• Really, you should take a look at my Twitter page. I'm masquerading as the quintessential Teabagger. I thought about Firebagging, but that just made me sad.

    A shitload of makeup, a loaned trailer in Cullman, Alabama, a new F350 King Ranch with Teabagger stickers and a whole bunch of Skoal chewing tobacco. This is gonna be one fucked up night.
  • Conservatives have some weird ideas about what constitutes humor. Humor's supposed to be light-hearted, self-depreciating and most of all, genuinely funny. Instead, conservatives have a knack for creating bitter shtick that makes no one but their own equally bitter audience laugh. Everyone else kinda groans and start heading for the exits. Or the bar.

    Very much like seeing this nearly made me find the nearest liquor cabinet, and I don't even drink.


    This is what passes for humor in the conservative world. Courtesy of the Loudoun County Republican Committee, as a part of an mass email. Among the images of zombies and a nightmare fuel Nancy Pelosi, we have President Barack Obama, portrayed as a zombie with a rather large hole in his head, suggested to be a gunshot wound. We all know the message being sent here.

    First off, I thought zombies' heads exploded upon their acquaintance with jacketed projectiles. And besides, the best weapon for a zombie offense is a shotgun. This wound looks like it was made with a large caliber handgun, probably one of those damn-near-useless .500 caliber phallic showpieces.

    Welp, the Republican Party of Virginia is out in front of the story with the usual "We don't condone this crap" spin. If it sounds like I'm being dismissive, just keep in mind how well people tend to behave when they're thrown in CYA mode.

    There's something about conservatism that makes for crappy comedy. I guess being bitter gun clingers does no favors for the funny bone.
  • A hat tip to blogger Jill Klausen, because without her Twitter post, I wouldn't have seen this timeline (from PBS's Frontline) of the slow but successful decommissioning of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, enacted to prevent rampant speculation by separating commercial and investment banking functions. In short, the act prevents banks from playing shell games with commercial bank funds to place bets on speculative investments. If the banks crap out on those investments, the eventual ramifications could spell a spectacular collapse on both sides.

    It took over 20 years and $300 million in lobbying efforts for bankers to get back to the shell games. The results speak for themselves.

    PBS Frontline: The Long Demise of Glass-Steagall
  • During Herman Cain’s tenure as the head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, at least two female employees complained to colleagues and senior association officials about inappropriate behavior by Cain, ultimately leaving their jobs at the trade group, multiple sources confirm to POLITICO.

    The women complained of sexually suggestive behavior by Cain that made them angry and uncomfortable, the sources said, and they signed agreements with the restaurant group that gave them financial payouts to leave the association. The agreements also included language that bars the women from talking about their departures.

    In a series of comments over the past 10 days, Cain and his campaign repeatedly declined to respond directly about whether he ever faced allegations of sexual harassment at the restaurant association. They have also declined to address questions about specific reporting confirming that there were financial settlements in two cases in which women leveled complaints.

    Geez Herm, just as you were going neck and neck in the polls with Mitt Romney, the GOP's preferred candidate of choice, someone somewhere threw a curveball that dinged you straight in the chest. Now we all have to see if you manage to get up or if your hopes for the GOP nomination will fall dead from Sudden Campaign Failure. I guess the previous Planned Parenthood flub wasn't enough to knock you off your campaign hustle.

    Behold the Cain Train's reaction to the above allegations:

    “Fearing the message of Herman Cain who is shaking up the political landscape in Washington, Inside the Beltway media have begun to launch unsubstantiated personal attacks on Cain,” J.D. Gordon said in an e-mail message Sunday night. “Dredging up thinly sourced allegations stemming from Mr. Cain’s tenure as the Chief Executive Officer at the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, political trade press are now casting aspersions on his character and spreading rumors that never stood up to the facts.”

    Translation?


    Yep. Sums it up just about.

    To be honest, I was hoping the Cain Train would have enough steam to chug on until Super Tuesday, for laughs. And I also wanted him to grab the GOP nomination, so I could see the following happen:


    • The GOP establishment being forced to get behind a Teabagger's candidate, thus validating the Tea Party and its assorted shenanigans.
    • Deep South crackers coming to grips with either backing a black GOP candidate or staying at home and allowing a black Democrat president to remain in office.
    • The GOP failing miserably at its gamble to "fight fire with fire," being left to wonder how come they couldn't at least split the black vote with Cain as a candidate. "Gee, I thought those blacks always supported blacks no matter what." (And for further evidence to the contrary, see Artur Davis.)


    Either way, even with Mittens being pushed onto the stage while Cain gets yanked offstage with a shepherd's crook, the GOP still stands a huge chance of losing in 2012. I think I need another refill of this here popcorn...
  • Courtesy of the New York Times

    If you happen to be among the many who still believe the whole "I am the 99%" thing is just horsepucky and still believe corporate America has your best interests at heart, take a look at Joe Nocera's NYT op-ed, or better still, the photos.

    Yeah, mocking people who've been bounced out of their homes and onto the streets due to the deceptive practices of your home mortgage lender clients is never a good look. Not even when done in "jest" at a Halloween party.

    These photos were taken back in 2010 at the law firm of Steven J. Baum, which represents JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, just to name a few. Heavy hitters in the mortgage lending arena.

    "It has been suggested that some employees dress in… attire that mocks or attempts to belittle the plight of those who have lost their homes," a statement read in response to the publication. "Nothing could be further from the truth."

    The spokesperson went on to describe the column as "another attempt by The New York Times to attack our firm and our work."

    Right. Exposing a lack of professionalism and empathy is now considered an "attack." What a bunch of assholes.
  • Dominic: We're under siege here. The whole city's gone mad.
    Finch: That's exactly what he wants. Chaos. The problem is that he knows us better than we know ourselves. That's why I went to Larkhill last night.
    Dominic: That's outside quarantine.
    Finch: I had to see it. There wasn't much left. But when I was there it was strange – I suddenly had this feeling that everything was connected. It was like I could see the whole thing; one long chain of events that stretched back to before Larkhill. I felt like I could see everything that had happened, and everything that was going to happen. It was like a perfect pattern laid out in front of me and I realized that we were all part of it, and all trapped by it.
    Dominic: So do you know what's gonna happen?
    Finch: No. It was a feeling. But I can guess. With so much chaos, someone will do something stupid. And when they do, things will turn nasty. And then, Sutler will be forced do the only thing he knows how to do. At which point, all V needs to do is keep his word. And then...


    An Iraq war veteran has a fractured skull and brain swelling after allegedly being hit by a police projectile.

    Scott Olsen is in a "critical condition" in Highland hospital in Oakland, a hospital spokesman confirmed.

    Olsen, 24, suffered the head injury during protests in Oakland on Tuesday evening. More than 15 people were arrested after a crowd gathered to demonstrate against the police operation to clear two Occupy Oakland camps in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

    It's been something I've been waiting on since Occupy Wall Street started. I've been waiting for the police to do something so jawdroppingly stupid that it would cause all hell to break loose.

    Given the previous animosity between locals and the police force, and the police department's own added zeal in "restoring order," Occupy Oakland could easily slip from being a protest to a full-on riot, one that the mainstream media most likely hope would discredit the entire movement, something that portraying the protesters as slackers, hippies, losers and sexual deviants couldn't do.

    Military members, those who have risked their lives in the defense of this country, are held in high regard by many. Having them injured or killed by people who are looked at as abusive, power-hungry bullies and servants of corrupt government and corporate American interests? There's no telling what would happen.

    I'd hate to even think of what would have happened if this Marine had died. As it stands, he's in "fair" condition in ICU. One report states he's suffered loss of speech due to the sustained injuries and brain swelling.


    As I said before, I can't help but wonder if the Powers That Be™ are hoping for a riot or two to break out at one of these Occupy protests. It'll give them all the pretext they need to really crack skulls en masse, while the mainstream media sighs collectively in relief and go back to investigating Paris Hilton's shopping patterns or something else that's completely inane and self-centered.
  • The nature of anonymous trolls make it so when there's more than one person making the same or similar point to the troll, chances are that person is a second account made by the same troll. In following one of these troll's YouTube video, I stumbled on the following comment:
    @lmdslam republicans and democrats both suck. the new TEA party types are the best answer for us now. Small federal government, less taxation, fewer regulations, strong military.

