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Interestingly, I met a woman the other day who actually got on the bus in New York City to view the eclipse in the path of totality. The way I traveled to see it but her trip was much more arduous. She was no more than a 15-minute drive from where I was in South Carolina. We saw essentially the same event. She went on about how spiritually moving the eclipse was for her. She expressed that feeling after I said did not understand why so many people were so excited about seeing it. As I said before, the experience was nothing like that for me. This is profound evidence that different people experience the same event entirely differently.

My argument has always been that Hillary wasn't a saint but, then, America isn't heaven. She was, first and foremost, qualified by virtue of being very knowledgeable about global and domestic issues and she knew how to be selectively ruthless; a formidable bitch. Plus, her future Supreme Court choices would not undo all of the judicial rulings that were so hard-fought-for to bring about a modicum of equity and justice for women and marginalized minorities, - decisions that are now in danger of being rescinded and replaced with conservative dogma that will transform this " democracy/ republic" into a "fascistic theocracy". Many are saying, and i agree, that Trump is not the real danger; it's his supporters who are the menace. And it seems to me that more and more of the common people are falling under his sway as a backlash to how they think the liberal media is bashing him, and - as we all know, everybody hates the media and its facts that Republicans call "fake news". This push-back is what evolved with Joel Osteen, the con man leader of the mega church who closed its door to flood victims in Houston. The Internet bashed and ridiculed him so badly that the Christian community started coming to his defense, and this included many blacks who felt that he was being picked on, reminding everyone that this multi-millionaire who lives like a king, is, after all, just human and should not be judged so harshly. There are all kinds of variations of the Stockholm Syndrome at play out there, not to mention the grip of cognitive dissonance. This is a nation at odds with itself. ...Grooming my bearskin cloak here in my cave, getting ready because - winter is coming...

Since May of this year, I've been sharing this bestseller seal. I this time I simply never noticed the type it contained! This morning I read an email from a bestselling author alerting me about the typo. They did so almost reluctantly not wanting to bother me in the event I was already aware of the error. I was not and just the day before I began using the seal throughout the site--an effort that I now have to invest valuable time to correct. Of course as soon as the error was pointed out it jumped out at me like some sick magic trick. Oh brother...

When was there parity anywhere or anytime on tbe planet. Judgements ranking and comparisons even happy in this discussion. I was just thinking thst perhaps society encourages these distinctions to both advance the society as a whole. And to exploit the "common" "man"

@Troy Your mind functions in the well-defined realm of scientific technology which interferes with your going with the random flow of the spiritual domain. It's kinda like you were subconsciously challenging rather than anticipating the eclipse to have a profound effect on you. This made you less receptive to experiencing what was contrary to your vibe. Has the eclipse turned things around? All of the high winds and flooding in certain areas and rampaging forest fires in other locations are not anomalies but rather events that naturally occur in the environment and atmosphere of Earth. If biological species are in the path of these forces, then the survival of these creatures is threatened. That's Life. Which doesn't mean that these phenomena won't impact on the ebb and flow of human activity i have certainly been experiencing some weird things lately. Time is not a factor in my solitude, so i live around the clock, sleep when i'm sleepy, eat when i'm hungry and just do whatever i feel like doing at any given moment. (by choice, my outside social life is limited) Away from the computer, my favorite spot is my recliner which is my phantom lover in whose arms i am so comfortable and content that i just drift off into dreamland. i have forsaken my bed for this seducer. Lately, in the middle of the night, when i'm dozing off while watching science channel documentaries about aliens or the big bang, or true crime programs about spouses killing each other to collect insurance, the recliner begins to rock ever so gently and gradually my body is overtaken by a tingling feeling that begins at my toes and crawls upward. Sometimes this is proceeded by my foot being jerked. Engulfed in waves of sensations, i simply lie there and keep my hands clasped and silently communicate to whatever this entity is, that i am not interested in going to the dark side or doing evil, but i wouldn't mind winning the lottery and being cured of all my annoying little ailments. Then, before i realize it, I am asleep and having crazy dreams. These dreams involve different scenarios but the underlying theme is always the same. I am trying to get someplace but I'm never able to find my way or complete what i have to do to get where i want to go and i am constantly misplacing my purse during all of this... Guess the implications of theses dream are pretty obvious, huh, Del? I read that the eclipse overshadowed another phenomenon which will be occurring on September 23rd when there will be an alignment of Jupiter, the Moon, Mercury, Mars and Venus with the star Regulus in the Leo sign. The 9 stars of Leo and the 3 aligning planets will make a crown of 12 stars for the Virgo sign which will be “clothed with the sun,” with the moon under her feet. ???? Doomsday predictors are saying this will herald the end of times as predicted in Revelations. Winter is coming... Why do i have the feeling that the intense media coverage of these hurricanes is over the top and the networks will be disappointed if the storm would just blow over?

