Democrats pull Hate Ad

ROCK HILL, S.C. - Democrats pulled an Internet ad that showed flag-draped coffins Friday after Republicans and at least two Democrats demanded it be taken down on grounds the image was insensitive and not fit for a political commercial.

The ad by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee called for a "new direction" and displayed a staccato of images, including war scenes, pollution and breached levees as well as a

The campaign committee replaced the ad with a radio commercial that targets Rep. John Hostetler, R-Ind., for opposing an increase in the minimum wage. Democrats have made a minimum wage increase a central theme of this year's election.

Democrats had featured the video ad for nearly two weeks on the DCCC Web site where it had gone largely unnoticed until Republicans began objecting to it this week. On Thursday, more than a dozen Republicans, many with military backgrounds, called on DCCC Chairman Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., to apologize. Democratic Reps. John Spratt of South Carolina and Chet Edwards of Texas asked Emanuel to pull or alter the ad.

"We're moving to another major effort that we're highlighting on our Web site," DCCC spokesman Bill Burton said.

In South Carolina, Spratt's Republican challenger, state Rep. Ralph Norman, commended the removal. It was "the right thing to do for the state, country and especially the brave men and women who serve in our military," said Norman's spokesman, Nathan Hollifield.

Louis Farrakhan's Son the Baskeball Player!!!

He would like to talk about basketball, and only basketball. It is an impossible wish, a hopelessly naïve wish, but it is that charming naiveté that could insulate this teenager as he becomes a man.


Mustapha Farrakhan showed savvy and skill at the Nike All-America Camp.
He will have friends because of his name. He will have enemies because of his name, too. His name is Mustapha Farrakhan.

He is a 6-foot-3 shooting guard out of the Chicago area, and yes, he's related to the Honorable Farrakhan leader of the Nation of Islam. Louis Farrakhan is Mustapha's grandfather.

On this day, last week at the Nike All-America Camp at Indianapolis, Mustapha Farrakhan has been summoned to the media room. On the court he is smooth and confident, dunking with two hands and throwing no-look passes and flicking righteous-looking lefty 3-pointers. In the media room he is humble and shy, with huge eyes and a small smile and an earnest, surprised look that implies he had no idea he would be asked about his grandfather or his father, also named Mustapha Farrakhan, who as the Nation of Islam's supreme captain is the likely successor to Louis Farrakhan.

The eventual elevation of his father would put the younger Mustapha Farrakhan -- this one, this wide-eyed teenager standing before you -- potentially in line to lead the Nation of Islam himself some day. This is what you want to discuss with 17-year-old Mustapha Farrakhan. His birthright. His future. His politics.

But he only wants to talk about his sport.

"I'm just focusing in on basketball right now," he says. "I'm just thinking about basketball."

Mustapha Farrakhan, a rising high school senior, definitely will be a college basketball player. He'll never be a "normal" college basketball player, not with one of the most divisive surnames names in modern American society on the back of his jersey, but Mustapha Farrakhan will get a scholarship. He'll earn it, too. Farrakhan was chosen for Nike's senior all-star game Sunday and acquitted himself well: eight points on five shots from the floor, plus five rebounds and three assists in 16 minutes.

I'll be honest, if for a moment I can completely interject myself into this story: When I saw Mustapha Farrakhan's name on the Nike Camp roster, I assumed he had been invited by Nike leader George Raveling for the publicity, or as a favor to Louis Farrakhan, or both. Sure, the camp brochure indicated Mustapha Farrakhan had averaged 17.1 points, 4.3 rebounds and 3.6 assists as a junior at Thornton Township (Ill.) High, but come on. Louis Farrakhan's grandson? No way he's a legit Division I player. That's what I assumed.

I assumed wrong. In a camp setting like Nike where most guards are selfish and/or out of control, Farrakhan stands out for his smooth jump shot, his clever passing and his overall savvy play. That's no surprise considering his 3.5 high school GPA. Not only is he being recruited at the solid mid-major level -- Missouri Valley Conference teams are on him the hardest -- but he's better than that. Mustapha Farrakhan might never be a Big Ten star, but he can play in that conference. He's that good.

He'll never be known for his basketball, however, which is too bad. Everyone deserves a chance to carve their own legacy, but for familial reasons some never get the chance. John F. Kennedy Jr. had no chance. Pete Rose Jr. had no chance. Mustapha Farrakhan has no chance, either. We can wring our hands about that, or we can get mad at anyone (me) who would be so crass as to suggest in writing that a 17-year-old kid has no shot at making a name for himself as a basketball player, but Mustapha Farrakhan is what he is: very good basketball player, grandson of Louis Farrakhan. And not in that order.

As impressive as he was at Nike Camp, Mustapha is the subject of this story because of his grandfather. Wherever he goes to college, his background will be a focal point for the local media. Is Louis Farrakhan coming to the game? Will he have bodyguards? (For the record, Louis Farrakhan has attended several of his grandson's high school games, protected by large men in dark suits.)

Here's a prediction: By the time Mustapha Farrakhan's college career is finished, he will have been written about in all of this country's major sports magazines and several of its major newspapers, and he will have been featured on ESPN. If he becomes a great college basketball player, that would help, but that's optional. Regardless of his game, his name is that big. Wherever his college team plays, Mustapha Farrakhan will be a storyline. Opposing fans will be happy to see him. Imagine the chants young Farrakhan might hear on the road. On second thought, don't.

Louis Farrakhan is an enormous figure on the socio-political landscape, a brilliant orator and persuasive Muslim leader capable of dreaming up and pulling off the 1995 Million Man March. He also is a vitriolic demagogue who has uttered more than his share of hateful words, words that won't be repeated here.

None of that, of course, has the least little thing to do with Mustapha Farrakhan's jumper or his ability to defend on the perimeter. Even though Louis Farrakhan's politics are irrelevant to this story, they are still crucial to this story.

Mustapha Farrakhan had better get used to it. It's reality for the basketball-playing grandson of Louis Farrakhan. Even when you're the story ... you're not the story.



Louis Farrakhan HONORABLE?!?!

How can Doyel call Louis Farrakhan "honorable", and then say "He also is a vitriolic demagogue who has uttered more than his share of hateful words, words that won't be repeated here."

Farrakhan's grandson is automatically a better person because he's NOT Louis Farrakhan. I hope that he keeps his distance from his grandson so that he may have a chance at basketball and life.

Watch Ayaan Hirsi Ali Interview

I wish I had 1/10 of this woman's courage!

Watch ...Van Gogh's film Submission

-QUOTE OF THE WEEK"

Despite the pet theories of liberals and conservatives, blacks aren’t killing each other because they are violent, crime prone by nature, because they are poor and oppressed or even because they are acting out the obscene and lewd violence they see and hear on TV, films and in gangster rap lyrics on the streets. The violence results from a combustible blend of cultural and racial baggage many blacks carry."

