"This is something different"

Atlanta is really the place to be right now. Even with all the gunshots. I am glad i;m still here for once.

Yes there are a lot of gunshots. It's the South, almost everyone has a gun.

I'm getting calls and texts about the rest of the city. Atlantic Station is very live right now. Downtown is going craaazzy.

It seems the world is celebrating.

And my ride has collapsed on his couch, snoring hard. He celebrated hard and fast. His happiness tired him out.

Text Messages and other things

Whats going around the text messages world:

"They have a sign up sheet for volunteers to help Bush pack his shit and get the fuck out, Nov 5th. I put us down for the 3-8 shift! Keep this going!"

Thank You George Bush

OBAMA YA'LL!!!!!


Anyone who has ever read the Maroon Tiger opinions column knows that the bulk of our writers are cynics. We keep on the negative cause that's the underlying feeling that everyone in the AUC is feeling.

That's not the case tonight.

When Obama won Virginia the bar erupted. Keep in mind it is mainly a G-tech bar, but the room jumped up, the waiters took shots in the kitchen and the dozen of us that were from the AUC went crazy.

I haven't felt this good in a long long time.

I still cannot believe it. I never thought that this early in my lifetime that a black man would be elected President of the United States.

So after we celebrated with an extra pitcher at the college bar we headed down to Morehouse's campus to celebrate with the rest of the paper staff and the school. It turned out that everyone had woken up and was celebrating hard.

I saw some of our more distinguished members with celebratory cigars outside. Inside Fredrick Douglass Hall we circled up and sang our college hymn. It was possibly the most beautiful moment I have ever been apart of.

From there a bunch of us went to the Strip on Clark Atlanta's campus. If anyone awake is reading this now i urge you to go there now. You will never see any more of a positive atmosphere anywhere (except maybe Chicago) in the world.

I can't believe this is happening in my lifetime.

I can't believe this is happening at all.

"My Vote Didn't Mean S#!t"

The above quote was from my boy "Gerald" after we saw the 60% polling for McCain. He's a Georgia voter.

My group of six finally found a bar to watch this election in. So now i am content with a cup of low grade alcohol in front of me and several teevees none of which i can hear over the bar's trivia night session.

We just toasted drugs and the cultivator of marijuana, Jorge Cervantes (it was a trivia answer). All is right in the world for the time being.

Election is polling at 174 -64 in favor of Obama.

Seriously this is silly

I am Maroon Tiger Opinion editor Alexander P. Brown, aka the Ghost Editor, aka "Why weren't you at this meeting?"

It is way too early to be blogging this election dammit.

Nothing is really going to plan tonight for me. I should be in various states of intoxication as I watch the election news so i can either cry into my liquor or accept celebratory shots. None of that is happening right now.

I am sober. Angrily sober.

Wolf Blitzer's annoying blaring is starting to sound like a siren as he launches into a read off of the Senate and House seats. Obama is polling pretty good at 81 to 34 according to CNN. And I am surrounded by people who decided to get wasted before i could find and access my laptop.

There is no justice.

And right now I'm getting an IM from my homies in Cali asking whether or not my state will get it's act together, referencing the fact I live in GA right now. I don't vote in this state, I don't even like this state seventy percent of the time. And while it would be pretty awesome if Georgia went blue this year it doesn't mean my tuition will go down because of it. Maybe I'll get lucky and my professors will be too wasted from the celebrating to actually teach the rest of the week.

Where is my whiskey?

Sen. Obama's Address: Minute by Minute

10:12 - He emerges with rather generic music. I mean really generic music. Who wrote that stuff? And these people are serious with these standing ovations. They got to President Clinton last night and they continue to drag on here.

10:16 - There's something about Sasha Obama. She sees everything with her youthful eyes and she has no clue about anything going on. She's surprised to hear her name and anyone in her family's name. How long will it take for the media to get too close to her?

10:18 - Could you really imagine that this guy would be the candidate four years ago? Yeah, he made a good speech but geez!

10:20 - It's interesting that Obama mentions New Orleans right here. Due to an impending hurricane, the Republican Party is mulling over postponing their convention. In this reference, Sen. Obama pits the Republicans in a damned if they do/damned if they don't scenario.

10:24 - Even when gone, Phil Gramm is an albatross around Sen. McCain's neck.

10:25 - Sen. Obama does the typical Democratic attack. Respectfully saying his opponent is wrong. He's not saying McCain is completely wrong, just really out of touch. The Democrats could be meaner.

10:26 - "You are on your own." This has been my problem with the Republican Party. While I do believe in the free market, we have to note we're a socialist-capitalist nation. It's a mix people forget.

10:27 - My friend Louis once said "politics is being able to go to the grocery store and take your kids to school." Obama echoes this statement here. America is the small things. It's the people who work everyday. The waitress living on tips, the steel workers, the self-made stories, the hard workers.

10:29 - Sen. Obama's life narrative is crucial to his campaign. While he solidly makes the retort of his elitism here, he needs to ensure this is said more often. He is the rags to riches story. Oliver Stone would have a field day with his biopic.

10:31 - If Obama can state the purpose of government so clearly, and these are ideals that we've always had, is he promoting change or reversion? Or is he saying his actions will reflect his rhetoric. We shall see.

10:33 - "Listen now..." The black vernacular just kicked in.

10:33 - His proclamation on oil had a Kennedyesque tone to it. But while it's good to here, it's no "we choose to go to the moon and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard."

10:36 - While Obama is promoting a variation on a new GI Bill it sounds an awful lot like Sen. Jim Webb beat him to it.

10:38 - Wasn't equal pay already legislated?

