Flex Your Muscles Mr. President

Last year this time I was sitting on my sofa watching election results as Barack Obama defeated John McCain to become president of the United States. I felt like things were looking up in spite of a potential stock market crash and depression on the way. So far during his short time in office there has been a lot going on. Last night there were gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia. The Republican candidate won both of them and now the media and political pundits say that this was an indicator of the country feels about Barack Obama’s policies. I don’t think that is true. I think it may be more a case that so far he hasn’t done anything to keep the people who came out and voted for him energized for change.

Barack Obama won because of young voters and independents. I think he needs to realize one day that those people voted for him and not necessarily the Democratic Party. The country didn’t actually convert over to Democrats. They just felt that he could lay the groundwork for some real changes. It’s not like the Democratic approval ratings were that high last year. That’s one of the reasons why he was able to climb to the top and win. He didn’t have the baggage and shouldn’t have added any baggage to himself either.

I knew he was going to have a little trouble when he appointed the same financial gurus to fix a system they helped to break. Sure, they probably understood how the system works more than anyone else but the people didn’t care. They had to be somebody in this country no associated with Wall Street that could have come in and handled that crisis. That one move alone may have been enough for some to say that everything in Washington is still the same. That opinion is helped along by the way everyone seems to be fighting and getting nothing accomplished. Old school Republicans and Democrats are not that ready to shake up the system and work together for the people. That bi-partisanship is cool but sometimes you when are the new management in charge you have to make an example out of some older employees just to let the rest know that the old days are gone before you can become the good guy that works with everybody.

I personally think that he would be feeling pretty good about everything if he would have bullied the House and Senate to pass the health care bill he wanted with a public option. You can’t have a better example of change where the people benefit more than that. Even the ones that get mad about know we need it deep down. Instead I think we are about to get this lobbyist influenced bill that is going to say reform and not really change the game for anyone. One of his advisers needs to tell the president that it’s okay to throw his weight around a little and to stop making everybody happy. That’s what we want him to do.

One of my favorite new things on the web is watching The Young Turks on YouTube. They are a progressive group but they cover a wide range of topics and are very entertaining. I am one of the few people in this area that really don't care about David Vitter. He's going to win again because enough people in his district like the way he thinks. Nevertheless I thought I would post this clip from their channel because it says a lot about the image of our leadership. The lady in this video was pissed.

Reminiscing On The Song Blog

You should go to the Just a Song blog and check out my latest post. I think it's pretty good. All of the post are good actually. I just a brief Kanye moment. I promised I would write about a song that was made after I was born instead of all the old stuff I usually do. I dedicate that post to my people from the Lower Nine because I drove down there today and decided to pick this song.

Don't Be Mad At Ed Blakely. Be Mad At Yourself

There is a news story about an interview with Ed Blakely. In the interview he had a lot of negative things to say about the city. He basically said the natives were dumb and lazy, black people didn’t like taking orders from white people and white people wanted to seize political power. He says that we paid him all that money because we didn’t want to fix our own city and was just hoping someone like him would do it for us. He also said that if the next mayor wasn’t a clever person there would be a race riot in the city. There were enough harsh words to go around for everyone. He’s probably sitting somewhere spending one of those New Orleans paychecks right now.

When I first read it I was mad at Mr. Blakely and I wanted to call him all kinds of names. I am sure he deserves a few of those names but I thought about it for a minute and realized that he didn’t really say anything that I don’t hear from different people living right here in the city. I even wrote myself last week how we keep wasting money because of our incompetence. The truth of the matter is that we live in a city where black leadership doesn’t have a good image because of the current state of the city. White leadership doesn’t either because too many black people think everything they do is personal and they don’t do anything to prove that theory wrong. Most of us spend our day fussing about some aspect of city government or some demographic that bothers us. Outside of pulling for the Saints, you would be hard pressed to find anything that people in this city rally together for. I can’t be too mad at Ed Blakely for saying what he did. His biggest sin was breaking the local code of putting our personal business in the street. We prefer to keep our problems secret so we don’t scare off the tourists. There are a lot of people that feel like Ed Blakely does but they have to live here and make money so they channel those feelings into being concerned about the conditions of the natives that can’t help themselves.