-Earl Ofari Hutchinson

http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/bawnews/stateof/hutchinson623

Man Convicted of Murder for Hate Crime

"As long as she had blond hair and blue eyes, she had to die,"- Grant

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR

WHITE PLAINS, July 11 — A homeless sex offender was convicted of murder as a hate crime on Tuesday in the stabbing death of a white woman near a downtown mall here last summer. He had told the police that he killed her because he wanted to start a race war.

After four hours of deliberations over two days, a jury in State Supreme Court found the defendant, Phillip Grant, 44, who is black, guilty of a racially motivated killing, which took place on June 29, 2005, at lunchtime in a parking garage near the Galleria mall.
The killing near the busy mall stunned people for its savagery and cast a harsh light on the way Westchester County dealt with its homeless population.

Mr. Grant was one of several high-level sex offenders who spent their nights sleeping at a county-run homeless shelter and their days roaming White Plains. The victim, Concetta Russo-Carriero, 56, a petite woman with green eyes and sandy blond hair, was stabbed as she walked through the garage on her way to her car.

About 2 p.m. in a packed courtroom in the Westchester County Courthouse, the jurors deciding Mr. Grant’s fate — seven white men, four white women and one black woman — filed into the courtroom. None looked at the defendant.

Stocky and expressionless, Mr. Grant showed no emotion as the verdict was read. But he turned toward one of his lawyers and whispered something afterward.
As he was handcuffed and led out of the courtroom, Mr. Grant kept his head down and did not look at the gallery, where dozens of Ms. Russo-Carriero’s relatives and former colleagues filled four rows of benches.

The jurors refused to speak with reporters as the courtroom emptied. They said nothing when approached by the victim’s relatives and walked quickly away from the courthouse.
After the verdict, Ms. Russo-Carriero’s parents and two grown sons spoke at a news conference, using language like “beast,” “savage” and “vicious” to describe Mr. Grant.

“When that animal stuck a knife in my daughter’s heart,” said the victim’s father, Ted Granata, 83, as he sobbed and turned red with grief, “he stuck it in our hearts too.”

Ms. Russo-Carriero’s eldest son, Jonathan Russo, 29, choked back anger as he spoke.
“My mother was leaving work and did not deserve to come upon such a vicious animal as Phillip Grant, a remorseless human being,” he said. “He murdered my mother for no other reason than that she is white.”

Mr. Grant faces 20 years to life in state prison at his sentencing, scheduled for Sept. 11. As a hate crime, the murder charge carries the same maximum sentence but a higher minimum one.
But legal experts say it is almost certain that Mr. Grant will never be released if the State Legislature adopts a civil commitment measure, known as Connie’s law, for the victim’s nickname, that would keep the most violent sex offenders locked in institutions even after their time is served.

A bill that would create the measure is being considered in the State Assembly.
Mr. Grant was a felon with a history of violent rapes when he began staying in a county-run shelter at the Westchester County Airport in 2003. Every morning at 6 a.m., he was put on a bus to White Plains with other shelter residents. But after the killing, the county faced such fierce criticism that it ended the busing and hired trained monitors to shadow the most dangerous sex offenders staying in its shelters.
The victim’s family sued the county and the City of White Plains in September, accusing them of negligence. The suit is pending.

The hate crime charge against Mr. Grant stemmed from statements he made in a rambling, 45-minute confession videotaped by detectives. On the tape, which was played in court, Mr. Grant said he suffered from depression and anxiety and was desperate for medication.
Paranoid that a group of white men were following him and plotting against him, he shoplifted a steak knife, hid on the top floor of the garage and waited for hours, he said, until he spotted a white person.

Ms. Russo-Carriero, a paralegal from White Plains, was found lying in a pool of blood by a passer-by about 1 p.m.; she had two stab wounds to her chest.
“I said to myself, ‘The first person that I see in this mall that looks white, I’m killing,’ ” Mr. Grant told his interrogators. “I had never seen this woman before and I didn’t care. All I knew was she had blond hair and blue eyes and she had to die.”

But Mr. Grant’s lead defense lawyer, Eugene Traynor, insisted throughout the trial that Mr. Grant had made a false confession because he was mentally ill and had been pressured by detectives. He argued vociferously that Mr. Grant had not been read his Miranda rights and suggested in his closing argument that Mr. Grant had been roughed up.
“This defendant did not get the treatment you would expect to get from police,” he said. “He got the homeless black guy treatment.”

Prosecutors pointed to strong DNA evidence, including drops of the victim’s blood that were found on Mr. Grant’s trousers and under his fingernails.

After the verdict, Mr. Traynor said he would appeal, citing “procedural issues” with the case, including pretrial publicity and his insistence that Mr. Grant’s confession was unconstitutionally obtained. Throughout the case, he fought to have the confession thrown out and repeatedly demanded that Judge Lester B. Adler call a mistrial, prompting the judge to lose his patience on Monday.

“One thing I know about this defense strategy is that it is to delay, obfuscate, throw this jury off and cause as much disruption as possible,” Judge Adler said.

Interview with Marcus Skelton Candidate for DC City Counsil

Growing up in Seat Pleasant, Maryland, Marcus believes that playing sports and his parents sending him to a local church to participate in Boy Scouts were major factors that deterred him from the dangers of the neighborhood he lived in. As a son of a former union president Marcus developed a strong work ethic and an understanding that business and labor need balance and communication to exist.

Marcus was a two-sport athlete at Crossland High School lettering in football and track. And as part of his Eagle Scout project Marcus restored his high school stadium, which saved the county thousand of dollars in labor hours.

He went on to Bowie State University where he received his B.S. in Communications and his M.A. in Human Resource Development. Academically, he received Bowie State’s Scholar Athlete Award in 2001 and 2002. On the field he received 1st Team All-CIAA and 2nd Team Daktronics All American honors as a three-year starter on Bowie’s football team. Marcus also volunteered with The Office of External Relations fundraising for athletics and Bowie’s general scholarship fund.

As chapter president of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc. he raised thousands of dollars for local charities. As a service to on-campus students, Marcus managed the fraternity’s wake-up call program. He coordinated fraternities tutoring program which helped students pass the Maryland Functional Math Test.

Marcus has a strong passion for career development and local politics. He help redesigned the Community College of Baltimore County’s Fellows Leadership Development Program and trained Southern Maryland Tri County Community Action Committee Head Start program staff after they hired a new executive staff.

Currently, Marcus resides in Southeast Washington D.C. He enjoys distance running, football, golf, and reading.

Why Run for Council Member At-Large……….?

My decision to run for City Council is based on my strong commitment to community involvement and my belief that together we can make better decisions beneficial to the future for the District of Columbia. We have the opportunity to stop run-away taxing and irresponsible spending by electing Marcus Skelton for D.C. Council Member At-Large.

Because public education, public safety, and job growth are three hotly debated issues in our community. I am committed to meeting as many of you as possible and learning how you feel about these and other issues that affect the city because there are multiple solutions to every problem. I also believe that all citizens agree on a few principles.

Bi-partisan government is beneficial to the future of the district because monopolies tend to lead to corruption.

Strong values and community involvement keep our streets and children safe.
The District of Columbia has a responsibility to prepare its youth to compete in today’s global economy.

