DarkStar Spouts Off

Maryland'ers Got It With No Vaseline

Marylanders, if you think $100k/$150k-per family for increased taxes doesn't affect you, wait until next year when they come back and lower what they consider "high earners." Also, the part of the teacher's pension that is going to be responsible to be paid by the counties and Baltimore City, means your county/city tax is guaranteed to increase in the coming years.

Chuck Brown, "Bustin' Loose"

Chuck Brown, RIP

The Blogger Was Fired Because She Never Read The Documents She Criticized

Right now, it appears because of The Drudge Report, the conservative
blogosphere is in an uproar because a blogger was fired after she
criticized Black Studies.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/mob-quad_644237.html

Late last night, in a shameful example of editorial cowardice, the
Chronicle of Higher Education fired Naomi Schaefer Riley. Naomi is a
good friend of mine, a sometimes contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD,
and a fine writer. And the story of what happened to her is highly
instructive.

...

Chronicle readers were outraged. Not that a graduate student was
earning a doctorate by claiming that Sowell, Thomas, and McWhorter are
threats to civil rights. Oh, no. They were outraged because Naomi
would dare poke fun at such insanity. Because, you know, that’s
racist.

Eight days and 497 comments later, the Chronicle’s Liz McMillen fired Naomi.


Neither Naomi Riley nor the Weekly Standard know what was contained in
the thesis, because, by Naomi Riley's own words, she didn't read it.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/black-studies-part-2-a-response-to-critics/46401

Finally, since this is a blog about academia and not journalism, I’ll
forgive the commenters for not understanding that it is not my
job to read entire dissertations before I write a 500-word piece about
them.


Let's think about this one for a moment.

Many conservative commentators made a point to say -- A VALID
POINT NO LESS -- that politicians signed onto The Patriot Act
without reading it first, as well as signing onto "Obamacare" without
reading it. But, now, The Weekly Standard, wants to defend commenting
in ignorance?

HBCUs and Entrepreneurial Studies

In the Twitter-verse, many of the Black conservative/Republicans that I am following, rip Blacks, in general, for being dependent, lacking entrepreneurial spirit, etc. My question is, will Black conservatives/Republicans magnify this article or will they ignore it so they can continue their Black conservative/Republican victim strategy?

Entrepreneurial studies taking root at historically black colleges

Howard University’s School of Business has long offered courses in starting, running and managing a company. Many of its students have taken advantage of the school’s certificate program in entrepreneurship, while others have tapped the resources available through the department’s small business development center.

But in recent years, faculty and administrators realized that business students were no longer the only ones who need to know how to run a business, nor were they the only ones actively seeking that type of training.

“Our students have always been interested in entrepreneurship, but I feel like it really exploded over the last five years, and now it’s all over campus,” said Barron Harvey, dean of the School of Business at Howard, one of more than 120 historically black colleges and universities in the United States. “In particular, I think we are seeing more collaboration between different schools and departments on campus, where students in various fields of study want to learn how to be an entrepreneur. And it’s not just at Howard, I think that’s happening at schools like ours all across the country.”

The business school now partners with Howard’s schools of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and divinity to offer dual degree programs for students who may eventually want to launch their own enterprises. Meanwhile, at the undergraduate level, the university has introduced an entrepreneurship minor available to students of any major, and in the past few years, the nursing program and the communications department have added formal entrepreneurship programs catering to their own students.

There it is. In your face. WHAT!?!?!

Black Enterprise: 10 Black Republicans You Should Know, But Don't

[ Update ]

Black Enterprise: 10 Black Republicans You Should Know, But Don't

I don't know the qualifications for this, but it was interesting. A lot of this is insider stuff.

Conservatives Love Talking About Gov't Abuse Except When It Comes To Policing

Conservatives love talking about government abuse
EXCEPT when it comes to policing abuse, but even then
will only discuss it when a Democrat is the president. For example,
"Fast and Furious" is being blared about by conservatives but they
don't mention it started, or at least also occurred, during the Bush
administration.

http://wapo.st/ISMJkY

Justice Department officials have known for years that flawed forensic
work might have led to the convictions of potentially innocent people,
but prosecutors failed to notify defendants or their attorneys even in
many cases they knew were troubled.

Officials started reviewing the cases in the 1990s after reports that
sloppy work by examiners at the FBI lab was producing unreliable
forensic evidence in court trials. Instead of releasing those
findings, they made them available only to the prosecutors in the
affected cases, according to documents and interviews with dozens of
officials.

In addition, the Justice Department reviewed only a limited number of
cases and focused on the work of one scientist at the FBI lab, despite
warnings that problems were far more widespread and could affect
potentially thousands of cases in federal, state and local courts.

As a result, hundreds of defendants nationwide remain in prison or on
parole for crimes that might merit exoneration, a retrial or a
retesting of evidence using DNA because FBI hair and fiber experts may
have misidentified them as suspects.

In one Texas case, Benjamin Herbert Boyle was executed in
1997, more than a year after the Justice Department began its review.
Boyle would not have been eligible for the death penalty without the
FBI’s flawed work, according to a prosecutor’s memo.


Justice?

Jackie Robinson Was A Rockefeller Republican

Did you know Jackie Robinson was a Republican?

Did you know Jackie Robinson backed Rockefeller when Rockefeller was running against Goldwater?

