Sitting On My Porch Part Seventy Three : A Long Winded Weekend Edition

Life these days can be confusing for a person that thinks the way I do. My code in life is that your actions have to match your words. Sometimes the words come first in form of ideas and then your actions have to follow that. This is the basis on how I judge people and give them respect. Whether or not I agree with them has nothing to do with it. I have tried to apply that to myself especially since I put my thoughts on this blog for public view. I never want to be put in a situation where I look like a hypocrite.

For instance, I could myself look good by telling how wrong guys are for hanging out in bars and strip clips. Everybody would be giving me compliments and telling me what a great guy I am. I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that because when my bills are paid and everyone is taking care of, it’s not out of the realm of possibility to find me and my friends sitting a table in a place like that with a few adult beverages. I stay honest with myself and leave that kind of moral high ground to folks like my dad. It seems like he’s never been out without my mom since about 1970.

The other night I was watching the Republican debate on Fox News and the moderators asked a question about foreign policy. Rick Santorum went on to answer about how we should be spreading democracy and American freedom all over the world! The crowd started cheering. A few minutes later a gay soldier asked a question by video from overseas about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. The crowd that was cheering for spreading American democracy started booing the soldier. Rick Santorum said he would reinstate the policy if he becomes president because serving in the military has nothing to do with sex. Gay people in the military don’t want to be able to come out to get some action. They are probably getting that anyway. They want to be able to come out because this is supposed to be a country with freedom to be who you are. That’s the kind of thing I can’t respect.

I could have respected him if he said that since he doesn’t want to give gay soldiers the freedom to be who they are he’ll make them exempt from having to go and risk their lives to give people in other countries the kind of freedom they can’t have in their own military. If he did that I would think he’s stupid but at least I could say he has conviction.

Stuff like that is the reason why even though I don’t agree with most of what Ron Paul says I respect him.  He’s the only guy that gets booed at a debate for how he feels and doesn’t backtrack on anything. That happens every debate while Mitt Romney attacks a healthcare philosophy he damn near created in Massachusetts. This always seems strange to me. I’m going to give Ron Paul a compliment. No matter what you think of his beliefs, his supporters never get cheated by having to watch him turn on his own principles just to win a poll. We could use more people like him accept for the wanting to take government back to the 1800’s part.

Issues of the world are complicated. I followed the Troy Davis execution story waiting to see if someone was going to step in and stop it to at least review the information and make sure that they were killing the right man. When no one did and the execution was over I felt a strong sense of sadness at the fact it seemed like the justice system was not working.  I am not a fan of the justice system because I think it is bias towards young black men. We need to fix that by keeping ourselves out of the system so the chances of another Troy Davis story happening again are minimal. At the same time we have men in our community like Telly Hankton that are so dangerous that the chief of police himself went to sent in on his trial just to see if he was really going to get convicted so his officers wouldn’t have to deal with him. Guys like that can’t be out here on the streets with the rest of us and a lot of them are too far gone for rehabilitation. Some of us may not like the current system but our community isn’t quite safe enough to pretend we don’t need something to keep some of our failures away from us.

The Saints play Houston this week. The Texans are not a rival in the minds of Saints fans the way Dallas is. It might be a more personal game because since 2005 Houston might as well be called Western New Orleans.  There are some folks here that have a strange feeling about Houston. Some of it is jealousy because they seem to have the money and progressive nature we can’t seem to master. The other part is frustration because no one talks about this but a lot of the people who stayed in Houston after the storm were hardworking and productive.  Don’t get me wrong a lot of good people came back home too but the thugs came back with them in full force.  Houston is too big for my taste but I have no problems with the city or its people because if they hadn’t opened up all of the Astrodome people may have been sitting on that interstate even longer. I pull for the Texans when they are not playing the Saints.

