Larry Craig Ain't Resigning!

NEWS FLASH:

Last week Senator Larry Craig kept his promise to "intend to resign" by the end of this month. He has resigned to intend to keep his post as U.S. Senator until the judge rules on not only whether he can change his plea, but through the outcome of the result to overturn his plea deal conviction. In short, he ain't going, folks. That could easily take months. IN FACT, IT WILL!

That's really what he "intended" to do all along.

He's got Billy Martin, one of the best lawyers money can buy these days (not that it helped Scooter Libby or Michael Vick all that much), and a mouthful of legal and political mumbo-jumbo to spit out at the media wolves and buy time until the final judicial determination is made, and perhaps more time than that, since it is unlikely he will do time for any of this regardless of outcome.

This good news must be giving the GOP agita since all of this fun will likely flow well into 2008, and will make wonderful cake and ice cream for the Dems to serve out to its guests for several months as well. I just can't wait for the political commercials, not just those after the nominees are picked, but the ones running up to the conventions. If I were Hillary, Obama or John (I'll bet John will), I'd be making Larry Craig fudge-packers for lunch right now, ready to serve on Super Tuesday.

If I were advising Rudy, I'd tell him to make up with his kids ASAP, so they can help him delete all versions of his gay pride day cross-dressing videos off the web, especially those on YouTube.

Only O.J. ranks higher on the hypocrisy scale of "IF I DID IT" True Charlie Murphy Stories.

Yup. Y'all got played.

A Travesty of Race in Our Time

Op-Ed Contributor
Jena, O. J. and the Jailing of Black America

By ORLANDO PATTERSON
Published: September 30, 2007

Cambridge, Mass.

THE miscarriage of justice at Jena, La. — where five black high school students arrested for beating a white student were charged with attempted murder — and the resulting protest march tempts us to the view, expressed by several of the marchers, that not much has changed in traditional American racial relations. However, a remarkable series of high-profile incidents occurring elsewhere in the nation at about the same time, as well as the underlying reason for the demonstrations themselves, make it clear that the Jena case is hardly a throwback to the 1960s, but instead speaks to issues that are very much of our times.

What exactly attracted thousands of demonstrators to the small Louisiana town? While for some it was a simple case of righting a grievous local injustice, and for others an opportunity to relive the civil rights era, for most the real motive was a long overdue cry of outrage at the use of the prison system as a means of controlling young black men.

America has more than two million citizens behind bars, the highest absolute and per capita rate of incarceration in the world. Black Americans, a mere 13 percent of the population, constitute half of this country’s prisoners. A tenth of all black men between ages 20 and 35 are in jail or prison; blacks are incarcerated at over eight times the white rate.

The effect on black communities is catastrophic: one in three male African-Americans in their 30s now has a prison record, as do nearly two-thirds of all black male high school dropouts. These numbers and rates are incomparably greater than anything achieved at the height of the Jim Crow era. What’s odd is how long it has taken the African-American community to address in a forceful and thoughtful way this racially biased and utterly counterproductive situation.
How, after decades of undeniable racial progress, did we end up with this virtual gulag of racial incarceration?

Part of the answer is a law enforcement system that unfairly focuses on drug offenses and other crimes more likely to be committed by blacks, combined with draconian mandatory sentencing and an absurdly counterproductive retreat from rehabilitation as an integral method of dealing with offenders. An unrealistic fear of crime that is fed in part by politicians and the press, a tendency to emphasize punitive measures and old-fashioned racism are all at play here.

* white America, and Republican America especially, are hellbent on destroying African-Americans as we know them today. As some white people used to say in the 80s "soon we'll all be one race anyway". they just forgot to mention that the one race we most likely won't be is black.

But there is another equally important cause: the simple fact that young black men commit a disproportionate number of crimes, especially violent crimes, which cannot be attributed to judicial bias, racism or economic hardships. The rate at which blacks commit homicides is seven times that of whites. just why the hell are brothers killing brothers?

Why is this? Several incidents serendipitously occurring at around the same time as the march on Jena hint loudly at a possible answer.
•
In New York City, the tabloids published sensational details of the bias suit brought by a black former executive for the Knicks, Anucha Browne Sanders, who claims that she was frequently called a “bitch” and a “ho” by the Knicks coach and president, Isiah Thomas. In a video deposition, Thomas said that while it is always wrong for a white man to verbally abuse a black woman in such terms, it was “not as much ... I’m sorry to say” for a black man to do so.
•
Across the nation, religious African-Americans were shocked that the evangelical minister Juanita Bynum, an enormously popular source of inspiration for churchgoing black women, said she was brutally beaten in a parking lot by her estranged husband, Bishop Thomas Weeks.
•
O. J. Simpson, the malevolent central player in an iconic moment in the nation’s recent black-white (as well as male-female) relations, reappeared on the scene, charged with attempted burglary, kidnapping and felonious assault in Las Vegas, in what he claimed was merely an attempt to recover stolen memorabilia.

These events all point to something that has been swept under the rug for too long in black America: the crisis in relations between men and women of all classes and, as a result, the catastrophic state of black family life, especially among the poor. Isiah Thomas’s outrageous double standard shocked many blacks in New York only because he had the nerve to say out loud what is a fact of life for too many black women who must daily confront indignity and abuse in hip-hop misogyny and everyday conversation.

* another piece of evidence that shows Black America must now take the lead in banning or shunning black music, and the white businesspeople that promote it, just as we rejected Amos and Andy decades ago, no matter how much other communities may like it, as racist, sexist and thus inappropriate. and if whites or others try to take it over once the blacks are forced to abandon it, Black America should come down on them hard and fast like a hammer on a nail and destroy the racists who try to continue its promotion.

What is done with words is merely the verbal end of a continuum of abuse that too often ends with beatings and spousal homicide. Black relationships and families fail at high rates because women increasingly refuse to put up with this abuse. The resulting absence of fathers — some 70 percent of black babies are born to single mothers — is undoubtedly a major cause of youth delinquency.

