A man from Chicago has been arrested because he attempted to infect U.S. President Barack Obama with his blood infected by the HIV virus, Fox reported. He also sent Obama’s staff envelopes with the infected blood.
The perpetrator is a citizen of Ethiopia, Saad Hussein. He sent the envelope soaked in blood to Obama’s office in Springfield. Along with the blood-soaked letter, the envelope contained an invitation to Obama’s electoral victory celebration and other documents.
By Dr. Boyce Watkins
I’ll start by saying that I love Tavis Smiley and have a tremendous amount of respect for him. Ok, I’ve said it, and I meant it. I hope you believe me as I write.
Tavis Smiley’s work in the Black community is critically important. I encourage Tavis, in the midst of such work, to remember that there is a difference between being an intelligent guide to enlightenment and being downright self-righteous. Tavis has a way of putting political leaders “on blast” for not showing up at his forums. When he held a debate for the Republicans in the 2008 Presidential Primaries, there were several Republican presidential candidates who chose not to attend. I understand being upset about this, because the Republican Party has paid dearly for its racism and ignorance of the needs of the Black community. Smiley responded to the Republican snub by putting the name of the candidate on the podium even if they were not there. This was a clear reminder to those in the audience that the leader “doesn’t care about issues in the Black community.”
When holding the State of the Black Union of 2008 (some confuse it with the State of Black America, issued each year by the Urban League), Smiley again invited as many political leaders as he could find, with Hillary Clinton being his star for the day. Then Senator Barack Obama, in the middle of a heated battle for Democratic delegates in Texas and Ohio, said that he could not attend the forum. Instead, he offered his wife Michelle to attend in his place. That’s when the drama got heated.
Tavis, appearing to be offended by Obama’s slight toward his conference, proceeded to nibble away at Obama’s heels every morning on The Tom Joyner Morning Show. The segments started with “he-say, she-say”, in which Tavis claimed that no one from the Obama camp offered Michelle up for attendance. But even if they had, Tavis claimed that no spouse of a presidential candidate would be acceptable for the conference, even Bill Clinton.
I must admit that I felt Tavis was doing a “Karl Rove” on the truth. Smiley’s snub of Michelle Obama was also a slap in the face of Black women everywhere who have tremendous respect for Michelle. Finally, Smiley’s words and actions bordered on petty and angered the millions of African-Americans who’d come to believe that Barack Obama could walk on water. While I’ve never felt that Obama could walk on water, I certainly did not understand Smiley’s confused obsession with Obama’s behavior. Smiley’s comments toward the Black presidential candidate reminded me of the same double standard I can sometimes get as a Black professor. You may have Black students who feel a certain degree of comfort with you, and thus empowered enough to attack you more than they would a White professor with whom they have no prior social affiliation. These situations can be nightmares, as they reflect problems with the collective self-esteem of the Black community, which leads us to feel that attacking and hurting one another is easier, and thus more satisfying than working together to fight Black oppression. In other words, Smiley was reflecting the same sentiment held by Black men who shoot one another on the street, but stand in fear of the racism in White America. Aaron McGruder, creator of the popular cartoon, “The Boondocks”, would refer to this as “a nigger moment.”
Phones were ringing off the hook, as I had friends from California to New York calling and asking “What’s wrong with Tavis?” I had no idea, since I don’t know Tavis personally. However, because we run in the same circles, I know plenty of people who know plenty of people who know Tavis. One of my great and respected friends, Kyle Bowser, is one of Tavis’ best friends, and Kyle rang my phone the day after I made my comments. Going through the blogs of other Black scholars, I had a chance to see their reactions. Melissa Harris-Lacewell at Princeton University, an intelligent (though somewhat elitist) scholar, happened to be incredibly poignant in her critique of Tavis Smiley’s behavior.
Melissa angered Tavis by writing a column that asked ”Who died and made Tavis King?”. I wasn’t as direct in my critique of Tavis, but I did have some strong words for him. I did not want to deliver any commentary on the Tavis via the major networks, since I honestly feel that there are some conversations Black folks need to have behind closed doors. But given that we get nearly 100,000 Black readers per week on our website YourBlackWorld, I felt this to be a fitting venue to let the world know how I feel.
