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Monthly Archives: August 2013

Last Few


The last few lines of this article tell the story better than I can:

6 reasons America will rise again

The US is down but not out. It could return to its dominant status, but it has 1 big obstacle in its way.

By Kim Peterson 14 hours ago
The U.S. economy is growing faster than economists expected, although the recovery is still weak.
One observer is confident the country has so many long-term advantages over its competitors that it will dominate the world again. A. Gary Shilling, a consultant and a columnist for Bloomberg View, made his case this week.
Here are the reasons Shilling thinks America will rise again: Energy independence. MSN Money wrote an entire series on this subject in July. Fracking has greatly helped the U.S. cultivate its own energy sustainability. It isn’t there yet, but it’s on track to be self-sufficient — and maybe even become the world’s next great oil exporter.
Immigrants. Immigrants tend to be younger and have higher birth rates. And the U.S. needs them, because in order to sustain the population in the long run, the country needs 2.1 births per child-bearing woman. Immigrants will also keep our population of working-age people (as a percentage of total population) from falling faster.
Entrepreneurial spirit. Even during the worst of the recession, Americans who were laid off or otherwise out of work showed a striking ability to start their own businesses. That’s the heart of the American entrepreneurial spirit, which will keep America afloat.
Labor flexibility. Labor union membership has fallen fast, which for better or for worse means workers are more tolerant of decreases in pay. That will help buffer the country against economic turmoil.
Less foreign money needed. U.S. households have been on a saving binge, particularly after the housing bubble burst and home equity loans became harder to get. Americans will probably save more, Shilling wrote. That will ultimately reduce the need for foreign financing.
Strong dollar. Even though China is becoming the world’s next superpower, reducing the U.S. presence on the global stage, nothing beats the U.S. dollar. The world still views the dollar as the primary reserve and trading currency.
So what’s holding us back? Shilling didn’t address this, but we have a pretty good idea. The one thing that could keep the U.S. from dominating again is its politicians and the petty squabbling and stifling bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. Time and again, we’ve seen how lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have kept America from moving forward. That doesn’t look to change anytime soon.
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The Holiday Season


Retailers in an attempt to get an edge on consumer’s wallets have created a holiday season unlike the Holiday seasons many of us grew up with. The new season as coined by an associate is :”Hallothanksxmas”. This is due the influx of holiday merchandise and the setting up of holiday displays weeks to months ahead of the actual event.  Even now the Halloween show is being put in place, in 45 days the change to Thanksgiving will appear, then finally the biggy: Xmas (or Christmas). What ever happened to the anticipation time? that defined time between the Holidays when you could exhale and prepare mentally for the next one?  That time was usurped by the large retailer’s in search for more revenue while convincing (advertising) the buyers to come early and shop. This brought another phenomenon: the midnight door buster sales, the early AM sales and finally Black Friday sales. Black Friday just means the Friday of the year where many businesses make enough profit to be in the Black for the year. The current  retail climate leaves us no time to breathe between Holidays which we so desperately need. To cap it all off we have lost out on traditional foods and we have in its place “Turducken- This is a turkey stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken layered with dressing. The initial Thanksgiving observers would be appalled and possibly puzzled. In their time it would have been any or all of these fowl depending on which was preferred. What next? Yams stuffed with Broccoli, peas and carrots mixed with mashed potatoes or the ultimate jellied cranberry stuffed with whole cranberries. How about pumpkin/apple/peach pie? Enough already!

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Indian Wars


Kent Connecticut is the scene of a largely unknown struggle for reclamation of native American  tribal lands. The Schaghticoke tribe is fighting to survive, the U.S. government has required native tribes to show the ownership of the land they live on since before colonization, under new guide lines they only have to show continuous existence since 1934. This allows the tribes to own the lands they exist on and even the lands now inhabited by newcomers (first white settlers). The Euro presence in the modern and past world has been noted by the conquest and indenturing of all native people wherever they went. This conquest resulted in the death and elimination of many people  and their traditions. It is a far cry now from then as people we have all come to the realization that in order to survive as a species we need to work together beyond religious, color, ethnic and gender lines. Even “Star Trek” has moved beyond those barriers. Why can’t we?

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Murderers Go Free!!


