BALTIMORE (AP) - A grieving father won a $2.9 million verdict Wednesday against a fundamentalist Kansas church that pickets military funerals out of a belief that the war in Iraq is a punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality.
Albert Snyder of York, Pa., sued the Westboro Baptist Church for unspecified damages after members staged a demonstration at the March 2006 funeral of his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq.Church members routinely picket funerals of military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, carrying signs such as “Thank God for dead soldiers” and
“God hates fags.”
A number of states have passed laws regarding funeral protests, and Congress has passed a law prohibiting such protests at federal cemeteries. But the Maryland lawsuit is believed to be the first filed by the family of a fallen serviceman.
I’m just curious, how can you Democrats who read stories like this can look at yourself in the mirror with a straight face and proudly proclaim that people like yourself who would do retarded shit like this should be given MORE power. What are you people smoking? Please share!
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) The taxman in Iowa is going after jack-o-lanterns this Halloween.
The new department policy was implemented after officials decided that pumpkins are used primarily for Halloween decorations, not food, and should be taxed, said Renee Mulvey, the department’s spokeswoman.
“We made the change because we wanted the sales tax law to match what we thought the predominant use was,” Mulvey said. We thought the predominant use was for decorations or jack-o-lanterns.
Previously, pumpkins had been considered an edible squash and exempted from the tax. The department ruled this year that pumpkins are taxable ” with some exceptions” if they are advertised for use as jack-o-lanterns or decorations.
Iowans planning to eat pumpkins can still get a tax exemption if they fill out a form.
The new policy, published in the department’s September newsletter, has some pumpkin farmers feeling tricked this Halloween.
“I don’t mind paying taxes, but let’s get real here, people,” said Bob Kautz, owner of the Buffalo Pumpkin Patch in Buffalo, just west of Davenport.
Kautz, who has owned his farm for seven years, was particularly dismayed with the notion of requiring customers to fill out a form verifying that they planned to eat the pumpkins they were buying.
“It’s another crazy, crazy, stupid thing,” he said.
Kautz said he will estimate how many pumpkins were bought for non-food purposes, and then will send the tax on that amount to the revenue department.
“It gets unfeasible for people to have small businesses,” he said.
Danny Carroll, who owns Carroll’s Pumpkin Farm in Grinnell with his wife, said he will have to pay the sales tax out of profits.
“Essentially, they just reduced our income by 6 percent,” he said. “It’s too bad, but it’s not surprising.”
Other Iowa pumpkin sellers also expressed confusion about the new policy. Some, like Carroll, said they were unaware of it. A few said they have been charging the tax this Halloween season and few customers have complained. None said they are asking customers to fill out the tax-exemption certificate.
Mulvey said department officials don’t know how much extra revenue to expect from the pumpkin tax.
I read this piece and I had to doublecheck to see if it didn’t come from The Onion. I find it hard to believe that this can be happening in the United States. What will come next? Hauling students off to the gulag who refuse to be “re-educated?”
The University of Delaware subjects students in its residence halls to a shocking program of ideological reeducation that is referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs.
The Orwellian program requires the approximately 7,000 students in Delaware’s residence halls to adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues ranging from politics to race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is calling for the total dismantling of the program, which is a flagrant violation of students’ rights to freedom of conscience and freedom from compelled speech…The university’s views are forced on students through a comprehensive manipulation of the residence hall environment, from mandatory training sessions to “sustainability” door decorations.
Students living in the university’s eight housing complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a “diversity facilitation training” session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that “[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”
The university suggests that at one-on-one sessions with students, RAs should ask intrusive personal questions such as “When did you discover your sexual identity?” Students who express discomfort with this type of questioning often meet with disapproval from their RAs, who write reports on these one-on-one sessions and deliver these reports to their superiors. One student identified in a write-up as an RA’s “worst” one-on-one session was a young woman who stated that she was tired of having “diversity shoved down her throat.”
Right Voices: “You have the right to free speech as long as the liberals approve of the message. You can have free thought, just as long as you think what the liberals want you to think.”
Mac’s Mind: “Nevertheless, it’s not so amazing that this type of thought policing happens at our colleges, but it is amazing that the dumbasses at this school are blatant about it.”
