Mr. President

Tune in Now. Obama!

Spoody has a licking issue. We are working on it. He is a good boy with a great temperament .Considering his journey and all his life was before he came into our lives I'm really happy with him.

HOME COMING

After 25 years I'm back home in Tallahasse Florida. just like riding a bike ,the people the food nothin like it . I will miss new york how could I not, I've spent half my life literally it is my home .my move to Tallahassee has allowed me to be a home owner ,something I could not do a new york city .

The contrast is great green peaceful that's what I'm talking about . Tallahassee has the rich musical history home of the marching 100 and a gateway city to the rest of the state . Education agriculture and industry are alive and well in Tallahassee florida . Just enough city and country to satisfy my needs I think I'll be a okay .

ARIZONA "BOO"

We Are All From Arizona | Official Michael De La Rocha Blog | Michael De La Rocha News and Celebrity Blogs | Global Grind

Knowing that a million people would be protesting Arizona's SB 1070, a blatantly discriminatory and unconstitutional anti-immigrant bill hauntingly similar to the Jim Crow laws of the past, my family and I buckled up and drove to Phoenix, Arizona to march with our brothers and sisters.

As I struggled to keep my eyes open from an exhausting week of work, I contemplated what the passage of SB 1070 really means for us all.

What does the bill say about the state of America when our President and countless others are diligently working to unite America in spite of the Tea Party and other extremist groups?

What does the bill say about the moral conscious of America when the majority of an elected state legislature would knowingly pass a bill that criminalizes one of the most vulnerable groups in America?

As I traveled late into the night, memories of Jews being forced to wear yellow stars and Japanese Americans being detained in internment camps during World War II flooded my mind.

As I drove to Phoenix, Arizona, I had an eerie feeling that this was 1962 all over again and President Kennedy was sending the National Guard to integrate our school system in the face of hate and bigotry.

As I drove to Phoenix, Arizona, I felt that it was 1964 all over again and President Johnson just passed the Civil Rights Act knowing full well that it would cost him the presidency.

Today, like Kennedy and Johnson, President Obama is standing on the right side of history by calling SB 1070 "irresponsible" and unacceptable.

However, this is 2010 not 1964 and the same racism and hate that's been hidden under the carpet for the last fifty years has emerged again.

While this may not be the 1960's, we still have the same 50% drop out rate in our school system, we're still fighting two unjust wars, and we're still denying people the fundamental right to marry whom they choose.

UNSUNG ON TV ONE - "GREAT"

Feeling Nina Simone

She had been the toast of New York City’s pop scene for all of two years, but Nina Simone was already cementing her legend as a no-nonsense diva.

There she was onstage at the Apollo Theater in February 1961, barely two weeks before her 28th birthday. She was a slip of a woman, haughty and remote, her dusky voice commanding and blues-suffused. Halfway through her spoken introduction to Nat Adderley’s “Work Song,” Nina thought she heard giggles and chatter, which wasn’t unusual for the notoriously rowdy crowd at the famed Harlem venue.

But the former Eunice Waymon of Tryon, N.C., was having none of it. She snapped: “For the very first time in your lives, act like ladies and gentlemen at the Apollo.”

The crowd shut up immediately, and Nina turned back to the piano and performed. The artist, whose only smash at the time was a tear-stained rendition of “I Love You, Porgy,” was hard to pin down even then. Nina’s approach was steeped in classical music. In fact, she was trained as a classical pianist and had hopes of breaking into that lily-white field. But her music rippled with the blues, jazz and gospel. European styles and African roots music were also braided into her work.

But her repertoire turned bitingly political, starting with 1963’s self-penned “Mississippi Goddam.” She traded elegant gowns for vibrant Afrocentric garb, and as she spiraled into the depths of mental illness, Nina’s behavior on and off the stage became more erratic. When she wasn’t rambling through her set, she would cuss out ticket holders—or not show up at all. She would pull knives on musicians and shoot at noisy neighbors.