    The above comes from YouTube user "1Makyo". So why focus on boilerplate Teabagger script from some run-of-the-mill YouTube denizen?

    Simple.

    "Small federal government, less taxation, fewer regulations, strong military."

    Let's break this down. In order for the United States to maintain its overgrown yet strong (in most respects) military in 63 countries, with over 250,000 military personnel and countless support staff, including contractors, the U.S. spends over $700 billion per year. That's more than other countries spend on their military forces combined. In contrast, China spends barely over $100 billion on their military.

    Now that requires a pretty beefy federal government that's doing a fair bit of taxation. On the other hand, the small federal government desired by the Tea Party wouldn't be able to swing these types of expenditures. At best, the U.S. would have no choice but to cut the military aid, pack up the troops and send them home, and then shut down and gut the bases they were in. America's priority would suddenly shift to homeland defense. No more bodies coming from Iraq and Afghanistan. Cue the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico that the Tea Party wants.

    The main problem with that is it will kick America's geopolitical chessboard from under it, and all of the carefully planned chess moves that involved military aid, interventions, counterterrorist works and plain old show of force will be for naught. Neocons will weep in anguish. If the U.S. wants to continue projecting force, something's gonna have to give.

    The second problem comes from the taxation end. Given the wealthy and multinational corporations will be the most reluctant to pay their fair share in taxes (or believe what they're paying now is their fair share), the bulk of the tax burden will fall on the usual suspects -- the middle classes and the working poor. The whole idea of activating the "trickle-down effect" to spur consumer spending by relieving the "tax burden" from the wealthy and large businesses fell apart before America's very eyes during most of this year.

    All of those tax cuts should have translated into spend-happy businesses and wealthy folk who hired more people and spend more money on more things just for the sake of spending, which should have translated into dollars trickling down from above and into the pockets of ordinary Joe Schmoes. Instead, the recession proved to companies that they could fire half of their workforce, force the other half to work twice as hard, and use the savings from firing the "dead weight" and their tax cuts to give their CEOs performance bonuses and better pay, while sitting on the rest of the money.

    Now, how do you expect to fund your overgrown yet strong military if you have to rely largely on an exhausted tax base that is punitively hit with regressive taxes at every turn? Well, the U.S. military could start relying on corporate sponsorship as a way to shore up those funds. Businesses donated to the NYPD to shore up their operating costs during Occupy Wall Street, so there's nothing to stop them from throwing a few bones to the Army or Air Force every once in a while, in exchange for certain services...

    You could also push a flat tax akin to Herman Cain's old "9-9-9" or new "9-0-9" tax scheme. And since "half of Americans don't pay taxes," all you have to do is to make them pay by getting rid of certain deductions and credits! Say goodbye to the EIC and Making Work Pay. Of course, this may drive some to partake more heavily in welfare/assistance programs, but you can kick them off the rolls just as well, if those programs even exist anymore. But that still takes a pretty big federal government to pull off.

    In the Tea Party-governed world of 1Makyo, the concept of "small federal government" is applied everywhere except the military, while it also receives private bankrolling from corporate sources, in exchange for playing mercenary whenever there's a natural resource that needs securing. As far as "fewer regulations" go, all you have to do is march backwards in time to see the environmental, commercial and health-related damages that will ensue.

    Hmm...sounds like business as usual. Perhaps the Teabaggers aren't up for the whole "small federal government, less taxation, fewer regulations, strong military" theme, after all.
  • Some people are still figuring out why black Americans still have President Obama's back, even after all of the economic turmoil and manufactured disappointment that the GOP hoped would turn black folks sour on him. They're also wondering why black Americans absolutely refuse to vote GOP, no matter how many black bodies they push onstage for the old shuck, jive and jig.

    Perhaps it's the fact that black Americans see something in the GOP that other people just can't seem to see, and of course, they don't like what they see.

    They see a collection of individuals who have little to no interest in the well-being of the poor, disadvantaged and downtrodden in this country. Just a collection of men and women who see themselves as the new American aristocracy, promoting economic and social policies that are designed to keep them in billions and trillions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars while distracting their deluded constituents with ethnic scrap fights and fear-based politicking.

    And for this, blacks are often accused of being on the "Democrat plantation," possibly because the GOP sees them as a captive source of guaranteed votes. The GOP wishes they could have something like that -- the dyed-in-the-wool Deep South-style bigot vote isn't as reliable and it tends to turn moderates and swing voters off like nothing else. The GOP really, REALLY wants that black vote.

    And black Americans refuse to give it to them. Which, of course, makes them "slaves." Infantile, servile slaves to the pinko commiecrats who steadfastly refuse to "think for themselves" and join the GOP like good little Negros. Besides, they have their own stable of fellow Negros, and you know how those Negros like to vote for other Negros just because they're Negros...

    I bet the GOP figures that if they could at least split the black vote, they could use whatever moderates and swing voters they have lying around to shore up the guaranteed 27% crazy/Teabag vote...wait, you mean there are some Deep South-style bigots out there who just won't vote for a black American, no matter his party affiliation? Might be a bit of a problem there.

    As far as the GOP is concerned, you are allowed to think for yourself, just as long as those thoughts are in accordance to GOP party doctrine. Blacks are more than welcome to join up with the GOP, just as long as they are on their best behavior and do nothing to either upset the established white power structure within or push their own interests too hard, especially if it happens to conflict with GOP tenets. Cain recognizes this, which is why he makes sure he always remains on the good side of the Teabaggers, working-class whites with an ingrained lack of tolerance for "uppity" black types and other party makers and breakers.




  • There's a 5-year-old child missing in Glendale, Arizona, and she needs to be found ASAP.

    The grandmother of an Arizona girl missing for more than a week has pleaded for more attention from police investigators and the national media, saying that the case of her granddaughter's disappearance hasn't been made a priority because she's black.

    Jahessye Shockley was last seen October 11 by her three older siblings at their Glendale apartment in suburban Phoenix while their mother was out running an errand.

    Glendale police believe Jahessye left the home through the front door but don't know what happened next.

    They have no suspects, evidence or promising leads despite search efforts that included more than 100 officers and volunteers canvassing the area within three miles of the girl's home.

    Jahessye's grandmother, Shirley Johnson, and about a dozen of her friends and neighbours went to the state capitol in Phoenix on Thursday to draw more attention to the case in hopes of finding the girl alive.

    'The Glendale Police Department has not brought this to the forefront.
    They botched this investigation,' Mrs Johnson told reporters. 'I believe it's because she's a little black girl.'

    Glendale police Sergeant Brent Coombs said that he can't say strongly enough how the girl's race does not matter to investigators.

    'What matters is there's a five-year-old girl missing,' he said. 'It's the department's No. 1 priority.

    There's more backstory at the Daily Mail. And I'm not surprised about the tepid response, or lack of it. Young black women and girls were never a priority for LEOs or mainstream media. Neither were Hispanics, for that matter.

    So once again, people are going to have to bypass the "lamestream" media and get the story out themselves. Get on Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook. Word of mouth. Posters and banners. Start spreading this story so people will know and be on the lookout.

    By the way, there will always be assholes among us:

    My heart goes out to that family, but DO NOT say such ridiculous things. When over 50% of your race commits ALL CRIMES IN AMERICA you don't have a leg to stand on. Tell your brothers and sisters to STOP IT. Then, the press will feel something.

    Yet another case study of the terminal illness plaguing the nation.
  • As a conservative, one of the ways to discredit the Democrat party is to suggest that the only reason the Dems must be winning elections is because they're coasting on faked ballots. Just accuse them of discarding ballots or registering dead people and illegal immigrants and the Low Information Voters start wondering about the integrity of the Democrat Party.

