A Blue View

A Teachable Moment?

It just might be. From the Wash Post:

As Gates and Crowley met with Obama, Ogletree met with Alan McDonald, the lawyer for the police unions in Massachusetts, and other law enforcement representatives from Cambridge to talk about how both camps can work together.

The incident not only forced the issue of race and law enforcement into the national spotlight, but it also prompted police departments around the country to take a closer look at their training protocols.

"I will go over our racial profiling orders just to make sure we're doing everything according to the rules and regulations," said Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington. "It doesn't mean that anything's wrong with our rules, but this is a good time to go back and make sure officers are . . . affording people their civil rights."

John Foust, director of academic training for the D.C. police, said the Cambridge incident made the agency reassess its curriculum.

"It made us take a second look to make sure we have the important topics covered," Foust said.

The D.C. police department requires recruits to take courses in diversity and racial profiling, as well as hate and bias crimes.

Maj. Huey Thornton of the Montgomery, Ala., police said the Gates-Crowley incident is being discussed among officers and in staff meetings.

"I don't think any department would like to find themselves in a situation like that," Thornton said. "It shows the scope of what you're subject to get involved in while responding to calls for service. And whatever training you've received, it's what you should always rely on. That's the teachable moment."

Obama’s Mistake Was Falling For A Culture War Diversion

Biting, and wise, commentary from Thomas Frank:

The essential point about Gates-gate, or the tempest over last week’s arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., is this: Most liberal commentary on the subject has taken race as its theme. Conservative commentators, by contrast, have furiously hit the class button.

Liberals, by and large, immediately plugged the event into their unfair-racial-profiling template, and proceeded to call for blacks and whites to “listen to each other’s narratives” and other such anodyne niceties even after it started to seem that police racism was probably not what caused the incident.

Conservatives, meanwhile, were following their own “narrative,” the one in which racism is often exaggerated and the real victim is the unassuming common man scorned by the deference-demanding “liberal elite.” Commentators on the right zeroed in on the fact that Mr. Gates is an “Ivy League big shot,” a “limousine liberal,” and a star professor at Harvard, an institution they regard with special loathing. They pointed out that Mr. Gates allegedly addressed the cop with that deathless snob phrase, “you don’t know who you’re messing with”; they reminded us that Cambridge, Mass., is home to a particularly obnoxious combination of left-wing orthodoxy and upper-class entitlement; and they boiled over Mr. Gates’s demand that the officer “beg my forgiveness.”

“Don’t you just love a rich guy who summers on the Vineyard asking a working-class cop to ‘beg’? How perfectly Cambridge,” wrote the right-wing radio talker Michael Graham in the Boston Herald.

Conservatives won this round in the culture wars, not merely because most of the facts broke their way, but because their grievance is one that a certain species of liberal never seems to grasp. Whether the issue is abortion, evolution or recycling, these liberal patricians are forever astonished to discover that the professions and institutions and attitudes that they revere are seen by others as arrogance and affectation.

The “elitism” narrative routinely blind-sides them, takes them by surprise again and again. There they are, feeling good about their solidarity with the coffee-growers of Guatemala, and then they find themselves on the receiving end of criticism from, say, the plumbers of Ohio.

The Gates incident was a trap that could not have been better crafted to ensnare President Barack Obama, who is himself a loyal son of academia’s most prestigious reaches, and to whom it was immediately obvious, even without benefit of the facts, that the Cambridge police “acted stupidly” in the situation.

Mr. Obama’s way of backing out of his gaffe was just as telling: He invited Mr. Gates and the policeman who arrested him to the White House for a beer, the beverage so often a gauge of a politician’s blue-collar bona fides. One symbolic gesture, hopefully, can exorcise another.

Class is always an ironic issue in American politics, and the irony this time is particularly poignant. We are in the midst of a great national debate about how to make health care affordable; almost nothing is more important to working-class Americans. “For the health of the nation, both physically and economically, we need a system with a public option,” Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, wrote recently in the Huffington Post. “And we need it now.”

But whether working families get it now depends to a large degree on Mr. Obama’s personal popularity. And now comes Gates-gate, this latest burst of fake populism from the right. Waving the banner of the long-suffering working class, the tax-cutting friends of the top 2% have managed to dent the president’s credibility, to momentarily halt his forward movement on the health-care issue.

Umbrage at a Harvard professor’s class snobbery, in other words, might derail this generation’s greatest hope for actually mitigating the class divide.

Hiding Behind Language

The Obama Presser

Glenn Beck Calls Obama A Racist

Beer Diplomacy

Shut Lou Dobbs Up

There's a petition you can sign at www.dobbsconspiracy.com. Here's their description:

Recently, CNN's Lou Dobbs has repeatedly used his prominent platform as a prime-time host on CNN, as well as his daily nationally syndicated radio show, to legitimize paranoid conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama's birth certificate. Despite the fact that these fringe ideas have been thoroughly debunked, he continues to mainstream extreme right-wing rhetoric by asserting that Obama needs to "produce a birth certificate" and giving birther conspiracies airtime on his shows.

In response to Dobbs' relentless trafficking in these fringe conspiracy theories, CNN President Jon Klein initially declared the story "dead," saying anyone who "is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef." But less than 24 hours later, Klein caved in to Dobbs, reversing himself completely.  He even went so far as to reportedly call Dobb's coverage of the birther movement "legitimate."

Klein's caving to Dobbs raises a serious, troubling question: Who is really calling the shots at CNN? We need your help today to publicly pressure CNN credibly address its Dobbs problem. 

Contrary to Klein's description of Dobbs' birth certificate coverage as "legitimate," CNN's own hosts have debunked and ridiculed the story as "ludicrous," "nutty," and "conspiratorial."

Nevertheless, Dobbs has repeatedly claimed on both his television and radio shows that President Obama has failed to adequately address the claims of birther conspiracy theorists. He has said that Obama needs to "produce a birth certificate" and that the birth certificate the president posted online more than a year ago has "some issues." Rather than correct the record in response to criticism of his coverage of birther theories, Dobbs has lashed out at "lily-livered lefties" who criticized him because he "had the temerity to inquire as to where the birth certificate was." He even claims a "national left-wing media conspiracy" is attacking him over the birther issue.

