislation has been passed to address this, but there's much more work to be done. If you want to help do something about it, check out StopOilSpeculators.com.

The other thing that concerns me is that, near the end of Keith's report, he mentioned the term "oil bubble".

Having lived through both the 1st internet bubble and now a real estate bubble, the thought of an oil bubble makes me extremely nervous. I mean, sure, if the bubble burst, the oil prices should collapse, which would be easier on my petrol budget. But, if all of these financial institutions are acting as major oil speculators, would the crash of the oil market make some collapse like Bear Sterns, pouring even more salt in the wounds of the credit crisis?

Robotech inches closer to big screen reality

OK, so, it's not quite a nerd-gasm yet. (Does that, then, make it nerd-play?)

Lawrence Kasdan to pen 'Robotech'

But it's still pretty tasty - because the minute somebody is paying an A-list writer for a script, you can at least know that somebody, somewhere, is serious enough about actually making the film to put some real skin in the game.

My only concern is that Robotech is a MASSIVE story. I mean, originally, they were three separate and totally unrelated anime cartoons that the producers redubbed and smooshed together to make one big, epic story spanning three generations of heroes fighting successive waves of mecha-enabled alien invaders (namely, the Zentraedi, The Robotech Masters, and, my personal favorites, The Invid). To do it even sort of right, you really ought to do three separate trilogies, one for each generation.



And, perhaps that's the point. If I was a studio head, I would be salivating at the chance to launch a property with a massive built-in audience and 8 potential sequels. Especially since you only need three-film commitments from any one actor (so the costs are fairly fixed, as opposed to other franchises that become increasingly expensive from actors' salaries).

And, unlike most 80's cartoons, Robotech already had fairly sophisticated dramatic elements - real death and cross-racial romance and the cost of war. It doesn't need to be upgraded to adulthood like, say, Transformers. In fact, my other concern is that the studio might try to soften some of the hardcore storytelling at the end of each saga in hopes of "sending people home happy".

Just tell a good story, man. That'll make people happy enough.

Then again, Kasdan did write "Empire Strikes Back". Maybe I shouldn't be concerned.

And I do think Tobey Maguire would make a pretty good Rick Hunter. And Katee Sackhoff is the obvious choice for Dana Sterling. Dare I suggest Grace Park is Lin Minmei?

Actually, the more I think of it, the more I realize Ron Moore is totally jacking Robotech tropes for Battlestar Galactica. Edward James Olmos is a total shout-out to Captain Gloval. The tone and lessons about war are also very similar, as well as the effect humanity has on alien cultures.

In short, I'm still anticipating the nerd-gasm. But, done right, this could be the "Lord of The Rings" for giant robot sci-fi summer action movies. I have renewed hope.

The Leader of the Free World

Damn that Obama!!!! I was supposed to be the first Black president!

PSYCHE. :-)

MSNBC & CNN are 4 years late.

I called this back in 2004, in a blog post I called "The Future".

Barack Hussein Obama is the presumptive nominee from the Democratic Party for President of the United States of America.

Think about that for a minute.

As we sit, a Black man has a 50/50 shot at becoming the leader of the free world.

And, if I can get all Marcus Garvey-ish on it for a moment, we're basically a coin toss away from having a man who looks like, frankly, the majority of the population of this planet, become the de-facto leader of said planet.

A bi-racial man of African descent who was raised by Americans of European descent, who worships with the majority religion on Earth (namely, Christianity), but wears a name with deep cultural resonance with the 2nd largest religion on Earth (namely Islam).

Delicious.

Breaking My Silence

I'll just say this: anyone who doesn't understand why someone like Rev. Wright might say something like "God Damn America", while still being a patriot, read this article from the New York Times, and understand that, while this case got a lot of publicity, stories like this happen every single day in this country and never get reported.

Black people (and, I increasingly suspect, Brown people as well) who simply want the opportunity to live their lives are KILLED.

They're killed with impunity.

They're killed by people who are supposed to enforce the laws like those against murder. They're killed by people who are supposed to protect them because they're citizens.

And when they're killed under such circumstances, on the extremely rare occasion where some sort of trial is convened, their loved ones are told that said killing wasn't really criminal or even improper.

The call from Rev. Wright isn't "Go To Hell America".

The call is "Damn it, America! Why can't you do right by me like you promised?!?!"

It's the glaring absence of justice on earth that makes us call for divine retribution.

Silence is golden

I'm sure many of you have been wondering why I haven't had anything to say about all of the recent electoral controversies of the last two months. Nothing on Rev. Wright, or Bosnian snipers, or phone calls at 3 in the morning, or bitterness in small town Pennsylvania, or the Weathermen, or flag lapel pins, or bowling, or whiskey shots, or even the debate last night on ABC.

And, yes, I do spend a fair amount of time following these stories, and I have pretty strong opinions. So strong, sometimes, that it literally drives up my blood pressure and makes my hands tremble in fury.

Which doesn't feel good.

So I don't say anything.

Because these things are distractions.

As my roommate likes to say, "they keep us all REAL busy, don't they?"

So, I've chosen to contribute as little as possible to the cacaphony, because, at the end of the day, the choice is really very simple:

If you like the direction the country is going in right now, internationally and economically, vote for John McCain.

If you don't like the direction the country is going in, but feel that the partisan divide in the country is just insurmountable, so that the best we can hope to do is cobble together the slimmest majority necessary to win and then, with no mandate, make whatever changes are available to that 50.01% of us, vote for Hilary Clinton.

If you don't like the direction the country is going in, and that the problems are so big that the incrementalism available to those slim majorities won't be enough to cut it, and are ready to at least try to bridge the partisan divide to build a real majority so that the entire country can be galvanized actually make some significant changes, vote for Barack Obama.

If you don't think voting for either of these three will effect your life in anyway, write in a 3rd party candidate who you think could, if given a chance, and vote for him.
if you don't think voting AT ALL can change the direction of the country, stay at home, roll up your sleeves, and get to work making your own contribution to making things better.

It's that simple.

Ask yourself what you believe, and then act accordingly.

But don't let them waste your time with this crap.

I know it's hard. Because the crap is madly entertaining.

But it's still crap.