After this past Sunday’s amazing Raider victory against the Philadelphia Eagles, a whole lot of folks had to bow down and acknowledge the greatness of the Silver and Black.. Political pundit Marc Lamont Hill is one of them.. Here’s the logo he must adorn for the next 7 days
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So last night I’m sitting here watching the news and I hear this crazy report about how all these companies that we helped bail out, first under former President George Bush and then later under President Obama, are on pace to make huge profits and give out record bonuses to their management teams. Note I said management, not your average Joe Schmoe worker who pushes papers or pushes a mop. While most of us can barely pay car fare to go to work (tolls are rising to 5 bucks here in the Bay Area), Goldman Sach’s management will be receiving a whooping 23 BILLION dollars in bonuses. 23 Billion dollars…I want everyone to sit there and think about that for a minute.
Think about that as I did and wonder why all these people I know who never paid a bill late in their lives suddenly had their line of credit decreased. My boy’s business had to let a few people go because one of the banks we helped bail out suddenly couldn’t give him and his business credit in spite of his stellar record and A credit rating..This scenario is playing out all over the country.
Meanwhile back at the Wall Street ranch-23 billion dollars for Goldman Sachs? 23 billion for a company that was failing and needed us to come to the rescue?
23 Billion dollars-I’m sitting here listening to this crap and looking at a medical bill for 1400 bucks I have no way of paying anytime soon. I couldn’t afford it when I got severely sick a couple of months ago and had no choice but to visit an emergency room. My ‘great’ insurance-(privately owned and not government run) wouldn’t cover me for an emergency out of state. It was on me they told me. But hey thats another story. The point is I couldn’t afford to pay it in August and I can’t afford to pay it now. I needed a stimulus package and couldn’t get it. My job needed one-None was given. I needed some credit mine was cut. Thank you Wells Fargo. Meanwhile back at the Wall Street ranch- Goldman Sachs management are getting 23 Billion dollars..
Where are all the Tea Party protestors? Why aren't they in front of Goldman Sachs?
I guess the thing that really eats at me most was hearing about Goldman Sachs and thinking about all these ‘orchestrated’ Tea Party gatherings. I say orchestrated because when you went you heard the a lot of talk about greed and corruption and tax dollars being wasted. You saw all sorts of posters with demonic pictures of President Obama denouncing him. And I’ll be honest, if Goldman Sachs are his people and he has people from that firm all up in his inner circle and administration, some hard hitting criticism is due. You’ll get no defense from me about Obama and his relationship to Goldman Sachs… With that being said, based upon the supposed outrage and call to action to get this country back on track as underlined by the Tea Party folks, my question is ‘Where art thou?’ When’s the next Tea Party?
Where’s the tea party thats gonna be kicked off in front of Goldman Sachs Headquarters on 85 Broad Street in Lower Manhattan? Since its been said that President Obama really doesn’t run the country and he’s controlled by rich, powerful wall street bankers, where are all my shotgun carrying, ultra patriotic Tea Party folks now? Where’s the September 12th Protestors? Remember them? Didn’t they show up with “millions’) in front of the white house’? (Note: It really wasn’t millions it was more like ten thousand, but we’ll say millions to make them happy…Please keep in mind it would be real expensive for those drug industry marketing firms that were organizing the September 12th Protest along with the Townhalls and Tea Party gatherings to hire millions to come out to a protest-but lets not digress). Obviously we don’t see these people confronting the ‘real beast’ and the real criminals…
Memo to Glenn Beck: Goldman Sach's CEO Lloyd Craig Blankfein has done more harm to us than Van Jones ever did or could
So as I was saying where’s Sean Hannity? Lou Dobbs? Rush Limbaugh? Has anyone seen them? Are they directing their viewers and listeners to show and protest? Are they getting the tens of thousands of ‘honest, poor, hard working citizens who carried posters with Obama looking like Adolph Hitler to show up in front of Goldman Sach’s headquarters carrying Hitler-isque pictures of CEO Lloyd Craig Blankfein? Do their listeners even know who he is? Where’s the Fox News ambush team to jump in the face of a bonus receiving Goldman Sach’s manager demanding they give back tax payer money? Isn’t Goldman Sachs who we should be confronting? Where’s the outrage?
Are there any ‘Joker-like pictures of David A. Viniar the Chief Financial Officer of Goldman Sachs being posted around town? Weren’t well known conspiracy pundits like Alex Jones (The Obama Deception) just two months ago offering 50 thousand dollars to people who could post up Obama the Joker flyers? Is he offering anything similar for us to confront the ‘evil folks’ at Goldman Sachs who pull the economic purse strings not just for Obama but for many of us as well?
Where’s Glenn Beck‘s hunt for wrongdoers of this magnitude? Where’s the weeks worth of expose to take down those who are really doing ‘treasonous’ and treacherous things that harm the working class America? Does anyone think that Glenn Beck targets like; Van Jones, Mark Lloyd or Yosi Sergent are the ones disrupting American life or is it the dip shits giving out billions of dollars in bonuses to their management teams after we bailed them out? Will any of those billions be stimulating your economy anytime soon? 23 billion dollars in bonuses folks..23 Billion.
The Tea party protesters and their contradictory ways aren’t the only ones we need to take to task. Let’s talk about your everyday run in the mill hoodlum. Lets make sure he has his priorities straight.
Memo to Thugs: Stop robbing poor people in the hood-try Wall Street
Memo to Wannabe Gangstas & Thugs: Stop robbing people in the hood. You wanna rob somebody? Find a one of these Goldman Sachs bonus baby cats. You wanna show how gangster you are? Post up on 85 Broad street or 30 Hudson street in Jersey City . If not in New York there’s a Goldman Sachs in a city near you. Whatever you do stop robbing and terrorizing poor folks in the community who can barely afford a pot to piss in and bring the drama to the folks who have more money than our entire community combined.
When these Wall Street barons get their bonus checks tell them to ‘Ante up’. Tell them to ‘run’ their loot and don’t feel bad. After all, that’s what these bankers did to us. Late last year they strong armed tax payers and told the American people they better give them stimulus money or the economy would tank.
