Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Let’s All Celebrate Mr. Obama’s Historic Inauguration

All Americans can celebrate and take pride in the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama and Joseph R.Biden on January 20, 2009, but Mr. Obama’s honeymoon with the American public ends January 20th and the real difficult complex work of making the marriage a success begins on January 21, 2009. This means all Americans must roll up their sleeves and stay politically active to insure that this ever evolving experiment in participatory Democratic governance becomes a reality for each citizen in the United States of America. My good friends, the same problems that existed on November 3, 2008 were also prevalent on November 5, 2008 and some have been exacerbated such as the pernicious financial crisis and the on-going conflict between the State of Israel and various Palestinian factions (Hamas) plus a multitude of domestic, international and global problems. We are involved in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. North Korea has stepped up its efforts to build plutonium nuclear bombs. And our southern border still has overt security problems. It has been reported that 45 million Americans are without health care and 37 million Americans remain in a sweltering sea of poverty with no end in sight, while pervasive bigotry, prejuduce are alive and well and the fundamental structures in the systems of racism are continually flourishing. Indeed Barack Obama's election to the Oval Office signals tremendous progress has been made, but more concerted efforts by all Americans are needed to eradicate all the vestiges of racism, sexism, classism and the gross socio-economic inequality among various classes. Therefore, this experiment in Democratic governing only works best with an active educated citizenry who are engaged in all aspects of the functioning of our government. For the last eight years, we the people (Congress) permitted the reckless, cantankerous Bush Administration to hijack our government because we were asleep at the wheel and preoccupied with maintaining our decadent, Epicurean lifestlye coupled with apathy. This means citizens need to become engaged by writing letters expressing their opinions on the issues, sending e-mails on their positions, requesting meetings with elected and appointed officials on their concerns, evaluating, monitoring and issuing quarterly report cards on the effectiveness and performance of all of our elected officials at all levels of government. We must hold all elected and appointed politicians, corporate CEO’s accountable and demand excellence in all the institutions of this society. No politician or corporate CEO should be given carte blanche or a free pass to run roughshod or afoul over the people’s interest. Furthermore, President Obama is encouraging people to hold him accountable based upon his/administration’s performance.
It is very unfortunate that the vast majority of my generation was standing on the sidelines, acting as silent bystanders when important history was being made by not participating in one of the greatest periods of our young Republic in such movements as the modern day Civil Rights Movement, the Black Liberation Movement, the Anti-War Movement, the Farm Protest Movement and the Women's Movement. All of the previously named movements still need to be reenergized and invigorated with new blood, immediate attention and with persistent action plans in order to make our union more perfect as we move forward in the first half of the 21st century. Young adults between the ages of 18 and 44 and also older adults can ill afford not to be involved in actively participating in the working of our treasured democracy. Our young people’s vote was pivotal in propelling Mr. Obama into the White House, and now they are charged with the responsibility of remaining actively involved on some level in making America that beacon on the hill that is often talked about by many great Americans. I urge all young people and young adults to accept their charge and responsibility to make their own history which should not be continually labeled and packaged by the media and educators as Black History, White History, Asian History, Native American History, Hispanic History, Female History, Ethnic History but solely American History.
Parents should at all costs provide their offspring with all the tools and resources that are necessary for the success of their child/student to achieve in all learning environments from "zero to 3" through graduation from a technical or other institution of higher learning. Parents have to demand excellence from their children, teachers, administrators, counselors, local school boards, insitutions of higher learning, state and federal departments of education and hold them accountable. We as a society, which includes the church, have to do a better job of making sure we are producing individuals with good, sound, wholesome parenting skills.
Each citizen of this great country, be it a corporate CEO, judge, doctor, lawyer, school teacher, college professor, student, minister of the gospel, rabbi, engineer, athlete, service employee, person working in the finance industry, realtor, policeman, farm worker, business owner/shopkeeper, construction worker, computer programmer/analyst, media personnel, journalist, skilled tradesman, factory worker, etc. should be involved in giving back to their communities in a positive way. No one from any occupation can be exempt from being involved in their respective communities. I would like to see more of the public involved in service projects, volunteering, mentoring, tutoring, adopting foster children and in those activities and programs in which they have a keen interest and awareness. The magnitude and proportionality of our problems are far greater in 2009 than those encountered in 1969 (40 years).
To my fellow Americans who say they cannot become involved in any political or progressive social action projects because of their employers' alleged prohibition on political activities, you are just using your employer as an excuse for your own apathy, complacency, irresponsible and cowardly behavior. You folks who choose not to be involved in any political or social justice issues, are all about maintenance of the status quo and self and therefore you will use any devious reason as a cover to compensate for your lack and level of consciousness. Those of you who are sitting back waiting on others to seize the time, licking your chops waiting for the opportunity to capitalize on the moment based upon the fruit of others’ hard and enduring labor, should be called to task. Some individuals may appear to have a valid exemption for not participating in political or social justice activities due to an employer’s political prohibition or ban based upon the nature of their work such as in national defense or defense related work. Some of these individuals working in defense related industries may have a CIA Badge and Poly, Krypto clearance, Top Secret and Secret clearance and would in fact be banned from most political activities. But most of the other employer non-defense related prohibitions on employee political involvement can be legally challenged in a court of proper jurisdiction. Where in the U.S. constitution does it say employees working in certain fields may be banned for political activities? This appears to be a blatant violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Rosa Parks stood up and took a chance and risked her life so that all Americans could be the beneficiaries of her courageous action, which culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court outlawing segregated seating on buses in Montgomery, Alabama and throughout the United States of America. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. paid the ultimate price for freedom (death) so that all may be the recipients of full first class citizenship. Two Black students from South Carolina State College, Samuel Hammond and Delano Middleton, and one high school student, Henry Smith, from Orangeburg, South Carolina, were brutally murdered on February 8, 1968 and 27 others were injured when they were exercising their rights as citizens in attempting to integrate a bowling alley which refused them service. Their slayings are known as the Orangeburg Massacre. Marking the 41st anniversary of the slayings, the public is invited to attend a special commemoration service on the campus of South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, South Carolina on February 8, 2009 to pay tribute to these brave and fearless students. And what about the courageous actions of Allison Krause, Jeffrey Glen Miller, Sandra Lee Scheuer and William Knox Schroeder, the four students from Kent State University in Kent, Ohio who on May 4, 1970, were slaughtered in cold blood by the Ohio National Guardsmen? Additionally, nine students wer injured in this brutal assault by the Ohio National Guardsmen. Then there was Viola Liuzzo, the White mother from Detroit, who was slain on a back road in the Heart of Dixie in Lowndes County, Alabama on March 25, 1965 for assisting Blacks in exercising their constitutional right to vote.
There are millions of others who gave up their lives in the struggle for freedom to make our country a true egalitarian Democracy. If some of my fellow Americans are not desirous of getting involved on some level in the operative functions of our government, I say “shame on you”. With the American people working in concert with the Obama/Biden team, we can begin to repair, heal, solve problems, prevent problems from occurring and strengthen this hemorrhaging republic in order to be a leading example in the entire world.
El-Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X) said: "If you don't stand up for something, you'll fall for anything". Are you ready to stand up and take charge of your own destiny and forge a new covenant with all the people in the United States to live in peace, harmony and prosperity?

