Trump 2020 & the Fight Against Make-Believe

Critical race theory, toxic masculinity and systemic racism are as real as the Easter Bunny, Leprechauns or Alf. All are fake, made-up non-existent fabrications of some wandering mind. The first three are inherently evil and grotesque and are just as nebulous as constructs created by Carl Jung or Sigmund Freud. These concepts go against all that I was taught and believe with respect to fairness, equity, liberty, justice and equal rights under the law. It is impractical for me to scientifically accept that it is possible to gauge and judge a person’s character and all associated outcomes they may experience or express based on immutable artifacts including but not limited to the color of one’s skin and sex. We do not select what race or sex we are prior to being born and frankly it is disgusting to even assert, without empirical and objective scientific support, that the solution to all social ills is to degrade a persons sense of identity because of their race and/or sex. This is an idiotic supposition – point, blank, period.

I will go out on a limb and bet you that the rest of the world (China, Russia, Turkey, India) are not taking this path and are laughing at our nation’s progressive liberal bent and desire for self-destruction. Going even farther, I would purport they are asking themselves; what is this systemic racism critical race theory dumb shit? The reason why they would never practice such is because they value science and fact over sophistry and emotion. The entire premise from my understanding of these theistic based philosophies are anti-American, anti-white, anti-man and pro-discriminatory. My entire life I have railed against people that judged entire groups of people by the color of their skin, how they talk, or who they select to have sex with.  I was raised during segregation in Memphis in the 1960s and saw first hand the sadism and cruelity of intentional bigotry. It is no different than a person asserting that all black males who wear hoodies are thugs, or that all women that dress expressly in an over sexual manner are thots or whores. I despise stereotyping and it seems to me that you can’t defeat stereotyping and discrimination by discriminating and stereotyping. This singularly undermines the primary groundwork and foundation of the United States of America – that all men (and women) are created equal and endowed as such by God, not another human being with a political agenda to push (such as those that espouse critical race theory and systemic racism) in their Zoroastrian search of a Fourier eutopia in some Potemkin village far, far away from reality.

This is one of the reasons’ I support President Trump. It is not a main reason, but it is important to do all in our collective power to maintain and preserve American history and our way of life as opposed incessantly trying to toss it down some memory hole. But there are more important reasons I have factored to direct my support to the President. Most importantly for me is policy. Need I remind folk that this is politics not emotitics – policy first and emotions never. In addition, its all fact based and has nothing to do with party or personality.

I will begin with what it is I hold disdain for with respect to Joe Biden. Although there are many things that rub me the wrong way about the nearly 48 years of Joe Biden’s political outcome, one of the most egregious was how he and former President Obama addressed Black incarceration. Sure, we know about the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill, but few of us ever discuss the case of Curtis McGhee and Terry Harrington in McGhee v. Pottawattamie County, Ia., 475 F. Supp. 2d 862. It pertained to two African American men wrongly imprisoned for 25 years who filed a lawsuit against prosecutors for fabricating evidence against them. The question was basically, do U.S. citizens who have been framed by unprincipled prosecutors for crimes they did not commit have a right to sue the prosecutors when the scheme is eventually exposed? The Obama/Biden administration said no and sent Solicitor General Elena Kagan to argue a friend of the court brief that any prosecutors must have absolute immunity from citizen lawsuits even if it includes actions considered to be illegal (fabricating incriminating evidence and hiding exculpatory evidence ) that result in innocent people being incarcerated. But this only makes sense seeing Joe Biden has described Blacks as “predators” incapable of rehabilitation and has been on record stating “What it says is, ‘In order for your child with curly black hair, brown eyes, and dark skin to be able to learn anything, he needs to sit next to my blond-haired, blue-eyed son.’ That’s racist!”

The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and his crime bill remains a concern presently. The latter not only created 60 new death penalty offenses under 41 federal capital statutes, it also got rid of education funding for incarcerated students, effectively gutting prison education efforts against success of such programs as noted in the scientific literature. To claim that he is a man of the poor and middle class is another farce given his actions earlier in this century including advocating for bankruptcy and credit card reforms that hurtlow-income consumers via the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) was passed in April, 2005. I could go on but now to why I will support Trump.

Number one, in attitude and effort, he reminds this Black man of himself. I also like the fact that he is taking on being tech and their desire to Big Brother the world via constant censoring of views they disagree with and de-platforming. It is completely against what Tunis Wortman described in his book A Treatise, concerning political enquiry and the Liberty of the Press and James Madison’s Charters written in 1792. Wortman wrote: “Of all the rights which can be attributed to man, that of communicating his sentiments is the most sacred and inestimable.” Prtecting the Bill of Rights is paramount in myy world view, as well as sustaing world peace, as the President has achieved with his Serbian/Kosovo economic normalization agreement that will go a long way towards solving this seemingly incessant conflict in the Balkans, as his historic deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

Policy wise, safe communities, great jobs, reinvesting in US manufacturing by bring vital supply chain industries back home is very important to me if we truly want to end our reliance on china, In my purview, all of these will go a long way to grow American jobs and wages. I also support his aim to end all sanctuary cities and using or federal government safety net for US citizens, Blacks folk born here only, or at least before illegal aliens. He has also kept his promise to keep us out of endless senseless wars, to bring our troops back and support our right to keep and bear arms.

He has already started building the barrier of other Southern border, signed into law a bill that will end surprise medical billing and require price transparency, signed an Executive Order to cut the price of prescription drugs, promoted school choice and provided permanent funding to HBCUs which this Morehouse graduate appreciates.

So, I fully back President Donald John Trump for these and many reasons I did not feel like articulating in sentence form. Trump over any trick the Demokkkrats trot out any day.

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Liberals Side with Illegal Immigrants over Blacks Born in America

Speaking on liberal progressive Democrats, Malcom X once stated: "The white Liberal differs from the white Conservative only in one way; the Liberal is more deceitful, more hypocritical, than the Conservative. Both want power, but the White Liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro's friend and benefactor and by winning the friendship and support of the Negro, the White Liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or a weapon in this political football game, that is constantly raging, between the White Liberals and the White Conservatives. The American Negro is nothing, but a political football." From this statement one can decipher two things: 1] that Malcom X had no love or respect for the progressive liberal left of American politics and 2] in many respect, he viewed Blacks who did in the similar vein as mindless serfs being conditioned to accept without question as their slave ancestors did.

