America's new Foreign Policy Entanglement

The events of the past weeks have served as a dramatic wake up call for President Obama and his retinue of advisors, as well as America as a whole regarding re-thinking their approaches to foreign policy in North Africa, the Middle east and worldwide. Although Most African Americans are familiar with Egypt and the turmoil occurring across its chronicled cities and other nation states in the region, grievously most have a curbed comprehension of the impact these occurrences have on President Obama and any policy deliberated as a function of these events. For President Obama and his administration, the conundrum from this vantage point is not purely formulating policy for America, but conspicuously deciding how to formulate policy on behalf of Israel and ally’s in the region or the inchoate masses of the secular populations in revolt.

First and foremost is dealing with addressing emotion, better know as terror as a singular attribute that Americans alone confront in concert with dealing with autocrats all for the good of us, under the guise of peace and Islamic fundamentalism. Mistakes made some 30 years ago in Iran, and what we have observed in Egypt and Libya, still fall on deaf ears – even for the prophet of all prophets Obama. In addition, our monolithic approach to supporting what is best for Israel and a myopic focus on Al Qaeda is misplaced and may do more harm than good. Common sense would advocate looking at all nations singularly but our focus on terrorism prevents such. There are differences between military dictators and monarchs, but starvation, repression, discrimination and poverty are least common dominators if one accepts and place the people of nations first.

In Libya, The United States is openly spoken out against the violence in the country’s second-largest city, Benghazi, where there are reports of security forces firing on peaceful protesters and where human-rights groups say many have been killed in recent days. In Iran, unconfirmed reports of anti-government gatherings on being broken up by a security police and members of the feared pro-government Basij militia patrolling the streets again he has spoken out.

The hand he is dealing with is progresively getting difficult to contain. There is Raymond Davis, the American who shot dead two men in Lahore, triggering a diplomatic crisis between Pakistan and the US. A former CIA agent, he opened fire with a semi-automatic Glock pistol on the two men who had pulled up in front of his car at a red light on 25 January. The 36-year-old former special forces soldier fired 10 shots and got out of his car to shoot one man twice in the back as he fled. A third man was crushed by an American vehicle as it rushed to Davis’s aid. Police confiscated from his car: an unlicensed pistol, a long-range radio, a GPS device, an infrared torch and a camera with pictures of buildings around Lahore. Plus, the possibility of unrest growing and spreading in the region and its impact on the price of Oil and the recovering US Economy makes all even more difficult. We have already seen militant actions lead to blowing up Iraq's largest oil refinery.

This is the position Obama is in. His taciturn inactivity places us in more danger by ignoring this for the people which make matters worse, for they will not forget either his inactivity or ineptness when orating support for the likes of King Abdullah of Saudi, a Mubarak of Egypt, Bashar Assad of Syria, or King Hamad bin isa al-Khalife of Bahrain. President Obama needs to make a decision regarding what is next for Libya and the Middle East. He must no make the mistake of the past and be able to see that the protest in North African and the Arab world are closer to the protest observed here in America during the 60s and the civil rights era. For one they are the youth of these nations just like it was the youth in the united sates that hit the streets then.

It will be difficult. On the one hand he will need to defend individual policy parameters that support nation building, democracy and human rights; not just in North Africa and the Middle East but Russia and china also. He must in addition, re-establish US credibility, and form new relationships with the new leadership of Egypt, Tunisia, and other places if such comes to fruition. And if not, engage the opposition leadership while maintain close ties with the military of said countries.

This will mean changing the US Foreign policy assumption of a one sixe fit all approach. Although outside of the region, we may be able to learn a thing or two from the riots in Greece and India, and use this to re-evaluate what we did wrong for example in Iran in 1979. Regardless, this is a difficult situation he faces since it is obvious his noted difficulty is siding with the ideas of freedom, liberty and democracy for the citizenry or maintaining an autocratic association with a dictator for the sake of a quasi-peace for Israel, and good standing of the US in the eyes of the regions other despots.

The President’s talk has been top shelf; demanding change now but it is rhetorical seeing that he and his state Department are torn between advancing democracy in the region and the old school, approach that change “taking time” Obama’s decision will become even more difficult in the future and will range from the role of Islam in politics. He should take into consideration that polity should be based on security and the well-being of the US first and foremost.