    The Republicans have better, less transparent ways of rigging the vote. Redistricting and political prosecutions, for starters. Getting the Supreme Court to sign off on your candidate is another.

    As it turns out, those instances of voting fraud are next to nonexistent, in the grand scheme of things, which makes the latest voter ID legislation a bit silly if it wasn't so damned dangerous.

    This post was just an excuse to post the lamentations of former Alabama gubernatorial contender Artur Davis over his lack of support of voter ID laws. The man then levied some serious allegations of voter fraud, but when asked by Dave Wiegel to start naming names:

    "I choose not to make allegations regarding specific individuals in the media," Davis told me, via e-mail. "As you might guess, the purpose of my editorial was to voice an opinion and to state the foundation for it, not to engage in name calling. Anyone who is even a casual observer of Alabama politics, however, knows quite well the frequency of absentee ballot charges and convictions within counties in the congressional district I represented, specifcially Hale, Greene, Lowndes, Perry, and the Bessemer areas within Jefferson County."

    And then TPM asked him to start naming names:

    “I know that those are the talking points that some groups opposed to my article have disseminated and I choose not to play that game with you or them,” Davis told TPM in an email. “It strikes me as the ‘shoot the messenger’ politics both the left and the right deploy and I hope you will do me the courtesy of printing my reply."

    Well, would you look at that. No answers.

    One has to wonder if Artur Davis thought by his virtue of being black, that he'd cinch the black vote in Alabama. Such thoughts were put to rest when Ron Sparks ran away with most of the black vote. Apparently that leads some to believe that black Democrats are somehow "brainwashed slaves on the Democrat plantation," all because they won't "think for themselves" and pull the lever for the GOP.

    Have you ever known a salesman who thought insulting those who wouldn't buy his product was a great way of...well...getting them to buy his product? I don't. Neither does anyone else, for that matter.
  • The following is not intended as an explanation of why "racism"* doesn't exist among blacks or as a ploy to absolve black individuals of prejudiced behavior. As long as there is a world where people can be compartmentalized and segmented into different groups based on appearance, location and tribal/ethnic affiliation, there will always be bigotry and prejudice.

    My beef is how the concept of "black racism" is being used by predominately white commentators as a nullifying argument whenever the issue of institutionalized white prejudice against blacks is brought up. "Black racism" is supposed to be the mirror brought up to the face of black Americans whenever they attempt to explain (once more) how the effects of institutionalized white prejudice continue to harm them in a variety of ways.

    As Abagond explains, the concept of "black racism" is more or less illusory and misleading:

    Black racism is not a mirror image of white racism. It is not equal and opposite. Instead it is different in scale and kind:

    Blacks lack institutional power. They do not, for the most part, control

    • the banks,
    • the police,
    • the courts,
    • the schools,
    • the hospitals,
    • the newspapers,
    • the film industry,
    • the fashion industry,
    • the labour market,
    • the housing market

    and on and on. Instead whites do. So much so that their racism affects rates of black unemployment, income, life expectancy, education, segregation and incarceration. Blacks do not even begin to have that kind of power over whites. If wealth is power, as it largely is in America, then whites as a whole are a hundred times more powerful than blacks (that is double what it was before the Great Recession). Even though the president is black, he cannot openly help blacks without being accused of racism.

    Internalized racism: The racism among blacks is mostly directed against other blacks, especially against one’s self. Blacks are subject to much of the same racist brainwashing as whites, particularly through television and school. According to one test of racism (the IAT), 42% of blacks are racist in favour of whites!
    Blacks understand whites way better than whites understand blacks:

    • Because they have to just to feed their families in a society that is mostly white.
    • Because they read white books, watch white television, receive white educations, work at white companies, etc. They have to deal with whites. Meantime whites can avoid dealing with blacks or having to take them seriously.

    This makes it hard for blacks to stereotype and dehumanize whites to a serious degree.


    • Blacks have not committed serious injustices that require racist whitewashing.
    • Blacks do not build their sense of self-worth on looking down on whites.
    • There is nothing like a black n-word for whites. So much so that most of the commenters on this blog who use racial slurs against whites are themselves white!
    • There is nothing like the black Klan. Some whites think the Black Panthers were like that, but they never went into white neighbourhoods to spread terror and lynch white people.

    Blacks do commit hate crimes and so on, but to think black racism is equal and opposite to white racism is to miss the nature of both white racism and black racism. White racism is institutional and cultural and a hundred times more powerful. Black racism is personal and, to a large degree, is a weakened form of white racism.

    The use of "black racism" as a weapon in heated debate isn't something new, as explained by commentator "sam":

    It is very simple to call black radicals racists in USA. That tactic has been used at least since 1950′s against any black movement, person, or this blog, which has been fighting against the racism in USA. It is the easiest and cheapest and fastest way to discredict anybody and very effective.

    I don't expect those who are comfortably wedded to the notion of "black racism" being an all-encompassing phenomenon to "get it." Cultivating the notion of "white victimhood" in response to dwindling social power and the loss of their societal punching bags and relief valves requires not listening to any argument that challenges their notions of "black racism." Once someone realizes what a complete crock "black racism" is, the notion of victimhood simply falls apart.

    On the other hand:

    “bottom line is you can make me the villian if thats what you want to do, but black racism does exist and it is growing like a cancer among some blacks.”

    Notice the part, "bottom line is you can make me the villian..."

    Some people will feel like they're being chastised or chided over the flawed concept of "black racism." They will reflexively shut down and begin repeating "I'm not the bad guy, you black racist you" meme over and over again until the argument ends. Some people are just like this. Is it our job to find more effective ways of breaking the flaws to them gently? Personally, I don't think so, but others may disagree.

    The need for maintaining the black boogeymen as a national sideshow is pretty damn strong. Otherwise you wouldn't see the Tea Party's attempts to mold the New Black Panther party into the black equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan. To the point, groups of black men nationwide will never receive the implicit and unspoken sanction of most parts of the nation to burn down white homes, churches or schools, or to drag white men off the back of pickups or hang them for sport. You won't see the New Black Panthers or anyone remotely like them marching through Main Street in a display of intimidation towards whites. It won't happen because the existing power structure in this country will not allow it to happen.

    As I mentioned in the last blog post, some whites are simply afraid of the possibility that any sort of concrete black movement will soon translate into a "black revenge," where blacks seeking compensation for the cumulative effects of institutionalized white prejudice will start by taking away white wealth and social privileges. Some whites see themselves as being a couple steps and one charismatic black leader away from being herded into ghettos. Considering past history, some whites subconsciously feel they're more than deserving of whatever fate they receive. And that may explain the reflexive defense mechanism for issues such as reparations and reconciliation. Perhaps that's one of the reasons Reconstruction was quickly put to bed, and a reason why the concept of a successful black-led nation seems abhorrent to many.

    *I never did like the word "racism," as it tends to verbally categorize people of color into different "sub-species" of human being. Such a thing makes it easier for the so-called "predominant race" to treat others as sub-human or non-human. The terms "ethnic background" and "ethnic groups" lend themselves to a more equal footing, putting everyone "on the same page," you may say. That's just my opinion on the issue.
  • When it comes to blogs that cater somewhat to black American audiences, you'll always have people who feel the need to espouse their opinion on issues that largely involve black Americans, without giving any thought to the context of the discussion or recognizing how they overestimate their own understanding of the discussion at hand. The only thing that matters to such people is that they have their opinions "out there," as they believe they are entitled to under the concepts of free speech.

    A number of blogs have suffered from individuals who stumble in said discussions and dictate their own opinions, drawn from experiences that may be alien or inapplicable to the situations alluded to in the discussions. They expect everyone else to stop and listen, thereby becoming the center of attention by presenting themselves as a sage bearer of advice. Such advice usually comes from a perspective that's had zero experience with the discussion subjects or anything remotely similar.

    Then there are those who have no intention but to disrupt the flow of normal discourse or to bring the discussion so far off track that any hope of coming back to the original discussion is soon lost. Killing debate through noise keeps people from discussing, sharing and generating ideas and solutions to problems that plague the black community, especially on blogs, forums and other relatively open mediums for discourse.

