If This Shut-Down Shit Works

by Ron Powell

Well, they've gone and done it... The Republican nut jobs have shown that they're willing to destroy the country before they'll let a black man appear to be effective or successful as President of the United States...
                                                                                                                                                              
This entire debacle is a manifestation of race based politics at the highest possible level. If you think that racism doesn't represent a danger to our society, you haven't been paying attention...
                                                                                                                                                               
If this shut-down shit works as intended by the racist extremists who seem to be in control of the Republican Party, the country is in grave danger of falling into a kind of semi-controlled anarchy in which nothing gets done and the 'government' is nearly non-existent....
                                                                                                                                                              
If this shut-down shit works everything that we understand to be a consequence of civil rights legislation and legislation that is currently in place to assist the poor and the indigent will be at risk.... The threat of a government shut down will be at the heart of every attempt on the part of these right-wing, racist, mental cases to undo Supreme Court decisions like Roe v. Wade, Brown v. Board of Education, Gideon v. Wainright, and on and on and on....
                                                                                                                                                            
The desire to see America become a plutocratic oligarchy, based in part on a renewal or return to apartheid and segregation, has clearly trumped common sense and common decency for most of the Republicans in the House and Senate...
                                                                                                                                                             
If this shut-down shit works, the movement toward political, social, and economic equality, and justice for all Americans will come to a halt and the American dream and the dream of most Americans will die...And we shall all suffer the consequences and be much the worse off for it...
                                                                                                                                                                     
As painful as it might be and as ugly as this has become, the only recourse the President and the Democrats have is a full throated, full throttled resistance to this racially motivated attempt at usurpation and coup....
                                                                                                                                                              
They've left you no choice Mr. President. You must stand your ground. Because if this shut-down shit works the America we know and love even with all of her flaws and imperfections will be no more...
                                                                                                                                                                    
These do-nothing, know-nothing, racist, obstructionists must not win... You now must do what Lincoln was called on to do in order to preserve the Union and the very idea of a free and just America. You must stand your ground....

White Flight From Planet Marred by Diversity of Passenger List

by Ron Powell

White flight is a term that originated in the United States, starting in the mid-20th century, and applied to the large-scale migration of whites of various European ancestries from racially mixed urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions.

Now the term may well be applied to a significant number of white people who expressed the desire to leave the big blue marble and take a one-way trip to the angry red planet....

The Mars One venture says more than 200,000 people registered their interest in taking a one-way trip to the Red Planet, but only a fraction of those are officially in the running for the trip.
To be precise, 2,782 people have paid their registration fee and submitted public videos in which they make their case for going to Mars in 2023 — with no guarantee that they'll ever come back.
Mars One plays off the fact that it's far easier logistically to send astronauts on a one-way trip to Mars than to make a round trip. The concept of the 55,000,000 km trip, which could take up to 300 days, has been compared to the way Europeans settled the Americas centuries ago: The first settlers didn't expect to come back home, but instead created a new home in the New World.
In a news release announcing the end of the first five-month recruitment..., Mars One said 202,586 people registered their interest in the trip. Registrations came from more than 140 countries, with Americans making up the biggest contingent (24 percent). The other countries in the top eight included India (10 percent), China (6 percent), Brazil (5 percent) and Great Britain, Canada, Russia and Mexico (each representing 4 percent).

The passenger list for the first flight to Mars has the potential of being racially diverse to the point of placing white passengers in a numerical minority.  A disappointment for those who may well have signed up to get away from people of color...

A word of advice to those who are looking to 'escape' from the planet they helped to fuck up environmentally and socially:

Be careful of what you wish for, you could find yourself longing for the good old days of global warming and a black president...

White Privilege and The Silent Majority

by Ron Powell

 

 The notion or concept of the "silent majority" was devised in order to provide the average white person a way to identify with the vast majority of white people who weren't actively and openly engaged in the protests and civil disobedience that occurred during the Civil Rights Movement...The idea being, that if you were white and not actively involved in the protests, then you were assumed to be against the protesters and marchers and for "law and order".

 

Hence, remaining silent meant that people could assume you were for maintaining the status quo and against any kind of change that might result in greater exercise of freedom on the part of black people.

 

As a result, people who are passively and quietly sympathetic to the notion of "liberty and justice for all" must have the courage to come out and declare themselves and in so doing risk being shunned or ostracized by family, friends, and neighbors and possibly even  penalized by employers...

 

Unwitting, unconscious, sub-conscious racists must acknowledge that racism is a predominant and determining factor in our society and that they have benefitted from this fact of American life.... 

 

Silent non-racists  must be willing to openly engage people who express themselves in ways that are clear indications of their racist mind set and attitudes and must become anti-racism activists...

The current rash of anti-black application of the law is steeped in a long-standing tradition and history in this country. What's 'new' is the seemingly clever ways racists have hidden their agenda and motives.

