Sometimes terror is a coordinated effort, even a state sanctioned operation, and at other times, terror is the act of one or two lone outliers. Today in London, terror revealed itself as the latter.

In a breathtaking attack, a terrorist wielding a meat cleaver chopped a British soldier to death, leaving him dead in the street in broad daylight. The man shouted “Allahu Akbar” after the attack and then, in a brazen move, the terrorist forced passersby to record a chilling video of him sharing his motives for the attack.

“We swear by Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reasons we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day. This British soldier is an eye for an eye a tooth for tooth,” said the man, whose hands were still bloody. “We apologize that women had to see this today but in our lands our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government. They don’t care about you”

One witness said one of the men was armed with a gun.

“I walked back up there and the tall black bloke had changed the gun to the other guy and he had two meat cleavers in his hand,” Julia Wilders, 51, told the paper. “And the response police turned up and he’s ran towards them with meat cleavers before I could even get out of the car … they shot him. And then the other one lifts the gun up and they shot him as well.”

In an uncharacteristic break with the Obama administration, center-left Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson is calling out the Obama administration for tapping journalists’ phones and physically spying on their movements.

“The Obama administration has no business rummaging through journalists’ phone records, perusing their e-mails and tracking their movements in an attempt to keep them from gathering news,” wrote Eugene Robinson in a recent editorial.

Another recent Washington Post report revealed that State Department adviser Steven Kim was prosecuted in 2009 for telling Fox News reporter James Rosen that US intelligence believed North Korea would respond to additional UN sanctions with more nuclear tests. The information Kim revealed to Rosen wasn’t harmful, classified, or a threat to national security, but Kim was prosecuted anyway.

To make matters worse, the Department of Justice then authorized surveillance of Rosen, which included FBI tracking and traced timing of calls.

Eugene Robinson describes just how dangerous the Obama administration is becoming with its overreaches:

If this had been the view of prior administrations, surely Bob Woodward would be a lifer in some federal prison. The cell next door might be occupied by my Post colleague Dana Priest, who disclosed the CIA’s network of secret prisons. Or by the New York Times’ James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, who revealed the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping program.

This is serious.

ABC News recently reported that an armed security official even followed reporters to prevent them from speaking with whistleblowers:

As we traveled the public hallways of the building – watched over by security cameras – an armed uniformed police officer with the Federal Protective Service followed us. We were looking for a particular office—of someone who would not want to be seen talking to reporters–but chose to bypass it because of our official babysitter.

As Robinson noted in his editorial, this sends a message to reporters that they are being watched.

“Rosen has not been charged. Every investigative reporter, however, has been put on notice,” Robinson concluded.

From ThinkProgress:

• All three people on death row are black men. In a state that is only 4.3% African American, Colorado’s death row is 100% African American.
• All three men on death are from the same one county, out of Colorado’s 64.
• All three men committed their crime when they were under the age of 21.

Dunlap was charged with killing four Chuck E. Cheese employees in Aurora, Colorado in 1993. Dunlap was convicted in 1996, but the family of his victims are still waiting for justice to be served in this case.

“I don’t know if Dunlap is ever going to be executed,” Sylvia Crowell, the mother of a victim, told ABCNews.com in February. “Whether he dies from natural causes or from execution doesn’t matter to me, but he better not leave that prison except in a pine box.”

Legislators in Colorado tried to do abolish the death penalty, but Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) announced that he had reservations and might veto the bill.

by Yvette Carnell

Given the controversy over President Obama’s Morehouse commencement speech, it seems only fair to air out this issue with relevant comparisons. The case that I and others have made is that President Obama inappropriately pathologized black male behavior during his commencement speech. Further, I asserted that one would not have seen such a display had the commencement speaker been a white president. In that regard, the most relevant comparison , and probably the most congruent given his stature in the black community, is that of former President Bill Clinton. Below I compare Clinton’s May 11th 2013 Howard University commencement to Obama’s Sunday Morehouse address.

When comparing both speeches, two themes stand out:

ON WORK

Bill Clinton, “Choose What You Love”

Even with the employment situation and economic challenges, virtually all of you have the power to choose what you will do to earn a living. It may sound self evident but most people who have ever lived including hundreds of millions of people on the face of the Earth today never had that choice. They simply did whatever was at hand in whatever form it presented itself to put food on the table and to support their families. You have a choice. Try to do something that will make you happy. Most people are happy doing what they’re best at.

Barack Obama, “Twice as Hard”

You are the mantle of Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington and Ralph Bunche and Langston Hughes and George Washington Carver and Ralph Abernathy and Thurgood Marshall and, yes, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. These men were many things to many people and they knew full well the role that racism played in their life. But when it came to their own accomplishments and sense of purpose, they had no time for excuses. Every one of you has a grandma or an uncle or a parent whose told you at some point in life as an African American you have to work twice as hard as anyone else if you want to get by.