More businesses mean more jobs.
Citizens need to keep more of what they earn to keep up with the rising cost of living.

Please support Marcus Skeltons run for DC City Counsil.
http://www.skeltonforcouncil.org/

Black Republican Comes Out of the Closet

Reginald Bohannon is a Republican.That in and of itself is not remarkable. But what is unusual--although certainly not unheard of--is that he is a black Republican, raised in a culture in which 90-95% of the ethnic group to which he belongs is Democrat, and in a family with a politically active Democrat mother.Not altogether unlike myself, actually, come to think of it (although I'm not a Republican; I'm an Independent).

And, in another similarity, Bohannon has written about his "change" experience, in a book entitled Coming Out of the Republican Closet: Coming to Terms With Being Black, Patriotic, and Conservative (it could be subtitled: not an oxymoron.)Here's a recent interview with Mr. Bohannon. His "coming out of the closet" metaphor is especially apt, I believe. It's one that has come up quite often on threads on this blog that discuss the experience "changers" have had (see this, for example).

As you all no doubt know, "coming out" is a phrase that previously had been used primarily to describe the experience of gays who'd been hiding their sexual identities for fear of discrimination and recrimination, and who finally decide they can no longer live the secret life. They tell the truth, and let the chips fall where they may; sometimes they fall hard and painfully. Before my own change experience, I would not have believed in any possible comparison to the experience of gays; I actually might even have considered it preposterous if someone had asserted discrimination from liberals because of "turning" in a conservative--or a neocon--direction. But now I'm a believer.

Personal experience, and being the recipient of emails from all over the world describing the phenomenon, have convinced me. And yet I still feel some amount of shock at the depth and breadth of it all. I like to think--and really, I know, since I always had a few conservative friends--that in my liberal days I would never have had this reaction to a "changer."

After all, doesn't it seem especially antithetical to the openmindedness and respect for opinions of others that liberals profess to feel?But, as I've written before, a political identity is much more than that: it often becomes a moral and personal identity, and there are groupthink aspects that lead to ostracism of the apostate.

Zell Miller likens political identity to a birthmark, and in a way it is. In his interview, Bohannon discusses the tagline to his book, "Not wanting to disappoint his family and bring ill-repute on them, Bohannon chose to keep his political viewpoints to himself." He feared name-calling and anger directed not only at him, but at his family.But over time he gained the courage of his convictions, bolstered by the history of the Republican party's support of freedom for blacks during and after the Civil War. An especially interesting aspect of his position is that he believes black people to actually already be more conservative on many issues than they themselves know. He sees himself as a person willing to point this out and make it easier for more of them to cross over into formerly-dreaded Republicanism.

Bohannon sees the scarcity of blacks in the Republican Party as a function of lack of education as to what Republicans really stand for--now, and historically--and an incorrect perception of the Party as racist.Bohannon says:...it takes some intelligence to be a black Republican because you have to do your homework. ...To be a Democrat, you just have to join the Party that your family belongs to and you don't have to learn anything at all.No, it's not true that black Democrats--or Jewish Democrats, or any other ethnic or socioeconomic group that's predominantly and overwhelmingly Democratic, for that matter--are unintelligent. Not at all, and I would strongly quarrel with Bohannon's use of the word.But I do identify with Bohannon's larger message--which is that, as I grew more interested in reading about political events, both domestic and international, as well as historical--I grew away from the Democratic

Party and more to the right. That certainly is not an inevitability; I know that some people go in the opposite direction. But, as I've written here, it appears to be a trend. Reginald Bohannon is part of it--and, if he has his way, more black people will join him.

http://www.rbohannon.com/index.html

Is "Freedom Of Religion" Conditional?

Asks Duane Brayboy, a black conservative blogger, about the efforts of church leaders in Pompano Beach, Florida to demand that political leaders keep a mosque from opening in the community. They argue that the land should instead be used for affordable housing, and that Islam has no place in the city's northwest side - which is predominantly black and Christian - where the new mosque would be located: "These Muslims should be free to build their Mosque wherever they own land and it meets all local building codes. This is a very bad move by these churches and they need to just sit down and focus on more important things. I wonder if these same 'opponents' felt that the land where these churches reside would also be better suited for affordable homes? Naaaah!"My response: I agree, and regular readers know that I am no fan of Islam. However, the issue of whether Islam has a place (or not) in this mostly black community will be determined by market forces. If folks are not interested, then the mosque will not acquire members. Period.

However, Independent Conservative disagrees with us. The black blogger writes about one of the preachers leading the protest against the mosque, who recently had to resign from a local government advisory post when he declared that Islam is a cult: "It is still socially convenient for a minister to protest the opening of a strip club and I thank God for all ministers that do. But it is socially inconvenient for a minister to protest the opening of a temple of false doctrine, that is entering a neighborhood full of people who worship Jesus Christ and God the Father. Once upon a time in America, a Christian minister embraced by politicians could speak against such, but not today.....But today, for a minister to even speak about another faith in anything but the nicest terms results in that minister being ostracized. Rev. O’Neal Dozier is pastor of the Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, Florida. He is a Conservative Republican and had a long history of favor with the GOP and the Bush family. That is, until the day he said Islam is a cult and he had a problem with a Muslim mosque being built in his community. Then he was asked to step down from the Broward Judicial Nominating Committee. It is said that he was 'controversial' because he, a minister of a Gospel of Jesus Christ would ask judicial candidates if they were 'God-fearing'. Oh my, to think a minister would actually ask someone going into a post of authority if they fear God. What’s 'controversial' to me is not his question, but that anyone would think it’s somehow out of line for a minister to ask."

Jeffries: "Black On Black Violence As A Hate Crime"

The Seton Hall University law professor and liberal writes:

"Newsweek reports that federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are using hate-crime laws to prosecute Latino gangbangers for a series of racially motivated attacks on Blacks. The context may seem somewhat novel, but at a higher level of generality the claim is familiar: The Latino gangbangers allegedly attacked African-Americans in order to dissuade Black folk from moving to predominately Latino neighborhoods.

Reading the report, however, provoked another question: Why not use hate-crimes laws to attack Black-on-Black crime? Much of Black-on-Black crime, I’d submit, reflects the extent to which Black folk have internalized stigma-informed signals about their capacity and worth. Stigma suggests to Black folk that their humanity is less valuable than that of Whites. To that extent, stigma cheapens the value of Black life — perhaps to the point that, when internalized, the self-constraint Black folk might otherwise exercise when contemplating deadly force is nullified.

According to social scientists, stigma concerns a trait so thoroughly discredited that the existential character of those bearing the trait is called into question. Stigma therefore challenges the essence of the kind of being the stigmatized constitute. Largely because of stigma, our forebears readily reconciled liberal, democratic values with the gross inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow: If Black folk weren’t fully human, they had no right to human entitlements. Assuming stigma continues to represent a salient aspect of American society, the concept of Black-on-Black crime seems less a descriptive notion and more a normative one. To this extent, the racial identity of the victims of Black violence is a precipitating cause of the violence itself. That sounds precisely like the legal definition of a hate crime.