Some Black People Wonder Why Black Men Do Not Go To Church..Why Do Black People Go To Church?Only Thing Happening Is The Preachers Personal Ushers Taking ,Up,Offering,Tithes Several Times,Preachers Buy Cars,Mansions,Gifts To Mistresses. Preachers Do Not Try,To Uplift,The Souls Of Black Folks .Be Mentors To Black Children,Especially Black Boys Before. They Get To High ,School. There Is Poverty And Drifting Souls All Around The Church,Black,Leaders Condone It..Churches Are Slave Cabins,Pimp Houses In Black .Communities....

Facebook does have some memes i can relate to dispersed between the prayer requests and religious verses and testimonies.

I see the tree and the serpent (s) golden ratio (Phi), owl and for some reason I also see a peacock feather... It feels like If I look at too long I'll become one with it . One more thing, many of those symbols are allegedly related to worshiping the Canaanite's sun god.

Poor Hillary Clinton. She just can't win for losing. She's really catching it from the haters responding to what as been leaked from her soon to be released book in which she offers her explanation and theories as to why she lost the election. Naturally, her detractors accuse her of blaming everyone but herself, but she reportedly does devote space to describing where she went wrong. In one chapter she takes Bernie Sanders to task for making her campaign harder, likening him to a father who promises his children a pony and when his wife questions where they will get a pony or how they will pay for it and where will they house it, he accuses her of not liking ponies. She pretty much accused him of putting her in a Catch-22 position from which she could never recover. She also said that she really believes her sex worked against her because many of both sexes just weren't ready for a women president. I think Hillary is destined to go down in history as a tragic figure. And i also think she should just retire from politics because she will be a disruptive force in the Democratic party which needs to re-invent itself. Below is an interesting perspective of her long political career, a blog essay by Larry Womak which appeared in Huffington Post in September of 2016, two months before the election. Is it biased? i dont know. But it does "out" her haters for their sloppy vetting of her. “Why Is Clinton disliked?“ “Why the hate for Hillary?“ “Why do people hate Hillary Clinton so much?“ Is it because of partisanship? Or a hard-fought primary? Maybe, NBC once suggested, it’s because “she’s not a train wreck.” Funny how the answers seem to be everything but the obvious. We go on endlessly about how “untrustworthy” she is, while fact checkers rank her as the second-most honest prominent politician in the country. (And her opponent as by far the least.) We say that she has trouble with transparency, while her opponent refuses to release his taxes and the current administration sets records for secrecy. We decry her ties to corporations and the financial industry, while supporting a walking tax shelter or mourning the exit of a president whose re-election was funded by a record-shattering Wall Street haul. We list so very many explanations, all of them complete bullshit. In truth, the Hillary haters seem to resent her more than disagree with her. They demand to be humored and catered to. They hold her to wildly different standards than her male counterparts. They regard her with an unprecedented degree of suspicion. Above all, they really, really want to see her punished. And an aggressive male presence—even if dangerously incompetent—seems to comfort a great many of them. Everyone but them knows damn well why. Bad news for the haters: History is decidedly unafraid of “the woman card.” It doesn’t care how many people will stand on tables today and swear they’d feel the same if she were a man. It will see us for what we are—a sick society, driven by misogyny and pathetically struggling to come to terms with the fact that women do not exist solely to nurture. If that answer isn’t as nuanced as the average thinkpiece, that’s because we, as a people, are not. No matter how many branches have formed, they all emerged from the same seed, planted way back when Bill Clinton first ran for governor. She wouldn’t be so suspicious of the press, or so measured in her presentation, or so any one of a thousand other things, if she had been born a man. The lengths we go to in order to rationalize this all will be seen, in retrospect, as extraordinary. When the Bush administration was discovered to have erased millions of emails illegally sent by 22 administration officials through private, RNC-owned accounts, in order to thwart an investigation