Thoughts On The Charleston Church Massacre

There is so much to write about the events of this past Wednesday night in the massacre at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina. 
It could and still may take multiple posts.
But let me start with arraignment of the suspect, Dylann Roof.
And let me say I am not a good Christian for I know that if something like this happened to my wife, son or other loved one, I could not express the forgiveness that so many did in court yesterday in North Charleston. But they did through their obvious pain. I would be angry, hurt and seeking justice. I do think that while they do sincerely seek to forgive, they did express the want of justice.
Which leads to Gov. Nikki Haley and her response to the massacre.
On the morning after, a visibly shaken and nearly crying governor seemed unable to speak. But once she regained her composure she spoke for a wounded state and a nation asking the collective question.
Why?
And Gov. Haley again set more of the tone that I feel yesterday by saying she wants to see the prosecutor seek the death penalty against Mr. Roof.
Then there is the suspect himself, Dylann Roof.
This is one young man fueled by clear hate, nothing more, nothing less.
Way too may people are trying to seek to make excuses or suggest that this is not the Dylann they know. Too bad but this looks like a non-starter as a website that appears to be that of Mr. Roof is filled with all the stuff of a certifiable racist. 
Our Dear Leader, President Obama, of course wasted no time-a crisis is a terrible thing to waste-in renewing his call for stricter gun control laws. His statement on Thursday morning, unlike that of Gov. Haley, sounded like a petulant child rather than a leader that should have used the occasion to promote healing and a total rejection of the Dylann Roof's of the United States. Not unlike other racial controversies, the Dear Leader, President Obama, admitted he did not have all of the facts, but suggested the ease of Mr. roof having a gun as the real reason so many were killed. I guess if Mr. Roof had simply driven a rent-a-truck full of explosives into the church, at least it would not have been a gun used, right?!
The most absurd outgrowth of this is the "Confederate" flag and the fact that it does fly near the statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina.
Now there is a massive call to remove the stars and bars one again. And everyone who seems to have commented seems to not grasp what the stars and bars are.
The origin of the flag, which I will not show, is the Army of Northern Virginia. And let's face it, the South were the antagonists and would have multiple battle flags. We, the victorious North would simply fly Old Glory at battle.
In fact, below is the actual flag of the government when the South broke away from the United States.

The stars are for the first seven states to join in open rebellion.
But as the war dragged on and the South was losing big time, the government flag became more rebellious.

In this flag in the upper left field is the dreaded stars and bars. This was the last flag of government as the North swept to victory.
There is no question that the battle flag of Northern Virginia is and always will be a flag of controversy. But let the people of South Carolina deal with it through their elected officials.
Sometimes I think way too many forgot who won the Civil War. It was us, the United States. There are too many who want to relitigate that time in our history when we have, thankfully, moved way past that dreaded time in our history.
To me, I will not forget the true Christian ladies that spoke forgiveness for a coward. They make me need to speak to Almighty God a lot more than I do now.

Ferguson One Big Dreckstorm*

Yes indeed, this was the week, Monday to be precise, that the St. Louis County, Missouri grand jury, was to render whether or not to indict Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson, for the shooting death of Michael Brown this past October.
And sure enough this past Monday evening, the St. Louis county district attorney, Robert McCulloch, in excruciating detail explained all that he presented to the grand jury and told the world that they will not indict the White police officer in the shooting death of the Black youth on August 9 of this year.
And the reaction ended up being the dreckstorm of the 21st century.
It appears that from the start of what should have been a tragic but routine story, everything surrounding it was problematic from the start.
No question that Mr. Wilson did kill Mr. Brown. But that is the only thing that all agree about.
As Mr. McCulloch said in his statement, it was within minutes that social media caught wind of it and the information being provided was muddled at best. But the seemingly damning piece of "eyewitness" accounts came from the friend that was accompanying Mr. Brown on the fateful night, Dorian Johnson. It was Mr. Johnson who claimed that Mr. Brown was being harassed and that his friend did escape a scuffle with Mr. Wilson. According to Mr. Johnson, Mr. Brown turned around and raised his hands as if to surrender and then, Mr. Wilson played shooting gallery with Mr. Brown. An unarmed Mr. Brown.
Only, that is not quite what happened.
Let's look at Mr. McCulloch's statement regarding the so-called hands up of surrender:

The description of how Mr. Brown hands, raised his hands, or the position of his hands, is not consistent among the witnesses. Some describe his hands as being out to his sides, some said in front of him with palms up, others said his hands were raised by his head or by his shoulders. Still others describe his hands is being in a running position or in fists.

