comedy i couldnt make up

Tavis Smiley calls in Tom Joyner calling out Sharpton and others for being blind Obama followers.

Al Sharpton calls in to the show and says Tavis was "buck dancing" for the Clintons...

Al Sharpton and Tavis Smiley go at it head-to-head this afternoon:

Cant we agree to disagree?

mark of the beast

One of the benefits of being the President of the United States of America, if time is on your side is stacking the United States Supreme Court. Obama has made one move with a Latino woman but he may have the chance to put another one on giving John Paul Stevens, the senior Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States is 90 years of age. He joined the Supreme Court in 1975 and may not have that many years to live.

My concern is that I think Obama will put a man in office that scares the ish out of me - Cass Sunstein. Obama has been linked very closely to Sunstein since their faculty days at the University of Chicago law school and has appointed him to direct the White House Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), His job is to mainly to put in place regulations to protect health, safety and the environment but history has shown us otherwise, but that is besides the point.

He is a major proponent of cost-benefit analysis as the basis for assessing regulations, even though mathematically it is not precise and can be easily manipulated to support what ever policy is retro chic. For example, it was he who used such an approach to develop his "senior discount" method for undervaluing the lives of seniors with respect to health care. He has even asked that popular or partisan websites to be FORCED to carry links to opposing viewpoints; something I will never do, could you imagine neo-Nazis and white supremist posing on my blog? Taking this farther, he even wants mandatory "electronic sidewalks" for cyberville. He would like a "notice and take down" law that would mandate bloggers and service providers to "take down falsehoods upon notice," even if they are made by commenter’s.

In a 2008 Harvard Law paper called "Conspiracy theories" Sunstein suggested that the government should ban conspiracy theorizing asserting to me that he does not desire for individuals to think independently or ask questions if it is against the body politic of who is in control of the government.

His position is that unrestrained individual choice if not controlled or regulated by the government is dangerous and must balanced in the interests of "citizenship" and "democracy." He stated that “a system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government. Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not to be rejected in freedom's name." Unlike the most of us, he see’s the internet as dangerous and that the Internet is destroying the ability for the masses to have shared social experiences.

He also is against using what is called the "precautionary principle" as a basis for regulating environmental which he would like to give the "benefit of the doubt," over possible health and safety concerns of the public. If you have read Sunstein's new book, "On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done,"

He is concerned that in the future,” people’s beliefs” will be are a “product of social networks working as echo chambers in which false rumors spread like wildfire."
Sunstein suggest that the current libel standard - which requires proving "actual malice,” even if one blogger or news paper, that we should even be held responsible even for what people who comment on or blog say, this is true even for web service providers.

Cass Sunstein is a scary mother shut your mouth and I don’t believe that many folk even know or care are even up on folk, his writings, his papers, his belief or his policies. If you are not, then you need to be – he is the antithesis of liberty in word, belief and practice. Although he claims to be a progressive, he is more of a regressive to me. So take my advice and don’t be surprised if he is the folk Obama select to take the place of John Paul Stevens on the United States Supreme Court. And if does, there will be a real mark of the beast on America.

The new white folk – us

In 1954, 0n may 17 The United States Supreme Court announced its unanimous decision regarding the historic Oliver Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas case. The case specifically targeted the doctrine of “separate but equal”. Thurgood marshall used social science to note the negative impact on the mental and psychological well being of African American students as well as the noted inferiority of the schools that African Americans were forced to attend. His purview was that such school segregation violated the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. One significant point of evidence was evinced by Dr Kenneth Clark and his wife. Called the doll test, Dr. Clark showed how segregation impacts African American children. In his words:

"I presented these dolls to them and I asked them the following questions in the following order: "Show me the doll that you like best or that you'd like to play with," "Show me the doll that is the 'nice' doll," "Show me the doll that looks 'bad'," and then the following questions also: "Give me the doll that looks like a white child," "Give me the doll that looks like a colored child," "Give me the doll that looks like a Negro child," and "Give me the doll that looks like you." By Mr. Carter: Q. "Like you?" A. "Like you."

His results showed “that of the children between the ages of six and nine whom I tested, which were a total of sixteen in number, that ten of those children chose the white doll as their preference; the doll which they liked best. Ten of them also considered the white doll a "Nice" doll. And, I think you have to keep in mind that these two dolls are absolutely identical in every respect except skin color. Eleven of these sixteen children chose the brown doll as the doll which looked "bad." This is consistent with previous results which we have obtained testing over three hundred children, and we interpret it to mean that the Negro child accepts as early as six, seven or eight the negative stereotypes about his own group." This was a while back, a time before many of us were born, however there is a similar behavior however it is self directed.

