Different Day, Same Shit.

There's a lot I could say about this. Like how racism is far from dead and will likely never die. Or how many corners of mainstream society still harbor prejudicial thoughts about minorities, but at least have the decency to keep them out of earshot of polite society. Or how an organization founded in the very heart of the Confederacy in antebellum times still perpetuates the same attitudes and beliefs that were present at the time of its foundation.

I could talk about all of that. Instead, I'll just pull a quote from a segment of Larry Wilmore's Comedy Central show, The Nightly Show:

“They also kicked the fraternity off campus, so don’t worry, you won’t be seeing any more of those frat boys - until they’re your congressmen.”

Imagine all the crazy shenanigans Trent Lott got up to during his time in Sigma Nu, except no one thought enough to capture it all on Double 8 film.

And that's the thing. No matter what the University of Oklahoma does to people like Parker Rice, these guys will inevitably land in places and positions of power and prestige, where their actions and beliefs will invariably shape and mold the processes and systems our society deals with on a regular basis.

Could you imagine Parker Rice on a Senate subcommittee deciding the fate of an education or healthcare initiative? I can and it's a scary feeling.

So while everyone pats SAE and OU on the back for performing the damage control required of them by their PR departments, keep in mind that you might be seeing some of these people again in another 10 or 15 years. I suggest you start jotting down names and committing them to memory.

Last time on Adventures In Senseless Shit, yours truly brought to you the story of a little boy who, encouraged by relatives, played up to the "gangster/trapper/thug" archetype instead of doing something kids his age usually do, like yank cats around by their tails or smear nail polish all over the new loveseat and recliner set, nevermind the plastic's still on it and everything.

Thanks to the power of Facebook, video camera technology and a few of Omaha, Nebraska's finest, he became the poster child of all that's perpetually wrong with the black community, young black males especially. The boys in blue caught a lot of flak behind that and rightfully so. Feigning sincere concern to showcase "proof" of black thuggishness and validate your own prejudices in the process has always been a bit of a dick move.

What I wasn't looking for was this nonsense from Crystal Wright:

Maybe if blacks would stop killing each other, having babies out of wedlock and basically acting like thugs, people wouldn’t call them thugs.

In a bold move to show residents, the pathology of violence they encounter and who is perpetrating the crimes, the Omaha Police Officers Association posted a video of a “local black thug” spewing profanity, sexual and violent laced language at a toddler.

Mr. Thug was so proud of his video masterpiece, he posted it on Facebook and his black friends cheered him on.

Liberals and some liberal blacks have expressed disdain for the Omaha police in posting the video, claiming it stereotypes blacks and the man’s behavior is an anomaly. But the opposite is true. In DC where I currently live and witness frequently uneducated blacks calling each other and their children the same sorts of heinous names.

I have never seen white people talk to each other this way, much less their children. While black activists and liberals can try to pretend, we all know hip hop and rap glorify and extol this exact thug culture, using the very same offensive words in their music. So let’s stop pretending.

Crystal, let's stop pretending you have the good interests of black folks at heart. We know you're just doing this whole Stepin' Fetchit routine for the big bucks, fanfare and connections. This formulaic recycling of the usual conservative arguments about blacks and black thugdom might impress your paymasters and send tingles up the spines of the unreconstructed, but just isn't gonna cut it with the rest of us today.

So Crystal goes on to tell us that the truth isn't politically correct, which segues into the big whopper of the day:

The ugly truth is blacks, who represent a mere 13% of the population, are committing most of the violent crimes in America and 55% of federal prisoners are black. About 54% of all homicides are murders of blacks and according to the Justice Department data from 1980 to 2008, “blacks were six times more likely than whites to be homicide victims and seven times more likely than whites to commit homicide.”

I have a love/hate relationship with the FBI/DOJ data. I love it because of how it lets the unreconstructed lay down a distorted version of "the truth" with remarkable ease. I hate it because it takes too damn long to correct that bit of statistical malpractice and keep a captive audience. Even Tim Wise can't cut it down to a succinct, salient point that single-handedly blows the above out of the water.

I could say the stats are bullshit, because they are. But then I'd just be accused of being in denial.

To be honest, the true face of the thug life isn't a little kid who knows only what he's taught or any number of random black males who fit the broad description of a "thug."

Take a look at the above photo. That's the true face of the thug life.

Hear me out on this. She's a ride-or-die chick with the conservative clique who's not afraid to put a cap in the collective ass of an entire community to get her program over with. With this drive-by piece, she unloaded the race realist gat and sprayed hot hollow-point bile all over the block for her conservative homies. Now that's some real gangster-ass shit.

Wanna know what might blow a hole in your political ambitions for 2016? It's not being seen palling around with the Socialist Marxist Kenyan in Chief. Or having a mouth that's just as wide as your own personal girth. Turns out it's having your minions gridlock one of the busiest thoroughfares in the nation just to get back at some Democrat mayor who wouldn't endorse your generously proportioned Republican ass so you could have bigger numbers to fuel your presidential campaign.

Screwing with poor welfare recipients and schoolteachers is one thing. But screwing with the ordinary motorist on one of the busiest commutes in the nation is just something you don't do, period.

Chris Christie figured he could escape the backlash and watch his minions take the hit, because that's what minions are supposed to be there for. And indeed they did. Sorta.



At least Mittens had the forethought to expunge any and all traces of impropriety on part of his staff. As far as pulling dirty tricks on political opponents, Christie still has a lot to learn from Richard Nixon, nevermind how his penchant for rigging the playing field even when handed sure-fire victory was driven by pathological paranoia, whereas Christie's own egomania was calling the shots.

Meanwhile, a lot of people are saying Christie's fucked. And he is. And in a way, he's always been fucked. He's not a fan favorite of the rabid GOP base, except when he's yelling and throwing his weight around. They liked how he pissed off liberals, but that's pretty much it. His penchant for maneuvering himself as the moderate choice works for grabbing moderate GOP voters, but it does him no favors for attracting conservative voters who like a little fire-breathing with their sermons.

Problem is, we're still at least a year away from presidential nominations and most people have short memory spans. Will this man still be fucked when it comes time to pick the next GOP candidate for president come 2016? That's anyone's guess and it all depends on how deep investigators dig and how much political gold gets unearthed.

Or perhaps how long ordinary motorists stay pissed at Christie's Soprano-esque move.

One of the most notable exploits of Jamaican-born leader Marcus Garvey, aside from the formation of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the cultivation of Pan Africanism and black nationalism throughout the 1910s and 1920s, was his attempts to encourage black Americans to return to their continent of origin by way of Liberia. The African nation had already been established during the early 1820s by the American Colonization Society as a sanctuary of sorts for black freedmen.

Opposition from European leaders, a lack of interest from black Americans and Garvey's own troubles with the proto-FBI and the initially successful but ultimately troubled Black Star Line put an end to those efforts. It didn't help that Garvey, a firm believer in black nationalism and separatism, and W.E.B. DuBois, who believed his "Talented Tenth" would lead blacks into an era of prosperity and eventual inclusion into the mainstream, were constantly at loggerheads with one another. You just don't call someone a "Supreme Negro Jamaican jackass" for nothing.

The underlying premise of pulling up stakes for greener African pastures was simple - if America is so bad for blacks, why stay?

---

Mychal Massie must had thought that the spirit of Marcus Garvey was moving through him as he wrote his latest column for World News Daily, the virtual hangout for washed up, past-prime conservatives like John Stossel and Walter Williams. Whereas Garvey posited his question as a response to the systemic, institutionalized mistreatment and subjugation of people only decades removed from actual slavery, Massie's question comes as a condescending sneer towards a people seen as, for the lack of better words on the part of yours truly, a bunch of whiny titty babies:

If America is so bad, blacks - why stay?

