(Akiit.com) NEW YORK, NY — Barack Obama’s audience for his acceptance speech likely topped 40 million people, and the Democratic gathering that nominated him was a more popular television event than any other political convention in history.

More people watched Obama speak from a packed stadium in Denver on Thursday than watched the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, the final “American Idol” or the Academy Awards this year, Nielsen Media Research said Friday. (Four playoff football games, including the Super Bowl between the Giants and Patriots, were seen by more than 40 million people.)

His TV audience nearly doubled the amount of people who watched John Kerry accept the Democratic nomination to run against President Bush four years ago. Kerry’s speech was seen by a little more than 20 million people; Bush’s acceptance speech to GOP delegates had 27.6 million viewers.

Through four days, the Democratic convention was seen in an average of 22.5 million households. No other convention — Republican or Democratic — had been seen in as many homes since Nielsen began keeping these records for the Kennedy-Nixon campaign in 1960. There weren’t enough television sets in American homes to have possibly beaten this record in years before that.

The convention that comes closest in interest was the 1976 Republican gathering, which averaged 21.9 million homes. That was the year President Gerald Ford fought off a challenge for the nomination from future President Ronald Reagan. For Democrats, the closest came during the 1980 convention where Sen. Edward Kennedy challenged President Jimmy Carter for the nomination.

This year’s nomination fight was another epic battle, between Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Even though it was decided before the convention, viewers apparently were drawn to the historic nature of the first black man nominated as a major party presidential candidate.

Nielsen said that 38.4 million people watched Obama’s speech as it was carried live by 10 commercial networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, BET, TV One, Univision and Telemundo.

PBS also televised the speech, but didn’t pay Nielsen for a count of its national viewership. Based on a sample of several large cities, PBS estimated that an additional 4 million people saw the speech on its network. C-SPAN, which also televised the speech, has no estimate of its audience.
Read The Full Story…

(Akiit.com) DENVER, CO — When Gordon Davis, a top fund-raiser for Senator Barack Obama, made partner at his white-shoe law firm in New York in 1983, it was a vastly different world for aspiring black professionals like him.

At the time, there were just five black partners at major law firms in New York, Mr. Davis recalled. That group had a tradition of taking each new partner out to an intimate congratulatory lunch. Today, more than 200 take part in the ritual at the Harvard Club.

The change over just a few decades offers a glance at the advances that have enabled a cadre of black elites like Mr. Davis to emerge as a force in the most successful fund-raising operation in presidential campaign history.

Mr. Obama’s acceptance of his party’s nomination on Thursday, on the 45th anniversary of the speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington, signifies a powerful moment of arrival for blacks. But the milestone is especially telling for this upper-crust group, which has mobilized like never before to raise mountains of cash to power his campaign.

“There’s a sense of not only pride but of a point in the culture we’re a part of, the society we’re a part of, that this is different,” said Mr. Davis, now a partner at Dewey & LeBoeuf. “It’s a measure of how far we — and I don’t mean just black people — how far this country and the business world have come.”

There are 57 blacks out of the roughly 300 people on the Obama campaign’s national finance committee. Each member commits to collecting at least $250,000, a formidable task that typically requires deep business networks, something relatively few blacks had until fairly recently.

The list of top Obama bundlers includes John W. Rogers Jr., the founder of Ariel Investments, the country’s first black-owned money management firm; William E. Kennard, the first black chairman of the Federal Communications Commission; and Mr. Davis, who drove across the country 45 years ago as a newly minted college graduate to take part in the March on Washington, and went on to serve as the first black parks commissioner of New York City and the first black president of Lincoln Center.

Mr. Kennard and Mr. Rogers are among a half-dozen black bundlers who have raised more than $500,000 for Mr. Obama, putting them in a select group of just three dozen fund-raisers.

Most of Mr. Obama’s major black donors are new to big-money political fund-raising, but there are signs that at least some could go on to become players in Democratic circles. Some, for example, have already begun flexing their muscle by raising money for politicians who endorsed Mr. Obama early on.
Read The Full Story…

(Akiit.com) Sun shining and I’m over at Cnn Website… Also have the tv on as my Tarheels play in a few minutes… Have waited long enough for college football, so I will sit in my lucky chair while cheering, etc… Later on I will head out to check on the fire pits in the back yard… Recently use them when me and few friends grilled out late night… Anyway, it seems like a hurricane shall be hitting the coast soon, so I hope all are prepared for such an event… Let me finish this up, as I need to order a pizza…

Written By CTA

(Akiit.com) I’d just lowered myself onto a stool at the counter and was reaching for a laminated breakfast menu when, from somewhere behind me, came: “…You remind me of the people who was against the Wright Brothers. Listen, they got this pill–I’m usin’ it.”

