Nothing about him suggests that he gives enough of a fuck about anyone in this nation unless there is something in it for him. Look how quick he was to walk back as much of his repudiation of neo-Nazis and such as he could to maintain what little support he has. Look at how he has majorities in all the main halls of government and, to date, has not one single legislative accomplishment. Look at how he has had more turnover in his cabinet than a fucking McDonald’s. Look at how he responds to even the mildest constructive criticism. Look at how he can’t even keep friends inside of his “own” (see above, he isn’t one of them, and they’re starting to see it) party.

I didn’t vote for him, but that isn’t why I say he is “not my president.” I mean he is not my president because he has not made one single action since taking his oath of office that would or has make my life one iota better. For that reason, even if you voted for or somehow otherwise support him, he is not your president either. Sure, there are people who pretend to tow the company line, even copying his approach to sniping the lowest hanging fruit to excuse his behavior. His surrogates go out to the media to repeat already dispelled non-truths and repeat them louder when called on it.

“Well at least he is not Hillary,” they say, but never actually offer any of the substance that the eleven million spent on Benghazi investigations HAD to have unearthed.

Wait… Nothing was ever found there either?

He can blame a “do-nothing Congress,” but they were fresh off of several years obstructing the last president in wait for someone in their party to be a waiting ink pen on the other end of their agenda. It seems more like an unhinged wannabe dictator attached to said pen is the actual problem here.

Hillary is not the president. After 7 months, it is not about sore losers as much as it is about one sore winner who can’t seem to actually do the job he has found himself in and is looking HARD to figure out who he will blame before Congress in the party he claims decides to quit on him like they did Nixon.

Russia investigations and Grand Juries are still a thing. The sooner Congress realizes that it will be their OWN asses in the grease for continuing – the few who still do – to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, the sooner 45 will get a visit similar to when Barry Goldwater, John Rhodes, and Hugh Scott made an infamous 08/07/1974 visit.

There isn’t enough cooked-up controversy to POSSIBLY draw attention away from these things when every single new fire burns just as hot as the previous one.

He’s not my president.

He’s not your president.

At the rate he is headed, his days of being his president are numbered.

You know who is doing a bang up job of keeping his nose clean in all of this? Paul Ryan.

“How?” you ask? Ryan is letting major conflicts go down between the executive and the Senate, not the House. He is quick to speak when 45 says some fuck shit. He has been on the right side of most discussions while remaining on the larger party message overall.
Should the president manage not to get himself impeached or otherwise resign as he sees his businesses hemorrhaging money, I FULLY expect Paul Ryan to primary him in 2020.
… and he’ll beat him too!

The post He’s Not My President, Nor Your President Either appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Things happened, the duo split for a while and Sean Price started making solo albums…
Great. Fucking. Solo. Albums He was new to many, but simply getting better at his craft to the ones who remembered. Unfortunately, on August 8, 2015, Sean passed in his sleep.

On the second anniversary of his passing, we get his second posthumous release, titled Imperius Rex. The conventional album release day used to be Tuesdays but that was abandoned by most a couple of years ago. I am going to go with the coincidence of the release date, the anniversary of his passing and the fact that it was a Tuesday is NOT a coincidence. Let’s talk about this new release from one of my favorite rappers.

1 – Imperius Rex

We get Elijah Price spitting a couple of his dad’s old bars, and then we get right to business. This beat is HUGE. I love how we got right into it on this. As ever, he drops a couple of mentions of Planet of the Apes, referencing the Rise and Dawn movies.

2 – Dead or Alive (feat. Bernadette Price)

Good of them to get the man’s wife involved in the project early on in the proceedings.
I was expecting some spoken word, she actually got on the song and spit the hook. I am impressed. I wonder why they never did this before. Another beat I happen to like a lot.

