politicalpartypoop.com

By Star Parker

From Townhall.com

A strange thing about President Bush’s recent address to the NAACP annual meeting was the lack of pretense that this was anything but a partisan affair.
Referring to NAACP president Bruce Gordon, Bush said, “I don’t expect Bruce to become a Republican _ and neither do you.”
This causes me to ask two questions. First, if the president felt that he was effectively addressing the black national chapter of the Democratic Party, what was he trying to accomplish? Second, is it really accurate to say that the Republican Party “let go of its historic ties with the African American community?”
On the second point, with due respect to our president, I think it is the African-American community that has let go of its historic ties to the party of Lincoln.
When I think of Lincoln I think of emancipation. That bold stroke of the pen finally did what this nation was struggling to do for a hundred years _ liberate its black slaves.
Lincoln believed in freedom _ freedom for all.
The agenda of the Republican Party of recent years, an agenda fought tooth and nail by the Democratic Party and by the NAACP, has been an agenda of emancipation.
Let parents choose where to send their child to school. Emancipate them from the tyranny of a public school monopoly. Let working Americans take ownership of their social security contributions and build equity in their own retirement savings accounts. Emancipate American workers from the tyranny of the payroll tax and government-controlled retirement.
Lincoln took two great lies head on when he emancipated the slaves. The lie that one man should or could control another’s life. And the lie that the African slaves could not be free.
It is the greatest of ironies that both these great lies animate the opposition of the Democratic Party _ and the NAACP _ to emancipating reforms like school choice and private retirement accounts. They believe that government and politicians should control the education choice of private citizens and should control savings and retirement funds of poor people. And they don’t believe that African-Americans can be free and take care of themselves.
So what was President Bush trying to accomplish with his address to the NAACP?
Maybe he thought that he could plant the seeds of change by showing up, being civil and cordial, and slipping in a few remarks about choice and ownership.
But, realistically, it was a waste of time. For the NAACP leadership, Bush’s gesture was a sign that he might be ready to accommodate them, rather than vice versa. More money, more programs, more statements giving credibility to racism as the cause of poverty.
What will it take to get African-Americans back to the agenda of Lincoln and a belief in freedom and in themselves?
For one thing, understand that much of the NAACP’s power and influence results not because it monolithically represents black America, but because so much of white America thinks it does. As columnist George Curry points out, the NAACP has been exaggerating its membership for years. According to Curry, there are less than 300,000 dues-paying members of the NAACP. That’s out of a population of 38 million African Americans, 13 million of which voted in the last election.
Millions of dollars of corporate funds go to support the NAACP each year, both as result of intimidation and the mistaken belief that the NAACP is the single national organization representing black interests. The result is that corporate America plays a major role in financing the NAACP’s ongoing campaign to keep blacks as Democrats (despite campaign finance reforms that supposedly prohibit this) and on the government plantation.
Note that President Bush’s address to the NAACP didn’t touch on social issues, such as preservation of traditional marriage, which are of enormous importance to black Christians nationwide. He knows that the NAACP is a regular plaintiff in lawsuits trying to overturn traditional marriage.
Nor did he talk about the enormous success of welfare reform, 10 years old this year, which liberated millions of young black women and their children from welfare dependence. Black liberals uniformly opposed this reform, claiming then, as they do today, that young black women could not be freed from government dependence and take care of themselves.
Lincoln sought the advice of black abolitionist Frederick Douglass on getting the word of emancipation to the slaves in the south. Today’s Frederick Douglasses, those many conservative black voices around the country who believe in black freedom and dignity, must be the vehicles for change today.
It certainly won’t be the NAACP.

BOSTON (AP) — Gov. Mitt Romney has apologized for referring to the troubled Big Dig construction project as a “tar baby” during a fundraiser with Iowa Republicans, saying he didn’t know anyone would be offended by the term some consider a racial epithet.
In a speech Saturday, Romney, a Republican considering a run for president in 2008, acknowledged he took a big political risk in taking control of the project after a fatal tunnel ceiling collapse, but said inaction would have been even worse.
“The best thing politically would be to stay as far away from that tar baby as I can,” he told a crowd of about 100 supporters in Ames, Iowa.
Black leaders were outraged at his use of the term, which dates to the 19th century Uncle Remus stories, referring to a doll made of tar that traps Br’er Rabbit. It has come to be known as a way of describing a sticky mess, and has been used as a derogatory term for a black person.
“Tar baby is a totally inappropriate phrase in the 21st century,” said Larry Jones, a black Republican and civil rights activist.
“He thinks he’s presidential timber,” Jones said. “But all he’s shown us is arrogance.”
Romney’s spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, said the governor was describing “a sticky situation.”
“He was unaware that some people find the term objectionable and he’s sorry if anyone’s offended,” Fehrnstrom said.
 
White House spokesman Tony Snow sparked similar criticism in May when he used the term in response to a question about government surveillance.

VIDEO - Lone Muslim shooter? Hardly.

The man suspected in a fatal shooting rampage hid behind a potted plant in a Jewish charity’s foyer and forced his way through a security door by holding a gun to a 13-year-old girl’s head, the police chief said Saturday. Once inside, police say, Naveed Afzal Haq opened fire with two semiautomatic pistols. One woman, Pam Waechter, 58, of Seattle was killed at the scene. Five more women were wounded.
Haq, 30, was ordered held on $50 million bail Saturday pending formal charges of murder and attempted murder. Haq, a Muslim, told authorities he was angered by the war in Iraq and U.S. military cooperation with Israel. “He pointedly blamed the Jewish people for all of these problems,” Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske said at a news conference Saturday.

Also check out - A random gallery of “lone” shooters

Pamela Waechter: 1947-2006: Friends remember ‘heroic life of helping others’

 THANKS FOR THE 411!

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Police were investigating six fatal shootings that occurred within 24 hours, the latest round of killings as the city struggles to rein in violence that has shadowed the recovery from Hurricane Katrina.
Three brothers and a friend were killed in a neighborhood not far from the French Quarter, and two persons were fatally shot in separate incidents hours later, authorities said Saturday.
Last month, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco sent the Louisiana National Guard and state police to New Orleans after five teenagers were fatally shot in a single attack.
Such sensational slayings have a crippling effect on the city’s struggle to rebuild its tourism industry and persuade evacuees to return, said City Council member James Carter, who leads the council’s committee on crime.
“The spotlight Katrina put on the city showed the real reason for these murders — abject poverty and a poor education system,” Mr. Carter said. “We have to go from looking at this as a strict law-enforcement situation and take a more holistic approach.”
There have been 78 killings in New Orleans this year, still far fewer than normal in a city accustomed to violence but enough to cause residents to fear a return to the days when New Orleans was the murder capital of the nation.
The latest shooting was in the Central City neighborhood, where most of the killings have occurred. The other recent ones, however, did not occur in the high-crime areas police have been targeting in their drive to stamp out the violence, police Superintendent Warren Riley said.
The three brothers — 16-year-old twins and a 21-year-old — were killed late Friday in the Treme neighborhood, as was their 39-year-old friend, Superintendent Riley said. All four lived nearby.
They were sitting on the porch of an abandoned house when two men walked by, then turned around and started firing, Superintendent Riley said.
The fifth shooting occurred early Saturday in the Gentilly neighborhood, an area that was severely flooded and has been slowly rebuilding. Police said they found a man dead on a street after they received reports that shots had been fired.
Responding to another call, police found a 31-year-old man lying in the middle of a Central City street with multiple gunshot wounds, officer Garry Flot said late Saturday. The man was pronounced dead at the scene.
Killings and other crimes had plummeted in the first months after Katrina hit New Orleans on Aug. 29 and flooded 80 percent of the city. The city’s current population is estimated to be about half the pre-storm total of 465,000.
People who “live the life” of drugs and violence were taking a toll on the rest of the residents, Superintendent Riley said.
“It is an unfortunate and very, very sad situation for those good-quality citizens who are living with the guidelines of what we all consider normalcy — the norms of society.”
Last month, five teens were killed as they sat in or stood near a sport utility vehicle. A 19-year-old man with a lengthy juvenile record was arrested in the deaths.