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Take Pride in Who You Are and Never Stop Reaching for All You Can Be

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, “There lived a great people-----a (B)lack people-----who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.” This is our challenge and our overwhelming responsibility.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Bogus National Title Game Between Florida & Oklahoma

Champions are made on the fields, arenas, pools, tracks, courts, lakes, rivers, not by the BCS, coaches, pollsters or the media. Presently, the whole collegiate season is wrongfully a form of a play-off and that’s how the schools and the BCS get around not having a bona-fide play-off system. Until the colleges and universities have a real authentic play-off system of the eight highest ranked teams after the completion of the regular season games, the anointing of any team under the present discriminatory system is flawed.
Four of the biggest stumbling blocks to having an eight team play-off are the college presidents, athletic directors, the PAC 10 and the
Big 10. The PAC 10, Big 10 and the Big East refuse to have a championship game, so why are they or any other non-BCS conference that doesn’t have a championship game included in the BCS rankings? So what we have in the instant case are two or three relevant bowls and all the rest of the bowls seem to be filled with
7-5 and 6-6 teams. The reason NCAA basketball is so popular is that you have a real champion. The SEC from top to bottom is the strongest conference in the land and like the Big 12 and ACC have legitimate championship games while the PAC 10, Big 10 and the weaker Big East have no championship game but they are rewarded for not playing a championship game in the final BCS rankings before bowl invitations are extended.
The above mentioned conferences, sponsors, Chambers of Commerce, college presidents throughout the country will never let a play-off happen in college football because the bowls are their gravy train and their perpetual cash cow. If some corporate sponsor would put up an astronomical amount of cash, those ultra conservative college presidents would agree to a true play-off system where a true champion would be determined.

