Five Reasons You Should Dump a Woman Voting for Trump IMMEDIATELY

Because you earned your Master of Arts in Procrastination and Pussyfooting, you made the cutoff for voting, are still waiting in line and reading this blog to pass the time.  As you begin to ponder your life choices, your contemplation takes you to the current lady in your life.  While having a car salesman "ah yes, isn't she a beauty" moment, you're confronted with this reality: "Oh snap...my woman is voting for Donald Trump!!!"  Fellas, if this is your predicament, then stop everything you're doing and drop her like Jordan Matthews and Dorian Green-Beckham drop passes.  Been pining after her and finally got her number?  Delete it.  Got through your 90-day probationary period and finally about to get some?  Cancel your next date.  Currently engaged?  Call off the wedding and take that financial hit.  At the altar as we speak?  Run like the Dickerson and duck every punch from her father, her brother(s), her uncle(s), her male friend(s) and whoever else wants to knock you the f--k out as if you're asking for your beach cruiser back.  Already married to her with kids?  Let wise words from Usher Raymond be your guide...the kids will understand if you thoroughly explain their mother's incurable insanity.  Not convinced you should roll?  I have compiled five of the best reasons why you cannot and should not be with a woman who is seriously backing Donald Trump in the most critical election in our country's history...

For Black People Who Think Voting Is Pointless, Part 2: The Fastidious and the Furious

In the past week since posting Part 1 of "For Black People Who Think Voting Is Pointless", I have witnessed exactly how important this upcoming election is to a lot of people.  Not only was the first part one of the most popular posts in New Problem Tuesdays history, but more important, the post garnered the most amount of meaningful engagement and discussion--much of it making cases for either Democratic candidate Hillary Trump or Republican candidate Donald Trump.  However, perhaps the post-debate sentiments of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick summarize how many Americans feel, especially within the Black community and among "millennials": "...to me it was embarrassing to watch that these are our two candidates.  Both are proven liars and it almost seems like they're trying to debate who less racist.  At this point, in talking to one of my friends, you have to pick the lesser of two evils, but the end is still evil."  Although Kaep plans on voting regardless, I have witnessed an even bigger surge of Black folks over the past week who are strongly considering not voting in November because of the paltry choices for Commander-in-Chief or their ardent supporters shoving their agendas aggressively down the throats of the undecided.  In the second and final part, I will outline the latter three reasons which note how simply having the power to choose fuels the importance of the Black vote in the most significant election in American history...

For Black People Who Think Voting Is Pointless, Part 1: Voter Suppression

Because there has been so much going on in the past week socially, politically and personally, I didn't realize National Voter Registration Day was today until I watched this morning's broadcast of TV One's NewsOne Now.  (BTW, thank God for Roland Martin because I wouldn't know a significant amount of the information I do without his platform.)  Having this information on the heels of last night's first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton heightened the urgency of this particular post.  I have read and seen the grumblings from many folks within the Black community who are so disappointed in and suspicious of American politics and government that they are threatening to remove themselves from one of the most important aspects of the political process: voting.  Now while the Electoral College has been constitutionally selecting the "leader of the Free World" since President George Washington, Kathleen McCleary gave this breakdown in an April 21 article for Parade: "When you cast your vote for president this November, you're not voting for the candidate on the ballot, you're voting for which group of electors from your state--Republican, Democrat or some third party--get to vote for president."  While I know that does nothing for the skeptics, perhaps this two-part series outlining the six reasons why the Black vote absolutely matters in the most critical election in our country's history will be more convincing.  Specifically, the first three reasons in Part 1 all deal with America's shameful legacy of voter suppression and disenfranchisement...

Scribbler's Milestone Post of the Year: 100 Posts & Runnin'

It took over three years and a website makeover/name change to get to this point, but we have finally arrived at the long-awaited 100th post.  To think that this time last year, I strongly considered never writing another post for New Problem Tuesdays ever again.  Between the demands of my personal life and having another passion that took just as much of my time as this does, it just didn't seem like there was enough room for a blog.  Nevertheless, the saga of The Angry Musings of Dirk Scribbler/New Problem Tuesdays continues much to my approval--and hopefully to yours as well. So in this milestone post, I just want to share with y'all some of my reflections about the ups and downs of being a barely-above-average blogger...

The Tuesday Slider Special (Vol. 1, No. 1)

I know...you're getting hungry, but please try to focus and wipe that drool off of the side of your mouth.  I don't want you getting committed somewhere by accident because you're reading this post.  Anyway, do you ever go out to eat and just want appetizers?  Specifically, do you ever have a taste for a burger, but you don't want the heaviness that comes with it or to have to split it in half--knowing the hassle that comes along with reheating a burger and recapturing the essence of it from the restaurant?  If on the menu, do you opt for the sliders instead to give you that taste for burgers without the need to be trotted out on a wheel barrel?  Well, in an effort to cover a wider array of topics without a five-to-seven-paragraph soliloquy for each one, I bring to you a brand new posting series: "The Tuesday Slider Special".  Quick takes from your soon-to-be favorite blogger that are easier to digest, but still filling nonetheless.  So without further ado, let's eat...