Hillary cruised through most of last night’s debate–until she was pressed on NY Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s illegal alien driver’s license plan. Ooh boy, I bet she was cursing Spitzer to high heaven. If not for that dunder-headed, back-firing New York state pander to the open-borders lobby, she would not likely have been pressed on this issue. She would have never stumbled. The cool-as-a-cucumber mask would have never slipped off.
She tied herself up in knots - in a way her opponents couldn’t - with her non-answer about whether she favors giving driver’s license to illegal aliens.
She must be the only New Yorker without an opinion on the plan (other than her colleague, Sen. Chuck Schumer).
Her evasiveness on the most talked-about issue in the state reminded everyone of the worst of husband Bill and what could be in store if another Clinton makes it to the White House.
Ed Morrissey: “This was a disastrous answer from Hillary. She can expect to live with this YouTube for the next year.”
An aging “idealistic” Democrat spills the beans about Clintonian leadership, whether it pertains to her campaign, his presidency, their party, or our country.
The establishment Dems are made up of baby boomers … of which I am one. Like many other things my generation loves, power is utmost…. Make no mistake, this is about control and power. My generation will likely not give up either without one whale of a fight. Watch HRC’s dismissive demeanor when she puts [Barack Obama] down … just as a mother might to a wayward, troublesome son.
And the Leftist thugs who shouted down David Horowitz were nowhere in evidence, of course. Not that they would have wanted to turn out to protest a speech by an apologist for jihad terror — and meanwhile, Emory’s President James Wagner pretended that conservative students were just as likely to behave like fascist thugs as liberal ones, and took precautions to protect Ashrawi’s speech that he did not take for Horowitz.”Ashrawi defends Hizbullah and Hamas,” by Gil Hoffman in the Jerusalem Post (thanks to all who sent this in):
Veteran Palestinian Authority lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi, who represents PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad’s Third-Wave party, defended both Hamas and Hizbullah in a speech at Emory University in Atlanta on Monday night.”The [Second Lebanon] War proved [Israel] could not defeat a nation fighting for freedom,” Ashrawi said. Later, the Christian lawmaker blamed Hamas’s January 2006 election victory on Israel, saying the occupation bred extremism.
Ashrawi also discussed the plight of the Palestinian people, saying they had plunged into a deep depression with unemployment and poverty at record levels, and that peace was the only answer.
Palestinians are experiencing “one of the most difficult phases in our history,” she said. “Violence and [the] extreme ideology of Israel feed violence and extremism on the other side. And that’s what led to the election of Hamas.”
“Now we see not just a political and economic battle, but a battle over the soul of Palestine,” she told an audience of about 200. “We find ourselves in the grip of… the deconstruction of Palestine.”
Nearly 75 percent of Gazans were dependent on welfare and the Strip’s unemployment rate had skyrocketed to 50%, she said, adding that conditions there had worsened since Hamas seized power in June.
In Thomas DeFrank’s book “Write It When I’m Gone” based on 16 years of conversations with former Pres. Gerald Ford which he promised not to publish until after the ex-president’s death, Ford called Bill Clinton a sex addict in denial. He also said Clinton refused to come clean about lying under oath to a Federal Grand jury about the Monica Lewinsky affair.More here
Ex-felons’ voting rights topic of Thursday meeting
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
COCOA (link) — A number of elected officials – including a judge – will participate in a town hall meeting Thursday to explain how ex-felons can have voting rights restored under a new state law.The meeting will take place 7 p.m. Thursday at the Joe Lee Smith Recreation Center located at 19 Washington St. in Cocoa. Officials will provide the necessary forms for citizens to get back the right to vote.
The meeting, sponsored by the Brevard County Executive Committee, will feature Cocoa Mayor Mike Blake and Rockledge Councilman Joe Lee Smith along with a guest panel that will include County Judge A.B. Majeed.
The group will also have a question and answer session and will include entertainment provided by the Cocoa Tigers High School Marching Band.
Was ‘intern’ a loaded word to throw at Sen. Clinton? Romney camp says no
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
Scored points with me! LOL!
For at least the second time, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has used the word “intern” when talking about Democratic front runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and his contention that he’s got the experience needed to be president — but that she would have to learn on the job.
“She’s never had the occasion of being in the private sector, running a business, or, for that matter, running a state or a city. She hasn’t run anything, and the government of the United States is not a place for a president to be an intern,” Romney said.