On the football side of things the Saints defense finally held a team under 20 points for the first time in a long time. We are either ready for another Superbowl run or the Chicago Bears have the worst offense in the league. Houston ran through our first team defense in preseason like they weren’t even on the field. Tomorrow we will find out if that was just preseason and the defense is ready to play well or if we should be looking at the schedule to see how many teams have prolific offenses and count those as a lost. This game will tell everyone a lot about where the season is headed because it’s too late now to fix the roster. I’m going to say the Saints score enough to win and come up with one big play from Darren Sproles in special teams to pull the game out. Darren Sproles is making all the preaching I did against the Bush trade look silly. If he scores every week I don’t mind being wrong.

Saints 31 Texans 27

Matters of Redemption

I’m watching the Philadelphia Eagles play the Atlanta Falcons right now. This is the first time Michael Vick has played in Atlanta since he went to prison. The Eagles were there before but he was a backup then.  There are a few people in #7 Atlanta Falcon jerseys. I figured there would be. Other than the fact he’s playing the Falcons I don’t care if Michael Vick wins this game. This post isn’t really about him. This post is about how we as a community look at redemption.

There’s no doubt that Mike Vick is a polarizing figure. There are some people that are going to always love him and others that will always hate him. Either way he does represent something that Michael Irvin mentioned on the NFL Network this morning. Michael Irvin was talking about how the African American community is built in a spiritual place that embraces the idea of redemption and how a lot of people in our community have latched on to Mike Vick because he represents that. 

Michael Irvin was right. The black community loves stories of redemption. It goes along with our journey in this country. We love to see it when someone beats the odds. There are a lot of people in my city who have had some serious obstacles to overcome. There is nothing that brightens my day more than running into someone who I know was on the edge of losing it all and came back. Usually the person doesn’t come back to start for an NFL team like Michael Vick. We are just happy to see some of our people getting up in the morning to go to work at a regular job. That alone is enough to make you cry sometimes.

The only negative aspect we have in our praise of redemption is that we don’t spend enough time trying to prevent one another from getting into places that we have to fight so hard to get out of.  Sometimes I think we focus too much on the end of the story and not trying to prevent the beginning and the middle. Many of the things we have to redeem ourselves from are a product of bad choices and avoidable circumstances. As much as I get inspired when someone beats the odds and finds their way back to the world I am equally depressed when they fall.

I don’t want to downplay what anyone has done to better themselves and change the course of their life. I just want more focus on how we can make sure as many people as possible succeed without having to go through anything. I would much rather have my friends going through life without criminal records and failed drug test trying to make things happen then always having to try and make something out of nothing.
Everybody’s not Mike Vick coming home to the Eagles or Lil Wayne getting out of prison to make records. Those guys were in prison with hundreds of brothers who have to start from scratch if they ever get out at all. The best thing we could do for them is keep them out of trouble to begin with. Not having as much drama in our lives may make our testimony a lot less exciting but our lives may be better for it.

Another Summit To Save Our Sons

Tomorrow morning at 10:00 AM the city of New Orleans will host a crime summit hosted by Mayor Mitch Landrieu. It’s called the “Saving our Sons Crime Summit”. Somehow I didn’t hear about this summit until this week and I made other commitments for Saturday morning so the city will have to forgive me if I can’t attend. I promise to make up for it by doing something productive. 

I really want to try and make it because I am interested in seeing how things go with the mayor involved. I went to the last meeting of the minds at Cohen High School and listened to men give passionate speeches about what’s going on in the streets. I remember that night well because there was a period when everyone went out into the hall where tables were set up to sign up for different things that would help out. I signed up for a mentoring program and the people never called me. I would put them on blast and mention their name but since they never called I can’t remember. I ended up working with the Volunteers of America Mentoring Children of Promise program and I will be getting another little brother as soon as work isn’t so hectic so I can give him some real time. 

That’s just a personal issue with that particular part of the last meeting. In general I support the summit. My only concern is that the message there makes it to the kids that actually seem to be in danger. The people who show up to crime summits are usually not the ones that are going to do any crime in the first place. Maybe with the mayor involved the conversation will lead to a plan that will get the message into the closed in subculture of our city that probably has no idea there’s a crime summit going on because they are too busy focused on doing their own crimes. Those are the kids we have to get into some programs even if we have to force them into them. 