    Ankhesen Mié lays out the ground rules for her blog and even goes so far as to patiently explain why her moderation policies are set up the way they are. Below is commentator M. Gibson's explanation as to why certain individuals feel duty-bound to stumble into conversations with nary a clue:

    I think some whites stay to appropriate the words and the sentiment behind our frustration. But they absorb nothing, so it changes nothing. They learn to speak the language of diversity but its life-changing effect is lost on them. They’re overly opinionated; believing their words come strictly from an ‘Objective’ point of view. Because they know how we POC tend to allow emotion to cloud the issue. Blind to their own conditioning they will call you a race-baiting so and so for calling their so-called conditioning into question. You’re nothing but a minority in their eyes and therefore your opinion really doesn’t matter.

    To them you obviously have a chip on your shoulder and should be approached in that light. Their privilege/ignorance hangs on every word; it seasons every point they try to make. They cannot empathize with the person of color (the beginning of wisdom) and frankly they can’t understand why they should. It’s why I asked Jas0n why was he here because he consistently failed to step beyond the white narrative. With each new argument he always seemed to take the side favorable to the very thing you called out. It wasn’t about agreeing with you, it was about his lack of empathy. He couldn’t put himself in the shoes of POC and so he was always on the outside looking in.

    "So when white people come here and give me their opinions on issues they cannot fully and usually don't want to understand, comment deletion is often imminent. This blog isn't for them. It's not here for their benefit, and 90% of the time, what they have to say doesn't help the cause."

    “Why is it always about you people?” they'll ask. "Don't just focus on race all the time," they insist. Sadly, they fail to see the forest for the trees, for they can’t understand why any blog would focus on POC when there are more important issues to explore. In this way they can control the narrative to suit their ends. Pretty soon it’s all about them isn’t it.

    To put it in a not-so-polite manner, it's a manifestation of "Attention Whore" syndrome on a digital scale: the drive to dominate the discussion regardless of the topic, combined with a lack of desire to understand the subject matter. It's the "pretty white girl shedding a tear in public after being embarrassed/corrected/shamed by a peer of color" ploy -- enter with several casually flung tone-deaf assessments of the situation with "solutions" for the poor people in the discussion to faithfully follow, only to cry bias and "reverse racism/black racism/whatever admonishment towards blacks" when you're asked to stop hijacking the discussion.

    "Slavery, racism, and segregation are in the past. We shouldn't talk about them anymore. Talking about racism is what keeps it alive."

    Boilerplate dismissals such as the one above are what keeps racism alive. Dismissal fosters apathy, which in turn fosters an environment where people can marginalize and discredit other voices with ease, without consequence. Telling someone they shouldn't talk about racism anymore because it makes you feel uncomfortable is the height of tone-deafness.

    Remember the words of John Cole. Sometimes, it's best to simply step back, shut the fuck up and listen. You might learn a thing or two.
  • The following is a response posted on Redeye's Front Page, specifically in response to commentator "FED UP" and his accusation of blacks milking Jim Crow, slavery, segregation and other historic and current instances of racism, presumably for entitlements, freebies and sympathy.

    "Mack you and others refuse to believe that black racism exist and keep stirring the pot of Jim Crowe with a big spoon."

    Funny, that's the same argument made by a certain conservative who spent his time giving feedback to other blogs, only his argument is framed as the above being perpetuated by liberals and black civil rights and media establishments in a cycle of grievance-driven co-dependency.

    This was my response:

    I might have an idea as to why you see "black racism" as somehow being an even bigger problem than the existing white racism.

    The previous de facto and de jure racial mistreatment did not affect you, since you were of the majority of Americans who had the luxury of not having to deal with such issues.

    When those de facto and de jure policies were largely done away with, you saw groups such as the NAACP advocating the "leveling of the playing field," which you saw as black Americans getting special treatment and privileges that you honestly believe they did not deserve.

    The problem of blacks not being able to advance in a largely white environment was never much of a concern to you. You most likely justified such inability as being proof positive of blacks somehow not being smart enough or good enough to hack it with whites. The prospect of whites deliberately preventing black advancement never crossed your mind, since you never thought you and yours were capable of visiting such harm to people.

    Which is why when the issue of slavery and Jim Crow come up, you become incredulous at the idea that your fellow whites were malevolent enough to visit mistreatment upon blacks without due cause. Of course, there must have been a reason for all of this to happen in the first place.

    The constant issue of racism against blacks and how slavery and Jim Crow shaped the black community annoys you to no end. It's simply an argument that's designed to make you feel sorry for blacks, allow them to raid your wallet in an neverending frenzy of taxpayer funds and get them off the hook when it comes to crime.

    You see Affirmative Action as employment privileges bestowed by guilt-ridden whites unto blacks who are obviously not capable enough to attain such employment. Race-based acceptance into colleges and universities are just gimmes handed over by emotionally-manipulated whites to blacks who obviously wouldn't hack it in these centers of higher learning if they didn't waltz in on their crutches. Of course, the history of systematic denial of both educational and employment opportunities by white society never factor in on your outlook.

    Back to those crime figures. Just looking at those makes you believe that there's something wrong with the black "race," that there must be some sort of natural affinity that blacks have towards crime and criminal behavior. This, of course, affects you since you fear having your wallet stolen by some black lout at some point in your life. The only method of control and containment you'd advocate is incarceration and imprisonment, because it takes most of the criminal blacks off the streets, thereby making you at least feel somewhat safer. Looking at the underlying causes of said criminal activity and so-called affinity is of no concern to you, since you are not concerned about the well-being of black society, but of your own.

    You see the crimes committed by blacks against victims who happen to be white as an act of racially-motivated revenge for "past misdeeds" against a people who have, in your opinion, nursed their grudges for far too long and should therefore drop such petty grievances and integrate themselves into white society as the European and Asian immigrants have done. If blacks happened to be of a much lighter skin tone that didn't make them prone to being singled out effectively as targets of discrimination, perhaps this would be much easier. After all, an Irishman can hide his heritage fairly well. The same does not bode well for a dark-skinned black man.

    For some people, even the image of a black person inspires an innate fear that can only be explained as an "extreme color-aroused response." This response is used to generate fear-driven support, voting patterns and legislation that continue to curtail black advancement while promoting policies that paint blacks as some sort of defective race that must be restrained by legal and social bonds, whereupon the blacks are, for their own good, pressed into the service of white Americans in conducting menial labor as a way of keeping their feeble minds busy while allowing white Americans, or at least those of considerable wealth, to profit and benefit from their work.

    "Black racism," or at least the prospect of "black revenge" looms large in your mind, as you can see yourself losing much of your material wealth, the collective social standing of your people as the "majority" and quite possibly your own life as a consequence of this "black revenge." Not saying that blacks are incapable of being racist, but the proportion of which people should take black racism seriously is, to put it diplomatically, overblown.

    Views such as FED UP's are the end result of the consistent brainwashing of ordinary Americans into believing that blacks were somehow inferior, beast-like or sub-human. This brainwashing was facilitated by a number of moneyed interests who were, at the time, adamant about maintaining the slave trade, as it brought them considerable profits and vast social power. At the same time, poor whites were brainwashed into the believing that blacks were somehow inferior to them. This allowed poor whites who were frustrated over being screwed socially and economically by their wealthier brethren to have a punching bag to release their collective stress upon. Meanwhile, any chance of poor whites and blacks uniting against wealthy whites were killed stone dead by the cancerous divide-and-conquer tactic.

    It's something that still goes on til this very day. It is a terminal illness that may never go away in any of our lifetimes.
  • While reading an AL.com story about concerned citizens meeting to discuss and plan Birmingham's future, I ran across this nugget that's a bit of a theme among some dissatisfied with the Magic City's current shape:

    They should talk about B'ham's past (pre 1963). A lot more pleasant.
    Be nice if they could revert back to that time. I just don't see it happening, which is why I left.

