In December 2006 I wrote about Mumia Abu-Jamal. He shot a cop in the back and face in 1981 and killed him. That part is not in dispute. Now, in March 2009, it’s still in court. He has been found guilty a few times. However, for some reason, his case keeps getting appealed and keeps going up to a higher court based on one single fact: the jury that found him guilty due to over-whelming evidence was mostly white. The simple fact that white people looked at the overwhelming evidence and convicted him means, according to his defense, that the murder itself is not the point. For some inexplicable reason, the court system seems to be going along with this racist farce.
The fact is there were people who saw him do it, there is physical evidence directly linking jim to the murder, and he has confessed to it.
He killed someone based purely on racial reasons, and now expects his cries of racism to save him.
Talk about hypocritical.
There are a lot of people supporting him. I feel about the same way about them as I do him directly. They say they want justice, but I think this sign sums up exactly what they do want:
They want this hypocritical racist cop-killer to walk free.
He’s had 28 years now to make his case and has failed. When is enough enough?
20
Feb
This is so amazingly stupid I don’t even know where to begin. The New York Post ran a cartoon intermingling the events of the violent monkey getting shot in Connecticut and the recent stimulus bill. Looking at it for two seconds, I got it. I thought it was very accurate. This stimulus was so bad a monkey could have written it. That of course, is not how Al Sharpton saw it:
If it weren’t for accusing everyone but himself of being racist, Al Sharpton would cease to exist. This is just stupid. CNN is doing a poll asking if the unnecessary New York Post was appropriate. So far, 52% think it was unnecessary. Count me on that side. CNN however, does not ask if Al Sharpton should apologize for seeing racism in everything black.
Note to all editors, from this point forward, all animals must be white. No one cares if a white is getting shot.
Spoken by Bobby Rush. Now, using that logic, the only reason the people of Illinois elected Obama in the first place was only because he was black. If it were for any other reason, then “the will” of Illinois would be to have something outside the color of his skin. They may have voted for him because he seems intelligent. It could have been because he was dynamic. It could have been because he’s a hell of a speaker and motivator. None of that counts in Bobby Rush’s world. The person just has to be black in order to meet the criteria of “the will of the people”. Now, “the will and the wisdom” of the state of Illinois voted for a black candidate in the 90′s, Carol Moseley Braun. I’m not sure if that was because she was a woman, or because she was black. I’m sure Rush is only concerned that she was black. However, in 1999, the will and wisdom of the state of Illinois chose a balding, pasty white male. So, there’s no clear evidence to me that the will and wisdom of the state of Illinois is quite as racially motivated as Rush seems to think they are. They are apparently looking at something else besides the color of the skin of the candidate. What should be even more disturbing to Rush I’m sure is the pasty white male wasn’t even a Democrat. So, the recent history of the will and wisdom of the state of Illinois is they will vote for blacks, and they’ll vote for whites. They’ll vote women, and they’ll vote for men. They’ll vote for Democrats, and they even vote for Republicans. So, looking at things from outside the state of Illinois, it seems to me that they are doing something Bobby Rush doesn’t like at all. They are making a choice by looking at the credentials of each candidate individually. What a concept huh? I really think they need to take a lot closer look at voting for someone stuck in the 60′s. The governor will appoint who they appoint. It can not represent the will and wisdom of the state of Illinois. That’s up to voters. Very soon after, the will and wisdom of the state of Illinois will determine who their senator will be. There is nothing Bobby Rush can do about that.
Earlier this year, a pretty good flap was made over Barack Obama trying to understand country life. He basically came to the conclusion that in order to live in places where people aren’t walking on top of each other, you had to be kind of bitter, and cling to things that aren’t made of concrete and steel. John Kerry had a real problem with rural America four years before him.
Now, Jack Murtha is taking the ball and running with it:
Now, he has since tried to explain his comment, by stating that they aren’t necessarily racists, they were just rednecks a while back. My first thought, it’s time for the redneck special forces to “handle” this situation.
However, a bigger issue is the Dems have pretty much put the screws to being a proud member of rural America. It’s very simple, if you don’t vote for Obama, you’re racist. If you live in rural America, you are not allowed to decide this election on any issue, period. You are either racist, or you’re not. You can not be conservative, pro-gun, anti-abortion, pro-states rights, or believe in a smaller, less intrusive federal government. And, you can not be offended by Obama previously insulting your heritage. All of that is out the window. You are, or you are not, racist. Period. If you vote for Obama, you’re not. If you vote for anyone else, you are. It’s no longer a red and blue state thing, it is black and not-black.