By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International Editor

Link to Story 
(CNSNews.com) - Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s popularity is growing across the Middle East, with many Arabs setting aside religious and other differences to embrace him as an Islamic hero who has taken on a reviled Israeli enemy.
While low-key criticism has been heard from some Mideast and Arab governments about Hizballah’s “adventurism,” among the Arab people, the Shi’ite terrorist group is drawing strong and vocal support, according to regional media outlets.
As the conflict in Lebanon and northern Israel moves into its third week, Arabs frustrated by their own governments’ cautious reaction are hailing Hizballah and its black-turbaned leader.
From secular leftists in Egypt to Sunnis in Syria, Jordan and the Palestinian areas, Arabs are singing the praises of the “courageous,” “devoted,” “charismatic” and “powerful” Nasrallah, whose image appears on t-shirts and posters.
Even before the current crisis, Nasrallah was admired by many Arabs and Muslims, particularly after Israel’s decision in 2000 to withdraw from a narrow strip of south Lebanese territory it had used as a buffer against cross-border terrorism.
“Nasrallah is the only Muslim in history to defeat Israel on the battlefield,” said the pan-Arab media organization al-Bawaba in one glowing 2003 tribute.
The 46-year-old cleric’s stature has grown as Hizballah has fired rockets into Israel and fought the Israelis on the ground in recent weeks.
In Syria, Nasrallah is likened by some to Saladin, the Kurdish Muslim warrior who conquered Crusader-held Jerusalem in the 12th century, and whose tomb is located in Damascus.
Middle East Online quoted residents of the city calling the Hizballah leader “the Saladin of our time,” and expressing the hope that he will capture Jerusalem and restore Arab pride.
One Syrian was quoted as contrasting Hizballah’s military performance against Israel to the collapse of Arab armies during the 1967 Six Day War.
A trader in the Damascus market said he was selling hundreds of t-shirts bearing Nasrallah’s face every day. Another shopkeeper said pictures of Nasrallah had been popular in the past, but mostly among Shi’ites. Now Syrian Sunnis and Christians were also buying them.
Middle East Online also noted that on widely displayed posters in Syria depicting President Bashir al-Assad, his father Hafez, and his late brother Basil, Nasrallah’s image was replacing that of Basil.
This was “a significant sign of popular and official support for the Hizballah leader.”

Noble quest’

While Syria’s backing for Hizballah is well-known, the governments of Jordan and Egypt - the other two countries defeated by Israel in 1967 - have not supported the militia’s recent activity.
King Abdullah and President Hosni Mubarak jointly warned earlier this month against “dragging the region into adventures that don’t serve the Arab issues and interests.”
Whatever their leaders’ public position, among the predominantly Sunni citizens of Jordan and Egypt feeling is reportedly running high against Israel and in favor of Hizballah.
“Suddenly Egyptians have found a hero,” Cairo’s Al-Ahram reported, saying that for some, Nasrallah was offering strong competition to Egypt’s iconic former leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser.
The paper described how a gathering of largely left-wing “activists, intellectuals, journalists and academics” had sent a message of support to Nasrallah, calling his campaign against Israel “a noble quest for self-defense in the face of a vicious imperialist project.”
“You restored the [Arab] nation’s confidence,” the message said. “Israel is built on the fear others have for it. You broke that fear.”
Al-Ahram noted with some surprise the fact secular leftists were embracing a Shi’ite cleric. It quoted one left-wing academic as saying Nasrallah had become “the most credible Arab leader in the Arab world.”
Professional organizations and political parties in several Arab countries are voicing support for Hizballah and condemning Israel.
Earlier this month, at a conference arranged by Egypt’s Bar Association, the body’s head, Sameh Ashour, said that if the Lebanese resistance to Israel was Shi’a, “then we are Shi’a.”
“Hail to the leader who reigns in the highest place in the hearts and minds of the Arab umma, Hassan Nasrallah,” Ashour said in a speech.
A number of speakers at the conference condemned Arab governments’ criticism of Hizballah.
The Association of Jordanian Writers has launched a campaign to collect one million signatures on demand that the government annul in 1994 peace treaty with Israel. The Israeli Embassy in Amman should be closed and Jordan “cleansed” from the presence of Zionists, it said in an announcement carried by the Al-Quds Al-Arabi paper.
A similar call came from Egypt, where opposition parties including the Muslim Brotherhood want their country’s 1979 peace treaty with the Jewish state canceled.
A lawyers’ body in Yemen condemned Arab governments’ “silence” and called for Arabs and Muslims to “gather around the noble Arab and Islamic leaders who support jihad and resistance.”
It said Arab governments should activate an Arab joint defense treaty - a document signed in 1950 between Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen - to enable Arab and Muslim youths to take part in jihad to support the Lebanese and Palestinians.
“Hizballah is riding a wave of popularity at the street level because of its confrontation with Israel,which is seen as heroic and as restoring Arab and Muslim honor,” says the Barnabas Fund, an international charity working among Christian minorities in Islamic countries.
In Islamic theology and tradition, it said in a briefing, Jews were meant to be a weak and despised people.
Because of this, Muslims’ repeated defeats at the hands of Israel were deeply humiliating.
“Anyone who can hurt the despised enemy who has inflicted such shame on Muslims and Arabs is celebrated as a hero by the Muslim masses.”
 

     On the CBS News “Public Eye” blog site on Thursday, Washington, DC-based CBS Evening News producer Ward Sloane was interviewed in the “Ten Plus One” feature. The Public Eye team asked ten questions, and then added one from an outsider, who asked about media watchdog groups: “There is always a lot of criticism, particularly in the realm of political reporting, about journalists being biased against liberals or conservatives. There are organizations that exist primarily to highlight instances of such bias. How do you think that climate affects political coverage, if at all?” Sloane contended all the media-bias talk was just fundraising hucksterism: “It is my belief, though I don’t have any evidence of this, that a lot of the howling about media bias is primarily a vehicle to raise money.”

     [This item by Tim Graham was posted Sunday on the MRC’s blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     Sloane answered:

I do not believe that honest journalists worry about what such organizations say about their stories and pieces. Of course, political stories I’ve worked on have been picked up by both conservative and liberal organizations as being “unfair.” But for these folks, “unfair” is anything that doesn’t promote their agenda. And it is my belief, though I don’t have any evidence of this, that a lot of the howling about media bias is primarily a vehicle to raise money.

Do I think these organizations can be helpful? Not really; I think they just want to use journalists and their media outlets for their own purposes. People who read or subscribe to those organizations are going to think the media is biased anyway. Once in a blue moon, it may be that they do serve the purpose of poking a stick in my eye and asking, hey, did I slant that item?

     END of Sloane’s answer

Like that blue-moon time the CBS Evening News was selling fake documents about President Bush’s National Guard service? Sloane says it’s up to the media to try not to be used by one side or another. But we can take his cynical disdain for media watchdog groups and turn it right back on the media, like this: “For these folks at CBS, a lot of the howling about the problems in the world is just a way for a network news division to make money. Do I think CBS can be helpful? Not really. They just want to use their news reports for their own purposes….” How does Sloane think that sounds? A bit….harsh, perhaps?

Found the two entries while blog surfing, I have a thing or two to say below: 

By James Joyner  - Outside the Beltway
Wizbang’s Paul has hung it up, I think for good this time, saying “It just ain’t fun anymore.” The last straw was a recent flamewar he got into with Ace but he’s been tired of the trevails of blogging for quite some time. Coincidentally, his colleague, Jay Tea, is taking a hiatus having just helped a friend get through his father’s dying days.