The men and women running for mayor should save a copy of Mr. Blakely’s interview and watch it several times a day because whether we like it or not it’s how people view the city. We have no one to blame for that but ourselves and we are the only ones that are going to change that. I say we all agree that the first candidate who spends all of their time trying to tell us what we suck at instead of how we can be better they should be forced to shut their campaign down immediately. I’m tired of paying people all this money for things we can do for ourselves and having them look down on us. When is all that local pride we say we have going to kick in for real progress.

7-0

After a game like tonight all you can do is take a shower, finish off your game liquor and go to sleep. Before I go to sleep I have a few things to say to some of the players.

To Jabari Greer and Darren Sharper: Thank you for coming to our city. You two may be the key to going to Miami.

To Marques Colston : I was wrong. You might be the real deal.

To Jeremy Shockey: Please see what I said about Marques Colston

To Mike Bell: Please see what I said about Greer and Sharper.

To Will Smith: Sorry for all the things I said to my boys about you.

To all my peeps who thought I was being negative earlier: when I was five years old I had a white am radio alarm clock and was listening to Saints games in my room crying because they were so sad. Back then you had to listen to the radio because they were so sad that they never sold out. We couldn’t afford a ticket at my house but I listened on that radio like I was there. If I don’t go to the game I am still doing the same thing today. I have been through Dick Nolan, Bum Phillips, Mike Ditka, Jim Mora, Jim Haslett and Sean Payton. I am battle tested and I want to go to the Superbowl. Let’s get it done!

The Bandwagon Is Getting Crowded

There is nothing that brings me more pleasure in sports than when the Saints beat Atlanta. There's also not another team that reminds me of how rough it's been over the last 30 + years of following this team. These Saints/Falcons games are personal. I like being undefeated but this media attention after only 6 games is starting to bother me a little. It would be one thing if our team was used to it but they are not. I like flying under the radar and keeping the routine close to the same. Peyton Manning and the Colts figure out how to do this every year in spite of all the commercials he does. The national media acts like the Saints are the best team in the league. Most of these folks had the team going 8-8 but now they can't stop raving about us. I don't like that because it takes away our edge. I don't want to be kissed up to until we are in the Superbowl. Then and only then will all of that admiration be legitimate.

If you just started following the team since Katrina you won't understand what I am saying. Just remember I told you that the first lost or rough stretch of games that all teams have we are going to be pushed aside like a flash in the pan. They all really want Brett Favre or Tony Romo to play in the Superbowl anyway. They don't want New Orleans to win and kill their ratings and promotion. If you want to know why I am talking so negative about the team being popular instead of holding parades in their honor this early in the season, it's because I can sense a little changing of attitudes on the team. They look a little too cheerful to me to only be 6-0. They could end up 6-10 and all this was just a brief moment of happiness for nothing. They need to stay hungry and come out like the same team no one thought had a chance. They are playing the pre-season favorites who will be fighting for a chance to win the division tonight because if we win it will be hard to come back from three games down with our schedule. They will give it all they have and we need to match that. I hope the first half of the Miami game was a wake up call. You are not going to come out flat like that and come back against NFL teams that often.

With all that being said.................Saints 35 Falcons 17. This isn't the week that the bandwagon breaks down.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

This will be my last blog entry until next week. I hope everyone has a safe Halloween and enjoys whatever they do if they celebrate. Please buy some good candy to give to the kids. Now&Laters or Sugar Daddies are nice. You probably don't need that much since kids don't really walk the streets like they used to. All of this controlled trick or treating is stupid.

The only acceptable costumes for adult females are cat suits or anything that requires heels.

Men are not allowed to dress up. Masks are okay if you have kids or going to a party and that is the only way to get in.

R. Kelly is coming to New Orleans tomorrow and I hope the power goes out so no one can enjoy his concert because we should be boycotting.

