Racist dogs! No, not the four- legged ones.

The dog days of summer aren't quite here yet, but a few stories today have me thinking about dogs.

The first one involves his O ness and his lack of a best friend-the four- legged kind that every man should have. Apparently when you are president of these divided states it helps to have a pet. It seems that Obama's black side is winning the battle on whether to have a pet or not and that's not a good thing. He got a dog for Sasha and Malia, but now, apparently, he might need to get one for himself.

Diana C. Mutz, the Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science at Penn, studied the electoral appeal of Barack Obama in the fall, crunching a wealth of voter data from the 2008 campaign, and came to a simple, surprising, but unshakable conclusion:
Dude could have used a dog.
Turns out all that sensitive talk about selecting the right sort of pooch for daughters Malia and Sasha (rescue or pup? what's good with allergies?) reinforced the qualities that Mutz suspects cooled some voters to his candidacy.
Instead of making Obama seem pet-friendly, focus on his canine considerations underscored the fact that the presidential contender did not have a dog - or any animal at home.
And in this country, pets and politics have long gone hand in hand, paw, or claw.
FDR had Fala. Nixon had Checkers. LBJ had those beagles he dangled by the ears.
Obama turns out to be the first petless person elected president in our nation's history, according to Mutz's research. (Chester Alan Arthur, the 21st president, was similarly petless, but he wasn't elected; he rose to his position after James Garfield was shot.)" [story]

My friend Daniel Rubin might have really stumbled unto something here. It's all about the pets.

O man if not a dog, may I suggest a parrot? Just make sure you keep him in the room with your top advisers when you are not around. You might want to find out later what they said behind your back.

The other dog story involves a dog who has probably been hanging around the tea party folks too long. Did you know that dogs can be trained to be racist? I did. I saw that movie back in the day. Still, it's not the poor dog's fault. The poor animal can only do what he is trained to do. I blame the owners. But honestly, the very thought of a racist dog is almost laughable. As if us racism chasers don't have enough to worry about with humans. Besides, I honestly thought that dogs couldn't see colors. Oh well, maybe some dogie expert reading this can help me with that one.

"Let's forget for a second that the dog was doing his job (barking at an intruder) and look at some science. Most animal behaviorists agree that dogs can be taught to react against sets of individuals. A dog could also learn to dislike individuals if they suffered some trauma by members of a group at an early age.

The dogs' vision can also play a role. Though dogs can see colors, they do so with far less sharpness than humans. I've read a report where a dog's eyesight had deteriorated to the point that dark moving objects appeared to be big scary moving blobs. Jeeze! I would bark at that too.So, yes, a dog can react negatively to certain people. But I refuse to call a dog racist." [ story]

Me too. It should be the other way around.

Finally, speaking of dogs; did you see the latest comment from Newt?

"..Mr. Obama is "the most radical president in American history," Gingrich said. "He has said, 'I run a machine, I own Washington, and there is nothing you can do about it.'"
"What we need is a president, not an athlete," Gingrich said during a question and answer period after his speech. He added: "Shooting three point shots may be clever, but it doesn't put anybody to work." [story]

Translated: we need a real president not a black man pretending to be a president. You know all those black people are good athletes. But that's all they are; athletes.

The Bullet Or The Burger?

City Council here in my fine city convened recently to pass legislation on banning trans fats in the food served in our restaurants. Now this might very well have positive long term effects, and there is no doubt that some of these elected officials might have their hearts in the right place. But I am sorry, banning trans fats was just not at the top of the list of things that we needed to do in Philly right now.

I read this fine article from Daniel Rubin in my local paper, and it was heart breaking to say the least. I mean here we have two generations of black men slaughtered in our streets by other black men as if their lives meant nothing. How sick is that shit? When does it end? It seems I write a post like this at least once a month. I am always moved to write when the Kill in Killadelphia gets to be too much even for me.

Anthony Harris, Peter Styles, Kosai Barouki, and Khalid Trice are all names you are hearing here for the first time, and they are names that you will never hear again. These men were all slaughtered on our mean streets over a three day period, bringing our murder count to 319. But the killings here of young black men by other young black men has become so ordinary, so mundane , that in terms of importance it ranks below the cost of our parking meters going up in Center City. No one notices, and no one cares. Just make sure those Negroes keep shooting each other and no one else. And the real sick thing is that the people who seem more effected by these senseless killings don't care either. Read the story in the link that I gave you again: the young man was shot in broad daylight in front of countless witnesses, yet no one will come forward. This is the culture we live in, where even potential witnesses live by the code of the streets.

I am following a story down in Mississippi, where a young black man allegedly committed suicide after being stopped by a police officer. If it turns out that the police officer's hands were less than clean there will be hell to pay, and rightfully so. But why does it take a white police officer shooting one of our own to send us into rage? Why aren't we outraged at these animals who are terrorising our neighborhoods and causing us to live in fear? Because they look like us? Because they are our own brothers and sons? I don't think so.

These animals are no better than the racist who were lynching us back when the South's most famous crop was "strange fruit" hanging from trees. These animals who kill without conscience and remorse should be priority number one for the people who we elect to look out for our best interest. We are in a war on terror alright, but it ain't against Al Qaeda, it's against our sons.

Yeah it's cool to ban trans fats. But what good will that do if we are killed by a bullet way before the trans fat takes its toll on our hearts? I think I speak for all of us when I say that I would would rather be killed by a burger than a bullet every time.