Although I’ve been at it hard for almost exactly three and a half years now (that milestone will hit officially Monday), I’ve managed to avoid the “blogger burnout” that seems to afflict most bloggers. Sure, it’s a ton of work and there are days when I feel like obligated to simply crank out content just to get something up, those days are still, fortunately, rare. I’m still a news junkie and sufficiently curious about the world around me that I’m seldom long without something of interest to opine about.

My least favorite part of the “blog job,” though, is the incivility in comment threads and the occasional cross-blog flamewar. While OTB’s comment threads are quite civil compared to most blogs of comparable traffic, there are a handful of regulars who forget the number one rule of our site policies: “Remember that the people under discussion are human beings.” The follow-on — “Comments that contain personal attacks about the post author or other commenters will be deleted. Repeated violators will be banned. Challenge the ideas of those with whom you disagree, not their patriotism, decency, or integrity.” — is something that I’ve largely refrained from enforcing, since it’s a lot of work and I hate to alienate regular visitors.

That’ll likely change, though, as four or five regular visitors–almost evenly divided ideologically, by the way–who are driving down the tone of the discussion. I think I’m better off making a few folks mad than have the comments section be an unfriendly place.

From Right Wing News 

This week-end, I was talking with someone who’s working on a yet to be debuted, high profile website that’s supposed to feature civil comments sections. Personally? I’ve been on the web for a very long time and I’m not sure such a thing can really be created.

You want to put in a filter that will get rid of profanity? People will spell words phonetically to get around it. Are you going to get moderators who will really crack down and ban everyone who’s rude? Well, that’s a subjective call and you’ll be overwhelmed with complaints. Do you want to set up an automated rating system that will automatically ban abusive posters based on the rankings of other people? On political websites, all that will mean is that all the liberals will try to ban all the conservatives and all the conservatives will try to ban the liberals.

That leaves you with three choices:

#1) You can put enormous amounts of manpower into policing your comment section. For most people, this is just too time consuming to be considered.

#2) You can take an extremely light touch and hardly ever delete comments or ban anyone. In this case, you’ll quickly find that your comments section turns into a complete sewer.

#3) You can take a benevolent, yet iron fisted dictator route. You can let people curse a little bit and just delete comments that go a little over certain lines. But, if people step way over that line, you delete their comments, ban them, and they’re never heard from again.

In my opinion, #3 is the best way to go because as James said, there are usually just a few instigators threadjacking, picking fights, and generally being obnoxious while everyone else ends up reacting to them. You get rid of those malcontents, you get rid of 90% of your problems. So bloggers, pull that trigger on problem commenters and never look back!

 

I’ve have often discussed this with folks and I have never understood why blog comments are such a big deal.
First of all I don’t get a great deal of comments, never have, nor do I ever think I will.
Maybe how I post things on this blog really does not invite folks to give their opinion on a given topic.
I have had to do the registration thing because of blog spam something all sites are dealing with.
For the sites that worry about comments particularly the profane laced or stupid comments my suggestion would be when someone make a dumbass comment when it is clear that they don’t know what the fuck they are talking about just highlight that comment and expose the stupidity. Put it front and center.
My feelings on comments are like my feelings on radio talk show callers. For a good number of them, the less I hear from them the better.
Take listening to Rush for example. The reason why his show is so successful is that his callers are well screened and the callers usually help him make his various points throughout the show.  But more importantly the host drives the show. I would not give a shit if Rush did not have a single caller. Most talks show callers are egotistical idiots who just like to hear themselves speak and get off on the fact that they are being heard by a audience.
Most people who call talk shows I believe truly think they are offering a unique perspective on a given topic when 99 percent of the time they don’t.
Bck to comments, I like reading smart comments, regardless of the political slant. I wish more liberal minded people would comment here, and offer a unique view from the other side. But I know from personal experience that being black and conservative, liberal white folks won’t come here or on any other right leaning black site and run the “evil white racist” conservative bullshit. To most liberals black conservative is an oxymoron. “How can you be a Republican when they secretly kill blacks in the basement.”  
The above articles and others I have read make note of how uncivil dialogue has gotten and they are concerned about the profanity laced tone of many comment sections.
I personally think filtering out comments is bullshit, and it’s a clear copout.
More than that it’s is completely disingenuous because to chastise the profane nature of someone’s raw feelings is to chastise real life.
I don’t consider the blog world a pristine intellectual venue where we all just get along.
We live in a racially and socially charged world where people flip each other off while driving.
Married couples engage in profane laced tirades towards each other (in front of the kids) I might add. Many folks have or at least wanted to say fuck you to his or her boss and co-workers.
We listen to music that demeans women and watch television shows that glorify violence and portray women as bitches and hoes. 
People engage in racially insensitive talk via jokes routinely, not to mention all of the other sexually and socially deviant behaviors both on and off the internet.
So for someone to tell me that they our concerned or outraged at the dialogue exhibited on blogs is laughable. Blogs are not private tea parties.

(more…)

By Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com

Question: What’s the difference between the Arab League and the academic Left that despises Israel? Answer: Only the Arab League is willing to condemn Hezbollah.

The surreal politics of this war finds Saudi Arabia attributing “full responsibility” to Hezbollah and calling on the terrorists to “alone shoulder the crisis they have created;” it finds Kuwaiti journalists lauding the “operations of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon [that] are in the interest of people of Arab countries and the international community,” even as hundreds of American professors rush to denounce Israel for firing back at genocidal killers sworn to her destruction.
More than 1,000 such professors have signed a petition that is currently circulating on American college campuses. Written in the name of “academics who condemn Israel’s aggression against Lebanon and Gaza,” the petition waxes indignant about Israel’s alleged crimes, including a “brutal bombing and invasion of Gaza,” and “acts of Israeli state terrorism” in Lebanon.
More noteworthy, however, is what the petition does not say. Not only is there no mention of Hamas or Hezbollah, but reading the petition one might conclude that terrorism plays no part in the current conflagration. Instead the petition calls for the immediate release of jailed terrorists, euphemistically described as “Palestinian and Lebanese political prisoners,” and effectively erases the role of anti-Israel terrorism in precipitating the current by asserting that “Israel’s destructive and expansionist policies are primarily to blame for the seemingly perpetual ‘Middle East crisis.’”
Never mind that Israel has withdrawn from both Gaza and Lebanon, and that the current offensive was prompted by the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, first by Palestinian terrorists and then their Lebanese counterparts. Never mind, too, that the “expansionist policies” in the region have been pursued by Arab powers who launched four major wars against Israel since 1948; by Islamist jihadists who have never reconciled themselves to a Jewish presence in the Middle East; and by rogue states like Iran and Syria, who rely on terrorist surrogates to succeed where the earlier efforts failed. These details are aggressively ignored for, as a review of the petition’s signatories makes clear, the rewriting of history to serve the interests of Israel’s enemies commands no small following in the increasingly radicalized academic world.

Read the rest here

I found this article below on the Black Commentator.
 
A first I found it a little funny but the more I read and absorbed I’m more embarrassed than anything.
I even considered not linking to it because I can just see white folks who know of her shaking their heads while reading this crap and saying “no wonder those niggas are so screwed up.”
I’m sorry, I have said this, over and over and over I know. I have posted shit about McKinney and I continued to be incredulous over the blind support this moron gets from some black folks.
I’m certain that web sites like this get money to write supportive pieces for people like her.
Shit I’m broke and could use a few dollars, but you could not pay me enough to write something positive about her.
These folks must have got paid, big time. Nobody is going to write such a piece about her for the hell of it.
No reasonable thinking black individual can honestly say they believe that McKinney is a quality political representative.
This is why black folks in majority black districts get fucked all the time.  Because they are represented by people like her who are either complete dolts or crooks. William Jefferson, Ray Nagin, Major Owens to name a few.
Black folks bitch and moan all day about whitey trying to get them and while yes that might be true some of the time why give them the ammunition because you are incapable of conducting yourself like you have some fucking sense.   
McKinney is not even liked nor respected by her own party, therefore she can’t possible effectively represent the people of her district. This lady is a fool. It’s ok to have a voice and be outspoken but you must conduct yourself with dignity something McKinney simply is not capable of doing.
This is like Steele. Steele in his actions and his own words has proven himself unworthy to serve in the Senate. I don’t care if he is a Republican, if you’re a fool you don’t deserve to be in office.
Yes I’m Republican and yes I’m a conservative but I’m more concerned about having quality PEOPLE in office to serve the interest of not just blacks but everybody.
I know and work with a number of black Democrats here in Kansas, and I would vote for them in a heartbeat because they are quality people and they make the people (all the people, not just blacks) in their districts proud.
This is the dilemma we black folks have. We must adjust to the white world, that is the game we must play. It’s unfortunate and unfair but much of what we (blacks)  do is magnified. Regardless of what side of the political ideological isle we sit on black political leaders must be individuals that constituents hold in high regard.
This crazy bitch did not even have enough respect for the political system to attend two debates. Now that she is apparently in trouble, not she wants debates and seeking help from all corners.
I hope the people of Georgia wise up and vote her ass out, they deserve better.         
      
