The Daily News has a quick analysis of Dubya the National Shrub's facial expressions. Prepare for tonight's State of the Union address and catch Dubya when he nervous (read: not telling the whole truth).

p.s. R.I.P. Coretta Scott King.

The Democrats are the "Lyin' Ass Boyfriend Party." So true. I've been quiet about mentioning it, thinking that maybe he does SOMETHING behind the scenes, but Harry Reid is an ineffectual, soft-spoken man. And the California Senators, two women nicknamed "Ali" and "Frasier" by Bush, aren't kicking down doors right now either.

In case you were wondering, here is Chuck Norris' reply to the Chuck Norris facts:

I'm aware of the made up declarations about me that have recently begun to appear on the Internet and in emails as "Chuck Norris facts." I've seen some of them. Some are funny. Some are pretty far out. Being more a student of the Wild West than the wild world of the Internet, I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It's quite surprising. I do know that boys will be boys, and I neither take offense nor take these things too seriously. Who knows, maybe these made up one-liners will prompt young people to seek out the real facts as found in my recent autobiographical book, "Against All Odds?" They may even be interested enough to check out my novels set in the Old West, "The Justice Riders," released this month. I'm very proud of these literary efforts.
~ Chuck Norris

Dude. That was kinda soft.

Well. This is interesting:

Transport workers reject new contract

Transit workers voted against a new contract by a margin of 7 votes, opening the possibility of another strike, said Roger Toussaint, president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, at a press conference Friday....

The rejected deal with the MTA -- reached after a three-day work stoppage last month -- included a pay increase of 10.9% over 37 months. The union's 33,700 members would have paid health care premiums for the first time but wouldn't be required to contribute to their pensions.

Mr. Toussaint, who had vigorously campaigned in favor of the deal, blamed a small faction of naysayers for the rejection. “It was a byproduct of inappropriate measures,” he said.

The One Store I Get Excited For

Trader Joe's In NYC! Finally, the store has an arrival date. I blame Anna-Lu for my Trader Joe's love. But what a fine store it is. I will happily travel with TJ bags on the subway.

Culture Shock

While I don't agree with all of Daryl James' assertions, this is an interesting article. The article is located at http://www.eurweb.com/story.cfm?id=24371 and here is the text.

Paradigm (n) 1. One that serves as a pattern or model. 2. A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline.

I wrote about the need for African Americans to create a new paradigm in two separate installments of this column. In the second, I even provided recommendations for what the new paradigm could be.

The topic is so complex that I decided to dedicate another installment to providing reasons why our current paradigm is faulty and causing us to be left behind as a people.

Our current paradigm is to accept whatever the worldview of African or African American happens to be.

Due to the commodification of our culture, we are now only as deep as the outlets issuing our culture back to us. As opposed to creating new extensions of our culture and then sharing it with each other, the world now takes from us what they want and eventually, it is packaged and sold back to us--presented as authentic Black culture. We consume this artificial culture as the rest of the world does and it is sickening us as a child who eats too much sugar.

We are cultural children. We are not fully developed as a people, because we don’t know who we are, what we stand for or where we are going. Many of us don’t even think about it.

The best that many of us can manage is to be whatever white folks are trying to be in their secondhand, deviant duplication of culture stolen from us. Blind to our own obfuscated culture, we embrace it as though it is true culture, which explains the success of someone such as Eminem.

And when we do play Afrocentric, it’s like children who play house but never really become responsible adults and parents. We can see throngs of Blacks with Afros, Dreadlocks and Braids claiming to be moving closer to their roots, but nothing else about their lifestyle or mentality is African or intrinsically African American—whatever that is.

But as far as our true and longstanding culture and legacy, most of us are no longer aware of anything that Blacks have contributed to the planet. Our history in this nation and in the world has been hidden, obfuscated, twisted and crapped on to the point where it is counterculture to embrace the truth. After having everything good about a people stolen, stomped on and lied about, it is no wonder that some of the people begin to hate themselves.

We are now seeing the deleterious results of the historical abuse of our culture, our minds and our collective psyche. We’ve embraced the worst things said about us and we joke about how horrible we are on the world stage. In our regular lives, we talk about how horrible black businesses are and expect consistency. We open businesses and perpetuate stereotypes about our employees and walk into Black businesses armed with stereotypes against them.

And, we fight against anyone who speaks against the ugly distorted culture that has become the status quo.

But we once had a tight hold on real culture.

