"Judged By The Content Of My Character"

"I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1963

It has been 46 years since Dr. King uttered those words to America. It was a historic and momentous occasion that still reverberates throughout the world. Yet as much as we (Blacks) have worked to be judged by our character and not our skin tone we are constantly being held back by our very own people.

Congresswoman Diane Watson made the following comment during a town hall discussion over health care reform in this country; "They are spreading fear and they are trying to see that the first president that looks like me, fail." These are some very damning words when you think about how long we have tried to distance ourselves from being looked at from a "skin tone" perspective but from a "character of works" perspective. Never mind that she went on to praise Fidel Castro and the Cuban government's health system. If Cubans are so happy with Fidel then why do they risk their lives and the lives of their children to set sail for the U.S.? But I digress.

I wrote my thoughts before the election about what I felt would occur should Obama get elected and many of those thoughts are being played out daily. The biggest being that any opposition to this president would be met with the big trump card of RACE. Since when did it become racism to disagree with the disastrous and ruinous financial policies of a sitting president. How would it have looked if white people would have screamed reverse racism after Kanye West made his "George Bush don't like Black people" remark. Sounds silly doesn't it. Then so does Ms. Watson's comments about a "president that looks like me."

"...In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds...We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plain of dignity and discipline...The marvelous new militancy that has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone..." Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1963

I know many of us have heard the " I have a Dream Speech" but I don't think many of us have read it and understood what Dr. King was speaking to us about. At least many of our black leaders need to heed his words. Stop blaming the man. Stop using the race card and start self examination of our deeds and actions when it comes to being Black and in America.

Some reading this may refer to me as an Uncle Tom. A characterization that has be inaccurately used for many years. My blog friend Digital Publius posted a piece about this topic last week. Others will say that I am a hater of all things black. Those are typical responses from blacks who support liberal philosophies even though many blacks on most topics are conservative in thoughts.

Black people when are we going to stop being victims and start being owners of our destination. You can no longer say that the "man" is holding you down because the "man" is now Black or in Obama's case semi-black. Above all stop looking to the government to fix your situation. It cannot and will not without making you a slave to their rules of living. If you want to be free then be free...of a tyrannical federal government.

To quote a Clinton..."Free your mind and your ass will follow" George Clinton, Parliament Funkadelic circa 1972

Some of these are my words (credit given where necessary)! Please post yours!

Pull 'Em Up And Show Some Respect To Yourself

As I attended my youngest child's college orientation this past weekend it occurred to me that I had done alright as a parent. When I say alright I am speaking about the way in which both my children have shown great respect for their parents, themselves and the adults that surround them. While they may have strong opinions, neither of them are disrespectful even as young adults themselves.

I write this because as I walked the campus of an institution of higher learning, I witnessed the results of poor parenting. An orientation letter that was sent to all incoming freshmen indicated that 'while there are many articles of clothing that may be fashionable today please refrain from wearing these articles as you would be making your first impressions with members of the faculty and administrators of the university.'

Yet I saw scores of young men with their pants completely off their asses and belted off at the knee. Good parenting would have prevented the rest of us from seeing this underwear display. If one father or mother would have said to their young son, "pull 'em up!" And now!

And the young ladies were not left out. Many wore some of the gaudiest outfits and skimpy articles of clothing on the planet. I asked myself where are these girls' mothers and not to my surprise I often saw the mother dressed just like the child. C'mon can't we stop trying to be our child's friend and be their parent. Cover it up young ladies! You can be sexy and appealing without showing all of your private parts.

It became obvious to me that many of these children have never really been parented once they made it to puberty. The parents decided to become the child's best friend and encouraged them in their manner of dress and actions. Trying to emulate the child to the tune of getting tacky tattoo's and piercings to show how cool they can be as an adult.

There are no schools or licensing for being a parent. But let's show some decorum and respect parents. Start telling your boys that they cannot wear their pants off their waist. Remind your little girls that they should cover up. If your child is under the age of 17 why are you allowing them to mark up their bodies with tattoos and piercing. You are the parent and can demand that they comply.

A belt is for holding your pants around your waist not your knees! I am sad to see that some municipalities have decided to legislate how to wear your pants. This is a waste of time for those cities. Better parenting goes along way. Start being a parent and stop being a friend. Pull 'em up!

These are my words! Please post yours!