If folks recall, when Congress took their initial vote on giving a bailout the answer was ‘Hell Naw’. That’s when these Wall Street crooks ran around and threatened to destroy the economy. Film maker Michael Moore outlines this in his movie ‘Capitalism a Love Story’ The end result was Congress reversed its vote and we wound up giving away trillions. We gave away all that money and the economy is still tanking for far too many of us…
23 Billion.. do you know how many people can have their basic needs met with that money? It’ll be interesting to see how millionaire broadcasters in the media suddenly get quiet and won’t cajole the people into action. Expect more balloonboy coverage and beauty Queen breast plant stories. This is what they are talking about today on local TV news stations in NY home to Goldman Sachs this morning as I write this.. Expect outlandish excuses used to defend the bonuses received by these Goldman Sach numbskulls-23 Billion
Something to ponder..
-Davey D-
I recently heard some grumblings from some who are suddenly feeling protective of CNN pundit Lou Dobbs as they fell back on the free speech argument.
The basic gist of the argument is as follows; “Lou Dobbs has a right to his opinion and what is taking place by Latino organizations rallying and demanding he be dropped is censorship”.
Noting could be further from the truth. Lou Dobbs does in deed have a right to his opinion, but not when it comes to spreading lies and half truths to millions on the airwaves and people can’t rebut. It’s interesting to hear people crying in defense of Lou Dobbs , while those very same people and forces have remained astonishingly silent when former CNN host Glenn Beck led a witch hunt against Green for All activist Van Jones.
Jone’s ‘free speech was called into question from the bully pulpit of the corporate airwaves resulting in Jones resigning from his post at the White House. many feel like he was forced out. Beck has since gone on to continue his witch hunt for people he personally feels have uttered the wrong ideological opinions past and present.
All it took was a couple of articles and a well placed letter from the widow of the cop who was killed and Hill was fired. News of his dismissal came to Hill via news media. He was never called and personally informed until after the fact. It didn’t matter that Hill had a right to his opinion or that Mumia has always maintained his innocence and millions around the world believe and support him. None of that ‘free speech mattered’.
Former Fox News pundit Dr Marc Lamont Hill
It was just last week that media pundits launched a campaign to ulster popular media analyst Marc Lamont Hill who is one of the few progressive voices that regularly appeared on Fox News. The two ultra-conservative pundits took issue with Hill’s support of Mumia Abu Jamal who sits on death row and Assata Shakur who escaped the law and is exiled in Cuba. These pundits went to a Fox shareholders meeting confronted News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch and demanded that he get rid of an employee who they felt was out of bounds for supporting a convicted ‘cop killer’.
How this connects to CNN even though these recent happenings occurred on rival Fox, is that as a news media outlets it hasn’t used its bully pulpit to demand that such distortions and McCarthy era tactics cease. It remained silent or in this instance has participated via Lou Dobbs whose insidious rhetoric has helped foster a climate that has led to a spike in hate crimes. With that in mind, there should be absolutely no objections to groups demanding Dobbs be dropped. The fact that Latinos groups have to hold rallies in 18 cities, get petitions and go through all sorts of hoops versus a couple of media pundits pushing their strongly felt opinions on the airwaves is a clear indication just how imblanced things are..
-something to ponder-
Davey D
Today CNN premiers ‘Latino in America’ Premiere, Nation-Wide Rallies Planned to Demand CNN to Dump Lou Dobbs!
You can join the efforts! Scroll down for a list of cities and make sure you download your signs!!!
Download Graphics here:
Community leaders, politicians and faith groups in 18 of the top U.S. Latino media markets are set to rally together in local protest events on Wednesday, October 21stin an effort to increase the pressure on CNN to remove Lou Dobbs from its programming. Calling CNN hypocritical for airing “Latino in America,” an advertising-driven special on Latinos, while at the same time hosting the anti-immigrant rhetoric of Lou Dobbs, the events are part of our BastaDobbs.com campaign, a coalition of Latino organizations from across the country that is led by online advocacy group Presente.org.
“Our message to CNN is clear: You cannot have it both ways. It’s either promotion of hatred by Lou Dobbs or real news regarding the Latino community,” said Isabel Garcia, a prominent civil and human rights attorney in Arizona who is highlighted in the “Latino in America” series and who is also participating in the BastaDobbs.com effort.
“Lou Dobbs abuses the CNN platform to dehumanize and spread fear about Latinos and immigrants. It is no surprise that hard-working Latinos in this country are increasingly victims of hate-motivated violence,” added Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles(CHIRLA). “CNN must be accountable to one of the largest minority groups in the United States if it seeks to gain their following and respect”.
On Wednesday, press conferences and public actions threat of Lou Dobbs on CNN are planned these locations!
ALBUQUERQUE, NM
12 PM NOON @ National Hispanic Cultural Center
1701 4th St SW, Albuquerque, NM 87102
ATLANTA, GA
10 AM @ CNN Building Downtown
190 Marietta St. Atlanta, GA 30303
BOSTON, MA
11 AM @ Massachusetts State House
24 Beacon St. Boston, MA 02133
CHICAGO, IL
12 PM NOON @ Casa Michoacan
1638 S. Blue Island Ave. Chicago, IL 60608
DENVER, CO
12 PM NOON @ Colorado State Capital
200 E Colfax Ave. Denver, CO 80203
GREENVILLE, NC
12 PM NOON @NCCE Lenoir County Center
1791 Hwy 11/55, Kinston, NC 28504
HOUSTON, TX
11:30 AM @Houston City Council
900 Bagby St. Houston, TX 77002
LAS VEGAS, NV
5 PM @ Hermandad Mexicana Transnacional
740 N. Eastern Ave.- Suite 110, Las Vegas, NV 89101
LOS ANGELES, CA
10 AM @ Carecen
2845 West 7th St. Los Angeles, CA 90005
MIAMI, FL
12 PM NOON @ Center for Immigrant Orientation
2610 SW 8th St. Miami, FL 33135
NEW YORK, NY
4 PM @ CNN Building Downtown
10 Columbus Cir. New York, NY 10023
PHOENIX, AZ
12 PM NOON @ 802 N. 7th St. Phoenix, AZ 85004
SACRAMENTO, CA
12 PM NOON @ Cesar Chavez Plaza Park
J St & 10th St, Sacramento CA 95814
SAN ANTONIO, TX
12 PM NOON @ Esperanza Peace & Justice Center
922 San Pedro, San Antonio, TX 78212
SAN DIEGO, CA
12 PM NOON @ Offices of American Friends Service Committee
3275 Market St, San Diego, CA 92102
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
12 PM NOON @ Sun Rise Restaurant
3126 24th St. San Francisco, CA 94110
TUCSON, AZ
12 PM NOON @ El Tiradito in Old Barrio
on South Main St. between W. Cushing St. & W. Simpson St. Downtown Tucson, AZ 85701
ALBOR RUIZ – NY LOCAL
Readmore: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/10/18/2009-10-18_lou_dobbs_ruins_cnns_latino_program_aim.html#ixzz0UOaB9E7z
In a few days CNN will launch its ambitious “Latino in America” series. Hosted by the popular Soledad O’Brien, the heavily promoted four-hour program will air on Oct. 21 and 22.
