The United States is now ranked on 22nd out of 168 Countries in having the least corruption. One of the reasons is the rich and powerful in the United States very seldom go to jail for their crimes, or receive hand slaps.
Nice to see in Israel, despite there being little justice for Arabs living in the country…
There is still justice for the high and mighty.
(Ignore the dumb arsed Cisco Commercial! From my view they are part of the problem here in the US.)
Why don’t you tell us how you really feel, Georgia State Senator Robert Brown?
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This does not look good…
The part with McGriff sitting on the furs is her “press conference” explanation of the situation…
“Look at me I’m sitting on a bunch of furs, so I’m not a thief?”
Turns out Mrs. McGriff has a fairly extensive criminal record… And apparently the local media isn’t buying either –
Oh My!
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Cory Booker is one of the new generation of black politicians who is going places. And he is doing it the old fashioned way by working – sometimes with shovel in hand – for his constituents.
Notice to other Mayors – “Don’t try this in your city – these are trained Tweeting professionals!”
Hizzoner On the Job!
Cory Booker: The Mayor of Twitter and Superhero of the Blizzard
If you’re a mayor of a northeastern U.S. city, you probably despise Cory Booker right now, because the tweeting mayor of Newark, N.J., is now a social-media superhero, able to move towering snowbanks in a single push — or by sending the shovels and plows your way.
After a blizzard started blanketing the Northeast on Dec. 26, an event that earned the Twitter hashtag #snowpocalypse, Booker turned the microblogging site into a public-service tool. Residents of the city, which has a population of around 280,000, swarmed Booker’s account (@CoryBooker) with requests for help, and the mayor responded. He and his staff have bounced around Newark shoveling streets and sending plows to areas where residents said they were still snowed in. “Just doug [sic] a car out on Springfield Ave and broke the cardinal rule: ‘Lift with your Knees!!’ I think I left part of my back back there,” he reported in one message. One person let Booker know, via Twitter, that the snowy streets were preventing his sister from buying diapers. About an hour later, Booker was at the sister’s door, diapers in hand. Read the rest of this entry »
What I suspect to be a long line of Tea Party Candidates who played fast and free with the campaign money, ala the Sno’ Ho’ and KKKarl Rove…
The Associated Press, quoting a “person with knowledge of investigation,” reports from Baltimore that federal authorities are probing the finances of failed Senate Republican candidate Christine O’Donnell of Delaware to determine if she broke the law by using campaign money to pay personal expenses…
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the national ethics group,previously called O’Donnell’s use of more than $7 million in donated funds “Magic Money,” and repeated a claim that she had misused campaign resources for personal expenses, including household rent, The News Journal reports from Wilmington.
Former RNC Chair, and current Governor of Mississippi Haley Barbour’s fond memories of White Citizen’s Councils …
And the reality.
How Things Change... The Old...
And New. Former Republican Senator George Allen and Council of Conservative Citizens
Although the term “historical revisionist” seems to have been co-opted these days by committed right-wingers who typically reserve it for liberals who refuse to adhere to the true and sacred American narrative according to Limbaugh and Beck, apparently Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour didn’t get the memo. In a recent interview with The Weekly Standard, Barbour, who is a favorite of the ultraconservative, race-baiting Council of Conservative Citizens, offered a startling new interpretation of this group’s massive resistance-era antecedent, the arch-segregationist White Citizens’ Council, whose title was subsequently deracinated to become the Citizens’ Councils of America. When asked how his hometown of Yazoo City, Mississippi came to integrate its public schools relatively peacefully in 1970, Barbour responded:
“Because the business community wouldn’t stand for it,” he said. “You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.”
Mississippi Governor and Former RNC CHair Haley Barobor at Council of Conservative Citizens BBQ
The White Citizens’ Council was formed in July 1954 in Indianola, a little north of Yazoo City in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, by a World War II veteran and plantation manager, Robert B. “Tut” Patterson, and some local businessmen and politicos. The council organizers had been inspired by a speech by Judge Tom Brady, also a Mississippian, who called on Southern whites to mount an organized resistance campaign against the Supreme Court’s integration decree. The Council spread across, and ultimately out of, Mississippi, generally attracting the white economic and political elites of the Deep South’s Black Belt counties but later making some inroads among blue-collar whites in the cities as well.