And, given most of main stream media could care less, Murtha’s narrow mindedness and bias will go unchecked allowing that sentiment to continue unabated. I’d like to think the good folks of Pennsylvania will do something about their obviously flawed representative, but I doubt they will. And, I don’t think Murtha came up with this insight, he just vocalized it.
And, to me, the purest sign someone is racist is when they assume everyone else is. If it’s on your mind that much, you’ve got a problem.
Just when I thought it was safe to assume Keith Olbermann was completely nuts, he tops himself. This is what the pride of the left wing had to say about John McCain’s recent ad featuring two hot young celebs:
KEITH OLBERMANN: What about when it backfires? Because it seems like the celebrity ad continues to echo. And Bob Herbert of the New York Times was on this network pointing out something I don’t know that anybody noticed before this morning. That not only in that McCain ad where there two underdressed blondes mixed with the black guy in the ad, but there were also images of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Washington Monument, and the Victory Column in Berlin — as Bob Herbert put it, “phallic symbols.” Three phallic symbols, two blondes and Barack Obama. So this is not just a sexist ad anymore. This is what they used to called “miscegenation,” isn’t it? This is what they used against Harold Ford.
JONATHAN ALTER, NEWSWEEK: Well, to suggest that somehow, you know, Obama’s going to-
OLBERMANN: He’s going to wind up dating those women-
ALTER: Yeah.
OLBERMANN: That’s the idea.
ALTER: That’s the oldest and deepest racist, you know, canard in American history, really, is that, you know, the slave is going to come after the wife of the plantation owner. I can’t, sort of, dissect and decode these ads that way. I just, somehow maybe my media literacy is lacking. I didn’t read that out of those ads, but I can see how some people would. And the larger issue, I think, is clear, which is they’re trying to portray him as being uppity. Now, is that racist? I’m not sure, you know.
Wow.
Simply, WOW.
That folks, is beyond nuts. That’s certifiable. There is a word for people who go around seeing a penis in every pointed object. The word is not racist, it’s delusionary. Ithyphallophobia to be more exact. Then, to take Paris Hilton and the Washington Monument and turn it into a black man with a large penis doing plantation owners’ wives that look like Paris Hilton is just amazing. ( Clue here, most plantation owners’ wives never looked like Paris Hilton. )
Now, this is where it gets political instead of space ( as in psychology ). This ad did not really do much for me. I never had any interest in watching it. Now, to say the least, I do. I want to try to follow the imagery that would morph my focus of a boring aging white guy into a black man with a large penis doing plantation owners’ wives that look like Paris Hilton. I really do. So, this ad I’m sure will get a LOT more airplay than it originally did thanks to Keith Olbermann’s fixation with penises.
Spike Lee has an issue with Clint Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers
But for some reason, Lee decided to take a stab at Eastwood for not sticking black people where they weren’t just to say there were black people in the movie. To which Eastwood replied, in his usual Dirty Harry personna, that Lee should “shut his face”. OK, I thought that was kinda cute. Everyone has faces. There is no connotation attached to a face. And, it’s succinct. I chuckled it off and it was pretty much forgotten. Apparently Spike couldn’t do that. Here’s the beginning of his rebuttal about faces:
“First of all, the man is not my father and we’re not on a plantation either,”
Didn’t take very long to fall back on that standard racism thing did it? Why didn’t he just call him Hitler as well? Now, IF one reads the rest of Lee’s response, it sonds intelligent and makes some sense. However, I am so turned off by the initial racism of the comment that the rest is meaningless and forgotten.
Someone needs to tell Lee that an African-American, who has never lived on a plantation, is running for President of the United States and has a real chance at winning. I think it’s time we let that racial dead dog die. And, before anyone else starts accepting that, it’s up to the peers of society to do it first. Until they do, the masses have their justification to continue doing it as well. Obama is running on “change”. The implicit “change” he represents is racial equality. As long as black youths of America look to Spike Lee, Jesse Jackson, and others as opposed to the Barack Obamas, this headache and crutch will go on. And, putting the Spikes in perspective, if they’re unwilling to accept the “change” Obama represents, I don’t want to hear them campaigning for him. Otherwise, they make Obama’s message very hypocritical and shallow.
