Colin Powell is above all a soldier. He loves his country and has dedicated his life to its service. His devotion to the U.S. Army is extraordinarily deep. Those qualities make him a fine man. They did not, however, make him a good secretary of state. Given the ideological proclivities of the Bush administration, perhaps Powell never had a chance. Perhaps no one should have had illusions about what he might accomplish.

The world took much reassurance from Powell's appointment. He was a moderate in a sea of hard-liners. He was a straight shooter. He believed in traditional diplomacy and international community building. His bona fides as a military man seemed to give him standing to challenge the Pentagon when that was necessary.

Powell came to the Army during Vietnam. He saw that conflict destroy the institution he loved, and he devoted two decades to rebuilding it, professionalizing it, putting the military back in charge of its own affairs, giving the professional officer corps a strong voice in how it was used. By the time of the Gulf War, the transformation was complete.

Nothing so exemplified it as Powell's doctrine: Go to war as a last resort; go with overwhelming force; go only with the unified support of the American people, and go with a clear strategy for consolidating the victory and leaving the battlefield. Iraq meets not a one of those criteria.

Who can ever forget Powell's dramatic presentation to the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, in which he made the case for going to war with Iraq? Few people trusted Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush on Iraq. But here was Colin Powell, the wise head, saying we must do this, agreeing with that other wise head, Tony Blair. Those two could not be dismissed. But they were wrong, and they had reason to know they were wrong.

Powell put up the good fight, especially against Rumsfeld. But without support from Bush and Cheney, Powell's efforts were doomed. He was outgunned time and again. In retrospect, it's difficult to understand why Powell ever took the job. He had no relationship with Bush and held an entirely different worldview from the president and those close to him. Surely he could anticipate the battles he would need to fight, and surely he had to know he would lose most of them. Just as surely, those who banked on Powell's ability to sway events should have known they were willing themselves to hope for too much.

Powell did have his victories, too. He was personally responsible for preventing what seemed like almost inevitable war between India and Pakistan. He successfully pushed Bush to pay more attention to Africa, to AIDS and to other humanitarian issues. But on too many of the large issues -- North Korea, Iran, Iraq and especially on the need to pay heed to the views of other important nations -- Powell might as well have been talking to a rock.

Powell's leave-taking is emblematic of his tenure: The possibility of a breakthrough in the Palestinian question is palpable right now, and Powell wanted to stay on a few months to see if he could make some progress. Bush told him no.

So now Powell leaves the scene, to be replaced by Condoleezza Rice, a Bush loyalist. As national security adviser, Rice failed miserably at that job's central task: being the president's honest broker between Defense, State and the CIA to ensure Bush got the best advice. Her primary task at State apparently will be the same as Porter Goss' role at CIA: To strip the agency of those career professionals who had the guts to tell the White House things it didn't want to hear -- unpleasant truths that it needed to hear. Bush will hear no more dissenting voices. As in the campaign, there will be no admissions of mistakes. There will be no course corrections.

Powell tried to warn of that cliff ahead from the inside. He should have quit and gone public with his warning long, long ago.

Let me just say I am in total agreement with him.

(CNN) -- You don't want to get Bill Cosby angry.

And Bill Cosby is angry.

Cosby's ire is focused at the African-American community: its rates of juvenile delinquency, its parenting, the coarse language of its youth. You can do better, he exhorts his audiences. Don't let yourself be victims, and especially don't let the poorest in the community let themselves be victims.

"This is about little children ... and people not giving them better choices," he told Paula Zahn in an interview for CNN's "Paula Zahn Now." "Talking. Talking. Parenting. Correctly parenting. That's what it's about. And you can't blame other things. You got to -- you got to straighten up your house. Straighten up your apartment. Straighten up your child."

This is not the smiling, avuncular commercial spokesman for Jell-O and Coca-Cola. This is not the wisecracking tennis coach of "I Spy," or the jokey stand-up comedian of "Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow ... Right" and "To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With," or the fast-talking guy of "Uptown Saturday Night."

This Bill Cosby is more like the man who told his TV son Theo, "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it" in an early episode of "The Cosby Show."

Times 10.