Mayor Landrieu has an underrated gift in how he communicates with people from all walks of life in this city. I think its part of the reason that although nothing has changed when it comes to influence and opportunity we haven’t seen any major public battles like we used to see when Ray Nagin was mayor.  If there is one thing to make me change my plans and go it will be to see if the mayor can’t stand up there and address some of the issues that need to be addressed to change some of the behavior of young men in this city. I want to see if the mayor can stand up there and tell those folks that if they just took responsibility for their kids and themselves that would cut the crime rate in half instantly without everyone getting offended and losing sight of the real purpose of being there. If he can pull that off there will be no need for anyone to run against him in when re-election time comes.

Week 1 : The Most Important Players For A Good Season

Tomorrow night the Saints play the Green Bay Packers to open the NFL season. I’m not going to kid myself into thinking this is a good way to start the season. Green Bay is a very good team. Their quarterback is an assassin. It doesn’t surprise me that so many people are picking them to repeat. I would rather open the season against the Bengals. That way if our defense isn’t quite ready we won’t get destroyed on a Thursday night when the whole country is watching. I’ve been through that once before against Peyton Manning and it wasn’t fun.

Win or lose there will still be 15 more games left. When I look at the season as a whole it’s difficult for me to figure out what I think the Saints record will be. This is not the same team that won the Superbowl two years ago and changing the roster is cool if you are getting younger and more talented but honestly I am not sure if that’s the case. I think we have a good team this year but how far we can go depends on a hand full of guys. Here are the most important Saints players other than Brees and Vilma in order of catastrophe if they get hurt or don’t play well.

1.    Malcolm Jenkins: He’s the most important person on defense besides Jonathan Vilma. Chase Daniel can hand the ball off and make a few throws if Drew gets hurt. We learned the hard way at the end of last year that if Malcolm Jenkins gets hurt the season is lost because there’s no one remotely close to his level of play. If he’s not in there it’s the Seattle playoff game all over again.
2.    Zach Streif : We won’t have to wait long to find out if our right tackle spot is going to be trouble all year. I think Jon Stinchcomb being cut had more to do with his physical skills declining than with Streif getting better. Nevertheless he’s got to play well because I think Charles Brown who was drafted in the second round of last year’s draft is a bust.
3.    Shaun Rogers: I wasn’t as excited about this signing as everyone else seemed to be. It just seems like his career should be better than what it has been. Plus he’s played for Cleveland and Detroit and I am not sure if he’s got a lot of concern for winning.
4.    Will Herring/Scott Shanle/Jonathan Casillas/ Martez Wilson: The two starters at outside linebacker coming out of a combination of these four guys have to be able to cover tight ends and make some plays. I thought this was the weakest spot on the team last year and it is again.
5.    Garrett Hartley and John Kasay: Last year one missed kick against Atlanta at home ended up being the reason we were playing in Seattle instead of having a home playoff game. Now Hartley’s hurt and our kicker is a 40 year old veteran who broke my heart so many times with the Panthers. Let’s hope he still has the leg and that it doesn’t come to him having to make a big kick before Hartley comes back. If he does have to make one let’s hope it doesn’t look like his kicks in preseason.

I don’t see any middle ground this season. We either going to win 11 to 12 games and win the division or we are going to win 5 to 6 and get young kids ready for next season. I am not going to make a prediction on the record because I want to say 12-4 but that’s more of my heart talking than anything. I’m just going to take this season week by week and see what happens.

You shouldn’t put much stock in preseason games but going by what I saw I want to say that the Packers will win tomorrow night’s game 31-21. However as a diehard fan, if you can’t be positive about the first game then when can you? I’m going with my heart and say Saints 27 Packers 21. That would be a great opening night. A good opening night would be a close came without Clay Matthews or Charles Woodson killing Drew Brees and Malcolm Jenkins not getting hurt.

I still haven’t decided on my new lucky game shirt since I burned the other after the Seattle wildcard game last year but I’ll have one by game time. I hope I don’t have burn this one too.