BET Needs To Make This A Show

I would start watching again for stuff like this.

It makes no sense to be this tired in the morning. You can only slam so much coffee before your body goes into shock. I thought the way to conquer insomnia was to lay in bed early and close my eyes. That worked for awhile but now I am waking up 65 times a night so I am only sleeping about 2 hours total. Since I can't work with my eyes closed I guess I have to do my best to wake up. This is the busiest time of year for me and I am getting cranky. A morning like this calls for the Double Dutch Bus. It reminds of doing the Soul Train line with my cousins. If that doesn't change my mood I may just go home.

Told Ya'll They Didn't Have The Money

It's not often I highlight when I was right but last month I wrote a post called "Wishing The Money Was Already Here". It was about the new Nickelodeon theme park in New Orleans East. I was basically saying how stories like that always got our hopes up and either never happened or took years to happen. Here is a paragraph.

I am sure every New Orleans resident can name at least three exciting things they were looking forward to that never came to be because someone announced it before they had all the funding to pay for it. I won't give you a list but I will say that a drive to the coast to hang out at the beach isn't far but Lincoln Beach would have been five minutes away from my house if that would have ever opened. I think it's still supposed to one day as soon as we get the cash. The theme park is relying on GO-Zone Bonds to pay for everything but I can't believe that will pay for everything. Someone is going to have to kick in some real money. That's my worry for these other projects that are not on the FEMA list of things to pay for. I'm not saying that people who want to do big projects shouldn't make plans and try to get them completed just keep it to yourself if you can’t pay for it.

Tonight I read this story about the theme park hitting a snag and I thought to myself that they were going to end this fantasy quickly for a change. According to the story even though Nickelodeon has their name on the project they didn't have to kick in any money. That seems crazy because I am sure they get a cut of the profits. The park may still be coming because it does say at the end of the story that Southern Star does have the money to pay the fee it needs just to request the bonds to pay for the park. Maybe he'll get approved and complete the project before I collect social security. The reason for this post is not to show off about being right. I made this post to show why we don't get excited for new things and question stuff so much. We've been getting excited for nothing our whole life.

6-0

We Get to Play Against Ricky

The man on the picture above holding the jersey is Errick Lynne Williams Jr. but people call him Ricky. A long time ago the Saints had a coach named Iron Mike. He's the man looking crazy in the rasta wig. Iron Mike gave up an entire draft and another number one pick to take Ricky. I remember being in Galveston, Texas for the Galveston Beach Party that weekend of the draft. All the guys I was with were just sitting in the hotel room, watching ESPN and shaking their heads wondering why we traded our entire draft for one dude. My boy Black Chris started screaming at the television “Is this moth#r fu%^#r gonna play defense too because all of them are garbage!” You had to love the Ditka years. It was a good thing there were girls in bikinis walking up and down the strip to take our minds off of that trade for a few days. Ricky hired Master P’s company as his agent and signed one of the most ridiculous contracts ever. He also made the decision to pose for a magazine cover with Iron Mike while wearing a wedding dress. Things went downhill from there. Ricky kept getting hurt and Iron Mike’s teams sucked. He got fired and we hired this stupid coach named Jim Haslett. Jim Haslett didn’t care for Ricky so he drafted this guy name Deuce. Deuce became a local hero and Ricky got traded for two first round picks. After ten years Ricky is playing in Miami, Iron Mike is on ESPN, Haslett is coaching in a minor league, and the great Deuce McAllister has three bad knees.

Ricky Williams gets to play against the Saints and I have a feeling he wants to show us all what we missed out on. We played Miami in 2005 with Ricky as their running back during the Katrina season but everyone had their minds on other things during that time. He and Ronnie Brown run the wildcat offense so well that it looks like they invented it. It's really hard to tell which way the play is going and it keeps defenses off balance. Many people are picking Miami to win because they beat up on the last two teams they played with the wildcat and they should have beaten Indianapolis but Peyton Manning scored every time he touched the ball and got the win. The Saints didn’t do well against the wildcat when they played Philly earlier so it worries me a little but I don’t think Miami can do anything to stop our offense. I think we score every possession and win the game 24-14. They will probably have a few good plays on offense but so far our defense has shown we can come up with big plays when we need them. I just wrote a scenario that would have us undefeated playing New England on November 30 but I erased it. I was getting carried away. We won’t look any farther than today’s game and take it one week at a time.