    I've never known any black person from Birmingham to talk pleasant about the city as a whole pre-1960s, unless it involved their own neighborhoods. That kinda narrows down the pool of people most likely to say the above, trolls excluded.

    The 1960s are a dividing line between the pleasant and idyllic Birmingham some whites knew and loved, and the depressed, crime-ridden shit pit they believe it turned into. You can figure out why on your own.

    This is the reason why Birmingham abdicated any chance of out-Atlanta-ing Atlanta. Because while Atlanta was willing to momentarily set aside most of its racial unpleasantries (and woo-boy, were there plenty) in the greater pursuit of Greatness™, divisive and corrosive politics put Birmingham on the same road as Detroit, in terms of urban vs. suburban strife and non-cooperation.

    Nostalgia is one thing, but pining about days gone by while ignoring opportunities to create future greatness is not only an exercise in futility, but just plain stupid, in my opinion. Instead of whining about the new CrossPlex being built in an area you're "scared" to go in, push for new events hosted at the facility and improvements made to the safety and livability of the surrounding area. In other words, stop whining over how the CrossPlex should have been built in Hoover, Vestavia or some other toney suburb with a more favorable color mixture.

    And on a conspiracy theory note, I have a strange feeling that the ultimate plan is to shift the economic and metropolitan center of influence away from Birmingham. If Tuscaloosa and Montgomery could become the new metropolitan powerhouses while Birmingham languishes Decatur-style, that would suit the T-town and Goat Hill folks just fine. After all, it's their time to shine.
  • When Alabama state senator Scott Beason and former representative Benjamin Lewis testified in the federal bingo corruption trial, they weren't doing so out of a sense of justice or the kindness of their own hearts. Instead, it turned out to be something a bit more insidious:

    U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson in an order today lambasted two key prosecution witnesses in the State House vote-buying case as being motivated by political ambition and racial prejudice.

    Thomson said Republicans Sen. Scott Beason of Gardendale and former Rep. Benjamin Lewis of Dothan had ulterior motives when they assisted investigators in the case. Beason and Lewis were key prosecution witnesses in the case, in which VictoryLand owner Milton McGregor and others were charged with offering and taking bribes to try to get a gambling bill approved in the Alabama Legislature. The two Republicans said they approached FBI agents after they felt gambling interests made improper offers to try to secure their votes on the bill.

    "The evidence introduced at trial contradicts the self-serving portrait of Beason and Lewis as untouchable opponents of corruption. In reality, Beason and Lewis had ulterior motives rooted in naked political ambition and pure racial bias," Thompson wrote.

    "The court finds that Beason and Lewis lack credibility for two reasons. First, their motive for cooperating with F.B.I. investigators was not to clean up corruption but to increase Republican political fortunes by reducing African-American voter turnout. Second, they lack credibility because the record establishes their purposeful, racist intent," Thompson wrote.

    Ouch. But that's not all:

    Beason wore a wire for the FBI, and the recordings picked up a conversation among Republicans talking about the effect a gambling referendum would have on voter turn-out during an election.
    They talked about how "every black, every illiterate," would be taken to the polls on "HUD-financed buses."

    In another conversation, Beason used the word "aborigines" to refer to people at Greenetrack, a casino in predominately black Greene County.
    Thompson said such statements "demonstrate a deep-seated racial animus and a desire to suppress black votes."

    Want more? Here ya go:

    Beason, Lewis, and their political allies sought to defeat SB380 partly because they believed the absence of the referendum on the ballot would lower African-American voter turnout during the 2010 elections. One of the government’s recordings captured Beason and Lewis discussing political strategy with other influential Republican legislative allies. A confederate warned: “Just keep in mind if [a pro-gambling] bill passes and we have a referendum in November, every black in this state will be bused to the polls. And that ain’t gonna help.”

    Keep in mind this is the same Scott Beason who is one of the chief supporters of H.R. 56, the immigration bill currently being struck down in parts by federal courts

    Let's be honest: the GOP has had a field day this past decade and the last using the courts and these corruption cases to tar, feather and remove Democrats, their supporters and possibly voters who lean Democrat, out of play and out of pocket. It's part and parcel of a movement to make Alabama a one-party state for Republicans, as well as obscure GOP-facilitated corruption that goes on in the background.

    So I'm not surprised to see a guy who thinks of himself as the next Jeff Sessions attempt to tilt the playing field in his party's favor by discouraging staunch Democrat voters from voting. This, on top of efforts nationwide to suppress Democrat votes.

    Meanwhile, a suit was filed in federal court alleging the systematic exclusion of blacks from criminal case juries, specifically ones that involved the death penalty.

    Alabama, don't you ever change.

    Hat tips to Redeye and Legal Schnauzer.
  • Behold, a 2006 radio ad from America's PAC, featuring Herman Cain of horrific 9/11 tribute fame:


    If you're still thinking about voting for this man or for the party he represents, you might need some help, of the psychological variety.
  • I always knew certain individuals, largely conservative, largely white, had this odd fascination with going back to a certain time and place. So they put on their rose-tint glasses and dream about returning to a "simpler time", which usually happens to be their childhoods. For the "Baby Boomers," that's sometime during the 1950s.

    These folks wouldn't mind traveling back to this period, preferably before 1954 when all of the unpleasantness of the Civil Rights movement started flaring up. Back when America was the undisputed king of the world, flush with cash and industry, bristling with confidence and with a wary eye on the big boogeyman du jour, the Soviet Union. Eurasia had its Eastasia, the kids had their new-fangled TVs set to Captain Kangaroo and cowboy flicks, and those who were supposed to be in their place were in their place. Which brings me to Pat Buchanan's latest brain fart:

    In an interview with radio host Mark Davis, agreed with Davis when he said that unlike today, blacks of the 1950s were "woven into the fabric of the America of that time than many of today's black Americans are woven into the America of this time."

    Buchanan goes onto explain that during the 1950s, blacks and whites "all had a common religion, we all worshiped the same God, we all went to schools where American literature was taught, the English language was our language, we all rooted for the same teams, we read the same newspapers, we listened to the same music. We were a people then. We were all Americans. Now I'm not saying segregation was good. But what I was saying, that did not prevent us from being one people."

    Ladies and gentlemen, Pat Buchanan has found the world's best weed, and he is now duty-bound to share with the rest of America whatever it is he's smoking. Given the above, it must be some of the best shit anyone's ever smoked in their entire life.

    I don't think I have to remind anyone of what segregation did to rend and tear the American fabric. Nor will I remind you how it was part and parcel in the legal and extralegal enforcement of Jim Crow, a system of socioeconomic apartheid designed to keep black Americans in a economically and politically powerless "second class" status. To say that segregated black Americans were somehow more "patriotic" than today's black America is...well...pretty fucking stupid.

    Blacks engaged in quiet, dignified suffering is a beautiful sight to those who view stoic suffering as the pinnacle of "Donner Party Conservatism," something that's only a stone's throw away from the "Flagellants," Calvinists and other social and religious groups that hold ever-persistent mortification and constant tribulations in one's life as a golden standard of piety and "right living." These ideal blacks never complain about their circumstances or their station in life. Instead, they "keep on keeping on" as America's readily available service industry job pool, doing all of the things that white Americans rather not do, quietly. These days, the Latinos are expected to fill that role, except when certain states decide to chase them away for political brownie points.

    It's interesting to hear Buchanan effectively say that blacks have somehow grown so far apart that they've become their own sub-species of sorts from the rest of America, so much so they can't be deemed as being as "patriotic" as their defacto and de jure counterparts from 60 years ago. I suppose it pains Buchanan to see blacks become a great deal more expressive of their current lot in life than the ones he remembers from his childhood. After all, your mammy didn't run off at the mouth about political issues if she valued her job. Neither did the porters, janitors, doormen or shoeshine boys. Flattering and accommodating white customers while getting the job done without whining or crying about this and that was the ideal of the day, and it's something I suspect many want to get back to.
  • It's not uncommon for someone to embellish a few minor details to make themselves look good. It happens on resumes, dating profiles, applications, etc. People have a natural tendency to make themselves look bigger and better than they actually are. Rappers do it to add faux street cred, gain fans and make the albums sell better. Politicians do it for the votes.