“Witness the evolution of a country as Latinos change America, and in return, America changes Latinos,” is how CNN entices potential viewers on its Web site. The series is a serious effort to capture a larger share of the Hispanic market – and according to some who have seen it, a worthy one.
Ironically, the series comes at a time when CNN has a huge trust problem with Latinos – and its name is Lou Dobbs.
Dobbs, some say, has thrown ethics overboard and has made a career out of vilifying immigrants.
“The truth is that CNN already airs a nightly program on Latinos in America. It’s called ‘Lou Dobbs Tonight‘, and for 260 hours a year CNN provides air time for anti-immigrant distortions and anti-Latino propaganda,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a national pro-immigration reform group.
America’s Voice, along with Media Matters, and Presente.org, have called on CNN to dump Dobbs.
“They (CNN) think that a few hours of serious reporting on Latinos by sunny Soledad O’Brien can make up for thousands of hours of anti-Latino extremism from the dark Lou Dobbs,” said Roberto Lovato, of Presente.org and a leader of the movement to dismiss Dobbs.
Through the Present.org Web site, www.bastadobbs.com, over 70,000 people have signed a petition demanding CNN President Jon Klein fire Dobbs. It reads, in part: “As President of CNN, it is imperative that you act quickly and decisively to drop Dobbs from your network, and send the message that CNN does not tolerate hate speech. There should be no place for the likes of Dobbs on the ‘most trusted name in news.’ “
Hate speech has created a hostile environment for Latinos in America resulting in violence and death. The FBI says that from 2003 to 2006, hate crimes against Latinos increased 40%.
Visitors to the Presente.org can watch the eye-opening video, “CNN: Lou Dobbs or Latinos in America?” They can also find some of Dobbs’ most outrageously false claims, such as the 7,000 cases of leprosy caused by Latino immigrants..
Dobbs has also claimed that “Just about a third of our prison system is made up of illegal aliens.”
But the Department of Justice reports that immigrants (legal and illegal) make just 6% of the prison population.
Presente.org is committed to set the record straight.
“For us, ‘Latino in America’ is a teachable moment that we will use to raise awareness about how Dobbs spreads lies about immigrants in his program and opens it to the most dangerous hate groups in the U.S.,” Lovato said. “It is also about raising awareness that by watching CNN, Latinos are disrespecting ourselves.”
America’s Voice and Media Matters planned to run an ad targeting Dobbs during the broadcast of Latino in America, but CNN refused to air it.
America’s Voice says it plans to run the ad on a competing network.
Angelo Falcón, executive director of the National Institute for Latino Policy in New York, points out that Dobbs’ problem (and CNN’s) is “he doesn’t understand the widespread antipathy to him and his race-baiting that exists throughout the Latino community, on its left, right and middle.”
The question CNN must answer is a clear one, Lovato said: “What is it going to be: Lou Dobbs or Latinos in America?”
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Rush, Rams and Reverse Racism
The Right’s Search for a Black Racist
by Paul Scott
With the announcement of Rush Limbaugh‘s failure to purchase part of the St Louis Rams football franchise, the Right went on a safari to track down the ever elusive, black racist. As usual, the race hunters came up empty. The best specimen that they could capture was Fox News Channel’s token black commentator, Dr. Marc Lamont Hill with a picture of former Black Liberation Army member, Assata Shakur on his website. Hardly, evidence of a violent plot to take over America by spear wielding black militants.
The reason why the Right Wingers have never been able to successfully cage a black racist is simple. They don’t exist.
Now this may be a hard pill to swallow for those who, wholeheartedly, believe in a warped version of the law of opposites.
If there is white racism, surely there must be black racism. If whites have ,historically, enslaved and oppressed blacks, there has to be some remote island out in the Atlantic where Bobby Whitman is being forced to pick cotton and sing Barry Manilow songs while Tyrone Jackson stands over him with a whip and a tall glass of Country Time Lemonade.
However, this Bizarro World of black supremacy only exists in the minds of Ultra Right talking heads and those who set their watches by the Glenn Beck Show.
For years, the Right has used the charge of “reverse racism” to hide their collective fears that they are losing control of America. Oddly enough, many people who scream racism don’t have the foggiest idea what the word means. While the definition of “racism” may be a doctrine of racial superiority, the functional definition is the power of a group to exercise this doctrine over others. Therefore, as author Nelly Fuller wrote “the only form of functional racism that exists among the people of the known universe is white supremacy.”
The doctrine of white supremacy is so entrenched in this society that even an African American president of the United States is not exempt.
So, sorry folks, by this definition, African Americans cannot be racist. We can be a lot of things; prejudiced, bigots, etc but the one thing that we cannot be, for social and economic reasons, is racist.
It must be noted that in order to find a black racist apologists for white supremacy have had to reach back centuries.
