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We're ready to take on PAX East! Find us at Booth 15090. Photo by: Chris Christo. PAX East, here we come! Come one, come all to our circus of value! Timmy and the ThinkGeek away team are headed to...

In the very first live episode of Southern Fried Asian, Keith traveled to Washington D.C., to speak with OCA National board member and Mississippi native Stan Lou as part of the 1882 Foundation’s monthly Talk Story events. http://traffic.libsyn.com/southernfriedasian/SFA_Stan_Lou.mp3 On the show, Stan talks about his childhood growing up in Greenville, Mississippi during the era of Jim […]

Just days after being charged by federal prosecutors, Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, Houston megachurch pastor and longtime spiritual adviser to former President George W. Bush, took to the alter of his church on Easter Sunday to defend himself.

According to KHOU11, Cadwell told his parishioners that the indictments against him were just a “pit stop” on his way to the Promised Land.

“As you know, I’ve been in the news lately,” Caldwell said. “From my mouth to your ears, I am not guilty.”

Caldwell, 64, who pastors Windsor Village United Methodist Church, was indicted in federal court last Thursday for allegedly using his influence as pastor of the 16,000-member megachurch to lure “vulnerable and elderly” investors into a scheme that has seen them lose over $1 million.

Gregory Alan Smth, 55, manager of Shreveport, Louisiana-based Smith Financial, was also named in the indictment for allegedly using his influence to lure investors to pay more than $1 million to invest in historical Chinese bonds. Both of them now face 13 counts of wire fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering charges, prosecutors said in a news release.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, which is also suing both men for violating financial laws, said that in 2013 and 2014, Smith, who has been barred from the broker-dealer business by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority since 2010, along with Caldwell, allegedly targeted “vulnerable and elderly” investors, giving them false assurances that the bonds–which were “essentially worthless” with no meaningful investment value–were worth millions.

Prosecutors said the historical bonds were issued by the former Republic of China prior to losing power to the Communist government in 1949. Smith allegedly told some investors that the money raised would be used to acquire more Chinese bonds. Prosecutors said he repeatedly told investors that the bonds were “risk-free,” “guaranteed,” and “safe” and that there were buyers lined up to purchase the bonds. Smith also told investors that the bonds would either be sold to a third party or redeemed by the Chinese government.

“They are not recognized by China’s current government and have no investment value,” United States Attorney Alexander C. Van Hook said in the release.

Prosecutors said Smith and Caldwell promised high rates of return, sometimes three to 15 times the value of the investments. And instead of investing the funds, prosecutors said they allegedly used the approximately $1.8 million of investor money to pay off personal expenses including personal loans, credit card bills, mortgage payments in the case of Caldwell, and luxury vehicle automobiles in the case of Smith. Prosecutors said offshore individuals allegedly received most of the remaining funds.

Caldwell and Smith allegedly raised at least $3.4 million from 29 elderly investors, some of whom liquidated their annuities to invest in the scheme.

Throughout 2014, prosecutors said Caldwell and Smith “continued to send emails and texts promising investors that they would be paid.” The “lulling emails,” prosecutors said, usually provided elaborate explanations for why Caldwell had been unable to sell the bonds. Excuses ranged from issues “pertaining to international currency exchanges” to “failures of international organizations like the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank to approve the redemptions.”

“Our laws do not tolerate materially misleading statements to exploit vulnerable investors who, in this case, looked up to a prominent pastor,” said Eric I. Bustillo, director of the SEC’s Miami Regional Office in a press release. “Caldwell took advantage of his victims, encouraging them to remain faithful even as he and Smith broke that faith, stealing from elderly investors in an outright fraud.”

Dan Cogdell, an attorney for Caldwell, told the Huffington Post in a statement that the accusations against the pastor are “simply false.”

Cogdell said his client believed the bonds were legitimate and that he had invested a significant sum of his own personal money into the scheme.

“Everyone who has asked for their money back, because the process is taking longer than expected, has received their money back,” Caldwell said during services on Sunday.

Caldwell started his career as an investment banker and bond broker. He has pastored Windsor Village Church since 1982, growing the congregation from 25 people to the nearly 16,000 members it is today, according to the church’s website. Caldwell served as former President George W. Bush’s closest spiritual adviser and officiated the wedding for his daughter Jenna in 2008. He endorsed presidential candidate Barack Obama that same year, donated to his political campaign, and went on to become one of President Obama’s spiritual advisers.

He has launched various community development projects in the Houston area, including schools, an AIDS outreach center, and a nutrition program. He published The Gospel of Good Success: A Road Map to Spiritual, Emotional and Financial Wholeness in 1999, in which he discusses how he transformed his megachurch into a “Kingdom-building machine” and advises readers on how to “create wealth God’s way,” among other things.

“This is not a get-rich-quick scheme,” Caldwell told the Dallas Morning News in a 1999 interview about the book. “It’s about being faithful to God and receiving what God has for you,” he said, and being “a blessing on God’s terms to others.’

The post Pastor Kirbyjon Caldwell Says He’s Not Guilty Of Fraud appeared first on Black Enterprise.