We need to present CNN with an overwhelming public response to Dobbs' relentless promotion of these conspiracy theories tinged with racism.

So, please sign the following petition today and demand that CNN address its Lou Dobbs problem in a credible manner.

911 Caller Said "They might live there" And Didn't Say They Were Black

From the Boston Globe:

The 911 call, alerting police to a possible break-in in a well-to-do Cambridge neighborhood, was routine and dutiful, almost apologetic in tone. A woman said that two gentlemen were seen pushing a door in to enter a house, but added that it might simply be residents having a hard time with their keys after returning home from a trip. She mentioned race only when pressed by the bored-sounding dispatcher, then halfheartedly replied that one of the men “looked kind of Hispanic.’’ ...

The nearly three-minute 911 call, made by Lucia Whalen, a 40-year-old woman who works near Gates’s home, only briefly mentioned race and did not describe the two suspects as black. That diverged from the police report written by Crowley, which stated that Whalen told Crowley she observed “what appeared to be two black males with backpacks’’ on the porch of Gates’s home.

Officer Frank Pasquarello, a Police Department spokesman, said officers often receive what seems like conflicting information from witnesses once they arrive on the scene.

Whalen and her attorney did not return calls seeking comment yesterday. But in a radio interview yesterday on WTKK-FM radio, Whalen’s lawyer, Wendy Murphy, said Whalen did not provide additional details at the scene.

“Never once in any of her statements, conversations, and so forth did she ever use the word black,’’ Murphy said. “But more importantly, when Sergeant Crowley got there, she didn’t have a conversation with him at all.’’ ...

In her call, Whalen calmly tells a dispatcher she had seen two suitcases on the porch and wasn’t sure if the men were breaking in.

“I don’t know what’s happening. . . . I don’t know if they live there and they just had a hard time with their key, but I did notice they had to use their shoulders to try to barge in,’’ Whalen said.

Gates declined comment, but Charles Ogletree, a Harvard Law professor who is Gates’s lawyer, said on his behalf that the professor was pleased the call revealed no racial bias.

“I’m glad that [the recordings] reinforce that the person who made the 911 call was very conscientious and only reported what she saw,’’ Ogletree said. “Somehow the transmission from the caller to the police department has led to a very different set of impressions. Professor Gates is very pleased that more of this information is coming forward.’’

The Birthers Are Peas In A Pod

CNN's Howard Kurtz Slams Dobbs' Birther Coverage As "Ludicrous"

“This case is more about class, deference and mutual respect,”

From the NY Times:

For most of his life, Professor Gates had gone out of his way to avoid confrontation with the police, even introducing himself at the station when he moved to Lexington, Mass., in the 1990s, in hopes that he, a black man driving a Mercedes, would not be pulled over constantly.

Professor Gates has dozens of honorary degrees and is such a fixture of Harvard Square that a beloved student hangout named a burger after him. Everyone at Harvard knows him — charismatic and distinctive with his impeccable suits and cane, the result of a longtime disability.

Sergeant Crowley was a trusted adviser of the Cambridge police commissioner, known for his even temperament and as a role model to younger officers. He is a new-generation officer who has not only been indoctrinated with racial sensitivity, but also teaches other officers how to avoid racial profiling.

A native son and by all accounts a by-the-book, 11-year veteran of the force, Sergeant Crowley is one of four brothers who work in law enforcement. Unassuming when off duty, friends say, he expects respect when in uniform.

The clash was one of two worlds within a city striking for its socioeconomic and racial diversity.

“In certain ways this case is more about class, deference and mutual respect,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum in Washington, a nonprofit group focused on improving police tactics ...

When Professor Gates first saw Sergeant Crowley at his door, he said in an interview, he expected him to say, “How can I help you, sir?” Instead the officer told him to step onto the porch.

Sergeant Crowley expected the professor to do what he had asked. Instead Professor Gates told him, “No, I will not.”...

The Birthers 15 Minutes Of Fame Are Almost Up

From the NY Times:

The conspiracy theorists who have claimed for more than a year that President Obama is not a United States citizen have found receptive ears among some mainstream media figures in recent weeks.

Despite ample evidence to the contrary, the country’s most popular talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh, told his listeners on Tuesday that Mr. Obama “has yet to have to prove that he’s a citizen.” Lou Dobbs of CNN said that Mr. Obama should do more to dispel the claims. Larry King, also of CNN, asked guests about it. Chris Matthews debated it with guests on MSNBC, and “NBC Nightly News” even did a segment debunking the theory.

Cable news is often stretched for news in the summer, but the birth certificate case has been fueled by the combustible combination of luck, compelling video, media-savvy doubters — and an outlandish topic.

The theory that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya, his father’s homeland, first took root among some staunchly conservative elements. In response, the Obama campaign scanned the candidate’s “certification of live birth” from Hawaii’s department of health and published it on the Internet. Numerous third parties have examined and confirmed the birth certificate and concluded that it met the requirements for citizenship.

“This smear was thoroughly debunked during the election,” said Eric Burns, the president of Media Matters for America, a liberal media monitoring organization.

But advocates of the issue, who are sometimes termed birthers, called attention to themselves through frequent calls to talk radio shows, e-mail messages to news organizations and a videotaped question at a Congressional town hall. Since mid-July, Mr. Dobbs has discussed it repeatedly on his radio show and on TV, emphasizing that he believes Mr. Obama is a citizen, while wondering in particular why Mr. Obama has not provided a fuller copy of his birth certificate so that “all of this nonsense goes away.” Mr. Dobbs’s coverage has been criticized by Media Matters and other organizations.

In an e-mail message to Mr. Dobbs’s producers on Thursday, Jon Klein, the president of CNN’s domestic networks, wrote that “it seems this story is dead — because anyone who still is not convinced doesn’t really have a legitimate beef.”...

The claims about Mr. Obama’s citizenship have percolated on the Internet and on right-leaning radio talk shows for months. But from more mainstream outlets, “the coverage has been minuscule” until this month, said Philip J. Berg, a lawyer who has challenged Mr. Obama’s citizenship in a number of lawsuits, unsuccessfully to date ...

Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, said the week’s recurrent cable news coverage was set off by two back-to-back events: the introduction of a bill that would require presidential candidates to provide a copy of their original birth certificate (it has nine sponsors in the House and one in the Senate), and the video of a town hall held by a Republican representative that turned into a hearing on Mr. Obama’s citizenship.

