Casey Thomas will officially throw his hat into the ring to unseat Dave Neumann on Friday at 11:00 a.m. Thomas will make his announcement at Tejano Restaurant at 110 W. Davis St. in Dallas.
Casey wants to represent District 3 which stretches from West Dallas, through Kessler Park and as far south as Mountain Creek. Should be a fun event.
As promised, here are my New Year’s Resolutions for 2009.
1. Drink less than 25 sodas.
2. Eat 125 bowls of Khashi cereal.
3. Read 12 Books (2 Fiction)
4. Finish rough draft of my book by March 1.
5. Read the entire Old Testament
6. Bike 500 miles.
7. Transcribe one scripture each day.
8. Attend NABJ Conference in Tampa.
9. Cook Turkey and Dressing for either Thanksgiving or Christmas.
I’ll update everyone on my progress throughout the year.
BY JASON JOHNSON
Don’t dive head first into that pool when it comes to your resolutions. Take it slow. Ease your way into the pool. Start at the shallow end. Spend some time in waist-deep water.
More specifically here is what I would recommend for you starting January 5th. Make S.M.A.R.T goals. Smart is an acronym for Specific,Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Tangible.
S-specific. Try to be very specific with your goals and write it down. Study after study has documented the correlation between writing down goals and achieving the goals. It works. Write the goal on paper and keep it somewhere visible as a constant reminder. For example, don’t say “I want to lose weight.” Instead, make your goal “I want to lose 30 lbs by March 1st.”
M-measureable. This goes hand in hand with specific. Try to make your goals measurable. By measurable, I am talking about things like pounds, inches, percentage of bodyfat, distance, etc. For example, a measurable goal would be “I want to weigh 140 lbs by March 1st ” “I want to be 12% bodyfat by June 1st.”Or, “I want to run a 5K by June 1st”
A-attainable. You need to make a goal that isn’t too easy to accomplish, but also not too hard to accomplish. Make sure the goal is within your limits.
R-realistic. This goes hand in hand with an attainable goal. But more specifically, you need to be realistic about where you currently stand in terms of fitness. Realistically, how much do you know about nutrition? How much do you know about exercising? These are questions to ask yourself when setting your goal.
T-timely. The goal needs to have some kind of time frame. For example, “…by June 1st” or “….by Memorial Day.” By giving your goal a time-specific deadline, you are much more likely to achieve your personal fitness goal.
Again, don’t just dive head first, take it slow. Ease your way into the water. Starting January 5th, exercise 1-2 times during the week. How about a Monday workout to jump start your week, and a Thursday workout to cruise you into the weekend? Make 1 or 2 positive changes to your diet this week. Cut out down on the regular sodas this week. Add vegetables to at least 1 meal.
Make this your year. Good luck in 2009!
8. The story of Clarence Otis Jr. – Darden CEO leads Red Lobster and Olive Garden Jan 10th
I received an email regarding Mr. Otis and thought it would be a great story to share with the Dallas South Family. There were a number of folks who were glad to know C.O. was out there doing it big as the CEO of Darden Restaurants Inc., the largest casual dining operator in the nation. Darden is the parent company of Olive Garden and Red Lobster.
The story was later picked up in the North Dallas Gazette. (16 comments)
I received an email from CNN asking if I would promote Soledad O’Brian’s upcoming special about the Martin Luther King Assassination. I agreed and then sent a message back requesting an interview with Soledad via email. CNN responded and apologized for not being able to meet my request, but asked me if I were interested in a live telephone interview. Uh….yeah
Soledad was so cool. We talked before and after the interview about the special and some of the folks she met while working on it. I had the chance to interview her again for CNN’s Black in America. (15 Comments)
At the time, it was nice to see that the voters of Iowa -overwhelmingly white- would deem Barack Obama worthy of being the Democratic presidential nominee. But at the time, it still didn’t seem very realistic that this would turn into any national trend.
Yet when Obama took the podium on that January night, a night he identified as a “defining moment in history,” he seemed presidential. He seemed like a man that might be able to actually pull it off. I was behind him, but I still didn’t think it would happen. (2 comments)
C.A.W. Clark was one of the truly great preacher/pastors this country has ever seen. I had the opportunity to meet him in my grandmother’s living room when I was a child and my uncle served as an armor bearer for Dr. Clark.
He was often listed by Ebony magazine as one of America’s 15 best preachers. Clark’s homegoing was celebrated by dignitaries from all over the city and all over the nation.
Everyone on the internet owes Sarah Palin a little gratitude for all the traffic that she sent our way at the end of 2008. This email that I received from a Wasilla, Alaska resident is proof of that.
