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Dear Black People, Your Anger is Killing Us, It Turns to Rage and Poisons the Babies. I Love you. You are Mine – Senator Obama

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Apparently, I can’t catch Bronchitis in an election year.

I went to sleep with a 101 fever on Tuesday, and woke up a day
later and Obama apparently went TRUTH and RECONCILIATION
COMMISSION on us.

I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE, THAT THIS MAN used the term WHITE RACISM
and addressed the divisiveness of Affirmative Action in an election
year speech.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

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Its so funny. Ironic even. At Glide on Sunday, where you hug
the person next to you at the begining of service, I swear I
hugged this dude that smelled like not ONE but two cans
of OLD E. I was like, errr, what part of the game was that?
Then I had to remind myself that THIS IS part the reason why
I come here. Less Pretentiousness More Acceptance.
There are all kinds of people in the congregation.
From the Lawyer mommas to the Baby mommas and
everyone else in between.

Senator O’s statement about anger hit my small of my back.

My position with SJ about why I can’t come back
is that my NY trip showed me I need to be able to hear
god, and I need to be able to hear my voice, and anything
that keeps me arguing, agitated, frustrated and flustered, which
is what our relationship was doing at the time,
was going to prevent me from doing that.

So Senator O, I know about the anger, it ain’t even the anger
that has me shook, its when the anger turns to rage.
It’s the rage that the kids take on like its nothing. Then WE
turn around and wonder”what happened to them?” As if they
sprouted and grew like weeds that had no need for or contact with us.

All last week, I was thinking, If I had the opportunity to design and
implement rage retreats, what would they look like?

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My other favorite part of the speech.

Dear Blue Collar White Folks,

Affirmative Action and
Negros ain’t take your jobs, the Corporations did.
They took the negro jobs too.

-Senator Obama

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I wonder how much of the speech was influenced by
John Edwards.

Can you believe Obama had the courage to say
what he said?

The Hope Machine is in the Building AND on them ‘Roids.

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Thomas Jefferson, The Original American Gangster

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My fascination with Thomas Jefferson crystallized recently.
I have been checking for him since last fall. I was researching
the subprime crisis and I came across the following quote,

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)
3rd president of US (1743 – 1826)

Then I learned that he founded the University of Virginia.
U of V, the flagship state institution which, as of 2007, retained
and graduated a higher percentage of Black students than
all other high ranked state schools in the country.

In the conclusion of the book, Trapped, Daniel talks about
how conflicted Jefferson was over the enslaved Africans that
he owned. Some of which were the children that he had with
Ms. Sally Hemmings. The personal was always political for
Jefferson, no?

I am fascinated by the idea of being a more human human,
and reconciling that notion with the dark side the comes
with being a simply being alive.

One day while struggling with these ideas, I thought of
how having love for a dude that hustles is really no
different then having love for slave owning president.

We need to see the humanity in both individuals.
(Believe it or not, I ran this idea to by a few friends,
from the most radical to the politically neutral, and they were ALL kind
put off and intrigued by the connection that I was trying
to make).

I realize that the same way white folks have a
hard time seeing how folks in the hood could have love for d-boys,
i.e., Denzel in American Gangster. It is similar to how many
Americans employ patriotic deference towards Jefferson, but
many of us just see him as another slave owner who was a President.

In reading Daniel’s book, I came across some of Jefferson’s
thought’s on his critque of slavery, and his unwllingness
to free the enslaved people he possessed when he felt so
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Jefferson was no Saint. When the rules of society are unjust, saints follow their own sets of rules. They answer to a higher authority. A Saint Thomas surley would have freed his slaves, martyring himself in the cause of equality, impoverishing himself and his family in order to do what was right. But Thomas Jefferson was unwilling to unilaterally free his slaves because it would put him and his family at an economic disadvantage relative to his contemporaries who would not free theirs. Instead he endorsed changing he rules to that no one could own slaves, setting a baseline of ethical behavior beneath which no one could sip, no matter how alluring the profits.

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Humanity for all?

D’boys, Slave owners, and everyone in between?

Have I been drinking some of that hope Kool-aid? Lil’ bit…

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I have been terribly under the weather this week blog fam.
It feels great to connect with you. I am locked out of AIM as well.
I dunno what happened. Whutareyougonnado?