Sitting On My Porch Part Seventy Two

This post is dedicated to Geraldine 9/26/32 to 8/29/2005. I'll never be over it but I'll keep moving forward. Long live the Lower Ninth Ward.

I need to get this post done before college football gets in full gear this weekend and I fight flood waters to make it to my fantasy draft on Sunday. Plus, I have two epic Saints season preview posts to do this weekend if the power doesn't go off. It’s been a strange week around the city of New Orleans. That’s not the first time I have said those words. Monday was the anniversary of the weather event on August 29, 2005. I’m not in the mood to type the name this evening. It’s always a pretty somber and reflective day for most of us. It’s been six years so we talk about it less but inside it still stays with you. All week I've been thinking about my grandparents and that always puts me in a strange place where I want to make them proud and kick someone's ass on their behalf at the same time. My fifth act as a king of all humans is taking August off the calendar.

I guess Mother Nature decided to give us something to take our minds off all the water by covering the city in a big cloud of smoke for two days due to a marsh fire out in New Orleans East. I made a comment Monday morning that it smelled like burned collard greens outside. The smoke smelled really bad on Monday and then tried to choke the life out of everyone on Tuesday. In true New Orleans fashion there were some people who pretended like they didn’t smell anything and it was no big deal and another group of people who thought it was Armageddon. That made the whole situation a bit funny to me.

Once the smoke got everyone’s mind off of flooding we were presented with another tropical system that sitting outside of coast and waiting to mess up everyone’s Labor Day weekend. If it gets strong enough for a name it will be” Lee”. I’m hoping that it comes through before that and gives us whatever it’s going to as soon as possible. If no one home gets flooded and the Direct TV signal stays on long enough to watch the LSU vs. Oregon game on Saturday we should consider this event a win. I don’t want to downplay the seriousness of a tropical storm but we live in South Louisiana. We are going to get some kind of tropical weather. Give me a pain in the ass storm like this one with lots of rain over one that requires the activation of contra flow any time.

Michael Vick signed a contract worth 100 million dollars this week after being in federal prison two years ago. Most black men can barely get a job digging ditches when they get out of prison and Mike Vick got a huge contract with guaranteed money. If that doesn’t make him appreciate his gifts I don’t know what will. People’s reaction to his rise, fall and rising again shows the different philosophies on life in our community. So many people are inspired by the fact he went to prison and came back to have success. I think they see a lot of their own family and friends in him. I was raised by people who would say that if he never would have been fighting dogs in the first place he would have 200 million right now and could do even more things for himself and his family. At the end of the day the best way to beat the system is to stay out of it.

On the flip side of that issue Betty Jefferson stole over a million dollars from the most vulnerable and needy people in New Orleans and all she got were 15 months of house arrest. The second best way to beat the system is to be a really good thief and always steal from poor black people. You’ll get to spend 15 months watching Young and the Restless for your punishment.

New Orleans City Councilwoman Jackie Clarkson had a few issues at a meeting in District E when she said that having Mitch Landrieu as mayor took her back to the 50’s and 60’s which were the glory days of New Orleans in her book. I’m not the type of person that jumps all over someone for a quote unless it’s Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh. In this case however the councilwoman is not going to get a pass because there’s no way she or anyone else has lived in this area all their lives and doesn’t know that kind of comment was going to piss off black people. The political climate in this country is too tense right now and she should be more careful. I tried to come up with a way to let her off the hook but I couldn’t.

Maybe to her the 50’s and 60’s were the golden era for New Orleans but if me and my friends went back in time and went out to eat all of my white friends would have a nice seat overlooking the French Quarter and the rest of us would be eating in the kitchen if we got that far without getting our asses whipped and going to jail. I like the mayor but he hasn’t done anything that great to make me get on board with going back to any days like that. If he gets a hospital open in New Orleans East and a Wal Mart somewhere I might reminisce on when Schwegmann’s grocery store was open but that’s as far back as I am going. Besides, I thought we were focused on going forward.