The entirety of Massie's column is a finger-wagging admonishment of the so-called "race baiters" and "angry black militants" who dare speak out about America's on-going racial injustices. In short, the entire piece screams "America - Love it or Leave it" to an audience Massie sees as ungrateful and unwilling to forgive their white counterparts for age-old injustices and current "misunderstandings."

When a piece starts out like this, you know you're in for a treat:

A fact in retail is that there ultimately comes a time when you are unable to satisfy a customer who insists on being irrational and/or is unwilling to accept what is being done for him or what is being offered to him. When you have exhausted all efforts to accommodate said customer, you apologize and politely offer that it is apparent, despite your best efforts, that you are unable to satisfy him. And you suggest that perhaps his or her interests would be best served elsewhere.

If America were a restaurant, black America would be the party of five who had to wait an hour and a half for the table next to the men's restroom and then wait around for a server who studiously ignores them while taking everyone else's orders, only to be told to kindly piss off and dine elsewhere if they don't like the service shortly after wondering aloud if that server would ever stop to take their order.

Massie's apparent ideal is for black America to patiently wait and wait and wait until its almost closing and the server finally takes their order, but most of the menu items are gone and whatever's left is half-cooked and unceremoniously dumped into a takeout bag, which is then plopped down on the table by a now-smirking server whose smirk disappears when black America rightfully refuses to leave a tip. "How typical," she says...

"It is THEIR OWN FAULT they decided to show up without a reservation," mutters the conservative couple a few tables over, nevermind how black America spent hours trying to get one only to be told again and again that there weren't any tables available, even if the restaurant is huge and half-empty nearly all of the time. "They did it to themselves. Besides, it was years ago they couldn't even set foot in the joint, so why are they complaining now?" say the libertarians across the aisle. "It's all in the past - they should be grateful."

The above video shows exactly what a "perfect storm of abusive power and arrogance" looks like. Watch the video in its entirety. This is what a police state looks like.

Also, note the conduct and demeanor of the deputies involved. They crack jokes, hurl abuse, intimidate and issue threats. One deputy even states, "I wish we could cane the both of y'all though." Highly aggressive, antagonistic and waiting for an opportunity to issue physical and possibly lethal violence.

All because one of the occupants had a warrant for an overdue $1,000 civil fine, which was paid the next day.

The Dekalb County, Georgia sheriff has already vowed to punish the seven deputies and their sergeant for their conduct. Sadly, most "punishments" involve the words "paid leave" and "suspension with pay."

As one of the deputies barked, "there's repercussions and consequences behind everything you do!" For the deputies involved in this shameful and arrogant display, we'll see.

Spicy headlines attract readers. They also attract controversy. Chattanooga Times Free Press editor and political commentator Drew Johnson didn't expect his controversial headline to attract a pink slip and a trip to the unemployment office:

Political commentator Drew Johnson, who had been editing for the Chattanooga Times Free Press for less than a year, was fired from the paper, after telling President Barack Obama to take his jobs’ plan and “shove it” in a headline, according to WND.

During the President’s visit to the Tennessee town last week, Johnson decided to change a headline to “Take your jobs plan and shove it, Mr. President: Your policies have harmed Chattanooga enough,” causing the article to go viral and stir up controversy.

Shortly after, Johnson was fired.

At first, it seems like Drew Johnson was given the pink slip over criticism of President Obama's economic vision. Except that the meat of Johnson's article was left as-is.

As it turns out, the Chattanooga Free Press claims that Johnson was told on multiple occasions not to dick around with the headlines. On this one, Johnson went so far as to wait until his editor was out for the day before changing the piece's original, less controversial headline to the above highlighted. Judging from the first of many tweets, Johnson wasn't seeing eye-to-eye with the bosses:

I just became the first person in the history of newspapers to be fired for writing a paper's most-read article. http://t.co/BPOTzihZoT
— Drew Johnson (@Drews_Views) August 1, 2013

That's a bit disingenuous isn't it, Drew?

@Derrall We change headlines all the time at the last minute. I had a filler headline in that stunk and thought of that Johnny Paycheck song
— Drew Johnson (@Drews_Views) August 1, 2013

Drew, you knew full well the Times Free Press couldn't let that Johnny Paycheck reference slide under the radar. It's almost as if you were begging for the hammer to come down.

The policy I "broke" did not exist when I "broke" it. It was created after people complained about the headline & was applied retroactively.
— Drew Johnson (@Drews_Views) August 1, 2013

Is Drew suggesting that the Times Free Press bounced him not because of their stated policy on headlines or their editorial standards, but because he had the temerity to tell the president to that his economic vision for Chattanooga and the rest of the country would make for a wonderful suppository? According to the Huffington Post, he maintains his ouster was for political reasons.

The Times Free Press, on the other hand, stands by its decision to let Johnson go for violating the newspaper's standards:

The language he chose was vulgar and not appropriate for this newspaper. Even Johnson himself admitted that the headline was “harsh and perhaps crass to a fault” in an editorial he wrote for this Sunday, which will not run.

It also noted that Johnson's editorial freedom wasn't infringed upon except for obvious reasons:

In fact the only instance when the Times Free Press ever denied Johnson the freedom to present his views was last week when he referred to pornography as a “miracle product” and touted the benefits of pornography stating that if teenagers watched pornography it would result in lower rates of teenage pregnancy.

Porn as a "miracle product." I bet people would have paid good money to see that article.

---

After doing the bit on the headline, I sat down and read the article that was attached to it. Overall, it comes off as a standard-issue conservative op-ed piece that strikes against the president and his efforts to spur job creation. Not much to it, except his article makes constant references to EPB, a non-profit utility serving the metro Chattanooga area.

Although the big highlight of the president's visit was his brief tour of the Amazon fulfillment center, the president also highlighted the city's fiber optic network infrastructure. That belongs to EPB and it's part of a vast fiber optic network that spans a 600 square-mile, nine-county service area. But it's not just ordinary fiber optic service that skids to an abrupt halt at the last mile. If you're one of the lucky folks living within EPB's service area, that network comes straight to your front door.

That means fast fiber optic Internet service with speeds of up to 1 Gbps. And since EPB is a public utility, that also means cheap fiber optic Internet service. EPB's slowest Internet tier is 50 Mbps for $57.99/month. Compare that to $89.99/month for Comcast's 50 Mbps "Blast Plus" service (or $69.95/month for those who take advantage of online-only 12-month pricing). And unlike Comcast, EPB offers symmetrical upload and download speeds.

In all honesty, Drew should be glad he can get some "study material" for his piece on porn's "miracle" properties with lightning-fast speed, but alas:

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 helped fund the Gig to Nowhere project, a $552 million socialist-style experiment in government-owned Internet, cable and phone services orchestrated by EPB — Chattanooga’s government-owned electric monopoly.

The Gig to Nowhere is a Smart Grid, a high tech local electricity infrastructure intended to improve energy efficiency and reduce power outages. After lobbying for, and receiving, $111.6 million in stimulus money from your administration, EPB decided to build a souped-up version of the Smart Grid with fiber optics rather than more cost-effective wireless technology. This decision was supposed to allow EPB to provide the fastest Internet service in the Western Hemisphere, a gigabit-per-second Internet speed that would send tech companies and web entrepreneurs stampeding to Chattanooga in droves.

In reality, though, the gig, like most of the projects funded by your stimulus plan, has been an absolute bust.

Drew also criticizes EPB for blowing taxpayer dough on its Smart Grid, which has done a lot to make electric service in Chattanooga more efficient, more cost-effective and less prone to getting knocked out of commission during bad storms:

While the Smart Grid will cost taxpayers and local electric customers well over a half-billion dollars when all is said and done, there has been little improvement in the quality of EPB’s electric service. Worse, despite being heavily subsidized, EPB’s government-owned Internet, cable and telephone outfit that competes head-to-head against private companies like AT&T and Comcast is barely staying afloat, often relying on loans from electric service reserve funds to afford its business expenses.