into the politically motivated firing of eight US attorneys, just one talk show covered it that Sunday. When Mitt Romney wiped servers, sold government hard drives to his closest aides and spent $100,000 in taxpayer money to destroy his administration’s emails, it was barely an issue. When Hillary Clinton asked Colin Powell how he managed to use a Blackberry while serving as Secretary of State, he replied by detailing his method of intentionally bypassing federal record-keeping laws: Yet the fact that Hillary Clinton emailed through a private server and didn’t use it to cover anything up is somehow the defining issue of her campaign. “My God,” people cry, “anyone else would be in jail!” Or is the real scandal that her family runs but does not profit from a charitable foundation awarded an A grade byCharity Watch, a four out of four star rating by Charity Navigator and responsible for helping 435 million people in 180 countries get things like clean drinking water and HIV medication? Because the AP seems super concerned that she encountered people who donated to it—specifically Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus—in her official capacity as Secretary of State. It should at this point be observed that her opponent is a shameless con artist who has built an empire bilking people with fake businesses, fake universities, fake charities and, now, a fake campaign. Last week, he told a lie every three minutes and fifteen seconds. Oh, and did we mention that he, like so many of his online “supporters,” is a goddamnRussian stooge? I tried to list all of the dumb, awful stuff that he does every day and I cannot come close to keeping up. Voters, it seems, are his easiest marks yet. And it isn’t just Republicans. The double standards are even more transparent on the left. Back in the mid-90s, Clinton’s persistent unwillingness to hide the fact that she was a thinking human female really freaked the center-left establishment out. Michael Moore observed that, “[Maureen Dowd] is fixated on trashing Hillary Rodham in the way liberals love to do, to prove they’re not really liberal.” The bashing slowly morphed into a creepy, extraordinary sort of policing. Since then, Clinton racked up a Senate voting record more liberal than any nominee since Mondale. Her 2008 platform was slightly to Obama’s left on domestic issues. Her 2016 platform was barely to the right of self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders. Yet, we have all heard and seen countless liberal posers passionately decrying her “far right voting record,” untrustworthy promises or ever-changing policy positions. Jon Stewart recently called Clinton “a bright woman without the courage of her convictions, because I don’t know what they even are.” Because if he doesn’t know, she must not have any, right? In fact, there is a very lengthy trail of public records all pointing in the same direction. If you can’t figure out which, maybe the problem is you. Yet, many on the left who gladly voted for John Kerry, two years after he voted to authorize the Iraq war, now say they couldn’t possibly vote for Clinton, because she did, too. And view her with contempt for opposing same-sex marriage in 2008, while fawning over men like Barack Obama andBernie Sanders, who held the same position at the same time. It’s time to stop pretending that this is about substance. This is about an eagerness to believe that a woman who seeks power will say or do anything to get it. This is about a Lady MacBeth stereotype that, frankly, should never have existed in the first place. This is about the one thing no one wants to admit it’s about. Consider, for a moment, two people. One, as a young woman at the beginning of a promising legal career, went door to door searching for ways to guarantee an education to the countless disabled and disadvantaged children who had fallen through the cracks. The other, as a young millionaire, exacted revenge on his recently deceased brother’s family by cutting off the medical insurance desperately needed by his nephew’s newborn son, who at eighteen months of age was suffering from violent seizures brought on by a rare neurological disorder. What kind of a society treats these two people as equal in any way? What kind of society even considers the latter over the former for its highest office? Generations from now, people will shake their heads at this moment in time, when the first female major party presidential nominee—competent, qualified and more thoroughly vetted than any non-incumbent candidate in history—endured the humiliation of being likened to such an obvious grifter, ignoramus and hate monger. We deserve the shame that we will bear.