Now to a portion of the article - Direct link here

Cynthia McKinney is a unique presence in the Congressional Black Caucus: a genuine “movement” activist. For that reason, she is hated and feared by white racists, for whom she is the epitome of the uppity Black; by corporate America and its vicious media, whose power she does not respect; by Democratic House leadership, which abhors activist Black lawmakers more than it does Republicans; and by cowardly African Americans who feel threatened by her example of principled speech and action for social justice and world peace. That’s why it is imperative that all people of good will assist McKinney in keeping her seat from Georgia’s 4th district, just outside Atlanta.
The racists and cowards smell blood. McKinney was forced into a runoff election, set for August 8, after failing to win a clear majority in this month’s Democratic primary. Turnout was abysmal – only 60,000 voters showed up, versus 95,000 in 2004 when she took back her seat after a two year absence.
McKinney garnered 47 percent of the vote in a three-way race, only 1,500 votes ahead of second place Hank Johnson, a compliant Black Dekalb County commissioner who brags that he is a “pothole” politician who will not stir up controversy. A white businessman got more than eight percent of the vote. His share will undoubtedly wind up in Hank(erchief head) Johnson’s column, on August 8. Clearly, McKinney must bring out her troops – which takes money. Her opponent’s surprise showing has invigorated those who backed Denise Majette with tons of cash to oust McKinney in 2002, and now see another chance to rid themselves of their nemesis.

Clinton’s secretary of state reminds us how lucky we are to have a Bush administration.
by William Kristol  - Direct Link to Article

From: The Weekly Standard

Every time neocon warmongers like me get exasperated by the Bush administration (and we’ve had increasingly good reasons for exasperation in the last year or so, I might add), someone like first-term Clinton secretary of state Warren Christopher pops up. Maybe “pops up” isn’t quite right, conveying as it does an implication of activity and even energy. So let’s just say that Warren Christopher presented his credentials to the Washington Post op-ed page Friday, criticizing the Bush administration, more in sorrow than in anger. Bush, you see, had “resisted all suggestions that the first order of business should be negotiation of an immediate cease-fire between the warring parties,” i.e., between the state of Israel and the terrorist group Hezbollah.
Christopher’s piece needs to be read to be believed. It needs to be read as an example of the fatuousness of liberal elite opinion about the world we live in. That opinion is dominant in the Democratic party–and, unfortunately, has penetrated the Bush State Department more than one would wish. Still, Christopher’s op-ed is such a convenient reminder of how much worse things could be that one wonders whether he’s on Karl Rove’s payroll.
He’s probably not. After all, this is the man who, as secretary of state, allowed ethnic cleansing to go on far too long in the Balkans, presided over humiliations in Somalia and Haiti, did nothing in the face of genocide in Rwanda, didn’t respond to terror at Khobar Towers, and allowed Hafez al-Assad to treat him as a supplicant. 
He’s back, basically articulating the line of the non-Lieberman wing–that is, 95 percent–of the Democratic party.
What’s his line? That “we should focus our efforts on stopping the killing.” How? Three recommendations. First, “an immediate cease-fire must take priority, with negotiations on longer-term arrangements to follow.” In other words, the fact that one of the warring parties is a state that had withdrawn from occupied territory and was scrupulously complying with its obligations, and the other is a terror group that was arming itself to the teeth and killing and kidnapping citizens of a neighboring country, is irrelevant. And the notion that a terror group should be in any way disadvantaged by the “longer-term arrangements to follow,” that the terrorists should pay any price for their actions, is nowhere suggested by Christopher. Indeed, he is so much the Compleat Diplomat that he never mentions the incident that caused the outbreak of hostilities: Hezbollah’s attack across the Israel-Lebanon border.

Second: “If a cease-fire is the goal, the United States has an indispensable role to play.” The highlighting of U.S. indispensability is a (moderately clever) way of disguising the fact that Christopher wants the United States to yield in its view of the Middle East conflict to the Europeans and the United Nations. What does U.S. indispensability mean to Warren Christopher? That only we can muscle the Israelis into an agreement, and that “the Europeans are unlikely to participate in a multinational enforcement action until the United States commits to putting its own troops on the ground.” In other words, what is indispensable is not a distinctively American view of the situation or the exercise of American leadership. It is helping the international community to impose an evenhanded settlement on Israel and Hezbollah.

Third: The United States has to engage in “direct dialogue” with Syria, since Syria has “more leverage over Hezbollah’s actions than any other country save Iran.” And what about Iran? Christopher leaves unsaid what would undoubtedly be his recommendation: direct engagement without conditions with that regime as well. He does write, “as the situations with North Korea and Iran confirm, refusing to speak with those we dislike is a recipe for frustration and failure.” It would, I suppose, be undiplomatic to mention North Korea’s missile launches and Iran’s nuclear weapons program. They just happen to be nations “we dislike.”
In Warren Christopher’s world, we should dislike fewer regimes. Then, presumably, we’d be disliked less. Israel, however, we should dislike. After all, “every day America gives the green light to further Israeli violence, our already tattered reputation sinks even lower.” This isn’t even evenhandedness. Nowhere in his op-ed is Christopher as harsh about Hezbollah–or Syria or Iran–as he is about Israel. Israeli violence is the problem. Anti-Israeli policies are the solution. Warren Christopher, meet Kofi Annan.
The Bush administration has wavered and floundered too much over the last year. Its State Department remains in some considerable denial about Iran, and its Defense Department about Iraq. We look forward to resuming our constructive criticisms of the administration. But we pause this week to say this: Given the spirit of today’s liberal establishment and Democratic party, so perfectly personified by Warren Christopher, thank God we have a Bush and not a Kerry administration.
–William Kristol

GLOBAL JIHAD
1 dead, 5 hurt
in Seattle terror
Muslim angry ‘about Israel,’
shoots up Jewish Federation

A 30-year-old Pakistani man, announcing he was a Muslim and angry about Israel, pulled out a gun in the Seattle Jewish Federation today and shot six people, one dead.
The gunman, identified by law enforcement sources as Naveed Afzal Haq, 30, reportedly lives in Pasco, Washington and has a charge of lewd conduct pending against him in Benton County, Washington. He reportedly is a U.S. citizen.
According to several witnesses, the Haq got through security and announced to staff members: “I’m a Muslim American; I’m angry at Israel.” He immediately began shooting randomly with a semiautomatic 9-mm handgun at the 18 employees and visitors in the offices.