Through the reflection of a shiny vintage toaster on the waitress’ work station I caught sight of a booth behind me holding four black gentlemen.

Cocking my head to the left allowed me a peripheral view of the casually dressed men, who looked to be in their early ’70s. Where there wasn’t gray, there was a bare noggin. Or hair painted jet black. There was a wine-colored Sean John workout ensemble on one of them; there was laughter, coffee, eggs, sliced fruit, dry toast, orange juice, bacon, extra crispy. And there was hardy conversation. The subject: Viagra.

I ordered scrambled eggs, toast and hash browns and settled in for some breakfast eavesdropping.

“One night, I went to Ruth’s place–you remember Ruth,” said the portly man with the gold tooth, talking when I came in the place. The man, not the tooth. “She wanted me to come over, but by the time I got there, she said she changed her mind.

“I said,’Baby, I don’t mean no disrespect, but I just took one of these pills and they ain’t cheap. Wake up your sister or that dog you got chained up out back, the parakeet–I don’t care who or what it is, SOMEBODY in this house gon’ fuck tonight.’” The table roared.

Usually, to hear dialogue this rich in either infinite wisdom or knee high bullshit, you’d have to be somewhere in The Community–taking in both soliloquy and Aqua Velva vapors while waiting for a barber’s chair to open up. Or at a pool hall; outside a liquor store, or wherever a spirited game of dominoes or bid whist thrives. Anywhere black men congregate, really, including boardrooms, private jets and on yachts in the Mediterranean. I just happened to be getting the show in a diner on L.A.’s Westside.

If a Brother was among the chemists who invented Viagra, he got no credit at the booth. “That white man is somethin’ else, ain’t he? Shit going on all around us, cancer and shit, and what does he do? Come up with a dick pill. You gotta love that man…”

“Oh, didn’t you know?” Somebody else chimed in. “That’s what he DO–conquer it or stick it!” They didn’t seem to see themselves in the portrait they painted.
Read The Full Story…

(Akiit.com) As a people, we have been dying since we came to this land and built it on our backs for free.

Slavery gutted Africa, taking its most vibrant and vigorous men and women in childbearing years. It took or slaughtered young strong women and men. That completely destroyed the natural cycle of that continent, which is why it began to fall off.

It was made worse when the world continued to ravage the continent of its other natural resources, making war and causing strife amongst and between the indigenous peoples. Now, even some of us look at Africa with detached disgust, imagining that Africans destroyed their own land and each other for no good reason.

Even after slavery and Jim Crow, America did the same thing to African Americans, as in-bred self-hatred continued to seep into secret places in the psyche of Black folks. Integration and Black flight saw the best and brightest of the community seeking to live anywhere but around other Blacks. They took Black commerce with them and completely destroyed the natural cycle of the community.

It was made worse when the nation and crack came to ravage the community —as the educated and hard working denizens migrated to other communities, the lowest of the low became elevated and respected.

Pimps, prostitutes, gangsters and thugs took their place at the top of the food chain and completely retarded the community’s growth process. Things went off on a “Back to the Future” parallel universe tangent.

There was once a straight brotherhood, where the gangsters only took the kids who weren’t going anywhere anyway. As much as I thought I was a gangster, I was told in no uncertain terms that they would beat my ass everyday after graduation until I went to college, preferably out of the city.

Now the gangsters take whoever they can and lives are destroyed. Only after crack cocaine and the Eighties did we begin to see grown men dressing and behaving as children. Gangsters are now the biggest cowards, shooting at random to avoid face-to-face confrontations that may lead to man-to-man combat.

America gave us selfishness.

The Eighties in America gave us self-centered bitches for men who would rather pursue big vehicles with too many televisions and careers chasing balls or holding balls while rhyming about nonsense.

There was once a straight sisterhood, where women encouraged each other to be beautiful and to love men and families. They encouraged each other to walk and talk in ways that commanded respect. Even prostitutes could clean up and look regal after working.

After crack and the Eighties, overly promiscuous women reigned, telling each other that they didn’t need men to have children—in essence, avoiding and helping to destroy the Black family.

The Eighties was the “Me” decade and ushered in the first generation of Black women who were hyper-materialistic, turning to easy money and away from and against their men.

The chickens have come home to roost now that we see an abundance of women who are single, angry and bitter with no kids. There are far too many old, drunken, promiscuous drugged-out freaks calling themselves Independent women and queens.

And our children are suffering the most.

America has given us a lack of integrity.

There is no personal responsibility. The selfish, greedy behavior of grown men and women has eroded the guts of our community.

In general, Black men blame white men and Black women blame Black men. For everything. In such an environment, whites can say nothing about Blacks or they will be accused of racism and Black men can say nothing about Black women or they will be accused of hating them–even if they are telling the truth.
Read The Full Story…