George Zimmerman is currently a free man, His lawyers now want the State of Florida to pay his legal expenses, this after his wife attempted to hide their assets (she is now being tried for that). If the State of Florida pays his legal expenses then does this mean it is open season on anyone of color, any of the LGBTG community (which includes all colors) or perhaps a person of a different religious persuasion?  We have a murderer who is free due to the lack of personal conviction on behalf of all of the jurors. The Prosecution missed opportunities in some key areas of their case. Was this deliberate or just an omission due to inexperience, lack of funds or something else? It has been pondered about the result if the Zimmerman was Black ( yes there are non whites with name of Zimmerman). This is just the latest in a series of injustices against minorities and will not be the last as the fringe extremists such as “George” or Jorge  as he would be called in Latin America will take heart in doing the same thing in their own communities. These last few years has brought out the best and worst of us all but this situation is almost like giving a tacit OK on assaults on NON whites of all types. If this were monopoly George would have a “get out jail free card” from the stack of cards in the center while the rest of could not pass go, let alone get $200.00

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Land Of The Free


America represents the ideal in democratic societies and because of it we have nationally known columnists who proffer their personal opinions as journalism. Specifically, Charles Krauthammer, Ann Coulter and several other high profile writer along with  several cable programs that have a specific agenda that does not benefit society as a whole. These limited target writers only have to offer their personal opinions as fact and gain a following. Their opinions have very little fact and a tremendous amount of speculation, innuendo and often Racist content. This could only happen in a free country like ours, in Russia, China and several mid east counties they would be jailed for life and/or executed for crimes against the state. Welcome to America Ann and Charles!!

 

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None of Us Really Know


As I read the seemingly endless stream of rails against the President by well known pundits, legislators and half knowledgeables, I am wondering if any of these nattering nabobs have a sense of what being the President is? Without excusing any errors made by this administration, we have a war to conclude in Afghanistan and several “hot” spots elsewhere in the world that have used up time and effort that should have been used in the US for repairing the economy. The Congress (some of them) are looking for POTUS to do something about Syria, Egypt & yes the economy, however rash actions will not help us at all. Sidewalk superintendents have never constructed a building so why are we to believe the sideline Pundits can run the country? It is imperative that all readers of the news, magazines and media viewers understand what being President means and how long it takes to get any work done. We  should remember that all of these things are occurring at the same time. We are experiencing  laws (new and changed) that the second President Bush started, some issues have ended, others have not started. There are some that the current President started but has just begun (the affordable health care act). The initial start has helped many, part of it has been implemented but has some flaws yet these flaws could have been worked out if the Locked bowel Congress would have spent any time in really reading the proposed law and making changes as needed. The idea that our representatives spent valuable time in the media ranting about how bad the act was instead of making it better indicates that our Congress is more the issue that the POTUS. The outright resistance to an elected CIC because?-Race. Party or what? is definitely why we need to replace as many as we can through elections as soon as possible.  How can we believe in elected officials who do not believe in us?  We have for years listened to the political rhetoric, vague promises, adverse statements against the other guy that we have come to think it is true, This is real life not a televised soap opera and there are no commercial breaks or cliff hangers to be resolved next week. I recently wrote to the local newspaper about the printing of nationally known pundits whose agenda does not involve  most of us but still affects what we do. The modern political machine does not exist for the voters, it exists for the politicians and their backers (big money). Think about how many billions of dollars was spent on the last election and how much was received from the public in comparison to what was spent by the “big money”. The only thing we have going for us is quantity, the numbers of average Americans who are willing to vote against the status quo. It may take several election cycles but it can be done.  The question is “do we have the will”?

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Worth Reading & Remembering


I have reprinted this article in total because many of us never knew about it.

Editor’s note: CNN will debut “We Were There: The March on Washington — An Oral History” hosted by Don Lemon Friday at 10 p.m. ET and PT. LZ Granderson is a CNN contributor who writes a weekly column for CNN.com. The former Hechinger Institute Fellow has had his commentary recognized by the Online News Association, the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. He is also a senior writer for ESPN. Follow him on Twitter @locs_n_laughs.

(CNN) — On August 13, 1963, in a last ditch effort to derail the pending March on Washington, Strom Thurmond took the Senate floor and hurled a series of vicious, personal attacks against the man organizing the largest protest in U.S. history.

Thurmond called him a Communist and a draft dodger.

He brought up a previous arrest and accused him of being immoral and a pervert.

LZ Granderson

LZ Granderson

The man Thurmond was attacking was not Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In fact Thurmond used King’s own words — secretly recorded by J.Edgar Hoover — in his attacks against the march’s deputy director.

“I hope Bayard don’t take a drink before the march,” Clarence Jones, King’s lawyer and close friend, said in the recording.