The above is the usual argument of public utilities being the business world equivalent of a clapped out Chevy Citation to the private sector's sleek, sexy and efficient Fisker Karma, as personified by Comcast and AT&T. Drew's beef is that EPB is wasting taxpayer money doing what Comcast and AT&T already do, to not only it's own fiscal detriment, but that of it's customers.

The reality is that both Comcast and AT&T would be perfectly content to extract as much profit as it can without making but the slightest investments into their aging infrastructure. Without a public concern like EPB to make them step up their game, the major ISPs would be more than content to rest on their laurels and rake in the cash, to the everlasting detriment of customers. Which is how Internet service in the U.S. wound up so slow and expensive compared to the rest of the world.

You can tell poor Drew has it out for EPB and for good reason. According to the former editor, his fiancé found herself out of a job after he wrote a few articles "exposing" the public utility.

@blurtjunk After these, EPB forced my fiancé's employer to fire her: http://t.co/vvmQkPwh7B http://t.co/uPEZp6OXlU http://t.co/m3dmd7DbD0
— Drew Johnson (@Drews_Views) August 4, 2013

I tried to find info on Drew's fiancé and the reason for her termination, but Google-Fu's failing me. However, I did take a good look at the articles he linked above.

The first article is a spiel that supposedly outlines how much money EPB wasted on its Smart Grid infrastructure, only to come off as an amateurish wank that ends with these choice nuggets:

After all, government ownership of companies is the very essence of socialism.

The true cost of the Smart Grid is liberty.

The second article is the most interesting. It's about how Iron Labs, an upstart video gaming business, tried to partner with EPB to showcase the potential of the company's gigabit-level services and got cold-shouldered. It then offered to pay for the service and got cold-shouldered again. This led Iron Labs into the arms of Comcast, which proceeded to promote and support the startup.

The problem? EPB only offers its $300/month 1 Gbps service to residential customers and businesses that only use a fraction of the bandwidth. For everyone else, the price of admission varies. The prospect of EPB having its bandwidth duly tested by hundreds of avid gamers running bandwidth-heavy apps was apparently enough for the company to craft a $9,000/month asking price.

Drew bangs on EPB for doing what many other ISPs would have done when faced with the same scenario. Meanwhile, Comcast had the cognizance to put a marketing thumb in EPB's eye by welcoming them with open arms.

Aaron Welch, the president and CEO of Iron Labs, admitted his company didn't necessarily need the gigabit-level bandwidth himself and cleared the air about the whole debacle. You can also see it in the article's comments, provided you get past the Comcast customer rep spam:

#1. Iron Gaming won the $10,000 Warner Brothers digital media prize in the
Gigtank Event this summer. We also receive $15,000 in seed capital that
was funded by local and regional venture groups.

#2. EPB valued our proposal for the "EPB Gig Gaming Center", an extension
of the GigLabs project, at $50,000 per an email from Danna Bailey to me.

#3. We were asking for the "Gig" only to help promote EPB in the media by
visually showing and making a physical representation of what a "Gig" can
do for gamers in EPB's customer base. This service would have been
exclusive to EPB's customer base and have provided a way for Iron Gaming to
promote our gaming league in the region. Did we NEED a gig, no. When we
finally asked to pay for the service, we kept getting referred back to
Danna Bailey and as of August 2 (before the end of the Gigtank Contest) we
have not heard back from anyone at EPB.

#4. Our relationship with Comcast has been fantastic from an Iron Labs
(brick and mortar gaming store) and Iron Gaming (online gaming league)
perspective. Comcast has helped open doors for us and provided a
significant amount of support for our startup.

#5. My only "beef" with EPB is that the people we were dealing with did
not understand the technical details of what we were offering and therefor
did not value what the proposal could provide them. To this day I do not
hold any animosity towards EPB and will still do all that I can in
supporting them and the growth of the startup community in the "Gig City".

Aaron Welch
President
Iron Labs and Iron Gaming

In the third article mentioned, Drew compares EPB salaries with those offered by the city of Chattanooga, focusing on the number of people earning six-figure incomes at both. Then he goes on to compare EPB employees to the average resident in Chattanooga. In short, those evil government workers are wasting your hard-earned taxpayer dollars by living high on the socialist hog. And I thought class envy was an affliction only liberals were supposed to suffer.

To summarize, Drew has a beef with the EPB because:

1. It's a public concern attempting to offer services that so-called "free market" competitors already offer, making it a juicy target for the former editor's right-leaning fury.
2. EPB's taken federal handout money to spend on its infrastructure and other concerns, again making itself a juicy target for some good ol' fashioned conservative tongue-lashing.
3. EPB also ties in to the president's economic vision for the nation. By now, that bullseye is about as big as Lookout Mountain itself.
4. Drew believes his previous pieces on EPB got his fiancé shit-canned from her job. 

But don't weep for Drew Johnson just yet. Johnson's tale of how he got burned by his former employer made him the talk of the right-wing media (despite how Johnson's viewpoints are more or less in tune with the libertarian point-of-view), judging from all the support he's gotten from conservative media and his recent appearance on Fox and Friends. He won't have long on the unemployment line - in fact, I do believe he's found himself another job.

President Obama’s latest cabinet-level nominees are running into deep resistance in the Senate, pitching Democrats and Republicans into another tense standoff over White House appointments.

Just days after Republicans used Senate rules to block two nominees from moving to the next step in the confirmation process despite the fact that both have the support of a majority of senators, Democrats are planning to force committee votes without Republican consent.

If Democrats do push the nominees through to the full Senate, they would almost certainly set off a Republican filibuster, which would jeopardize the confirmations and, for now, leave vacancies at the top of two federal agencies.

Republicans have objected to the nomination of Gina McCarthy to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, citing what they said were her insufficient responses to their questions. They have also sought to block the labor secretary nominee, Thomas E. Perez, a lawyer in the Justice Department, on the grounds that he is too political.

A third nominee, Penny Pritzker, a wealthy hotel heiress and a top Obama fund-raiser who has more than two decades of corporate experience, has run into resistance since Mr. Obama put her name forward this month to be the next commerce secretary. Republicans are promising to scrutinize her family’s financial dealings, including their use of offshore accounts to reduce their taxes.

Nominees at all levels of Washington’s bureaucracy — 117 of them in all, including cabinet secretaries, judges and members of obscure oversight boards — are facing delays. Just last week, the Senate confirmed David Medine, the president’s choice to lead the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The time between his nomination and confirmation was 510 days. Every Republican voted no.

The true scandal isn't at the abandoned consulate compound in Benghazi or at the various IRS offices where selective investigations of 501(c)(4) organizations originated. The true scandal lies deep within the hallowed halls of Congress, where GOP legislators are intent on blocking just about every cabinet and agency appointment possible. It's not just to spite the president and roadblock as much of his agenda as possible, but also in an attempt to fulfill their insistence that "big government doesn't work" by making it stop work:

In doing so, Republicans are not breaking the rules of the Senate. They are, however, breaking the Senate itself, and harming the government. As with all legislative chambers, and in fact all democratic institutions, the Senate runs on a combination of formal rules and informal norms. But Republicans, by refusing to accept those norms, make it impossible for the normal machinery of government to function.

And remember that this is entirely unprecedented. Until very recently, simple majority confirmation was the norm on executive branch nominations with only a handful of exceptions. Not only that, but both Democrats and Republicans agreed that in almost all cases presidents were entitled to their choices when it came to these posts.

Unprecedented, but the GOP's made an exception for President Obama since his first day in office. No surprise here.

The surprise is how this story is getting buried underneath the Benghazi and IRS narrative. Well, maybe that's not a surprise, either. At any rate, you can bet your bottom dollar that those two stories will continue to be pushed hard and often by conservative news mavens. This one, on the other hand, won't rate any greater than typical Capitol Hill background banter.

