Gil Scott-Heron Dies-age 62

NEW YORK — The author of the song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" – which helped pioneer sounds that would fuse to become rap – has died in New York City. Musician Gil Scott-Heron was 62. read more

Gil Scott Heron, a true giant of commentary music, understood the power of how to move, groove and teach through his music. He, along with The Last Poets, effectively married the spoken word with hypnotic beats.

His searing insight will truly be missed...

Bishop Eddie Long and the Mega Church Failure

My faithful reader, Barbara (thanks mom) wrote,

I have a negative opinion of most mega churches. There are so many positive things that they should be doing

.

Not to make light of Bishop Eddie Long's sordid affairs and troubles, but it raises the question of the role of the Black Church in an era of high crisis (we all know the statistical data) in the black community.

Instead of using church funds and resources to buy mansions, private jets, exotic vacations, fancy cars (plural) and other extravagant material bling-bling, just maybe the church could use more resources to uplift our community from economic chaos and Depression like conditions.

Or, are we as a people, so vested in materialism and individualism - I got mine, you got to get yours - that we fail to see that collectively we are greater than our individual parts?

Heru Ammen of the Urban Village Blog writes:

The black church is the worst culprit of what I term purveyors of conscious neglect. This institution, which should be standing in the gap for its poor and disenfranchised constituents represents the worst exploiter of the poor and disenfranchised that has ever existed in the African American community. Its raw embrace of individualism and materialism is couched in a feel good message of salvation and prosperity. Unfortunately the message of salvation and prosperity that the black church promotes seems to only apply to a few of its select clergy and members

He goes on to explain:

Their are approximately 70,000 black churches in the United States. Partial statistics show us that the median-average income of black churches is $200,000 annually. With a combined annual income approaching fourteen-billion (or more), the black church has the financial capability to effect change within our urban communities on a scale that is as wide as it is deep

All I can add is, preach on my brother, amen.

Bishop Eddie Long's Settlement

Bishop Eddie Long:

Do You remember what you pledged?

“I’ve been accused, I’m under attack. I want you to know, as I said earlier, that I am not a perfect man,”

“But this thing, I’m going to fight.”

“And I want you to know one other thing, I feel like David against Goliath, but I’ve got five rocks and I haven’t thrown one yet.”

All this cage rattling bravado and now this:

And finally, Long settled out of court for a reported $15 Million and an apology to his accusers.

So much for, I will never surrender. Not only do you have to raid the church's building fund for your trysts, you have say:

I am sorry!

The hypocrisy is not that you fell from grace nor that you are not perfect - we all fall short of the Word.

There go I but for the grace of god.

The problem is you threw the most and hardest (Goliath not David) rocks, while you lived in the thinnest glass house.

Tupac and Biggie: Still unresolved

A man suspected in the high-profile beating of San Francisco Giants fan Bryan Stow at Dodgers stadium on March 31 is in custody, Los Angeles police sources told the LA Times.

The arrest comes after a month of public appeals from the Dodgers and Los Angeles police for anyone with information to come forward.

Giovanni Ramirez was arrested by an LAPD SWAT team on Sunday and is being held on one-million dollars bail.

I applaud the LAPD for their sense of urgency to collar the 1st suspect of this heinous crime. Mr Stow, in critical condition, by all reports, did nothing to provoke the attack.

The LAPD assigned 17 detectives to work full time in the investigation and raided the residence of the alleged attacker with a 60 officer strong SWAT team.

Now LAPD could you muster the same sort of urgency to bring the killer or killers of Biggie Smalls to justice. And while you are at it, teach the Las Vegas PD how its done - so that they can solve the Tupac murder as well.

Dr. Barbara Sizemore: BLACK PEOPLE STILL DON'T GET IT

Dr. Barbara Sizemore on the high black incarceration rate:

They come from a culture that doesn't save them because the people don't have enough sense to save their culture



Do you get it?

The Cornel West Litmus Test

Professor Cornell West on President Obama

“He feels most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they want,” he says. “He’s got two homes. He has got his family and whatever challenges go on there, and this other home. Larry Summers blows his mind because he’s so smart. He’s got Establishment connections."

“I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men,” West says. “It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white."

My Response:

Dr. West, you have every right to hold any president accountable for their actions or perceived inactions. Healthy, fierce and confrontational debate is what makes a democracy strong. I have no qualms.

But when you inject race, in a dime-store psychological way, you cheapen and undercut your argument.

Secondly, Dr. West you bring more scrutiny upon the type of company you professionally keep.

Checking your educational resume, one can - using your litmus test - conclude you are only

"...comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they want,”

Dr. West's Resume:

Tenured professor at four elite universities with minimal minority students. These universities include: Haverford, Harvard, Yale and Princeton.

He has taught overseas - not Africa, Asia, nor the Middle-East - in Europe at the University of Paris.

Report Card Time:

Sorry, Professor West you have just failed you own Litmus Test.

