Commentary
Robinswing, Black Kos Editor
I’ve never seen anything like this before. I cannot in my memory find a post election where the debate is about whether the President Elect is/ should be/must/ step up and start governing. To say that there are a lot of expectations wrapped around Obama is the height of understatement. Boyfriend has his work set out for him. Good thing I believe he is up for the tasks.
I do remember that almost as soon as the election of 1992 was over, the republicans started in on Bill Clinton. Where I lived, there were bumper stickers proclaiming, "Don’t blame me I voted for Bush". It was clear from day after the election forward that giving William Jefferson Clinton a hard time was first and foremost on the agenda. The republicans are good at obstruction. They start early. They never let up. They suck at everything having to do with governance. They hope that people don’t notice this aspect of the GOP. In this regard nothing has changed.
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There were folks laying in wait for President Clinton. Some of these same folks are laying in wait for President Elect Obama. These people will lie, steal and cheat the American people out of the government they voted for, given half a chance.
Every move the brother makes is second guessed. The attempts to taint him with guilt by association are ongoing. The American press has for the most part continued with questions from the Nixonian error (which truly might be the last time the press did its job). What did he know and when did he know it? I figure its just moments until somebody uses the word corruption and attaches a ‘gate’ to it. The press has so little imagination and no real idea of what it is really supposed to be doing.
Their laser focus on unimportant minutiae whilst ignoring the real stories grates on the blackwoman’s last nerve ending.
Why aren’t there more stories about the sneaky shit W. is doing even as he virtually ignores the economic meltdown?
The American press seems to be stuck in a narcissism so vast little that is not about America gets notice. Americans are largely ignorant of what’s transpiring in the rest of the world even though it is clear that whether climate or finances, we’re all in this together. At this point in our history, Earth is one large dysfunctional family.
A little over a month from now, Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America . He will hit the floor running. Because he has to.
He is selecting the folks that he wants to work with to shape the change that Americans have voted for. He will be the president of all the people. This will never satisfy republicans and some progressives. So far, this man has proved himself smarter than all of his critics. I suspect this will not change.
I will fight twice as hard to protect him from the sharks in the sea of politics. Sadly, this also includes the press sharks.
In the spirit of the season we are entering, I will hold the idea of peace and green on earth and goodwill toward men.
In the spirit of our newly elected President, I will hold forth for change and hope.
In the spirit of my ancestors, I have come too far to turn back now.
In the spirit of the Southside of Chicago, some ass kicking might be in order.
Now, run and tell that.
I love this video. With so much bad news from the country continent of Africa it's important to see what this video calls The Africa you never see on TV. BIG UP! Warning it's a long video.
Part 2
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NY Times === Situation in Somalia Seems About to Get Worse.
Somalia’s transitional government looks as if it is about to flatline. The Ethiopians who have been keeping it alive for two years say they are leaving the country, essentially pulling the plug.
For the past 17 years, Somalia has been ripped apart by anarchy, violence, famine and greed. It seems as though things there can never get worse. But then they do.
The pirates off Somalia’s coast are getting bolder, wilier and somehow richer, despite an armada of Western naval ships hot on their trail. Shipments of emergency food aid are barely keeping much of Somalia’s population of nine million from starving. The most fanatical wing of Somalia’s Islamist insurgency is gobbling up territory and imposing its own harsh brand of Islamic law, like whipping dancers and stoning a 13-year-old girl to death.
And now, with the government on the brink and the Islamists seeming ready to seize control for the second time, the operative question inside and outside Somalia seems to be: Now what?....... More
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Versed in the highs and lows of emerging-market development, SABMiller, Standard Bank, and others are expanding across the continent and beyond.
BusinessWeek === South African Companies Unlock Sub-Saharan Africa.
Name a global economic woe, and chances are Charles Needham is dealing with it. Market turmoil has knocked 80% off the shares of South Africa's Metorex, the mining company he runs. The plunge in global commodities is slamming prices for the copper, cobalt, and other minerals Metorex unearths across Africa. The credit crisis makes it harder to raise money. And fighting has again broken out in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Metorex has a mine and several projects in development.
Such problems might send many executives to the window ledge. Yet Needham appears unruffled as he sits down at a conference table in the company's modest offices in a Johannesburg suburb. The combat in northeast Congo, he notes, is far from Metorex's mine. Commodity prices are still high, in historical terms. And Needham is confident he can raise enough capital, drawing on relationships with South African banks. "These are the kinds of things you deal with, doing business in Africa," he says.
That kind of resolve is typical of South African companies. All told, South Africans have plowed more than $8.5 billion into the Sub-Saharan region, the U.N. estimates, making the country the biggest investor there. Ever since South African Breweries pioneered the African beer market—and then went on to become the global titan known as SABMiller—South African companies have led the way on risky turf. Johannesburg cellular provider MTN was one of a handful of companies to defy conventional wisdom and prove that Africa could be a huge market for mobile phones........ More
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Who will lead after the Mandela generation exits?
The Root === Where's South Africa's Obama?
