Change Comes to the White House

First Visit to the White House

44th President

Yes, We Can! Yes, We Did!!!!

The most amazing thing about this election

The most amazing thing about this election is the broad base of Obama's support...

...teachers, factory workers, Blacks, Caucasians, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians, women, young people, middle-aged, senior citizens, engineers, doctors, bankers, intellectuals, truck drivers, former statesmen, mail carriers, retail clerks, Northerners, wealthy, poor, middle class, Southerners, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Agnostics, Atheists, gay, straight, dentists, writers, college grads, high school dropouts,...

McCain supporters...

...kkk memebers, aryan brotherhood types, white supremacists, hate-mongers, racists, bigots, skinheads, die-hard Republicans, amerikan nazi party members, segregationists... T

Pro & Con John McCain - Barack Obama

Colin Powell endorses Obama

Money As Debt

Black "Crabs in a Bucket" Mentality; Prominent Blacks Slam Obama's Acceptance Speech

Me for Presidents?

Pat Buchanan Loved Obama's Convention Speech

Big Brother 2008

Dog Meat?

Earthlings

EARTHLINGS is a feature length documentary about humanity's absolute dependence on animals (for pets, food, clothing, entertainment, and scientific research) but also illustrates our complete disrespect for these so-called "non-human providers." The film is narrated by Academy Award nominee Joaquin Phoenix (GLADIATOR) and features music by the critically acclaimed platinum artist Moby.

Part 1: (watching) http://youtube.com/watch?v=GhxKnys7Ryw
Part 2: http://youtube.com/watch?v=7sRiH_Owq9U
Part 3: http://youtube.com/watch?v=N8U9dw-9U4E

ObamaChrist? This is Just Not Right...

The Future of Food

Now that's a BIG ________!

Jail for Sagging Pants?

I must first say that I don't personally wear sagging pants.  However, I believe that if I wanted to wear sagging pants, I should have the right to. Yes, it looks ignorant to me.

However, this is a "slippery slope" of a situation. If we accept this law, what else is under the radar?

Do we then make laws against wearing "wave caps" a certain way?

Do we then put restrictions on how small or big one's clothes have to be?

(Some could argue that this is yet another way to target young black men for arrest or for police intimidation)

Imagine a law stating that women or men cannot wear shirts or pants more than two sizes too big or one size to small. 

Would we then have "fashion police" measuring people and fining people for wearing a size 14 dress when they are really a size 10?

Ridiculous? Yes, it is. But, I think you get the point.

People should have the "right" to dress how they want to....regardless of how ignorant it looks. It is called personal expression. Once we allow the government to dictate how clothes should fit us, other personal expressions will start to be regulated as well.   

What do you think?

Love Never Fails

Macbook Heaven

I know I have been virtually absent from the blogging world for a while...but I am back now. I had been having some serious laptop problems. Long story which I would save for another day, another blog perhaps...To sum it up, I would advise people to switch from PCs to MACs....Why? "It just works!" (Actually, that is Apple's slogan for MACs)....

I just purchased my new Macbook on Saturday and I am ALREADY a PERMANENT MAC guy now...

Put simply, the whole operating system is just so much better than PC's Windows versions (especially Vista).

The free programs/applications are SPECTACULAR!

How about I turn on my Macbook and am able to surf the net or use an program/application in less than 5 seconds....Try that on a slow loading PC or PC laptop.

Deliberate Dumbing Down of America

Barack Obama's Speech on Father's Day (2008)

Water-fuel car unveiled in Japan

Jun. 13 - Japanese company Genepax presents its eco-friendly car that runs on nothing but water.

The car has an energy generator that extracts hydrogen from water that is poured into the car's tank. The generator then releases electrons that produce electric power to run the car. Genepax, the company that invented the technology, aims to collaborate with Japanese manufacturers to mass produce it.

Police to Seal Off D.C. Neighborhoods

According to an article from the examiner.com, a controversial new program announced today created so-called "Neighborhood Safety Zones" which would serve to partially seal off certain parts of the city. D.C. Police would set-up checkpoints in targeted areas, demand to see ID and refuse admittance to people who don't live there, work there or have a “legitimate reason” to be there.

WTF? Do we live in a "Police State?"

• Well, considering the current state of crime in urban and poor communities, I actually agree with their plan.
• Would this violate some peoples "rights?" Yes, and I don't care. If a "checkpoint" kept ignorant criminals out of a neighborhood by determining that they have no "real reason" for being in that area, I would wholeheartedly support the plan.
• What reasonable middle class homeowners honestly want random people walking around their neighborhood? If I saw any unfamiliar faces walking around my neighborhood, I would feel cautious and concerned about why they were in my neighborhood.
• Urban middle class communities will become "ghost towns" if the people in these communities do not feel safe. No urban middle class = no strong school/real estate tax, both which result in poor, disadvantaged communities.
  

What If Gas were over $12 a gallon?

Website Let's You Send Post-Rapture E-Mail

If millions of Christians suddenly disappear (via the Rapture) from the face of the Earth as the opening act for Armageddon, I would imagine that most nonbelievers would be too busy freaking the hell out to check their e-mail. But if they do log in, now they can be treated to some post-Rapture messages from their missing friends and loved ones, courtesy of web startup YouveBeenLeftBehind.com.

For just $40 a year, believers can arrange for up to 62 people to get a final message exactly six days after the Rapture, that day when -- according to Christian end times dogma -- Christians will be swept up to heaven, while doubters are left behind to suffer seven years of Tribulation under a global government headed by the Antichrist.

"You've Been Left Behind gives you one last opportunity to reach your lost family and friends for Christ," reads the website, which is purportedly run "by Christians, for Christians." The domain name is registered through an anonymous proxy service, presumably to protect the proprietors from the Forces of Darkness.

The e-mails will be triggered when three of the site's five Christian staffers "scattered around the U.S." fail to log in for six days in a row -- a system that incorporates a nice margin of safety, should two of the proprietors turn out to be unrepentant sinners or atheists.

Users can also upload up to 150 megabytes of documents, which will be protected by an unidentified encryption algorithm until the Rapture, then released to up to 12 nonbelievers of your choice. The site recommends that you use that storage to house sensitive financial information.

"In the encrypted portion of your account you can give them access to your banking, brokerage, hidden valuables, and powers of attorneys," the site says. "There won't be any bodies, so probate court will take seven years to clear your assets to your next of kin.

A few questions:

• How many Christians currently believe in the rapture?
• Can someone be a Christian and not believe in the rapture?
• What decent message could you possibly leave to those loved ones "left behind?

Possible letter:

Hey loved ones,

Well, if you receive this, I have been raptured to heaven. I don't want to say I told you so. But, I told you so.

Well, I imagine it is too late for you.

I will think of you and reflect upon my love for you for the rest of eternity while you burn in hell.

Love Always,

Your Raptured Loved One

Ghetto Cribs?

Where do they find these ignorant folks? Have they no shame or decency?

FULL SPEECH: Obama Declares Victory

The following remarks are the text as prepared for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., on June 3, 2008, his first speech after declaring victory in the Democratic nomination contest over Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. The speech was delivered in St. Paul, Minnesota, site of the Republican National Convention in August 2008.

Tonight, after fifty-four hard-fought contests, our primary season has finally come to an end.
Sixteen months have passed since we first stood together on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois. Thousands of miles have been traveled. Millions of voices have been heard. And because of what you said, because you decided that change must come to Washington; because you believed that this year must be different than all the rest; because you chose to listen not to your doubts or your fears but to your greatest hopes and highest aspirations, tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another a journey that will bring a new and better day to America. Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

I want to thank every American who stood with us over the course of this campaign through the good days and the bad; from the snows of Cedar Rapids to the sunshine of Sioux Falls. And tonight I also want to thank the men and woman who took this journey with me as fellow candidates for President.