* but, the black family also fails because we don't really try to make it work. most divorces happen becaue of infidelity, most of these babies are being born to women who aren't considering the consequences instead of just waiting until they're married before having children, and because of me who are having trouble finding gainful employment or who are just assholes who need their asses kicked because they fail to honor their obligations after fucking these women and inpregnating them. if you can't afford a baby don't have one. and if you decide to get married and have a family, stay together instead of finding reasons to fall apart. cheating and unemployment didn't start in this generation, so get over the bullshit reasons and just stay together for your childrens's sake - even if you no longer love each other.

The circumstances that far too many African-Americans face — the lack of paternal support and discipline; the requirement that single mothers work regardless of the effect on their children’s care; the hypocritical refusal of conservative politicians to put their money where their mouths are on family values; the recourse by male youths to gangs as parental substitutes; the ghetto-fabulous culture of the streets; the lack of skills among black men for the jobs and pay they want; the hypersegregation of blacks into impoverished inner-city neighborhoods — all interact perversely with the prison system that simply makes hardened criminals of nonviolent drug offenders and spits out angry men who are unemployable, unreformable and unmarriageable, closing the vicious circle. a vicious cycle that integration has accelerated, not solved.

Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other leaders of the Jena demonstration who view events there, and the racial horror of our prisons, as solely the result of white racism are living not just in the past but in a state of denial. Even after removing racial bias in our judicial and prison system — as we should and must do — disproportionate numbers of young black men will continue to be incarcerated.

Until we view this social calamity in its entirety — by also acknowledging the central role of unstable relations among the sexes and within poor families, by placing a far higher priority on moral and social reform within troubled black communities, and by greatly expanding social services for infants and children — it will persist.

Orlando Patterson is a professor of sociology at Harvard and the author of “The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America’s ‘Racial’ Crisis.”

Republicans Debate Candidates’ Decision to Skip Forum on Minority Issues

As the Democrats debated last night in New Hampshire, a debate broke out about the decision of the leading Republican presidential hopefuls to skip a televised forum tonight that focuses on issues important to black and Hispanic voters.

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None of the leading Republican candidates plan to attend the forum, which the television host Tavis Smiley will moderate at Morgan State University in Maryland and which will be broadcast live on public television. All the leading Democratic candidates attended a similar debate moderated by Mr. Smiley in June at Howard University in Washington.

does this mean, as suspected for so long, that Republicans are racist at the core? read on...

Instead of attending the televised forum, which has been in the works for months, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mitt Romney are scheduled to be in California, Fred D. Thompson in Tennessee and Senator John McCain in New York.

proof positive that Rudy is mean-spirited, Mitt is a Mormon piece of shit, Fred is a John Birch Society card-carrier like his Reagan nemesis, and McCain is still an asshole who is out of touch with reality.

“I’m very disappointed by it,” said Michael Steele, the chairman of Gopac, an organization that tries to groom Republican candidates, who said he had spent months trying to have all the candidates to attend the forum. “The hope was that it would be a chance for these guys to get out there and have a direct conversation with African-Americans and minorities across the country and lay out their visions.”

duuhhh... and what vision is that???

Mr. Steele said that shunning the debate could not only harm the party’s prospects with black voters, but with independent voters, as well.

“It’s hard enough as a black Republican to stand up in the community and say, ‘Trust me, these guys really do care,’ and then, when given the opportunity to show that, these folks don’t see the follow- through,” said Mr. Steele, the first African-American to win statewide office in Maryland when he was elected lieutenant governor, as a Republican.

just goes to show that Mike Steele is one of those see-no-evil, hear-no-evil black republicans. Is being a Republican that important and necessary for him to make it to the top in Maryland?

A Republican debate on Univision, the Spanish-language television network, was canceled this month because Mr. McCain was the only leading candidate to agree to attend. (The top Democratic candidates, by contrast, did debate on the network.)

McCain had to placate the Mexicans, he's from Arizona. If he didn't, he'd be out of a job.

The decision to skip the forum tonight was criticized in an editorial in The Washington Times, a conservative-leaning newspaper, that said, “It is striking that the Republican front-runners believe that some run-of-the mill fund-raiser is more important than building up their relationships with black and Hispanic voters, groups who flock to the Democratic Party in droves.”

In this day and age of needing zillions to run for Prez, fund-raising is job #1 in politics. Who the fuck are u kidding?

Donald E. Scoggins, the president of Republicans for Black Empowerment, said: “We feel that they’re losing a great opportunity to bring to the black community views that we feel, if they were aired, would go a long way toward dispelling the myths involving Republicans and the black community.” And he said he worried that if the Republican Party did not adapt it would find itself increasingly out of step with the changing demographics of the nation: “I feel that the Republicans cannot continue to send subliminal massages to the base when it comes to dealing with race,” Mr. Scoggins said.

Obviously, the problem here is that the black Republicans continue to delude themselves into believing the GOP candidates are going to talk to minority America. They can't! Because they are committed to the BASE of the party: those patriots of Anglo-American power, and that damn sure don't mean you niggers, kikes, spics, and chinks.

This is the BASE that Nixon appealed to who he called the "Silent Majority" in 1968. The BASE, who as the Silent Majority was also the White People's Party in the South, the Neighborhood Improvement Committe that came out when a black family moved on the whites-only block, the BASE who is the KKK, the BASE who is the right-wing, the BASE who wants that Reaganesque, pre-1960 perfect white world, the BASE who wants to turn back the clock, push "family values", push "law and order" (enter Giuliani and Thompson), the BASE who wants to rule the world with their "American Way" value system (enter McCain), the BASE that doesn't want an America with minority groups anywhere in sight at all.

Oh, don't misunderstand us, they say, we're not racist. You niggers, uh we mean minorities can exist in our great melting pot of a country, just stay in your ghettos, or in the Blue states, or in New York or DC or Hollywood or whereever you fuckers live, just stay out of our America, our homes, our political party, our business community and just leave "OUR" country alone!

Is the GOP inherently a racist political ideology? Well, if you know or recall anything about the Reagan Revolution (which is really the Barry Goldwater Revolution combined with the Southern strategy, which was to grab whites disenchanted with their Democratic Party who ran for the hills to the GOP once civil rights dominated the Dems in the 1960s, even though Nixon created Affirmative Action) knows that the Silent Majority still very much exists.

