Bill Maher – Who is More Successful – Obama or Romney?

Interesting viewpoint…

 

 

Bi-Racial…Tri-Racial… And the American Melting Pot

Herman Cain says that racism isn’t a significant factor in America anymore. Unfortunately, like much of what Mr Cain claims about race (and politics) in America, that isn’t true.

What is true is that race, and racism in America, sans a few Tea Party bigots, has become far less “in your face” – thanks to the many black and white folks (unlike Mr Cain) who marched, and after the marching was over – chose to live their lives rejecting one of the the very core premises of the founding America…race.

This family’s experiences aren’t any different than a majority of mixed race families in America, where their children struggle with a sense of belonging, acceptance – and sometimes the racism of their peers and peer’s parents.

For Mixed Family, Old Racial Tensions Remain Pa…, posted with vodpod

In Strangers’ Glances at Family, Tensions Linger

The question tore through Heather Greenwood as she was about to check out at a store here one afternoon this summer. Her brown hands were pushing the shopping cart that held her babbling toddler, Noelle, all platinum curls, fair skin and ice-blue eyes.

The woman behind Mrs. Greenwood, who was white, asked once she realized, by the way they were talking, that they were mother and child. “It’s just not possible,” she charged indignantly. “You’re so…dark!”

It was not the first time someone had demanded an explanation from Mrs. Greenwood about her biological daughter, but it was among the more aggressive. Shaken almost to tears, she wanted to flee, to shield her little one from this kind of talk. But after quickly paying the cashier, she managed a reply. “How come?” she said. “Because that’s the way God made us.”

Cornell Belcher Takes on Herman Cain’s Rhetoric on CNN

Cornell Belcher unloads on Herman Cain’s “brainwash” statement…

Bad quality – but the enitre broadcast segment. Good back and forth with Ari Fleischer.

Belcher hits the nail on the head – but I wish he had come at it a little differently. The real issue is WHO Cain is playing to and WHY. And why would that audience support Cain’s regurgitation of racist right wing talking points?

The New Jim Crow – Virtual Slavery – Republicans Bring Back Chain Gangs to Replace Paid Labor and Illegal Immigrants

Post Civil War Much of the South Was Rebuilt By Prison Labor Slavery

Chain Gangs were once a fixture in the South. Used as a slavery replacement strategy, prisoners – almost exclusively black, were used for everything from rebuilding the City of Atlanta after the Civil War to picking cotton, and laying railroad tracks.

The Prison Slavery System is making a big comeback, with major corporations – and in states which have driven out their “illegal immigrants”, now need Prison labor to pick the crops.

With black unemployment hovering at 16.5%, and teen unemployment hovering at 50% – in conservative America, if you are black – you have to go to jail to get a job.

Wisconsin Republicans aren’t that ambitious…yet.

Prison inmates replace unionized workers in Racine, Wisconsin

 

Prison inmates have replaced union workers in Racine County, Wisconsin, thanks to the changes to the states collective bargaining laws that went into effect at the end of June.

The Journal Times reported prison inmates will now be able to do tasks such as landscaping, painting, and shoveling sidewalks in the winter that were previously performed by unionized employees.

Inmates are not required to do any work for the county, but can receive time off their sentence if they do. Racine County Executive Jim Ladwig said the use of prison labor would not result in any public works staff reductions.

“We’re gonna have them do landscaping at county buildings, have them pick up trash on the roads,” he told local Fox News 6. “So we can use some of the county personnel to do difficult tasks, such as putting in a parking lot at the park.”

Republican Gov. Scott Walker signed a non-fiscal version of his budget plan into law in March that stripped nearly all collective bargaining rights from Wisconsin public workers, giving officials the power to make many changes affecting workers without formal negotiations.

 

A Flood of White Supremacist Political Candidates

After co-opting the right’s racial language and strategy, and having their philosophy of white victimhood adopted by the Tea Party and fully propagandized by think tanks such as the Hoover Institute and AEI, and broadcast 24 x 7 by Faux News…

White supremacists are ready to make another move to the mainstream, just as the Third KKK did in the 1920′s.

One of the impacts of the right’s racial propaganda machine is this – which is summarized from a llstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor survey here.