And he doesn't care who knows it. Some of his critics have attacked him for airing what they see as the black community's dirty laundry in public. Others said that Cosby should also be condemning establishment institutions that, in their view, helped create the situation.
"Judgment of the people in the situation is not helpful. How can you help them is the question," said hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, founder of Def Jam Records and the Phat Farm clothing line.

Let 'em rant, Cosby says.
"Let them stay mad as long as they don't have good sense," he told Zahn. "I don't care what right-wing white people are thinking. ... How long you gonna whisper about a smallpox epidemic in your apartment building when bodies are coming out under the sheets?"

Focus on education
To get the message out, Cosby has organized and continues to organize town hall meetings in inner city communities where community leaders -- from police chiefs to district attorneys to parents to schoolteachers -- get everyone to talk about how to help give kids better choices.
Cosby first caused controversy after making a speech at a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision that struck down school segregation.

"People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around. ... The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting," he said, addressing an audience of Washington VIPs.

"Brown versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem. We have got to take the neighborhood back. ... They are standing on the corner and they can't speak English."
A number of commentators have defended Cosby, including NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, who shared the dais with Cosby, and black newspaper columnists Clarence Page and Leonard Pitts Jr.

Cosby on "Cosby," his '90s sitcom. "The Cosby Show," his previous program, was one of the leading shows of the '80s.

"He's pissed a lot of people off," Kevin McCaskill, principal of a vocational high school in Springfield, Massachusetts, told "Paula Zahn Now." McCaskill has worked with Cosby on educational programs. "[But] he simply said this is what is occurring, what are we going to do about it, without excuses. ... It's not about Kevin McCaskill nor do I think it's about Bill Cosby. It's about what do we have to offer to make people the best they can possibly be."
Cosby has a longstanding interest in education. The actor earned a doctorate in the subject from the University of Massachusetts and has made shows, such as the Saturday morning cartoon "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids," with an emphasis on teaching. (Indeed, "Fat Albert" was the subject of his dissertation.)

The comedian is also symbolic of what he preaches. Raised in a poor Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, neighborhood, he dropped out of high school to join the Navy but later earned his diploma through a correspondence course.
He acknowledges he could push the limits as a youngster. A teacher called him "a schemer with a high IQ."

But, he told Zahn, "what kept me out of trouble is going right to the edge and then ... thinking that my mother would be embarrassed, and that I didn't want to embarrass her, and that my father would be embarrassed, and I just didn't want to do that to my family."
He earned an athletic scholarship to the city's Temple University and worked nights as a bartender -- which is how his comedy talent was discovered.

In the 1960s, Cosby was a trailblazer. Other black comedians of the time focused their routines around race; Cosby told tales of childhood. On the other hand, Cosby was one of the first African-Americans to star in a TV series, "I Spy" -- and received equal billing with his co-star, Robert Culp, to boot. He won three Emmys for his performance in the series. His comedy LPs won Grammys.

'Make them think'

"The Cosby Show," which began in 1984 and was TV's No. 1 series for several years, cemented Cosby's status. The show didn't talk down to its audience and simply assumed the success of its black characters: Cosby's obstetrician, Dr. Cliff Huxtable; his lawyer wife, Clair; their five children and, later, grandchild; and their comfortable life in the upscale New York City neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights.

"When it came time for the Huxtables, it was off of my routines," he told CNN. "And I was watching television and I noticed that a number of television series had these little ... children who were brighter than the parents."
He wanted to change that around.

"Our children ... were never brought up to feel that comfortable that they could call the parents stupid. First of all, they're not working. They're homeless," he told Zahn with some amused exasperation. "You can't do that."

Cosby's career hasn't always run smoothly. An early '70s series, "The Bill Cosby Show," and a mid-'70s variety effort, "Cos," both tanked. He made two movies during the "Cosby Show" run, "Leonard Part 6" and "Ghost Dad," both of which failed at the box office.
There's no guarantee that his education and parenting crusade will pay off, either. As a 67-year-old multimillionaire entertainer old enough to be the crotchety grandfather of today's teens, he knows it's going to be hard to make people listen.

