ARE DEMOCRATS EATING THEIR OWN?

It’s now a year and 9 months away from the 2008 Presidential election, but you sure wouldn’t know it to read the news. Already candidates are entering the ring. Much like Christmas, the elections season keeps starting earlier and earlier. Already in the ring are Democrats; Senator Barack Obama, (D-IL) Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Gov.Bill Richardson (D-Kan) and Senator John Edwards (D-SC) and Republicans have Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kans) and a one-foot-in-the-ring John McCain (R-AZ). It may be early, but already the fur is starting to fly.

A recent poll showing Barack Obama near neck and neck with Hillary Clinton seems to have set off a few revelations about Barack being leaked to the news. First that his middle name is "Hussein" (Which by the way is not included on his offical site) and then immediately afterward that he attended a Muslim school in his youth in Indonesia. The Muslim school leak was picked up by Fox News from conservative Insight Magazine and hence was dismissed by the left as an effort by right-wingers to discredit Barack. I have a different opinion on this. I don't think that the right has as much to lose by a Obama candidacy as Hillary Clinton does. An early lead by Barack could spell disaster to Hillary who isn't about to watch this newcomer steal away her monetary supporters and constituents and do nothing about it. If you think about it, it would be a good move for Hillary's Machine to leak info on Barack to Fox News and then claim it was a right-wing effort thereby leaving her with a double win. Slapping both opponents with one hand. Say what you want about the Clintons, they are not stupid.

Is The Hillary Machine ready to take on all comers? The answer is a resounding "Hell yes". She's been getting ready for this almost as soon as she finished packing her bags to leave the West Wing, maybe even sooner. She finished off 2006 with a campaign war chest at an estimated 13 million, most of it leftovers from her '06 New York Senate campaign. That Hillary is a force to be contended with is not even in dispute. She has tons of connections for raising funds (some estimates are that she could raise 300 million), the Democrat Leadership Council is behind her 100%, (it was after all, formed by her husband), and machinery that includes all the top minds in the Democratic field; John Podesta, President and CEO for the Center for American Progress, a major Democrat front group, James Carville aka The Ragin' Cajun, longtime friend and CNN Commentator and Terry McAuliffe the ex-DNC chair, and a certain inside ex-President. With tons of money, friends in the press and Hollywood and both the DLC and the DNC on board, frankly, she looks unstoppable.

So how does this bode for Dems like Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Bill Richardson? Not good at all. It almost looks to me like a fight for the V.P. slot. I myself am hoping for John Edwards to pull out of the pack. Maybe all this infighting between Barack and Hilary will give him an opening. I'm also not opposed to Bill Richardson or Obama. Edwards, Obama and Richardson have one trait that I find appealing, they're not "Heirs to the Throne". I really don't think it was the intent of our Founding Fathers to have the presidency handed down from father to son (Bush) or from husband to wife (Clinton) . The 2000 elections were a prime example of this with Al Gore riding his Senator father's legacy and Bush riding his President father's. Surely we can do better. It looks like we have a good chance this time of getting someone who knows what it's like to struggle a little. The Republicans are looking very weak at this point in time and don't have any real candidate that I would want to get behind. But it is still way early and God only knows what will happen in the months ahead. If there's one bright spot for the Republicans, it's that after the infighting that's sure to happen if anyone should threaten Queen Hillary, there might not be anything left to fight against. H.C.