I issued a statement agreeing with my friend Roland Martin at CNN, who felt that Tavis was out of line by making such a strong demand on Obama at such a critical time. Yes, Hillary Clinton showed up in spite of being on the same campaign trail, but the fact was that Hillary was well positioned to win in the upcoming battlegrounds states, Texas and Ohio. Also, Hillary Clinton needed to regain the ground in the Black community that was lost when her husband Bill shot himself in the foot. The words out of Bill Clinton’s mouth were so vile, that his own “ghetto pass” was revoked immediately. Clinton had compared Barack Obama to Jesse Jackson, implying that he was simply a Black presidential candidate with no chance to win White voters. While Jesse ran a great campaign, the notion that Obama’s fate would be similar to his own was disappointing for many Black people to hear. Clinton was no longer one of us, and he certainly was not the “first Black president” anymore.
I also felt that Tavis should have been more careful about being too critical of Obama in light of the fact that he was accusing Barack of doing some things that he himself had been doing. For example, Tavis claimed that he was not going to give Obama a “ghetto pass” just because he was Black. Rather, he would challenge him and question him like he would anyone else. First, Tavis’ words presumed (self-righteously) that he knows what is best for Black folks and we cannot make this determination ourselves. No one gives the “ghetto pass” to Ward Connerly (the guy in California fighting against Affirmative Action) or Condoleeza Rice, so the idea that Black candidates get votes only because they are Black is simply ridiculous. A “ghetto pass”, should such a pass exist, must be earned, and Obama had earned the love, trust and support of the Black community. To presume that people were supporting him just because he is Black is an insult to the collective intelligence of the Black community.
Secondly, Tavis himself had been long receiving the very same “ghetto passes” that he felt Black America was unfairly bestowing upon Obama. As powerful and revolutionary as Tavis may have sounded on The Tom Joyner Morning show, the fact that you hear “This was brought to you by Walmart” at the end of each segment reminds you that the message has been diluted by corporate sponsorship. No great Black revolutionary in American history has ever been brought to you by McDonald’s, Walmart, Wells Fargo, or any of the other corporations that sponsor Tavis’ forums.
Additionally, there is a clear reality in the life of Tavis Smiley, one that he cannot ignore: the Covenant with Black America, The State of the Black Union Conference, The “Pass The Mic” Tour, and everything else Tavis has done was created with the express objective of obtaining revenue and profitability for his corporate sponsors. Tavis has sold himself (and I do not use the word “sold” in a negative sense) to White American corporations as the broker of Black leadership. He is the man that many corporate executives believe they can go to in order to reach the African-American masses. We are the drugs, and he is the pusher: White corporate America represents the group of addicts getting high on the profitability of Black consumption.
As a Finance Professor, I must say that I see nothing wrong with the Tavis Smiley business model. I am not here to say that Tavis has “sold out”, for I don’t believe he has. We all sell something in order to make a living, and even the concept of “selling out” presumes that one has managed the thin line between making a profitable trade, versus giving up something of tremendous value. The problems with the Tavis Smiley business model arise when such a business model is pursued carelessly or selfishly. I do not accuse Tavis Smiley of being careless or selfish. However, his attacks on Senator Barack Obama, none of which were thrust on Senator Hillary Clinton, smelled of self-interest from a man who appeared to feel slighted that Obama jumped his place in the line of great Black leadership.
I felt sorry for Tavis after seeing the reactions of our readers on YourBlackWorld. Hundreds of emails and comments were coming in every day, with many readers claiming that they were once Tavis Smiley fans, but not anymore. Overnight, Tavis went from being incredibly popular, to becoming the Milly Vanilly of social commentary. I can’t help but wonder what happened behind closed doors, as I am sure his publisher became concerned that he could no longer sell books. His corporate sponsors were surely aware of the fact that he was not in control of the Black audience they were buying from him. I am willing to bet that his life was a mess, at least for a while.
I hope this year’s State of the Black Union Conference is a bit more balanced. Tavis is a good brother who deserves our respect. But it is my greatest hope that he learns the difference between balanced critiques and flat out “haterology”. I do a lot of critiquing, but when it comes to Obama, I want him to succeed. I sincerely hope that Tavis wants the same.
This is an excerpt from the book “Black American Money” by Dr. Boyce Watkins, to be released in April 2009. For more information, please visit www.BoyceWatkins.com.