Read the rest here

From Neal Bortz HERE WE GO WITH THE PROFIT HYSTERIA AGAIN

The Associated Press is reporting that Exxon Mobil’s second quarter profits totaled $10.36 billion. That’s the second largest quarterly profit ever recorded by any publicly traded U.S. company.
OK .. get ready for the screams.  It’s just a matter of hours before some demagogues in Congress start yelling again for a windfall profits tax.  Across the country we’re going to hear screams of anguish from economic ignoramuses who couldn’t tell you the difference from a profit and a profit margin.
Nowhere in the article can you find Exxon Mobil’s profit margin for the quarter.  You can, though, find the numbers you can crunch to reach that figure.  Total revenues for Exxon Mobil during the quarter were $99.03 billion.  Run a little division problem and you come up with a 10.46% profit margin.  Not bad at all, but not the best out there either.  Most pharmaceutical and banking companies earned a higher profit margin. 
The amount of profit earned is directly tied to the price of the product you are selling, and the market for that profit.  All these higher profits mean is that the cost of Exxon Mobil’s products (primarily petroleum-based products) has gone up along with demand. 
By the way ,,, during the quarter Exxon spent nearly $5 billion of this profit on capital projects and exploration for new sources of oil, and another $7,9 billion was sent to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases.  Belinda is one of those shareholders, so perhaps you can blame here for your high gas prices.  Besides Belinda, we have some of teacher’s union pension funds out there who invest heavily in Exxon Mobil. These dividends, which came from the Exxon profits, will be spent to cover pension checks to retired teachers.  Now that’s pretty nasty, isn’t it!  How DARE these teachers receive pension checks funded by investments in a successful corporation like Exxon Mobil when the government could be getting that money thorough a windfall profits tax?

Right Wing News has a nice post entitled: Cindy Sheehan: Not A Very Nice Person. That sorry ass, bitch ass, cracka ass…er uh sorry people you must understand I hate fake ass people. Talk about someone starved for attention. I love how dude used the term “professional griever”.
Ah I remember when the left wing blogs and the media anointed her “the liberal goddess.”
Stupid ass liberals gushed over her like a damm rock star and she ate it up.

Remember stuff like this:

From the World Socialist Website, “Growing support for Cindy Sheehan protest against Iraq war”
The ranks of protesters who have converged on Crawford, Texas to support Cindy Sheehan have swelled to some 300 since the 48-year-old mother of a fallen soldier in Iraq set up camp August 6 down the road from George W. Bush’s ranch, where the president is vacationing until the end of August.
Ms. Sheehan’s son Casey was killed on April 4, 2004, only five days after arriving in Iraq. She has vowed to stay in her makeshift camp until Bush speaks to her or she is arrested.

Every fucken story had to mention my man Casey, who lets face it if he were alive dude would employ the Homer Simpson choke on his idiot mother. 

But there was more gushing….

Village Voice:  ”When I heard the name Cindy Sheehan,” says DeBar, the Ossining activist, “I thought, great.”
Last month, DeBar, himself a former Green Party candidate, proposed a Draft Sheehan effort on a Green message board. Unlike some Greens who are pushing a Sheehan for President initiative, DeBar wants to see her move from her home state of California to run against Clinton in the New York primary next year. That way, he writes in his post, “she could force a seismic shift in the direction of the Democratic Party.”
Activists see obvious potential in Sheehan. The movement’s icon did, after all, rescue anti-war activists from hibernation, breathing new life into their cause from the moment she set up her bivouac at Camp Casey. At the Brooklyn Peace Fair, hordes of fans flocked to her as she descended the platform, lining up for pictures, praising her speech, offering to escort her if she ever comes back to town. After Sheehan signed the back of a postcard with “Peace, Cindy,” an ebullient middle-aged woman produced it, repeatedly, for all to see.

And tidbits like this: From Daily Kos

We should call her “Mother Sheehan”.  (no people I did not make this shit up!) We should never call her Cindy; I don’t know her.  “Mother Sheehan” is her title, and expresses her ceremonial status as a bereaved mother, calling forth over the dead body of her son.  She is not a person now, she is a mother, which is not an expression of her individuality, but rather the expression of her eternal character: the mother, the bringer of life who has been wronged by state power.

But those mean ole Republicans

They go after the nice people  “Swift boating” Cindy Sheehan

 It’s a shame left wing blogs don’t pimp her any more. And the media has stayed away from her.
You think the lunatic left knows she is more a liability than an asset.     

I don’t ever want people like Sheehan to go away, I think their voices should be heard loud and clear. I’m actually glad the media sticks a camera in the faces of these lunatics so I can feel at peace and know where the enemy lies.
It’s kinda like my fear of snakes. If I can see them and know where they are at all times I’m cool. It’s when they are hidden and concealed and jump out at me when the fear comes in. (yes a black dude scared of snakes, fuck you!)
My advice, embrace liberals, give them the floor and let them entertain. Just keep them in full view.

By Mona Charen

Never has a news story affected me the way the Andrea Yates tragedy did when it first broke. I was in the car when I heard the news on the radio, and I literally had to pull over — the horror was just too overwhelming. As I recall it, these were the words that constricted my chest: “Police say the mother chased her oldest son around the house after having drowned his younger siblings.” Noah was 7. He screamed as his mother dragged him to the tub.
I later learned from court testimony that the boy struggled for his life while his mother held him under water and twice broke through the surface to sputter an apology for anything he had done wrong to merit such a punishment. Another of the children, it might have been John (6) or Paul (3), was found with strands of his mother’s hair in his fist.
On July 26, at her retrial, Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity. She will be committed to a mental institution for an indefinite period, but her crime is erased.
Few people who heard the details of Yates’s disintegration could doubt that she suffered from mental illness. Normal until the birth of her first child, Yates began to have psychotic “visions” after Noah was born that worsened with every subsequent birth.
She was diagnosed several times by different psychiatrists as having any of a number of dire conditions, including major depression, post-partum psychosis and schizophrenia (though the medical experts differed in their diagnoses). She first tried to commit suicide in 1999 by taking an overdose of pills. She was prescribed anti-depressants but refused to take them. She then declined to feed her children because she claimed they were eating too much. She told her husband, according to crime.about.com, that characters on television were talking to her and she imagined that there were video cameras in the ceiling of their house.
Later that same year, Rusty Yates came home to find his wife crouched in the bathroom holding a knife to her throat. She spoke of hallucinations. She was hospitalized in a psychiatric unit and remained catatonic for 10 days. The drug Haldol was prescribed, and she improved and was discharged. But the psychiatrist warned Rusty that having any more babies might renew Andrea’s psychosis.
Six months later, apparently at the urging of her husband, Yates was pregnant again and had stopped taking her medication. When her father died soon after Mary, the couple’s fifth child, was born, Andrea Yates fell apart. She stopped speaking, mutilated her body, frantically read the Bible and stopped feeding her infant.
On June 20, 2001, Andrea waited for Rusty to leave for work and then methodically murdered her five children. She told police she had done it because “they weren’t developing correctly.”
Two juries have had to decide to what degree Andrea Yates was responsible for her behavior. But no juries have ever been asked to consider Rusty’s guilt. The word negligent doesn’t even begin to describe his malfeasance. How is it possible that a man who knows his wife’s sanity has been compromised by childbirth can nonetheless impregnate her five more times (she miscarried once)?
How could he leave her alone when he knew she was, at the very least, suicidal — and when her failure to care for the children (and feeding is pretty elemental) revealed a clear case of endangering the welfare of a child? What was he thinking when he urged Andrea to home school all four of their children (the fifth came later) in the converted school bus they were living in?
Who is more guilty here: the sane one or the insane one? Some of the jurors in the retrial expressed regret that they could not legally find Yates “guilty but insane.” Texas, unlike some other states, doesn’t have such a verdict. In the common law tradition, insanity relieves a person of criminal responsibility because the insane have a diminished capacity to understand the wrongfulness of their crimes. But in practice, the line between rationality and irrationality is very hard to draw. Didn’t Andrea wait until Rusty left the house to begin her murders? Doesn’t that suggest planning?
Expert witnesses disagree all the time about the nature, extent and effects of mental illnesses. It therefore falls upon juries to use their common sense as to whether a defendant understood what he or she was doing. Many jurors have difficulty applying the words “not guilty” to a person like Andrea Yates — crazy though she clearly is. For moral clarity as much as anything, there ought to be an option for “guilty but insane.”
 