CNN Interview With Other Officer In Gates Arrest Photo

The Power Of Race Surprises Everyone, Even Someone As Smart & Experienced As Obama

From the NY Times:

President Obama tried Friday to defuse a volatile national debate over the arrest of a black Harvard University professor as he acknowledged that his own comments had inflamed tensions and insisted he had not meant to malign the arresting officer.

Mr. Obama placed calls to both the professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and the man who arrested him, Sgt. James Crowley, two days after saying the police had “acted stupidly” last week in hauling Professor Gates from his home in handcuffs. Mr. Obama said he still considered the arrest “an overreaction,” but added that “Professor Gates probably overreacted as well.”

“I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up,” the president said in an appearance in the White House briefing room. “I want to make clear that in my choice of words, I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically, and I could have calibrated those words differently.”

Mr. Obama’s unusual personal intervention and public statement came just four hours after the White House said he had no more to say on the matter. But after talking with Michelle Obama and some of his closest friends amid unrelenting publicity, his advisers said, the president reversed course in hopes of quashing a dispute that had set off strong reactions and made it harder for the White House to focus attention on his efforts to pass health care legislation.

The Gates case has become the first significant racial controversy Mr. Obama has confronted since being sworn in as the nation’s first African-American president. The improvisational handling of it underscored the delicate challenges for a leader who has tried to govern by crossing old lines and emphasizing commonalities over differences.

Advisers said both his sharp statement, which was made at Wednesday night’s news conference, and his toned-down remarks on Friday reflected strains of his experiences. He was personally outraged by the arrest and wanted to speak bluntly about it, aides said. And they said he was distressed that his words proved polarizing and contrary to his instincts for conciliation.

Whether he succeeded in tamping down the emotions of the case remained to be seen. In their telephone conversation, Mr. Obama said, Sergeant Crowley suggested that he and Professor Gates come to the White House to share a beer with the president. Mr. Obama then conveyed that idea in his phone call with Professor Gates.

Professor Gates said in an e-mail message afterward that he was “pleased to accept his invitation” to come to the White House and meet Sergeant Crowley. “After all, I first made the offer to meet with Sgt. Crowley myself, last Monday,” he wrote. “I told the president that my entire career as an educator has been devoted to racial healing and improved race relations in this country. I am determined that this be a teaching moment.”

Racial Profiling By Police Is "just a fact" -- President Obama

From the Boston Globe:

President Obama, weighing in on the arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., said last night that Cambridge police “acted stupidly’’ when they handcuffed Gates even after he showed proof that he lived in the house.

Calling Gates “a friend,’’ and acknowledging he didn’t “know all the facts,’’ Obama said during a nationally televised press conference otherwise devoted to healthcare that he didn’t know whether race played a role in the arrest of Gates, who is black and a noted authority on race relations, by a white Cambridge police officer investigating a burglary report.

But the president added that it is “just a fact’’ that African-Americans and Latinos are disproportionately stopped by police - evidence “that race remains a factor in our society.’’

Obama, the first African-American commander-in-chief, won office by running a campaign that tried to transcend race. His remarks on Gates’s arrest are perhaps the most pointed comments he has made on the subject since his election.

America has made progress on race relations, and his election is testimony to that, the president said, but the Gates episode suggests there’s still more that needs to be done.

“I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of Afri can-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately,’’ the president said. “That’s just a fact.’’

Cambridge Sergeant James Crowley, who arrested Gates last Thursday, declined to respond to the president. Asked at a softball game in Natick last night about Obama’s remarks, Crowley shook his head and said, “I think I’d be better off not commenting on that one.’’ ...

"Discrimination cannot stand ... not on account of color or gender, how you worship or who you love. Prejudice has no place in the USA."

In case you missed this portion of Obama's complete speech to the NAACP:

President Barack Obama Addresses The 2009 NAACP Convention

The NY Times take:

Obama Tells Fellow Blacks: ‘No Excuses’ for Any Failure

President Obama delivered a fiery sermon to black America on Thursday night, warning black parents that they must accept their own responsibilities by “putting away the Xbox and putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour,” and telling black children that growing up poor is no reason to get bad grades.

“No one has written your destiny for you,” he said, directing his remarks to “all the other Barack Obamas out there” who might one day grow up to be president. “Your destiny is in your hands, and don’t you forget that. That’s what we have to teach all of our children! No excuses! No excuses!”

Mr. Obama spoke for 45 minutes to an audience of several thousand people, most of them black, , clad in tuxedos and ball gowns, who had gathered in a ballroom of the Hilton New York to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the nation’s largest civil rights organization.

He was one part politician and one part black preacher as he spoke in lilting cadences, his voice quiet at times, thundering at others, in unusually personal terms. At one point, when his audience shouted back at him, repeating his words, he threw back his head and laughed, saying, “I’ve got an amen corner back there.”

Mr. Obama spoke directly about his own upbringing, crediting his mother (who was white) with setting him straight, and departing from his prepared text to talk about how his life might have turned out had she not. “When I drive through Harlem and I drive through the South Side of Chicago and I see young men on the corners,” he said, “I say there but for the grace of God go I.”

It was an unusual moment for a president who has sought to transcend race and has only reluctantly embraced his unique place in history. Six months into his presidency, Mr. Obama has seemed more comfortable embracing his identity as the first black American president overseas than at home, as was the case during his trip to Ghana last week, when he declared, “I have the blood of Africa within me.”

At home, though, Mr. Obama has largely avoided talking about himself in racial terms ... But the White House was low-key in preparations for the N.A.A.C.P. event. When a reporter tried to cast the speech as Mr. Obama’s first to the black community, the press secretary, Robert Gibbs, demurred, saying, “I think the first speech to black America and the first speech to white America, the first speech to America was the Inaugural Address.”

But there was no mistaking Thursday night that Mr. Obama was speaking directly to black America. In part, it was a policy speech.

Mr. Obama told his audience what it wanted to hear on housing, the criminal justice system, education, health care, and jobs — all issues central to the N.A.A.C.P.’s agenda.

Even as he urged blacks to take responsibility for themselves, he spoke of the societal ills — high unemployment, the housing and energy crisis — that have created the conditions for black joblessness. And he said the legacy of the Jim Crow era is still felt, albeit in different ways today.