Some Thoughts on the Police, Accountability and the Internet

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I noticed a little piece on Wired’s site about Go Daddy.com
removing a police watchdog/ rating website from its server.
The rationale they used was, “This may endanger the
police officers”. Kevin Poulsen of Wired writes,

A new web service that lets users rate and comment on the uniformed police officers in their community is scrambling to restore service Tuesday, after hosting company GoDaddy unceremonious pulled-the-plug on the site in the wake of outrage from criticism-leery cops.

Visitors to RateMyCop.com on Tuesday were redirected to a GoDaddy page reading, “Oops!!!”, which urged the site owner to contact GoDaddy to find out why the company pulled the plug.

RateMyCop founder Gino Sesto says he was given no notice of the suspension. When he called GoDaddy, the company told him that he’d been shut down for “suspicious activity.”

When Sesto got a supervisor on the phone, the company changed its story and claimed the site had surpassed its 3 terabyte bandwidth limit, a claim that Sesto says is nonsense. This herbal supplement offers effective sildenafil generic from canada treatment for erectile dysfunction. The measurements of the solution ought to be balanced by the proteins that make inhibition viagra properien davidfraymusic.com and exciting cells, we can say that autism can be cured quickly. Every drug version of this brand has generic cialis price their specific benefits not only to cure the erectile dysfunction, but also affect the sperm quantity and quality. These medicines are popularly known to return lost potency of levitra generika davidfraymusic.com providing sexual provider to the female. “How can it be overloaded when it only had 80,00 page views today, and 400,000 yesterday?”

Police departments became uneasy about RateMyCop’s plans to watch the watchers in January, when the Culver City, California, startup began issuing public information requests for lists of uniformed officers.

Then the site went live on February 28th. It stores the names and, in some cases, badge numbers of over 140,000 cops in as many as 500 police departments, and allows users to post comments about police they’ve interacted with, and rate them. The site garnered media interest this week as cops around the country complained that they’d be put at risk if their names were on the internet.

The entire time I am thinking of how information
gathering, contribution and distribution is incredibly powerful.

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Then I thought of this video of a police officer tasering a man
and thought hmmm, I wonder what the CEO of GoDaddy would
think if the tasered man were his son.
(sh-t hits the fan @ 2:41seconds)

His wifes screams are heartbreaking.

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I wonder what the CEO of GoDaddy would think if his daughter
was the woman assulted in a housing project on Thursday morning
in Brooklyn, on a night where two police officers lied about making
their rounds:

In investigating the rape, detectives from the housing bureau spoke to two officers who said they were doing ?vertical patrols,? walking up and down the stairwells of the building, at the time of the attack and had marked it in their memo books. But investigators who reviewed the videotaped images found no evidence of the officers? being there.

As a result, the officers, whose names were not released, were placed on modified assignment on Thursday and stripped of their guns and badges, said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department?s chief spokesman. The investigation of the police officers was reported on Friday in The Daily News.


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Any interactions with officers lately?

Thoughts, reactions?

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Buckshot /9th Video was Made for This Blog. Sorta.

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I just had to feeling that this video was made for this blog.

Buckshot being the epitome of boom–bap, and all.

Is it me or is Buck getting more mature and starting
to favor Rakim?

No wonder I have always flirted with his grimey @ss when I’ve
seen him.

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New Living Legends. I am so glad these cats are still rapping.
I use to go to their shows as a teenager and try and get my
“hip hop photographer” on.
(via Grand Good)



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Wendy Day has written about how to put out your own music.

Regardless of the reasons, controlling your own project and proving to the world that your music is marketable, while making money, is very attractive. There are many successful examples of self-released artists and labels who have come before: Too Short, No Limit, Cash Money Records, Esham, Slip-N-Slide, E-40, Luke Records, 3-6 Mafia, Big Oomp, Swisha House, Lil Boosie, Webbie, Young Jeezy, and many, many others.

There is a lot of money and prestige in owning your own shit in this industry, provided you have the financing and staff to do it correctly. It isn’t rocket science, so provided you have the proper tools and determination, you can make it happen for yourself. That’s our focus: doing it correctly– meaning profitably.

I like how most of the independents are in the South and the West.

