(NNPA)—The charge that the oil spill in the Gulf is Obama’s Katrina is bogus because there was no comparison between the swift manner in which he deployed his administration to deal with the crisis and Bush’s approach to Katrina.

The oil explosion happened on April 20 and the Coast Guard was deployed the next day, long before Bush engaged FEMA to bring resources into Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. That same day, Obama sent the No. 2 man in the Interior Department to New Orleans and the Minerals Management Service established a headquarters near the scene of the explosion.

(NNPA)—William Butler Yeats did a good job of capturing a harrowing pandemonium in his poem, “The Second Coming.” He wrote, in 1919:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

by George Davis

(NNPA)—Rand Paul and his defenders say he’s not a racist. He calls himself a Libertarian…If you have webbed feet and you quack and waddle, you can call yourself a pigeon, but you’re probably a duck.

Rand Paul says he thinks the government should not make laws to prevent racist behavior by private business owners. He says: “private business owners should be able to decide whether they want to serve Black people, or gays, or any other minority groups.” I guess he thinks they should not be able to decide whether they want to serve Whites. But he’s not a racist.

by Phillip Johnson

Over 30 years ago, I joined the fraternity of Alpha Phi Alpha, Inc. Their motto “First of All, Servants of All, We shall Transcend All,” spoke to their being the first Black fraternity and their lofty vision for brotherhood.

They touted iconoclastic members, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Thurgood Marshall, U.S. Sen. Edward Brooke and Ambassador Andrew Young, all from the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement. They engaged in the community with programs like “A Voteless People is a Hopeless People,” and they have changed the trajectory of the lives of thousands of young men in the process.