(Akiit.com) Special occasion for some one dear to my heart… Can’t believe it’s been 10 years since I connected with this beautiful woman…. Yes soul mate as my life has changed for the good… Better person but overall a better man… Now I need to find that special online gift for an anniversary, which is ours in reality… Can’t wait to see the glow on her face, when she opens the box… A diamond ring which shall sparkle before all… This type of moments are priceless… Let all embrace love, as there is a someone out there for you….

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(Akiit.com) Like so many I’m glad to see the NFL lockout is over… So all fans will be able to cheer your favorite team this year… There will be no missing regular season games either… For the veterans players many don’t have to worry about getting beat up in training camp, etc… Seems like all the rookies will be signed quickly this time around… Well those funny tshirts the wife got me are cool… Definitely will get people talking, etc… I see facebook is slowing down… Not many of my friends are posting daily and so on…. Google plus is the new it thing for all bloggers…

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(Akiit.com) The way you think and feel about the world is shaped by what you see when you get out of bed in the morning. I remember hearing this from civil rights activists. It simply means that perspective is hugely determined by place, context, and vantage point. This is profoundly true for me and most of the people I’ve ever met. You see the world from the place you live.

Part of the problem in the current budget impasse in Washington, D.C. is the perspectives of the politicians in the debate. Every morning they see and hear each other; the gladiator ring of national politics; the Washington media; their donors; their ideological base; and their latest poll ratings. Sure enough, the perspective that dominates politicians of both parties on the budget is who’s up and who’s down; whose power is growing or diminishing; whose constituents and donors are better organized and get their interests in front of the lawmakers; what the pollsters say; and how the end result of the debate will impact electoral gains. This perspective also dominates the news coverage.

So we at Sojourners thought there needed to be another perspective in this debate, and that the nation needed other voices. We need to hear from people who see and hear something different from politicians when they get up in the morning — real people who are struggling, some of whom are poor, families, children, and the elderly, and maybe people whose job forces them to have to read the Bible.

I’m talking about local pastors. Every day, pastors relate with the people in their congregations and communities. Pastors can’t avoid the real world, which is so easy to do in Washington, D.C.

We wondered, what do pastors think about the budget debate? We decided to go to them and ask them to speak out, and now they have. “An Open Letter to Congress and the President” was initiated by a group of pastors two weeks ago and sent out to their colleagues. Their letter talked about the real people who will be most impacted by this debate, and that any budget deal should be evaluated by how it affects the poorest and most vulnerable. God requires this of us, they asserted. We decided to try for 1,000 signatures from local pastors — in July, when so many people are away, when things are shutting down for the summer, when it’s hardest to get a response on anything. It was an act of faith. So far, in two weeks, 4,700 pastors have responded and made their voices clear. A full page ad titled, “Listen to Your Pastors” appeared in Politico yesterday. A copy of the ad with a full list of signers is here. You can also listen to a press call I moderated on Wednesday featuring Rev. Rich Nathan, Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, and Rev. Derrick Harkins.

“The recession has cost hundreds of our church members’ jobs and homes,” said Rev. Rich Nathan, senior pastor of the Vineyard Church of Columbus in Columbus, Ohio. “But I am concerned about something that has even more devastating consequences for our nation: the adoption of a philosophy that says, ‘I got mine! You’re on your own!’ Jesus had an infinitely wiser philosophy for building a flourishing society: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ This is as meaningful in today’s budget debates as it was two thousand years ago in ancient Israel.”

Growing numbers of Christians are condemning the immorality of extending tax breaks and benefits for the wealthy, while programs that help the poor and vulnerable meet their most basic needs are being cut. The clergy signers of the letter told political leaders, “We work, pray, and do whatever we can to remain faithful to the responsibility of every Christian to help the poor. Still, we can’t meet the crushing needs by ourselves.” They reminded Congress that government is a critical and necessary partner in serving the common good.

Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, founding pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado, was also a recipient of a program that could be cut. “As a member of the clergy and a mother of two children with strong minds and bodies — which benefited for three years from WIC [the Women, Infants, and Children program] — I stand with all Christians in America who believe the cries of the poor and the cries of the children are not only the very voice of Christ, but are indeed the sound of our future waiting for response,” Rev. Bolz-Weber said. “How shall we answer?”
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(Akiit.com) The latest employment figures show the Black economic condition in America worsening. I say it is time to turn to China for economic lessons.

When it comes to China, the numbers are truly astounding. The Asian giant has the fastest growing economy in the world – averaging roughly 10 percent growth per year for the past 25 years. If we in the United States grow annually by just three or four percent, our economists consider that good economic news.