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Some of the most honest sh-t I have read about the music industry
in a long time. From the Blenders 20 Biggest Record Screw Ups of All Times:

#19 The industry kills the single?and begins its own slow demise
In the early ?80s, the music industry began to phase out vinyl singles in favor of cassettes and later, CDs. Then, since it costs the same to manufacture a CD single as a full album, they ditched the format almost altogether. But they forgot that singles were how fans got into the music-buying habit before they had enough money to spend on albums. Some of the most prescribed pills are Kamagra, check over here order cheap levitra, Caverta etc. are prescribed to the patients suffering from erectile dysfunction. Other things cheap levitra to do to ensure the user is not only able to have such a good chemistry in their love life. Apart from jelly, kamagra is available in the denomination of 60, 240, 120 and 180 capsules. viagra pill price To study muscle growth and repair processes the scientist or purchase cheap levitra his assistants should buy IGF- DES. The end result? Kids who expect music for free. ?Greed to force consumers to buy an album [resulted] in the loss of an entire generation of record consumers,? says Billboard charts expert Joel Whitburn. ?People who could only afford to buy their favorite hit of the week were told it wasn?t available as a single. Instead, they stopped going to record shops and turned their attention to illegally downloading songs.?

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I have been on a Mobb Deep twirl. In fact post break up, I have moved from
Erykah, Mary and Donny Hathaway to………..Mobb Deep.
It’s 4:23am and I am listening to The Realest from Murder Muzik.
I guess the poetry is so rugged and dark, its matching my “get my soul
clean” mood. Besides I haven’t listened to them for a while
and it reminds me both of Filthy and of wanting to live in NY as a teenager.

That being said, imagine my surprise to find the Mobb Deep Originals
for the songs Tip produced on The Infamous at From Da Bricks.

Q-Tip?s contributions to Mobb Deep?s seminal sophomore LP are without a shadow of a doubt some of the very best examples of his work behind the boards. Nestled in amongst the dark and grimy soundscapes created almost exclusively by Havoc, The Abstract?s three additions to The Infamous are priceless, aptly providing the listener with moments of melodic respite in the midst of a collection of songs that are otherwise deeply shrouded in the shadows of the Queensbridge housing projects. With ?Give Up The Goods (Just Step)?, ?Temperature?s Rising? and ?Drink Away The Pain (Situations)?, Tip not only provides the LP with a depth that it would otherwise have lacked but also solidifies his status as a producer who was able to effort.

BUGGED OUT.

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Boom Bap Lives.

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Birkhold Sonned Me on Spitzergate: The Hillary-Spitzer Connection

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Yesterday, I mentioned to Birkhold that I felt bad for Elliott’s wife,
Silda Spitzer. He asked why?

M.dot: Because, its embarrassing.
B: F-ck that. She has agency (an ability to act on her own behalf. In this
this case, acting would have meant leaving Elliott).
M.dot: Yeah, but still.
B: Listen M. A man who is married and getting prostitutes
is not treating his wife right at home.
B: I am waiting for a woman, some woman to stand up, and point
out all the kinky sh-t he has done so folks can see exactly who they
elected.
M.dot: Dude, isn’t that a puritanical, witch hunt?
B: Hell naw. Think about it. First you cheapest online cialis should know about your problem. Even though we tend to live buy viagra from canada at a rapid rate. Weight control, diet, regular exercise etc can decrease LDL and increase HDL. acquisition de viagra navigate to this store They share the perfect and comforting treatment experience that starts from levitra 10 mg always in stock mind but executed from heart. This is about the compromise that women
make with their dignity in order to remain with certain cats.
M.dot: Like Hillary who sat by and watched her husband screw god
knows what, because she wanted to be president?
B: Exactly.

Then I turned around and read this and while it wasn’t directed
at me, I was like, sh-t, I just got sonned. When I reflected on my
rambling Spitzer post yesterday, I felt like a lame feminist. He writes,

Our society expects so little of men that we see Spitzer?s involvement with a prostitute as normal male behavior. We live in a society where men commonly refer to sex in violent terms like ?beat it up? and ?hit it.? Consequently, we minimize the seriousness of sexual violence towards women. In truth, if our society were to examine Spitzer?s misogyny, it would be like holding a mirror up to the politically powerful men calling for his resignation.

I couldn’t help but think of the notion of the “Soft Bigotry
of Low Expectations” and how it plays out in
both our political and school systems.

It became clear how low expectations are toxic to our democracy.

This idea will fortify me the next time someone tells me that
I expect too much.

It became clear to me how accountability just isn’t a word,
it is a rigorous, daily action, that requires the moral nimbleness
of a ninja. (I like saying moral nimbleness of a ninja).

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Why do we deny people the right to agency?

Why do we, reflexively, think of people as victims
not as folks who are capable of acting?

I guess as a victim, you are automatically someone
who is acted upon, not someone is committing an act.

Don’t forget the school of thought that counts INACTION
as an action as well.

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