MYSPACE LIBERAL ADVOCATES ATTACK FREE SPEECH

They called me an idiot, a moron and a homophobe, they dismissed my points as drivel, they tried to say I was against letting gay people have kids at all, they made statements about things I never even said, and worst of all they cut me off from responding to their comments and then banned me from their site. My horrible crime? I posted a piece called "Why I Can't Support Gay Marriage", my post right before this one on thehippieconservative.com. I knew it was coming. I was doing what I always do, trying to inject a train of thought that you may not have considered. For that I was banned from ever posting again on the Myspace Democrats.
To be fair, at first the Myspace Republicans wouldn't even let me join. I guess the word "hippie" got them a little nervous. Oddly enough, as soon as the Dems banned me the Republicans accepted me. (????) For those of you that aren't familiar with the whole Myspace world, it has a lot of groups and forums for supposedly open discussion. While the Myspace Democrats are a public group (you don't need to necessarily join to post) the Myspace Republicans is a private group (you have to request to join and be approved to post). Since I was rejected by the Republicans, (which, by the way I found very funny) and accepted by the Dems, I started posting some of my thoughts on their site. I started out posting some less contraversial pieces and things were going great. And then I decided to challenge them to open up their thinking a little by offering a debate against gay marriage. If you read the peice you'll see that all I was really arguing was that a gay marriage might not be the very best situation (I said optimum) for a child when compared to a man/women marriage. (You could even take the gay factor completely out of it.) I based it on research and made my points based on cross gender parenting, the raising of a child of the opposite gender. Since this is not a problem in a man/women marriage, I thought it was worthy of debate.
You would have thought I told the Christians that there was no Jesus. The attacks poured in. By now, most of you know me well enough to know I'm not afraid of a debate and that I promote civility in discussion. I don't think I would be understating it to say there wasn't a lot of that. Although I should point out here that it really didn't seem to be the gay people themselves that were the problem, it was those who wrap themselves in self-rightousness as a defender of their gay friends. One by one I responded to their accusations, misquotes, and misconceptions and then, suddenly, I was banned from responding. I immediately put up a post (I could still do that) and asked what it was that I had done wrong? I was civil. I didn't call people names. I didn't in the least bit promote any animosity towards gay people. What was the problem?
After about a half hour, (maybe they reviewed my comments) I was back up and responding. I stayed online for 3 hours giving my point of view as the accusations against me grew. One by one I corrected them and then, again, I was banned. Frustrated, I went to bed. In the morning, a thought for a new post came to mind on an unrelated subject. I logged in and was suprised to find out I can no longer post on the Myspace Democrats. Well, I'm mad as hell. Myspace has millions of viewers. It and Youtube make up the largest sites for posting material. If I allow this to happen, little by little we float into a world where only one view is tolerated, where open discussion is limited, and where free speech is slowly killed.
So what can we do? I'm asking all of you to take a minute and help me. Go to my post, read it and draw your own opinion. Go to the Myspace Democrats and read my comments and if you agree that I didn't deserve this, post you own Topic asking why I'm no longer allowed to post. It's a small battle, but remember freedoms never leave all at once, they fall a little at a time. Thanks in advance. H.C.

WHY I CAN'T SUPPORT "GAY MARRIAGE"

Well, I guess the best place to start is by ridding all of you of the preconceptions you got from the opening title. I'm not a homophobe, hell, you couldn't survive a day working in my University if you were. Without outing anyone, I'll simply say I deal with gay people a lot. I find them to be as normal or not normal as most people. Some I was suprised to find out, others I was not. Basically, I find no difference in the way I feel around them from the way I feel around my straight friends. I plain old just don't care. If they hit on me it might make me feel different but for some reason (gaydar?) they seem to know I'm straight. Hell, maybe it's just that I make a damn ugly gay guy, I don't know, but like I said, I plain old just don't care. Keep it to yourself. I don't want to know your sexual exploits and that applies to everyone. Second point; I'm not religious in the standard sense. I don't subscribe to any ideology based on any religion, so spare me your Christian-bashing rants. I will say one thing though; why would you gay couples care at all what a bunch of religious people think about your relationships? They sure as hell don't care what you think of theirs. Trust me, I asked. "Marriage" is a religious rite, want to have a church that honors Gay Marriage? Start your own church with your values, and get "Married" there. Just a thought. Anyway, with that out of the way, here's the reason I can't support "Gay Marriage".

Children. That's it, plain and simple. More specifically, adoption and custody battles. You see, with everything that we do in our lives there are unintended consequences. You drive your car to work everyday and that causes Global warming. See, not what you intended, but it still happens. With Gay Marriage the unintended consequences are that children get sucked into the fray. Kids just want to be "normal". You wanted to be normal when you were young, we all did. Now I understand that life's rough, we're all going to get picked on for something at sometime in our life, but let's all at least agree that we should try to limit it for the sake of our kids. Anything that makes kids feel less "normal" around their friends I view as a negative. I know it makes them stronger, but they'll get plenty of harrassment without you helping. Now here's where it gets complicated. People can't help it if they're born gay and some of you out there were. The exact percent? Somewhere between what the far right is saying (0%) and what the far left is saying (100%). Some of you were in denial or trying desperately to fit in and be "normal" and found yourself with kids, I have no problem with you. Please do the best you can to give your kids a chance to fit in without your desire to change the world getting in his or her way. Now here's where I have a problem. Should we say that a gay couple is the same as a straight couple legally. How do we decide if a father/father couple is a better environment than a single mother for the raising of a girl?Read any far left publication and they'll have one answer, read any far right publication and they'll have another. Who should I believe? The Heritage Foundation or the Triangle Foundation? This is my dilemma. My gut instinct on this is that there are a lot of different levels and to address it properly we need to look at whatever I can find on gender influence, single parents and any other social variables that might apply, so here we go.