Did You Know?

The first free African Americans enlisted in the Revolutionary War (War of Independence) on January 16, 1776. One of these brave free African American soldiers, named Oliver Cromwell, rowed stroke oar in the boat that took George Washington across the Delaware on Christmas night, 1776. Cromwell was one of the 2,400 handpicked men who routed the tough Hessian and Brits at the Battle of Trenton. The 5000 strong, free African Americans fought courageously, gallantly and bravely during the American War of Independence along with the other troops of the Continental Army which laid the groundwork for the election of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States.
Knowledge is power and everyone should try or attempt to learn at least one new fact each and every day of their lives. Thereby, your mind will become a reservoir of knowledge. Learning is a continuous lifelong process.

Close GITMO Why?

If President-elect Obama closes GITMO, where will the detainees go? Will some detainees be released/detained further or will they be put on trial? What would happen if one of those GITMO detainees who is released, attacks a U.S. interest around the globe? What would be the political fallout for Barack Obama who would have the blood of innocent Americans or other foreign nationals on his hands?
Mr. Obama needs to take more time to think more clearly on the subject and to consult with chief U.S. military personnel and members of his national security team on the subject on closing GITMO because the consequences and repercussions could be fatal to the U.S. national interests.
In my opinion, GITMO must stay open until we come up with a viable alternative that can absorb all the detainees with the highest standards of detention and security which meet the United States’ global obligation in its efforts to combat and curtail terrorism.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Indeed Politics Make Strange Bedfellows (Hillary Clinton)?

Mr. Obama, while campaigning during the Democratic primary, claimed that Mrs. Clinton had no substantive foreign policy experience other than visiting Bosnia and other foreign countries to perform ceremonial duties as the First Lady. So, how now, President-elect Barack Obama is Hillary Clinton so eminently qualified to run our State Department? Did she acquire this knowledge and experience through osmosis, diffusion or by some other unknown means? Hillary did not distinguish herself during the trumped-up Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on her nomination on January 13th which revealed how unqualified Hillary Clinton is in seeking the job as Secretary of State of the United States. She did not have a mastery of the subject matter and appeared to lack depth and knowledge of the real issues with which the Obama administration will be confronted from day one of his presidency. If Hillary did not have the name “Clinton”, she would not have been elected Senator of New York or Secretary of State of the United States designee.
If Hillary runs the State Department the way she ran her primary campaign for the presidency which was dysfunctional, in disarray, backstabbing, in-fighting and in a climate of acrimony, this will do more harm to further damage the U.S. reputation around the world. And what about the wheeling and dealing of Slick Willie who was one of the most dysfunctional persons to ever inhabit the Oval Office? Hillary’s appointment as Secretary of State is bordering on fraud and gives the appearance that a conflict of interest will certainly happen. It is quite apparent that Mrs. Clinton will be approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the entire Senate. But doesn't Hillary's appointment as Secretary of State reveal that our government may be open to the highest bidder (Marc Rich)? And what about Bill Clinton lurking around in the background with all his questionable foreign connections? None of President-elect Obama's nominations for any cabinet level post should be rubber stamped. Therefore, I ask Mr. Obama to withdraw this nomination to save further embarrassment and ridicule from the other nations of the Free World.

Burris sought death for innocent man

By BEN PROTESS-- PROPUBLICA 1/1/09 12:24 PM EST

Roland Burris is no stranger to controversy after continuing to prosecute the wrong man for a high-profile murder.

