•  As the stock market tanked, the President informed us that he didn't worry mcuh about the "daily gyrations" of the market because it is nothing more than the equivalent of a daily tracking poll.
• Again, as the market was dropping like a hot rock, President Obama went out and encouraged people to buy stock!
• We have a Treasury Secretary who cannot fogure out how to use Turbo-Tax and cheated the government out of taxes he obviously owed, who defrauded his employer of the stipend they gave him to pay the taxes, and whose "plan" to stabilize the banking sector had the markets running for the hills.
• We have a Secretary of State who is giving out stupid gifts to the Russians, even as they continue to try to remake the old Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. She also declined to even mention the human rights abuse that are rampant in China and has signalled her willingness to engage in "diplomacy" with the terrorist sponsoring state of Syria.
• We have a Homeland Security Secretary who has an open borders attitude and allowed the city of Phoenix to become one of the kidnapping capitals of the Americas. Yet the drug fueled violence on the borders that have spilled over into our nation are only seen as "concerns" for us to be aware of.
• In the space of 50 short days, we have seen an orgy of spending that makes the Republican Congress of the Bush years look like Scrooge McDuck hoarding money. In the space of 50 days a deficit of $500 billion (pre-TARP) has had well over $1 trillion added to it...with more to come.

As I have made my trek through the system of higher education, I have known that mine was going to be a lonely existence on the college campus. It was going to be lonely because in the sea of liberal thought and ideology that permeates the universities in our nation, I self identify as a conservative. And it was going to be doubly so because I am a black conservative at an HBCU.

I started out at a community college and I had some experiences with liberals there. I had a history teacher whom I still much admire who believed that socialism could be workable…if just the right people were to try it. But she never tried to push her liberalism into the classroom, unless she was asked what her personal views on a subject or issue were; at that point she was allowed to answer freely because she never pretended to be the academic when asked those questions. She made sure that she always stressed the fact the personal views she shared with us were just that; her personal views, and not those of the college. That was honorable.

I had another professor there who was a professor of political science, a practicing lawyer, and an active Democratic politician in the community. He also never allowed his personal feelings to seep into this lectures about the American system, and he managed to never let slip one insult towards George W. Bush in any lecture. In fact, he admonished several students who did so by reminding them that no matter their feelings, Mr. Bush was the President of the United States and in his classroom that position would be treated with respect. He was honorable as well.

Here at WSSU, in this semester particularly, things have been far different than what I experienced at RCC. I have one professor who, not knowing that I was a Republican stood in front of the class and announced that Michael Steele was simply a token and that most black Republicans were ashamed of it. I sat there stunned and amazed at how brazen that was, and how uninformed. But in the spirit of being a student respecting the position of the professor, I said nothing. A couple of weeks later during a class discussion, one of my classmates who knew I was a conservative Republican from a discussion in another of our classes asked me to give the Republican view of the “stimulus” bill. You could have heard a rat peeing on cotton; it grew so quiet in the classroom. And it was even quieter when I finished explaining that the “stimulus” was actually very light on anything that would immediately help the economy and was simply a liberal “holiday tree”. Since that point the blatant Republican bashing in class has stopped, although my new class nickname has become “Republican”. But I can deal with that.

In another of my classes I was asked whom I voted for in the election after I said that the “stimulus” bill did a lot of creating jobs for government workers and making work for everyone else, but that it would not in the end pull us out of the tailspin we are currently in. After being asked why I voted for McCain, and if I was “For all the stuff McCain was for”, I answered that in a situation where I had to choose between someone I could never agree with and someone I could occasionally agree with, I chose the latter. I was then asked by my professor why I would vote for a Republican, and my succinct answer was “Because I am a history major.” When pressed on it, I laid out the sordid details of the Democrats racially divisive history from the days of Thomas Jefferson to the presidential election of 2008. When I was finished, my professor then asked me this, “But don’t you think people can change? Don’t you think the Democratic Party has changed since then?” And I pointed out that while I believed people can change, I see no real evidence that the Democrats have changed when a former Klansman still sits in the Senate, and both the current Sec.State and VeeP have been caught making jokes about Indians and 7-11 and service stations. And from that point on my professor and classmates have shown a new respect for conservative ideas when they are presented. That was my teachable moment, and I took advantage.