Once again, the advantages of working in a University setting and having a diverse stable of friends comes in handy. I went straight (pun) for two friends that I know are gay. (They've told me, no I'm not guessing.) One is in a steady relationship and has an adopted child, the other is in a relationship with no children, both are advocates of Gay Marriage and are considered by me to be good, intelligent, people all around. I asked both for their opinions and any supporting research that they could give me and I thank them for helping me. Since the preponderance of evidence that I found was agenda-driven, it was very hard for me to separate good research from bad. Pro-Gay Marriage research tended to rely on subjects that were overwhelmingly lesbian/lesbian parents since the research (I'm guessing here since I could not find any) on gay male/gay male parents must tend to be less favorable to their agendas. Since this form of research dominates the Web and is generated by Universities which favor Gay Marriage, some of my conclusions came from research that was generated to argue that single mothers were better single parents than single dads or that gender influenced the child's outcome when the custodial parent was/wasn't the same sex. This research would often conflict with other studies that supported Gay Marriage. Like I said, this is complicated.

I relied heavily on two research papers that took different sides of the issue at hand. The first one was decidedly Pro-Gay Marriage, from the American Academy of Pediatrics titled, "Technical Report: Coparent or Second Parent Adoption by Same Sex Parents" and was given to me by one of the aforementioned advocates. In the opening paragraph the Author, Ellen C. Perrin, concedes that, "The secrecy resulting from the stigma still associated with homosexualty" hampered her research. This leads one to believe that there is a stigma attached to being Gay that is accepted as a negative by even it's advocates. It's very hard to on one hand say that someone suffers prejudice in society for being Gay and then turn around and claim that it won't have a negative effect on the children. The body of her research seemed to focus primarily on Lesbians and came to the conclusion that there were no negative results of a child in a Lesbian/Lesbian household. Although I found her research in that area to be compelling, I could not help but wonder why she chose to focus on Lesbians instead of Gay Males as did every research paper I read. Is it possible that the dirty little secret in the Gay community is that Gay Male/Gay Male parenting did not fare as well in research. One has to wonder. This would be consistant with other papers I researched that were Pro-Womens rights that claimed straight men did not do as well as their straight female counterparts in raising children, particularly girls.

Which brings us to the issue of cross gender parenting. Even among straight parents it is accepted that children do slightly better in a single parent household that is of the same gender as the child. This makes sense as a boy can find himself isolated in a house with a sister and a mother, the same would be true if you turned the genders around. While it's true that a positive role model of the same gender would help the child, it's a stretch for me to assume these people exist in most relationships when everyone I talk to has a hard time finding one. There's also a level of commitment to consider. Friends come and go, that's the idea behind Marriage to begin with; to commit to one another and to the children they intend to raise. It's not the responsibility of friends to help you raise your child, nor should it be.

The second paper I found relatively reliable took the opposite position, although not "Anti Gay Marriage."It was titled "Review of Research on Homosexual Parenting, Adoption, and Foster Parenting" by George A. Rekers Ph.D.. I found his piece to be equally bias as it focused on problems with research done by advocates of Gay parenting. That said, I found his arguments equally compelling. He raised several questions I found valid to ask. Such as; why research seems to focus on Lesbian households, how long do Gay relationships last compared to Straight relationships and how is sampling of the well-being of the children in question being done. He points out that a great of the research being generated is not being done on a random basis, rather it is being done with volunteers who most certainly would not be volunteering against their own cause.

