Farai forwarded me the following article:

“I went to an event in Philly on Friday, November 19 at the Asian Arts Initiative, an Asian American “community arts” space, entitled “Changing the Face of the Game: Asian Americans in Hip-Hop.” I cannot pretend I didn’t already know what I was getting myself into. The title of the event itself expresses a level of hostility to Black people – Since Black people are the current face of the game, and for whatever reason, that needs to be changed. But anyhow, I went, ready to see what was gonna go down…”

http://www.nathanielturner.com/werealcoolkenyon.htm

In it, the author brings up the issue of cultural appropriation. I don’t know… on some level, I agree that hip-hop is a black art form that has been appropriated by others, but at the same time, I do believe that Asian Americans and other races do have their place in hip-hop history (for example, DJ Q-Bert and all the Asian American skratch DJs in the Bay Area).

In either case, it’s too late to really do anything about it. The doors have been thrown wide open and hip-hop has moved beyond the black community. Hip-hop — while it does have primarily black roots — is now being listened to and created by other races. It’s something that speaks to most youth today. I used to work with youth in Oakland and I saw how important it was to everyone, no matter what race they were.

However, like anything else that comes from an outside culture, I do believe that people need to acknowledge and understand the roots of hip-hop and give credit where it is due. People need to listen and rap responsibly.

-Jean Chen

A woman paid $50,000 to have her cat cloned! Do people have nothing better to spend their money on?

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/12/23/MNGM3AGB391.DTL

On this fine day, Christmas Eve eve (one more shopping day left!), Timothy Noah, who writes “Chatterbox” for Slate, offers a good explanation for Bush’s Bushisms and his inability to answer questions by the press. What I find most interesting is that Noah finally calls out what allows Bush to not only ignore questions about how realistic is his big reforms are(read: HOW ARE WE GOING TO PAY FOR ALL THIS?) but deflect the questions because he doesn’t want to “debate” himself in public (how about in private then?)

Noah writes, assuming the role of Bush:

“What ‘I’ get to do, as president, is make promises that I know perfectly well can never be kept, and then to make Congress break those promises for me. I don’t have to change ‘the principles I believe in’ because I know more responsible people in the government will violate them and take the blame.

“Those ‘principles,’ then, are really nothing more than the narcissism of a spoiled child. Why a Congress controlled by Bush’s own party is willing to put up with this infantile buck-passing is anybody’s guess. But it’s time for the rest of us to recognize that when Bush says he can privatize Social Security cost-free, he’s just putting his vanity on display. He only believes it because he can rely on his political allies not to.”

You know who’s really happy about all this smugness? The Chinese government because they own the American government’s debt, all the billions and trillions dollars worth of it.

Haven’t posted in a minute… just been swamped writing and working–like most of you to be sure. Anyway, here’s my two cents before christmas:

In Washington DC all hell broke loose because the taxpayers of that town had the crazy idea that the Montreal Expos-turned-Washington Nationals should actually foot the bill for most, if not all of the new stadium they want.

What is it with sports franchises and paying for stadiums? Sports is a business and a stadium is what most businesses call “overhead”… Where do these fools get off demanding that taxpayers, particularly those who don’t like sports should have to put in for a stadium? McDonalds doesn’t make locals pay for building their restaurants… Hospitals don’t make local communities pay for building a hospital. Why? Because they’re private institutions and overhead is the cost of doing business.

or am I missing something?

I’m in Chicago where they built a new Soldier’s Field a couple years back. the thing is big and ugly and expenseive–something like $300 Million… all taxpayer funded.

The way taxes work is if you put in for it, you get to use it for free. We don’t have to pay a fee to drive down the street. Why? Because our taxes go to build and maintain the streets. We don’t have to pay to attend public schools. Why? Because our property taxes pay to build the schools. We don’t pay fees for a lot of services for one simple reason: our taxes already pay to build and/or maintain these things.

With that said….

Every taxpayer should be allowed to attend games for free. Otherwise, cut us a check and give us our money back!

now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go take out a loan so i can afford bears tickets for next season.

Watching BBC News, their top story was Bush conceding that the insurgency in Iraq is, well, affected things there. Holy Mother of God! Really? I thought the totally liberal media was just ignoring all the good stories in Iraq in favor of bloods and guts and things exploding. Stunned at Bush’s admission, I figured I’d see if this “story” held up. And it did!

The Times lead online story started this way:

“‘We’re under no illusions,’ Mr. Bush said at a White House news conference. Some individual Iraqi units are ready to provide security, he said, but there are not enough of them to make up a cohesive fighting force. Mr. Bush declined to speculate on how long United States troops will have to remain in Iraq.”

AND:

“Responding to several questions on Iraq, Mr. Bush acknowledged that the country’s emerging security forces had performed ‘with mixed results’ and that some had simply fled after encountering insurgents. ‘That’s unacceptable,’ he said. But he added that some Iraqi security forces had fought well at Falluja and other battle sites.

A day after insurgent bombers killed more than 60 people in Iraq, the president said such killers are trying to shake America’s collective will as well as the Iraqis’ resolve.
‘We must meet the objective,’ Mr. Bush said, ‘and I believe we will.’

His last (and maybe first?) press conference of the year, lasting a gut-wrenching 55 minutes, Bush said the elections in Iraq will definitely continue even though less than half of Iraqis will be able to make it to the polls. Hell, less than half of Americans make to the polls for anything. If we’re going to fix a country, we definitely can’t make it better than this one. Hopefully Bush’s advisors will continue to clue him into reality and let him read the newspaper.