Did Roger Goodell Eliminate Domestic Violence Or Encourage Under Reporting?

How can you tell if you have no clue about the importance of women to your company or to society?  No, this isn't about Hobby Lobby again, its about a football commissioner.

Roger Goodell was just recently introduced to a rather insensitive guy that just so happens to have the same name as him.  That's probably what Goodell is telling himself now that he thinks he is the new crusader for domestic violence.  In an epic move of historical significance, Goodell has upped the ante on players who beat their women.

Prior to the start of training camp, Goodell was painfully forced to make a ruling on Baltimore Raven running back Ray Rice after video surfaced of a vicious altercation between he and his wife (then fiance) Janay Palmer. When Palmer did the 'ride or die' move and laid on the knife for the both of them (his money is her money), Goodell fell for the okie doke and assumed his chauvinistic fan base would find a  2 game suspension of Rice sufficient damage to their fantasy football teams.  More games than that would be threatening to shut down one of the top  running backs in a league that doesn't expect running backs to survive very long to begin with.  One lost season for a running back that has relationship problems could have been the kiss of death to his career and the Ravens chance to rise to the top of the league again.

Besides.  Its not like he smoked some weed or something like that.

Forget about the collective bargaining agreement that allowed for wacky weed sentencing.  American's believe that the punishment still has to fit the crime, and Goodell has just decided that one weed violator is almost three times the NFL criminal of a first time knockout artist like Ray Rice.  No Rog'.  We do not want you to retroactive the punishment or change the collective bargaining agreement.  You simply need to think about what you are saying when you're talking to would be abusers.

The message?:  if that &#$!$# makes you mad, you get one time to NOT handle it well......but after that we might ban you for life,( but probably just one year) unless you offer up the proper contrition before camera as Rice did to achieve his 2 game ban.

So let me make sure I am clear on this. A first time offender could come short of murder, but it would only cost them 6 games? A first time offender, who probably needs a little time off for therapy sake after getting placed in a cold, overcrowded, overnight jail cell, only gets 6 games? Since the whole world knows this rule now, will the first of the first time offenders simply figure that he will likely lose six games anyway, so he might as well get his six games worth?

Maybe there will never be one player who fits this distorted view of the "first time offender" that I've just laid out, but there better not be either.  Anyone who jaw jacks his fiance like Rice did, has the kind of problem that an aggressive game like football won't properly nurture.  Trust me.  I have some women in my family who sincerely believe that they can fight better than most guys.  Prior to their adulthood, I sincerely used to agree. Janay Palmer does remind me of some lady in my family, but I am not interested in seeing her or my cousin Boom Boom hit their stupid men upside the head any more than I am interested in allowing NFL football to set the lead on such a serious issue like domestic violence, especially when their leadership starts to look like spreading spilled milk with a wet mop.

What has been called a monumental clean up of a monumental mistake is more of a case of insult to injury if you ask me.  It's like Goodell accidentally confessed that blacks look like monkeys to him and then cleaned it up by saying that he made a mistake; only the monkey looking blacks look like monkeys.  In this comparison, Goodell has made it pretty clear that there is no place in the NFL for domestic violence....so you better not do it twice or we will review your case to see if you deserve a lifetime ban or not.

Huh?

The real motivation of my indignation is the improper revelation of domestic altercations.  In other words, teams under report incidents of domestic violence already, and this ruling is likely to force the hider's into deeper hiding given the significant risk that comes with a second offense.  What is the penalty for teams that hide abuse? That first time penalty will not be significant enough to catch the raised hand of an abuser mid-motion, just before anger and rage do what anger and rage do to those without proper control of these emotions.  But that second time penalty WILL curb first time reporting

Fret not Goodell.  At least your ruling will curb something.

Obama's Shock And Awe: The Tan Suited Man With No Syrian Plan

Honesty is clearly not the best policy when you are a maligned second term president.  Neither is pimping a taupe suit.

Its All In The Scheme

I remember my days as a suit salesman.  Guys like Barack Obama would often come in the shop asking for something that is more suited to their color scheme.  Inside of every human being is a color scheme that spews from the pores of who you are.  Hair color and skin tone play a significant role in determining what is your fashion focused color scheme.  When I look at Barack Obama, the fashion plate, taupe (or tan if you must) is clearly a color that suits his color scheme.

Assad will need the US to address his ISIS crisis.

Maybe its just my background, but I appreciated the bright color and the open dialogue. President Obama spoke about a significant concern to American's that are focusing on the rapid advancement of the IS (Islamic State).  At this point, calling them anything less is to glare upon this newly established terrorist nation with blurry glasses on.  If the devastation that they've enacted upon Syria, and now in Iraq, is not a clear statement of their Jihadist (holy war) intention, then let this idea sink in a bit. We are soon to become allies with both Syria and Iraq in order to thwart this advancing enemy.

Just one year ago, Syria's president Bashaar Al Assad was being considered for crimes against humanity as his insistence on the use of chemical weapons inside of Syria could not be disregarded by the Obama administration or the world at large.  With support from Putin (who is seen as a key surrogate to the Assad regime), the international community was able to forcibly remove Assad's chemical weapon cache, without a need for war. Misguided revisionist have questioned why Obama did not send troops to Syria then, unclear that those boots would have been against Assad and not with Assad against ISIS.

Click Here to watch the video

So forget about that suit and focus on the scheme. In the grand scheme of ideology towards terrorism, Obama has the right idea.  Sharia Law does not offer much wiggle room in the eyes of the extremist'. The infidel's must be removed from the land by conversion or otherwise.  Those who follow in this extreme expression of Islam, have made their intentions clearly stated. If you anger them into honesty, as FOX news analyst Sean Hannity achieved when interviewing London Imam Anjem Choudary, you will learn all that you  need to discover about our sworn enemies.


Choudary, and those of his kind, simply do not see a place in this world for any alternative other than the worldwide Islamic state (typically called a caliphate).  That is right.  Extremist' do not believe in world wide religious freedom, but that someday we will be shrouded in Sharia Law as the overriding law of the world at large. This, they believe, is their promised prophecy according to the religions founder, Mohammed.  How we transition from the world we live in to the one extremist' envision is exactly why ISIS represents such a significant concern.

Convert or Die

What do you do with an enemy that says you must convert or die? That is what we considered when America chose to intervene in Iraq recently. As it turns out, President Obama had his own flawed characterization of an imminent threat, similar to the one Bush used to usher America into Iraq the first time.  No, he did not pretend that WMD's were the reason for our attack, but the trapped Yazidi people (Christian Kurds) in Iraq were originally reported at 40,000 people who risked death if not rescued from their mountain perch.  It turned out to be several hundred people, but not nearly the volume estimated before the initial rescue mission began. US air strikes may have opened up supply lines to that mountain, but leaving was not part of the plan for some Yazidi's. Did he fluff the figures to justify his disregard of congress?  Probably, but congress is proving to be more willing to let the president go it alone than Obama originally expected.

mis-Calculations?

As the president spoke on this threat, he appeared to make a couple of significant miscalculations.  The first was assumed to be that taupe suit he spoke in.  The traditional blue or black suit that is common among politicians, had clearly been side stepped when president Obama walked out in that taupe number, but he made this suit choice amid an environment that  has decided he is no longer fully engaged in his job. Nothing says disengagement like a fashion forward suit color, but did he also have to admit that he doesn't have a plan for Syria?

Which was the bigger error, the suit or the truth?

How do we storm into Syria with troops and not get stuck there forever?  Is that a problem to be dealt with by some future president or should it matter that we find the doorway out long before we storm our way in?  The plan for dealing with ISIS is one that should involve the entire world and should involve a lot of deep thinking.  American's do not often buy into that waiting and planning concept, especially when concerned about an imminent threat.  The ease at which we waged war in Iraq the first time proves that.    However, the war weary and those ashamed of our last misstep might unwittingly allow this threat to reach our soil before addressing it.