At this defining moment for our nation, we should be proud that our party put forth one of the most talented, qualified field of individuals ever to run for this office. I have not just competed with them as rivals, I have learned from them as friends, as public servants, and as patriots who love America and are willing to work tirelessly to make this country better. They are leaders of this party, and leaders that America will turn to for years to come.
That is particularly true for the candidate who has traveled further on this journey than anyone else. Senator Hillary Clinton has made history in this campaign not just because she's a woman who has done what no woman has done before, but because she's a leader who inspires millions of Americans with her strength, her courage, and her commitment to the causes that brought us here tonight.

We've certainly had our differences over the last sixteen months. But as someone who's shared a stage with her many times, I can tell you that what gets Hillary Clinton up in the morning even in the face of tough odds is exactly what sent her and Bill Clinton to sign up for their first campaign in Texas all those years ago; what sent her to work at the Children's Defense Fund and made her fight for health care as First Lady; what led her to the United States Senate and fueled her barrier-breaking campaign for the presidency an unyielding desire to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, no matter how difficult the fight may be. And you can rest assured that when we finally win the battle for universal health care in this country, she will be central to that victory. When we transform our energy policy and lift our children out of poverty, it will be because she worked to help make it happen. Our party and our country are better off because of her, and I am a better candidate for having had the honor to compete with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

There are those who say that this primary has somehow left us weaker and more divided. Well I say that because of this primary, there are millions of Americans who have cast their ballot for the very first time. There are Independents and Republicans who understand that this election isn't just about the party in charge of Washington, it's about the need to change Washington. There are young people, and African-Americans, and Latinos, and women of all ages who have voted in numbers that have broken records and inspired a nation.

All of you chose to support a candidate you believe in deeply. But at the end of the day, we aren't the reason you came out and waited in lines that stretched block after block to make your voice heard. You didn't do that because of me or Senator Clinton or anyone else. You did it because you know in your hearts that at this moment a moment that will define a generation we cannot afford to keep doing what we've been doing. We owe our children a better future. We owe our country a better future. And for all those who dream of that future tonight, I say let us begin the work together. Let us unite in common effort to chart a new course for America.

In just a few short months, the Republican Party will arrive in St. Paul with a very different agenda. They will come here to nominate John McCain, a man who has served this country heroically. I honor that service, and I respect his many accomplishments, even if he chooses to deny mine. My differences with him are not personal; they are with the policies he has proposed in this campaign.

Because while John McCain can legitimately tout moments of independence from his party in the past, such independence has not been the hallmark of his presidential campaign.
It's not change when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush ninety-five percent of the time, as he did in the Senate last year.

It's not change when he offers four more years of Bush economic policies that have failed to create well-paying jobs, or insure our workers, or help Americans afford the skyrocketing cost of college, policies that have lowered the real incomes of the average American family, widened the gap between Wall Street and Main Street, and left our children with a mountain of debt.

And it's not change when he promises to continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians  a policy where all we look for are reasons to stay in Iraq, while we spend billions of dollars a month on a war that isn't making the American people any safer.

So I'll say this there are many words to describe John McCain's attempt to pass off his embrace of George Bush's policies as bipartisan and new. But change is not one of them.
Change is a foreign policy that doesn't begin and end with a war that should've never been authorized and never been waged. I won't stand here and pretend that there are many good options left in Iraq, but what's not an option is leaving our troops in that country for the next hundred years especially at a time when our military is overstretched, our nation is isolated, and nearly every other threat to America is being ignored.

We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in - but start leaving we must. It's time for Iraqis to take responsibility for their future. It's time to rebuild our military and give our veterans the care they need and the benefits they deserve when they come home. It's time to refocus our efforts on al Qaeda's leadership and Afghanistan, and rally the world against the common threats of the 21st century terrorism and nuclear weapons; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease. That's what change is.

Change is realizing that meeting today's threats requires not just our firepower, but the power of our diplomacy tough, direct diplomacy where the President of the United States isn't afraid to let any petty dictator know where America stands and what we stand for. We must once again have the courage and conviction to lead the free world. That is the legacy of Roosevelt, and Truman, and Kennedy. That's what the American people want. That's what change is.

Change is building an economy that rewards not just wealth, but the work and workers who created it. It's understanding that the struggles facing working families can't be solved by spending billions of dollars on more tax breaks for big corporations and wealthy CEOs, but by giving a the middle-class a tax break, and investing in our crumbling infrastructure, and transforming how we use energy, and improving our schools, and renewing our commitment to science and innovation. It's understanding that fiscal responsibility and shared prosperity can go hand-in-hand, as they did when Bill Clinton was President.

John McCain has spent a lot of time talking about trips to Iraq in the last few weeks, but maybe if he spent some time taking trips to the cities and towns that have been hardest hit by this economy, cities in Michigan, and Ohio, and right here in Minnesota, he'd understand the kind of change that people are looking for.

Maybe if he went to Iowa and met the student who works the night shift after a full day of class and still can't pay the medical bills for a sister who's ill, he'd understand that she can't afford four more years of a health care plan that only takes care of the healthy and wealthy. She needs us to pass health care plan that guarantees insurance to every American who wants it and brings down premiums for every family who needs it. That's the change we need.
Maybe if he went to Pennsylvania and met the man who lost his job but can't even afford the gas to drive around and look for a new one, he'd understand that we can't afford four more years of our addiction to oil from dictators. That man needs us to pass an energy policy that works with automakers to raise fuel standards, and makes corporations pay for their pollution, and oil companies invest their record profits in a clean energy future, an energy policy that will create millions of new jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced. That's the change we need.

And maybe if he spent some time in the schools of South Carolina or St. Paul or where he spoke tonight in New Orleans, he'd understand that we can't afford to leave the money behind for No Child Left Behind; that we owe it to our children to invest in early childhood education; to recruit an army of new teachers and give them better pay and more support; to finally decide that in this global economy, the chance to get a college education should not be a privilege for the wealthy few, but the birthright of every American. That's the change we need in America. That's why I'm running for President.

The other side will come here in September and offer a very different set of policies and positions, and that is a debate I look forward to. It is a debate the American people deserve. But what you don't deserve is another election that's governed by fear, and innuendo, and division. What you won't hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon that sees our opponents not as competitors to challenge, but enemies to demonize. Because we may call ourselves Democrats and Republicans, but we are Americans first. We are always Americans first.

Despite what the good Senator from Arizona said tonight, I have seen people of differing views and opinions find common cause many times during my two decades in public life, and I have brought many together myself. I've walked arm-in-arm with community leaders on the South Side of Chicago and watched tensions fade as black, white, and Latino fought together for good jobs and good schools. I've sat across the table from law enforcement and civil rights advocates to reform a criminal justice system that sent thirteen innocent people to death row. And I've worked with friends in the other party to provide more children with health insurance and more working families with a tax break; to curb the spread of nuclear weapons and ensure that the American people know where their tax dollars are being spent; and to reduce the influence of lobbyists who have all too often set the agenda in Washington.

In our country, I have found that this cooperation happens not because we agree on everything, but because behind all the labels and false divisions and categories that define us; beyond all the petty bickering and point-scoring in Washington, Americans are a decent, generous, compassionate people, united by common challenges and common hopes. And every so often, there are moments which call on that fundamental goodness to make this country great again.

So it was for that band of patriots who declared in a Philadelphia hall the formation of a more perfect union; and for all those who gave on the fields of Gettysburg and Antietam their last full measure of devotion to save that same union.

