As you have no doubt heard by now, James Brown passed away on Christmas Day. There’s not a lot that I want to say on his life but, “thank you” for all the good music over the years. Here are a couple of my favorite James Brown hits.

I Feel Good

Say It Loud

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Bill O’Reilly is one of those folks that I considered to lack anything that resembles common sense or coherent thought. If something does not fit his extremely narrow view of the world, he immediately dismisses it. This is why I am not surprised to read the following about him:

Responding to a caller’s assertion that no other “religious symbol other than the Nativity should be put up during Christmas,” Bill O’Reilly stated on the December 19 edition of Westwood One’s The Radio Factor that “if you’re generous, you [should] put up all the symbols.” Continuing, O’Reilly asserted that “there’s really only one [other] symbol, and that’s the menorah. There’s no Kwanzaa symbol.” O’Reilly, presumably referring to the rapper 50 Cent, then asked if “there [was] a 50 Cent that we have to put up” to honor Kwanzaa. He was later corrected and told that there is “a Kwanzaa symbol,” which he characterized as “a candelabra like Liberace had.” Kwanzaa is an African-American and Pan-African holiday celebrated from December 26-January 1.

I have included the audio from that exchange below.

 

 O'Reilly disrespecting Kwanzaa [0:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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To tell you honestly, I don’t know how to feel about this one but, my immediate impression is that this doesn’t sit well with me at all. Ronnell Wilson was on trial for the killings of two undercover police officers. At his trial, prosecutors used rap lyrics Wilson had written to convince the jury of his violent tendencies and, apparently, they helped to convict him. Now, Wilson is facing the possibility of the death penalty.

Since at least the lat 90’s, I have heard of instances where prosecutors have used rap lyrics to help put people away. My issue with this is that I have heard a lot of not-so-tough people say some really hardcore stuff. Some, like actors, play a role that they are nothing like in real life.

I sincerely hope that this does not catch on any more than it has. I am afraid that we are getting to a point where we’ll have people being locked away based on a persona rather than having committed an actual crime.

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You know, it’s funny, some white folks will look for any convenient excuse to mask their racism and xenophobia. A few weeks back, I posted how CNN host Glenn Beck attempted to question the patriotism of Keith Ellison, the first Muslim congressman (a black man from Detroit who converted to Islam).

More recently, I have been reading conservative hit pieces on Barack Obama. In a nutshell, they are attacking him for his name and the fact that his father was a Muslim. Obama identifies himself as a Christian but, that is not stopping the right-wingnuts from attacking him.

The latest piece of trash comes from Debbie Schlussel, a blogger of obvious agenda, who says that, since Obama’s dad was a Muslim, Obama must be too.

However, look at what’s really going on here. Over the last several years, the words “terrorist” and “Muslim” have been used interchangeably. What is being said here is that, if Obama were to become President, or even Vice-President, we would somehow be electing a terrorist or terrorist-sympathizer into the White House.

But, let’s strip away one more layer here. It would be politically-devastating in this day and age to say, “You don’t want to be the first people to elect a Black President, do you?” You see, if Obama identifies himself as Christian then, the only surface issue to take up with him is that he’s black. But, the righties don’t want to say that. So, we look at family history and smear him because his father had a different religion. His father, as far as anyone knows, had no ties with extremism, as most of the world’s 1 billion Muslims do not.

Now, if we are going to evaluate people on the basis of their parents’ affiliations (again, there was no negative history associated with the elder Obama) then, explain to me how these same folks justify their support of George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush. Why do I say that? You see, the grandfather of our current President, former U.S Senator Prescott Bush, had his company’s assets seized in 1942 for knowingly doing business with the Nazis. Grandfather Bush as a banking director and board member of a front company, helped keep the Nazi war machine moving.

Read More… »

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Did George Bush wake up yesterday, see his shadow and call for several more years in Iraq?

What I can only call a mixture of 10% hubris, 20% stubbornness, 70% stupidity and 0% reality, Bush’s strategy is to put even more troops in Iraq and prepare for a long struggle.

Okay, rant time.

One - where in the hell is he going to get the troops? The Army, for one, just last month hit its monthly recruiting goal in what I believe was the the first time it had done so all year. This was only after throwing a whole lot of money at people to get them to join. So, how, pray tell, does the military, as a whole, get Bush the 70,000 new troops I hear he’s asking for?

Two - Why?!! I mean, really, besides military contractors and oil companies, who’s going to benefit from an even more protracted conflict in Iraq?

Three - Where’s the plan? Bush has yet to define what the goals really are? Sure, we hear nebulous terms like a “Democracy in the Middle East” — which is funny if you look at some of the things the Iraqi constitution calls for — but, where are the clearly-defined goals and milestones that must be met in order for us to leave. Don’t give me the “conditions on the ground” garbage, either. I think it’s long past time to quit playing it by ear. Of course, I also think it’s long past time to go so, take it as you will.

At the end of the day, Bush is more concerned about his “legacy” than the lives or safety of the American people. Now, more than ever, I believe impeachment should be on the table and that a majority of America would support it. It’s obvious that the person in charge is both incompetent and dangerous so, in January, I think that Congress should start doing its Constitutionally-mandated oversight and get to the business of being a check on presidential power run amok.

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I wonder if the people of Maryland would ask that Bush tell the full picture.

What Bush didn’t tell about black home ownership, or even home ownership in general, was that too many of these home were purchased with subprime loans. In other words, with loans having high interest rates and unreasonable terms.

As a result, the Center for Responsible Lending is predicting that a full 20% of subprime loans taken out in Maryland this year will end in foreclosure.