Sotomayor Hearings Help GOP Dig A Deeper Hole With Latinos

From Time:

Despite the best efforts of some Republicans to spark a confrontation on hot-button issues like abortion, gun rights or her general approach to judging, Sotomayor had largely steered clear of any trouble, and the process had taken on an air of inevitability. But that didn't mean the grilling of a Latina woman by a panel made up mostly of white men didn't produce its share of uncomfortable moments. One such moment occurred the morning of July 15, when the appellate judge was being questioned by Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican. In the middle of an exchange on gun control, Sotomayor tried to illustrate the reach of New York gun laws by joking about running home to get a gun in self-defense. "If I go home, get a gun, come back and shoot you, that may not be legal under New York law because you would have alternative ways to defend ..."

"You'll have lots of 'splainin' to do," Coburn interrupted, invoking a phrase familiar to fans of the 1950s sitcom I Love Lucy, on which Lucy's long-suffering husband Ricky Ricardo (Cuban-American Desi Arnaz in real life) would often utter the refrain in exasperation at his zany wife's antics. Sotomayor paused awkwardly before nervously agreeing with a chuckle, "I'd be in a lot of trouble then." ...

One of the main focuses of Republican concern has been a comment Sotomayor made at least five times in speeches since the 1990s, that she hoped a "wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion" than a white male. Sotomayor has said repeatedly before the committee that she regrets her choice of words and that in context they were meant to illustrate how a judge must always be vigilant against bias. "The point's been made, and she's pulled back on those comments," says John Ullyot, a GOP strategist who has worked on judicial nominations in the past. "There's no point in pressing it further, especially when we're trying to reach out to Latino voters." ...

But what Republican Senators consider to be courteous questioning of a nominee may not be taken that way by a population unaccustomed to the inside-the-Beltway banter of the Senate. "This may come as a surprise, [what Latinos] see is an unfair attack," says Cesar A. Pareles, president of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, an organization whose board Sotomayor used to sit on, which itself was pilloried as a far-left organization by Republican Lindsey Graham on Tuesday. "Many Latinos will not understand that this is just typical politics. They will take it much more personally and perceive racial animosity directed toward the Hispanic community."

Coburn's exchange wasn't the only one of the hearings that has struck many observers, and not just Hispanic Americans, as offensive.

Rachel Maddow Highlights GOP's Racism On Display At Sotomayor Hearing

Turning The Immigration Issue On Its Head

Mexico Builds Border Wall To Keep Out US Assholes

Postracial America - Hah

In case you missed the story.

Obama Speaks At Slave Fort In Ghana

From Dayo Olopade of The Root:

Barack Obama rounded out his trip abroad with a stop in Accra, Ghana over the weekend. There, he spoke to the nation's parliament and paid a visit to a maternal health clinic in Accra, before finishing up with a moving visit to Ghana's Cape Coast Castle—the point of no return for thousands upon thousands of black Africans sold into slavery in the diaspora.

Obama addressed the Ghanaian assembly as a cosmopolitan international leader with "the blood of Africa in me." He encouraged good governance as the building block of international development, that which will invite trade rather than the vicious cycle of aid and waste that characterizes many partnerships between Africa and the West:

In the 21st century, capable, reliable and transparent institutions are the key to success—strong parliaments and honest police forces; independent judges and journalists; a vibrant private sector and civil society. Those are the things that give life to democracy, because that is what matters in peoples’ lives.

Watch part of Obama's speech [Watch the complete speech]:

Though this was Obama's fourth trip to the African continent, it was his first as president, and first to the west coast where most black Americans find their ancestry. And so the trip held a special resonance for Malia, Sasha and Michelle Obama—the members of the Obama family whose ancestors were actually slaves. At the Cape Coast Castle where the Middle Passage began, Obama was cognizant of that history:

...[A]s Americans, and as African Americans, obviously there's a special sense that on the one hand this place was a place of profound sadness; on the other hand, it is here where the journey of much of the African American experience began.  And symbolically, to be able to come back with my family, with Michelle and our children, and see the portal through which the diaspora began, but also to be able to come back here in celebration with the people of Ghana of the extraordinary progress that we've made because of the courage of so many, black and white, to abolish slavery and ultimately win civil rights for all people, I think is a source of hope.  It reminds us that as bad as history can be, it's also possible to overcome.

Just before boarding his plane back to the United States, Obama added that he would "never forget" the sight of his daughters passing through the infamous "door of no return" at the Cape Coast Castle—and then walking back in.

Civil Rights Group Divided Over Marriage Equality

From the NY Times:

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the 50-year-old civil rights organization founded by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others, is seeking to remove the president of its Los Angeles chapter in response to his support of same-sex marriage in California.

The effort by the Atlanta-based organization is meeting stiff resistance in Los Angeles from both the board of the local chapter, whose chairman is secretary of the state’s Democratic Party, and the City Council president.

During the battle last fall over Proposition 8, an amendment to the State Constitution that banned same-sex marriage, the chapter’s president, the Rev. Eric P. Lee, was ... front and center at an opposition group’s large rally at City Hall and marched in the blazing sun for 15 miles in Fresno. Many other local African-American pastors prepared mailings featuring church leaders in support of the proposition and linking their views to Barack Obama, then the Democratic nominee for president ...

While the Mormon Church raised a great deal of the money in support of the proposition, the role of African-American churches, and their voting parishioners, was not insignificant. The Edison/Mitofsky exit poll in California found that 70 percent of black voters backed the ban, which passed with 52 percent of the vote.

Mr. Lee said that his opposition to Proposition 8 had “created tension in my life I had never experienced with black clergy.”

“But it was clear to me,” he added, “that any time you deny one group of people the same right that other groups have, that is a clear violation of civil rights and I have to speak up on that.”

In April, Mr. Lee attended a board meeting of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Kansas City, Mo., and found himself once again in the minority position among his colleagues on the issue of same-sex marriage ... a month later, Mr. Lee said, he was surprised to receive a call from the National Board of Directors summoning him immediately to Atlanta to explain why he had taken a position on same-sex marriage without the authority of the national board ...

“It’s been our position that the local board hired him,” said Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer, chairman of the local board and secretary of the California Democratic Party. “And, in fact, we are also the ones that approved his stance on the position of marriage equality. We have asked the national board if we have violated any procedures, and we have not gotten an answer.”