 

Found this while blog surfing…… 

I’ve never really paid that much attention to The Daily Kos. I don’t like its politics and I don’t care for its publisher, Markos Moulitsas. But I’m feeling some pangs of anger toward Kos now, after watching this Nightline episode covering Moulitsas’ blog campaign to defeat Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.

Lieberman’s in the final leg of his primary campaign against insurgent challenger Ned Lamont. For my earlier post on Lieberman’s primary challenge, click here. Daily Kos has pledged the defeat of Lieberman to be one of its top political priorities in this year’s election season. The reason? Lieberman has emerged as the Senate’s top Democrat supporting the American project of democracy-building in Iraq. Lieberman published an important essay in the Wall Street Journal last November after visiting the Iraq, arguing against a precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country. Here’s what Liberman said of Iraq, following the nation’s January 2005 elections:

In the face of terrorist threats and escalating violence, eight million Iraqis voted for their interim national government in January, almost 10 million participated in the referendum on their new constitution in October, and even more than that are expected to vote in the elections for a full-term government on Dec. 15. Every time the 27 million Iraqis have been given the chance since Saddam was overthrown, they have voted for self-government and hope over the violence and hatred the 10,000 terrorists offer them.

READ MORE AT - Burkean Reflections

JOKES ON HER. WATCH VIDEO

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer - Link to Article

WASHINGTON — Democrats plan to press for a minimum wage increase and”tough, smart”national security in their final push to wrest power from the Republicans in the November elections.
House and Senate Democrats will hold a joint meeting on Thursday to discuss events planned for the 100 days leading up to midterm congressional elections and lay out their party agenda, called”A New Direction for America.”
It’s a compilation of positions the party has staked out over the past few months on income, national security, energy, education, health care and retirement accounts.
“We’re going across the country to make our case,”Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said.”We’re going to reject the divisive politics of the last six years, and unite America behind an agenda that works for all.”
His counterpart in the House, Nancy Pelosi of California, said Democrats offer change.”Americans know the country is going in the wrong direction,”she said.
Republicans control Congress but the Iraq war, inflated gas prices and a soaring federal deficit have soured the political environment for the GOP. Polls show the public favors a Democratic takeover, and Democrats hope to make their closing pitches in a series of campaign events focused on issues including college affordability and Medicare prescription drugs.
Danny Diaz, a Republican National Committee spokesman, said:”It is both ironic and amusing that Democrats believe they are making a final argument to the American people, while being incapable of deciding how much to raise taxes on working families or how quickly to retreat from Iraq.”
On Saturday, exactly 100 days before the Nov. 7 election, the Democratic National Committee will reach out to voters through more than 800 picnics, pig roasts, phone banks and neighborhood canvasses.
In early August, House and Senate Democrats plan to hold at least 200 town hall meetings, press conferences and speeches in states and congressional districts. Larger events also will be staged in some of the most competitive states. In New Jersey, for instance, Reid will join Sen. Bob Menendez, who is in a tight race, to outline port security problems and solutions.
Democrats also will press for a minimum wage raise on Labor Day and hold an event about Hurricane Katrina recovery in Louisiana in late August, a year after the deadly storm.

FROM: Rush on yesterdays show:

  ”Democrats plan to press for a minimum wage increase, and tough smart national security–” Well, let’s redo the John Kerry campaign. “–tough, smart national security in their final push to wrest power from the Republicans in the November elections. House and Senate Democrats will hold a joint meeting today to discuss events planned for the hundred days leading up to midterm congressional elections and lay out their party agenda called a New Direction for America.” How many times have we had this story? They’re going to meet, and then they’re going to come up with what they believe in, and then they’re going to announce it.  
 
But not right now, because they’re going to wait ’til the election really heats up, three months, hundred days out. This story is the same story that I have been reading to you and reading myself for the past six months, Democrats map out election plan. All right, let’s see what they’re up against, shall we, ladies and gentlemen? The economy is as good as it’s ever been. Unemployment is at record lows. We are winning the war against terror, despite the claims of the Drive-By Media. Inflation remains low. Home ownership’s at an all-time high, and the Democrats want to go in a different direction. (Gasping.) How can this be a new agenda when it’s recycling words that John Kerry used in a losing campaign? “I can do it tougher, and I can do it smarter, because I am John Kerry.” He’s going to be strong and smart, that’s right, strong and smart.

By KRISTEN WYATT, Associated Press Writer

 ANNAPOLIS, Md. - Republican Senate candidate Michael Steele on Wednesday called President Bush his “homeboy,” reversed course on having the president campaign for him and said he was joking when he described his Republican affiliation as a scarlet letter.
The Maryland lieutenant governor, under fire for his comments, told WBAL radio that his remarks were supposed to be off the record with a handful of reporters. Instead, Steele’s campaign confirmed Tuesday that he was the unnamed Senate candidate who had assailed the Bush administration and Republican-controlled Congress in a story in The Washington Post.
“I’ve been quoted as calling the president my homeboy, you know. And that’s how I feel. … It’s a term of affection and respect for his leadership of our country in a difficult time,” Steele, who is black, said in the radio interview. FULL STORY

“Karl, you get that black motherfucker on the phone and tell him what be better do to get another fucking dime from us. Fuck him. What does he know, he’s a fucking Lt. Gov.”

Ok people, I have changed course. I’m done with supporting this guy. He clearly is an idiot. When The News Blog ran the sambo shit, I was outraged. As dude was attacked by what was clearly a racist liberal Democrat establishment, I supported dude. But I’m like fuck it, Republicans should just say, screw Maryland.
I wouldn’t vote for this dude for dog catcher. Forget him being Republican, he is just stupid. He claims that he made some remarks “off the record” who is he fucken kidding.
The man is embarrassing and what make all of this more irritating to me is that it’s already hard enough for niggas to make inroads into becoming legitimate political candidates in either party. And here he is fucking shit up! 
And this wavering back and fourth between ghetto talk and normal talk is getting real old. He clearly is confused.
Advice for Steele; just shut the fuck up, keep your damm mouth shut for a few weeks, stay out of the news, don’t give interviews, and stay off TV. Do your stump speeches; give that big wide negro grin and no more negro slang in news articles.
(The News Blog) called a spade a spade from the beginning, looks like dude was right.  

More - Despite ground rules, Steele protests publication of criticism

and this… 

Senate Candidate Steele Caught in New Bush Fib
By Paul Kiel

What a pathetic climax to the days-long controversy following Dana Milbank’s column about the “Scarlet Letter” Republican.

As everyone now knows, Milbank wrote a column Tuesday, relating the comments of an anonymous Republican carping about the burden of being a GOPer during Bush’s second term. All day Tuesday, bloggers and pundits took turns guessing at the mystery Republican’s identity. Finally, on Tuesday afternoon, Michael Steele admitted to ABC News that it was him.

And now, he takes it all back. Bush is his “homeboy,” he said during a radio interview this morning. Whereas before (when he was under the guise of an anonymous “GOP Senate candidate”) he said that “to be honest,” he probably wouldn’t want Bush campaigning with him, now he says that “If the president wanted to come and help me in Maryland, he is more than welcome, because I’m not going to turn my back on a friend.”

But it gets even better.

Backpedaling furiously, Steele also said this morning that the interview with Milbank and other reporters was supposed to be off the record. That would mean that Milbank wasn’t supposed to quote his remarks, anonymously or otherwise.

But it turns out that’s just not true. Steele appears to be lying through his teeth. As Milbank clearly stated in his piece, Steele spoke to reporters “under the condition that he be identified only as a GOP Senate candidate.”

This afternoon I contacted Milbank to find out what happened and he confirmed that the meeting, done over lunch, was not off the record. “The luncheon was one in a regular series, and they are all on background. It was announced at the start of the lunch that this one, too, was on background,” he said.

As proof, Milbank forwarded me an email from Steele’s flak Doug Heye, who in response to an email from Milbank checking whether he could run certain quotes from Steele in his story, responded, “since it was a backgrounder, if there are specific quotes you’d like to use, can you email them to me so I could sign off?”