If ISIS or Choudary get their way, we should expect to wage this war until the end of time, and WE shall always need an evolving policy to address the fervor of our evolving enemies.  That is the truth, and its not really what most Americans care to hear.  Much like that tan suit Obama wore, sometimes the choice you make will not be the one most people expect.

POSTSCRIPT:

As President Obama left the podium yesterday, he was called to comment on the immigration issue as protesters had gathered outside of the white house that day to push the issue of immigration further along.  In definitive words, the president urged congress to create a comprehensive plan for immigration so that he doesn't have to do it himself.  Listen to the man in tan because unpredictable people do love shock and awe.

America's Founding Wasn't Flawless. Neither Were The Founders

Who do we get to blame for congress and its absolute fear of accountability if not the founding fathers?  Didn't they realize that partisanship would someday become the subordinate of our demise? Some in congress have begun to excuse their uselessness by saying "no legislation is better than bad legislation".  Meanwhile, they allow all legislation and decisions of war to come exclusively through the executive branch and executive orders, functionally turning the office of the president into the king we abhor.  For Americans, choosing our next king has just gotten serious.

The founding design was flawed, and it still is.  Apparently, I am suppose to be afraid to say that, especially if I hope to declare myself as a truly conservative republican.  Not that I am striving to own one label or another, but there are people out there (Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, Rand Ryan, Paul Paul, Iyn Rand) who are. Any one of these offshoots of the republican Medusa would love to solidify their place within a conservative electorate that has no true identity as a result of an unrecognizable face. Republican, Libertarian, Tea Party or Tea Party Libertarian's are all distinct aspects of a segmented party searching to coalesce around an identity that average Americans won't be afraid to look at, and a candidate who can best express this fractured face.

Paul Paul is actually a formidable candidate for republicans to put forth, in that he marries most aspects of what the party seems willing to accept as their identity.  The problem is that Paul Paul doesn't exist.  Neither does Rand Ryan, who could also connect the dots on conservative confusion if he were a person. The Tea Party is not reflected in any of these examples (real or mythical), because they remain the marginalized group under the republican umbrella.  As they continue to lose primary elections to traditional republicans or Libertarian up shoots, the impetus to put forth a Tea Party presidential candidate has lost much of the steam that it had at the start of Barack Obama's presidency. Libertarian's might remind you that they were originally described as Tea Party Libertarians, but their two famous faces in that crowd, Rand Paul and his father Ron, do not express the Tea Party aspects of the Libertarian banner.

In fact, Rand Paul will be the one conservative candidate in this election for president who, much like myself, sees plenty of errors in the founding documents, especially as they've disproportionately impacted brown skinned American's that are currently incarcerated in US prisons. Those who blame laws and regulations for our economic and social problems rarely see how our founding documents have always allowed whatever capitalism could afford. Regulations have never been designed to stop business, just to insure that only a select few maintain quick access to certain industry.  Big money can move mountains of regulations out of the way, or financially absorb them to speed things along. Everyone else must get in line.

The big money provision is firmly established and maintained within the founding documents, and little has changed since our founding.  If that is okay, which it very well might be, lets admit it and stop pretending that the founders wrote a flawless document of supreme opportunity for all.  We can easily disagree about how much industry owes society(socialism), but we shouldn't continue to argue about our imperialistic model, its intent, or its initial and remaining flaws.

What the founders created is the democratic freedom to be heard. That's it.  To be certain, democratic freedom is a powerful tool. Many capitalistic newsrooms use it daily to manipulate the masses.  Constitutionally condoned misogyny continues to force women to fight their way into a founding document that finally insists on equality, but can't undo the imbalance that former founding language fostered for way too long.  We will leave the racial stuff alone for now.

It might  be harsh to hold the founding fathers to task for misogyny that ruled their era and before them.  In fact, I only hope to reveal that any document made within the belly of imbalance was also vomited from that belly. Yet, despite all of that, the beauty of the constitution is not the surety of its founders but the surety of its foundation of freedom, in which democracy could overcome the natural failures of man, even theirs.

Would we have established an electoral college if the founders had advanced technology like today?  Technology is currently challenging all traditional means of voting, but it has yet to address the founding failures in how we actually vote for our president.

Conservatives deserve the lion share of credit for a clear understanding of this key issue for our nation.  The founders locked us into a two party reality that robs our ability to stand on principle and vote that way as well. Principled stands, like that of the Tea Party republicans, is what started this conservative segmentation, and both Tea Party and Libertarians will have to either wait their turn (Tea Party) or get behind Rand Paul (Libertarians) as a third party alternative.  For legitimacy sake, Libertarians may be forced to put forth a viable candidate regardless of the uncertain republican plan.  Four more years of Libertarians waiting to bear the face of the republican party for a run at the presidency could be the formula for the same kind of,  "waiting for our chance" decline that the Tea Party  is experiencing now.

Despite the distinct divide, if you asked any conservative segmentation of today's republicans to articulate their movement, the words "founding fathers" will certainly make their way into the explanation.  In essence, the hope is to insure that the concept of conservatism and the actual thing being conserved is easily repeatable and connectable in a short sound bite.  Modern conservatism is being segmented by economic motivations, social motivations or both.  The segmentation is correct and the founders were wrong.  Until a viable alternative party candidate wins the Presidency, the two party divide, securely established, designed and protected by our founders, will eventually split America into a handicapped nation.  Already, we lack the collective resolve to address the ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) threat and groups like them WILL be emboldened to take advantage of this time in our history to increase their stature.

The founders should have given the president the freedom to destroy foreign enemies as needed just as they should have given American citizens the power to ouster a sitting president who doesn't act in our collective interest relative to war.

Oh! They did do that?

So what is the real problem then?

Congress (aka., power grabbers)

Congress was, and is, full of a bunch of people who think they could be president too.  A few are happy to simply represent their constituents at home, but most are power grabbers with ego's that afford them this character flaw.  The founders, seeking to be smarter than the country they were rejecting in this whole founding process, diminished the role of the president, or king, or whatever you call the person in charge, by sharing his responsibility with power grabbers, but leaving accountability at the foot of the king. Agreement becomes weakness to a power grabber. At its worst form, power grabbing turns into a stalemate stare down like we are witnessing in congress today.

Is congress still at the mercy of lobbyist and the likes as we used to suspect?  Only if they choose to be.  No congressional representative remains in office long if they do not play the game a little, but even that becomes a further indictment on those who place power above principle. Terms limits should be dictated by personal integrity, or an unwillingness to sale out.  Some of our nations best politicians will never ascend to national politics because state and local politics is a dirty challenge.  National politics is downright filthy.

Thanks to our founding, political principles are dictated by personal priorities resulting in the politics of lesser evils.  The founders probably intended for a closer connection to God then what we've maintained, but capitalistic compulsions (i.e., lawsuits that ran God away) ruled the day on that matter as well.

Now, God is still in schools, just only at the big money Catholic and Jesuit schools that can afford to circumvent the "No God" regulation, which poor people who love God can't easily navigate around (I got sent to the office several times while learning evolution in high school). An alternative party candidate will address this problem, but are we currently taking a 50 year approach towards dismantling the two party grip? Those currently on this route don't think so, but the remedy they seek lies in a fractured founding document that instituted an electoral methodology which marginalizes any state that dares put forth a third party candidate. Marginalized states will have to continue to put forth marginalized candidates for 50 years in my estimation before enough states will finally see the wisdom in the approach since the electoral process demands that ALL electoral votes from each state be cast on one candidate, regardless of what the other votes in that state reflect. Disinterested voters had better move to states where their vote can bear weight or they risk feeling further disinterest given the electoral process.

Is that simply losers lament?  No way.  It is discontent with a process that feels forgone long before you've gone off to stand in a long line just to receive a conclusion that you already expected. On presidential election nights, only a handful of states actually hang in the balance, and those states get pounded with campaign artillery for their troubles. Actually voting is important because turnout is not a forgone conclusion, but the polls make voters feel as if the conclusion is foregone, and seldom do polls significantly miss.