But more recently, in fact just yesterday I was denounced in class as attacking someone as if I were Fox News and of smearing someone with unsubstantiated charges. I would have been angry, but it was all too funny to me because I saw it coming. My class was assigned a book by John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man to read as part of an international relations class. I was suspect of the book to begin with because this class has been less about international relations than about the evils of American foreign policy, as seen through several different IR theories. So, I read the book (which I do not recommend, by the way) and in my review I ripped it apart. It lacked any specifics on how all the developing world was being ripped off by the bad old Americans; it read more like a bad John LeCarre novel than an honest memoir, with it’s talk of CIA assassins killing everyone who opposed US foreign policy; and the rehashing of the Halliburton, Carlyle Group, Bush-Saudi, and Iraq saving Venezuela from being invaded conspiracy theories. As I wrote it, I knew that no A was forthcoming, unless I joined the mush heads in class who loved it so much, mainly because all they know about IR they have learned in class. So I got my B and my anonymous denunciation and took it in stride, because I knew it was coming…but that’s okay. I can handle it and I could never trash my country just to get a good grade from a professor who came here from Africa to enjoy the fruits of freedom, yet spends an inordinate amount of time savaging the freest country on earth. What sort of idiot would I be to sell out to go along with that?

But as I go on through the trials of being a lone conservative voice in the liberal wilderness of the college campus, I want you guys to keep me in your thoughts and prayers. I am getting close to the finish line and I will not let the liberals deter me now!

Every February we celebrate Black History Month here in the United States, and every February like clock work we hear people attacking the very idea of Black History Month, which often morphs into complaints about HBCU's, BET, and any other organization or celebration that focuses on Blacks as a group. And sadly for me some of the loudest complaints come from my conservative brethren. So today, I am going to explain to you why Black History Month still matters, and why it is so important to all of us...and especially Blacks.

When Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week, America was deep in the throes of Jim Crow segregation. Blacks were never taught that they had any history besides one of alleged barbarity in Africa and deprivation as slaves and share croppers in America. The Harvard educated Woodson knew better, not because he had been taught about it at Harvard, but because he had done his own research and found out that Blacks had much more to look back on than slavery. There were great kingdoms in Mali and Ghana, great university cities like Jenne and Timbuktu, glorious rulers like Mansa Musa and Menes, great cities like Menefer and Kilwa that no school was teaching to its Black students. So Mr. Woodson, seeing this appalling lack of knowledge of the history of Blacks in society, took it upon himself to set aside one week every February to teach that history to anyone who wanted to learn it and to make sure those Blacks understood that there was glory in their history and not just misery.

And the same lack of knowledge that so appalled and inspired Carter G. Woodson exist to this day, in spite of the morphing of Negro History Week into Black History Month. Sure, all throughout February there are school lessons about Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, and now I am sure that Barack Obama will be included in the pantheon of heroes as well. And there is talk of Jesse Owens, Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods as well and there is nothing wrong with that. The problem lies in the fact that even now Black history is either largely ignored, or is taught in the same tired timeline...slavery to Jim Crow to the Civil Rights movement to the election of Obama. Period. But that is not all that we are.

I have found that the people who regularly frequent this space are some of the more intelligent people out there, so I want to ask you a few Black history questions in an attempt to make my point...feel free to use a reply post to answer the following questions:

1. What is the significance of the year 1482 in Black history?
2. What is the significance of the year 1619?
3. Who was Mansa Musa, and what was his importance?
4. Who was Menes and what was his importance?
5. What is the significance of the years 1803-04 in Black history?
6. Who were the Moors, and what is their significance?
7. Identify Benjamin Banneker and list one notable accomplishment.
8. Who was Jean-Baptiste DuSable?
9. How many Africans fought in the Revolutionary War, combined?
10. What did the Constitution of the United States say about the slave trade?

That's ten simple questions, and I would wager right now that the majority of the people who respond to this little quiz, without the aid of the internet, would likely fail. And not just White folks, but Black folks as well. And the reason is that we are not being taught! It is not some covert conspiracy to shut Black history out of history curricula, it is simply that the same incomplete history is taught from generation to generation and becomes the accepted history. And it happens at all educational levels and at all types of schools. I am a history major at an HBCU, have taken all of the prescribed African American history courses, have gotten A's in all of them, and in only one have we looked at the history of Blacks extending from Africa to the present. The rest followed the same time line that I laid out earlier, with a few extra details added in for flavor.

But it is during Black History Month that we get the opportunity to have a broader horizon of Black history opened up to us, when we really take the time and have an opportunity to get deeper than just a surface view of the subject. And until the accepted history of Blacks in America can be revamped, and curricula are changed to offer a more holistic view of Black history then Black History Month will continue to be needed. You see, Black History Month isn't just for Blacks. It is for all of us to be able to take a closer look at history and to see where Blacks come from, to expand our horizons and knowledge base, and to gain an appreciation that Blacks have a history beyond slavery and Jim Crow. It allows us to appreciate the history of the Moors, of Askia Muhammad, and Richard Allen and to share that history with the entire American society. It allows us to all come to the realization that Blacks have just as rich a historical heritage as the Italians, Greeks, or English and that history is just as wonderful. It allows us to get a sense of where Blacks come from, where we are, and how we got here. It is not to shut out anyone, but is an invitation for you to join in our celebration of our unique history.

