Seeing the Dream Come True

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Obama Holds His Own

Be Sure To Catch It!

He's got a valuable message through jokes.

"The Black man gotta fly to get something that the white man can walk to."

Be sure to catch it on HBO the next time it comes on. Seriously!

Also, if you haven't seen it, make sure you see The Black List, Vol. 1. Great show with some wonderfully heart-warming life perspectives from Black celebrities. (Louis Gossett, Jr. was a favorite of mine! Great storyteller!) This show is a definite must-see. Can't wait until Vol. 2!

To Debate or Not To Debate

What? Ok, let's SWYM for a moment, here. Is he kidding? This is just some self-centered grandstanding stunt on the part of McCain to delay (read: add study time for) the upcoming debate with Barack Obama and thereby put off (read: cancel completely) the much-anticipated VP debate between Palin and Biden scheduled for next week. Seriously? Who is he kidding?

Let's face it... he's tired. This is McCain's way of sweeping into the Presidential sessions, sitting back while some decisions are made and then holding an emergency press conference to let us all know that he's saved the day. Give us a break! This doesn't make him more of a "patriotic stateman." This just shows he doesn't have the capacity to walk and chew gum at the same time. And as Obama put it so elegantly, "I think that it is going to be part of the president's job to deal with more than one thing at once."

"This doesn't smell right," David Letterman said during a routine that only half appeared to be a joke. "This is not the way a tested hero behaves. Somebody's putting something in his Metamucil."

How can you argue with reasoning like that?

Senseless - A Racial Rant

Willingboro borders Burlington, NJ, where I live. While Burlington Township may not be immune to crime, I feel safe here. I am often concerned about the violent crimes that happen in Willingboro, especially because I have young children and it is so close to us. It is a middle class, predominantly Black community and we spend a lot of time there... we shop there, our salon is there, and we have close family there.

So why does this particular shooting stand out? Because, although I did not know the victim personally, he is part of my family. Sad that this is the way I had to find out. Knowing that he was only 23 years old and the father of two young boys makes it even sadder. I remember being 23. It was one of the best years of my life. I had just graduated college and started a new job by that age. Life was beginning for me, not ending!

So this is a small plea from a complete nobody to those who are still embroiled in daily gang activity, to those prone to senseless violence, and to those who look at the two paths in front of them and choose the wrong road rather than the right. Please STOP!

What we need to realize is that Racist America has made guns and drugs easily accessible in Black communities. Then they perpetuate the "coolness" of the thug mentality, droopy prison pants and all, and then sit back with folded arms and satisfied smirks while we do their job for them like hired hands, except the return payment is death.

And what are these kids dying for? "Territory" that has never belonged to them in the first place? A stolen girlfriend? A 'look'? A blue shirt? Or, as in this case, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. (He was one of the GOOD guys! Senseless!) Give me a break! If we could get these kids to take a step back and look at themselves, they may actually see what they could become. Instead they just fuel the fire. Rather than bringing one another down, we need to pull together as a community and lift one another up.

Parents need to be more involved in their children's lives. For that matter, children need to stop having babies of their own. How can they "parent" when they are babies themselves? Mothers, take hold of your daughters. Don't let them become parents until they are married with education behind them, a husband beside them (if they so choose!), and jobs and homes of their own. Let them be proud of who they are to become.

BAW has a study on the website today that shows that 40% of white Democrats won't vote for Obama just because he's Black. They say this because they have such negative views of Black people as a whole. So no matter how right Obama is about what needs to be done for ALL Americans (and he IS right!), he won't get votes from people that can only see the negative aspects of his Blackness. And that is because of people like this shooter. It needs to STOP. These people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become PRODUCTIVE members of society. It's the "Butterfly Effect" and it's affecting all of us.

Ok, I'm off my soapbox now. Thank you for listening to my rant!

Mario Saves the Princess

Ok, this was too funny not to share.


Check out the whole video (and more) here:
http://video.aol.com/video/super-mario-rescues-the-princess/2239004

More Flip Flopping from McSame

Suddenly, we're not the only ones to see it? He's been flip-flopping since the beginning. It seems that everytime he speaks without a tele-prompter in front of him (and quite frankly, even when there is one) he puts his size 12 right in his yap! Please? Can someone spare us from this man, and soon?

By Katharine Zaleski
From the Huffington Post
September 18, 2008

John McCain has been all over the map recently, especially when it comes to the economic crisis that's been hammering Wall Street. He also managed to make some interesting - or rather, bizarre - remarks about Spain on Wednesday. See more articles below on McCain's actions over the last few weeks.

McCain Remarks Appear To Reject Spain As Ally:
Late Wednesday night, news made its way from the other side of the Atlantic that John McCain, in an interview with a Spanish outlet, had made a series of bizarre responses to a question regarding that country's prime minister.

