I’m no baller, but over the course of the last several years I have had many interactions with the rich and the famous. Of course, most times nothing really spectacular happens. Famous people after all, are just regular people like you and me. (Well, some of them are regular, others are either extremely short or pretentious buttheads…but I digress.)

But there has been one or two times when I have been kicking it with a baller and something really cool happens. Like the time I almost got beat up at Death Row’s corporate office or the time ?uestlove told me that he’d “rather spin records than do coke.” (I think he was trying to say he likes to DJ because it keeps his mind busy, but ?uestlove is a bigger nerd than me so it was sort of hard to interpret what he was saying.)

So in the spirit of Charlie Murphy and Rick James, every now and then I plan to drop a blog about one of my Completely Not Fake Hollywood Stories. Heck, if Eddie’s little brother can get famous retelling his big bro’s experiences why can’t I get some blog traffic telling mine.

After the jump is a Completely Not Fake Hollywood Story about the legendary cartoonist Aaron McGruder. Read the full story

According to social scientists and political practitioners, people are less loyal to products and political parties than they were in the past…a trend that is likely to affect the next election.

Think about it…Everyone knows people who have abandoned their religion, been divorced, or changed their political affiliation. Americans today are more likely to make such important changes than ever before.

Peter Hart, Democratic pollster, found that college students are more willing to transfer schools and that 40% of Americans will change their religion at least once. Linda Lea Viken, divorce attorney, has found a clear increase in the number of divorces among the elderly, even after being married for fifty years.

So how does this affect elections? When running Howard Dean’s campaign in 2004, Joe Trippi witnessed the fickleness of Americans. After coming in third place in the Iowa caucuses, Dean lost his supporters as quickly as he gained them. According to Morris Fiorina, political science professor at Stanford University, “Obama benefited from the looser ties people have today…” (Not a surprise considering the distrust of the Bush administration.) However, “…the flip side is that he cannot count on the depth of support that a winning candidate might have had a generation ago…And, of course, if ties are looser, then change can occur faster than if the ties bind more tightly.”

After all, didn’t we learn not to trust politicians? It may not be fair to say that it’s bad to be fickle and good to be loyal. Of course, fickle isn’t exactly a positive adjective but blind allegiance isn’t something we want either. What do you think? Is it good that Americans aren’t bound to a specific politician or should we be more loyal?

Iran’s elections have been all over the news lately. Anger is visible in the streets. Youth are tired of the same old thing and a revolution may be bubbling underneath the surface. We’ve got a firsthand account from a friend of The League/99Problems who is brave enough to venture in a field report directly from Iran! Check out this article by Laylo Fagroovy!

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The Revolution Begins by Laylo

June 15, 2009 The eerie howling of “Allah al-Akbar! Allah al-Akbar!” (God is Great) could be heard from rooftops in the streets of Tehran after dark. It is an echo from the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution 30 years ago, when Ayatollah Khomeini and his supports ousted Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, to replace the monarchy with a religious democracy, forming the Islamic Republic of Iran.

But in recent years, the people of Iran have yearned for more freedom under the current regime, with some sacrificing their lives to be heard. On Monday, June 15, possibly as many as one million people took to the streets of Tehran to march from Enqelab (Revolution) Street to Azadi (Freedom) Square to support Mir Hossein Mousavi in the contested presidential elections.

Read the full story

We’re wrapping it up over at 99problems but this story caught our eye:

Do not adjust your monitor, that is in fact a judge, shuffling a deck of cards,  flanked by two nervous/excited Arizonans.  Oh, the shoddy camera work; mic in the shot! But seriously…that card shuffle sounds good, right?

Don’t wonder what a deck of cards has to do with the American legal system; about as little as you expect.  That whole ‘checks & balances’ dealy doesn’t leave a lot of room for Lady Luck most of the time, but every now and then your legal compass leads you to the end of a heated city council race in Cave Creek, Arizona, and you really don’t have any other choice.

Well, not true.  You could play dice. Read the full story

There are a number of images that permeate our collective psyche. Some are tragic, others hopeful. Every now and then, there is an image that embodies a state of mind so well that it can’t be described or explained. You just have to see it.

On June 4th, 1989, a young, unidentified man stood directly in front of a line of tanks in Beijing, China to express a sense of dissatisfaction, attempting to stop the Chinese government’s attacks on young activists.

Despite the defiance of Tank Man, the struggle continues. Read the full story

“There are three things I never talk about in public: politics, religion and money.”

My experience as a journalist has shown me that a lot of people think this way. It’s normally the people who have money that don’t want to talk about it. People who don’t really care too much about religion are the ones that don’t want to talk about it. And folks who are staunchly conservative try not to talk about their views in the street for fear of being publicly stoned to death.

Obama’s historic race had everyone discussing politics, so much that for the year and a half that he ran his campaign it became as normal a conversation starter as “How’s the weather?” Now that he is in office, the culture he created for using one’s voice is allowing folks to speak their minds on American policy, the economy and such. But don’t think that everything is fair game.

“Five Political Topics That Don’t Go Over Well”

1. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Talk about a mood killer. Try uttering the words, “Well I think Israel/Palestine should…” and watch people’s smiles disappear and ears perk up. The war between the two nations has been going long before Israeli was made into an independent Jewish state in 1948. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is like the abusive couple that lives upstairs. Sure, you hear them fighting every night. You wonder why they still live together. Time to time you call the cops, who only get turned away because the couple is determined to work it out themselves. At some point, you become numb to it.

Read the full story

The League was there on the scene at Power Shift 2009 and we want to congratulate all the participants for the biggest, most inspiring energy conference yet. Van Jones was on the scene, The Roots were on the scene…for a few days D.C. was the home of ten thousand kids from across the country, and the passion and inspiration we saw is all the motivation we need to know that Green Jobs are the way of the future, and we’ve got to spread the word.

So, without further ado, we present LYVEF’s Power Shift 2009 coverage.

For a long time, when I saw kids who were out of control, hugging the block, angry and violent I’d think, “It’s the parents’ fault.” While I still consider the lack of parenting and solid family structure as contributing to the demise of young people, I’ll admit that there are other factors outside of the home that are leading our youth to fail.

Congressman Robert C. Scott wants to save the kids or at least prevent them from falling victim to the lack of resources in their communities and ending up either dead or in jail. He recognizes the flawed and failing infrastructure as well as policies that are making it hard for young black and brown kids (as well as white) kids to succeed. Scott represents Virginia and serves as the Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security. Read the full story

President Obama can not change the fate of our country on his own. It is up to free-thinking artists and activists everywhere to seize the opportunities we have to work with each other and realize our dreams.

The power of a real leader is to inspire the people to act. We must act together!

Most of the time, we act like education is supposed to end at 12th grade, or when you get that college diploma. Why do we think adults should keep their heads down, stop paying attention to the world, and live for that biweekly paycheck?

Why do we leave it to the idealism of kids to energize us and to dream big? That is a mindset that we’ve let ourselves settle into; we need to break the mold and let our unique creativity, our natural thirst for knowledge, come out.

The key to social change is the understanding that we have to think bigger, do more, and learn from our victories and defeats. Education is a life time pursuit; it’s the pursuit of a life time, facing the challenges of our world and bringing each other across the finish line.