P.S.
There is no mention of Reggie Bush this week. He already knows.

Gone Before They Can Figure It Out

New Orleans is a strange place when it comes to keeping up with people. It’s not a really big city but somehow you can go years without seeing people that you know. All it takes is moving to another neighborhood or changing jobs for people to seemingly disappear. There are people I went through school with that I haven’t seen since I graduated high school and I know they haven’t moved anywhere. It’s been like that for a long time and Katrina made it worse. Nevertheless there are those times when you see someone unexpectedly and it surprises you. Sometimes you are just happy to see them because they remind you of the good old days. Then there are those other times where you run into somebody and wonder how they made it this far and appear to be doing so well. One of the byproducts of coming up in the kind of environment we did in the city is that some people have a bad ending written all over them. You are more surprised to see them living a regular life than you would if you saw them on the news for murder.

Thursday I was picking up my baby from school and I ran into one of those cats with the bad ending label. He was there to pick up one of his kids. The sight of him standing there talking with the security guard and wearing work clothes surprised me for a minute but I was glad to see him doing well. This was one of those cats that 20 years ago you just couldn’t imagine holding a job and behaving normal. I don’t know a better way to put this so I will just put it plainly. He was ignorant. He never went to class. If he graduated it wasn’t when he was supposed to. I remember him going to jail. I guess he got it together and decided that kind of life wasn’t the way to go and he changed. There is never anything wrong with that because we hope that people grow over time and calm down. We exchanged greetings and I kept going along with my business. All the way home I thought about seeing him and it bothered me.

I remember that entire group of guys he used to run with. They were all pretty wild for their age. The one person in the group that got in trouble more than the rest of them was a really good friend of mine. I never thought he was a thug or anything but he thrived on the attention that he got from these guys by acting stupid. He would get in a fight or do something crazy and they would all laugh or treat him like their hero. Although they were all supposed to be pretty tough guys I only remember him being in the middle of every conflict. Sometimes they would come and get him to settle things they started and he wouldn’t know what the beef was about. I guess it didn’t matter since he had to be a soldier. I used to think to myself how crazy it was that he was going to war with all these guys that only started coming around once they thought he could give them some extra street credibility. I couldn’t tell him anything. The environment was too intoxicating for a square like me to have any effect on his decisions. All I could do is hope he made it through okay and figured it out on his own. Well, he didn’t have time to figure it out because he was killed at the age of 18 behind one of those street conflicts. All those people he fought for and hustled with so hard to be accepted by moved on and when ahead with their lives without him. All he had to show for his decisions was a grieving family and a t-shirt with his picture on it.

The thing that makes me shake my head is that in the past few years I have run across every one of those guys in the group he hung out with and every one of them is living a pretty normal life. They all have jobs and families and are still fighting through. When we meet I always shake their hands or give them a hug. Then, I whisper really low as if my boy can hear me and say “I knew that foolishness wasn’t going to lead to anything good.” Then I just shake my head in disgust at the whole fantasy that the street life has a future. I haven’t run into many older successful street soldiers that didn’t get out of the game. Even if they don’t die we still end up with a bunch of grown men with no contribution to anything constructive and we have to take care of them. There may be a few cats that managed to live their whole life holding down the block but not enough for all these youngsters to think it’s going to work out for them in the long term. Sadly, even with all the evidence we have about what the future looks like; we still can’t stop it from happening over and over. We have to keep trying though because we have enough stories like the three people I could have written this same story about.

