Editor's Literary Thursdays

The Journey....


I have toiled night and day, but have nothing to show....
I have wandered through the wilderness, but with nothing in sight....
I have beckoned to the Angels, but they are yet to be seen....
In my pain, I have wondered aloud and recoiled in despair....
But who am I to dismiss the path of glory....
For in my desolate peril, I am assured of a new beginning....
In my languished anguish, I see the dawn of a new day....
For I must go on, my senses tell me....
The journey has only begun, my conscience assures me....
For I must not worry, but must surely tarry....
For the journey, though began with a query....
Must end with the promise, the query beckons....
This is my life.... of the glory foretold....
For I must not die, but shall surely live....
And in living, I must be fulfilled....
And in fulfillment, I must be complete....
And in completion, the glory shall be revealed....
For I am the reason for the journey....
And the journey, the reason for my being....


By Boye' A. Coker


All Rights Reserved

Glenn Beck's Fox show coming to an end

The crying "apostle of hate"

NEW YORK – Glenn Beck later this year will end his Fox News Channel talk show, which has sunk in the ratings and has suffered from an advertiser boycott.

Fox and Beck's company, Mercury Radio Arts, said Wednesday they will stay in business creating other projects for Fox television and digital, starting with some documentaries Beck is preparing.

Beck was a quick burn on Fox News Channel. Almost immediately after joining the network in January 2009, he doubled the ratings at his afternoon time slot. Fans found his conservative populism entertaining, while Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert described Beck's "crank up the crazy and rip off the knob" moments.

He was popular with tea party activists and drew thousands of people to the National Mall in Washington last August for a "restoring honor" rally.

Yet some of his statements were getting him in trouble, and critics appealed to advertisers to boycott his show last summer after Beck said President Barack Obama had "a deep-seated hatred for white people."

Beck said that he went to Roger Ailes, Fox News chairman and CEO, in January to discuss ways they could continue to work together without the daily show.

"Half of the headlines say he's been canceled," Ailes said. "The other half say he quit. We're pretty happy with both of them."

Beck said he noted on his show Tuesday that "how many times can I tell the (George) Soros story," referring the liberal donor that Beck has made a target of attacks.

"We felt Glenn brought additional information, a unique perspective, a certain amount of passion and insight to the channel and he did," Ailes said. "But that story of what's going on and why America is in trouble today, I think he told that story as well as could be told. Whether you can just keep telling that story or not ... we're not so sure."

Beck, who outlined on Wednesday's show his reasons for believing that "we're heading into deep and treacherous waters," told his viewers at the end of the show that his Fox talk show would conclude.

"I will continue to tell the story and I will be showing other ways for us to connect," he said.

More than 400 Fox advertisers told the company they did not want their commercials on Beck's show. Beck's advertisers were dominated by financial services firms, many touting gold as an investment.

Ailes dismissed the financial impact of the boycott but expressed some frustration with it.

"Advertisers who get weak-kneed because some idiot on a blog site writes to them and says we need to stifle speech, I get a little frustrated by that," he said.

One of Beck's most prominent critics — David Brock, founder of the liberal watchdog Media Matters for America — said that "the only surprise is that it took Fox News months to reach this decision."

"Fox News Channel clearly understands that Beck's increasingly erratic behavior is a liability to their ratings and their bottom line, and we are glad to see them take this action," said James Rucker, executive director of ColorofChange.org, which organized the advertiser boycott.

Beck was a lightning rod for other critics, as well. The Jewish Funds for Justice organized a petition drive last fall to get Beck fired for what it called his misuse of Nazis and the Holocaust phrases against political opponents.

Viewers had begun turning away. Beck's 5 p.m. ET show averaged 2.7 million viewers during the first three months of 2010, and was at just under 2 million for the same period this year, the Nielsen Co. said. His decline was sharper among younger viewers sought by advertisers.

Increasingly, the show began to be dominated by Beck standing in front of a chalk board giving his theories about the world's troubles.