What is ironic is what he spoke that day in 1963 is the present reality for Black America. In just 30 years, the Democratic Party has morphed into some sort of Star Trek space anomaly. When Clinton was President as well as Obama, border protection and building walls along the border was all the rage. Presently it is not and the new bevy of the Democratic mind meld are in lock step to make sure open borders are the future of America. Why? Because the Democrats are fighting for illegal aliens and have become more valuable to their ability to acquire and maintain power, that they have replaced African Americans on their hierarchy of political social Darwinism.

Everywhere one looks Blacks are taken a second place behind illegal immigrants. One of the biggest places we see this is in the criminal justice system. Take California for example. Since the late 1980s, activist in California were trying to obtain government funding to assist in reducing over crowing in jails and hire more public defenders.  The funding was never available according to law makers. The tune is different today because funding is being cut for public defenders in California while inordinate funds are being found to protect the rights of criminal illegal aliens. Last year in California, lawmakers approved $45 million to expand legal services for immigrants to assist more than 2 million people living in the state illegally and to protect them from deportations. Two years before that, the state put in place a “sanctuary state” bill to expand “sanctuary city policies, prohibiting state and local law enforcement agencies, including school police and security departments, from using resources to investigate, interrogate, detain, detect or arrest people for immigration enforcement purposes.”

This is happening all across the country. Recently in Denver Mayor Michael Hancock announced plans to set aside hundreds of thousands of dollars to form an immigrant legal defense program and similar efforts are being introduced in San Francisco and Seattle. In Washington State a bill was just passed that prohibits discrimination by employers and landlords “based on citizenship or immigration status.” As one writer and radio host put it: “In other words, if an employer had two equally-qualified candidates to choose from — one a citizen and one an illegal immigrant who had been deported several times — and the employer hired the citizen, this could be grounds for a lawsuit on the immigrant’s behalf…Under Washington state law, they would have the right to a cause of action against that employer if they were discriminated against because of their legal status...Now federal law might come in and have something to say about that, but this is what Washington state law would say.”

I do not mind helping people but I do expect US citizens should come first. In California, Blacks are suffering yet are being ignored. Although Black people in California are just 9 percent of the population of Los Angeles County, yet are nearly 40 percent of the homelessness. The same is true for San Francisco. The research results are startling. While 5 to 6 percent of San Francisco’s population is black, more than 40 percent of the city’s homeless population is black.

Albeit I am focused on race, on the micro level, on the macro level all American citizens loose when our resources are not used for the tax payers that provide them. Clearly Democrats have other interest than serving the people born in America, and have all but relegated the Black vote to side chick status, fact is US policy should focus on US citizens and the working men and women who want access to opportunity and a safe place to live. This is only possible if we address illegal immigration. Economically, it has been estimated that Illegal immigration costs taxpayers in all 50 states approximately $90 billion. In California it cost $12.3 billion to educate the children of illegal immigrants annually in grades K-12.

The progressive focus on taking care of criminal illegal aliens severely impacts outcomes for the worse in the African American community. First most illegal aliens come to America with very few years of schooling. This means they will likely end up in low-paying wage jobs. Not only will this put them in competition with poor blacks in the US with similar educational attributes but also other immigrants who came to the US before them. Thus with a larger pool of low skilled workers, wages will go down because there will be a surplus of workers to jobs. This point was hammered by then-chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, the late great Barbara Jordan of Texas in 1994 when she testified before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. She stated: "Unlawful immigration is unacceptable. … Failure to develop more effective strategies to curb unlawful immigration has blurred distinctions between legal and illegal immigrants. ... The Commission is particularly concerned about the impact of immigration on the most disadvantaged within our already resident society — inner city youth, racial and ethnic minorities, and recent immigrants who have not yet adjusted to life in the U.S."

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, recently said that "We are a nation and land of laws, not just [one where] some people are subject to laws and others are not." This maybe the only time to date I have agreed with her. However, I wonder why this isn’t the standard with respect illegal immigration? Because Black people are not reproducing enough to provide them with the unconditional and unearned votes we give them. Through democratic supported eugenic genocide in the form of abortions and Planned Parenthood, Blacks just do have as many children as the used to. And if democrats get their way for a mother to be able to decide to murder a child after it has been born, our population will really start to evaporate. This is one reason why AOC support people not having more children – just bring them over from 2000 miles below the Mexican border already made. Yes, in 2019, Liberals side with illegal immigrants over Blacks born in America, for criminal illegal aliens are the new black.

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Video: How Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton Restarted the African Slave Trade in Libya

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Not Monetary Policy, Rather the NFL and ESPN

The pulse of Black America these days appears to be controlled by several issues, none of which have any true impact on improving the present status quo of the African American community. These include Cam Newton's (seemingly innocents) comment regarding route running, the constant displeasure and anger toward President Donald Trump’s oral attacks against multi-million dollar celebrities associated with professional sports (namely Jemele Hill, LeBron James, & Colin Kaepernick)  and others who have decided to make a stand for (or knee) for whatever reason they say. Sure there is the occasional racist confederate statue and promoted albeit unsubstantiated Russian hacking of the US 2016 Presidential election, but anything that involves policy that could possibly actually assist in empowering the black community economically such as US monetary policy, not a whisper.

To be fair, maybe monetary policy or even fiscal policy are areas not to many African Americans take the time to understand, or maybe they feel it is too difficult a subject to comprehend. Whatever the case, you are more likely to see sincerely emotionally based thought-out gobbledygook on some stupid ish LeBron James said, or on how heterosexual black men are the white men of black people, or how Jemele Hill was right, than the previous. I would expect that a lot of cats know the difference between monetary and fiscal policy, but just in case they dont, I will attempt to explain the two, outline how a lack of focused attention on monetary policy is a slow death of the African American community and how can we change our attitudes such that we focus on tangible political issues instead of cosmetic subjects typical of identity politics that do nothing but aid in divide and conquering everybody.

Fiscal policy is a way a government adjusts its spending levels and tax rates to influence a nation's economy. Examples of this can be observed when the government implements tax cuts. Monetary policy is a macroeconomic policy put in place by central banks like the Federal Reserve designed to control and/or manage the money supply and interest rate. By macroeconomic, I am referring to general economic factors, such as interest rates and national productivity, which in theory can aid in dealing with consumption, inflation and even the Gross domestic product (overall productivity). Some common examples of monetary policy deals with regulating the discount rate of borrowing or lending and purchasing of government securities – all of which are ways the Federal Reserve in this instance, can control the country's money supply. Thus use of the noun money.