Remember how Ronald Reagan faced down the Evil Empire and defeated it through sheer brinkmanship, relying on the superior economic efficiency of the capitalist system to cause the Soviet slave state to collapse in on itself, thus winning the Cold War without firing a shot? Never happened.
Moonbats won the Cold War!
Or at least, they did if the Boston Globe could be believed. From the hagiography of deceased nuclear freeze advocate Randy Forsberg, check out this tortured inversion of history:
[Forsberg] helped end the Cold War, the most costly and dangerous confrontation in world history. This singular achievement was not hers alone, of course, but she spurred the massive social movement in the United States and Europe that convinced the superpowers - the United States and the Soviet Union - that they had to stand down from their nuclear rivalry.
[…]
The nuclear freeze idea, and the citizens’ campaign that galvanized the world to embrace it, gradually altered the opinions of the public and then the policy makers in the United States and elsewhere. In America, the quickly rising popularity of the freeze collided with the equal popularity of President Ronald Reagan, who accelerated the arms buildup in the early 1980s. But the freeze movement changed Reagan’s own calculations, driving him toward arms control negotiations and softer rhetoric toward the USSR by 1984.
As you might recall, in conventional reality, it was Reagan’s rejection of the demands of kooks like Forsberg that led the Soviet Union to bankrupt itself trying to keep up with us.
Lawmakers, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, have taken thousands in campaign cash from an embattled Nobel-prize winning scientist while earmarking federal money for his New York lab.Mrs. Clinton and Sen. Charles E. Schumer, also a New York Democrat, requested a $900,000 earmark in June for the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where James D. Watson served as chancellor before resigning last week after apologizing for comments that suggested that people descending from Africa aren’t as intelligent as those from Europe.
Federal campaign filings show that Mr. Watson has donated more than $70,000 to candidates and their political causes, including a total of $3,000 to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign on May 17 and June 25. Two days later, a Senate committee report showed that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Schumer earmarked $900,000 for the lab.
The majority of Mr. Watson’s donations over the years have gone to Sen. Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat, who has received more than $30,000 from the scientist, records show. Mr. Harkin is chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on labor, health, human services and education.
Phillippe Reines, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, yesterday referred all questions about the earmark to Mr. Harkin’s office but added that there was no connection between political donations and the earmark.
“One thing had nothing to do with the other,” he said.
Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign has returned nearly $1.3 million to hundreds of donors since July 1, including more than $800,000 tied to disgraced one-time fugitive Norman Hsu. The total figure is more than triple the returned donations for the rest of the Democratic field combined.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Harkin yesterday said the earmark is not likely to move ahead, partly because of the furor over Mr. Watson.
Check out the Washington Post’s reporting on Obama’s campaign push at black churches–part of a “three-city gospel concert series over the weekend” throughout South Carolina. You’ll motice how there is none of the anti-religious alarmism that regularly infuses the ominous coverage of Republicans and the “Religious Right.” Whereas religious conservatives are cast as brainwashed sheep (see David Limbaugh’s excellent “Persecution“), Obama’s followers of faith are treated respectfully. They’re hip, earnest, and “innovative:”
Each concert stirs some of the fervor that typified the Obama campaign in its early days. As the gospel acts perform, people rise to their feet, mothers hug daughters, old friends reach out to one another and then embrace strangers. Couples hold each other tight. Some close their eyes and sway in their seats. In Greenwood, most of the room is drawn to the stage, leaping up and down as if it were a mosh pit. The concerts’ playbook was open to innovation. In North Charleston, the sister combo of Mary Mary recalled Beverly Crawford to the stage after her set, asking her to sing a few lines of her song “Praise Jehovah.” The following night, with the show running long, Byron Cage did an impromptu set with a group of young liturgical dancers before he jumped from the stage to jam with the believers who had surrounded the stage.“We’ve got the faith,” Obama senior adviser Rick Wade tells those assembled on the first evening. “But now it’s time to go to work.”
Christopher Hayes article ” The New Right-Wing Smear Machine” in The Nation on the under-the-radar spam e-mail smear campaigns by some right-wing operatives and how sites like Snopes.com and BreakTheChain.org have been countering the disinformation. Hayes mentions the now-infamous Hillary/Gold Star Mothers smear started by an operative writing for the right-wing website NewsMax (I wrote about the Gold Star Mothers smear and about NewsMax). It is a thorough article about how unscrupulous meme-creators are using e-mail for the purposes of modern day whisper campaigns. What I found ironic about reading the article online was that it had a Google ad for, of all things, NewsMax.