Smartypants has the GOP pegged:

I suspect that any African American who has had success in this country will be able to relate to what is happening to the President right now. Every single move he makes is scrutinized and if he ever shows his humanity by making a mistake, he is likely to face impeachment.

We should all think about that and let it sink in. I'm sure the President is very aware of that fact. He is cautious by nature and that is probably one of the reasons he was able to become our first African American president.

But in this context, caution is called for. He's carrying a lot on his shoulders...more than is possible for me to even imagine. What he needs from us now is to keeps our heads together, focus on the long game, and remember that "no drama Obama" has always been the winning ticket.

Let the Republicans be the party of hysteria. That's what a beast in its death throes does. And to paraphrase what the President said to Mitt Romney..."Please proceed, Republicans."

So far, President Obama has done a marvelous job of letting the Republicans expose themselves as an obstinate, capricious and hysterical bunch. As long as the president continues on this track, he'll remain untouchable and the GOP will hopefully see itself as the Whigs saw themselves in their twilight years.

Many men, wish death upon me
Blood in my eye dog and I can't see
I'm tryin' to be what I'm destined to be
And niggas tryin' to take my life away

It's not every day that yours truly would lead a blog post with lyrics from a rap song, but after listening to 50 Cent's urban lament, it felt somewhat appropriate. After all, many men and women have wished death on the president, from ordinary citizens to militia members and even U.S. servicemen. And now we can add a law enforcement official to that ever-growing list:

A sheriff in Massachusetts is refusing to apologize for joking that President Barack Obama could best serve the country by being assassinated.

Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph D. McDonald, Jr. made the joke during a local St. Patrick’s Day breakfast for Republicans on Sunday. He said that the ghost of Lincoln appeared to Obama in a dream and advised him to go to the theater, where the former president was shot in the head.

Of course, invoking the imagery of Abraham Lincoln's assassination at Ford's Theatre in April 1865 is considered a "joke," one made "in jest," to boot. Perhaps the president should just lighten up and shrug off this latest threat to his and his family's well-being.

Both of Barack Obama's terms as President of the United States have been marked by a thorough and unrelenting disrespect of his being and the office he holds, on both racial and ideological grounds. Through thoughts, words and actions, that unending disrespect constantly oozes out of the pores of people who see the president as an aberration, as someone who neither deserves the office he currently occupies nor deserves to lead a nation populated by men and women of a certain ideological bent. This seething, unrelenting disrespect manifests itself most noticeably in calls for the president's life, his wife's life or (and I shudder at the thought) his childrens' lives.

Sheriff MacDonald should not only be heaved away from his department with great force, he should also be prevented from taking on any more jobs within the law enforcement sector. By all indications, this is what's least likely to happen. If the trials and tribulations of countless men and women are anything to go by, it's a given that those within law enforcement not only tolerate, but also welcome and perpetuate the ideologies and rhetoric that drives people to threaten the president's life. As long as the good sheriff is tolerated by his constituency and the Powers That Be™ above his own pay grade, he and others like him will continue to exist as a part of law enforcement.

It's interesting to note that news of Sheriff MacDonald's "joke" was included in an initial report by the Boston Globe, only for any and all mentions of said "joke" to be scrubbed without so much as an editorial note. Perhaps someone didn't want to become a target of the Plymouth County authorities or perhaps the good sheriff had some good friends in all the right places. Nevertheless, sources like the Boston Globe end up making themselves irrelevant and unimportant to ordinary people as they stray from reporting actual news and gravitate towards issuing stories that read more like the latest public relations news wire.

With a press that's all too willing to cover for the disrespect of others who "don't belong" and the willingness of people to look the other way and remain silent during these fragrant acts of disrespect, it's little wonder the president has to tolerate having death threats hurled his way on a constant basis by people who feel entitled to do just that. At least until the Secret Service shows up.

Speaking of the Secret Service, I hope the sequester isn't hitting them too hard. The last thing we need is for the people who actively seek to neutralize assassination plots to be underpaid.

It was a hot Sunday morning last July when, right on schedule at 6:30 a.m., 61-year-old Johnny Lee Butts left his rural Mississippi home on his morning ritual, a 4-mile walk.

His neighbor, Otis Brooks, says Butts, a Sunday school teacher, waved as he passed his front door wearing a blue T-shirt.

Brooks remembers that his neighbor's skin tone was easily visible that morning. "You could tell he was black; you could see his arms." The point would become important later.

At nearly 7 a.m., about an hour after sunrise, three white teenagers were barreling down Panola County Mississippi Highway 310 in a white Monte Carlo. Two of the three teens later admitted they had been heavily drinking vodka and smoking marijuana all night. They were headed right toward Butts.

The two teen passengers said they and the driver, 18-year-old Matthew Whitten "Whit" Darby, spotted a man walking on the shoulder on the opposite side of the road.

In statements to police and also in statements given to a grand jury, all obtained exclusively by CNN, the two teenagers, a then-15-year-old and 18-year-old Tony Hopper Jr., described what happened next.

"We see a walker on the side of the road. The complete left side of the road while we are on the complete right side of the road," the unidentified teen told a police lieutenant. "And I pointed out to say, 'watch out there is a walker there...'"

The unnamed teen continued his story: "Whit slightly turns the steering wheel and I saw him. 'Watch out, don't do nothing stupid' and then he just keep turning the steering wheel and eventually before we knew it he ran him straight over."
"He didn't slow down," Hopper said in a statement to a deputy sheriff.
The deputy asked: "He never hit his brakes?" Hopper replied: "No sir."
"Do you think he hit him on purpose?" asked the deputy.
"Yes, sir, I do," said Hopper.

Butts was hit from behind by the Monte Carlo, which was traveling somewhere between 55 and 70 mph, according to the documents. The car violently tossed him into the air, slamming him into the windshield, and his head struck the rear windshield. Butts' body hit the car with such force that the windshield collapsed into the car, bending the steering wheel back sharply. His leg was nearly severed.

Butts' body was found lying in the road, 172 feet from where the car hit him, the documents show.

Darby stopped his badly damaged car. His two passengers told police they got out and looked at Butts' pummeled body. Then they got back in the car and Darby sped away. Darby drove them to a house where they'd been partying, according to the documents, and the two teen passengers tried to sleep. Darby left the house alone and drove on to his grandmother's home.

Much later that day, the two teen passengers turned themselves in to police. Darby was arrested, telling police exactly what the two other teens said he would say, that he hit a deer. Darby denied he was drinking or smoking marijuana.

Right about now, the average "race realist" would be in a fury over the "they hit him because he was black" angle. Then again, this is Mississippi, a land where deep pools of racial antagonism lurk underneath a thin veneer of civility and Southern hospitality. It's a place where some people still think it's well within their rights to fuck with black Americans minding their own business just because they can.

Local law enforcement aren't willing to call this a hate crime, nevermind how there's plenty of evidence that points in that direction:

Champion told CNN that there is "no evidence at all" that Darby killed Butts out of hate, or as a hate crime. One reason a hate crime has been ruled out, Champion said, is that the teens in the car that morning could not see whether Johnny Butts was black or white.

But that is not true, according to the statements given by one of the teens in the car. In grand jury testimony obtained exclusively by CNN, Tony Hopper Jr., who was riding in the back seat, testified that he could see Johnny Butts was black before the teens hit him.

"Could you tell whether he was a black man or a white man before ya'll hit him?" Hopper was asked by the grand jury.

"Yes," Hopper said. "I could tell that he was black."

Hopper said the same thing on the day after the killing, when a sheriff's deputy asked him: "Did y'all know if he was black or white?"

Hopper answered: "I could tell he was a black man."