For all practical purposes, current US monetary policy is crushing the black community. Sure it has the stock markets at all-time highs (which for the record I benefit from) and has so far created the 2nd longest bull market run in history,  but it hasn’t resulted in any improvement in the economic capacity of the average black person in America. For us, it has yielded a period of wage stagnation even with the supposedly reduction in the national unemployment rate producing economic inequality levels we ain’t had since before the Great Depression. This is even after all the stuff Bush and Obama did based on the request of the Federal Reserve, supposedly to help Main Street (Quantitative Easing, TARP, and the bailouts of Bear Stearns, AIG, and GM). Overall, the median household before-tax incomes have fallen from near $55,000 to $53,000 presently, which means it is even worse for African Americans.

So far, Fed monetary policy has widened the employment gap for prime-age African Americans and whites. Plus, Blacks tend to slightly (if at all), participates in the financial markets, which over the past 8 years have served to mostly advantage the upper 10%. All of which is primarily determined by Federal Reserve’s monetary interventions. Although progressives like Obama and the mainstream media’s  assert that Federal Reserve policies thattarget full employment benefits African-Americans, it is not clear to how this can be the case when there is no evidence of this (albeit Obama said it was), or to support that specific unemployment for certain ethnic racial groups are considered when they formulate and implement monetary policy.

Since 2000 the African-American unemployment rate has been double the white unemployment rate with the unemployment rate of African-American teens being more than six times higher than the overall white unemployment rate.  Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve Board Chair even said that the US central bank was basically powerless to do anything specifically to tackle high unemployment rates in the black community. 

More to this point, Former Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota conducted research on the minutes and transcripts of the central bank’s meetings and found no referencesto the African American unemployment. This was in 2010 and searches for 2008 and 2009 detailed a similar result – at a time when African Americans were disparately being hard hit by the foreclosures when the housing bubble burst. The mortgage crisis in concert with the 2008 economic slump devastated 47 percent of black families’ wealth, wealth which has yet to be recovered.

With 80% of Americans on average earning less than $50,000 and one in two making less than $30,000 annually, it appears that US monetary policy is either tone death or designed to serve the top 10 percent. In some places, especially urban areas and major cities, the unemployment rate is for African-American men between the ages of 18 and 37 is nearly 40 percent unemployment and near 50 percent in cities like Chicago, Baltimore and even Atlanta.

Until the Federal Reserve factor in the experience of black economic conditions when developing and implementing monetary policy, nothing will change. But this won’t change until we who suffer by foul and ineffective monetary policy become more knowledgeable of the issue and remove ourselves from the ridiculous and mundane things we claim to be the most outraged with. Sure they recovery is strong, but only for a small segment of the population, for the average African American it has mainly worsened economic inequities. So forgive me if the removal of a statue, or some millionaire paid to play a kids game is mad supposedly due to police brutality aint that important to me.  I’m mad at this too, but I’m equally upset with the 538 murders and 2,913 shootings in Chicago to date (maybe even more) than the  329 whites, 165 blacks,112 Hispanics killed by police thus far according to the Washington Post. The prior of which is more a function of economic reality of actually failed monetary policy than a rebel flag. But that is just me.

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The Snap, Crackle & Pop of Susan Rice

Now I don’t watch the Sunday network talk shows, but I do get to read the transcripts.  I was sent one via email from a friend of mine on Susan Rice’s appearance on the Sunday talk show hosted by Former Bill Clinton Press Secretary George Stephanopoulos.  My friend was cracking up and couldn’t stop laughing. Now for the record I like Susan Rice, I may not agree with her often, but I do like her (nothing like a smart black woman to make me smile). I digress. Nonetheless, it was obvious the powers that be on the mainstream media wanted or needed to get former Ambassador Susan Rice into the collective unconscious of the public left.

From reading the transcript, the first thing that jumped out was that Stephanopoulos was tossing former Ambassador Rice under hand softball pitches or even worse, setting the ball on the T for her to hit without much difficulty. The set up (as has been the case since the presidential primary), is to first use a few of Trump tweets like they were chum (fish parts, bone and blood) to attract the anger and lure Ambassador Rice like a shark to the Trump smell. This is followed by the introduction of the Great White or Tiger Shark they are baiting (chumming) for: this time it being the person who served as national security adviser and UN ambassador under President Obama. His first question, referring to the commixture of tweets pertained to how alarmed should we be because of the recent terrorist attacks in London? Rice gave the basic scripted Benghazi type answer: “We need to remain very focused on dealing with that threat. But at the same time, we need to recognize that there will be homegrown extremists in all our countries. And there is no easy way to predict and defeat every single one of them.” 

Stephanopoulos’s next question was pure chum. "You heard the president say that travel ban would bring an extra level of safety. Your response?”

RICE: “Well, George, there's really no evidence to suggest that by banning Muslims or banning Muslims from a particular set of six countries that we would make ours here in the United States safer. And that's, I believe, one of the major reasons why the courts thus far have been very skeptical of the travel ban. Moreover, I think there's a very real risk that by stigmatizing and isolating Muslims from particular countries and Muslims in general that we alienate the very communities here in the United States whose cooperation we most need to detect and prevent these homegrown extremists from being able to carry out the attacks.”

Yes, that is correct, targeting the same predominantly Muslim nations Obama did in 2011 would only result in the “real risk that by stigmatizing and isolating Muslims from particular countries and Muslims in general that we alienate the very communities here in the United States.” It would be easy to conclude then that Obama’s slowing down of refugees and the level of Iraqi resettlement, would have resulted in the same. Now both programs are different, but it is the logic (or illogic) that sticks out as peculiar.

His next line of questioning briefly (and I mean briefly) addressed leaks.  From reading the transcript and lack of follow-up by Stephanopoulos it was clear he did not want to accidently ask her about possible leaks and unmasking by Obama administration appointees so he deftly moved to the next subject which was her critique of President Trump published in The New York Times. Stephanopoulos stated, “… one of the things you wrote is that Russia has been a big winner under President Trump. How so?”

RICE: "Well, George, the United States has been the leader of the world because the world trusts and respects us, because we have an unprecedented network of alliances with close partners that work with us, whether it's to defeat ISIS, whether it's to deal with a threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon, or to go after challenges of a new sort like pandemic disease or climate change. We need these partners. And when we alienate our western allies, when the president went to NATO and failed to reaffirm, as every president has since 1948, that we're committed and remain committed to the defense of our NATO partners, he sent shockwaves through Europe. And that is exactly what Vladimir Putin wants. Because Putin's interests, as he reaffirmed just on Friday, is to see NATO weakened and ultimately destroyed. And when the United States, the most important player in NATO, casts doubt about our commitment to that vital alliance, it undermines our security. It undermines the security of our closest allies. And it's a big win for Vladimir Putin.”