They are the same angry whites who were pissed when they saw a Honda or Toyota on their streets in the 70s, who were pissed when they realized most of their oil was coming from the Arabs in the 80s, who were pissed when the U.S. has to borrow money from Japan in the 90s and now China in the 2000s to keep the economy going, who are really pissed at seeing all these Mexicans and Haitians and Middle Easterners and Indians over here (but not the Irish and Russians and Eastern Europeans who also came) and taking their jobs, who want 'their' America the fuck back!

Is it any wonder then that the U.S., a nation that for years has been piercing the sky for higher moral ground than the rest of the planet supposedly has, starts off the 21st century talking about "killing them" (as in Bin Laden, Saddam, Amadinijad and Chavez, just to name a few)?

But the question one must ask is if these same angry people are aware the GOP has its own political agenda that only stands to benefit the richest and most powerful of them, including its rewards to the benefit of the politicians involved?

If you still have to ask the question, you're either in total denial or just asleep behind the wheel.

Opinion

Why Mugabe attracts Africans and repels the West

By Peter Kagwanja Mon Sep 17, 4:00 AM ET (from the Christian Science Monitor)

PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA - WESTERN dignitaries attending festivities to mark a decade of South Africa's democracy on April 27, 2004, were struck mute by the deafening applause that greeted Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe.

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"I cannot figure out why he is being applauded when he has destroyed his country," protested Gareth Evans, former Australian foreign minister and president of the Western think tank, the International Crisis Group.

Mr. Mugabe remains both an enigma and a magnet, attracting Africans and repelling the West. He is at the center of a seven-year-old game of brinkmanship between Africa and the West, fostered by diametrically opposed responses to Zimbabwe's seizure of land owned by some 4,500 white farmers in 2000. Since then, the two sides have looked each other in the eye to see who would blink first.

This face-off hovered over the summit of Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders last month in Lusaka, Zambia, and now haunts the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Uganda this November and the upcoming Euro-Africa summit in Portugal in December.

Mugabe's fall from grace in the eyes of the West is a relatively recent phenomenon in his 27 years in power. Now portrayed as the archetypal bare-fisted dictator, he was hailed by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as "a man I can do business with." And in 1994, Queen Elizabeth bestowed on him an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath.

What inflamed relations with Britain was the injudicious denial by Tony Blair's Laborites in 1997 of Britain's colonial responsibility for land reform. Clare Short, Britain's secretary of state for international development, wrote to Zimbabwe's minister of agriculture and land: "We are a new government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and, as you know, we were colonized not colonizers."

After Britain reneged on its pledge to fund land reform, citing cronyism, Mugabe went ahead with his own land redistribution plans, which pushed Zimbabwe's predominantly agrarian economy down the cliff: 80 percent unemployment, nearly empty government coffers, collapsed services, and an annual inflation rate of 18,000 percent.

In less than seven years, Zimbabwe has witnessed the fastest peace-time economic dip in history since Weimer Germany – plunging one of Africa's strongest economic and regional breadbaskets into a crisis with 4 million people reportedly starving and in need of food aid.

Mugabe may have lost the economic war, but he has won every political battle with the West. As the oldest freedom fighter still in office, he has always drawn the biggest applause in African meetings, including the recent SADC summit. The Africa-West standoff has emboldened him and turned him into a symbol of African resistance, a liberation hero.

Even though foreign humanitarian aid has flowed steadily to the poor in Zimbabwe, the West's asset freezes and travel bans on Mugabe and a hundred of his associates and spouses are seen in some quarters as "racial" retribution for his seizing of white farms and handing them over to black Zimbabweans. But invoking a moral mission, the West insists that its "smart" sanctions have targeted elements of the ruling elite "engaged in actions or policies to undermine Zimbabwe's democratic processes or institutions."

In the aftermath of the Iraq invasion in 2003, Mugabe upped the ante, whipping nationalism to a fever pitch: "Our cause is Africa's cause," he told the fervently pro-Zimbabwe publication, New Africa, in May. This has given wing to intense militarization of polity in the government ahead of the 2008 elections to forestall a Western-sponsored "regime change."

In a move aimed at demobilizing the opposition's urban support and nipping in the bud a Ukrainian-style "orange revolution," the Mugabe government ordered "operation Murambatsvina" (Drive Out the Filth) – a draconian clearance of what it termed "illegal shelters" in Harare and other cities – which a United Nations report estimates has destroyed the homes and livelihoods of 700,000 Zimbabweans and negatively affected 2.4 million more.

Apart from the economic cost of Zimbabwe's meltdown on the region, Mugabe's real impact on Africa is ideological. The West has urged South Africa to break rank with states that back Mugabe and to adopt a forceful stance against Harare. At the same time, South Africa's ruling elite fear that, owing to Mugabe's nationalist credentials and popularity, public condemnation of Harare would exacerbate South Africa's internal divisions over President Thabo Mbeki's successor and lead to isolation on the continent.

Pretoria's behind-the-curtains quiet diplomacy talks between Zimbabwe's ruling party and the opposition from 2000 to 2004 yielded a new constitutional draft for Zimbabwe. But the initiative was stillborn because Pretoria lacked the muscle to enforce it. Moreover, in a continent where age matters, the 65-year-old Mr. Mbeki has an uphill task getting octogenarian Mugabe to take him seriously.

Issues of sovereignty have also come into play. Pretoria's effort to use economic leverage by offering Zimbabwe a $500 million credit line to pay the International Monetary Fund debt in return for governance reforms backfired. Zimbabwe rejected the offer and paid its own debt in February 2006.

Mugabe's status as elder statesman and anticolonialist hero has ensured unwavering regional support. An extraordinary SADC summit in March 2007 expressed "solidarity" with Mugabe, but appointed Mbeki as mediator between Zimbabwe's ruling party and the opposition. Zambia's president, Levy Mwanawasa, the new chair of SADC who previously described Zimbabwe as a "sinking Titanic," made a U-turn, declaring that the country's problems were "exaggerated."

SADC's meeting last month resolved to bail Zimbabwe out of its economic woes and endorse Mbeki's mediation, but this enterprise has no breathing chance unless Africa and the West end the face-off.

Moreover, the trial of Liberia's warlord, Charles Taylor, in 2006 for crimes against humanity as part of the West's war on impunity in Africa has removed guarantees for safe retirement, thus diminishing the chance of Mugabe's exiting. He is running in the 2008 elections.