However, Beck has built a powerful brand for himself through a daily radio show, best-selling books and personal appearances. Mercury Radio Arts is expanding and a key Fox executive, Joel Cheatwood, is joining the company later this month.

Beck's company created and operates a news and opinion website, TheBlaze.com. For $9.95 a month, he offers fans access to "Insider Extreme," a website that beams documentaries, Beck personal appearances and a video simulcast of Beck's daily radio show, with an extra hour featuring Beck cohorts.

Beck said ratings for his television show were not an issue, noting that "we have buried the competition in every sense." His supporters believe that the recent decline is more a reflection that ratings were abnormally high early last year.

"Call CNN and MSNBC and ask them if they'd like to have Glenn's ratings at 5 in the afternoon," Ailes said.

Ailes emphasized that Fox and Beck will continue to work together.

"We like each other," he said in a dual interview with Beck. "We're not drawing pictures of each other on the walls, having staff fights and stealing each other's food out of the refrigerator or any of that stuff."

Warren Moon is off base with racism charge regarding Cam Newton

Warren Moon

Editor's Monday Dish

There is no question racism continues to play a part in everyday American life. So however does sexism, classism and every other ism we can think off, that speaks to the unfortunate tendency for humans to either denegrade others different from them, or just flat-out annihilate them, as has happened over human history.

For the latter reason, I take any charges of racism quite seriously (and so must every well meaning human being), particulary since it (racism) has had the most insidious effects on humanity (victims of racism) and it must not be talked about lightly.

As an immigrant to this country, from Africa, I have experienced my own fair share of discrimination (continue to). While I will not to delve into my own personal experience, I was rather taken aback by a recent story from the sports world.

The story in question was a statement credited to Warren Moon, former NFL great and Hall of Famer, in which he accused those criticizing Cameron Newton, former Auburn University quarterback, who was essentially "pimped" by his father to the highest bidder (yes he was and I said it), of blatant racism.

Are you kidding me, I thought to myself! I was befuddled not only by the context in which he (Warren Moon) had arrived at his opinion, but more-so that such a comment would come from someone like him.

Let's be frank. If there is anyone that has earned the right to speak on issues of racism, where it actually obtains, it is Warren Moon (by virtue of his personal experience as one of the first black quarterbacks in the NFL), but this rant of his, particularly around a less-than-sterling character like Cameron Newton (with his antecedents), would serve to belie my earlier assertion on Moon's credibility.

Cameron Newton was kicked out of the University of Florida for multiple instances of academic dishonesty (cheating), shortly after he had also got himself in hot-water for stealing a fellow student's lap-top.

His father, then shops him around for close to $200,000 rather than ensure his son gets a solid education while playing football.

Then Newton compounds his own problems by calling himself an "entertainer and an icon" and not "just a student".... really?

When I heard that Cameron Newton had hired Warren Moon as his adviser, I was one of those that felt there could not have been a better move than that by anyone, since the Chicago Bulls selected Michael Jordan in the 1984 NBA Draft.

Boy, was I wrong and I and a lot of folks are sure disappointed in Mr. Moon as he, like most other "Racial Industry" profiteers, has again be-littled an issue that actually affects genuinely decent, hard-working and extremely competent black and other minority professionals, who are the real victims of racism, on a daily basis.

That the real victims of racism must endure the incendiary balderdash of avowed racists, constantly referring to genuine race issues as someone "pulling the race card", can only be attributable to the misguided opportunism of the Al Sharptons, Jesse Jacksons and now, Warren Moons of the world.

It also seems Mr. Moon has conveniently forgotten the harsh treatment of Tim Tebow, Ryan Mallett, Jay Cutler and even Jeff George (from Mr. Moon's own playing days). Or, are they also vitims of racism? I guess not, since they are white and the same media he (Mr. Moon) villifies must have been doing their job.

Funny enough, Mr. Moon's charge of racism would serve to be rather hypocritical, in light of his own preferential treatment for a first degree negligent driving charge. One in which, yes you guessed it, he got off rather lightly.