Only Mr. Johnson still insists that Mr. Brown had his hands up in the air as if he was surrendering as he went towards Mr. Wilson.
Thus, again according to the statement of Mr. McCullogh, Mr. Wilson feared for his life as he had already endured being roughed-up by Mr. Brown. That is when he started shooting for he did not know if Mr. Brown had a weapon or not.
That is the basic story.
But a lot of what happened after that was the dreckstorm on steroids.
Clearly, no one thought that it would have been a good idea to at the very least cover-up Mr. Brown's body as the immediate investigation was taking place. As people were believing that Mr. Brown was trying to surrender to Mr. Wilson, they also saw this as a sign of disrespect. And I agree.
But now this was becoming a cause celebre. The likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton were beginning to sink their fangs into another case of a White cop killing a Black kid indiscriminately. The town of Ferguson itself was a town of change for only about 25 years ago it was a majority White town and now the majority was Black. Yet the police department was overwhelmingly White. Now I am never certain about whether it matters that law enforcement and or firefighters and the like have to absolutely reflect the make up of any community. But in this case, the fact is there were very few Black officers.
So, many of the people of Ferguson were beginning to think, hm, there must be something to it. Mr. Wilson was merely suspended pending an investigation per the law. There was a build up of hostility and there was days of a show of force fit for a third-world nation. The reason is that little was done and when it was done, it was too late. Eventually, the Missouri governor, Jay Nixon, appointed a member of the Missouri highway patrol, Capt. Ron Johnson, as a point man to coordinate a better response from the Ferguson police department, the St. Louis County police (there is no sheriff as in almost all other counties in the United States.) and the Missouri highway patrol. Now to many, myself included, Capt. Johnson seemed to be way to accommodating to people meaning to cause trouble. But, what he was trying to do in the best way possible is to stop the dreckstorm from an all out explosion. and he did a decent job under horrible circumstances.
In my estimation, the Ferguson police and St. Louis County police were in over their head. They had no clue that by then this was, to coin a phrase, a big f---ing deal. It was not their finest moments.
But many were complaining that the grand jury, which was convened on August 23, was taking a long time. And there was a reason for it.
No doubt that Mr. McCulloch could have avoided such a circus. He had the power himself to charge Mr. Wilson with one of four potential charges, the most serious being first degree murder all the way down to involuntary manslaughter.
So why didn't Mr. McCulloch do that?
I will state that this is pure speculation on my part, but Mr. McCulloch looked at very similar cases around the United States. Although the George Zimmerman shooting of Trayvon Martin was not a case involving a police officer, it was the most recent case of a White shooting of an unarmed Black youth. We all know what happened with that one. And what could he charge him with? It is clear that it would be all but impossible to charge with first degree murder as that means having to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Wilson premeditated, or planned, to kill Mr. Brown. Involuntary manslaughter would be the minimal charge and even if convicted, also not an overwhelming possibility, Mr. Wilson probably would serve less than 10 years.
In other words, Mr. McCulloch handed it off to the county grand jury. But not in a usual way.