This will hit place like Baltimore and DC the hardest — cities with heavily-black populations.

Sadly enough, there is the side of the story of home ownership that the President is not telling. People can afford to get into a home but, can’t afford to keep it.

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In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, in addition to the death count associated with the flooding, there were other killings that went on. Some were due to personal/neighborhood beefs that boiled over. Others were at the hands of military contractors and law enforcement. It seems that Ronald Madison may have been a victim of the latter.

Madison, a 40-year-old, metally-retarded man, was on New Orleans’ Danziger Bridge on September 4, 2005 . It seems that there was some encounter with police and Madison was shot and killed. According to police, they say that he was reaching in his waistband and turned on them when he was shot.However, an eyewitness has come forward with a different account. Kasmir Gaston had taken refuge in a nearby motel. At the time the incident was happening, he was on the balcony outside his room observing what was going on. According to Gaston, Madison was running away from police with his hands up in the air when he was shot in the back.

Currently, the there is a police investigation and a grand jury probe into what happened.

Personally, I hold out no hope for justice if the police are investigating themselves.

I see us, once again, sitting on top of a powder keg in terms of police/black community relations. When you add this to the recent incidents in New York and Atlanta, we are seeing a that there are folks dying highly suspicious and totally unwarranted deaths. I am afraid that, too soon, this will once again boil over.

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I often find myself wondering why people people so easily in this concept that white people are, somehow, being disenfranchised by affirmative action. I remember when the Supreme Court was weighing in on affirmative action a few years back in the case of the University of Michigan. At the time, minority students, in total, comprised some 14-15% of all undergraduate enrollment and a relative handful of all law school admissions.

So, the argument I saw was that people were saying that they were being discriminated against because they only represented 85% of the enrollments as opposed to 90+%.

Black people tend to attend colleges in much smaller numbers than just about any other group of people out there and, still, the numbers appear to be too high for some. So, when I hear of white folks complaining about affirmative action being unfair, I shake my head in disgust.

I ran across an article from CivilRights.org that summed up some of my sentiments quite nicely and wanted to share it.

Consider a few things that have happened in the past month-and-a-half, in no particular order: First, comedian Michael Richards goes on a racist tirade at an L.A. comedy club, screaming the n-word at two black audience members, over and again for several minutes. Then, white students at four entirely different colleges dress up in blackface or throw “ghetto” parties, at which they mock low-income African Americans; next, a group of Muslim clerics are thrown off a plane because passengers get nervous after seeing them engaged in evening prayers prior to boarding their flight; and finally, New York police fire fifty shots at a group of unarmed black men, for no apparent reason, killing one who was due to be married the next day.

Oh, and then there is this: in spite of the above-mentioned events, the President of the College Republicans at Boston University, announces that race-based scholarships for people of color are the “worst form of bigotry confronting America today,” demonstrating the desperate need for BU to require a course in “Getting Some Perspective, 101,” for all incoming first-year students.

In response to this most horrible of racist practices, the campus GOP has announced its plans to offer a “Caucasian Achievement and Recognition Scholarship” for deserving white students. According to the head of the group, the scholarship is not being offered to help whites, per se, but rather, to point out the unfairness and immorality of “racial preferences” in American society. Merit, rather than race, should determine scholarships, they insist.

Yet upon close examination–indeed, even a cursory one for that matter–it becomes apparent that the arguments made against race-based scholarships, whether at BU or elsewhere, fail to demonstrate even the most rudimentary flirtation with intellectual honesty.

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..You.

In case you didn’t see this, Time Magazine named its Person of the Year and it was “You.”

The “You” there are referring to are the people who took the internet and made it place for the expressing of creativity and ideas and the people who didn’t rely on traditional media to get information to the masses but, took control for themselves to share with the world.

America loves its solitary geniuses—its Einsteins, its Edisons, its Jobses—but those lonely dreamers may have to learn to play with others. Car companies are running open design contests. Reuters is carrying blog postings alongside its regular news feed. Microsoft is working overtime to fend off user-created Linux. We’re looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it’s just getting started, as millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy.

Who are these people? Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I’m not going to watch Lost tonight. I’m going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I’m going to mash up 50 Cent’s vocals with Queen’s instrumentals? I’m going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?

The answer is, you do. And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you.

So, congratulations to “You”, Time’s Person of the Year.

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I love reading stuff like this. The question pops up right around election time or during the Presidential campaign season — why can’t the Republicans get the black vote?

Sometimes, I just want to say “Duh!” when I read that the Republicans can’t figure it out.

Well, to help them, they can read here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

The bottom line is all of this is that, instead of putting black faces up to us to get us to buy in, start dealing with the actual concerns of black people — for example, employment, better access to health care, better public education, better access to capital, etc.

When you do things like the following, it’s no wonder you don’t get our votes:

Regardless of how many supportive columns Black conservatives Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Star Parker, John McWhorter, LaShawn Barber and Larry Elder write; how much money talk show host and syndicated columnist Armstrong Williams gathered up from the Bush administration for touting its policies; multiple appearances by Black conservative “spokespersons” on conservative radio and cable television’s talk shows; large amounts of right wing foundation money poured into creating and sustaining Black conservative organizations; invitations extended to conservative Black clergy to White House gatherings; and Mehlman-authored apologies for the party’s racist policies — including Nixon’s Southern Strategy and the infamous Willie Horton advertisement– the Republican Party continues to be unable to win significant numbers of Black votes.

When Republicans get substance to go with the flash, we can talk. Until then, they can, as I have said before, go kick rocks. Until you want to deal with the issues that affect the majority of black folks don’t expect to garner a majority of black votes.

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