Conversations on Being Ordinary

An Ordinary Person has a new look! Look in on his thoughtful post The Working Class Vote, about what's the matter with what's the matter with What's the Matter with Kansas (which he correctly says is 'a potent critique of the ideological and policy thrust of the Democratic Party in the 1990s under Bill Clinton.') : "...the best advocates working class people are going to have are themselves exercising their political rights and empowering themselves by advocating for their own interests...."

Fred Newman in conversation with Jackie Salit for Talk/Talk had this to say last Sunday in 1968 Redux: "You always have to engage the relationships that make up the political totality. Liberalism's compromises of its own ideas opens the door to the American people saying Well, if we're going to have Big Business government, why not have Big Business people do it? Why have these people who are Johnny-come-lately's to the whole thing, why keep them in charge? I think Bush succeeds Clinton not only literally but, in some sense, conceptually...."


Steve Rankin at Free Citizen offers some comments on the litigation involving party rights vs. voter rights in A Dispatch From Puget Sound: "...In the last 35 years or so, the federal courts have been moving toward greater autonomy for political parties, so the party rules have almost always prevailed...."

Think On These Things has a pointed rebuke of a New York Times defense of their irresponsible horse-race mentality....

We Could Be Famous is angry. In The Rockets' Red Glare and Bursting Bombs, a basketball game turns into a demonstration....

Think about Hillary and Obama....

And speaking of which, don't miss Hillary's Harlem Hegemony from Think On These Things... The Hankster endorses Think On These Things! now on the sidebar... Good work, Think!

New York City 2007 Obama Blackout

Every so often New Yorkers experience a blackout. We suffer hours or days or weeks depending on what neighborhood you live it. We blame ConEd. We walk home and light candles and complain to our neighbors.

This summer it might well not be ConEd's fault for once. We might just have a Dem Party blackout on Barack Obama. (And maybe the 2 are connected, given the control of the Dems over City politics, independent Mayor Michael Bloomberg's nonpartisanship notwithstanding...)

The "hot" item these days among New York City independents is the black establishment's swift and almost complete support for Hillary Clinton, no questions asked. But Lenora Fulani has something to say about that. In today's Black Star News, there's a commentary by Fulani called "Let the People Decide". She says:

Let me be very clear here. I have not endorsed Obama’s presidential campaign. Moreover, I am an independent and therefore not a voter in the New York Democratic presidential primary on February 5, 2008. But I am a political leader and I am concerned that the Democratic Party—including major Black Democrats—have shut down public discussion of critical issues affecting the Black community.

The Committee for a Harlem Debate Between Clinton and Obama will be marching in Sunday’s African American Day Parade to build the public call for a forum at the Apollo Theatre.

And Think On These Things - a self-proclaimed pro-Obama blog, in an article called Did The Clinton Machine Silence Debate Among Blacks In Harlem? links to an article from EURweb about Master P at Oprah Winfrey's Barack Obama fundraiser. Master P says that Hip Hop "is a way of keeping our kids off the street, it's taken them out of the dope game, out of the hustle game and turned them into businessmen...."

Discuss!