As Mr. McCulloch noted, there was mountains of evidence, 70 hours of testimony from 60 witnesses and the police officer facing charges, Mr. Wilson and over 4,700 pages of transcript for all to see. And the grand jury came back with the only decision that it could.
No true bill, or no indictment on any charges.
But to add insult to incompetence, Mr. McCulloch thought, gee, I'll make my statement at 8pm on Monday evening. Maybe all those wanting to stir up trouble will be tucked away in bed.
I know that everything is earlier in the Central Time Zone. All television shows in prime time is 7pm to 10pm unlike the coastal time zones, which are from 8pm to 11pm. You know for all the farmers and the like.
But the fact is that it was known that there was a decision in the early afternoon. Yet Mr. McCulloch made his announcement while the buildup of potential anger only had more time to grow.
And of course the dreckstorm blew its lid and it was on.
Businesses were looted throughout the city and cars and buildings were set ablaze. It was a full-fledged riot. Little if anything was done to stop it. In fact, Gov. Nixon had deployed the state national guard to the region. Where were they? Sure as hell not doing a damn thing to stop the conflagration.
Later that evening, St. Louis county police chief, Jon Belmar and Capt. Johnson of the highway patrol expressed, I can't believe that I am writing this, shock that the events escalated to full-scale rioting.
Are those two kidding?!
I am but a humble blogger in Pasadena, California and just doing a cursory look around the internet and they would know that trouble was going to be made by every race-huckster extremists along with far-left allies. Hell, even pro-Palestinians were gonna hijack it and link the events of Ferguson to their cause.
But Laurel and Hardy, well they just could not believe it.
And the dreckstorm went nationwide and has even disrupted the busiest shopping day of the year, Black Friday.
Now a little more background I chose to save to this point of the post.
Mr. Brown was not just harassed then killed by Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson heard a radio call of a robbery at a convinence store. As he was finishing up another call, he heard another call with a description of the suspect. And then, he saw Mr. Brown.
A video later surfaced from the convenience store showing Mr. Brown with Swisher Sweet cigars and shoving and pushing a clerk trying to stop him from stealing the cigars.
Mr. Brown after three separate autopsies and blood samples was shown to have marijuana in his system.
Going back to the robbery, Swisher Sweets are also known as blunts and used to smoke marijuana.
There is A+B=C.
Mr. Wilson never knew if Mr. Brown was armed or not until after the shooting.
A question was brought up where was there a taser gun? Mr. Wilson said that he did not have a taser gun.
Now while we are given the impression that all the elected officials involved were eeeeevvvvviiiiilllll, raaaaacist (remember, there are five a's in raaaaacist!) Republicans, that is not true. Every elected official involved, the governor, Mr. Nixon, the St. Louis county DA, Mr. McCulloch, all the county elected officials and the city council of Ferguson were all Democrats.
Darren Wilson has resigned from the Ferguson police department and I doubt he will ever be involved in law enforcement again.
Could things have been done differently? Possibly but that is requiring a great deal of hindsight. Is systemic racism involved in this case? Doubtful as I see it. A crime was committed and there is no doubt a chain of events took place that probably would have turned out the same way no matter the race of those involved.
The one thing is certain.
That Ferguson, a town few heard of before August 9, 2014, sure has caused one helluva dreckstorm.