"My response: as much as I am tempted to view black on black violence as a hate crime, I must disagree. The stigma that Professor Jeffries mentions was vastly stronger during Jim Crow, but yet black folks weren't offing each other like nowadays. Today's crime stats are happening not because of stigma, but because some folks lack decent moral values...unlike older generations of far poorer black folks. The prevalence of fatherless homes is taking its toll, and that is where the focus should lie.

Bush Plans To Headline Blackwell Fundraiser

A presidential fundraising foray to the Cleveland, Ohio area next month could add $1 million or more to the campaign coffers of Secretary J. Kenneth Blackwell (pictured), a conservative Republican who seeks to become the state's first black governor. President George Bush will headline the event for Ohio's current secretary of state on August 2 at the home of Edward F. Crawford, chief executive officer of Park-Ohio Holdings Corp. The president raised about $3 million for GOP candidates during a July 30, 2004, fundraiser at Mr. Crawford’s home. Tickets for the Blackwell fundraiser are $1,000 per person, or $10,000 for those wishing to be photographed with the president.

President Bush’s visit will help Secretary Blackwell replenish his war chest after a successful primary campaign against Attorney General Jim Petro left him with $1.3 million on hand, compared with the $2.6 million that his opponent, Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio), had in the bank going into the general election.

Democrat Zombies

I love Bob Hope!

I Was Once a Democrat...

This man explains why he left the Democrat Party and became a Republican.

Steele endorses Mfume

Well, kind of. From The Baltimore Sun:

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Kweisi Mfume was fielding questions on WBAL radio when the leading Republican contender phoned in.But instead of a scrap, what ensued was a cross-party love feast. Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, the GOP's likely nominee for Senate, said he wanted WBAL listeners to know just how fond he was of Mfume. Steele spoke glowingly about a recent speech on economics and development given by Mfume, a former congressman and national president and chief executive officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

"When he got done, I went up to him, I said, 'Yo, brother, you sound like a Republican,'" Steele recounted last month on the Ron Smith Show. "He just looked at me and started laughing. I said, you know, so we have this kind of relationship that is a good one, it's a strong one. I think it's good for Maryland. You have two, you know, smart, energetic, African-Americans running for the United States Senate. I think that's exciting for our state. It's certainly exciting for the country."

If you weren't around Sixers on Friday, here's why Steele made this call...the African-American vote in Maryland is up for grabs if Mfume doesn't win the Democratic primary.

Reggae concert canceled after gay protests

Reggae concert canceled after gay protests
Beenie Man and the group T.O.K. have released songs deriding gays

Beenie Man performs at the Second Annual Vibe Awards at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, Calif., in this Nov. 15, 2004, file photo. A reggae concert meant to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS is coming under fire from some black gay bloggers and activists who are incensed that the lineup includes two artists they consider to be anti-gay.
View related photos

NEW YORK - Citing concerns about potential violence, an organizer on Wednesday canceled a reggae concert meant to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS after protesters complained two of the scheduled performers were anti-gay.

The organizer, LIFEbeat, came under fire by black gay activists and bloggers after it was announced that Jamaican dancehall artists Beenie Man and the group T.O.K. were scheduled to perform during a July 18 concert at Webster Hall. Protesters asked that the artists be dropped or forced to denounce controversial lyrics.

LIFEbeat executive director John Canelli said the group had been flooded with calls, some of them threatening, in recent days and was concerned safety would be an issue at the concert.

“The possibility of violence at the concert from the firestorm incited by a select group of activists makes canceling the event the only responsible action,” said a statement from the group, which uses the music industry to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS.
Board member Tim Rosta said the motive behind the concert was to raise awareness about AIDS and its impact, especially in Caribbean communities, but the uproar made it clear how deeply people were hurt and offended by the lyrics of the artists’ songs.
“I think that we misjudged the depth of the hurt around some of the issues that are raised by some of the lyrics,” he said.

Beenie Man and T.O.K. have released songs that deride gays through slang terms. One Beenie Man song calls for a lesbian hanging, and a T.O.K tune suggests gay men be burned.

“The idea that they would invite artists who encourage murdering gays and lesbians is so outrageous, insulting and unbelievable,” activist Keith Boykin said before the announcement of the cancellation.

Earlier this week, the concert organizer rejected the anti-gay lyrics but said including the artists would help reach a larger audience thanks to the popularity of their beat-driven dancehall music.

“By both artists agreeing to perform at an HIV/AIDS prevention concert in 2006 shows they have recognized the devastation this disease has had on their communities and that they want to effect some positive change,” Canelli said.
He added that the artists, who are not being paid, agreed before the protests not to use any “potentially offensive lyrics” at the show.
In statements earlier this week, T.O.K. said it had “matured over the years,” and Beenie Man said, “AIDS is an epidemic that doesn’t discriminate. It’s not a gay or a straight thing, it is a fight for life.”

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

A Black Cop Infiltrates The KKK

A Black Cop Infiltrates The KKK This is an amazing story and my hat is off to this amazing police officer.

You can see video by clicking link below:
http://www.letstalkhonestly.com/page/page/1307246.htm_ http://www.letstalkhonestly.com/page/page/1307246.htm)

Ralp Reed, Discussed "Mortgaging Old Black People"

By Paul Kiel

Ralph Reed's primary is only a week away and things are heating up.

In advance of its August publication date, GQ has released a big piece on Ralph Reed today, with one gem in particular: a plan hatched by Reed and Jack Abramoff which sounds suspiciously like "mortgaging old black people," as a former Reed associate told the magazine.

In July of 2003, Abramoff and Reed considered launching something called the Black Churches Insurance Program.

We know how this scheme would have gone, because Abramoff pitched something similar to a cash-strapped Texas tribe, the Tigua. Basically, since the tribe couldn't pay Abramoff, he offered to arrange "a life-insurance policy for every Tigua 75 or older." When those elders died, the death benefits would have gone to Abramoff through one of his non-profits. The Tigua didn't take Abramoff up on the offer, but it was too good of an idea to let go.

So Abramoff apparently thought black churches were a good target. This would have been the same thing, according to GQ's Sean Flynn, except that it was African-Americans. Or as "a former associate of Reed's" told GQ, "Yeah... it sounds like Jack approached Reed about mortgaging old black people.”

According to Abramoff's email exchange (under the subject line "Black Churches insurance program") with Reed in July of 2003 pitching the idea, it would have been huge:

Per our previous discussion, Abramoff wrote. Let me know how we can move forward to chat with folks who can set this up with African American elders. It can be huge. Thanks.
A file called “Charity Elder Program2.doc” was attached.

Three days later, Reed replied: Yes, it looks interesting. I assume you’ll set up a meeting in DC as a next step, or whatever we should do next, let me know.


Reed would have been the point man with the church leaders, one assumes, ushering them through the sticky process of getting all of their elders to sign up for life insurance policies payable to Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed.