I found this post humorous, this is an oft repeated liberal blog tactic to get liberal blog sheep to get pissed off and ignore right leaning talking points. Particularly talking points aimed at Hillary Rodham. Here is another old blog entry hightlighting the same old rant.
Some examples:
“the right wing approach to US media - the sort of thing that propaganda historians will one day take apart smear by smear by lie by echo. Reduced to its basic elements, the strategy is both simple and familiar”
1. Have people in the biggest media outlets who run a neocon line, like Michelle Malkin and Bill O’Reilly. That is easy because Murdoch runs most of it and he has been consistently committed to the war.
2. Allow those people to blur the gap between fact and opinion, allowing editorial to stand as journalism.
3. Change the nature of editorial, so opinions can be selected and ventilated with no reference to facts whatsoever - what we would call naked, unadorned ranting.
4. Use the blogosphere to raise smears and false claims, usually based on some tiny fact. Use those facts to ignore or divert arguments.
5. Amplify the smear around the online pundits to create an apparent consensus around a “scandal”.
6. Spread it around the large media conglomerates like Fox.
7. Then claim that the conglomerate is some kind of truth-telling outsider, which is being attacked by “mainstream media”.
8. Use this to make the traditional journalism outlets like the New York Times uneasy, and increase the power of their own neocon elements.
9. Never ever retract - just repeat lies.
10. Revel in the impotence of the truth tellers.
You will see shit loads of articles like the one linked particularly when Hillary officially captures the nomination.
Every Hillary stump speech will include the phrase “Right Wing Smear Machine.”
Let’s get real. I get e-mails from Newsmax and a few other right leaning sites that have these bullshit, “breaking news” crap about Democrats and what they are doing.
However I subscribe to far more of the Democratic left leaning sites and campaigns just to see what they are whining about.
I take what I read from a SINGLE source with a grain of salt. If the story is juicy enough and it interests me, I look to see what right AND left leaning blog sites are writing about it.
THEN I go to the major news sites, to see the spin. What I’m getting at, is I do my homework.
If Newsmax were to send me an e-mail link saying “Hillary wants to kill all children” I would be like what the fuck.
They tend to have sensational headlines. But stories that have the elements of truth will rise to the top and will be supported likewise.
Like I have said many times before, the top bloggers on the right will do their research and pick a story apart to get at the truth, headlines on Drudge or Newsmax be dammed.
If something is a flat out “lie” the right wing blogsphere will simply reject it. This can’t be said for liberal bloggers or websites like Media Matters on the left.
You don’t have to take my word for it, take the time to read some of the crazy shit on liberal blogs.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is finessing her support of Rep. Charles Rangel’s (D-N.Y.) controversial new tax bill, highlighting Democrats’ concern about how Republicans plan to use it in the 2008 elections.Following the unveiling of arguably the most politically explosive domestic policy bill of the 110th Congress last Thursday, Pelosi seemed to wholeheartedly support the tax overhaul authored by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rangel.
“I certainly support his plan,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) said to the assembled reporters.
But when the transcript of the briefing came out, words were inserted — highlighted by brackets — clarifying that she supported his goal, if not his specific proposals.
The final transcript read: “I certainly support his plan [to begin tax reform.]”
With a year and a few days to go before voters across the United States go to the polls to elect their 44th president, The Daily Telegraph today unveils the first instalments of its list of the 100 most influential conservatives and 100 most influential liberals in America.
The 2008 election is arguably the most open contest since 1928, the last time there was no incumbent president or incumbent vice president running for their party’s nomination. The victor will become the most powerful person in the world at a time of almost unprecedented challenge and turmoil.
Founder and CEO of the conservative website redstate.com who also blogs on his personal site erickerickson.org, entitled Confessions of a Political Junkie, and on Georgia politics at peachpundit.com. A Republican political consultant and self-described “recovering lawyer”.
At just 32, Erickson epitomises the new power of the internet. A small-government fiscal and social conservative based in the south, he taps into and influences the Republican “base” that the GOP’s 2008 candidates are courting. Only started blogging in 2003.