Former Illinois attorney general Roland Burris, embattled Gov. Rod Blagojevich's pick to replace Barack Obama in the Senate, is no stranger to controversy. Public fury over the governor's alleged misconduct has masked the once lively debate over Burris' decision to continue to prosecute, despite the objections of one of his top prosecutors, the wrong man for a high-profile murder case. While state attorney general in 1992, Burris aggressively sought the death penalty for Rolando Cruz, who twice was convicted of raping and murdering a 10-year-old girl in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. The crime took place in 1983. But by 1992, another man had confessed to the crime, and Burris' own deputy attorney general was pleading with Burris to drop the case, then on appeal before the Illinois Supreme Court. Burris refused. He was running for governor. "Anybody who understood this case wouldn't have voted for Burris," Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, told ProPublica. Indeed, Burris lost that race, and two other attempts to become governor. Burris' role in the Cruz case was "indefensible and in defiance of common sense and common decency," Warden said. "There was obvious evidence that [Cruz] was innocent." Deputy attorney general Mary Brigid Kenney agreed and eventually resigned rather than continue to prosecute Cruz.
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Burris takes his battle to court
Once Burris assigned Kenney to the case in 1991, she became convinced that Cruz was innocent, a victim of what she believed was prosecutorial misconduct. She sent Burris a memo reporting that the jury convicted Cruz without knowing that Brian Dugan, a repeat sex offender and murderer, had confessed to the crime. Burris never met with Kenney to discuss a new trial for Cruz, Kenney told ProPublica. "This is something the attorney general should have been concerned about," Kenney, now an assistant public guardian in Cook County, said in an interview. "I knew the prosecutor's job was not merely to secure conviction but to ensure justice was done." Kenney was not alone in her beliefs. Prior to Cruz's 1985 trial, the lead detective in the case resigned in protest over prosecutors' handling of the case, according to news reports at the time. And rather than argue Burris' case before the state supreme court, Kenney also stepped down. "What I took away was that [Burris] wasn't going to do anything to seem soft on crime," Kenney said. "He didn't have the guts." In her resignation letter, Kenney claimed Burris had "seen fit to ignore the evidence in this case." "I cannot sit idly by as this office continues to pursue the unjust prosecution of Rolando Cruz," she wrote. "I realized that I was being asked to help execute an innocent man." Burris' response at the time: "It is not for me to place my judgment over a jury, regardless of what I think." (We have also left a message for Burris at his office and will post an update if we hear back.) State prosecutors carried on with the prosecution, even after DNA evidence in 1995 excluded Cruz as the victim's rapist and linked somebody else, sex offender Brian Dugan, to the crime. Eventually, prosecutors' case hit a wall. The Illinois Supreme Court reversed Cruz's conviction and granted him a third trial. (The court declared that the trial judge in the case had improperly excluded Dugan's confession and thus compromised Cruz's defense.) In the new trial, Cruz was acquitted. The judge in that case concluded, "I'd hope and pray the person or persons -- whoever is culpable -- is brought to justice." In late 1995, Cruz finally walked free after serving 11 years on death row for a crime he did not commit. A grand jury later indicted four sheriff's deputies and three former county prosecutors for their roles in the Cruz case. They were eventually acquitted. Burris was never accused of any wrongdoing or misconduct. Dugan is scheduled to stand trial for the crime next year, 26 years after it was committed.

Illinois’ Plantation Politics

Black Buzz says one of the Chicago papers did an editorial about Mr. Burris on January 13th in which it was mentioned how desperate Mr. Burris was in seeking the U.S. senatorial appointment even though he had full knowledge that said appointment was tainted. Most people with some semblance of integrity avoided this appointment as if it were the plague because they knew it was infected with the disease of Blagoitis. Yes it’s true that many Blacks such as Burris appear to be cutthroats and electable only because they would cut their own grandmothers’ throats in order to get ahead or personally succeed. Sadly, a majority of so-called local Black leaders in Chicago and elsewhere in the country, in their pandering to local/state White officials and establishment powers, have sold their families and traded their souls for a dry bone from the master’s table for the honor of currying favor with Whites in power. (Bobby Rush is the exception to the brutal backroom politics in the windy city).
People like Mr. Burris have not been selective in their choices just as a pet dog in their desire to be loved, have required no more than a patronizing pat on the head. Mr. Burris and others of the same ilk are not electable to any meaningful office and are regarded as toilet tissue, useable and disposable to those who have used them (Blagojevich). A great number of these so-called Black leaders at all levels of government, particularly Mr. Burris, in their service as footstools and patsies to the master have betrayed, misled and misinformed other Blacks for whom they assumed representative or leadership status, now serve as surrogates in the maintenance of the status quo.