3 – Definition of God

I love how each song thus far has had samplings of Sean’s prior work in the scratches around the hooks. I don’t know how much Sean had personally in the choice of beats and production on this album, but whoever DID has done a wonderful job of matching these backdrops to his rhymes. The third song in and I have not heard one I would skip yet. This song ends with Sean doing his Stephen A Smith impression. Got a chuckle out of me.

4 – Ape in His Apex (feat. Ruste Juxx)

I almost know what to expect on this one. Sean was always about the concept of his albums, and this “ape” thing is one he has leaned on hard. The organ in this beat is amazing. The alliteration with the “sh” in the middle of the first verse was fucking ILL.
Ruste Juxx comes in with a “Ruste Juxx verse,” and those are always worth the price of admission.

5 – Apartheid (feat. Buckshot & Gene)

First thing I caught was the Tenor Saw sample of Ring The Alarm. Topically, the hook in patois, then Buck comes back to his regular flow to finish his verses. I am more impressed with Buckshot than I usually am with this one. Gene’s verse at the end was impressive, and I like how the song just ended cold.

6 – Lord Have Mercy (feat. Rim P & Vic Spencer)

If one song to not be impressed with was an inevitability, then I have found it. The beat is really laid-back, and the hook is an earworm. Never been a fan of Vic Spencer’s flow either. Commitment to the task of completing this review is really the only way I made it the whole 3:35 of this track.

7 – Negus (feat. DOOM & Ike Eyez)

This is a loping and slow beat. I like it. I didn’t get as much of Sean Price on this song as I would have wanted, but I am cool with the guests enough to not have that as a damning complaint.

8 – Church Bells (feat. Junior Reid)

This song is making me wish I had thought to put Junior Reed album on my player to listen to after this album is over. Sean comes in aggressive and disrespectful as we loved and will miss him. So far, this might be my favorite song on this album. I listened three times before moving on from it.

9 – The 3 Lyrical Ps (feat. Prodigy & Styles P)

Weird seeing this after what happened to Prodigy back at the beginning of this summer.
Holy HELL that Prodigy verse though! Easily one of his best, in my opinion. Styles is Styles, and that is to say, he is consistent and fully fit to give the last verse of a song. I listened to this one twice before moving on.

10 – Not97 Skit
All I can say about this is “lol.” Funkmaster Flex is somewhere upset that he cannot respond to this.

11 – Refrigerator P!

This beat is damn good. It set me up to think I was going to get a good song over it and I was more than pleased with what I got. Something that I am beginning to notice on this album is that there are a LOT of features. There is not one on this song and I think that very fact was what made me notice it. Don’t let my dalliance into that little detail make you think that there was something wrong with this particular song.

12 – Prisoner (feat. Freeway)

I am sitting here surprised that Sean Price and Freeway haven’t worked together before. Freeway is one of those people who has either gotten WAAAAAAY better through the years or who took a long time to grow on me, but his input on this song was damn good. Well worth the second listen.

13 – Resident Evil

Back to the alliteration at the beginning of the first verse. This beat is funky. I mean, literally, it sounds like a funk song. That is not a complaint, not in the least.  The rhymes in the song speak directly to that, so one can only assume it was on purpose.

14 – Clans & Cliks( feat. Smif N Wessun, Rock, Method Man, Raekwon, Inspectah Deck & Foul Monday)

Clans and Cliques… Wu-Tang meets Boot Camp. Slick… Oh shit, the song is playing!
This song is fucking amazing. Sean drops some gems, referencing Wu Tang lines from years past. Raekwon gives a verse showing skills he has not brought to his own albums in quite a while. Same for Method Man. I wish Ghostface was on this one.

15 – Rap Professor

I have heard this rhyme before. I am not mad at it, it was one of my favorites from one of his freestyles on the old mixtapes. That I am 15 tracks in before hearing rhymes I have heard before on an album from someone who passed two years ago is surprising and refreshing. The second verse was rhymed I have not heard before, so all is well.