Reed's flack's response to the story was as off-point as always:

Reed’s communications director, Lisa Baron, initially said, “Your sources are wrong,” but not how or in what way. A day later, she notably did not say those sources were wrong. Ralph receives unsolicited requests of a political or business nature all the time, she wrote in an e-mail. Our records show no meeting took place to discuss the proposed project. Ralph had no involvement whatsoever in marketing such policies to African-American churches.

Another Stupid Liberal: Tom Delonge

According to an Internet news-site posting, former Blink-182 star Tom Delonge has now spoken out in public about his doubts concerning the official version of the events behind the September 11, 2001 attacks.He also reportedly declared his belief that the attacks were an inside job, not just the work of "a bunch of people who just learned to fly planes.

" And Delonge should know, after all he was lead singer for Blink-182, a southern Californian punk/pop quartet noted for their fart jokes, running naked in videos and two US Billboard number-one albums, which includes their 1999 album "Enema of the State" (an album that infamously featured a porn star on its jacket cover)."We do know that the buildings came down in a fashion extremely similar to a controlled demolition of a building," said Delonge.

"We do know that expertise that is needed to fly those gigantic planes into that exact location could never have been achieved by someone that just learned how to fly a small plane."He also charged, regarding the failure of NORAD to enact standard operating procedure and intercept the planes, that "Cheney knew that the planes are coming in and he capped the order to leave it alone so it could hit.

It's so weird how our own government did it to us."Yeah, because you know, Bush and Cheney just planned the whole thing, and amazingly were clever enough to get the entire government to say nothing about their plans to kill more than 4,000 people on 9/11 and take over the world. All for oil, Halliburton and Texas of course. Because as the liberals constantly remind us Dick Cheney is the one who really pulls the strings in the White House.

Cheney, the man behind the evil Halliburton (which by the way one noted liberal by the name of Michael Moore has stock in), failed to stop the planes from crashing into the World Trade Center towers and Pentagon as part of the sinister plot to control the world's oil.Wow.Now either we save the world and put a quick stop to that evil Cheney guy or Tom Delonge may be forced to shut his stupid trap up and stick to his music. Tough choice.

Condoleezza Rice's Favorite Songs

The Independent, a British newspaper, published a no-news special edition yesterday that featured the secretary of state's favorite music. Rice provided the list as a favor to rock star Bono, who guest-edited the paper as part of a charity appeal to fight AIDS in Africa. Half the revenue from the edition will be donated to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS.









Mozart : Piano Concerto in D Minor

Cream : "Sunshine of Your Love"

"I love to work out to this song."
Aretha Franklin: "Respect"

Kool and the Gang: "Celebration"
Brahms : Piano Concerto No. 2

"It's a stormy, difficult piece, but I am going to learn to play
it before I leave this earth!"

Brahms: Piano Quintet in F Minor

U2: Any work
Elton John: "Rocket Man"

"It brings back memories of college, friends, my first boyfriend."
Beethoven: Symphony No. 7

"Quite simply the greatest symphony of all time."
Mussorgsky : "Boris Godunov"

"The greatest opera of all time. If you love Russia, you have to love Godunov."

Where is the Conservative/Libertarian John Stewart??

It would seem like Hollywood libs are
using comedians as a way to cut through debate.

Since they can not have a clear debate they use comedians to get there message out.

Who is the conservative John Stewart?

Are all comedians liberal?

Video European Racism and Soccer

Interesting expose of European racism.

Malik Shabazz on Hannity & Colmes

Mailk Shabazz defends Farrakhan's theories on New Orleans'
levees being blown up.

Noam Chomsky vs. William F. Buckley Debate

Watch Buckley Tear Noam Chomsky to threads!




Noam Chomsky vs. William F. Buckley Debate : Part 2 of 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9Samvw6Z08&search=William%20Buckley

Chippla Vandu on Sharia Republic

Chippla Vandu

The Nigerian-born moderate blogger, who now lives in Europe, comments on growing Islamic extremism in Somalia and in elsewhere on the African continent:

"From Northern Nigeria to Somalia, the craze by the ruling class to see that people abide by Arabic cultural values as promulgated by their interpretation of the Islamic religion is baffling. Why should 21st century African societies be subject to 7th century Arabic laws?

Furthermore, even in the Arab nations of North Africa, Sharia law holds less sway than it does in say Northern Nigeria and of recent, in Somalia.....My question is this: what room does Sharia law give for the creation of a pluralistic society?

Or, how does Sharia law accommodate the existence of pluralism? As with most things with Islam as practiced in Northern Nigeria, asking too many questions could be dangerous--only a thin line exists between what is considered a genuine question and an open attack on Islam. Until the day comes when Islam can be openly and frankly discussed on the streets of Northern Nigeria without the fear of a mob attack, enlightenment of the individual mind in that part of the world would remain an illusion.

As for Somalia, it needs one of two things to set it on the right path—a miracle, or foreign intervention. The last thing any African nation needs today is Taliban-style madness, which is precisely what one sees in Mogadishu."

So Much Ill and So Little Good

Great critique of William Easterly from http://ethiopundit.blogspot.com/



William Easterly, the author of The White Man's Burden : Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good begins his book stating that there are two tragedies for the world's poor.

First, that so many suffer because they lack access to existing inexpensive solutions and second, that the $2.3 trillion (that is $2,300,000,000,000 in cash money / 23 followed by eleven zeros or 2.3 thousand billion bucks!) spent on foreign aid over the last five decades has still not managed to get those existing inexpensive solutions to the poor.

Indeed, foreign aid often makes the lives of the poor far worse.This point of view is a far cry from the Jeff Sachs school of "throw so much money at the third world that even the most rapacious elites can't manage to steal it all ... then maybe something good will happen ... maybe". The Easterly book manages to actually judge and evalutate human reality and the results of aid, accountability, institutions and governance.His scholarship encompassess the modern history and policy of economics and aid with a sharp eye out for what actually works ... not what it is easy or convenient to accept. We will try and let the book speak for itself as we admittedly cherry pick through it. We were impressed with this work because the author agrees with us on many things sure, but mainly because he brings decades of broad scholarship and intimacy with the subjects at hand to the fore - all supported by fact that he constantly evaluates and questions.

Page numbers are from the 2006 Penguin Press edition. .......................................Some aid is expected to have impact on growth in the short term while other forms like humanitarian aid are expected to help in the long term. A study from the IMF in 2005 revealed that there was "no evidence that either 'short impact aid' or any other aid had a positive impact on growth." (p. 49)The results of studies from the Center for Global Development, which have been used by Sachs and Blair to justify quadrupling or at least a doubling of aid under the MDGs and the Commission for Africa actually showed that "aid had a zero effect on growth whe it reached 8 percent of the recipent's GDP, and after that the additonal aid had a negative effect on growth". (p. 50) A 2000 World Bank Study stated that "[d]espite the billions of dollars spent on development assistance each year, there is still very little known about the actual impact of projects on the poor". (p.194) Indeed, "bureacracies will devote effort more to activities that are more observable and less to activities that are less observable". (p. 179)Observable can mean headlines or simply amounts of cash involved or just some combination of hype thereof.