"Would you be willing to meet with the head of our government, Mr. Zapatero?" the questioner asked, in an exchange now being reported by several Spanish outlets.
McCain proceeded to launch into what appeared to be a boilerplate declaration about Mexico and Latin America -- but not Spain -- pressing the need to stand up to world leaders who want to harm America.

McCain Flip-Flops On AIG Bailout: Rejects It Tuesday, Says It's Okay Wednesday:
Republican presidential candidate John McCain, a day after flatly rejecting the idea of a taxpayer bailout for American International Group Inc., said Wednesday that the government had been "forced" into proposing an $85 billion loan to the nation's largest insurer.

McCain appeared to soften his opposition to the bailout proposed by the Federal Reserve, treating the plan as a necessary evil to protect ordinary Americans with finanical ties to AIG and asserting that such a financial collapse should not be allowed to happen again. He also called for an investigation to uncover any wrongdoing.

NY Times: McCain All Over The Place On The Economy:
On Monday morning, as the financial system absorbed one of its biggest shocks in generations, Senator John McCain said, as he had many times before, that he believed the fundamentals of the economy were "strong."

Hours later he backpedaled, explaining that he had meant that American workers, whom he described as the backbone of the economy, were productive and resilient. By Tuesday he was calling the economic situation "a total crisis" and denouncing "greed" on Wall Street and in Washington.

McCain Slams Wall Street "Fat Cats" Who Are His Biggest Donors:
John McCain struck a tough, quasi-populist pose this morning during his morning sweep of the television news shows. Speaking to NBC's Matt Lauer about the current crisis on Wall Street, the Republican nominee said executives have "treated it like a casino and need to be held accountable and stop walking away with these fat-cat packages."

Leave aside for the moment the fact that one of McCain's top economic advisers, former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, walked away with a $42 million "golden parachute" after being fired. Overall, the generic Wall Street "fat cat" is a tough character for McCain to cast as his nemesis, given his success in fundraising among their ranks. As Bloomberg reported Monday night, securities and investment companies have collectively donated millions to both McCain and Barack Obama.

Time's Joe Klein: "Increasing Numbers Of Otherwise Sober Observers... Are Calling John McCain A Liar":
Politics has always been lousy with blather and chicanery. But there are rules and traditions too. In the early weeks of the general-election campaign, a consensus has grown in the political community -- a consensus that ranges from practitioners like Karl Rove to commentators like, well, me -- that John McCain has allowed his campaign to slip the normal bounds of political propriety. The situation has gotten so intense that we in the media have slipped our normal rules as well. Usually when a candidate tells something less than the truth, we mince words. We use euphemisms like mendacity and inaccuracy ... or, as the Associated Press put it, "McCain's claims skirt facts." But increasing numbers of otherwise sober observers, even such august institutions as the New York Times editorial board, are calling John McCain a liar. You might well ask, What has McCain done to deserve this? What unwritten rules did he break? Are his transgressions of degree or of kind?

By the way... check out the anti-Palin rally on the Daily Kos that took place in Alaska this week. Lots of pictures of the protesters like the one on the left that came out to express their views. You go, Alaska!

A Woman's Worth

A Woman's Worth

Tuesday, September 09, 2008
By Goldie Taylor

I have been a mother all of my adult life. A single working mother. I put off dating, took menial jobs far beneath my qualifications and baked my share of ginger bread cookies for PTA Night, all so that three incredible children could have better. I chose their lives over mine. I don't have to tell you that it wasn't easy. Unfortunately, my story, our story, is not unique.

We slept in cars, bought groceries with food stamps and prayed for a better day. When that wasn't enough, I put myself through school at Emory University and took a part-time job as a staff writer at the Atlanta Journal Constitution. That was over a decade ago. Along the way, things got better.

I've been an executive at two Fortune 500 companies and a practice director at two multinational public relations firms. Today, I own an advertising agency and I've authored two novels. A third and fourth are on the way, God willing. All of this was possible because somebody laid a brick or two on the road for me.

A few weeks ago, I woke in tears. It was my 40th birthday and certainly not a time for sadness. Rather, I cried in joy because for the first time I realized and could embrace the value of the struggle. The bright little girl, who once cried in my arms because we didn't know where we were going to live, was headed off to Brown University. The small boy who had been the 'man of the house' far too soon was now truly a man. And the tiny, angelic baby who had come to this world precious and innocent just 15 months after him was now a 16 year old girl headed out to her first job interview.

For all of this, maybe I should be proud of a woman like Sarah Palin. Maybe, just maybe, I should be rejoicing in John McCain's selected running mate. But I'm not.