When a person's vote doesn't feel valuable, than voting loses virtue. The founders may not be responsible for that, but they can't get an ounce of credit for their lack of effort in protecting the sanctity of the voting process when they started out allowing shoddy behaviors, most notably the electoral college, as well as the systematic exclusion of millions from the two party electoral trick. However strongly you defend the founders for the use of it at our founding should be the same vigor at which you adjudicate them for not foreshadowing its eventual uselessness.

This is, in small part, an effort to discredit the flawless founding, but in large part it is a hope to convey a bigger concept.  Thank you founding fathers!  We know that creating a more perfect union could never mean perfection, and that electoral thing was good when it was good.  Now, its time to count the freakin' votes.  Its the only way to functionally destroy the dysfunctional two party system as we know it.  Through counting the vote and accessing all presidential candidates, and their campaigns, through public television (free TV only) and a free web- based campaign tool, we can force big money out of the presidency and the voice of America into it. If big money wants your vote, they can pay for door to door workers who come out and ask for your vote like they used to do in the good ole' days, when people respected the voting process.


.....or we could keep political gridlock instead.

Was Big Mike Suppose To Be A Surgeon (or Michael, An Angel)?

I wish I could not relate so easily to young black men who find themselves in the predicament that Michael Brown Jr. found himself that fateful day he left to become Michael, an angel. 

I aint sayin’ he was an angel during his lifetime.  He was human, and he’s likely the kid on the video who "strong-armed" those cigarillos, which are cigars that are used for rolling blunts (marijuana joints rolled with cigar skins). 

Reasonable accounts have Michael Brown Jr. and Dorian Johnson stealin’ and thuggin’ the day Darren Wilson took Brown Jr's life.  It’s something I might have done myself on some level or another growing up in places that make you choose one path  versus the other.  I have certainly seen it live and in living color on many occasions.  For many inner city youth, you either follow those who are stealin’ and thuggin’ or you follow those who are mackin’ and hangin’.  I was not properly suited for either endeavor, so I avoided both and settled on the more traditional route of sports and school, but so did Michael Brown Jr.  To graduate high school means you shunned enough distractions to make it through. He did no less than any high school kid does in the end; he survived and got a diploma and was scheduled to continue his education.

And then the real tug-o-war began.

The world is a scary place and life will be challenging under the best of circumstances.  Every hood in America is basically the same. On one corner they are mackin’ and hangin’ and on the other they are stealin’ and thuggin'. Young black men who live in really tough areas have a duty to insure that they maintain a tough exterior, even if they would prefer to only do the mackin’ and hangin’ instead of the stealin' and thuggin' that Michael Brown Jr. looked to be doing just before he was shot down in the street.  Black men who reject both directions learn how to play act either role for survival sake. If the streets know you are aspiring to do more than these hopeless endeavors, the streets will make every attempt to keep you near.

There simply is no way to question the obvious fear that America has for black men, especially young and dark and big like Michael Brown Jr.  Black men fear one another too.  Turns out that growing up as a young black man is so difficult, you never know who is handling the task very well, so you have to be ready to deal with an angry black man at all times....especially if you are one.  WE understand black male fear because WE live in it.

The oddest part about facing a scary world is that some folks decide it’s easier to be scary instead of scared.  On some level or another, we all assume this survival posture in life, but few of us do it in such a way to incite felony convictions or gunfire. If you are an inner city black man, avoiding felony convictions or gunfire is a magic trick of sorts. It’s not impossible to pull off, but demands more energy than anybody who is not a black man quite understands. Growing up naturally insures mistakes. A world that is inclined to see you as a villain is apt to think you are doing something wrong, even when you're not. People who prefer to label only work to prove themselves right. Incarceration trends have not matched crime for 40 years.

This story demands speculation and it is often unfair to do much speculation, but Michael Brown Jr., much like Trayvon Martin, has risen above his own name and become the symbol of what many poor American’s have said about bad cops for years.  Seldom, if ever, are bad cops convicted for the crimes they commit against regular citizens, so to expect differently is foolish.  Darren Wilson will likely walk, or he will be given a charge of manslaughter and suspended jail time that won’t satisfy the angry.  If he actually goes down for Murder 2 and see's real time, this statue becomes a  monument that is higher and more significant than any of us have seen thus far in this age-old debate.

Michael Brown Jr. is the new and improved Trayvon Martin because the evidence, especially witnesses, have elevated this beyond simple supposition.  This is probability at its finest, and it is probable that we will have all of the pertinent facts necessary to achieve a necessary conviction…….yet we still must preserve the sanctity of policing by not trying to heap years of oppression onto the back of Darren Wilson.

We (I’m talking to my black folk now) should prepare ourselves for the necessity of leniency. On that special day when the police force becomes 67% black in Ferguson because the city is 67% black, those 67% will be YOUR friends and family members burdened with the challenge of policing desperate populations in their area.  One day the news report is of the lost life of a citizen, and tomorrow it is the lost life of an off duty police officer who stepped in to calm young folks who decided thuggin’ at a Jazz festival in Denver City park is a great way to flex your muscle. Not at all the same topic, but young black men are dying at the hand of a lot of bullets and the residual casualties are making the whole issue harder to ignore.

Michael Brown Jr. should have never lost his life, but neither should have Celena Hollis of the Denver police force. I only mention her because when I think of anger towards police, I remember Celena Hollis and her family.  Darren Wilson has a family too.

Is one death more emblematic of a bigger societal problem? Probably!

Yet, if we cause the best of our society to stop sacrificing themselves to the demands of law enforcement, what kind of new societal problem will we experience?  Police are something nobody seems to like except everybody that needs one.  I can only imagine how frustrating these days must be to the good cops of Ferguson; having to listen to the anger of some the same people they had to rescue prior to the death of Michael Brown Jr.

I am not an advocate of disrupting the sanctity of policing, not even for Michael Brown Jr.  The spirit tells me that we won’t have to because Michael Brown Jr., like Trayvon Martin is a flash point to a greater, long overdue discussion.  Our angels for change. Michael Brown Jr. told his grandpa that the world would know him one day, and he was right.

SquareBiz stands committed to this discussion and all of America’s important conversations that we have yet to seriously start or sensibly finish.  Rodney King was the first of this kind; modern day police brutality caught on camera.  While we do not have actual footage of the Brown Jr. shooting,  eye witness and forensic evidence caused nearly two weeks of street protests and rare federal oversight.  Fortunately for Rodney, he lived and L.A. recovered from the destruction it experienced when the cops got off.  Unfortunately for America, the discussion did not live, as it only revealed how opposed many of us were over the latitude we believe policing demands and how this flexibility has disproportionately smacked the hell out of brown skinned people. Quickly, we retreated into our respective corners only to pretend that this was not a fight worth having. After all, Rodney lived.  

Michael Brown Jr. did not live, but will his memory die as well?

We have had our head violently yanked from the sand on this one, but despite oxygen deprivation, it seems we often prefer to shove our head back where it came.  Eyewitness testimony may be inspiring the black president and his black Attorney General to move with haste, but the Ferguson mayor, Missouri governor and every presidential candidate who could be forced to oversee America’s future conversations on race have been slow and silent, much like racial progress. It’s rather easy to alter the face of racism by turning your back on it, but in doing so, you have done little to affect historical change and nothing to lead the change that’s needed today. If leaders chose only to speak on the importance of respecting our good cops during these angered moments, that would have value. Silence is a message of another kind.