Things in the Arab world will continue to surprise and if Obama is to maintain any type of control, he must become a student of history and learn from the mistakes in US foreign policy of the past. he does have one advantage, he was opposite Rush Limbaugh, Glenn beck, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Huckabee who criticized the President for not Support Mubarak.

The Two face Hypocrisy of US Foreign Policy

I have been writing and expounding on US foreign policy since the early 1980s. My first or one of my earliest essays was called “Israel’s fascist Penumbra” which was published in the Black Students Association Journal at Memphis State University in 1985.

It addressed the “do anything” for Israel mentality and our traditionally mistaken monolithic conviction of Arabs and Africans worldwide, that we often dissemble under the shadow of peace and agoraphobia. What is common regarding now and then and even times prior is the “do as I say and not as I do” legacy of colonialist and imperial belief orientations that place all European in origin at the summit of rational behavior and what is deemed to be acceptable.

On the one hand we vilify the Arab and African States for their desire for governments to run as theocracies, yet we do the same here. Promulgating policies based on religious beliefs and biblical guidance. Our own founding as a nation saw the assertion that Africans were less valuable and more akin to live stock than human beings. An edict that presented itself in policies from slavery to Jim Crow and segregation. In Oklahoma, a law was recently passed that bars courts from considering Shariah law when deciding cases was put on hold. And we are well aware of the tense debate facilitated via the discussion of abortion.

We condemn terrorist for their no holds barred attacks on America, yet we support going to Somalia and just killing everyone in sight as if their lives are less important than ours to avenge the deaths of four Christian Missionaries who were not asked to come to their country in the first place. We support invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq and manufacture policy and war to remove leaders we label tyrants and dictators and autocrats yet give similar men billions in aid annually and historically and invite them to the Whitehouse for dinner pretending as if their blood is not on our hands from the tanks and fighter we give them.

We supported Chiang Kai-Shek’s ROC government from the 1930s to 1949 in a civil war that saw the murder of tens of thousands. In Chilie we funded General Augusto Pinochet who murdered and tortured thousands from 1973 to 1990. Then there was Suharto in Indonesia and Papa and baby Doc in Haiti.

But it is to only be expected for unfortunately we too are a nation of terrorist and celebrate such resonantly. In Mississippi, there is an attempt to venerate Nathan Bedford Forrest, a man whose image on horseback I road past almost daily in my home town of Memphis, Tennessee. Yes, 150 years after the start of the Civil War people want to celebrate a murderer who founded a terrorist organization called the Ku Klux Klan. An organization from its inception main goal was to conduct inordinate acts of violence solely on African Americans in the South eventually including the bombing deaths of four girls attending Sunday school in a Church in 1963.

This man was also known for what he did on April 12, 1864 at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, when General Nathan Bedford Forrest captured the fort with his 1,500. In the process, according to eyewitness accounts like General Kilpatrick (USA), Forrest “nailed Negroes to the fences, set fire to the fences, and burned the Negroes to death.” More than 300 African American Union troops were massacred then.

But let me not digress, the point is that US foreign policy is the result of constructs that are two-faced. For if other did to us what we did to them we would be extremely upset and throwing hissy fits. We are so shallow, self-centered and heedless. Yes we are hypocrites and this hypocrisy may be what destroys us, just as it leads to behaviors that spoliated ancient Rome.

First Presidential Anti-Obama Campaign Attack Ad For 2012 Hits New Hampshire

Police arrest 11-year-old over 'inappropriate' stick figure drawing

 

What U wont see on TV #2

1] Whites leaving the Democratic Party in droves

2] Detroit Officials To Shut Half The City's Schools

3] Mom Arrested For Duct-Taping Baby Daughter

4] Blood Tests Show Chemicals In Gulf Citizens Blood From SeaFood

5] If Libyan unrest spreads, gas could reach $5

6] BABY DOLPHINS ARE WASHING UP DEAD ALONG THE GULF

7] Security Industry Association recommends biometric authentication for federal E-Verify program

8] Italian Stock Exchange suspended due to 'technical issues'

9] 5.7 Volcano Island Japan and 5.8 Santiago Argentina.

African- Sub-Saharan mercenary killed in Libya (extremely graphic)

The Internet is for Entertainment - Not Information

A new study has reported some startling findings on cell phone usage in America. Although it examines cell phone usage across the nation, it pointed out that African-Americans and Latinos outpace whites in their use of data applications on handheld devices, continuing a trend we first identified in 2009.

