Sitting On My Porch Part Fourteen

Sometimes after a storm it takes awhile to take a proper assessment on just how much it screwed you. For the most part we dodged a bullet with Gustav and Ike but when the scores are calculated I still got whipped. Since my week long exile two weeks ago I have a leak in a pipe running through my driveway, my ice maker isn’t making ice and my Direct TV boxes keep losing the signal and cutting into the football games. When you add up the potential repair bills plus my high cell phone bill because when you are evacuated that’s all you have, the score is now Hurricane season 10 - Cliff 0. The score will only get worse tomorrow when I am soaked in mud trying to stop this deluge in my driveway.

How is it possible that after decades in the Senate and being successful enough to own 7 houses that John McCain can’t speak clearly on the economy? Here it is you have Sarah Palin practically delivering the white working and middle class voters to him on a silver platter and he’s trying his best to give them right back to the undecided column. If I wasn’t a black man from New Orleans who was raised in an environment of racial division I might think this was being rigged for Obama. Since I a black man from New Orleans raised in an environment of racial division I think it may be a set up just to disappoint us extra.

Are there really Americans who are that wishy washy that one bad sound bite or commercial can change national polls in a matter of hours? Chuck Todd on NBC is becoming a celebrity from showing that map everyday of the polling numbers in the battleground states. Everyday the numbers are different. Who are they calling? I refuse to believe that more than 10% of Americans don’t already know who they are voting for. They could have the election tomorrow and the results would be the same as November.

Brothers, I understand your plight and I know it’s not all your fault that so many of you don’t have a job. I would just like to ask that when I am out working during the day I don’t see you all sitting around looking happy about the fact you don’t have a damn thing to do. This pisses working folks off. Please stay inside until after rush hour please. If you are going to be outside do me a favor and at least look angry and frustrated. I need that to help defend you to people in the suburbs.

As a man with a degree and a career in technology, how bad should I feel about the fact that I can’t get my Treo 700 to do anything but ring and dial? Me and my boss have the same phone and he can practically stay home and work from his. I can barely get mine to synchronize. I’m too embarrassed to admit that I can’t get mine to work so when he grabs his and asks me about something I just start clicking on things like I am actually doing something. The only thing that makes me feel more remedial than my phone is soduko. Soduko is the dumbest game ever because I can’t solve a puzzle to save my life.

Keith Olberman is the liberal version of Bill O’Reilly and if you love him just because he makes you feel good by saying everything exactly the way you want to hear it that makes you a hypocrite. He is way too obvious to host any election coverage.

I was going to give my thoughts on the city’s “master plan” it’s own post but I changed my mind because the question is simple. Shouldn’t anyone involved in city government before Katrina already have had a plan somewhere in a file cabinet or locked away in a safe? Even if the plans sucked they should have had some to present. It’s not like New Orleans was this paradise prior to August 2005. If anyone ran for office since the storm, shouldn't they have had some plans already too? Don’t you think there should have been this press conference sometime in late 2005 or early 2006 where council members or the mayor said something like

“I have been working on this plans for the last few years but never thought we would have the money or opportunity to do this. Even though the storm was tragic, we could now make this happen.”

Usually when I make a statement like this someone sends me a comment with a link to a story where this actually happened. If this happened I never knew anything about it.

Finally, I would like to wish my parents Bernadine and Clifton a happy 39th wedding anniversary. Your love has to be strong to survive the first five years of marriage without me. If anybody who has ever met me thinks I have any decent qualities it’s all because of you. I hope you have a great weekend and 50 more years together. This song is for you.