Hello President Obama Congratulations on picking the Super Bowl winner. I hope you and yours enjoyed the game. It was quite exciting. I was rooting for the Cardinals however it seems the "Steel Curtain" sealed the game in the end. I thought the HULU commercial was interesting and I immediately checked it out. I was a little disappointed with the speed however that might have a direct relationship with the broadband challenges that are facing our nation. I hope you have had the opportunity to read my last 2 notes. I apologize for not writing last week however I was busy with education policy and planning for job creation. I have not even had a chance to play basketball but I hope you have had the opportunity to do so. I truly hope we will have the opportunity to get on the court together in 2009. Please note I have a smooth jump shot. This video was done in September 2008 in Tampa Florida while visiting with my high school best buddy Bruce. Its a tribute to a wonderful mentor the both of us shared "Miles Strodel" our high school basketball coach and principal. I was in Tampa to deliver a keynote at a conference. The subject was "Civil Gideon". I will be speaking at the AIIM Conference in Philadelphia on April 2nd so please come if you can. Its kind of pricey but I think they would let you in. I saw Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), member of the Finance Committee, and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), member of the Banking Committee, debate the economic stimulus package that they and their fellow senators will vote on next week on last weeks Meet The Press. Please continue to reach out to both sides of the isle. I very much like your choice for Secretary of Commerce. Try to be patient. While the first legislative test yielded no GOP votes your second test brought 3 votes so you continue to do better. So with respect to the legislative branch of government you have nowhere to go but up and I guess that's a good thing. Thanks for your apology on the Daschle nomination. Please let me know what Senator Kennedy suggests regarding a nominee. It is a tough position to fill. We simply must stop this culture of priviledge. I was speaking with someone recently who relayed part of a conversation with an IRS official. The official indicated that he had recently been asked for the Geitner exemption. Lets see what Senate Majority Leader Reid and House Speaker Pelosi have to say about current goings on. Today's Meet The Press was great. David Gregory continues to ask both sides the tough questions. Let us hope the American people weigh in on what they are saying. Well, that's all for now Mr. President. Talk to you soon.

This is just a test Here is the Homelessness With Hope Show Here is the first test show. Its the embed from the host Here is our version from Camtasia running on our server Here is the IPod version. Here is the CORI Show

We are making progress but theres some bugs. The top iTunes button I beleive is a bug and if you mouseover it says http. The second iTunes button says itpc but opens a blank window along with iTunes but iTunes does not seem to be playing or loading anything. I think this iTunes button needs to be linked or reference in some way the rss podcast feed which in this case is http://global.shawmuteducation.org/Video/serviceprovider.rss It has been quite a year. We started with a goal of taking all of our cable show and other footage and turrning them into Podcasts. We accomplished that and one can view the 3 components of this summers speaking engagement at the Seventh Annual Grassroots Use of Technology Conference at UMASS Boston. Sustainability Africa Jamaica Now that skyBuilders has incorporated ITunes into theirt blogs we are quite excited abbout checking it out.