Black History Month remains important because it is not just for us Blacks, but is an opportunity for all of us to learn, grow, and appreciate one another. And that is why we should all happily celebrate Black History Month.

From time to time we all love to rant and rave at the folly and excesses we see going on around us. Let’s face it, a little rant is oftentimes good for the soul…it acts as an emotional catharsis and allows us to efficiently function (nice alliteration, LOL!) in a world that seems at many junctures to have simply gone mad.

Recently the object of scorn has been the evil bank executives who handed out billions of dollars in bonuses, while their banks were teetering on the edge of collapse. Or it could be the Citi executive who blew through over a million bucks to redecorate his office, or the latest outrage of the company attempting to take delivery of a corporate jet after the bank had to be “bailed out” by the government. And then there is the favorite whipping boy of the press, Exxon-Mobil which again managed to post record profits in the midst of an economic downturn. Ranting at their excesses or complaining about the money they blow through on “frivolous” expenditures is only natural, when many of us are actually hurting financially. We look at that money, calculate how much it could have helped regular folks, and we rant. And I can live with that, because I understand it…heck, I even rant about some of this stuff myself!

The danger in that ranting, though, is when people turn that frustration into a political position or platform. Too much of the populist sentiment we see coming from television commentators like Bill O’Reilly or some politicians who stoke anger at a perceived lack of judgment on the part of corporate execs is easily transformed into demagoguery. People get so emotionally caught up in vilifying the evil executives that all sense of fairness and fact checking get lost in the rush to see who can condemn the “profligate spending” the loudest. For example, the Citi corporate jet was not costing the taxpayers anything, since it was ordered and the payments were being made when the company was in good financial shape. And in the case of the million dollar office make-over, none of that money had anything to do with the TARP funds that the government was handing out like candy on Halloween. While it may have been a bit over the top, the renovations were done before the company went in the crapper and it was done on the company’s dime…so where does President Obama get off carping about it!

Which leads me to the biggest danger in the whole rush to embrace populist sentiment, and that is the fact that populism almost always leads to a more intrusive government. Think about what you’re hearing now: Levin saying that the government should not allow Citi to take delivery of their plane or Obama weighing in on how much money corporate executives should be allowed to earn. At the end of every populist campaign is a call for the government to intercede and “set things right”. Populism leads into an ever more intrusive government presence in business and industry and in our personal lives as well, like night leads to day. I have yet to see a populist yet whose solution to whatever problem he is ranting about encompasses any type of market based, or individual responsibility based solution; it is always, “We have a problem with X, so we need the government to do Y!”

A lot can be said about President Elect Obama, but one thing that no one should ever think abut this guy is that he is in over his head when it comes to playing politics. After running a nearly two year presidential campaign based on a message of Hope and Change, Mr. Obama has given us very little of either and in a way it shows that he is quickly becoming a master at playing political hardball, with a bit of a Machiavellian twist to it.

The first thing that Obama did was go find one of the most partisan Clintonistas ever to roam the halls of the White House to become his chief of staff. After months of bleating that the problem in Washington was the intense partisanship that pervaded nearly every debate or decision, Mr. Obama went out and chose a man in Rahm Emanuel who embodies that type of partisan division that he so profoundly professed to want to be rid of in the capital. And when challenged (mildly) by the press about the appointment, Mr. Obama bristled and defended his appointment by letting everyone know that it was going to be imperative for him to have skilled Washington insiders on his team, and that the only place to draw them from was from inside the Clinton inner circle. So much for change, eh?

But what has fascinated me the most is how well Obama has lived up to the old adage “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.” Starting with the choice of Joe Biden as his Vice Presidential running mate, Barack Obama has set about co-opting every major Democratic voice that could be a real challenge to him in the future. Look at his appointments and you will see that he has brought in every major challenger to him in the primaries and handed them plum assignments in his new administration. Joe Biden will be locked back into the VP closet that existed before Dick Cheney held the office; Bill Richardson will be presiding at Commerce (although I can’t quite figure out what qualifies him for the post); Tom “Puff” Daschle will be somewhere being concerned, and in the biggest coup of all Hillary Clinton will succeed Condi Rice at State. Now we all know that Hillary’s idea of “diplomacy” basically consists of either a. playing the victim or b. throwing things at Slick Willie up in the White House residence, but her appointment isn’t really about her being a diplomat. It is all about protecting Obama as a viable candidate for reelection in four years.