Shame on you Mr. Moon and between you and Cecil Newton, one can only hope that Cameron Newton is able to avert the impending train-wreck that awaits him. I do wish him well, but somehow and one way, he sure will learn.... Life has a way of seeing to that.

More Black Men now in Jail than were in Slavery

By Dick Price


“More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began,” Michelle Alexander told a standing room only house at the Pasadena Main Library this past Wednesday, the first of many jarring points she made in a riveting presentation.


Alexander, currently a law professor at Ohio State, had been brought in to discuss her year-old bestseller, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Interest ran so high beforehand that the organizers had to move the event to a location that could accommodate the eager attendees. 


That evening, more than 200 people braved the pouring rain and inevitable traffic jams to crowd into the library’s main room, with dozens more shuffled into an overflow room, and even more latecomers turned away altogether. Alexander and her topic had struck a nerve.

Growing crime rates over the past 30 years don’t explain the skyrocketing numbers of black — and increasingly brown — men caught in America’s prison system, according to Alexander, who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun after attending Stanford Law. “In fact, crime rates have fluctuated over the years and are now at historical lows.”

“Most of that increase is due to the War on Drugs, a war waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color,” she said, even though studies have shown that whites use and sell illegal drugs at rates equal to or above blacks. In some black inner-city communities, four of five black youth can expect to be caught up in the criminal justice system during their lifetimes.

As a consequence, a great many black men are disenfranchised, said Alexander — prevented because of their felony convictions from voting and from living in public housing, discriminated in hiring, excluded from juries, and denied educational opportunities.

“What do we expect them to do?” she asked, who researched her ground-breaking book while serving as Director of the Racial Justice Project at the ACLU of Northern California. “Well, seventy percent return to prison within two years, that’s what they do.”

Organized by the Pasadena Public Library and the Flintridge Center, with a dozen or more cosponsors, including the ACLU Pasadena/Foothills Chapter and Neighborhood Church, and the LA Progressive as the sole media sponsor, the event drew a crowd of the converted, frankly — more than two-thirds from Pasadena’s well-established black community and others drawn from activists circles. Although Alexander is a polished speaker on a deeply researched topic, little she said stunned the crowd, which, after all, was the choir. So the question is what to do about this glaring injustice.

ACLU Pasadena/Foothills President Michelle White, Author Michelle Alexander, LA Progressive Publisher Sharon Kyle, and ACLU Pasadena Past President Kris Ockershauser.Married to a federal prosecutor, Alexander briefly touched on the differing opinion in the Alexander household. “You can imagine the arguments we have,” Alexander said in relating discussions she has with her husband. “He thinks there are changes we can make within the system,” she said, agreeing that there are good people working on the issues and that improvements can be made. “But I think there has to be a revolution of some kind.”

However change is to come, a big impediment will be the massive prison-industrial system.

“If we were to return prison populations to 1970 levels, before the War on Drugs began,” she said. “More than a million people working in the system would see their jobs disappear.”

So it’s like America’s current war addiction. We have built a massive war machine — one bigger than all the other countries in the world combined — with millions of well-paid defense industry and billions of dollars at stake. With a hammer that big, every foreign policy issue looks like a nail — another bomb to drop, another country to invade, another massive weapons development project to build.

Similarly, with such a well-entrenched prison-industrial complex in place — also with a million jobs and billions of dollars at stake — every criminal justice issue also looks like a nail — another prison sentence to pass down, another third strike to enforce, another prison to build in some job-starved small town, another chance at a better life to deny.

Alexander, who drew her early inspiration from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., devotes the last part of “The New Jim Crow” to steps people can take to combat this gross injustice. In particular, she recommended supporting the Drug Policy Alliance. At the book signing afterwards, Dr. Anthony Samad recruited Michelle Alexander to appear this fall at one his Urban Issues Forums, typically at the California African American Museum next to USC.


http://www.laprogressive.com/law-and-th ... t=My+Yahoo

Nigeria's parliamentary elections postponed due to 'logistical shortcomings'

Late President Umaru Yar'Adua

Seems Obasanjo and his cohorts need to put some more finishing touches to their plot, to again steal the people's mandate.
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LAGOS, NIGERIA - Parliamentary elections in Nigeria have been postponed until Monday because of organisational problems, officials say.