First, she lost this one:
Now, a lot’s being said about that one, but I think it’s over-rated as far as the average voter goes. He’s popular in Boston, but that’s about it. The only thing it does show is a crack in the Clinton “establishment”. Bill & Ted
However, the endorsement Hillary seems to be losing that DOES matter comes in the form of this pic from Collegehumor.com.
Namely, she got trounced in South Carolina leading right into Super Tuesday. Now, without going into a ton of research into exit polls and the like, my basic assumption that makes South Carolina different than, say, Nevada, is the minority population. Namely, the minority population that identifies with the guy that beat her. Some people were implying Obama wasn’t “black enough” to appeal en masse with the African-American voter, but I think Hillary’s a little too white to offset the implied whiteness of Barack. Where this gets touchy for Hillary is next Tuesday. Namely, 1,059 delegates are at stake in states that have more than 10% African-American voters. I use this as the criteria because otherwise, most serious candidates will garner somewhere in the neighborhood of 40% of the vote regardless of anything else. A 10% block of votes will swing that election. In South Carolina, that block came in at about 30%. Obama won with about 47% of the delegates. Needless to say, the math sure looks obvious. Using that same math for 2/5, it looks tough for Hillary. It’s not enough votes to seal up the primary, since Hillary’s leading at the moment, but it sure swings the momentum to Barack in a major way going into the last few remaining big delegate states the following couple of weeks. A few of those have very large African-American blocks as well. So, that pic of Hillary and the little girl just sort of struck me as being totally iconic to the situation Hillary’s in. The bigger problem for Hillary that I can see is I don’t have a clue what she can do to overcome the unfair advantage that familiarity with a candidate based on purely non-political issues presents. Maybe I’m wrong, and I hope I am, but I really don’t expect this race to become anything more than a one issue race that Hillary and Edwards will not be allowed to debate.
I live in a very small town in very rural southern Kentucky. We don’t do a lot of newsworthy stuff here. However, I was rather shocked to see we had made national news, at least on Fox:
Skeletal Remains Found in Kentucky May Be Those of Former Slaves
Skeletal remains found during construction in south-central Kentucky may be those of slaves or former slaves, the Pulaski County Coroner said.
Best I’ve heard on the story, there’s no “may” to it at this point. They are simply trying to find the reputed third grave. The two found were apparently young women, properly buried for the time, with some of their possessions. Pretty cool story so far.
The story also matches up well with the history of this town. Previous to the Civil War, there were basically no slaves here. The land wasn’t conducive to large farms, and the farmers here didn’t make a lot of money doing it. During the Civil War, Kentucky was a border state, with families on both sides of the conflict. Northern Kentucky tended to be predominantly Union, this area predominantly Confederate. However, it had nothing to do with the slave issue, as it wasn’t an issue here. As such, blacks came from the South through here, and some settled here. We’ve had a rich history of blacks ( African-Americans? ) contributing to our society. Post Civil War most of them settled in a couple of pockets of our county and mostly farmed and created their own very small, very secluded communities. Over time, those communities became less meaningful as they worked the factories and other industries that came here. Now, we’re just pretty much totally integrated.
I’ve always felt Somerset was kind of special in that race really has never meant anything much here. I didn’t even know what racism was until I was a young adult and moved away for a while. This story kind of has a little special meaning to me as it harks back to a time when racism was a very troubling issue for our country. But, from the evidence found so far, apparently it never was here.
That’s the headline you won’t see. This is what I’m referring to:
Now, some people are trying to explain this off as a reference to socio/economic situations as opposed to racial ones. But, that’s not what Joe says. He’s been around long enough to know what he’s saying. And, that’s what he said. Very clearly and succinctly. In order to make it a socio/economic comparison, and stay within Joe’s statement, one has to assume the minority population determine the socio/economic situation. Bottom line, it’s racist. So, let’s look at the socio/economic aspect to see real quicklike if that’s what he’s actually referring to since that seems to be the defense being thrown in his direction.