The 15-year-old passenger in the car, riding in the front seat, says in his statement he couldn't tell whether Butts was black or white. CNN's policy is not to identify juveniles in criminal cases.

The FBI is currently looking into the case. In the meantime, I'll leave you all with this wonderful gem from Panola County Sheriff Dennis L. Darby (no relation):

Sheriff Darby told CNN on the phone they had looked into the incident with the boys on the road and found nothing. "There's nothing to this report," he said, "it's all hearsay," and "he-said she-said." Sheriff Darby told CNN he would not give a copy of the report to the network. Then the sheriff warned CNN not to "stir up trouble in my county." He warned if the network pursued the story, "I'll be coming after you."

So much for Southern hospitality. You know, this place could do with a little "outside agitation." And Sheriff Darby could do with a nice, shiny federal boot wedged up his hindmost parts.

I haven't heard anything in the way of new developments regarding the Trayvon Martin case. It's just as well, now that Michael David Dunn is in the news:

A Brevard County man was in jail Monday, accused of shooting a teenager dead in an argument over loud music.

Michael David Dunn, 45, and his girlfriend were in Jacksonville Friday for Dunn's son's wedding when they stopped at a convenience store, Jacksonville sheriff's Lt. Rob Schoonover said.

Jordan Russell Davis, 17, and several other teenagers were sitting in a sport utility vehicle in the parking lot when Dunn pulled up next to them in a car and asked them to turn down their music, Schoonover said.

Jordan and Dunn exchanged words, and Dunn pulled a gun and shot eight or nine times, striking Jordan twice, Schoonover said. Jordan was sitting in the back seat. No one else was hurt. [source]

In short, it's a case of a middle-aged white male who took it upon himself to order a few rowdy Negros into silence. No one's saying what sort of words were exchanged, but I'd bet money there was an N-word or something approximate to that involved. During that exchange, he felt "threatened" enough to unload eight rounds into a parked SUV.

Dunn's attorney Monday said her client acted responsibly and in self-defense. She did not elaborate.

I recognize his attorney's duty to duly defend her client to the best of her abilities. However, I still would like to point out that the above is pure, unadulterated bullshit. I seriously doubt this man acted under any semblance of self-defense. Instead, he let his anger, whether racially motivated or not, take over in the worst manner possible. This should be something worth throwing him under the jail for.

Dunn, a gun collector, was arrested Saturday at his home in Satellite Beach on charges of murder and attempted murder. He was being held without bail.

This man knew better. To sum it up, courtesy of Gawker commentator "otownjester":

You use a gun to kill. You do not pull a gun unless that is your intention. You do not use a gun to intimidate, coerce, or to feel powerful. It is a tool, that we as citizens deserve to have to protect our personal liberties so that any random individual cannot use his might to make right. Growing up, it was very strict how to handle, clean, and use a gun. We never thought oh you can just pull it out any time you are agitated. No. This man like the dude in the Trayvon Martin case were hot heads, irresponsible gun owners, and worse make gun owners appear irrational and violent. This man was a bully and he had no right asking those kids to do shit. If the music was that bad, you call the police... that is their job.

Michael David Dunn used his hand-held might to make his own form of right. He should be made to pay for it and pay for it dearly.

In the above video, Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) explains how America wound up with "the best and brightest immigrants" by comparing them to...bird dogs. See how easy it is to dehumanize outsiders and those who don't look like you?

You want a good bird dog, and you want one that's gonna be aggressive? Pick the one that's the friskiest, the one that's in games the most -- not the one that's over there sleeping in the corner. You want a pet to sit on the couch, pick the one that's sleeping in the corner. That's -- so, you get the pick of the litter, you got yourself a pretty good bird dog. We got the pick of every donor civilization on the planet because it's hard to get here, you had to be inspired to come. We got the vigor from the planet to come to America. Whichever generation it was, and then we taught our children that same thing.

This is the same guy who claims that not only is profiling important for combating illegal immigration, but he also claims to have a "sixth sense" when it comes to spotting illegal immigrants:


It's gotta be the shoes.

Then again, we all might just be taking all of this out of context, right?

This American vigor that we have that comes from legal immigrants who came to this country with a dream — we get the cream of the crop of every donor civilization on the planet — and people that can take a compliment and turn it into an insult are not going to be constructive working across the isle. But that’s what that was, was a compliment. And everyone who was there that heard that knows that.

Yeah, I'm sure he meant well.

Speaking of immigration, it's worth nothing that the legal immigrants who had the easiest time coming over have always been those who had the most money. It doesn't take just sheer moxie to come into this country the right way - it also helps if you have some coin to spread around.

There are two kinds of republicans...millionaires and suckers. -Redeye

It never fails to amaze me how Republicans on the lower end of the economic scale can consistently vote against their own interests. These are the people who need things like universal healthcare, Social Security, favorable economic reform and other societal safety nets. However, they're always quick to vote for people dedicated solely to the cause of garroting these programs, with the intention of picking the resultant bodies clean of any valuables, just because.

Whether it's the specter of "socialism," fear of federal government or the distaste/hatred of the eponymous "lazy" negro or Latino, conservatives are always willing to join forces with their moneyed, empowered representatives on Capitol Hill to help dismantle these and other programs that don't represent a hard-assed ideology that leaves countless Americans out in the cold, with no one to turn to. Republicans on the wrong side of the $250,000 income bracket are the literal suckers and soft touches of the GOP universe.

Once again, I bring you this footage of Mitt Romney confiding in his well-moneyed supporters what he thinks about 47 percent of Americans:


The takeaway from all of this is that 47 percent of Americans don't pay income taxes. Therefore, this percentage can be assumed to be freeloaders and welfare cases who want endless entitlements and represent a lockstep vote for President Obama as a result.

Of the 47 percent who were spared federal income taxes, over two-thirds were still on the hook for payroll taxes, most of which go towards Social Security and Medicare. Only 18 percent of that 47 percent figure managed to avoid federal income taxes, according to data from the Tax Policy Center.

Most of the people who avoid federal income taxes are hardworking heads of household relying on low-wage jobs to take care of one or more offspring. Being the head of household is one major deduction on tax returns and having dependents in the form of children or disabled adult relatives are also major deductions, and for good reason. Factor in various credits and adjustments, and you wind up getting the majority of your payroll taxes back in the form of a refund. For a struggling single mother with mouths to feed*, that income tax refund is the one thing they can look forward to between early February and May.

Meanwhile, over 20,000 households earning over $200,000 per year avoided paying federal income taxes, according to data from the IRS. Of those 20,000, over 4,000 were millionaires:

So how does someone in the top 3 percent of America’s income earners finagle their income tax burden down to zero? For the majority of them, it’s all about donating to charity, investing in local and state governments, earning money overseas and writing off doctor bills.

In Hendricks’ Wisconsin case, ABC Supply switched from an ”S” corporation, which passes all of its profits and losses through its owner to be taxed under personal income, to a “C” corporation, which stands independently of its owner and whose income is subject to corporate taxes.

Scott Bianchini, ABC tax director, told the Journal-Sentinel that the switch was a “substantial part” of why Hendricks had no state income tax liability. Bianchini noted that while Hendricks’ tax burden was minuscule this year, the billionaire has paid more than $10 million in taxes since 2005.

The wealthy have a variety of methods at their disposal to avoid federal income taxes. Mitt Romney himself should know, with his Swiss bank accounts and investments in the Cayman Islands. Yet and still, its the people making under $50,000 without paying federal income taxes that conservatives claim to champion yet simultaneously castigate.

Conservatives see no issues with wealthy entrepreneurs and major corporations using tax dodges to reduce or even eliminate their tax burden, as it would be exactly what less well off conservatives would do if they themselves were wealthy. Seeing struggling single mothers and other people near the poverty line go bereft of substantial tax burdens is something that pisses conservatives off - after all, poverty is considered a shameful defect and positive proof of general laziness among people who should quit with the entitlements, pull up bootstraps and get back to work like normal, regular hardworking Americans with incomes above $200,000.

