just voted, who the man, you the man

MONDAY

ima assume that obama is going to back pelosis play, she certainly backed his

and in doing so lost her historic speakership, he value loyalty so much he
wouldnt support the dem over the repub who supported him doing his run

well pelosi went to the wall for him, ima see how much loyalty he got when it cost him

far as im concerned its pelosi do or die

rdoc

 

SATURDAY

so im at the reading, standing room only, in walks adam with his cronies, eric and yagoda and my heart is full seeing them in their maturity,

they no longer the boys they were when they were here, they men now, full grown literati, adam handled the crowd like a master, he brought honor to the unit - the cuse mob was in the house

eric was updating me on becky and torday and tebordo and it was good catching up w/them

i have for sometime now been contemplating doing an mfa su alum facebook page because it distress that our cohorts dont know each other, parker dont know adam, adam dont know kayla and none of them know mildred and so forth and so on

they only know the 2 cohorts ahead and behind and we got so many strong folk out there now a little crossfertilization would be a very good thing, ima have to move on that

then of course the questions come, open to all or just su mfa folk being the biggie, i will think about it

some more, ie stall its the hassle of getting all those names together that cause me to hesitate, exhorting folk to be part of it, and i assume it would be a maintenance forever thing,  and i will be chargrined if nobody responds to the call - but i been saying ima do this for a couple of years now and everytime we get a new cohort in i think about it, sometime this week ima move on that,

rdoc

 

 

FRIDAY

okay, i think ive recovered enuf to start pontificating again
supposed to be doing that last read thru of rest for the weary and have not started,

hopefully i will focus today, want to run down to the city because my boy adam levin
is reading in brooklyn, but i should work instead, have to decide in next

couple of hours, i been back and forth with it, im going im not going, im going im not going

okay, the election, i just dont know, so much of how we finesse this depends
on what obama does and its difficult to call obama, he is being pushed to

compromise with repubs and im thinking compromise more than he already has?
so he talking compromise and they still talking implacable opposition so i kinda

dont know what the short run is going to be

dont know what the longrun is either, the old wouldbe prophet is stumped
i know what i want but i dont know if that is how it will play, the american public

is in a strange space, economic recovery is critical, but how to do it if the repubs
are determined that obama admin be a failure, and if we do get economic recovery

in next couple of years it will entrench the 2010 cohort, also redistricting has been given
over to the repubs, hard to see the silver lining in this one, i have to remind myself when

you lose an election it feels like the end of the world but weve lost important elections before

and survived them

one good trend is that hispanics stood firm in the west, all that demonizing by angle
and assorted arizonian played off in hispanic resistance, what else, usually im pretty

confident in my projections but maybe im still shellshocked or something, the old conjureman

dont like not being able to see, perhaps its a sign i should concentrate on finishing my novel

i think too that im going to the city, i want to see adam, i want to see the su mfa contingent
in the ci ty, which i assume will come out for adam, and i think i need a break, i need a nyc break

ima roll, and when i get there i might find some of my old haunts and get started on this read thru

im about two steps away from the blues, nyc run might be what the old rootdoctor ordered

rdoc

 

 

 

THURSDAY

so this what it means to have a grown up president

 

 

i been so discouraged i havent been looking at the news, which is deep because ima news junky
but if obama can take the punch i guess i can too,

was telling nana that i am even more determined to support obama now than i was before, its like we been thru the fire together and i like the way he handled himself

feel like im back in the nam, me and you brother, against the world

a luta continua

rdoc

WEDNESDAY

so on facebook a buddy of mine, adam banks, was defending the black vote
preemptive calling out the pundits who are going to diss the black vote today

i replied that i dont know thats helpful, i havent seen the stats yet but if blackfolk stepped up i will be surprised, i suspect we did better than past throwdowns but not by much,

rather than defensively rail about perceptions best we focus on the consciousness raising we all know is crucially called for when it comes to blackfolk, an ongoing struggle, best we resolve to start shaping up for 2012 and beyond, this was just the preliminary round

i should clarify maybe, there are so many issues that we have to address as blackpeople that we have to first ackwnowledge are issues, and kind of face facts unflinchingly if we are to flip them, blackpeople dont vote and if they did it would make a huge difference in our condition and influence on american policy in the world,

thats something we got to systematically attack rather than try to beg for it in the crunch, and i feel like in order to address that condition we 1st got to acknowledge, somehow we got to facilitate and institutionalize electoral consciousness, got to add it to the long list of we gottas

that said if folk try to dump on black voters i would support making the case otherwise, as a strategic move, not a passionate one, not one we actually convince ourselves to believe

i got to go, i got manuscripts to read
and i would like to start that last read thru

i should be more disappointed about the election

but its no more than i expected, a luta continua

rdoc

 

TUESDAY

just voted, had to stand in line (okay just two people but still that was encouraging regards turnout today
but this is an academic district, i expected no less, if the academics dont understand how important this

election is we're doomed, doomed i tell you

Comments

[nanakwame]

Democracy as we know it is dead baby, dead - The return to local control and shaping is important now. Why I wait to see your book, for as Afro Blues Folks, we have a well of history, we need to pull from. The poor in the world are facing grave times. Haiti has always been my barometer. Places like Ghana have brought Western style politics going to hurt them in the long run. Our infrastructure, our schools have been corroding for a while now. Atlanta has water problems!! Maybe a little Authoritarianism will wake up my people. We have once before. Here is a fact

A graph of polarization from 1879 to 2009 looks like a U-shape, with the greatest cooperation occurring between about 1930 and 1960. The crisis of the Great Depression, the success of the New Deal and the unifying threat of World War II probably all contributed to bipartisanship during those decades, McCarty said.
Immigration and income inequality also influence polarization, McCarty said. The Republican Party draws voters from middle- to upper-income populations, he said, while the Democrats rely on middle- to lower-class voters. During time periods when the rich are richer and the poor are poorer, each group is more likely to vote based on their interests: Republicans become more anti-tax, while Democrats favor more redistribution programs.
Lately, Republicans have benefited from this effect, McCarty said, because a larger proportion of the poor are immigrants, whether legal or illegal. They can't vote, so wealthier constituencies have relatively more political clout.

from 1930 to 1960 hmmmm

[arthur flowers]

well i suspect we are in a big rich are richer and the poor are poorer spike now that will only continue to grow, unless obama is more of a miracle man than folk think he is - and ima tell you folk i think i believe in him even more now, its like we been thru the fire together and i like the way he handle himself, its like we back in the nam - me and you brother against the world

[nanakwame]

Oh I am fully behind the man - 19th Century Party politics is killing us a nation, baby brother. It is not going to work, especially with growing anarchy. White populism is not going to keep working, it is actually back firing and smarter whites have been addressing this for a while. Why I say that us in the Art and tradition of Juju better start looking at what happened before when the anger and competition for material resources got thick. Remember they called our populism in the 1960's - communist as a cover, and killed black citizens. We are still very close to our animal, remember we are only 5% different, and we eat our own and our unborn. Why our tradition that never left the synergy of animal/human/spirit has a trumped card

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2007/07/the-ants-of-gai.html

A working man intellectual, where very few media want to talk about

Two comments from yesterday

Yes, the American electorate has adopted the Veruca Salt mentality of "I want it NOW!" Deplorable - Rebecca Houston
Yes, the great American pastime of lashing out wildly, trying to correct our own stupid mistakes or taking shots in the dark in order to fix problems we haven't even taken the time to understand. - Zane

[nanakwame]

Oh forgot - a great look at our tradition

http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=8649
America: Populist Before It Was Capitalist