Pledged to maintain white supremacy, the councils foreswore violence but did their best to intimidate blacks who might think about challenging the status quo and to make painful examples of those who did. Perched atop the local economic pyramid, the councils’ white elites could seriously reduce, if not cut off entirely, the flow of commerce and credit, not to mention employment, to blacks who got out of line. Council leaders typically made it a point to see that the names of any black persons who had attempted to register to vote or signed petitions for school desegregation made their way to the local newspapers so that whites in the community would know which blacks to fire, turn off their tenant farms, or deny credit. An Alabama council member summed up his group’s aims quite candidly when he explained, “We intend to make it difficult, if not impossible, for a Negro who advocates desegregation to find and hold a job, get credit, or renew a mortgage.” Read the rest of this entry »
No, Virginia - These guys had pretty much gone the way of the DoDo Bird by the 15th Century...
This one first surfaced in October, when a controversy erupted due to a claim in a History Text used in Virginia 5th Grade Elementary Schools contained the assertion that “thousands of black soldiers served in the confederate army”, and that black soldiers fought under Stonewall Jackson…
Neither of which is in the least bit true. Turns out the person who writes History Texts for Five Ponds Press, the company which has a lock on Virginia textbooks – isn’t a Historian. And Five Ponds Press doesn’t have their textbooks vetted by professionals prior to publication, with History Texts written by Joy Masoff.
How did Five Ponds get a lock on the Commonwealth’s textbooks? (Yes, Virginia is one of two Commonwealths in America! Extra points if you remember 10th Grade US History and the other one.)
It doesn’t appear to be anything nefarious. Virginia has a policy favoring small publishers. Second, Five Ponds reacted quickly in developing textbooks tailored to Virginia’s infamous “Standards of Learning” test…errrr… hygiene (I’m trying not to use the “s” word”!).
A combination of poor sourcing and fact checking by Five Ponds, which does $70 million a year worth of business with Virginia (who appear to be their sole, if not principal client) – and a complete breakdown by the Commonwealth in auditing the textbooks for accuracy has resulted in textbooks distributed throughout the School System with dozens, if not hundreds of errors.
In the version of history being taught in some Virginia classrooms, New Orleans began the 1800s as a bustling U.S. harbor (instead of as a Spanish colonial one). The Confederacy included 12 states (instead of 11). And the United States entered World War I in 1916 (instead of in 1917).
The text also claims that early Virginia settlers commonly wore full suits of Armor. Unfortunately for Five Ponds, Virginia was settled a few centuries after Knights in Shining Armor roamed the fields of Europe and the Middle East. By the 16th Century, muskets had pretty much rendered anything except a breastplate, and possibly a helmet obsolete.
Growing up in Virginia, I remember the pre-1970’s textbooks whose content was specified by the State Legislature. Replete with stories of “happy darkies” tending the fields as slaves in Antebellum heaven – let’s just say the Southern Myth was on full display in all it’s rancid glory. Some states, notably Texas and Arizona – apparently never left that era.
These are among the dozens of errors historians have found since Virginia officials ordered a review of textbooks by Five Ponds Press, the publisher responsible for a controversial claim that African American soldiers fought for the South in large numbers during the Civil War.
“Our Virginia: Past and Present,” the textbook including that claim, has many other inaccuracies, according to historians who reviewed it. Similar problems, historians said, were found in another book by Five Ponds Press, “Our America: To 1865.” A reviewer has found errors in social studies textbooks by other publishers as well, underscoring the limits of a textbook-approval process once regarded as among the nation’s most stringent.
“I absolutely could not believe the number of mistakes – wrong dates and wrong facts everywhere. How in the world did these books get approved?” said Ronald Heinemann, a former history professor at Hampden-Sydney College. He reviewed “Our Virginia: Past and Present.”
In his recommendation to the state, Heinemann wrote, “This book should be withdrawn from the classroom immediately, or at least by the end of the year.”
The review began after The Washington Post reported in October that “Our Virginia” included a sentence saying that thousands of black soldiers fought for the South. The claim is one often made by Confederate heritage groups but rejected by most mainstream historians. The book’s author, Joy Masoff, said at the time that she found references to it during research on the Internet. Five Ponds Press later apologized.
The unusual review process involved five professional scholars. The results, said three of those involved in the process, proved disturbing. Some submitted lists of errors that ran several pages long. State officials plan to meet Jan. 10 to review the historians’ concerns. (more)
While filling in for Sean Hannity last night, Carlson said that while he’s a Christian and “all for forgiveness,” Michael Vick killed dogs—and Carlson believes “he should have been executed for that.”
Now this is one of the guys who supported rendition and torture …of humans.
On CNN’s Crossfire (10/27/01), conservative Tucker Carlson was succinct: “Torture is bad. Keep in mind, some things are worse. And under certain circumstances, it may be the lesser of two evils. Because some evils are pretty evil.”