“Yes,” King replied. “And grab one little brother. ‘Cause he will grab one when he has a drink.”

The story behind ‘I Have A Dream’ speech

“Bayard” would be Bayard Rustin, the most important leader of the civil rights movement you probably have never heard of.

Opinion: Congress, stand up for civil rights

Rustin was imprisoned for challenging racial segregation in the South before the phrase “Freedom Rider” was ever said. He taught a 25-year-old King the true meaning of nonviolent civil disobedience while the great dreamer was still being flanked by armed bodyguards. And before addressing the crowd of 250,000 that gathered at the National Mall nearly five decades ago, famed actor and activist Ossie Davis introduced him “as the man who organized this whole thing.”

No, the reason why you probably have not heard of Bayard Rustin has nothing to do with the significance of his contributions to the March on Washington or the civil rights movement in general. His absence is epitomized by the sentiment woven between the lines of that joke between Jones and Rustin’s protegé. You see, the organizer of the great march, the man who held a fundraiser at Madison Square Garden to help fund the bus boycott in Montgomery, the intellectual behind the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Council was also unabashedly gay. And it was the discomfort some had with his sexuality that led to his disappearance in our history books.

“We must look back with sadness at the barriers of bigotry built around his sexuality,” wrote NAACP chairman emeritus Julian Bond in “I Must Resist,” a collection of Rustin letters. “We are the poorer for it.”

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of arguably the single most important event of the 20th century — as well as the speech that defined it — there is a natural inclination to evaluate how close we are to achieving Dr. King’s famed dream.

Why some movements work and others wilt

With President Obama in office, it is silly to suggest no progress has been made. But considering that the wealth gap between black and white families has nearly tripled over the past 25 years or that a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 40% of white Americans don’t have a friend outside of their race, who can view the election of one man as King’s dream being fulfilled?

Yes, the residue of the Jim Crow era still poisons the air like mold spores after a flood, manifesting in unjust laws such as Stop and Frisk and clusters of failing schools in poor black neighborhoods.

But after recently reading the full text of Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, it occurred to me that perhaps the reason why we’re still divided as a nation is because we haven’t figured out what is keeping us apart.

Despite being a leading voice for racial equality since the 1940s, Rustin’s marginalization is a direct reflection of oppression of a different sort. Thurmond used it as a weapon to attack the March on Washington. Adam Clayton Powell, a black congressman from Harlem, used it to gain power. Other black leaders, like Stokely Carmichael, used it to question his place in the movement.

March on Washington: Fast Facts

You see as big and as looming and as destructive as racism has been and continues to be in society, we must remember it is only a branch.

The root of the problem, the reason why we continue to struggle with equality, is our pathological intolerance, an intolerance no collective group of people has proven to be immune to.

“I say to you today, my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today, and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'”

Dr. King’s dream has not been fulfilled because we began betraying the integrity of his dream the moment we started scrubbing Rustin’s life out of Black History Month lessons and civil rights movies.

We betray that dream each time a black person claims offense to the notion that gay rights are civil rights, as if the black community is the only community capable of being oppressed.

We betray King’s dream each time a white elected official is allowed to say things about the gay community in ways that would never be tolerated if directed at the black community.

I don’t say these things because I view the history and plight of these two minority groups as being exactly the same — they are not.

I say these things because racism and homophobia — like anti-Semitism, sexism and xenophobia — all have the same mother. And as long as concessions are made for one, we will never be free from the clutches of the others.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the nation’s highest civilian award. It was established by President Kennedy 50 years ago. Considering the anniversary of the march, it is fitting that Rustin is among the 16 being honored with it in November.

But like King, he was more than August 28, 1963.

He was a giant.

And so while the medal is special, the best way to honor him is to talk about him, all of him, both now and in the many years to come. Bayard Rustin spent his life fighting for peace and equality and he did so unashamed of who he was. It’s about time history, and the people he helped most, stop being ashamed of him.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of LZ Granderson.

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How is Your Health?


