Michele Bachmann to meet with Dalton McGuinty on how to sign political pledges and lie and get away with it
GOP candidate Michele Bachmann
McGuinty is the guy on the right ducking a taxpayer's right hook
Michele Bachmann, a GOP candidate for the U.S. Presidency, and Dalton McGuinty, Premier (like a Governor in US) of Canada’s largest Province, Ontario (a little like Texas), have both made pledges to the people and it is rumored that they are getting together to discuss the merits of such pledges and how to make them and avoid delivering on them. Both are facing upcoming elections and winning or losing may depend on the fallout from broken pledges.
It appears McGuinty may be at greater risk. First, Bachmann isn’t likely to win anyway, while McGuinty is the incumbent and stands to lose it all. Secondly, Bachmann would only lose the votes of gays and all intelligent thinking people, whereas McGuinty could lose the votes of almost all taxpayers. What these politicians have in common is the making of pledges on two different, but big issues: Taxes and religion. Talk about dealing with visceral issues – just shows to what lengths politicians will go (read lie) to get elected.
Bachmann apparently signed a pledge drawn up by the conservative group, The Family Leader, which states that marriage is to be defined as only between a man and a woman. (more…)
“People are the worst”
Coming 2026
My personal history is the stuff they write books about. And that's what I am doing. The working title, "Chains of My Father: Marry White."
"The ghostly image of the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds." - Barack Obama
This perspicacious line from the Prologue of Barack Obama's "Dream from My Father" wrenched my aspiration into action. I started writing, furiously. Unlike Obama's perspective, my pain had been for the opposite reason: I was not seen by whites as a "tragic mulatto," rather I lived every day of my childhood hoping whites were not "searching my eyes for some telltale sign" that I WAS mulatto. This is my story.
It's historical fiction because I cannot find enough records to substantiate all facets of the story. I've combed the genealogy, traveled to my father and grandmothers' birthplace, walked the graveyards, searched the churches and ... well, all the facts aren't there. I have written three books based on the genealogy of other families but my ancestors emerged from a journey that left too few records – slavery.
My paternal, great grandmother was a "freed slave." My grandmother, Amelia, was born to a mixed race slave named Mary (we do not know her last name) and a white, French plantation owner, the Count de Poullain, in Grenada, West Indies. Amelia was raised in the "Big House" and in adulthood, in an attempt to escape her black heritage disowned her mother, telling her, "Get out and never come back." Amelia, as a mother of twelve children, enshrined into the family commandments, "Marry white." Many did, including my father. My mother was a lovely, white, Anglo-Saxon protestant born in England. They met in Canada where my dad studied and became a doctor.
It has taken five generations for the descendants of Mary to free themselves from the stigma of their black heritage but today my children embrace it. Unfortunately, the past 250 years have been a wasteland of bigotry, racism and bullying. But, on closer look, we see not only the brutality, fear, violence, and murder but also the self-respect, dignity, love, kindness, perseverance and indomitable spirit.
As of the spring of 2025, the depth of historic perspective and the sweeping inspiration of oppressed people has created a two-volume duology of which I have only arrived at the middle of the 19th century. 1840 is the year my great grandfather was born, the beginning of Volume II, and he's pushing me to make sure our story is published by the summer of 2026.
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