White folks are being duped big time by those who have pushed the narrative and dynamic re race and racism in a direction that requires the self-declared 'non-racist' to actively "opt out" of racism rather than simply remaining silent while sitting on the sidelines and wondering what all the 'fuss' is about...

The failure of "good" folks to speak up and speak out will be the undoing of the "progress" that has been made in the last 50/60 years.....

If people who sympathizes with the rhetoric of hatred and violence are not confronted  by people of good will the tragic truth is that they will prevail  and we will have lost the opportunity to turn the page and turn the corner.....

All the progress we have made can be lost in a split second...We have and obligation to protect the progress we have made while at the same time not being complacent...We have come a great distance but we have a great distance yet to go before we can rest......

Martin Luther King's Speech: 'I Have a Dream' - The Full Text and Video

Fifty years ago, on August 28, 1963, the greatest speech given in the 20th Century was delivered at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington,  DC....Ten days earlier I celebrated my 17th birthday...The following year I was headed to Washington, DC to begin my college education at Howard University...

Wednesday, will be the 50th anniversary of the occasion of that event. I'm offering the full text of the speech here in the hope that you will read the speech as well as listen to it again as, I'm sure,  many of you will....I'm also providing a video of the full speech....However, reading the words that were so powerfully and eloquently delivered will give you a perspective and even some insight that can only be had from the process of reading and contemplating the words as you progress through the text. I am pleased to present:

The Full Text of the Famous Speech by America's Greatest Civil Rights Icon

By The Rev. MARTIN LUTHER KING Jr. 

Aug. 28, 1963—

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.

But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

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

                                         

Black people have had to endure, survive, and navigate the black/slave codes of the colonial and post revolutionary period, and the "Jim Crow" /segregation Laws of the post Civil War period...All of which were composed, enacted and enforced as reflective of the firmly held attitudes and beliefs of whites regarding the relationship between whites and black people and black people and the government...

 

Currently we are being required to endure, survive, and navigate "stand your ground", "stop and frisk", disproportionate sentencing, gerrymandering of our districts, and voter ID legislation that is reflective of the same attitudes and beliefs that were the genesis of an anti-black legal and governmental system that was/is predicated on racism...

 

Much has taken place in the fifty years since that speech was given. However, we can change the legal, governmental, and political system, but if we don't change the underlying attitudes and beliefs which have been embedded in the institutions, policies, and procedures that are the basis for the organization and management of our society, nothing but the language will have been changed. The functional outcome(s) will continue and remain as a cancer on our society....

Thanks for reading and watching,

Ron Powell

no rights which the white man was bound to respect

by Ron Powell

 

Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court held that African Americans, whether slave or free, could not be American citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court....

Writing for the (7-2) majority, Chief Justice, Roger B. Taney, said, "the authors of the Constitution had viewed all blacks as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

However, when Judge Debra S. Nelson, decided to bar any reference to race or racial profiling in the trial of George Zimmerman, she was most assuredly concurring in a ruling, rendered nearly 160 years ago, which, now, is widely regarded as the worst decision ever made by the Supreme Court.
When the jury of six Sanford women, who, in my view, are the visceral benefactors of racism, rendered their "not guilty" verdict, as a matter of logic and, to a great extent law, they were simultaneously rendering a judgment against Trayvon Martin...
For in order to find Zimmerman "not guilty" they must of necessity have determined Martin to be "guilty", albeit posthumously, of assault with deadly force...This is the conclusion that must be reached while deciding that the use of deadly force against him, in self defense, was justified...
No way that their non-racist, unbiased, and completely objective decision would be influenced by the prospect of facing the ire and wrath of the white residents of Sanford who would, no doubt, castigate, excoriate and ostracize them, should they bring in a guilty verdict, whether it be a compromise or not...
In determining that the death of Trayvon Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman was an act of self defense, and therefor justifiable homicide, they not only declared Zimmerman to be "not guilty" but "innocent", which carries a different kind of moral weight...In essence, they too, were concurring in the Supreme Court opinion that insisted that black people, "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

Zimmerman clearly concurred in that opinion when he took it upon himself to act as police, prosecutor, judge and jury as he executed Trayvon Martin for being where he didn't belong ...He knew that in doing so, he would be treated by the Sanford law enforcement authorities as though the young black man he had shot and killed "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." Which is why the police saw fit to release him the night of the fatal incident purely on the strength of his story of being attacked by this black kid wearing a hoodie....
In his Dred Scott opinion, Chief Justice Taney went on to list the "horrible consequences of negro citizenship" as part of his argument based on the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV, stating what the Court considered to be the inevitable and undesirable effects of granting Scott's petition  for freedom:

"It would give to persons of the negro race, ...the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, ...to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased ...the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went."