The face-off has fostered an international climate hostile to Zimbabwe's economic recovery. Although Harare exited the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 2003, it is important that the CHGOM in November provides an opportunity to bring Zimbabwe back onto its agenda. Portugal, now holding the EU presidency, must stay the course regarding its decision to invite Zimbabwe to the Euro-Africa summit in December. This event provides a window to revive the ties between the two continents in ways that can usefully impact Zimbabwe.

Mugabe's liberation colleagues, such as Namibia's Sam Nujoma and Zambia's Kenneth Kaunda should work with Europe's new leadership – Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy – and other influential global elders to support the SADC mediation to deliver an economic recovery plan and a democratic constitution to ensure a level playing field in the 2008 polls.

Dr. Peter Kagwanja is acting executive director of the Democracy and Governance Program at the Human Science Research Council in Pretoria and is president of the Africa Policy Institute in Nairobi, Kenya.

McNabb stands tall in pocket, speaks his mind

Black quarterbacks have come a long way in the NFL.

So they say . . .

yo lika shout out to brotha mike on the dc peeps today 4 the story. one, bruh.

As presented by Michael Wilbon

Columnist

Updated: 12:19 p.m. ET Sept 21, 2007

Michael Wilbon Columnist

Thankfully, Donovan McNabb had the guts to stand tall in the pocket with critics trying to knock his head off. Thankfully, McNabb, at 30, has some sense of the NFL beyond his own participation. Most celebrity athletes talk only when paid to talk, and usually about something benign if not downright useless.

McNabb, however, had something very real to say in a conversation with James Brown of HBO. He said black quarterbacks are under more scrutiny and criticized more harshly than white quarterbacks. Why this has become a hot button topic I have no idea. It's not like McNabb called anybody a racist or a bigot. He said that black quarterbacks face more criticism than white quarterbacks, than Peyton Manning or Carson Palmer, just to name two. And he's right, just as black politicians or entertainers or writers are scrutinized more closely, whether it's professionally or driving home in the middle of the night from work.

Anybody who doubts McNabb needs only to walk around one of the upper-concourse areas of Lincoln Financial Field late in a game when, as several white friends have told me, the frequent use of the word "nigger" preceding McNabb's name during a losing performance is so casual it sickens them. Rex Grossman, just to name one white quarterback who has to deal with daily criticism, doesn't have to be on the wrong end of that kind of hateful venom, even though he'll never be half the quarterback McNabb has been.

Story continues below ↓

All quarterbacks are criticized; it's the nature of the business. Joe Montana, John Elway, Brett Favre . . . they've all faced it, especially in this age of nonstop talk and analysis. Quarterback is the most important position, the most high-profile position in American sports, and nothing else comes close. The praise and criticism are both extreme to the point of absurdity.


McNabb has a $100 million contract and those Chunky Soup commercials for one reason: he's a quarterback. Most NFL players are completely unrecognizable out of their jerseys, but McNabb is so well known his mother has her own commercial success.






Undeniably, this is progress. It was unimaginable 20 years ago when Doug Williams led the Redskins to a Super Bowl victory. Williams might as well have been a Martian that Super Bowl week, as reporters crowded around him to ask how he felt about making history. Remember, Warren Moon is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but no NFL team would draft him out of the University of Washington in 1978, even though he led his team to the Rose Bowl. It wasn't enough. Scouts tried to talk him into changing positions so that some team would draft him, but he wouldn't and went to Canada. He had to leave this country to play quarterback professionally.Black quarterbacks have come a long, long way. Just seeing James Harris and Williams play in the 1970s brought black folks to tears. I'm elated that I can't even name all the black players who play quarterback these days. The Jacksonville Jaguars ended last season with three. Vince Young, two years ago, was drafted ahead of Matt Leinart, and JaMarcus Russell, this spring, was drafted ahead of Brady Quinn. Leinart and Quinn are prototypical, perhaps even stereotypical, white, in-the-pocket, Golden Boy quarterbacks.

Sez Dan Rather : Government Influencing Newsrooms

Are you as surprised as I am? Or as goofy-looking? The government is controlling my nose (and thus my mouth). Damn I'm ugly - I look like a gnome.

SAMANTHA GROSS of the AP brings the buzz, thanks Sam!!

NEW YORK - Dan Rather said Thursday that the undue influence of the government and large corporations over newsrooms spurred his decision to file a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company.

"Somebody, sometime has got to take a stand and say democracy cannot survive, much less thrive with the level of big corporate and big government interference and intimidation in news," he said on CNN's "Larry King Live."

In the suit, filed a day earlier in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, Rather claimed CBS and Viacom Inc. used him as a "scapegoat" and intentionally botched the aftermath of a discredited story about President Bush's military service to curry favor with the White House. He was removed from his "CBS Evening News" post in March 2005.

"They sacrificed support for independent journalism for corporate financial gain, and in so doing, I think they undermined a lot at CBS News," he told King.

Rather didn't mention other instances in which he believed news organizations bowed to corporate and government pressure.

CBS spokesman Dana McClintock did not return an after-hours call seeking comment Thursday. He has called Rather's complaints "old news" and said the lawsuit was "without merit." A spokesman for Viacom declined to comment.

Journalism ethics scholar Bob Steele said Rather would have a difficult time proving that the White House or other political operatives exerted undue influence on CBS.

"It would be naive for us to believe that there was no influence from powerful institutions and individuals on journalism," said Steele, a scholar at the Poynter Institute, a journalism foundation in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Still, he said: "For the most part, the journalists who run news organizations and who report the news fight hard to protect the independence of the journalism, and most of the time succeed."

Rather narrated the September 2004 report that said Bush disobeyed orders and shirked some of his duties during his National Guard service. It also said a commander felt pressured to sugarcoat Bush's record.

The story relied on four documents, supposedly written by Bush's commander in the Texas Air National Guard, the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian. Critics questioned the documents' authenticity and suggested they were forged.

A panel selected by the network to investigate the story determined that it was neither fair nor accurate. CBS fired the story's producer and asked for the resignations of three executives because it could not authenticate documents used in the story. Rather was forced out of the anchor chair he had occupied for 24 years.

On CNN, Rather dismissed the panel's review, claiming it was not impartial.