ON INEQUALITY

Bill Clinton, “The World Has Too Much Inequality”

The world has many challenges. You know them. There’s too much inequality. It’s manifested for most college students in the fact that they haul out of college with too much debt and wonder if they’ll be able to repay it…

Barack Obama, “No Time For Excuses”

Well, we’ve got no time for excuses. Not because the bitter legacy of slavery and segregation have vanished entirely; they have not. Not because racism and discrimination no longer exist; we know those are still out there. It’s just that in today’s hyperconnected, hypercompetitive world, with millions of young people from China and India and Brazil — many of whom started with a whole lot less than all of you did — all of them entering the global workforce alongside you, nobody is going to give you anything that you have not earned.

The takeaway here is that the speech given by former President Bill Clinton could’ve been given to any other student body in the world. Although Clinton did mention some of the achievements of Howard University graduates, he did not make a racialized speech evoking tough love or the imaginary penchant black men have for excuse making. There was nothing in his  speech about black men making bad choices.  For Clinton there were only banal generalities about the real challenges ahead and a “shared future” with “shared values.”

Watch them both:

As the number of poor people in America swells, the number of poor people living in America’s suburbs has grown to an astonishing 67 percent between 2000 and 2011, according to the Brookings Institution. As a percentage of the population, however,  urban centers still have a larger percentage of people living in poverty than suburban areas, but the Brookings report shows a changing landscape.

According to the authors of the report, more poor people were lured to the suburbs with a promise of a better life.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

More poor people moved to the suburbs, pulled by more affordable homes or pushed by urban gentrification, the authors said. Some used the increased mobility of housing vouchers, which used to be restricted by area, to seek better schools and safer neighborhoods in suburbia. Still others, including immigrants, followed jobs as the booming suburbs demanded more workers, many for low-paying, service-sector jobs.

In addition, more poor people in the suburbs who had been doing well before the recession slid into poverty after the recession took hold. And the housing boom and bust further decimated suburban homeowners.

Suburbanites were not prepared for the economic downturn largely because of the idealized notion that suburbia means middle class.

The study defined poverty based on  federal poverty line, which stood at $22,350 for a family of four in 2011.

Obama said to the graduates, The comment caught a lot of students off guard and created a stir within the crowd. Once the crowd calmed a bit, Obama added, “Be the best father you can be to your children. Because nothing is more important.”

The words were presumably self affirming to gay male graduates at the historically black college, especially coming from the first black presidents. Obama’s comments were especially important when one considers the recent tension between Obama and some in the Black community over Obama’s support for gay marriage.

Obama then went further, telling Morehouse men that the “sting of discrimination” many of them had felt was shared by “gay and lesbian Americans” when “when a stranger passes judgment on their parenting skills or the love that they share.”

As Buzzfeed points out,” Obama referenced “your boyfriend.” In the prepared remarks, only “your wife” and “your partner” — a gender-neutral wording — were mentioned.”

In that sense, Obama went slightly off script to applaud gay students, then later cautioned Morehouse grads against discriminating against their gay counterparts in an ‘all discrimination is the same’ sort of way.

The White House did not comment on the remark.

There are so many ironies to President Obama’s Morehouse speech that one hardly knows where to begin …..or end. Yesterday, I pointed out that Obama seems to have a selective memory where his parents are concerned, a flawed memory which entails giving his mother all of the credit and his absent father  all of the blame. But as a Facebook friend noted, there’s a second irony to the Morehouse speech: That a man who proclaims himself to be the president of all people, not just black people, would be so bold as to give a ‘credit to your race speech’ at a historically black college.

Here’s President Obama in his own words:

You are the mantle of Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington and Ralph Bunche and Langston Hughes and George Washington Carver and Ralph Abernathy and Thurgood Marshall and, yes, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. These men were many things to many people and they knew full well the role that racism played in their life. But when it came to their own accomplishments and sense of purpose, they had no time for excuses. Every one of you has a grandma or an uncle or a parent whose told you at some point in life as an African American you have to work twice as hard as anyone else if you want to get by.

There was a downpour at Morehouse yesterday during commencement, but the graduates weren’t only drenched in rain:

Sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down. I had a tendency sometimes to make excuses for me not doing the right thing. But one of the things that all of you have learned over the last four years, is there’s no longer any room for excuses.

And lastly:

….you have to remember that whatever you’ve gone through pales in comparison to the hardships previous generations endured – and they overcame, and if they overcame them, you can overcome them too.

It’s the ‘work twice as hard and be a credit to your race’ speech that all Blacks have become accustomed to, but it sounds awkward coming from President Obama, not because of who Obama is, but because of what Mr. Obama does and does not represent.

After being needled by Blacks to handle issues specific to our circumstance, such as legislation to address double digit unemployment in our community for example, Obama pushed back, asserting that he’s the president of all people, not just Black people. But when he took center stage at Morehouse, he transformed to become the voice on race in America?