In his book, “The Ice Man Inheritance: Prehistoric Sources of Western Man’s Racism, Sexism and Aggression,” Canadian author, Michael Bradley traces the foundation of the myth of black racism back centuries when the Bantu-speaking people conquered the Khoikhoi and the Saan. Because anthropologist CS Coon divided the Africans into two separate races, some have used this as evidence of “black supremacy.” However, Bradley also quotes anthropologist Ashley Montague as saying, ” The modern conception of race owes its widespread diffusion to the white man. Wherever he has gone he has carried it with him.”
America’s search for black racists carried into the Civil Rights Era when Mike Wallace introduced America to Malcolm X via the documentary “The Hate that Hate Produced,” which, like future programs ,confused reactionary racial rhetoric and calls for black self empowerment with black socio-economic supremacy.
This was also evident in the late 60’s and early 70’s, when those attempting to label the Black Panther Party as “racists” ignored the fact that Panther ideology was based on Marxism which downplayed race in order to organize the oppressed working class and also the fact that the party had many white supporters including celebrities such as Jane Fonda and Marlon Brando.
This frantic search for black supremacy continued into the 80’s and 90’s when black leaders such as Rev. Jesse Jackson, Minister Louis Farrakhan and Rev. Al Sharpton were labeled racists as well as entertainers such as the rap group, Public Enemy.
We see the same trend continuing over the last year as Conservatives tried to link black racism to the Obama administration by their attacks on the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Even the Latino community was not spared as Supreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor was portrayed by the conservative media as a brown racist.
So, it is not black racism that is the problem, it is conservative talk show hosts such as Sean Hannity, Mike Savage and Rush Limbaugh who spew their hate filled venom across the planet via their satellite powered pulpits, 24 hours a day.
If Limbaugh and his ilk want to see a real racist, they need to look no further than their own bathroom mirrors.
Paul Scott is a self-syndicated columnist and author of the blog, No Warning Shots Fired.com. He can be reached at (919) 451-8283 or info@nowarningshotsfired.com
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Rebranding America
by Bono of U2
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/opinion/18bono.html?pagewanted=1
A FEW years ago, I accepted a Golden Globe award by barking out an expletive.
One imagines President Obama did the same when he heard about his Nobel, and not out of excitement.
When Mr. Obama takes the stage at Oslo City Hall this December, he won’t be the first sitting president to receive the peace prize, but he might be the most controversial. There’s a sense in some quarters of these not-so-United States that Norway, Europe and the World haven’t a clue about the real President Obama; instead, they fixate on a fantasy version of the president, a projection of what they hope and wish he is, and what they wish America to be.
Well, I happen to be European, and I can project with the best of them. So here’s why I think the virtual Obama is the real Obama, and why I think the man might deserve the hype. It starts with a quotation from a speech he gave at the United Nations last month:
“We will support the Millennium Development Goals, and approach next year’s summit with a global plan to make them a reality. And we will set our sights on the eradication of extreme poverty in our time.”
They’re not my words, they’re your president’s. If they’re not familiar, it’s because they didn’t make many headlines. But for me, these 36 words are why I believe Mr. Obama could well be a force for peace and prosperity — if the words signal action.
The millennium goals, for those of you who don’t know, are a persistent nag of a noble, global compact. They’re a set of commitments we all made nine years ago whose goal is to halve extreme poverty by 2015. Barack Obama wasn’t there in 2000, but he’s there now. Indeed he’s gone further — all the way, in fact. Halve it, he says, then end it.
Many have spoken about the need for a rebranding of America. Rebrand, restart, reboot. In my view these 36 words, alongside the administration’s approach to fighting nuclear proliferation and climate change, improving relations in the Middle East and, by the way, creating jobs and providing health care at home, are rebranding in action.
These new steps — and those 36 words — remind the world that America is not just a country but an idea, a great idea about opportunity for all and responsibility to your fellow man.
All right … I don’t speak for the rest of the world. Sometimes I think I do — but as my bandmates will quickly (and loudly) point out, I don’t even speak for one small group of four musicians. But I will venture to say that in the farthest corners of the globe, the president’s words are more than a pop song people want to hear on the radio. They are lifelines.
In dangerous, clangorous times, the idea of America rings like a bell (see King, M. L., Jr., and Dylan, Bob). It hits a high note and sustains it without wearing on your nerves. (If only we all could.) This was the melody line of the Marshall Plan and it’s resonating again. Why? Because the world sees that America might just hold the keys to solving the three greatest threats we face on this planet: extreme poverty, extreme ideology and extreme climate change. The world senses that America, with renewed global support, might be better placed to defeat this axis of extremism with a new model of foreign policy.
It is a strangely unsettling feeling to realize that the largest Navy, the fastest Air Force, the fittest strike force, cannot fully protect us from the ghost that is terrorism …. Asymmetry is the key word from Kabul to Gaza …. Might is not right.
I think back to a phone call I got a couple of years ago from Gen. James Jones. At the time, he was retiring from the top job at NATO; the idea of a President Obama was a wild flight of the imagination.
General Jones was curious about the work many of us were doing in economic development, and how smarter aid — embodied in initiatives like President George W. Bush’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief and the Millennium Challenge Corporation — was beginning to save lives and change the game for many countries. Remember, this was a moment when America couldn’t get its cigarette lighted in polite European nations like Norway; but even then, in the developing world, the United States was still seen as a positive, even transformative, presence.
The general and I also found ourselves talking about what can happen when the three extremes — poverty, ideology and climate — come together. We found ourselves discussing the stretch of land that runs across the continent of Africa, just along the creeping sands of the Sahara — an area that includes Sudan and northern Nigeria. He also agreed that many people didn’t see that the Horn of Africa — the troubled region that encompasses Somalia and Ethiopia — is a classic case of the three extremes becoming an unholy trinity (I’m paraphrasing) and threatening peace and stability around the world
The military man also offered me an equation. Stability = security + development.
In an asymmetrical war, he said, the emphasis had to be on making American foreign policy conform to that formula.
Enter Barack Obama.
If that last line still seems like a joke to you … it may not for long.
Mr. Obama has put together a team of people who believe in this equation. That includes the general himself, now at the National Security Council; the vice president, a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; the Republican defense secretary; and a secretary of state, someone with a long record of championing the cause of women and girls living in poverty, who is now determined to revolutionize health and agriculture for the world’s poor. And it looks like the bipartisan coalition in Congress that accomplished so much in global development over the past eight years is still holding amid rancor on pretty much everything else. From a development perspective, you couldn’t dream up a better dream team to pursue peace in this way, to rebrand America.