The American President: Donald Trump & The Societal Exposé, Part 4

YouTuber Tashya Tummings had perhaps one of the most interesting quotes of the year on the sneak: "The more public you are, the less talent you have."  If that's the case, then Republican presidential candidate and famed businessman Donald Trump is the most talentless hack in the 2016 presidential election.  Even with the candidates remaining on the GOP side, Senator Ted Cruz or Governor John Kasich aren't the "sexy picks" because they aren't as entertaining as Trump.  Sure, they could write tangible policy in their sleep with their hands tied behind their backs, but because Trump and Cruz have been too busy taking shots at each other's wives and giving news outlets even more fodder, nobody cares.  With the help of the media, Trump has effectively turned the GOP debates and town halls into nothing more than reality television for politics without having any teeth to his bombastic claims of making America "great again".  With that said, Trump isn't a lone ranger when it comes to giving the people what they want.  The difficulty in filling an arena with people interested in watching a science experiment versus the ease in packing those same stands with football, basketball or boxing fans immediately comes to mind.  It's not to devalue the greatness of sports or entertainment because, obviously, I have made a living from writing and discussing those things ad nauseam.  Nevertheless, when Americans turn on their televisions, log into their social media accounts and turn on their radios and media players, they often want a show, not a lecture.  Hence, in the fourth and final installment to "The American President: Donald Trump & The Societal Exposé", I will manifest the last reason why he is merely a byproduct of a society that routinely values style over substance...

The American President: Donald Trump & The Societal Exposé, Part 3

As a tenth grader at School Without Walls Senior High School in Northwest D.C., my exceptionally brilliant humanities teacher steered us away from generic textbooks and encouraged us to consult primary source information first when it came to understanding social, political and historical events.  Her thinking was that general and secondary sources allowed for less detail and more cultural bias whereas primary source information was directly from the people with the experience(s) being researched.  Apparently, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump doesn't believe in that as he is a constant violator of former New York Jets and Kansas City Chiefs coach Herman Edwards' "Don't Hit Send" warning.  Whether it's via social media or just opening his mouth, Trump says whatever he wants whenever he desires without any defendable form of mental preparedness, verification or fact checking until someone corrects him.  As problematic as this is for a presidential candidate, he is representative of an even larger dilemma in American society: taking information as presented from questionable sources to make an argument without enough supporting facts from more reliable sources.  Hence, in this third installment of "The American President: Donald Trump & The Societal Exposé", I will get into Trump potentially being the poster child of America's miseducation...

The American President: Donald Trump & The Societal Exposé, Part 2

Whether we choose to admit it or not, America loves a trash talker--whether that love is actually loving the person's platform or loving to hate everything for which they represent.  When someone gets our blood boiling, it gives us a reason to get out of bed in the morning to stand against their flawed system of values with our best devised strategies or just to punch him or her in the mouth one good time.  Even if we aren't able to do that for lack of toughness, tangibility or bail money, the drama starter nevertheless makes for more of an intriguing piece of scuttlebutt than someone who avoids controversy like the plague.  In Part 1 of this four-part series, "America the Divided," I delved into America's historic separatism and how Republican frontrunner Donald Trump is merely a cog in the systematic machine of racial, religious, gender and other forms of cultural and political separation.  Serving as a perfect segue to this week's installment of "The American President: Donald Trump & The Societal Exposé", I continue in my assertions that while Trump's blustering rhetoric appears to be nothing more than disunifying rabble-rousing, his tactics are not germane to one particular group of people who superficially look, sound, act or think like him...

The American President: Donald Trump & The Societal Exposé, Part 1

Observing the meteoric rise of businessman Donald Trump during his campaign for the Republican nomination for President of the United States, several pundits, political analysts and social media experts have run to the same defense: "There's no way that Trump can win the general election.  The American voter is much smarter than that and this would be an insult to their intelligence."  However, let's keep it 100: is the rise of Trump and the real possibility that he could be the 45th President an insult to the American voter and the democratic political process that we darn near deify, or is it an indictment of America?  At so many patriotic events, we are encouraged to sing Katharine Lee Bates and Samuel A. Ward's "America the Beautiful" as a sign of our solidarity with what is often billed as "the greatest" or "the most powerful" nation in the world.  Given the historically divisive social climate in our country, how "beautiful" is or has America ever been and to what "greatness" is Trump truly returning us?  He represents everything that many Americans--regardless of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, generational gap, religion, etc.--believe and exhibit, whether they realize it or not.  In a four-part series over the next several weeks, I intend to highlight many of the harsh and sobering realities about America and manifest just how "American" Donald Trump is...