Your love

Stand

In the end you'll still be you

For the things you know are right

Azul serape

Flat taxes, asses and heads

The only people in favor of flat taxes are billionaires, lackeys and idiots.

Which one are you?

Everybody is a star

It used to be that only the Paris Hilton types could command undeserved fame.

But with the advent of social media, everybody gets their 15 minutes whether they deserve it or not.  But what differentiates one star from another.

When everybody is a star we simply call it daylight.  And we know what happens to stars in the light of day.

In order to shine we have to find a little corner of darkness and illuminate it.

Live for now

Preachin the blues BB King joins the heavenly choir

BB King was a blues man of the first order. 

He had a mean falsetto and could shout the blues with the best of them.  He rarely played chords but his vibrato laced guitar licks have yet to be duplicated by anyone that I know of. 

In another life he would have been a baptist preacher, he certainly had all the tools. The world has plenty of baptist preachers, but only one BB King.  Rest in peace Mr. King after a job well done.

...and now you wanna give'em back

RIP BB King
September 16, 1925 – May 14, 2015

Ellie's love theme

No thing on me

I can see clearly now

A lovely day indeed

 Its mother's day and everything seems to be quite lovely.

No one is talking about how to improve mothers or motherhood. Everyone seems to be simply reveling in the joy of the day.  As it should be, it seems to be a full on celebration of the institution of motherhood and nothing else.  Let's see if we can hold this spirit for another month.

Happy mother's day to all the mothers of the world.

Let's go back so we can look forward

Its not you its me

But you didn't help

Oh freedom

When you're moving in the positive

You've got to make sure its the brightest star

Don't talk to me about what makes my family happy

You could have avoided this mess

I'm satisfied

You really got a hold on me

Tell it like it is

Did someone say buttwhuppin

Since you brought it up, let's talk about it.

The streets will steal your child if you are not vigilant, and sometimes even if you are. This is how you keep your child alive in the hood. But you cannot wait until his age is in double digits before you begin.  This was a well worn path for this mother.  She has been doing this for this child for a long time and to be quite frank, her assault on her child is probably illegal.

If it weren't for the riots, some child welfare agency would be "looking into the situation". And were it not for the fact that his compatriots had just looted and burned down the local CVS pharmacy, you would have a bunch of well intentioned but completely ignorant child advocates talking in hushed tones about the long term effects of corporal punishment.  What the child advocates fail to do is balance that risk against the long term effects of being dead.  If not today, then the Popo will see him tomorrow, Freddie Grey style.

Let's be clear, you do not need active riots in the streets to lose your child to those streets.  Kids are won and lost every day of the week.  So the next time some well meaning do gooders start talking about damaging the child's self esteem, we need to pull this video clip out and shove it up their self assured asses and run it on infinite loop.

That is not to say that there are no limits, I don't know what Adrian Peterson was thinking, but sometimes a little well placed physical and psychological terror is how you take your child back from the streets.  It remains unclear whether or not this mother will ultimately prevail in saving her child from the Sirens song of the street, but I am certain that a little time out will not get the job done.

This young man had absolutely no fear of the heavily armed and probably quite pissed off Baltimore police officers who are notorious for putting the smack down on knuckleheads who cross their paths.  But the child has nothing but retreat from his Mama.  You can even see it in his face when he contemplates some sort of retaliation against his mother.  And shortly after that you can see in his face when he realizes that retaliation is not the move.  Sister girl did not come here to lose and homeboy knows it.  Right now he has only been a little embarrassed in front of his friends.  Imagine the ridicule he will face if his Mama has to execute a full mat take down on his ass.

So what have we learned?

Child advocates should perhaps be a bit more circumspect in their assessments before they dispense their "wisdom", particularly in places where the rules don't apply in the same way it applies in your burg.  In the untamed wilderness of the hood you do whatever you have to do to save your children and sometimes that means a good wallop up side the head.