DarkStar Spouts Off

Brain Pellets

1. How much money does Britney Spears generate for other people? She's an example of what capitalism really is all about. She's a product pimped by her record company. She's a business which pays other people and other businesses for their services. Other businesses make money off of her by providing goods that happen to be about her or related to her in some manner.
2. The right wing venom directed towards McCain is interesting given Romney's flip flops. He, Romney, seems to be Bill Clinton like in triangulation. Not only that, it appears that "his" health care initiative is costing his state a lot more than anticipated.

House Hunting

I have real estate searches set up to find homes for sale in desirable areas, within a certain price range, meeting a certain style. Here are some things I've noticed:

• While PG county is off of my list because of taxes and poor school system, the number of "short sale" comments is absolutely amazing. I should say that it has been reported many times that PG county has the highest foreclosure rate in the state of Maryland.
• A lot of homes stating short sale have comments stating pre-approval is required by Countrywide.
• I've tried to get to see homes listed as short sale but the listing agents don't want to show it unless pre-approval is available.
• The short-sales are not necessarily good deals from what I can see.
• We are looking into buying property for rental investments but the market is glutted. The going rate for monthly rentals would make it hard to buy a decent home and make money on the rental. Right now, you couldn't even break even. That's very disappointing.

Quick Thought On The Dem Primaries

I think the Clintons are actually doing some good in their racialist (how's that?) antics.

I like seeing the Clintons being taken down a peg in their admiration by some Black folk. The feminists going berserk should give more  ammunition to Black feminists who have serious issues with the white
feminists and I think that is necessary. Finally, the Clintons going racial may move more Black Democrat politicians to grow a pair and really butt the Democratic power structure.

Toni Morrison Endorses Obama

I have no idea why I feel the need to comment on Toni Morrison endorsing Obama.

Maybe she saw more of Bill Clinton than the general public has seen and she realizes he ain't Black! *ahem*

Maybe she thinks he went too far and had to revoke Clinton's ghetto pass.

Whatever the reason, even though I understood her joke/comment about Clinton being Blacks, I never liked it, even in jest. Why you ask? Because I like to think that any Black man, knowing people are out to get him, would have enough sense to stop doing your dirt until you know you are in the clear!

Of course, that means Marion Barry ain't Black...

Thinking Stuff

Random thoughts:

• I have some sympathy for people who took out subprime loans and are now facing losing their homes. But it appears to me that people took out loans for homes they should have known they couldn't afford. In cases where people were tricked, and there were some cases, people's homes should not be taken. But, here is something that is troubling. If this is accurate, then people brought it upon themselves.
• Mrs. D.S. and I went to the Karibu bookstore in Bowie on Saturday. For all intents and purposes, that store is already closed. There are few books left that anyone would want to buy.
• On global warming:

Read this:

Point one: We've known for 20 years about the earth's moderate, natural 1,500-year climate cycle, which we discovered in the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores. The ice shows seven previous global warmings in the past 12,000 years. Two of these—8,000 years ago and 5,000 years ago—were, for many centuries, substantially warmer than today. The Greenland and Antarctic ice caps didn't melt. Point two: This can't be global warming. 1) The Arctic was also warm in the 1920s; the Russians say it happens every 70 years or so. 2) The Antarctic Ice is now at a modern high. The Antarctic has been cooling since the 1960s, according to Peter Doran's 2002 paper in Nature. Thanks to warming's additional snowfall, the East Antarctic ice cap is currently gaining about 45 billion tons of ice per year. Neels Reeh of the University of Denmark says that another 1 degree C of warming would melt enough Greenland ice to raise sea levels perhaps half an inch per year—but added ice in the Antarctic would lower sea level almost that much. The net increase has been six inches per century, and it isn't expected to change.

There is more. Read it all.

• There were others and now I can't remember them.

Bill Continues To "Niggerize" Obama

Yeah, I don't use that word much. In fact, I may use it once every few years. And when it does get used, I'm usually spun up over something. Well, Bill Clinton did it this time:

January 26, 2008  8:18 PM

Said Bill Clinton today in Columbia, SC: "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign.  And Obama ran a good campaign here."

This was in response to a question from ABC News' David Wright about it taking "two Clintons to beat" Obama. Jackson had not been mentioned.