The president said that he considered the peace prize a call to action. And in the fight against extreme poverty, it’s action, not intentions, that counts. That stirring sentence he uttered last month will ring hollow unless he returns to next year’s United Nations summit meeting with a meaningful, inclusive plan, one that gets results for the billion or more people living on less than $1 a day. Difficult. Very difficult. But doable.
The Nobel Peace Prize is the rest of the world saying, “Don’t blow it.”
But that’s not just directed at Mr. Obama. It’s directed at all of us. What the president promised was a “global plan,” not an American plan. The same is true on all the other issues that the Nobel committee cited, from nuclear disarmament to climate change — none of these things will yield to unilateral approaches. They’ll take international cooperation and American leadership.
The president has set himself, and the rest of us, no small task.
That’s why America shouldn’t turn up its national nose at popularity contests. In the same week that Mr. Obama won the Nobel, the United States was ranked as the most admired country in the world, leapfrogging from seventh to the top of the Nation Brands Index survey — the biggest jump any country has ever made. Like the Nobel, this can be written off as meaningless … a measure of Mr. Obama’s celebrity (and we know what people think of celebrities).
But an America that’s tired of being the world’s policeman, and is too pinched to be the world’s philanthropist, could still be the world’s partner. And you can’t do that without being, well, loved. Here come the letters to the editor, but let me just say it: Americans are like singers — we just a little bit, kind of like to be loved. The British want to be admired; the Russians, feared; the French, envied. (The Irish, we just want to be listened to.) But the idea of America, from the very start, was supposed to be contagious enough to sweep up and enthrall the world.
And it is. The world wants to believe in America again because the world needs to believe in America again. We need your ideas — your idea — at a time when the rest of the world is running out of them.
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Seventy-Two Democrats Abandon Public on Net Neutrality
By Megan Tady, October 16, 2009
Seventy-two Democrats – count ‘em – just backstabbed you. This afternoon, they sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission asking them to walk away from their plans to protect Net Neutrality.
They also defected from their own party, abandoning President Obama’s tech agenda that supports a free and open Internet, where competition and innovation can flourish.
Wish I could say this is a joke, but the letter hit my desk an hour ago, 72 signatures included.
It’s outrageous: Dozens of the lawmakers we’ve elected to look out for us in Washington are saying they’d rather hand the Internet over to a few powerful corporations than safeguard it for the public.
And the cause of this congressional panic? A progressive proposal that the FCC just wants to circulate for public comment.
In September, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced that the commission would expand rules to protect Net Neutrality, the principle that stops Internet service providers from blocking and controlling online content. On Thursday, the FCC will vote on a notice of proposed rulemaking to establish Net Neutrality rules, which is the first step in the regulatory process.
But the deep-pocketed telco lobby on the Hill is doing everything it can to derail protections for an open Internet. And it appears to be working. After all, the Dems’ letter parrots telco talking points – they had to come from somewhere, and it certainly wasn’t from the more than 1.6 million people who have signed a petition in support of Net Neutrality.
How is it that a handful of corporations are co-opting the debate, even as hundreds of thousands of people say, “Enough is enough”? This is a clear example of “special interests” vs. “real Americans.” Corporations don’t want any rules that prohibit them from acting as Internet gatekeepers – they don’t even want the FCC to consider them. And they’ve got the influence and power to convince lawmakers to act against our interests and reject an open Internet.
But we’re powerful, too, and we’ve got to show it. Now’s not the time to be timid. We want two million people shouting for Net Neutrality to send a resounding message to the FCC that the public supports them.
Add your name to the petition for an open Internet right now. Then Tweet it. Facebook it. Ask your friends to do it. The fight for Net Neutrality is very real, and it’s getting nasty.
Megan Tady
Campaign Coordinator
Free Press :: www.freepress.net
413.585.1533 ext. 216
reform media. transform democracy.
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The only person who seemed to be honest during yesterday’s enthralling ‘Balloon-Gate’ scenario was 6 year old-Falcon who was at the center of it all. That little kid sat up on national television and told the world-‘We did this for the show.’ And what a show it was. It had all the ingredients; roller coaster action, teeth clenching drama, intrigue and mystery-It was all there.
On top of it, seemingly everyone was in on what appeared to be a grand exercise in mass deception. That includes the McGiverist/Inspector Gadget-like father –Richard Heene who’s ‘acting’ abilities’ were atrocious. His tears and supposed outrage had me taking notes-‘Do not take lessons from his acting coach’. There was the overly eager ‘friendly’ next door neighbor, Marc Friedland who was on every news channel seemingly going for his sot at 15 minutes of fame by extolling the virtues of what many of us were seeing as a wacky family.
But perhaps the most dishonest were the news agencies who quickly cut away from President Obama addressing folks in New Orleans about Katrina recovery and followed the runaway balloon for two hours. During those two hours news channels tripped over themselves pulling out charts and graphs to give us reports about wind currents, high altitudes, temperatures and speculation about possible lightning storms. It was done in such a way that everyone at the airport stopped what they were doing and gathered around the TVs to watch. The deception was realized after the balloon landed and little Falcon was nowhere to be found. That’s when our favorite news channels trotted out all these balloon experts who repeated over and over, there’s no way that a craft of that shape and size could’ve carried a 6-year-old boys to such heights (10 thousand feet was one estimate) and at such speeds(85 mph was another estimate). In fact most said the balloon wouldn’t have flown at all.
We also came to find out that law enforcement agencies in Colorado had early on suspected that Falcon had either fallen out of the craft or was never on it. That vital information was communicated at least a good 15 minutes before the balloon landing but was not broadcasted. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. What ratings seeking news outlet would want to stop their coverage after drawing everyone in and getting them to watch for two hours? What news outlet in 2009 would have the courage to sit up and say ‘Sorry folks-false alarm, we assessed this situation wrong?’
