She was an early support of President Obama’s presidental run and continues to support him. In spite of their close relationship, she has clashed with the Obama administration on foreclosures.

TheGrio’s 100: Kamala Harris, the future of California politics

Kamala Harris

Harris Out on a Limb on Mortgage Settlement

Click here to view the embedded video.

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TheGrio’s 100: Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s first Muslim congressman

Congressman Keith Ellison

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Chemical engineer, scientist, physician, teacher and astronaut, Dr. Mae Jemison has a wide range of experience in technology, engineering, and medical research. In addition to her extensive background in science, she is well-versed in African and African-American Studies, speaks fluent Russian, Japanese, and Swahili, as well as English and is trained in dance and choreography.

Dr. Mae C. Jemison, Not Limited By The Imagination of Others

Mae C. Jemison blasted into orbit aboard the space shuttle Endeavour, September 12, 1992, the world’s first woman of color to go into space and the city of Chicago’s first astronaut in U.S. history.

The Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence (DJF)

Click here to view the embedded video.

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6 years is the time that the Madison Apprenticeship Program has been here.
15 classes have graduated.
138 students have successfully completed the program.
75% success rate of students- employed, obtaining higher education, housing

All of these statistics and numbers and all we are asking for
Only $1
That is all we need to help others get back on track and no longer be a statistic.
It’s the Power of One!
Please come and see our new location at 4518 Verona Road.
Donations can be sent to:
Madison Apprenticeship Program
P.O. Box 44842 or any Harris Bank
Madison WI 53711
Join us on Wednesday, Feb. 29 at 3pm for our fundraising celebration!
Madison Apprenticeship Program gives Allied-Dunn residents another shot at success
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It’s that time again for our annual Power of One Campaign. In a time of celebrating Black History Month, we are honored to be the first African American owned company, in the history of the City of Madison, to receive approval for the Capitol Revolving Fund Loan through Community Development Authority, CDA… As we continue to strive towards the objective of expanding our programs, we are asking you to join us in achieving this goal by donating to our annual fundraising campaign. See the attached flyer for further details and feel free to share with your family members and friends.

Our belief here at TJ’s Support Brokerage Firm, Inc. is that the smallest gesture matters. If we as a community come together, we trust that we too can make a difference.

Happy Black History Month, from our family here at TJ’s to yours,
Board of Directors: TJ’s Support Brokerage Firm
Volunteer Team: Madison Apprenticeship Program

Madison Apprenticeship Program gives Allied-Dunn residents another shot at success
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Don Cornelius passed on today at the age of 75. He opens our daily celebration of Black History Month 2012. Don Cornelius was the creator of the iconic show “Soul Train”. The show featured a number of up and coming black entertainers throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Legends such as Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, James Brown, and many others graced the Soul Train stage. Mr. Cornelius suffered a stroke and other major health issues that led to his apparent suicide. May God bless his spirit with peace on the other side.

Thank you Don Cornelius for your work, vision, and legacy! Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends. Your obedient servant, RevGHLK

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Text: Proverbs 12:11

Introduction

• We are still dealing with the theme — 2012: The Year of Wise Execution
• The spirit gave me a thought or quote I’d like to share with you.
• “When one accepts the reality of death, they receive the power to live.”

“Walking a New Road” by Jim Rohn

• Paragraphs 1-2 (((summarize)))
  • “Ten years from now you will surely arrive. The question is, where?”
  • ““Do not kid myself anymore” day…I didn’t want to be disillusioned anymore.”
  • Crossed-finger theory
  • Proverbs 12:11 NIV, “He who works his land will have abundant food, but he who chases fantasies lacks judgment.”
• Paragraphs 3-4 (((read aloud)))
  • A few minor changes may be the only thing between you and your destiny.
    • Bible Knowledge — There are 1189 chapters in the bible. If starting March 1, 2012 you read four chapters a day, you would be finished reading the entire bible by December 23, 2012. And if you extend your goal date to December 31, 2012, you will have eight grace days in case you get behind schedule here and there.
    • Prayer Life — Commit yourself to praying a short prayer before bed and when first waking up. Commit yourself to praying at, at least one good hour (6, 7, 9, 12 am/pm) per day. Commit yourself to reading the current (or a past) meditation at least once per week. Commit yourself to keeping a handwritten list of all saints, friends, and family that need prayer—and pray down the list throughout the week. Do these four things for several months, you will end up with a stronger prayer life than the average person.
    • Financial Life — For the young people… If you put $500 in a Roth IRA (a retirement account) when you’re 18 and don’t touch it for 50 years, you’ll have approximately $27k when you turn 68. Add an extra $100 a year and it’ll increase to $93k. Start with $1000 you’ll have approximately $54k. Add an extra $100 a year and it’ll increase to 120k.
• Paragraphs 5-7 (((read aloud)))
  • “Hoping without acting. Wishing without doing.” — Faith without works is dead. (James 2:14-26)
  • “I don’t want to make any more errors. Now’s the time to adjust my daily program to take me where I want to go.”

