Friday, July 29, 2011

You Need to fix this Barack: Has Wall Street Abandoned Obama?

Has Wall Street Abandoned Obama?: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Let them hear your voice-- your true voice--Mr.President.
Convince them, remind them of hope... Barack is the president of the United States of America.
Americans are beat up and tired and scared. We have never been here, in this place before.
(Remember when Moses had to convince the Jewish Nation to leave Egypt for their own good?) Where should we be led Barack? We need a fresh horse. AND IT IS NOT THE TEA PARTY.

Obama: East Africa famine needs world to respond - Yahoo! News

Obama: East Africa famine needs world to respond - Yahoo! News: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Sunday, July 17, 2011

The World from Berlin: 'The US Is Holding the Whole World Hostage' - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

The World from Berlin: 'The US Is Holding the Whole World Hostage' - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International: "The US needs to raise its debt ceiling, currently set at $14.3 trillion (€10.1 trillion), by Aug. 2, otherwise the country will run out of money. But negotiations between President Barack Obama and top Republicans and Democrats have so far failed to make progress.

Obama has now given congressional leaders until Saturday morning to reconsider their positions. 'It's decision time. We need concrete plans to move this forward,' Obama said on Thursday, the fifth day of talks, following an inconclusive negotiating session.

Financial markets, which have previously viewed the negotiations with calm, are beginning to get nervous amid fears that Republicans and Democrats may be unable to reach an agreement by Aug. 2. Any default on the part of the US could have incalculable effects on global financial markets and could hurt the fragile recovery in the US. Moody's and Standard & Poor's have warned they may cut the country's top AAA credit rating if a solution isn't reached.

Republicans want any increase in the debt ceiling to be met by spending cuts equal to the same amount, as well as more serious efforts by the government to address the debt problem. Democrats are open to certain cuts but want tax increases in return. With presidential elections coming up in 2012, neither side wants to be seen as ceding ground.

On Friday, German commentators react with concern to the ongoing stalemate.

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

'The bitter debate in Washington about raising the debt ceiling has largely left the financial markets cold. … The market players apparently expect that an agreement will be reached in time. That's the only possible explanation for their surprisingly calm response.'

'We can only hope that the top politicians in Washington take Moody's warning seriously, despite the relaxed response from the financial markets so far. A US default and a lower credit rating would … send stock prices through the floor and could choke off America's economic recovery -- with global repercussions. The politicians in Washington are playing with fire. A swift compromise is needed. Nobody needs a US default.'

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

'It's actually unimaginable. On August 2, the US could, for the first time in its history, become insolvent because the Republican majority in the House of Representatives refuses to raise the ceiling on the national debt. But until now, everyone is acting as if it will all be OK and the politicians in Washington will come to their senses in time.'

'The Republicans are playing with fire. Nobody can imagine what the repercussions might be if the unthinkable happens and the US is suddenly no longer a safe haven for investors. Anything is possible, from a small, barely perceptible amount of turbulence in the financial markets to a global panic. Congress should think carefully about what it is doing.'

The conservative Die Welt writes:

'In this period of competing debt crises, America and Europe are looking at each other in amazement, with each side understanding less and less about what is happening on the other side of the Atlantic. While Europe's chaos is obvious to the Europeans and the rest of the world, there are few signs of self-doubt or self-awareness in the US. In the middle of the poker game between the two political parties to prevent a national default on Aug. 2, polls show that 77 percent of Americans believe that they live in the world's greatest system of government. Just as many are convinced that life is only worth living as an American.'

'Democrats and Republicans are so hopelessly embroiled in a religious war that compromise and pragmatism are just dreams from a far-off era of reason. …

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Wednesday, July 06, 2011

YouTube - ‪Hey ..... President Obama‬‏

YouTube - ‪Hey ..... President Obama‬‏: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Awwww, that is sweet. Images of Black Love.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Economic Diversity in the Black Community: Is it Allumette? (nah, it's not Allumette)




Photo courtesy of usslave.blogspot.com
I awoke with the thought that the reason the unemployment rate is higher in the black community and among teens is because neither group owns the means of production to anything worthwhile. We should have way more printing presses circulating in the black community because communication at that level is the easiest and most effective thing to own. Newspapers sit around for weeks staring at you begging you to either read it, recycle it or throw it away. Broadcast has to travel by word-of-mouth after its 30 seconds are gone.
Where are our advertising agencies? Where are our television and radio stations? We should have them by the 100s of thousands, constantly telling ourselves what ever it is we want to be reminded of or know. Have you ever noticed that we as a country don't share our local news readily? How would the vast majority of us know whether or not we were all experiencing the same thing if network news did not tell us? It would be back to word-of-mouth and telephones just like the olden days.

The lack of these items in our community relates to a deficiency in jobs or rather viable career paths. Plenty of black folks major in these areas in college (if we are allowed and yeah, I said it) but then we have to go a beggin' to other community groups for the work. Those groups are selective amongst themselves between rich and poor. Blacks deserve the same opportunity to make those decisions but we do not get the chance to do so. We have not given ourselves the right to make these places viable work options.

It is for this reason our communications and news is filtered mostly though sets of eyes and minds that do not work like ours do and do not understand what we know. Gatekeepers of another color, creed, race, religion in some instances a whole 'nother agenda. That is why we do not know every little thing our favorite black celebrity is doing. Now, if given the choice of more privacy and freedom or more money, many of the black glitteratti would choose the latter--bet. And there would be more black glitterati--maybe you or another person you know.

It is for this reason, our nation's first black president has to have his message spun in a million different directions. There are no black news or communication agencies that broadcast nationally. None. Not everyone is on the Web. The bulk of our black wealth is not on the Internet. They look on television broadcasts and newspapers for a reflection of self but all they see is criminality--a concept many cannot relate to as they follow the law and God.

 So let us decided to do this thing for ourselves because from that point, businesses will erupt and create commerce like a seedling in the springtime. We all have to provide food, clothing and shelter for ourselves so we need black farms, black textile factories and black construction companies. Competition in the economic arena in the form of capitalism leads to flourishing advertising and marketing. And there we have our economically viable black community. All we would have to do is to populate it, educate it, guide and direct it.

The black farm needs workers and heavy equipment so let us, like we do in Farmville, create the means of production to do this. We would need a steel foundry--Gary has plenty but not owned by blacks or Americans for that matter however, I'm sure at the right price we would be in business together. The company that creates heavy earth moving equipment gets steel from them and the black farmer buys the tractor. Everybody works and makes money. The few black banks we have would have to finance our endeavors, so on and so forth.

Of course this is a simplistic, Stone Soup way of looking at a very layered and complicated mission but if we were ever in the position to have to do this, we would be able to do so. There would be a group of like minded individuals who would rise about the rest and become the true black bourgeois, keeping us fed, sheltered and clothed because they would not be able to afford selfishness and greed to lead their decisions because that would lead to death very quickly. And there would be jobs aplenty--so much so that black women would go back to the old days and start having babies earlier in life to keep up with the demand our society would place on itself. Those women would be charged with the duty of being a mom and wife and her husband would be able to support his family legally, ethically and morally.

Editor's Note:
I prefer the Stone Soup analogy to the one of Allumette the original. I grew up reading Grimm Brother's Fairy Tales--the American version of Allumette. (Whatever dudes, the girl starved to death outside of the French bakery but she died hallucinating that she had a cornucopia of delicious baked goods.)