MARILYN HACKER AND TERRANCE HAYES MAKE 2015 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS POETRY LONG LIST

After announcing the 2015 National Book Awards long list for Young People’s Literature yesterday, the National Book Foundation did the same for the Poetry category this morning. Two previous winners of the Awards made this year’s list: Marilyn Hacker and Terrance Hayes from 1975 and 2010 respectively. Looking at the list each year reaffirms for me what excellent […]

WHY AMERICA BEING ANGRY AT RUSSIA FOR PROVIDING MILITARY AID TO SYRIA IS ALMOST FUNNY

If you read my post about America’s role in creating the bloodbath in Syria we see today, you will immediately understand how the US having conniptions over Russia sending military supplies to President Bashar al-Assad’s embattled regime is ridiculous. I’ll even go further and say that Russia is doing more than playing chess on America’s checkerboard — […]

MALCOLM X NOVEL ANNOUNCED IN 2015 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS LONG LIST

I always look forward to reading the lists of finalists for the National Book Awards, but my eyebrows arched a bit higher this morning when I saw the subject areas covered by the authors in the Awards’ long list for Young People’s Literature: a Malcolm X novel, co-written by one of the daughters of the […]

THE US HELPED TO CREATE THE ‘REFUGEE’

Since Americans want to debate whether or not the country should accept refugees from the current Middle East wars, let’s bring up a topic which is astonishingly missing from these discussions … … Like how America helped to create this refugee crisis! In America’s attempt to reshape the Middle East through proxy wars or outright […]

LOOK WHO’S TALKING – GIULIANI SCHOOLS DE BLASIO ON HOMELESS ISSUE

The good news about former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani crawling out of his makeshift 9/11 shrine to write a New York Post article about current Mayor Bill de Blasio’s handling of the city’s homelessness problem is that Giuliani never mentioned 9/11. I’m sure of that. I read the article twice. Plus, I skimmed […]

A WAY TO EXPLAIN WHY SLAVE TETRIS IS A BAD IDEA

You would think that I wouldn’t have to burn electrons explaining why Serious Games Interactive CEO Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen’s Slave Tetris mini-game is dumb, if not outright disrespectful to humanity, but he apparently doesn’t get it — even after he pulled the mini-game from his larger Playing History 2: Slave Trade game. The intent of this […]

THE BASIC PROBLEM WITH HILLARY CLINTON’S EMAIL SCANDAL NO ONE’S TALKING ABOUT

While former Hillary Clinton State Department aide Mark McDougal intends to hide behind his Fifth Amendment rights in response to any congressional inquiry about Clinton’s private email server use for conducting government business, there are two fundamental issues about Clinton’s behavior most people are missing. Forget for a moment that the public is completely ignoring […]

STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON MOVIE THOUGHTS, PART TWO

Part Two: This Movie and Planet Earth Now that I’ve discussed the social backdrop for the Straight Outta Compton movie in my previous post, I want to start this post by giving props to film director F. Gary Gray because Compton was shot and edited well. But of course I have some feedback about the storyline. […]

STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON MOVIE THOUGHTS, PART ONE

Part One: Plantation Cultivation and the American Dream Straight out of the 1980s–90s plantation known as Compton, California, and powered in part by President Ronald Reagan’s Narcotics Entrepreneurship and Small Arms Specialist Training Program, better known to the rest you as the Iran-Contra scandal, five young men pushed their way to entertainment stardom and out […]

MICHAEL ROBINSON’S DEATH PENALTY WITHOUT A TRIAL

Guess what happens when you are arrested in Pemiscot County, Missouri, and you’re a diabetic in need of two insulin shots per day to stay alive? The answer simple, in the case of Michael Robinson—you die in jail. Allow me to throw in some disclosure before I move on. I’ve had a social media connection […]