              

And isn't it interesting that Jesse Jackson, Sr. is put into this. Another Sistah Souljah moment.
If you remember me from soc.culture.african.american.moderated on USENET, you may remember the firestorm I started when I wrote this rant. Well, what do you have to say NOW?

Oh, I KNOW This Would Set People Off!

I KNOW this would set people off!

In a bit of political theater, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Florida Democratic Party clamored to restore convention delegates that had been stripped by the national party.

At stake: 185 delegates in a state where Clinton leads almost 2-to-1.

The presidential candidate said Friday -- just four days before Florida's primary -- that she wants the convention delegates from Florida and Michigan reinstated. The national party eliminated all the delegates from those states -- more than 350 in all -- because they broke party rules against holding their primaries before Feb. 5. All the major Democratic candidates also made pledges not to campaign in those states before their primaries.

Clinton could claim most of the Michigan delegates because she won that state's primary after the other major candidates pulled their names from the ballot.

"I know other campaigns have tried to downplay the significance of these two states," Clinton told reporters in South Carolina Friday. "I think that is not a good strategy for Democrats or any of us who cares about the outcome of this election."

If they did this, there should be an internal riot of it.

UNCF

I'm watching the UNCF show on television and I noticed, once again, the major corporations and foundations that have given money to the UNCF. The 2006 annual report is here. I have to point this out from page 11 (13 in the PDF):

$1,000,000 AND UP

JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Merck & Company, Inc.
MetLife Foundation
Ocean Bank
RBC Liberty Insurance
U.S. Bancorp Foundation
Wachovia Foundation

$500,000–$999,999

Bloomberg L.P.
The Coca-Cola Company
Dell
Foot Locker
Foundation, Inc.
General Motors Foundation
HSBC — North America
McDonald’s
Prudential
Office Depot, Inc.
The Procter & Gamble Fund
Sallie Mae Fund of the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region
Target Stores, Inc.
Toyota Motor Sales USA, Inc.
The UPS Foundation
Wal-Mart Foundation
Target Stores, Inc.
Toyota Motor Sales USA, Inc.
The UPS Foundation
Wal-Mart Foundation

Please remember this when people try to snow you about racist corporations or the evils of capitalism.

Experience?

I've always wondered how Hillary Clinton can say she has more experience than Obama. In fact, I previously wrote:

Hillary Clinton is saying experience matters. Well, excuse me, but the experience she has is sitting by while her husband gets "serviced" in a hallway off of the Oval Orifice.

That was a cheap shot and I don't apologize for it. Colbert I. King does a better job and, quite frankly, gets all up in the Clinton campaign's behind:

Item: Hillary's claim to "35 years of experience." Subtract her years spent as first lady of  Arkansas and in the White House, and her time working as a lawyer in the Rose Law Firm and in other jobs. As Reason Magazine's Steve Chapman reported in November, Hillary Clinton has "just under eight years of experience in elective office -- one more than John Edwards and four fewer than Obama." And, to boot, Hillary the Feminist has her man to fight her battles.

Read the entire opinion piece. It's good reading.

End The Prison Industrial Complex!

I'm tired of the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC)! So let's do what we can to destroy it!

• Be involved in your children's lives.
• Read to your children when they are young.
• Take your children to the park.
• Take your children to "cultural events."
• Teach your children right from wrong.
• Teach your children the meaning of delayed gratification and practice it.
• Practice what you preach.
• Review your children's homework.
• Meet your children's teacher on a regular basis.
• Join the PTA and attend the meetings.
• Help out the sports team for which your children play.
• Make sure their a**** are in the house before the street lights come on!
• Teach your children to not be followers.
• Teach them that good and bad actions have good and bad consequences, respectively.
• Mentor other children if you don't have any. If you do have children, also get involved in the lives of your children's friends!

How's that for a start?

Memphis Cares

Memphis Cares

Our Call to Action
We are asking every man and woman to commit just four (4) hours per month for one (1) Year

Recruitment Goal
To recruit 6000 mentors between January 2008 and December 2013! Goal is 50% of the mentors will be African American men!

Who Should Mentor?
All are welcome! We recruit men and women (like you) to become mentors because they have valuable knowledge and life experiences that will benefit young people. All it takes to become a mentor is a committed, caring person, responsible and a good listener.

A Moment of Silence For Karibu

"Where are we going to get books for our kids?"

By early afternoon, word had spread and dozens of customers crowded the bookstore's aisles. One of the nation's largest black-owned bookstore chains, Karibu, will be closed by mid-February, and people brought their shock and sadness to Bowie Town Center, along with their checkbooks.
...