10:39 - Auditing the federal budget is a task that will certainly take more than his first 100 days in office.

10:40 - Did a Democrat just promote personal responsibility and family values?! Unheard of!

10:41 - "John McCain says he'll follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of Hell, but he won't even follow him to the cave where he lives." Now that is a good line.

10:43 - This is a well written speech with plenty of soundbites. The delivery conveniently packages these soundbites. It's not made for buildup. It's not even made for call and response. But the speechwriters are clearly political minds.

10:46 - Obama is above the fray but he legitimizes being above the fray. What kind of nation is this when we have to legitimize and remind people that it's best to be above the fray? He really just said it's best to not cause dissension in America, but he ironically does this at one of the most partisan gatherings in the nation.

10:48 - For the first time in four days, I'm seeing someone actually pitch for the moderates instead of rallying the party. While Obama spends most the speech doing what is expected of him in the convention, he does what's unexpected here and tries to find a common ground for the other Americans who have differing views about abortion, gun control, immigration, and gay marriage. Good move.

10:50 - And now he's fighting Rovian campaign strategies.

10:52 - Did he just say he's best because he's fresh and actually sort of inexperienced?

10:55 - People were wondering if he'd invoke King. He did. He most certainly did. Funny thing is, he knows people know without him having to say. Obama is a candidate who doesn't always have to say things because he knows the media has said it ten times over.

10:57 - HOLY CRAP, A RETRACTABLE PODIUM! Oh, and what on earth is this song? And where are the balloons? I knew there'd be something wrong with having this speech in a stadium. No balloons, no confetti. Yeah, history was made and the speech was good, but where are the balloons?

10:58 - Nevermind, fireworks are much better than balloons.

10:59 - Ooh, and confetti and streamers. At'll do, pig. At'll do.

Shawdy, my leaders talk black

This blog post is a shout-out to the new class of young black male leaders that defy the stereotype (that excludes Kwame Kilpatrick) and morph black politics from one of victimhood to a politics of possibility. This is a shout-out to those leaders who are confident enough to be themselves and use language that they would use in comfortable company. This is, in fact, a shout-out to the shout-out.

During his nearly prime time speech, Deval Patrick shouted out a number a people. No one blinked. Hillary, eventually gave a few herself. Some might call this a simple term going mainstream. But I think its a bit complex. As more black leaders become serious players in the game, the more they have probably conceded to "the mainstream" and the more they get to influence the mainstream. Language, as always, plays a central role.

African-American vernacular is distinct in two ways from other American dialects: grammatically and lexically. Slang is the lexical component. For AAV lexical items to be widely accepted, on a political level, says something of the pressure that this new class is having on political discourse (on a basic and meta level).

I think this is an example, too, of how something can be integrated in the whole while retaining its identity. It doesn't have to scream that it is x. It will be x.

So, true, Obama might not spend all day talking about black issues, but I'm wiling to wager that we'd see some mudcloth in the oval office.

Anthony Harris's Minute By Minute Account of Former President Clinton's Address

Feel free to read over this while watching this over MSNBC.



9:00 - 9:05 - President Clinton found the standing ovation cute until he found it to be annoying. Yet another reason why this is a pep rally.

9:06 - It is almost inevitable for Pres. Clinton to go deep into this speech without giving credit to his wife. Yes, Hilary didn't win. Yes, we all know this. Yes, we have to note the elephant in the room. But moving on...

9:08 - I have a job to do as head cheerleader who isn't running for an office. Get in line behind Sen. Obama.
The brief invocation of Pres. Jimmy Carter is a small shout out to the South which could possibly be in play.

9:09 - The litany of problems leading to the rote line of the week: Obama is suitable for the presidency. All the while, Pres. Clinton's statements fly directly in the face of comments he made during the primary season.

9:14 - Stating that he is involved in the fight against AIDS seems to remind America that he is still involved in global issues. Juxtaposing this task with Sen. Obama's eventual presidency says the two will work in tandem, which is a good statement to make.

9:15 - "...economically beneficial ways to fight global warning" - It sounds like oil lobbyists still get to him, even out of office.

9:17 - While it is true that we are in a serious recession, take note that there was also a recession at the end of the Clinton presidency as well. Although, the 2008 recession puts America in a worse predicament than in 2001.

9:19 - "Yes, he can, but first we have to elect him." Who was the staffer who wrote that "off handed" comment. I feel like he was saving that one up. Just waiting to spring it.

9:21 - I heard numbers, real numbers that not only attack Sen. McCain but also attack Republican policies with a real argument. Without actual balance in the government, a one sided view of America could bring its detriment.

9:22 - "In this case, the third time is not the charm." Someone thought that line was cute. That person was wrong.

9:23 - President Clinton brings up a point. People called him too young to lead the nation. President Bush was too inexperienced to lead the nation. Sen. Obama is hearing the same claims. We've been having a lot of young presidents. It's campaigning in the advent of television. It started at Kennedy and moved on from there. It's waxed and waned, but it also hit a spike when Ted Turner took the task of giving the news to the world.

9:25 - And the speech concludes with U2's "Beautiful Day". What's the deal with this song? Sure, I liked it when it first came out. I liked it back in 2001. I liked it for the occasional event. It's good at a football game. You could throw it in a movie here and there. The video was good. But for crying out loud, someone come up with a new song. Even Bono is probably sick of it by now. The Edge would have said something by now but he only talks once every ten years or so. He's probably going silently insane. Listen, Barack Obama is black. Let's use another song. Break out some Stevie Wonder. Seriously, give me a new song to drive me crazy for every campaign event for ten years.

That's a full lid folks.