President Obama has talked tough about the need to shed wasteful spending. But will he practice what he preaches? His one-time rival, Sen. John McCain, brought up a pricey presidential project that seems a bit unnecessary — a fleet of 28 new Marine One helicopters that will cost taxpayers around $11.2 billion.
At a recent summit to cut the federal deficit, Sen. McCain suggested that if President Obama wants to help the economy, perhaps he should consider canceling the order. Obama replied that he's already looking into it. Obama then joked that perhaps he's been unknowingly deprived all his life, but his current Marine One chopper seems just fine to him. CNN is reporting that the new helicopters, which were originally ordered by President George W. Bush not long after 9/11, are now on hold (though not officially cancelled...yet).
Naturally, all this talk of gazillion-dollar equipment has people searching. Folks are desperate to know more about the fancy helicopters, what they can do, and why they cost such an exorbitant sum of cash. Queries immediately surged on "marine one photos" and "why is it called marine one." Regarding the second inquiry: It's called Marine One only when the president is aboard.
President Barack Obama takes center stage on Tuesday to try to sell the American people on his broader agenda for jolting the United States out of deep recession and confronting long-term economic challenges.
Riding high in opinion polls, Obama will deliver a State of the Union-style address at 9 p.m. EST in his first appearance before a joint session of Congress since he took office five weeks ago.
The primetime speech, the opening act on Capitol Hill for any new president, comes in a pivotal week for Obama. He will roll out his firstbudget proposal on Thursday against a backdrop of growing public anxiety over the worst economic crisis in decades.
In a stark reminder of how grim the situation has become, Wall Street slumped to a 12-year low on Monday as investors worried about the government nationalizing ailing major banks, a prospect the White House tried to play down.
Mayor Sheila Dixon, in her first extended television interview since she was indicted in January, told WJZ that she was "floored" by the accusation that she stole gift cards from needy families and "bothered" that Barack Obama snubbed her during a pre-inaugural visit to Baltimore.
Reporter Adam May said the interview was granted without ground rules, though Dixon told the station that she would not answer specific questions about the 12-count indictment filed against her after a nearly three-year investigation of City Hall corruption by the state prosecutor's office.
Dixon is charged with theft, perjury for failing to disclose gifts from developers and misuse of office. She has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and did so again in the interview.
Dixon said, "I was floored" when accused of taking gift cards intended for low-income families.
Eric Holder, the nation's first black attorney general, said Wednesday the United States was "a nation of cowards" on matters of race, with most Americans avoiding candid discussions of racial issues. In a speech to Justice Department employees marking Black History Month, Holder said the workplace is largely integrated but Americans still self-segregate on the weekends and in their private lives.
"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards," Holder said.
Race issues continue to be a topic of political discussion, but "we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race."
Holder's speech echoed President Barack Obama's landmark address last year on race relations during the hotly contested Democratic primaries, when the then-candidate urged the nation to break "a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years" and bemoaned the "chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races." Obama delivered the speech to try to distance himself from the angry rhetoric of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
His massive stimulus plan now signed into law, President Barack Obama is turning to attack the home foreclosure crisis at the heart of the nation's deepening economic woes.
His goal is to prevent millions of American families from losing their houses because they can't make mortgage payments.
"We must stem the spread of foreclosures and falling home values for all Americans, and do everything we can to help responsible homeowners stay in their homes," Obama said Tuesday as he signed his tax cut and spending package into law.
The ambitious plan he was announcing at a Phoenix high school Wednesday was expected to offer government cash to mortgage companies that reduce interest rates — and therefore monthly payments — for homeowners in danger of default, according to several people briefed on the plan. What remained unclear was how the government will decide who qualifies for relief.
One Democratic official familiar with the plan said it also would allow homeowners to refinance their mortgages if they owed more than their homes were valued. Still another section would give bankruptcy judges more authority to change mortgages. That last provision has been opposed by lenders, who said it would add risk and lead to higher interest rates.
Despite President Obama's vow to open government more than ever, the Justice Department is defending Bush administration decisions to keep secret many documents about domestic wiretapping, data collection on travelers and U.S. citizens, and interrogation of suspected terrorists.