Popular accountability could make the less observable more important but there is, according to Yale Professor James Scott an "inherent contradiction between planning ... and democratic politics" that are normally implied by accountability. (p. 145)Easterly says that the IMF and the World Bank don't show respect for democracy in general. The IMF charter officially bans consideration of domestic politics "[b]ut a problem with the apolitical approach is that it is not apolitical. Supporting a sitting government with funds is unavoidably a political act". (p. 147)Taking up the example of Mobutu and numberous IMF bailouts he received Eaterly notes that the thefts were no secret.

The brutal selfishness of local dictators began long before aid even began - one early 19th century observer noted of Haiti that The present government seems to consider the poverty and ignorance of the people as the best safeguards of the security and permanence of their own property and power.Dictatorships like the Duvaliers got credits galore when aid began although nothing changed politically. (p.149) Later in 2001 Congo the World Bank went out of its way to give the Kabila fils government 'early wins' but "[d]idn't explain why it wished on the Congolese people a government made up of political actors who had demostrated an exceptional ability to use violence". (p.289)Easterly points out that while the rich can use their money and power in markets and accountable government that the poor are utterly alone against governments whose interests may have nothing to do with their own. "The central problem is that the poor are orphans; they have no money or political voice to communicate their needs or motivate others to meet those needs" while no one in the aid circuit considers what may actually work and what may not actually work. (p. 167)

Please understand that the foreign aid problem is inherently difficult because of the complexity of development, the weak power of the poor, and the difficulty of getting feedback from beneficiaries and of learning from failure. Throw into the trash can all the comprehensice frameworks, central plans, and worldwide goals. Just respond to each local situation according to what people in the situation need and want. (p.206) Accountability for public services is called democracy. (p. 381)

donors also put a positive spin on awful recipient governments by asserting that while things are bad, they are getting better. The use of gerunds such as "developing," "emerging," and "improving." The language effects even scorecards that are supposed to hold governments accountable for poor results. (p.138)The issue of playing with words in the face of millions suffering and billions being wasted comes up again with 'loans' - "[c]alling a loan to the poorest countries a 'loan' has become even more fictional. (p. 232) Then there is the issue of foreign aid volume as though it is an input to development and not an output.

Advocates for the world's poor throughout the decades have focused on increasing the volume of foreign aid. The recommended increase displays a strange fixation on double.McNamara defined success at the World Bank in the 60s and 70s in terms of doubling loan volumes (p. 182) This trend has continued through to Blair, Sachs and the vast aid apparatus of which they are only the most visible elements.Another issue beyond brutality and corruption is that of the society itself.

As Francis Fukayama also pointed out in Trust Easterly quotes a pair of World Bank economists who "found that low income societies have less trust than rich societies, and societies with less trust have less rapid economic growth". (p.79) Now imagine the result when a local government strives to create LESS TRUST in a society by tribal divide and rule and/or the creation of a police state. In previous paper by Easterly and Levine 'Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions' reviewed in Foreign Dispatches the authors define these problems and their costs
Africa's economic history since 1960 fits the classical definition of tragedy: potential unfulfilled, with disastrous consequences. In the 1960s a leading development textbook ranked Africa's growth potential ahead of East Asia's and the World bank chief economist listed seven African countries that "clearly have the potential to reach or surpass" a 7 percent growth rate.

Yet, these hopes went awry. On average, real per capita GDP did not grow in Africa over the 1965-1990 period, while, in East Asia and the Pacific, per capita GDP was over 5 percent and Latin America grew at almost 2 percent per year. Much of Africa has even suffered negative per capita growth since 1960, and the seven promising countries identified by the World Bank's chief economist were among those with negative growth. Sub-Saharan Africa's growth tragedy is reflected in painful human scars. Easterly also identifies what works.

For example financial markets are a source of free market efficiency and create opportunities for the creation of wealth by borrowing and investing resulting in a positive feedback loop (p. 76) of service for the supposed consumers of economic growth - the so called people. Another crucial element is property rights which underly financial markets and economic growth. "Property rights are an incentive to accumulate assets over time and across generations, which is often necessary to have a productive capacity to meet consumer needs. When I sacrifice consumption to buy land, factories,or other assets, I don't want someone else seizing those assets. (p. 90)Easterly makes two crucial points on what should be done.

The utopian agenda has also led to an unproductive focus on trying to change whole political systems. The status quo - large international bureaucracies giving aid to large national government bureaucracies - is not getting money to the poor. Conditions on aid don't work to change government behavior.[...]Remember, aid cannot achieve the end of poverty. Only homegrown development based on the dynamism of individuals and firms in free markets can do that. (p.368)Above all the author is opposed to BIG PLANS that are supposed to change the world with just a few tens of billions more.

What is really needed is FREE PEOPLE...............................There is no reason to believe that as things stand in the aid game that countries like Ethiopia will do better for their people in the future. Ethiopia is a clear case of how divergent the interests of rulers and ruled can actually be - and how divergent the interests of the ruled and the 'development partners' of the rulers can be as well.

The Ethiopian government is doing everything wrong IF one assumes that its aim is development. From the point of view of gaining more power and money for a tiny aristocracy from day to day while the getting is good, then the Ethiopian government is doing everything right.Remember the quote above from the early 19th century observer of Haiti that
The present government seems to consider the poverty and ignorance of the people as the best safeguards of the security and permanence of their own property and power.We all want to assume that such is not the case and that generosity erases poverty because it is more often easier to believe so than to accept how really bad a government can be or how complex the world is. Ethiomedia posts a recent article by a Western reporter who quotes an embassy official
"With direct budgetary support, donors aren't just dating the Ethiopian government, they're married to it". A key force in earning that trust was Meles Zenawi. The prime minister, as both critics and fans will say, is a persuasive man, able to talk like a democratic reformer or a World Bank technocrat when needed. "I always thought that Meles was going to save this country," says a long-time Western diplomat based in Addis. "He comes across as a calm and rational leader, but right under the surface is a hard-core ideologue with a psychopathic willingness to kill his own people to keep power." (Like most people interviewed for this article, the official refused to be identified.

To us this is a bit like the scene in the classic movie Casablanca where Rick's casino is shut down by an official who is "shocked , shocked to find out that gambling is going on" - in the next shot the same official is handed his roulette winnings as he orders everyone out.You see, all WANTED desperately to believe in Meles DESPITE all evidence because it served the purposes and illusions of all concerned - except the 70 million Ethiopians who it was all suppposed to be about.Foreign aid donors are the sole consituents of the government and they are only fitfully concerned with the brutality towards and future economic prospects of the government's 70 million hostages to donor good behavior. Donor good behavior is defined in terms of the respect and above all the money paid into the coffers of government and the elites at their core. None of this is a secret to anyone concerned.