Conclusion

• Father Hurley left us everything we need to success.
• The tools and keys are at our disposal to overcome all our troubles.

Walking a New Road by Jim Rohn

Here is a good question to ask yourself.  Ten years from now you will surely arrive. The question is, where? We don’t want to kid ourselves about where. We don’t want to kid ourselves about the road we’re walking.

At age 25, I had a day shortly after I met my mentor Mr. Shoaff called “do not kid myself anymore” day. I didn’t want to be disillusioned anymore. Up until then, I had been using the crossed-finger theory. But after meeting Mr. Shoaff, I finally decided that the crossed-finger theory was not going to get me what I wanted. That it wasn’t where the treasure lies. That I was going to have to make sure which way I was headed.

Then, with the help of Mr. Shoaff, I found with a few reading disciplines, and a few disciplines of mind, and a few disciplines of activity, that when exercised, can begin making all the difference in the world as to where you will arrive.

Just a few changes. Sometimes we get the idea that we’re doing about 10% and there’s about 90% more that we need in order to make the difference for our fortune, but probably the opposite is true. We’re doing enough things to have bought and shared in the good life so far. And maybe all we need is that extra 5% or 10% of intellectual change.  Activity change. A refinement of discipline. A refinement of thought. And all we need is the ideas to make those simple changes and the equity starts gathering in one year, three years, five years, 10 years.

I have a good comment for you: Now’s the time to fix the next 10 years. Now, you may have to come to grips with reality and with truth; that’s what was good for me when I met Mr. Shoaff. I was 25 years old, he was 44 years old. And he brought me a wealth of experience and he started asking me the tough questions. “Big question”, he said “Are you reading the books that are going to take you where you want to go  in the next 5 years?”

Excellent question. See, you want to make sure. I would assume for all of you, to get to where you want to be in the next 5 years, you are either reading the right books or you’re not. You’re either engaged in the disciplines or you’re not. But, here’s what we don’t want to engage in: disillusion. Hoping without acting. Wishing without doing.

The key is to take a look and say, “Where am I? What could I do to make the changes to make sure that I can take more certain daily steps toward the treasure I want: the mental treasure, the personal treasure, the spiritual treasure, the financial treasure? I don’t want to make any more errors. Now’s the time to adjust my daily program to take me where I want to go.”

In lecturing for more than 40 years, I’ve gotten letters and personal testimonies of people that have done such remarkable things with just a few suggestions. And that is why seminars, tapes and books can be so valuable. Here’s a key idea for us all to remember: We could all use a little coaching. When you’re playing the game, it’s sometimes hard to see it all.

But the key is to start right now making these changes to walk this new road. And here’s what’s exciting to me: just a few daily disciplines makes a great deal of difference in one year, three  years, five years. And before you know it, you will be walking a brand-new road.

http://www.jimrohn.com/

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Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are groups of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers, who come together voluntarily to give coordinated high quality care to the Medicare patients they serve. Coordinated care helps ensure that patients, especially the chronically ill, get the right care at the right time, with the goal of avoiding unnecessary duplication of services and preventing medical errors. When an ACO succeeds in both delivering high-quality care and spending health care dollars more wisely, it will share in the savings it achieves for the Medicare program.

https://www.cms.gov/ACO/

It is an important step and interesting concept. Of course, it has drawbacks. However, the American healthcare system has been spinning out of control for the last 50 years. We are committed to keeping our followers informed spiritually and materially.

Here are some informative articles on Accountable Care Organizations.

DMC, U-M Health System, Genesys tapped by feds for Medicare services, savings for seniors

Can Accountable-Care Organizations Improve Health Care While Reducing Costs?

Accountable Care Organizations, Explained

Affordable Care Act helps 32 health systems improve care for patients, saving up to $1.1 billion

AComg! The regulation that could determine the future of health care

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Text: 1 Kings 3; 1 Kings 10; Proverbs 4:1-8
Devotional Reading: Proverbs 4:7

1. Foundation of Lesson (Proverbs 4:7)
• “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.” (Proverbs 4:7)
• Wisdom is more than knowledge; it is knowledge, experience, and application.
   o A young person can be wise but they still need to have patience so that experience can take place.
• Understanding takes time. Understanding is necessary for any endeavor to be successful.