In half a dozen lawsuits, Justice lawyers have opposed formal motions or spurned out-of-court offers to delay court action until the new administration rewrites Freedom of Information Act guidelines and decides whether the new rules might allow the public to see more.
In only one case has the Justice Department agreed to suspend a FOIA lawsuit until the disputed documents can be re-evaluated under the yet-to-be-written guidelines. That case involves negotiations on an anti-counterfeiting treaty, not the more controversial, secret anti-terrorism tactics that spawned the other lawsuits as well as Obama's promises of greater openness.
"The signs in the last few days are not entirely encouraging," said Jameel Jaffer, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed several lawsuits seeking the Bush administration's legal rationales for warrantless domestic wiretapping and for its treatment of terrorism detainees.
President Obama has dropped the idea of appointing a single, powerful “car czar” to oversee the revamping of General Motors and Chrysler and will instead keep the politically delicate task in the hands of his most senior economic advisers, a top administration official said Sunday night.who insisted on anonymity.
The official also said that Ron Bloom, a restructuring expert who has advised the labor unions in the troubled steel and airline industries, would be named a senior adviser to Treasury on the auto crisis.
The unexpected shift comes as G.M. and Chrysler race to complete broad restructuring plans they must file with the Treasury by Tuesday. The companies’ plans are required to show progress in cutting long-term costs as a condition for keeping their loans.
The administration official said the president was reserving for himself any decision on the viability of G.M. and Chrysler, both of which came close to bankruptcy before receiving federal aid two months ago.
One of President Obama’s top advisers said Sunday that the administration had not ruled out a government-backed bankruptcy as a means to overhaul the automakers.
“We’re going to need a restructuring of these companies,” the adviser, David Axelrod, said on “Meet the Press” on NBC. He added that a turnaround of the companies would “require sacrifice not just from the auto workers but also from creditors, from shareholders and the executives who run the company.”
US President Barack Obama early Saturday hailed a 787-billion-dollar economic stimulus plan passed by Congress, calling it "a major milestone on our road to recovery."
"This is a major milestone on our road to recovery, and I want to thank the members of Congress who came together in common purpose to make it happen," Obama said in his weekly radio address.
He promised to sign the package into law "shortly."
The comments came after the US Congress late Friday approved a 787-billion-dollar package of tax cuts and fresh spending to salvage the broken US economy, handing the president his biggest yet political victory.
The Senate voted 60-38 to pass the measure hours after it cleared the House of Representatives by a lopsided 246-183 margin, setting the stage for Obama to sign the measure into law before his self-imposed February 16 deadline.
The U.S. Senate gave final approval Friday to a $787 billion recovery package that President Obama hopes will help boost an economy in freefall with a combination of government spending and tax cuts and credits.
Sen. Sherrod Brown speaks to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at right on the Senate floor Friday.
Approved earlier by the House, the plan -- which went through multiple permutations as it bounced back and forth on Capitol Hill over the past week -- now goes to Obama's desk, where he plans to sign it into law by Presidents Day.
Spending in the package includes about $120 billion for infrastructure -- new projects repairing bridges, roads, government buildings and the like -- more than $100 billion for education and $30 billion on energy-related projects that Obama says will create "green jobs."
More than $212 billion goes to tax breaks for individuals and businesses, and another $267 billion is in direct spending like food stamps and unemployment benefits.
The Congressional Budget Office has predicted that the plan will create between 1 million and 3 million jobs.
Most individuals will get a $400 tax credit, and couples will get $800.
The vote by the Senate took several hours longer than a simple roll call of its 100 members generally would. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, attended a wake for his mother until about 8 p.m. Friday.
Voting began about 5:30 p.m. Then, the Senate chamber sat nearly empty until Brown arrived to vote about five hours later.
He was flown from Ohio to Washington on a plane provided by the White House, which said no commercial flights were available that would have allowed Brown to cast a vote and return to Ohio in time for his mother's funeral Saturday.
It is a quick, sweet victory for the new president, and potentially a historic one. The question now is whether the $789 billion economic stimulus plan agreed to by Congressional leaders on Wednesday is the opening act for a more ambitious domestic agenda from President Obama or a harbinger of reduced expectations.
President Obama and Gov. Tim Kaine on Wednesday at a parkway project in Springfield, Va., that could get stimulus money.Both the substance of his first big legislative accomplishment and the way he achieved it underscored the scale of the challenges facing the nation and how different a political climate this is from the early stages of recent administrations.