Donors give money for a host of geopolitical reasons that have nothing to do with development and growth. Aid given for frank feelings of altruism or the betrayal of feelings of altruism are all served with the now ridiculous notion that 'at least something is being done'.Aid has created an Ethiopian political system designed to serve aid donors as long as they don't touch the political power of the government or even look too hard to see how the 'people' are being served. The donors play along at every level. The governments as we noted have realpolitik interests while their bureaucrats and NGO bureaucrats have career interests in the status quo and the promised 'doubling' of aid with no view to results.

The Ethiopian government dictates who is hired locally and internationally by NGOs. Indirectly for foreigners but it is clear that if they don't play ball they won't do well dealing with the government. Ethiopians, native or foreign based must be ... 'cooperative' and serve the interests of the government more directly to be acceptable to the regime.Every measure of NGO operation is thus influenced by one of the most brutal, corrupt and least attractive to foreign investment regimes on earth.

This is mutely accepted as the price for building careers and that proverbial 'chance to make a difference'. Both government or NGO bureaucrats are graded far more by how they get along with the local dictator and his minions or by pushing paper back and forth than by any measurable sort of results.This is why absurd government claims of growth or investment are largely met with cooperative and complicit silence from the aid community.

To them it makes no difference anyway and despite bouts of Meles worship they never really believed that they were creating growth and change but rather just enough 'positive' stirrings to keep their own taxpayers silent.People joke about how the Immigration bureaucracy in the US is the very worst one because citizens don't have to deal with it.

The actual reality of that imagined efficiency and dedication is found in foreign aid bureaucracies which literally don't have to deliver results at all to stay in business.Imagine the existence of such agencies for a moment! Aid bureaucracies are judged by how much money they spend and plan to spend - not by how many people they lift out of poverty. For example, Ethiopia's government, tens of billions in aid in hand after 1991 has yet to allow its people to develop by any measure.Now, we are sure that all those aid bureaucrats are indeed 'good' people.

However, they only need to look across the table at their government, party and govt/party cronies during the next negotiation or dinner party to know the faces of those who are their real development partners and also the authors of ongoing, accelerating Ethiopian misery.That vanishingly small elite that you hang out with and pay off for minimal access to Ethiopians controls the inseperable party and government as well as their attendant business empires and monopolies that account for the great majority of allowed economic activity.

After all you know who gets most of your aid contracts and all of the budget support and loans don't you? The same folks own all the land, control all the credit, pretend to have courts, laws and parliaments, routinely kill people and no longer even pretend to have free press or politics. But, you already know that don't you?

Everything that made donor countries rich or former poor countries develop is not being done in Ethiopia where the government's greatest pride is the amounts of aid it has managed to beg from societies where Ethiopians are acutally allowed to create wealth. Neither lowly ethiopundit, nor Easterly on high nor any other of the myriad bearers of common sense everywhere are any sorts of prophets here.

Everyone knows what works and what doesn't and what the human costs are in that choice for a long time already.Note, no one is speaking of not providing food to the starving here - making that the issue along with crocodile tears are the usual tactic used to avoid discussing the benefits and harm that aid causes. Essentially, aid should be about more than subsistence welfare to last just from season to season and year to year.The point should be to help the supposed recipients in the long and short run by allowing actual growth to take place and avoiding what has failed already. The old saying that 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions' is particularly apt here.Some brutal regimes have oil or inherited a relatively developed economy that will take years to destroy while they strip it bare at leisure -

Ethiopia has instead the endlessly renewable blood, sweat and tears of 70 million human beings - the evils of harvest time are horrible to behold..........................There are ways to deliver aid responsibly - read No More Appeasement for background and examples of what can be done to actually help - responsibly.

Video: British Islamist defends London bombings

They don’t call it Londonistan for nothing.

Actually, this was filmed in Birmingham. The organization is al-Ghurabaa, a successor to the notorious and now defunct al-Muhajiroun.

The speaker is Muslim convert/”revert” Trevor Brooks, a.k.a. Abu Izzadeen. Rusty’s got all the background you could ever want and more. A year after 7/7, this human tapeworm is still free to preach, threaten, and reduce himself to public fits of laughter over 9/11.

Keep in mind as you watch that there are journalists in the room, taking notes right in front of him. He doesn’t care. Why should he?

VIDEO HERE>>> Allah now has the video up<<<<<<>Hackney, East London, and originally from Jamaica.

He is the new leader of the islamist group Al Ghurabaa (the strangers), is a fluent Arabic speaker and a communication engineer by training. He is a psychopath who has openly admitted that he wishes to die as a suicide bomber.

{{refhttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1724541,00.html)) Abu Izzadeen converted to Islam when he was 17-year-old.

After becoming a Muslim, Trevor Brook changed his name to Omar but preferred to me known as Abu Izzadeen (commonly used term Father of...).

Influenced by his brother Abu Abdul Rahman, also a convert to Islam, the islamic leader is married to an Arab woman with whom he has three children. He told Asharq al Awsat that 1994, the year he embraced Islam, was a watershed.

He continues to regret the 17 years he spent prior to embarking on the religious path, he added. “I still vividly remember the day I pronounced the Shahadah, in my father’s house. It was a day before I turned 18, on 17 April 1994.”

Izadeen has described the 7/7 suicide bombers in London as "completely praiseworthy" [1]

Video of New York Times Protest

Yesterday in New York City, hundreds of American's protested
outside the New York Times HQ.

Below are some of the accounts of the event.

Click on the URL below to watch the video:

Hat Tip to Atlashrugged http://www.foxnews.com/video2/launchPage.html?071006/071006_hc_protests&Timely%20Protests%3F&Hannity_Colmes&Demonstrations%20at%20The%20NY%20Times%21&National&-1&Timely%20Protests%3F&Video%20Launch%20Page

http://www.fightingtheleft.com/

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/

http://newsbusters.org/node/6361

Black Leaders Divide over Joe Liberman

Two of the Congressional Black Caucus' most prominent members, U.S. Reps. John Lewis and Maxine Waters, have split over Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman and his primary with Ned Lamont, a divide that highlights the question of how the black vote might sway the outcome.

Waters, the more media-savvy and aggressive of the two, is backing Lamont - potentially bad news for Lieberman, who in recent years has been criticized for his stand on issues such as affirmative action and school vouchers.


But Lewis, viewed as more of an old-guard civil rights leader, helps reinforce Lieberman's message that he was a part of the rights movement as early as the 1960s, when he was a student at Yale.

The rival endorsements are not likely to translate into large numbers on Aug. 8 - black voters are expected to make up only about 10 percent of the total - but even a relatively small number of votes could affect a mid-summer primary in which turnout is likely to be low.

Waters says Lieberman "acts just like a Republican," and that she is talking with Lamont. "I'm calling Mr. Lamont," Waters told The Tom Joyner Morning Show, a nationally syndicated radio program, last week, "to tell him I'm going to come up and help him."

No timetable has been set, but Waters brings to the contest vivid reminders of why many members of the black caucus - which consists of the 43 black members of Congress - and former leaders of the NAACP have been cool to Lieberman for years.