A near-fanatical hatred of those worse-off and a near sycophantic devotion to the wealthy is a linchpin of conservative ideology. If you're not doing well for yourself, then something is obviously wrong with you, never mind any other factors that could easily plunge someone into poverty. The wealthy love seeing middle and low-income conservatives do their dirty work for them - having these people blindly attack welfare and entitlement means future opportunities to satiate Republican bloodlust draconian regulation or outright cancellation of helpful assistance programs, save for the ones that directly help their base. It also means future opportunity for the wealthy to shove what was once Social Security or Medicare money into their own pockets via speculative market investments and other vehicles that are supposed to be "better" than Social Security.

Mitt Romney thinks 47 percent of Americans are hopeless "welfare cases" who slavishly follow President Obama in hope of undeserved crumbs and trinkets here and there. That 47 percent should speak loud and clear what they think of Mittens come November 5. And despite all of the above evidence of Romney and Co. not really giving a flying toss about middle and low-income conservatives, they'll still vote for the man, if only to see the imaginary "welfare queen" get hoisted up by her bootstraps.

*Along with Buy-Here-Pay-Here car lots, tax return preparers specializing in "advances" and pretty much any retailer who loves seeing the influx of taxpayers with wads of cash burning holes in their pockets.

While scores of mothers across the United States will be able to share this day with their kids and loved ones, many parents won't be able to for a variety of reasons, many of them excruciatingly painful. For many, Mother's Day is a painful reminder of not being able to have their child by their side. No gifts, no happy greetings of "happy Mother's Day," no way of both mother and children expressing the love they have for one another.

Sadly, there are those who believe any time is a great time to be an asshole:


I suppose Sabine's not having that great of a Mother's Day. Such a hate-filled message has no place on a day like this, or any other day for that matter.

Field Negro always has a colorful bunch of anonymous characters who emulate electronic pimples on the ass cheeks of Internet humanity. Today, the stupidity was amped up by a factor of five. If you read through the comments section, you'll see comment after comment featuring truckloads of bigotry and abject idiocy. Quite a few voiced a thinly-coded desire to deal with their "Negro problem" by force. I understand and respect the Field's Open Door policy, but if this isn't a good advertisement of why moderation is essential to a sane and asshole-free comments section, I'd be hard pressed to find anything else.

One anon excerpted the following from novelist and antebellum Southern romantic Thomas Dixon, Jr., whose work inspired D.W. Griffith's infamous motion picture, "Birth of a Nation":

"Since the dawn of history the Negro has owned the continent of Africa rich beyond the poet's fancy, crunching acres of diamonds beneath his bare black feet. Yet he never picked one up from the dust until a White man showed him its light. His land swarmed with powerful and docile animals, yet he never built a harness, cart or sled.

A hunter by necessity, he never made an axe, spear or arrowhead worth preserving beyond the moment of its use. He lived as an ox, content to graze for an hour. In a land of stone and timber, he never carved a block, sawed a foot of lumber or built a house save of broken sticks and mud.

With league on league of ocean strand and miles of inland seas, for 4,000 years he watched their surface ripple under the wind, heard the thunder of the surf on his beach, the howl of the storm over his head, gazed on the dim blue horizons calling him to worlds that lie beyond, and yet he never dreamed of a sail. He lived as his fathers lived - stole his food, worked his wife, sold his children, ate his brother, content to drink, sing, to dance, and sport as the ape.

And this creature, half child, half animal, the creature of impulse, whim and conceit, pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw; a being who left to his will, roams at night and sleeps in the day, whose speech knows no word of love, whose passions once aroused, are as the fury of the tiger - they have set this thing to rule over the Southern people ... Merciful God ... it surpasses human belief."

What you just read here is 1)elevation of white self-esteem at the expense of people of color and 2)justification for the enslavement and continuing mistreatment of people of color, most notably Africans and black Americans. It's a cavalcade of sociopathic behavior that leads individuals to turn ordinary human beings into tea cozies and lampshades. When applied on a national scale, you get events such as the Holocaust, Australia's systematic elimination and marginalization of Aborigines and the liquidation of Darfurians and other dark people of color from Sudan and other North African nations. But nowhere is the insanity more visible than within the United States.

You can take a look at how conservative-minded and even "progressive" white Americans have flipped out and lost their minds over the Oval Office's current resident. Electing a "P.O.C." as president caused many people to lose their shit and devote their time and energy to denigrating and discrediting a man who has so far done his best to elevate Americans out of their current fuck-up without fucking up or getting assassinated. Extraordinary color arousal led to the formation of the Tea Party and its capture of the GOP. The end result of that moment of abject insanity will most likely result in millions of die-hard conservatives being conflicted by their undying hatred of the "Marxist Socialist Kenyan Usurper" and their utter dislike of magic Mormon Mitt Romney as a presidential choice.

A fallback to a tired tome from a tired Ku Klux Klan admirer deserved a response:

Interesting how the glorification of the antebellum American South always came with some denigration or castigation of blacks as an inferior species. Black inferiority was also useful for justifying slave ownership. After all, where would those poor Negros be without white guidance via ownership?

One reason for constantly and consistently deeming one group of people inferior to another is to deliberately keep them at the bottom of the socioeconomic totem pole, especially if you're aiming to maintain them as an easily accessible pool of manual labor. Just as one would breed horses and cattle, the wealthier plantation owners and other scions of the Old South bred Negros. Keeping them demonized and disliked was a ploy to keep poor whites from sympathizing and uniting with them and everyone else from realizing they were just as human as their fellow whites. Manufacturing the myth of the Negro as a slow-witted and slue-footed creature did wonders to cement negative opinion of them in the minds of passive individuals, nevermind if Negros were often the hardest working men and women in the entire country, by default.

Just as conservative-minded Americans are persuaded by Wall Street into cutting their own throats in the name of austerity and tax cuts, descendents of the Old South have graciously eaten bowl after bowl of shit representing the supposed inferiority of the Negro. It helps keep lesser minds preoccupied with their hatred of the other tribe and it helps the wealthy and well-connected maintain their prestige, wealth and power.

The so-called inherent superiority of "whiteness" was required to keep the "peculiar institution" afloat and keep fellow whites united with their betters and separated from their "lessers." When the abolition movement and northern industrialization threatened that institution, succession became the Old South's ticket to continued national psychopathy. The Civil War could had put that superiority theory to bed for good, but the desire for brotherly bygones and the need for a new social punching bag brought about the continuation of that flawed theory.

Sadly, the incessant need to marginalize blacks to subconsciously prevent some sort of karmic retribution from coming into fruition guarantees the continued propagation of supposed black inferiority throughout the American landscape.

My sympathy for Mark Judge died a few days after his bike got stolen. It was on a Good Friday that the non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma survivor came back from a wonderful day of activity, only to see an odd sight.

He saw his bike. He also saw a rather large Negro holding his bike, forcefully liberated from its secure bounds. Before Mark could respond, the naturally swift-footed Negro took off in an instant. Mark gave valiant chase, but the fast twitch fibers afforded by his extra set of leg muscles allowed the strapping Negro to leap across five lanes of traffic and pirouette gently onto the roof of a five-story building. Mark's gaze met the cold, soulless eyes of the elusive Negro for a brief moment, and in a flash, the Negro was gone. And so was Mark's bike. Negro stole Mark Judge's bike.