Freddie Mills, a security officer who was scanning the aisles as his 2-year-old daughter played nearby, said he was "angry, angry, angry."

"Where are we going to get books for our kids?" he said.

This was more than a bookstore; it was community, it was "culture," Mills said. Urban-lit author Omar Tyree, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison and local bestselling erotica author Zane are among the many writers who have done signings for the stores.

"It's like the barbershop, like the black beauty salon," said co-owner Simba Sana. "It's a place where black people can come and lay their heads down."

...

But Sana said the closings were not caused by financial pressures. "Karibu's demise is a result of the ownership, including myself, failure to resolve conflict in a peaceful way and also a failure to end relationships amicably," he said.

SIGH

Kwame, Don't You Know

Kwame, don't you know? It's never the crime that causes the most trouble, it's the cover up!

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his chief of staff lied about their relationship last summer at a police whistle-blower trial that has cost the cash-strapped city more than $9 million, according to records obtained by the Free Press.

The false testimony potentially exposes them to felony perjury charges, legal experts say.

Kilpatrick and chief of staff Christine Beatty denied during testimony in August that they had a sexual relationship. But the records, a series of text messages, show them engaged in romantic banter as well as planning and recounting sexual liaisons.

The messages are also at odds with the pair's trial testimony that they did not fire Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown in 2003, an ouster that led him to sue. The text messages show Beatty recalling the "decision that we made to fire Gary Brown."

Dummy! You ain't Bill Clinton!

Ain't THIS Something!

Well if isn't something!

At 1:15 PM EST, Rush Limbaugh just admitted that the "civil rights" crowd have little sway over the Black community and the proof is Barak Obama.

Hmmm... That sounds familiar!

Not only that, he is saying the same thing I said on NPR and on my blog, and other blogs, that the Clinton's are using a version of the Southern Strategy on Obama to make him "black" in the eyes of whites.

Oh, yeah! This will come back at some folks. Yesssss sireeeeee Bob!

Africa Is Of No Importance To The U.S.?

The next time some fool states that Africa is of no strategic importance to the U.S., point that fool to this:

Although there is no way of knowing how many of the total entrants the 606 recorded individuals represent, officials said Sinjar was a primary entrance point. Its importance increased as Iraq's Anbar province -- farther south and bordering Saudi Arabia and Jordan -- became more difficult for foreigners to cross.

"We also adjusted our analysis [to say that] more North Africans were foreign terrorists than previously assessed," said Col. Steven A. Boylan, spokesman for Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Although Saudi Arabia was by far the most common country of origin of foreign fighters, with about 40 percent of the total, a surprising share -- 19 percent -- came from Libya. Overall, about 40 percent were North African.

Then stand back and watch that person's head spin with foam spewing out of the mouth.

Tech Buy Outs

Sun Microsystems is buying MySQL -- I have no idea what this means for MySQL. I use MySQL for learning technologies that require a database, for prototyping purposes, and for development purposes before putting software on the "real machines" and using Oracle. At home, I downloaded the Linux and Windows versions and installed them to do what I need to do. What this means for MySQL is unknown. What this means for Sun, I assume, is more money from the service side of MySQL.

Oracle is buying BEA Systems -- Oracle had its own application server for awhile and that didn't work out so they brought a company which gave them a better application server, Orion. Now they are buying BEA Systems and they get a better application server, business process management software that uses the application server, web services software, web portal software, a good Java Virtual Machine, and other software. I think BEA got the best of the deal because their software is too damned expensive and is battling open source software that is of decent enough quality for production use. Having dealt with BEA sales representatives and having used BEA software, I hope the quality of some of it improves and the cost goes down, but I doubt it. Just say NO to BEA portal software!

Here is a link to a company pronouncing the death of J2EE software. Gigaspaces is actually on the list of software that I feel the need to evaluate.

You Won't Like This Idea

I read this and came up with an idea.

Stock markets around the world plummeted today, as a financial crisis that began in the market for U.S. home mortgages spread to almost all corners of the global economy.

U.S. markets were closed for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, but all of the world's other major economies experienced a sell-off. Stock prices fell 7 percent in France and Germany, 5 percent in China and Great Britain, and 4 percent in Japan. Stocks lost value in 42 of the 43 nations with widely followed markets; the only exception was Sri Lanka.