Mr. Lee, the former pastor of In His Steps, an African-American Wesleyan church in Los Angeles that he described as “very conservative,” said he saw failures both in the leadership of the conference (“Dr. King would be turning over in his grave right now,” he said) and the largely white anti-Proposition 8 movement that did not more actively seek the support of church-going African-Americans.

“The black church played a significant role in Proposition 8 passing,” Mr. Lee said. “The failure of the campaign was to presume that African-Americans would see this as a civil rights issue.”

The Rise of Right Wing Hate

Uighur Update

China Clamps Down on Uighurs:

Muslim States 'Silent' on Uighurs, from Al Jazeera:

A leading Uighur rights activist has criticised Muslim-majority countries for not speaking out against decades of alleged repression and persecution from the Chinese government.

Speaking in Washington on Monday, Rebiya Kadeer, a businesswoman who was jailed for years in China before being released into exile in the US, hit out at what she said was decades of "brutal suppression" of Muslims in China's western Xinjiang region.

Speaking after a day of unrest in Xinjiang left at least 150 people dead, Kadeer pointed to the lack of response from Muslim countries to the violence and the situation faced by the Uighurs.

"Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and a number of other Muslim countries as well as the central Asian states like Kazakhstan Kurdistan and Uzbekistan - they all deported Uighurs who had fled Chinese persecution for peacefully opposing Chinese rule, for writing something, for speaking something," she said.

"Those sent back to China were either killed or sentenced to life in jail."

She said the lack of action from Muslim countries contrasted with support given by other governments.

"Our only friend is in the West - Western democracies are supporting us and we are very grateful," Kadeeer, who heads the World Uighur Congress, told reporters.

"We certainly hope that more Muslim countries will raise our situation."

Explicit Anti-Semitism On Iranian TV (#iranelection)

Tom & Jerry Is A Jewish Conspiracy, from a seminar broadcast on Iranian TV on 2/19/2006:

Harry Potter and the Zionist-Hollywood Conspiracy, broadcast on the Iranian News channel on 12/15/08:

The New Haven Fire Fighter Case: Pro & Con

 

Can The Stain Be Removed From The Fabric?

Heated Debate on 'The View' About Republicans & Racism/Domestic Terrorism

Right-Wing Terrorism Feeds Conspiracy Theories About Liberal Media Which Feeds Right-Wing Terrorism

From Thomas Frank:

The culture war's inevitable cycles of accusation and counter-accusation ... began with the chorus of outrage directed at elements of the antiabortion movement after Tiller's murder on Sunday May 31. The crime, some suggested, was the logical culmination of certain pro-lifers' apocalyptic rhetoric and their penchant for singling out particular individuals to calumniate.

Pro-life leaders declared themselves shocked and surprised. How could this happen? And how could anyone associate them with this crime? After all, as far as we know, the man accused of the murder wasn't acting on anyone's instructions; he didn't go to movement meetings; he wasn't a member of the main groups dedicated to making Tiller's life difficult. He was, by all reports, an extreme outlier, a wingnut's wingnut.

A larger reason for the shock and surprise -- and this is true for the right generally -- is this: The culture wars are not meant to be taken seriously. Yes, right-wing invective dabbles in nightmare visions of treason and conspiracy and rampant paganism and a homegrown holocaust right here on Main Street, U.S.A. Yes, it ritually denounces liberals as members of a class fundamentally alien to the American way of life. But these are the ingredients of entertainment, not politics.

Culture war makes you feel noble and heroic. It sells books, it drives up the ratings of "The O'Reilly Factor," it brings in millions in direct-mail contributions -- but everybody knows you can't make Hollywood change its ways by walking the streets of Wichita carrying a sign deploring the "culture of death."

According to the unwritten rules of the culture wars, the "base" isn't supposed to act on it when the performers describe a world gone crazy. They're an audience; they're supposed to hiss, applaud, donate, vote and go home.

The people who are empowered to act are the usual suspects in Washington, where the only Armageddon is the one facing the steak some lobbyist just bought for your congressman.

Public memory is short, however, and it won't be long before this incident, too, has been carved and sanded and fitted neatly into the grand narrative of the culture wars, in which true-believing patriots are eternally disrespected by all-powerful liberals. And that will bring us to Act II in our red-state story, in which certain pro-lifers discover that they are the real victims of the Tiller tragedy, unfairly slandered by the left for their views.

We know this will happen because this is what some seem to recall most vividly about the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing -- not so much the act itself, but the clumsy way then-president Bill Clinton tried to blame conservative talk radio for the crime.

We also know it because this part of the cycle has already begun. Fox News star Bill O'Reilly, who adopted the "baby killer" rhetoric of the Kansas right in his many attacks on Tiller, seemed uncomfortable to find himself on the receiving end of public outrage after the doctor's slaying. He also had an explanation for it: "the far left is exploiting this," he said last week, "trying to shut guys like me up by saying O'Reilly's responsible for this murder."

Others have tried to force the story into the familiar narrative of liberal media bias. After all, there were other murders in America, they pointed out, and to the extent that newspapers chose to focus on this one, their liberalness could be measured most precisely.

You and I will forget about Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, but I suspect that certain pro-lifers never will. They will cherish their memories of those awful days when the bloggers and the pundits suggested that maybe they deserved some of the blame for his murder. They will memorize the unjust accusations, exaggerate the sting of the insults, shed a tear for their own suffering -- and get back to imagining themselves as modern-day John Browns.

MSNBC Reacts To The Holocaust Museum Shooting

Keith Olbermann on increasing right-Wing, domestic terrorism:

Joan Walsh on the mainstream hate:

Fox Reacts To The Holocaust Museum Shooting

Fox's Beck typically has a idiotic reaction: he blames the left!

But Fox News' Shep Smith is scared by the email Fox receives:

And then goes on to discuss the conservative-derided DHS report on domestic terrorism:

Wow. Even some Fox talking heads are scared by these recent events.

The GOP's Internal Tensions Over Sotomayor

This cartoon ...