Conducted by the Pew foundation, the Pew internet and American Life Project Noted that minority Americans lead the way when it comes to mobile access with almost two-thirds of African-Americans (64%) being wireless internet users. In addition, African Americans are significantly more likely to own a cell phone than white’s counterparts (87% of blacks own a cell phone, compared with 80% of whites). In total,
Findings also indicate that although the internet is a wealth of information, that when compared to whites, researchers have noticed signs of segregation online and display trends that show blacks and Latinos may be using their increased Web access more for entertainment than empowerment. Forty-one percent of blacks use their phones for e-mail, compared with 30 percent of whites. The figures for using social media like Facebook via phone were 36 percent for Latinos, 33 percent for blacks and 19 percent for whites.

Another study conducted by the Nielsen Company using cell phone bills found found that the average African-American uses 1,331 talk minutes a month. The average white person, on the other hand, only goes through 647. The Caucasians aren't making up this difference through texting either, as they text an average of 566 messages a month, to blacks' 780. Moreover African-Americans are slightly more likely than whites to have a cell phone, but not a land line.

Jamaican Musician David Minott is asked millions of African Americans to go without using their cell phones for 24 hours during his “Our Silence Speaks Volumes: the Black Out” campaign. His desire was to get people of color to turn off their cell phones for 24 hours starting on the first day of Black History Month, Feb. 1.

Yep, thats where wer have come. Wonder what Tim Berners-Lee would think now,he first proposed the World Wide Web more than 20 years ago. And just think, I was in college and school when their was no desktop computer, cell phone or even internet. I bet some folks even think it is impossible to live without such. Just think I sued to read books, listen to records and actually remembered telephone numbers.

I agree the enternet is good, but we also loose a lot. No wonder my students can't formulate sentences with correct subject verb agreement or attend to a page for more than 10 seconds. The convience of the internet has dumbed us down, for we mainly use it to be entertained, when in fact we have serious work left to do.

yet it’s now difficult to even imagine ordinary life without it

What U wont see on TV

Sarah Palin takes breastfeeding dig at Michelle Obama during Long Island appearance

Kendall Anderson, 16, killed mom with claw hammer for taking away his PlayStation: court

Michele Bachmann, Tea Party darling, slams First Lady Michelle Obama over breastfeeding

Student strike at University of Puerto Rico rocks island and sparks political crisis


GOP State Sen. Proposes Elimination of Child Labor Laws

Mississippi governor refuses to denounce proposal to honour former Ku Klux Klan leader

Housing Doom: Nearly 5% of US Mortgages in Foreclosure (up from 4.39%)

US Patent 6506148 – Nervous system manipulation by electromagnetic fields from monitors

John Henrik Clarke/ Cornell West: Debate on Afrikan Nationalism

Who is the real madoff: African Americnas Still Display Scant Signs of Economic Improvement

By definition, to improve is to enhance in value or quality — to make better. Yet more than 40 years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, there is still no noticeable improvement in the quality of life in the African American community.

A new report suggests that a large corpus of the African American community has made very little progress when compared to whites over the past few decades. According to a survey given to African American adults, seven out of 10 adults view today as very tough times for their children and perceive poor black youth as falling further behind. Yet, unlike adults, two out of three African American youth perceive current times as being “very good or OK.”

In addition to survey data, the report also provides economic data on opportunity trends. Four out of ten black children are born into poverty compared to less than one in ten for whites. Less than 40 percent live with two parents versus 75 percent for whites. African American children are statistically more likely to die before their first birthday or become obese in school.

More startling is the finding that 85 percent of African American children in the fourth grade cannot read or do math at their grade level, and almost half eventually drop out of school. A young African American male born over the past decade has a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison in his lifetime.

It is essential that we remember that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was more than a dreamer; he was a catalyst. We cannot think we have it made, since the numbers show us otherwise.

In 2010 the unemployment, underemployment and hidden unemployment rate for black 16 to 29-year-olds was 40 percent and 43 percent for black males. The large number of young black adults not working full-time jobs will severely limit their future employability, earnings and ability to support their families.

It was Dr. King who said, "It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps."