After filtering through all this research and talking to people on both sides I can only come to one conclusion. Both sides are doing their best to discredit the other side. I could not, with any degree of certainty say, that all things being equal, all married couples should be judged the same in the eyes of the law. I found compelling evidence that there is a difference between Gay families and Straight families particularly when raising children of the opposite gender. I have serious questions about Gay Male/Gay Male parenting that I could not answer through research that dominates the Web. I would like to say however, that I believe any loving family is better than not having one. For this reason I am not against adoption or custody of children by Gay families, but I have serious concerns about how we are going to make decisions when the issue is between the many different family units we are creating. How we decide will decide the type of life these children will have. This is no time to be experimenting to further a social agenda. I have no problem with civil unions that give Gay people the same legal rights in property, medical decisions or anything else, but, until I can rest assured that children are not being used by people for selfish reasons, I can not support Gay Marriage. King Solomon is famous for his wise decisions, most notably when two women approached him both claiming to be the mother of the same child. Solomon instructed his guards to "Cut the baby in half" thus solving the problem. One of the women lept forward crying and said the other woman was the mother, to please spare the child. Soloman then gave the child to the woman who lept forward, saying she had proven she was the real mother by doing what only a mother would do. Give up what she wanted for the sake of the child's welfare. The point here is the children must come first. If they don't, you don't deserve the child. In the future, more evidence may become apparent, society may become more tolerant, but we don't know for sure what the future holds. Until that day, I'll advocate for one man/one woman, married to each other, being the optimum family for raising a child, and we can continue to argue over who comes after that. H.C.

HEMISPHERIC ISOLATIONISM

Hemi-Iso what, H.C.? Don't worry, I'll keep this in layman's terms. The first thing that I found out while researching this column is that while there is certainly is a Western Hemisphere, there is no Eastern Hemisphere. At least not in geo-political terms. I guess there is too much going on in the other side of the world to break it down to a hemishere. It's broken down into Europe, Asia, Middle East, Far East, etc. The Western Hemisphere, as used for political concerns consists of North America, Central America, and South America. Now, I wish I could take credit for the idea of Hemispheric Isolationism but some guy named Henry Kissinger apparently defined it first. However, I do think I may be the first to propose this kind of economic structure for the present day free-market philosophy in the America's.

Allow me to back up a bit here so you can better understand why I would think this is a good idea or even necessary.

The United States has been a major player in world politics almost from conception, for better or worse. Even the American Revolution involved world politics. Realizing the Colonies had no real manufacturing to produce weapons necessary to support their fledgling army, Ben Franklin was dispensed to France to try to convince King Louis XVI to support the new America both finacially and militarily. It was one of the earliest examples of military trade by the not even fully formed United States. From that day forward the United States has expanded it's trade to nearly every country in the world.

And for the most part it has been a good thing. The ability to negotiate trade has turned the United States into the most powerful country on the face of the Earth. But, with great power comes great responsibilty. With it's mighty armies and enormous wealth, the U.S. has expanded it's influence to a point where it's now seen by the world as both the cause and the answer to any and all of the world's problems. And there lies the problem.

Most people I talk to about the U.S.'s influence in world politics assume that most of the world hates us for the things we have done to them. This is only partly true. At least half of the world hates us for what we didn't do. Some Vietnamese people , for example, harbor a lot of hatred for leaving Vietnam and subjecting them to the cruelty of Pol Pot, (my guess is most of you didn't even know our leaving the Vietnam War resulted in 2 million deaths), while others hate us for getting involved in the first place. Rwandans hate us for turning a blind eye to years of genocide, while Serbs hate us for getting involved in Bosnia and stopping genocide. America it seems, can not win.

Now, while G.W. has done a great job of making us even more hated in the world, we have been slowly going downhill in popularity for some time. Our continued support of Israel has made us the target of hatred by Palestinian and Arab for over 40 years and the hatred of Muslims has been cast upon us Christians since the 7th century. I know a lot of you like to think that before G.W. the whole world was in love with us but you would have a very hard time proving that to me. France, for instance, was a huge fan of the U.S. after we liberated them in WWII, but it didn't take long for that to fade. Some young French people started emulating American culture, which really disturbed the traditionalist older French people and soon everything American was seen as a threat to French culture. Charles Degault ran for President of France on a platform of preserving the French way of life and after winning, did an ethnic cleansing of all things American. Even kicking out the American troops stationed there. That's gratitude for ya.

Everyone it seems, has a reason for hating the U.S.. Which leads me to why I'm thinking of Hemispheric Isolationism.