... is in reaction to statements like this:

At times it seems like it's 1856 and we're watching the end of the Whig Party as a national political force. I'm so sad ;)

Obama To Visit Africa, Possibly Cape Coast Castle

From the NY Times:

When President Obama visits Africa this summer, it promises to be a moment of enormous historic and symbolic resonance for his country and the continent of his father’s family. But it will not exactly be a homecoming, since his ancestral homeland was deemed too troubled to visit.

The White House passed over Kenya, where Mr. Obama’s late father was from, in favor of the small nation of Ghana as the site of his first presidential visit to sub-Saharan Africa. A year after Kenya exploded in political violence, it remains a tense and unsettled place. Ghana, by contrast, is an outpost of democracy and civil society in a volatile region ...

Mr. Obama will travel to Accra, the capital of Ghana, on July 10 for an overnight stop at the end of a trip that will first take him to Moscow to meet with Russian leaders and then Sardinia for the annual summit of the Group of Eight powers. Not counting Egypt, where he will travel next month, it will be Mr. Obama’s first trip to Africa as the first African-American president. And while a quick one-night, one-stop visit might not produce the spectacle of a longer journey across the continent, it will surely generate global attention.

Among other things, Mr. Obama may visit Cape Coast Castle, the headquarters of the British slave trade on Africa’s Gold Coast. Captured Africans would pass through the castle’s “door of no return” as they were carted off to ships. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush visited African slave posts during their presidencies, but the imagery of an African American president visiting one promises to be far more profound ...

As they surveyed the possibilities, Kenya was ruled out. Although Mr. Obama went there three years ago, it has since descended into political turmoil. After a disputed election last year, ethnic violence erupted, leaving more than 1,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands fleeing their homes.

A coalition government formed with the opposition stopped the upheaval but has not resolved the underlying tensions. A United Nations investigation recently reported that more than 500 people had been killed by police death squads.

In choosing Ghana instead, the Obama team picked a bipartisan American favorite. President George W. Bush visited Accra last year and Ghana named a major new highway after him. Mr. Bush reciprocated with a rare State Dinner at the White House for Ghana’s then-president, John Kufuor. John Atta Mill succeeded Mr. Kufuor this year in the second peaceful handover of power in a region where coups are more common.

Thank You Activist Judges

Richard Just raises an interesting point about the historical role "activist" judges play:

I am late to this, but Maine Governor John Baldacci's explanation of why he changed his mind on gay marriage was fascinating--and shed some light on a question that has been hotly debated in liberal circles over the past few years: When it comes to gay marriage, does judicial activism help or hurt? From The New York Times:

Gov. John Baldacci of Maine signed a same-sex marriage bill on Wednesday minutes after the Legislature sent it to his desk, saying he had reversed his position because gay couples were entitled to the state Constitution's equal rights protections.

"It's not the way I was raised and it's not the way that I am," Mr. Baldacci, a Democrat, said in a telephone interview. "But at the same time I have a responsibility to uphold the Constitution. That's my job, and you can't allow discrimination to stand when it's raised to your level."

Baldacci is being very specific: He shifted his view because he decided that the status quo wasn't constitutional. This struck me as a noteworthy, and unusually clear, piece of evidence in the debate over the efficacy of judicial activism. Those of us who favor an active role for courts hardly see them as the only, or the primary, way of pushing liberal goals. We simply argue that progress in a liberal democracy is a complicated enterprise involving multiple players and multiple branches of government--and that, when it is clear history is headed in a certain direction, courts can often play a role in nudging forward other branches, not to mention public opinion. This is arguably what happened during the civil rights movement. Is the process working again? Ten years ago, I doubt any governor, especially one who was skeptical of gay marriage, would have been inclined to read his state's constitution as containing a right to gay marriage. What Baldacci's comment suggests is that, as judges across the country reinterpret equal protection clauses in light of our culture's changing understanding of homosexuality, they are not merely persuading themselves or their peers in other courts; they are also persuading those outside the judicial system.

Of course, it's just one governor, and it's just one comment. Still, it's a heartening development. So: Good for Governor Baldacci. And good for the judges who laid the intellectual groundwork for his decision.

"Sojourner Truth would be proud to see me, a descendant of slaves, serving as" FLOTUS

From Michelle Obama Watch:

Joined by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, First Lady Michelle Obama unveils the bust of Sojourner Truth in Emancipation Hall of the US Capitol today.

Sojourner Truth, the first Black woman to be honored with a bust at the Capitol, was a an abolitionist and crusader for women’s rights to vote. Truth met presidents Abraham Lincoln in 1864 and Ulysses S. Grant in 1870, and delivered her signature “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech at a women’s rights convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851.

To a loud and resounding applause, the First Lady said:

[O]ne can only imagine what Sojourner Truth, an outspoken, tell-it-like-it-is kind of woman—and we all know a little something about that, right—just to imagine what she would have to say about this incredible gathering, just looking down on this day, and thinking about the legacy she has left all of us—because we are all here because, as my husband says time and time again, we stand on the shoulders of giants like Sojourner Truth.

And just as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott would be pleased to know that we have a woman serving as the Speaker of the House of Representatives, I hope that Sojourner Truth would be proud to see me, a descendant of slaves, serving as the First Lady of the United States of America.

And just as many young boys and girls have walked through this Capitol—I see them now, and they see the bust of suffragists and hear the stories of the struggles of women, what they had to endure to gain the right to vote—now many young boys and girls, like my own daughters, will come to Emancipation Hall and see the face of a woman who looks like them.

Meet The New Ranking Minority Member Of The Judiciary Comm: Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (R-AL)

First, Rachel provides some background on his failed nomination to the Federal bench 23 years ago for being a racist (yes, before the very committee he's now going to the ranking member of):

Then Katie Koch updates the backgrounder:

The Hill brings word today that Senator Jeff Sessions will likely replace Arlen Specter as the ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, with a full GOP vote on the Alabama senator expected as early as tomorrow afternoon. Sessions leapfrogged more-senior member Chuck Grassley for the top spot, The Hill reports, because conservative groups "viewed Sessions as the better spokesman, and more likely to lead the Republican charge in questioning the [next Supreme Court] nominee."