Sitting On My Porch Party Thirty Five

What do you want people to know you for? When people see you on the street and recognize you what do you want them to associate you with? It doesn’t have to be anything that spectacular. You could be the guy in the neighborhood that goes to the park and works with the little boys playing football. You could be the lady that walks around and checks up on the elderly. Someone could see you and just say that they had an experience with you at work or something and you did really well. Regardless of what your answer is I know one thing you don’t want to be. You don’t want to be the guy that’s known just for hanging around other people while they are trying to do something.

Mayor Nagin and some other local leaders went to Cuba to learn about their hurricane preparedness and other things they do when a storm approaches. I am sure they have lots of experience because they deal with storms almost every season but I don’t think this is a trip we needed to take. Our image is bad enough already without being associated with Fidel Castro. I would have felt better about it if I could trust that the mayor wouldn’t say anything that would make the news. I really think it’s time to just maintain day to day business and not do anything major until the next leadership is elected soon.

Austin Badon dropped out of the mayor’s race proving that even without a lot of big name competition it has been hard for anyone to build excitement. James Perry needs to do something to build some excitement. My last suggestion about to him was crazy so I have a better one. He should go to Miami this week for the Saints game against the Dolphins and when Miami has the ball run out on the field and tackle Ricky Williams so they can’t run that wildcat offense. After he gets out of jail and the Saints are 6-0 he will be leading in the polls. The brother needs to shake it up a little.

Lil Wayne is about to spend a year in jail after pleading guilty to gun possession charges. I know he performs in a genre that makes it possible he might benefit from going to jail. It will give him that authentic street credibility. He has to pay for the consequences of his choices but I want to go on the record with something right now. If this blog blows up beyond the five people that read it now and somehow I gain fame and riches that I couldn’t imagine, I will not be going to jail for anything. There won’t be any DWI’s. There will be no weed smoking and I won’t need a pistol because I won’t be going anywhere people that people who like to shoot go. The most you could expect from me is drinking a lot of Crown Royal, the best cigars I can buy, and possibly a photo shoot with Buffie the Body just so I can live the dream. Other than that I will be walking the straight and narrow. If I get that money I plan on living as long and free as possible to equal all the years I was broke.

If the Balloon Boy’s family gets a reality show or makes any money from pretending their baby was floating away in a homemade balloon the terrorists win.

When I was growing up I was a huge fan of Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas. The story that came out this week about them having animosity about things that were said back when Magic was diagnosed with HIV is an example of why we have so much violence between black men. Not talking things out leads to unnecessary conflict. I know Magic had a book to sell but it’s been almost 20 years since all of this happened. As close as he and Isaiah were he could have called him up or invited him over and just laid everything out and got it resolved. We have to stop holding on to grudges and being afraid to talk to one another.

Incompetence Costs a Pretty Penny

I was looking at this story about how the Housing Authority of New Orleans has paid millions of dollars to this company out of Houston called MFR to run the Section 8 program. If I read the story correctly we are still paying them 600,000 dollars a month right now. It’s the usual New Orleans mess and it is an example of so many things that bother me about how things run in the city.

First of all I am so happy that the HUD decided to come in and take over HANO. I hate the fact that we need outsiders to come in and clean up our business but some things are too out of hand to expect it to correct itself. There is so much federal money coming into the city because of new housing that I think the feds felt like it would set the entire administration back if they depended on HANO’s leadership to do things efficiently. Whatever the reason was I am glad that they did it.

Second of all, why does it seem like New Orleans gives millions of dollars to outside companies so they can operate government programs? I say that if you have that much money to spend why not create jobs in your city and run all these things yourself. Did we really need to pay people to install crime cameras? Couldn’t we have just hired some IT guys and let them build a staff within the framework of the city’s payroll instead of forking over all this money to private companies? If you did things that way at least you could fire people that were incompetent without still having to give away a few million before finding someone else and giving them a few million too. Maybe I don’t understand how the contract process works but it seems no one else does either because we continue to waste money on issues that seem avoidable. I can’t say that Mir Fox & Rodriguez have done a bad job running the Section 8 program and doing other things for HANO but do you know how many local people we could put to work running that program ourselves? I did a little math. If you take the 600,000 dollars a month we are paying them now, multiplied that by 12, and divided it by 40,000 dollars (which is a good job in New Orleans if you can find it), we could have put 180 to work. Half of those people could be residents of HANO. It wouldn't take that many people to run the program so the other half of that money could go to something else. The next leadership of this city needs to figure out how to spend as much city money as possible on city people.