16 – Price Family (feat. Bernadette Price)

And you finish things off with the man’s wife as well.
This was well-played.  Fuck, she can rhyme!  I wonder if he wrote her rhymes or if Duck Down has been hiding her for all of these years.  My only real gripe with this song is that I wanted more Bernadette on it.  The All In The Family thing at the end was pretty funny though.

I am not at all surprised that this project happened, knowing the amount of work that Price was said to be recording up until he passed. Given how much better he got in his last 10 years than he was before, I came to this project with pretty high hopes as well. Suffice it to say, my expectations were fully met with this one. I look forward to the album he is rumored to have recorded with Lil Fame of M.O.P. to see the light of day.

I don’t give “star” ratings, I am only here to say whether or not an album was dope in my own opinion. The answer to that question is likely loaded with my preconceived biases, but I am saying for sure that this is a damn good album.

The post Review: Imperius Rex – Sean Price appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Look back at the Rocky movies…

Rocky

Rocky matches up against a superior but supposedly cocky Apollo Creed and uses the Black man’s hubris against him and stays upright for the whole fight.  No winner was declared, but we all assumed Rocky to be because of how it all played out.

Rocky II

Having had his name sullied by being matched by an inferior fighter, Apollo asks for a rematch and is rebuffed.  The still-cocky black man spends a whole movie making him take the fight, then LOSES the fight due to a brash obsession with knocking the white man out.

Rocky III

Now having disposed of the original cocky negro, Rocky is the best thing ever invented and can move on to new targets.  This time, a NEW cocky original African Black man named Clubber Lang assaults Rocky’s precious manager causing him a heart attack for which Rocky must avenge him.  One problem though.  Clubber was prepared for and won the fight.  The moral of this story now is that with preparation, the white man will ALWAYS beat the best black man down eventually.  This also includes the since-slavery approach to doing so by using our own community against us.  Apollo Creed decided to become Rocky’s Pet Negro and train him to beat Clubber!  Showing us that we have always been our own worst enemies.

Rocky IV

With his Pet Negro in tow, we have our hero confronted with an existential crisis.  See, Apollo is still a good boxer, but is still cocky.  Since Rocky has to keep his “I have black friends” narrative moving, he now has to avenge Apollo getting himself killed with the same shit that lost him his title back in the original Rocky movie.
But wait, a new nemesis!Not only do we have the Russians throwing the first punch in cheating their way to victory, they also KILLED Rocky’s Black Friend©!  Now Rocky has to pretend he gave a damn about that n**ga AND end the cold war.  Y’all know how this ends.

Rocky V

Look, to avoid telling the obvious joke about Tommy Morrison eventually dying of AIDS, I amt gonna skirt having to act like I DIDN’T see this piece of shit 3-5 times and just pretend Rocky V didn’t exist.Fuck me…  I told the joke anyway, didn’t I?

What this series of movies taught us is unimportant.  What it told young Italians (and to the larger overarching populace, ALL white people) is that they were physically, morally and mentally superior to us.

Hell, Eddie Murphy tried to warn us!

Stay woke my brothers and sisters.

The post A Hotep Movie Moment: The Rocky Theory appeared first on Madness & Reality.

South Park had an episode named “All About Mormons” (<– watch it there if you have been asleep for the last 9 years) in their 7th season, in which they went through this seemingly far-fetched story and explanation of exactly what it is that Mormons Believe. At the time, I was without a car after a near-death situation back at the beginning of that summer, so I had nothing but time when I was not working 60 hours a week to get myself back into one.

When it went off, I went RIGHT to the internets to check the “this is bullshit” meter on this. What resulted was a “Phillip is awake until 4am” internet journey looking further into the Book of Mormon. What I learned at the time was not only PRECISELY outlined in the episode, but it was what took me deeper into the rabbit hole that had me up until 4 in the morning. More on that in a minute.

As I have stated here before, I have NO qualms admitting that I was raised in the church and my understanding of the bible leaves me not willing to take it literally so much as understanding that 2012 science is what it was then, so the tenor of HOW what was written was written reflects that. I prefer to take the lesson and apply to a more current situation. I do what works for me.

This matters because this “research” was done in 2003, and I became aware of Romney when he ATTEMPTED to run for president in 2008, but stalled out in the primaries. The moment I read that he was Mormon, I was done with him.

Last week, AlterNet posted a story/link that detailed one of the tenets of Mormon belief; that Jesus would return to the earth in Independence Missouri (lol, I said Missouri) AND Jerusalem and rule for (only?) 1000 years. His return in this manner was tied to a United States in a constitutional crisis and on the verge of collapse and that the savior making way for Jesus’ return would himself be a Mormon and that OTHER Mormons would be made “Gods” themselves on the other side of this.

Now, we all know that Joseph Smith was a CONVICTED con-man. What we may have missed is that he is apparently a very bad fanfiction novelist whose most famous and influential work was loosely based on what we SHOULD believe about the New Testament with a sprinkling of what he could – for his own personal gain – convince us that we should believe about it.

And this is where Willard Mittens Romney comes in.

See, having read and pretending to believe what this fan fiction novel contains, he has used his privileged position to rise in the ranks of this “church,” using it to avoid military service and generally avoid the onus of having to behave like a decent human being when conveniently avoidable. Now having lost the 2008 GOP race, and seeing that a party whose policies have CREATED the problem that currently dog the country and its economy, Mittens has created HIMSELF as the “Mormon savior” who will save the US from certain doom.

Now, Mormons only make up about 2% of the US population and EVERY SINGLE ONE of those voting for Mitt might not make so much of a difference in his outcome of the election. What must be watched is the number of people who might still wake up on Election Tuesday still needing to be convinced to actually vote at all. Drawing the fact that some might be convinced to buy Joseph Smith’s snake oil will EASILY believe that Mitt is – instead of an entitled asshole who is growing increasingly frustrated that he has to be more aggressive than he feels he has to be – the aforementioned “savior” of America named in Smith’s fanfic novel.

But no, not me…

Again, my mind was made up the moment that Romney’s name came to my attention. Well, one could say that it was made four years before that. Maybe it is just me, but I cannot actively allow myself to trust a dude who ADMITS to believing something like that and then appears more to be using it for his own personal gain.

In other words, Romney never had my vote, and it was never because anyone involved was black or white.

The post My Subconscious 2003 Decision Not To Vote For Mitt Romney appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Who are they? They’re people who are registered to vote, but have no real plans to actually get out and exercise that vote. Polls tout the “For Romney” people, the “For Obama” voters and the “undecided” voters. I would hedge a bet that the people who are GOING to vote have known who they were going to vote for, for months if not years. All Santorum jokes aside, I know I did.

What the polls don’t have is an accurate depiction of the people who are of the opinion that, “fuck you, the Electoral College makes votes in my state pretty much useless anyway,” or the “hell, I ain’t fond enough of EITHER of these assholes to vote at all” people.

Trust me, they exist.

The rest of most political discourse/debate between the candidates AND their backers is more a matter of the act of license to insult people once every couple of years without them getting quite angry enough to catch an assault charge. Some of those with lower self-esteem may need election cycles to get that kind of a thing out every once in a while, no? In the meantime, those “undecided” voters might represent the most valuable votes in what MIGHT have otherwise been a close race before a certain candidate began to display a tragic inability to NOT step on his own dick time after time.

The post Identifying the “Undecided” Voters and Why They’re Undecided appeared first on Madness & Reality.

1- What other languages do you know?

Yes, most other countries on the planet with the type of schooling systems that would make them desirable places to live teach their children to speak not only their own native language(s) but English as well. Don’t expect, though, to just waltz into every country and expect everyone to bend to your will that they speak English with you. Most Americans don’t know a word of any other languages other than insults and profanities. Not helpful.

2 – What can you do for them?

Remember this: a large part of the divide in America is the widening gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” A large consideration in this is that some feel that America is too lenient on allowing MORE “have-nots” onto their shores and then coddling them until they get their shit together – if they ever bother to do so. Well, the fact remains that securing a Visa to immigrate to most other countries if you do not already have dual citizenship will generally require that you prove a good enough reason to be allowed to be there. If you couldn’t make it here to the point that the winner of an election caused you to want to renounce your citizenship and move away, all I can say is “good luck!”

3 – Where will you work?

Furthermore, how will you secure work? As someone who tolerates his place of employment and looks incessantly for better opportunities, I can assure you that indeed.com does not have an international search option. Long story short – and this could have easily fallen under “What will you do for us?” – securing a job internationally will usually require an international education or a US one that is discernibly valuable to another country’s interest. In other words, you’d likely already be working for a company that might be willing or in need of someone to work overseas, and you’d already have your ‘in.’

4 – No one is impressed with America anymore.

If you thought it would be as easy as “shit, I’m AMERICAN, I’m a hot commodity the world over!” then you were dead ass wrong. Generally unhealthy, entitled, lazy, undereducated, arrogant are all descriptions that have applied to Americans. Don’t let me be the one to break that to you. A perfunctory Google search will unearth the same results.

“Well why do people want so badly to come here then?”

Ever visited a third-world country? I have… On the other side of the manicured beaches and resorts normally resides a comparative shithole that the locals will have to return to after you’ve barely covered their otherwise meager living expenses being touristy. $7.75 an hour is a gold mine compared to that. The ability to get considerably more than that $7.75 an hour is motivation enough to work and go get it. Along with people from war-torn countries where a grenade landing in their breakfast is a real possibility, THOSE are the people who want to come to America.

Industrialized countries – the ones spoken of as if they matter on your preferred news sites – have citizens who are fine with being there. Obesity is not a rampant health concern, and even the NON-rampant ones don’t become pandemic due to a lack of coverage due to providers trying to coin them to death. They get better educations, are generally more cultured and overall mature and less violent as well.
… and they usually speak English better than any of us.

Those are the ones who stay put.

And yes, I am aware that most of what I have said in this post is applicable to my one-language-speaking ass as well. The difference is that I am not the one bitching about the need to move away if my candidate du jour does not win the election.

Now if after reading this, you still think trying to move away if you don’t get what you want, please do me the favor of letting me know how that works out for you.

The post Election Got You Wanting to Move to Another Country? Not so fast! appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Then on August 29, 2008 it was announced that Sarah Palin would be John McCain’s running mate. The whole of America not named John McCain and Sarah Palin were too busy saying “who?” to see that this was probably the very moment where the McCain campaign lost the election. Unleashed on the whole of us was someone who had dedicated her academic and personal life not to a political career, but apparently to be a public personality – specifically on ESPN. So intent on this, was she that she’d named a daughter after the city in Connecticut that the network is based.

Anyway…

Well, Willard “Mittens” Romney seems to have “Palin’d” himself with the previously-posted-on-this-site leaked videos of his apparent support for Chinese slave labor and (worse) explaining in full enough detail his disdain for basically half of the US voting public.

This weekend, a graphic floated around the Book of Face…

[imagebrowser id=6]As with Palin before him – who at this point has pretty much NO support from the GOP election-winning machine establishment to the point where she is a political running joke for the most part – our buddy Willard Mittens Romney is fast on the retreat not only from having given his opponents simple fodder to come at him with only two weeks between him and the first of the presidential debates. He also has those in his own party so spooked by any connection to him and how damning it might be to their own continued viability whenever they come up for reelection distancing themselves from him. At that point where the politically expedient thing to do would be to call a meeting and have someone brainstorm a lie in the LEAST possibly intelligence-insulting vein, he decides to go off on his own and double down, instead trying to justify what was said.