As the Insane Reports: Break Yourself.....Fool

Yesterday, I was informed that some internet churl was “going in on me” on his/her internet radio show for an essay I penned noting the habits (contingencies of reinforcement) of African Americans, in particular individuals under the age of thirty regarding their usage of social media – specifically Twitter. In this person eyes, I was a “dumbass” and an “idiot.” So as a result, I will put down the copy of Fear and trembling I am reading and respond to his vitriol as quick as I can so I can be finished before Watson star’s on jeopardy.

Too bad this animalcule (to use a term coined by Voltaire in his story Micro magas) lacked the home training and erectior ingenii (nobility of mind) to invite me on his show to engage in discussion to advance rumination on the subject. But such was not the case, bringing me to conclude that what I noted in my essay unnerved him for it may have been akin to him reading about himself. Otherwise discussion would have proceeded as was the case historically with many diversified voices of past African American scholars when they reasonably disagreed with one another.

Obviously this person is no scholar as evinced in both his defensive posture and vehement vilification of me personally. The fact of the matter is that twitter is an extension of many of our daily activities. Truth is black folk watch Television more than the read and many of us do not even read a newspaper daily. Likewise we spend equally as much time as we do watching television as we do on twitter. I do not see what is wrong about bringing this up. If these observations are not consistent, otherwise we would not place education and intellectualism below fame, status, entertainment, wealth and/or celebrity. We are already a dumber-down populous or else we would recall that reading in itself is a revolutionary act. We take this for granted currently when in one epoch we were killed, blinded or had out tongues removed for learning to read or teach others this skill.

It was rather bazaar, some of the comments the article received. One woman said that “he forgot Haiti.” Which proves my point that is like saying we have a black valedictorian, yet 65 % of all the other black students in the class failed the 12th grade. Why is so difficult for people to see how many of us use the medium? I firmly believe that we are wasting a valuable opportunity when we tweet about where one is eating, pictures at the club, or of the shoes we just bought. If we do not maximize its utility – that’s a problem. Just like when only 12% of African American fourth grade boys are proficient in reading; or that only 20% of black boys and girls report having a average in school compared to 55% of whites – that’s a problem.

It’s cool to say that African Americans represent 12 percent of the US population yet comprise 52 percent of the federal prisons but not when you say we make up 25 percent of social media users. I understand MLK Jr and he was correct when he said “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” This makes Harriet Tubman’s words even more sagacious. She said “I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”

It only makes sense for many of us live as mental slaves, continue to enslave ourselves with materialism daily and worse, don’t even know that we are slaves. The unfortunately reality is that as a people, we are not as academically oriented in raising our children as white and Asian communities, or else we would read as much to our kids in the 5th grade as other ethnic groups. Unfortunately we do not. We do read the same to our kids, daily while aged four through six, but less than 30 percent daily by the time they are in the 5th grade compared to 70 percent for whites and Asians. Yes it is true, we are more concerned with what Veblen articulates and described as “conspicuous consumption.”

I find this discussion essential and important. In particular as a single parent of two, my son of which received an academic scholarship to Morehouse, a 30 on his ACT, a perfect score on math and all-state honorable mention in Baseball. And my daughter, who can give correct change, add and subtract and read at the age of five.

But then again what do I know for in the purview of Mr. /Ms. insanityreport self-fulfilling prophecy and in their own words, I am an “idiot and a “dumbass.” for presenting a personal scheme. And we all should know as Daniel Bell pointed out, “conceptual schemes are neither true nor false but [rather] useful or not.

African woman set herself on fire at Rome's city hall to Protest racism

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Multimillion-Dollar Slaves Are Still Field Negroes

America’s history is filled with examples of exploitation. From General Amherst giving Native Americans on the Trail of Tears blankets infected with smallpox to the horrendous capture and transportation of Africans to the New World to work for Europeans for free. Now if Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is accurate, then the same historical practices are occurring today, since energy can neither be created nor destroyed but only altered in form.

Some would argue that slavery does not exist in America in light of the passage of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution. However, if we examine the world of professional sports, it could be noted that a large body of evidence suggests otherwise. In America, people are excited and happy when they cheer for their favorite professional sports team, but rarely see the similarity to the former practice of slavery and rich whites owning and utilizing blacks for profit and personal gain.