Did you know Jackie Robinson had to deal with the racist Goldwater supporters?

If a Republican mentions Jackie Robinson was a Republican, complete the story for them. End it with, "That's right, Jackie Robinson was a Rockefeller Republican!"

See the head spin.

Symbiotic Relationship: Al Sharpton and Fox News

Let's look at a definition of symbiotic relationship:

A symbiotic relationship is a relationship between two entities which is mutually beneficial for the participants of the relationship. Thus there is a positive-sum gain from cooperation.

That's a great definition. Here is a great example of symbiotic relationship featuring Al Sharpton and Fox News:

“Check out this,” the flamboyant civil rights leader told me during breakfast at his organization’s annual meeting this week. He flipped through the program until he found a full-page ad with the logos of Fox News, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal. “News Corporation Proudly Supports National Action Network’s 2012 Convention,” it said.

Sharpton grinned. “They bash me on Fox News,” he said. “But they sponsor my conference.”

Do I really have to say anything else about this?

So, This Is What I Went Thru When I Went To High School

I'm going to excerpt just the first few paragraphs from this article.
This is what I went through for the first 1.5 years of high school
when I went to Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, a science,
engineering, and technical high school. It is what is called a magnet
school, today, but to get into the school, you had to have an 85/100
average and no grade below an 80.

The first 1.5 years of high school, I played catch up AND I had to
adjust to *gasp* white people *gasp* and some who were smarter than me
*gasp*. Essentially, I had to learn how to think more and study. I
went from spending 15 minutes doing homework a night to literally
doing 4 hours a night *PLUS* time to study if I had a test.

http://wapo.st/IhTKHn

Entering my freshman year at Georgetown University, I should have felt
as if I’d made it. The students I once put on a pedestal, kids who
were fortunate enough to attend some of the nation’s top private and
public schools, were now my classmates. Having come from the D.C.
public school system, one of the lowest-performing in the nation, I
worked extremely hard to get here.

But after arriving on campus before the school year, with a full
scholarship, I quickly felt unprepared and outmatched — and it’s taken
an entire year of playing catch-up in the classroom to feel like I
belong. I know that ultimately I’m responsible for my education, but I
can’t help blaming the schools and teachers I had in my early years
for my struggles today.

Even though I attended some of the best schools in the District —
including my high school, the Cesar Chavez Public Charter School for
Public Policy, at the Parkside campus near Kenilworth — the gap
between what I can do and what my college classmates are capable of is
enormous. This goes beyond knowing calculus or world history, subjects
that I didn’t learn in high school but that my peers here mastered
long ago. My former teachers simply did not push me to think past a
basic level, to apply concepts, to move beyond memorizing facts and
figures.

Looking back, I realize that the D.C. public school system is like a
neglectful parent who isn’t around much but still likes to brag about
her child’s accomplishments. Since the third grade, my teachers told
me I was exceptional, but they never pushed me to think for myself.
And when I did excel, they didn’t trust that I’d done the hard work.
They assumed I was cheating. Now, only 10 milesfrom those teachers and
schools where I was considered a standout, I’ve had to work
double-time just to keep up.


Read the entire thing, because although the introduction is good, it
gets MUCH deeper in the paper.

And this is why I think urban school systems need to be blown up and
education re-crafted.

Kudos to Darryl Robinson!

Pro Baseball Teams and Castro

Will pro baseball teams who have dealt with Castro be sanctioned?

What Makes Instagram Worth $1B?

What makes Instagram worth one billion dollars?

OK, I know it's worth it if someone pays that much for it, but other
than that, why is it so valuable? I've used the application and don't
find it that impressive. The few filters are not earth shattering and
the fact that they are able to post to other social media, doesn't
make it that valuable. That's just "the power" of developing a sharing
agreement with the other social media companies.

What it tells me is, Instagram has valuable metadata that people don't
realize they are accumulating and/or creating and Facebook gets access
to it. As I type this, the Instagram website is not responding
probably due to the crush of requests.

Time To Unpucker Your Butt

People protest Mary J Burger King commercial? Now you can't even find the "offending" commercial online.

Doesn't Popeyes have a Black spokeswoman celebrating their fried chicken?

People need to loosen up their butts.

Latest Drop Squad Candidates

I present the members of the New Black Panther Party to be Drop Squaded for offering a bounty on George Zimmerman. Yes, I think Zimmerman belongs in jail and then should get a court date for murder, but offering a bounty on him? Way beyond uncalled for.

I also present Spike Lee for tweeting Zimmerman's address and if that wasn't bad enough, the address was wrong!

Actually, Drop Squading provides the opportunity for these people to get back in the good graces of Black people. Forget the Drop Squad. They should be forever banned from being Black!

Yeah! I said it! WHAT!!!!!

It's Not About The Hoodie

Keeping it 100.

Maybe I've lost my street edge. I never thought of Black teens or men in hoodies as threatening.

If it is cool or cold and I'm being approached by a brother in a hoodie? I'm not threatened.

If its hot outside and dude isn't looking like he's working out? Yeah, I'm rolling in the opposite direction.

Dude has on a hoodie and then starts to look around and pull up the hood or is peeping around the corner and pulls up the hood? Yeah, I'm rolling out HARD.

It wasn't about the hoodie. I'm not even convinced it was about race. Zimmerman was looking for trouble and he found Trayvone Martin.