That brings me to my third point. I don’t care what you neighborhood you live in or what race you are, you should want the Inspector General’s office to be successful. Now, we can debate about how the current process is set up and if changes needed to be made but the one thing we should all agree on is that if we don’t get an honest assessment of what’s wrong with the way we do business and how we can make it better we are just going to keep giving away money by the truckloads to outside companies for things we should be able to handle. It’s my personal opinion that companies get over on us because they know we are so unorganized and inefficient that we will pay top dollar just to let them take away the pressure of having to clean things up. That’s why we need an apolitical Inspector General who releases his reports timely and stays off of talk radio and television unless he’s explaining a report. I don’t need that person’s opinion about anything. All I need to know is why we keep sending millions of dollars all around America to do things we can do for ourselves.

This Team Might Be The Real Deal

The Eagles just lost to Oakland this afternoon. That’s proof that even if your team is better on paper you can always lose if you are not playing at a high level. I made that statement first to calm down the overload of confidence I have about this year’s Saints team. After five games we have scored over 40 points three times and beaten two teams that experts said were Superbowl contenders in the NFC. This one is even sweeter because New York was healthy so we don’t have to hear about any asterisks like people tried to give us when we beat up on Philadelphia. I don’t think we are going 16-0 but I don’t think there is a game on our schedule that we can’t win. This might be the best Saints team from top to bottom we have ever seen. I know for sure our secondary is the best we have ever had because both cornerbacks are playing out of their minds. Cornerback has always been our weakness on defense even in The Dome Patrol years. I feel real good about this team. They even surprised me today. All we have to do is keep #9 healthy and good things are ahead.

The fact that this team is constructed the way it is brings me back to Reggie Bush and why I call him the X factor. We don’t need Reggie Bush to run the ball 20 times a game to win. We don’t need him to catch 10 passes either. I do think as the season goes along and we teams match up on some of the regular things we do, one or two big plays from him could change the tide of the game and tip things in our favor. The lack of pressure on him should free him up to be loose and make big plays. If that starts happening it is over my friends. I am not keeping the Bush bandwagon going for nothing. I am thinking long term.

Let’s not start saving up for our replica championship rings just yet. There are 11 games left but I think it is okay to accept the fact that we are not a fluke. The NFL has to deal with us.

P.S.
All Lance Moore does is catch the ball every time it’s thrown to him no matter what. If the pass is anywhere near him he’s not dropping it. He's my favorite Saints player at the moment.

The Giants Are A Real Test

Tomorrow the Saints and the 5-0 New York Giants play in the Dome to see who can make the claim as the NFC’s best team. If the Saints win tomorrow there will be no doubt that we are serious Superbowl contenders. It’s also a huge game because we may have to see the Giants again if we go far and I would rather play them here in the playoffs. The Giants are a really good team. They can run, pass, and play defense well. Eli Manning is their quarterback and he’s playing pretty good right now. It also doesn’t help that Oakland didn’t try to win last week and allowed them to get a good scrimmage in before the big game in New Orleans. They didn’t have to wash their jerseys after the game so basically we are both coming off a bye week. I am not making a prediction for this one because it can go either way. I will be hoping the Saints win but that Giants team is no slouch. I think we have to run the ball early and stay out of those long third downs because their front four can rush the passer by themselves as well as other teams do with blitzing. Everyone should hope for a win but I would be more interested in how we play and stand up to that team as a gauge for the next 11 weeks of the season.

I’m looking to the left and right of me and the Reggie Bush bandwagon is getting kind of empty. There are a lot of empty seats. I will admit that he hasn’t done anything yet to make people want to stay on. If anything he has been the one dim spot in a great season so far. I can no longer deny that something may be wrong with Reggie but I am hanging on to the philosophy that he is the X Factor and I am not getting off the bandwagon until the check engine light comes on and it blows a head gasket. I have a good feeling that Reggie is running a punt back tomorrow as one of this two touchdowns on the day.