But he's going to try, full speed ahead.
"When I say, 'I don't care what white people think,' I mean that. I mean, I'm addressing my people, period," he told CNN. "I'm telling you. I want all this loud profanity in the street stopped. ... I want you to stop doing things that are detrimental to your getting at least an education with a high school credential. I'm talking to the people who are dropping out."
Even if all this means taking a hit in his popularity?

"Maya Angelou said, 'You know, Bill, you're a very nice man, but you have a big mouth,' " he said. "So I just want to be the big mouth and make them work, make them work, make ... make them think."

Okay..baaack to the sister in law. My brothers first wife was black , but she was an olive skinned black person with straight black hair. She had a white father and her mother was black. The child my brother and her had was olive also with curly black hair. My brother is a dark, black man.

In comes the sister in law who as you know already is white. My nephew for the first 10 years of his life has always referred to himself as black and viewed himself as that. During the summer last summer he was in town and we were all sitting around --me, him, my mother --talking about school coming in the fall and filling out school forms. I cannot recall how exactly it came up but we were talking about the large percentage of biracial children and how those percentages were increasing. We were talking about what they would check when it comes to race.

The old adage in America was that if you had a drop of black blood in your veins you were black. Given changes in time that has changed some. Biracial is now on the forms today along with alot of other choices. My nephew said that he was no longer black. He had been told by my sister in law to check white or bi-racial. White!! My mother looked atme. I looked at her. I then asked my nephew why he would check white. He said it was because my sister in law told him to and they had talked about it and he could be any race he wants to check.

???? What is up with that. I think that is wrong as she is not his biological mother.
My brother has full custody and he lives with my brother and SIL.

I have a sister-in-law now just happens to be of the caucasian persuasion. Yes. She was born that way. We did not have to use crayolas on her skin. But let me tell you, she is blacker than any black person I know. (Blacker than me and I am not too black..I am an oreo remember! GTFOOH!) She and my brother have been married now for 3 years. The have a family: 1 son from a first marriage, a baby that is theirs--2 years old and now a new baby on the way. We just got the news about the new baby.

When they got pregnant the first time, it was my mother who took it upon herself to send some baby things to them before the child arrived. She sent a huge box about every month or so. In the end she had sent so much stuff that she has completly outfitted the baby in clothes from birth to about 2 years old. I kid you not. That baby would have wanted for nothing. My mother bought onesies, clothes, towels, socks, shoes, blankets....literally and mean literally EVERYTHING that child could want or need for 2 solid years. My brother and sister in law would have to buy NOTHING for that baby...my niece. With a black grandmother you know that was the best dressed child. No expense was spared for her.

I think the black must have rubbed off from my brother. Next thing you know about a month before the baby comes, they begin to act cool toward my mother and me too. We do not know why. We let it go..or at least my mother does. My brother if her favorite...(and do not let me get into that yet) so whatever he says or does is golden. I have had the better education...I completed college, have a professional job...yadayadayada...but I am the black sheep for some reason in her eyes. My brother dropped out of college and works in retail but somehow that is still a better standing in her eyes. He is golden.

So...my mother mentions to me that she thinks sister in law is acting funny and is short on the phone. They have the baby. We do not get to see the baby right away because her family from Vermont has to come first. They live about 2 states away from me. So we are told we have to wait. The Vermontians came first. We finally do get to see the baby live about 2 months after she arrives. In the interim we see lots of pictures that are sent and posted on a family photo album on AOL.

Funny how those pictures look. The baby has on tyedied onesies. WHAT THE HELL???!! TYE DYE. WHERE THE HELL DID THAT COME FROM???? And all the colors are hard colors for a baby...nothing in any pink at all. My mother had bought all pink and she sure as hell would not buy anything tye dyed. We waited and looked at the next batch of pictures. The baby is dressed in bright red dresses and other really hard primary colors for a newborn and of course there are more different tye dyed onesies. And no soft pink blankets that my mother bought. She is wrapped in the plaid blankets you get in the hospital.

My mother finally got the nerve to make mention of it in a phone call. How come there were no pictures of the baby in anything my mom sent????? My brother says he leaves all decisions about that up to my sister in law. So my mom asked her. My sis-in-law said that she has worn some things but she did not know what outfits came from who??? STRANGE as all the outfits would have been from my mother. She would not have needed anything.