In other words, he has somehow managed to step on his own dick.

One could say that we most value a little help from our “friends,” or in this case at least those purported to kind of be a little like us. At least McCain had a goon to go in and make these dumbass comments in his VP pick, thus providing him a scapegoat and saving his spot in the Senate. But with those very “friends” cutting and running the other way, we can all but name the leak of that “47%” video as the moment where Mittens may have ruined his campaign.

The post I’m More Than 47% Sure That Mitt Romney Has Cost Himself The Election appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Take me for instance, I have a twin brother who – apart from waist-length dreadlocks – I look LITERALLY nothing like. There are, a couple of people that happen to look quite a bit like me (or me like them, as it were). One would be my mom’s brother and his 21 year-old son. Understand, though, that they happen to be blood relation on the side of the family that I DO happen to favor. Another is my 1 year-old daughter, who looks more like me every day as she transitions out of the “which parent does she look like” stage. I guess I vaguely favor my mom and sister as well.

The person(s) I do NOT look like, though, is every skinny dreadlocked goon who makes the local newspaper over a B&E, assault, robbery or drug charge. The fact that you could not be bothered with looking beyond brown skin and similarities in hair before jumping to “look, this guy in the paper looks just like Phillip!” is precisely why I make a specific point of making you so uncomfortable that you have to explain it off “I was just kidding” for fear that I might take a chance at becoming that goon in the newspaper.
Sadly, you never learn…

A common occurrence in the lives of most black folk I have come across is being approached by a random white person in public with a statement of “oh wow, you look just like [random person you don’t know and probably look nothing like],” or something like “wow, anyone ever tell you that you look just like [public figure you look nothing like]?”

These occurrences are literally never flattering, and 13 times out of 10 come across as patronizing and insulting.

All black folk do not look alike, please stop it.

The post Dear White People: All Black People Do Not Look Alike appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Anyway, one issue I have not visited is just how acceptable it has been for other conservatives/republicans to call Romney out for being what we all think he is, but now it is dirty pool for liberals/democrats/progressives to do so?

Watch me here…

Newt Gingrich said it months ago:

The post Bain Capital: The Hypocrisy of the “Vulture Capitalist” Defense appeared first on Madness & Reality.

[Phlip note – take that last one however you will]

Anyway, the notion that the inclusion of a minority or member of an otherwise marginalized group into your circle excuses you from exhibited bigotry simply out of the goodness of your heart would be suggestive that you are any less of a bigot is rather shortsighted. Treating groups that you obviously have no other vested interest in getting to know outside of inconvenient circumstance as if you have found THE exception to established rules is not only insulting in and of itself, but a long hard look should be taken at the jewel you assume you have found. If they know of your “one of the good ones” feeling and continue to deal with you without checking you on it, then they’re likely dealing with an impressively weighty set of issues themselves.

The issue in play here is not “see, there CAN be decent [minority] people.” The issue is that inside of your mind exists a world where the remaining of 100% of the members of that group is comprised of shit and that you have been blessed to have found the sugar among them.

I am a black male with no criminal record, a mortgage that has never been late, a job that I like sometimes, a happy wife and daughter (who, by the way was born to that wife) and a wonderful relationship with my in-laws. I attend church semi-regularly, I am an amazing cook and have been accused of being a decent writer a time or three down through the years. I tend to try to look at the details of things before fully making my mind on how I feel about them, then govern myselves accordingly. These items do not make me an exception to any established rules, they simply make me a human being who has applied himself to being something.

When you aim to classify me as “one of the good ones,” make sure the “ones” part of that is applicable to “human beings,” and not just “black guys.” I would thank you to leave your implied privilege to define who or what I am compared to what you thought I should be out of this.

The post Dear White People: Let’s Talk About, “One of the Good Ones.” appeared first on Madness & Reality.