If we slap a chest camera on every officer in America is that the license to continue the silent delusion that community policing was not the solution to begin with?  Cities that have implemented chest cam’s have seen up to 80% reductions in violent policing, but have they seen a change in attitude? Integrating will help, but does that ultimately mean more cops, of whatever color, and more jails?  Breaking the tragic cycles of life and prejudice that result in incarceration (or death by cop) should be the greater goals that we look to gain from the senseless loss of another young black man, but even that places the wrong focus on this issue.  Michael Brown Jr., good, bad or in between should not have been shot that day, so the idea of mentoring, as suggested by the president’s My Brother’s Keeper comments, lends itself to the notion that mentoring could have saved the life of Michael Brown Jr. Six foot four, big black and scary, Michael  Brown Jr. needed a cop who saw his own son, and not some menace to society. America needs this too.

If Wilson killed Brown Jr. without knowing about the video............ (Why do we have this video in the first place?)

What mentoring could have done is offered a summer program for college credit that Brown Jr. could have been attending instead of stealin’ and thuggin’, and walking in the middle of the street to go do some mackin’ and hangin'. Seeing a non-athletic, scary black man in college is a visual mentoring of its own kind.  In this case, mentoring could have only forced this awful plight on some other black family, at a different time and place, to watch their loved one become the poster child for police brutality run amok. At the rate of death to young black men by insensitive white cops, this day was inevitable, which also means that some other innocent family of the killer cop would be dealing with whatever the family of Darren Wilson is dealing with in St. Louis. God Bless both families during this trying time. 

I know that my white neighbor, the surgeon, did not call it stealin’ and thuggin’ when he too behaved like Michael Brown Jr. as a kid, despite a much more privileged life than Brown Jr., but he always shakes his head when he thinks about how awful, and how fortunate he was given his travails while coming of age. Imagine the outcry if he'd been killed by police while doing some of the same stuff black kids die for all of the time?

Which lead me to wonder. Could Big Mike have become a world famous surgeon, or was he always destined to be an angel named Mike?  

The Question Still Remains. WHY DO WE HAVE THIS REPORT?

As the conspiracy theories mount regarding this bizarre series of events, try this one on for size.

This portion of the convenience store theft report (see below) was amended by the officer who took over this case the Monday following the killing of Mike Brown (2 days later).  First question is, why does anyone need to take over the cigarillo case which is listed as a 48.99 loss to the convenience store, but no names of the convenience store workers or notes saying they would pursue this crime. This case should have been shut before it needed to be open, not reassigned so that multiple statements could be entered for a case that died the minute the victim refused to press charges.

The bigger concern is why would the confirmation of the two individuals names be added to an incident that the merchant didn't care to pursue, and since the names were clearly added on Monday by the newly assigned cop on this case, why did this newly assigned cop need to officially name the cigarillo suspects?  The original officer did not include these names.  This eyewitness of Browns dead corpse could have been made by the merchants who are the only people who laid real eyes on the thief.  Apparently, this newly assigned cop has better vision when it comes to turning unknown perpetrators into confirmed dead people by video imaging alone.  As you read this report, it seems as though Johnson is added simply from his televised interviews and not from him admitting to a crime that the video would have cornered him on anyway. Why couldn't they simply force Johnson to admit his involvement in the video taped crime.  BECAUSE THE CASE SHOULD HAVE BEEN CLOSED, since the merchant refused to testify, yet notes are continuously being added.

LINK TO THE FULL REPORT

After all of that minor madness, there still is this question of the statement that you see above and the one contradicting it made by the Ferguson police chief.  This Monday morning addendum says that "It is worth mentioning that this incident is related to another..." The chief of Ferguson now says it was NOT related  because Darren Wilson (the shooter), had no clue about the cigarillo theft. Yes, its worth mentioning this report so long as you release the incident reports that you are referring to.  As of now, they have yet to release the only report/s that matters in the death of Mike Brown and the only report that has been requested. Yet, we have mass proliferation of a strong arm theft report with several addendum notes made for nearly a week, before you give us what actually we asked for?  How many times do you need to reword a totally unrelated petty theft that was exceptionally cleared by a non-pursuant merchant  before it was permanently expunged by the death of the key suspect; which made any additional notes on this theft, especially his name, unnecessary  and impossible to prove anyway

Darren Wilson had no clue Big Mike was stealing, nor did America until the chief insisted we read this report.  However, this report directly mentions the only reports that we've been asking for in the first place. Wilson may not have known about this almost meaningless report before he shot Brown, but he better love it like a Bible right now. This report is possibly the report that keeps Darren Wilson from doing life in prison, because in Missouri, there will be less punishment for killing a strong arming cigarillo thief.

Now.  Can we get those other two reports.....please?

Hillary Is The Consummate Politician. Is That Her Achilles Heel?

Hard Choices and Stupid Decisions?
Is Hillary talking too much.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are en route to Martha's Vineyard to celebrate the birthday of Vernon Jordan's wife. Tensions have seemingly mounted recently among these families as Hillary continues to posture herself for a presidential bid. Part of that posturing included a denunciation of Obama's Iraq engagement, especially with the recent actions to send troops and military support back to the region.

My prediction is a lip kissing selfie.  What better way for Hillary to put to bed the criticism that she is getting for criticizing her former boss over Iraq.  As easy as it would be to dive into the inner workings of the Clinton-Obama relationship, I don't think it matters much.  Democrats remain united when it comes time to voting, and even if Clinton doesn't need Obama's presence, she will need his endorsement.  In reality, Obama needs Hillary too.  Losing the presidency in 2016 to the republicans will be more of an indictment on Obama's tenure than anything else.  Winning gives his signature legislation, Obamacare, a better chance of surviving a jilted congress still eager to gain a significant win over Obama.  Repealing his healthcare law gains revived energy if Republicans win the white house.

If my lip smacking selfie prediction holds true, it will testify to the necessity of Obama in Clinton's campaign calculations.  If calculations are the essence of the Clinton way, then Hillary might be proving herself the mastermind of this family.  Somehow, the Clinton's find a way to be on everybody's side, even Republicans when necessary, and that politically pragmatic penchant has now become a signature of their family; like a fragrance from someone familiar that tells of their coming or of their recent departure.

If the Clinton's were that cool uncle who still wears Brut by Faberge, then we might not be so annoyed with their odor.  For some reason their stench is no longer pleasant to the nostrils anymore.  They are starting to remind me of that sanitary hospital smell.  You are happy to smell it when you need the benefits and cleanliness of a hospital, but if you stay too long, the dirty smell of natural air provides a familiar comfort.

The Clinton's, especially Hillary, are way too sanitized.  Something so clean can be appreciated, but its unrealistic in a world full of germs.  If you eat 7 course meals with the elite for too long, something in your DNA will eventually long for an outdoor barbecue complete with flies and the 3 second rule on food that falls in the grass.

Hillary isn't unique in her political calculations, but she might be calculating the wrong numbers on this one.  The old America appreciated the Queen of Kings, Hillary Clinton.  Today's America needs the kind of leadership that sounds different then what we have heard for the past few years of congressional stagnancy.  Obama has taken the luster away from this historical moment thing anyway. Hillary might inspire a sexist nation to put another social feather in its cap, but she will have to do it being something other than the best  of the same old stuff we've seen for years.

Right now, she is the consummate politician.  Given the rancor associated with that word, this might just be her Achilles heel.  For Hillary to burn a trail to the White House, she will need to behave in a much less common way so that the public doesn't continue to see her as another predictable politician.  In other words, don't prep the public for your presidential bid by undercutting your former boss, just announce early or shut up completely until you do.

Even Eyewitness Testimony Can't Stop Incidents Of Bad Policing

Whenever we get another one of these unarmed black men killed by a cop, we lose a lot of rubber as we spin our wheels in the street trying to find the balance between trusting the men and women we depend on to serve and protect us, while the unavoidable truth is that no one can ever hire perfectly for any job.

Occasionally, police departments hire guys (sorry fellas, but its rarely ladies making these errors in judgement) that love weapons more than they love law enforcement or dislike minorities more than they love justice.  In certain toxic instances, they hire men with all of these traits.  There is probably no easy way to avoid these leaks in the system, and police unions become unfortunate shields for the worst of law enforcement's hiring mistakes.