The thing is… we’ve done this before.

You might have grown up on the exceptionally pale original Lost in Space which aired from 1965 – 1968. You might have watched the reruns. Maybe you’re watching the reruns in anticipation of the April 13th debut of the reboot.

Or maybe you were one of the 12 people to watch the 1998 retelling (starring Joey Tribbiani).

I imagine these comparisons are quite tiring for the producers and writers, but given the state of reboots these days, it’s worth asking (no offense, The Rock, but Baywatch wasn’t your best work).

So it’s fair if you’re wandering if yet another reboot is worth your time and effort. We know the story: the Robinsons are on route to colonize (sidebar for sci-fi writers: you should really come up with another word for this; I will mail you my thesaurus) a scouted and inhabitable planet are thrown wildly off course and must fend for themselves if they hope to survive. It’s a conflict we’ve been seeing since 7th grade English class, so is this humans against nature tale do more than just go through the motions?

Full disclosure: I will watch almost anything set in space. Star Trek has my heart, but Star Wars, Firefly, Aliens (all of them), Space Balls, Interstellar, Contact… it honestly doesn’t matter, I’ll watch it. But I know when I’m watching a show because it’s set in space versus when I’m watching a show because it’s good. Make no mistake: Lost in Space is good.

There are a lot of reasons why this iteration works. First, production value. While there are times during original when it looks like the Robinsons are betting their lives on aluminum foil and hope, it looks like Netflix has spared no expense.

The robot? [runs in circle] Whew boy! The. Robot. The robot is impressive in a way I didn’t expect from a non-theatrical release. Its movements and its face, in particular, are disarming. It’s not uncanny valley because it is so obviously a robot but it’s fighting with Wall-E for the mechanized barely verbal champion of my heart. (Skip to about 1:00 to see the robot or treat yourself and watch the whole trailer)

Technology, in general, is believable enough for me to suspend my disbelieve and rational enough for me to pretend like I was an honors science student in high school and still futuristic enough for me to know I’m at home in my chosen genre.

But since the show hinges on being invested in the Robinsons’ survival, let’s talk about the family. Tolstoy wrote “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” One thing the reboot did absolutely right was adding the right bot of complication to the Robinson family dynamic. Each member is layered and what drew me in more with each episode was the slow reveal, the development of each character.

I found myself impressed by Molly Parker’s portrayal of matriarch Maureen Robinson. Her character is brilliant, but falters when it comes to her family. What is best for them? Whose needs should be prioritized at any given moment? She faces questions that are all too familiar to mothers still in this solar system. Parker communicates her inner conflicts with a truly authentic performance.

Her counterpart, John Robinson (Toby Stephens) embodies the dueling priorities of how do I love and also provide (and protect) them when it’s almost impossible to do both at the same time? There are heartbreaking moments and feel good moments, but– all due credit to the writers–they almost always feel earned.

Penny Robinson (Mina Sundwall) offers comic relief by often voicing the audience’s concerns. She’s not exactly our voice of reason, but sometimes what you really need is a voice of sarcasm and WTF. The counterpart to her is, for me, Will Robinson (Maxwell Jenkins) who I found to be the embodiment of both my fear and my wonder–and sometimes the bravery we don’t know is in us. His is an actual child-like character. Often, [looks at Wesley Crusher] children aren’t children on sci-fi shows if they are lead characters. Will is a child and his relationship with the robot which could have so easily veered into the awfully cheesy territory.

Judy Robinson, played by Taylor Russell, likewise feels like a kid you might reasonably sit next to in an honors class: brilliant, somewhat haunted and crippled by that brilliance, and trying not-as-successfully-as-she-thinks to mask it. It’d feel disingenuous to not address the question of race. The thing is I’m aware that families need not be homogenous, so after seeing the trailers and promo pictures, I had less question about the logistics of her family as I did about the utilitarianism of tokenism.

If I’m honest, I am less and less patience for shows and movies with all white casts. Even if the shows are good. Even if I like the actors. Even if I like the original. Because I’m going to die one day and so I only have so much time to watch television so I’m going to make sure that I see myself in what I make time to watch.

I don’t want to ignore Ignacio Serricchio’s role as Don West. The Argentinian actor is a PoC, too, but [sings in the key of Gina Rodriguez’s Instagram account harmonizing with Nella Larsen’s novels] it is easy to code him as white, white passing, or racially ambiguous. Want to really think of a radical future? Imagine a future where PoCs are more abundant and vital and less tokenized.

Is that to say that it feels very much like tokenism? Yes. Is that to say it’ll stop me from watching it? No. I’ll watch it and I’ll recommend it. I know that Lt. Uhura was the only black woman on Star Trek and yet her presence has meant so much to so many WoC, but that doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed that Russell is the only WoC with top billing.

Bottom line:

Watch Lost in Space. Come for the familiar and comforting puny earthlings against all odds and stay for the character development and emotional engagement.

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The post ‘Lost in Space’: Reboot Is Worth Your Time, Come Along For The Ride appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.