Now what is missing from this response you might ask? For starters, it is questionable if the prior administration tried to or wanted to go after ISIS. Obama did call them the JV team and blamed everyone in the universe (Bush, the second amendment & even global warming) for his not recognizing them as a threat.  In fact, Obama was occupied with Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden so much so that he basically breast fed ISIS into existence with his policy of unilateral invasion of Libya under the dress of NATO. Which reminds us of how poorly he and Rice responded to the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens. Moreover, the concept that Iran as a major nuclear threat is also laughable given that they are still on the path and the deal negotiated by team Obama does nothing to prevent them from becoming a nuclear power. Not to mention the illegal and off the record $1.7 billion payment to Iran in 2016 made entirely in cash, with non-U.S. currency.

When asked about President Putin, Rice quickly responded that “he's lying” and that "The reality is, …the Russian government, at the highest levels, was behind the very unprecedented effort to meddle in our 2016 presidential election.” Continuing she said, “Russia is an adversary. Russia not only has invaded a sovereign country and annexed part of it in Ukraine and Crimea [After Obama orchestrated coup]. It's not only in cahoots with a regime in Syria that uses chemical weapons [yet to be proven], it has interfered directly and deliberately at the direction of the highest levels of its government in our democratic process…That is a threat to the integrity of our democracy. That's a threat to our country on a bipartisan basis. And we need to hold Russia accountable.”

Who else to know if someone is lying than the always honest Susan Rice who had the gumption to go on national television and lie to hundreds of millions of U.S. citizens and people around the globe when on one news show she said: “Based on the best information we have to date, what our assessment is at present is in fact what began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy, sparked by this hateful video.…We do not — we do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned. I think it’s clear that there were extremist elements that joined in and escalated the violence. Whether they were al-Qaeda affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based extremists or al-Qaeda itself I think is one of the things we’ll have to determine.”

Again Stephanopoulos let her hit the pitch right up the middle of the field without making a play on the ball. Without a transition, it was easy for him too move to the next point of liberal discontent – when he asked, “Would it have been appropriate for Jared Kushner to have a back-channel during the transition? Your successor, General McMaster, has suggested there's nothing wrong with it.”

RICE: "Well, George, I think, these reports, if accurate, are concerning, not just because of communication between the Trump transition and the Russian government, and we do have communications between transition teams and foreign governments, but rarely with adversaries like the Russians, and rarely with the frequency that we have seen. But what I found most concerning about that report, which, if true, is that Jared Kushner suggested to the Russian ambassador that they communicate using Russian communications in a Russian diplomatic facility to hide their conversation from the United States government. That's extraordinary, if not mind-boggling from the point of view of a national security professional. I have worked in this field for 25 years. And I have never heard of such a thing. The United States -- and from one administration to the next -- has one government, one president at a time. And we worked very hard to do a professional and effective handoff. A seamless one. We worked very hard in this transition to accomplish that and to do so transparently.”

This was probably the most historically inaccurate and artfully mendacious crock of Buffalo feces of the entire interview. First communication alone is not as heinous as Rice makes it out to regardless of who is President or what country it is, even Russia. And the part about advisories is either the result of a historically ill-informed person or a calculated lie.

After the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, his future national security adviser Henry Kissinger set up a back-channel to contact and communicate with the Soviet leadership via a known KGB operative named Boris Sedov, whom Kissinger had come to know from interactions at Harvard. Even before Nixon, FDR’s used a long time fried Harry Hopkins as a go between the U.S., U.K. and Stalin. Only difference was that Roosevelt was President at the time. Then there’s Obama’s backchannel fiasco with Iran which occurred in 2008 while he was running for president in which prior to even being elected, his staff established secret communications with the Iranian leadership using William Miller to relay how they planned to interact with Iran if Obama was elected.

I don’t know if Rice believes what she says in interviews or rather if she just like hearing herself talk. One thing for certain is that she has a short memory span and here knowledge of history is suspect or intentionally confined. I mean, the Obama administration and the democrats went from loving Russia to hating Russia and calling the nation the greatest threat in the world when just a little while back it wasn't.

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After Mosul, Will it be Erdogan or The Kurds?

This past week President Tayyip Erdogan had a meeting with President Trump. As observed before when he met with President Obama, once again his goons took to beating up and violently attacking protestors.  But this is not important for the time being, what is pertains to the Trump administration plans for after the Mosul offensive and even ridding Syria of IS.  This is valid for my main botheration with Obama was his failure to plan for what was to occur after the implementation of any of his foreign policy escapades from Yemen to Syria to the South Sudan and especially in Libya.

Unlike the prior administration, I can note that Trump seems to be engaged with the issues but I am not so certain that he grasps the seriousness of a fallout between Erdogan and Turkey and/or the US and the Kurds.  Something must give and I am not at rest that President Trump, as Obama before him, is ready for this. And he is the one who opened this can of worms when his administration announced that the U.S. would back, arm and support the Kurds in their effort against the Islamic State and to show he was about that life, the Trump Defense Department immediately sent military vehicles with American flags to the YPG fighters engaged in combat activities on the Syrian side of the border.

As expected Erdogan was not happy and expressed such through one of his many mouth pieces this time being one of his top foreign policy advisers İlnur Çevik. Cevik expressed succinctly the differences between Washington and Ankara over the U.S. military’s partnership with Kurdish military organizations in Syria by hinting that American troops could be targeted alongside their Kurdish allies in the country since U.S. forces have teamed up with members of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and since Turkish fighter’s patrol along the border region with Syria frequently bombing the YPG who they see more of an enemy than IS. Specifically, Cevik stated that if the U.S. troops would "go to far, our forces would not care if American armor is there, whether armored carriers are there" adding that “Suddenly, by accident, a few rockets can hit them.”

It was a simple choice for Trump based on all he has been talking about wiping the Islamic State off the face of the planet. Easy also because the YPG have shown themselves to be one of the most effective forces on the ground in the fight against IS next to the Syrian Defense Forces. Moreover, most Kurds are Sunni Muslims, however, they consider themselves Kurds first, and Muslims second, and don't want to be absorbed into a universal caliphate or equally any affiliation with Sharia law. Also of importance is that the Kurds are the most pro-American people in the entire Middle East and believe and acknowledge equal right for women.

The fact is northern Syria  has a large Kurdish population which for decades, Turkey has viewed a major political threat due to the mounting influence of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in the region.  Erdogan was hoping the US-YPG alliance which President Barack Obama started would be discontinued under Trump. But it has not and he made this clear in an interview in which he stated that seeing US military vehicles operating close to the border with Syrian Kurdish fighters "seriously saddened" him.