Apparently none of our ‘trusted’ new sources. Instead giving us the full scope of what was taking place, what we got was a breath taking narrative that had us all at the edge of our seats as we watched the balloon make a soft landing and an undercover officer heroically dash out to make sure it didn’t take off again. Poor guy, I don’t think anyone had the heart to tell him there was no kid in the balloon because dude was running like there was no tomorrow.
Little 6 year old Falcon spoke the truth yesterday
As for the throngs of people watching intensely at Oakland Airport, they seemed relieved, I heard a few claps, and even saw a couple of high fives as the wall to wall coverage concluded and damage control procedures of reframing the discussion kicked in. It started with news anchors acting like they were just as shocked as we were to discover the little boy was missing…As we say back home ‘Negro Please’-translation-Please spare me the drama.
I wasn’t alone in my assessment as the twitter world was abuzz with folks pissed off that they were duped. One tweet summed it up best by noting the balloon escapade was phony and he wondered how many country’s were bombed while we watched this unfold. He noted that perhaps a bill was secretly signed reinstating slavery while we watched the balloon coverage…
What caught my attention in the aftermath was the instant psychological analysis that was quickly attributed to the little boy, especially after it was discovered he was hiding in the attic. These experts kept noting that ‘Little Falcon’ is a smart, precocious young man who may have been seeking attention. I heard words like ‘warm’, ‘loving’ and even ‘little genius’ being used to describe him. We heard police officers boldly assert that it’s not unusual for young kids to go hide in attics when people are looking for them after they caused a big mess. Empathy and understanding were the marching orders of the day and the themes directed at Falcon. And should they not? After all, he’s six years old and shouldn’t we see all six year olds with such loving gazes?
It’s hard not to think how the narrative would’ve been played out had it been ‘Lil Darnel’ or Lil Jesus from the inner city who caused this commotion. Would we have been as sympathetic and understanding or would we have seen him as a young uncouth troublemaker? Would the Nancy Graces and Gloria Allreds of the world been on TV calling for this child to be removed from the home and there be widespread condemnation of the entire community for the actions of one?
Before people get too bent out of shape and start rolling their eyes and mumbling ‘Oh brother here we go again’, keep in mind it was just a year ago that we had a spate of arrests and handcuffed placed on 5, 6 and 7 year olds all over the country for acts far less disruptive and costly then the ones caused by ‘cute, precocious’ Falcon. We even had one infamous incident in Pittsburgh, Pa where an officer saw fit to pull a gun and point it at the head of a 7 year old girl-Joshaly Lawton who wouldn’t stop crying when her mom was pulled over for a traffic violation. The mother Pamela Lawton was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct when she objected to the officer pulling a gun on her child.
Am I the only one who recalls the handcuffing and arrest of 7 year old Gerard Mungo Jr. in Baltimore for riding a moped on a sidewalk? Am I the only one who recalls school officials in St Petersburgh, Florida calling the police who then handcuffed 5 year Jiyisha Scott who they said was throwing a temper tantrum? Weren’t there similar incidents in places like Chicago and a couple of other cities that escape my mind? Am i the only one who recalls some of the same news outlets that encouraged empathy and understanding toward Falcon were justifying the arrest of these little Black kids who I guess weren’t seen as cute and precocious?
There’s many ways to look at what took place yesterday and attributed to larger societal problems. Lack of parental oversight, kids having access to too much, our society just getting more and more out of control are a few of the isms and schisms that can be conjured up.
Our kids are crying out and we keep failing them. We fail them with our less than stellar policies that suggest we won’t leave them behind, but in reality we do. We fail them when we require more and more in the workplace from overworked and underpaid parents, take away resources for support and then blame them for not being as responsible and ‘there for their kids as much as we would like them. We fail them when we grandstand and utter lofty phrases like ‘It takes a Village to raise a child’ and yet we don’t actively participate in the raising process by setting good examples for the young kids we say we’re raising to follow. In fact we don’t even take steps to childproof this proverbial village we like to talk about.
Sadly many of us can’t even tell when our kids are crying out for help. Was Little Falcon crying out for help yesterday when he hopped in the balloon, hopped out and hid in the attic while a massive manhunt kicked into gear looking for him? Most people including the newscasters who participated in this exercise of deception kept suggesting that Falcon’s actions were troubling and he needed help-and that’s probably true.
But lemme close by restating my initial remarks. The only person who seemed to be honest during yesterday’s enthralling ‘Balloon-Gate’ scenario was 6 year old-Falcon. Yesterday in front of a nationwide audience we heard him cry out for help and unfortunately I think it was ignored. So let me repeat his cry for help. Falcon said ‘We did this for the show.’ That was his cry for help.
Ladies and gentlemen our kids are not fodder for over-the-top dramatic news coverage, rating boosters for reality shows or poster children for fake ass politicians who use them as convenient backdrops while trying to push forth an agenda. Our kids are not show material. They are real, tangible beings who we all better be responsible for and I do mean all of us…
A troubled six year old today who’s issues aren’t adequately and lovingly address will one day grow up to be a troubled adult who will go to do things like shoot unarmed men in the back of the head at an Oakland BART station, look us in the eye and lie to us about weapons of mass destruction that don’t exist and send us off to war or violate our trust by raiding our banking system, tanking the economy and leaving all us in economic ruin.
A troubled kid one day becomes a troubled adult who will go on to do things like plow drugs and alcohol on an unsuspecting 13 year old, rape her, flee the country before doing jail time and will act incredulous and shocked when finally caught and forced to answer for his misdeeds. His equally troubled friends will actually defend him and claim he did nothing wrong. Troubled kids become troubled adults who lose all sense of civility and compassion and become hardened to the point of seeing no need for justice for those who have been egregiously wronged
A troubled six year old who is not fully cared for will one day grow up and become a troubled adult who will inappropriately use his kids to put on a good show…
something to ponder.