I know some people would say that the difference is that athletes are paid vast sums of money. This may be true, but slaves were paid with a place to live and food. Not to mention that pro sports is a microcosm of our society, because when athletes can no longer play in the NFL or NBA, they are discarded like waste material.

A slave by definition is “a person who is the property of and wholly subject to another.” This would be applicable to sports because African Americans have turned sports, both college and pro, into a multibillion-dollar industry but collect a paltry amount of the money they help a franchise earn.

So let’s be realistic when we look at professional sports in America and the role African American men and women play. All they do is play, because none own any of these plantations, er, organizations. Not since the Negro Leagues have blacks owned professional sport organizations, and we won’t anytime in the near future.

Obama More Regan-Like than the Tea Party

It may strike some as peculiar, at least it does me, as to how the Republican Party always profess to be the party of Regan while in the same voice recreate history saying he fought against a government that over-taxed. How quickly we forget that after Regan cut taxes in his first term, seeing the ballooning budget short-comings, he raised taxes; in fact eleven times during the remainder of his presidency. This point is either forgotten or overlooked by most.

Now I can take this from a person that doesn’t know any better like Sarah Palin – since she is spoon fed info and obviously couldn’t read an entire Dr. Seuss Book. Just like the claim that Republicans tend to be pro-trade or that they can all wily nilly like pick $100 million or billion dollars to cut from the budget by September of this year, out of the air without any forethought, examination or critical evaluation regarding its impact on jobs lost, gained, created or how it will impact our economic recovery. I mean they just pick it out of the air and I suspect just because it is an even number and 100 sounds good.

I could never see Reagan behaving like many of the Republicans currently in office. Like Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky fighting over sleeping bags. Session’s blocking the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) – which gives preferential treatment to $20 billion worth of imports annually from some developed countries and McConnell threatening to block the Trade Adjustment Assistant Program which provides training and income for Americans whose employers cannot compete with increasing foreign imports. Although such behavior is untoward in a period when we need jobs, these folk still proclaim to be what they are not – Regan Republicans. First, regardless of how Regan may have felt in his later years, he did sign into law that legalized abortion in the state of California in 1967 when he was governor. Not to mention that he assisted in getting 3 million plus undocumented workers legal status and was a firm proponent of amnesty for this segment of the population.

In plain speak, Regan was an optimist. An optimist in the same nature as the picture painted of America and its future by Obama in his recent State of the Union Address. Yes Obama too is an optimist. And in this time of a growing economic divide when more Americans are being left by the side of the road via rising unemployment and under employment; having little if any job security; schools and libraries closings and police and firemen being laid off across the nation – we need an optimist.

Yes Obama is more like Regan than the GOP, in particular and Tea party member of potential Presidential candidate. All they seem to do is play politics instead of dealing with and solving the problems confronting our great nation. It was Newt Gingrich who wrote of Obama as being “a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.” I do not know about you but such discourse is not helpful and untoward in general.

The GOP and their new flunkies the Tea Party are out of touch and self-centered. I guess one can say they are a perfect match for each. It is as Boileau stated, “un sot trouve toujours un plus sot, qui l’admire”… [a fool can always find a greater fool who admires him].

Top 10 Male R & B Vocalist of All Time

I thought of the concept for this article after reading a story written in the New York Times by Anthony Tommasni on his list of top ten composers. Albeit I am certain that most of the readers of this periodical are not too concerned with Bach or Debussy, most are with R & B music. Add to that that the Grammy’s are around the corner, what better way is there to get prepared? So I have dropped the gauntlet, which would you choose and who would select as number one? Here is my list with a small caveat and why. The caveat being that I intentionally left off Michael Jackson and Prince for they are relegated in their own categories.

1] Luther Vandross: My number one. Luther is the E.F. Hutton of R & B – when Luther sings people listen. I cannot name one time when I was with a woman, from high school to now, that I was unable to let Luther do my talking for me. All of his albums exuded love and emotion and the facile truth embodied when one thinks of that special person.

2] Marvin Gaye: My close second is the ultimate in smooth. His voice, music and the way in which he played the piano made him special plus the fact that in each song and word he sings one can hear his struggle with life in his music. Marvin was special, so special that he could make a song about war sound as moving as a love duet.