*Dreckstorm-dreck is a Yiddish word. A kinder way of saying s*it. Thus, a kinder way of saying a S*itstorm.

Hmm, A Lesson Not Learned In The Sterling Kerfuffle

OK, it appears that one thing about the whole Donald Sterling kerfuffle that I forgot to mention in this post is the following.
While I provided a pretty comprehensive history of Mr. Sterling's pretty public transgressions, the fact is that the revelations of his mistress, V. Stiviano, was done in private conversations that she was tape recording. In California, one can not tape a phone conversation unless both parties agree to it. Miss Stiviano claims that Mr. Sterling did approve of it. But we only have Miss Stiviano's word for it. So it is very possible that Miss Stiviano did the recording without sufficient approval of Mr. Sterling.
In other words, while there is ample history of Mr. Sterling's racism and misogyny, this is what has made the NBA seek to remove him as the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers.
Now, what a Pasadena city employee does when he is not on city time is coming back to bite him in much the same way as it did Mr. Sterling.
The Pasadena director of public health, Dr. Eric Walsh, was going to give the commencement speech at Pasadena City College later this month. Now Dr. Walsh replaced one Dustin Lance Black who is an Academy Award-winning screen writer and alumnus of PCC. And he happens to be an open homosexual. And there are racy photos of Mr. Black and a former boyfriend floating around the internets. And PCC found a way to "disinvite" him as this article notes. Now to be fair, PCC has already had a scandal of sorts with now former professor Hugo Schwyzwer and his inviting a porn actress to speak at one of his controversial classes. Read the link for why it was controversial. Now when PCC decided to "disinvite" Mr. Black, one can cut the college slack due to their previous seemingly inaction in the Schwyzer affair.
But not to this student group called Students For Social Justice.
Led by fourth year student Sarah Belknap, the group decided to take to the internets to find something dirty on Dr. Walsh.
I have to digress a moment on this point about Miss Belknap.
PCC is a two-year community college and Miss Belknap is in her fourth year. Maybe if she hit the books and study a little harder, she would take her social justice wares to a four year university. Just sayin. . .
Well, Dr. Walsh is a Seventh-Day Adventist preacher and needless to say, they found plenty of his sermons that were, well not exactly politically correct.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Walsh spoke on such topics as the evils of the one-time hit television show Will And Grace. The Will character was openly gay. And Dr. Walsh, associate pastor at Altadena Seventh-Day Adventist church, said this is in a sermon:

"Today you have whole shows like 'Will & Grace' where the whole theme is around gayness -- if there is such a thing. How does the devil do it?…A slippery slope, he doesn’t give you whole lot of it all at once, it's just a little bit at a time. And you become kind of immunized to something that was once revolting to American society.”

So, he is not a fan of Will And Grace and thinks that it sets a bad example for Americans. Again, this was not said in his capacity as the Pasadena director of public health but as a minister. In fact according to this in our local fish wrap, the Pasadena Star-News, Dr. Walsh spoke in his capacity as director of public health at All Saints Episcopal Church, a very modernist Episcopal congregation that has and does perform same-sex marriages. And he has spoken at the Mayor's prayer breakfast on the need to maintain the multicultural feel of Pasadena. And that discrimination can lead to public health problems. And he even quoted Oprah Winfrey and Tupac Shakur.
However, in the pulpit, he did not care for such people and groups that he believes are bringing down America's morality, such as it is.
In other words, in Dr. Walsh's capacity as director of public health, a job he has had since 2010, he is doing and saying all the right things. But as a minister, he is not sure all about the things he comes to understand are bringing down his nation and yes, his city.
In other words, to people like Miss Belknap and the Students For Social Justice ilk, people like Dr. Walsh who do find a way to thread the needle of his primary job for the city and his belief that God wants a different world, especially regarding moral issues, can not do both.
And the response to the social justice crowd is putting Dr. Walsh on paid administrative leave by city manager, Michael Beck, while the city "investigates" whether or not what he said as a private citizen would affect his job.
I put "investigates" in quotes because I am pretty certain that the city of Pasadena will find a way to make Dr. Walsh go away. They will be more afraid of the social justice crowd rather than whether or not Dr. Walsh has done a good job.
And what does this have to do with Donald Sterling?
How we have come to find out about both Mr. Sterling and Dr. Walsh.
A private and or series of private discussions are just that. Private. It does not give the right for someone to tape record it without permission of both parties. Even if in the end it is for some good. The law in California is very clear.
In the case of Dr. Walsh, he was unfortunately a victim of a college administration that got caught with it's pants down, so to speak. They disinvited an openly gay speaker for possibly having racy photos online. They asked Dr. Walsh to be a second choice. Because Mr. Black raised the "they don't want me cause I'm gay card" and whipped up the social justice crowd, Dr. Walsh not only has been scrapped as the commencement speaker, but Mr. Black, of course, was reinstated as the commencement speaker. And because of the social justice crowd they may cost Dr. Walsh his job because when he was on HIS OWN time, he spoke honestly, as he saw it on such hot-button so called social issues.
Mr. Sterling has a record as a racist and misogynist and one who openly discriminated against minorities and families with children in his rental properties. Dr. Walsh has no such record. But as a minister of the Gospel, as he sees it homosexuality is wrong and he spoke that truth. Mr. Sterling is going to be forced to sell his basketball team not for any of the past evils, but for what he said to a mistress on tape. Dr. Walsh will possibly  lose his position as director of public health not for anything job related but what he has said outside his capacity of the director of public health.
The lesson we have not learned it appears is that nothing is private anymore. Nothing.