93. MICHELLE MALKIN
Blogger and author
Born in Philadelphia to Filipino parents, Malkin’s michellemalkin.com and Hot Air websites attract massive traffic while her column is syndicated to 200 newspapers. She has enthusiastically embraced multi-media to spread her message and take the Liberal mainstream media to task.
Her outspoken opposition to “amnesty” for illegal immigrants reflects the views of most grassroots Conservatives. At 37 and already battle-tested in the culture wars, her influence looks certain to grow and grow.
62. JEROME ARMSTRONG
Democratic activist and blogger
A former environmental campaigner, 43, who first became interested in politics after the 2000 election, he founded the MyDD – My Direct Democracy website and coined the term “netroots” – the grassroots internet activists who hit the big time during Howard Dean’s campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2004.
The first major liberal blogger, he also works as an internet strategist and campaign adviser. Sees blogging as a “key component to the revitalisation of the progressive agenda” but believes in getting Democrats elected rather than in ideological purism.
Have the Bush years taken a toll on your relationships?
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
I found this on Wizbang - His title FUNNY, So Delicious, It Ought To Be Illegal, Folks if you have time to read through the thread please do, this is comical.
Do you have any idea how fucked up you must be upstairs or in your personal life to actually allow a president or any other elected official to dictate the quality of your life.
You know as much as I detest Hillary and the notion of her becoming elected, I may have a momentary sad moment because she WILL fuck things up UNLESS the people are smart enough to elect a Republican majority Senate and House, where gridlock and FORCED by-partisanship would take place.
My life won’t change one bit, unless Hillary herself comes and carjacks me, or poisons my Crown Royal, trips me as I go down the stairs, tramples my lawn, interrupt me during a big football game!
The Germans have a wonderful language. As I understand it, whenever they need a new word, they just keep mashing existing words together until you have this mouthful-and-a-half that sums up a complicated concept. And as a result, they have words for almost everything. (Plus, it’s almost impossible to speak German without sounding like you’re furious.)One of the more delightful German words I know is “schadenfreude.” It’s that thrill you get at someone else’s misfortune. It’s behind that laugh we all feel bubble up when we someone take a pratfall. It’s what made me want to fall over guffawing when it turned out one of Hillary Clinton’s top fundraisers was a wanted fugitive, on the lam for about 15 years. It’s at the core of nearly every dumb criminal story, every tale of a politician caught exhibiting hypocrisy.
For those not interested in wading in, it’s a long discussion of how George W. Bush has ruined their personal relationships. Well, if they were honest, they’d admit it’s actually how their hatred of George W. Bush has become so all-consuming, it’s ruined their personal relationships. It’s like a case study, a huge stack of anecdotal evidence to back up the whole “Bush Derangement Syndrome” notion.
I suppose a better person would instead feel sorry for these people, and hope they get the help they need.
It was 6:30 p.m. The lights were still on at Needham High School, here in the affluent Boston suburbs. Paul Richards, the principal, was meeting with the Stress Reduction Committee.
On the agenda: finding the right time to bring in experts to train students in relaxation techniques.
Don’t try to have them teach relaxation in study hall, said Olivia Boyd, a senior. Students, she explained, won’t want to interrupt their work. They were already too busy before or after school for the training.
No one is busier than Josh Goldman. Captain of varsity tennis, president of the Spanish club and a member of the student council and the Stress Reduction Committee, Josh was not able to squeeze in the meeting at all.
Mr. Richards noted his absence wryly. “Josh is a perfect example,” he said. “He’s got a hundred things going on.”
Here is the high-powered culture that Mr. Richards is trying to change, even if only a little.
Turns out Mr. Richards is the same principal who got rid of the honor roll to “lessen student stress.”
Now, Richards is leading an entire cult of educrats more obsessed with reducing “stress” and coddling fragile minds and bodies than with challenging students to push themselves to the limit and demanding nothing less than their best.
A noose was discovered around the neck of a bronze statue of late rapper Tupac Shakur, which sits in the Peace Garden inside of the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts in Stone Mountain, Georgia.Vandals have also defaced the building and later further damaged the statue with “handbills of garbled rants that include references to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina as well as vague threats against various record companies and rappers,” read a statement from The Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation (TASF).