The electoral officials - who have apologised for the delay - say ballot papers have not been delivered in time to many polling stations.

The decision is seen as a big blow to the credibility of the electoral body in Africa's most populous country.

Some 73 million people have registered for the parliamentary, presidential and gubernatorial polls over two weeks.

Security has been high, with borders closed and only election officials, security forces and emergency personnel allowed to drive on roads during voting.

Earlier, politicians were urged to put a stop to campaign violence.

Amnesty International said at least 20 people had been killed in related attacks and clashes over the last two weeks.

A bomb was thrown into a police station in the city of Bauchi on Friday in an apparent attempt to cause panic. No casualties were reported.

Police in the Niger Delta also said they had arrested two men driving a minibus filled with assault rifles, ammunition and a rocket launcher.

Continue reading the main story

Vote by #s

• 74m regstd. voters
• 360 Assembly members
• 109 senators
• 54 parties 
• 36 governors
• 20 pres. candidates

"In order to maintain the integrity of the elections and retain effective overall control of the process, the commission has taken the very difficult but necessary decision to postpone the national assembly elections to Monday," Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) head Attahiru Jega said on Saturday. "It is an emergency," he added.

According to the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), aircraft that were supposed to be flying in ballot papers and accreditation details from overseas were diverted away from Nigerian airspace.

There were angry scenes in polling stations across the country as word began spreading that the elections were postponed, our correspondent says.

She adds that the move raises fears among some that Mr. Jega's grip on his staff at the election commission is not tight enough, and people will wonder whether the coming elections over the next two weeks will run smoothly.

The voting process had already started with large turnouts reported in cities such as Lagos and Kano before the announcement by Mr. Jega.

The elections will be the third nationwide polls in Nigeria since military rule ended in 1999.

The previous votes - in 2003 and 2007 - were marred by allegations of widespread ballot stuffing, voter intimidation and violence.

Security forces were also accused of siding with the People's Democratic Party (PDP), which has dominated politics since the return to civilian rule.

Mr. Jega threatened sanctions against any political leader engaging in violence or vote-rigging, even warning he would resign if necessary.

In the election, 360 seats in the lower house of parliament, the House of Representatives, and 109 in the upper house, the Senate, will be contested. The PDP holds more than three quarters of the seats in both houses.

Classical - Gospel - Jazz

Falling in Love with Jesus by Jonathan Butler

            

  

Jazz Hearted Fridays

That's The Way Love Goes

by Norman Brown

from the album After The Storm

Editor's Literary Thursdays

Who am I? My senses question
What am I? My conscience beckons
Where am I? My compass queries 
For I once knew, but now I wonder
For I once was, but now I ponder
And I once was there, but now I'm yonder
But lo I am, as my senses gather
Reveling in the conscientious realization of my being
A conscious revelation of my humanity
And alas, the query is answered
For I am home, where I belong
With the compass of my compassion firmly situated
And Located in the very essence of my soul... and my spirit...    


By Boye' A. Coker

All Rights Reserved

Microsoft Co-Founder Hits Out at Gates

Provided by the WALL STREET JOURNAL

Bill Gates schemed to take shares in Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT - News) from his co-founder during the early days of the software company following his partner's treatment for cancer, according to a new memoir by the billionaire co-founder, Paul Allen.

The allegation is part of a critical portrait in the book of Mr. Gates, with whom Mr. Allen formed a friendship in grade school that evolved into one of the iconic partnerships of American business. The book, "Idea Man: A Memoir by the Co-founder of Microsoft," is scheduled to go on sale on April 17. A draft of the memoir was viewed by The Wall Street Journal. An excerpt of the book appeared on Vanity Fair's website early Wednesday.