Time passes and the baby clothes remains foremost in my mom's thoughts as not one thing she purchased has she ever seen the baby in . They come to our state for a visit and I ask, when we are all sitting around the living room, about the clothes my mom sent. Do you know what that heifer said happened to all the things my mother gave her. She said she recycled them.

RECYCLED THEM! I asked her what the hell that meant. She said she gave them away to all her coworkers who had babies. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Recycling brand new baby clothes that you need??? A fight broke out. Verbal. Next thing my brother is up in my mother's face saying, "You think you the only one who can by clothes for the baby?!" Yes the black has worn off of him somehow, someway. He also said, "you did not buy us what we needed as we had to buy onesies." That did it! Next thing my mother is yelling telling my brother that they did not have to buy onesies as she had bought them in every size...many of them in every size..so that she would be completely outfitted in onesies until she was 2 years old.

She then told him some of the other things she sent and asked if he had seen any of them. He said no he had left all that to my sister in law. So he had no idea what was sent and she just got rid of them. She was so stupid she got rid of the stuff they needed. My brother got silent at that point and heifer did not say a word. She just said again that she recycled them to some of her coworkers who were also having babies.

My mother was crushed. I bet she spent about $1000 on that baby all told. She was thinking if they had all the little stuff they could get the big stuff like car seats and cribs. But no...whose crib and car seat did they beg for to take back with them that visit. My daughters. I was disgusted with them both. Totally disgusted. My mother was and IS still crushed by that.

She talks about that at least once a week to me. Needless to say we do not sent any sort of clothes for the baby anymore. All occassions are marked with the giving of TARGET gift cards ...about $25 so that they can get what they want. My mother spends time each week talking about all the things she will not be getting for the new baby. She has learned her lesson. So have I.

With all that there is some satisfaction in there for me. What goes around really does come back around. The favorite golden child who got everything is now treating my mother badly. Me who was not the favorite can look on that and say to myself...see, he really was not golden and really never has been. Now she can really see the truth that I have always seen. Sometimes when you get to actually see "what goes around comes around", it helps. It helps me with the pain I have felt all these years knowing that he was the favorite and me being treated like the outcast.

I can honestly say lessons can be learned at any age. My mother is learning some with my sister in law. Heifers can be really MEAN!

Dang!  I work in an office with about 65 employees in it and I swear we have some of the greediest people working there.  This just gets on my last nerve.  Let me tell you about it.

Whenever the office throws a party or an office luncheon there is normally food left over.  They are normally catered events.   When it  is over, normally an email is sent around telling us there we can have lunch tomorrow.   Well, that food usually never makes it to the next day becasue all the other black employees...not me...basically steal it and take it home.  To me it is stealing. 

They bring baggies from home and load up the food and take it home  in their briefcases and big purses.  And don't let it be a Friday.  They come in saturday and load up.  It makes me sick!  Not only that, they will bring in empty lunch boxes or walmart bags and store stuff in.  I will never forget the time I found a blue walmart bag loaded down with cold cuts hidden away in the office freezer.

Why are these people acting like they are homeless?  These are people who make $50,000 plus per year. Make me sick!  And of course all the white people talk about them...so much so that even if something is offered for employees to take home, I refuse to take  it.  I refuse to be lumped together with that group.

Guuuuuurl!! Whad up with you? Did you not look in the mirror before leaving the house? Where was your stylist? On a 15 minute break? Why did you listen to Lil Kim about what to wear? Where was ya momma? She could have helped you pick a dress to wear. Hoochie must be the way you plan to go with these outfits.
 More Hoochie Serena!

Even More Hoochie Serena!

What do yall think of these pictures?

It must be that time for PMS or very near that time. Each month I get one big annoying pimple that is no annoying. Sometimes I get more than 1 but where it shows up, it will be a lone pimple. I hate it. You would think that when you hit your 40's that whole acne thing would be over but it is not. In fact sometimes, I think it may be worst than when I was a teen. Normally that one lone pimple will show up on my face near the jawline, or one loan pimple on my nose and it will not act like a normal pimple. No.. it has to be giant in size and it will not come to a head for a very lone time. It just gets bigger and bigger and it hurts.

