RIP J.D. Salinger & Howard Zinn

Holden Caufield's finally at peace. The nation isn't.

Stop the Overtime debate. The Vikings lost. Period.

Let's get one thing straight--I'm no Saints fan. They are vastly overrated. But...I wish folks would stop this endless debate over NFL sudden death overtime rules and coin tosses. One of my wingnut pals, who's blog you can access to the right, and who's GOP partisanship belies all of his libertarian, bootstrap let the chips fall jawboning, was quite upset. He wanted a rule change. An accommodation. Fairness. Well, here's what I said:

"

Look if you lose the coin toss, THEN PLAY SOME FRIGGIN'DEFENSE. Or how about just playing to win during regulation time! What--you want the game to last ten quarters? You sound like such a socialist "lets be fair/level the playing field at someone's expense Obama-ite whiner, Bwa hahahaha Please note I'm nowhere NEAR a Saints fan, but if anyone other than Brett Favre was on the losing end, no one would be having this silly debate."

Prediction: Coakley loses Kennedy seat--The NFL as political metaphor

Football analogy time. In this age of Game Change (see previous post), why not?

I'm predicting Martha Coakley will lose. I'm predicting Barack Obama will be a one term president. (More a George Bush Senior than a Jimmy Carter loss, but at this point does it matter?).

Why am I courting the wrath of true believers? Because the Democrats are like the Ravens, Cowboys, Chargers, Cardinals et al.

Both sets rely on big plays on O or D or both, and big personalities to win. If you get behind them, you're dead. Period. Yet if you trip them up, pierce their lack of a fundamental game plan, you win. Little discipline beneath the surface of either the Dems or these teams. The coaches/leaders aren't ruthless field generals. They are arrogant young guys or self-serving paycheck collectors or technocrats or avuncular types. I guess Norv Turner fits the latter two categories?

So where are the fundamentals that truly win games? Block, tackle, run, throw, catch, kick. That's it. The GOP does it well. In Massachusetts, it has. In Virginia and NJ as well. Don't blame it all on weak or sublimely flawed candidates (though that helped!). Fundamentals don't just mean physical or digital grassroots stuff (the latter, ironically, what Plouffe did for Obama with the template laid by Howard Dean...and where are they now?). Fundamentals also mean dirty tricks, soft money, lies, distortion, casting yourself as a victim or oppressed when you and your target demos clearly aren't, displacement of evil out-groups or straw villians (ACORN, illegals and other hobgoblins), recruitment (and eventual casting away...watch it folks) of stormtroopers (e.g. Tea Partiers). Couple that with your own PR arm--Fox News and Fox Business News--well, you have a machine where the players are interchangeable, not irreplaceable.

The Baltimore Ravens kicked Rex Ryan to the curb in favor of Harbaugh. Barack ( or his people, and who are his people, his team, his sanctum? Growing up a loner, a la Tony Romo, doesn't help) punts Plouffe, distances himself from Dean. Brings in Rahm et al. Outsource's his leadership to Harry Reid and former Baltimore Colt-Memorial Stadium in her blue and white booties booster Nancy Pelosi. How's that been working out for the Ravens, the Jets, and the White House's agenda? Ryan was the Ravens' rock for fundamentals, for gritty football. Harbaugh may have just ridden that legacy this season.

Likewise, when I see the Dems in Massachusetts this week I see the Dallas Cowboys. Everyone knew Teddy Kennedy was sick for long time. Why wasn't an heir apparent trained, pimped, hyped and hustled? Well because they were hot, unstoppable, flashy, the boys. Now the Commonwealth will be stuck not with an Olympia Snowe type, but rather with some Rick Santorum clown for 6 years. Nice legacy for Ted. Though I predict Brown will be a one term senator...and none other than Derval "Barack with balls" Patrick will knock him off. I dare you to bet against me.

For Barack the implications are grim. Grim as the post Reconstruction extremism and dark ages of 1876-1898, revisited. As grim as Colts-Vikings Superbowl...