The book gives a revisionist take on some details of Microsoft's history and the relationship between Mr. Gates and his former partner, the two of whom have long been viewed as cordial if not close friends. The book has created a rift between Messrs. Gates and Allen, say people who know both men. In the book's acknowledgments section, Mr. Allen thanks Mr. Gates along with 17 other people for "general and logistical assistance."

The book is "a very balanced portrayal of their relationship," said David Postman, a spokesman for Mr. Allen. "Paul clearly values the input and the ideas and energy of Bill Gates."

"While my recollection of many of these events may differ from Paul's, I value his friendship and the important contributions he made to the world of technology and at Microsoft," Mr. Gates said in a written statement.

Mr. Allen's unflattering account of Mr. Gates in the book is already making waves within the tight circle of early Microsoft alumni, with several people who know both men privately expressing confusion about Mr. Allen's motivations for criticizing his old business partner and questioning the accuracy of Mr. Allen's interpretation of certain events. Mr. Allen, for instance, puts himself in meetings that people familiar with the meetings say he never attended. In one case, Mr. Allen visits Palo Alto, Calif. to help woo a computer scientist who would later become one of the Microsoft's most important programmers. People familiar with the meeting said it was Mr. Gates who made the visit. Mr. Postman said that he isn't aware of any errors in the book.

In the book, Mr. Allen also positions himself as the spark of many of Microsoft's most important ideas, playing down Mr. Gates's role in some cases. Woven throughout the book is a bitterness Mr. Allen expresses for not receiving more credit for his work throughout his career and more shares in Microsoft.

Mr. Allen became one of the world's richest people from the success of Microsoft under Mr. Gates's leadership, with the vast majority of his wealth created in the years after he left the company.

"I am surprised that Paul would have felt that it helps his legacy to express dissatisfaction with the share of Microsoft he received," said Carl Stork, who joined Microsoft in 1981 as a technical assistant to Mr. Gates and worked there for two decades. "While all of us considered Paul a friend and valued his contribution, there is no question that Bill had a far larger impact on the growth and success of Microsoft than did Paul."

Much of the book focuses on the philanthropic and entrepreneurial efforts of Mr. Allen since he left Microsoft as an officer in the early 1980s. His early stake in the company created one of the world's greatest fortunes—he ranks 57th on Forbes magazine's list of billionaires, with an estimated $13 billion fortune—and funded everything from his acquisition of multiple professional sports teams to a successful quest to win a prize for building a reusable spacecraft.

Throughout the history of the technology industry, one co-founder often plays an outsized role in the success of their companies. Mr. Gates, Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL - News) Steve Jobs and Facebook Inc.'s Mark Zuckerberg all saw their co-founders leave before their companies truly took off. Yet the importance of those early partnerships can't be overlooked, said David Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School.

"I'm not sure Bill would ever have dropped out of Harvard if it wasn't for Paul," Mr. Yoffie said, referring to Mr. Allen's role in encouraging Mr. Gates to leave college to start Microsoft. "I don't know whether Steve Jobs, without Wozniak, would have ever gotten things together."

Messrs. Gates and Allen were widely thought by associates to have a warm relationship in the years since Mr. Allen, 58 years old, left Microsoft. Even Mr. Allen says Mr. Gates was one of his "most regular visitors" when Mr. Allen was recovering from chemotherapy two years ago from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, describing him as "everything you'd want from a friend, caring and concerned."

Yet, in the book, Mr. Allen also reveals that his decision to leave Microsoft was prompted largely by his growing disenchantment with the behavior of Mr. Gates, whom he portrays as a confrontational taskmaster who clashed with Mr. Allen's low-key style. Past histories of Microsoft have said Mr. Allen's departure from the company was sparked by his first brush with cancer in 1982, when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease.