Our grandparents were serious people. The times that they lived in dictated that they live as serious people. They would have loved to be carefree and pretend that they were okay as individuals, but they realized that as a people they really weren’t okay.

Then our parents came into the sixties and seventies and were handed resources which could have been used to build a Black nation, but they were used to build good things for the first few who lined up to get them and share with no one.

That was the first generation of people to become all about self and we now see the result. The white hippies were able to crap on their status quo and then clean themselves up and go to work for daddy. Blacks who did it just fed off of their families and resources, which lead to the first generation of wholly dysfunctional families.

Our parents came from a movement that was revealed as hollow and at its roots revealed as superficial. Only a few people were Martin and Malcolm, while the rest were dressed up for the occasion, which explains how the “movement” stopped short when a handful of people were killed.

Now, just like white Americans, many of us watch television for cultural cues.

Black men in their thirties and forties who watch rap music videos are being silently affected by the second rate candy-culture, which is why we see grown men with sagging pants, talking like stupid ass rappers and thinking like them, which is killing us.

White women can watch shows like Sex And The City, but Black women who allow the imaginary socialization to seep into their psyche are damaging themselves and their potential for real relationships.

The world ain’t fair, and it ain’t cool. Black men are being left out and left behind, but the useless, counterproductive gangster lifestyle is still being glamorized. AIDS is at the doorstep of Black women more than anyone else’s, but yet, they still want sexual freedom. Freedom from what?

Baby daddies and baby mammas who both know that they have nothing financially, morally or culturally to give a child, still continue to have them. Fantasia’s ode to baby mammas was a cultural signpost of the comfort held in being a single parent. Why celebrate and glamorize a wretched situation just because you overcame as an individual?

But we have begun to operate as individuals, while we continue to talk about the Black community. We are disconnecting from the struggle, even as we are still struggling.

The longer you make people struggle, the more you filter them out and wear them down and collectively they eventually acquiesce. Over the past few decades, more of us have begun to circle the drain, even while others claim to be “balling out of control” with heavy debt and few real assets. Now, we have people who don’t even sellout, they give everything away for ninety-nine cents or for nothing.

Our most salient issue is that we think we are free. We think that we can make choices without paying a cost, not realizing that many of us get nothing and still must pay a dear price.

Financially, we are in danger of becoming irrelevant. Comfortable morons can talk about the growing Black middle class, but as a people, we are worse than ever, because the real growth in our population is the group of people who have nothing and will not find a way to have anything. There are more of us who are getting pushed out of the game, yet there are more of us pretending to be at the top of the game.

When one of us makes it, we pretend that we are different from the rest of the race. How could we have role models when the fist thing a successful Black man or woman does is disconnect and speak about how different they are from the rest of us?

Whatever we create as individuals will never benefit the collective and if the divide between the haves and have-nots is growing among whites, then it is growing exponentially among Blacks no matter how many sweet lies we tell.

Spiritually—the best many of us can do is embrace Jesus and refuse to look at anything else even if we don’t really understand. If you don’t fall in line you will be chastised. If you question the norm in any way, you will be attacked and/or ostracized. Yet, many of us are dying a spiritual death while zealously beating others over the head with a religion.

Ignorance and its fallout have become cultural cues for the destruction of what we were and what we could become.

Without a real culture that we can embrace, there is nothing to hold us together, or even keep us solid as individuals. We have never been at a lower point in male/female relationships, cultural identity, or mutual respect.

Many of us are so far from anything substantial and real that anyone who poses as aware is embraced as something near to a god.

We have developed such poor cultural habits that it appears that we have truly accepted our place as second class citizens.

At some point, we will witness blacks dying off. We are morphing into an entire segment of society that can not provide for itself—spiritually, financially, culturally.

There is no guarantee that we have to exist.


Darryl James is an award-winning author and is now a relationship coach, providing pragmatic advice for loving and living in today's world. James’ latest book, “Bridging The Black Gender Gap,” is the basis of his lectures and seminars. Previous installments of this column can now be viewed at www.bridgecolumn.com. James can be reached at djames@theblackgendergap.com.