The takeaway: Mr. Obama is mostly unwilling to discuss race, especially as it relates to policies that will improve the plight of Black America, but he’s perfectly willing to discuss race when it entails him telling Blacks to work “twice as hard”, be good parents, and stop making excuses (a word he used at least four times).

Obama wants you to be a credit to your race, but he doesn’t feel as if he owes the Black race anything. He wants you to live by the standard of ‘twice as good’ but doesn’t feel that he, as President of the United States, should do anything to ameliorate that double standard.

If that’s not irony, then I don’t know what is.

Obama is not just a failed president. He is a failed Black president. How ‘s that for duality?

During President Obama’s commencement address at Morehouse College, one line stood out:  “My whole life, I’ve tried to be for Michelle & my girls what my father wasn’t for my mother and me.”

This theme of black male abandonment, and condemnation, is central and recurring in Obama’s rhetoric. Even in the push for gun control, Obama evoked the pain felt by his father absence.

“As a son of a single mom, who gave everything she had to raise me with the help of my grandparents, I turned out OK,” Mr. Obama said at a high school in his Hyde Park neighborhood. “But at the same time, I wish I’d had a father who was around and involved. Loving and supportive parents … that’s the single most important thing.”

Obama went on to say that strong families are as important as curbing gun violence to protecting kids.

No matter the circumstance, or how unrelated the topic, Obama reverts back to the theme of Black male abandonment, but why isn’t there any blame  for the mother who dumped young Barack with his grandparents so she could build a new life.

What criticism does Obama have for the mother that first dragged him to Indonesia, where he was relentlessly bullied, and then dumped him to live with his grandparents? Not much. Even though Obama professes to have adored his grandparents,  he revealed during his Jeremiah Wright speech that they both harbored racist resentments. This was no life for a young Black man to live, being abandoned by his mother, left to be raised by racist whites.

But Obama’s life with his mother was no better. Once when Obama was being mercilessly brutalized and pelted with rocks by his racist peers in Indonesia, a friend of Obama’s mother offered to intervene:  “No, he’s OK,” replied his mother. “He’s used to it.”

It was devastatingly uncaring for a mother to allow such a thing, but she’s still heralded as a strong single mom. Only Obama’s Black father is maligned as  a deadbeat. Why the double standard? Why can’t Obama ever have the gumption to acknowledge the woeful fact that both his parents were painfully indifferent to his needs. Why is it only Black men who are deserving of the label of dead beat?

Totally Biased

Like most things W. Kamau Bell, it wasn’t funny.

Bell also seemed to echo comments made by the NAACP’s Julian Bond earlier this week, reveling in the Tea Party’s tax sorrows. “This is what presidents do,” Bell observed. “They use the IRS to stick it to their enemies, that’s what I like.”

He then wondered aloud what the big deal was with the IRS, Associated Press, and Benghazi scandals: “I don’t get why everybody’s acting like this is some, big, crazy scandal.”

Bell concluded, “Barack is finally using the presidency for what it’s supposed to be used for: petty vindictiveness.”

While Jon Stewart has roasted Obama in recent weeks, Kamua Bell… sorry.. W. Kamau Bell, has used this period to make stale racial jokes. This may be the most pivotal point in Obama’s second term and it is the job of comedians to make us laugh about it, but I don’t know if folks are into the same Obama race jokes that they were into in 2008. A lot has changed since then.

What do you think of Bell’s routine?

Even if we suppose that Shakur is guilty of the crime for which she is accused, k!lling a New Jersey police officer during a shoot-out, wouldn’t that make her an escaped criminal as opposed to a terrorist? So this isn’t about Assata Shakur as much as it is about what, and who,  Shakur represents.

Now that Shakur has a $2 million dollar bounty on her head, she’s in danger of being captured or fatally wounded, the latter being far more likely since  governments often work in concert with paid mercenaries who aren’t bound by any law, international or otherwise.

Writer Margaret Kimberley holds President Obama directly responsible for the target on Shakur’s back and says the attack isn’t just an attack on Shakur, but a proxy attack on Black radicals as well:

The significance of the renewed attack on Assata Shakur is not just of international significance. Obama is making a point about black America and those few who still dare to speak out against their nation’s domestic and international policy. Immediately after announcing the increased bounty and terrorist designation the FBI posted billboard sized wanted posters in Newark, New Jersey.

Kimberley goes on to say that the billboard of Shakur isn’t intended to actually capture her, but to intimidate Black folk who are thinking about speaking out:

Of course the billboards are not meant to capture Shakur but to send a not so subtle message about the state of black liberation. Simply put, there won’t be any talk of black liberation. The Shakurs of the world who weren’t imprisoned, killed off by Cointelpro or bought off, have to be destroyed once and for all and any memory of them must be disappeared as well.

In Kimberley’s estimation, the Obama presidency was always intended to end any talk of a Black Agenda or Black Liberation movement.