Jay-Z’s paralyzing decision point about the next steps he should take in his upcoming venture with Barneys New York, given the store’s racially-scented harassment of young black shoppers, reminds me of a midnight stroll I took through Battery Park City’s North Cove marina a few months ago where I saw aspiring members of the […]
Read More THE HOVA DILEMMAYou likely wouldn’t notice this, but I haven’t done much to promote this blog. In fact, with the exception of a very small handful of instances, I haven’t even told my online friends about mentalunrest. Of course I’m not ashamed of my posts, and I’m completely cool with folks finding and sharing my words. But […]
Read More BLOGKEEPING NOTES – GETTING THERE…I still don’t get why we keep focusing on technology as Obamacare’s main problem, when technology problems are more likely the outgrowth of more fundamental issues. An early lesson I learned as a management consultant is that systems modeled after a crap strategy and equally bad business practices mean you will have chaos on […]
Read More SHINY NEW WIRES WON’T FIX OBAMACAREI just watched a fascinating interview with National Security Agency Director, General Keith Alexander, where he answers critics of the NSA’s counter-terrorism surveillance programs with a challenge at the 15:09 mark: “Can somebody come up with a better way of doing it?” Here’s my way: starve the terrorist beast. I admit that my way […]
Read More YES, NSA. THERE IS A BETTER WAY.I’m not surprised to hear about the New York City Police Department extending its stop-n-frisk behavior to upscale joints like Barneys when they falsely arrested 19-year old African American Trayon Christian, after he legally bought a $350 Ferragamo belt from the retailer. But since we now know the NYPD “periodically” visits Barneys to nab credit […]
Read More STOP AND FRISK COMES TO BARNEYSShortly after Pakistan’s hottest young human rights export, Malala Yousafzai, warned President Obama that current US drone attacks in support of the global War on Terror are killing civilians and fueling terrorism, Amnesty International reviewed a subset of US drone attacks in Pakistan and released a report [PDF] with a takeaway that the organization […]
Read More AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL AND THE US DRONE SHOWI delayed making this post about drummer and composer Ronald Shannon Jackson because a part of me hoped that the news was a bad rumor, but I consider Vernon Reid an extremely reliable source for this instance—Ronald Shannon Jackson has left us at the age of 73. I’ve written on another site about my […]
Read More RONALD SHANNON JACKSON, 1940-2013Premium remixer and Facebook pal Leighton Hema – also known as Mr. Leigh – pulled together a groove-lover’s remix of Janelle Monáe and Esperanza Spalding’s “Dorothy Dandridge Eyes.” Here’s the Jazzy Soul-spiked original version for the sake of reference, and Mr. Leigh’s take is embedded below…
Read More MR. LEIGH REMIXES JANELLE MONAE & ESPERANZA SPALDINGI see two things accomplished by the recent partisan-driven budget standoff between Congress and the White House. In a case of twin-irony, the Party of No Guts displayed a rare streak of courage while the Party of No Brains won something that they’ve always claimed to be viscerally against – more government regulations! (Laughing) C’mon, what […]
Read More WHAT DID THIS GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN ACCOMPLISH?Talk show host, blogger and online comrade Tanya Free raised a question yesterday that will likely spark a passionate debate: “What role, if any in your opinion, has race played in the government shutdown? Is it about ObamaCare or Obama?” My short answer is “Both,” and the evidence I’ll present in this post is one […]
Read More TARGET: OBAMA OR OBAMACARE?
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