The gross state product per capita last year in DC was $136,714. This ranked #1 in all the land. The gross state product per capita for Iowa? $38,521, which ranked 23rd. What this says is this is what each person living in each location produced. Now, in order to produce $136,714 per person, you’ve got to have some people making a LOT of money and a whole lot of others making pretty good money. In order to produce $38,521, you’ve got some people making pretty good money, and a whole bunch making not a whole lot. I’ll put it this way, how many readers make $18 an hour? How many make $65 an hour? I live pretty well, I make a lot closer to Iowa than DC. Using another indicator, the unemployment rate in Iowa is probably 2% less than DC at the time of this post. However, the population density of Iowa is about 23 per square mile. The density of DC is about 9,300 per square mile. Bottom line, there’s a lot more opportunity ( see gross state product ) in DC than Iowa, but there’s a heck of a lot more competition ( see densities ). Needless to say, the cost of living in DC is profoundly higher than Iowa.
Now, I’ve never lived in Iowa, but I have lived in DC. The reason I left DC was because it seemed like you spent way too much time just existing there. A two mile commute to get home takes an hour in DC. A two mile commute to get home here ( and Iowa as well ), is about five minutes. In other words, the societal differences of spending time laughing and playing with your kids in a place like Iowa is a lot easier because you don’t spend so much time just doing the basic functions as you do in DC. Those two hours a day commuting in DC take away from any opportunity the parent would have had to spend quality time with their child. That’s not a minority issue. Whether that commuter is black, white, Hispanic, or whatever, that’s not a social issue. Now, they could choose to live in Iowa to eliminate that issue from their life, but then Iowa gets the credit and DC loses a good parent. Commuting time is simply one issue that makes life in Iowa a lot different than life in DC. There are many more.
But, the bottom line is there are very distinct differences between life in Iowa and life in DC or any city. That’s why people move to cities or leave them. That’s their choice. What Biden is assuming is all the negatives of city life are because there are more minorities there than in Iowa. As I have pointed out, the primary negative he points out can be just as easily argeud that the geography of any city is the culprit and not the racial make-up of that city. It’s a very simple and easy argument to make without bringing any aspect of race into it. But, Joe only sees the race issue. You know what that means dontcha?
Al Sharpton called for a national boycott on November 2 for reasons no one is particularly sure of. It’s being laughed off and dismissed by most people, including myself. The reason it’s being dismissed by most people is because he is wanting to punish corporate America for something no one knows what he’s talking about. In the meantime, something overt and obviously racial occurs, and Al totally dismisses it. As yet, I’ve not seen any condemnation from Jesse Jackson either. And, the ones I fully expect to hear nothing from are Harry Reid and of course, Nancy Pelosi.
Joe, like Byrd, will get a pass. He can’t be racist, he’s a Democrat. Just as DailyKos or Keith Olbermann.
Jesse Jackson blasted Barack Obama because Obama hasn’t brought attention to a racial incident in Jena, Louisiana. Jesse’s claim is that Barack is “acting white” by not making it the centerpiece of his campaign right now. This is so typical Jesse Jackson it’s sickening to me. Racial tensions reached a loggerhead in the 60′s, when Jackson was a young activist adult. They kind of simmered through the 70′s, but mellowed substantially. With the advent of the 80′s we got inter-racial dating and marriages becoming almost a common occurance. By the 90′s, that wasn’t even shocking any more. Now in the 21st century, I think I can speak for most whites anyway, it’s a non-issue. Your either fer me or agin me, the color of your skin is meaningless. Race issues, to most the whites I know, is non-existant. So, every so often, you get some racist like Jesse Jackson who stirs up something just to antagonize the issue just like it was 1964 all over again. Or, at least they try. Jackson’s a single issue guy and that issue is racism. If people don’t cower down to his myopic racist views, they’re not black enough. Enter Obama. Obama gets pounded every day on issues. He’s running for national office. When doing so, you get hit with every conceivable issue imagined. Every day. Every waking moment. As such, I bet you right now Obama could rattle off the top ten most frequently asked questions he gets every single day, every waking moment. And, I bet, as a skilled politician, he gauges those questions and uses them to form his political strategy.
This leads me to the conclusion I have, which should terrify Jesse Jackson. My conclusion is most everyone else in this country realizes Jena for what it is. It’s a fairly isolated incident perpetrated by a very few narow-minded idiots. It’s not the national problem it was forty years ago. As such, it’s not something people worry about much. As such, it’s not something people are asking Obama about. As such, it’s not something Obama feels compelled to address. As such, it is absolutely no indication whatsoever on the blackness or whiteness of Obama. And, the sooner racists like Jackson quit gauging someone on how black or white they are, the sooner racism will go away.
