Most Astonishing Health Disaster of the 20th Century

Thank goodness I stopped smoking over 2 1/2 years ago after smoking most of my life. Furthermore, I have severely curtailed, almost to none, the high intake of soda pop I have traditionally consumed. And, it's working for the betterment of my health in many ways! I pray for continuous enlightenment.

EBONYJET Culture Page

EBONYJET Culture Page

John McCain - Lost in Space

Has Your Town Declared Peace Yet?

Has Your Town Declared Peace Yet?
by Ben Manski and Karen Dolan


Tired of being ignored by the feds, citizens pass city laws declaring peace.

The heartland spoke; the world listened. On April 5, 2006, hundreds of newspapers across the globe, from Italy’s Il Manifesto to the Los Angeles Times, shared a similar headline: “Wisconsin votes for troop pullout.”

One day earlier, citizens in 32 Wisconsin cities, towns, and villages had cast ballots for immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Voters in tiny villages in the North Woods and the Door Peninsula, in the regional urban centers of Madison and La Crosse, and in the small cities that are the heart of the Badger State, sent a clear message. As Green Party activist Steve Burns told newspapers, the vote meant that “opposition to the war [has] become the majority sentiment,” winning over communities that had voted for George Bush only months earlier.

While peace advocates rejoiced over the events, the Bush administration was unresponsive to Wisconsin’s extraordinary display of democracy. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan attempted to downplay the Wisconsin vote, concluding that while “all Americans” wanted the troops home, they also understood the importance of the “mission in Iraq.”

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William Murphy III - of Detroit, MI

Boy Slaps His Mother On Dr. Phil

Where is the love? Where is the respect? Where is the fear of God? This is the result of children being raised in a Godless home!

Amir Edwards - Superstition - The Jam Society

I remember that just a few “short” years ago, I was working in Placement Services at Wayne State University, when Susan Edwards knocked at the back door of the office and I got up to go and let her in. Sure enough, it was Susan, wheeling a stroller with her new baby boy, Amir, in it. I was so shocked that the only thing I found remarkable was the color of his eyes. I was like, “Sue, he really has the most beautiful steel grey eyes.”
Well, things have changed and nearly 12-13 years have passed. So, what is the passage of 12-13 years like? To me, truthfully, they were almost as if they were 4-5 years ago. It seems as if nothing much has happened in that short time since I first saw Amir in that baby stroller.
Now, let me update you. Sue called me this Sunday morning and wanted to know if I could find an article about Amir in this Sunday’s Detroit Free Press and download it along with the images it contained to send to those people she knew would be interested. Here is the embedded file that I sent her, along with the PDF file attachment. I am astounded, shocked, in awe of the time that seemed to have passed so quickly. Has it been 12-13 years since then? Could we have grown older? What have I been doing, positive, with my time during that time.
It’s almost shocking or incomprehensible to me but, here is that infant, featured in this Sunday’s Free Press, winning band competitions, something I could never hope to imitate! May God continuously bless him! And, his mother, too!

Michelle Obama on The View

The Torchbearer of Camelot

Previously fearful of stepping out of the background, Caroline Kennedy now appears ready to continue the family legacy of public service. Is her role with the Obama team a permanent shift into politics or a guest appearance?

SIRI AGRELL
Globe and Mail Update
June 14, 2008 at 2:12 PM EDT

When Caroline Kennedy took the podium to introduce her preferred candidate for U.S. president, veteran PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer could think of little to tell viewers except her middle name. "There aren't many people who know much about this young lady," he said.

Ms. Kennedy also faltered. Dressed in a simple white dress, kitten heels and pearls, the daughter of assassinated president John. F. Kennedy began speaking before the microphone was on, stumbled through her prepared address and kept talking as the crowd roared with applause.

When it was time to bring out her uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy, she looked palpably relieved.

Ms. Kennedy's appearance at the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, where she voiced her support for party nominee Al Gore, was her first major foray into the public eye and did not do much to alter perceptions of her as a sincere but intensely private figure.

Eight years later, having endorsed Democratic nominee Barack Obama, who recently named her as part of his vice-presidential selection committee, Ms. Kennedy, now 50, is far from the unwitting celebrity she once was.

"Caroline was always reluctant to step out of the background, that was her preferred role," says Laurence Leamer, author of The Kennedy Women. "She was afraid. There was fear for her family, fear for what politics can do to people on various levels."

But her new, high-profile role stumping for Mr. Obama seems to be a signal that she is ready for the scrutiny, and the potential danger, of life as a public Kennedy.

In a sign that she will not escape close examination in her new role, another member of the vice-presidential selection committee, Jim Johnson, resigned this week over suggestions that he received advantageous loans from Countrywide Financial, a major player in the subprime mortgage crisis.

According to Mr. Leamer, Ms. Kennedy became willing to place herself in the public eye only after the death of her younger brother, John Kennedy Jr., in a 1999 plane crash. John John, as he was known, the editor of George magazine, was widely considered the future of Camelot and, without him, Ms. Kennedy found it necessary to fill the void, continuing the family legacy of public service.

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New IPhone 3G Released Now

A New Taste Sensation - Riding a Flavor Trip

Bo Diddley Moves On

Bo Diddley was not a happy camper while he lived, so there is not a chance in a hundred that he went gently when he died of heart failure on Monday. Diddley (born Ellas Bates, later changed to Ellas McDaniel) was always ornery, especially when it came to what he thought was his due. But then, if you'd invented as much as he did, you'd be ornery too if you hadn't received what you thought you deserved. And in Bo Diddley's case, he thought he'd invented nothing less than rock and roll. After all, he was out there two or three years before Elvis or Chuck Berry or Little Richard, tearing it up with an electric guitar and a trademark beat that landed somewhere between a shuffle and the clave rhythm of Latin music. You hear it in everything from Buddy Holly to the Who to the New York Dolls, but Bo Diddley was the first to inject that infectious beat into mainstream pop. For that matter, the very phrase "rock and roll" was coined by disc jockey Alan Freed in the early '50s to describe what his listeners were about to hear: "a man with an original sound, who is going to rock and roll you right out of your seat." And that Diddley did, for over half a century, touring until a heart attack stopped him last year.

Not being an especially sentimental man, Diddley was almost indifferent whenever it was pointed out to him how much he'd influenced the course of pop music. Being honored for his influence "didn't put no figures in my checkbook," he said. And as for being influential, he saw it more as theft. "Everybody tries to do what I do," he said. "I don't have any idols I copied after." But what really riled him was not being paid. Like so many artists of his generation, he was given a flat fee for his recordings but not royalties. "I am owed. I never got paid," he said. "A dude with a pencil is worse than a cat with a machine gun."

A lot of details in his biography come straight off the rack: born in the South around New Orleans, raised in Chicago, where high school classmates gave him the name Bo Diddley and where he soon took Chess Records by storm. He had hits with his first two singles, "Bo Diddley" and "I'm a Man," which was reworked a year later by his labelmate Muddy Waters as "Mannish Boy." But here's where it gets interesting. Muddy's version is straight up bragging—and frankly a little boring. The original is funny. Something in the Bo Diddley delivery always implied a joke, even when it didn't make clear who was being kidded. But in this case the bragging is just so over the top that you can't help smiling. Sometimes the humor lies in the surreality of the lyrics, and no one could be more surreal than Diddley; from his big black glasses to his guitar shaped like a cigar box, he just radiated strange. But a good kind of strange, the kind that made you want to work your way down front and hang on the edge of the stage all night while he played.

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