Of course Mark Judge didn't actually see who stole his bike and neither did anyone else. He merely assumed that the only way his bike could had been stolen was if a Negro gentleman of a large and strapping size or a team of small, crafty and fleet-footed Negroids illegally liberated his conveyance from its moorings. When his friend warned Judge not to jump to race-tinged conclusions, that was the final straw that broke the biker's back. No longer would he be moored down by his own burdensome white guilt. No longer would he actually have to give those black fiends benefit of a doubt. No longer would he be subject to the politically correct demands of treating blacks as human beings without undue suspicion. Judge was finally free to consider his safety in the same manner John Derbyshire asked of his sons.

In short, Mark Judge finally found the vindication he needed to emulate the so-called "fear" that his white counterparts "experienced," while comforted in the knowledge that with a single phone call or cry, he could have that awful Negro "subdued" via taser or bullets by a cadre of surly and unforgiving law enforcement officers. In some states, merely feeling that since of "fear" is enough to end said Negro's life, as a man by the name of George found out.

Having your bike stolen sucks. They're by far the easiest things one could steal and get away with. Seems like no one gives a shit if they see a guy (or even a black guy *gasp*) working over a bike lock or chain with a rusty hacksaw and lots of elbow grease. Someone might even give the guy a hand if he plays his story right. But I lost sympathy for this cancer survivor the moment he allowed his ignorance to override his judgement. Anyone could have stolen Mark Judge's bike. Even the seemingly nice monks could have his beloved silver-blue L.L. Bean tucked away in a quiet corner of the Dominican House of Studies, awaiting a tricked-out flame job and some new front brakes.

Oh, who am I kidding?

I stole his bike.

Now that I feel sorry for him again, he can come over to my house and get it back. Of course, he'll have to look around for a while. When he shows up, I'll wish him good luck.

Remember that long-running thread from Something Awful highlighting the epic stench of stupidity and failed aspirations emanating from the lovely Free Republic? It's still going on strong, with twice the stupid, twice the bigotry and double your daily recommended amount of Vitamin Asshole™. FReepers (not to be confused with the far more admirable Detroit Free Press or "Freep") have proven to be a hardy breed, even during the challenging "dark age" (hehe) that is the Obama Administration. Sadly, all signs of a white lord and savior have proven to be for naught this election period, especially since perennial asshole Newt Gingrich's chances of being the GOP's designated golden boy are as good as Rick Santorum's.

For a moment, imagine the House That Jim Robinson Built as an old and decrepit rancher built back in the 1950s with peeling vinyl siding and droopy gutters. The lawn seems manicured to a tee, until you run across the various weeds that've been cut down instead of uprooted. Rusted burn barrels and car doors litter the backyard. The backyard itself is bare in most spots and littered with brass casings. A half-finished bunker is out there somewhere, but you dare not climb over the fence to look for it. Parked nearby are various full-size American trucks in various states of disrepair. Out front near the garage is a newish Toyota with a huge American flag screenprint on the window and a "Don't You Fucking Re-Nig" sticker on the bumper. The windows are either boarded up or simply covered in dust, dirt and grime.

You reach the front door and eye the sign informing you of your impending demise if you're black, Mexican, gay or a Democrat supporter. Open the door and you're confronted by a noxious stench that incapacitates people from the next county over. It's a hoarder's paradise. You brush past tall stacks of years old newspapers, gun magazines and printed emails featuring cartoons poking fun at Bill Clinton and Al Gore. You clamber over mountains of sweat and shit-stained clothes. You step gingerly over piss puddles, rotted food, empty Viagra and Cialis bottles and cat shit. Lots and lots of cat shit. There are empty dog food cans littered all over the place, but no dog. Ol' Nagger's been dead for years now.

The kitchen has stack after stack of dishes piled up, all dirty and unwashed since 1999. The fridge does not work. Of course it doesn't work. Part of a skinned deer carcass stands in the corner, rotten and maggot ridden. You pass another room that's filled with guns, laid out carefully on a nearby bed. The guns are well taken care of and there's stack after stack of ammo in the corner, with more out back in a shed.

You approach the bedroom located at the back of the house. Hunched over a Gateway 2000 desktop is a FReeper, personified as a morbidly obese man. An old USMC cap covers his shaved head and a well-worn inhaler administers medication for his severe asthma. The room is enveloped in a foul cascade of shit, sweat, pit odor and failure. A nearby printer slowly pounds out an image of Michelle Obama in a mammy outfit and Barack Obama in a butler suit, both serving a perky-titted Sarah Palin and a massively corpulent Rush Limbaugh. The ghost of Ronald Reagan looks on with approval while an American eagle sheds a single tear. You can barely see the Free Republic board through the green-tinted CRT monitor. You notice something on the man's plate. It vaguely looks like...dog food?

You quietly back away from the horrors in front of you, only to trip over an ill-placed copy of "Guns and Ammo" and land face first into a puddle of goddamned cat piss. You rouse the FReeper. He's pissed. He picks up something, but that something isn't one of the many guns in his collection. No, it's two dead cats, each fitted with...viking helmets? He starts swinging wildly. You clamber over the magazines, the rank clothes, the old newspapers, desperate to find a way out of this miserable hell. You reach the door and it's...locked? You turn around and it's just you, the FReeper and the makeshift dead cat nun-chucks he dubs the "Viking Kitties..."

Let's cut away from that highly unpleasant imagery and begin examining two examples of abject stupidity, the first representing blatant bigotry that's been coded for your pleasure (but just barely):

The simple solution would be for them to go to Africa, just “go”, live in a mud hut, breed and figure out how to kill each other. They sure as hell don’t belong in a civilized world.

I’ll chip in boat fare.

The above plays into the "All Blacks Are Savages™" theme while satisfying the "exotic creature/dangerous creature" prerequisites. The dehumanization effect is already built in, fortified by the rock-solid assumption that all blacks are criminal in nature and thus forth undeserving of any human treatment. So of course, the best way to deal with that pesky "black problem" is to ship them "back" to their "homeland." After all, it's where their ancestors got them, right? Doesn't matter which country on the African continent, they all look alike. *chortle*

Funny how these folks think problems can be solved by shipping them off. Negro gets uppity? Ship him downriver to another owner. Indians on "your" land? Have the U.S. government ship them off somewheres. Daughter gets diddled by Uncle Ted? Ship her off to relatives or a boarding school. She's pregnant? Ship the baby off to an orphanage. Baby's half-black? Say, where did that Negro get off to...

Nevermind two asshats who think their problems can be solved with man-sized crates and a UPS label. The following is perhaps the most blatant sympathizing for the ultimate personification of failure and victimhood: the Confederacy:

Lincoln was a Tyrant and a Atheist who used just enough phrases from the Bible to sound Christian. The South did not start a Insurrection against the Federal government but instead tried to leave the US and they started their own government!

Lincoln was the Poster Child for Adolf Hitler. The Nazi’s studied Lincoln’s war against the South to learn how to overthrow a government yet seemingly keeping the people from knowing they were destroying their own government.

Show me one instance were a Southerner tried to take over the US government! You can’t because it never happened!

The deaths of nearly 750,000 people and the dislocation of nearly 500,000 more rest solely on Lincoln’s head! He may not of killed as many people as Hitler but his war plans were the blueprint that Hitler used in Germany and against other countries.

In essence, Lincoln was a tyrant for putting an end to the tragicomedy that was the Confederacy. In preserving the Union, he became worse than Hitler, Tojo and William Tecumseh Sherman combined. The deaths of those 750,000 rest solely atop the man's stovepipe hat and not within the hands of men who thought succession was a wonderful idea.

BTW, let's ignore attempts by pro-slavery figures to induct more slave states into the Union prior to the Confederate clusterfuck.

Amazing how Confederate fans can wrap themselves up in pity, victimhood and delusion, something those same individuals constantly chastise black Americans for supposedly doing*. The Free Republic is chock-full of these nuts and I tip my hat to the folks at SA for not only making this happen, but also for having the courage and intestinal fortitude to provide (paying) viewers with a front-row seat to the Saddest Spectacle on Earth™. It's like a Gallagher show, only you have a two old, grizzled white guys spraying pressurized shit from a septic truck onto the audience. Have your rain coat, umbrella and a match handy.