OK, now I want to present an idea I had  written about before. Obama care, affordable Healthcare or whatever you want to call it is law. There are some parts that are in effect and doing good, some parts have yet to start and have some issues. There has never been any laws that have been perfect but previous legislators (the ones who really were in it for the glory) looked at these laws and made corrections. They debated the different” ideas and made the required adjustments. The current legislators have become engrossed in staying in office and maintaining the status quo of their biggest backers and the constituents who follow their “different” ideas. They have done nothing to improve the law but everything to try to repeal or defund the law to the detriment and harm of the people who are currently being helped by the law. Congress had ample time to do what they should have done several years ago but instead they made a media circus of it with offerings of misinformation as to what it will cover and what it will not. Now the people who should be involved in this are not, therefore making the law ineffective for all. This law was made to assist ALL Americans but our “honorable” Congress decided to “stick it” to the President on the backs of the people. Thank you Congress, each one of you will eventually need the people and we will not be there for you as we will take a page from your playbook. Thanks for the lesson.

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Change IN Reading.


I came across this article while researching “Dixiecrat”. I had complained to the local newspaper about two prominent commenters (“pundidiots”) who under the guise of conservatism have penned articles which appear to me more like segregationists and extreme tea partyists than unbiased reporters (no disrespect to reporters). These 2 (possibly of many) Ann Coulter and Charles Krauthammer have penned columns that would have made Hitler happy. Their unilateral views are not reflective of true American views but they have the forum to advance their views. Any interviews with Coulter has been a war of words where she openly espouses her views to the world even when proven wrong. I believe their objectives are purely to become known for their no wing propaganda which has n more entertainment (?) value than real content.

    Tue, 02/05/2013 – 12:57pm

How Dixiecrats Became Republicans

I’m still shocked (not) at how many Kansans come here to post on political matters and still don’t know about the major shift from Democratic to Republican over civil rights matter and other things in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s.

It’s a matter of history, a matter of record. You can find it all over the internet in reputable areas. It’s just a fact.

I grew up and registered the first time into the old Democratic Party, which was a remnant of the old Dixiecrat Party. They hated blacks. They hated Jews. They hated Catholics. I grew up listening to it. I personally knew KKK members. In fact, a boy I dated had an older brother in the KKK (big time Democrats). That older brother’s name is online in articles that talk about the Bogalusa Race Riots of the 60’s. He had his white sheet on, with at least a half dozen other KKK members that worked for my father and were at our home a lot. He tried to pull a black man out of a car to beat him up and the black man shot him.

You certainly don’t have to tell me about the old Dixiecrats. I lived amongst them.

Today those same people I knew who hated black people and Jews and hated everything about civil rights are all Republicans. They’re not JUST  Republicans, they’re far right extremists.

I get their emails almost daily – emails full of lies about Obama, with caricatures of Obama and his family – and so much more. Lies, hatred and ugliness that is hard to imagine that a person can carry around in his or her heart.

Kansas, do a little research and find out how and when they all switched to Republican after the Civil Rights laws came around.

You think Eisenhower’s actions mean that the Republican Party is the one for civil rights because you missed a major shift in politics that happened twenty years after Eisenhower. Btw, today if Ike ran for president, the Republican Party of today would not have him. You know it, and I do, too.

Start your re-education on politics by googling Dixiecrats. I won’t do it for you because you need to choose your own source.

Because it was a fluid and changing situation for parties, and really always has been and will continue to be into the future, you won’t find it easy reading, but if you are going to talk politics you need to educate yourself to the history of the parties.

Civil Rights laws passed in the 1950s and especially in the 1960s, were championed by NATIONAL Democrats, but caused splits in the Democratic Party. Many in the South switched allegiance to the Republican Party which was seen as more conservative. With Reagan the shift in the South was fairly complete.

We’re in Kansas, so you might not think that’s important, but surely most of you do know that the base of the Republican Party today is in the south. That’s why you lost the last election. Your party tried to put a man in office who is everything the southern Democrat hates.  Romney tried, twisting in the wind with one lie today and another lie tomorrow, to appeal to both the southern Democrat (who absolutely represents a huge bloc of the Republican votes today) – while trying not to turn the deep pocket Republicans off. It was a Herculean task. It was like Sisyphus pushing that rock up the hill, only to see it slide back down every time. I don’t like Romney because he’s more  Libertarian than a moderate Republican. He wants a corporatocracy to rule America. He’s like Brownback on that.

But that’s not why he lost. He lost because too many old Dixiecrats in the south who now belong to the Republican Party refused to go vote for him.

That’s a matter of record.

As long as your party harbors and gives sustenance to the old Dixiecrats (and they are, by far, no longer just in the south – Kansas is full of them) – your party is not going to win a presidential race, again. The Hispanics and the African Americans and the Asians have woken up. They know now how important a single vote can be.