Once again, Carlson’s sense of justice is skewed by his racism.
On April 6, 1933, the German Students Association’s Main Office for Press and Propaganda proclaimed a nationwide “Action against the Un-German Spirit,” to climax in a literary purge or “cleansing” (Säuberung) by fire. Local chapters were to supply the press with releases and commissioned articles, sponsor well-known Nazi figures to speak at public gatherings, and negotiate for radio broadcast time. On April 8, the students association also drafted its twelve “theses” — deliberately evocative ofMartin Luther — declarations and requisites of a “pure” national language and culture. Placards publicized the students’ “theses,” which attacked “Jewish intellectualism,” asserted the need to “purify” the German language and literature, and demanded that universities be centers of German nationalism. The students described the proclaimed “action” as a response to a worldwide Jewish “smear campaign” against Germany and an affirmation of traditional German values... Welcome to Arizona
A new law is set to take place in Arizona, HB 2281 – which is to ban “Ethnic Studies”. “Ethnic” in this case being any American who isn’t white… The need to “purify” the American language and literature… Indeed. By 1938 the pogrom had reached fever pitch, and Kristallnacht. About the only difference between the Nazi Kristallnacht and an American Lynching (Tulsa, Rosewood) I can see is the spiffy Nazi uniforms. Same program, different channel. Both were preceded by virulent anti-minority language, with action bolstered by, and given the “seal of approval” of law.
As a child of the 60’s, I ask myself -“What happened to all the hell raisers?” Been looking for a way to shut the whole state down about now… I guess we didn’t have video games.
While much condemnation has rightly been expressed toward Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, a less-reported and potentially more sinister measure is set to take effect on January 1, 2011. This new law, which was passed by the conservative state legislature at the behest of then-School Superintendent (and now Attorney General-elect) Tom Horne, is designated HB 2281 and is colloquially referred to as a measure to ban ethnic studies programs in the state. As with SB 1070, the implications of this law are problematic, wide-ranging and decidedly hate filled.
Whereas SB 1070 focused primarily on the ostensible control of bodies, HB 2281 is predominantly about controlling minds. In this sense, it is the software counterpart of Arizona’s race-based politicking, paired with the hardware embodied in SB 1070’s “show us your papers” logic of “attrition through enforcement,” which has already resulted in tens of thousands of people leaving the state. With HB 2281, the intention is not so much to expel or harass as it is to inculcate a deep-seated, second-class status by denying people the right to explore their own histories and cultures. It is, in effect, about the eradication of ethnic identity among young people in the state’s already-floundering school system, which now ranks near the bottom in the nation.
There’s a word for what Arizona is attempting to do here: ethnocide. It is similar to genocide in its scope, but it reflects the notion that it is an ethnic and/or cultural identity under assault more so than physical bodies themselves. By imposing a curriculum that forbids the exploration of divergent cultures while propping up the dominant one, there’s another process at work here, what we might call ethnonormativity. This takes the teachings of one culture – the colonizer’s – and makes it the standard version of history while literally banning other accounts, turning the master narrative into the “normal” one, and further denigrating marginalized perspectives. America’s racialized past abounds with such examples of oppressed people being denied their languages, histories and cultures, including through enforced indoctrination in school systems.
As if to add insult to injury, HB 2281 barely makes a pretense to hide any of this in its language and intended scope. A close reading of the law lays bare some of the more stark and sinister aspects of its potential application in a state where Hispanic students fill nearly half the seats in the public schools (the domain to which HB 2281 will apply). In particular, there are three primary aspects of the law that merit further investigation as contributing factors to the ongoing erasure of ethnic identities and the further marginalization of people of color in Arizona. (more)
Ok Guys – you know you been through it, when your lady sets the program for you to once again prove you affection with the “You don’t love me!” meme.
Seems this woman in Spain really went overboard!
Spanish woman fakes kidnapping to test husband: police
Spanish police have detained a woman who faked her own kidnapping to test whether her husband would pay ranson, sending him a photograph of herself with bound hands and feet, police said Monday.
The man received the photo on his mobile phone from someone claiming to be one of the kidnappers along with a text message demanding a ransom of 20,000 euros (26,000 dollars) for her release, they said in a statement.
The ransom request was repeated in later text messages as well as warnings that the man not go to police, which he ignored.
Police launched a search and spotted her car, which they followed to a shopping mall in the town of Gandia on the Mediterranean coast.
“The woman, who was travelling alone and was in perfect health, was the supposed victim of the kidnapping,” the police statement said.