    Which brings us to Marco Rubio, possible GOP VP shoe-in for 2012 and could-be presidential candidate for 2016. This guy's got the perfect backstory for a Cuban-American politician: he's the son of Cuban exiles who fled Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution. It definitely gets the attention of his fellow right-leaning and anti-Castro Cuban-Americans.

    As it turns out, that backstory may have been embellished just a wee bit:

    Multiple documents signed by Rubio’s parents, including their petitions for naturalization, show that Mario and Oriales Rubio arrived in the United States on May 27, 1956, with their son Mario, 6. Maternal grandfather Pedro Victor Garcia also came to the United States around the same time.

    The Social Security numbers for Rubio’s father and grandfather suggest that Mario Rubio received his Social Security number in Florida in 1956 and that Garcia received his in New York in 1956-57.

    Tsk, tsk. But not to worry -- Rubio's fighting back.

    To suggest my family’s story is embellished for political gain is outrageous. The dates I have given regarding my family’s history have always been based on my parents’ recollections of events that occurred over 55 years ago and which were relayed to me by them more than two decades after they happened. I was not made aware of the exact dates until very recently.
    What’s important is that the essential facts of my family’s story are completely accurate. My parents are from Cuba. After arriving in the United States, they had always hoped to one day return to Cuba if things improved and traveled there several times. In 1961, my mother and older siblings did in fact return to Cuba while my father stayed behind wrapping up the family’s matters in the U.S. After just a few weeks living there, she fully realized the true nature of the direction Castro was taking Cuba and returned to the United States one month later, never to return.
    They were exiled from the home country they tried to return to because they did not want to live under communism. That is an undisputed fact and to suggest otherwise is outrageous.

    The following comes from a 2006 address at the Florida House of Representatives:

    “In January of 1959 a thug named Fidel Castro took power in Cuba and countless Cubans were forced to flee. . . . Today your children and grandchildren are the secretary of commerce of the United States and multiple members of Congress . . . and soon, even speaker of the Florida House.”

    In this address, he's not directly referring to himself as one of those descendants of exiles, just mentioning others while also saying he could be, which is interesting. If he knew for a fact his parents fled specifically because of Castro, you'd think he'd trumpet that fact every chance he could get instead of being so obtuse about it in this particular address.

    Well, an embellishment that can be easily explained away as an act of innocent misinterpretation or misappropriation is much better for a politician to handle than an outright lie.

    P.S.: I find it interesting how most Cubans are dead-silent on Fulgencio Batista, who was just as much of a capricious thug as Castro was. But then again, he was one of our thugs. As long as you're willing to play ball for Uncle Sam's team, you can do pretty much whatever you want to your own people. Uncle Sam didn't like Batista's declining batting average and had him permanently benched for that Castro feller. Too bad Castro didn't want to play for our team.
  • - Muammar Gaddafi is dead, after being wounded and captured by Libyan rebels in his hometown of Sirte.

    A spokesman for the National Transitional Council (NTC) in Benghazi, Jalal al-Galal, said a doctor who examined the fallen strongman in Misrata found he had been shot in the head and abdomen. Jerky video obtained from Sirte showed a man looking like Gaddafi, with distinctive long, curly hair, bloodied and staggering under blows from armed men, apparently NTC fighters.

    The brief footage shows him being hauled by his hair from the hood of a truck. To the shouts of someone saying "Keep him alive", he disappears from view and gunshots are heard.

    "They captured him alive and while he was being taken away, they beat him and then they killed him," one senior source in the NTC told Reuters. "He might have been resisting."

    - If you plan on attending an Occupy Wall Street protest, you might want to find out if it'll get you canned from your day job. Because that's what happened to Lisa Simeone, producer and host of NPR's "World of Opera" after attending an "occupation" at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C.

    That same day, NPR persuaded a company for which Simeone worked to fire her, cutting her income in half and purging from the so-called public airwaves a voice that had never mentioned politics on NPR.

    About three and a half hours after the above email was sent, Simeone had been fired by a show called Soundprint as punishment for having been "unethical." Here is her bio on that show's website. And here she is on NPR's.

    Soundprint is a show that does touch on politics and includes political viewpoint in Simeone's ledes, but it is not an NPR program and not distributed by NPR. It is, however, heard on public radio stations. Despite the title "NPR World of Opera," that show is produced by a small station called WDAV for which Simeone contracts. Simeone was not an NPR employee. WDAV has not expressed any concern over Simeone's "ethics."

    Simeone told me: "I find it puzzling that NPR objects to my exercising my rights as an American citizen -- the right to free speech, the right to peaceable assembly -- on my own time in my own life. I'm not an NPR employee. I'm a freelancer. NPR doesn't pay me. I'm also not a news reporter. I don't cover politics. I've never brought a whiff of my political activities into the work I've done for NPR World of Opera. What is NPR afraid I'll do -- insert a seditious comment into a synopsis of Madame Butterfly?

    It makes you wonder why NPR would take such drastic steps to have a freelancer on a show that was merely broadcast on some of NPR's affiliate stations given the boot just hours after she attended the protest. The whole thing reeks of an over-reactive legal department -- or someone who had a grudge and found the perfect excuse to give her the boot.

    NPR hasn't done much, if anything at all, to cover OWS. It seems NPR feels more comfortable staying in the good graces of corporate donorship than covering one of the most important and game-changing events in the history of the United States.

    BTW, when conservatives parrot claims of how "50% of Americans don't pay taxes," remember that those claims are just that. Over 86% of Americans pay their taxes, a damn sight better than what the Wall Street boys are doing.

  • Courtesy of Everqueer

    Next time you decide to send a care package to the troops stuck in a remote Afghan outpost, try sending them stuff that's actually worth using (i.e. toiletries, snacks, etc).

    The last thing they need is political proselytization via conservative blowhard, in hardback form. But at least it's good for heating fuel.

    Hat tips to Everqueer and Military.com.
  • Imagine you live in a not-so-great neighborhood and you wake up to find your truck's been stolen. And like any other civil-minded and law-abiding person, you pick up the phone and report it to the police.

    Now imagine that, instead of taking a report and hopefully getting down to the bottom of who did it, they place you under arrest on the basis of you having the same first name as someone who was wanted on an aggravated assault charge.

    That happened to Teresa Culpepper, and she ended up spending 53 days in county lockup before her publicly-appointed lawyer brought the victim of the assault in to clear the innocent Teresa's name.


    Teresa Culpepper says she called police to report that her truck had been stolen in August. But when they showed up at her home, they arrested her for aggravated assault committed by another Teresa.

    "All she has is the same first name. The only descriptions that match are 'Teresa' and 'black female,'" Culpepper's attorney, Ashleigh Merchant told The Lookout. Culpepper, who is 47, didn't have the same address, birth date, height, or weight as the Teresa who was supposed to be arrested.

    Merchant says Culpepper, who was legitimately convicted of a misdemeanor in the 90s but otherwise has no criminal record, lives in a rough neighborhood where police are frequently on patrol. She and her family were unable to post the $12,000 bond to get her out of jail, so she wasn't released until her public defender found the victim of the assault and brought him to the court to say Culpepper was not the "Teresa" he had accused.

    Wrong address, wrong birth date, wrong height and weight. Was this the case of lazy police work, with the arresting officers and administrative staff figuring it didn't matter who they brought in since they all look alike and did the same things? Keeping the wrong person locked up for 53 days is a sign of a systemic failure of process and procedures. Then again, we execute the wrong people on a regular basis in this country.
  • I was beginning to wonder if I was a bit premature about Herman Cain losing "Flavor of the Moment" status. Reassurance comes from ABLC's Nicholas Wilbur:

    Once the media sinks its talons into a candidate, which is what happens when public opinion polls show him or her as a potential frontrunner, every aspect of his private and public life is opened up to mass dissection, dissemination, speculation and criticism. Every piece of legislation he backed, every gaffe or false statement he makes, every twitch, stutter and scratch goes instantly viral.

