Concrete proof that OBama is not a Muslim President/ The Tea Party gains new ground.

American politicians continue to jump through hoops to prove they're Israel’s staunchest defender and will continue to give Israeli the key to America's Treasury. 


Meanwhile Israeli has very few power rivals in the Democratic Party and hold even more sway in the Republican Party because of their perverted connection to America's growing religious right.
Could it be that the Tea Party is the chicken coming home to roosts not only for America, but also for Israeli? 


Well, I was floored when newly minted Senator and  Tea Party flame carrier, Rand Paul, bluntly told the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee,( AIPAC)- one of the wealthiest, strongest, and feared lobby - that they "were going to disagree about the need for foreign aid and suggested they "move on" to other topics.  Words like this, before the rise of the Tea Party, would've been a political death kneel for any national politician. Now the Tea Party seem more strongly patriotic over what is nothing but failed isolationism, while sadly the Democratic Party continues  to kowtow as opposed to saying "enough" to Israel's compete and continued disrespect to our Government. 


For instance, last March Israeli deeply embarrassed President Obama using the day before Vice President Biden's much anticipated visit to Israeli, to announce the construction of
1,600 new units of new housing in east Jerusalem. Not only did this further deteriorate President Obama's dream of a Palestinian Israeli peace accord, but continues to retard our ability in fighting our dual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, while increasing the likely hood of a Muslim Extremist attack on American soil. “What happened to the vice president in Israel was unprecedented,” said a senior administration official, speaking off record. “Where it goes from here depends on the Israelis.” 

Meanwhile Israeli's domestic mouth peace IPAC condemned Obama for having no cause to be "angry". Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had the gall to say that Obama butting in on a domestic matter. Even though, American tax dollars fund both the military and domestic projects in Israel and their policies continue to jeopardize America. 


Any good news for the Obama Presidency or the Democrats???????

My least Favorite Holiday, Original Sin.

Thanks Giving has always been my least favorite holiday. As a Black man, I find it sad that my people who suffered( and still do), some the most brutal oppression in America- and the world -continue to celebrate this "holiday" that symbolizes the defeat of Native American civilization. 


So I was reading a NY Times review of a book entitled "Original Sins" by A.J. Langguth, which connects two of the most brutal acts of American white supremacy, the genocide of Native Americans, and the Civil war, fought because of half of America's fierce desire to protect that "peculiar institution"called American chattel slavery. The review gets into William  Faulkner's point that the past doesn't really die and is actually a continuum into the future.


This connection got me thinking about ways in which white supremacy is a stream spanning through out history into the present and future, connecting both big and small acts of white supremacy that drastically change the American and world landscape. Such is the case of Andrew Jackson, the former president. Andrew Jackson like any "American Patriot" including these today, loved the "America Way", unless America tried to empower non white people, then The America Way became, the enemy.  Andrew Jackson, was a staunch Unionist until America, in the most meager ways tried to insure, protect, and promote certain liberties of Native Americans and Blacks. 


Breaking Federal treaties between Native Americans and the U.S. Government, in the name of "state’s rights", Jackson also condoned and used violence and political force to destroy and ethnically cleanse America of Native Americans.  The infamous Indian Removal Act of 1930, went against the U.S. Supreme court, becoming a clarion call that signaled to white American that they could pick and chose what federal laws they would and would not follow. 

Ultimately, no law protecting Native Americans or Black people had to be respected by white men. This lead to the Civil War. Both of these events created catastrophic suffering and loss of life. The Indian Removal Act, resulted in the Trail of Tears, where only the Natives suffered while white America went on to prosper, momentarily. Then, because of the horrid human rights ethos of white supremacy, the aforementioned current continued forward destroying much, and transforming the rest into evil until it connected with the next horrific act. The Civil War, which like James Balwin's "fire this time" and Malcom X's "the chickens came home to roosts" almost destroyed all of America. 


I think Black America should use November 25th to memorialize The Trail of Tears and connect it with our own in continuum.

Is it a bird, is it a plane? Because it's not President Obama. Could it be Hip Hop finally coming to rescue Black America?

I remember being down on my luck, working two, long commute, minimum wage, corporate jobs that would swing to demeaning at a moments notice. One of the voices that kept me sane and focused was Tupac Shakur. In fact his song "Me Against The World" became my anthem and mantra, especially the part where Tupac raps 

"With all this extra stressin

The question I wonder is after death, after my last breath
When will I finaly get to rest? Through this supression
they punish the people that's askin questions
And those that possess, steal from the ones without possesions
The message I stress: to make it stop study your lessons
Don't settle for less - even the genius asks-es questions
Be grateful for blessings
Don't ever change, keep your essence
The power is in the people and politics we address
Always do your best, don't let the pressure make you panic
And when you get stranded
And things don't go the way you planned it
Dreamin of riches, in a position of makin a difference
Politicians and hypocrites, they don't wanna listen
If I'm insane, it's the fame made a brother change
It wasn't nuttin like the game
It's just me against the world"

That passage summed up exactly where I was. 