It's "Un-American Behavior" to Protest Your Displeasure With Your Government

"That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." Declaration of Independence

Within the Declaration of Independence, the founding fathers indicated that whenever government becomes destructive with regards to the rights of the governed that it should be abolished, altered and a new government instituted. I guess you could say that the Townsend Acts, the Stamp Act or the Intolerable Acts would have been totally permissible if the Colonist would have just paid their taxes and not protested their unfair taxation without representation within the British Parliament. There would not have been a Boston Tea Party or a Boston Massacre which ultimately helped to usher in the Colonial uprising that later became the American Revolution. But these people were fed up and acted out to protest an ever increasing governmental intrusion into their lives. I am sure that there was someone in the British Parliament or even King George himself that called their actions not British-like!

Now along comes Cruella D'Pelosi and announces that Americans that protest the ever increasing governmental intrusion into their lives as Un-American behavior. Maybe they didn't teach American history at Trinity College or maybe considering the age of Cruella the history of the American uprising in the 18th century had not been committed to book form yet. At any rate if she had half a clue she would realize that what the American people are doing is very American. In other countries the consequences are much worse as in civil uprising and coup d'etat.

But as the founding of this country has shown us we only needed one civil uprising to start this nation. All other governmental changes have been peaceable and without bloodshed. Every two years we have the opportunity to change our government through the ballot even though elections can have dire consequences, ala President B-Rock and his Band of Merry Men.

Americans are just trying to utilize the Constitutional rights of assembly and protest to voice their total disapproval of a health care initiative that has been proposed with little debate and with very few Congressmen ever reading it in its entirety.

Now the Congressional Democrat leadership is running scared of a few vocal voters. They have decided to stage a protest of their own and not hold town hall style meetings as to keep the 'angry mobs' away. They would rather control the meetings via conference calls and staged question and answer sessions much like President B-Rock monthly pressers.

Let me get this right. You are elected by the people in your district to serve them, yet because you cannot handle personal conflict you choose to not meet your electorate face to face thus you are not available and are seen as hiding from the public. Hmmmm. If I did that in my job with the customers that help to pay my salary then I would be one of the millions looking for a job. I guess the writers of the Declaration of Independence were right....time to abolish and institute a new government, peaceably in 2010. These Congressmen should be voted out of office if for nothing more than cowardice. How can you vote to send our troops to war around the globe but cannot stomach the few hours spent with the people you represent and pay your salary?

And Ms. D'Pelosi. She has gotta go! She has insulted the American people for the very last time. The ignorant voters of California have been sending this clown to Washington since 1987. It is time for a wake up for the left coast. Remember elections do have consequences!

These are my words! Please post yours!

Cash For Clunkers, Converter Box Coupons and KFC Grilled Chicken

Once again the Obama administration has found a way to showcase government's inability to play in the free market. The government's $1 billion "Cash For Clunkers" program has been suspended after already spending close to $150 million in a week on 22,000 vehicles with reserves of $850 million for pending applications. You can bet that their will be a bill down the road to add more taxpayer funding to this program because it was not fair that everyone could not participate.

The program that is officially called Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS), was designed to help jump start auto sales by offering consumers $3,500 or $4,500 rebate if they trade in a used vehicle that gets 18 mpg or less and buy a new car that is more fuel efficient. But just like the digital t.v. conversion box coupon program the government under estimated the consumer response.

The digital t.v. conversion had budgeted $1.3 billion to assist consumers with their conversion to digital broadcast on older television sets. But the money ran out and consumers were still waiting for their $40 coupons to purchase the set top boxes. The official conversion date was then extended from February to June to allow for additional $650 million in funding from Obama's "stimulus package" and to get more coupons in the hands of the populace.

Both these programs have the same thing in common. Government bureaucrats are not the best people at forecasting expenses. Although the DTV conversion coupons were redeemed at about 55% the money has been allocated and you can best believe that it will not be reallocated back to the treasurey once the final coupons have reached expiration.

With the CARS program the dealers are the ones that may be on the hook. They have to give the consumer the rebate off the vehicle price up front and wait for the government to approve their application for reimbursement on the vehicle but not until they have proven that they have chemically destroyed the engine and rendered the car unsaleable. Thus if the bureaucrats decline an application the dealership does not get reimbursed and will have to eat the loss because they will have a car that cannot operate.