So it was for the Greatest Generation that conquered fear itself, and liberated a continent from tyranny, and made this country home to untold opportunity and prosperity.

So it was for the workers who stood out on the picket lines; the women who shattered glass ceilings; the children who braved a Selma bridge for freedom's cause.

So it has been for every generation that faced down the greatest challenges and the most improbable odds to leave their children a world that's better, and kinder, and more just.
And so it must be for us.

America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment this was the time when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals. Thank you, God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

My immediate reactions to the night's events:

• Obama and Michelle are dynamic husband and wife duo. They walked out on the stage in Minnesota looking elegant, classy, and in total support of each other.

• Why didn't Clinton praise and support Obama as the democratic nominee? She lost the nomination. If she cared so much about the Democratic party as she said, why couldn't she have focused her speech on unity than about trying to PROLONG her failed campaign. Yes, she fought a GREAT fight, but it is over. There was no need to continue to focus on her accomplishments than on uniting the party. Why would she encourage her supporters to go to her website and tell her what her next steps should be? The FIRST step would be to recognize Obama as the official nominee...


• Overall, he did a good job with the speech. I loved its central theme of us being "Americans first" and of unity.

No More Loans To Community College Students

Source: NY Times article

Some of the nation’s biggest banks have closed their doors to students at community colleges, for-profit universities and other less competitive institutions, even as they continue to extend federally backed loans to students at the nation’s top universities.
Citibank has been among the most aggressive in paring the list of colleges it serves. JPMorgan Chase, PNC and SunTrust say they have not dropped whole categories, but are cutting colleges as well. Some less-selective four-year colleges, like Eastern Oregon University and William Jessup University in Rocklin, Calif., say they have been summarily dropped by some lenders.

The practice suggests that if the credit crisis and the ensuing turmoil in the student loan business persist, some of the nation’s neediest students will be hurt the most. The difficulty borrowing may deter them from attending school or prompt them to take a semester off. When they get student loans, they will wind up with less attractive terms and may run a greater risk of default if they have to switch lenders in the middle of their college years.
Tuition and loan amounts can be quite small at community colleges. But these institutions, which are a stepping stone to other educational programs or to better jobs, often draw students from the lower rungs of the economic ladder. More than 6.2 million of the nation’s 14.8 million undergraduates — over 40 percent — attend community colleges. According to the most recent data from the College Board, about a third of their graduates took out loans, a majority of them federally guaranteed.

“If we put too many hurdles in their way to get a loan, they’ll take a third job or use a credit card,” said Jacqueline K. Bradley, assistant dean for financial aid at Mendocino College in California. “That almost guarantees that they won’t be as successful in their college career.”
So far, financial aid administrators say they have been able to find fallback lenders that students can switch to, but the hurdles are costly to students — in money and time. The maximum interest rate on federal loans, now at 6.8 percent on the most commonly used loans, is set by Congress, but lenders are scrapping benefits, like rate cuts for borrowers who make their payments on time or allow direct withdrawals from bank accounts.

Some loan companies have exited the student loan business entirely, viewing it as unprofitable in the current environment. By splitting out community colleges and less-selective four-year institutions, some remaining lenders seem to be breaking the marketplace into tiers. Students attending elite, expensive, public and private four-year universities can expect loans to remain plentiful. The banks generally say these loans are bigger, more profitable and less risky, in part perhaps because the banks expect the universities’ graduates to earn more.

Racial Exhaustion

Abstract

Racial Exhaustion

Professor Darren Lenard Hutchinson

Washington University Law Review (vol. 86, 2008)

Contemporary political and legal discourse on questions of race unveils a tremendous perceptual gap among persons of color and whites. Opinion polls consistently demonstrate that persons of color commonly view race and racial discrimination as important factors shaping their opportunities for economic and social advancement. Whites, on the other hand, often discount race as a pertinent factor in contemporary United States society. Consequently, polling data show that whites typically reject racial explanations for acute disparities in important socio-economic indicators, such as education, criminal justice, employment, wealth, and health care. Echoing this public sentiment, social movement actors, politicians, and the Supreme Court have all taken a skeptical stance towards claims of racial injustice by persons of color and have resisted demands for tougher civil rights laws and race-based remedies. They have viewed these policies as: (1) unnecessary, given the eradication of racism and the prior implementation of formal equality measures; (2) excessive in terms of substance or duration; (3) futile because the law cannot alter racial inequality; (4) misguided because nonracial factors explain racial disparities; and (5) unfair to whites and a special benefit for persons of color. Adhering to these beliefs, a majority of the public has reached a point of racial exhaustion.

This Article argues that the public’s racial exhaustion did not recently emerge, and it is a product of a hard-fought and successful battle against racial subjugation. Instead, throughout history, opponents of racial justice measures have invoked this discourse to contest equality measures and to portray the United States as a post-racist society, even when efforts to combat racial hierarchy were in an embryonic state and persons of color lived in extremely vulnerable political, social and economic conditions. To elaborate this claim, this Article examines political resistance to civil rights legislation and remedies immediately following the Civil War and during Reconstruction, after World War II and through the Cold War era, and in contemporary political and legal discourse in order to demonstrate the persistence of racial exhaustion rhetoric. This Article then considers how social movement actors, civil rights lawyers and theorists, and scholars interested in the interaction of law and rhetoric could respond to the persistent portrayal of racial egalitarianism as redundant and unfair by dissecting the premise of these claims, placing them in an historical context, and, if necessary, by strategically modifying their arguments to focus on class and other structural barriers that correlate or intersect with racial inequality. Despite the presumptive constitutionality of class-based remedies, political opposition to social welfare policies and the depiction of these programs as handouts to undeserving individuals - including persons of color - might limit the efficacy of economic approaches to racial inequality. Moreover, the intersection of race and poverty suggests that class-based remedies alone might not adequately address racially identifiable material inequity.

Click here to download the entire 77 page manuscript.

Disrespectful Kid Slaps His Own Mother!

Kirk Franklin - Imagine Me By: David Sides

David Sides has been playing the piano ever since he was the age of 10, and loves using this gift God has blessed him with to entertain others. He plays all of his songs by ear!

Top 10 Cancer Myths Quiz

Top 10 Cancer Myths Quiz
Myths and rumors become dangerous if they prevent people from having regular check-ups and tests to find cancer in the earliest, most curable stage. Take our quiz to test your own knowledge about cancer, including everyday moves that lower the risk of cancer.

Link to the American Cancer Society's on-line quick quiz: http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/PED_11_1_Top_10_Cancer_Myths_Quiz.asp

A Georgia Teacher & Student Come To Blows In School

My people, my people, my people..... I am speechless.....

Hillary's supporters really made her look bad

Things that she said that stood out to me....

"The democratic party is throwing the election away...to what? an inadequate black male!"

• This statement just spews hatred and reflects her feelings not only about her "perceived" inadequacy of Obama, but of the black race period.... Notice that she does not even refer to Obama as a man, but as a "male"......damn......Check out this video from a past post and tell me who appears to be more "inadequate" for the presidency.

"I can be called 'white' but you cannot be called 'black.'"

• Ridiculous. No comment.

"I'm no second class citizen."

• Since when have white people in America been considered "second class citizens?"

"God damn the democrats!"

• You would "write off" the whole democratic party because of a black man most likely being the Democratic presidential nominee? There truly is no unity in the Democratic party.

"They think we won't turn and vote for McCain...Well, I got news for all of you, McCain will be the next president of the United States!"

• Hatred at its best... How many white people would rather switch political parties than vote for a black man?

America is STILL the "Yet to be United States of America."