“Hate comes in all colors and genders, therefore we will use this act of hate and ignorance to bring our community together and to pray for the healing of those who harbor such feelings. With God’s guidance, the work of the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts and Peace Garden will continue to positively impact and transform our community.”
Never mind the fact that there are far greater Negros worthy of statue recognition, a Tupac bronze statue in a “peace garden” is a really strange thing. But hey a gay bashing fired Negro actor won an NAACP “image” award. Anywho, wanna know why I think these noose stories are bullshit, check out the “money” line in the story.
The Foundation is currently raising money to construct a fence around the parameters of the Center to prevent these types of incidents from occurring again.
Hmmmm, where are the damm pictures? There are none!
Maybe it’s just me, but I just don’t see some redneck risking jail time or a beat down just to stir up people with some jackass racist symbol.
Now going to a “private” Halloween party in blackface with a “free the Jena 6” shirt, sure I can see some idiot white rednecks doing that.
(AP) SALT LAKE CITY - The founder of Overstock.com rejected the NAACP’s demand for an apology Friday after an Internet video surfaced of him saying that Utah minorities who don’t graduate from high school might as well be burned or thrown away.Patrick Byrne’s comments were posted on YouTube. The video clip was from a debate two weeks ago in Provo, where he was speaking in favor of vouchers, public aid for families sending kids to private schools.
A statewide voucher program that would grant $500 to $3,000 per child based on family income is on the Utah ballot Nov. 6.
On the YouTube video clip, Byrne says: “Right now, 40 percent of Utah minorities are not graduating from high school. You may as well burn those kids. That’s the end of their life. That’s the end of their ability to achieve in this society if they do not get a high school education. You might as, just throw the kids away.”
Byrne has made similar remarks in other debates. He said Friday he had no intention of apologizing and claimed his comments were taken out of context.
“These folks have been selective in their editing,” Byrne told The Associated Press. “I very clearly said the system is throwing away 40 percent of the minority kids because they’re not graduating. I’m saying that I’m against throwing kids away.
“People against vouchers are in favor of throwing the kids away,” Byrne said.
Jeanetta Williams, a voucher opponent and president of the NAACP’s Salt Lake branch, said the videotaped comments shocked her and she believes Byrne meant that minorities who don’t graduate should be burned or thrown away.
“Those were his words, not mine,” she said.
Williams noted that Byrne didn’t mention white children who don’t graduate. Utah is 83.5 percent white, 11 percent Hispanic and 1 percent black.
“It says he’s not sympathetic to the minority community and he means exactly what he said,” Williams said of Byrne’s lack of an apology.
Byrne, chief executive of Utah-based Overstock, has long been a voucher advocate and has donated several hundred thousand dollars to the voucher movement in Utah.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People opposes vouchers, saying they could lead to segregated public schools. It says tuition still would be out for reach for many minority families because a voucher wouldn’t cover the entire cost of private school.
Damm how many times and how many ways can white folks express how fucked black children who don’t graduate are?
I understand what dude was saying and I don’t think his intent was evil or anything, however it’s obvious when white people go on TV or radio and say shit about the plight of Negros they inevitably fuck it up and come off racist or mean spirited.
Note to whitey: Stop talking about Negros without written permission, or take a Negro with you on your next interview so we can clear any potential insensitive comments you might make.
Also NOBODY in Utah is qualified to talk about Negros, the only Negros in Utah play for the Jazz and their kids go to private schools.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Megan Williams thought she was going to a party. That’s why she tagged along with a woman she hardly knew, up a remote southern West Virginia hollow to a run-down trailer surrounded by beer cans and broken-down furniture.”But there wasn’t no party,” Williams said. “I realized I’d made a bad mistake.”
For at least a week, authorities say, the 20-year-old black woman was kept captive in a shed, tortured, beaten, forced to eat rat, dog and human feces, and raped by six white men and women who taunted her with racial slurs.
“They just kept saying ‘This is what we do to niggers down here,’” Williams told The Associated Press in one of her most extensive interviews since the shocking case made national headlines last month.
Seated in a rocking chair in her mother’s living room, about 50 miles from that shed, the slight woman with cocoa-colored skin says she was hopelessly outnumbered by people who just wanted to hurt a black person.