I was "extra stressing" after being fired from "a position of making a difference" which was my real job. Because I was "punished for asking questions".  on behalf of poor children, which I considered part of my job.

And late at night, when I would leave my demeaning second job for the long train ride home from Evanston, I would listen to Tupac rapping " Be grateful for blessings" and more importantly  "Don't ever change, keep your essence".

And I wasn't the only person in a difficult situation using Hip Hop to keep my head above the currents. I remember once ordering chicken wings from a westside fast food joint. In ran a kid no older than fourteen who was being chased. A few minutes later, a group of much older gang bangers-some armed with baseball bats- ran past.  After looking out the window and seeing that the "coast was clear",

 the kid rapped the following verse from Biggie Small's song Every Day Struggle. "I don't wanna live no mo' Sometimes I hear death knockin at my front do' I'm livin everyday like a hustle, another drug to juggle; another day, another struggle. He sounded so earnest, so prayerfully, as if rapping those words could save his life before fleeing out into the night. That was before Biggie went from rapping about young Black males struggling to make it day to day, to rapping exclusively about expensive champaign and Scare Face cocaine built dreams. 

And that was also before the dream of Tupac, using Hip Hop to continuing on the Legacy of Malcolm X, died along with him in a hail of bullets. 

Now the endless party, bullshit, rims, timbs, pimps, playa, fucking, smacking tricks, Black hoes down, has infected Hip Hop like zombies in Dawn of the Dead. But the progressive life preserving, highly democratic currents that stem from the deeply humanistic well which is the foundation of Hip Hop

 still run through like a positive current in the negative bleak landscape of Rap Music. 

And, although the dream has been deferred, that some from the Hip Hop World will pick up the baton that fell out of Tupac's back pocket the night he was killed,-clearly no one from the Black church of the Black political world has-, the dream it is not dead. 

First on the horizon was Wyclef Jean. I was so excited when he threw his dread tam hat into the ring for President of Haiti. Haiti has always been a historic beacon to the Black western world. Haiti,  was the only country to have a successful slave rebellion, organized and run by

Toussaint L'Ouverture,  that lead to the establishment of the first Black new world government. I thought Wyclef could have done what former president Jean Bertrand Aristide tried but could not do. Reverse the dismal back breaking poverty and create a new progressive country. 

Wyclef showed himself to be a selfish self absorbed pretentious fool. It took his "presidential campaign" to expose that he represents the worse of Haiti, starting with his Yele  Haitian Foundation which raised money not to benefit Haiti's hyper poor, but to launder money to him and his cronies. Even his former Fuggie band mate, Pras Michel called him the "Black Sarah Palin".  Then came Kanye West aka "Kanye Pest" who carried Hip Hop to a Lindsay Lohan Level. But then challenged others to look at him under a new progressive light with those brave historic words" George Bush don't like Black people", that uniquely spoke to a people still reeling at the abandonment and disrespect of Black Louisianians in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Well, after helping focus the world on The United States Government's treatment of poor Black people, Kanye Pest went right back to preening on down the runway of diamond encrusted bling bling Dom Pérignon trappings and manifestations. Kanye's next political utterance came recently when he basically apologize to and compared himself to George Bush, the man he did what no other person could do during Bush's presidency, shame him. 

 But could there be new hope on the Hi Hop horizon with Che "Rhymefest" Smith, running for Chicago Alderman of the 20th Ward?  O.K. like Tupac, Rhymefest has his demons that got him arrested as well. But I'm kinda liking what I'm hearing.  He is one of the few Black voice to talk about holding Obama accountable for ignoring agendas that would lift the boat of poor Black America.  For an interview with XXL Magazine, Rhymfest said "I think President Obama has to be criticized, he has to be empathized with, protested against and he has to be voted for again, because we are his constituents and he owes us; Just like you have gays and lesbians fighting for equal rights and "don't ask, don't tell"

After completing his last Album "Blue Collar", Rymfest announced his candidacy by saying "The 20th Ward in Chicago needs help, shorties are out here selling dope to pay the family bills. Grandmothers are raising their children's children, people are unemployed and under employed and leadership is absent!"

This sounds like a voice we need in Chicago's notoriously corrupted political system. Especially in Chicago's 20th Ward which like too many communities in Chicago, is bombed out and depleted like

 Afghanistan, but with out the USA tax payer aid or public attention

The problem is that unlike Tupac, Rymfest isn't saying much and of course the press isn't really covering him. But win or lose, hopefully he will inspire the much more contemplative Hip Hop artists like Common, KRS One, Nas, The Wu Tang Clan, De La Soul, etc, to get involved. Can you imagine the real change if the real hip hop community came together to fight for political change? I know Martin and Malcolm would be smiling for the first time in a long long time.