*You see, blacks "whine" while Confederate symps merely "air out their grievances." Nope, there's no double standard here...

I went through school, I worked my way through, it took me seven years, I never borrowed a dime of money. He borrowed a little bit because we both were totally on our own when we went to college, totally. [...] I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that. We live in an opportunity society and people are forgetting that. I remind folks all the time that the Declaration of Independence says “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” You don’t have it dumped in your lap.

The above quoted belongs to House Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who probably didn't notice (or care to notice) how student tuition has risen over the past decade. Still, you have to admire someone who has the brass ovaries to deliver the most viciously polite form of "fuck you, got mine" to date. Very brassy for a woman who has a minimum of $500,000 in mortgages on two houses, according to her 2010 financial disclosure statements.

States have cut their higher education funding. The federal government's considering cuts to Pell Grants. Colleges everywhere are raising their tuition rates and employment opportunities remain scarce. Unless you luck out and get a scholarship or have your parents/endowment/inheritance/sugar daddy/corporate sponsor helping you out, student loans are your only port of entry on the voyage of college education.

Virginia Ann Foxx graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill back in 1968 with a bachelors degree and attained her Masters degree in 1972. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average cost of a four-year university during 1968-1969 was around $1,245 per year. Adjusted for inflation, that amounts to $7714. Today, it'll cost you $20,660 for a year of full-time study (including room and board) if you're a N.C. resident and over $41,000 if you're not. Meanwhile, Harvard tuition costs add up to $53,000 per year, $36,000 if you cut out room and board. Little wonder some people are walking around with over $200k of student loan debt.

Foxx says she worked her way through school. With the average cost of tuition and the wages offered by most part-time jobs, students who go at it that way will be lucky to pay for food and books. It's possible to cut corners here and there, but it doesn't add up to much. I lucked out with Pell Grants, cheap in-state tuition and cut out the room and board costs by staying close to home for the last two years of college. I also had a part-time job that didn't do much against my overall tuition bill, but it helped with food and books. If you split the apartment rent with roommates, eat beans and rice and refrain from silly shit like iPads, spinning rims* and the like, you'll be able to survive. Barely.

You'll still need student loans for the vast majority of your tuition costs, unless you find spending five years of less-than-part time matriculation at a community college for a two-year associates degree to be more your thing. Not that there's anything wrong with that**.

If Foxx thinks having $200k of student loan debt is unacceptable, then perhaps she could do her part to help lower the cost of college tuition around the country. After all, she happens to chair the House Subcommittee on Higher Education.

* I've seen students take the leftovers of their student loans and buy some of the silliest shit imaginable.
** Most jobs require a bachelors degree, at minimum.

Some people say we've reached a point in time where we can truly consider ourselves beyond race. After all, segregation and outright bigotry are both long gone, discrimination's a thing of the past and hey, we even have a black president now. Now we can all join hands, hum "Kumbaya" and look forward to a time where the last remnants of racial antagonism and bigotry can die along with the people who practiced and held those traits, beliefs and ideas.

Or not.

John Derbyshire, in response to black parents giving their children "the talk" about how to best avoid the numerous pitfalls that lead to jail, untimely death, or both, decided to create a "white" version of that talk to give his kids. The big difference between "the talk" and what Derbyshire cooked up lies with how many racial stereotypes, false "facts" and outright bad advice Derbyshire managed to compress in about 15 "life-saving" tips.

Derbyshire starts off by sneering at the rather quaint idea of refraining from archaic terms that border on disrespect or insensitivity towards blacks. This is mixed in with a little bit of "Why can't I call them the N-word?" and "I can call you whatever I want".

(1) Among your fellow citizens are forty million who identify as black, and whom I shall refer to as black. The cumbersome (and MLK-noncompliant) term “African-American” seems to be in decline, thank goodness. “Colored” and “Negro” are archaisms. What you must call “the ‘N’ word” is used freely among blacks but is taboo to nonblacks.

You can already tell where this is headed. As for Tip #2, Derbyshire proudly states that "10 percent of the African American population is more than half European in ancestry", but won't say how that happened. Funny that.

(3) Your own ancestry is mixed north-European and northeast-Asian, but blacks will take you to be white.

Because not even white Americans can tell by sight alone one another's precise ethnic makeup. Hence why people proudly pronounce themselves as "Scots-Irish" or "Italian on my mother's father's side". Otherwise, they're about as white as Wonder Bread, for all intents and purposes.

I wouldn't mind knowing what's on Derbyshire's sons' driver's licenses. Did they tick the "White" box without a second thought? Most likely.

(4) The default principle in everyday personal encounters is, that as a fellow citizen, with the same rights and obligations as yourself, any individual black is entitled to the same courtesies you would extend to a nonblack citizen. That is basic good manners and good citizenship. In some unusual circumstances, however—e.g., paragraph (10h) below—this default principle should be overridden by considerations of personal safety.

Uh-oh. I wonder what Derbyshire meant by that. Don't worry, I'll get into that later on.

Tips #5 through #8 are merely weak statistical justifications for what could be summed up as "typical black behavior," along with something I can only discern as "blacks are not special snowflakes" and "blacks are anti-social." Tip #9 is where we really get down to the meat of the whole article:

(9) A small cohort of blacks—in my experience, around five percent—is ferociously hostile to whites and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us. A much larger cohort of blacks—around half—will go along passively if the five percent take leadership in some event. They will do this out of racial solidarity, the natural willingness of most human beings to be led, and a vague feeling that whites have it coming.

Eh?

You know what? Here's a small exercise for all those paying attention:

(9) A small cohort of whites—in my experience, around five percent—is ferociously hostile to blacks and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us. A much larger cohort of whites—around half—will go along passively if the five percent take leadership in some event. They will do this out of racial solidarity, the natural willingness of most human beings to be led, and a vague feeling that blacks have it coming.

See what just happened?

But it isn't as bad as the following tip #10, along with all the addendums tacked onto it:

(10) Thus, while always attentive to the particular qualities of individuals, on the many occasions where you have nothing to guide you but knowledge of those mean differences, use statistical common sense:

(10a) Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.

(10b) Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods.

(10c) If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date (neglect of that one got me the closest I have ever gotten to death by gunshot).

(10d) Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks.

(10e) If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.

(10f) Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians.

(10g) Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.

(10h) Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.

(10i) If accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving.

I think Derbyshire left out (10j) clutching your (man) purse when passing a strange black and (10k) calling the cops whenever you feel "threatened" by one. And there's always (10k)(2) if you're in a state with a "stand your ground" law: just shoot the black if you feel "threatened". The police will back you and you'll be home for dinner in no time.

Derbyshire's article and advice is akin to a man who stands on his head in the tub and proceeds to take a massive, wet shit all over himself and the tub. John continues his coprophiliac celebration by touching on blacks' inherently low IQ (#11) the evils of Affirmative Action and how his feelings were hurt by the DMV lady who told him he couldn't add "mixed north-European with just a splash of minty northeast-Asian" on his driver's license (#12), how to use "intelligent blacks" as a human shield against accusations of racism (#13 and #14), and an ill-thought-of jab against President Obama (#15) as a parting shot.

And Derbyshire's claiming to teach his kids all of this. One can only hope he's being factious about the whole thing, but considering how many people tend to take their own bigotry seriously, even the most satirical effort can appear to be laced with bitter diatribe that tells the audience how the writer genuinely feels about the whole thing.

The whole point of letting racism and bigotry die becomes moot if people are still passing on their maligned views on other ethnic groups to their offspring. There will always be a need for a proactive approach when it comes to stamping it out. It's not gonna die on its own.

EDIT: Jonah Goldberg does not approve of your work, John: