What the West Point Address tells us about the Obama Doctrine and Obama’s Man Crush on the MPIC

The record is clear that the impact of Bush foreign policy both politically and economically, resulted in nothing good for America. The only tangible outcomes were destroying the government of Iraq under false pretense, disrupting the standard of living for tens of millions, tens of thousands Americans dead or permanently maimed, hundreds of thousands dead Iraqis, the entry of al Qaeda into Iraq where prior they had never existed, and hundreds of billions in wasted tax dollars.

Unfortunately, President Barack Obama, although in the beginning he made a point to continuously reinforce that he had no interest for interfering in the affairs of other nations, his foreign policy actions seem to out Bush, George W. Bush. Just this week he confirmed this for the entire world. In his address at West Point, Obama provided a picture of how after five years, he sees his foreign policy efforts, and in all aspects, it is troubling, neocolonialist, and in tone reminiscent of the Rumsfeld Cheney bravado of the previous administration.

Now I cannot blame Obama singular for this, in fact most of the blame should be placed on those who voted for him, for they never read his policy positions prior to running for President, or read his speeches delivered to groups like AIPAC in 2007.  They never concerned themselves with his limited, if any foreign policy experiences with the exception of a brief stint on the foreign relations committee or him having no military experience at all.  

He embraced the joint special operations view of pre-emptive war and expansionist foreign policy as manager in chief of the U.S. imperial empire. Rather than exploring who he actually was, progressives, whether because he was a democrat, or if he were black, or that he made promises that any pragmatic person would not believe based on his past statements, turned a blind eye towards the reality of his prism of executive action.

Several statements stuck out which may be a looking glass into the remaining years from a foreign policy purview for the standing commander in chief. The first was: “The United States is the one indispensible nation.” I can only say the question would be, in what manner? By definition, the President is stating that either the United States or he is absolutely necessary. I personally disagree, unless necessary is correlated to causing trouble around the world, incessant practices that reflect the violation of international law, human rights and the basic respect for others to do as they please without U.S. interference. This position in word actually brings him closer in line to the prior administration for as it is stated in a basic Theorem of trigonometry: the same named trigometric ratios of conterminal angles are equal (conterminal angles in this case being a democratic or republican commander in chief).

The President also added, that “It is impossible to ignore sectarian conflicts, failing states and popular uprisings.” This also makes one cringe with his understanding and implementation of U.S. foreign policy, national security and U.S. interest in terms of priority. History under the present administration has lucidly indicated that the President has a problem with reading the pulse of both the American people and the world around him.  The way he went about dealing with Egypt is just one example. First he supported the democratic elections which brought Mohamed Morsi to power, albeit a member of the Islamic Brotherhood and hesitantly supported the popular uprising against an autocratic dictator named Mubarak. All because it was evident the present administration did not have a pulse of what was going on in Egypt in real time and had allowed their unconditional support of Mubarak, even amidst his long record of human rights violations to cloud their understanding of what the people of Egypt wanted and had experienced under the man the U.S. supported.

Strangely, after giving support to the democratic desires of the people of Egypt albeit late, an Islamic fundamentalist theocrat was elected whom Obama placed full support and validation behind. Next we saw protest again in Egypt, but this time there was a coup, in which the Obama administration said nothing, did nothing and even gave the new government (coup) billions in military aid justifiably, by not referring to the overthrow as a coup. So although he openly said this in his West Point address, the fact assert otherwise. Now the Egyptian people hate the U.S. more, and channels of cooperation have increased between Egypt and Russia. This is a strange statement seeing that near the end of his address President Obama revealed: “America’s support for democracy and human rights goes beyond idealism – it’s a matter of national security.”

The President also said [It]...is not whether America will lead, but how we will lead, not just to secure our peace and prosperity, but also to extend peace and prosperity around the globe.” The how is evident. The Obama motto follows the Bush playbook like an AFC coach discovering the West coast Offense. Leadership via the Obama doctrine is dividing and conquering at home and unilaterally destroying and disrupting sovereign nations, even if against international law. This is no more visibly seen than what occurred in Libya in 2011.

There was no reason or compelling U.S. interest to go into Libya unless it was on the behalf of what I have called the military police industrial complex (MPIC). This is just all of the big banks, big corporations and big lobbyist that make sizable piles of loot on war, incarceration, insider trading and media manipulation. Not only would war make them loot but they would be able to use their neocolonial desires to destroy one of the world’s last state own central banks in Libya. Fact is we followed France and Germany and didn’t lead at all with respect to Obama’s intervening into Libya. But like a good politician, reasons we contrived and lies even told.  The biggest was human rights, protecting civilians, and people believed it although we can’t even help the innocent civilians we promised to aid in Haiti after their earthquake and even supported the U.N. to say that although Cholera never was in Haiti until U.N. troops arrived, they can’t even suit the U.N. to clean up the water and pay for the lives of 40,000 people who died as a result. Meaning, it is visible how we lead.

Libya is the perfect example of the Obama doctrine. If a nation is doing good for its region or country, then it must be destroyed because their success is a threat to U.S. national economy because Bush and Obama has fucked ours up miring our economy in debt for war. At no time was it mentioned by progressives that Gaddafi gave Libya the highest human development index in all of Africa, or that he stood in the forefront of the struggle for Africa against U.S. supported apartheid in Israel and South Africa.  This mean nothing to neo liberals and neoconservatives, because investment under neocolonialism only increases the gap between rich and poor nations, which in simple terms means foreign capital is used not for the people, but rather for the exploitation as opposed to the development of the undeveloped world.

So those who agree with this approach, or worse stay silent, are progressives who are in reality procolonialism. No matter what one says, Gaddafi was pan African and pan Arab and desired such to make all of Africa independent from the West.

Now the President also dropped that he wanted to continue his Libya model in other places. For in the Obama worldview, whether military force will be used anywhere, is for the president alone to decide. In the speech he noted “America’s failure to act in the face of Syrian brutality or Russian provocation not only violates our conscience, but invites escalating aggression in the future.”   First how can a Nobel peace prize winner that has used drones to kills thousands of women and children in Yemen, Afghanistan,Pakistan, and Somalia know anything about conscience, when by practices his foreign policy is to escalate aggression without invite whenever he feels, or needs to buttress his approval rating? As he said in the same speech, we know this is already the case given he said [The] “United States will use military force, unilaterally if necessary, when our core interest demand it.”

Obama’s foreignpolicy beliefs are clear. He said “The issue of transparency is directly relevant to a third aspect of American leadership: our efforts to strengthen and enforce international order.” This is how he perceives his role as commander in chief. Foreign policy is basically using counter-terrorism to stunt the economic growth of other nations and deepen their citizenry into poverty while making U.S. plutocrats even wealthier. He has established a large covert presence in North Africa in total secrecy (transparency), away from democratic debate, and without any Congressional approval or oversight. This is what he means by transparency.

Moreover, Obama has expanded drone attacks in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan. In simple terms has continued the practice and policy of the Bush administration with respect to foreign policy. He has invaded more countries and violated just as many if not more human rights and issues of state sovereignty that George W. Bush ever did. Ironically while asserting and pointing the finger toward Iran, China and Russia which I assume is a replacement for Bush’s “Axis of Evil” he described and referenced so frequently.

In sum, Obama uses military force whenever he wants, wherever he wants, and without anyone's permission. He ignores as Lincoln wrote, "The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object.” Obama's ongoing use of military force in multiple countries ensures that the posture of the US for the foreseeable future will continue to be one of endless war. This my friend, is the Obama doctrine in a nutshell.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) calls for 'limits on First Amendment rights'

The Age of Phony Compassion and Fake Hash tag Celebrity Activism

Over the past few weeks, many have been in an uproar over the kidnapping of more than 200 Nigerian school girls in Borno State Nigeria. They were taken from their school as the slept and huddled off in trucks to places in the Sambisa forest outside of Maiduguri and possibly beyond.  Albeit nearly three weeks after the actual crime occurred, the concern is needed and well deserved.  But somehow, I feel that the interest is fake and phony and I will tell you why.

When I was a child, growing up in Memphis in 1960’s, activism was real, tangible and hands on. This type of activism in the age of social media and remote control sedentary decadence is rare mainly because the modern western influenced psyche assumes that action is limited to what one can accomplish with a keystroke or the push of a button. It allows one to be reticent and hidden in their personal urgency to acknowledge and even confront evil in any form or manifestation it may engender.

The #bringbackourgirls is just the recent example of this artificially contrived concern for a criminal act that in all honesty, many did not care about either through ignorance and not being informed or because it did not gain traction until some famous person they idolized brought it to their attention. Consequently making it retro chic to be concerned and to care and thus promote the hash tag. Otherwise there would have been a concern for all the past ill and crimes committed by the Islamist organization Boko Haram. But the record and fact exhibits and documents such was not the case.

There was no #dontburnourboys hash tag when just this year in February, the same Islamist attacked a boarding school in Potiskum, Nigeria in the northeast of the nation that resulted in the killing 29 students and one teacher. All of which were burned alive. Likewise, there was no #stopkillingourchildren when Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau and his band of militants opened fire on students in their sleep at a secondary school in Nigeria's troubled northeastern Yobe state, or when they set fire to a locked dormitory in Damaturu, Nigeria and then shot and slit the throats of students who tried to escape through windows during a pre-dawn attack in which 58 students were killed. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the attack in June in the village of Mamudo which left 22 students dead. In all of the above attacks, all of the dead were teenage boys or young men between 10 and 18 years old.

Now again, the attention pertaining to the girls is deserved, but why was their no attention to the aforementioned attacks on students the same age?  Was it because they were males, was it because they were burned alive and had their throats slit which may be less appealing for attention than kidnapped children? I cannot answer any of the prior queries but I can assert that something is amiss. Either in the west we feel more attached to women in need more so than boys or men in need, or either we are stupid creatures of the moment caught up and motivated by celebrity trends of the day and actually do not really care what happens in faraway places like Nigeria, regardless of religious affiliation or gender.

Now before you say I am making excuses, missing the point or just “hating”, I must add that I lived in Nigeria for more than a year when I was doing my post doc. Moreover, although I lived in Owerri in Imo state and Lagos more than half of my time there, I have been to and worked outside in the LGAs around Maiduguri and the Sambisa Forrest where I did onchocerciasis eradication (river blindness). It was so thick we had to park our land cruisers and walk miles to our target LGAs. Not to mention I have worked and stayed in Calabar, Jos, Kano, Benin, Kaduna, Onitsha, Afkipo, Afikpo South, Port Harcourt, Ngor Opala and too many other places in Nigeria to name. So for me it is personal.  I know about Boko Haram and personally, they are just like Uganda's cult-like Lord's Resistance Army with the only difference that the latter is Christian. And while Boko Haram has repeatedly targeted Christian institutions such as churches, most people killed in attacks have been Muslims. I understand that Boko Haram was created in 2002 by a radical Islamist cleric in Maiduguri, Borno state, after he was expelled from two mosques in Maiduguri by Muslim clerics for propagating his radical views.

So to me, the attention is well deserved, but to be honest we must admit that it is fake and phony. If such were not the case, we would have hash tags for this week’s bombing that killed 130 people, or the bombing the following day that killed scores more – but we did not.  Just like we don’t care, don’t know, and don’t want to know about what is going on in the Central African Republic where Christians are chopping up and beheading and even eating Muslims left and right.

I won’t say that we don’t care (black people) because the victims are black, but I will say for most in the west, there may be some sort of shame and guilt over Rwanda’s genocide, or the exploitation of child soldiers in Uganda and the killings in Darfur, Sudan; for we know the record indicates conservatively speaking, since 1996, 6 million Congolese have been killed. And in all of these cases we know that our President, who looks like us black folk, has turned a blind eye to Africa. First when he waived the ban on sending military aid to nations that use children as soldiers in 2013, and specifically with respect to Nigeria, when the Obama Administration, after John Kerry took over as Secretary of State, the U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, Terence P. McCulley, accused the Nigerian government of “butchery during a confrontation with Boko Haram terrorists in Baga, on the shores of Lake Chad, and in May 2013 threatened to withdraw U.S. military aid from the West African nation.”

So the way II see it, I am glad of the attention, yet at the same time I know it is fake and phoney and comes with barely an iota of concern and compassion. But such is the standard in this new world of hash tag diplomacy and celebrity activism and a sad standard it is indeed.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: The Affordable Healthcare Act

I have openly stated for the record that if one desires to explore how the Federal Government operates in the function of health care administrator, just look at the Veterans Administration Hospital Services – where the average wait time to see a physician is five months. In all sincerity, this is how, based on observation and past history, I perceive Obamacare will be implemented and administered. However, I will say, regardless of political affiliation, one must wait and see if the Affordable Care Act actually accomplishes and does what it was indicated to do when initially proposed by and signed into law by the President.

It was first hard to understand why any legislature would vote for a bill that none had ever read, to have any comprehension of all the mandates, subsides and regulations entangled in large sums of paper that represented the law itself. However, it is possible to evaluate its eventual effectiveness – namely by determining if it actually meets its objectives of reducing health care cost, provide health care coverage for all and lastly, if you can actually do what the President stated: keep your physicians or policy if you like them.

The last is a given so I won’t spend too much effort on that. However, the first, reducing cost is the main concern. It should be clear that in order to reduce health care cost, one must know how much health care service are in dollar terms.  This is something that varies by hospital to hospital and specialty to specialty as research notes. For example, the Washington Post reported that the cost for a patient on a ventilator at one hospital was $115,000 and $53,000 at another and $30,000 at yet another. Procedures for lower limb replacement in the same article ranged from $117,000 to $25,600. One example showed that inpatient cost for joint replacement in Oklahoma was $5,300 but $223,000 in Monterey, California. In NYC, cost for treating asthma varied 321% between two hospitals approximately 60 blocks apart.  And I won’t even go into cost for aspirin, toilet paper and overnight stays in a hospital ward.

A social Marxist would say let us have one cost across the board, but such would not consider a surgeon with 20 years experiences and no clinical complications experienced by patients and a first year without any clinical experience (which would go against all the rules of rewarding expertise and competency).

 

The President often repeated that the ACA would reduce the cost of premiums by $2,500 for a family of four. However, using the same math the Administration employed, one scientist calculated it would increase premiums for a family of four by more than $7400 by 2222.  When I did the formula, I came out with a similar figure closer to $7,900 per family of four (my model assumed that both head of household were not employed). The Manhattan Institute, although they did not disclose their method completely, predicted and increase of 41% which in any case is way more than $2,500.  This was as of the end of last year and was an overall estimiate not giving any weighted effects for states like Georgia or Indiana where increases are estimated to be 198 and 72 percent accordingly.

New information shows that based on official filings by insurance companies in Virginia, that policy rate increases range between 3 to 17 percent for 2015, and are attributed to new cost associated with implementing the ACA as a function of being mandated to cover less healthy and previously folk that never had health insurance.

 

Although the President stated that this law would assist in providing coverage for folk who did not have health insurance. It is difficult for me how his administration came up with the number of people who did not have health care coverage since it fluctuates, similar too manner in knowing how many cares are owned by people versus the actually number that are drivable and on the road. Since this proposal was implemented during the start of our current and present recession, the Obama Administration goal of signing up 7 million really wasn’t too difficult since close to 40 million currently have no form of health coverage, inclusive of the botched roll out of the web site.  To be completely honest, as the federal government, it is difficult for me to believe then even have a clue of how many uninsured folk in America, regardless of being either democrat or republican.

Although many promulgate that the subsides will help deal with these projected increases, in reality they will not hide the pain that certain folk will have for paying extra for others who cannot afford to pay for their policy or being required to pay for service they do not need. My mother for example, is 72 and still wonders why she has to pay for maternity coverage (when she can’t have children or why she has to, by law have prostate cancer coverage when she doesn’t have a prostate).

In summary, anyone who will say that the ACA is a failure or a success is not being honest or objective. All will have to wait for small and large business, which the president gave waivers, to sign up and see what other laws go in place or changes made to the ACA to complete the final product to evaluate it appropriately. What can be said that it will have a major impact on the U.S. Economy, since the government has taken control of approximately 30% of the U.S. GDP with its control of health care insurance and health care delivery? What we can say is that the ACA will definitely change how many small and large business hire and provide insurance coverage.  What we can say is that the ACA will limit individual choice in healthcare and may even impact the growth of the health care delivery industry as a hole. Lastly, what we can say is that in time, all will feel the impact of ACA whether for the good, the bad or the ugly.

 

14 years of the same ISH

Sometimes I feel as if I am in a bad dream, it is as if President Obama and President George W. Bush are one in the same, for the policies I was vehemently against while GWB was in office, I am still against and have been put in effect a lot more viscerally under Obama.  What I saw with Bush: the incessant wars, taxbreaks for the wealthy, the banks and Wall Street getting wealthier without any threat of prosecution for criminal wrong doing and war mongering, I see two times in President Obama.

Bush did not place U.S. domestic issues as being our main priority, and nor does Obama. Bush was preoccupied with Iraq, and Afghanistan and Mr. Obama, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Libya, and now the Ukraine. Currently the latter is more like some dystopian Fourier reality, that for him is dynamic and fascinating, but for the majority of Americans, wasteful and unnecessary. It is as if the Ukraine and parcels of land 99 percent of Americans will never see or set foot upon, deserves more attention than the millions of Americans with major financial needs like the hungry, the homeless, or the millions who can’t pay their rent or mortgages or whom need jobs at living wages.

There is no valid reason to be occupied with the Ukraine when what we face at home is a true national security threat economically. Just this past week, Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen informed the Joint Economic Committee of Congress that under current policies the federal government’s deficits “will rise to unsustainable levels.” Unemployment, depressed wages and unadmitted inflation is killing us. We are over our head and drowning in deficit spending so all we left with is printing “mo money, mo money and mo money,” to use a phrase from “In Living Color.”

Why is the U.S. economy more of a national security issue than the Ukraine? First, at last count, about 5 trillion or approximately 47% of U.S. debt is owned by foreign investors, the largest being China and Japan at (plus $1.1 trillion each). Unlike us, the Russian government expects to have a budget surplus according to the IMF. Add to this, Russia also has a trade surplus which increased to $18.86 billion while the U.S. trade deficit continues to fall. If anything, maybe the U.S. wants a war so it can rev up its dire economic prospectus. For it is clear that what we observed when George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, the same can be noted, applied and said for the Obama Administration – the economic and financial need ­of conflict with another energy rich nation.

Why else make a big fuss about nothing? Obama in his neoliberal caricature resembles Balzac’s master criminal Vautrin more than the leader of the free world as the U.S. has been coined. Big oil and Wall Street made a killing under Bush. The U.S. invasion of Iraq crushed that country, destroyed Iraq’s state-owned oil industry, and grew the price of   crude from $20 a barrel to $147 a barrel in 2008 (needless to state Exxon Mobil’s most profitable year ever). The point being whenever sanctions are placed on an energy rich nation, U.S. plutocrats get paid. Obama is just extending the Bush playbook and we saw such in 2011 when sanctions were placed on Iran and Sudan. And when they don’t work, we have good ole NATO, who implemented an undeclared war on Libya, not to forget the CIA efforts in Syria. Thus, it doesn’t take a high school graduate to foresee the impact or likely impact the disruption of the flow of Russian energy to Europe would mean for big U.S. oil companies.

Obama and Bush are in policy, one and the same person, the only differences are gang, I mean political affiliation and ethnicity. The U.S. I suspect see the Ukraine as a means to grow and escalate military spending across Europe, making the U.S. military industrial complex more loot on behalf of U.S. oil interest. See, what corporate U.S.A and Wall Street know is that war drives capital into the United States, which keep U.S. banks the main feature of the global economy by cutting the deficit and artificially propping up the dollar. This is the only conclusion that is both reasonable and logical for as German MP Alexander Neu noted, “Not a single NATO country is in any way threatened,” by the actions in the Ukraine. Plus, what would we expect, there are more than 6000 German companiesactive in Russia with more than $27 billion invested in the nation. Meaning just like Iraq was no threat, or Libya, or Syria, Obama economic and foreign policy is no different than his predecessor with the exception it is on steroids.

 

Real Life Transformers: Check Out This Video of a Helicopter Transforming Into a Truck

Fundamental Zealotry and other Nonsense

I have come to the realization that the lack of the ability of the majority of citizens of these United States, in particular we African Americans, t think critically is intentional and have taken a turn for the worse. It like clear that the main reason for this is that the power that be know and accept that a lot of money is made when folk do not have the ability to think critically.
 

Over the past two weeks, two specific events have drawn me to conclude of such, as that distractions seem to garnish more attention than events and occurrences that actual merit our focus the most: the Donald Sterling Saga and the skit on Saturday Night Live written and performed by Leslie Jones.

Seems that the only thing we black folk get up in arms about is our skin color, confederate flags and the n-word.  It as if we only have our antenna out to pick up what bigots say but can't see the forest for the trees.  The issues that are destroying our community go unattended and are pushed back in our collective unconscious, in particular for this generation in which they believe that just because a politician is black and a democrat you can’t say anything wrong about the person policies, not the man I mind you but policies. If we were in tune to other issues, we would likely in the case of Sterling attend to his message about institutional racism in America and abroad, specifically alluded to by what he stated pertaining to the real manner in which Israel treat blacks and Africans.  But no we do not.  If we had our ears to the ground, we would attempt to address and discuss the bigger issue of how and why owners get public support through stadium subsidies & even antitrust exemptions in cities where the urban areas are mainly African American and Latinos, whom tax monies build the large stadium complexes but is not poured in the despondent and deplorable public education systems the vast majority of us send our kids too.  No we don’t dare address such.