"This was in many ways a fraud. It was a setup," he told King.

Louis D. Boccardi, the retired chief executive of The Associated Press who made up the two-man investigative panel with Richard Thornburgh, the former U.S. attorney general, defended the panel's work Thursday night.

"Our report was independent, and it speaks for itself," he said, echoing comments made by Thornburgh on Wednesday. Both declined to comment further.

So let me get this straight. A panel of 2 guys, one a corporate exec, one a REpublican loyalist, make up "an investigative panel"? Who the fuck are u bullshittin'?? Are they serious? Do they actually think I now do NOT believe Dan Rather, who as our esteemed professor notes above, that it is realistic to believe (and be pretty sure of) the control of our media by corporate and government interests, which are of course geo-political, economic, and closely guarded.

We shouldn't be naive? Who sez . . .?

And a footnote: Blackwater, who was asked, no, TOLD to leave by Iranian President Nouri A-Maliki of Iran for their henious crimes against Iraqis last week, apparently were able to trump him and it appears a call by Condi caused Nouri to "think twice" before you try your hand at that. Any guess who's running that government? And they can't even reach those benchmarks? What gives, skee?

Another Jena 6-type incident? On Long Island?

Mychal Bell, 17, is accused with five others of beating Justin Barker in a school fight.

(Mineola - WABC, September 18, 2007) - On Long Island, there is outrage over an attack caught on tape that some are saying was racially motivated.

The Loving Tree

The chaotic scene took place on June 1 and involved several white men and one black man outside a McDonald's in Oceanside. As only in the Y2K century, caught on video.

Leaders in the black community are now calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate. Several community leaders held a news conference to express their outrage at the Nassau County District Attorney's Office. They say the videotape proves that the DA's Office did not properly investigate the incident.

The video of the violent brawl is at times unclear, but leaders of the black community insist the tape is proof positive that the man accused of assault is, in reality, the victim of a racially motivated attack, Their believe is that 24-year-old Aloysius Staton is being unfairly prosecuted. "This young man is innocent," New York State Senator Eric Adams said. "The videotape shows that he is innocent. He was the victim of a crime."

Last month, Staton and his friend entered the McDonald's when a fight broke out, captured on the restaurant's security camera. Staton and his friend claim they were the victims of a bias attack, and that eight young men instigated the fight, calling them names. "They called me racist names, the N-word and stuff like that," Staton said.

Staton was caught on tape hurling a beer bottle at one of the men. But prior to that, another man is seen swinging a chair at Staton's friend. Attorney Phil Shanahan insists his client was acting in self-defense.

"We need someone that needs to look and see why these men who were truly guilty of the crime were not prosecuted," he said. In the end, Staton was the only person indicted by the Nassau DA. He was charged with assault. "We are all under the law, and the law should apply to everybody equally," the NAACP's Claudia Swansey said.

The DA released a statement saying this is an ongoing investigation and that the videotape is being looked at as evidence. Staton faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

Not sure if he did it, but OOOPS! She dit it Again!

Playboy won't pay for Britney

If her embarrassing performance at the VMAs was any sort of indication of Britney Spears' current net worth, then I think we can all say that a star has fallen. Should you need any tangible evidence of her decline, consider her latest PR disaster.

The National Ledger reports that Playboy will only shell out no more than $400 grand to have Britney pose nude and show all her sweet juicy stuff nude for a Playboy centerfold spread.

Britney insists that she won't take her clothes off for less than seven figures, a sum that has been scoffed at by editor/founder Hugh Hefner.

Damn! And I was hoping to see her stink ass there!

Seriously, we've seen all there is to see of Britney Spears for free. The only thing Playboy could add to that is some air-brushing and good lighting, which would be a small improvement, but not enough to make up for the fact that no one out there wants to see that woman naked. If I'm wrong about this, please let me know. OK, you're right we can stand a little more, just please don't flood my e-mail box with too many requests for this!

You know that saying about how you can't put the toothpaste back into the tube? Well, I think that pretty much sums up Britney Spears.