Observers are already making reference to Sessions's contentious statements on race, which first surfaced when Reagan tapped him for the U.S. District Court in Alabama (the nomination ultimately never made it out of the GOP-controlled Judiciary Committee to the Senate floor). But for a more thorough history of Sessions's pesky habit of saying some pretty outlandish stuff, it's worth checking out Sarah Wildman's 2002 piece for TNR:

Since his election as a senator, Sessions has not done much to make amends for his past racial insensitivity. His voting record in the Senate has earned him consistent "F"s from the NAACP. He supported an ultimately unsuccessful effort to end affirmative action programs in the federal government (a measure so extreme that many conservatives were against it), he opposed hate-crimes laws, and he opposed a motion to investigate the disproportionate number of minorities in juvenile detention centers. Says Hillary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington bureau, "[Sessions's] voting record is disturbing. ... He has consistently opposed the bread-and-butter civil rights agenda."

But it has been on judicial nominees that Sessions has really made a name for himself. When Sessions grabbed Heflin's Senate seat in 1996, he also nabbed a spot on the Judiciary Committee. Serving on the committee alongside some of the senators who had dismissed him 16 years earlier, Sessions has become a cheerleader for the Bush administration's judicial picks, defending such dubious nominees as Charles Pickering, who in 1959 wrote a paper defending Mississippi's anti-miscegenation law, and Judge Dennis Shedd, who dismissed nearly every fair-employment civil rights case brought before him as a federal district court judge. Sessions called Pickering "a leader for racial harmony" and a "courageous," "quality individual" who was being used as a "political pawn." Regarding Shedd, he pooh-poohed the criticism, announcing that the judge "should have been commended for the rulings he has made," not chastised.

With "leaders" like this, it is no surprise that the GOP has so little appeal outside of the South.

Was Obama's Election Symbolic Or Substantitive Change? It Doesn't Matter, It's Working.

A very hopeful story, from the NY Times:

Although the civil rights movement gave Samuel Sallis equality under the law a long time ago, he was left wanting most of his life, he says, for the subtle courtesies and respect he thought would come with it. Being a working-class black man downtown here meant being mostly ignored, living a life invisible and unacknowledged in a larger white world.

Then Mr. Sallis, 69, noticed a change.

“I’ve been working downtown for 30 years, so I’ve got a good feeling for it,” Mr. Sallis said. “Since President Obama started campaigning, if I go almost anywhere, it’s: ‘Hi! Hello, how are you, sir?’ I’m talking about strangers. Calling me ‘sir.’ ”

He added: “It makes you feel different, like, hey — maybe we are all equals. I’m no different than before. It’s just that other people seem to be realizing these things all around me.”

In dozens of interviews in seven states over the last several days, black men and women like Mr. Sallis said they were feeling more optimistic about race relations than even a year ago, when Mr. Obama emerged as a serious presidential contender after a string of primary and caucus victories. Many whites said they were feeling better, too, expressing an invigorated sense of openness toward people of other races ...

Mr. Sallis said, “it feels like there’s a possibility now that wasn’t there before.”

In Tampa, Fla., Milton Patrick, 33, an auditor who is black, went to a baseball game this spring for the first time at the invitation of his white colleagues. In Karen Jackson’s multiracial Los Angeles office, where race, politics and religion were once taboo subjects, Ms. Jackson, a black woman, said people were engaging her in friendly and meaningful discussions. And in Brooklyn, Shel Harris, a black man, said he dropped his “skeptical, more on guard” attitude toward whites after working alongside so many on the Obama campaign.

“Whenever they said something, I was always looking out for their ulterior motives,” said Mr. Harris, 62, a retired phone company worker. “Now I find that I take white people’s statements more on face value.”

The interviews reflect findings in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, in which two-thirds of Americans said race relations were generally good, with the percentage of blacks who said so doubling since July.

In just over 100 days, Mr. Obama’s presidency seems to have done much to alter the greater American public’s perception of race relations.

And perhaps, in some cases, even the reality.

Rachel Maddow's Interview w/ Matthew Shepard's Mom on Foxx's 'Insensitivity & Ignorance'

Judy Shepard responds to NC's Virginia Foxx hoax comment (btw, the House rejected Foxx's argument and passed the Hate Crime legislation by a large, 75 vote margin):

CNN Assesses Obama's "Swagga"

This is both amusing and pathetic at the same time:

Sadly, It's A Grey World

Ahmadinejad At UN Conference On Racism

Tea Parties Were "racism straight up"

The Countdown interview with Janeane Garofalo that was discussed by the media critics in this post:

Race a Dominant Theme At Latin American Summit

From the Wash Post:

In presenting himself at a summit here as an equal partner to Latin America, President Obama is drawing on his race as evidence of U.S. social progress and of his own affinity for the region's poor.

Race occupies a far larger and more troubled place in Latin American politics than it does in Europe, where Obama rarely mentioned his ethnic background this month during his first overseas trip as president.

He is doing so more often here at the Summit of the Americas, in part to push an agenda that, among other issues, seeks to address the region's income disparity between rich and poor, the widest in the world.

In talking about his race and the backgrounds of his counterparts, Obama is associating himself more closely than his predecessors did with Latin America's indigenous, black and mixed-race underclass, which has long identified the United States with economic policies that benefit the elite of European descent far more than them.

The approach has helped to reduce, though not eliminate, the expected political strife between Obama and such populist leaders as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Bolivia's Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of his country.

Those men explicitly mentioned Obama's race in a closed-door meeting Saturday as a sign that U.S. policy toward the region may change, according to several U.S. and Latin American officials who attended.

"The president put it on the table very explicitly" at the opening ceremony, said a senior Obama administration official who participates in closed-door meetings with the president. "Inequity in this hemisphere is extreme, and a hemisphere blessed with a lot of resources should not be suffering the way it is. Race is a part of that in many cases" ...

Obama has mentioned his race as part of a Latin America agenda broader than the Bush administration's, which focused primarily on promoting an economic policy of free trade, government privatizations and lower public debt. The mix became known as the Washington Consensus, a term used as an epithet in much of Latin America.

The last Summit of the Americas, in 2005, was dominated by differences over trade, which the Bush administration saw as the best way to promote economic growth. But much of the region's recent growth has been driven by exports of natural resources, often controlled by small groups of families or foreign companies. The income gap has widened in some countries.

By contrast, Obama announced Saturday that the United States will contribute to a new $100 million micro-finance loan program for the region. And during a meeting with 14 Caribbean leaders the previous evening, he said "bottom-up growth" should be the approach each leader takes to reduce poverty, a senior administration official said.