So case closed.

Late Update: Here’s the email as forwarded to me by Milbank (I’ve redacted their email addresses):

From: “Doug Heye” To: “Dana Milbank” cc: Subject: RE: Reconsider? 07/24/2006 03:38 PMWon’t waste your time, and know deadlines are tight.

I’d probably be fine with those you sent, but since it was a
backgrounder, if there are specific quotes you’d like to use, can you
email them to me so I could sign off?

I can hold off on signing off for other press for the time being, as
well.

 

By JOHN McWHORTER - Via The New York Sun
July 27, 2006
Last weekend I was on a panel about blacks and voting. Predictably, much of the black audience got quite a thrill from assailing Republicans as racists. The whole idea of Republicans as bigots is hardly the open-and-shut case that many assume. This week in the Times Paul Krugman has it that black people see Republicans as anti-black because of things like resistance to the estate tax and raising the minimum wage. But things like this are more of interest to Krugman, other economists, and political junkies than the man on the street of any color. Even liberal black Newsweek writer Ellis Cose has said that “rage does not flow from dry numerical analyses of discrimination.”
More to the point is the idea on the vine that the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina meant that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,” as one of our bards of the moment couched it. However, the black community mantra “Know Your History” applies not only to the Scottsboro Boys, but to things like Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Ground zero this time was mostly white Homestead, Florida. Yet it was the same story — the days of inaction, people stranded in the steaming dark. Katrina was about incompetence, not bigotry.
Then there are allegations that Republicans have been suppressing the black vote. I suspect that only a certain unreachable fringe truly believe that such people are committed to a return to white supremacy, opposed to the black suffrage out of a conviction that we are an inferior race who ought have no place in the electoral process.
There is always the seamy side to an election, and the blunt truth is that for someone committed to shaving away Democratic votes by hook or by crook, sheer pragmatism dictates that there is no more dependable or efficient way to go at this than to target the black vote.This is because we are the Democrat’s most dependable supporters, in contrast to Latinos and Asians who split their vote between Bush and Kerry more evenly.
Deliberately discouraging voters is disgusting. It should be aired, condemned, and prevented. But then, cynical operatives would have less reason to even try to get away with it if we split our vote more like other groups.
Still, nothing could budge many from a steadfast wariness based on any number of controversial timeline snippets: Reagan’s “welfare queen” jokes, the Willie Horton ad, and so on. However, the idea that black people’s wedge issue must be a party’s “sensitivity” about race is a new one. Back in the day the assumption was that there was ample racism on both sides and that our job was to choose the party that was, nevertheless, most likely to address any of our concerns. By modern standards both Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were bigots. W.E.B. DuBois supported Wilson in 1912 as the lesser of two evils because Wilson promised to make federal patronage color-blind and to veto anti-black legislation.
Many will object that while that was the best they could do a century ago, today, we have the option of voting for the party that “isn’t racist.” But in doing that decade after decade, what do we get? In 2006, the “racist” Republicans are the party behind programs saving children from failing schools, assisting religious organizations (e.g. black churches) in turning around their neighborhoods (e.g. black inner cities), and maintaining welfare programs as focused on job training. A funny kind of racism, this, regardless of whatever Trent Lott once said after dinner one night. Naturally there have been snags in carrying these programs out, and none are magic bullets. But the Democrats did not create them. Often they have even opposed them.
And for what? Under Mr. Clinton, there was, we recall, the Conversation on Race. This would appear to have led to precisely nothing, especially given the conviction so regularly expressed by black commentators today that there still needs to be some kind of “conversation” on race in America.
If we are a strong people, it cannot be at the top of our list that a party’s members be, to a man, paragons of racial enlightenment and goodwill. What should matter is proposals and policies designed to help the disadvantaged, and the assorted rituals of “acknowledgment” do not meet this standard.
Something paradoxical in black America is how gleeful people often are in talking about sad things. For example, another observation on voting that black audiences often applaud is that the Democrats exploit our vote. For those wondering why anyone would applaud such a glum observation, the applause is for the idea that we are getting one over on the Democrats by having figured out the exploitation in question.
But we aren’t.The applause changes nothing.
Rather, instead of the spirited debates that the black community once had about which party to endorse and why, every four years almost everyone votes for whoever the Democrats happen to have settled upon. If the Democrat wins, we can’t expect to be a priority since we were such a cheap date. And never mind if the Democrat loses. What the Bush administration has done nevertheless, then, is further evidence that the idea that real black people don’t let their friends vote Republican is getting old.
That idea leaves black America politically powerless, making do with scraps from the table. It actually brings to mind the plantation that Mrs. Clinton “acknowledged” not long ago, as something about which even a well-heeled black audience presumably “know what that’s like.” Of course, unlike our slave ancestors we have our precious “acknowledgment.” But in 2006, we sell ourselves short in pretending that this is enough.
Mr. McWhorter is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Video  - Hillary on Display

Cities say immigration enforcement
not business of local police officers

By Chelsea Schilling
2006 WorldNetDaily.com

In the blistering deserts along the U.S.-Mexico border, clusters of weary undocumented travelers climb through destroyed wire fence atop sand dunes.
The sight is so common that passersby – even on the U.S. side – rarely notice anymore.
But some big-city police departments have taken a similar “blind-eye” approach to immigration law enforcement – literally forcing officers to look the other way as well.
Local law enforcement agencies, such as the Los Angeles Police Department and the Houston Police Department, prohibit officers from inquiring about citizenship status and reject policies and plans that would expand their role in federal immigration law enforcement.
A common belief among proponents of the sanctuary policies implemented by some big cities is that illegal immigration, if a concern at all, is solely a federal issue.
Back in 1979, the LAPD adopted a mandate by the L.A. City Council to prevent police from inquiring about the immigration status of arrestees. The internal policy, “Special Order 40,” is clear, concise and to the point. It states: “Officers shall not initiate police action with the objective of discovering the alien status of a person. Officers shall not arrest nor book persons for violation of title 8, section 1325 of the United States Immigration code (Illegal Entry).”
LAPD Assistant Chief George Gascon said in a statement faxed to WND that Special Order 40 “prohibits our officers from inquiring into a person’s immigration status, or working with federal authorities to enforce immigration matters when no other crime is present.” “Our officers understand that they should arrest and report to federal authorities individuals suspected of having been previously convicted of serious offenses, who were deported and are now back preying on our communities,” Gascon said.
Judicial Watch, a public-interest group sworn to fight government corruption, is in litigation opposing LAPD’s use of taxpayer funds to enforce and maintain Special Order 40, which the organization claims “violates both federal immigration laws and California law and puts American citizens at risk.”

Read Full Article

By Larry Fine

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tour de France winner Floyd Landis denied on Thursday taking performance-enhancing drugs during the race and said he would fight to clear his name after testing positive for the male sex hormone testosterone.
“I don’t know what the explanation for it is, whether it was a mistake or whether it’s an occurrence from some other circumstances that go on in the race or something I did,” he told reporters in a teleconference call.
“But it was not from an exogenous outside source of testosterone.”
When asked by reporters if he had taken any banned substances to boost his performance during the race, Landis replied: “No”.

 Read Full Story 

Crap I’m kinda pissed that I’m putting another entry about the cheating bastard on my blog but I’m an opinionated prick so I get to change the rules.
I heard that this dude  was asked the question  “if he had taken any banned substances to boost his performance during the race” as stated in the article, but his answer was not “no” it was, “I’m gonna say, no”. Note the difference.
Goddamm liar. If I was innocent, if I won fair and square I would be on every talk show, and I would be giving out blood samples left and right to clear my name.
Hell, now that Armstrong is gone, just pack this damm sport up and stop this madness.
The people who do this professionally are obviously a bunch of cheating bastards.
Let make the Tour more interesting, lock these duded up in the Big Brother house with cameras on them for 30 days, then have them sport some basic 10 speed bikes from Walmart, (1) one damm bike and have them climb some mountains in those, that will impress me.
My meds have not kicked in yet today so watch out!! Yes it’s Friday I hope to get better.