But fans all over the world kept coming back. Although she never matched the commercial success of contemporaries like Ray Charles, Sam Cooke or Aretha Franklin, Nina still became an international icon. Her commitment to using her music as a weapon, as a way to raise consciousness about the sociopolitical storms gathering around us, was unwavering throughout her 40-year career.

So it’s fitting for Women’s History Month that we remember Nina Simone, an oft-misunderstood artist who refused to compromise in an industry and a country that didn’t know (and still don’t know) what to make of self-assured, dark-skinned women with soul, brains and talent to spare. Her artistic triumphs and public struggles helped karate-kick down doors for the likes of Erykah Badu, India.Arie and, of course, Lauryn Hill, who name-checked Nina in the Fugees’ hit “Ready or Not.”

The legend’s strange and sometimes-volatile life is explored in the new book, Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone by Nadine Cohodas, whose last book, Queen, was a biography of another troubled soul sister, Dinah Washington. Like that book, Princess Noire is painstakingly researched. It also clears up factual deficiencies found in Nina’s 1991 autobiography, I Put a Spell On You.

Why Black People Need More Vitamin D!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why Black People Need More Vitamin D

Why Black People Need More Vitamin D
Melanin protects us from harmful UV rays. But it also blocks our defenses against diabetes and cancer.

Vitamin D may be the most important supplement you’re not taking—or not taking enough of. Most of us—and even our doctors—have little idea that taking regular amounts of it may help stave off some of the most common life-threatening illnesses.

Best known for building bones and preventing rickets—a bone disease more common in the days of Charles Dickens than today—vitamin D has recently been shown to lower the risk of diabetes, hypertension, multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis, memory loss and several types of cancer.

Despite this good news, most Americans don’t get near enough vitamin D. And among African Americans, some experts have called vitamin D deficiency a “hidden epidemic” and have speculated that low levels are to blame for higher rates of diseases such as hypertension, heart disease and diabetes. The Chicago Sun-Times went even further, linking African-American death rates from aggressive forms of breast and prostate cancer to low levels of vitamin D.

In the body, vitamin D is produced by sun exposure. But Americans aren’t exposed to as much sunlight as we used to be—either because we’re inside watching TV or hunched over computers or avoiding the sun to prevent skin cancer.

So how much vitamin D do we need? That’s still being debated. In March, researchers at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine found that 3 in 4 Americans had insufficient levels of vitamin D, up from about 1 in 2, when measured 20 years ago.

Last fall, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended infants, children and adolescents double the amount of D they ingest each day. The government recommends a daily intake of 200 international units (IU) from birth to age 50, 400 IU for people between 51 and 70, and 600 IU for those over 70.

Other experts have suggested even bigger boosts. The University of Colorado researchers advised increasing vitamin D intake to 1,000 IU daily. The well-respected Institute of Medicine went even further, recommending 2,000 IU a day. So drinking fortified milk, at 100 IU a glass, is just not enough.

New national guidelines are expected next year, and there’s little doubt that recommended vitamin D intake will be increased.

To help sort through the vitamin D maze, we spoke to Dr. Consuelo Hopkins Wilkins, an assistant professor of medicine and psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who has spent nearly a decade studying this overlooked vitamin.

The Root: How does exposure to sunlight produce vitamin D?
Dr. Consuelo Hopkins Wilkins: Everybody has the ability to make vitamin D. In the second layer of the skin, there’s a kind of a pre-vitamin D. When the skin is exposed to ultraviolet light, it activates this pre-vitamin D, which makes its way through the blood stream to the liver and kidney. There, it gets further activated from pre-vitamin D to vitamin D.

TR: What has caused our worsening problem of vitamin D deficiency?
CHW In general, people are exposed to the sun less, partly because of the risk of skin cancer. And we’re wearing more sunscreen, which blocks production of vitamin D. People are also living longer, and as we get older, we’re less likely to be in the sun. Aging also affects the skin’s ability to convert pre-vitamin D into vitamin D, and in older people, the liver and kidney can’t activate it as well.