The Role Of The Courts

From the NY Times:

“The concern about creating another Roe v. Wade looms large,” said Nathaniel Persily, who teaches law and political science at Columbia. “At least five members of this court, if not more, would probably be reluctant to weigh in on this controversy, especially given the progress that is being made in state legislatures, state courts and public opinion.”

Court decisions on issues like school desegregation, abortion and same-sex marriage can raise questions about the judicial branch usurping the democratic process. But there are strategic issues as well. The Supreme Court not only decides cases but also decides which cases to decide. In jurisprudence as in life, timing is everything.

Even some strong supporters of abortion rights believe, for instance, that Roe went too far too fast and may have been counterproductive. One of them is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“The court bit off more than it could chew,” Justice Ginsburg said in remarks after a speech at Princeton in October. It would have been enough, she said, to strike down the extremely restrictive Texas law at issue in Roe and leave further questions for later cases. “The legislatures all over the United States were moving on this question,” she added. “The law was in a state of flux.”

Roe shut those developments down and created a backlash that lasts to this day. “The Supreme Court’s decision was a perfect rallying point for people who disagreed with the notion that it should be a woman’s choice,” Justice Ginsburg said. “They could, instead of fighting in the trenches legislature by legislature, go after this decision by unelected judges.”

Until the Vermont Legislature acted on Tuesday, victories for same-sex marriage also came only from courts, but they were state courts. These courts based their decisions on state constitutions, which, moreover, means that the United States Supreme Court almost certainly could not review those particular rulings, even if it were inclined to.

Successive state court lawsuits from supporters of same-sex marriage reflect a strategy that is pragmatic about building local support, said Andrew Koppelman, a law professor at Northwestern ...

“It’s courts that started this,” Mr. Koppelman said of the same-sex marriage movement. “The courts are able to make a difference if there is a social movement that could go either way.”

Patrick J. Egan, who teaches politics and public policy at New York University, said the aftermath of controversial court decisions tended to follow a pattern. Immediately after a decision, he said, the mere fact of judicial endorsement of a position increases public acceptance slightly. Then politicians’ initial reactions can help sway public opinion.

The pattern on same-sex marriage, Professor Egan said, is that “Republicans react very opposed and Democrats react very, very neutrally.” As a consequence, he said, “opposition to same-sex marriage shoots up a bit in the month or two or three after a big court decision.”

Turkish TV Anchor Dons Blackface To Address Obama

Cultural asssumptions are a very tricky thing:

From the NY Times:

When video appeared online this week of a Turkish television anchor in blackface, reporting on President Barack Obama’s speech to the Turkish parliament, American bloggers leapt to comment on it — despite having little or no idea what the anchor was saying or what he could possibly have been thinking when he applied the makeup.

After posting the video, bloggers from the left and the right of the American political spectrum — including the Huffington Post, Town Hall, Scoop This and Think Progress, among others — started trying to make sense of it ...

Here at The Lede, we were fortunate enough to be able to turn for help to Sebnem Arsu, a Turkish journalist who reports for The Times from Istanbul. Sebnem was kind enough to watch the clip for us and give us an explanation via e-mail. She says that what we are watching was broadcast on a channel called “Flash TV,” which generally presents the news in a sensational, tabloid style. Sebnem writes: “They tried to be funny, but obviously, they have no idea what kind of a message their ‘joke’ would convey in your part of the world.”

As to what motivated the anchor to don blackface to make his comment on Mr. Obama’s address to Turkey’s Parliament, Sebnem explains that he was playing off a Turkish proverb that says, roughly, that a person who asks for a favor darkens his face, but a person who then refuses to grant that person a favor has an even darker face. The idea seems to be something like what English-speakers mean when they say that they are “red-faced” with embarrassment. According to Sebnem:

In the traditional culture here, it has not been an easy act to ask something from a person, like “would you please do this or that for me.” It was even considered to be shameful to a certain extent, so “darkening the face” is like hiding behind your real face, or putting a mask on, to hide your shame.

However, if the person facing this demand, knowing how hard it has been for the other person to ask for it, refuses to help, then it’s even more shameful, and can only be concealed by a darker look, or mask.

Sebnem adds that in common usage, the phrase is given a racist turn, so that a person who refuses to help someone else is said to have a face that is not just dark, but “Black or Arab.”

Sebnem explains that the reason for the blackface, then, is that the anchor is asking Mr. Obama for a series of favors: “demanding Mr. Obama’s support for Turkey’s fight against Kurdish rebels, the country’s bid to join the European Union and its rejection of Armenian claims that Turkey had committed genocide.”

“That's the America I want you to know”

From the Politico's report on Obama's second Town Hall meeting, this time with Turkish college students:

Obama has been on the hustings all week, engaged in a furious effort via speeches and town halls for public consumption and closed-door sit-downs with heads of state to convince regular people and elites alike that, as White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel put it Tuesday morning, “America is back.”

Much as he had at other stops, Obama sold the United States in part by conceding its flaws. But here he also made a concerted effort to portray an America that was striving to reach its ideals. And in this, he cited himself, noting that America is a place “where anybody has a chance to make it if they try.”

“If that wasn't true, then somebody named Barack Hussein Obama would not be elected president of the United States of America,” he said, repeating his rarely used middle name for the second time on this trip. “That's the America I want you to know.”

Sunday Afternoon Relaxation

DNA Evidence Frees Black Man Convicted Of Bear Attack

"White people with blue eyes" Caused The World Economic Crisis

Jill Tubman reacts to the flare up Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva caused with these comments:

 This is a real shot across the bow for those world leaders heading to the G20 Summit next week. There are a couple of translations here of what President Lula actually said. Both are pretty special, hilarious & strangely satisfying especially after U.S. conservatives’ craven attempt to lay the blame for the world’s economic struggles on the Community Re-investment Act (CRA) and black and brown people who dared to try and buy a house. It was a typical, “blame the niggers” strategy, so obviously ridiculous given the role of predatory lending targeted at minorities in the subprime mortgage meltdown that it was disproven and discounted quickly. The other layer of irony here is that Lula is considered white in Brazil.

Remember This?

To those who don't think yesterday's NY Post cartoon is rascist:

 

Remember this rascist, anti-Obama video (h/t to Turborama)?