It would be easy to chalk up the lost lives that will always come from the imperfect process of hiring, but the issue is bigger than Mike Brown from Ferguson or Eric Garner from New York.  I could Google names for hours of young black men that have died at the hand of law enforcement. Even worse, are the many nameless faces that never made it to the news; those forgotten ones that inspired certain residents of Ferguson, Missouri to loot a shoe store.

I know.  Retribution is a funny thing, but so is this unbreakable fear that America has of black men.  Especially young black men that embrace the entirety of hip-hop culture and go by the name Big Mike.  When Big Mike was alive, his 18 years of maturity was easily mistakable for grown man dangerous.  They called the kid Big Mike for a reason.  Apparently, the homicide of Big Mike took place in a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri similar to most suburbs of America.  These are the places in America where whites, who can afford it, run away from the places where too many non-whites start to inhabit.  It would be nice if I could characterize it in some way that doesn't sound so disparaging of those who run towards the suburbs. The truth is, anywhere you see a suburban area that is not predominantly white, it is usually the old suburban area that whites have long since abandoned in mass.  Areas like Ferguson, Missouri, where Big Mike took his last breath on earth, or Aurora, Colorado, where I spent my middle school and high school years.

The Denver Metro is a cluster of old school suburbs that evolved from  the main city. Instead of building neighborhoods that distanced themselves from the main city like they do with modern suburbs, metro area neighborhoods  like Denver, extend from the main city by design.  People in Colorado love Denver, even those that choose to live outside of its most active inner circle.  Aurora is one of the first of these offshoot cities with a vibrant history of military bases that anchored the city during its rise.  Lowry Air Force base was a key central part of Aurora before a recent  redevelopment and on the outskirts of the military base are several pockets of housing that offered various price ranges to the military families that occupied the area.

Directly across the street from the base is an upper crust slice of neighborhood that was said to be commonly owned by the officers.  The houses are noticeably nicer than all the others in the area, and only a few people we knew actually lived in these houses.  One of them was one of my closest friends.  His dad was an Air Force officer so he was fortunate to have a house inside of this little slice of heaven. Somehow, when I think back to my Mike Brown moments in history, it always seemed to be with this particular friend of mine, who was every bit as black and as nerdy as me, if not more so.

He was the military family kid that lived on the nicer side of the street. There were a few other black kids that lived in the same area, but they were lighter skinned black kids of mixed race.   When we first got confronted by questionable policing, it was in this 6 block neighborhood where my friend lived. The shakedown  was the basic 'what are you doing in this nice area' kind of shakedown, but a shakedown no less. This might have been one of the last pieces of white sanctity nestled inside of the rough edges of north Aurora, but it was nestled, not isolated like a true suburb.  Shakedowns in other parts of Aurora were very prevalent at the time.   Aurora, once the suburban refuge to neighboring Denver, had begun to lose all of its non-minorities to South Aurora and other areas not called Denver or North Aurora.  Unfortunately, the staffing of Aurora police officers in the 80's is much like that of Ferguson, Missouri today, not reflective of the community that it attempted to serve.

We were two blocks away from his home, probably walking back from hooping on the military base.  Colorado had finally given in to the lottery ticket craze and someone had discarded a loser on the sidewalk along our route home. 30 seconds after we picked up that ticket, a police car pulls up to us and stops us to ask us what we were doing in the area.  The answer of heading home didn't fit the pre-planned agenda for this stop, so he proceeded to take down names and check for warrants.  The few black dudes that lived on the outskirts of this small community probably did have warrants, so his shake of the dice had a reasonable expectation of luck.  When he crapped out so quickly on two high school nerds that actually did live nearby, he was none too happy that I requested his name, badge number and a reason for the stop.  As I recall, he accused us of littering (the lotto ticket was a loser remember) and made sure we never got the rest of that information.

The next time I got a police shake down, I was a sophomore in high school and responsible for pulling off the Sadie Hawkins (girls ask the guys) dance for our class.  While dressed in shirt and tie, myself and that same friend of mine and another young black gentleman in a shirt and tie, had to move the school soft drink machine into the gym for the dance.  I guess there could have been three black burglars in shirt and tie trying to steal a soft drink machine behind a well populated school, with no get away car just as the cop suspected of us.  The white students who were holding open the door for us came quickly to declare that they were pointing guns at the sophomore class president and his most likely to succeed friends, but even the teacher that soon arrived could not digress this overly aggressive act of policing.

The first incident occurred in broad daylight, but the latter was in the dark, backside of the school gym.  From the street view, I respect that this cop might have thought that he had unveiled something nefarious.  Whether he really had a call about someone matching our descriptions or simply used it to quell the embarrassment of the moment is hardly of a concern to me.  In the process of trying to keep people safe, innocent people occasionally endure shake downs (see; airport travel).  My concern is for the unbridled passion at which this officer went about his business.  When police officers regularly treat innocent people as guilty until proven otherwise, they eventually end up with fatal errors in judgement.

To the credit of old school cops, they were more likely to beat young blacks down and leave them to get home on their own instead of shooting them dead.  Now, gun culture and the prevalence of guns creates hypersensitive cops that trust the laws to acquit them against shootings more than they trust the people they are sworn to serve and protect.

Will chest camera's  improve police accountability?

Where do these quick triggered tendancies come from?  Lack of diversity in leadership positions, especially in communities where diversity represents the community at large. These environments demand leaders who reject typical hiring behaviors to insure that diversity, of gender and ethnicity, becomes a priority of leadership itself.  Diverse hiring within diverse communities is a central component for what defines good leadership. White cops, educators, judges....leaders, will never develop minority sensitivity running from intimate minority interaction like working side by side with them every day.  In fact, hiring black officers to police their own neighborhoods seems to be the loudest bone of contention from the more controlled of the angry Ferguson protesters.  Must we always use tragedy to foster the changes that are abundantly apparent long before the tragedy occurs? As we speak, Ferguson police officials seem focused on discrediting the eye witness accounts which drastically differ from the statement of the officer who pulled the trigger in this death (his name has yet to be released in fear for his safety).

In  the wake of the choking death of Eric Garner in New York, NYC, public advocate Letitia A. "Tish" James, is leading a change that includes police with video cameras abreast.  While some cops clearly hate the idea, others, especially those who've  been involved in justified shootings, see this as a way of clearing the name of good cops who get illegally targeted while justifiably performing in the line of duty.

I can hear all of you privacy advocates screaming in the background.    Do chest camera's further exacerbate  our limited privacy? The answer to that question is rather easy.  Integrate or video tape.  The choice is yours.

Race Track Retribution Leads To Death Of Kevin Ward Jr.

As a parent, I have been torn over this Tony Stewart/ Kevin Ward Jr. racing death incident.  My heart bleeds so sincerely for the parents of Ward Jr., that I have hesitated to deliver the SquareBiz on this issue.  The more that I have mulled it over, I have decided that these parents have lost a son.  If we don't give this issue meaning, than they will have lost him for nothing.

White people sports fight too much.

Race car driving is the new hockey, but even hockey seems to be fighting tooth and nail to hang on to fighting.  It has become some forgone conclusion within these sports that something gruesome, either a blind sided run into the side boards or something similar on the race track, is a necessity for full entertainment value. In sports like soccer or football and basketball, fighting has been legislated away from the game. Players might try it, but the penalties insure that they won't do it twice.  In hockey, certain players actually remain employed in the NHL, despite limited skills on skates, simply because they've been garnered with the tag. "Enforcer".

This is the guy who beats up other guys that play the game too physically, especially when said physical play is being forced upon a key scorer on your team.  Many of these players may never even see the ice until they are needed to isolate other enforcers. For the sake of the test later, I am going to paraphrase that for you.  Hockey has players that they pay to perform assault and battery on each other.