-Davey D-
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Racist is what many think when they see or hear the name of Texas born CNN host Lou Dobbs. His constant immigrant bashing and anti-Latino rhetoric has raised serious concerns
In many circles around the country when you mention the name Lou Dobbs, you think racist and anti-Latino before you think longtime and once upon a time revered CNN figurehead who helped launched the 24 hour news network . This Texas born son fancies himself as an ‘independent populist’ who uses that moniker as cover for his over the top xenophobic expressions. He’s been pimping the Latino community for the past few years by espousing racially biased remarks that have helped create a climate where fellow citizens are made to feel uncomfortable because of their ethnicity and there’s been a rise in Hate crimes.
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It’s time to give Lou Dobbs the boot:
Add your name to AlterNet and CREDO’s petition, and send him to the sidelines.
http://www.alternet.org/story/142940/is_lou_dobbs,_cnn’s_resident_bigot,_on_his_way_out?page=entire
The heat on CNN to dump right-wing nativist news host Lou Dobbs has reached a boiling point.
Several grassroots and Internet campaigns urging CNN to drop Dobbs in response to his relentless hate-talk are gathering momentum and tens of thousands of signatures. Will Dobbs finally be stopped from using his on-air bully pulpit to bash immigrants and spread misleading and inaccurate information?
One major anti-Dobbs campaign, Basta Dobbs.com, calls Dobbs the “most dangerous man for Latinos in America.”
Just how dangerous is Dobbs? According to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, “The rise in hate crimes against Latinos coincides almost exactly with the time Dobbs has been propagating false conspiracy theories about Latinos on the air. He’s not urging people to go hurt and kill — but that is the effect of what he does.”
A recent poll of the top 100 Latino leaders, including members of Congress and business leaders, conducted by Bendixen and Associates for Democricia Ahora, showed that 89 percent had a negative opinion of Dobbs. Many believe him to be a racist and question his journalistic credentials. Seventy percent of those polled thought that a campaign aimed at ousting Dobbs was a good idea.
John Santore of Media Matters explains the position of DropDobbs.com, another coalition of groups, which include the National Council of La Raza, LULAC and the Southern Poverty Law Center, working for Dobbs’ ouster:
For years, Lou Dobbs has been one of the most dangerous hosts on cable news. He benefits enormously from the legitimacy of the CNN brand, which provides him with an unparalleled platform from which to mainstream the hate-speech and racially charged conspiracy theories normally relegated to Fox News and other conservative news outlets.
Dobbs calls himself an “advocacy journalist,” but he doesn’t even live up to that ambiguous standard. Good journalism enhances the discussion of serious topics, but Dobbs helps to undermine and debase that discussion, routinely infusing it with misinformation and fear.
Meanwhile, Dobbs has become even more unhinged.
In a rambling, bizarre attack on one of his critics, Roberto Lovato, a key leader in the BastaDobbs.com campaign, Dobbs resorted to juvenile name calling, going so far as to call Lovato a “flea” and a “bozo.”
Dobbs was set off by an AlterNet article in which Lovato chargedthat Dobbs postures as “the victimized defender of American virtue” in order to spread his bile.
A Big Problem
The intensity of the protests against Dobbs have made the news host a “big problem” for the network, sources inside CNN report. Closed-door discussions on Dobbs’ fate appear to be under way.
CNN executives have a lot to talk about. The cable channel is losing market share, and Dobbs is leading the way in the drop in viewers. Raw Story reports that after harping on the Obama birth certificate story, Dobbs’ ratings fell 15 percent — in two weeks.
Long-term, big-picture audience demographics should also figure in CNN’s decision. The Latino market in the U.S is exploding. Naturally, CNN has much invested in its Spanish-speaking audience, and it is well aware that Latinos are not happy with the anti-immigrant Dobbs.
The more Dobbs viciously attacks Latino immigrants, the more he alienates the very audience that CNN is trying to woo. One insider said off the record that they think Dobbs will probably be gone by year’s end.
CNN’s Big Contradiction: Marketing to Latinos While Dobbs Alienates Them
The message aimed at CNN by the drop-Dobbs campaigns is, “How can you seemingly embrace your Latino audience with marketing and special programming
on the one hand, while allowing Dobbs to spread hate with the other?”
The BastaDobbs campaign is spearheaded by Lovato, as part of Presente.com, an online organizing effort affiliated with the Color of Change. CoC is the group credited with getting more than 60 advertisers to drop Fox’s Glenn Beck Show.
I spoke with Lovato on Sept. 27, and he said this about the nationwide campaign against Dobbs’ hate:
For many years, Latinos throughout the United States have organized local street protests and press conferences denouncing Dobbs’ dangerous rhetoric. Think tanks have produced numerous reports proving the falsehoods and fakery that passes for “news” on Lou Dobbs Tonight. Yet, all we get are more silly outbursts from Dobbs — and silence from CNN.
But now, Latinos and others come to realize Dobbs is not going to change. So it’s time for us to take our fight to the real source of the problem, CNN itself.
We are going to make Jonathan Klein, the president of CNN, one of the most famous TV execs in America [Klein is responsible for management oversight of all programming, editorial tone and strategic direction of the network].
I’m encountering this disposition to fight in the 25 cities our campaign is organized in, and on the Internet. Dobbs and CNN are bringing unprecedented alignment and agreement between working-class and elite Latinos.
I asked Lovato about his approach to pressuring CNN and the economics of the Latino audience. Lovato said:
CNN’s moves to capture a segment of what many in media consider the “mission critical” Latino market are no secret. Latinos understand why we’re seeing more of Rick Sanchez and other Latinos on CNN. We take note of the inclusion of Latino analysts, including Alex Castellanos and Leslie Sanchez; and we are curious about how CNN will treat us in its upcoming Latino in America series.
And we wonder why CNN isn’t translating Lou Dobbs in Spanish for inclusion on CNN Espanol, which, by the way, is quite popular with Latinos at this point. But to watch sunny Soledad O’Brien singing the praises of Latino contributors to American society, while just a time slot away the dark, dour Lou Dobbs continues infecting the airwaves with deadly misinformation about “criminal illegal aliens” is just too much hypocrisy.
Regardless of CNN’s big-money efforts to target the Latino market, the continuation of Dobbs’ program guarantees that, for Latinos, the name “CNN” is synonymous with “anti-Latino hatred.”
