2012 Williams Watch- Serena Wins First Round Aussie Open Match

Two weeks into a new year and another professional tennis season gets started with the first Grand Slam  tournament of the year kicking off Down Under.

It's the 2012 edition of the Australian Open in Melbourne.

Big Sis is still trying to recover from the auto immune ailment she's suffering from.  She thought she'd be ready to play for the Open but was forced to withdraw. 

She plans to be ready to resume playing next month with an eye towards getting ready for the French Open, Wimbledon, and defending the doubles gold medal she and Little Sis won in Beijing in 2008. 

That leaves Little Sis to uphold Williams family honor and attempt to win her sixth Australian Open singles title after not being able to defend her 2010 singles title due to foot surgery that was problematic in healing. 

She's currently number 12 in the WTA rankings and is also entered in the mixed doubles with Andy Roddick as her partner.  They'll play number one seeds Kveta Peschke and Mike Bryan when that tournament starts.

12th seeded Serena started off Aussie Open singles play with a 6-3, 6-2 straight set victory over Austria's Tamira Paszek that took her 79 minutes to complete in large part to those 12 aces she served in this match to go along with the 34 winners she hit.

Her second round opponent is Barbora Zahlavova Strycova, who was a quarterfinalist in last year's US Open.

Serena had a pattern going in which starting in 2003, she'd won the Aussie Open in odd numbered years and back to back after her 2009 win.

I'm hoping she's back to her Grand Slam winning ways in 2012, and this would be a nice place to start.

Tona Talks About Racism

In her latest Vlog, Tona talks about racism.

Joy Girl Update

I posted back on January 10 about Fredrikka Maxwell, one of my guest columnists here and a beloved figure in our trans community who lives in Tennessee.

I've spent some enjoyable time with her when I lived in the Louisville area or gone to SCC, IFGE or other trans themed conventions.

As you TransGriot readers are aware of she recently had surgery on her right eye.  I was beginning to get concerned because I haven't heard anything from her since the day she posted just before going under the surgeon's scalpel that she was fasting in preparation for it and asking people who believe in the power of prayer to do so for her.

I was relieved to read this comment moments ago from her Facebook page:

This is a note of thanks to all of my friends who sent prayers and good wishes during the surgery. Thank you all so much. God only knows how much I needed that. The docs are saying it will still be six weeks or so before they know how good or how bad the eye is gonna be. Meanwhile, I'm starting to climb the walls so I have to get back on the computer. I feel disconnected from the world.

Glad to hear you're okay Joy Girl.  One less thing for me to worry about.  

Total Recall Update-1Million Signatures!

The United Wisconsin group that started a petition drive seeking to oust Gov. Scott Walker (R) turned in their mountain of petitions in Madison yesterday containing 1 million signatures.

The number far exceeds the 540,208 signatures that were needed to force the election and is also just shy of the 1.12 million votes that Walker received in the 2010 midterm election.

United Wisconsin is also submitting petitions to force recall elections on Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch (R) and exceeded the threshold needed by 305,000 signatures on that one.  

Recall petitions were also delivered to force four more Wisconsin Republican state senators to face the voters, including majority leader Scott Fitzgerald, and United Wisconsin exceeded the number of signatures required on all four of those petitions as well.



The 1 million signatures gathered by United Wisconsin means that in order for the pro-Walker forces to stop the recall election, they would have to successfully invalidate 46% of the gathered signatures.

Not likely and even Scott Walker knows that.   That's why he's been furiously fundraising out of state, running ads and lying spinning his jacked up record to keep his seat and the money from his 1% buddies is flowing into his campaign coffers.

Stay turned, going to be a fun 2012 election season out of Wisconsin.
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Georgia GOP Legislator Sponsoring Drug Testing Bill Fails One Himself

One of the other features of the GOP War on the Poor is to attempt to pass legislation that would force people to undergo drug testing before they can receive any public assistance.

In Georgia one of the six sponsors for Georgia House Bill 464, that state's version of that odious legislation is state Rep. John Andrew 'Kip' Smith (R-Columbus). 

HB 464 if passed would force welfare recipients to submit to yearly random drug testing and anyone who failed the test would automatically be cut off from public assistance. 

In response to HB 464, state Rep. Scott Holcomb (D-Atlanta) submitted one that would require state lawmakers to undergo random drug testing 


Turns out that Rep. Smith got busted in Buckhead for DUI after being pulled over by an Atlanta police officer for running a red light.   The officer smelled alcohol after pulling him over and after initial refusal by Smith to submit to the Intoxymeter test relented. 

Blowing into it resulted in a .091 reading, which is above the .08 limit in Georgia.   To compound his problem Smith failed the 'walk and turn' and one legged stand field sobriety tests.  



After failing those tests he was placed under arrest and taken to the ATL Iron Bar Motel.  He later failed two more tests in which he blew a .099 and then a subsequent .100 reading.

I love what Think Progress commenter Savethecountry had to say about what his punishment should be for his DUI arrest.

Here's an idea for Kip's punishment­. Instead of slapping him on his wrist by allowing him to complete some 30-day "Club Med" treatment program, let's make him live on what a typical Georgia welfare recipient receives, and let's make him do it for 30 days in Section 8 housing in a dilapidate­d, crime-ridd­en, economical­ly depressed neighborho­od with no car (entirely appropriat­e), an unscrupulo­us landlord and indifferen­t law enforcemen­t. Dr. Drew couldn't offer a better shock to ol' Kip's system than making him at long last walk the walk. Hey, we could get Morgan Spurlock to film it for posterity.

Extreme hubris should be rewarded with extreme humility.

Karma is a witch sometimes isn't it GOP?   

For You Black Peeps Who Think Deportations Are Just A Latino/a Problem, Think Again

You may want to reconsider that after hearing the story of  Jakadrien Turner, a Dallas teen who had been missing since she ran away from home in 2010.

Granted, she got busted in H-town for shoplifting and gave a false name to the po-po's that unfortunately for her also happened to be the name of a wanted twentysomething Colombian national with a warrant and ended up being deported out of the country.

What needs to be questioned here is why ICE officers and officials didn't take the time to positively ID her, much less ask themselves the things that make you go hmm question of why a person who has given you the name of a Colombian national can't speak a word of Spanish, much less her fingerprints didn't match the name of the person in question?

But this catch 'em and deport 'em strategy is problematic on a lot of levels because it is breaking up families, and as Jakadrien's case points out, a lot of Latinos look like us.  

With African-Americans increasingly living in neighborhoods side by side with Latinos, work with them and patronize Latino/a owned businesses.   Because we live in a world with interlocking webs of mutuality, as Jakadrien's case was evidence of, what affects one group affects all of us.  

Let's conjure up a scenario in which ICE raids say for example a Dominican beauty shop in which a sistah is getting her hair hooked up.  She happens to not have her license on her and finds herself with a one way ticket out of the country if the same sloppy procedures and bad luck that reared its head in Jakadrien's care happened to my hypothetical sister getting her hair hooked up.       

Jakadrien is back in Dallas now, but what happened to her highlights the fact that this is not just a Latino problem in terms of the ICE deportations breaking up and separating families.

We need to as a nation come to a common sense solution to deal with immigration policy that everybody can live with. Probably isn't going to happen this year, but we definitely need to be discussing it with our Latino/a allies