aka Contrarian

If you grew up during the 1950s, you'd know that many of the popular melodious love ballads of the day with their exquisite lyrics were songs taken from Broadway stage hits showcasing the works of such talented white composers as Cole Porter, and these classics became known as the "standards" that make up the American song book. Not only did black vocalists such as Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday include these works in their repertoire, but black jazz musicians like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane recorded their interpretations of them. Good music is good music no matter the origin or style. Music is the universal language.

There you go making up scenarios. I am perfectly content in the company of myself. I'm trying to retreat and preserve my privacy so I can engage in my favorite passtimes. Who needs somebody in my space, sitting beside me on the bed? Not me. MYOB.

This is almost as bad as niggaz resenting white rappers who trespass on black territory.

Of course you would imagine that. That's how your malicious mentality operates. You conjure up false scenarios about people so you can launch the strawman bullshit that you substitute for reality and use as an excuse to ridicule.

@frankster If you're ever in Chicago, check out the Field Museum, home of Sue, the T-Rex reconstructed from the fossil remains of a dinosaur found around a hill in southwestern South Dakota.

But there is not a huge difference between getting a million people to turn out for a single event which results in no future goals being accomplished, which is the case of both Kamala and Farrakhan. It's the same paradigm. The post Civil Rights generation has been so quick to mininimize the positive effects of this movement, calling its accomplishments too moderate and misguided yet they can't exude enough praise for Farrakhan and his fiery oratory and quasi military group of henchmen and humble females in pseudo garb playing at being pious, all of which is confined to a small segment of the black population. Whatever. I remain unimpressed. We pick our heroes. To each his own.

HoHum. Kamala Harris (like BaracK Obama) was able to inspire millions of black people to come together - and vote for her but, as with Farrakhan, being able to do this proved nothing when it came to meaningful reform. Her accomplishment has been dismissed, particularly by black men, so pardon me if I remain unimpressed with Farrakhan's meager accomplishments.

It seems to me that when it comes to Homo Sapiens, it is a species made up of human creatures with superficial differences. Species is primarily determined by its ability to interbreed and produce viable, fertile offspring within its group, and it is reproductively isolated from other groupsThis means that members of the same species can successfully mate and create offspring that are also able to reproduce, while members of different species cannot interbreed in this species. Imo, this debate could be resolved by simply defining terms instead of wallowing in subterfuge.

America's black population is put at 49 million or 14% of the total population. The NOI represents a blip on this radar. Gifted orators and dynamic leaders like Farrakhan crowd the ranks of the black clergy who head the churches which have always been the backbone of the black community and the "good intentions - that pave the pathway to hell" . In Chicago's case, Farrakhan got some concrete input from another of the city's black kingpins, Larry Hoover.

What does any of that have to do with Farrakhan being extraordinary? It just proves he can't perform miracles. It doesn't take anything special to tell people to do what's best for themselves. It's not about him being brilliant, it's about them being vulnerable.

To me, this whole argument about race is ambiguous. As someone who loves language and defers to the "it-is-what-it- is" school of thought, I don't really have any strong convictions on the subject. I don't think it's contradictory to accept the idea that there is only one race; the human race but like music, race comes in many versions and arrangements. Nor do I think the scientific determination invalidates the aesthetic one. Science can be just as fluid as art.

Why be so silly as to compare me to him? I am neither a minister, nor a black leader! But as you said, MINISTER Farrakhan was doing his job which consists of what thousands of ministers all over the country do; upifting sinners - with varying degrees of success. Nor is there any way of knowing how many followed the directive he issued at the Million Man March. There was no appreciable change in black progress after that event. It was business as usual, with Farrakhan lIving like a King while his comparatively modest following sold bean pies and the black masses continued their errant ways! Just another hustling black preacher.

All of which adds up to the very mundane conclusion that there is nothing extraordinary about Minister Farrakhan.

Obviously, the most accurate definition of race is: "a term that describes what some people believe doesn't exist"

Get real. All a white person has to do is go on line and monitor black open forums and, if so inclined, quote all the bad things Blacks are on record as saying about their own people. The strident vociferous Farrakhan, leading his life of luxury from his palatial domain has made very few in-roads and had minimal impact on the problems of the vast black community. We are the same age, and over the years, when it comes to widespread, long term progress, he has emerged as little more than a cult leader.

I'm a regular viewer of the "Ancient Astronauts" TV series. Its producers really rely on their imagination when analysing and deconstructing all the artifacts from different civilizations that give credence to Earth having once been visited and infuenced by aliens from outer space! I find the case they make very intriguing.

Yvette and I did meet for lunch a while back when she was in Chicago and are still FB friends and keep up with each other. One of her daughters and one of my granddaughters both attended Indiana university. I also met Deesha for lunch when she was in Chicago but we never really bonded. We were FB friends for a minute, but our relationship cooled because she was an avid BLM supporter and I wasn't. I'm also friends with "a women" who I knew from Thumper's corner and who also had a book published. I never was able to track down my buddy author Chris Hayden from back then. He just dropped off the radar. I fear he might ve died. Still friends with LambD and Linda Chavez . The other Linda whose last named I forgot also suddenly disappeared. She was the one who was part of your AALBC nucleus. She also self published a book.

indirectly through OD's I guess, since he was also a notorious drug dealer.

@TroyI am talking about "methodology", not "time-lines". Under ideal conditions, hypothetically speaking, it would be plausible to utilize the preserved DNA of an extinct animal in order to resurrect it. Just because it's not possible to do so with dinosaurs due to the passage of time doesn't mean that that method is not plausible. Plausible also implies not far-fetched.

@Troywhen I said "plausible", I meant that, in theory, if scientists attempted to recreate dinosaurs, extracting their DNA from amber resin wouldn't be a far fetched method to use if other conditions were right. That, presumably, was also what those involved in making the Jurassic Park movies thought. I believe scientists also just recently resurrected a dire wolf which was believed to be extinct . (Except in Game of Thrones.) Are dire wolves the same as red wolves?

Elon Musk has picked up and split the Trump administration, leaving his DOGE project in shambles. A sign of things to come? Left to his own devices,Trump may end doing what no one else could accomplish; removing himself from office, via self-destruction.

Larry Hoover was running his Gangster Disciples empire from his jail cell. His federal sentence was commuted but the State of Illinois sentences are still in effect and not likely to be reversed. Hoover's crimes were particularly brutal and other Blacks were his only victims, which was undoubtedly why Trump had no qualms about commuting his sentence.

Did Fred Flinstone get the memo about humans and dinosaurs not co-existing? We can't even track down and corner Big Foot in order to check him out, much less discover a dinosaur! The Jurassic Park movies are, at least, inspired by a plausible way of recreating dinosaurs through extracting their DNA preserved in prehistoric resin. The guys running the "big show" apparently preferred to scrap their creation and go back to square one because dinos were big cumbersome creatures as opposed to agile apes with an opposing thumb and forefinger and the better potential to walk upright. Lizards surely have to be miniature souvenirs from the time when the T-Rex species roamed the Earth.