“I just hope they fry for what they did to me. That’s really all I got to say,” she said. “I hope they fry.”
As you may have heard, John Edwards has been trying to out-pander Shrillary by promising a college education to all Americans, presumably even those of us who have no use for one and do not belong in college.
Stealing money from the productive to pay able-bodied adults to sit through lectures about queer theory and womyn’s studies will — according to the Breck Girl — alleviate poverty.
Here’s something almost as funny — while listing some of the extravagant freebies he plans to finance by looting “the rich,” the zillionaire trial lawyer proclaimed:
There are no free meals.
In the upside-down, inside-out, topsy-turvy world of moonbattery, a “free meal” is when the government lets you keep what you earned. The goodies he’s promising — college education for everyone, federally financed universal pre-kindergarten, matching savings accounts for low-income voters, a million new housing vouchers, etc., etc., ad nauseam — aren’t free meals but entitlements, because they are coercively paid for by someone else.
This from the website News Bloggers. I had not heard Berry’s comments nor see that particular Tonight Show.
This political correctness bullshit is getting out of hand.
Okay, let’s get controversial. Halle Berry was on The Tonight Show and while she was showing Jay Leno a picture of her face distorted to make it appear that she had a large nose, she said, “This is like my Jewish cousin.”Racism alert! Racism alert! Or in this case, anti-semitism! Whose worse Halle Berry or Ann Coulter? Does Halle have to go to the same rehab clinic as Mel Gibson and Michael Richards?
I happen to think that context matters a tremendous amount in these type of statements. I gave Don Imus a lot more of a break because he does a show that involves humor. I give the Fox News Channel guys a lot less of a break because they say these type of things as serious commentary on social events.
Comedians get almost complete license to make jokes that involve stereotypes in my mind. Michael Richards went over this line because he was so over the top and wasn’t really kidding when he heckled the black audience member during his now infamous rant at the Laugh Factory in LA. If Ann Coulter finally admitted she is a comedian and has been putting on gullible conservatives for the last ten years, then I would give her a free pass on all of her comments.
We joke about race on our show all the time. I make jokes about Muslims blowing things up with impunity. But I also joke about other races. It’s all in the family because we know that all these stereotypes are gross over-generalizations and typically nonsense. But it would be different if you were actually perpetuating the stereotype rather than mocking it.
Where does Halle Berry fall into that spectrum? I think pretty far toward the joking end. So, I pardon her. Am I not merciful?
In the video below, a black, a Jew, a Turk and an Armenian (… walk into a bar, sounds like the beginning of a racial joke, right? but they actually all walked into our studio … well, actually because they work there) all discuss whether Halle Berry’s comments were acceptable or unacceptable:
Florida State University’s COAPS (Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies) says that hurricane season 2007, which ends November 30th, is looking well below normal, in fact they are calling it “historic inactivity”.According to COAPS: “Unless a dramatic and perhaps historical flurry of activity occurs in the next 11 weeks (ACE is based on calendar year, not traditional June-November hurricane season) , 2007 will rank as a historically inactive Tropical Cyclone year for the entire Northern Hemisphere. During the past 30 years, only 1977, 1981, and 1983 have had less activity to date (Jan-December). For the period of June 1 - October 19, 2007, only 1977 experienced LESS tropical cyclone activity.”
Miller Brewing Apologizes for ‘Last Supper’ Poster
Monday, October 29th, 2007
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(CNSNews.com) - The Miller Brewing Company issued a formal apology on Friday for any offense caused by the use of its logos on a poster promoting the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco during late September by replacing Jesus and his disciples in Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of “The Last Supper” with half-naked homosexual sadomasochists.In an email statement sent to Cybercast News Service by Senior Manager of Media Relations Julian Green, the company said it “has taken action to ensure that such an incident will not happen again.”
“Miller has just completed an exhaustive audit of its marketing procedures for approving local marketing and sales sponsorships, and it is implementing plans to tighten its compliance procedures,” the release stated.
“The company has received assurances from its local distributor in San Francisco and from Folsom Street Events that future marketing materials and event activities will fully comply with Miller’s marketing policies and procedures,” the statement added.
“We deeply regret that we did not adhere to our own policies with regard to the Folsom Street Fair,” said Miller Senior Vice President Nehl Horton. “We apologize to everyone we offended as a result. We hope people will forgive us for this serious error and have confidence we will not repeat it.”
