Old School Friday: Rest in Peace, Michael

Peace. Finally.

SHAMELESS PLUG: Read my wife’s blog @ The “D” Spot Redeux

Happy OSF! Dance with me!

So you want dancing? I got all the dance moves you’ll ever need right here…

’nuff said. The end.

SHAMELESS PLUG: Read my wife’s blog @ The “D” Spot Redeux

Monica Conyers giving God and Christians a bad name

It’s not like we in Detroit didn’t see this coming, and it’s not like quite a few of us weren’t praying for this to come. So when the news finally broke this afternoon that City Councilwoman Monica Conyers appears to be on her way to facing federal criminal charges for her alleged role in a pay-to-play scheme where she took money to shuttle through a  lucrative contract for a waste disposal company, I was all prepared to jump up on my desk at work and do an end zone victory dance.

But then I read the part about where Conyers, during her local television show, started talking about how she’s a child of God and asking for everyone to pray for her and admonishing those (like myself) who haven’t prayed for her as being part of the problem. But as for those who have lifted her up in prayer to Jesus…etc…etc…etc…

And my mind started reeling back to the last days of ex-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick when he too started crying to God in public on TV. Matter of fact he did it in his church holding his wife’s hand as he begged Detroiters for forgiveness and understanding because he knew – or thought he knew – what effect the church has on a lot of Detroiters. Kilpatrick figured all he had to say was that the devil made him do it but that now he was a-leanin’ on God’s everlasting arm and Detroiters would just commence to rolling about in the aisles shouting ‘hallelujah our boy done been saved’. Or some shit.

Didn’t work though. Praise God.

Give God a break, Monica. And us too while you're at it.

So now here comes Monica doing the same damned thing. And as soon as I saw it I knew – just like I knew with Kilpatrick – that not only is she guilty of screwing over the people she was elected to serve but she’s guilty of abusing God’s good name. Something too many of our crooked black politicians have a tendency to do, I hate to say. The minute somebody catches one of us doing something we start callin on De Lawd. And I strongly suspect De Lawd is getting sick and tired of that bullshit.

And I also suspect if Monica keeps on with that routine she’s gonna find out just how fed up He is.

But then maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

SHAMELESS PLUG: Read my wife’s blog @ The “D” Spot Redeux

Happy OSF! Keepin it in the family y’all

Hey y’all.

Well I’m back, and itchin’ to get to groovin’ with OSF.

So let’s keep it in the family with, ohhhh, let’s say The Brothers Johnson. Whachu thank?

Then movin on to The Pointer Sisters talkin’ ’bout yes we can long before Brother Obama. With all respect, of course…

Then wrappin’ it up with one of the baddest blues/rock blues family duos to ever take the stage, the Vaughn brothers Stevie Ray and big Brother Jimmy Vaughn.

Hope you good people enjoyed the ride. I sure did! ‘Til next time. Meanwhile…

SHAMELESS PLUG: Read my wife’s blog @ The “D” Spot Redeux

Holocaust Museum murder was more about crazy than race

And now that it’s all said and done, what do we know? About James W. von Brunn? The 88-year-old racist who still hasn’t given up on hate after all these years and decided to attack the Holocaust Museum?

Yeah, OK. He says blacks and Jews run the court system, but that only lets us know he’s crazy. Because brother if black people ran the court system I seriously doubt we’d still be having  all these discussions at this late date about why so many of us are stuck behind bars. As for us being partners with the Jews in running the court system…?

Right. So anyway.

And then there’s the part about him being an artist. And a well-known terrorist who’s been on the radar for quite some time. And twice-divorced. And this and that and on and on.

But what do we know?

We know nothing. Because in the end, when you really examine all the hastily assembled data thrown together by hasty reporters up against a hastydeadline to provide as much data as possible and more than the other guy in a competitive attempt to create the definitive Sketch of an American Terrorist, all we really have is that this MF was crazy. The end.

And except for like-minded crazies whose twisted, tortured gray matter happens to be processing the world on the same wave-length from another dimension, most of the rest of us can’t even begin to fathom how this really works. Inside the mind of a James W. von Brunn. Because most of us are essentially normal, or at least that’s how we would be classified by this, our classification obsessed society (what do you do? where do you belong? what do we call you?). And so we don’t know how to do crazy real well because we just ain’t wired that way.