The Kurdish and US soldiers who support them are during an offensive to take Raqqa, ISIS’s Syrian capital, and have recently made significant gains against the extremists in the region but recent attacks by Turkey against Kurdish areas in Syria are hampering the offensive against ISIS. Erdogan doesn’t want the YPG or the PYD to be the leading powers in Syria’s Kurdistan region and sees both as part of the PKK.

To understand this one must understand the Kurds in the region (Iraq, Syria and Turkey). Erdogan’s forces are fighting the Turkish Kurds (The PKK or Banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party led by Abdullah Ocalan who was jailed in 1999 with the help of U.S. CIA) and Erdogan is extremely hostile with the Syrian Kurds (the PYD or Democratic Unity Party) who are aligned with the PKK and have their own militia called the YPG. Last there are the Kurds in Iraq who have established a Kurdish Regional Government since the US invasion/occupation of Iraq and who have their own military forces called the Peshmerga. All three Kurdish areas are fighting IS, but all are considered problems to Erdogan. The Turks want to destroy the PKK and its affiliates, as well as the YPG.  They consider them to be the same or equal to ISIS – terrorist. This is what the U.S. and Russia equally must syphon through because Erdogan sees the possible defeat of IS in Raqqa by the Kurds and U.S. forces as major political leverage for the YPG.

When the Turkish State was founded in the aftermath of WWI, the Kurds were promised the creation of an independent state as part of the treaty of Sevres in 1920. Unfortunately for them, this part of the treaty was never ratified and Turkey has refused to recognize the existence of a separate Kurdish ethnic community within its borders.  Upon which several major Kurdish rebellions occurred in Kurdish strongholds in Turkey during the 1920s and 1930s. Since then the Turkish ruling class began viewing a separate Kurdish identity as a threat to the nation-state - Turkification.

Now, Turkey has become one of the world's largest and most powerful Muslim fundamentalist states. I say this because it is well known that Erdogan’s administration (maybe with the exceptions of the Saudi’s) is the main state sponsor of ISIS. Add to this that Erdogan is an Islamist that embraces Muslim fundamentalism to the level of even destroying the last bits of democracy in Turkey to eradicate all Kurdish people so that he can establish a new Ottoman Empire for Turks and only Turks.  Now, it is estimated that around fifteen million individuals of Kurdish origin live in Turkey who under the present leadership of the Republic, have been treated worse than a second-class citizenry.

Trump and Putin know that they NEED the YPG to continue with its fight against the Islamic State. Although the U.S. has maintained good relations for the past seven decades, the war on ISIS has led the Pentagon to decide that it is the best interest of the U.S. to work with Kurdish forces if the objective is to defeat ISIS. Thus, the conflict: the U.S. want to work with the Kurds on the ground in Syria effort to take Raqqa (the headquarters of ISIS) but Turkey doesn’t want this thinking that it with give them more clout with the current U.S. administration.

Like Obama (called Erdogan a trusted friend), Trump underestimates Erdogan's hatred of the Kurdish minority and the level of his support of ISIS.  Trump must decide if its relationship with the Kurds in Syria is a temporary relationship of opportuneness until IS is defeated or is the beginning of something new? Something new that could lead to an independent Kurdistan? Erdogan wouldn't be happy about it, but he'd accept this from the U.S. and I believe that is his main concern. After all, we saw what he did after the strong electoral might of the Kurdish party that prevented a parliamentary majority of Erdogan's AKP in June's election. 

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Neoliberalism or How to Pimp the Underclass in Six Syllables

For long as I can recall, at least after the civil rights era, the economic prosperity in the African American community has been on the decline. Ironically this started under the purview of a new approach to economics trumpeted to be the end all and be all to the problems (economic and civil) that confronted the U.S. since the end of the Vietnam war. This is what it was supposed to be but what it became was a new-fangled form of lassez-faire policy that to date, has serve to retard economic growth and increased disparities in wealth and income inequality in the U.S. and worldwide.

You got it, I am speaking about neoliberalism. I have defined neoliberalism policy as policy that transfers controls of economic factors from the public sector to the private sector. Neoliberals rather in the form of Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, Tony Blair or The Clinton’s assert that economic and foreign policy that removes trade barriers and restrictions on capital flows is the best thing you can do to create job growth, economic prosperity, wealth and more importantly, eliminate or at least, lift folk out of poverty. Although apolitical, after the 80s, democrats (social democrats in France, Labor in England & Democrats in the U.S.) used this ideology to usher in and promote their views on domestic and foreign policy. A strange occurrence, since historically, these political parties were framed as being the representative of the little man, main street, the factory worker and union member. Establishing neoliberal free market foreign and domestic would mean that the democrats would not have to work with the vulture class.  This meant forming more relationships with the elite and wealth of the big cities more so than the lowly farmers of the Midwest or miners in other states.  Even in urban areas, it meant economic ostracization for minority communities until it was time to secure their vote.

This alone demanded that Democrats listen and accept more ideas from the wealthy and affluent, and it has been the same since Tony Blair and the Clinton’s. Although democrats proclaim their policies serve progressive and liberal objectives, the harsh reality is that the do not. They have led to the destruction of unions and reduction in collective bargaining rights while they claim to be the party of the working class.  They have tightened relationships with the white-collar elite and for taking their money, have put in place policy that has help to suppress wages and wage growth.  These policies have also resulted in the ruination of the auto industry as we have witnessed in Detroit. But they did not stop there.  Starting with Bill Clinton, they even deregulated banks and had the gumption to tell the working poor that their situation was due to education, while rich liberals ignore the fact that even going to college, whether one finishes with a degree or not results in most African Americans having amassed nearly two times the amount of student loan debt than whites. Even Obama and other black establishment cats representing the democratic party got in on the act preaching the same credo asserting a culture of poverty argument that basically suggest that black are poor and need to go to college. As if all our problems are due more to having a poor education, than the neoliberal policies they unabatingly advance.

With Obama and his neoliberal economic locution, African American unemployment is still two times that of white unemployment. Economic disparity between whites and blacks has grown wider since his election and African American median income has fallen more than 10 percent with 26 percent of Black households being considered “food insecure.” Since Obama took office, the seasonally adjusted labor-force-participation rate for black Americans across the board has declined and the number of black food-stamp participants has increased more than 50 percent. Add to this that the percentage of black Americans who own homes has declined sharply and that real median income among black households based on data from your Census Bureau has also declined.  This means a higher poverty rates for blacks since 2008, a reduction in the number of young black men with full-time employment and an increase in median white wealth providing them with more income at a pace way surpassing that of blacks under your administration. Maybe this is why it has been determined that single African American women ages 36 to 49 have a median wealth of $5. This is without me even mentioning the paltry rate of GDP growth since you took office.  To put it bluntly, the economic liberalism of the Obama era was just a more murderous form of Reagan – unfettered (legal or illegal) immigration was encouraged and a blind eye was turn to both corporate tax evasion via overseas accounts and the activity of criminal banker activity on Wall Street.