    Which explains why Mitt Romney hasn't had much of an appetite for the limelight, at least not so early on in the game.

    Mitt's strategy apparently relies on having the other front-runners step up and blow their wad on an early shot for fame and household recognition. They hog the spotlight and suck all of the oxygen out of the room, but their 15 minute shots for fame inevitably end when the mass media digs in and unearths unsavory aspects of their professional and personal life, some of which inevitably turn people off towards the Flavor of the Moment. The public and media proceed to anoint another front-runner as Flavor of the Moment and the cycle repeats anew. Meanwhile, Mittens stays in the cut, safe in the knowledge that as the pre-approved GOP candidate for President, he doesn't have to lift a finger until it's close to Super Tuesday, when he has to put his name in the minds of all those delegates if the GOP hasn't already.

    So far, Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry both stepped up and subsequently burned themselves out. And now Herman Cain's doing the same. At some point, the media and GOP supporters will get sick of seeing him and quietly escort him off-stage for the next sap in line, at least until it's close enough to Super Tuesday that Mitt Romney can comfortably show himself without flubbing too badly or having anyone digging too deep in his past to derail his nomination chances.

    Mittens has the whole Mormon issue to deal with, a liability that could have sunk his nomination chances had he decided to show up on stage early. A late entrance might just be the thing that helps him cinch the nomination without getting beat senseless over his religion, among other things.
  • The Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center crunched the numbers from Herman Cain's "9-9-9" tax plan. Once you get past the glossy exterior and tricked-out trim, things don't look so good under the hood:


    A middle income household making between about $64,000 and $110,000 would get hit with an average tax increase of about $4,300, lowering its after-tax income by more than 6 percent and increasing its average federal tax rate (including income, payroll, estate and its share of the corporate income tax) from 18.8 percent to 23.7 percent. By contrast, a taxpayer in the top 0.1% (who makes more than $2.7 million) would enjoy an average tax cut of nearly$1.4 million, increasing his after-tax income by nearly 27 percent. His average effective tax rate would be cut almost in half to 17.9 percent. In Cain’s world, a typical household making more than $2.7 million would pay a smaller share of its income in federal taxes than one making less than $18,000. This would give Warren Buffet severe heartburn.
    As Howard Gleckman explains, Cain's "9-9-9" plan is actually "a 25 percent flat-rate consumption tax—not all that different from the FAIR tax that he says is his ultimate goal." Hmm...a flat tax doesn't seem all that bad, does it? Well, let's put those figures on an easy-to-understand graph.



    Don't like what you see? That's probably because your income comes nowhere near the $200k-$500k threshold where the pain of Cain's plan turns into a bountiful bonanza of tax cuts. After all, someone's gotta pay for this stuff.

    Cain’s triple tax would replace payroll and estate taxes as well as the corporate and individual income taxes as we know them. All deductions, exemptions, and credits (except for charitable gifts) would be eliminated from the individual tax. Because businesses could deduct all their capital purchases, capital income would be tax free. But wages would be taxed—again and again and again. First, directly through the individual flat tax and then, because firms can’t deduct wages as an expense, twice more through the business tax and the sales tax.

    Because employers would be taxed on wages they pay, economists figure the levy would result in lower salaries. Not only would the combination of lower incomes and higher taxes reduce the current standard of living for many middle-class households, those lower wages would also result in lower Social Security benefits down the road.

    Damn. Those working-class folk just can't catch a break, can they?
  • In one of my previous blog posts (The School-To-Prison Pipeline), I mentioned something about sycophants and how they spend their time sucking up to and carrying water for the wealthy and powerful while pissing on the poor and weak. Well, here's a prime example of a sycophant in action (also known in other circles as a "ratfucker"):

    Since the Occupy Wall Street protest began on September 17, New York security consultant Thomas Ryan has been waging a campaign to infiltrate and discredit the movement. Ryan says he's done contract work for the U.S. Army and he brags on his blog that he leads "a team called Black Cell, a team of the most-highly trained and capable physical, threat and cyber security professionals in the world." But over the past few weeks, he and his computer security buddies have been spending time covertly attending Occupy Wall Street meetings, monitoring organizers' social media accounts, and hanging out with protesters in Lower Manhattan.

    As part of their intelligence-gathering operation, the group gained access to a listserv used by Occupy Wall Street organizers called September17discuss. On September17discuss, organizers hash out tactics and plan events, conduct post-mortems of media appearances, and trade the latest protest gossip. On Friday, Ryan leaked thousands of September17discuss emails to conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, who is now using them to try to smear Occupy Wall Street as an anarchist conspiracy to disrupt global markets.

    The NYPD might have been very grateful he did so, since it involved a proposed demonstration outside NYPD headquarters at 1 Police Plaza. In the thread, organizers debated whether to crash an upcoming press conference planned by marijuana advocates to celebrate NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly ordering officers to halt arrests over possession of small amounts of marijuana.

    "Should we bring some folks from Liberty Plaza to chant "SHAME" for the NYPD's recent brutalities on Thursday night for the Troy Davis and Saturday for the Occupy Wall Street march?" asked one person in the email thread. (That past Saturday, the video of NYPD officer Anthony Bologna pepper-spraying a protester had gone viral.) Ryan promptly forwarded the email thread to Loyd at the FBI and Dragos at the NYPD.

    But Ryan didn't just tip off the authorities. He was also giving information to companies as well. When protesters discussed demonstrating in front of morning shows like Today and Good Morning America, Ryan quickly forwarded the thread to Mark Farrell, the chief security officer at Comcast, the parent company of NBC Universal.

    And his rationale for helping the NYPD and others?

    My respect for FDNY & NYPD stems from them risking their lives to save mine when my house was on fire in sunset park when I was 8 yrs old. Also, for them risking their lives and saving many family and friends during 9/11.

    Don't you find it Ironic that out of all the NYPD involved with the protest, [protesters] have only targeted the ones with Black Ribbons, given to them for their bravery during 9/11?

    I am sorry if we see things differently, I try to look at everything as a whole and in patterns. Everything we do in life and happens in life, there is a pattern behind it.

    Lovely. Under the guise of being a good citizen, this self-important individual meddled with Occupy Wall Street by giving authorities an inside first-look on activities organized by other coordinators. In return, I'm sure he expects Wall Street, the FBI and NYPD to remember his calling card whenever they need some cyber-security assistance.

    Remember this whenever you see the NYPD interacting with citizens in the following manner:





  • In protest of the presence of the "Kenyan Marxist Occupier in Chief" in the Oval Office and his desire to impose socialist measures such as "Obamacare" on the hapless American people by dictatorial decree, business owner and Tea Party supporter Melissa Brookstone is going on strike!

    But she won't be toting picket signs in front of her own place of business or taking bus trips to D.C. to protest against the Brownish Usurper. Instead, she resolves not to hire a single person until Obama and the Democrats concede defeat in the war against her businesses and others throughout the U.S. And she's encouraging her fellow Teabaggers to join her!

    Too bad she'd probably fire her employees if they ever decided to go on strike. And with jobs being few and far between, people who are lucky to have them can ill afford to lose them over a strike. Seems like the only people who can afford to dabble in workers' rights are the people with the power to hire and fire others, and rest assured they're not doing this on behalf of those who need jobs, no matter what they say to the contrary.

    Remember kids, don't grow up to be commie scum liberal scum! Tea Party good, liberal scum bad!
    Remind your parents to be good little sheep and vote Republican.
    Pull up those bootstraps!

  • The most notable aspect of the Occupy Wall Street movement is that it didn't come pre-approved from the loins of mainstream media. It didn't seek permission from the scions of print and television media or wait for the online pundits to bestow blessings upon it. There wasn't any need for protesters to patiently wait their turn until "Very Serious People" decided the movement was worth bothering themselves with, if at all. It took a while for the MSM to finally take full notice of Occupy Wall Street, whether they really wanted to or not.