So was this the beginning of the Race War brought on by the election of an African American president? Not to mention the pollution of the pristinely white gene pool and the negro-phication of the courts?

Or was this simply one elderly, deranged lunatic howling at the moon?

SHAMELESS PLUG: Read my wife’s blog @ The “D” Spot Redeux.

Chrysler dodges death again, and without Iacocca

I never figured Chrysler had a chance, to be honest. And I know I’m not the only one. I’m pretty sure I’m not far off the mark when I say that those of us in Detroit who have been watching the Saga of the Incredible Shrinking Big Three have long speculated that the likelihood of all three automakers making it out of this economy alive was a longshot at absolute best. Hell, it wasn’t that long ago when we were bracing ourselves for the disappearance of Ford, so if Ford was looking shaky then what were Chrysler’s chances?

But then Ford pulled a rabbit out of the hat – a big, fat, sassy rabbit at that – and wound up finding the strength to give the bailout funds the finger. Well, actually it wasn’t so much the funds they were telling to fuck off as it was the strings that came attached to those funds. Ford essentially said that if they had to dance with the ugliest duckling on the dance floor then they damned sure were gonna reserve the right to call the tune.

GM would have loved to flip its own middle finger as well, but that’s kinda hard to do when you look down and realize someone has already cut it off. So instead they had to employ their few remaining fingers by sticking them in other rather uncomfortable locations while cheesing like Louis Armstrong as if it was the best feeling in the world.

Please sir? May I have another?

But back to Chrysler, who we now learn just got tossed the lifeline from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who – one day after holding up the Chrysler-Fiat merger process – decided against the suit brought by some rather overly greedy debt holders and in favor of the Obama administration-backed deal that allows Chrysler to survive by partnering with Fiat. The alternative to allowing this deal to go through was a dead Chrysler in a town that really can’t handle too many more dead bodies right through here. It’s bad enough dealing with the dead who are really dead, but then adding the walking dead to the list of traumas is more than we can handle right now.

So anyway God Bless Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and fuck those three secured Indiana pension funds who tried to hijack this deal for more money. This ain’t the time to try and squeeze the lemon for more; this is the time for everyone to make do the best you can with what you got and be damned glad you got anything at all. If Ginsburg had sided with the pension mutts there would have been enough blood on the floor for all of Detroit to wade in ankle-deep. As it is there’s just enough to paint the floor red with several thick coats. It’s ugly, but it’s better, and better is a whole lot better than the other thing.

But we really didn’t think Chrysler was gonna make it, man. No more Lee Iacocca (may the force be with him), and no one with anywhere near the force of personality and persuasiveness – let alone that particular size of brass balls – to pull off  Salvation Part 2. So we figured this was it. We’d probably wind up with GM because GM is just too damned big to fail, and Ford because of the sheer size of that rabbit.

But then there were Three. Again.

Didn’t they used to be bigger, though? I mean a lot bigger?

SHAMELESS PLUG: Read my wife’s blog @ The “D” Spot Redeux

Obama owes gays an explanation for abandonment

Aside from the fact that I’ve been taking a bit of a break from blogging for a few weeks, I nevertheless have been holding my tongue on criticizing my president because I’m still extremely supportive of so much of what he’s done so far and what he appears prepared to do. I still believe the man is phenomenal, and he’s still relatively new to the office (although you wouldn’t know it looking at all the stuff he’s taken on).

But there’s one promise Obama made during his campaign that he appears to be flushing down the toilet, and that’s a very important promise he made to the gay and lesbian community. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to stay quiet about this inexplicable decision on his part to not ask himself to keep his promises and to not tell those of us who voted for him why he is choosing to back away from his promised repeal of Clinton’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” compromise policy implemented in 1993 preventing gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military.

I don’t get it.  Sure, I realize the man’s got several plates full of pressing issues to deal with, most of them critical and ticking away like time bombs. I’m even willing to concede that repealing “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”  probably isn’t the most critical dilemma he has to solve right now, not when placed next to rescuing an entire economy, let alone the health care situation. But unlike either one of these mammoth dilemmas, it seems to me that repealing “Don’t Ask” is a relatively simple thing to do. No, not simple politically because the anti-gay rights folks are just waiting for another reason to froth at the mouth. But then they didn’t vote for Obama anyway….