On the real, why are we concerned about multi-millionaires that play professional sports when the quality of life for most black men in America is mostly negative? It seems that the only place black men are over represented where they display a modicum of success are in the sport and entertainment industry, and frankly, I am frequently more offended by the lyrics of rappers like Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, 2 Chains, and Future than by what Donald Sterling said or Leslie Jones performed.

 

The truth is that all that is negative, pessimistic, gloomy and associated with failure is where we as black men are vastly and disproportionately over-represented. Nationwide we account for more than 50% us dropout rate and maintain  the lowest college enrollment than any other group by ethnicity and gender in the nation. In   Mississippi, Michigan, Louisiana, Indiana, Georgia,Florida, District of Columbia, California, Arkansas, Alabama and many other states 10% of less of black males in high school read above an eighth grade level.

Personally I think mass incarceration deserves more attention that a television comedy show or a NBA owner. Those who kill non-Latino whites are over three times more likely to be sentenced to die as those who kill African-Americans. The killer (no pun intended) is that for the same crimes, the odds of receiving a death sentence are nearly four times (3.9) higher if the defendant is black.

Then there is the lucid observation that we as African American men are more likely to be unemployed, under employed, trapped in low wage jobs, have higher rates of job instability, lower wages, and extremely longer bouts with unemployment; which may account for why nearly 49 percent of black men are arrested for non-traffic offenses by the time they turn twenty-three.

I can’t comprehend why a whole bunch of us black folk more concerned and vocal about millionaire slaves and racist owners, or a comedian when, most of us are living from paycheck to paycheck, have suffered huge financial setbacks and are still scared about the future. The cold, hard truth is that we have one microscopic group of folk who have resources, are making loot and continue to enhance their financial position and a president that has increased their wealth. But we do not dare address this, specifically that the economic conditions of African Americans has gotten worse over the last five years more than any time in modern history.

None of this gets us mad, just old outdated bigots that allow us to show our support for political correctness and other cultural Marxist beliefs. Even Ebony magazine chimed in on this by unleashing their racist watch dog extraordinaire Jamila Lemieux on a comedy skit, on the same weekend in Chicago (Ebony’s own backyard) in which 4 people were killed and 24 others are injured in shootings. The same weekend in which Donnell Flora, 25, who uses a wheelchair took a bus to deliver a gun to his niece to shoot a 14 yr. old girl over a Facebook post over a boy. Then there is the fact that in Chicago, 92 percent of African American men are unemployed. But none of this was exciting enough, no racism involved, therefore again pushed deep back in the recesses of the black mind. Maybe they need to talk about the issues that would make folk write books with titles like “Food Stamp Bitches,” or why maternal deaths are on the rise among African American women in the United States, but I doubt it. Even going back to look at Richard Pryor’s slave sketch he did on his show when I was a teen in the 1970s, seems would upset black folk today, which makes me think his comedy would be viewed as inappropriate currently. But these same folk yell free speech when it is Beyoncé, Lil Boosie or some other subject-verb challenged miscreant. 

As a community we rarely write about our deep issues and concerns like we once did, nor are we black writers interested in such, because to do so would mean looking at the mirror and accepting that a lot of our problems are not and cannot be singularly attributed to racism. How many of US would hold our kids to the standard of nothing less than a 95% being acceptable to bring home as a grade as Kwasi Enin parents did? Parents? How many of us will cut the TV off and sit with our kids and do homework and read to them instead of watching the Real Housewives of Atlanta? How many of us take our kids to the library weekly or even own library cards. Small things can and do make a difference.

Sometimes being distracted by thing we cannot change does our community more harm than good, by taking our attention from what we CAN address and deal with in our own backyard. Truth is, it was Abraham Lincoln who said and wrote: “Free them [black slaves] and make them politically and socially our equals?  My own feelings will not admit of this" (Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II, p. 256). A man clearly who doesn’t or couldn’t deserve the right to own a NBA team in today's, world of intolerance and impracticality.