Will there be shifts in the future between parties, again? Hell, forget the future. It’s happening right now. You’ve got moderate Republicans all over this country dumping the GOP and registering as Independents. It’s only a matter of time that they’ll go all the way into the Democratic Party.

Of course, as history repeats itself, in time the Democratic Party will, like the Republican Party has done, get too full of itself – try to go to the extreme as the Republican Party has tried to do. Then the tide will begin to ebb the other way.

What you need to recognize today is that the parties have had a sea change over the last 60 years. None of us belong to the same party that they were  when Civil Rights was rearing its head – from Lincoln to Reagan.

It’s all different. And from any given year to any given year,  you can find evidence of small ebbs and flows in the parties.

As a Republican, you need to ask yourselves, are you happy being a member of a party that rivals the old Dixiecrats and their Jim Crow laws and attitudes? If so, then stick with it all the way to the bottom, ’cause, my friends, you are going down.

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InterestingPost from CNN


The post below could apply to “LBGT”, Native Americans. Latinos and immigrants.

Editors note: Tanner Colby is the author of “Some of My Best Friends Are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America.”

(CNN) — “So, how many black friends do you have now?”

It’s a question I get asked a lot, ever since I set out five years ago to find out why I, your typical middle-class white person, had no black friends at all.

I do have black friends now, actually. Several. But I rarely offer that information when asked, because to ask white people how many black friends they have is to pose the wrong question.

Recently, a Reuters poll came out showing that 40% of white Americans have zero nonwhite friends, and only 20% of white Americans have five or more nonwhite friends. People seemed shocked that the numbers were so bad.

Tanner Colby

Tanner Colby

Personally, I was surprised that they were so good. America remains a deeply segregated and divided country. Even accounting for institutional and socioeconomic barriers, in the places we have the opportunity to integrate—the high school cafeteria, for instance—we largely don’t.

The Reuters survey itself is misleading, lumping all minorities together under the vague heading of “nonwhite.” Depending on what part of the country you live in (e.g, anywhere but Minnesota or Wyoming), it’s not uncommon to have Asian or Hispanic friends.

But the social divide between whites and those groups is more a function of the slow-rolling, generational process of immigrant assimilation. That is a wholly different phenomenon from the social divide between whites and blacks, which is the product of 400 years of slavery and segregation. That’s the social divide we should worry about, and if the poll had focused on that, the numbers would surely have been much worse.

The reason why “How many black friends do you have?” is such a terrible question is because it shows how we typically talk when we talk about race. Even when we try to talk about race in a constructive way, we usually make black people the object of the sentence, rarely the subject.

Black friends are the things to be acquired to prove one is not racist. The way the question is asked accords black people no agency, nor does it reveal anything about the real character of the white person being queried.

What you really want to know is not “How many black friends do I have?” but rather, “Have I become the type of individual that a black person might choose to be friends with?” That’s a real question. Poll a couple thousand white people with that and you might start to get some interesting answers, or at least some confused and befuddled looks.

White people are products of their own whitewashed, sanitized environment. Black people have been systematically excluded from white neighborhoods. Black stories rarely surface in popular culture. The history of race in high school textbooks has been boiled down to a handful of bedtime stories about Jackie Robinson and Rosa Parks. Try to tap into the average white person’s feelings on race and you won’t necessarily find feelings of hate and antipathy. You just won’t find much of anything, no fully formed or well-considered thoughts about race of any kind. There’s nothing really there. Even white people who want black friends don’t know where to start.

America’s lack of integration wouldn’t be such a big deal except for the fact that relationships and social networks are vital to economic advancement.

Even when programs like school busing and affirmative action give black people access to white spaces, when those people go to climb the social ladder there’s nothing there for them to grab onto, because there’s very little reciprocal effort coming from the other direction. It’s high effort and low reward.

The result is that black people end up with integration fatigue. Many black writers responded to the Reuters poll with essays on why they didn’t want white friends, and didn’t need them. White friends weren’t worth the bother.

This is their prerogative, but ultimately, it’s to society’s disadvantage because white people control the access to, well, just about everything. If you don’t have white friends, you might have a decent job and a comfortable life, but all the doors of opportunity in this country are not open to you. “I may do well in a desegregated society,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “but I can never know what my total capacity is until I live in an integrated society.”

Interracial friendships, social bonds across the color line, are a key factor in putting the sins of America’s past behind us. But it’s not something that’s accomplished by white people knowing lots of black people. It helps if white people know how to be better white people.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Tanner Colby

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