Although car racing does not utilize an enforcer, it does allow, and seemingly condone bumping and shoving on the track that keeps leading to assault and battery after the race.  Technically, one of the attacked would have to press charges and since there is so much noise in the arena, it would even  be hard to site them for disturbance of the peace, but you get my drift.  This is assault and battery that may someday cause a man to lose his life, and then what will we do.

Well, someday is now.  Granted, this fight was not like the others.  Car versus man is closer to vehicular homicide which begins to question the motive of the killer and the intent of the slain.  Was he really going to try to fight Tony Stewart during the actual race (the video says maybe), and why is it okay that we continue to watch the escalation of raceway retribution?  Is it still okay that we allow and nearly condone the fighting now that we've lost Ward Jr.?  Tony Stewart is a virtual poster child for dirty driving (enforcer) tactics, so the question of whether or not this would have happened if it were any other driver except Stewart looms over the Stewart legacy in addition to the life lost while Stewart was, once again, being Stewart.

Questions are endless in the face of tragedy. Yet, searching for a reason for the lost life goes without question.  Whatever we determine to be the singular cause for this incident, fighting , or the unabashed allowance of it, needs to be high upon the list of focal points.  No one can speak for Ward Jr. and what motivated him to do what he did that day.  If Stewart was planning on accepting blame, I doubt that he would be mulling over whether or not to race in Michigan this coming weekend. To Stewart, this was just an accident.  You know, the kind of stuff that happens when you allow really fast cars to race around a track, and really immature men to fight when their cars crash from racing so fast.

It used to be that the barbarism of the wreck was enough for race fans.  The track design combined with the speed and volume of cars proves they have an expectation of a wreck; maybe even the hope of one.  Race fans who frequent the tracks seem to recall the scene of a wreck more than they do the 60 cars that passed the dude in the back of the pack.  These days, if the wreck doesn't entertain you enough, there is the obligatory, post race fist fight in response to the wreck.

 Post race!!

Ward Jr.  decided that he couldn't wait to get his point across to Stewart.  People who live on the edge of death may not have the same sensitivity to it as one might expect; both Ward Jr. in his fearless attack of a moving vehicle, and Stewart in his cold ability to move on so quickly after taking part in the death of a 20 year old man.  As for hockey? We will likely need to see a player have his nose bone forced into his brain from one of those close combat punches in hockey, causing the first hockey related death from fighting, but do we need anything else to clearly see the risk of allowing men who drive fast cars to fight each other without retribution?

If every race car driver who engages in an act of raceway violence knew that they would have to sit out the next 2 races, do you think we would ever see another fight, or another death due to the acceptance of fighting?  Even the guy who wanted to fight would not often gain a willing combatant if we change the rules around fighting on the raceway.

As a show of respect to the parents of Kevin Ward Jr., that should be the new standard for all race car drivers on any level.  We will call it the Kevin Ward Jr. rule in honor of his tragic and senseless death.  To me, that's the only way to give this loss some meaning.

As for the bigger issue of fighting in sports, car racing and hockey seem to be the last of a kind.  Basketball players tried to keep up a good front, but they always seemed to look like the kids in the neighborhood that couldn't fight so well (not Stephen Jackson...he got hands), so no one cared to legislate fighting in hoops until the Ben Wallace .vs. Ron Artest/Metta World Peace incident in Detroit 

Hockey is starting to get too many black players, so they will self correct soon enough. America is uncomfortable with black love and black violence as it invokes images of fear that Will Smith and Colin Powell haven't fully erased from our psyche. Don't be offended white people, we are all afraid of young black men with a chip on their shoulder, me included.  A few of us are just more afraid for them. (another topic for another day)

As for race car driving, the brothers are not aching to take over that sport any time soon, so you will have to fix that one yourself.  Wrecks and scraps are blowing the sport up exponentially, but they are also causing the sport to lose favor among parents who have to bury the victims of this growing craze. Fighting in racing might seem benign when you consider the massive pit crews that typically separate the angry combatants, but sometimes even the pit crews lose their cool.  Sooner or later fighting always leads to some unexpected incident, like the one we saw in Detroit...... or the death of Kevin Ward Jr.

Its time for the fighting to end.

Rory McIlroy Joins Tiger and Jack In Rare Air. Is It Time For One Name?

Rory McIlroy just rushed from behind to shut out the lights on the last PGA major of the season.  When I say turned out the lights, I mean that literally.

Under the minimal lights that remained in the skies at Vallhalla, McIlroy took a 2 shot lead into the 18th hole with a blind tee-shot to close out the tournament.  Blind, because there was not enough light for Rory to see the fairway that he grabbed a driver to reach, and water was in play to the right. If that wasn't enough to complicate the ending for Rory, the tee-shot was anxiously taken. Rory was scheduled to sit and wait even longer as the group in front, Phil Mickelson and Rickie Fowler had yet to even reach their balls to take an approach.  Before they got the chance,  Mickelson and Fowler agreed to let Rory tee off since the light was nearly gone for the day.  Tournament rules typically allows for the tee-shot in the event of minimal light, but Mickelson and Fowler expected Rory to wait behind for his approach shot.  For some unusual reason, the tournament officials allowed Rory to approach before the group in front finished the hole.

This seems like a small logistical error, but it might have cost Mickelson a tournament.  Rory had just enough light to get a birdie putt within 3 feet, and finished it off along with the tournament.  Had he been forced to wait, he would have taken his putt within 5-10 minutes of less light than he ended up receiving. Even more importantly was the tee-shot that landed way too close to that water on the right I had mentioned.  Mickelson graciously declared that it didn't impact the conclusion of the tournament, but one might only wonder.  Simply allowing Rory to tee-off could have been a tactical move that the tournament officials totally impeded, especially considering the extra minute or so that Mickelson and Fowler had to wait for Rory's approach.

When the light is dim and the eyes lose depth perception, every shot becomes a different kind of guessing game.  Rory should have had a couple of tougher guesses than he ultimately got. It was his lack of second guessing himself, even when faced with the option to tee-off on 18 or save it for another day, that might have captured him a tournament.  Rory never appeared to have a second thought about playing in the dark, and he didn't hesitate to thank the twosome in front for how classy they proved to be given an opportunity to totally screw the guy in the lead who was foolishly willing to tee-off in the dark...with a 2 shot lead no less.

And boy is he in the lead.  Rory joins Tiger and Jack as the youngest players to win 4 majors (all three were 24-25 years old). He gave up a lead to start out the day, but rushed past the capable twosome that played right in front of him, and finishes this tournament having won 3 weeks in a row.  Whether Tiger makes it back to capture enough victories to move past Jack is quickly becoming a page 2 story.  Rory is securing his place in golf lore while most of the golf world is still taking bets on the Tiger thing.

In some ways, that might be what gives him the air to breath.  Everyone knows this kid is amazing, but no one seems to want to shift the camera off of Tiger for long enough to recognize what we already know.  No problem.  This young man will make sure his presence is felt even if no one cares to watch his arrival. When asked to put his amazing accomplishments into perspective he said, "It's just something I'm going to have to come to terms with".  No one really understand their own excellence, especially while its occurring.  Even Tiger is struggling to recapture the wild feline that once roared inside of him.  Your best option is to treat all of your success as simply not good enough.  When you lock your sights on all-time greatness, the last victory isn't enough anymore.

Postscript:  Rory most likely wins the Player of the Year award from this 3 weeks of excellence.  To start the year, Henrik Stenson, who also had a chance down the stretch of this tournament, was on a Player of the Year run himself.  Closing out this tournament would have reignited Stenson's name in that conversation for sure.

                             ________________

Rickie Fowler, who also had a chance to capture a season ending victory (for majors) might have had the best season ever for a player who didn't win a single tournament.
                             ________________

Mickelson said that he is finding his game and I believe him.  If the Ryder Cup team needs an elder statesman, Phil is ready to play.
                             ________________

In Rory's podium interview, it appears that he would have chosen to play the next day if he didn't get a chance to tee-off when he did. Thanks again Rickie and Phil. This stress was too much to carry into another day, and I didn't even play.