Most of the world has gotten sick of the U.S. being in such a position of influence. Politicians all over the world and even in this Hemisphere are getting elected on platforms of America hating. (Think Hugo Chavez for example) The War in raq has been nothing but trouble and next to no one seems to care if Islamic Fascists blow up American interests and even the Leftist media here in the U.S. seems to hope we lose the war. Without any support from anyone outside of Britian and with our own media working against us, we can no longer win. We suffer all this like a parent hoping that one day his children will finally see the good in him. It's way too comfortable for other countries to sit back and criticize, to demand that the U.S. fix all the world's problems than to ever help themselves. Like the parental example we are, we need to kick our whiney children out on their own.

It's time to throw the gauntlet down. To demand that each country commits itself to helping the U.S. with troops and money or slowly be left on it's own. Our traditional friends of Israel and Britian would still get our military protection, but why are we the world's food suppliers and humanitarian aid suppliers to countries who vow to destroy us at all costs? Every disaster brings accusations of how the U.S. isn't doing enough while it's accusers do nothing. Only in our absense will they finally respect everything we have done.

But H.C., every economist in the world says that isolationism will lead to inflation, depleting our dollar down to half it's worth. I agree, there will be a price to pay, but they're talking about complete isolationism not hemispheric, and I'm talking about moving our investments slowly over a decade or two. Why can't we have products that are being produced in China produced in Central American or South American countries? Why can't we use Mexican labor instead of Tiawanese to produce our textiles? Why can't we devote efforts and monies to ending our dependence on Mid-East oil? Wouldn't we be better off to cure some of the problems we have here in our own Hemisphere before we go trying to solve the world's problems? Let's let Europe, Russia and China fight with the Islamic Terrorists over the Middle East and Africa. If it should happen that we have to retun to the world military stage, we will be far more appreciated. With the whole world praying for our defeat in every venture, we can no longer afford to spend billions every year hoping that the world will one day appreciate it and help us. As the computer "Joshua" so elequently stated in the movie "War Games", the only way to win a game that can't be won, is to not play.

BEN FRANKLIN DAY

As most of you know, on January 15 we celebrate the passing of one of America's great leaders, Dr. Martin Luther King. But did you know that two days later is the Birthday of another of America's great leaders, a man that without, America may not have ever been formed? A man who secured the help of France at the onset of the American Revolution, who's inventions changed the life of every American. A man who printed the first political cartoon, who's words are quoted by nearly everyone. A man who helped draft and then signed the Declaration of Independence, that was the first Ambassador of the United States, who started Fire Departments and the Postal System. That man was my hero, Ben Franklin.

We live in a world without worthy heros. I'm not saying that there isn't any great people to be admired, I'm just saying that in my eyes, they all fall short. When I decided to get a Myspace account, to hopefully increase the amount of people who read my column, the "heros" part of it remained empty as I struggled to think of any person I could honestly call my hero. For a while John Lennon was the only one I could think of and he actually falls way short. I never could understand why he treated his son Julian the same way that he complained that his father had treated him. Abandoning him for long periods and then drifting in and out of his life. Why is it we repeat the mistakes of our parents instead of learning from them? I checked out other people's heros in an effort to find someone I had forgot about. The list was strange to say the least. Bill Maher, Michael Moore, Jon Stewart, entertainers and sports figures. Then my son reminded me of someone I had forgotten, the one person I felt was truly worthy of admiration, Benjamin Franklin.

Ben Franklin was born January 17, 1706, one of 17 children, in Boston, Massachusettes. At age 15 he became a apprentice printer for his brother's newspaper, The New England Courants. Since his brother would not publish any of his articles, young Ben started submitting them under the pseudonym Silence Dogood, a ficticious widow, and probably the first published Feminist. So popular were his pieces, that people began clamoring for the author to step forward, and after 16 pieces Ben confessed to being the author. His brother however, was jealous of Ben's newfound fame and wouldn't publish any more of his pieces. Frustrated, Ben ran away to start a new life in Philadelphia. After working a while as a apprentice printer, Ben purchased the Philadelphia Gazette and began writing in ernest. The Gazette soon became the colonies most successful newspaper.