    Yet there are those out there who are still keen on dismissing OWS outright, as though it were some sort of aberration among the masses that fails to reflect upon the rest of America, despite how Americans across the country are standing in solidarity with their brethren in Zuccotti Park. Apparently, David Brooks of the New York Times feels this way about the movement.

    Similarly, if you look only at the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements that have been getting so much coverage in the news media, you know very little about the wider America. Most Americans seem to understand this. According to data from the Pew Research Center, they are paying less attention to the Occupy Wall Street movement than any other major story — less than Afghanistan, Amanda Knox, the 2012 election, the death of Steve Jobs and far, far less than news about the economy.

    This, despite the amount of solidarity shown across the nation. The above isn't an accurate reflection of the news stories Americans believe are important to them, so much as it's a telling reflection of what Brooks and other "Very Serious People" believe should be worthy of America's collective attention.

    Quietly and untelegenically, Americans are trying to repair their economic values.

    There's more than one way to dismiss OWS. In this instance, all one has to do is separate the protesters from "ordinary Americans" who are piecing together their shattered financial security, then contrast the "camera-hungry" protesters against other Americans who are "quietly working" behind the scenes. Al-Jazeera, the news outlet that conservatives and "Very Serious People" wanted Americans to dismiss throughout the War on Terror, has a great piece on how the media marginalizes dissenting movements such as OWS.

    America went through a similar values restoration in the 1820s. Then, too, people sensed that the country had grown soft and decadent. Then, too, Americans rebalanced. They did it quietly and in private.

    The main point driven home is Occupy Wall Street's lack of necessity when it comes to rebuilding the country's shattered finances, as it will be done by ordinary Americans who will surely pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get back to work. Brooks goes so far as to pat Americans on the back for disavowing credit cards and debt without realizing how many Americans had to rely on debt instruments just to survive, and without realizing that being flat busted broke is the biggest reason Americans are ditching credit cards in the first place.

    No mention is ever made about the financial sector playing a role in America's economic meltdown or how it encouraged the finance of expensive lifestyles with dubious debt instruments. The role of corporations in shedding jobs as a method of inflating their own worth and executive bonuses goes unmentioned. As far as Brooks and other "Very Serious People" are concerned, these entities weren't responsible for the current economic crisis, therefore such discussions aren't necessary. Instead, fault lies with ordinary Americans who should have known better and a government that constantly gets in the way of "job creators."

    The "Very Serious People" are vexed how OWS continues to stand outside of "Serious" influence and ignore "Serious" advice given by "Very Serious" pundits and opinion-makers, most of whom themselves are ridiculously disconnected from the lives and ordeals of ordinary Americans. Brooks himself probably wonders at times why the rabble in Zuccotti Park couldn't just stop being such mindless hippies and piss off elsewhere, so the "Very Serious People" can once again represent America's clearing house of great minds when it comes to solving America's most pressing issues.

    Occupy Wall Street represents a method of bringing important issues to light without relying on mainstream media to green-light their voice and without seeing the media repackage said voice for further acceptability among center-right and conservative interests. Not being able to role-play as the arbiters of the angered American voice scares guys like Brooks, because otherwise they'd be paid hacks consigned to the margins of genuine American free speech and political action.
  • The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

    While the United States is still somewhat civilized in that metric, in comparison to places like, say, Mexico, Turkey or North Korea, we're doing our damnedest as a nation to change that, for the worst. The U.S. continues to trend southward on the list of "first-world nations you'd actually want to live in." When it comes to healthcare, education, advances in technology, per-capita income, amount of leisure time and general happiness, we're falling farther and farther behind our European and Asian contemporaries. At least we'll always be numero uno when it comes to military strength and expenditures...

    When kids talk about their schools, quite a few will liken them to prisons. Not because they just don't plain like school (who does when you're a kid?), but because the schools have, for the most part, have replicated the rigid, regimented and highly controlled environment that resembles most maximum security prison environments. In many cases, you can thank zero-tolerance measures and building architects who design most new schools to be cinder-block enclaves with limited access and limited distractions. That means no windows and few entry and exit points save for the fire escapes. And they'd get rid of those, too, if they could.

    I had the pleasure of going to a high school that was built in a hillside during the late 1950s, as a Cold War-era solution to surviving a nuclear attack and the resultant radiation fallout that followed. It didn't help that it was just a few miles away from a rather important military installation with a lot of stuff that made it nuke-worthy by Soviet standards. As a result, you had a hexagonal structure surrounded by other hexagonal stubs buried in a hillside, with no classroom windows. As this school was quite old by the time I attended, the HVAC and ventilation system was usually FUBAR and any decent temperature or fresh air regulation had to be done by opening the emergency doors in the classrooms that were lucky to have one. However, this school wasn't "urban" enough to warrant metal detectors and the school didn't seem to embrace the "zero-tolerance" policies with the fervor schools do today. Other schools I went to before that were built as most schools were before Brutalist architecture and the need for controlled environments came into vogue.

    Not only do you have the buildings as instruments of control, you also have the adherence to class schedules, the assigned lunch seating, the requirement to travel to and from as a group at the appointed times, etc. I understand this is all necessary for young minds that have yet to handle independence with the measure of respect and good judgement that most kids have yet to develop, but I can't help but notice how the entire school environment resembles the corrective institution in a growing number of ways. It's a feeling you can't really put your finger on, but you know it's there.

    The need for control and regimentation is manifested by students who act out because they're either bored or frustrated. Since the public school experience is largely regimented out of necessity (or laziness, in many cases), there's no way that a school teacher can fine-tune the curriculum to accommodate a student for whom the standard method of learning simply does not work. Lots of people require hands-on experience and end up doing better in trades and careers that feature tactile and tangible experiences. And since public schools usually lack the funds, will and foresight to identify underlying problems that could result in a miserable school experience for a kid, those problems are either ignored or doped away with copious amounts of Adderall or Ritalin. For others, they act out, and the zero-tolerance policies come into play.

    Private schools are a whole 'nother kettle of fish. I had the opportunity to go to quite a few when I was a young kid, specifically a small, church-run school in the middle of a "distressed urban environment." The entire experience was different from any public school I've been to at that point -- the classroom experience was less restrictive and regimented. There was less stress, even though the environment was just as competitive (or far more, in many cases) as other ordinary public schools. Fewer fights, fewer disruptions and more opportunities for a custom-tailored educational experience that actually benefits kids. But it was expensive, and single parents with other household expenditures can't swing the private school bills as well as financially established families, and those are few and far between in most urban areas.

    So, where am I going with this? Well, the Tea Party made plenty of public institutions targets in their scheme to dismantle and replace them with privatized entities. Actually, it isn't so much the Tea Party orchestrating this as they are simply the dumbassed foot soldiers doing the bidding of the real power brokers funding the so-called "grassroots" organization. Public schools are one of those targets.
    (More after the jump)


  • The Lord's Resistance Army. Sounds like a cut-rate garage band or a Christian-themed electronics club. In reality, its a guerrilla group based in Central Africa with a knack for kidnapping, conscripting, indoctrinating and raping children, among the usual killings, maiming and other acts of terrorism and debauchery. The leader, Joseph Kony, is a certified nutcase with a messiah complex, a knack for "channeling spirits" and overall bloodlust. In short, this guy's one evil motherfucker.

    Not it matters much to Rush Limbaugh, who doesn't mind any of what's going on just as long as the LRA continues to be focused, in his mind, on killing muslims. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" and whatnot. Which makes ol' Rushbo one morally bankrupt motherfucker. Not that his own narcissistic, tone-deaf tendencies would allow him to recognize how morally bankrupt it is to support a group that fancies delivering pain, misery, death and sheer horror to countless thousands of African victims.

    Rushbo was a bit miffed at Obama's plan for intervention by sending 100 U.S. troops into Uganda to assist in finding and capturing Kony and others. The portly pill-popping pontificator claimed Obama was really targeting Christians by getting rid of Kony's kooky ass.

    Kony's just as much of a terrorist as the people behind Al Qaeda are, except they happen to purport themselves as "Christians." Oh, and they're probably the wrong color, too.
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