Chris Matthews on Obama’s SOTU: “I Forgot He Was Black!”
Chris Matthews is the front runner for the 2010 SMH award.
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thaswassup
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thaswassup
Proposed All White Basketball Team Not Sitting Well With Some in Augusta
"A black man would rather miss than look bad," says Billy Hoyle.
Augusta, GA—This is not the type of news that Augusta Mayor Deke Copenhaver wanted to hear the day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Mayor Deke Copenhaver: “I am a sports enthusiast, myself, but I just don’t think that idea is going to fly in Augusta, Georgia.”
It’s the idea of an all white professional basketball league. According to a press release from the All-American Basketball Alliance, the group is looking to target southern cities such as Augusta, Albany and Chattanooga, Tennessee to form a team.
Mayor Copenhaver: “We have done to much to really foster a spirit of inclusiveness in this city.”
The press release goes on to say that only natural born United States citizens and players, whose parents are both Caucasian, can join the league.
Dip Metress, ASU Head Men’s Basketball Coach: “Nobody is going to put money behind this. Basketball is an international game. We have three, four international players here and coaches international.”
Don “Moose” Lewis is the league commissioner and says that “white basketball players” are essentially shutout of conventional professional basketball due to the growth of non-organized play on the court. This statement is not sitting well mistress.
Metress: “The game has changed throughout the years. In a sense, it’s more athletic games, but the fundamentals are not eroding.”
Lewis also states players on professional teams are carrying guns, attacking fans, and fundamentally sound white players are a vanishing species.
Mayor Copenhaver: “You still see lots of players who are fundamentally sound that basketball is played in a bunch of different fashions. You have five different positions. You have a point guard who distributes the ball, so I think basketball is basketball.”
Source: WJBF TV
H/T to @rawkaFELa
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thaswassup
Barack Obama effigy hanged in Georgia
The US secret service is investigating an apparent effigy of Barack Obama hung from a storefront in Georgia. Local television news showed what appeared to be a black doll at the end of a noose on the main road in Plains, home of Jimmy Carter, the former Democratic president, Georgia governor and Nobel peace prize winner.Witnesses said the doll bore a sign with Obama’s name. The effigy was quickly removed by the fire department after it was discovered on Saturday.
The election of Obama, the first African-American president, incensed US racists and his policies have provoked angry conservatives to compare him to Hitler and Stalin. But the number of threats to his life so far has been roughly similar to those against Bill Clinton and George Bush at a similar point in their presidencies, the US secret service director told a House of Representatives committee last month.
The tiny town of Plains, 120 miles south of Atlanta, is proud of its connection to Carter, president from 1977 to 1981, and residents said they hoped news of the effigy would not overshadow the link. Georgia was long a hotbed of racial animosity and when Carter was inaugurated governor in 1971 he declared: “The time for racial discrimination is over.”
In October 2008 two students in Kentucky hung an effigy of Obama in what they called a Halloween prank. They were arrested, but charges were later dropped. During Bush’s presidency crowds in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and across the Muslim world frequently burned him in effigy.
Source: The Guardian
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thaswassup
A “White Christmas” in the Philippines
H/T @rawkaFELa via ThinkProgress.org
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thaswassup
HP COMPUTERS ARE RACIST!
H/T to @LuzvimindaUzuri
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thaswassup
Promotion day arrives for white Conn. firefighters
NEW HAVEN, Conn. – A group of white firefighters who won a discrimination case before the U.S. Supreme Court are receiving their promotion badges Thursday in a ceremony that provides symbolic recognition of their victory.The high court ruled in June that New Haven officials violated white firefighters’ civil rights when they threw out 2003 test results in which too few minorities did well.
The case became an issue in confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who ruled against the white firefighters when she served on a federal appeals court.
Fourteen firefighters who sued are being promoted Thursday to lieutenant and captain. Another 10 firefighters, including four minorities, who took the 2003 tests but were not plaintiffs in the court case also will be promoted.
Dennis Thompson, an attorney for black firefighters who tried unsuccessfully last month to block the promotions of the plaintiffs, said Wednesday that his clients congratulate the newly promoted firefighters.
“Nobody is going to say these guys are unqualified,” Thompson said.
But Thompson, who is trying to intervene in federal court in New Haven to challenge the validity of the exams now that they have been certified, said the fight is not over because the black firefighters were not heard. In other cases cities have been required to make more promotions than planned, he said.
“They understand this is a 15-round fight,” Thompson said of his clients. “You don’t decide who won in Round 3.”
That prompted an angry reaction from Karen Torre, attorney for the white firefighters.
“Attorney Thompson’s provocations and promise, to me, only demonstrates the need for the Supreme Court to take up the issue of the constitutionality of that provision of Title VII that allows such people to paralyze local governments and the civil service and hold the public hostage to endless litigation over the issue of race,” Torre said in a statement.
David Rosen, an attorney for a black New Haven firefighter who is suing the city and arguing he was unfairly denied a promotion, said Wednesday that his client, Michael Briscoe, is happy for the firefighters being promoted and has congratulated several of them.
“He’s not trying to take a slot away from one of the people being promoted,” Rosen said. “There are other vacant positions.”
Frank Ricci, the lead plaintiff among the white firefighters who won and is being promoted, told the Senate in July during Sotomayor’s confirmation process that the lower court ruling against him “divides people who don’t wish to be divided along racial lines.”
Ricci told the panel that “achievement is neither limited nor determined by one’s race but by one’s skills, dedication, commitment and character.”
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thaswassup
Clippers Announcers’ Controversial Comments About Hamed Haddadi
Fox Sports Prime Ticket suspended announcer Ralph Lawler and analyst Michael Smith earlier in the week for offending some viewers with their comments about Memphis Grizzlies center Hamed Haddadi. Smith spoke of the Iranian center: “You’re sure it’s not Borat’s older brother?… If they ever make a movie about Haddadi, I’m going to get Sacha Baron Cohen to play the part.” After Haddadi passed the ball to a teammate for an assist, Lawler said, “I guess those Iranians can pass the ball.” Both announcers were suspended one game.
Source: Huffington Post
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thaswassup
Obama: US must reverse course with Indians
By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer Ben Feller, Associated Press Writer – 50 mins agoWASHINGTON – President Barack Obama assured American Indians on Thursday that they have a place in his White House and on his agenda, telling tribal leaders their marginalized community deserves more from its government.
“I get it. I’m on your side,” Obama told the largest gathering of tribal leaders in U.S. history.
Obama devoted part of his own time Thursday and even more of his administration’s attention toward renewing relations with American Indians. He opened a conference that drew leaders from 386 tribal nations — the first meeting of its kind in 15 years — and he ordered every Cabinet agency to take more steps toward more cooperation.
The president returned to the event at the Interior Department late in the day for closing remarks, as scheduled, but he altered his message to address a deadly shooting rampage at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas. He said his administration would get answers to every question about the incident.
Obama’s outreach to tribal leaders amounted to a campaign promise kept from a president who got significant support from Native Americans on his way to the White House.
It comes as American Indians remain entrenched in a class-action lawsuit against the federal government, claiming the government has long swindled them out of land royalties.
Obama said he didn’t blame tribal leaders for skepticism about another politician offering hopeful words. But he said he has no interest in going through the motions of just holding a summit with them.
The president seemed to connect best when he told his audience that he was like them: an “outsider” who grew up without a father, moved around a lot, and understood what it was like to struggle and be ignored.
“You will not be forgotten as long as I’m in this White House,” Obama said to a sustained ovation.
Whether that promise results in action over the next few years will be the test. In a question-and-answer session, audience members pressed Obama for government help on a litany of matters, from more respect for sovereignty rights to environmental cleanup to concerns about offshore drilling.
One leader pleaded with Obama to find a way to make the federal commitment lasting, so that it would not be at the whim of White House elections. In the process, the speaker predicted Obama would win re-election, which apparently stuck with the president as he pledged to enforce the laws of the land.
“For the next eight years — the next four years at least, let me not jump the gun,” Obama said, catching himself. He finished the thought more narrowly by saying that for “the next three years and one month” of his term that he would ensure a new relationship is in place.
During the conference, agency officials and tribal leaders discussed problems facing American Indians, including economic development, education, health care, public safety and housing.
The president signed a memo calling on every cabinet agency to give him a detailed plan to improve the relationship between the government and tribal communities.
He has made good on pledges to hold the summit and to give American Indians a prominent voice on his senior staff — and he reminded the audience of that.
“We respect you as a man of your word,” responded Jefferson Keel, president of the National Congress of American Indians.
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thaswassup
Alien Halloween costume offends immigrants
AP Hispanic Affairs Writer
MIAMI —
A Halloween costume that depicts a space creature in orange prison garb emblazoned with the words “illegal alien” is reigniting debate over a long-used term based on the U.S. government’s designation of all foreigners as aliens.
The dispute has immigrant advocates calling on retailers to pull the costume from its shelves, while a group that supports strict immigration laws say it’s all a to-do over nothing, with freedom of speech being turned upside down by political correctness.
Since Friday, when the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights in Los Angeles first raised the issue, companies including Target, Walgreens and eBay have removed the costume from their inventory. Still, many local retailers continue to stock the costume that also comes with a “green” card – which technically makes the alien legal.
At costume stores in Miami, the responses have been mixed.
Don King, whose mother immigrated from Cuba, bought pirate and Homer Simpson costumes Tuesday at Halloween USA in midtown Miami, where the costume is on sale but has attracted few customers. “It’s a joke,” King said. “I really don’t think much of it.”
A few miles away in the Little Havana neighborhood, workers at a popular costume store said it was not something they would carry because it was discriminatory. They do stock a human taco costume, replete with a Mariachi hat.
Cashier Carmen Torres, who recalled facing discrimination after arriving from Cuba as a young girl in the 1960s, said the costume was tasteless. “They haven’t done anything bad. You can punish those who are criminals, but not people who are trying to, trying to work,” Torres said.
Target has said it sold the costume online only and that it was posted by accident though it did not meet the company’s standards. eBay said it asked sellers to remove the costume because it “does not allow items that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual, or religious intolerance, or promote organizations with such views.”
Jorge-Mario Cabrera, a spokesman for the immigrant coalition, said the costume “perpetuates this idea we have about undocumented immigrants as alien foreigners, strangers, scary.”
Cabrera said he knew the costume could be taken as a play on words but the jumpsuit was too close to what many immigrants must wear in detention centers, “where they can spend months at a time, and where there is a lot of suffering.”
“That the creature was holding a green card was a stab at a (broader) community,” he said, because it suggests even with a legal document, immigrants are still scary criminals.
William Gheen, head of the North Carolina-based political action committee Americans for Legal Immigration, said efforts to get stores not to sell the costume amounted to an attack on freedom of speech. He urged Americans to buy the costumes in protest.
“I looked at the costume and thought it was kind of funny. The only thing that wasn’t funny was how many illegal immigrants are in this country,” said Gheen, who has given speeches suggesting Latin Americans are bringing an epidemic of tuberculosis to the U.S., despite government figures showing the illness is at an all-time low.
Gheen said he didn’t understand why people would have a problem with words used in federal law.
“This is a battle over psycholinguistics,” he said, referring to the study of the relationship between language and the psychology or behavior of those who use it. “Nobody is supposed to be able to use the words ‘illegal aliens’ … except in the government literature.”
There’s a big difference between how words are used officially and what people say in popular language, said Charleton McIlwain, professor of race and media at New York University.
“When people (informally) talk about immigrants, the term aliens seems to almost exclusively get used for Mexicans or other Latin Americans. We don’t talk about Canadian aliens,” he said.
Many major media organizations, including The Associated Press, no longer use the term “Illegal Alien” unless quoting an individual or government text.
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chris
where can i get 1 of these costumes this shit is funny
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thaswassup
Groups upset man wouldn’t marry interracial couple
By MARY FOSTER, Associated Press Writer
NEW ORLEANS – Two civil and constitutional rights organizations called on a Louisiana justice of the peace to resign Friday after he refused to marry an interracial couple, saying any children the couple might have would suffer.
The leaders of the American Civil Liberties Union in Louisiana and the Center for Constitutional Rights and Justice in New York said Keith Bardwell, a white justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish in the southeastern part of the state, should quit immediately. Earlier this month, Bardwell refused to issue a marriage license to Beth Humphrey, who is white, and Terence McKay, who is black.
“Perhaps he’s worried the kids will grow up and be president,” said Bill Quigley, director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Justice, referring to President Barack Obama, the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas.
Obama’s deputy press secretary Bill Burton echoed those sentiments.
“I’ve found that actually the children of biracial couples can do pretty good,” Burton told reporters aboard Air Force One as it flew to Texas.
Marjorie Esman of the ACLU said the group was calling on Bardwell to resign “before he infringes on the constitutional rights of another person.”
Bardwell did not return calls left on his answering machine Friday. He has said he always asks if a couple is interracial and, if they are, refers them to another justice of the peace.
“No one’s ever complained about it before,” Bardwell said Thursday. “I do it to protect the children. The kids are innocent and I worry about their futures.”
Humphrey and McKay were eventually married by another justice of the peace, but are now looking into legal action against Bardwell.
Humphrey said she called Bardwell on Oct. 6 to ask about a marriage license. She said Bardwell’s wife told her that Bardwell would not sign marriage licenses for interracial couples.
Bardwell maintains he can recuse himself from marrying people. Quigley disagreed.
“A justice of the peace is legally obligated to serve the public, all of the public,” Quigley said. “Racial discrimination has been a violation of Louisiana and U.S. law for decades. No public official has the right to pick and choose which laws they are going to follow.”
The ACLU on Thursday asked the Louisiana Judiciary Commission to investigate Bardwell. The nine-member commission is charged with investigating judges and lawyers in Louisiana. A commission spokeswoman said investigations were confidential and would not comment.
If the commission recommends action to the Louisiana Supreme Court, the matter would become public.
Tangipahoa Parish President Gordon Burgess said Bardwell’s views were not consistent with his or those of the local government. But as an elected official, Bardwell was not under the supervision of the parish government.
“However, I am certainly very disappointed that anyone representing the people of Tangipahoa Parish, particularly an elected official, would take such a divisive stand,” Burgess said in an e-mail. “I would hope that Mr. Bardwell would consider offering his resignation if he is unable to serve all of the people of his district and our parish.”
Bardwell, a Republican, has served as justice of peace for 34 years. He said he has run without opposition each time, but had decided earlier not to run again. His current term expires Dec. 31, 2014.
Source: Yahoo News/AP
By 
chris is discussing. 
dreamsburnred 2:51 am on December 26, 2009 Permalink |
Computer bugs…gotta love em.