What does all of this have to do with KFC Grilled chicken? Nothing and everthing; except that even private enterprise can sometimes underestimate consumer demand. KFC chose the queen of daytime talk, Oprah Winfrey, to help launch a free grilled chicken dinner promotion and were innundated with angry customers who were being turned away at stores after they begin to run out of chicken. The difference is that KFC realized that they had a problem on their hands and still promised free chicken and a Pepsi as a raincheck to those who did not get their meal on the day the promotion ran. KFC did not use taxpayer money to fund this obviously expensive product launch promotion but paid for it from the ordinary running of their business. KFC's president, Roger Eaton, apologized and made good on his company's plan to offer a free trial of their latest product.

Once again the government has under projected demand and expenses for another government program. Yet they think that we will take their word at how much health care reform will pay for itself when these two programs indicate that they have no clue as to consumer demand or how to fund it. Every program the government has ever launched has cost more than what has been budgeted but now health care will pay for itself and possibly provide a savings to the government. Ha Ha.

These are my words. Please post yours!

Healthcare Reform or Overhaul...Still No Plan

After listening to B-Rock Opompus on last night I had the sinking feeling that we have been here before. It all sounded too familiar. It all sounded like the pressure that B-Rock put on Congress and the American public for his stimulus plan.

Take these words from an op-ed piece that the president wrote on February 5, 2009:

"Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse."

Now compare those words to these words uttered last night:

"So let me be clear: If we do not control these costs, we will not be able to control our deficit. If we do not reform health care, your premiums and out-of-pocket costs will continue to skyrocket. If we don't act, 14,000 Americans will continue to lose their health insurance every single day. These are the consequences of inaction. These are the stakes of the debate that we're having right now."

If any of you really listened to the president you all would have heard what I have been hearing from him since last August. Plenty of ideas and no true plan to get these ideas working. If you recall he once thought about taxing the benefits of the those wage earners who make over $350k annually but now has support for creating a surtax for those Americans who earn $1M annually.

When asked if he and Congress would abide by the same plan that he is proposing, Opompus made the mistake of telling Americans that he wanted them to have the same plan that Congress currently has. O.K. They pay about 25% of the premiums and the taxpayers pick up the rest of the tab. In short, the taxpayers will pay for the plan. The other problem with this is that members of Congress have no waiting period to enroll and they are offered a myriad of plans to choose from which are through private carriers and provide for no pre-existing conditions clauses. Plus Congress has its own doctors, nurses and technicians standing by. They don't even have to leave work to get a physical exam or x-rays. Unless we work in healthcare field we gotta go to the doctor's office.

What is wrong with this idea? First, the government subsidizing 75% of premiums already indicates that companies will choose to drop coverage for their employees and turn them over to the government plan because not many companies choose to pay 75% of their employee premiums without tax incentives. Secondly, no private insurer can compete with the government when it comes to the ability to impose taxes and penalities on the populace to keep their premiums low thus eliminating competition.

To further bolster the presidents take over of healtcare was hidden in his response to a question posed by Steve Koff, of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

"But having a public plan out there that also shows that maybe if you take some of the profit motive out, maybe if you are reducing some of the administrative costs, that you can get an even better deal, that's going to incentivize the private sector to do even better."

He seeks to remove the profit motive from private health insurers. Then there will be no private health insurers if they cannot make a profit. No one will be in the business of assuming risk without rewards. I know that health care costs have continued to rise but so have the cost associated with the advancements in treatment. Companies and researchers that come up with new and innovative ways to fix our ailments have to be compensated for their research and development. I really don't think we can wait on Pakistan to come up with a new treatment for any new malady that exists. Most money is recouped in the early stages of use.

I don't hear an outcry about how much money Microsoft makes off of its suites of Office 2007 or Windows Vista software. They are still charging the same rate that they did when the products launched 3 years ago and by now I am sure that they have recouped all of their research and development costs for that product launch( and you can bet that Windows 7 will be launched with the same pricing structure). And take a look at the Apple iPod. The prices never really go down. You get some new features, first color, then video, then smaller size, then touch and wi-fi capabilities but the prices remains constant within a few dollars. But I digress.

As I mentioned earlier, the president is full of ideas and no plans. His ideas are disguised as plans but if you examine closely you will see that there is no substance to grab hold to. Contrary to what he says, B-Rock wants to nationalize healthcare. He wants a complete overhaul of our healthcare system without looking to see what is broken and needs fixing. If my car were to run out of gas while driving; I would not rebuild the engine to fix the problem. I would call the motor club to bring me gasoline or tow me to a gas station. Let's remind our elected knuckleheads in Congress that overhaul means tearing down to rebuild. Do we need to rebuild or just fix what is broken and remove what is not working?

These are my words! Please post yours!