Heavyweight Bout

This year there has been through the news the heavyweight bout between the presidential candidates mainly Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It seems to me that this is ridiculous each opponent just keeps battering the other in the news and in public. Every time there is something new about one of them Obama and his election committees and minister friends (I am a avid Christian and they are not like the Preachers in my pulpit). Hillary and her money (I wish that I could have over 100 million I wouldn’t care what you say). This isn’t happening on the republic side with McCain I bet he turns on the TV and laugh at his opponents. Now he’s not squeaky clean but he sure knows how to stay out of the news this does help my Psychology teachers prediction that McCain will be president because Hillary will mess up Obama’s votes. What happened to the normal elections it’s like a MTV reality show (which by the way are not that good). If this goes the way it does it will mean the white man will win again.

Changing Times

Today what is with our generation (yes even mine is included) the main story in the news (besides the candidates sniping each other) is the fights amongst teens first the one where the girl student is beating her teacher on camera. This girl is on the floor beating her teacher who is trying her hardest to defend herself, what really is shocking is that the students in the class are just watching and not lending a hand (if someone helped they might have avoided charges being brought against them, and might have gotten an A in the class) that is just sick the poor teacher is not the same after the accident. Then another act of cruelty is the girls who beat up the girl in the house now it’s just evil that you gang up on one person (if that were me I would throw lamps, chairs, TV’s, whatever I’m taking someone to the hospital with me). It seems like a different attitude is taken towards people today back in the day (I sound old) they had much more respect for each other, now you get in a fight that person comes after you until your dead.

The Olympic Flame

Again I looked over the Olympics in China because I had a lot of free time at the school before class and I found an interesting article where in Paris the protesters of the games in China forced the police there to extinguish the torch three times because people got close or there were too many for the police to handle. Most of (if not all) the protest are in relation to China’s human rights violations in Tibet. I mean people are getting tackled by the police and people are breaking through trying to throw water on the torch (One guy tried it didn’t go out he went to jail) but it is a big deal I really don’t know what China has done in Tibet but Paris doesn’t approve of it. People were on bridges protesting the police had to take it on a secret bus (still didn’t help). It just makes me wonder what did they do that is so bad people don’t want the torch to make it to the country. I don’t know if the torch came here yet but the police is going to have their hands full.

The Wheelchair Bandit

One for the record books in Palo Alto, California a man robs a bank in a wheelchair (notice only the strangest things happen in California, those people are crazy) the man is about 60 and he held up a bank and speed off in a motorized wheel chair right leg sticking straight out going down the sidewalk and he was hoisted in to a white van. I heard of equal opportunity for the disabled but that’s going too far. The police don’t know if he is truly disabled or is it a MO of his but I just looked for a subject for a blog and had to share this strange story. The man shouldn’t be that hard to find it’s not like he can escape very quickly.

MLK

Again today is the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination and it made me think or the impact his life had on the world as I watched the kids on the news before the commercial break explain how he affected them and the world. They were kids of all different colors and races. As a black person I would like to think that he only did this for us but he didn’t he did it for everyone. Then I think what would he think today if he saw the world and the progress we have made as African-Americans. I don’t think he would be proud he would probably say we have gone backwards and we really didn’t understand his message. Or maybe some people have corrupted his message we brought this up in English class but we couldn’t finish discussing the question. Somewhere we as a nation have forgotten his words even though we honor him and made his birthday and national holiday it’s not the same like we discussed in class we should be more open in racism without taking offense, now I’m saying be intelligent about it don’t just spurt out racial slurs but understand how people feel about it without masking the issue.

McCain's Courage

Today our city received a lot of attention in the news besides our beloved Memphis Tigers getting ready for the Final Four today is the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr. being assassinated and the presidential candidates came to our city and visited the Hotel where he was shot. From what I saw on the news only Hillary Clinton and John McCain came Clinton for a brief moment and McCain came and seemed like he preached to the crowd. It’s kind of ironic because McCain is not known to get the majority of the Black vote (two reasons he’s a republican, and he’s running against a black man, good luck) and I heard that he didn’t vote for Martin Luther King day in the first place 25 years ago and he admitted it to a crowd (of majority black) and apologized for it. I have to respect that it took extreme courage and honor to admit that especially since no one knew about it and his opponents didn’t use it against him. (even I might have stayed quiet) but he isn’t who I would vote for but he gained some respect for speaking and admitting a mistake like that.

Image

Well again we are deep in the NCAA Tournament and in the public eye but this is a different team that this country has never seen we won over Texas after every sports analyst said we wouldn’t escape the South region and we walk through it with relative ease now we get to the biggest game and our back up point guard wants to do drugs and is suspended for the game and maybe never be a tiger again (you would think he would stay off it at least till after the Championship game, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity). Our coach is trying to clean up the image (according to the news) What really troubled me was what I heard in Psych class (wow, really good blog material)
According to him the Commercial Appeal took a look at where the former Tigers are who made the first Final Four run in 1985 today he said two of them have bad jobs, one is dead, one in jail, and the other is doing ok. He believed why you would come up with this evidence now like they want our tigers to lose in the tournament and it effects our image because if someone were to look at our local papers it seems like we have little confidence in our own team. To look at it objectively it is bad timing, just root for the tigers, but it does address the problem that if you don’t go pro in sports you are basically used by the school and have little to show for it.

Frederick Douglass

Well for a change my history class brought me a subject for my blog I had to read a book about Frederick Douglass, called The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. It was an interesting book, because it describes first hand the life of a slave. It shed some light on how it was Douglass told us in the book that he was sold apart from his mother and that on some nights she would walk 12 miles to lay beside him. She died when he was 7 and to him it didn’t phase him he said it felt like the death of a stranger (that’s unimaginable considering today’s time) the slaves were treated poorly and had to work long and hard on little food rations. Women slaves were constantly harassed and raped Douglass said his father was a white man maybe even his master. In the book he was moved to the city where life for a slave was a little better his new owners wife came from the North and she began to teach him how to read then her husband stopped that because he said that an education would make the slave unmanageable and unhappy (I wanted to go back in time and choke him, but he was right an uneducated person is easier to control). You would have to read the book to understand more it is worth reading for anybody.