The REAL Lesson Of The Donald Sterling Kerfuffle? Hypocrisy

Before I get started, let me be very clear right up front.
This post is in no way any kind of defense of the in limbo, titular owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, Donald Sterling.
What I want to share is the real lesson from this Le Affair d' Sterling.
That is the repugnant hypocrisy shown on all sides of the reason Mr. Sterling now being banned from the National Basketball Association for life, fined $2,500,000 and will be forced to sell the team.
BTW, the latter will be harder because there is no way Mr. Sterling will sell right away. In fact, I think that he could very well drag this out in the courts and expose the NBA to owners just as awful and corrupt as Mr. Sterling.
To understand why the NBA and Mr. Sterling came to this point, we have to get a flavor of Mr. Sterling himself and we need to go to the beginning.
Mr. Sterling is, essentially, a product of Los Angeles. Sure he was born in Chicago, Illinois, but his family moved here when he was two years old. His family surname, which he changed to the current one as an adult, is Tokowitz. He graduated Roosevelt high school in 1952. Roosevelt high is in the Eastside of Los Angeles when it was where a lot of working working-class Jewish people lived. He went to and graduated Cal State University, Los Angeles in 1956 and attained his law degree from the Southwestern University School of Law in 1960.
Clearly, Mr. Sterling has had some problem of his own upbringing since he changed his very ethnic, Jewish surname to a very Anglo-sounding surname. As the link indicates, Mr. Sterling had to start in law on his own because the opportunities to join a named law firm in the early 1960s were not all that great.
In starting the practice of law, Mr. Sterling became a divorce and personal injury attorney. Nothing like starting at the bottom of the law chain I suppose. I believe today we call Mr. Sterling's type of attorney an ambulance chaser. He made enough of a living there to purchase a 26-unit apartment building in Beverly Hills. And that was the start of the real estate empire that Mr. Sterling made it rich.
And in 1979 in a business deal with the man who bought the Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Kings and the then Fabulous Forum, Dr. Jerry Buss, it became his gateway to eventually buying his own team in the NBA.
And in 1981, Mr. Sterling spent $12,500,000 and purchased the then San Diego Clippers.
A digression here.
The San Diego Clippers started life in the NBA as the Buffalo Braves. A now politically incorrect team name if there ever was one. And the Braves could not hang in Buffalo and after eight seasons, moved to San Diego. Bottom line. They sucked in Buffalo and sucked in San Diego.
After the purchase of the Clippers, the Sterling ownership era began.
And right then and there, the NBA should have known that he was going to be a handful of an owner that did not care about niceties or even following the rules.
In 1982, Mr Sterling was fined $10,000 for saying that he have no problem if the Clippers finished in last place in the overall league standings so that they would be able to to have an automatic first-round draft pick.
Openly telling the league and the fans that you don't care where you finish to get a quick-fix high draft pick is a no-no in any professional sports league. And it should be.
In 1984, Mr. Sterling decided to move the Clippers up Interstate 5 to Los Angeles.
Again, another nicety was ignored by Mr. Sterling.
He needed to get league approval to make such a move. And because he did not get league approval, the NBA fined Mr. Sterling $25,000,000 for doing what he did without league approval. Of course Mr. Sterling was going to keep the team in Los Angeles and sued the NBA for $100,000,000. Eventually, the parties involved settled and Mr. Sterling ended up paying $6,000,000. I suppose that for Mr. Sterling, forcing the NBA to fine him less was worth the legal effort.
But the Sterling era truly was major suckage.
The Clippers played in the even then dilapidated Los_Angeles_Memorial_Sports_Arena from 1984 to 1999 when they joined the Kings and Lakers and play at the Staples Center.
They did not draw all that many fans during that time. They often finished in last place in the Pacific Division and league overall standings. In fact, the first winning season the Clippers had took eight seasons as they finished the 1991-91 season with a 45-39 record. It would take another five seasons for the Clippers to have a second winning season in Los Angeles.
Mr. Sterling has been until recently one of the cheapest owners in any sport. In fact The Sporting News bestowed the honor of Mr. Sterling being one of the worst owners in basketball in decades.
Mr. Sterling did not want to pay a fan that one a contest. Being that the fan was a lawyer, he had to sue to get his money. Mr. Sterling did not help defray costs when an assistant coach, Kim Hughes had surgery for prostate cancer. It took four Clipper players to raise $70,000 to pay for the operation.
And here in the LA Weekly, are some more of the reign of error that has been Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers.
In 1983, this is what he asked a prospective head coach, Rollie Massimino:

"I wanna know why you think you can coach these niggers?"

Nice. Very nice.
And here is a choice one.
Mr. Sterling was negotiating with Danny Manning and with the then NBA commissioner, David Stern, in the room, he made this comment:

"I'm offering a lot of money for a poor black kid."
Again, such a mensch.
But understand this.
Mr. Sterling was not just a basketball team owner. He still was very involved with real estate and development. And as with being a basketball team owner, he was a very immoral individual.
Again, from the LA Weekly, we read about what happened in 2002 when Mr. Sterling was sued one of many times for housing discrimination. Here is what the property manager said Mr. Sterling said. Keep in mind, this is under oath:

"That's because of all the blacks in this building, they smell, they're not clean.. And it's because of all of the Mexicans that just sit around and smoke and drink all day. I don't like Mexican men because they smoke, drink and just hang around the house. Is she one of those black people that stink?...Just evict the bitch."

Such the man. Such a compassionate landlord. Especially when he wants to evict a tenant.
And back to basketball, former Clipper general manager, Elgin Baylor, sued Mr. Sterling after he was let go by Mr. Sterling. Mr. Baylor said he wanted to fill his team with "poor black boys from the South and a white head coach". And that Mr. Sterling kept his salary at $350,000 while the White coach at the time had just been signed to a four-year, $22,000,000 contract. Somehow, Mr. Baylor lost the lawsuit.
The case against Mr. Sterling basically started from day one. It has been very important to recall some of the history because it leads to the hypocrisy that is what has occurred in current NBA commissioner, Adam Silver, and his handing down an essential death sentence to Mr. Sterling.
For many years, Mr. Sterling has basically tried to buy off all those groups that might have caused problems for him.
One is a glaring pact with the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP. He gave them money, they made him out to be a good guy. The good guy being sued for housing discrimination. The good guy that said black people smelled and attracted vermin. Before the kerfuffle of his spouting off to his mistress, one V. Stiviano, about her chumminess with Magic Johnson and why she should not show photos on Instagram and not to bring Black people to Clipper games, Mr. Sterling was to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Los Angeles NAACP on May 15.
And Mr. Sterling may have kept the Los Angeles Times from going under gracing the Sunday main news section of pages of advertising touting, himself of course, his work on all sorts of charities and some of his upscale real estate properties. Sunday is the most expensive day to advertise in any newspaper and full page ads on this day cost a pretty penny.
And yet all, I mean all, of this has been known to the powers that be since the beginning.
There is no way that people did not know what kind of cretin Mr. Sterling is. What, did it really take a mistress tape recording conversations with Mr. Sterling and somehow, somehow it mysteriously leaked to TMZ? BTW, TMZ is a horrible gossip site and I am ashamed to even link to it. But there seems to be some kind of eternal justice that Mr. Sterling was outed as a horrible human being by TMZ.
What NBA commissioner Mr. Silver is doing is playing a game of CYA*. It may just work if Mr. Sterling just sells the team and slithers away quietly.
But it will not.
For if nothing else, when Mr. Sterling is not keeping the Times afloat with all his self-promoting ads, he keeps a lot of attorneys employed and rich. I guess hopefully for him, they are not lazy Mexicans and or smelly Blacks.
He will sue his way out of this. And I do not think that I would put it past him to drag other owners dirty laundry in the mix. Something that Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban, alluded to. And Mr. Cuban is not a man without his own controversies.
So, after all of this, where is the hypocrisy?
The whole tenure of Donald Sterling being a sports team owner has been a case study in it. People like the former NBA commissioner, David Stern, and his basically helping Mr. Sterling become an NBA owner in the first place.
The same NBA that essentially allowed Mr. Sterling to break a big rule by moving the Clippers from San Diego to Los Angeles.
The same NBA that knew Mr. Sterling was a pretty in-your-face racist and misogynist. And a slumlord as the cherry on top.
All the race-huckster groups that took Mr. Sterling's money and looked the other way.
And all the sanctimonious crap that we have to hear now, thanks to everyone jumping all over to condemn what they already knew.
The lesson is not that there is a man like Donald Sterling and his racist, misogynist ways exists. Sadly, it does. But the real lesson is that when everyone knows it and does nothing to stop it until it gets real bad, is that hypocrisy reigns here.