This sentiment, articulated well over 150 years ago, reverberates today in virtually every "all white" community, church, country club, cook-out, cocktail party, executive suite, and lunch room. It also is a dominant motivating factor in every state that is now controlled by a Republican legislative majority and/or Republican governor whose political practices and governmental policies serve little more than to concur in Justice Taney's now defunct opinion that, people of color, black people in particular, "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
                                                                                                                                                                
Here's a couple of interesting and curious coincidences:
Samuel Nelson, one of six the concurring justices in the Dred Scott Decision....
Debra S. Nelson, presiding judge in the Zimmerman trial
Sanford is a name common to both cases....

Clarence Thomas: Not Big Enough for the Job

by Ron Powell

 

In joining with the majority in the striking down of Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, Clarence Thomas has shown, once again, that he simply is not big enough for the job.....
Rather than exercise a modicum of independent thought and expression, Thomas chooses to be the shadow and apparent puppet of his idol Antonin Scalia, with whom he has rarely disagreed, during his tenure on the Court....
Thomas is markedly unlike an earlier Republican appointee, Chief Justice Earl Warren, who was a model of political reversal after receiving his appointment to the Court:

In 1952, Warren stood as a "favorite son" candidate of California for the Republican nomination for President, hoping to be a power broker in a convention that might be deadlocked. But Warren had to head off a revolt by Senator Richard Nixon, who supported General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Eisenhower and Nixon were elected, and the bad blood between Warren and Nixon was apparent. Eisenhower offered, and Warren accepted, the post of solicitor general, with the promise of a seat on the Supreme Court. But before it was announced, Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson died suddenly in September 1953 and Eisenhower picked Warren to replace him as Chief Justice of the United States. 
The president wanted what he felt was an experienced jurist who could appeal to liberals in the party as well as law-and-order conservatives, noting privately that Warren "represents the kind of political, economic, and social thinking that I believe we need on the Supreme Court.... He has a national name for integrity, uprightness, and courage that, again, I believe we need on the Court".
                                                                                                                                                               
In the next few years, Warren led the Court in a series of liberal decisions that revolutionized the role of the Court. He is known both for his efforts on behalf of Japanese internment during World War II as well as the decisions of the "Warren Court", which ended school segregation and transformed many areas of American law, especially regarding the rights of the accused, ending public-school-sponsored prayer, and requiring "one-man-one vote" rules of apportionment.
                                                                                                                                                
He made the Court a power center on a more even base with Congress and the presidency especially through four landmark decisions: Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), Reynolds v. Sims (1964), and Miranda v. Arizona (1966).
Eisenhower is often said to have remarked that his appointment was "the biggest fool mistake I ever made.".........Wikipedia
                                                                                                                                                           
Clarence Thomas was born in 1948 in Pin Point, Georgia, a small, predominantly black community founded by freedmen after the American Civil War. When he was a child, the town lacked a sewage system and paved roads. He was the second of three children born to M.C. Thomas, a farm worker, and Leola Williams, a domestic worker. They were descendants of American slaves, and the family spoke Gullah as a first language.  Thomas's first-known ancestors were slaves named Sandy and Peggy who were born around the end of the 18th century and owned by wealthy Liberty County, Georgia planter Josiah Wilson.  M.C. Thomas left his family when Thomas was two years old. Thomas's mother worked hard but was sometimes paid only pennies per day. She had difficulty putting food on the table and was forced to rely on charity.  After a house fire left them homeless, Thomas and his younger brother Myers were taken to live with his mother's parents in Savannah, Georgia. Thomas was seven when the family moved in with his maternal grandfather, Myers Anderson, and Anderson's wife, Christine (née Hargrove), in Savannah.
                                                                                                                                                      
Living with his grandparents, Thomas enjoyed amenities such as indoor and regular meals for the first time in his life.  His grandfather Myers Anderson had little formal education, but had built a thriving fuel oil business that also sold ice. Thomas calls his grandfather "the greatest man I have ever known."  When Thomas was 10, Anderson started taking the family to help at a farm every day from sunrise to sunset.  His grandfather believed in hard work and self-reliance; he would counsel Thomas to "never let the sun catch you in bed." Thomas's grandfather also impressed upon his grandsons the importance of getting a good education.
                                                                                                                                                      
Thomas was the only black person at his high school in Savannah, where he was an honor student.
He was the only member of his family to have attended college.....
.....Wikipedia
                                                                                                                                                           
How is it possible for a person with such a background to behave and vote as he has as an associate justice on the highest court in the land?
                                                                                                                                                            
Come on Clarence, couldn't you have, just this once, voted the facts and the truth of your life and upbringing?
                                                                                                                                                                 
You were born and raised in Georgia during the 50's and 60's, for God's sake!!!