Seven Years In Blogger Land And I'm Still Here

On August 25, 2011 this blog made 7 years old. I'm old school. I'm a veteran. I've been posting a long time. You get the idea. I'm amazed at myself for still being this engaged despite my incredibly short attention span. The last few months I had been seriously thinking about retiring and hanging up my Blogger user id and password. I was all set to do it but then I changed my mind. I figured after years of coming up with new things to talk about a few times a week I had run out of ideas or the interest in the world around me to talk about anything. The real truth is that I am just getting lazy and distracted by things. I still love doing it so I'm going to hang around for a bit longer.

Yesterday I was this year’s Rising Tide Conference. It’s the perfect place to be for a blogger who needs a boost. A friend of mine was on the Brass Band Panel. When he saw me he asked what I was doing there. I told him I was there every year. He looked at my name tag and was like “What the hell is Cliff’s Crib?” I told him it was my website. He gave me a confused look and said “Cliff you gotta website?” He’s probably still confused today. The conference is getting bigger and bigger. It’s getting so big that now you can actually be there all day and not run into some of the familiar faces. That’s a huge sign of progress. It shows that blogs are still going strong despite the term for what we do being lumped in with every person who decides to leave a comment on a news story or anyone else that types a few words online.

What they do is comment on other people’s work. What real bloggers do is create our own voice. Sometimes we do a good job of that and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes people read it and sometimes no one notices. Either way I respect the people who go through the process and put themselves out there even if I don’t agree with them.

I remember how it was last year to be at the Rising Tide Conference knowing you won the Ashley Morris Award and couldn’t tell anyone. I thought I gave it away when my friends showed up and lowered the black/white ratio of the crowd slightly. I have my plaque sitting on a stand in my office at work. Winning an award for blogging is funny because one of the unwritten rules of the game is to try to not make things so serious. It’s hard to maintain that when people stand up and applaud your work.

This year’s winner is Dedra Johnson also known as G Bitch to her blogger friends. She’s a well deserving winner and I can assure you that her real life personality does not match the name of her blog. She’s good people and I am happy for her. Congratulations and I hope we are all around next year when a new winner is honored.

To all the other bloggers out there still coming up with relevant, informative and thought provoking posts keep doing what you do. I’ll be right there with you. I love doing it. Plus, you can’t put a price on telling someone “Google me” and actually have things show up during the search that don't involve arrests. You can’t put a price on that.

The Cost Of Young Men Making Dumb Decisions

Unless LSU has been hiding something for the last few years I feel comfortable in saying that Jordan Jefferson is a good kid. Nevertheless he and his teammates did a dumb thing by breaking curfew and it led to him and a teammate allegedly being in a fight which caused them to get arrested and suspended from the team. Young men do dumb things. They always have and they always will. I did some dumb things at that age. I made some choices that were so stupid and hazardous to my well being that I pass certain spots in New Orleans that remind me of a crazy night and feel like I should go straight to church and thank God that nothing happen to me. Nothing too bad ever happened. I always made it home jail and bullet free. I was never a bad guy and never looked for any trouble but when you make bad decisions the potential side effect is bad circumstances. Things could have gone either way. I am glad thankful they never did.

I’m sure Jordan Jefferson’s parents and coaches told him to be careful just like my parents used to always tell me. When I was 20 years old I would say okay but when the night is calling and the adrenaline is rushing you hear what they are saying but it doesn’t always stick. I went to a few places I shouldn’t have and been around some people who could have put me in danger. Kids do that all the time it’s just that most of them are not the quarterback for a major college football program.

I feel bad for the kids involved especially for Jordan Jefferson because he paid so many dues to get to this point and have it all blow up on him because of a few minutes of bad judgment. I don’t know what actually happened yet. It really doesn’t matter at this point. His football career is ruined and if LSU loses to Oregon next week everyone is going to blame him. If the entire season falls apart some fans are going to talk like he’s a mass murderer instead of a kid that got into a fight and that’s unfortunate.

Times have changed in our society. You could be the starting quarterback for your college or the first person to do well and make it out of your neighborhood and there will be just as many people out to hate you as there are to love you. You have to stay clear of places where there is the potential to have altercations with people because you can’t control that environment.

