What Choice?

The idiocy spewed by Kanye West that slaves had "the choice to be free" deserves a rebuke but you will not see that in this place. What you will get instead is a brief look at my own family. Both sides emigrated from Saint Domingue (Haiti) before the revolution birth a free new black nation. My family on both sides left. They were taken by their parent who allowed them to be free half-black children or with their owners as slaves to Louisiana. By 1820 both sides of my family, free and slave were in Louisiana and Mississippi. Before either state became a part of the United States my people free and slave were living on that land. Before the ignorant people who came to this country far later than my family. They who wear sheets, burn crosses or carry tiki torches to assert their rights supersede everyone else's right to life and freedom.

My family, both sides were in this land bearing the grinding harshness of slavery on sugar plantations or having to live insular lives to remain free. Were it not for the Toussaints and Dessalines who understood liberty and desired it for themselves and their people my family both sides would have like everyone else on that island continue to endure the hell of enslavement until a Toussaint or a Dessalines is born to break the chains of slavery. Without that desire for liberty, there would be no Haiti and no east to west coast United States without a lot more fighting than what occurred for it. Because of Hait's revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte was forced to sell the Louisiana Territory to the upstart nation, The United States, increasing its size by a third. Liberty is in the DNA of the survivors of the Middle Passage, the horrendous trip from the coast of Africa to the Carribean and Brazil packed in the bottom of slave ships like cords of woods instead of sentient beings. Imagine working for free and by force sun-up to sun-down to make your captor rich. Or imagine being free, but that existence and worse travel make you susceptible to being captured by those slave catchers.  Then they can insist because they are white that you are a runaway slave when you are a not. A free person then had to carry Freedom Papers to affirm your freedom while having to pray that the slave catcher is literate and honest enough to accept that you supposedly are free. Imagine being vulnerable to becoming a slave when in truth you are free. In reality, neither side of my family was free.

Vote Blue!

The experiment is over! We have experienced a full year with this retrograde administration, and we are now a sorrier country for it. It is now an emergency! We have experienced fascism for ourselves, and most of us who are sane are awakened to do our duty and our best by voting for progress and sanity. VOTE BLUE! Our lives are at stake! Our children's lives are at stake. We teeter on the precipice of conventional was, or God help us a nuclear war. The lying never ceases,. We are on a destructive path increasing into the hands of the very few more and more money weakening the middle class and starving the poor. Our media has encouraged what we have as leaders to continue in this way. No system is untouched. The Congress has abandoned the majority of the people for the wealthy few. Our judicary, especially the United States Supreme Court have followed the way of the Republican Congress weakening the methods to restrain Gerrymandering, corporate cash thereby bringing forth the increasing of polluted air, water, and land for money!

What can we do about this? We are not yet powerless and at the mercy of our present government. We can change directions towards definite continuous improvement by VOTING BLUE! Vote for every Democratic Party Member on your ballot. Bring back sanity, reason, progress, justice, and fairness to this country. Take the time and make the time to go out in vote. Be patient wait is you have to for it is too serious a matter to give up. Vote.

Just Vote BLUE! 2018

How Much Will The Media's Disapproving Yowling Over Syria Affect President Obama?

Best article I've read on Huffpost in a very long time. The media has less credibility than Donald Trump's claim to billionaire status. Hint: If he were one why would he collect a check for a sad TV show? The media should be reduced to showing 50 seconds news clips of their nonsense; at least we would know when they will shut up.
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Syria and My President the War Mongeror or Don't Start Nothing Won't Be Nothing!

All of a sudden Syria is joining the Chemical Convention and agreeing to open their storage sites to inspection. My President's threats are real and he has proven that he doesn't mind bombing so while our lazy shiftless media and many politicians might be snickering I'd call this a win for my President. I know that I was in the minority on bombing Syria but there is a line that was set in 1925 after WWI that gassing people is a war crime.

If you believe that it was because of Putin's intervention then I've got several slightly used bridges to sell you. Mr. Obama has been willing to use those drones. Pakistan is curiously quiet these days. The cost of war is death. I would so much prefer it is the death of our enemies that we anguish rather than our own soldiers. There is no need to send troops when we can locate and bomb every where we think there are chemical weapons. Assad has no shame and has been very harsh and ruthless with his own people. Until he realized that My President was seriously going to handle him like he did Pakistan.

I would like most people would rather live peacefully without war and/or violence. However as those people who have had to face bullies know nothing stops a bully like a good beat down. Assad refused reasoning until he saw that beat down coming. My President ain't scare of a fight but he would rather have peace and no one having to face chemical weapons used against them.

