No Affirmative Action - Become Water

 

On June 11, 1963 Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked the doors of the University of Alabama to keep Black students from registering and said ”segregation forever!” I was four years old and two years later attended an all Black, separate and unequal, Jim Crow elementary school in East Texas because I could not, by law, attend the all White elementary school closer to my home because I was Black. I did not understand the situation at the time because I was six years old. I studied from hand me down books, but the information was the same. Two years later The laws changed and my original school was shut down and I attended the formerly all White school closer to my home. My prior teacher prepared me well with those second hand books and I was like water. You see, water will find a way in, around or over any obstacles place in front of it. I knew what I knew. I knew what I was taught. I was not going to pretend to be less than anyone else regardless of their race, background or socioeconomic standing. 

I progressed through elementary, junior high and high school and did my best, even when I was one put in, what I called a warehouse class and my friends asked me, “What are you doing in here?” They knew me and I was moved to another group. Later I realized some students were set aside and given up on by their schools, many of them minorities, but like water I went around that. After finishing high school I was recruited by an HBCU for their business school and graduated Summa Cum Laude. I didn’t have a legacy of higher education in my family, I was the last of nine children and the first to go straight to college and earn a Bachelor of Science degree, but other siblings earned even higher degrees later on in their lives because they were like water also and would not be denied. 

 One Eigth of a Man

I came back to East Texas with my shiny new degree and went into business to business sales, but when I walked into establishments with my suit on, the question I got most often was not, what do you have of offer, but where are you from. The implication was that I must not have been from around there or I would have known I was out of my place walking into their business like that. I was you and newly married and thought, these people aren’t going to stop me, so I relocated, not far, but different. I was like water again and was able to utilized everything I knew and was taught to grow, provide for my family and prosper, then I came back on my terms.

Sixty years after George Wallace blocked the doors to the University of Alabama the Supreme Court of the United States of America essentially overturned Affirmative Action in the ability of colleges to use race as a factor in deciding who is admitted to their schools. You see, I’m the same person who could not attend a nearby elementary school because I was Black and in my same lifetime the SCOTUS said it is all even now. On June 29, 2023, 60 years after George Wallace blocked a university’s doors to keep Black students out, the Supreme Court determined everything was even. Slavery began 400 years ago and in 1966 I was legally barred from attending elementary school with White children, so now the SCOTUS has determined the weight of that oppression has been lifted. Native Americans were forced from the lands onto reservations and it is like a mulligan in a golf game and all even. Hispanic Americans relegated to the underclass for years laboring in fields, domestic work and exploited and it’s all equal now. 

Do not allow that Supreme Court ruling on Affirmative Action stop you from achieving your dreams. Behave like water and go around, through and over obstacles place in your path. Those before you did it and you can too!

Impeachment: If Soldiers Face Death, Senators Can Face Witnesses To Preserve America

Work of  U.S federal government, in the public domain in the United States

In the Constitution Congress has the sole power to declare war. In recent years, Presidents have entered the United States in multiple wars without Congressional declarations of war. When the United States enters a war the expectation is for those in military service to fight in those conflicts and if required, to give their lives in combat. Military members, members of Congress and the President take an oath that all contain these words, "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."  

Trump: Nixon on Steroids

 

Congress and Presidents have sent Americans to face deaths in wars foreign and domestic to maintain our republic! The least they can do is face the truth, witnesses and voters to make sure we protect our republic from foreign powers being invited to interfere in our elections going forward! Impeachment is not a political party exercise, but an emergency button to be pushed if a President, of any political party, is violating his oath of office and placing our republic in peril. We expect military men and women to sacrifice their lives in order to protect our freedoms, among those, to have free and fair elections free from foreign influence. The United States was born because it broke away from foreign rule through a bloody war and it should be obvious why an invitation by a sitting U.S. President, elected under a cloud of election interference by Russia, to the President of another country to assist him in an upcoming election by smearing his political opponent.