It used to be that the forces of racism were the main culprits of the problems that many African American Currently, there are many trends in behavior that denote some of us are regressing. One such trend is young men calling themselves goons and thugs and gangsters and women calling them Barbie – a white doll. Now some have considered my presentation of such as petty, non-sensorial and even as bull shit. However I disagree. True it may be younger folk doing such but that does not abrogate my responsibility to point out what I perceive needs to be discussed.

It is as if one should not attended to unemployment just because they have a job; or not be concerned about high dropout rates among African American males because their son is graduating and going to college. I suggest that we have lost our way and that our behavior from self –hate, to being self absorbed and materialistic is akin to the manner in which white folks treated use decades past. They were the one that made us feel less than equal; they were the ones who used violence on us; they were the ones that made laws that made it a crime punishable by death to learn to read; they were the ones who considered black as vile and ugly. Not any more for today it is us. We make ourselves feel less if we don’t have certain material to define us; we sing about beating killing and shooting our own kind in popular music as if it is acceptable behavior and even parade it on television via videos and on the radio as if it proffers a benefit to our community; we no longer read and if we do in many cases it is about gossip and/or celebrity and now we proclaim ourselves to be representatives of white beauty, at least some of us with the use of fake hair and proclamations of the aforementioned. Why not Kendra, I mean the black doll has a name – or is it that even today – we associate with the white doll over the black one?

Even today what Dr. Clark noted still occurs. Now I don’t care nor am I trying to ruffle any feathers, however I will not separate myself from acknowledging or trying to openly discuss things that may be detriments to our community. It is sad that folks get defensive and prefer to attack the messenger than accept and think about problem solving. If we should have learned anything from Martin Luther King Jr., it should be tolerance of the opinions of others. He encouraged open discussion and the promulgation of thought as opposed to self-destruction when he wrote "A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan” and “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity." 459 years latter and we still got major problems folk and we too weak to accept, point out or even acknowledge them. And as such, we may as well put on them white robes for how are we any different from the KKK?

same ole same ole

Ok I’m back, sorry have a lot on my plate but not enough to prevent a simple jactitation on the current President of the United States and his Cronies. Now I know we all know this is Black history month, a month in which we should I figure be trying to focus on education or even bring to the fore, past wrongs in an attempt to correct them.

If you did not know, this is the 100 year anniversary of the legendary Jack Johnson and James Jeffries fight which occurred during the summer of 1910. Born in Galveston, Texas in 1878 as Arthur John Johnson, he was the first African man to win the heavyweight boxing championship of the world. His life was one of hardship. His family lost all they owned in the great Hurricane of 1900 and he was arrested in Texas for boxing since it was against the law and considered a blood sport. Before becoming Champion of the world, Jim Jeffries refused to fight him because he was black. However Johnson went to Australia and defeated Tommy Burns to win the title in 1908 which forced Jeffries to fight him if he desired the title. After Johnson put the smack down on Jeffries (the first great white hope), folk lost their minds. There were race riots; the Texas state legislature even banned the showing of films of his victory. The only thing that could be employed to “handle” Johnson were Federal laws – mainly the Mann Act, of which he was charged for transporting white women across state lines for “immoral purposes” – a charge that was completely false. The original name of the Mann Act was the “White Slave Traffic Act”. In 1913, he was imprisoned as were many other African men to follow including Chuck Berry.

Sen. John McCain and House Rep. Peter King last year pushed a resolution through the Senate and House of asking for President Obama to pardon Johnson. However, Obama’s head of the Justice Department, Eric Holder and staff said no, suggesting they do not “traditionally” pardon dead folk compared to people "who can truly benefit" from a pardon. Truth is that Bill Clinton pardoned Henry O. Flipper, the first black graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1999, who was wrongly accused of embezzlement and G.W. Bush pardoned Charlie Winters in 2008 for illegally selling planes to Israel during the Arab-Israeli war in 1948.

Strange to me that Obama is always talking about change, but his actions seem to continue the problematic approaches to politics that we have seen historically by folks trapped inside the beltway. So Mr. President, Pardon Jack Johnson, because for some strange reason, I thought you ran on a mantra of change, not the same ole same old.

ATL-BOS & BOS-PHI-BWI-ATL

Ok will start back blogging in a few: Below is why I was in 5 airports in 3 days. I hate snow. All these were taken at my hotel at BWI at 1245 in the am after i found out all flts to ATL were canceled.