Hmmm. There really is a lot to pull apart in what you wrote. First I need to ask did you watch the video or read any of the accompanying documentation? It would be helpful if I knew for sure that you have a basic understanding of the environment. Do you understand why the EU took Google to court, and why the court penalized Google with a multi-billion dollar fine? If so, I gather you disagree with the decision. That is fine; one's perception of right or wrong is a personal decision. However, in this case, Google violated the law, which is far less subjective. No one said Google or Amazon were waging a war against Black people specifically. I'm saying their behavior adversely impacts us; perhaps morese than any other group, because we own so little on the web. @The DW_Perspective, are you or have you even been a bookseller? If so, could share how you come to know so much about the business? That would be helpful. The music business model was under assault before Itunes came along. How old are you? Do you remember Napster? Itunes as a music platform is growing increasingly irrelevant as more people move to simply streaming music or downloading it instead of buying it. I'm glad to read you like and use Bing. Unfortunately, the reality is that only a small minority of people use Bing. Bing has little impact in search. Do you run a website? If so, what percentage of your traffic comes from BIng? Your mention of Obama and the contributors to his campaign is lost on me. I watched the video. "net neutrality" is a serious issue. If 45 gets rid if it that would be bad, really bad.

So you think Hillary's continued, unwavering support of Planned Parenthood and all of the women's services this includes does not qualify her for being supportive of women and children issues? i can't believe you would bypass someone who, in being qualified, was savvy and clever, in favor of someone who was incompetent and ham-fisted and obvious in being this! SMH But you are not alone. Bullies actually command a lot of admiration among certain types who scorn what they perceive as being wimpy. But there's no excuse for ineptness. If anonymity allows them to not be held accountable for their true motivations and actions , i don't think Americans are people with a lot of scruples. l confess that i am a lot more sarcastic and critical on the internet than i am in person, mainly because i don't want to get my ass kicked. The things i say and write when squabbling with people on Facebook discussions boards are really scathing. So although i don't consider myself unscrupulous, i will admit to being over zealous in my iconoclastic existentialism. i am, who i am.

I believe they went after Clinton because they didn't like Hilary. Her problem is that she is smart and opinionated. And is seen as cold. Which is unacceptable to a large number of men and women. I am suspicious of people who start foundations. Foundations are a clever form of estate management. Bill Gates can't sell his shares in Microsoft without negatively effecting the stock price. The perception is the company is tanking. And he's trying to get out. By setting up a charity you don't have that problem . And you can use the funds for investment. I believe both Gates and Zuckerberg married lawyers. So usually the funds make a lot more more than they donate. I look at the financials. The Clinton foundation has a catering arm. Which is three times more profitable than the average catering firm. Which means either their cost are a lot lower or they charge a lot more than their competitors. Also they spend more on travel expenses than program spending. Due to security they either fly First Class or they charter a plane. So its always good to follow the money. The Clinton's were broke when the left the Whitehouse. Collectively they have made upwards of $85 million. For speeches. Hilary's are private and no copies of the transcripts are available. Trump is what he has always been a self obsessed misogynist racist spoiled rich kid, with no interest other than self promotion, making money and finding etays to make someone else bear the risk. He doesn't pay his contractors. Apparently those two young girls who sang at his inauguration are sueing him for non payment. His foundation was used as his personal piggy bank. He purchsed a six foot painting of himself. Eric had a foundation that used his father's Golf course. At first there was no fee. And then the charges were significantly more than other Golf clubs would charge. He is our PT Barnum and i believe we are watching a Greek Tragedy. The overseas donations due to the hurricanes , were less than previous years even from our allies. Trump is the President that Business people and disgruntled disenfranchised people want in office. He was voted in to make America great by returning to its preregulation,pre civil women gay and handicap rights, pre voting rights. Only White Male land owners could vote .