From there Ben's achievements rained down steady. Author, Postmaster, politician, Fire Marshal, insurance agent, and inventor. We all know Ben's contribution to our understanding of electricity, (he discovered the principle of positive to negative flow) but are you aware of some of Ben's other inventions? He invented swim fins, bifocals, the Franklin stove, the lightning rod, the odometer, improvements to the printing press, postal distribution points, fire stations, the catheter, and Daylight Savings to name a few. And most respectfully, did not patent two of the most important; the Franklin Stove and the Lightning Rod because he felt they were too important to humanity to profit on. What modern day inventor would have been so generous?

Ben's contributions to this country as a politician can hardly be overstated. He was pivotal in the decision to separate from England. His writings to his followers in the Gazette helped form opinions that directly caused the uprisings against England. His cult-like status in Europe helped aline help from the French in the Revolutionary War. He helped draft both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and continued until his death April 17, 1790 to be both Ambassador and Statesman of the United States No single person more directly caused this country to be formed and liberated than Benjamin Franklin.

So why is Ben forgotten by the citizens of this country? He had an illegitiment child, William, and that was frowned on very much in Franklin's time. (He claimed that was his one great regret, not having married his mother first.) Maybe it's because of some of the erronious claims made about Ben, that he was unfaithful and atheistic. I found no real evidence that would support those claims, although I've seen lots. Ben was married to his one true love, Deborah Read Rogers for 44 years. Ben kept several pews in several churchs throughout Philadelphia. I think some people confuse Ben's reluctance to swear alligence to one church with his not being a man of faith, for you people I offer this quote by Ben, "[I believe] That there is one God, who made all things. That he governs the world by his providence. That he ought to be worshiped by adoration, prayer, and thanksgiving. But that the most acceptable service of God is doing good to man. That the soul is immortal. And that God will certainly reward virtue and punish vice, either here or hereafter."

Was Ben Franklin perfect? No, no one is. But in a world filled with heros who throw balls, tell jokes, or write songs, the achievements of a man as great as Ben Franklin stands out as stupendous and unequaled in our time. Never has one man who has done so many wonder things and effected each of our live so much, been so ignored. We need to stop this injustice and give Ben what he deserves.... Ben Franklin Day, January 17. H.C.

THE GREAT BLACK HOPE

I love boxing. I know, I know, it's just two Neanderthal people beating the crap out of each other, but it's so simple in that form. Mano a mano. I used to fight when I was a bit younger at Berston Field House on the north end of Flint, famous for producing a lot of great fighters including former Heavyweight champ Chris Byrd, in fact I trained under his dad, Joe. It was a great outlet for all the anger that I was experiencing at the time. Like most boxing fans, I worshipped Muhammad Ali as the greatest fighter of all time. He had it all; style, skill, agility and a great knock-out punch. I wanted to be the next Ali, only white. That was the one thing that bothered me about boxing, all the great fighters of the time were black. I began thinking that it was impossible for a white guy to become Heavyweight champ. Every once in a while my hopes would be increased by some upcoming white fighter who was always deemed "The Great White Hope". As much as I loved Ali, I desperately wanted some white dude to dethrone him. One by one they fell; Gerry Cooney, Tex Cobb, Gerry Quarry, and too many more to count. I began to think it was hopeless. One thing always bothered me about the "Great White Hopes", it seemed that they were always picked off the vine too early. As soon as they got noticed, before they even had one fight against a top-ten fighter, they were in a Championship bout. It seemed to me a conspiracy to keep them losing.

Now the black people of the U.S. have their own "Great Black Hope" in a field dominated by white males. Barack Obama, a Freshman U.S. Senator from Illinois, is making a run for the Presidency of the U.S., and I'm a little worried the same thing is happening to Barack. Senator Obama stepped out into full public view after giving a great keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, with his charactaristic easy going, confident style, he was the hit of the show and soon became a household word, athough one constantly mispronounced. Both Ted Kennedy and Rush Limbaugh have famously had a hard time separating poor Barack Obama from Osama Bin Ladin. Not really someone you want to be confused with, but then again, both Ted and Rush have been a tad confused for some time.

Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on Aug. 4, 1961. He started his education in Jakarta, Indonesia where his family were originally from, then went to Occidental College in L.A. and finally studied law at Harvard where he got a J.D. He was first elected to the Illinios State Senate in 1997 before making his leap to the U.S. Senate in 2004. He has published two books; Dreams of my Father; A story of Race and Inheritance and The Audacity of Hope; Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. Both have been well recieved and give us a little insight into the man and his past. Maybe too much.