I am an avid user of masks and exfoliatants, so when that one loan pimple shows up, I work extra on those areas. I mask it twice a day hoping to drawn it out. Nothing works. I then becomes most painful. I still continue to mask it 2 times aday to help it come to a head. Finally when I think it will never go away and it may be there for at leat a week just hanging out, growing, it looks like it may finally get a head on it. Still it is not enought. So I continue the masking and exfoliating. Finally it will come to a head and I surgically(( with a sterilized needle and peroxide)) puncture it to get rid of it. That is normally such a relief because the skin around is swollen and the release of pressure will end all the pain. Then I can work on healing it. It must be that time because several lone pimples have just cropped up. When I am stressed then several will come and not just the one. I just got rid of a loan pimple that was near the corner of my eye in the very soft skin aroudn the eye. It was there for a week and it was the most painful ever.

Whoever heard of a pimple just under the eye..not on the face, but in the eye socket area. I could not use a needle there. I mean, you are not supposed to use things like masks or exfolialants in the eye area. I used a buff pupp and the most gentle mask Estee Lauder had. Now I have another on my left shoulder blade...just one. And one on the nape of the neck...just one. And of course I cannot really reach those to well. I can mask and use the loofah. The lone pimples of course on dark skin leaves a mark...a dark little scar. Those marks seem to last forever. We all want to have clear skin...at least I do. I have found that if you use a bleaching cream you can lighten those dak marks and they will fade away after a few months of use. This year, since about April I have been using a fade cream consistently. There was a time in my mid to late 30's when I did not have any sort of monthly breakout and I thought that time in my life was over as far as skin blemishes. But noooooooo. 40 + came and here I am with skin like a teen again. What gives???

History 

When discussing the twentieth century, we often compare and contrast life from the year 1900 to the year 2000. We all realize that in the year 1900, people didn't have cars, couldn't fly in airplanes, and didn't have microwaves. Yet, there is another item that those in the year 1900 did not have and those in the year 2000 took for granted - Oreo cookies. Most of us have grown up with Oreo cookies. There are photos of us with chocolaty remnants smeared across our faces. They've caused great disputes as to the best way to eat them - dunking them in milk or twisting off one side and eating the middle first. Besides eating them plain, there are recipes galore on how to use Oreos in cakes, milkshakes, and additional desserts. Oreos had become part of twentieth century culture. Though most of us have spent a lifetime cherishing Oreo cookies, did you know that since their introduction in 1912, the Oreo cookie has become the best selling cookie in the U.S.?

Oreos Are Introduced

In 1898, several baking companies merged to form the National Biscuit Company (NaBisCo), the maker of Oreo cookies. By 1902, Nabisco created Barnum's Animal cookies and made them famous by selling them in a little box designed like a cage with a string attached (to hang on Christmas trees). In 1912, Nabisco had a new idea for a cookie - two chocolate disks with a creme filling in between. The first Oreo cookie looked very similar to the Oreo cookie of today, with only a slight difference in the design on the chocolate disks. The shape and design of the Oreo cookie didn't change much until Nabisco began selling various versions of the cookie.

In 1975, Nabisco released their DOUBLE STUF Oreos. Nabisco continued to create variations: 1987-Fudge covered Oreos introduced 1991-Halloween Oreos introduced 1995-Christmas Oreos introduced Now, how does all that relate to me? It relates to me in that I have been referred to as an Oreo cookie for the vast majority of my childhood.

As a woman of color I look back on that with disgust. Really. Many of the neighborhood kids called me that just because I had better diction than they did. I guess I spoke like a "white person" but I was black---hence the oreo cookie comparison. Black on the outside and white on the inside. Could I help in that I took my education seriously and so did all in my family? Both my parents went to college and degrees and master degrees. I guess the neighborhood we lived in was not affluent so not everyone took advantage of an education. Fine. That is your choice to be a drop out or a crack head but making gun of others trying to get ahead? That is just like our people. Some of our people. We just cannot stand to see some of us get ahead.

Crab Antics

That is what a lot of black people practice. Crab antics. We are just like a barrel of crabs. All thrown in together, scrabbling to get ahead and if one does, all the others grab the crab at the top and pull him back down. You watch a barrel of crabs. You will see. Don't hate me just because I have good diction. Open a book. Study. Read. You too can be articulate.

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