The following is Not from the Onion.. "African-American males without disabilities do no better than white males with disabilities"

The ruins of the Temple of Hope smolder still, in the wake of the slash, burn, pillage and plunder of the marauding Tea Party Movement Army.

For those who care, there will be no "official" answers to why it was so easy for the barbarians (with only minimal resistance), to crush Obama's once energized "Movement of Change". And why wasn't a wall built to keep them out? After all, liberals still claim that President Obama was and has the heart of a grassroots community organizer.


The reason is simple. President Obama didn't run a campaign centered on protecting or empowering poor people, especially poor Black people. What candidate Obama did was ingeniously send subliminal political messages to white liberals who've grown tired of feeling guilty and they secretly blame poor Black folk for their continued plight at the bottom of the well. Finally an African-American candidate, Barack Obama, came along, freeing them from their liberal guilt by publicly calling out the negative behavior of poor Black people, while not addressing the decades of systematic racial oppression which is at the root of this behavior. The Black middle class also formally jumped on this bandwagon of retro Booker T. Washington empty rhetoric mixed with long simmering Black on Black self hate. This was a continuation of the same one sided blame game that gained social prominence with Bill Cosby in Black America. But with Barack Obama it gained political prominence throughout all America.

Upon assuming the presidency, except for universal health care, President Obama, along with the Democratic congress continued- as usual- to prioritize the 

needs of the wealthy, high above those of the working class and the poor. A major example was the extension of the Bank Bailout ( TARP Program), which was eerily similar to Reagan's 1980's tax cuts. But in this case, instead of cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans who did not reinvest it back into the economy, Obama gave American tax dollars to the wealthiest banks and corporations who likewise didn't reinvest it into the economy.

And instead of engaging the country in real discussions of race, President Obama used poor African-Americans and their children as a common rallying point for all of white America and the vapid and backwardly religious addicted Black middle class. Well,looks like it's time to call out America's Black middle class on how they are "raising" their kids. 

Recently, The New York Times in an article entitled "Proficiency of Black Students Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected" covered a report released by the Council of the Great City Schools that I think brings into serious question the parenting skills of the Black middle class themselves. The report covers what those who have been paying attention to what's going down on the ground already know. That even with the Obama presidency, little has been done to substantively improve the "comprehensive challenges" facing African-American males nation wide", and that the issues connected to education, educational achievement,  employment, drugs, violence, prison, fatherhood, etc, continue to deteriorate for African-American males 

But what's new news is that the the average African­American fourth­ and eighth­grade African-American male who isn't economically poor, does no better in reading and math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress Test (NAEP )than white males who are  economically poor. And African-American males without disabilities do no better than white males with disabilities. So what's going on with the Black middle class? To much church and not enough intellectual growth. Too much mindless consumerism and not enough cultural spirituality. And finally too much self hate and not enough realizing that we will always be just a few steps away from Jamal passing around that 40 ounce on the corner, unless we become actively involved in the struggle.

I think before any more Black people criticize what Shaquita, Chantell and Rey Rey aint doing, they need to pick up   E. Franklin Frazier's book "Black Bourgeoisie" published in 1957, which was billed  as  "The Book that brought the shock of self- revelation to middle-class Blacks in America".

What Hurricane Katrina Couldn't do to New Orleans, The Tea Party does to America

Friedrich Nietzsch said “when you look into the abyss the abyss looks back at you”

This is a disturbingly profound idea for those brave enough to engage an action that requires deep reflection and analysis that will lead them to finding themselves alone, perched precariously atop the peak of an

existential but very “real” Mt. Olympus of their own construct, looking straight down an icy slippery slope leading to infinity. 

Such an example is how the Republican Party two years ago looked down into their abyss and emerged as the Tea Party, which is why yesterday they surged like Hurricane Katrina overwhelming the United States Congress and the House of Representatives aka "The People’s House of the United State’s America", completely.  Do I like it? No. Do I respect it? Yes. Clearly the Democrats are not capable of this sort of reflection. They’re only capable of “hope” which propelled Barack Obama to The United State's Presidency, but he and the country no further.

If the Democrats could have peered deep into the abyss of their souls two years ago, they could have  

created a real movement( bigger than Obama) to keep Obama focused on The People, and out of the arms of the Big Bank and Insurance Corporations and  the Military Industrial Complex where he now sleeps soundly, and will be even more confined to, when the Tea Party takes formal control of The United States House of Representatives this January.