"It was all about blood on the wall," said Georges Ugeux, chairman of Galileo Global Advisors, who was visiting the Indian stock exchange, which fell 7.4 percent (the equivalent of a 900-point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average). "For them, this is a black Monday."

You won't like this idea at all, but I think it's the best thing for the U.S. economy. Instead of coming up with a "stimulus package" that, in reality, is nothing more than a wet band-aid, why don't we just let the markets do what the markets are going to do and suffer the ride?

Cutting rates, coming up with a stimulus package that gives people money to spend, pumping money into the economy, saving people from losing their homes, now, only to lose them later, etc, is just delaying the inevitable and making the real correction much harsher in the long term. Just, let it happen.

The Greatest Speech Ever Written

Letter from the Birmingham Jail

News & Notes

I'll be on News & Notes today. More later.

[ Update ]

We discussed people starting to get hyped about presidential politics, the Southern Strategy and the Clinton campaign, and the noose gracing the cover of the golf magazine.

The other round tabler talkers were Ambra Nykol and John McCann. Instead of calling from a land line, I was at The Baltimore Sun and did it over an ISDN line. Hopefully you will her less "ummms" and more bass. :-)

The audio link.

Media Race Baiting

The media has been saying that there is a great level of violence between Blacks and "Hispanics." The conservative media and conservative bloggers have been pointing it out and asking why "Black leaders" aren't saying anything about this violence. In the forums that I visit, when this is brought up I mention that not all Hispanics are the same. For example, I know Blacks and Puerto Ricans get along well in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. I also know the same can be said for Dominicans. I definitely can't say that I know this is the same for Latinos from Mexico or El Salvador. I've heard about tensions and I've experienced an isolated incident, so I can't say yes or no either way. Therefore, the broad brush is more harmful than useful.

So, now we have Hillary Clinton winning the Nevada caucus, and the advantage she had with Latino voters over Obama is being reported.

The Nevada results contained some worrisome signs for Obama along demographic lines. The heavy support that Clinton won among Hispanics suggested that he could face an uphill climb to win that important group in California, New York and New Jersey, the three most populous states with primaries on Feb. 5. In the first contest in which race has played an important role, white caucusgoers in Nevada backed Clinton over Obama, 52 percent to 34 percent, and nearly two-thirds of Latinos chose Clinton. Black voters broke heavily for Obama over Clinton, 83 percent to 14 percent.

However, Matthew Yglesias has an interesting take on the matter:

There's lots of reporting out there on Hillary Clinton's strong win -- 64-26 -- over Barack Obama among Latino voters in Nevada. One thing I would add to this is that Clinton did pretty well with whites, too -- beating Obama 52-34. What's more, we've seen over and over again that Obama does better with more affluent voters and with better-educated voters. And, of course, the pool of non-hispanic whites is more affluent and better-educated than is the pool of Latinos.

Long story short, I'd be interested in seeing how different hispanics and non-hispanic whites really look once you control for non-ethnic demographic factors. Or, in other words, does Obama really have a specific problem with Latino voters, or is this more of a class phenomenon?

He asks a good question.

Should the break down of voters be reported? Is it necessary? I have to write yes to both questions. However, there is a right way to ask and a wrong way to ask. The media is too lazy so they are going to ask the wrong way.

Clinton, Inc, 1, Obama, 0

I am just an observer in the Democratic primary fight but I have been watching with interest what is happening in the Democratic primary for a few reasons. The first reason is I knew there was going to be a strong fight between Clinton, Inc. and Obama . The second reason is because I wanted to see how the Democrat politicians would take part in the fight. The third reason is because I wanted to see how Black Democrats were going to respond to the actions of the Democrats.

As I wrote before, I knew it was going to get dirty once Clinton, Inc. felt as though they were falling behind, and it did. I count myself as one of the many who think Clinton, Inc. pulled the race card to get an advantage. I am also willing to state that the tactic worked for Clinton, Inc.:

Barack Obama leads Hillary Clinton a little more than a week before the South Carolina Democratic primary, as the state's large African-American population moves solidly behind him, according to a new McClatchy-MSNBC poll. The poll underscored a racial divide in the state over the showdown between an African-American man and a white woman. South Carolina is the first state with a large African-American population to vote in this year's Democratic campaign. The poll showed Obama, an Illinois senator, leading among African-Americans by a better than 2-1 ratio. Clinton, a New York senator, led among whites by 2-1. Overall, that translates to nearly a 10-point lead for Obama. "Voters are breaking along racial lines," said Brad Coker, the managing partner of Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, which conducted the survey. "Racial voting patterns are going to play a major role." A white man, former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, was a distant third in the survey and didn't appear to be factor yet in his native-born state.