It seems that in his first book, Sen. Obama admitted, ala Bill Clinton and G.W., that he tried marijuana and cocaine in his early years. Now, the pupose of all these confessions is always the same, to get it out before someone else finds out. I myself have no problem with anyone experimenting in their youth, although you need to be careful and none would be better. I think you would have a hard time finding anyone nowadays that didn't at least try pot. Which once again makes me question why we're still ruining lives over it. Will this be a problem for Senator Obama? I really doubt it. If it doesn't bother evangelists when G.W. did it, it's hard to imagine it would bother Democrats or Moderates when Barack does it. He's wise to get it out there early

So do I think Senator Obama has a chance? No, not really. First off, he's a Senator, and not since J.F.K. have we seen the Senate path to the presidency work. Although trends, like rules are made to be broken. Second, he doesn't really have much of a record having only been a Senator for 2 years, a fact the he's trying to promote as being less corrupted by the system. He's a great orator and after 8 long years of a President that mangles the English language, that may be a welcome change. Will his race be a factor? Certainly. America has not quite gotten over the whole race thing on both sides. Some black people will see him as too white and some whites will see him as too black. He does seem to have a gift for walking that line between the races, but I'm not sure he can hold on to that with all the contraversy that will surround him once he becomes a serious contender. Mostly, I'm concerned that like my boxing examples, he's simply been picked off the vine too early. A great speaker that crosses race lines only comes around once a generation and Barack needs to be patient and allow his star to burn. My hope is that he will be the V.P. choice for John Edwards, I don't think I would even take the offer if the candidate is Hillary Clinton as she's too devisive and I'm not sure she can win. For now, Barack, do what you do best, be yourself, The Great Black Hope. H.C.

THE SHORT LIFE OF MIKE "SPIKEHORN" TRENCH

"A friend is the gift we give ourselves"

Once again fall has taken the leaves from the trees, the nights have grown colder and I’m spending a lot of time in my hunting stands reflecting on times gone by. More and more as I’ve grown older, I find myself thinking about the friends that I’ve lost. It’s now almost a year to the day since I lost my “Accidental Friend” Brian. I’m not really sure why it is, but for my relatively young age I’ve lost nearly every friend I ever had. Of the dozen of so people that I used to walk to Emerson Jr. High with every morning, only me and one other friend are left. Drugs killed a lot of them, the rest died of accidents related to drugs or diseases that are linked to that sort of lifestyle. Make no mistake about it, if you chose that lifestyle, your life will be much shorter. So it was with Michael “Spikehorn” Trench.

I met Mike in my first year at Emerson. (For more info on what that was like, read my column “Black and White”). Mike was the brother of one of my older brother’s friends so I sort of knew who he was, but I had never actually met him. To say Mike was a character would be an understatement, he was one of the funniest people I have ever known. Mike was small built, short in stature, and almost feminine in appearance. He had hair so straight that he used to stick his head out a car window at my urging and then shake it to demonstrate how it would fall right back into place, a fascinating feat to someone like me with frizzy hair that would turn into a rat’s nest at the slightest wind. He was horrible at any sport he played, but what he lacked in ability, he made up for in sheer guts. Once, in a pick-up game of football, Mike played for over an hour with a broken collarbone, and he was getting creamed by everybody. Mike was always picked dead last by anyone but me. I would always pick Mike early. The smile that would come over his face as he would trot over to my side was always worth more to me than winning. He was my best friend and I like to think I was his. Once, after I received a particularly bad beating at the hands of about 30 local hoods, Mike came running to my aid. After viewing the damage to my face, Mike doubled up his fists and ran down my perpetrators. He got the living shit kicked out of him. It was the stupidest and the most amazing thing anyone had ever done for me. Through whatever we faced, Mike covered my back and I covered his.

Mike loved drugs. For whatever reason, God had put into Mike that need to escape and the inability to stop. My inclination was more toward Marijuana or alcohol and I was never cursed with having an addiction. While I was content to be “buzzed”, Mike always wanted to be a little higher, almost as if he wanted to see if there was a plain where the troubles of living could not reach him.