Dear President Obama Like many I remember watching and listening to Walter Cronkite. I knew nothing about media literacy and looking back even now I feel there would not have been much of a need for that since newsmen like Cronkite spoke the truth. They were people we could trust. Today newsmen often tell outright lies and deceive the public. There was an implicit ethic of trust in people like David Brinkley, Chet Huntley and Cronkite. Walter watched over us and the country watched him. On Tuesday November 22nd, 1063 and afterwards, like the rest of the country, I was glued to the television set for days. It was a particularly sad time for those of us in Massachusetts where the President was from. At that time we only had a black and white television. I had to wait until we visited grandmother to see the events in color. Looking back, upon my return to school, I don't remember there being a lot of discussion about the tragic events. Most of my friends were very suspicious of what the government was saying actually happened. I think most who attended the William Lloyd Garrison Elementary School with me would remember Mr. Hughes. He was the disciplinarian for the school He was tall and always wore a dark suit. The dark trench coat he would wear as he supervised school recess seemed to make him look even more ominous. Back in those days of the shiny gold bell resting firmly in Mr. Hughes left hand, I thought it quite an irony: to be attending an elementary school named after William Lloyd Garrison in the early 60's to be hearing the rhetoric and becoming aware of the notoriety of Louise Day Hicks, and to be witnessing news reports of dogs and hoses being used on people of color in the south while a man named Martin Luther King was basically saying to our nation to please "do what the constitution promises". It was all somewhat surreal!!! I thought it was simply "stupid" that a person like Louise Day Hicks would hold an elected political position in the city where I lived. The newspapers and other local media outlets did not appear to denounce her views and I figured it must be that there was a law that said they simply had to report the news. After all as schoolchildren we recited the pledge of allegiance every day and slavery was something that only took place in the south and in the past? I can still remember the November afternoon and the cold stare on Mr Hughes face as he stood in the doorway and told me that the President has been shot. He was angry and I had seen that look before but this time he was also visibly shaken. I rushed home to turn the television on and watch the news. It was then that I witnessed Walter Cronkites report below. Watch CBS Videos Online Kennedy's words stating that "we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's future" and his challenge for our country to visit the moon had a galvanizing impact on society. His call to the youth via the Peace Corps provoked global change. After all it was a simple matter of life. In today's world we are faced with another issue but the bottom line is still about life. I am just as sad about the passing of President Kennedy as I am about the inaction of Congress as well as the poor media coverage of the Health Care issue. I choose the word "issue" as opposed to "debate" because their should be no debate about life! I cannot imagine a congressman or senator being interviewed by Cronkite and not providing a solution without paying a severe consequence. The issue is not you nor is it your plan. The issue is life and how we keep health care costs down while providing adequate health coverage to all Americans. We have gone to the moon so I don't think the American public is going to swallow the idea that this cannot get done. Here is a recent Meet The Press episode that spoke to this subject. Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy The medias handling of this issue has been abysmal. It is time to bring out the pie charts. Congress is guilty of passing a prescription drug deal that hurt our country and now we are asking this same group to right the ship. Why doesn't the media pick up on that. As in the financial community, we are also seeing a serious erosion of ethics in the health care industry that has been abettted by the Congress. One example of this ethical decline is the lack of an adequate alert to African American men regarding prostate cancer. What is often said is that screening is not necessary. What needs to be said is that if you are in a high risk group screening is the smart thing to do. Now why is it that you think they don't say that? A decade or so ago I remember going to a job interview. The site for the interview was a building owned by the Commonwealth. While I was there on time the individual who was suppose to meet me was not. An alarm went off but since I was already employed with the state I knew the number to call and quickly did so. This particular phone number features a recording service that records all calls. Some ten minutes later while the alarm still blared and still on the phone the police showed up. The officer summoned me and I responded. I asked him to speak with the individual on the phone but he simply arrested me. Evidently it was not proper protocol to simply pick up the phone to validate my story. It was a scary experience but of course I assumed it would be all over after they validated my story. Well I was wrong about that. The District Attorney actually wanted to prosecute. I had to seek the dismissal of my first public defender by saying to his boss "if you can tell me why he does not have the tape of my phone call I will keep him". When I finally got to court the judge looked at the prosecutors like they were crazy. It was clear that while I was in an employment application process the District Attorney's office was attempting to put me through a criminal application process. One of the very early supporters of the Shawmut Education mission was honorary Shawmut Education Board of Directors member and Harvard University Professor, Henry Louis Gates. Professor Gates and I share a number of passions including my work on family history. I wonder if this also includes my love for basketball? Last week I returned for the first time to the police station where I was taken after my arrest. I was there for a meeting with police officials and community leaders interested in quelling recent gun violence in the community linked to a summer basketball league. I now play a role on the newly formed commission for that league. The newly formed commission will need to find ways of supporting the successful function of its league limited number of coaches and referees much in the way that Secratary Geithner is trying to solve the economic crisis without a full compliment of staff. (Why is the media not reporting the Treasury staffing story?) I note that the past NBA season was marked in part by the suspension of a referee for handing out technical fouls deemed by NBA league officials to be unwarranted. Lets get Professor Gates and Officer Crowley on the court. I will also ask his opinion on what might be the next steps to take in my research of my family history. The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c