Going Home to New Orleans...My Annual Pilgrimage

Every summer since I started working for my local school system I go home to New Orleans to visit my family and my oldest and best friends. Never will I lose the love I have for the people, food, customs, music, colloquialisms and history of New Orleans. Like Austin in Texas, New Orleans is an anomaly in a backwards red state. The city is mostly blue with a strong underlining of white privilege control of money and patronage. The economy is built upon tourism. Those who work in that industry work hard labor paying miserly wages. The system was sustained through low rents, family homes handed down and simple needs. In other words, those not so economically successful could survive since food was relatively cheap and utilities too. After Hurricane Katrina, real estate taxes went up and with it insurance rates, and rental housing too. There are fewer grocery stores and those that exist in areas like New Orleans East are not as well kept as those in the predominantly white affluent or up and coming neighborhoods.

Many former New Orleanians want to return home. The home they left does not exist. The new systems in place are not for them. New Orleans is fast becoming a mini New York meant for the wealthy while stuck with the stubborn poor. The school system is a hodgepodge of wildly fluctuating and various quality schools. Only the wise consumer oriented parents with excellent detective skills manage to locate good schools. The school system students are mostly black and mostly poor. The exam schools are majority white. Most affluent parents send their children to parochial schools that have always been segregated or mostly segregated.

Multi-million dollar housing development using HUD (Housing and Urban Development) money is designated to build luxury apartments. Meanwhile there is a severe shortage of affordable housing for the working poor. So, where is the fight against this mess? A few people have raised concerns but the very people who need the housing, decent education for their children are focused on surviving.

I love going home. I am glad though to come back to a blue state and especially a blue city where the discussion is not about how to shaft the working poor. It would be wonderful if the powers that be in New Orleans would be more interested in helping than ridding themselves of poor people.

John Henry Spooner Shooting VIDEO: Evidence Shows Darius Simmons Killed (GRAPHIC)

And so it begins...
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The Day After The Verdict: Florida v. Zimmerman

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The Killing of Trayvon Martin was a lynching. It was predicated on an assumption that a black man must explain to an unknown white man why he was in a certain neighborhood. This is a centuries old question that black men have had to answer or face possible death or imprisonment. During the Antebellum period, slaves or free people of color needed to show proof as to who they were and why they were out of their area. Sadly, this is true today some 148 years later that we must prove our legitimacy, our right to simply walk around on the sidewalks of any America city as the free people the United Sates of America Constitution 13th Amendment says we are able to do as citizens. It says: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Formally abolishing slavery in the United States, the 13th Amendment was passed by the Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the states on December 6, 1865.[Library of Congress website: We according to "Amendment IV have: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

That part about "persons" means self. That means as a free American we have the right to walk freely, not answer questions from non-law enforcement officers, and not be killed for doing what is perfectly legal. Now, it seems as though George Zimmerman, the man that shot and killed Trayvon Martin and his legal team may seek to get an order of immunity so that Mr. Martin's family cannot sue him in civil court where there is a lower bar of preponderance of evidence versus reasonable doubt. That is galling! The Martin family legal team surely planned for this action and again America must wait for some semblance of justice for Trayvon Martin he certainly did not get it last night.

WATCH: Your Duly Elected Representatives Standing Up For Their Principles Before It Was Cool

Rep.John Lewis is a great man. The best that Georgia offers America.
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A President's Finest Hour

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It is true that the message of acceptance for blacks in America was President John F.Kennedy's finest hour. Some 248 years (1865) ago the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery in the United States was ratified. In 1965, the Civil Rights Movement with President Lydon B. Johnson's signature made voting a right and not a privilege for blacks in former slave states and he signed the public accommodation law that meant that blacks could eat, ride and sleep in places along with anyone else who could pay for it. That I remember was a very happy day for my parents. The law was finally on their side and going to be upheld.

Tom Donilon Resigning: Obama National Security Adviser To Be Replaced By Susan Rice

Why has the AP hired such a bunch of political hacks as "reporters"? Regurgitating Republican talkinbg points in an article supposedly about the nomination of Susan Rice to head the NSA. She was drummed out of the running for the position of Secretary of State because she is a woman and the Republican Senators like McCain et al wanted to see Senator Kerry become Secretary of State. McCain went as so far to pronounce Ms. Rice as "not very bright.t" This from a guy who graduated far from the top of his class whereas Ms. Rice was a Rhodes Scholar and graduated with honors from Standford University. She has been a fine representative for the United States at the United Nations and I think she would do as well or even better at the NSA. Too bad the AP has decided to paint her as a "faulty" explainer on a Sunday talk show as bearing more merit than how she has conducted herself as UN Ambassador.
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Michele Bachmann: 9/11, Benghazi Were God's 'Judgment,' So We Must Hold Day Of Prayer On Sept. 11

They certainly don't present a loving image of God's people.
About Benghazi
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Reinhart and Rogoff's Second Response To Critique Of Their Research

I would have appreciated a more practical response...SUCKERS! The masses are just that to this weak "science" economics.
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Paul Krugman: 'So Much At Stake' In Reinhart-Rogoff Research Controversy