 

If Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refuses to hear key fact witnesses before acquitting President Donald Trump of the articles of impeachment drawn against him, then the Senate has lost its moral authority to send brave Americans to their deaths in defense of their right to display such moral cowardice in a free country.   

Second Amendment Misused By Gun Rights Advocates



Gun rights advocates have long distorted the meaning of the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution to justify their version of guns rights. The 2nd Amendment is clear, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” There is no mention of the type of gun that could be owned.

The 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted in 1791 when a skilled user could manage to shoot and reload a musket 2 to 3 times per minute. Now the 2nd Amendment is being used to justify the need for civilians to own semiautomatic guns that can hold 100 rounds of ammunition and fire 45 to 60 times per minute or as fast as the shooter can pull the trigger. The 2nd Amendment says nothing about the of gun anyone can own, it just says you have the right to own guns. As for the word “infringed” that some gun advocates become unhinged over anytime gun regulation is brought up, it simply means “act so as to limit or undermine.”

The second Amendment deals with the right to own guns and no one has acted to limit our undermine the right of law abiding citizens eligible to own guns from obtaining them or limit how many they can own. When the word infringed is extended to mean that it also includes no regulations on the types of guns available for people to own, that’s where the misuse of the 2nd Amendment occurs. Guns are commercial products produced by companies that design, manufacture and sell them to the public. Guns are designed to launch a projectile into an object and cause damage, if that object happens to be a living being like a deer or person it causes injury or death. If government authorities tasked with maintaining public safety determine that a certain type of gun or ammunition feeding device is involved in excessive human injury or death, they have the duty to address the issue with legislation to protect the public. None of the current gun legislation or proposed changes “infringes” upon anyone’s right to go to their local Walmart, Gander Mountain or Cabellas and buy the available gun of their choice. Please don’t bring up how many people die in automobile accidents compared to firearm deaths because it’s a false comparison, cars are designed for transportation and those deaths result from accidents and bad decision making, not from intention. These shooting spree killers did so with a gun, not a car.




The 2nd amendment is a clear statement in what it means in regards to gun ownership, you have the right to keep and bear arms, period. The 2nd Amendment does not outline the type of guns you have the right to own. Guns are a product just like automobiles, food and drugs. Automobiles, food and drugs are all regulated to ensure that safe products are available on the market. Occasionally regulating agencies will require products that have proved to be a danger to the public to be removed from the marketplace by their manufacturers or move from off the shelf access to prescription required in the case of drugs. Guns are no different than any other product when it comes to public safety. There is nothing magical, mystical or sacred about any one gun type or ammunition magazine that makes it essential for a gun owner to possess.

Jared Lee Loughner was taken down during his shooting rampage in Tucson, Arizona when he was trying to reload his semiautomic handgun after his 33 round magazine was empty, but he dropped the second magazine and others on the scene took him down. What if Loughner had a 10 round magazine instead of a 33 round unit, that’s 23 fewer shots before he had to reload, could someone that is gone still be alive? Colin Ferguson methodically shot passengers on a Long Island, New York commuter train with a semiautomatic pistol in December 1993, he emptied and reloaded two 15 round magazines, when Ferguson tried to load a third magazine other passengers took the opportunity to tackle him. If Ferguson was limited to 10 rounds per magazine, would someone that was killed be alive because of 10 fewer shots fired? The 10 round magazine limit proposed is just common sense. Why does any recreational gun owner need a 100 round drum magazine on a civilian semiautomatic rifle like what was used by the Aurora, Colorado theater shooter. If 10 shots can’t handle what is coming at you in a defensive mode then it is likely that more rounds won’t be of much help either.

All of the noise against gun legislation is a smoke screen for the makers and takers. The manufacturers and gun lobby make money and politicians take money. Some gun owners just want to keep getting their favorite grown up toys that resembles the guns used by our brave troops on the battlefield. The sad truth is that we kill over twice as many of each other in the United States than the number of brave troops we have lost to enemy combatants during 12 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Something has to change.