The issue of , particularly African American influence in the political arena is likely to get even more toxic, considering roughly 1/3 of the 30,000 or so locally elected officials is African-American. This means politically, we should see a rise in the number of Afican American candidates to Federal Positions – and President Obama and guys like Deval Patrick are likely to be just the leading edge of a very big wave. That doesn’ t mean that the majority of elected positions in America will be held by black folks, or even minorities – just that the chances of the Senate remaining an all white bastion, and the next black President may not be as far away as many think.

Which brings us to what I call… “Fear of a Black Planet”.

White Supremacist Stampede

Billy Roper (l), and David Duke

Add to the growing list of candidates considering a bid for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012 America’s most famous white-power advocate: David Duke.

A former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, member of the Louisiana House of Representatives and Republican executive-committee chairman in his district until 2000, Duke has a significant following online. His videos go viral. This month, he’s launching a tour of 25 states to explore how much support he can garner for a potential presidential bid. He hasn’t considered running for serious office since the early ’90s, when he won nearly 40 percent of the vote in his bid for Louisiana governor. But like many “white civil rights advocates,” as he describes himself to The Daily Beast, 2012 is already shaping up to be a pivotal year.

Former (and current) Neo Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, neo-Confederates, and other representatives of the many wings of the “white nationalist” movement are starting to file paperwork and print campaign literature for offices large and small, pointing to rising unemployment, four years with an African-American president, and rampant illegal immigration as part of a growing mound of evidence that white people need to take a stand.

Ground Zero at the Lincoln Memorial

I seriously hope the counter protesters come a million strong…

I’ll be there, if for no other reason than to deliver a 1 finger salute to these racist assholes.

I was there in 1963 as a kid when my parents took me to join Martin Luther King on the Mall.

Ed Show: Cenk On Glenn Beck’s MLK Rally, posted with vodpod

The Headless Republican

The Headless Republican Haunts America!

Quite frankly the only headless bodies I see right about now are the Tea Bagger style conservatives whose lies have reached epidemic proportions.

Headless bodies and other immigration tall tales in Arizona

Ay, caramba! Those dark-skinned foreigners are now severing the heads of fair-haired Americans? Maybe they’re also scalping them or shrinking them or putting them on a spike.

But those in fear of losing parts north of the neckline can relax. There’s not a follicle of evidence to support Brewer’s claim.

The Arizona Guardian Web site checked with medical examiners in Arizona’s border counties, and the coroners said they had never seen an immigration-related beheading. I called and e-mailed Brewer’s press office requesting documentation of decapitation; no reply.

Brewer’s mindlessness about headlessness is just one of the immigration falsehoods being spread by Arizona politicians. Border violence on the rise? Phoenix becoming the world’s No. 2 kidnapping capital? Illegal immigrants responsible for most police killings? The majority of those crossing the border are drug mules? All wrong.

This matters, because it means the entire premise of the Arizona immigration law is a fallacy. Arizona officials say they’ve had to step in because federal officials aren’t doing enough to stem increasing border violence. The scary claims of violence, in turn, explain why the American public supports the Arizona crackdown.

Last year gave us death panels and granny killings, but compared with the nonsense justifying the immigration crackdown, the health-care debate was an evening at the Oxford Union Society.

Two months ago, the Arizona Republic published an exhaustive report that found that, according to statistics from the FBI and Arizona police agencies, crime in Arizona border towns has been “essentially flat for the past decade.” For example, “In 2000, there were 23 rapes, robberies and murders in Nogales, Ariz. Last year, despite nearly a decade of population growth, there were 19 such crimes.” The Pima County sheriff reported that “the border has never been more secure.”

FBI statistics show violent crime rates in all of the border states are lower than they were a decade ago — yet Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) reports that the violence is “the worst I have ever seen.” President Obama justifiably asserted last week that “the southern border is more secure today than any time in the past 20 years,” yet Rush Limbaugh judged the president to be “fit for the psycho ward” on the basis of that remark.

Domestic Terrorism – Driven By Conservative Hate

Once again we have an act of domestic terrorism undoubtedly spawned by the hatred and vitriol on talk radio and Faux -