DarkStar Spouts Off

Memorial Day, My Family

My family celebrates Memorial Day by having cookouts and visiting grave sites.

Yesterday, I hosted the cookout and I was told it was a good time.
Being the host, the wife and I did a lot of work so I have to take
their word for it that they had a good time. Would family lie? Never.
:-)

Anyway, my uncle and two cousins served in the Army and Air Force. I
never thank them for their service but I'll change that oversight.
Going to the grave sites is a way of outwardly remembering family who
have passed.

That's what Memorial Day is to me, and for those who are serving,
today, who have served in the past, and to the family of those who
have served and lost their lives, to you all I say, thanks.

Gary Coleman, RIP

Gary Coleman has passed.

RIP.

More Park Sausages, Mom! Please?

Mr. Haysbert, RIP:

Raymond V. Haysbert Sr., an elder statesman of Maryland's
African-American business community, died at Union Memorial hospital
Monday. He was 90.

Haysbert had been the chief executive officer of the Parks Sausage Co.,
one of the largest black-owned businesses in the country. He was a
longtime chairman of the Urban League in Baltimore.

He moved to the city in the 1950s, recruited by Henry Parks, and helped
turn the sausage company into a success. Known for its popular "More
Parks Sausages Mom, Please" slogan, it became the first minority-owned
company to go public on the stock exchange and earned record financial
profits. Later, he founded a family catering business, Forum Caterers.

"Ray Haysbert was synonymous with the struggle for entrepreneurship
among African Americans at a time when it wasn't very popular," said
Kweisi Mfume, former Baltimore congressman and head of the national NAACP.

Quick Points

I'm sure Venus and Serena were taught better about displaying their
cookies and behaving with class. Based on Venus' outfit, it's clear
both sisters didn't listen. Vickie's is appropriate in private, not in
public. Straight up, she looks like a cracked out prostitute desperate
to get a trick to get a fix.

BP and the U.S. government have no clue how to stop the oil gush. I
pray every night for a solution to this mess. My son won't be able to
see the wonders of "clean water".

Spouting Off On: Let's Be Real

Look, Rand Paul is a Libertarian. With the exception of one self proclaimed Libertarian, they don't believe government should tell private businesses how to run their companies and/or who to serve or who not to serve. They don't believe the government has any business telling a property owner what they can or cannot do with their own private property. There really is no surprise they hold those views. ANYONE who has a level of knowledge about Libertarians, should probably start with the assumption they believe things like the Civil Rights Act application to businesses and property rights was wrong.

Right now, I don't feel like going into the "what if" situations that I think puts some Libertarians in knots. But I will say this, for any Libertarian who has commented in the public square about the details of their beliefs and where it leads, if they are running for public office, it IS fair game to ask about those views, whether or not they are a part of the campaign.

All of the Rand Paul backers who are whining about "gotcha media questions," grow up. That's the nature of the game. Rand Paul wrote a public opinion article in the not distant past. It's fair game.

What Should Be The Title of That Article?

Here are the first few paragraphs of this article:

Baltimore's poor African-American students are reading on average as well as their peers, whether they are in a small town in North Carolina or a city such as Chicago, according to the results of a national test released Thursday.

The results of the most rigorous and reliable assessment of reading given across the nation show that the city still faces challenges in improving its schools. The majority of fourth- and eighth-graders didn't pass the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which doesn't test just whether they can read, but whether they can comprehend a long passage and write a short response.

"We are primed to take the next leap into a story which is increasingly about excellence rather than a story about chasing 'good enough,' " said city schools CEO Andres Alonso.

Results of the test showed that 42 percent of the city's fourth-graders are reading at a basic, proficient or advanced level, compared with 65 percent across the nation. In eighth grade, 54 percent of students were at basic or above, compared with 73 percent in the nation.

Only 2 percent of the city's fourth-graders were considered advanced readers and none of its eighth-graders were.

Baltimore scored below the average for cities, but still beat out a number of cities with large poor and minority populations. Washington, which made some of the largest gains over 2007 and has a schools leader who has pushed cutting-edge changes, still had lower scores than Baltimore for eighth-grade reading.

After reading that, would you think this would be the title?

Reading scores show city's poor, black students on par with peers around U.S.

I mean, what the hell?!!?!?!?!?!?!

Tell the damn truth! The kids in Baltimore City Public Schools performed HORRIBLY on the tests!

If You Don't Have Gold, Guns, and Farm Land, You're Hosed

Auction of Spanish debt close to failure

By David Oakley

Published: May 19 2010 03:00 | Last updated: May 19 2010 03:00

Spain came close to its first debt auction failure yesterday, highlighting the funding problems for weaker eurozone economies.