After checking it for authenticity, I posted the letter from Anne Kilkenny and the comments started rolling in. The next day Dallas South was listed on page one of Google searches for the term Anne Kilkenny. This is still tied for the most commented about story ever on Dallas South. (77 Comments)
This wasn’t a particularly long post, but it was one of the first documentations on the web -outside of the Texas Dems site- about the peculiar way Democrats select their presidential choice in our state. We came to call it the Texas Two-Step, and prior to this year hardly anyone had heard of it.
This post was copied into emails and sent around the state by people trying to get the word out about the extra trip to the polls. It’s tied with the Kilkenny post for the most commented upon post. (77 comments)
The beating that Rev. Jeremiah Wright took in the media was personal for me. I had watched Dr. Wright come to our church for the last ten years teaching a gospel of love and social justice.
The man who had married Barack Obama, and baptized his children, was now being used as the one hope to derail his candidacy. But Obama used this as an opportunity to deliver a pivitol speech on race.
Dr. Wright’s plans for a peaceful retirement went out the window, and his relationship with Obama was over. I wrote my first non-local column for the Dallas Morning News after this post titled Black Preachers Speak Truth To Power. (56 comments).
I was typing feverishly while on the phone hosting the blog talk show just after CNN made the call. It didn’t take a lot of words to capture what had just happend:
Wow, who woulda thunk it. Yes we did. Yes we did. 6000 People at Friendship West tonight for President Barack Obama’s big moment. I have video that will be up on YouTube momentarily.
That truly was the moment. The moment that many of us had hoped for, but still wouldn’t allow ourselves to truly believe it was going to happen. After months of campaigning, live blogging, debating, and the whole nine, the dream was finally a reality. Barack Obama had been elected the 44th President of the United States. (2 comments)
What will 2009 have in store for him, for us, and for this great nation? Whatever it is, you know we’ll cover it here at Dallas South.
Happy New Year!!!!
I received a text message out of Louisiana today late this afternoon:
Mychal Bell arrested for shoplifting and assault for hitting a security guard with his elbow trying to get away.
A quick check of the net proved my source was right on it. According to the News-Star out of Monroe, Louisiana, Bell is free on bond after being arrested on Christmas Eve. He’s charged with shoplifting, resisting arrest and simple battery, related to an incident at Dillard’s in Pecanland Mall in Monroe. This comes less than less than a month after he completed a sentence for his role in a fight with classmate, Justin Barker, at Jena High School in 2006.
Here’s more from the Star-News article:
Scott said that personal and court experiences have led him to that conclusion. “He should at least have the presumption of innocence,” he said.
It’s hard to presume innocence when a brother is running through the parking lot. Back in February, Bryant R. Purvis, 19, -another Jena defendent- was arrested on a charge of assault causing bodily injury after an altercation at Hebron High School outside of Dallas.
This continues a sad story that has followed one of the biggest civil rights actions in recent memory. Money squabbles and run ins with the law give more ammunition to those who questioned the protests -and the vigorous defense of the Jena 6- in the first place. It’s another example of how our follow through on civil rights issues is sorely lacking.
BY JASON JOHNSON
2009 is right around the corner. One of the most common New Years Resolutions for many people is—> “This year, I’m going to lose weight!”
And what usually happens?
Burnout starts to kick in. By January 19th (2 weeks later) you skip the gym. Sleep in, instead of going to the gym, or run to the mall instead of going to the gym after work. The 6 times a week exercise routine, turns into once a week. You stop packing your lunch, and start going out to lunch again with co-workers.
So what can you do to keep your New Years Resolution of losing weight?
Find out Jason’s S.M.A.R.T. way to keep your resolutions in Part 2 on Tuesday. I’ll share my 2009 Resolutions with you on Wednesday so you all can help keep me accountable.
According to TheHill.com, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is calling for a United Nations investigation into Israel’s attacks on Gaza for what he sees as a disproportionate response to Hamas rocket attacks. Here are highlights from the article posted by
It’s been a tough few days for old Shawn. With Dallas South down since Friday, I really didn’t know what to do with myself. There’s good news and bad news as a result of this.
The good news is that the problems is that we’ve got so much traffic coming into Dallas South these days.
The bad news is that I have to find somewhere else to host the site. We’ll be good for a little while though.
So give me a little time to get my blogger legs back under me and we’ll be ready to finish the year out strong.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 /PRNewswire/ — Fully half (54%) of American women worry they or someone they know will be a victim of domestic violence. Younger women ages 18-29 are most worried, with more than two-thirds (68%) saying they are worried about this threat. Of these younger women, 36 percent say they are “very worried” and 32 percent say they are “somewhat worried.”