I Am Done With Political Correctness (That Shit Is Gay)

Yeah, I said that!

Do you remember when white people couldn't figure out whether to refer to us as black people or African Americans or coloreds (we never liked that one?...or negroes?...my bad), or black Americans, only to have some really defiant blacks who would say, "can you just call me an American?", even though you were trying to simply draw a distinction between the brown skinned, bigger nosed Americans....no, not Mexican Americans, the one's with the fuller lips? What do we want to be called today?  The more I think about those days, I hope that all of the sensitive white folks who tried so hard to deliver the correct description were quietly saying to themselves, "these nigga's are crazy".

This won't be another article defending the N word.  I personally hate the notion of defending any word.  Words are my life. To even consider excluding even one of them from allowed use is like historical genocide to me.  Every word that exists has a reason for being.  Words can be offensive, but offense is not always in the heart of the deliverer nor in the control of them as well, and even the best of intentions WILL offend someone on earth.

Every word has a context in which it is used, and I simply trust that the user of words has selected accordingly. Like when you say shit, you didn't mean shucks.  Enough said.

Uh huh, I said that too.

Political Correctness disagree's with me wholeheartedly.  PC says that I have got to be ultra sensitive to the entire world of people that I might offend and choose my words according to their potential for offense. Some might argue that the line between intent an offense is as indistinguishable as the concept of Good and Evil.  The power of that reasoning is what convinces me that Political Correctness is the most evil thing around.  What could be more demonic than something that further widens the gap of knowledge that we have about one another.  Thanks to Political Correctness, we are afraid to even ask the question.  I could never grow an afro, so sometimes even I want to touch one. Oh yeah. I'm black and I know the proper way to touch a 'fro.  'Fro is short for Afro. We blacks like to create slang for lots of shizzniyee (see; shit).  If whites could be taught the proper way to touch a 'fro, don't you think race relations could improve?

 PC will have none of that.  It wishes I would delete that entire last paragraph. I will not.

In fact, I'm doubling down. I have a great example of how this impacted me recently.  I received an interesting Facebook video of 6 guys who stand in a line and putt 6 different balls into the same hole. Undoubtedly these guys taped forever and missed a lot.  By the time they actually made one, they jumped around in such amazement that I started to type these words:

 "cool...except for jumping around like little girls".

You know how FB is.  90% of the things you type get deleted and reworded, or not sent at all.  I am the father of 5 girls, no boys, so I can only imagine what the response would have been if I would have sent that chauvinistic post.  By the time I had hit send, I also hit backspace until the post simply read:

"Cool"

  Fortunately, one of my less Politically Correct brothers posted what I was actually thinking when I first saw them running so wildly.

"Gay"

I know.  PC long since decided that we can't use that word anymore just like coloreds or negroes. Gay guys, especially on television, might choose to behave in an effeminate manner that they proudly describe as gay, but when the golf guys act gay after an impossible trick, it becomes offensive. I did not phrase that as a question because I am a black man. I won't dare declare hypocrisy because my race is indirectly responsible for this madness. PC might have actually been created as a cowardly response to the race issue in America, and all other disenfranchised groups followed the model  that blacks have proudly embraced around race.  The model is, just don't talk about it so that you don't offend the wrong person.  By not offending, we have confused ourselves into believing that we are more progressive as a society when in fact we are only more confused about one another.

Why are blacks the only articulate ones?

My name is Gary Dwight Brewer, and I grew up in a family that did not let my middle name, and a natural affinity towards school, go un-attacked. All families can run the dozens, as they call it. Black families, mine especially, are beyond skilled in the area.  To be a black man that sounded white, and named Dwight, was challenging for sure.  I had to choose early to either conform to the critics, or embrace who I was with tenacity.  In some ways I did both simply because I could. Over time, talking black had not become the intensely negative stigma that it was when I was growing up.  In some weird turn of events, talking black became cool enough to be mainstream.  Even if you are not black, you certainly understand the words that exude from black culture.  You might even check people when they dis you.

Did it ever offend me that whites only used the word, articulate, when referring to blacks who speak well?  It used to, but now articulate blacks are the poster children for the word articulate.  It is simply never used much in referring to white people because articulation is an assumed skill among them.  In turn, being white comes along with this notion of automatically being smart.  Is it true?  Smart is relative, but whites don't strike me as the most widely uneducated people in America.  Is that a lot of words to say yes?.....YES!

White people are pretty smart. They can't dance a lick, but every white person who can dance is about as upset right now as every white person who ain't particularly smart (do they read blogs?). The real burden of stereotypes is squarely on the back of that small, but significant group that stereotypes don't apply to.  They are the pioneers of social change, but they are also the most prevalent voice in the anti-stereotype crusade. Pioneers have their own stereotypes.  Some are called Uncle Tom while others might get the more direct, nigger lover, label. Both carry a social burden that is tiresome, but necessary.

I am writing today to ease your burden. Stereotypes are okay once again and Political Correctness must die instead for us to truly merge as a nation.  A scared white boy who is trying to psyche himself into getting out on the dance floor for the first time, so he doesn't die a lonely old man who no girls will date, needs to be confident enough to approach whatever black people in the room can help him.  Yes, he might find the 30% who also can not dance, but he needs to know that non-dancing blacks exist just like he needs to find a wife. PC has forced some white men to ask other whites for dancing advice in fear of offending the wrong black person.  As a result, we have whites doing dances like the water sprinkler and really bad renditions of the running man (which was a bad dance to begin with). That doesn't make blacks responsible for white divorces, but there's blood on our hands.

Why are we so afraid of stereotypes.  I don't get upset by being the articulate black man. It beats the hell out of the stereotype they had in mind as they walked up to me. Nerds in school hated being called nerds until one day their nerdism earned them a really good job.  Now you hear older nerds calling themselves nerds all the time.  Do their poor, envious peers still call them nerds?  Well of course they do, but the pain and the stigma of a stereotype is often in the hands of those who bear the label.  Everyone feels typecast when someone assumes things about you, especially based upon race. But would you prefer they shut up and leave with their assumptions intact, or open their mouth and gain an opportunity to have another perspective? Being the exception to the rule doesn't change the rule, so get over being the exception.

That being said, I do feel badly for black people who can't dance and white people who aren't terribly smart, but I believe this is not a problem that honest dialogue can't fix. That golf trick video was cool....and then it became gay really quickly. While my use of the word 'gay' could be proliferating homophobia, as it clearly did when we were homophobic kids, not asking homosexuals what still offends them could be proliferating homophobia in the form of homo ignoramus.  Is the word gay now one of those things like blacks can say nigga but no one else can?  Gays can say gay, but its offensive for anyone not gay to say gay even if you meant gay in a different way?  That's gay for sure, and the last I checked, some real gays are not as offended by the word as non-gays think they are, just as every black isn't actually offended by all of the things people think we should be offended by. We do like chicken, and my oldest daughter wonders if the fact that we don't have chicken delivery is actually a black conspiracy.  Sometimes I wonder if the modern social divide is being driven by people assuming offense for others and not real people offended themselves.  In fact, even this 'ban the word gay" crusade seems to be nothing more than a way for heteros to pretend that they are more sensitive to the plight of gays than they truly are, so they pretend to be offended at the word just in case someone gay is watching.

The whole institution is built under the umbrella of PC and I am striving to tear that facade down. I do so with a sincere prayer request from everyone who wastes a moment reading anything that I write.  Political Correctness lives despite very few who support it, and it will not be attacked without retribution. I stand fearlessly in the face of Political Correctness and say, enough is enough.  America used to be called a melting pot, but cold group relations of all kinds, aided by political correctness have frozen this stew into a stagnant jelly.  A heated debate beats silent refrain any day of the week. If we can't talk, we can't grow.

Time to bring the heat.