Being detailed-oriented is very important. Sometime when we read fast, our eyes trick us and fill in missing letters or words. Misspellings or typos are unprofessional. You learned that the hard way. But it was a valuable lesson.

@Del, I'm actually going to push back a little more on your statement and actually modify a statement previously made. Just today I was talking to another Brother, older, who runs a business as well. He employs several full time staff, in other words he runs a much larger business. We were discussing the relative advantages of his competitors and what advantages he offer tat they don't. One of the advantages he cited was that his business was Black owned. I told him that I actually did not find that being Black owned was an advantage. He explained that were it not for other Black people, he would not have a business. Upon reflection I had to recognize that the same was true for my business. Now I may not have as much support has I want from my community, and on too many occasions I may not have as much as I need, but I would not have a business were it not for my Brothers and Sisters. Indeed Del, while you are not writing checks to me on a regular basis your participation here makes this forum possible. You and all the regular contributors to this forum could be doing anything else, but you are a Black man who is supporting a Black business. In all seriousness and gratitude; thank you. Almost all of the active participants on this forum have been Black. If I depended upon white folks to keep this forum alive it would never have gotten off the ground. Now I'm not dismissing the support of white folks in keeping AALBC.com alive, but to be clear: there would be no AALBC.com with the support of my people. My sincere thanks to all of you

Well, i got on my soap box and expressed my thoughts about why backs are where they are and what the chances were of changing this. Then all the guys proceeded to express their ideas like they had to explain what i had already said. We all agreed that black folks needed to come together but were discouraged by the obstacles that included black folks being their own biggest challenge in a capitalistic country laced with racism. Or something...

Well the seal has been corrected. I'm going to do some extra promotion for authors who use the seal on their website or marketing materials. I have not decided what yet.

Peope here ask me whats wrong with America. Home is where the heart is.

Mel I did not realize I was blowing off your comments by making the statement about engineers and programmers, in fact I thought I was supporting it, not sure why you did not see it that way. At any rate, I was really lamenting the fact that these jobs are rather meaningless in that they are not contributing anything of value. Yes I know full well Facebook are using our data in ways we can not begin to fathom, which is why I've largely opted out of the platform--which nowadays is tantamount to being the crackpot living off the grid in a cabin. I also know all these new professions collecting our data is not being done to improve society but the more effectively get us to buy not things we don't really need or to manipulate us into behaviors that don't serve us, like electing 45. The best and the brightest among us are not trying to improve the world, or deal with climate change, but are on Wall Street trying to create a computer program to extract more of our wealth. Hopefully some good will come out off this "technology," but all that has happened is that wealth inequality have grown to a record highs and more of us are living on the margins. Even the life expectancy of white men is down Speaking of white men. When I was in technology on wall street I watched entire departments of white men be replaced by guys in, or brought over from, India. It was really crazy to watch it happen. I also watched the number of contractor increase dramatically while really employees go down. From the cafeteria, mail room and janitorial staff, to administrators and computer programmers, many of these employees are contractors, without benefits offer to actual employee of the firms. This was largely unheard of when I started in corporate America today it is par for the course. No one works their way up from the mailroom, because they are not even employees of the firm. Capitalism make these actions desirable; technology make it easier to accomplish.

@Troy , thank you for this response - I agree technology is creating a digital divide - and many are not afforded the opportunity to capture the equity they are owed.