The Legacy Of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Is That ALL Americans Can Claim His Message

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the most consequential speech of the 20th century by a non-politician as we Americans celebrate what has been called the I Have A Dream speech delivered by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.
It was no surprise that the Speech was delivered at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The message from the Rev. Dr. King was as powerful as that of the 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, when he proclaimed the Emancipation Proclamation.
It is a message that capped an amazing struggle that the Rev. Dr. King was leading to end the degradation of Black Americans and the spectre of segregation that still gripped much of the American South. An American South that politically was in with the Democrat party. Republicans of all stripes, though disagreeing how, did not support the segregation and the keeping down of Blacks in the South. But it was not just segregation. It was keeping people of color down by the government at all levels. Economically, politically and socially, Blacks and other non-Whites were to be blunt kept in their place.
To put it another way, when the Rev. Dr. King gave the Speech, major league baseball was only desegregated a mere 16 years. And in the South, only one team and that was the Houston Astros. The Braves would not move to Atlanta and the Deep South for another two years.
I use the sports analogy because while the sport was expanding, it would not go to the Deep South in moving teams and expansion. Even major league baseball was not sure how it would be to have a team in a part of the United States that still kept Blacks from drinking water at a decent fountain or eat at a lunch counter in a restaurant.
But for me, the Speech was a call to arms for Christians to once and for all be the leaders of the movement to end the government allowing for such injustice to occur. And it was a call to those of us who value freedom to seek this freedom for those irrationally kept from reaching their full, God-given potential.
Let me share this line from the speech that expresses the freedom the Rev. Dr. King was seeking for all:

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. 

Now the Rev. Dr. King did not mean violent militancy but the kind of Rosa Parks who just was damned tired and wanted to sit down in the front of the bus in Birmingham, Alabama. The just saying no to the likes of Bull Conner and yes being violently suppressed.
But the Rev. Dr. King extolled the crowd that not all White people were bad. That many were there at the Speech and believed in the message of freedom. And here what speaks to me:

for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny.

Yes, I really believe that. Because it is our American destiny. To be one nation of people from all over the world to live the American Experience.
Read the clear Christian message the Rev. Dr. King was saying to not just those the victims of injustice but even to those who were the cause of the injustice. The Rev. Dr. King quoted the Old Testament prophet, Amos 5:24 here, "No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream." That was a powerful message to those committing injustice to free themselves from that bondage as well as a message to those that got it.
But it was not the total straight from the Holy Bible message but making clear that it was a mandate from God himself that all people had to change.
The meat of the speech was the dream itself. And that is what is needed to be read again and again:

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

As I have said, it is a message to the captives of the racism being practiced in the South openly, in other parts of the United States covertly. And a message to the real victims of real racism that someday all will be able to live together in peace and harmony.
We need that message more and more today.
And this message is sorely needed to be drilled into every single American every single day:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Yes, yes, yes!!! We need to judge (note the Rev. Dr. King does not use non-judgemental language here) all people of content of character. I sure don't care what color one is. But I care how a person handles her or him self.
For me that is the legacy of the Rev. Dr. King that I take and try to live by as best as I can.
Many conservative people have been leery of this aspect of the Rev. Dr. King and what he was trying to accomplish. Many thought that he was too close to the Communists. Yet I can say that while the Soviet reds thought that they had a fellow traveller, he was using them because he needed all the support, however questionable, he could get. Why I know this is again, because the Rev. Dr. King was a devout Christian and could not support Communism or its goals as they were just as devout atheists as he was a Believer.
In retrospect, then President Reagan made a big error when he vetoed congressional approval of the holiday in the Rev. Dr. King's honor back in the 1980s. And I admit I was wrong to support that decision. For me I just was not certain of the true legacy that the Rev. Dr. King left on his country. But as time went on and I actually did some and research, I realize that the man was a great man and I think the only one that could lead the United States away from the era of accepting separate but equal that prevailed since the War Between the States or the Civil War.
A legacy of a true leader is the fact that from throughout the political spectrum, people can take something and hold on to it or indeed use that as their way to live life.
And that is not just the legacy of a speech read, no orated, on a hot day, August 28, 1963 by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. That all Americans can and do live it every day.

More Lefty Media Misinformation

In yesterday's Left Angeles Times, a poll was released regarding Californians views of the so-called California Dream Act.
What is important is how this was relayed both in print at the local news rack and online.
The headline in the print edition, and the lead story, reads as follows verbatim:

USC/DORNSIFE/
TIMES POLL
DREAM Act has state voters divided
Nearly 80% of Latinos back government
aid for illegal immigrants at state
universities, versus 30% of whites.

Now for the headline online:

USC/DORNSIFE
TIMES POLL
Survey finds ethnic divide among voters on DREAM Act
Among Latinos, 79% support government financial aid for illegal immigrants who attend state universities, compared with 30% of whites. And 49% of all respondents say UC and Cal State campuses are not very affordable or are unaffordable.

Now, what do you think is wrong with the headline?
Well, if you read the print edition, you would be led to believe that the poll itself is say maybe 50-50. If you read the headline only online, it defines an ethnic divide among voters.
Yet the real story is really buried in the article.
The fact is that among all voters, no matter ethnicity, only 40% of all polled support the California Dream Act. A number of 55% oppose the California Dream Act.
So, where is the division?
Seems to me that the majority of all polled oppose the act. The only group supporting it in any large numbers are Hispanics.
And Whites support/oppose it roughly about 30% to 70%. What I can not find is how the numbers broke down among other ethnic groups. Groups as Asian-Americans and Black Americans. It would seem that if we saw those numbers, while maybe not as negative as Whites, it would show that they do not support the act either. That is why you have a 40% for and 55% against split.
But the way that the Times portrays this as a battle between Whites and Hispanics. No doubt that the California DREAM Act is a boon to illegal aliens in the schools in California. It gives them a break at the expense of just as deserving, American-born Hispanics. These illegal aliens get to pay in-state tuition rather than the out-of-state that they should be paying. Actually, they should be paying what an international student would pay. Since they are not American citizens. And not citizens of the state of California.
And I wonder how many of the American born Hispanics, when they understand what this means for their potential family members, really do support the act?
But I fault a newspaper that should report the fact of the poll. That the majority of California registered voters oppose the California DREAM Act. That the underlying fact is that, again since I do not have access to other ethnic groups polled, only Hispanics seem to strongly favor the act.
But the Left Angeles Times seems to want to bury that real fact. No, they want to fan the flames of raaaaacism. That the eeeeevvvvviiilllll White people want to keep all the Hispanics down.
No, we do not. We want those who can to pursue higher education. And no, I don't want to throw those students here illegally out of the United States. They should just have to pay the higher cost.
And the real tragedy is that this is the Democrat party buying Hispanic votes. Nothing more, nothing less.
It is too bad that the Left Angeles Times used their poll for manipulation and not the facts.