Another contributing factor is that more and more people are overweight or obese. Research shows that when you expose overweight and normal weight people to the same amount of sun, the heavier group doesn’t produce as much vitamin D. No one is sure why, but it may be that vitamin D is “hiding” in fat cells.

TR: Why are African Americans particularly vulnerable to vitamin D deficiency?
CHW Melanin protects the skin against ultraviolet light. But by blocking the sun’s rays, melanin affects the skin’s ability to activate pre-vitamin D. So the darker the skin, the less vitamin D you produce. In the scientific literature, the difference is striking.

TR: How do you know if you have enough vitamin D in the body?
CHW Your doctor can give you a blood test. You probably have to ask for it, and here in St. Louis it costs about $90. There’s also a home test you can use, which costs about $65 [or] $75. Serum vitamin D is measured in nanograms. Ideally, your level should be over 30 ng/ml but less than 100. Too much vitamin D in the blood, which is rare, can lead to toxicity.

PALIN,PALIN,PALIN.............the idiots lantern.

Obama Dismisses Palin's: She's 'Not Much Of An Expert' (VIDEO) | News & Politricks News | Global Grind

President Obama isn't taking anymore ish from the right, on Good Morning America the Prez dismissed criticism by Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin Thursday over his administration's proposal to limit the use of nuclear weapons.

Pointing to Palin's lack of expertise on the policy surrounding nuclear weapons, Obama brushed off Palin's claims that the move would make the U.S. more vulnerable.

"I really have no response. Because last I checked, Sarah Palin's not much of an expert on nuclear issues," Obama told ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "If the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff are comfortable with it, I'm probably going to take my advice from them and not from Sarah Palin,

If it's not yours........

Parents Have Their Sixth-Grader Arrested | News & Politricks News | Global Grind

Police arrested a sixth-grade student Monday at the request of the boy’s parents, after he said he stole and then gave away more than $7,000 worth of his mother’s jewelry.

The boy told police he gave a classmate at Everett Middle School a white gold ring and a diamond ring, which he had taken from his mother’s jewelry box the previous week. When he asked the girl to return the jewelry, she gave back the white gold ring but said she “had lost” the diamond ring, according to a Bay County Sheriff’s Office report.





The boy gave a sapphire ring to another friend who, when asked, said he had given it to a female classmate, according to the report. Another boy told his friend that he could have his mother’s emerald and sapphire ring back if he gave him a reward.

The boy’s stepfather was adamant about filing charges, police reported, so the deputy “placed (him) into handcufffs (double locked) and placed him in my patrol vehicle.”

Police booked the student into the Bay County Jail on grand theft charges, and then took him to the Department of Juvenile Justice.

Most Anticipated Summer Hip-Hop Albums

**EXCLUSIVE** GG's 15 Most Anticipated Summer Hip-Hop Albums | Official Tyrone P. Blog | Tyrone P. News and Celebrity Blogs | Global Grind

Summer is quickly approaching and along with beautiful weather,  small clothes and longer days comes some of the best music of the year. Who will have the official “summer jam” of 2010? Who will provide the soundtrack to countless summer parties? Take a look at our 15 most anticipated albums. 

15. Big Boi  "Sir Lucious Leftfoot: The Son of Chico Dusty"

Outkast’s Big Boi has been preparing to release his first solo album for years now. After tons of promising first singles (“Royal Flush” with Andre 3000 and Raekwon is a classic, and “Somethin’s Gotta Give” with Mary J. Blige which should’ve done much better) and false starts, things seem to finally be on the right track for Big. He recently signed a deal with Def Jam and today released his official first single “Shutterbug.” The album is set to feature appearances from  Gucci Mane, Too $hort, Jamie Foxx and Andre 3000 among others, and should hold us over until Outkast finally drops that seventh album.