96 Billion Lbs Of Food Wasted In US In 1 Year

Another Obama Pastor Problem (Video here)

CHICAGO (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Thursday that he was "deeply disappointed" by a supporter's sermon at his church that mocked Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Rev. Michael Pfleger, a White Chicago activist, also apologized for last Sunday's sermon at Obama's church, in which he said Clinton's eyes welled with tears before the New Hampshire primary because she felt "entitled" to the Democratic nomination and because "there's a black man stealing my show."

Michelle Obama lynched by the KKK?

Why in the world would someone create this cartoon and post it on a MAINSTREAM NEWS website? (Of course, they pulled it down now...so, no use mentioning the site)

My initial reactions to the picture:

1. WTF?
2. Well, why should I be surprised? We all know how certain people feel about blacks...
3. First the negative talk about "assassinations"....now, people are suggesting lynching? I am scared for Obama AND Michelle....
4. Why do they have her in a sexually provocative red dress, suggesting that she is not the family woman and faithful wife she appears to be?
5. Why are they BRANDING her like an animal? Despite her intelligence, charisma, and educational background, it appears that many people still see her as nothing more than a wild animal that needs to be controlled and tamed....

Sometimes I feel that no matter how educated, articulate, intelligent, kind, and moral I am, many White people still view me as "less than human."

The Value of a Human Life: $129,000

By KATHLEEN KINGSBURY , an article found on Time.com

In theory, a year of human life is priceless. In reality, it's worth $50,000.

That's the international standard most private and government-run health insurance plans worldwide use to determine whether to cover a new medical procedure. More simply, insurance companies calculate that to make a treatment worth its cost, it must guarantee one year of "quality life" for $50,000 or less. New research, however, would argue that that figure is far too low.

Stanford economists have demonstrated that the average value of a year of quality human life is actually closer to about $129,000. To get to that number, Stefanos Zenios and his colleagues at Stanford Graduate School of Business used kidney dialysis as a benchmark. Every year dialysis saves the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans who would otherwise die of renal failure while waiting for an organ transplant. It is also the one procedure that Medicare has covered unconditionally since 1972 despite rapid and sometimes expensive innovations in its administration. To tally the cost-effectiveness of such innovations Zenios and his colleagues ran a computer analysis of more than half a million patients who underwent dialysis, adding up costs and comparing that data to treatment outcomes. Considering both inflation and new technologies in dialysis, they arrived at $129,000 as a more appropriate threshold for deciding coverage.

"That means that if Medicare paid an additional $129,000 to treat a group of patients, on average, group members would get one more quality-adjusted life year," Zenios says. Based on patient surveys, one "quality of life" year is defined as about two years of life on dialysis.

Zenios's conclusions arrive amidst mounting debate over whether Medicare, the U.S. government health plan for seniors, ought to use cost-effectiveness analysis in determining coverage of procedures. Nearly all other industrial nations — including Canada, Britain and the Netherlands — ration health care based on cost-effectiveness and the $50,000 threshold. Medicare, on the other hand, decides whether to pay for new technology based on whether a treatment is "medically necessary and appropriate." But as health care expenses rise and entitlement programs grow fiscally strapped — at least one part of Medicare is now expected to be bankrupt by 2019 — more and more academics have called for this approach to be reconsidered, and for cost to become a factor. Such a move would mean that "if the incremental cost of a new technology was more than the threshold," Zenios says, "then the recommendation would be that Medicare not cover that new technology."

Assigning a dollar figure to Medicare patients' lives may sound crass, but such valuations are routine in Americans' daily lives. Take, for example, the $500,000 death benefit the government pays families when a soldier is killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Or the cost calculations that for-profit health insurers make to determine how much coverage they'll give customers. In fact, at least some Americans seem at ease with allowing money to play a prominent role in health care decisions. In a 2007 survey of New Yorkers, 75% of participants felt "somewhat" to "very" comfortable with allowing cost to inform Medicare treatment decisions, once they understood how the system worked. "Americans understand and are prepared to engage the issues that arise when setting priorities and limits for their public programs," Marthe Gold, the City University of New York Medical School professor who conducted the study, wrote with colleagues this past fall in the journal Health Affairs.

The Stanford researchers caution that if Medicare fully adopted a cost-benefit analysis model, too many patients could be denied life-saving treatment. They return to the example of dialysis patients. Their study showed that for the sickest patients, the average cost of an additional quality-of-life year was much higher — $488,000. "It is difficult to justify the burden and expense of dialysis when persons have other serious health conditions such as, for example, advanced dementia or cancer," says co-author Glenn Chertow, a nephrology professor at the Stanford School of Medicine. "In these settings, dialysis is unlikely to provide any meaningful benefit."

But with organs including kidneys for transplant so scarce, is it justifiable to deny these patients a chance to live through dialysis? It is a question, Zenios says, everyone should approach with trepidation. "What is the true value of a human life? That's what we're asking people," he adds. "I wouldn't pretend to know."

Black Invention Myths? What do you think?

Recently, I encountered a website that claims to dispel myths about black inventions. My first impression is that his goal appears to suggest that blacks invented NOTHING. He gives no black inventor credit for ANYTHING!!! I wonder what his motives were...

I do agree that perhaps some inventions attributed to black inventors may be exaggerated. However, let's not act like blacks invented nothing or contributed nothing to modern science!

Here's what the author had to say:

"Perhaps you've heard the claims: Were it not for the genius and energy of African-American inventors, we might find ourselves in a world without traffic lights, peanut butter, blood banks, light bulb filaments, and a vast number of other things we now take for granted but could hardly imagine life without.
Such beliefs usually originate in books or articles about black history. Since many of the authors have little interest in the history of technology outside of advertising black contributions to it, their stories tend to be fraught with misunderstandings, wishful thinking, or fanciful embellishments with no historical basis. The lack of historical perspective leads to extravagant overestimations of originality and importance: sometimes a slightly modified version of a pre-existing piece of technology is mistaken for the first invention of its type; sometimes a patent or innovation with little or no lasting value is portrayed as a major advance, even if there's no real evidence it was ever used.
Unfortunately, some of the errors and exaggerations have acquired an illusion of credibility by repetition in mainstream outlets, especially during Black History Month (see examples for the traffic light and ironing board). When myths go unchallenged for too long, they begin to eclipse the truth. Thus I decided to put some records straight. Although this page does not cover every dubious invention claim floating around out there, it should at least serve as a warning never to take any such claim for granted.
Each item below is listed with its supposed black originator beneath it along with the year it was supposedly invented, followed by something about the real origin of the invention or at least an earlier instance of it."

Traffic Signal
Invented by Garrett A. Morgan in 1923? No!
The first known traffic signal appeared in London in 1868 near the Houses of Parliament. Designed by JP Knight, it featured two semaphore arms and two gas lamps. The earliest electric traffic lights include Lester Wire's two-color version set up in Salt Lake City circa 1912, James Hoge's system (US patent #1,251,666) installed in Cleveland by the American Traffic Signal Company in 1914, and William Potts' 4-way red-yellow-green lights introduced in Detroit beginning in 1920. New York City traffic towers began flashing three-color signals also in 1920.
Garrett Morgan's cross-shaped, crank-operated semaphore was not among the first half-hundred patented traffic signals, nor was it "automatic" as is sometimes claimed, nor did it play any part in the evolution of the modern traffic light. For details see Inventing History: Garrett Morgan and the Traffic Signal.

Gas Mask
Garrett Morgan in 1914? No!
The invention of the gas mask predates Morgan's breathing device by several decades. Early versions were constructed by the Scottish chemist John Stenhouse in 1854 and the physicist John Tyndall in the 1870s, among many other inventors prior to World War I. See The Invention of the Gas Mask.