And from the comments to that post, one I tend to agree with:

Name: Kofi
Comment: I think Darryl falls into a familiar trap. We will often spend 90% of our time and effort on an analysis of the problem and only 10% of our time and resources on solutions. Its not as if Darryl is telling us anything that most of us already know on some level. I would like to debate various strategies and tactics to resolve issues impacting black folks. We have collectively fallen into the trap of viewing ourselves through the lens of pathology. A SOLUTION WOULD BE TO ASSES OUR STRENGTHS. Based on this type of analysis we can then formulate strategies for success. Yes, there are businesses that are not run well but, there are many more successful ones as well and more open each day. What can we learn from successful economic strategies? We as African Americans give white people far too much power. They are not a monolith. Just think about the number of whites who are marginalized as white trash or rednecks. Southern whites and poor whites are largely invisible and often tricked into acting against their class interest.

a shameless plug from one of my LA friends, who has finally gotten her first credited writing job on network TV. it's on a midseason show called "4 kings" starring seth green. her email to her friends:

Hello, all. Laura Gutin here with a brief note regarding the premiere of "Four Kings" on NBC this Thursday at 8:30pm (7:30pm Central).

As you may or may not know, I was a staff writer on "Four Kings" this season, so I'm really excited for the show to be on the air. It's about four guys in their mid-20's who have been friends since childhood and are now living in New York, and it stars Seth Green, among others. The show was a lot of fun to work on, and I think it's pretty funny. I hope you'll check it out, and if you like it, you'll set your watches (or your TiVos) for 8:30 on Thursdays. Don't you want me to have a job next season?

One more thing: due to some weird NBC rules, staff writers are not credited on shows. Yup, I got a credit when I was a production assistant picking up CPK and dropping off scripts, but now as a staff writer I don't get a credit. It's a bummer, but I assure you I wrote on the show this season, and when my own episode airs, it will have my name right at the beginning.

I hope everyone is having a good year so far, and I hope you enjoy the show!

Love, Laura

I of course will have nothing to do with the first program mentioned in this article. Nope. Nosiree. I won't be doing those progress reports. Nope. Not I.

I have become a selfish jerk:

- I have been shamelessly promoting my blog. I tell people “why, I posted it on Live Journal.” “Gosh, I posted it on Pico.” Like I am that important. People come to read when they wanna, and it’s cocknoxious of me to ask them to step out of their routines—which probably involve more work than I do—to read my mealy mouthed whining! (But read my/ our sports blog.)

- The continuing sales of candy on the subway by pre-teens and teenagers is making me sick. I assume they’re out because in the holiday season, people are giving, people are sweet, and people are from out of town. I should respect that some of my young (black + Latino) people have a hustle, but what kind of world are we in that they have to hustle like this? I’m a hater, I know. Even worse, I wonder if it’s because I hate to hear people on the subway? I have preaching, I hate sales, I hate panhandlers, I’m halfway to sounding like I am from a red state and I am living in a waterfront condo.

- I’m going to go wash my sins out with whiskey. Happy New Year!

Here is a pretty good list of some of the worst television of the year.

This morning Alissa met me with a bag the size of a well-fed 10 year old. We walked to Atlantic/ Flatbush, in hopes of finding a ride... and there was a yellow cab, empty of passengers and lights on, in the middle of the street. Sweet! He didn't even pass me by! It took 40 minutes by car, traffic on Flatbush and gridlock on Broadway being the culprits.

post: from the Defend Brooklyn mailing list:


So Pataki and Bloomberg were willing to let TW-100 walk over a pension proposal that would have saved the transit authority less than $20 million over the next three years considering that the city says that every day of the strike will cost its businesses hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenues. Are they that dumb? No, This is all about upcoming negotiations for City employees who's contract runs out next year. Bloomberg was quoted in the NY Post 12/20/05 saying New city employees had better get ready for reduced pension benefits no matter what happens in the transit talks — where pension costs are a key sticking point.

"A fifth tier for city workers is something we have to think about," the mayor said during a press conference on Staten Island, referring to the city's four current pension plans.

Pension reform had been on the mayor's agenda long before the transit negotiations.

This is why we have a strike today! And if you think this is bad just wait till the summer.

Phil

Escalade-ation

So in response to Mayor Bloomberg calling the TWU workers selfish, cowardly, and thugs, Roger Toussaint, head of the TWU, responded this afternoon by likening their struggle to Rosa Parks' struggle and bringing up the lack of days off/ holiday provisions on Martin Luther King Day. And the story of a transit worker with a child who couldn't get days off.

This ain't gonna end this week, because that's a step up in rhetoric.

plus: i like how this NYTimes graphic starts with the most affected-- a graphic that is city-center oriented; and goes on to the worst affected. the most affected graphic does not take into account the additional time and discomfort on the LIRR or in vehicles for those of us on the outskirts of the city, or the effect on Long Island. That is your paper of record.