While it hammered home the reality of bigger, more activist government, the economic package was not the culmination of a hard-fought ideological drive, like Lyndon B. Johnson’s civil rights and Great Society programs, orRonald Reagan’s tax cuts, but rather a necessary and hastily patched-together response to an immediate and increasingly dire situation. On the domestic issues Mr. Obama ran and won on — health care, education, climate change, rebalancing the distribution of wealth — the legislation does little more than promise there will be more to come.
In cobbling together a plan that could get through both the House and the Senate, Mr. Obama prevailed, but not in the way he had hoped. His inability to win over more than a handful of Republicans amounted to a loss of innocence, a reminder that his high-minded calls for change in the practice of governance had been ground up in a matter of weeks by entrenched forces of partisanship and deep, principled differences between left and right.
In the end, Congress did not come together to address what Mr. Obama has regularly suggested is a crisis that could rival the Great Depression. What consensus has been forged so far is likely to be tested in the months to come as he faces scrutiny over the effectiveness of the stimulus package and the likelihood that he will have to ask Congress for substantially more money to heal the fractures in the financial system.
So this was hardly a moment for cigars.
If this is the 21st-century version of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 100 Days, Mr. Obama seems to be pursuing it more as an urgent but imposed necessity than as a self-selected mission.
While he has deployed his political capital freely to win approval of the package and to begin pushing his version of a financial-system rescue, he has left little doubt that he is eager to move on to the rest of his domestic agenda. At his news conference on Monday night, Mr. Obama said with a hint of exasperation that a costly economic rescue package “wasn’t how I envisioned my presidency beginning.” Regardless of the government’s budgetary straits, Mr. Obama has signaled that he sees his other signature initiatives not just as salvageable but as more urgent than ever.
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Dear friends:
I am overcome by the following news from Sri Lanka that more than 100,000 of my people are sandwiched between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil militants. http://tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=28378
It is a pity that we hear very little in our media about potential human tragedies of this magnitude.
Although not a poet, I have written this poem to express my feelings and to awaken the conscience of the international community.
Please pass this on to people who may be able to do something to save the lives of these innocent civilians.
Tamil people and a Silent World
When their rights were being taken away, the world was silent.
When their land was being colonized, the world was silent.
When their protests were being ignored, the world was silent.
When their politicians were being expelled, the world was silent.
When their press was being crushed, the world was silent.
When their ladies were being raped, the world was silent.
When their loved ones were being abused, the world was silent.
When their leaders were being bought, the world was silent.
The world was willing speak only after matters reached the two extremes:
The world expressed their sorrow after their people were massacred in 1983.
The world expressed their anger after their youth spoke back with violence.
Of world, do you have eyes to see only the violence of their youth?
Don’t you have eyes to see the prejudice of their government?
Oh world, do you have ears to hear only the lie of their government?
Don't you have ears to hear the cry of the Tamil people?
Oh world, won’t you speak while the Sri Lankan Tamil people are still alive as a people group?
Do you have to wait for another massacre to break your silence?
Alex Thevaranjan
Roland S. Martin, CNN
A lot of media outlets made a big deal out of the mostly white White House press corps covering the first black president, and those stories were worth pursuing.
All of us in the business know full well that those are considered plum jobs and are steppingstones to greater things.
But while we hold the media accountable for the need to diversify their ranks, it’s quite telling to see the lack of diversity in the White House’s press office.
I got an e-mail Tuesday listing all of the various press folks and contact information, and hardly any African-Americans or Hispanics were listed. Granted, the deputy press secretary is African-American, and the director of broadcast media is Hispanic. But that’s not sufficient.
Unfortunately, this shouldn’t come as a shock because the campaign press staff of then-Sen. Barack Obama was just as weak on diversity.
Just because there is a black president doesn’t mean that diversity should be cast aside. President Obama should be held to the same standard when it comes to this issue as any other occupier of that office. I am a former national board member of the National Association of Black Journalists, and my support for diversity never wavers, no matter who is running the show.
One of the reasons this is important is ��” just like in the media, where there are bigger and better things awaiting White House correspondents ��” a position in the White House press office positions someone for the next level.
