black…MYstory

I’ll tell you straight-up, — and you can call me what you want — every black man is not my brother. If you hurt women and/or children, I don’t claim you.

Kelvin “Bird” Tillie, in no uncertain terms, is a coward, bully and no brother of mine.

Alexis Goggins is a 7-year-old first grader in Detroit and, in my heart and mind, a hero. Her mother, Selietha Parker, had broken up with Tillie six months ago. However, I wish she would have had better taste in men. This four-time felon couldn’t handle rejection so, on a night when Parker had to call a girlfriend to pick her and her child up when their heat went out, Tillie lay in wait for her outside of her house. At gunpoint, he kidnaps the two women and the child.

They stop at a gas station where Tillie forces the driver to get gas. The driver, Aisha Ford, calls 911 (who first hangs up on her then, during her second calls, tells her they have no units to send). Ford stalls for time, waiting for police to arrive and then tells Tillie that the $5 he gave her for gas would not be enough and goes back into the station to purchase more gas. The attendant sees that she is distraught and Ford informs him of what is happening. The attendant calls 911 and, as he is calling, shots are fired inside the vehicle.

The mother is shot in the head and arm and, before he could shoot again, Alexis puts her body between the mother and the shooter, begging him not to shoot her mother. Without hesitation, Tillie shoots the 7-year-old girl six times. Police finally arrived and arrested Tillie at the scene. He is facing charges of “kidnapping, assault with intent to murder, child abuse, felony firearms and habitual criminal charges.”

Alexis was taken to Detroit’s Children’s Hospital with wounds to her eye, left temple, chin, cheek, chest and right arm. She was in critical condition but expected to survive.

Needless to say, I have strong feelings about what should happen to Tillie but, as a responsible adult, I’ll save those for private converation.

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My wife was sharing with me a story about somebody we know and was telling me how this person is asking that all the gifts that people give her child not be made in China. Given the volume of items made in China, that is an awesome challenge. My wife conveyed to me that she thought the request was kind of funny but, personally, I agree with this mother.

As I have posted here before, just because our government won’t acknowledge it, toy safety is a big concern. In recent news, we have seen story after story about toys manufactured in China containing lead paint. I even heard about a kids C.S.I. game that contained asbestos. As a parent, this bothers me greatly. A kid could inhale something or accidentally consume paint chips and, over time, develop some serious problems.

Recently, tests on more than 1,200 childrens’ products yielded some horrifying results. Researchers from 9 states, along with the national Center for Health, Environment and Justice encountered the following:

Tests on more than 1,200 children’s products, most of them still on store shelves, found that 35 percent contain lead — many with levels far above the federal recall standard used for lead paint.

A Hannah Montana card game case, a Go Diego Go! backpack and Circo brand shoes were among the items with excessive lead levels in the tests performed by a coalition of environmental health groups across the country.

Only 20 percent of the toys and other products had no trace of lead or harmful chemicals…

…Easthope said 17 percent of the children’s products tested had levels of lead above the 600 parts per million federal standard that would trigger a recall of lead paint. Jewelry products were the most likely to contain the high levels of lead, the center said, with 33.5 percent containing levels above 600 ppm. Among the toys that tested above that limit was a Hannah Montana Pop Star Card Game, whose case tested at 3,056 ppm.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a level of 40 ppm of lead as the maximum that should be allowed in children’s products. Lead poisoning can cause irreversible learning disabilities and behavioral problems and, at very high levels, seizures, coma, and even death.

This is something to think about as we purchase toys for our little ones this year.

UPDATE: You can find more information at www.healthytoys.org. Right now, the site seems to be experiencing high traffic so, you may not get in right away.

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If someone were to hang a noose in my workplace, I would consider it a symbol of hatred, not unlike have a swastika painted on a home or a cross burned in one’s front yard. For that reason, I find them neither humorous or something to take lightly.

More importantly, it is nothing to lie about.

That why I agree with the decision to fire a black firefighter in Baltimore, MD. There have long been issues of race in the Baltimore fire department…legitimate issues. So, why Donald Maynard, a six-year veteran of the department, took it upon himself to fabricate a story about being the recipient of a threatening note and a noose is beyond me.

As of now, Maynard is suspended with a recommendation that he be fired. To that I say, good riddance.

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Question: What do these two statements have in common?

On Iraq:
“Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” (George W. Bush, Oct 7, 2002)

On Iran:
“I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” (George W. Bush, Oct 17, 2007)

Answer: After yesterday, we know that these are, at best, trumped-up charges and, at worst, flat-out lies meant to get us into military conflict with countries that pose(d) no immediate threat to us.