Every fall, me, Mike, and several of our friends would make our way to Northern Michigan (referred to by us Lower Michiganders as “up north”) to hunt deer. We stayed at my Step-Father’s deer camp which was nothing more than a shack made out of quarter-rounds (the part left over from a log when you square it up) and whatever wood they could scrounge. It had no running water, so we had to get our water from a well pump that produced water so cold it was surprising that it wasn’t froze solid. Needless to say, washing up produced screams that are probably still confused with Bigfoot. Heat came from an old wood burner that took forever to start and then would cook you out of there. Animals lived in every part of the cabin and it wasn’t uncommon to wake up and see chipmunks running for cover when you turned on the lights. As primitive as it was, this old city boy loved going “up north” every chance he got and Mike was my constant sidekick.

The adventures we had up there would fill a book, but one thing stood out more than all my other memories, the day Mike shot a buck. As you might suspect, since we went on our yearly hunting trip more to party than to actually get a deer, deer were rare on our buck pole. In fact, in the six or seven years that we went up to my step father’s cabin we had collected only two legal bucks excluding Mike’s. I had shot one barely legal buck that was so close to the 3" antler limit we hid it our trunk rather than risk a fine (it turned out it was in fact legal) and my mom had hit one with her car. It would be accurate to say that we weren’t much of a threat to the deer population. I always pictured the deer up there in a thicket laughing at us as we wandered into the woods way passed daylight, hung-over and making more noise than bus load of elementary school kids on a day hike. Despite our obvious inabilities, we still made our attempts at bagging a buck, and all of us dreamed of that glorious ride home down I-75 with our buck straddled across the trunk of our car with all the other returning hunters craning their necks to look at what we had got. It seems strange in today’s climate, but back then it was a right of passage, and only “real men” could bag an elusive whitetail. Certainly none of us thought that man would be Mike Trench.

Mike and me would always venture out together into the vast northern woods and hunt within earshot of each other, and so it was on that day. I was nursing a hangover and had almost fallen asleep as the daylight was slowly fading into dark. The sound of Mike’s shot damn near gave me a heart attack, and my first thought was that Mike had somehow shot himself. I gathered myself and ran as fast as I could over the ridge that had separated us, fully expecting to see Mike wounded. What I found instead was Mike standing over a nice spikehorn deer, cleanly killed with a shot through the heart. I couldn’t believe my eyes! We danced and whooped for a good five minutes. When we finally settled down, we set about the task of cleaning the deer and then dragging him out of the woods. Back at camp our other hunting comrades ran out of the cabin at the site of Mike’s deer. We hoisted him up onto the buck pole and began a long night of celebrating. Mike was the star of the show, a man’s man, a hero, and the ride home had us all beaming at the other hunter’s envious looks. Mike was so proud he took the horns and tied them to the front of his car where they remained for years. From that day forward Mike was known as “Spikehorn Trench” to all of us.

Years came and went as they will, I got married and started having kids and Mike’s lifestyle and mine could no longer be the same. I cleaned up my act and Mike slipped further into the world of drugs. I could no longer hang out with my friend and we drifted further and further apart. But I would still bump into him every now and then and always hoped that one day he would save himself and we could be the friends we once were. One day shortly after Mike’s 30th birthday, I saw Spikehorn walking down the street and stopped to chat for a moment. He said he had been reflecting on his life and where he wanted to go with it. His 30th birthday, he said, had made him realize he had wasted his life, so he had quit all drugs and was going to start anew. He gave me his phone number and said to call him, maybe we could even go hunting, like we used to do. I told him I would like that very much. It never happened.

Two weeks later, Mike “Spikehorn” Trench was found in an abandoned house, dead from a drug overdose. His current “friends” had dumped him there when it became obvious he had done too much. When they returned to check on him, he was dead, so they did what any “friends” would do, they emptied his pockets and left him there to rot. At his funeral, I cried harder than I have ever cried in my life.

The lesson here my friends is this, there can only be one end to a life of drugs; death, and a host of “friends” who will turn their backs and leave you when you need them most. I live every day of my life wishing that I could go back and somehow save Mike from his fate, this is my burden. It's a burden I share with his family. For all of you I have this piece of sage advice. Always remember that moderation is the key to living a good life, nothing in excess. If you must do something to escape, smoke pot, or drink a little, but above all else avoid drugs and the lifestyle that surrounds it. There is no wasted life, we all are here for a reason, even if only to show us what not to do. Let Mike’s life be that lesson for you. H.C.