One by one, South Africa's Moses Generation is dying out—there was another funeral last Saturday—and its demise is raising uncomfortable questions about the yet-to-emerge Joshua Generation to lead South African into its Promised Land. These biblical references arise out of a speech Barack Obama delivered in Selma, Alabama last year, when the then 46-year-old Obama acknowledged the role old civil rights black leaders in creating a world in which his candidacy was possible. "Like Moses, they challenged Pharaoh, the princes, powers who said that some are atop and others are at the bottom, and that's how it's always going to be," Obama said. He thanked those leaders, but went on to say:
"As great as Moses was, despite all he did, leading a people out of bondage, he didn't cross the river to see the Promised Land." Obama spoke of God's advice to Moses about leaving it to the Joshua generation "to make sure it happens." It seems an appropriate comparison here in South Africa, not only regarding the unfinished businesses of getting to the Promised Land of a stable, deep-rooted democracy, but as to questions about where South Africa's Joshua Generation will lead them........ More
I'm hoping that he is cleared, I like Jackson Jr. I was never a huge fan of his father, but I think Jr. is his own man. (dopper0189)
NY Times === Officials Say Jackson Was ‘Candidate 5’ in Blagojevich Case.
Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr., long seen here as someone who was willing, even happy, to clash with this city’s old power structure, found himself tangled up on Wednesday in the fallout from the arrest of Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois — now a symbol of that old, unseemly political way.
Mr. Jackson was described in an affidavit filed in Mr. Blagojevich’s arrest as one of at least six people being considered by the governor to fill President-elect Barack Obama’s unfinished term in the United States Senate in exchange for money or a new job.
Specifically, federal authorities said, Mr. Jackson is "Senate Candidate 5," associates of whom, the governor said in a wire-tapped conversation, were willing to raise money for Mr. Blagojevich in exchange for the seat.
Mr. Jackson, an ambitious Democrat elected to Congress 13 years ago and the son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader, made a defiant appearance before reporters in Washington on Wednesday, denying unequivocally that he had offered Mr. Blagojevich anything in exchange for the Senate seat or had sanctioned any offer by an intermediary, as Mr. Blagojevich seemed to suggest in recordings........ More
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HuffingtonPost === Colin Powell Slams Sarah Palin: I'm From The South Bronx... "Nothing Wrong With My Value System".
Gov. Palin, to some extent, pushed the party more to the right, and I think she had something of a polarizing effect when she talked about how small town values are good. Well, most of us don't live in small towns. And I was raised in the South Bronx, and there's nothing wrong with my value system from the South Bronx........ More
Living in St. Albans, Queens
NY Times === Bluesy Home Market With a Jazzy Past.
It used to be easy for residents to rest on St. Albans’s laurels.
For several decades, starting in the 1940s, this serene neighborhood in southeastern Queens was a bastion for some of New York’s most famous African-Americans. Jazz greats like Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald, as well as sports heroes like the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Roy Campanella, called it home. By the 1970s, the area was solidly African-American and middle-class, and living there was a sign of success.
Visitors today don’t have to look far to see the neighborhood’s pride. Near the Long Island Rail Road station in St. Albans, a giant mural depicts some of the neighborhood’s famous residents........ More
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NY Times === Blacks and the White House: Slavery and Service.
The first child born at the White House was the grandson of President Thomas Jefferson. The second child born there was his property -- the African-American baby of Jefferson's two slaves.
Slaves not only helped build the White House, but also for decades men and women in bondage served America's presidents and first families as butlers, cooks and maids.
Two hundred years later, Barack Obama's election as the 44th president -- the first black chief executive -- is casting a spotlight on the complicated history of African-Americans and the exalted place they called home -- the White House.
During and after slavery, black workers made the White House function. Obama's entry on Jan. 20, 2009, will be a moment for the ages that few of them could imagine.
''I'm very proud of the fact we're going to have an African-American president and I think the help is going to be pleased to be working for an African-American president,'' said 89-year-old William Bowen Jr., a second-generation White House butler who worked for Presidents Dwight Eisenhower to George H.W. Bush.
When Bowen started at the White House in 1957, the civil rights movement was still in its infancy, segregation was still legal and African-Americans were just penetrating the upper echelons of government service....... More
Work by these artists is controversial and sizzling. Robert Johnson explains why.
Forbes === Why African-American Art Is So Hot.
Hanging in Robert Johnson's den is an oil from the 1930s by an African-American artist named Palmer Hayden. The painting depicts a black American businessman getting his shoes shined.
The subject is nattily dressed in suit and spats, a little like Johnson himself, who is sporting a crisply pressed blue shirt and a shiny yellow tie.
"That painting represents pride and dignity," says Johnson. "I identify personally with this work."
Johnson may be known for the low-budget comedy routines and booty-shaking music videos that drove the success of BET, the cable channel he founded that turned him into America's first black billionaire in 2001.
But in his private moments he is moved by art that documents the struggles and achievements of black people in America. Since the early 1980s Johnson, 62, has assembled some 250 pieces by 19th- and 20th-century African-American artists....... More
A look at the anti-abortion movement.
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NPR cutting black journalist Farai Chideya. by Deoliver47
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Crisis in Zimbabwe. by gsadamb