How true and in this case how very, very disgusting. The pain inflicted on the marginalized is massive and it's based on faulty math.
About Video
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Guns and Civilization

United States of America Constitution
Amendment II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The year is 2013. As citizens of the United States of America we have several kinds of regulated armies that swear to protect and defend us and our rights as citizens. The need for citizen militia now is about the same as the need for a horse drawn fire-wagon completely obsolete. If we are a civilized nation then we have no need to own or use military weapons. The majority of citizens of the United States of America get their food from grocery stores. We do not hunt for meat unless it is in the refrigerated aisles of stores. There remain purists who prefer to hunt and kill their own meat guaranteeing its freshness and knowing its place of origination. They use shotguns. The likelihood of those hunters to use military weapons to kill their prey is small since the point of hunting animals for food is to eat them. Meat that is obliterated by bullets is practically uneatable. Military weapons are to kill humans as many and as quickly as possible. There is no need for citizens to own these weapons of death and destruction in a civilized country.

The hypothesis that more guns equal more deaths is highlighted in my birth city of New Orleans, Louisiana. According to an article attributed to Gwen Filosa, on the Times Picayune online news site NOLA.com, “Gunfire Death Rate in Louisiana is the Highest in the Nation, Researchers Find” published on June 2, 2010, stated that “Louisiana, where an estimated 46 percent of households own a firearm, has a gun death rate of 19.87 per 100,000, the Violence Policy Center determined by reviewing newly released 2006 data, the most recent available from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

Rounding out the top five in overall gun deaths were Mississippi, Alaska, Alabama and Nevada. The lowest per-capita gun death rates were in Hawaii, with 3 per 100,000, and a household gun ownership rate of about 10 percent.

The national average of gun deaths is about 10 per 100,000, roughly half the rate of Louisiana.
Hawaii was followed by Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York, which had a 5 per 100,000 gun death rate and 18 percent household gun ownership.

"The equation is simple," said Kristen Rand, the nonprofit's legislative director. "More guns lead to more gun death, but limiting exposure to guns saves lives."

Unless you hunt for food the event of a domestic argument being settled with slamming doors and curse words could well end in cocked triggers and everybody and the dog being shot to death within mere minutes because the gun is available. If you do not hunt for food why do you need a gun? Are thinking for protection a gun might be useful? No. That’s why we pay taxes for police. They are trained in weapons handling, the law and how to quiet yet not kill rising domestic incidents. Since we are the government and the democratic experiment that is America has lasted more than 200 years then the chances of a country or a group of insurrectionists taking over are between very slim and zero. The fact that we have the best military in the world and each state has National Guard units, state troopers, local sheriffs, and police forces what need is there for a militia?


Next issue: Gun Deaths and Domestic Violence

Ted Cruz, Dianne Feinstein Do Battle During Debate On Assault Weapons Ban (VIDEO)

I agree we should have a well regulated militia...just make 'em use the dang muskets they had when the thing was written and we can get rid of those military weapons that our local yahoos use to shoot out of helicopters at some deer minding its own business.



Seriously, we have an army and a very good one at that. There is no need for our citizenry to be armed with military weapons.
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Scott Brown Senate Run? Landscape Shifts As Republican Eyes Another Possible Bid

Only the media wants Scott Brown to run again...and maybe Wall Street. It's time for him to get a job not on the public dole. Stay in Washington Mr. Brown you can be a shill just like all of the other ex politicos. Your 15 minutes are up!
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Scott Brown Doubts Ed Markey's Residency In Possible Massachusetts Senate Fight

Ed is old school MA he will beat the leather shorts off of Scott Brown! He tried stuff like that with Sen. E and she handed him his petard. Rep. Markey will not be so gentle.



Ed knows how to win in MA.
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Jim DeMint To Heritage Foundation: Senator To Leave Position To Run Think Tank

[singing in Buggs Bunny's voice] "Overture. Dim the lights! This is it!..." He is leaving. America and especially the Senate are all the better for it. Although SC is a perverse state and can indeed send to the Senate an even worse yokel than De Mint , I dare hope that America catches a break and someone who loves America more than money or party will be sent in his place.
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Sheryl Nuxoll, Idaho GOP State Senator, Tweets Out Bogus 'Last Chance' For A President Romney

I have never in my whole life seen such a huge boatload of bad losers. Geez, y'all lost...get over it! A bunch of whiners! I never wanted nor did I ever vote for Reagan, Bush I, or Bush II. They won. I waited out their terms to elect someone better. Killing yourselves or your significant others is just nuts. 53% of America said no to Romney. Unless you are a rich investment banker or hedge-fund manager it doesn't matter much. You should be hunkering down and waiting for the next election. You have four years to lose the hate. You'll survive just fine...I did.
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Get Your War On: The Aftermath (VIDEO)

Dear GOP:



You NEVER should have disrespected my President! Feeling humiliated? Shocked? Good! Underestimate people of color, angry women and young people again if you want to continuously lose.
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