BTW, it sounds elitist and classist when you say:

And then as it turns out with the inauguration I couldn’t get a ticket with my mother and my brother. I said this is very strange. We drive into the hotel and the guy who picks up my bags from the hotel has a ticket to the inauguration

That Pssst sound you hear is the deflating of Dr. West's credibility.

Throw Mamma From The Train

An Amtrak train made an unexpected stop Sunday, as a woman was escorted off for speaking loudly on her cell phone.

Lakeysha Beard, 39, was charged with disorderly conduct after she wouldn't stop talking on the 16-hour trip from Oakland, California, to Salem, Oregon. The train was stopped short of its destination.


She was reportedly in the quiet car of an Amtrak train.

Lakeysha, Lakeysha, Lakeysha... no matter how hard we try to dispell misconceptions and stereotypes, by being a walking cliche, you decided to be an one woman wrecking crew to these efforts.

I can not watch FIX News, but the imagery of this story has to be a gift wrapped present.

FIX News aside, I commute via the DC Metro daily and I have had numerous encounters with Lakeysha's kin folk.

Loud, ignant (check Urban Dictionary), and just flat out wrong - these folks love to put on a show. As a matter of fact, they perform as if someone is paying them.

I have often mused, there has got to be a man (FIX News employee) that distributes checks to these chosen ones who bless us with their unsolicitated talents.

Now back to Lakeysha. Home-girl had the audacity, after 16 hours of running her yap in the Amtrak quiet car, of feeling she was disrespected by the other passengers.

MSNBC reported, Beard herself felt "disrespected."

My injury has now been insulted!

Africa: The Fastest Growing Region In The World?

Found this story on the web. Check it out. To read the entire story click on the link, African Progress.

Sharing his enthusiasm for growth in the economy, CEO of RenCap, Stephen Jennings, said Nigeria has attributes for emerging market investment banking, and consumer finance.

According to him, the country’s huge population presents significant opportunities in the consumer goods, real estate, construction and services industries.

“Strong economic growth is creating jobs and supporting the emergence of a middle class with higher disposable income,” Mr Jennings said.

He added that over the next five years, Africa will become the fastest growing region in the world.

“Africa has much greater scope than any other region for convergence and leap frogging. Africa also stands to be perhaps the biggest beneficiary of the historic movement of capital from the West to emerging and frontier markets and the integration of the emerging markets themselves” he said.

He further said Africans need to begin to have a positive outlook about the continent.

“We are all brainwashed about Africa’s problems and supposed inferiority. The stunning progress made by Africa is beginning to be understood but its tremendous potential is far from being properly reflected in investment decisions and resource allocation. Positive expectations and high aspirations will be key components of the next chapter of Africa’s dramatic growth story,” he said.

According to him, total foreign capital flows into Africa increased from $15 billion in 2000 to $87 billion in 2007, with more than 20 African countries received at least $500 each in foreign investment in 2008.

Breaking News: Trump Not Running

Donald Trump ended his months-long public flirtation with a 2012 presidential run Monday, saying that he will not seek the Republican nomination -- even though he could have won the election.

Did anyone really think Trump was running anything other than his mouth?

Trump was probably gonna stretch this running for president hoax as long as he could. It got him free press. It fed his Empire State ego.

So, why stop now?

'If you don't like the heat, get out of the kitchen'.

Obviously, after that triple smack down:

First President Obama at the correspondence dinner:

"No one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald," Obama said at the swanky black tie event. "And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter - like did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?"

Then, SNL's Seth Meyers:

"Donald Trump said that he was running for president as a Republican. That's funny, because I thought he was running as a joke."

Finally, when Obama got Osama, the breaking news preempted Trump's Apprentice show.

Hence, Trump left the hot kitchen.

Teen who challenged Bachmann to Constitution showdown is running for class president

Posts by Liz Goodwin Yahoo Reprint

When 16-year-old Amy Myers launched her campaign to be class president at Cherry Hill East High School in New Jersey, the boys in her sophomore class began teasing her. And that crash course in how aspiring female leaders get judged on the basis of gender led, in a roundabout way, to Myers' challenge to debate Minnesota GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann on the Constitution.

"Your slogan for president should be that you're not a witch," Myers' male detractors said, referencing the much-mocked campaign stance of ex-Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, who decided to confront her years-old statements about Wicca head-on in her first TV ad. The boys told Myers she just wanted to be "another girl politician" like O'Donnell and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, whom the boys (and pretty much every late-night comedian) often made fun of.

"And I just said, 'oh great,'" recalls Myers.

Myers was angry that many of the most visible female politicians were seen as fodder for jokes and ridicule, which made her peers think it was ok to mock her political aspirations, too. She singled out Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) after her father noticed the congresswoman had incorrectly stated the Revolutionary War Battles of Lexington and Concord happened in New Hampshire. (She told a group of conservatives in Manchester in March: "You're the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord.") In January, Myers watched agasp as Bachmann said America's founding fathers "worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States." READ MORE