Still Alive and Well in America

'Stealth racism' stalks deep South

By Tom Mangold of BBC World Jesse Rae Beard is one of the 'Jena Six' students on trial This World investigates the rise of discrimination in America's deep south as six black youths are charged with an alleged attack on a white student, which could see them jailed for up to 50 years. Editors note: We should not, and this article is not intended to purport, that stealth racism is only a product of the South. It has been a product of the North much longer. When the KKK was rallying to keep blacks out of schools and public facilities in the South during the Civil Rights movement, whites in the North lived in segregated neighborhoods, with overt or tacit understanding of covenants not to sell to blacks for decades. Some of the worst race riots in America occured in Northern cities between 1900-1920. And stealth racism still occurs today in the North, in places like Howard Beach in NYC, in some parts of suburban Philadelphia, and in many parts of the U.S. through economic practices which include job discrimination, housing/mortgage lending practices, access to credit, and many other methods. It should be no surprise to you that blacks remain among the poorest ethnic/racial group in America, in fact in much of the Americas (just as true in Brazil for example, who is now trying to enact Affirmative Action laws). Even Canada, which by all accounts is the most diverse and open society perhaps in the Western Hemisphere, has limits on this claim when it comes to the corporate boardrooms and offices of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. So please don't stereotype the South - the problem persists throughout America. Three rope nooses hanging from a tree in the courtyard of a school in a small Southern town in Louisiana have sparked fears of a new kind of "stealth" racism spreading through America's deep south. Although this sinister episode happened last August, the repercussions have been extensive and today the town of Jena finds itself facing the unwelcome glare of national and international publicity. Jena has a mixed community, 85% white, 12% black. The bad old days of the "Mississippi Burning" 60s, civil liberties and race riots, lynchings, the KKK and police with billy clubs beating up blacks might have ended. But in the year that the first serious black candidate for the White House, Barak Obama, is helping unite the races in the north, the developments in the tiny town of Jena are disturbing. Nooses in the playground It all began at Jena High School last summer when a black student, Kenneth Purvis, asked the school's principal whether he was permitted to sit under the shade of the school courtyard tree, a place traditionally reserved for white students only. He was told he could sit where he liked. Tom Mangold interviewed primary witnesses in Jena The following morning, when the students arrived at school, they found three nooses dangling from the tree. Most whites in Jena dismissed it as a tasteless prank, but the minority black community identified the gesture as something far more vicious. "It meant the KKK, it meant 'niggers we're going to kill you, we're gonna hang you 'til you die'," said Caseptla Bailey, one of the black community leaders. Old racial fault lines in Jena began to fracture the town. It was made worse when - despite the school head recommending the noose-hangers be expelled - the board overruled him and the three white student perpetrators merely received a slap on the wrist. Troubled community Billy Doughty, the local barber, has never cut a black man's hair. But he does not think there is a racism problem in Jena. Caseptla Bailey with a picture of her son Robert, one of the 'Jena Six' Caseptla Bailey who is 56 and a former Air Force officer, has a degree in business management, but she cannot get a job as a bank teller. She lives in an area called Ward 10, which is where the majority of blacks live in trailers or wooden shacks. She says no whites live there at all. "We want to live better, we want better housing." she says. "The Church says we should all be brothers and sisters in Christ". Yet Sunday morning is perhaps one of the most segregated times in all of America. In the white neighbourhood, Pastor Dominick DiCarlo has only one black member of the Church, out of 450 resident members. Race-related fights As racial tension grew last autumn and winter, there were race-related fights between teenagers in town. On 4 December, racial tension boiled over once more at the school when a white student, Justin Barker, was attacked by a small group of black students. He fell to the ground and hit his head on the concrete, suffering bruising and concussion. He was treated at the local hospital and released, and that same evening felt able to put in an appearance at a school function. District Attorney Reed Walters, to the astonishment of the black community, has upgraded the charges of Mr Barker's alleged attackers to conspiracy to commit second degree murder and attempted second degree murder. If convicted they could be 50 before they leave prison. Mr Walters has refused to give an on-the-record interview to the BBC about his decision on the charges. Mr Barker has since been charged with possessing a firearm in an arms-free zone (the school grounds). The six black students will face a hearing next month. One of them is Caseptla Bailey's son Robert, who originally had his bail set at an unaffordable $138,000 (£69,495). She had to hire a private lawyer who managed to get Robert's bail reduced to $84,000 (£42,285) so that her family could meet it. Michelle Jones' brother Carwyn is one of the boys charged. She is adamant that he will not get a fair trial in Jena. "If he's tried here, the jury will pick who they want. I have no doubt that they will convict those boys of attempted second degree murder." When they do eventually file into court, many observers believe it is the town of Jena which will really be on trial. This World: "Race hate in Louisiana" was broadcast on Thursday 24 May 2007 at 1900 (7pm) BST on BBC Two.

IF I DID IT, I MAY BE GOING TO JAIL

O.J. Simpson after being questioned by police as a possible suspect in a theft at a casino.

That was the other day. Just a few hours ago, Las Vegas police have arrested O.J. Simpson. The exact charges are as yet unclear, or unannounced. But given an associate who was involved in this theft (where O.J. was allegedly present) has already been arrested and charged with felony robbery, burglary, and assault with a deadly weapon while trying to obtain or reclaim sports memorabilia that O.J. says is rightfully his, it's safe to say a conspiracy charge is enroute to O.J.'s mailbox.

The victim, Alfred Beardsley, told TMZ it was an attempted robbery of items he rightfully owned or had legal possession of. Thomas Riccio, the auctioneer who tipped O.J. off about Beardsley's possession of these items, says he escorted O.J. to Beardsley's suite, alleging to buy the suit O.J. wore when he was acquitted at the criminal trial, and then demanded his stuff. He says no one, including O.J., had a gun or any other weapons, but then another person or two came in, and at least one of them was brandishing a gun. Riccio and O.J. both say it was a misunderstanding and no criminal intent was garnered by them.

It appears to be a quick arrest. Do they have a case? We'll see, stay tuned for more breaking news on this story.

BREAKING NEWS

from our affiliate Point N Controversy >

Like you didn't see it coming sooner or later. Actually I thought he had at least the sense, especially after the incident with his girlfriend, after he was accused of stealing cable, after he got off with murder (yeah I know some of us don't feel he did it, but I do), and even after writing the book 'If I did it...', he would have by now just stayed in the low and learned to just be cool.

but NOOOOOOO!!! NOT THIS DUMBASS STUPIDASS MUTHA FUCKA!!!!

YES. O.J. Simpson was just arrested for allegedly participating, no make admitting he participated, in a 'sting' or 'robbery or 'armed robbery', depending on whose version you like, of a group of memorabilia traders at the off-the-strip Palace Station Hotel & Casino in Vegas to steal back sports memorabila O.J. claims was rightfully his. He now faces multiple felony robbery charges.

You'd think by now he'd know the legal system, especially the criminal part, a little better after getting away with the crime of the century. Apparently Dumbass doesn't realize that it doesn't matter if he was holding a gun or not. He already admitted to being a co-conspirator to a felony robbery with a deadly weapon, since one of his co-conspirators has already been arrested and charged with direct felonies on these counts and more. O.J. has virtuall admitted to being involved in this escapade, with the defense that the stuff was stolen from him. Dumbass told CNN and other news networks, undoubtedly thinking his celebrity would get him off. You'd think someone who walked away from arguably THE MOST SENSATIONAL CRIME OF THE 20th CENTURY, who's only paid $10,000 of the $34 million civil judgment for the Browns and Goldmans, who escaped payment because his six-figure income from pensions is totally protected by law from attachment to the judgment, and who is probably one of the most hated people in America, especially by those who are just mad that this black man married and then killed his beautiful blond white ex-wife who he felt cheated on him, would just be cool and stay alive and enjoy his life to the best he can.

He was actually doing that, ironically. Well I doubt he'll be doing that anymore. He may be facing 30-40 years in prison with this absolutely asinine caper. My advice to Orenthal J: stay clear of the Aryan Brothers in the can. They've been waiting a long time for your arrival!

Do Good Companies Discriminate in Job Hiring?