3] Al Green: This Memphis crooner was special. I have not seen women fall for a man like they did Al ever, maybe with the exception of Marvin Gaye and Maxwell. Al Green was the master of seduction and introduced the world to Southern Soul. He won 8 GRAMMY Awards including every years from 1981 to 1984.

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4] Otis Reddy: One of the two on this list that were taken from the world two early. Let my mother tell it, he was the most influential soul singer of the 60’s. I remember hearing his music all through the house all day long. He had a spontaneous that was completely different from the Detroit sound. But just as Marvin, he too sang of Love and the struggle of black people.

5] Maxwell: Representing the new school, Maxwell is a throw-back and could have held his own with the great vocalist from the 60s to the 70’s. You know a person is special when after a long break from music he can come back at the drop of a dime and drop a hot album without blinking an eye.

6] Teddy Pendergrass: This man has always had pipes and the ability to make women come out of their panties with a single stanza of a song. He had this gift early on when he was singing with Harold Melvin and the Blue notes. The way in which he can control his voice is what makes his ballads must have for any collector. Turn off the Lights.

8] Keith Sweat: From “Nobody” to “Make it last forever”, this man knows how to write music and deliver a song. To this date he remains one of the top selling R & B vocalists ever.


9] Frankie Beverly: Performing with the legend at group Maze, this man is the epitome of melodic. He has been performing for more than over 30 years since 1977. He has almost 30 hit singles and eight gold records. The word that describes him best is consistency.

10] Gerald Levert: They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. This is true when we speak of the deep and timeless vocals sang by Levert. Called the Velvet Teddy Bear, he was the son of Eddie Levert from the O'Jays. The question is why did such a great voice have to leave us at such a young age.

Louis Farrakhan on 60 Minutes with Mike Wallace

From Buckley to Bachmann

Hegel once wrote a description of man as being a “moral form of evil.” I would be willing to suggest that such is an apt description when man is either in the bodily form of Al Qaeda or the current day Republican Party – most particularly Michelle Bachmann. This presupposed leader of the congressional Tea party caucus is reflective of many a GOP members of the current party and very unlike the ones I grew up understanding inclusive of Reagan and most notably William Buckley. Not only do I recall the openly friendly and positive relationship that Regan had with Speaker Tip O’Neil, but that Republicans used to be scholarly and astute, especially Buckley with his éclat background.

I remember as a young child, not being able to wait to watch Buckley’s “Firing Line” when we got home from church. And although I was not concerned with party affiliation during that period of my life – but with civil rights and learning about the great people that lived, spoke and talked during the late 60s and early 70s, I did love his reasoning and pragmatism. So much so that I started to read the National Review – a magazine he founded with an associate. He was the first to introduce Yale (his alma mater) into my understanding He was also a plenteous writer – with more than 50 books to his credit, inordinate essays and more than seven tons of his collected papers donated to Yale University.

Most importantly, he was graceful and kind and respectful of divergent views and political positions. My favorite show was the one he had Huey P. Newton on. But who would expect Bachmann to be brainy enough to start high school at age 13 as did Buckley. For Buckley placed an intellectual face on conservatism a task that seems to be lost but attempted by the likes of Beck and Limbaugh these days.

Especial the likes of Bachman or Palin – who I would dare to say, would NEVER have appeared on Buckley’s show if he were alive today. Let us not forget that it was Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-MN, who said that "the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States....Men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country." I do not think Buckley or men of his ilk would not have know that John Quincy Adams never signed the document she spoke off, or that Thomas Jefferson -- who wrote that all men are created equal -- owned slaves. Or that a slave was equivalent to 3/5ths of a freed white man. Not only is her history bad (the founding fathers had abolished slavery) but her math is somewhat suspect also. It was she, while the cameras and microphones were on, stated that Obama’s south Asian trip will cost taxpayers “$200 million a day” and represents “the kind of over-the-top spending” that’s rampant in Washington.


The Republican coterie inclusive of the new Tea Party members did keep one promise and voted to repeal the Obama Health care reforms of last year albeit a vacuous symbolic gesture, while minutes afterwards praising sections of the law they voted to repeal. Stranger even is that Republicans laude the fact that they added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare in 2003 but never mentions it was not in the budget nor paid for just as the major spending items of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

This type of talking out the side of one’s neck is a constant. For example, folk like Bachmann love to name-call and say they will not raise the national debt limit but American cannot default on its debt – yet without an increase the government would be forced to default. There is also the new house budget rules the GOP put in place December 22. Democrats had pay as you go in place, meaning tax cuts or increases in entitlement spending must be off-set by tax increases and cuts in entitlements. This is no longer a requirement.

