diversifiedminds

President-Elect Barack Obama has decided to have the pastor of Saddleback Church in California deliver his invocation at his inauguration. Rick Warren has one of the best selling books in history, The Purpose Driven Life and is regarded as one of the leaders of the Evangelical Christian movement. His role at the inauguration would be fairly minimal. He would be blessing the ceremony and essentially that would be it. While his role is minimal, it is regarded as an important one by many. Gay rights activists and others have become enraged at Obama's selection of this man to deliver the invocation. Many regard his stance against homosexual marriage as the number one issue as to why they are against him. Others decry his stance on abortion as another reason that he should not deliver the invocation. My opinion is that anyone Obama picked to deliver his invocation would be a huge issue. As long as you are picking someone who is a religious figure, more often than not their stance on ...

As I awoke yesterday morning to the new Al Qaeda audiotape, I was shocked at the content in it. Now we all know that Al Qaeda is notorious for vitriolic messages, but there was something especially strong in this particular one. Al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman Al- Zawahiri issued a taped message insulting Americans, and Obama specifically. He referred to Obama, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell and their "likes" as "house slaves ( negroes )." He furthermore said that Obama was not an authentic black leader like Malcolm X. Let me attack this from a series of angles. 1) It is very clear that Al- Zawahiri has been reading some of the books that Malcolm X wrote. Clearly as one runs around and ducks the American and coalition forces in Afghanistan, living in caves and the like, there must be considerable time to read. And in all likelihood the way that he became attuned to Malcolm X was through an American member of the Taliban, as some of his recent taped mes...

A recent and rather disturbing trend has sprung up the New York area since the election of Barack Obama last week. Three major instances of hate crimes have sprung up, with direct ties to the selection of Obama. Two occurred on Staten Island and one occurred on Long Island. In the incident on Long Island as well as one of the incidents on Staten Island vandals spray painted swastikas, anti-Obama messages as well as racist commentary on signs, cars and property. In the Staten Island case the vandals referenced murdering Obama. As a result the State Department, Secret Service as well as the Department Of Justice has been called in. The second case on Staten Island is even more disturbing. On the evening of the election, an 18 year old black male allegedly was assaulted by four white men who shouted out Obama's name as they beat him with a baseball bat. The injuries were severe enough to require staples to close a head wound as well as crutches for an injured leg. The sheer violence...

Growing up the oldest of seven in Brooklyn I always envisioned a life that was very different than what was around me. I grew up with a considerable amount of responsibility. I was lucky to have a strong support system that included my mom, grandmother and great-grandmother. They instilled in me values that have made me the kind of man I am today. Unfortunately the positive male influences that I needed from my family was not always present. I internalized this and continued to strive to be the male influence that I wanted to see around me and needed in my life. I did not see strong male leaders, so I became one. I did not see academically successful men, I became one. I did not see men who were actively involved in making the world a more equal and just place, so again I became one. I did this not only for myself, but also for my siblings and family. I studied the lives of successful black male leaders. Men like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey and Thurgood Marshall j...

According to CNN within the last hour the McCain-Palin ticket has launched a new Spanish-language robocall in primarily Cuban-American south Florida. In the new robocall it is alleged that today at 1:28 today Fidel Castro threw his support behind Barack Obama's candidacy. Isn't using a robocall such as this quite late in the game? Its almost 6pm in Miami. A sizable chunk of people probably voted already. Admittedly its an effective yet lowball robocall. But this is similar to the McCain campaign. Good ideas, yet ineffective and too late.

One of my favorite shows is Rick Sanchez' program that comes on CNN at 3pm. He uses Facebook , Myspace , Twitter and other social networks to make it truly interactive. He had McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb on today. The topic was Senator Obama's ties to Rashid Khalidi (Columbia University professor and controversial figure with ties to the Palestinian Leadership Organization.) When asked by Rick Sanchez to name another person that Obama has ties to that is also anti- semitic the spokesman after a long pause said "I think we all know who we are talking about." See video here I was completely shocked at this comment. He never offered a name, and left the suggestion completely open-ended that there is a possibility that Obama has ties to anti- semitic people. What makes things even more interesting is that McCain has ties to Khalidi himself! During the 1990's McCain donated money to Khalidi to study voting patterns in Palestine. I suppose in McCain's min...