Peanut Butter
George Washington Carver (who began his peanut research in 1903)? No!
Peanuts, which are native to the New World tropics, were mashed into paste by Aztecs hundreds of years ago. Evidence of modern peanut butter comes from US patent #306727 issued to Marcellus Gilmore Edson of Montreal, Quebec in 1884, for a process of milling roasted peanuts between heated surfaces until the peanuts reached "a fluid or semi-fluid state." As the product cooled, it set into what Edson described as "a consistency like that of butter, lard, or ointment." In 1890, George A. Bayle Jr., owner of a food business in St. Louis, manufactured peanut butter and sold it out of barrels. J.H. Kellogg, of cereal fame, secured US patent #580787 in 1897 for his "Process of Preparing Nutmeal," which produced a "pasty adhesive substance" that Kellogg called "nut-butter."

George Washington Carver
"Discovered" hundreds of new and important uses for the peanut? Fathered the peanut industry? Revolutionized southern US agriculture? No!
Research by Barry Mackintosh, who served as bureau historian for the National Park Service (which manages the G.W. Carver National Monument), demonstrated the following:
Most of Carver's peanut and sweet potato creations were either unoriginal, impractical, or of uncertain effectiveness. No product born in his laboratory was widely adopted.
The boom years for Southern peanut production came prior to, and not as a result of, Carver's promotion of the crop.
Carver's work to improve regional farming practices was not of pioneering scientific importance and had little demonstrable impact.
To see how Carver gained "a popular reputation far transcending the significance of his accomplishments," read Mackintosh's excellent article George Washington Carver: The Making of a Myth.

Automatic Lubricator, "Real McCoy"
Elijah McCoy revolutionized industry in 1872 by inventing the first device to automatically oil machinery? No! The phrase "Real McCoy" arose to distinguish Elijah's inventions from cheap imitations? No!
The oil cup, which automatically delivers a steady trickle of lubricant to machine parts while the machine is running, predates McCoy's career; a description of one appears in the May 6, 1848 issue of Scientific American. The automatic "displacement lubricator" for steam engines was developed in 1860 by John Ramsbottom of England, and notably improved in 1862 by James Roscoe of the same country. The "hydrostatic" lubricator originated no later than 1871.
Variants of the phrase Real McCoy appear in Scottish literature dating back to at least 1856 — well before Elijah McCoy could have been involved.
Detailed evidence: The not-so-real McCoyAlso see The Fake McCoy and Did Somebody Say McTrash?

Blood Bank
Dr. Charles Drew in 1940? No!
During World War I, Dr. Oswald H. Robertson of the US army preserved blood in a citrate-glucose solution and stored it in cooled containers for later transfusion. This was the first use of "banked" blood. By the mid-1930s the Russians had set up a national network of facilities for the collection, typing, and storage of blood. Bernard Fantus, influenced by the Russian program, established the first hospital blood bank in the United States at Chicago's Cook County Hospital in 1937. It was Fantus who coined the term "blood bank." See highlights of transfusion history from the American Association of Blood Banks.

Blood Plasma
Did Charles Drew "discover" (in about 1940) that plasma could be separated and stored apart from the rest of the blood, thereby revolutionizing transfusion medicine? No!
The possibility of using blood plasma for transfusion purposes was known at least since 1918, when English physician Gordon R. Ward suggested it in a medical journal. In the mid-1930s, John Elliott advanced the idea, emphasizing plasma's advantages in shelf life and donor-recipient compatibility, and in 1939 he and two colleagues reported having used stored plasma in 191 transfusions. (See historical notes on plasma use.) Charles Drew was not responsible for any breakthrough scientific or medical discovery; his main career achievement lay in supervising or co-supervising major programs for the collection and shipment of blood and plasma.
More: Charles Drew Mythology

Washington DC city plan
Benjamin Banneker? No!
Pierre-Charles L'Enfant created the layout of Washington DC. Banneker assisted Andrew Ellicott in the survey of the federal territory, but played no direct role in the actual planning of the city. The story of Banneker reconstructing the city design from memory after L'Enfant ran away with the plans (with the implication that the project would have failed if not for Banneker) has been debunked by historians.

Filament for Light Bulb
Lewis Latimer invented the carbon filament in 1881 or 1882? No!
English chemist/physicist Joseph Swan experimented with a carbon-filament incandescent light all the way back in 1860, and by 1878 had developed a better design which he patented in Britain. On the other side of the Atlantic, Thomas Edison developed a successful carbon-filament bulb, receiving a patent for it (#223898) in January 1880, before Lewis Latimer did any work in electric lighting. From 1880 onward, countless patents were issued for innovations in filament design and manufacture (Edison had over 50 of them). Neither of Latimer's two filament-related patents in 1881 and 1882 were among the most important innovations, nor did they make the light bulb last longer, nor is there reason to believe they were adopted outside Hiram Maxim's company where Latimer worked at the time. (He was not hired by Edison's company until 1884, primarily as a draftsman and an expert witness in patent litigations).
Latimer also did not come up with the first screw socket for the light bulb or the first book on electric lighting.

Heart Surgery (first successful)
Dr. Daniel Hale Williams in 1893? No!
Dr. Williams repaired a wound not in the heart muscle itself, but in the sac surrounding it, the pericardium. This operation was not the first of its type: Henry Dalton of St. Louis performed a nearly identical operation two years earlier, with the patient fully recovering. Decades before that, the Spaniard Francisco Romero carried out the first successful pericardial surgery of any type, incising the pericardium to drain fluid compressing the heart.
Surgery on the actual human heart muscle, and not just the pericardium, was first successfully accomplished by Ludwig Rehn of Germany when he repaired a wounded right ventricle in 1896. More than 50 years later came surgery on the open heart, pioneered by John Lewis, C. Walton Lillehei (often called the "father of open heart surgery") and John Gibbon (who invented the heart-lung machine).
What medical historians say...

"Third Rail"
Granville Woods in 1901? No!
Werner von Siemens pioneered the use of an electrified third rail as a means for powering railway vehicles when he demonstrated an experimental electric train at the 1879 Berlin Industrial Exhibition. In the US, English-born Leo Daft used a third-rail system to electrify the Baltimore & Hampden lines in 1885. The first electrically powered subway trains, which debuted in London in the autumn of 1890, likewise drew power from a third rail. Details...

Railway Telegraph
Granville Woods prevented railway accidents and saved countless lives by inventing the train telegraph (patented in 1887), which allowed communication to and from moving trains? No!
The earliest patents for train telegraphs go back to at least 1873. Lucius Phelps was the first inventor in the field to attract widespread notice, and the telegrams he exchanged on the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad in January 1885 were hailed in the Feb. 21, 1885 issue of Scientific American as "perhaps the first ever sent to and from a moving train." Phelps remained at the forefront in developing the technology and by the end of 1887 already held 14 US patents on his system. He joined a team led by Thomas Edison, who had been working on his "grasshopper telegraph" for trains, and together they constructed on the Lehigh Valley Railroad one of the only induction telegraph systems ever put to commercial use. Although this telegraph was a technical success, it fulfilled no public need, and the market for on-board train telegraphy never took off. There is no evidence that any commercial railway telegraph based on Granville Woods's patents was ever built. About the patent interference case

Refrigerated Truck
Frederick Jones (with Joseph Numero) in 1938? No! Did Jones change America's eating habits by making possible the long-distance shipment of perishable foods? No!
Refrigerated ships and railcars had been moving perishables across oceans and continents even before Jones was born (see refrigerated transport timeline). Trucks with mechanically refrigerated cargo spaces appeared on the roads at least as early as the late 1920s (see the proof). Further development of truck refrigeration was more a process of gradual evolution than radical change.