I'm not 'bed wetting liberal' nor am I a 'right-wing zealot.' What I am is a working mother. And I cry foul. I won't, for a moment, denigrate her experience or lob spit balls at her family. I will, though, take issue with what she knows. Or more succinctly, what she does not know. Living in Alaska, I'm not sure how much she knows about the people living in inner city Baltimore. I don't know how much she cares about the 125 murders this summer in Chicago. I have no idea what she believes about HIV/ AIDS and the havoc it wrecks on Black women or the cancer rates in East St. Louis. She has said nary a word about Hurricane Katrina or the infant mortality rates in Appalachia.

I do know that she's a life-time member of the NRA, a proponent of individuals who wielded the very weapons that killed my father and brother. I do know that she "lives really close to Russia," but I'm not so certain she is ready for Putin. I know she wanted to ban books for public libraries and sex education in schools, but that her 17 year old is pregnant and preparing for a shotgun wedding. I know that she loves her husband enough to allow him (and probably did herself) use her office to settle a personal score--one that the McCain campaign would now like to cover in under a blanket of Juneau snow. I know that the Alaska Independent Party, and its secessionist platform, was enticing enough for her to attend its conference (and for her husband to become a card carrying member). Does she love her country? I'm sure. Enough to support those who want to leave it.

But I have no earthly idea what she knows (or could possibly know) about national domestic policy or foreign diplomacy. For all of her working class values, she never once mentioned the Middle Class in her diatribe that mocked her opponent's experience. Having been the mayor of Wasilla (pop. 6,000 at the time) and governor of Alaska (a state a smaller than the county I live in) for a little over a year, she felt she was qualified to do that. And obviously, so did John McCain.

If she's qualified, then so am I. But in this country I love, she has been afforded the ability to run. The very constitution she says doesn't apply to the men at Guantanamo says she can. But this is about more than that.

As Gloria Steinem said in a recent Los Angeles Times editorial, 'Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.'

The good news is thanks to Shirley Chisholm, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Angela Davis, Condoleeza Rice, Anita Hill, Madeline Albright, Maxine Waters, Kathleen Sebelius, Hilary Rodham Clinton and a slew of others, there are 18 million proverbial cracks in the ceiling. Our collective political and economic power is due to the strides (and leaps) they, and others, took on my behalf. I am grateful. I am deeply humbled to stand on the bricks they'd laid before me.

But, whatever our struggle was (and is) that last thing I want is to be patronized. Just as I cannot support just any African American who decides to offer themselves up for public service, I will not toss my vote to someone just because we share the same chromosome mix. To do so would dishonor the vow I made to my children, to myself. I did not vote for Al Sharpton, wasn't old enough (nor would I have) voted for Jesse Jackson and I certainly will not support Sarah Palin. Identity politics, especially in this case, are a sham of the worst order.

When I cast my vote, it will be for people who will lay more bricks for people like me. It will be for people who will put diplomacy before war, challenge us all to provide healthcare for the sick, help another child go to college, and check the special interests in Washington. This fall, I'm not looking for a woman. I'm looking for a brick layer. I couldn't care less if that person hasn't spent 'enough' time in Washington or can 'properly field dress a moose'. I couldn't care less if that person likes hockey, soccer, football or table tennis. I couldn't care less if they graduated from Harvard or the University of Iowa. I'm a Christian, but I couldn't care less if they are down with Deuteronomy, Leviticus or Numbers. I want them to uphold the Constitution.

So no, I will not sit idly by as they attempt to suspend habeas corpus at Guantanamo Bay, engage wiretaps on American citizens without a warrant, and hide behind executive privilege when they are caught firing attorney generals based on how well they tow the Republican line. I won't let them cost us $12 billion a month fighting a war that should have never been authorized and never been waged. Not while working people lose their homes to predatory lenders and watch as we bail out the financial institutions that created the housing crisis.

I will not, in the name of history, vote for a woman like Sarah Palin who does not share my values.

But here’s what I will do. I will continue raising money for Barack Obama. I will get on the phone again and call people in distant states I've never met. I will e-mail, call, and knock on doors until the final vote is cast. I do this, not because he shares my skin, but because I admire his principals and he shares my values. I do this because Barack Obama is more than a community organizer, he is a bricklayer. And he sees -- just as he sees the light in Michelle's eyes -- my struggle, my worth as a woman.

Goldie Taylor is CEO of Native Brand Communications and chairman of Goldie Taylor OmniMedia, LLC. She is the author of In My Father’s House (Wheatmark, 2005) and The January Girl (Madison Park, 2007 & Warner Books, 2008) and is currently working on her third novel, Come Sunday. Taylor and her children live in Atlanta and New York. For more information, visit http://goldietaylor.wordpress.com/