2. Solomon’s Dream—Solomon’s Heart (1 Kings 3:1-15)
• Solomon’s father David was near death. At the request of his leadership team, David appointed his son as king, because various factions were trying to overthrow the kingdom.
• Solomon was anointed, crowned, and went to pray and make public animal sacrifices (the religious law of the day).
• That night God can to Solomon in a dream and asked him what he wanted.
• Solomon asked for wisdom to perform justice toward and for the people placed in his charge.

3. Solomon’s Wisdom & Wealth (1 Kings 3:16-28; 1 Kings 10)
• The story in 1 Kings 3:16-28 is very interesting and worth reading. It shows Solomon’s great wisdom.
• First Kings 10 recounts the Queen of Sheba’s visit.
   o She wanted to see for herself if all the stories about Solomon were true.
   o After challenging him with many philosophical and life questions, she found him to have a wisdom far behind any other.
• Solomon’s great wealth…
   o In 1 Kings 10 alone, Solomon was given 25 tons of gold!
   o And even more telling, in verse 21 it says he received little silver because silver wasn’t as valuable as gold in his time. God will bless us with what we need at any given time!

4. Importance of Wisdom (Proverbs 4:1-8)
• Wisdom is a preservative.
• Wisdom is the key to success.
• Without wisdom our lives we remain stagnant.

Closing
• This declaration is critical—Wise Execution.
• We need to act wisely through prayer, fasting, studying, coming to church services, thinking, planning, and thinking again.
• However, if we don’t execute, all the wise planning will be in vain.
• The year 2012 will be the year we get busy doing the things we’ve been talking about for so long. Not just church matters but matters in our individual lives.

Postscript
• This sermon was put together on location. Our pastor was unable to attend service and it fell upon me to preach in her place. This outline can to me while sitting in the back corridor behind the altar. The subject—2012: The Year of Wise Execution—was the last piece that came to me.
• Thank God for his revelatory power. I’ve been publishing, through the Internet Ministry (www.FatherHurley.com), year declarations since 2008. This is the first one that I had the opportunity to share in a live service on the first service of the year. Again, I thank God.

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On this Martin Luther King Day morning, I wonder about the state of our nation. What is it that we’re after? Or are we so divided that the question of what “we” want has become nonsensical? Divisions of race, gender, sexual orientation, politics, religion, and so forth, have not disappeared. On one hand, division can be viewed positively as diversity, which is necessary in a successful democracy.

I heard a clip from Dr. King’s I Have a Dream speech on the radio which gave me pause. It reminded me of how each of us can and should make a difference. Yesterday, while reading through the constitution of the Universal Hagar’s Spiritual Church, it states that pastors (and ministers) should visit the sick (members and non-members) and be active in civic life. Those of us in the non-vocational ministry, i.e. we don’t get a living wage from the ministry; have a hard choice to make. The choice is stark, make a living and give the ministry its due time or reconsider why we’re in the ministry at all.

I then heard a brief clip from NAACP president Ben Jealous that stopped me cold. He pointed out that Dr. King learned the importance of social activism from his father and grandfather. Jealous emphasized that those of us born in the 1970s and 1980s were largely cut off from this tradition. We were taught that color doesn’t matter and somehow civil rights successes from the 1960s did all the work. As Rev. Al Sharpton said several week ago, civil rights/activism are still important, if for no other reason than to maintain the ground we’ve already gained.

This ministry has been given the rallying cry—2012: The Year of Wise Execution. The need to read, study, pray, fast, develop patience, meditate, and think first will always be critical to success. BUT if we never execute, how will we make the changes that are so desperately needs in our homes, schools, businesses, municipalities, city halls, county offices, state houses, federal agencies, and the three branches of government. Change comes through action (execution) which is born out of an emancipated thought-process (wisdom).

This is my year, your year, and our year. If you don’t do something now, then when will you? Many goals can’t be completely quickly. But to use that as an excuse to do nothing can no longer be accepted. Brothers and sisters, ladies and gentlemen, please do something this year. Act out the faith of the apostles. Act out the faith of Christ. Act out the faith of our righteous leaders. Act out the faith of the great men and women of history. Act out your faith, the faith that you have developed! Act out the faith that works. For we know, faith without works is dead (James 2).

I have the honor to be your obedient servant,
Rev. George H. Latimer-Knight
Written January 16, 2012 at age 30

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I will post the sermon outline and explanation later in the week. I just wanted to share that portion with you. We’ve prayed, shouted, and begged long enough. EXECUTE WISELY. Just do it! Go forth and live. Amen.