San Antonio Spurs Assistant Coach Becky Hammon Is Confidence Personified

Hammon's, who's dad was also a coach, always dreamed of being in the NBA

I can admit it.  I had the biggest crush on Becky Hammon for years.  Cute girls that hoop are easy to love. She played ball in my state at Colorado State University, so I always had a close up view of this incredibly special player.  As a coach myself, I instantly recognize special players on the floor.  They somehow are quick but they never hurry.  Their knack for knowing when the game needs a momentum change, and providing it is uncanny.  Becky Hammon has always been that type of player.

Now that she has been hired by the San Antonio Spurs of the NBA as an assistant coach, she gets to reveal herself as that kind of coach.  Hammon is a bull dog with dimples.  Her temperament is stern by nature and she is unafraid of confrontation.  She might even like confrontation a bit.  When she addresses a player, she walks into that uncomfortable region that most people avoid to both hear and be heard, and its not just because she is diminutive.  I have seen Hammon extend her ear to another person, player or coach, so often that it seems burned in my memories of who she is as a person.  The most powerful teachers in the world come across as intense listeners.  Hammon's voice will be powerful in this league because she listens with her spirit looking for an opportunity to help her team maximize their individual skills.

If a team is but a reflection of the coach, I predict that Becky Hammon will not only become the first female head coach in the NBA, she will be the coach of the most confident team of NBA players that ever stepped on the floor. Confidence is who she is because she has every reason to be.  Becky Hammon, who just so happens to be female,  knows basketball as well as any PERSON on this planet.

So proud OF you.  So proud FOR you.

Paul Ryan's Budget Goes All-In With His Own War On Poverty

Gotcha this time!

For some time now, I have lived by the belief that we can, and should destroy welfare as we know it. Welfare these days is hardly the shameful welfare of the 70's and 80's.  You know, when the case manager used to check in your house to see if June Bug was laying up in there.  Of course, June Bug was your boyfriend and maybe even the biological father of your children, but the case manager felt it was not beneficial (or lawful) for a woman to have a man and still need social services.  In effect, case managers ran off June Bug and his would be replacement as well. Under the Paul Ryan plan, case managers might return.

Cost And Commitment

By the time Bill Clinton achieved a second term, it wasn't hard for him to unleash his conservative leanings.  As a result of a Clinton signed bill, welfare recipients have had a shortened benefits clock for years (TANF Temporary Assistance For Needy Families).  While our current, so-called liberal president has inflated recipient numbers, the welfare to work reform bill already does much of what Paul Ryan thinks he is coming up with, especially the connection to resources that prepare people for the end of assistance.  If we re-institute a modern version of the age old case worker, we might sneak into areas of cost (for individual case managers) and commitment from recipients who must follow the plan in order for the program to achieve objectives.

 What is the danger of such an idea?  Mandatory (again, to achieve stated objectives) case manager visits that get missed resulting in disrupted benefits harm children more than their irresponsible parents. Over the years, we should have learned that forcing the ignorant poor to submit to their own betterment is not as easy as it sounds on paper.  For a black American (me), these are the moments that the REAL crime of slavery starts to manifest.

Similar to the Ebola virus, ignorance is not the kind of disease you ever want to let live. Federal laws surrounding how we educate our kids reflect an awareness of this reality, but in our history, we not only functionally allowed ignorance,  we forcibly produced it in mass, actually killing many who were caught pursuing its cure.  Among the worse symptoms of ignorance is how it blinds those worse stricken with the disease from the only path that leads them to health.  If quarantined, ignorance would die off in time, but we're too dumb for that.  Ignorance is much too contagious to ignore, but we've found a way to do it with our toxic rhetoric that  blames one party or another for the reasons that OUR kids are still struggling in school.

In reality, we are all in this mess together and Ryan's plan will fix some of the issues with the social safety net (Earned Income  Credit increases for example) but might cause others. Namely, the fund diversion scheme that he uniquely calls the Opportunity Grant.  No, this is not new government monies in the form of an additional federal grant on top of monies already being received by each state to support its welfare needs. This grant is an opportunity to switch money you already get, into services of your own choosing.  Services like case managers for instance.  The real concern is that Governors will soon divert these funds to address other state shortfalls, at the risk of increased hunger  and homelessness in their state.

Do you remember when charter schools began to receive the headcount allotment that state and federal budgets spend each year on each student (the money follows the student)?  In a similar fashion, the Ryan plan allows states to take  up to 80% of their federal welfare subsidy and spend that money in ways driven by that states ideology and agenda.  More conservative states are likely to force the case manager process upon poor people in order to assign blame in the event they remain poor after the process reaches an end.

In an MSNBC interview with Chuck Todd, Ryan admitted that " If the status quo was working, I would be supporting it."  It is not working, according to Ryan, and Ryan says that we've got record poverty to prove that the war on poverty (i.e. welfare) isn't working.  The proof of welfare is a mixed bag of success and failure that remains a subject of debate. Freeing 80% of the welfare bounty from of each state into the hands of whichever Governor is in office at the time begs for a better quality of governor than we have seen lately.  These days, governors are constantly testifying before a grand jury in order to clear their name of fraud.  Either Ryan is confident that his law will pass at a time when corruption in state government has gone away for good, or he needs to crumble up this bill and smoke it in his pipe dream.

He's not totally dreaming when he says that welfare is not working.  By and large, welfare works about as well as common cold medicine, which can hide the symptoms for a while. Ryan is dreaming about this causation between welfare and the rise of poverty.  Welfare didn't make poverty rise anymore than cold medicine made colds return again each winter.  In fact, several conservatives have noted that federal dollars on a per person basis actually increased after Clinton forced so many slackers off of the doles.   Those who focus on this fact, lose sight of the corner that this backs them into.  If less people had access to welfare benefits as result of the Clinton reforms, doesn't it make it harder to blame welfare for increased poverty?

One day, when we gain the wisdom of the Italians or even the Native Americans, we will finally stop connecting wealth to knowledge and ignorance to poverty.  There may very well be a link, but that direct causation died with the Leave It To Beaver Show and a vibrant American job market.  Today, poverty is rooted in a whole complex web of decisions that are often bigger than the individuals trying to make them. Bad choices do create bad outcomes, but limited choices and limited knowledge of good choices when choices present themselves tilt the odds in a predictable direction. While it may be easy to remain insensitive when the bad decisions are done by adult decision makers, the children they breed become innocent victims of the ignorance that they will likely proliferate themselves.

So What Is The Cure?

For the common cold we don't have one. As for poverty, if you assume ignorance and poverty have a natural link, than you will spend a lot of time educating poor people only to discover that they still may not have enough jobs in their neighborhoods even if they had the education to fill them (see; Detroit, Michigan). Our economy not only has a problem with the ignorant poor, it now must deal with the educated but economically disenfranchised. Welfare can't fix poverty because welfare didn't cause it in the first place.  Welfare will help some families seeking to rise above poverty, just as it does condone laziness from some too.

Ryan's plan does accept what America seems to believe as well.  Welfare is necessary on some level or another, even if Ryan thinks the states can best determine that level on their own.  Ryan, and America, also seem to naturally equate the words welfare and poverty as if they are one and the same.  They are not, and no war on poverty needs to attack the social safety net nor look to it as a liberal panacea for poverty.  Disregard what the Great Society though it could do. Welfare can only offer a humanitarian bridge when life demands it.  Outside of that, welfare is not even a cool name, much less a cool idea and its presence speaks more negatively on a society than positively.

If Ryan were really interested in ending poverty, like he will pretend to be when he announces his run at the presidency soon, he would focus on job creation measures as well as a wage increase initiative.  Instead, he is beginning his run with a book tour and this middle of the road pandering bill aimed towards all of those he will soon ask a vote from (mainstream republicans and independents primarily). Mainstream republicans may appreciate the name association that this bill does between welfare and poverty, but previously independent people and unaffiliated voters who have found themselves in the need of the humanitarian bridge we call welfare, won't appreciate the name association or Ryan turning a blind eye to their existence or their plight.