Day Deux

Less cold today; walking makes a body tired. But I feel good, exercised; which is the perfect antidote to the malaise I've been feeling recently. Plus it takes a moment like this to remind me how much I love certain people.

Also, shopping at Century 21 was quick and easy. More people in the store than I would have guessed but free enough at lunchtime to get some clothes.

Last night I caught a ride home with one of my big bosses and I will never do that again. On the plus side, he really does remember my name and even my high school. On the bad side, we sat in traffic on Water Street for an hour. And then on State Street for half an hour. I learned a lot about Sir Paul McCartney's oeuvre, found out there is apparently an Eagles song in the movie "the Warriors," and saw my old Windsor Terrace neighborhood, but that trip was not necessary.

Tonight, we walk.

Here is a transit strike photoset from yesterday, including Randi Weingarten at the Manhattan base of the bridge, Marty Markowitz in the Brooklyn Cyclones cap telling us "we're going to get through this" on the Brooklyn side, and lots of morning commuters getting reacquainted with their bunions.

What some New Yorkers are saying about the transit strike

opposition seems to be based on people's whining inconvenience (serve me, meat! and smile when i can't understand the subway map and my brittle voice shrieks at you!) and on the premise that being a transit worker is a desirable job. also, the premise that since the rest of the world is getting unlovingly screwed out of pensions that everyone else should.

also, this transit system is obviously valuable to all of us, drivers and walkers and subway riders alike. and if someone's douche-ass advertising job was valuable to the company, they can go to their boss and say "hey, i'm valuable. pay me like i'm in GoodFellas or i go to a rival."

the transit workers have no rival.

so when they get mistreated, when they have given back wages (when in any private industry job have you agreed to not get a raise?) they only have one option. stay. that lack of option should have a specialized status/ value. since the sweet children from indiana who come to the city to test their hipster fortunes playing their glockenspiel into their powermac don't want to be train conductors, obviously, this is a job that a limited amount of people are willing to do.

additionally: danger factor, being in the subways. in 7th grade our science teacher asked us to come up from the subway and blow into a tissue and check the color of what comes out. lovely, right? and we don't work in it.

and yes, the subways are going to be automated at some point (that sends warmth up my spine! hey, digital readout, these kids are robbing me. what's that you say in response? next stop, bergen street?), which should embolden the transit workers. because what are they going to do in 10-15 years? work in finance? study philosophy?

anyway, the comments. these people.

douchey comment string from gothamist.

Transit Strike 2005!

I went to bed last night knowing that it was actually going to happen. The Transit Workers’ Union was going to walk off the job; the MTA representative came out and spun the negotiations his way, the TWU representative spun the negotiations that way. The news reporters clenched their jaws and pursed their lips to deliver the news. The traffic reporters spat gloom and doom. I heard of bottlenecks; Dora and Di decided not to go.

The LIRR station at Atlantic was jam packed with people buying tickets to get to Jamaica and then back into the city. Good luck. Meanwhile, I started my walk up to the Brooklyn Bridge, assuming it should take me 40-50 minutes.

And I had my camera. There will be a photoset later.

Highlights include:

- A few bikes.
- Not much foot traffic, relatively.
- Goofy bikers and rollerbladers.
- Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz greeting us on the bridge. “We’re going to get through this!”
- Empty roads on the bridges and streets.
- The United Federation of Teachers at the Manhattan foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, with some TWU folks, handing out coffee.
- The Red Cross, handing out coffee.
- Reporters everywhere.

Apparently the Staten Island Ferry wasn’t crowded.

Also, that was a good brisk walk! I should do it more often! Except for the frozen nose thing.

From the NY Times, about the strike on the private bus lines likely to happen on Monday. I bring this up because I live out there, with some pretty cruddy bus service to begin with, and at $5/ dollar van ride, i'll take the LIRR, thanks. or just stay with my girlfriend as long as she'll have me. you know, becausde mike bloomberg told me i should. anyway, here is some text from the article:

The Transport Workers Union represents 217 workers at Jamaica Buses, based in Jamaica, Queens, and 490 workers at Triboro, based in Flushing, Queens. By noon today, the buses were still running, and it was unclear when the union members would stop work. A driver for Triboro Coach said a walkout was unlikely before Monday.