Your obedient servant,
Rev. George H. Latimer-Knight

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According to the U.S. Department of Defense, Private LaVena Lynn Johnson killed herself on July 19, 2005, eight days before her twentieth birthday. Exactly how did she end her life? She punched herself in the face hard enough to blacken her eyes, break her nose, and knock her front teeth loose. She douched with an acid solution after mutilating her genital area. She poured a combustible liquid on herself and set it afire. She then shot herself in the head. Despite this massive self-inflicted trauma, she somehow managed to drag her then fully clothed body into the tent of a KBR contractor, leaving a trail of blood along the way and set the tent ablaze in a failed attempt to cover up her crimes against herself.

If this story sounds plausible to you, you may have missed your calling as an officer in the U.S. Army, because Army officers, speaking with a straight face, would have you believe that such a thing is not only possible, but actually happened.

In reality, LaVena Johnson was raped, beaten, and murdered by someone on a military base in Balad, Iraq, and the Army doesn’t want you to know about it. Army officers most especially didn’t want her parents to know about it, so they concocted the suicide story, informing them that their daughter had shot herself in the head in her barracks.

When LaVena’s body was returned to her parents, however, her father, Dr. John Johnson, immediately noticed that her nose was broken and her lip was torn. He was surprised to discover that her gloves were glued to her hands (as it turns out, to hide burns). As a former military man himself, he also recognized that the exit wound from the bullet could not possibly have come from the weapon the military claimed LaVena used to kill herself. He knew then that the Army was lying to him, that his daughter had been murdered. He made these discoveries three years ago. Today, the Army is still lying to him, and to us.

LaVena Johnson enlisted in the U.S. Army after graduating from a Missouri high school because she believed it was right to serve her country. She loved America, was very patriotic, and she thought joining the military was the best way to express that patriotism. Although her mother had assumed that her daughter, a violinist and honor student, would go straight to college, LaVena had made other plans. After her death, her company commander described her as having been “clearly happy” during her time in the Service. She enjoyed her job, took pride in it, and cared about the U.S. Army.

Unfortunately, the Army did not care about her. In fact, the disdain and contempt in which the Army held – and continues to hold – her seems to have no bounds. Her father stated last year in an interview given for a Missouri television station that the U.S. Army “turned on her” after her murder. I differ with Dr. Johnson on only one point: the U.S. Army never did give a damn about his daughter.

In a heart-wrenching interview conducted last month with LaVena’s parents, her mother, Linda Johnson, describes the members of the military responsible for this cover-up as “lying demons.”After filing a FOIA request for release of a CD-ROM contained in LaVena’s file but withheld from the family for over two years, and under added pressure from a congressman, the Army finally gave the Johnsons the CD. On it they found horrific photographs from the autopsy that clearly showed the extent of their daughter’s injuries. It proved that the original black and white photos of LaVena’s body originally sent to them had been doctored. Also on the disk were damning sketches of the crime scene that gave her parents further information contradicting the Army’s statements.

One wonders whether LaVena would have enlisted in the Army if she had known that Veterans Administration statistics show that one third of the women who serve in the military are victims of sexual assault by a fellow soldier. Or if she had known about an emerging pattern of “suicides” of women soldiers who were also victims of sexual assault.

According to the Department of Defense FY07 Report on Sexual Assault in the Military,
“The Army remains committed to thoroughly investigate and take appropriate action in all unrestricted reports of sexual assault,” and the Department of Defense “continues its commitment to eradicate sexual assault in the military services.”

Military leaders have no real interest in stopping sexual assaults. If they did, LaVena Johnson’s rape and murder would be included in their statistics. But they would rather not admit that these crimes occur if they don’t have to. So, if the victim is dead, all the better. Just report that death as a suicide.

LaVena Johnson was awarded a posthumous promotion to Private First Class, a bone thrown to her family, no doubt. But her spirit cries out for justice. Please call your representatives in Congress and demand action on her case. The telephone number for the U.S. Capitol switchboard is 202/224-3121. Please help her parents to obtain a proper investigation of their daughter’s death. The major media have ignored LaVena’s story, and without a vociferous public demand for action the government will continue to stonewall.

LaVena Johnson was raped and murdered. Do not let the military sweep this under the rug.

August 4, 2008

Elizabeth Higgs [send her mail] is a wife and mother living in Covington, Louisiana.

Copyright © 2008 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

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I can agree with the fundamental premise of why he’s a Conservative Democrat. One the one hand people should pick themselves up, work hard, and fight for success. On the other hand, society has an obligation to help those who can’t help themselves and the working poor. This is where my political thoughts generally led me. There has to be a demand for both personal responsibility and community responsibility.

Your obedient servant,
Rev. George H. Latimer-Knight

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