Tick Tock Sheptock

What was a field of 22 presidential candidates ( five Democrats and 17 Republicans ) has now been narrowed down to just two finalists with one of them in the midst of his party's convention today on July 19th, 2016. (I'm sure he was pleased to see the welcome committee .) However, I'm firmly convinced that the world is going to Hell in a hand basket when I consider how a psychopath like Donald Trump has knocked off 16 other GOP contenders and out-maneuvered scores of other people in his party who sought to stop his advance . He is now set to become his party's official nominee. Let's face it: Donald Trump is a man who is just chock full of contradictions and conflicts . Two of his three wives including his current wife were born in Communist nations and his own grandparents immigrated to this country from Germany; but, Donald has spoken against Muslim and Mexican immigrants. He lies constantly; but, wants to sue media outlets that tell the ugly truths about ...

(At events organized by activists and advocates) I, Eric Sheptock, will be in Philadelphia, PA during the week of the Democratic national Convention. I've been asked to speak about homelessness. Though I tend to speak off the cuff, here are some thoughts that I'll convey at organized events and elsewhere while in our nation's first capital: The Black Panther Party which celebrates its 50 th anniversary this October was begun in response to police brutality in Oakland, CA in 1966. They created armed resistance to a corrupt police force; but, like Hamas, Hezbollah and Fatah, they transitioned into affording social services to the poor – namely school breakfast to Black children. They also began to teach people about the negative effects of capitalism and racial inequality. In short, they were stopped dead in their tracks by J. Edgar Hoover whose most effective tactic was having the feds to offer school meals without the ideology. The effects of discouraging the...

 Republished from 7/12/16: Let's be BRUTALLY HONEST ; lay aside any emotions and take a good, hard, rational look at what led up to the Dallas massacre . I've been thinking about it a lot and this is my second blog post on the matter in the five days since Private First Class (E3) Micah Xavier Johnson shot 12 Dallas law enforcement officers, killing five. In the minds of some -- but not all -- people he went from being a military hero to being a criminal zero when he transitioned from shooting at foreigners in Afghanistan to shooting at cops in America. Now some people are wondering why Private Johnson chose to shoot cops in a city that has not been in the national media for its police brutality and killing of unarmed Black men. I assure you that there are many in Afghanistan who still don't know why we decimated THEIR country when we didn't find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, when Osama Bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan and when most people in that countr...

  "I don't condone it; but, I understand it."   -- Various people responding to the 7/7/16 Dallas Massacre No sooner had I written about how "It's a madder, madder, madder, madder world" when we had a week of murders by White police of Black men who either did not have guns drawn or were even complying with orders from ofcrs. JERONIMO YANEZ and JOSEPH KAUSER. Then, fed up by White police shooting and killing unarmed Black men, MICAH JOHNSON (and possibly others) used the sniper skills afforded him by the U.S. military to kill A DOMESTIC ENEMY . Apparently, unlike American active-duty soldiers , he and any accomplices he might have had were good marksmen who didn't kill any civilians. Taken together with what we know about the DC Sniper and how he was possibly upset that he was flunked in sniper school (having only been designated an "expert shooter") or may have had a host of reasons for being upset, I suppose the military wil...