The government's difficulties in selling €6.44bn ($7.96bn) in one-year and 18-month bills sparked worries over its 10-year debt auction tomorrow.

It planned to issue €8bn yesterday, but only just attracted that amount of bids, with yields at record highs. This prompted debt managers to reduce the size of the sale by €1.56bn. Normally a government bill auction would be covered at least 1.5 times.

Steven Major, head of fixed income at HSBC, said: "The Spanish auction was very disappointing and does not bode well for further issuance. It's becoming more apparent just how difficult it is for Spain, which is a big worry so soon after the launch of the international rescue package.

I'm going home to cry...

Send Her and Her Family Packing

My father was a Jamaican immigrant who came to the U.S. by following the rules of the time. The girl who "outed" her family when she said her mother "doesn't have papers," needs to be investigated. If it's true, the family should be sent back home.

Right is right and wrong is wrong.

Political Musing

Arlen Spectre losing his race is not a Tea Party victory, it is a
Democrat victory. Who really likes a "party switcher" when the
switcher is doing so because he wants to stay in power?

Rand Paul's victory was a Tea Party victory because they got him the
win to run in the general election. But, I think it also shows the Tea
Party was co-opted in that state. In my opinion, he should have been a
third party candidate who, if he won the general election, would try
to caucus with the Republican party.

That Depends On What the Definition Of...

This is unbelievable:

The Vatican prepared Monday to make its most detailed defense yet against claims that it is liable for U.S. bishops who allowed priests to molest children, saying bishops are not its employees and that a 1962 Vatican document did not require bishops to keep quiet.

An attorney for the Vatican said he would file a motion Monday that seeks to dismiss on jurisdictional grounds a federal lawsuit filed in Louisville.

The bishops are not employees?
Even though you control where they go?
Even though they sign on for life?

The I.R.S. would disagree, I'm sure.

I Agree With This Decision, Unfortunately

I agree with this decision:

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal officials can indefinitely hold inmates considered "sexually dangerous" after their prison terms are complete.

The high court in a 7-2 judgment reversed a lower court decision that said Congress overstepped its authority in allowing indefinite detentions of considered "sexually dangerous."

"The statute is a 'necessary and proper' means of exercising the federal authority that permits Congress to create federal criminal laws, to punish their violation, to imprison violators, to provide appropriately for those imprisoned and to maintain the security of those who are not imprisoned but who may be affected by the federal imprisonment of others," said Justice Stephen Breyer, writing the majority opinion. I say "unfortunately" not because of the ruling for sexual predators, but because I wonder if this is now the slippery slope to jailing people for life for "lessor" crimes.

As a postscript, I wonder what the more ardent "original intent of the Constitution" folks feel about the decent by Justice Thomas and Justice Scalia:

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the court's judgment, saying Congress can only pass laws that deal with the federal powers listed in the Constitution.

Nothing in the Constitution "expressly delegates to Congress the power to enact a civil commitment regime for sexually dangerous persons, nor does any other provision in the Constitution vest Congress or the other
branches of the federal government with such a power," Thomas said.

Thomas was joined in part on his dissent by Justice Antonin Scalia.

BP On The List

I like Amoco gas. It seems to do well in the car that I have and the car that my wife has. For as long as I have been driving and putting gas in the care, Amoco gasoline has always treated my cars well.

So, it is with much sadness that I have to add BP to the list of companies I boycott.

This, I Like

Gov Christie calls S-L columnist thin-skinned for inquiring about his 'confrontational tone'

Booties Bass U

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/14/bootsy-collins-university_n_576061.html

This may be the thing that gets me to buy a hammer and learn how to funk a little bit.

Funkmaster Bootsy Collins can now add another bullet point to his resume: university founder. Collins has announced that his online University of Funk will go live July 1.

Bootsy Collins presents the world's first Funk University for bass players of planet Earth. Construction of this online campus will conclude in June, with the first semester beginning on July 1, 2010.

Bail Out

We bailed out banks.
We bailed out Freddie and Fannie.
We bailed out car companies.
We are bailing out Greece to the tune of at least a trillion dollars.
At least Germany is mad about the Euro bailout because it's THEIR
pockets being raided.

The money is not there so who is going to bail US out?

A world wide depression is here.

[ UPDATE ]

We, the U.S., is helping to bail out Greece, but the trillion is total so far. The IMF is helping bail out Greece and we, the U.S., pays a percentage of that amount.