Do you hate being black and black people that much?
                                                                                                                                                             
I can't help but think that your grandfather is shouting from his grave:  "the biggest fool mistake I ever made"!!! 

The Senate No Vote: Gun Rack Racism

This is a bushmaster .223

It isn't just a gun, it's an assault rifle....

To put it another way, it's a weapon of mass destruction....

It's the weapon that was used to slaughter children in their school in Newtown, CT.

As many as 90% of the voting population believe that it makes sense to require the purchaser of such a weapon to undergo a background check before taking possession of this or any other "gun" which may be acquired in the open market....

We are being led to believe that the action of the Senate was against the common sense proposals regarding legislation that would require comprehensive background checks....

But it wasn't....

It was another obstructionist vote against the Presidency of Barack Obama....

It was another clear manifestation of the determination that is held by many in Congress, including some Democrats, that Barack Obama should not be permitted to govern, even when it makes sense, and even when it is in the best interest of the country to permit him to do so...

The vote in the Senate was not about whether criminals or crazies should be able to get a bushmaster.....

It was about keeping Obama from being successful in a matter that has overwhelming popular support...

It was about keeping Obama from a political victory that the public wants and needs him to have....

It is in this context, and in this regard, that the negative action taken by the Senate on the matter of universal comprehensive background checks was not just shameful and cowardly, it was a despicable display of what I call 'gun rack' racism....

Public opinion and public safety be damned!

The End of War and Violence: An Ancient Idea Revisited

My mother would tell folks at family gatherings, or house guests of one sort or another that, when I was in the toddler stages of life, all she need do, while shopping for groceries, was put me in front of the book rack, where I would sit quietly 'playing' with the books I could reach....So it was that by the time I completed the 8th grade I had read: The dictionary, the Bible, Plato, and Homer......


My passion was Greek mythology, sparked by the Homeric Epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey.....When I entered college and discovered that there were entire courses devoted to ancient Greek literature, I felt as though I had died and gone to heaven...


I was introduced to classical Greek plays by authors such as: Aeschylus (c. 525–456 BCE), Sophocles (c. 495-406 BCE), Euripides (c. 480–406 BCE), and one of my favorites, Aristophanes (c. 446-388 BCE), author of Lysistrata.


Illustration from a bust


Lysistrata (translation: "Army-disbander") is one of the few surviving plays written by Aristophanes. Originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BC, it is a comic account of one woman's extraordinary mission to end The Peloponnesian War. Lysistrata persuades the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace — a strategy, however, that inflames the battle between the sexes. The play is notable for being an early exposé of sexual relations in a male-dominated society.



Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley, 1896

LYSISTRATA: There are a lot of things about us women that sadden me, considering how men see us as rascals.

CALONICE: As indeed we are!

These lines, spoken by Lysistrata and her friend Calonice at the beginning of the play, set the scene for the action that follows. Women, as represented by Calonice, are sly hedonists in need of firm guidance and direction. Lysistrata however is an extraordinary woman with a large sense of individual responsibility. She has convened a meeting of women from various city states in Greece (there is no mention of how she managed this feat) and, very soon after confiding in her friend about her concerns for the female sex, the women begin arriving.


With support from Lampito, the Spartan, Lysistrata persuades the other women to withhold sexual privileges from their menfolk as a means of forcing them to end the interminable Peloponnesian War. The women are very reluctant but the deal is sealed with a solemn oath around a wine bowl, Lysistrata choosing the words and Calonice repeating them on behalf of the other women. It is a long and detailed oath, in which the women abjure all their sexual pleasures, including The Lioness on The (a sexual position).


Soon after the oath is finished, a cry of triumph is heard from the nearby Acropolis – the old women of Athens have seized control of it at Lysistrata's instigation, since it holds the state treasury, without which the men cannot long continue to fund their war. Lampito goes off to spread the word of revolt and the other women retreat behind the barred gates of the Acropolis to await the men's response. (-Wikipedia)


I'm thinking. what a marvelous idea it would be for women to be able to put an end to war, and street violence, or stop things like corporate greed, congressional gridlock, pollution of the environment and global warming....Just by saying no to sex....


Or, would that be asking too much?

White Guys On Black History

Black History Month: The Super Bowl

This is the 25th anniversary of the first appearance of a black quarter back in the Super Bowl. With the Redskins trailing the Broncos 10-0 in Super Bowl XXII, Doug Williams, fired four TD strikes in the second quarter alone, including scoring tosses of 80 and 50 yards to Ricky Sanders. He earned MVP honors in the 42-10 victory for a 340-yard effort that set a Super Bowl record at the time.

There were those who understood the impact of the Williams appearance and victory, just as the effect the appearance of Jackie Robinson in a Brooklyn Dodger uniform was understood some 40 years earlier.

I could go on here, but if a picture is worth a thousand words: 'nuff said'....