Then again, extreme pain and shame may be a good thing for the Dems, for Barack, for teams like the Ravens, the Cowboys, Kurt Warner's bunch, the Bolts & such. Extreme pain pushes out the conventional wisdom, the entrenched fools, the Kool Aid drinkers. It induces change. Real change, not bullshit. Pain becomes an inducement to fundamentals. Fundamentals win.

Pissed away: What a difference a year makes

You can see Tour of Echoes here, and read the article I did for The Root from which we created the multimedia piece, as a gift for the Inauguration of Barack Obama.

One year later I offered this Facebook status--picked up by the right wing Tigerhawk blog--out of utter dismay:

Christopher Alan Chambers marvels at how Barack Obama's managed to piss away more hope and goodwill in exactly 1 year than teen newlyweds or a bad football coach. Can't blame Tea Baggers, white people's cognitive dissonance/world view or inheriting a vast mess at home and abroad for everything, folks.

Thoughts?

The Best Word on Harry Reid

Game Change is a crazy book. I think Heilemann (whom I've spoken to personally) and Halperin are the Harriet Beecher Stowe of today's Civil War (the opposing forces seem to be the same--right down to the migration to the politics and culture of Reconstruction). Indeed I told Heilemann if he showed up at the White House, Obama would greet him the same way Abe Lincoln spoke to Stowe in 1861: "So you're the little [lady] who helped cause this big mess."

In case you were waiting on my comments on Harry Reid, I couldn't do it any more justice than Ta-Nehisi Coates, resident pundit for The Atlantic. I'm not so arrogant as to say great minds think alike. No, it's that this is a no brainer, and common sense dictates convergence...like coming to the conclusion simultaneously and independently that ketchup and maggots aren't good toppings for vanilla ice cream. So, here it is:

John Cornyn and Michael Steele [on Fox News, of course] think that Harry Reid's comments are the same as Trent Lott's

"In 2002, Democrats expressed outrage at Senator Lott and called on him to step
down as leader. That same standard should be applied to Senator Reid and his
embarrassing and racially insensitive statements; statements, I would add, that
Senator Reid still has yet to clarify," Cornyn said in a written
statement. As we await his explanation, Senator Reid should do the right
thing, follow the example that he himself set in 2002, and step down as majority
leader."

I think you can grant that, in this era, the term "Negro dialect" is racially insensitive and embarrassing. That said, the fair-mind listener understands the argument--Barack Obama's complexion and his ability to code-switch is an asset. You can quibble about the "light skin" part, but forget running for president, code-switching is the standard M.O. for any African American with middle class aspirations.

But there's no such defense for Trent Lott. Lott celebrated apartheid Mississippi's support of Strom Thurmond, and then said that had Thurmond won, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years.'' Strom Thurmond run for president, specifically because he opposed Harry Truman's efforts at integration. This is not mere conjecture--nearly half of Thurmond's platform was dedicated to preserving segregation. The Dixiecrat slogan was "Segregation Forever!" (Exclamation point, theirs.) Trent Lott's wasn't forced to resign because he said something "racially insensitive." He was forced to resign because he offered tacit endorsement of white supremacy--frequently.

Claiming that Harry Reid's comments are the same, is like claiming that referring to Jews as "Hebrews" is the same as endorsing Nazism. Whereas a reputable portion of black people still use the term Negro without a hint of irony, no black person thinks the guy yelling "Segregation Forever!" would have cured us of "all these problems."

Leaving aside political cynicism, this entire affair proves that the GOP is not simply still infected with the vestiges of white supremacy and racism, but is neither aware of the infection, nor understands the disease. Listening to Liz Cheney explain why Harry Reid's comments were racist, was like listening to me give lessons on the finer points of the comma splice. This a party, rightly or wrongly, regarded by significant portions of the country as a haven for racists. They aren't simply having a hard time re-branding, they don't actually understand how and why they got the tag.