In contrast, half (50%) of older women ages 30-70 say they are worried about domestic violence, with 23 percent of them saying they are “very worried” and 27 percent “somewhat worried.”
These results are reported in a recent YWCA USA survey report, What Women Want: a National Survey of Priorities and Concerns, based on a telephone survey of 1,000 women ages 18-70 conducted on Oct. 28 – Nov. 2 by Princeton Survey Research Associates International.
Race is another factor that influences women’s degree of concern about domestic violence. Six in 10 (60%) Black women say they worry about being a victim or knowing someone who is a victim of domestic violence, compared with 52 percent of White women. Further, 34 percent of Black women say they are “very worried” about domestic violence, compared with 23 percent of White women.
“These are truly frightening survey findings,” said Lorraine Cole, PhD, YWCA USA’s CEO. “That so many women live in such fear of domestic violence is shocking. I hope the new Obama administration will do everything to eliminate this scourge of domestic violence and work with us to make sure every woman is safe in her home and intimate relationships.”
Statistics help explain women’s anxiety. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 1.3 million American women are physically assaulted by an intimate partner each year and among women who are murdered, one-third is killed by a current or former husband or boyfriend. Further, 19% of women raped each year are victimized by a current or former intimate partner. One million women are stalked each year. And one in 12 women will be stalked during their lifetime.
Other YWCA survey findings:
Two-thirds (66%) of all women and 73 percent of younger women say that addressing violence against women should be a top priority for President-elect Obama and Congress in the first year of the new administration. Most significant, eight in 10 Black women (83%) say violence against women should be a top priority.
Nearly one in five women (19%) considers violence against women the nation’s most pressing public health issue. This health issue ranked third after access to affordable, quality health care (37%) and the number of women without health insurance (26%).
The YWCA USA is a national not-for-profit membership organization dedicated to social service, advocacy, education, leadership development and racial justice. Established in the United States in 1858, the YWCA is the oldest and largest national organization dedicated to the empowerment of women and girls and the elimination of racism. Through nearly 300 local associations located across the nation, the YWCA serves 2.5 million women and girls each year. Globally, the YWCA USA is a member of World YWCA that works in 122 countries and serves 25 million women and girls. For more information and to read the full survey report, visit http://www.ywca.org/.
Source: YWCA
WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Asian Americans are less attached to their racial identity than black Americans. This finding confirms that minority politics in the United States today is more complex than generally realized and that understanding the increasingly multicultural nature of the U.S. requires perspectives that incorporate, but go beyond, the black historical experience.
The study which led this finding was conducted by political scientists Jane Junn (Rutgers University) and Natalie Masuoka (Tufts University). It is entitled “Asian American Identity: Shared Racial Status and Political Context,” and appears in the December issue of Perspectives on Politics, a journal of the American Political Science Association (APSA). The article is available online at http://www.apsanet.org/media/pdfs/POPDec08Junn.pdf.
Asian Americans exhibit relatively high levels of economic and residential integration with mainstream white America, leading to predictions that they are assimilating more rapidly than black Americans and other minority or immigrant groups. They are also among the fastest growing minorities in the United States, having grown from less than 1 million people in 1960 to 14 million today. In political terms this growth has made Asian Americans a decisive swing vote in states such as California, New York, and Washington. Yet, despite their differences with black Americans, Asian Americans do exhibit racial consciousness in politics.
The study explores this phenomenon. It employs data drawn from the 2004 Ethnic Politics Survey, which included comparison groups of 354 Asian and 416 black Americans. The survey further divided the respondents into two groups, one of which was exposed to questions crafted to accentuate racial identification and measure the resulting sense of group identity. The outcome was that while the overall proportion of Asian Americans who say race is important in their racial consciousness is smaller than for blacks, in the experiment “Asian Americans showed strong results from the experimental manipulation, demonstrating substantial malleability.”
In their analysis, the authors identify three factors that drive Asian American group identity: state-sponsored racial classification, immigration policy, and racial stereotypes. They then assess how these factors structure the ways in which Asian Americans identify with their group: “We argue that racial identity for Asian Americans exists as a more latent identity compared to blacks, and we find Asian American group racial consciousness much more susceptible to the surrounding context,” state the authors. “In the multi-racial U.S. polity today,” they conclude, “we now have the opportunity to consider racial dynamics beyond the binary of black and white.”
For more data on the Asian American electorate in the 2008 election containing additional work by these authors and other researchers, visit the National Asian American Survey: http://www.naasurvey.com/.
The American Political Science Association (est. 1903) is the leading professional organization for the study of politics and has over 14,000 members in 80 countries. For more news and information about political science research visit the APSA media website, www.politicalsciencenews.org.
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