This is a cool song. I am not sure we should make it an official new song but I like it.



This is one is cool too.

My Thoughts On The President's Visit

I had to think about this issue for awhile before I blogged about it. The president was here yesterday. He visited Martin Luther King Charter School and had a town hall meeting at UNO. Personally I wanted the president to stay for awhile because I feel you have to take time and travel the entire city and see the progress as well as what hasn’t been done. When it comes to New Orleans nothing beats the eyeball test when judging what is or isn’t going on. My preference would have been for him to come when he had time to check things out more thoroughly. Since that didn’t happen I won’t waste any time pouting about it. When I thought about it yesterday I realized that President Obama could have stayed here for a week and if his policies and the money don’t hit the right priorities it wouldn’t matter. We would still be in the same situation.

He’s got a few people from New Orleans in his administration. I don’t think they are going to just let him forget. I can personally attest to the fact that stimulus dollars are starting to hit the streets as we speak. I also like what happened with the housing authority and the changes there. If can make sure that the Corps of Engineers completes all of their levee projects and somehow we can get new school buildings and a medical facility or three opened from Washington D.C then he doesn’t have to worry about coming back anytime soon. Let’s see what happens in the next few months and maybe after we get our new mayor and new city council we can invite him back to stay a day or two. We had three years to make progress before he became president so I guess it’s fair to cut him some slack after all the things he has had to deal with in only nine months time. I may be going soft on President Obama. That’s probably true but if things are jacked up this time next year I won’t have a problem saying so. Right now I think we should thank him for coming, focus on our own local affairs, and see what happens.

P.S
No one should say anything negative about that little boy asking the president why people hate him. That baby doesn’t understand policies at his age. He’s only judging things by the energy he sees and feels. That kid asked the president a sincere question that he really wanted an answer to. Give that baby some credit.

I just came from outside and I was thinking that tonight would have been a good night to sit on the lake and smoke a cigar. Before Katrina I would relax by driving to the section right next to the Seabrook Bridge and sit on the top step to watch the water and think. Every now and then my cousin would meet me out there and we would split a six pack while enjoying that cigar and talk about things going on. I guess that tradition is dead since it’s been four years and the lights are still not being turned on at night. I just have to say that this really pisses me off.

Anyone that thought Rush Limbaugh would be an NFL owner does not pay attention to how that league and its owners conduct business. Since it was announced he was trying to buy in there has been a lot of media attention given to that story. That is exactly the reason why those owners wouldn’t let him in. One of the arguments in his favor was that controversial rappers have bought into NBA teams. The NBA is a different league. They sell their players and personalities over the actual game of basketball. One of their owners has a great blog and gives his opinion about everything. No one can tell you what an NFL owner thinks. I am a football fanatic and couldn’t pick more than five of them out of a lineup. They like it that way because the NFL is the only professional sports league in this country where people in cities like Jacksonville, New Orleans, Green Bay, and Cincinnati can actually think their team has a shot at winning. No one person comes before the game itself. That’s why they are the number one league and it doesn’t make any sense to have an owner with a divisive radio show possibly saying something on air to turn the attention to him and away from the field. Rush didn’t lose out on being an NFL owner because of how he thinks. He lost out because he likes telling everybody how he thinks. It’s good to see Reverend Al Sharpton back to picking the best ways to get media attention.

I know he is only six years old. I am glad he didn’t fall out of that balloon today and he was at home safe but when all the cameras went away someone should have whipped that little boy’s ass for hiding that long. I know he could hear his mama screaming “Lord, my baby floating away in his daddy stupid balloon!” Maybe that’s just what my mama would have said while cussing my daddy for leaving us outside with a balloon full of helium. That whole thing was a hoax. Those folks want a reality TV show and didn’t want to have 8 more babies to accomplish it.