Air Brake / Automatic Air Brake
Granville Woods in 1904? No!
In 1869, a 22-year-old George Westinghouse received US patent #88929 for a brake device operated by compressed air, and in the same year organized the Westinghouse Air Brake Company. Many of the 361 patents he accumulated during his career were for air brake variations and improvements, including his first "automatic" version in 1872 (US #124404).

Air Conditioner
Frederick Jones in 1949? No!
Dr. Willis Carrier built the first machine to control both the temperature and humidity of indoor air. He received the first of many patents in 1906 (US patent #808897, for the "Apparatus for Treating Air"). In 1911 he published the formulae that became the scientific basis for air conditioning design, and four years later formed the Carrier Engineering Corporation to develop and manufacture AC systems.

Airship
J.F. Pickering in 1900? No!
French engineer Henri Giffard successfully flew a powered navigable airship in 1852. The La France airship built by Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs in 1884 featured an electric motor and improved steering capabilities. In 1900 Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin's first rigid-framed dirigible took to the air. Of the hundreds of inventors granted patents for early airship designs and modifications, few succeeded in building or flying their craft. There doesn't appear to be any record of a "Pickering Airship" ever getting off the ground.
US Aviation Patent Database, 1799-1909

Automatic Railroad Car Coupler
Andrew Beard invented the "Jenny [sic] coupler" in 1897? No!
The Janney coupler is named for US Civil War veteran Eli H. Janney, who in 1873 invented a device (US patent #138405) which automatically linked together two railroad cars upon their being brought into contact. Also known as the "knuckle coupler," Janney's invention superseded the dangerous link-and-pin coupler and became the basis for standard coupler design through the remainder of the millennium. Andrew Beard's modified knuckle coupler was just one of approximately eight thousand coupler variations patented by 1900. See a history of the automatic coupler and also The Janney Coupler.

Automatic Transmission/Gearshift
Richard Spikes in 1932? No!
The first automatic-transmission automobile to enter the market was designed by the Sturtevant brothers of Massachusetts in 1904. US Patent #766551 was the first of several patents on their gearshift mechanism. Automatic transmission technology continued to develop, spawning hundreds of patents and numerous experimental units; but because of cost, reliability issues and an initial lack of demand, several decades passed before vehicles with automatic transmission became common on the roads.

Bicycle Frame
Isaac R. Johnson in 1899? No!
Comte Mede de Sivrac and Karl von Sauerbronn built primitive versions of the bicycle in 1791 and 1816 respectively. The frame of John Starley's 1885 "safety bicycle" resembled that of a modern bicycle.

Cellular Phone
Henry T. Sampson in 1971? No!
On July 6, 1971, Sampson and co-inventor George Miley received a patent on a "gamma electric cell" that converted a gamma ray input into an electrical output (Among the first to do that was Bernhard Gross, US patent #3122640, 1964). What, you ask, does gamma radiation have to do with cellular communications technology? The answer: nothing. Some multiculturalist pseudo-historian must have seen the words "electric" and "cell" and thought "cell phone."
The father of the cell phone is Martin Cooper who first demonstrated the technology in 1973.

Clock or Watch (First in America)
Benjamin Banneker built the first American timepiece in 1753? No!
Abel Cottey, a Quaker clockmaker from Philadelphia, built a clock that is dated 1709 (source: Six Quaker Clockmakers, by Edward C. Chandlee; Philadelphia, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1943). Banneker biographer Silvio Bedini further refutes the myth:
Several watch and clockmakers were already established in the colony [Maryland] prior to the time that Banneker made the clock. In Annapolis alone there were at least four such craftsmen prior to 1750. Among these may be mentioned John Batterson, a watchmaker who moved to Annapolis in 1723; James Newberry, a watch and clockmaker who advertised in the Maryland Gazette on July 20, 1748; John Powell, a watch and clockmaker believed to have been indentured and to have been working in 1745; and Powell's master, William Roberts.
Silvio Bedini, The Life of Benjamin Banneker (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1999)

Clothes Dryer
George T. Sampson in 1892? No!
The "clothes-drier" described in Sampson's patent was actually a rack for holding clothes near a stove, and was intended as an "improvement" on similar contraptions:
My invention relates to improvements in clothes-driers.... The object of my invention is to suspend clothing in close relation to a stove by means of frames so constructed that they can be readily placed in proper position and put aside when not required for use.
US patent #476416, 1892
Nineteen years earlier, there were already over 300 US patents for such "clothes-driers" (Subject-Matter Index of Patents...1790 to 1873).
A Frenchman named Pochon in 1799 built the first known tumble dryer — a crank-driven, rotating metal drum pierced with ventilation holes and held over heat. Electric tumble dryers appeared in the first half of the 20th century.

Dustpan
Lloyd P. Ray in 1897? No!
While the ultimate origin of the dustpan is lost in the mists (dusts?) of time, at least we know that US patent #20811 for "Dust-pan" was granted to T.E. McNeill in 1858. That was the first of about 164 US dustpan patents predating Lloyd Ray's. See the dustpan patent list.

Egg Beater
Willie Johnson in 1884? No!
The hand-cranked egg beater with two intermeshed, counter-rotating whisks was invented by Turner Williams of Providence, Rhode Island in 1870 (US Patent #103811). It was an improvement on earlier rotary egg beaters that had only one whisk.

Electric Trolley
Did Granville Woods invent the electric trolley car, the overhead wire that powers it, or the "troller" wheel that makes contact with the trolley wire, in 1888? No!
Dr. Werner von Siemens demonstrated his electric trolleybus, the Elektromote, near Berlin on April 29, 1882. The vehicle's two electric motors collected power through contact wheels rolling atop a pair of overhead wires. The earliest patentee of an electric trolley in the United States appears to be Eugene Cowles (#252193 in 1881), followed by Dr. Joseph R. Finney (#268476 in 1882) who operated an experimental trolley car near Pittsburgh, PA in the summer of 1882. In early 1885, John C. Henry established in Kansas City, MO, the first overhead-wire electric transit system to enter regular service in the United States. Belgian-born Charles van Depoele, who earned 240+ patents in electric railway technology and other fields, set up trolley lines in several North American cities by 1887. In February 1888, a trolley system designed by Frank Sprague began operating in Richmond, Virginia. Sprague's system became the lasting prototype for electric street railways in the US.

Elevator
Alexander Miles in 1887? No!Was Miles the first to patent a self-closing shaft door? No!
Steam-powered hoisting devices were used in England by 1800. Elisha Graves Otis' 1853 "safety elevator" prevented the car from falling if the cable broke, and thus paved the way for the first commercial passenger elevator, installed in New York City's Haughwout Department Store in 1857. The first electric elevator appeared in Mannheim, Germany in 1880, built by the German firm of Siemens and Halske. A self-closing shaft door was invented by J.W. Meaker in 1874 ("Improvement in Self-closing Hatchways," US Patent No. 147,853). See Elevator Timeline

Fastest Computer/Computation
Was Philip Emeagwali responsible for the world's fastest computer or computation in 1989? Did he win the "Nobel Prize of computing"? Is he a "father of the Internet"? No!
The fastest performance of a computer application in 1989 was 6 billion floating point operations per second (6 Gflops), achieved by a team from Mobil and Thinking Machines Corp. on a 64,000-processor "Connection Machine" invented by Danny Hillis. That was almost double the 3.1 Gflops of Emeagwali's computation. Computing's Nobel Prize equivalent is the Turing Award, which Emeagwali has never won. More...