That’s easy for me say now. I’m 37 year old dad with a career and an upstanding reputation. I’m so paranoid of something happening that I hardly hang out anymore because I am afraid of screwing everything up. When I was Jordan Jefferson and his teammates’ age I probably would have thought “All we have to do is go to the bar, meet some girls and have a few drinks without any trouble. We’ll be back in enough time to sleep a little before practice. No one is going to even know we left. What could possibly go wrong?” Ninety nine percent of the time that works. This story is the case of the one percent that it doesn’t work and you end up sitting on the sofa at your parent’s house watching television as some other guy leads your team out of the tunnel for the first game of your senior season. He should have just stayed in and went to sleep that night. I hope this makes him a better man as he gets older.

Some life lessons sting harder than others.

Farewell Mr. Fielkow

New Orleans City Councilman at Large Arnie Fielkow is stepping down to move to Chicago. He’s going to be the president of the NBA Retired Players Association. That sounds like a pretty cool job. I would like to wish the councilman well and thank him for his service to my city. I’ve never had an issue with Mr. Fielkow since he’s been in office. I didn’t like the NORD public/private partnership and even though I thought that plan was misguided and unnecessary I feel his heart was in the right place. He was just trying to help the kids.

In many ways the councilman’s story is the perfect example of a lot of our current residents. He’s not a native so he’s free of some of the baggage natives have. He came to town because of work. He and his family fell in love with the place so they decided to get involved and make a difference. There is more and more of this demographic around town. Most of them are cool and have a genuine concern for the city and all of its residents. Then there are others who are here to take advantage of our struggles and failures. They caught us at our most vulnerable and are trying to reshape our city for their own agendas.

I think Mr. Fielkow belongs in that first group. I would like to thank him for trying to do some progressive things to move the city forward and for never telling the world that everything here was going okay because we had a second line parade on Sunday.

Now comes the fun part because the councilman has to select an interim replacement and the council needs to approve that person. Then we’ll have a special election after that to elect a new councilperson. I haven’t made any predictions in awhile but I think whoever is selected for the interim post and how the rest of the council handles it will decide the next election. If there’s one more backdoor hookup to maintain a certain level of control by some members on the council then there’s going to be a pushback in the citywide race.

College Football Will Never Be The Same

I am a college football junkie. I'm one of those guys that watches ESPN U for signing day and follows the recruiting websites. I used to buy magazines all the time until the Internet made that unnecessary. When I was a kid I would rent every college football history book from the school library. I could hold my own in a trivia contest. After the Saints are done playing on Sunday my NFL interest start to fade a little. I can watch college football all day and night on Saturday no matter who's playing. I think it's the best level of football because of the tradition and the players. I don't really care about the BCS and all the money involved. I just want to watch the games. This off season there has been a few scandals involving players receiving benefits. People are acting like there’s a huge problem. I say the things going on are just the nature of a beast that’s been created and it’s not going back the other way.

You got these huge expanding conferences trying to generate more and more money from television contracts. Stadiums are getting bigger and bigger. In order to sell the ad time while the games are on and to sell the extra suites and seats in these giant stadiums you have to market the game in a way that expands it’s following beyond the students of the school or the people who live in the area of the school. That means you have to get the best player’s possible. You have to get players so good that football fans in Wyoming would have to be interested in the players involved in an LSU and Alabama game that they will tune in and CBS will give the SEC billions of dollars for the right to broadcast their games. There’s no way you can have that much money involved without any corruption and it’s foolish to think every player is going to sit there and be okay with that.

Things are even more confusing for the players because now there are college sports video games and other merchandising. When Reggie Bush was at USC you could buy a video game where #5 for USC didn’t have Bush on the back of the jersey but you knew he was supposed to be. I went to Ohio State’s website to look up the price of a jersey. You can get a replica #2 jersey for 59.95. I’m not saying Terrell Pryor was right for breaking the rules. I’m just tripping on people acting like he murdered someone for trading his own clothes for a tattoo.