Not only is China growing, but the speed of growth is astounding. For example, the city of New York recently announced that it is going to take seven years to complete a two-mile leg of the long-awaited Second Avenue subway line. During that same seven-year period, the city of Wuhan, China plans to complete an entire 140-mile subway system.

In fact, China is growing so rapidly that it expects to build a city roughly the size of New York every year for the next twenty years. As a result, the U.S.-based research company Freedonia Group currently estimates that one-half of all cement purchased in the world is going to China. Meanwhile, in a 2009 report, the World Bank praised China for lifting more than 600 million people out of poverty over the past quarter century. For example, the report found that in 1981, 53 percent of all Chinese lived in poverty. By 2001, the poverty rate had fallen to just 8 percent.

Finally, if you have been wondering where a nearly bankrupt America gets the money to finance wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, pakinstan and Libya, the answer is China. Before this nation’s current economic crisis is over, the U.S. will easily owe the communist rulers of China well over $1 trillion. China is among the world’s biggest buyers of U.S. Treasury Bonds – the instruments we use to finance much of our debt.

In sharp contrast to an advancing China stands Black America. According to the Census Bureau (2007 figures), African Americans have the lowest median household incomes in the nation. Even native Alaskans (the people we often refer to as Eskimos) have a higher median household income than we do. The reason for the income gap is the historical lack of business ownership among the country’s African American population.

The lesson China appears to be teaching Blacks and the rest of the economically underdeveloped world is electing progressive politicians is great and achieving ever-increasing levels of education is fantastic but if politics and education are not employed to produce rapid economic group growth they will largely be for naught.

But according to the Small Business Administration, Blacks have the lowest “business density” (number of businesses owned per 1,000 persons) in the nation. This means African Americans can only grow economically when some other racial group engages in profit-making enterprise and then decides to hire us. Put more simply, Blacks are economic slaves to the entrepreneurship of others.

China is the global economic power it is today because roughly 30 years ago, a short, chain-smoking, resilient revolutionary named Deng Xiaoping battled his way to leadership of the Communist Party and declared it was time to break with the old ways of doing things. He told a country where wealth was viewed as an evil that “To be rich is good.” Black America needs its Deng Xiaoping.

This is the challenge facing Black America. As a people, we have entered a post-Civil Rights era. We have elected the first African American president. But we continue to linger at the bottom of American society economically. Our lower classes are too dependent on welfare and government social programs. Our middle classes are too dependent on “good” government jobs and our rich are little more than over paid entertainers and athletes who have shown absolutely no ability to provide the leadership needed for building group wealth.

A 2006 paper by economist Robert Fairlie appears to confirm this position. He points out that only 3.8 percent of Blacks own their own businesses. This business ownership rate contrasts with a 6 percent rate for Hispanics and an 11.6 percent rate for whites and Asian Americans. Fairlie advocates a rapid increase in Black business ownership as the way out of disproportionate group poverty.
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(Akiit.com) If you know me, you know I am not fond of the death penalty. The death penalty is a vengeful act masking itself as justice. “Justice” is a subjective term and what may be just to me may be unnecessary to someone else. Nonetheless, we live in a nation-and world believing that death is justice under certain circumstances.

I don’t believe heinous, violent people who target innocent people for personal satisfaction or evil should walk around with the rest of us. People who have the propensity to commit violent crimes make us all feel unsafe, so I never feel TOO badly when violent career criminals go to jail for a long time. I have gripes and complaints about how the justice system doesn’t works, but for crimes like rape, child molestation and serial murder I have little empathy.

People who don’t live in Cleveland may not be familiar with Anthony Sowell. Anthony Sowell is a man accused and on trial for luring (black) women to his house, raping, killing and stowing their bodies in and around his house on Imperial avenue. These women had been missing for months, and some for years, some even unreported. It was a gruesome discovery that shook up the city and highlighted the disposability of black women. Sowell is now on trial , and if he is found guilty he will receive the death penalty. It seems like a pretty just punishment for such hateful, heartless behavior.

A month ago, in an effort to keep up with the case, I read that the families of the women who were murdered would be satisfied with a plea deal offered to Sowell. This deal would have taken the death penalty off the table, but also spared them from a public trial that would reopen wounds that they would have to relive. The prosecution did not bend despite a petition that was sent stating, “The death penalty for Anthony Sowell is not necessary, or even desirable, in comparison to the grief we families will continue to suffer under the realities and uncertainties of the criminal justice system.”

Bill Mason, the county prosecutor says, he wants the death penalty, which he will more than likely get now that Sowell is on trial.
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