All the can be connected in a causal manner to policy put in place by folk (99% democratic progressive liberals) elected to office or thought leaders, by the poor and working class black folk who have been distressed by said policies. Again, plainly put poverty and racism has only got worse during Obama’s tenure. Obama and democrats love to tout a higher minimum wage as being a solution but never answer how is this possible, when even with a higher wage, you cannot be sure that cats will give folk the hours they need just to get by let alone move out of poverty? How can this solve any economic issues sustained for blacks since democrats came to power during the post-civil-rights era and with democrats still pushing for capitalist globalization that has had a disproportionately negative influence on African Americans over the past 40 to 50 years? How can this help when 95% of the jobs created during the Obama Presidency were temporary? And don’t say because we talk about education because the reality is that African Americans with some college education have higher unemployment rates than whites who never went to college or even completed high school?

It was President Obama in 2014 that stated "if Uncle Jethro would get off the couch and stop watching Sports Center and go register some folks and go to the polls, we might have a different kind of politics." This in a nut shell is neoliberalism, who's efficacy that even the IMF is starting to question. A philosophy which states we get rich if you vote for us and us alone while you black folk will remain restricted to unstable low wage service sector jobs (which are vanishing) and represent the fastest growing population of homeless in the U.S., women and children. This is one reason why economic position of African Americans have not changed since democrats began to represent all major urban areas since the mid-1960s. If I am wrong, then why have schools failed to improve and have been on a downward trend since then?  Why have long-term job prospects in these same places decreased and even disappeared since then? Neoliberalism has never been shown to have been effective or even work in the real world, especially when it comes to improving the economic conditions of blacks regardless of location of residency. So, I ask you, why support a party that takes your vote and destroys your community and ability to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Riddle me that Batman.

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Bush, Obama & Trump Middle East Policy is one in the same

I have attempted to stay out of the fray regarding what has just happened in Syria.  It is almost as if Obama is still in Office and as if Trump has turned into Obama in the same fashion Obama turned into Bush. For all I know Trump is putting together a secret “kill list” like his predecessor and continuing Obama’s drone strike assassination program. I have read some interesting perspectives on this topic and agree with many of them.  For example, Norman Solomon’s suggesting that all this incessant Russian bashing may have been used to ‘bait’ Trump to bomb Syria, with or without evidence. I also agree with MIT professor of Science, Technology, and International Security Dr. Theodore Postol in his assessment of the White House report noting that it provides no evidence that the Sarin came from or was dropped from an Airplane and that without being on the ground at the time such a position is impossible to prove given Assad’s advantage in his battle against IS and other western supported terrorist proxies. For lack of a better statement, to use the words of Mike Whitney, “You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that the case against Syrian President Bashar al Assad is extremely weak.” Or as the free-thinking cats at MOA have pointed out, the White House “assessment” begins with "The United States is confident that the Syrian government conducted a chemical weapon attack, ..." noting that “The U.S…. does not have"proof" - it is just "confident".” And returning to Dr. Postol, he was also correct in 2013 when he disproved the Obama Administration uninformed position that Assad was responsible for a chemical nerve agent attack in Damascus.  My question is will Trump be another Obama with respect to Foreign policy in West Asia and use his war powers even out there past Obama? Will he engage in even more unjustified and clandestine wars in the same way Bush and Obama did by targeting even more majority-Muslim countries?

Let us begin with some historical perspective. The west has had its eye on Syria for decades now.  Although many would assert it started with a 1949 coup attemp timplemented by the CIA just 3 years after Syria became an independent country, I would suggest it started after WW1 in 1919 and continued up until the Franco-Syrian war initially. Specifically, after the implementation of the Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916 - which cut up what was left of the Ottoman Empire between France and Britain. The war itself happened in 1920 ending in a victory for the French and the formation of a new pro-French government. This resulted in Syria being divided in to several regions according to religion. This is an important historical event because it appears the object of current western interference and the call for regime change in the nation has a similar objective.

In addition, history shows us that the objective of these efforts was to dominate and control the rich natural resources (oil and natural gas) in the region. As early as 1957 President Eisenhower and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan were making plans to establish and support financially the establishment of what they called a “Free Syria Committee” for the singular purpose of regime change in Syria to try and control the oil fields of not only Syria but also Iraq. There was no real geopolitical reason for this other than the desire of the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) to build a Trans-Arabian Pipe Line (TAPLINE) from Saudi Arabia to the Mediterranean via Syria through to Turkey. This required a “Syrian right-of-way” to be agreed upon without input from the Syrian people of course.

Unfortunately, the efforts of the west resulted in making a divide between Shiite and Sunni that has been going on since the seventh century even worse especially if one considers that Shiites are the majority in Iran and Iraq, and are the largest Muslim group in Lebanon and their lands include what many consider the richest oil fields in the entirety of the Middle East. 

These efforts have only increased and intensified over the past few decades with regime change in Syria being priority. First a unified Syria stands in the way of policy objectives in the region to numerous and nuanced to discuss (US interests both in Lebanon and preventing the establishment of an Iraq’s pipeline to the Mediterranean for example). We know this because recently unclassified documents show that the CIA even made plans to use Iraq, Israel and Turkey as proxies in 1983 to pressure the Syrian government by using covert military actions just to establish a pipeline. Although this didn’t manifest, it did not prevent the CIA from continuing to try for in 1986 they drew up some more ideas to overthrow Syria by provoking sectarian tensions (does this sound familiar?). The same policy goals were desired again in 1991 and in 2001.

What we see now - with the supposed “civil war” in Syria - has been years in the making and the recent efforts of ISIS and other terrorist extremist (all supported by the West and Saudi Arabia) may have finally come to fruition after hard work put in by the British government according to former French foreign minister Roland Dumas who is on record saying that he got it from the horse’s mouth that “top British officials” were in the process of arming Sunni nationals “to invade Syria” in 2009 – two years before the anti-Assad protest. Then there is what then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in 2012: that the best way to help Israel deal with Iranis to help overthrow Bashar Assad.