By giving these people high level appointments, he has squelched any voice that could really be strong enough to raise a primary challenge to him if he turns out to be Jimmy Carter Part Deux. If his administration turns out to be a total failure, then all of those people he brought into it, especially Hillary Clinton, will be tarnished beyond repair. And besides, how would it look if one of them, while serving in the administration, decided to challenge the sitting President for leadership of the Party? To my recollection it has never happened in modern times, and Obama has made damned sure that it is not going to happen to him! The only person outside the Obama Administration that could possible challenge Obama would be John Edwards, but in all reality his affair with Rielle Hunter has basically destroyed his political viability…which is why he hasn’t been slated to be Attorney General. Because if Edwards had simply lost to Obama in the primaries we all know that he would be part of Team Obama right now.

People may have thought that Bill Clinton was the smoothest political operator on the scene, but I think that Obama has taken that mantle away from Slick as well. This dude is as smooth as they get and I can hardly wait to see what moves he makes next.

Tuesday November 4, 2008 will long be remembered as one of the most historic nights in the history of the American republic, for on that night, The One officially became “The Chosen One.” The American electorate has spoken and Barack Hussein Obama is due to become our 44^th President of the United States.

I offer congratulations to the victor and the same prayer that I have prayed for every President that I have voted for (or against) in the time that I have been eligible to vote; I pray that he governs us well, with no attempt to rule; I pray that he is and remains in good health; that he leads us with wisdom and foresight; that he remembers that he is in office to serve us and not his personal ambitions or any political Party, and that he allows Almighty God to be the Ruler of his heart and the Governor of his actions.

But as I look at the end of this long…long…long campaign, I am struck that the Pope of Hope’s election has shown me several things that I would like to share with you now.

Woody and Bo were right! Back in the 1960s though early 1970s Big Ten football was defined by the way Ohio State and Michigan played the game: “Three Yards and a Cloud of Dust!” That meaning the team that was successful was the team with the better ground game, and Obama proved that it works in politics as well as football. The Obama campaign had the better ground game all though the campaign season, and I can personally attest to that: In the last week of the campaign I had two “robo-calls”, a visit by campaign volunteers, information through the mail, and a personal call from an Obama volunteer. During the course of the campaign I, a duly registered Republican in a battleground state (!) received NOTHING from the McCain campaign; not a call, not a piece of mail, and not a visitor. When the opposition is reaching out to your supporters more than you are, you should know you are in big trouble!

This is the last “First”! With Barack Obama becoming the first African American to win the office of President, maybe now we can stop celebrating meaningless “firsts” for blacks in this country. After this, being the first black to win a gold medal in the high dive or something just loses whatever luster it had!

The Justice Brothers…R.I.P. As many of you may know, Rush Limbaugh likes to call Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton “The Justice Brothers” on his radio show, and Obama’s election just put a serious crimp in their hustle, as well as the prestige of the old line civil rights groups. Because Obama did not kowtow to the NAACP and did not rely on them for support and/or prestige, the NAACP now finds its standing diminished. Barack Obama won the Presidency without having to rely on them, and that basically makes them irrelevant. As for “The Justice Brothers”, it is going to be really hard to work the racism hustle when America just put a black man in the Oval Office.

Our “Original Sin” has been washed away. The one thing that I really hope this election result does is finally put to bed the idea that America is a Nation filled to bursting with racists just waiting to “keep a brother down.” Barack Obama just rose above all of that and showed that the promise of our founding “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal” is not just lofty rhetoric penned by “dead white men”, but it is a promise that has now been kept. While I do not agree with President-Elect Obama’s politics, I do recognize that his is a life and a story that could be found (to steal one from Don King) “Only in America!” We have fulfilled the promise that Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and Madison made to us ad now we can move freely into the next chapter of our history.

One brief aside: While I was watching the “Fox & Friends” segment talking about the impact of the youth vote in this election, I was appalled to see several young people in the crowd shots wearing the Hammer and Sickle of the old Soviet Union on tee-shirts, and one guy waving a Hammer and Sickle flag at a celebration of Obama’s victory. Do these young dumbkoffs not know what that means, what it represents…or do they just not care?

With only a week left before Election Day and with all the major (and minor) newspapers having made their endorsements, I feel that now is the time that The Spade makes it’s first official endorsement for the office of the President of the United States. After much consideration and deliberation by the editorial staff of The Spade we (mainly I) have decided to support Senator John S. McCain for the Oval Office.