Negative images of minority groups are ‘blatant,’ says researcher.

 

It didn’t take a study to figure out that such video games as Grand Theft Auto and 50 Cent’s Bulletproof show blacks and Hispanics in a negative light. But research was conducted anyway to prove just how offensive these images have become.
University of British Columbia researcher Robert Parungao, who graduated this spring with a B.A. in Sociology, completed an eight-month analysis for his thesis and found that negative portrayals of minority groups are “blatant” in most of the popular games. 
“Parents, government and media watchdog groups have protested the widespread violence and sexism in videogames, but the blatant racism has gone largely unnoticed,” Parungao told the Web site Next-Gen.Biz.
For his study, Parungao examined four titles that span 20 years of videogame design: Kung Fu, Warcraft 3, Shadow Warrior and Grand Theft Auto 3. He analyzed the storylines and characters, and spent 100 hours playing the games.
The best-selling Grand Theft Auto 3, Parungao found, “features non-white characters who are mainly triad members, yakuza gangsters, Latino gangs or black hoods. These stock characters are seen in a lot of games and function as narrative obstacles to be overcome, mastered or ultimately blown to smithereens by the white hero”       
Parungao also said videogames lag behind changes seen in other entertainment media .      
“Film and television come under greater critical scrutiny so civil rights and minority groups can voice their concerns and effect some change,” he said. “But videogames have generally been seen as kids’ toys. There aren’t the same mechanisms or critical forums to encourage game designers to evolve.”      
He added: “I hope to continue looking into ways to improve videogames because they’re fun and I’d like to see them turn into positive media instead of negative ones.”

OK THEN LETS START WITH THESE DUDES!

 VIDEO - VENT - With Michelle Malkin 

New Column: Bolton Must Be Confirmed
By David Limbaugh

Why are Democrats — in the words of Sen. Christopher Dodd — promising a “bruising” battle over the confirmation of John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations?

Bolton is serving under a recess appointment because Democrats twice filibustered a vote on his confirmation last year, preventing a full Senate vote. They were upset that Bolton had made disparaging remarks about the United Nations and that he was tough on subordinates. They were afraid he would alienate our allies.

Now they are sure he has done just that. Dodd said, “I’m sorry the administration wants to go forward with this. The problems still persist. Many ambassadors at the U.N. feel he hasn’t done a good job there. He has polarized the situation.”

There you have your answer. The liberals’ opposition to Bolton lies in their attitude toward the United Nations, which they regard as a largely positive institution rightly frustrated with the arrogance of President Bush and the United States.

The New York Times made this very clear in a recent story on Bolton. The Times wrote, “The Bush administration is not popular in the United Nations, where it is often perceived as disdainful of diplomacy, and its policies as heedless of the effects on others and single-minded in the willful assertion of American interests. By extension, then, many diplomats say they see Mr. Bolton as a stand-in for the arrogance of the administration itself.”

Does the Times bother to refute this charge that Bolton and the administration are arrogant and unjustly alienate our “traditional allies”? Hardly. It’s been one of the main critics of President Bush’s alleged “unilateralism” in foreign policy.

Liberals don’t like it one bit that Bolton sees his role as vigorously representing the national interests of the United States, just as every other U.N. ambassador advocates the positions of his own country. They don’t support Bolton’s efforts to reform the United Nations, a corrupt organization that has consistently mistreated the United States and made a mockery of human rights — a cause it purports to champion. They cringe when Bolton exposes U.N. hypocrisy, such as when he pointedly challenged Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, on his threat to charge Israeli leaders with war crimes.

They don’t like Bolton’s unambiguous defense of Israel’s actions in response to Hezbollah’s unprovoked attacks, in which they killed and kidnapped Israeli soldiers and shot missiles indiscriminately into Israeli civilian populations. They resent Bolton’s rejection of the U.N.’s moral perversion in giving the terrorists a pass for their atrocities and portraying Israeli acts of self-defense as war crimes.

They shudder at Bolton’s moral clarity, such as when he said, “I think it’s important that we not fall into the trap of moral equivalency here.  What Israel has done in response is act in self-defense. And I don’t quite know what the argument about proportionate force means here. Is Israel entitled only to kidnap two Hezbollah operatives and fire a couple of rockets aimlessly into Lebanon?”

Bolton understands the nature of this conflict and its adversaries. Nothing could better characterize the respective warring forces than a recent cartoon depicting an armed Israeli soldier positioned protectively in front of a baby carriage while his terrorist enemy was holding his weapon behind a baby carriage.

As Bolton knows, it’s hard to negotiate with savages of that mindset. That’s why in an interview with Fox News’ Brit Hume, Bolton dismissed Syria’s requests for dialogue with the United States. Bolton told Brit, “Syria doesn’t need dialogue to know what they need to do. They need to lean on Hezbollah to get them to release the two captured Israeli soldiers and stop the launch of rockets against innocent Israeli civilians.” Exactly.

To put it bluntly, Republicans support Bolton’s nomination precisely because of his clarity of thought and speech — and his unapologetic representation of America’s interests. Democrats oppose him because they sympathize with the negative view of Bolton held by foreign envoys who have anything but the best interests of the United States in mind.

If it bothers you that we have a staunch defender of America’s interests serving as our ambassador to the United Nations and believe, instead, that we should routinely subordinate our interests to other nations openly hostile to us and contemptuous of the very idea of human rights, then you, too, should join the liberal chorus against confirmation of this fine public servant.

Contact: David Almasi, 202-543-4110 ext. 11, Project21@nationalcenter.org

Christian Newswire/ — Members of the black leadership network Project 21 are speaking out against the efforts by some left-leaning black religious leaders to politicize black houses of worship.
At the “National Conference and Revival for Social Justice in the Black Church” held in Dallas last week, (Late June) Reverends Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Joseph Lowery exhorted the leaders of black churches to reorient themselves and their congregations to fight for social justice issues instead of addressing moral issues such as homosexuality and abortion.
“It’s wrong for Jackson and Sharpton to tell ministers how to conduct their ministry. Clearly, they are trying to convert religious leaders into lobbyists for their self-serving political agenda,” said Project 21 senior fellow Deneen Moore. “Black ministers should not serve at the altar of their divisive rhetoric. Black churches should reinforce the importance of a strong nuclear family unit which will yield economic benefits and moral values that will elevate blacks in society.”
According to a report on the conference in the Dallas Morning News, Reverend Jackson charged that black churches have strayed for their past work on social justice issues to join what he calls a new culture of “inspiration addicts.” He added: “Faith must be accompanied by action and works to make sense.” One of these apparent actions is his boycott of the BP oil company for alleged price gouging. Jackson reportedly enlisted the support of approximately 100 conference attendees.
Reverend Sharpton said he sought to mobilize black congregations to participate in the fall mid-term elections. He said: “[A]s the entire Congress is up, one-third of the Senate is up and local government officials are up for re-election, it is time for [the] Christian right to meet the right Christians and begin the fight in the home state of our president.” Under IRS rules, churches are prohibited from engaging in lobbying and political campaigning.
“I have spent a large part of my personal time over the last two years educating people about the Partnership for Prescription Assistance and Medicare Part D. That, however, does not replace my primary function as a priest and bishop,” said Project 21 member Council Nedd, a bishop of the Anglican Diocese of the Chesapeake. “With all due respect to Reverend Sharpton and the other ministers meeting in Dallas, my primary call as a minister of the Gospel is to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. My ministry is not beholden to any political establishment. On Judgment Day, I would rather it said of me that I won one soul for Christ, rather than I got one million people to the polls on Election Day.”

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Floyd Landis’ stunning Tour de France victory just four days earlier was thrown into question Thursday when his team said he tested positive for high levels of testosterone during the race.

FULL STORY…BUT do you really care.<