The poll showed more than half the likely vote coming from African-Americans - 54-43 percent - and a bigger female turnout than male, 59-41 percent. The poll's findings that 15 percent remain undecided - enough to swing the eventual vote - are noteworthy. Also, 1 in 5 who did support candidates said they still might change their minds. Edwards' supporters were more likely to change their minds. The results came after days of verbal warfare between Clinton and Obama supporters over her comments that it took President Lyndon Johnson to accomplish, with civil rights legislation, the dreams of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Obama supporters accused Clinton of besmirching King. The two blamed aides and overzealous supporters for the fracas during a debate earlier this week. In South Carolina, the poll showed this landscape among likely voters heading into the primary Jan. 26: - Obama, 40 percent.
- Clinton, 31 percent.
- Edwards, 13 percent.
- Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, 1 percent.
- Undecided, 15 percent.

I think the poll results show that Clinton, Inc. succeeded in making Obama a "Black politician." Clinton, Inc. pulled the race card, though not as strong as first done with Sistah Souljah, but it was pulled none the less, and they let the Obama supporter's response do the real "heavy work." I'm not saying Clinton, Inc. should not have been called on their trash, but the blow back against the backlash was predictable. However, the 15% that are undecided will tell the final tale.

I Know It's Friday And I Should Post Something Happy

I know I should be posting something mindless and not post something that if you think about it, it could mess up your weekend, but it is not a good idea that Saudi Arabia and China are bailing out our major financial companies.

I wish I could remember the person and the exact quote, but a famous communist once stated they didn't have to do anything to make capitalism fall, because capitalism will sell and buy the rope to hang itself with.

Here It Comes

Watch out for Fred Thompson. In fact, I've decided I'll vote for him in the Maryland primary election. I think he can knock out Rudy Ghouliani.

Paying By The Byte

For 4 summers, I worked for AT&T before the break up. The first summer I was a clerk in a telephone office that serviced a government agency. One day the manager came in and said the telephone world was going to change. AT&T was pushing for a break up of itself to allow it to get into the long distance game. In short, AT&T got what they thought they wanted.

When I first got an Internet connection, I had dial-up. I got a second line so I wouldn't miss calls while I was on-line. Then, Bell Atlantic (now Verizon), wanted to charge me a business rate for the second line because I told them the line was for the Internet. The person I argued with told me they really want the ability to charge by the minute because the telephone network was designed to handle calls that lasted, on average, for about 10 minutes.

Later, before cable Internet was available, I looked into getting an ISDN line. I decided not to do it because they charged by the amount of data transferred and, at the time, my consulting business was new I and wasn't sure if I could recoup the cost. But I remembered the discussion with the telephone person saying they wanted to charge Internet use by the minute.

Now, comes this and I think it is inevitable. Home users being charged by the amount of data transferred is going to happen:

Time Warner Cable Will Do Trial on Setting High-Speed Internet Charges
Based on Usage

NEW YORK (AP) -- Time Warner Cable will experiment with a new pricing structure for high-speed Internet access later this year, charging customers based on how much data they download, a company spokesman said Wednesday.

The company, the second-largest cable provider in the United States, will start a trial in Beaumont, Texas, in which it will sell new Internet customers tiered levels of service based on how much data they download per month, rather than the usual fixed-price packages with unlimited downloads.

Company spokesman Alex Dudley said the trial was aimed at improving the network performance by making it more costly for heavy users of large downloads. Dudley said that a small group of super-heavy users of downloads, around 5 percent of the customer base, can account for up to 50 percent of network capacity.

Here it comes but the cable company is going to be the first to really try it. When it sticks, watch Internet innovation come to a crawl.

Let Me See How This Works

Let me see how this works.

You are in charge of a corporation and you just got a raise.

You are in charge of the corporation at a time when your employees are using drugs and setting records. You, people who write about your corporation, and people interested in your product, have publicly stated that they know your employees are using drugs. There was even an investigation into it, with charges being filed and you even had to appear before congress! But even knowing that, the board members give you raise.

Can I get a job like that?