So it seems that President Trump is no different than Obama or Bush or his democratic opponent Hillary Clinton and their desire to use any excuse to make bankers and oil giants the benefactors of the wealth to be generated by a divided Syria without Assad at the helm.  Chemical weapons like WMDs in Iraq, was contrived as an excuse to justify their goals.  I mean we know that Turkey supplied Sarin gas to Syrian rebels in 2013in order to frame the Syrian government. We also know that independent Humanitarian organizations have documented that ISIS has used chemical weapons, including Sarin, chlorine and sulfur mustard agents, at least 52 times on the battlefield in Syria and Iraq since 2014.

We also know that just like the Bush Administration, Hillary Clinton and Obama cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government to fund and arm clandestine operations designed to take down Iran and its ally Syria  by encouraging Sunni extremist groups that not only champion a militant view of Islam but are also are anti-America and sympathetic to ISIS and Al Qaeda. All which seem to be from extremist Islamic fundamentalist groups with origins in or connections to Saudi Arabia. 

In all sincerity, the west, as in Yemen, is backing the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, Sunni’s who are an openly admitted group that considers the U.S. and of Israel as lifelong enemies. By bombing Assad, we are basically s one writer put it serving as the ISIS/Al Qaeda Air force. This in my opinion, is no different that when Barack Obama invaded Libya without Congressional approval in 2011.  Trump clearly is no different and seems to take his marching orders from the neoconservatives and neoliberals who won’t be happy until a major U.S. military intervention happens in Syria (and other places) even if it means a confrontation with Russia and/or China. You may question my analysis but for what it is worth, NSC adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster is no dissimilar than Hillary Clinton, Victoria Nuland, or Nuland’s husband – Robert Kagen on this matter.

Again as I asked in the beginning of this essay, is Trump any different than Bush or Obama? I suspect not. As one writer pointed out: “I don’t think that anybody seriously believes that Assad or anybody else in the Syrian government really ordered a chemical weapons attack on anybody.  To believe that it would require you to find the following sequence logical: first, Assad pretty much wins the war against Daesh which is in full retreat.  Then, the US declares that overthrowing Assad is not a priority anymore (up to here this is all factual and true).  Then, Assad decides to use weapons he does not have.  He decides to bomb a location with no military value, but with lots of kids and cameras.  Then, when the Russians demand a full investigation, the Americans strike as fast as they can before this idea gets any support.  And now the Americans are probing a possible Russian role in this so-called attack.  Frankly, if you believe any of that, you should immediately stop reading and go back to watching TV.”

I remember the Gulf of Tonkin and other major U.S. lies to justify war like the one in 1970 when our government lied to the American people and said, “We didn’t cross the border going into Cambodia” when in fact we did. Former UK ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford, was correct in his assessment equally when he said like Libya, Syria will "implode" if President Assad was removed from office period. Not to mention bombing Syria does nothing to provide humanitarian relief and merely distracts the world from the West supported atrocities in Yemen, Mosul and the South Sudan.

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Obamacare: A Farrago of a Mess

On Monday, I read the transcripts from the Sunday morning talk shows.  One comment that struck a tone with me that I read was from Laura Ingraham.  Now honestly, albeit an intelligent person, I rarely agree with her observations but this time I did. She gave an apt description of Obamacare as a “libertine mess of a piece of legislation.” I wanted to name this essay exactly this, however fearing copyright challenges, I came up with my own title of a similar nature

Regardless if you call it the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, the fact is that for the vast majority of Americans, in particular the ones that lost coverage and now have higher premiums and deductibles, the foul side effects and unplanned imports have not been received well. Admittedly, no new government program is going to be completely perfect and however laudable a desire as it is to provide health insurance to millions that do not have any coverage, the reality is that health benefit mandates and willy-nilly rating rules significantly increase health insurance costs, and as a result are passed on to consumers.

I don’t mind saying it, but I predicted all of this years ago. It began with, from the very start, when President Obama kept on saying that American families would experience an annual reduction of $2,500 in their health costs if his law was passed. This would be mathematically impossible unless some extreme assumptions could be made and they were. The biggest being one of structure given that the ACA doesn’t even address the cost of health coverage. It is easy to make sweeping statements when the direct object of a statement (cost of health insurance coverage) isn’t even spoken about in the legislation. Another and more problematic aspect of the law is that Obamacare can only work the manner stated if cats participate in the“individual mandate.” If you don’t then fear the tax and be fined either greater of 2.5 percent of your household’s taxable income or $695 per uninsured adult and $347.50 per uninsured child in your family. This flat fee rate will increase each year with inflation. The assumption here was that if employer and employee insurance costs were greatly reduced, then that would have a direct, outcome on citizens in the form of the aforementioned $2500 per year for the average family. Maybe this is why then President Obama stated that his law would “not burden people who make $250,000 a year or less,” or why he said that the ACA would not add “a dime” to the federal deficit. 

None of what has thus far been presented has occurred. What has is that it has been estimated that the ACA will cost about $1.34 trillion over the next decade and that Obamacare’s tax penalty connected with the individual mandate thus far falls more on lower-income and lower-middle-income individuals/families since subsidies for deductibles and other costs for income-eligible persons enrolled in the exchanges are available only to enrollees who select certain level health plans, which means that the plan must pay 70 percent of the average enrollee’stotal medical expenses for covered benefits. This in itself defeats the purpose of having insurance.

Economics side, another problem for many, myself included is that Obamacare abrogates individual and personal freedom not only by limiting choices but by allowing the government to make you to participate by buying insurance for not obeying the law. Almost every main decision in the health care sector of the American economy under the ACA is in the hands openly or ultimately, by federal officials – unelected federal officials.

But if you participate, you give up most of the liberty us as individuals connect with choice and medical freedom. Just take the Obamacare's Independent Advisory Board (IPAB) for example. This allows for the ACA to create a 15-member panel of experts that determining the type of care that Medicare pays for on behalf of the individual and consequently rations Medicare through price controls for that individual – whatever they decide you are stuck with. Why, because under Title I, federal officials define the content of health insurance coverage, including but not limited to obligatory medical actions, treatment and preventive health care services.  Then there is the large long-term care program called the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act. As early as five years ago we knew many of the components of the legislation were not practical or affordable. The Obama Administration’s from the start knew that the CLASS act was not financially feasible, but wanted it and so kept the program anyway.