Ultimately, Dobbs’ vicious attacks on immigrants — often combined with bizarre red-baiting — is not doing great things for the CNN brand. In fact, Dobbs’ antics harshly distort its tag line: “The most trusted name in news.”
For example, take a look at Dobbs’ response to the national protest day, “A day without Immigrants” in 2006, here described by Daphne Eviatar, writing in The Nation:
… on CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, it was a different story: “Hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens and their supporters today failed in their attempt to shut down most of our cities to support amnesty for all illegal aliens,” the network’s 6 p.m. news anchor reported that evening.
Dobbs elaborated in his online column: “It is no accident that they chose May 1 as their day of demonstration and boycott. It is the worldwide day of commemorative demonstrations by various socialist, communist and even anarchic organizations. … No matter which flag demonstrators and protesters carry today, their leadership is showing its true colors to all who will see.
You might expect that sort of McCarthyesque description from Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh or some other famously right-wing provocateur on Fox or talk radio. But Lou Dobbs, on CNN? These days, the network once pilloried by conservatives as a leading voice of the “liberal media” is offering an expansive platform to the nation’s leading spokesman for anti-immigration hard-liners.
There are countless other critiques of Dobbs, dating back more than three years. The charges, listed by the DropDobbs campaign, and documented by Media Matters, include:
A more thorough listof Dobbs’ hate speech can be found on the DropDobbs site.
It’s time to give Lou Dobbs the boot:
Add your name to AlterNet and CREDO’s petition and send him to the sidelines.
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Remembering Rappers Delight-30 years Ago It Was Born
by Davey D
Sugar Hill Gang came to life 30 years ago
With all the sudden deaths that have affected us this year-from Michael Jackson to Roc Raida to Mr Magic to local KPOO radio legend Clarence ‘Swig’ Swiggins its been hard to sit back, catch a breath and notice some of the landmark dates that have impacted our culture. My boy Bruce Banter from playahata.com hit me up to remind me that today was the 30th anniversary of Rapper’s Delight by the Sugar Hill Gang.. Wow that’s a long time…
I’m not sure of the exact date if it was October 13th 1979, but I do recall when I first heard the song it was definitely in the fall of 1979. I think almost everyone who was around at that time has a ‘This is how Sugar Hill Gang’ impacted me story.
I fondly recall, that Rapper’s Delight re-energized what appeared to be a dwindling culture at least as far as the emceeing/rap aspect was concerned. Prior to SHG, I recall going to parties and cats would be on the mic rapping and rapping and rapping all night long. Some groups had nice routines. Others tried to put structure into what they were doing, but for the most part, many of those parties had dissolved into cats just having massive freestyle sessions on the mic to the point that it was overkill. The block parties as I recall were dying out and many of the more established acts had moved to the clubs. If you went to a jam, gone were cats flowing on the mic nonstop all night long. Groups would do a set and although they didn’t have records, each act, whether it was the Cold Crush Brothers, the Crash Crew or Funky 4 Plus 1 More all had signature routines that folks went to go see.
The summer leading up to the release of Rappers Delight was interesting because, I recall hearing stories about how icons like Grandmaster Flash had moved on to ‘blending’ records and playing at discos versus being at parties cutting breaks and beats. Chic’s Good Times which is what helped propel Rappers Delight was a massive hit and anyone who even thought about rapping loved flowing over the long Niles Rodgers bass laden break.
Also that summer I recall the Fatback Band’s joint ‘King Tem III Personality Jock. It was a cool novelty record, but dude sounded nothing like the emcees who you heard on tapes or saw at the early jams. He sounded like a radio disc jockey. Years later, we found out that the rap was a throwback to the rapping and rhyming that was around before Hip Hop as we know it. Black radio DJs always rhymed-People like Jocko henderson and DaddyO are a couple that come to mind. Many of these jocks did so as they would introduce songs. So while King Tem III struck a chord, it didn’t shake things up the way Rapper’s Delight did a few months later.
In my mind Hip Hop was kind of dying until Rappers Delight emerged and then all hell broke loose. The possibility of being able to make a name for yourself and reach the stars via recording a record got everyone back to writing rhymes and taking a renwed interest in emceeing.
The other thing I remember was that hardly anyone had ever heard of the Sugar Hill Gang. There was initial confusion because we all knew Sugar Hill was a section in Harlem, but one of the rappers in the song Big Bank Hank was calling himself Casanova Fly. There were only two people who used that name Casanova. One was Grandmaster Caz of the Cold Crush and the other was a ‘hardrock’ cat named Tiny who headed the Casanova Crew over on Webster Ave in the Bronx.. A lot of cats thought it was him rapping , which caused confusion because why use the name Sugar Hill when he was up in the Bx and not Harlem. ? It was just a matter of time before we all found out that SHG was a crew that was put together and the Casanova references was due to Hank borrowing Caz’s rhyme books. I will post up the interview we did with Caz where he breaks all this down.. Its an interesting situation. All this lead to a couple of other questions
1-Why them and not use some of the more established, better known crews like Flash or Cold Crush or Theodore and Fanstatic Romantic 5?
2-Why use the word ‘rap’? Prior to the release of ‘Rapper’s Delight’, what became known as rap was emceeing or rhyming. Rap was what you did when you were hollaring at a female.
In anycase Rappers Delight was the song that let the world know what was occuring in New York and subsequently people all over the planet jumped in the fray and added their own seasoning to the mix…. At the same time it also represents the beginning of a culture being diluted and overtly influenced by a music industry which was dying at the time. Folks forget the music industry had raped a soulful music expression that was popular in the clubs and completely watered it down to a commercialized ‘disco form’. In 1979 while Rappers Delight was blowing up..you also had alot of people running around and tagging on walls ‘Disco Sucks’. The industry needed somethinfg to help it bounce back. Rappers Delight wasn’t the answer in 79, the person who saved the industry was a cat named Michael Jackson, but thats another story.
Happy birthday Sugar Hill Gang and Rappers Delight.
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This isn’t another hate article about how President Obama doesn’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, in fact the Republican Party just reinforced how even the slightest success from Barack drives them completely crazy. But I do have to say that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama is….ironic. Even he looked kinda embarrassed accepting it.