However, repealing the legislation would definitely cause him some problems with the military brass, which may explain the holdup. Perhaps he miscalculated just how brutal they were willing to be in playing hardball to knock him off course from fulfilling his promise.  Looking at this thing through a set of  cold-blooded lenses, my guess would be that Obama and his crew are calculating that he needs the military more than he needs the gays, and that the blowback from cutting the gays loose will be considerably less than if he says it’s OK for them to serve openly in the military. From a political standpoint, Obama doesn’t want that distraction right now, and he figures putting the gays on hold isn’t going to cost him much and may even gain him a few votes from the same folks who may have approved of him choosing Rev. Rick Warren, the openly anti-gay pastor of one of the largest church congregations in the nation, to give the invocation at his inaugural.

But then we always knew that Obama was one hell of a political operator, far better than most folks realized who weren’t paying close enough attention. So the fact that his political calculus was well thought-out isn’t the surprise here.The surprise is that the other  side of Obama we thought we knew – the side that displayed compassion and a commitment to equal justice, not to mention a commitment to keeping his promises – seems mysteriously AWOL in this case.

Don’t ask the military for permission to do the right thing, Mr. President. Just tell them it’s time you kept your promise. If they tell you allowing gays to serve may cause them to lose ground in the two wars we’re currently fighting, you can just remind them that much of the ground that was gained was thanks to the gays and lesbains in uniform. They just didn’t know it.

SHAMELESS PLUG: Read my wife’s blog @ The “D” Spot Redeux.

Happy OSF! This one is dedicated to…

Yeah, I said it. That’s right. I’m a Muppets fan, dawg. Big time.  And I wanna send this little Sly and the Family Stone tribute shoutout to the Muppets and all other puppets with attitude throughout the world.

I mean it’s just amazing what a simple sock can do…

SHAMELESS PLUG: Read my wife’s blog The “D” Spot Redeux.

Happy OSF! The greatest of all time…

Greatest rock guitarist of all time…

Greatest funk group of all time…

Greatest blues man of all time….

Greatest jazzman of all time…

In my opinion, of course.

It’s time to blow up Detroit’s City Council

I’m not a huge fan of  Detroit City Councilman Kwame Kenyatta – or any other current member of city council for that matter – but I do think Kenyatta made a very good point recently when he suggested that anybody else who was planning on running for the full four-year mayoral term in the fall should put those ambitions aside in the best interest of Detroit and let newly-elected Mayor Dave Bing Hold onto the reins so he can plan long-term for the betterment of this city. God knows it’s time for some continuity in this city, and going through four mayoral administrations in the space of a year ( from the disgrace of Kwame Kilpatrick to Ken Cockrel who stepped up as interim mayor from City Council per the requirements of the City Charter, and now to Dave Bing who won in Tuesday’s special election to fulfill the remainder  of Kilpatrick’s term through the fall) is the last thing Detroit needs right through here. 

And this is coming from someone who didn’t support Bing in the Special Election. I was for Cockrel, and I still think Cockrel was the better choice, although neither one of them excites me much. But now that Bing is in, and I get the feeling that at least Bing is a decent enough man who does care about the city and who appears to be putting together a pretty good team around him, I say let the man stay in and at least try to get something done.  I believe that’s why Freman Hendrix abandoned his hopes early and joined up with Bing instead. It was a smart move, and it was also a move in the better interest of helping move the city forward. The fact that Freman wasn’t likely to prevail in the fall also no doubt had a lot to do with it. The man saw the numbers, and he can count.

But another reason why I want Bing left alone to do his job is because of the upcoming City Council race. We Detroiters need to clean house on City Council, which means the City Council race is where voter interest and attention must be focused come the fall. Right now there are more than 400 candidates for 19 slots in the fall primary. That’s ridiculous. Out of that 19, nine will make the final cut to join the council. Of the nine currrently serving – since Sheila Cockrel just announced she will not be running again – I would say Ken Cockrel is the only one worth keeping of the entire bunch. The rest of them need to go. But since that most likely won’t happen, then we need at least five new faces. That means Conyers, Collins, Reeves, Watson, and probably Tinsley Talabi must  get the boot.

Because without a brand new council, a brand new mayor doesn’t mean a damned thing. The only chance we have is to throw caution to the wind and set fire to all the bullshit. Don’t stop pouring on the gasoline until it’s all been burned to the ground. This is no time for half-measures and caution.  We’re at the brink of no return, y’all. We need to act.

SHAMELESS PLUG: Read my wife’s blog @ The “D” Spot Redeux

Another reason