As you are likely aware, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) came out yesterday and had some very telling things to say that stand in stark contrast to Bush Administration’s allegations on Iran.

The NIE is the compilation of the combined views of the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies regarding the security issues affecting the U.S. and, like I stated, its findings on Iran were very telling.

According to the NIE, Iran actually halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and, furthermore, states that due to significant technical issues, Iran probably is another 3-8 years away from having enough enriched uranium for a bomb.

However, the most interesting part of the report coming out is its back story. It is believed that the administration, particularly the office of Vice-president Dick Cheney, held up the release of this report for over a year, try to twist arms of intelligence analysts to get them to change the report to match the administration’s rhetoric.

So, in other words, as in Iraq, they went around the world citing Iran as an immediate threat when they clearly knew otherwise.

Of course, the chickenhawk spin-doctors are at work and trying to wipe egg off their faces on this and Republican candidates, no doubt, are going to have to get new material for their stump speeches, as this country has no desire to repeat the Iraq debacle.

We’ll have to see how this all shakes out but, one this is clear. We are certainly being lied to by this administration on Iran.

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Like I’ve said, I normally stay out of the political horseraces because there’s very little substance there but, I did have to chuckle at something I read.

For a long time, now, Hillary Clinton has been the presumed front-runner and seemed to believe her own press, thinking she would breeze through to the nomination.

Last month, she even shot back at her opponents Barack Obama and John Edwards for what she said were personal attacks against her but, swore to stay above the fray. Why? Because she was the clear front-runner, of course. You see, when you’re winning, you don’t switch up the style.

However, in the age of the internet, your words are only as far away as the nearest transcript or audio/video download. So, I hearken back to her words as I see that the Clinton campaign is now engaging against personal attacks against Obama. Showing she can sling mud with the best of them, Clinton is now raising questions about Obama’s character and even his honesty (which is a big gambit, considering to whom she’s married). For example:

Clinton has hammered Obama recently over his health-care proposal, arguing that he is misleading voters because it omits millions of people and would not lower costs. But Sunday, in a dramatic shift, she made it clear that her goal is to challenge Obama not just on policy but also on one of his strongest selling points: his reputation for honesty.

“There’s a big difference between our courage and our convictions, what we believe and what we’re willing to fight for,” Clinton told reporters here. She said voters in Iowa will have a choice “between someone who talks the talk, and somebody who’s walked the walk.”

Asked directly whether she intended to raise questions about Obama’s character, she replied: “It’s beginning to look a lot like that.”

So, why the change? It stems from polling that shows Obama wiping away her over 20-point lead in the polls in Iowa and even pulling ahead slightly.

To these attacks, Obama had his own words in response:

“I think that folks from some of the other campaigns are reading the polls and starting to get stressed and issuing a whole range of outlandish accusations.”

So, with the Iowa caucuses about a month away, we can expect even more dirt to fly.

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A few weeks back, the President vetoed the Democrats’ domestic spending package. He accused them of acting like kids with a credit card.

I found this to be quite ironic, considering how he is paying for his war in Iraq. You see, he makes you believe that, because he cut taxes for the rich and is not raising income taxes on the middle-class, the U.S. must have enough cash on-hand to pay for war. But, this is not true. In actuality, we are borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars. So, if you don’t see Bush say anything about lead paint or asbestos in kids’ toys from China, you’ll just have to understand. You see, it’s hard to criticize someone when you owe them over $900 billion.

Please understand, while the President talks about Democrats “wanting to raise your taxes”, let’s be real. If you take out a loan, you have to pay it back or face the consequences. The bill will come due and we are going to have to pay up. The only issue is that either you pay now or pay later — with even more interest accrued.

I say all that to say this — Bush and Congress are burying us in debt. Right now, the national debt is rising at a rate of $1 million per minute. Think about the following:

It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States.

Even if you’ve escaped the recent housing and credit crunches and are coping with rising fuel prices, you may still be headed for economic misery, along with the rest of the country. That’s because the government is fast straining resources needed to meet interest payments on the national debt, which stands at a mind-numbing $9.13 trillion.

And like homeowners who took out adjustable-rate mortgages, the government faces the prospect of seeing this debt — now at relatively low interest rates — rolling over to higher rates, multiplying the financial pain.

So long as somebody is willing to keep loaning the U.S. government money, the debt is largely out of sight, out of mind.

But the interest payments keep compounding, and could in time squeeze out most other government spending — leading to sharply higher taxes or a cut in basic services like Social Security and other government benefit programs. Or all of the above.

Like I said pay now or pay (more) later. Don’t you think it’s long past time for us to ask the serious questions about our economy?

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