President-Elect Obama, keep Guantanamo Bay open for wack ass rappers.(Vibe.com)

The last few days, watching the liberal blogosphere act like a bunch of whining malcontents as they clumsily hyperventilate over Obama picking Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, and the President-Elect's decision to let Joe Lieberman keep his chairmanship despite the Connecticut Senator's nasty general election habit of questioning Obama's patriotism and calling him a Marxist - my dear cousin Rose suddenly comes to mind. See, Rose's current boyfriend is a world class guy in my honest opinion, an extremely hard working and unassuming fellow who loves my cousin with every fiber of his being - he would gladly sacrifice his rather interesting life just to extend the tenure of her less than stellar existence. But to hear her tell it, the fact that he occasionally chews with his mouth open, occasionally leaves his socks in sporadic places, and is obsessed with Fantasy Football has made life simply not worth living for my fifth favorite cousin. Listen, Rose's particular gripes aren't all that unreasonable, I'm currently single because I have a penchant for announcing my bowel movements and putting every girlfriend that I've ever had on the business end of a "Dutch Oven". But when you consider the fact that her last boyfriend beat her so routinely that you would have thought he was doing so to a metronome, extracted large sums of money out of her purse, and proceeded to consensually penetrate all of her closest girlfriends - thus providing her entire crew with a delightful case of gonorrhea at exactly the same time. It makes the gripes about her current boyfriend akin to someone bitching about the color of a Maybach that was given to them, or taking issue with the slight stutter your voluptuous porn star girlfriend with Daddy issues has. After 8 years of suffering under a man that can be accurately described as the Barney Fife of Presidents, the prematurely incessant groans about an Obama presidency possibly not living up to some liberal standard seems like a bunch of wasted fucking energy to me.

Besides, for anyone paying attention, Obama has always been more of a pragmatist and less of an ideologue. Despite the fact that Hillary ran a gutter campaign littered with xenophobia and dog whistles, she's extremely qualified to be Secretary of State, and Obama's impressive campaign has momentarily rendered me mute in terms of questioning his decisions for a while. Besides, keep your friends close and enemies closer I say, the last thing he wants is Hillary Clinton causing absolute havoc for him in the Senate. I despise Joe Lieberman as much as the next guy, I wanted Obama to put the smack-down on Lieberman so bad that my right hand shakes every time his pathetic name is mentioned. But Joe Lieberman votes with the Democrats 90% of the time and Obama needs that vote. Besides, when a person goes out of their way to betray your trust and you forgive them without batting an eye, that person usually spends the remainder of their existence kissing your ass. The recent "concerns" from some of the Anti-War left just proves that they weren't paying attention to his campaign over the past 2 years - sure he wants to get out of Iraq as soon as humanly possible, but what part of increasing troop levels in Afghanistan and bombing al qaeda in Pakistan whether their government likes it or not didn't people understand?

But there is one impending Obama action that has the collective hearts of the Netroots going all aflutter, and that is the closing of Guantanamo Bay - an Executive order the President Elect has signaled he will issue the moment he's sworn in. Obviously I agree with this, no logical American who cares about our moral standing in the world can be against the closing of Gitmo - that's whats great about having a President who was once a law professor, a place that represents the blatant disregard for habeas corpus and the Geneva conventions must thoroughly offend his sensibilities. But being that this election was an electoral rebuke of ignorance - Americans gave the proverbial finger to "Drill baby Drill", Joe the Plumber, Guilt-by-Associations, Tito the Builder, and Sarah Palin's Folksy "I feel like she's one of us" shtick - now is a better time than ever for all of us true Hip Hop aficionados to do away with sub-par lyricism that has unfortunately become an accepted part of the music we all love. Aren't you absolutely horrified every time you turn on your radio and find yourself subjected to knuckle-dragging minstrelsy posing as Hip Hop? Don't you cringe every Jim Jones, or some other entertainer of his ilk, tries to convince the populace that "swagger" is a sufficient replacement for actual mic skills? Despite people desperately trying to convince me that he is the second coming of the long haired dude who died for our sins, I've heard nothing but unimpressive 16's from Lil Wayne thus far. How many times have you witnessed some rapper with a gaudy diamond encrusted smile, heard the pedestrian wordplay that escaped his blissfully ignorant mandible and thought - "A monkey could do that!"?

This might sound kind of harsh but I truly feel that people who don't respect Hip Hop as an artform should be treated like enemy combatants and dealt with accordingly. Its this writers humble opinion that Barack Obama should keep Guantanamo Bay open and only house wack ass rappers there. As for recommended torture techniques: 1)Being forced to listen to "Paid in Full" for 48 hours straight. 2)Daily Vocabulary tests given at gunpoint 3)Learning the words to Kool G Rap's "Men at Work" verbatim 4)Forcing the detainees to build a DJ Premier shrine and make them worship at it 5)An Electric shock every time something incredibly stupid is uttered( ala Soulja Boy thanking Slave Masters and DMX now knowing who Barack Obama was) and 6)Random beatings that involve the detainees being hit with a pillowcase full of "WiId Style" VHS tapes.