If you're a minority, especially African-American or Latino, but perhaps also Asian, bi-racial or gay, you have no doubt by now asked this question as the writer below has. You've been looking for a job, you see the bullshit ad tab of these employers that says they're an "Equal Opportunity Employer", and you look around and ask yourself: "If they're so committed to diversity, why do I still feel like people like me, by and large, are at the bottom of the totem pole?" "Why does the white man or woman get the opportunities, have the relationships, get the break, and why don't I?" Why does almost every recent poll or statistical chart indicate that whites are happier with life, have more income, are more gainfully employed, have more opportunity to be who they want to be, and that even higher education won't make the lives of minorities better than their white counterparts?

Find me a minority who hasn't experienced discrimination in the workplace. Find me a minority who feels better off now than, say, 4 years ago? Find me a minority who feels they can truly achieve parity with their majority neighbors. Find me one, and I'll find you 100,000 who will say otherwise. That's a harrowing statistic we should all be frightened about.

In the meantime, read this Q&A from DiversityInc.com, whereby the "white guy" (he's a featured and actually much-respected contributor to this magazine) answers this question from his racial and cultural perspective, while being mindful of the challenge of diversity:


By Luke Visconti (the "white guy")

© DiversityInc 2007 ® All rights reserved. No article on this site can be reproduced by any means, print, electronic or any other, without prior written permission of the publisher.

Question:

My company is on your Top 50 for Diversity list and will soon be celebrating Diversity Week in November. There will be rewards given to nominees who embrace diversity, which is all very good. My question: How do you help a company see that they must also keep a watchful eye on those managers who don't care about receiving an award and think that they can continue to operate as business as usual? I have been with the company for 15 years. During that time, I have taken advantage of the generous education program and received a bachelor's and soon to be two master's degrees. Last year, my department decided to outsource many jobs, mine included. For those of us who want to stay with the company, we have until this October to find another job. Since March of this year, I have, on record, 54 job postings [that] I have applied for. Of those postings, I have only been interviewed for six of the jobs. During each interview, the hiring manager finds some area of their business that I am not familiar with to point out that I am not qualified for the position. I know of a few individuals (non-minority) from my department with less qualification who have already found new positions, but I am still looking. I cannot believe that out of 54 postings I [don't] qualify for any of them. I am not writing this question out of bitterness. I am only writing it to find an answer. All I seek is an opportunity.

Answer:

I'm very familiar with your company and it is a long-term leader in diversity management. This doesn't mean that every manager is "on it," but you stand a much better chance of finding a progressive manager at your company than most people do.

Since I don't know you, I am forced to give general suggestions. Not all of them may apply to you. Please understand that I am not trying to diminish the reality of your experience when I suggest that you can take action to change your outcome.

Please consider this checklist:

1. Give your next job application your "full game." Study for the interview, understand the person with whom you're interviewing, know the department, try reaching out to that person's friends for insight into what areas give the manager the most pain. Make yourself a walking encyclopedia of solutions.

2. Follow up. Make sure your follow-up correspondence is not a form letter. Make it relevant to the potential new supervisor.

3. Politics. See if you can leverage people you know to apply influence on areas that interest you for a transfer. Find managers who HAVE been active in your company's diversity-management efforts. Utilize your employee-resource-group network.

4. Appearance counts. Make the best of your personal visit. Dress one level up. Use the spellchecker on your correspondence (I'm not sure why people think that misspellings are OK in an e-mail).

5. Be positive. Forget about the 54 jobs you applied for. Focus on the future. You love your company—tell them about it. Tell them how much you care, how proud you are to work there and how satisfying it has been to avail yourself of their generous education benefits. Tell them how you want to use that knowledge to their benefit and work there until you retire. It's hard to resist a positive message like that. Don't include anything negative. Air your opinions with the highest level you can reach by writing letters to executives, and ask for their help!

6. Learn. We have a number of really good career-advice articles on this web site. Click here.

Your industry is going through hard times. Despite that, their commitment to diversity has not wavered (again, I'm not discounting your experience, it's just that your experience at your company is likely to be much, much better than at the average company).

By the way, there is opportunity in tough times; a good manager will be much more open to hiring someone they don't know who is well prepared over an "old boy" who is taking it for granted that they'll get the job.

My heart goes out to you and I wish you good fortune in finding another position in that company.

violent tragedy in west virginia

FBI enters case of ghastly abuse
From staff, wire reports

Police are looking for two more people in the torture, beating and sexual assault of a Charleston woman, and the Logan County prosecutor said he believes the woman first met one of her abductors over the Internet.
The two people being sought by police are believed to have picked up 23-year-old Megan Williams from Charleston and transported her to Big Creek, where she was held captive in a home for at least a week.
Police have arrested six people already. The FBI has entered the case because it is a possible federal hate crime, authorities said.
The victim is black and the alleged assailants are white.
Prosecutor Brian Abraham said he heard from one of the arresting officers that Williams met a Logan County man on an Internet site.
Abraham could not verify whether that person was already in custody or one of the suspects still sought by police.
"I think she may have met an individual on the Internet and he agreed to pick her up in Kanawha County and take her to Logan County," Abraham said. "That individual may have befriended her and at some point turned her over to these people."
Abraham, who has served eight years as prosecutor, said he has never witnessed or imagined a case of this proportion.
"We’re up to our eyeballs in murder cases in Logan County, but nothing quite like this," he said. "We have typical homicides motivated by jealously, passion and theft. This seems like outright malice. It’s something you’d see in a horror movie."
Magistrate Leonard Codispoti told The Logan Banner, "It was the worst case of human abuse I have seen since I have been a magistrate.
"Something like this is so horrifying it makes you want to puke. They got this girl out of Charleston and took her to Big Creek, threw her in a shack, raped and stabbed her, put a rope around her neck, made her eat animal feces and did other horrifying things to her."

It's not over. Seems as if there are two more ' alleged' suspects still wandering out there. This poor woman. Seems like it's Open Season on Black folk, doesn't it? Reminds me of that famous Vernon Johns sermon.

Now, if it walks like a hate crime, talks like a hate crime, smells like a hate crime....what is it - oatmeal? They just didn't 'happen' upon this victim, they searched her out, which, for me, is the pure definition of a hate crime.

Police mull hate crime charges for W.Va. attack

Six West Virginia residents charged in sadistic rape and torture of a black woman

(Why are the Feds dragging their feet?)