Financial Tidbits

• Yesterday, Legg Mason, based in Baltimore, announced they were laying off a lot of people. This is a few weeks after moving people into a new complex in downtown Baltimore. The kicker is the work will be taken over by people across the country AND across the globe. So, in other words, they are out sourcing financial data to Dubai.
• The U.S. is giving a hellluvalot of money to Greece to bail them out. That makes no sense. If the Euro countries can't handle it, so be it.

Will You Continue Eating Shrimp?

I think most of the shrimp available in the middle Atlantic states comes from the Gulf area. I've told my wife, who is the big shrimp eater, that she should stop eating the stuff because who knows where
the shrimp is coming from.

Leana Horne

She could SANG.

Showed class.

FOINE.

Showed class.

FOINE.

Decent actress.

Showed class.

FOINE.

Ear worm of the day: "Stormy Weather".

Happy Mother's Day!

Bomb Beats

I was doing some grilling for a Mother's Day cookout and I had my iPod on. I recently loaded a lot more of my CD selection and I decided to play the "recently loaded" list.

I jammed. Period.

First of, the Hidden Beach Unwrapped hip hop jazz series is just great. Following that series, closely, is the Urban Knights series. Anyway...

The songs were jumping around from James Brown to Maceo to Parlament, to Cameo to Public Enemy. It then did a long play from their last CD and earlier CDs then I realized something, again.

The Bomb Squad produced the best funk beats for "hip hop", period.

Not Smelling The Pass Test

Something doesn't pass the smell test. One analyst throwing off the
entire market because a "billion" was used instead of a "million"?

OK, yes that's a magnitude of 1000 difference, but DAMN.

Where's The "Broken Windows" Crowd Now?

Presented without comment:

Two years ago, a police officer in a Brooklyn  precinct became gravely concerned about how the public was being served. To document his concerns, he began carrying around a digital sound recorder, secretly recording his colleagues and superiors.

He recorded precinct roll calls. He recorded his precinct commander and other supervisors. He recorded street encounters. He recorded small talk and stationhouse banter. In all, he surreptitiously collected hundreds of hours of cops talking about their jobs.

Made without the knowledge or approval of the NYPD, the tapes—made between June 1, 2008, and October 31, 2009, in the 81st Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant and obtained exclusively by the Voice—provide an unprecedented portrait of what it's like to work as a cop in this city.

They reveal that precinct bosses threaten street cops if they don't make their quotas of arrests and stop-and-frisks, but also tell them not to take certain robbery reports in order to manipulate crime statistics. The tapes also refer to command officers calling crime victims directly to intimidate them about their complaints.

As a result, the tapes show, the rank-and-file NYPD street cop experiences enormous pressure in a strange catch-22: He or she is expected to maintain high "activity"—including stop-and-frisks—but, paradoxically, to record fewer actual crimes.

This pressure was accompanied by paranoia—from the precinct commander to the lieutenants to the sergeants to the line officers—of violating any of the seemingly endless bureaucratic rules and regulations that would bring in outside supervision.

Hat Tip: P6

This Is Why This PUTZ Should Be Fired

I've written a few times in the past two years that I think the
Baltimore school CEO, Andres Alonso, should be fired. I think the last
time I wrote it, I think I wrote it because I thought he was
pressuring schools to do in-school suspensions so that the NCLB
"school safety rating" would fall within the acceptable guidelines.
Here is another data point:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/bi-ci-alonso-bullying-20100503,0,5893721.story

Students who bully their peers should be allowed to stay in the
classroom, Baltimore schools CEO Andres Alonso said Monday as he
addressed several high-profile harassment incidents by urging parents
and community leaders to step up their involvement.

"We believe that to punish children by excluding them and pushing them
outside of school classrooms is something that does not work, will not
work," he said in remarks at a news briefing at city school
headquarters to discuss recent claims of chronic bullying.

"The children come as is. We don't choose them. We have an obligation
to all of them."

Last week, the mother of a Gilmor Elementary School third-grader said
that her daughter was bullied and threatened to kill herself by
jumping out a window at the school. The school system said that the
girl's teacher reported that she only said that she wanted to kill
herself.


I repeat my assertion: Alonso is pressuring schools to keep trouble
makers in school so the school system looks "good."

Fire his ass. Oh, wait. He's only accountable to the NON-VOTER
elected school board who is really accountable to NO ONE.

Tech Shorts

• After a weekend of giving my new HTC Incredible a decent work out, I've decided the Incredible, IS.
• The Seagate BlackArmor NAS is a nice networked backup hard drive. If you need a backup system for Windows or Mac, check it out.
• I have seen the iPad, AND I LIKE!!!!!! I bet you it finds an immediate home in the kitchen.

Airline Merger

Continental?
United?
Two bad airlines combining to be the largest?
Damn.