Fire Escape
Joseph Winters in 1878? No!
Winters' "fire escape" was a wagon-mounted ladder. The first such contraption patented in the US was the work of William P. Withey, 1840 (US patent #1599). The fire escape with a "lazy-tongs" type ladder, more similar to Winters' patent, was pioneered by Hüttman and Kornelio in 1849 (US patent #6155). One of the first fire escapes of any type was invented in 18th-century England:
In 1784, Daniel Maseres, of England, invented a machine called a fire escape, which, being fastened to the window, would enable anyone to descend to the street without injury.
Benjamin Butterworth, Growth of Industrial Art, 1888
By 1888 the US had granted 1,099 patents on fire escapes of "many forms, and of every possible material" (Butterworth).

Fire Extinguisher
Thomas J. Martin in 1872? No!
In 1813, British army captain George Manby created the first known portable fire extinguisher: a two-foot-tall copper cylinder that held 3 gallons of water and used compressed air as a propellant. One of the earliest extinguishers to use a chemical extinguishing agent, and not just water, was invented in 1849 by the Englishman William Henry Phillips, who patented his "fire annihilator" in England and the United States (US patent #7,269).

Food Additives, Meat Curing
Lloyd Hall "is responsible for the meat curing products, seasonings, emulsions, bakery products, antioxidants, protein hydrolysates, and many other products that keep our food fresh and flavorable"? No! Hall "revolutionized the meatpacking industry"? No!
Hall introduced no major class of additive, certainly not meat curing salts (which are ancient), protein hydrolysates (popularized by Julius Maggi as flavor enhancers in 1886), emulsifiers and antioxidants (lecithin, for example, was used in both roles before Lloyd Hall had any patents in food processing). The so-called revolutionary meat curing product marketed by Hall's employer was invented primarily by Karl Max Seifert ; the number of Seifert's patent was printed right on the containers. Hall's main contribution to this product was to reduce its tendency to cake during storage. Details: Lloyd Hall myth.

Fountain Pen
W.B. Purvis in 1890? No!
The first reference to what seems to be a fountain pen appears in an Arabic text from 969 AD; details of the instrument are not known. A French "Bion" pen, dated 1702, represents the oldest fountain pen that still survives. Later models included John Scheffer's 1819 pen, possibly the first to be mass-produced; John Jacob Parker's "self-filling" pen of 1832; and the famous Lewis Waterman pen of 1884 (US Patents #293545, #307735). Early History of the Fountain Pen

Golf Tee
Dr. George Grant in 1899? No!
A small rubber platform invented by Scotsmen William Bloxsom and Arthur Douglas was the world's first patented golf tee (British patent #12941 of 1889). The first known tee to penetrate the ground, in contrast to earlier tees that sat on the surface, was the peg-like "Perfectum" patented in 1892 by Percy Ellis of England. American dentist William Lowell introduced the most common form of tee used today, the simple wooden peg with a flared top. Details...

Hairbrush
Lyda Newman in 1898? No!
An early US patent for a recognizably modern hairbrush went to Hugh Rock in 1854 (US Design Patent no. D645), though surely there were hairbrushes long before there was a US Patent Office.
The claim that Lyda Newman's brush was the first with "synthetic bristles" is false: her patent mentions nothing about synthetic bristles and is concerned only with a new way of making the handle detachable from the head. Besides, a hairbrush that included "elastic wire teeth" in combination with natural bristles had already been patented by Samuel Firey in 1870 (US, #106680). Nylon bristles weren't possible until the invention of nylon in 1935.

Halogen Lamp
Frederick Mosby? No
The original patent for the tungsten halogen lamp (US #2,883,571; April 21, 1959) is recorded to Elmer G. Fridrich and Emmett H. Wiley of General Electric. The two had built a working prototype as early as 1953. Fred Mosby was part of the GE team charged with developing the prototype lamp into a marketable product, but was not responsible for the original halogen lamp or the concept behind it.

Hand Stamp
William Purvis in 1883? No!
The earliest known postal handstamp was brought into use by Henry Bishop, Postmaster General of Great Britain, in the year 1661. The stamp imprinted the mail with a bisected circle containing the month and the date. See "Bishop marks"

Heating Furnace
Alice Parker in 1919? No!
In the hypocaust heating systems built by the ancient Romans, hot air from a furnace circulated under the floor and up through channels inside the walls, thereby distributing heat evenly around the building. One of the most famous heating systems in recent centuries was the iron furnace stove known as the "Franklin stove," named after its purported originator Benjamin Franklin around 1745 AD. The US had issued over 4000 patents for heating stoves and furnaces by 1888 (Benjamin Butterworth, Growth of Industrial Art, 1888).

Horseshoe
Oscar E. Brown in 1892? No!
Some sources on the web, if not ignorant enough to say Brown invented the first horseshoe ever, will at least try to credit him for the first double or compound horseshoe made of two layers: one permanently secured to the hoof, and one auxiliary layer that can be removed and replaced when it wears out. However, in the US there were already 39 earlier patents for horseshoes using that same concept. The first of these was issued to J.B. Kendall of Boston in 1861, patent #33709.

Ice Cream
Augustus Jackson in 1832? No!
Flavored ices resembling sherbet were known in China in ancient times. In Europe, sherbet-like concoctions evolved into ice cream by the 16th century, and around 1670 or so, the Café Procope in Paris offered creamy frozen dairy desserts to the public. The first written record of ice cream in the New World comes from a letter dated 1700, attesting that Maryland Governor William Bladen served the treat to his guests. In 1777, the New York Gazette advertised the sale of ice cream by confectioner Philip Lenzi. History of Ice Cream

Ironing Board
Sarah Boone in 1892? No!
Of the several hundred US patents on ironing boards granted prior to Sarah Boone's, the first three went to William Vandenburg in 1858 (patents #19390, #19883, #20231). The first American female patentee of an ironing board is probably Sarah Mort of Dayton, Ohio, who received patent #57170 in 1866. In 1869, Henry Soggs of Columbus, Pennsylvania earned US patent #90966 for an ironing board resembling the modern type, with folding legs, adjustable height, and a cover. Another nice example of a modern-looking board was designed by J.H. Mallory in 1871, patent #120296. Details...

Laser Cataract Surgery
Patricia Bath "transformed eye surgery" by inventing the first laser device to treat cataracts in 1986? No!
Use of lasers to treat cataracts in the eye began to develop in the mid 1970s. M.M. Krasnov of Russia reported the first such procedure in 1975. One of the earliest US patents for laser cataract removal (#3,982,541) was issued to Francis L'Esperance in 1976. In later years, a number of experimenters worked independently on laser devices for removing cataracts, including Daniel Eichenbaum, whose work became the basis of the Paradigm Photon™ device; and Jack Dodick, whose Dodick Laser PhotoLysis System eventually became the first laser unit to win FDA approval for cataract removal in the United States. Still, the majority of cataract surgeries continue to be performed using ultrasound devices, not lasers. Details...

Lawn Mower
John Burr in 1899? No!
English engineer Edwin Budding invented the first reel-type lawn mower (with blades arranged in a cylindrical pattern) and had it patented in England in 1830. In 1868 the United States issued patent #73807 to Amariah M. Hills of Connecticut, who went on to establish the Archimedean Lawn Mower Co. in 1871. By 1888, the US Patent Office had granted 138 patents for lawn mowers (Butterworth, Growth of Industrial Art). Doubtlessly there were even more by the time Burr got his patent in 1899.
Some website authors want Burr to have invented the first "rotary blade" mower, with a centrally mounted spinning blade. But his patent #624749 shows yet another twist on the old reel mower, differing in only a few details with Budding's original.