Jamaica Buses has about 15,000 riders each weekday, while Triboro has about 42,000. If there is no bus service on the lines, city-licensed commuter vans along those routes will be permitted to charge up to $5 a person and taxis will be allowed to charged up to $10 a person.

The chairman of the City Council's Transportation Committee, John C. Liu of Flushing, said in a discussion on WNYC-AM radio this morning that the patrons of the private bus companies would be the one harmed by a strike.

"These riders have suffered from years of neglect by the city and the M.T.A.," Mr. Liu said. "Their service has become atrocious and to sock it to them this way through a strike at this point just seems profoundly unfair to these bus riders."

He emphasized that the union was not the only one to blame for the contract impasse. "Whenever there is a shutdown of a transit system, it's not just simply the union's fault because it is illegal for them to do so," Mr. Liu said. "The M.T.A. should have come to the table a long time ago in earnest and not wait until the very, very last second. And in fact that's been, I think, a part of the problem. The chairman, Kalikow, didn't even show up until yesterday afternoon."

Roger Toussaint, the union's president, and Mr. Kalikow met at 11 p.m. last night for the first time in the labor talks, just one hour before the union's three-year contract expired at 12:01 this morning. Although talks had been conducted throughout the day, they heated up once Mr. Toussaint and Mr. Kalikow were both at the table.

The major sticking point, according to several union officials, is the authority's proposal that new employees reach age 62 before being able to collect a full pension. Since 1994, the vast majority of transit employees have been able to collect a regular pension at age 55 if they have 25 years of experience.

Normally I’d talk about the extreme self-absorption and anti-tabloid snobbery of the NY Times (Hi! This is Queens here! We exist!) but this is an interesting article, short and sweet, about one transit worker. I like it not only because the writer is one of the kids from the HS (Sewell. I know a funny story that Cappy might know too!), but also because the article talks in monetary and time terms about the life this conductor leads, the middle income people in the middle of the transit negotiations.

Meanwhile, A judge enforced an arbitrator’s ruling that removing conductors from the L train violated the Transit Worker’s Union contract.

And from Ray Sanchez' column:

Joshua Freeman, a labor historian at the City University of New York, said MTA giveback demands plus the union's militant history couple to make a strike a real possibility.

"The very nature of brinkmanship is sometimes you fall off the edge, even if you don't flinch," he said. "But this is not late in the game by standards of these negotiations, which tend to always be resolved at the very last minute."

And, Some MTA Guidelines in case of a strike, from the Newsday:

Enhanced carpooling rules in morning rush hour; restrictions on trucks, cars with fewer than four passengers

Carpool staging areas in all five boroughs

Additional parking at Metro-North and LIRR stops

Encourage use of bicycles where possible

Encourage staggered work schedules

Encourage telecommuting

Start of school will be delayed two hours, field trips canceled

SOURCES: NYC OFFICE OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, NEWS FILES

In case you don’t know about the local papers—I suppose “tabloids” can be used to segregate them from the classy and regal New York Times—a little proof positive that the NY Post is very chummy with Fox News and into promoting conservative concepts on New York’s populace (as if reading Andrea Peyser wasn’t enough. Or the mug shots of negroes).

There’s no link to the article because I wouldn’t want you to sign up for the NY Post (though it’s free); you don’t need to get dumber. Read the Daily News instead. That way you won’t think about boycotting stores that won’t put Christmas in their advertisements.

Hiatus

This is a NaNo haitus-- not that I am getting far in the novel-- but I break it for this article about the changing New York (and how we used to be able to say "I'm from New York and that meant that even if you were sheltered you could probably throw a punch or hire someone who could), from the NY Times. Yes, the article is about video games. An excerpt:

WHEN we say, "I'm a New Yorker," we sometimes say it with a little sneer. Rats? Mafiosi? Terrorists? We can take it. Bars here close at dawn. Subway doors are ripped open with bare hands. New York's edginess is so endemic, so untamed, that a crack cocaine den was found this year in the otherwise relentlessly genteel Upper East Side. That's how we roll.

At least that's what we sometimes like to think. In fact, New York is no longer such a tough town. On any given day, we're more likely to dial 311 than 911. This is a city of Prada boutiques and pumpkin spice lattes. One of the biggest disasters to strike the city this year was a public-relations gaffe in which a 24-foot-tall Snapple popsicle melted all over Union Square on the first day of summer. The horror!

NBA Preview at the sports blog, Athletes in Action (sixstarcamp.blogspot.com)