If I was a world class football player coming out of high school I don’t think my parents would have let me accept any money to go to a particular school or any gifts from someone after I got there. I’m thinking that if I was 19 years old and looked around to see thousands of people wearing a jersey with my number on it I might think getting a few tattoos for one of those jerseys was fair especially since I’m the reason they are selling the jersey with that number on it anyway. I would get punished for doing wrong by the NCAA but when a system grows to a certain point the line between right and wrong gets blurred.

The media and the fans should just calm down and admit the fact that it will never be 1965 again when it comes to college football. As long as there is lots of money involved there’s going to be corruption and the players are always going to be the most susceptible to it. The glory days are not coming back so lets just accept it and enjoy the games on Saturday.

Sitting On My Porch Part Seventy One

School is in full swing around these parts. The little kids are going back to school and the big kids are going off to college. I had a talk with a friend that sent her son off to college this morning. She was real proud. I gave her props for getting him to that point but I wish the idea of young men from our community going to college was as routine as getting a driver’s license. It would be a great thing if the whole neighborhood was packing up and going away to school and it was no big deal.

I have written about 7 blogs to post here and left them in the drafts folder. I may get aggravated and not post this one.I look around and think to myself “What’s the point. The whole world is tripping and there’s nothing we can do about it.” No matter where I look all I see if foolishness. It doesn’t matter if it’s the super committee and the thought that I will be working until I’m 75 or parents in Louisiana killing their children, everything is out of order. Just Monday I drove children to a school within a block of a triple shooting that happen the night before. When it comes to worrying a conscious brother from New Orleans will become delirious trying to keep up with all the things on the agenda. I think that’s why I am tuning out of things more than before. Nevertheless we need to get back to a regular blogging schedule so let’s see where this goes.

Who really wants to pay attention to such foolishness as Steve Harvey deciding who’s an Uncle Tom or not? When did being totally happy with everything the president does become criteria for having your blackness questioned? That’s just crazy. I don’t know what Tavis Smiley and Dr. West’s full motives are with their poverty tour but I am sure speaking out for the poor isn’t Uncle Tom behavior. The truth is that if someone asks me I wouldn’t know how to exactly describe an Uncle Tom.

I don’t think anyone should be debating the president right now because he has his supporters so confused they may have to wait until after he releases his job plan and the outcome of the super committee to know if he’s a closet conservative, a pushover, or the greatest politician in the last 50 years. Emotionally I can only deal with the last two options. The first one would be so devastating to my community that we wouldn’t recover. The only thing that might save us is that so many of us are so blindly loyal that we wouldn’t realize the truth for 30 years anyway.

Who really wants to follow the Iowa Straw Poll and the Republican presidential race? The whole thing is a joke because as much as Republicans talk about their values they don’t really want a candidate that far to the right. They are just dying for someone to rescue them from Michelle Bachmann and Rick “Long Wolf McQuade” Perry. Michelle Bachmann won the straw poll and although I think her and her husband or crazy and dangerous they seem to be legitimate in how they think. If the Tea party is right and the majority of Americans feel the way they do then she should win the nomination and the White House in a landslide. Why do the media seem to be ignoring her so much after the weekend?

Is there any website left on the internet that you can’t share with your Facebook friends?

New Orleans Saints post will start after the third pre-season game and I have a better idea of what the new team looks like. I’m just getting over the Reggie Bush trade so I am almost
ready to talk about them. I think this year I am going to blog about my fantasy team too just to have extra stuff to talk about besides the news. I have been in the same league since Hurricane Katrina and the reason is that it’s the most gentlemanly and respectful football league in all of America.

So the Jay Z and Kanye West album watch the throne came out last week and after listening to it over that time I am ready to give it four out of five stars. I couldn’t give it five because there was just a bit too much noise in some of the songs. I’m old school and like that boom bap sound. The best song is Murder to Excellence by far. It’s a good album that respects hip hop but it’s not the best song out right now. The best hip hop song out right now is Dee 1 Featuring Mannie Fresh in The One That Got Away.