Lawn Sprinkler
J. H. Smith in 1897? Elijah McCoy? No!
The first US patent with the title "lawn sprinkler" was issued to J. Lessler of Buffalo, New York in 1871 (#121949). Early examples of water-propelled, rotating lawn sprinklers were patented by J. Oswald in 1890 (#425340) and J. S. Woolsey in 1891 (#457099) among a gazillion others.
Smith's patent shows just another rotating sprinkler, and McCoy's 1899 patent was for a turtle-shaped sprinkler.

Mailbox (letter drop box)
P. Downing invented the street letter drop box in 1891? No! George Becket invented the private mailbox in 1892? No!
The US Postal Service says that "Street boxes for mail collection began to appear in large [US] cities by 1858." They appeared in Europe even earlier, according to historian Laurin Zilliacus:
Mail boxes as we understand them first appeared on the streets of Belgian towns in 1848. In Paris they came two years later, while the English received their 'pillar boxes' in 1855.
Laurin Zilliacus, Mail for the World, p. 178 (New York, J. Day Co., 1953)
From the same book (p.178), "Private mail boxes were invented in the United States in about 1860."
Eventually, letter drop boxes came equipped with inner lids to prevent miscreants from rummaging through the mail pile. The first of many US patents for such a purpose was granted in 1860 to John North of Middletown, Connecticut (US Pat. #27466).

Mop
Thomas W. Stewart in 1893? No!
Mops go back a long, long way before 1893. Just how long, is hard to determine. Restricting our view to the modern era, we find that the United States issued its first mop patent (#241) in 1837 to Jacob Howe, called "Construction of Mop-Heads and the Mode of Securing them upon Handles." One of the first patented mops with a built-in wringer was the one H. & J. Morton invented in 1859 (US #24049).
The mop specified in Stewart's patent #499402 has a lever-operated clamp for "holding the mop rags"; the lever is not a wringing mechanism as erroneously reported on certain websites. Other inventors had already patented mops with lever-operated clamps, one of the first being Greenleaf Stackpole in 1869 (US Pat. #89803).

Paper Punch (hand-held)
Charles Brooks in 1893? No!Was it the first with a hinged receptacle to catch the clippings? No!
The first numbered US patent for a hand-held hole punch was #636, issued to Solyman Merrick in 1838. Robert James Kellett earned the first two US patents for a chad-catching hole punch, in 1867 (patent #65090) and 1868 (#79232).

Pencil Sharpener
John Lee Love in 1897? No!
Bernard Lassimone of Limoges, France invented one of the earliest sharpeners, receiving French patent number 2444 in 1828. An apparent ancestor of the 20th-century hand-cranked sharpener was patented by G. F. Ballou in 1896 (US #556709) and marketed by the A.B. Dick Company as the "Planetary Pencil Pointer." As the user held the pencil stationary and turned the crank, twin milling cutters revolved around the tip of the pencil and shaved it into a point.
Love's patent #594114 shows a variation on a different kind of sharpener, in which one would crank the pencil itself around in a stirring motion. An earlier device of a similar type was devised in 1888 by G.H. Courson (patent #388533), and sold under the name "President Pencil Sharpener."
Here are several other examples of 19th century sharpeners:Early Mechanical Pencil SharpenersMechanical Pencil Sharpener Gallery ~ 1884-1899
Permanent Wave Machine (for perming hair)
Marjorie Joyner in 1928? No!
That would be German hairdresser Karl Ludwig Nessler (aka Charles Nestlé) no later than 1906.
Postmarking and Canceling Machine
William Barry in 1897? No!
Try Pearson Hill of England, in 1857. Hill's machine marked the postage stamp with vertical lines and postmark date. By 1892, US post offices were using several brands of machines, including one that could cancel, postmark, count and stack more than 20,000 pieces of mail per hour (Marshall Cushing, Story of Our Post Office, Boston: A. M. Thayer & co., 1892, pp.189-191).

Printing Press
W.A. Lavalette invented "the advanced printing press" in 1878? No!
Movable-type printing first appeared in East Asia. In Europe, around 1455, Johann Gutenberg adapted the screw press used in other trades such as winemaking and combined it with type-metal alloy characters and oil-based printing ink. Major advances after Gutenberg include the cylinder printing press (c. 1811) by Frederick Koenig and Andreas Bauer, the rotary press (1846) by Richard M. Hoe, and the web press (1865) by William Bullock. Major advances do not include Lavalette's patent, which was only one of 3,268 printing patents granted in the US by the year 1888 (Butterworth, Growth of Industrial Art). Improvements After Gutenberg

Propeller for Ship
George Tolivar or Benjamin Montgomery? No!
John Stevens constructed a boat with twin steam-powered propellers in 1804 in the first known application of a screw propeller for marine propulsion. Other important pioneers in the early 1800s included Sir Francis Pettit Smith of England, and Swedish-born ship designer John Ericsson (US patent #588) who later designed the USS Monitor.

Refrigerator
Thomas Elkins in 1879? John Stanard in 1891? No!
Oliver Evans proposed a mechanical refrigerator based on a vapor-compression cycle in 1805 and Jacob Perkins had a working machine built in 1834. Dr. John Gorrie created an air-cycle refrigeration system in about 1844, which he installed in a Florida hospital. In the 1850s Alexander Twining in the USA and James Harrison in Australia used mechanical refrigeration to produce ice on a commercial scale. Around the same time, the Carré brothers of France led the development of absorption refrigeration systems. A more detailed timeline
Stanard's patent describes not a refrigeration machine, but an old-fashioned icebox — an insulated cabinet into which ice is placed to cool the interior. As such, it was a "refrigerator" only in the old sense of the term, which included non-mechanical coolers. Elkins created a similarly low-tech cooler, acknowledging in his patent #221222 that "I am aware that chilling substances inclosed within a porous box or jar by wetting its outer surface is an old and well-known process."

Rotary Engine
Andrew Beard in 1892? No!
The Subject Matter Index of Patents Issued from the United States Patent Office from 1790 to 1873 Inclusive lists 394 "Rotary Engine" patents from 1810-1873. The Wankel engine, a rotary combustion engine with a four-stroke cycle, dates from 1954. History of the Rotary Engine from 1588 Onward

Screw Socket for Light Bulb
Lewis Latimer? No!
The earliest evidence for a light bulb screw base design is a drawing in a Thomas Edison notebook dated Sept. 11, 1880. It is not the work of Latimer, though:
Edison's long-time associates, Edward H. Johnson and John Ott, were principally responsible for designing fixtures in the fall of 1880. Their work resulted in the screw socket and base very much like those widely used today.
R. Friedel and P. Israel, Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1986).
The 1880 sketch of the screw socket is reproduced in the book cited above.

Smallpox Vaccine
Onesimus the slave in 1721? No! Onesimus knew of variolation, an early inoculation technique practiced in several areas of the world before the discovery of vaccination.
English physician Edward Jenner developed the smallpox vaccine in 1796 after finding that the relatively innocuous cowpox virus built immunity against the deadly smallpox. This discovery led to the eventual eradication of endemic smallpox throughout the world. Vaccination differs from the primitive inoculation method known as variolation, which involved the deliberate planting of live smallpox into a healthy person in hopes of inducing a mild form of the disease that would provide immunity from further infection. Variolation not only was risky to the patient but, more importantly, failed to prevent smallpox from spreading. Known in Asia by 1000 AD, the practice reached the West via more than one channel.

His complete list can be found here...

Again, I question his motives. His research appears somewhat credible in several instances. Yet, I CANNOT believe that there were no "true" African American inventors.

A reputable list of African-American inventors and their inventions can be found here if you would like to explore this topic more.

Your thoughts?