I know that my decision may rankle some regular readers, and I know that I have stated in the past that I would not be able to support  a McCain candidacy, but times and circumstances change, and these changes have forced me to reconsider my previous position.

As a conservative Republican the nomination of John McCain has been very problematic for me, as Senator McCain has often done things and taken positions that run exactly counter to my conservative beliefs. Who can forget his complicity in the amnesty plan for illegal immigrants, his assault on free speech with McCain-Feingold, his crazy embrace of the global warming myth, or his participation (along with his lapdog Lindsey Graham) in the Gang of Fourteen? All of these things, coupled with his thin skinned approach to even dealing with conservative critics has left me far from warm to the Arizona “maverick”.

But even with all of that said, this electoral choice boils down to a choice between a candidate that seems to have an antipathy towards  many conservative positions (McCain) and a candidate that seems to have an antipathy towards America herself (Obama). Given that choice, I will choose the former over the latter every day of the week…and twice on Sundays! While McCain may not be in agreement with every position that I personally hold dear, I at least know that he is not trying to attempt to turn America into a socialist paradise. I can safely assume that McCain has no desire to redistribute my (little) wealth under any type of governmental plan, and I can safely assume that McCain is not going to weaken us by cutting and running from Iraq at the first opportunity to declare victory. We know that Obama has in mind “spreading the wealth” as part of his economic philosophy, we know that he is not seriously committed to winning the war in Iraq, and just the last day or so we have seen that his $250,000 figure for who is rich has been adjusted down to a level that Joe Biden now says stands at around $100-150,000.

And I also feel confident that John McCain is not going to use the power he has at hand to attempt to destroy anyone that has the gall to speak negatively to or about him, as Barack Obama has done repeatedly, and most recently with the accessing of the records of “Joe the Plumber”. While the Obama campaign may be totally innocent of any involvement in this mess, it says a lot about the man and the people who support him, that they have no qualms about attempting to smear the reputation of a common man who dared “speak truth to power” to the Almighty Obama.

Lest anyone get the impression that my endorsement of McCain is more of a repudiation of Obama, let me explain why I am willing to support John McCain. First, I respect his long years of service to this country; first as a fighter pilot in Vietnam, then as a Representative from Arizona, and now as a long term Senator from that state. I have always been struck by the notion that McCain’s use of the slogan “Country First” is not just election year rhetoric, but is more of a personal conviction that the Senator is now sharing with the public.

Most importantly, I respect John McCain as a man of honor and integrity. Ironically, it has been the issues that I have disagreed with McCain on the most that have gone the furthest in earning my respect. No matter how wrong I have believed McCain to be on an issue, I have never thought that he based his positions on any of them on political expediency. He could have gained major points with the conservative base of the GOP by standing against the President’s immigration ideas, but McCain took the bullets because it was a stance that he believed in. He could have done what so many Republicans were doing in the early aftermath of the invasion of Iraq and simply supported the status quo strategy of the President and Secretary Rumsfeld, but he instead tried to move the administration to a position where there were more troops added in order to begin securing that country. And McCain could have easily mollified the Republican base by switching his position on what constitutes torture and going along with popular sentiment that water-boarding does not equal torture. Yet McCain stood up and said that he believed that water-boarding was torture, and that the United States should not be involved in using any techniques in interrogation that could be reasonably deemed to be a form of torture.

On two of the three issues I hold a position that is almost the polar opposite of McCain’s, but it was those stands that made me respect the man…even if I didn’t agree with him. Because in all of those instances that I highlighted, I saw a man making a stand on what he honestly believed to be right and a man who was willing to stand up for his principles, regardless of any political price to paid. I admire that about him, and even though I find myself in disagreement with some of his positions, I at least know that this is a man who is doing his best to do right by the nation and not pandering to everyone in sight in an attempt to advance his political career.

I know that there are many readers of The Spade and beyond who are going to cast third party protest votes, and who believe that both Obama and McCain are trying to take the nation in the same direction, and on some issues it may seem that you are right. But the difference is that McCain is not a blind ideologue that is willing to sacrifice anything in order to advance his ideology. McCain, in my opinion, is a man who has always been motivated not by ideology but by what he honestly thinks is the right thing for his country. This has often put him at odds with the base of the Republican Party, but at least he has been willing to stand for what he believes in and not flitted about in an attempt to ride the wave of every “popular” issue that has come up in his career.

I know that the endorsement of The Spade is not likely to change any minds, but hey if Colin Powell can get some attention by making an endorsement, then so can I!