It's 2024! and I have some plans for the new year. I am planning to learn some new skills this year. Number One is swimming. I have taken swimming lessons several years ago but, for reasons, didn’t keep them up. I’m hoping that 2024 is the year where consistency will reign and I can become a swimmer, instead of a wannabe swimmer.

Gardening is another skill; I haven’t had much success with growing things. I have been good with my sister’s plants but generally, I have a brown thumb in every sense of the word. I am hoping to reverse this and start to get into my Mother Nature phase.

I already know how to ride a bike but I want to start riding regularly. My knees won’t let me run any more (sob!) but riding a bike should fulfill my need for (moderate) speed.

We are at the end of January and so far it looks to be continuing the pace of 2018 in being overly long and full of bullshit. I think that this month has had 50 days so far. So, with that in mind, it shouldn’t be surprising that we already have Democrats announcing runs for the 2020 Presidential race.

There are, as of today, 4 candidates that have some level of name recognition: former Mayor of San Antonio, Texas and an official in the Obama Administration Julián Castro; New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand; Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren; and California Senator Kamala Harris. But that’s not all! There are other, lesser known candidates including U.S Representative from Hawaii Tulsi Gabbard, former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda, former Maryland Representative John Delaney, businessman Andrew Yang and Mayor of South Bend, Indiana Pete Buttigieg.

Others who are expected to throw their hats into the ring are former Vice President (and former Senator from my home state of Delaware) Joe Biden; 2016 darling Senator Bernie Sanders; New Jersey Senator Corey Booker; former Texas Representative and 2018 rock star Beto O’Rourke plus 50-11 others. Basically, every Democrat that you might have heard of in the last 2 years. And now it seems that Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz wants to get in on the fun, but as an independent centrist. Because both sides…of course.  

While it is of course still early in the campaign, one candidate has been getting a good bit of attention, at least on Black Twitter, and that’s Kamala Harris. There are three positions on Senator Harris – Hell No, Hell Yes, and um, I don’t know. I count myself in the last category. I first heard of Senator Harris when she was the Attorney General of California but I didn’t have many details, only that she was the first African-American (her father is from Jamaica), first Indian-American (her mother is from India) and the first woman to hold that position. After she was elected to Senate, I was favorably impressed by her questioning of now former U.S Attorney General Jeff Sessions. However, I’ve seen receipts about her tenure as both California Attorney General and San Francisco District Attorney that give me pause.

With this in mind, my question is what, if anything, could Senator Harris do to get doubters on her side? She has lately renounced some of her former stances on issues that are important to left-leaning Democratic voters. Do you think that she can be persuaded to move to the left on these issues or do you not trust her based on her former positions?

As for Elizabeth Warren, will her DNA test be a distraction? To be honest, I wanted Senator Warren to run in 2016, when I would have voted for her. Now though, I still love her economic positions but the wannabe Indian stuff has thrown me off.

I’m not yet ready to decide on who I want to support and since there are sure to be more candidates coming into the race, I have plenty of time to make up my mind. I just hope that with this election, people base their votes on who would be a good president, instead of somebody that would be good to have a beer with. Or because they’re white.

December 31, 2018

As the longest year in memory comes to a close, let’s look back on some notable moments.

Just kidding!

Let’s put this bastard in the rear view mirror and step on the gas!

Let’s look at the future and what I’m looking forward to in the 2.0.1.9.

The first thing that I can’t wait for is the Democrat takeover of the House of Representatives. While we will still have the Worse President in American History in office (for however much longer), we will have a hopefully strong new class of Democrats, featuring not only the most women ever but some great new women of color with progressive values. I am hoping for not only an impeachment attempt on the Orange Simp but also bills put forth that will clean up some of the messes that have been started in the previous two years. Things like a better healthcare plan than the ACA (single-payer maybe?), immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship for the Dreamers, an end to the horrors of the incarcerating asylum seekers and other immigrants, prison reform, action on climate change and gun control. Granted, I’m being overly optimistic, but a girl can dream.

On the pop culture front, I want to see Captain Marvel and then see how she figures in the wrap up of “Avengers: Infinity War” with “Avengers: End Game.” I’m guessing that Peter Parker is going to be okay because the sequel to “Spiderman: Homecoming” comes out next fall. However, since it’s called “Spiderman: Far From Home” he might not be completely out of the woods.

Even though I’m a scaredy cat, I’m excited for Jordan Peele’s new movie, “Us.” The trailer looked incredible and based on “Get Out,” it should be pretty good. “John Wick 3” will be out too and I want to see fine-as-aged-wine Keanu Reeves kicking ass. . I

Next year is the last season of Game of Thrones and I’m a little sad to see it come to an end. On the other hand, going out on top instead of waiting to jump the shark is the way to do it, so salute to GoT.

British superstar Sade had two songs featured in movies, A Wrinkle in Time and Widows, in 2018 so I’m hoping that she will drop a CD and go on tour in 2019. Sade is the musical equivalent to Halley’s Comet, so finally catching her live is a goal for me.

Well, we’re only a few hours away now so here’s to everyone having a wonderful New Year!

When voting, people examine the candidate’s positions on the issues that are important to them. It’s rare that a candidate will have a 100% match with a voter’s most important beliefs, so you try to match up as best you can.

Now, if a candidate has a platform that includes three or four of your most important issues, that’s a good fit. But, if the other two or three things are the opposite of what you want, and that might actually be horrible, then you might not want to vote for that candidate. If their platform is curing cancer, world peace, chocolate cake every Friday and strangling puppies, you might want to vote for someone else based on that puppy killing thing.

The problem is that some voters decide that the things that they agree with are serious points but the problematic one is just a joke or hyperbole. But when this person gets into office and starts killing puppies, the voters are stunned. “I didn’t vote for them to murder little dogs!” Ah, but, in a sense, you did! When you decided to disregard that last little platform issue you ended up voting for puppycide.

You don’t need to like everything that a politician proposes, but if some of their plans are horrifying, you might want to go for a different person. Just saying.

I wrote this last August and it's still very relevant.

Lately, due to the GOP picking Donald Trump as their presidential nominee, I’ve been seeing articles and think-pieces on poor whites and their voting habits. The pieces invariably take the tone that whites are voting against their own self-interests by voting for Republicans and that they need understanding and kindness to help them out of this dilemma. The problem with these articles is that they don’t realize (or want to realize) that poor whites have competing interests – one for being poor, and the other for being white.

Historians and social scientists are still trying to figure out exactly when “white people” officially became a thing. Many trace it to the colonial period in America when laws were first enacted that gave whites less severe punishments for the same crimes that blacks had committed. Some ask if it hadn’t started earlier; after all, something made them choose Africa as a supply depot for slaves. Whichever it is, there is no doubt that whites have been advantaged over blacks for the entirety of American history.

Despite working class whites lack of economic success, many still vote for Republicans and have since the Southern Strategy peeled whites away from Democrats over that party’s support for Civil Rights in the 1960’s. 

This is my first official blog post. The topic is…being my first blog post. I had ideas of what to write but I got those ideas so long ago that I’ve forgotten them. I also had an article from another blogger on what to write but I can’t find the article. So, I’m writing about just sitting down and writing.

Of all the advice that established writers give to new and aspiring writers, the most common and the most helpful is to just sit down and write. That’s also the hardest advice to take. I want there to be something magical that I can do but magic in real life is an illusion. To get anywhere truly special and wonderful in life, you have to work. So, here is my first post. It’s not anything brilliant but it exists and that’s the most important thing.

My next blog post will really be about something. I promise.