At first she told police that she had been released that morning but later confessed to faking her abduction “to find out what her husband would be willing to do for her”.
In 2008 a Spanish court sentenced a woman to three-year-a-half years in prison after finding her guilty of extortion by faking her children’s kidnapping seven times.
Seems that Alvin Greene has got a taste for campaigning. After loosing to SC Senator Jim DeMint by more than 30 points, Greene isn’t going to let a little thing like a landslide keep him down…
Besides, there is the issue of all those left over Alvin Greene Action Figures!
Alvin Greene, the unemployed military veteran who won the Democratic nomination to face Sen. Jim DeMint (R) this fall, has filed to run for South Carolina’s state House.
Greene, who lost to DeMint by over 30 percentage points, paid the $165 entry fee five minutes after the filing period opened on Christmas Eve to run in a special election to replace the late state Rep. Cathy Harvin (D), according toThe Associated Press.
His surprise primary victory over presumptive nominee Vic Rawls prompted calls from Democrats to investigate the election results, but he remained on the ticket through the general election.
In the midst of the campaign in August, Greene was indicted by a South Carolina jury for allegedly showing pornography to a college student. He declined to drop out of the race, and one of his first campaign speecheslasted a mere 23 seconds.
Greene got into trouble again when a companion of his got into a restaurantaltercation with officials from a local Democratic group, resulting in the ejection of Greene and his associates.
The candidate was also known for more lighthearted moments, such as his suggestion that manufacturing action figures of himself could create jobs.
Dallas Pastor Sandy McGriff Shows Off Her Furs
Dallas preacher Sandy McGriff says she wasn’t breaking into a congregant’s house on Christmas Eve to rob her—she did it to protect the woman from other burglars. McGriff, who was arrested when police caught her loading $10,000 worth of valuables into her car, says she stopped by to check on Serita Agnew’s house when she saw two men exit it. She says she climbed through a window they’d already broken, and grabbed Agnew’s fur coats, designer purses, and a laptop to protect them in case the thieves returned.
“I thought I was helping,” she tells the Dallas Morning News. That, needless to say, is not how police tell the story. A neighbor called police when he spotted a woman break Agnew’s window and climb into the house. When police arrived, they say McGriff told them that Agnew had asked her to pick up the coats, making no mention of the two men. The police report also says she was not sober, and lists her name as “Kathy Robinson,” an alias she has a criminal record under. She was released on $26,000 bail in time for Christmas services.
Things that make you go “Hmmmmmm…”
Seems it would have been a lot simpler just to dial 911 on the old cell phone. Now… I understand about the “Born Again” thing…
But I wasn’t aware that included a criminal alias!
Juan Williams was recently booted from his gig at NPR to the anger and chagrin of conservatives…
Now it seems, at the hue and cry from the same conservatives, he might be booted from his Faux News gig because of stating the obvious truth – The Sno’ Ho’ is stupid.
What is Portrayed By Conservative Media.
You’ve heard the term “Angry black man/woman” probably too many times for it to register anymore. Most black professionals run into it personally at one time or another, and it is a common device utilized in political and corporate infighting against black employees.
It is a device, dependent on the ignorance or bias of other white employees and managers, which can cause serious career damage to the accused black employee. Often phrased as “having a chip on the shoulder” when a black employee reacts no differently than a white employee to a situation, or when the employee is a black woman, as having “an attitude”, the false canard is just another of those “black taxes” on the way to that still not reached post-racial nirvana.
This irrational, racially driven bias provides a serious challenge to President Obama’s image.
Obama and the Question of the ‘Angry Black Man’
Dec. 23, 2010 – Since his 2008 campaign, much discussion has been devoted to understanding President Obama’s approach. At various points Obama’s public coolness has been seen as a plus, while at other points it has been viewed as a real minus. On those rare occasions when Obama has dared give expression to his ire, he has confronted the “angry black man” issue and any concerns he may have regarding the perception that an “angry black man” has assumed the role of President of the United States of America.
In the last two weeks two friends of mine have written pieces critical of my assertion that part of understanding Barack Obama is to understand his intense fear of being perceived as an “angry black man.” One friend simply stated his disagreement with me, while the other ridiculed my position. Both friends happen to be white.
Before I go any further let me be clear that I do not articulate this analysis as in any way a defense of Obama. As my record shows, I have been highly critical of the President on many issues. What has me unsettled, however, is how easy it has been for many white leftists and progressives to dismiss the matter of the “angry black man” without fully interrogating the concept and its implications. In that sense, this is about much more than President Obama.
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