These guys are lost. But Michael Steele's "off the hook" strategy will, presumably, point the way back. Not for nothing, I offer the wise and venerable words of my people: Negro, please.

How we can defeat al Qaida

First medical marijuana, now Snoop Dog parachutes into Yemen and No. Pakistan. We start them young. They will be mellow, horny and hungry by the time they're angry young men...

The Nimrod Tree

See the annual Infamous Christmas blogpost below to peep a photo of Nat's tree (and Mrs Nat doing her thing on the laptop). Time to take it down sadly. But it had a great run, through three parties and numerous visits, stop-bys, jostling by adults and kids alike...

...but then I hear from a few bammas about how they don't put up Christmas trees. OK in DC the lovely Frazier fur goes for $50-$75 [at a reputable place for a 6ft tree]. OK, some negroes are cheap as hell and $50 for a tree is insane. Yet this goes to something a lot more grounded in ignorance, rather than wallets...sort of like telling people not to get a vaccine--just don't eat lean porkchops else you get swine flu [which is one reason they now call it H1N1 so as not to give credence to this nonsense].

So here's what the black Muslims have to say about Christmas trees (FYI in that's evile white-Jew Santa depicted above to set the mood):

Christmas was set up as a memorial to Nimrod. The Christmas tree is an "Evergreen tree", this means that it is green or has life, all year round and does not die out like other trees.
1. Evergreen tree is used at Christmas as a symbol to represent everlasting life for the white race.
2. It sits in a box held in place by a cross which represents the division of the four brothers; Black, Brown, Red and Yellow, which support the white race.
3. The trinkets and ornaments represents the riches, wealth and knowledge of the Blackman which was stolen by Nimrod and brought back to the white race in Europe.
4. The star on top of the tree represents the superior brain power of the white race to remain on top.
5. Santa Claus represents Nimrod bringing the riches of the Blackman back to Europe. (They do not explain where Santa Claus gets the presents from do they).


Okey-dokey. Now, I always thought Nimrod was just another old Testament douchebag, and other than seeing his character in John Huston's "The Bible" (Tower Babel sequence, Stephen Boyd plays Nimrod) who cares? Well I guess my elitist Princeton bourgie ass was plain mistaken:

Two key figures in the origin of Christmas are Nimrod, a great grandson of Noah, and his mother and wife, Semiramis, also known as Ishtar and Isis. Nimrod, known in Egypt as Osiris, was the founder of the first world empire at Babel, later known as Babylon (Genesis 10:8-12; 11:1-9). From ancient sources such as the "Epic of Gilgamesh" and records unearthed by archeologists from long-ruined Mesopotamian and Egyptian cities, we can reconstruct subsequent events.
After Nimrod's death (c. 2167 BC), Semiramis promoted the belief that he was a god. She claimed that she saw a full-grown evergreen tree spring out of the roots of a dead tree stump, symbolizing the springing forth of new life for Nimrod. On the anniversary of his birth, she said, Nimrod would visit the evergreen tree and leave gifts under it. His birthday fell on the winter solstice at the end of December.
A few years later, Semiramis bore a son, Horus or Gilgamesh. She declared that she had been visited by the spirit of Nimrod, who left her pregnant with the boy. Horus, she maintained, was Nimrod reincarnated. With a father, mother, and son deified, a deceptive, perverted trinity was formed.

According to this stuff adopted by a few idiots, the Christmas tree is really a "Nimrod tree," representing Nimrod's evil...Nimrod's erect phallus, etc. etc. Mix that with the usual Elijah Muhammad crap and you get black folks' number one Christmas myth. Dumb? Yes. But it helps buttress the artifice you need when you aren't going buy a Christmas gift for your kids, yet jack a nice PS3 or new North Face parka for yourself.

Hope you had a Merry Christmas. Now let me curse Nimrod for all these damn pine needles I got to vaccum up!