Suspects allegedly used racial slur, tortured woman for a week

NBC video

Six people to be charged with hate crime Sept. 11: In W.Va., police are investigating what they call a shocking case of torture. Six people could be charged with a hate crime. Nightly News

MSNBC video

6 charged in torture Sept. 11: MSNBC's Tamron Hall talks to WSAZ reporter Jennifer Cottrill about the case. MSNBC

Updated: 2 minutes ago

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Authorities said Tuesday they are considering hate crime charges in the case of a woman who was tortured while being held captive for at least a week, and they are investigating the possibility that she was lured by a man she met on the Internet.

The victim was repeatedly called a racial slur while her captors sexually abused, beat and stabbed her, her mother said.

Six people, all white, including a mother and son and a mother and daughter, were arrested in connection with the alleged abduction of the 20-year-old black woman.

“I don’t understand a human being doing another human being the way they did my daughter,” Carmen Williams said Tuesday from her daughter’s room at Charleston Area Medical Center General Hospital. “I didn’t know there were people like that out here.”

Megan Williams, with a cast on her arm, spoke barely above a whisper.

“I’m better,” she said.

The Associated Press generally does not identify suspected victims of sexual assault, but Williams and her mother agreed to release her name.

'Out of a horror movie'
A prosecutor said police are investigating the possibility that the victim was lured to the house where she was attacked by a man she met on the internet, but Carmen Williams insisted that wasn’t the case. “This wasn’t from the Internet,” she said.

Deputies also interviewed the victim Tuesday morning. State, local and federal officials planned to meet later in the day to decide whether to file hate crime charges, Logan County sheriff’s Sgt. Sonya Porter said. An FBI spokesman in Pittsburgh, Bill Crowley, confirmed that the agency is looking into possible civil rights violations.

The woman’s abductors called her the N-word “every time they stabbed her,” Carmen Williams told The Charleston Gazette earlier.

Authorities were still looking for two people they believe drove the woman to the house where she was abused, said Logan County Chief Deputy V.K. Dingess.

The case is “something that would have come out of a horror movie,” Logan County Sheriff W.E. Hunter said.

Deputies found Williams on Saturday when they went to the house in Big Creek, about 35 miles southwest of Charleston, to investigate an anonymous tip from someone who had witnessed the abuse, Porter said Tuesday.

One of the suspects, Frankie Brewster, was sitting on the front porch and told deputies she was alone, but moments later the woman limped toward the door, her arms outstretched, saying “Help me,” the sheriff’s department said in a news release.

***************************************
Another word: why isn't the news media covering this story better? Also, if you check the few major ones that have (like CNN and CBS, to name a couple) are charging and adding negative tones to the veracity of the victim and the "helplessness" of the accused being brought into the court of public forum for what they did. Well they should be dragged out into the mud just like Michael Vick was for killing dogs. Now we must see whether American values pit bulls over human abuse and suffering based on racial hatred. Back in the day, some appeared to care more about the life of beautiful animals than that of "ugly Negros". Have our values changed? REEaaally???? We'll see......

and NO, we didn't forget what today is...

we should all remember where we were and what we were doing about 10 minutes before, up to and since that tragic moment on that tragic day that changed our lives in america forever, no matter who you are. if you were here, you felt the moment.

click on the VIDEO BAR to the RIGHT >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > > > > > >

sex, drugs & race in philly: if it was some white kids that got shot, would the problem be solved already?

September 10, 2007 (from philly.com)
Where are Philly businesses on violence?


Headinthesand.jpg: no the picture didn't copy, but the thinking sure did.

Phil Goldsmith, former managing director of the city of Philadelphia, and now chief of
Ceasefire PA, recently spoke with Inquirer columnist Monica Yant Kinney about
businesses stepping up to helpaddress the worsening problem of violence and guns in
Philadelphia. Not usually one to hold his tongue, Goldsmith opened fire (sorry) on
business people for being more talk than action. Yant Kinney gaveus her unpublished
notes on th short conversation, printed here with Goldsmith's permission:


     Yant Kinney: What will it take to get outcry from the business
     community and/or the rest of white/powerful Philly about the
     violence? Will it really take the shooting of a kid from Penn?

     Goldsmith: Unfortunately, the answer is yes. If the homicides were
     occurring in Center City, God forbid, as opposed to where they do
     occur, you would have a much more engaged business community, a much
     different rallying impact. ... The business community, the Chamber
     [of Commerce] is actually on record in favor of one gun per month.
     They’re in favor of reporting lost/stolen [guns]. It’s one thing
     being in favor of something. It’s another actively getting your
     constituents involved.


     Yant Kinney: Has the business community been asked to get involved?

     Goldsmith: I don’t know if they’ve been asked, but I don’t think they
     have to be asked. My point is, what’s going on in Philadelphia, as
     well as in Reading, as well as Lancaster, as well as Allentown, this
     is just not a Philadelphia issue. It’s having an economic impact in
     the city. When Philadelphia makes the national news as it has, the
     past several months, there’s no way in the world that helps the
     business community, economic development or tourism in that city. It
     shouldn’t take having a white kid killed in Center City to galvanize
     the community in this city. It shouldn’t be that difficult for people
     to connect the dots. They know what to do if they want tax breaks.
     This is as important to the vitality of this city as well as the
     livability of the people who live here.”


Goldsmith also said, in a paraphrase from Yant Kinney, that the first thing businesses
and universities ought to do is have a "more vocal role" in Harrisburg, where legislative
efforts to fight the problem consistently have faced impasses or been watered down.


We intend to ask the Chamber for response. Yes, the Chamber, led by Joseph Frick of
Independence Blue Cross, and some other business people have been speaking up and
taking some action about the violence and the need for busineess community involvement.

But are they the exceptions?
Tell us: What other business people are really stepping up? Funeral directors?

Yes that is the question, isn't it? Why does it take the blood
of the privileged to fight the right fight? If those same folks
were suffering in Dafur, if there was oil we could grab there,
we'd be in there solving the problem. But no money can be made
in the ghetto, they think. More aptly, there is no money they
are willing to share that they make out of the ghetto. They
rape you and me for our gold and dollars, but give very little
in return. Substistence is not enough. Handouts are not enough.
The time has come to create life for all Americans to prosper in.
Yank your stupid fuckin' head out of the sand! (b4 its too late)