“Miller Brewing was never afforded the opportunity to review our Fair poster before it was printed and distributed,” said Andy Copper, board president of Folsom Street Events, which sponsors the “world’s largest leather event” every year. “The approval was made by a third party without Miller’s knowledge and consent.”
Whites Need to Take Responsibility for Their Racism (Alternate Title: Stop Giving White People 2nd, 3rd and 4th Chances When Blacks Get Zero Chances)
Monday, October 29th, 2007
Today I’m kinda out of it, have been most of the weekend. So this morning I was not in my usual mode of trolling my typical political blogs to see what is out there.
So I’ll post a few things I found of interest.
This first one is from a blog called Alas a blog - interesting post on racism.
I don’t agree or disagree with some of this stuff it’s just “interesting” and worth a look.
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Editor’s Note: I’m absolutely not going to let this thread turn into a discussion of how whites really aren’t racist, and people of color are really the problem. So if you want to leave a whiny comment about Al Sharpton or illegal immigrants or any other distraction, I’ll delete it.I want to pull several seemingly unrelated posts together to make a point about contemporary racism. Yesterday, I read this post over at Racialicious. Carmen closes the post with the following sentences about Don Imus and Michael Richards:
The Richards incident started with the racist ravings of a white man, complete with references to lynching, but ended up as a public discussion of why black people keep using the n-word towards each other. The Imus incident started with the racist and misogynist remarks of a white man, but ended up as a public referendum on misogyny in hip hop.
It’s fascinating to me that all roads seem to lead back to discussions of how black people are supposedly oppressing themselves.
I am struck by how common this phenomenon is. The basic pattern that these discussion follow is:
White person makes incredibly racist statements.
Some people express outrage over those statements; others seek to downplay the statements.
Those who want to downplay the statements are able to win the “hearts and minds” of the vast majority of whites, who want operate by the anything but racism philosophy.
The conversation the turns to how it really isn’t racist or wasn’t intention of the person. Since this allows people to think it is not that person’s fault, they then proceed to the last step.
Blaming the real victims of racism.
This leads to sentiments like notion Don Imus called women nappy headed hos because of Hip Hop. Once we reach the 5th step the conversation is almost beyond repair. Whites are reframed as victims people of color (in particular blacks) are framed as the real source of the problem, and then the debate has totally shifted.
In the “new” face of racism, two things have to happen: 1. acknowledge that the certain aspects of any racist incident are extreme (not unfair, extreme) or that the black community is acceptable to you & 2. then posit a racist overlaying narrative that essential reframes the discussion around the unfair and extreme behavior perceived to be experienced by white people.
After reading those Carmen’s and Professor Black Woman’s posts, I was reminded of the discussion we had here and at Alas about the Don Imus controversy. I put up very few posts about the Don Imus case, but the discussion generated in those posts two posts reveals how these contemporary racist tactics work.
NOW put up a website of offensive ads. I can’t believe it’s 2007 and we are still here. Seeing these images side-by-side was shocking to me and I am someone who thinks about gender and advertising. Do you think that people will understand sexism better by seeing these demeaning images side by side, with explanations as to their problems?Examples:
The Daily Mail reports that record numbers of Britons are traveling abroad for medical treatment. This despite the fact that those people pay taxes - and quite a lot of them - for “free” health care.
Record numbers of Britons are travelling abroad for medical treatment to escape the NHS - with 70,000 patients expected to fly out this year.
And by the end of the decade 200,000 “health tourists” will fly as far as Malaysa and South Africa for major surgery to avoid long waiting lists and the rising threat of superbugs, according to a new report.
The first survey of Britons opting for treatment overseas shows that fears of hospital infections and frustration of often waiting months for operations are fuelling the increasing trend.
Patients needing major heart surgery, hip operations and cataracts are using the internet to book operations to be carried out thousands of miles away.
India is the most popular destination for surgery, followed by Hungary, Turkey, Germany, Malaysia, Poland and Spain. But dozens more countries are attracting health tourists.
Research by the Treatment Abroad website shows that Britons have travelled to 112 foreign hospitals, based in 48 countries, to find safe, affordable treatment.
Church members routinely picket funerals of military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, carrying signs such as “Thank God for dead soldiers” and