In that year, Mr. Allen says he eavesdropped on a discussion in the Microsoft offices in Bellevue, Wash., between Mr. Gates and Steve Ballmer, now the company's CEO, in which he heard the two men talking about Mr. Allen's recent lack of productivity and how they might dilute his equity in the company by issuing options to themselves and other shareholders. Mr. Allen said he burst into the room and confronted Messrs. Gates and Ballmer, both of whom later apologized to him and backed down from their plan.

"I had helped start the company and was still an active member of management, though limited by my illness, and now my partner and my colleague were scheming to rip me off," he says in the book. "It was mercenary opportunism, plain and simple."

A spokesman for Microsoft said Mr. Ballmer had no comment.

Earlier efforts by Mr. Gates to whittle down his partner's stake in Microsoft were successful though, according to Mr. Allen. In the mid-1970s, when the two college dropouts were based in New Mexico, Mr. Allen says Mr. Gates asked for 60% of their partnership because of his greater contributions to the creation of software for running the BASIC programming language on an early PC, the MITS Altair 8800.

Mr. Allen says he had assumed that their partnership was evenly split, but he agreed to Mr. Gates's request.

Several years later when Messrs. Gates and Allen established Microsoft as a formal partnership, Mr. Gates asked to change their respective shares in the business to a 64-36 split, a demand to which Mr. Allen again agreed. But in the early 1980s Mr. Gates rebuffed Mr. Allen after the latter man asked for an increase in his own Microsoft shares after his work on a successful Microsoft product called SoftCard, Mr. Allen writes.

Mr. Allen was deeply disappointed in the response from Mr. Gates, whom he had known since Mr. Allen was a tenth grader and Mr. Gates was an eighth grader at a prestigious private school in Seattle.

"In that moment, something died for me," Mr. Allen writes. "I'd thought that our partnership was based on fairness, but now I saw that Bill's self-interest overrode all other considerations. My partner was out to grab as much of the pie as possible and hold on to it, and that was something I could not accept."

Mr. Allen said he sucked it up and thought, "OK…but one day I'm out of here," the book says.

Mr. Gates's attempts to lower Mr. Allen's stake in the company reflected concerns that Mr. Allen wasn't working hard enough and wasn't commitment to the company, say people familiar with the relationship. That was one reason, these people say, that Mr. Gates put a provision in their first partnership agreement that would allow him to buy out Mr. Allen if he thought there were "irreconcilable differences" between the two men.

Mr. Allen mentions the agreement in the book, without saying why Mr. Gates inserted the clause.

As Microsoft grew, it attracted more people like Mr. Gates who were single-mindedly focused on building Microsoft. They were willing to work around the clock, sleep in the office and battle each other over strategy and technical decisions. Mr. Allen, these people say, grew increasingly tired of that life and lagged the rest of group, they said. He gradually lost interest in remaining at the company. In the book, Mr. Allen says that fights with Mr. Gates took a toll on him. "My sinking morale sapped my enthusiasm for my work, which in turn could precipitate Bill's next attack," he wrote. He noted that Mr. Gates tried to keep him at the company.

Mr. Allen has spent the decades since his departure from Microsoft using his wealth to carve a somewhat whimsical path for himself. Many of his business investments, like the cable company Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR - News), software company Asymetrix Corp. and set-top box maker Digeo Inc., have either flopped or fared poorly for him.

Mr. Allen devotes portions of his book to investments like the Portland Trailblazers NBA franchise and the Seattle Seahawks NFL team. He financed the creation of rock n' roll and science fiction museums in Seattle designed by architect Frank Gehry, while he invested $100 million in 2003 to form a non-profit organization called the Allen Institute for Brain Science to study how brains work.

Even before Microsoft made him wealthy, it appeared to people who knew him that Mr. Allen had broader interests than running a software business. David Bunnell, who worked in New Mexico in the 1970s with Messrs. Allen and Gates at the pioneering PC maker Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, better known as MITS, said Mr. Allen was more passionate about music and culture than his business partner.

"He was more interested, in a broader sense, in the world," Mr. Bunnell says. "I think Bill is more single-minded."

Sex: What Men Want

Hmmm, so men have the innate desire to impregnate as many females as possible....?