These modern day republicans are more interested in attracting camera time and attention than problem solving. Aside for special incantations pushed by Dinesh D'Souza or sophist jactitations frequently uttered from the lips of Bachmann, no wonder politics is imperforate to reason. I mean one should not find it strange that it were Republicans who stated the passage of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” by a vote of 57 to 40 in the Senate. As well as the GOP in the Senate who initially blocked legislation that would provide medical care for (/11 rescue workers and others who became ill during and after the attacks on the World Trade Centers.

Folks like Bob Barr (a fellow libertarian), Dr. Alan Keyes, Dr. Condoleezza Rice and Eric Erickson of Red Sate.Com today are a dying breed. And for the record, I am neither GOP nor Democrat, but I really miss the days when the public could openly appreciate the intellectual views of both with appreciation and respect. The days when working for the good of America came before the good of the party. Dang folk, what happened to us (USA)?

KFC Drops Commercial with Look-Alike Obama in Hong Kong

William Buckley interviews Huey Newton on Firing Line

Obama Backsteps Made in USA Foreign Policy for Egypt

As the Egyptian people take to the streets of its cities against decades of repression, increasing poverty and unbearable food prices, the Obama administration is in an admitted quandary of either supporting the requested demand for democratic reform of the people or the stable support of a corrupt dictator. The longer he waits to decide in pursuit of his request for an “orderly transition” to democratic reform as stated by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the more his hopes of modeling changes as those that occurred in Turkey, the more likely what happened in Iran in 1979 will come to fruition. The conundrum is that he as president in the past has been in bed with Mubarak and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia too long to adapt or alter American political policy in the region. This in fact is worse than the BP oil spill or the mid-term election losses the democrats suffered this past November.

The citizenry of Egypt know more of the US support of Mubarak’s three decades than the average American and of the $1.5 billion annually gives to his totalitarian regime. This is an overshadowing sticking point since cutting off this aid would likely make the Israeli government uneasy. But being on the wrong side of the history could proffer even more hazardous for President Obama: for again it may result in leadership similar to that in Iran after the overthrow of the shah via popular revolt – but I seriously doubt it.

Yet it could. We have already lost face validity for even asking a man who has ruled for nearly 30 years to be in charge of the democratic conversion of an autocratic state. I would be more fearful of an anti American state more so than an Islamic fundamentalist state that hates the West. I remember seeing the murder of Anwar Sadat on television and remember it was not by Islamic fundamentalist but rather folk who hated the fact that he dealt with the west, particularly the United States and Israel. I also recall that our most hated enemy, Al Zawahiri was forced to leave his home of Egypt because of Mubarak’s preventing such men from being a part of the political process. Thus it is not unlikely that these young secular democracy seeking, twitter and facebook users may be pushed by Obama inaction to hate the US as much or as equal as Mubarak.

Obama seems to need to brush up on his history or risk another Khomeini. The truth is we back step when folk desire liberty and democracy after we talk it up as did the President in his address at the American University in Cairo in 2009. We go after the Saddam Hussein’s of the world while kicking it with the Mubarak’s and King Abdullah’s of the world. This is what creates Islamic fundamental extremist that desire to fly planes into our architecture. Seeing we have not learned anything after support Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Chiang Kaishek in Tiawan or Mobutu Seko in Zaire. Obama needs to face the fact that we support such openly, especially in the case of Mubarak and the sad thing is that we do so for Israel (who just sent three Israeli planes landed at Cairo's Mina International Airport on Saturday carrying hazardous equipment for use in dispersing and suppressing large crowds)not America. I mean we seem to speak more of the Suez canal and what Egypt thinks and feel that the people of Egypt.

Obama has a tough task ahead. He holds the baggage of American foreign policy. This will make it complicated for him to urge a transition from a US supported government that has abrogated any and all other organized political alternatives and elides political freedom. Maybe we should rethink Afghanistan for what we see in Tunisia and Egypt tells us that it does not require a bloody and bellicose illegal invasion and occupation to overthrow a dictator. So get your practice on Mr President, Jordan is likely to be next - so don't blow it.