In summary, the ACA has increased costs for individuals,families, and businesses and unlike proponents of the bill claimed, instead the American people have come to hate the bill more and more. Not only is it worsening America's debt problem, federal spending on healthcare is also increasing which some believe will result in trillion-dollar deficits in seven years' time. The Congressional Budget Office has indicated that U.S. Federal debt could be as high as $30 trillion by 2030, as a consequence of Obamacare. Don’t even include the absence of insurance options under Obamacare or the failing co-ops. Large insurance providers like Blue Cross Blue Shield, United Healthcare and Aetna are all leaving the exchanges and several states have only one insurer providing insurance through Obamacare. Less competition in the exchanges only means higher premiums and deductibles cost and less consumer choice (this is the law of supply and demand).

But such should have been expected, I mean congress had not even read the bill or given the chance to read the bill before being forced to vote on it. But folk still stick up for Obama care.  But to me, a woman over 70 should not be forced to purchase prostate cancer or maternity coverage if she doesn’t have a prostate gland and can’t have a baby.  But folk like this cat seem to don’t get this. How would you feel if you paid the same price for auto insurance as a person with 3 DUI’s? The ACA is truly a hodgepodge, mishmash jumble of confusion - a  Farrago for lack of a better word.

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Puzzy Lemonade Outrage or Do Blacks Care About Anything Besides Beyoncé?

Years ago there was a little girl, she operated a lemonade and candy stand, her name was Heaven Sutton. She isn’t with us anymore because she was gunned down in her front yard.  Now years later the names of children killed by senseless gangland (or any form) violence in places like Chicago are too numerous to name.  Acen King, Ja'Quail Mansaw, Cylie and Caden McCullum, Payton Benson

Antonio Smith Jr., Tiana Ricks and Londyn Samuels are just a few, but you don’t know their names or even know who they are.  They were never romanticized with hashtags like #remeberhername or #sayhisname or #bringbackourgirls because although they were black there death's were not sensational enough for the retro chic political narrative of the day.

If they were killed by police or an idiotic white lunatic, they would be known and remembered and we would cite their names with the likes of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown.  But they have no value in the eyes and minds of social justice warriors because mentioning or remembering their names does not help to enable their goals of getting rich off of racial and identity politics and obtain fake fame by receiving television air time for pretending to be “woke.”

The artificial pretense of the so-called woke culture is metastasizing like a cancer, especially with the election of Donald Trump.  It is as if black folk can only attend to complaining about him and police shootings and nothing more.  Not the pathetic state of our inner cities. Or our failing government public schools or increasing rates of poverty (all of which by they have been happening in places that have been run by democrats since the 1940s in most cases and problems Trump had nothing to do with). The fake outrage at the election of Donald Trump that I have written about before will never manifest into true honest civic outrage for real problems that confront us daily like the deaths of the little children or the economic constraints I mentioned previously. 

These same folk, especially the black ones will protest against Trump and his ban on seven specific nations but were silent when Obama was bombing families of the same innocent women and children in the same nations with his drone wars which he dramatically increased when compared to George W. Bush after giving his 2009 Nobel Peace prize acceptance speech: wars that the former president conducted with impunity in places like Somalia, Libya, South Sudan, Afghanistan and Syria that created his current migrant-refugee crisis to begin with. They are loud when they are not allowed within the U.S. proper but were quiet when they were being slaughtered religiously on the orders of America’s first black president. It is as if they say it is cool to kill them, I can get with that but it is a problem when we try to improve criterion for entry to the U.S.

For the life of me I cannot figure this out – being open to individual and personal acquiesce to murder but opposed to none murderous acts to an option of personal choice.  Likewise, there was no outrage when Obama stopped Iraqis from immigrating to the U.S. for 120 days.  Clearly politics and not protest in the name of basic dignity is hey problem or issue.

At Berkeley we saw this in action. Incantations of divide and conquer. Destroying property and setting vehicles on fire has nothing to do with protest based on what is called for to stand on the side of righteousness regarding human dignity or else they would affirm the nonviolent approaches of Gandhi, King and Mandela.  This is all show and mechanically contrived vexation.  They do not really care, they just want attention; and they do not seek change, rather they only want to define what is acceptable or should be tolerated as meaning you have to agree with me or else you are wrong and my speech is more important than your speech. What I am paying attention too is more important than anything else. But where were they before this?

For example, cities and states all around the nation have been finding funds available to deal with litigious actions that may be pending for illegal aliens under asserted or proposed Trump planes to deal with the issue.  You got black folk even out on the front lines of this fictitious battle.  Mind you that for decades we have been trying to get the same cities and states to hire more public defenders for the many of our fellow men and women locked behind bars but the response was always “we do not have the money for such.” Yet there were none of these adamant protestors standing next to us when we made this request but we stand with them. And all of a sudden places like LA can magically come up with $10 million for this but no funds for additional public defenders to defend people born in America.

It is as if we are living in an alternate reality where all injustices are equal when evidence dictates they are not.  There were only one specific people designated as slaves in America who did not have a choice to come him but rather was forced to by a combination of the Bible and the barrel of a gun. Still opaquely innocent and manipulated we go along with the flow when it makes no logical senses and supersedes our own collective interest.  We hail the arrival of Muslim immigrants without out the consideration of the fact that if they are terrorist, they will kill us too, and want to kill us too.  Liberal or conservative they do not care, they will set you on fire and chop your head off with the quickness for things we call liberties (sexual orientation, wearing revealing clothing if you are a woman, drinking alcohol, being a Christian or having an abortion).

That they do like beating women and condemning homosexuals to death don’t outrage us, nor what they believe.  It is this myopia that believes we are justified not to speak up on behalf of the children I mentioned earlier because they do not meet our narrative.  But don’t let it be an award show, or you will have protest and outrage out the azz.  There would be #oscarssowhite or the recent #grammyssowhite because Beyoncé didn’t win album of the year.  This is an issue although WORLDWIDE the woman she lost too sold waaaaaaaay more albums than she did. Now let that sink in, cats are so mad that a millionaire didn’t win an award while sitting in a room filled with other millionaires outfitted in $5,000 or more worth of sartorial splendor, that they are willing to express emotional disdain.  But let a two-year get shot in the head the result of a gangland hit, and they won’t say jack. But it makes sense, after all these rich Hollywood cats are oppressed too, with their body guards with automatic weapons, drivers and walled-in mansions.

Have we lost our way? Are we so caught up in self-absorbed mindless celebrity twaddle that we can be eaisly paraded about like a puppet by presentations of what Juvenal called “bread and circuses?” Do we even know what we are upset by, angered by or protesting against?  I don’t think so and I don’t think for those who are black, really have have any interest in improving our conditions collectively as a people, if they were, they would know of Lavontay White, Takiya Holmes or Kanari Gentry Bowers. Unfortunately they don’t, they just know Beyoncé didn’t win a Grammy for Album of the year and that it takes precedence above all else.

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