One notable exception is Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who effusively praised Lieberman Monday in Hartford. Lewis, who joined Rep. John B. Larson, D-1st District, in meetings with Hartford community leaders, said he remained grateful for Lieberman's marching for civil rights in 1963 in Jackson, Miss.

"It was very dangerous for a white person from the Northeast or from anyplace to come south, to go to Mississippi and talk about registering black folks to vote. That should count for something," Lewis said.

Like Waters, Lewis is a member of the Congressional Out of Iraq Caucus. But he backs Lieberman despite the senator's support for the war.

"He is my friend. He is my brother. He is my colleague. I stick with my friends," Lewis said.

The warm words from Lewis, however, belie Lieberman's difficult history with the national black political establishment.

"Sen. Lieberman is not in any way beloved in the African American community. There's a considerable amount of suspicion," said David A. Bositis, senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research group that examines minority voting patterns. "It also helps that Lamont is being promoted as the more liberal of the two candidates."

Even though Lieberman's NAACP legislative report card has been stellar, Waters and others have long been critical of the senator.

Their pique first surfaced when Lieberman became an enthusiastic member, and later chairman, of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council - formed in the mid-1980s by white politicians who thought the party was becoming too liberal, politicians derided by the Rev. Jesse Jackson as "Democrats for the Leisure Class."

Over the years, there were other disputes involving Lieberman's questioning of affirmative action, support for school vouchers, reluctance to send troops to Liberia and criticism of President Clinton's behavior.

Bositis thought that many black voters, once reminded of Lieberman's record, will give Lamont a serious look.

"A lot of [Lieberman's] black support in the past has come because people held their nose and didn't want to vote for the Republican," the researcher said.

But Marshall Wittmann, political analyst at the DLC, disagreed. He thought it would help Lieberman to have the backing of Lewis, who helped lead the 1965 voting rights march in Selma, Ala., where he suffered a concussion after being beaten by a police officer.

Waters became nationally prominent in 1992, after South Central Los Angeles exploded in the wake of the incident involving motorist Rodney King, a black man beaten by white officers. Waters was often a spokeswoman for the embattled area, explaining the residents' frustrations.

The oldest beef that Waters and her followers have with Lieberman stems from 1995, when California was considering banning racial preferences at state-funded institutions.

"You can't defend policies that are based on group preferences as opposed to individual opportunities," Lieberman said at the time.

When Al Gore picked Lieberman as his vice presidential running mate five years later, Waters and other black caucus members were unhappy, and Lieberman had to make amends with skeptical caucus members at a downtown Los Angeles hotel.

Waters, in the front row, said she was "unclear" where Lieberman stood. Lieberman explained his civil rights history and pledged allegiance to affirmative action programs. Waters said she was satisfied.

But later that year, before a meeting with black caucus members, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., warned Lieberman: "Be very careful with affirmative action. They remember."

Members then grilled him intensely on a number of subjects, and were particularly upset that he had just been quoted saying he "wouldn't send American men and women to Liberia unless I was convinced the country was ready for peacekeeping."

At a time when troops were being sent to Iraq, the caucus was not pleased that Lieberman said, "I don't think it's appropriate for American soldiers to get into the middle of that." Lieberman said his statements were taken out of context.

Mean Girls - Condi vs Hilary

VideoTube Video" Condi Rice Beating Up Hilary"

Hip Hop doesn’t Kill People, People Kill People

Although I understand where folks are coming from when they argue that hip hop creates negative behavior here is a mistake in analysis that I think they are making.

They (it seems) are assuming that the elimination of ‘negative’ hip hop would dramatically reduce ‘negative’ behavior particularly amongst us blacks. I simply don’t believe that anymore after really reflecting on my previously held position. I think any form of ‘communication’ can reinforce positive or negative pre-existing potential to do a certain behavior but I really no longer believe that it is the genesis, the creation of such behavior.

I don’t think hip hop creates negative behavior, I think it simply reinforces the negative perception or the negative potential that pre-exist in an individual. When hip hop cats say ‘hip hop is just a window to the ghetto or street life’ I think they are right, but not in the way they think they are right.

For example, if my intent is to kill you, I mean I seriously beyond of shadow of a doubt want to kill you, then yes a gun might make it easier for me to do so, but if indeed it is my intent to kill then I will find a way regardless.

If the intent of an individual is to do some anti-social behavior, hip hop may be like the gun per se in that it provides a vehicle by which to shape anti-social behavior but it does not create said behavior. I believe the behavior would occur regardless because the intent of the person doing anti-social behavior was not created by the music that simply reinforces it or provides a shaping mechanism for it.

When you evaluate hip hop as a shaping mechanism for pre-existing anti-social tendencies and behavior, and not the creator of anti-social tendencies and behavior it forces you to look not at hip hop but at the root causes of the behavior that hip hop actually shapes.

Like the old saying goes, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” so it can be said that, “Hip hop doesn’t create bad behavior in people, people create bad behavior in people”. In other words, the infastructure and social dynamics in our community create an environment in which hip hop can serve as a shaping mechanism for the over abundance of anti-social behavior that our communities disproportionately produce. If we don’t correct the infastructure that produces anti-social behavior in the first place, we can eliminate hip hop, but we won’t eliminate the anti-social behavior that hip hop shapes.

Does hip hop in many ways portray us in a negative light to the world? Yep indeed. Doesn’t it also have positive aspects? Yes indeed. Do the negative aspects out weight the positive aspects? Absolutely irrelevent. When we change ourselves and our communities and rebuild our social infastructure then hip hop will cease to be the gun used with the intent to murder, because the intent simply will not be there.

Dell Gines is the President of the The Urban Center for Economic Education and Development, ., He has been blogging since June 2005 at Dellgines.com AKA Adequate Defense, and discusses a vast array of topics dealing from Urban Culture, Politics, and Faith.

WHERE HIP-HOP LIVES

The New Yorker magazine has an excellent article on the radio hip hop turf war's
Entitiled "WHERE HIP-HOP LIVES."

New Yorker reporter BEN MCGRATH indepth reporting on this fued is eye opening.
WHERE HIP-HOP LIVES

Hot 97’s turf wars.

by BEN MCGRATH

On the last Wednesday in April, a former drug dealer named Jamal Woolard, from the Lafayette Garden housing projects, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, was preparing for his big break. Woolard, whose hip-hop name is Gravy and whose songs include “Drugs, Drugs, Drugs,” “Get Wet, Get Wet,” “I Know, I Know,” and “Murder, Murder,” has for several years been a figure on the Brooklyn underground circuit, cutting mix tapes with better-known performers like Busta Rhymes, Foxy Brown, and 50 Cent. A year and a half ago, he signed a major-label recording deal, with Warner Bros., but outside the bootleg market on Canal Street, where you can collect the latest rap demos and mix tapes (CDs, actually) for five dollars apiece, Gravy remained an unknown.

That Wednesday night, he was due to make an appearance on “Riding with Funkmaster Flex,” a popular radio show on WQHT, otherwise known as Hot 97. He’d been invited by Flex, a veteran d.j. who wields a kingmaking power in the hip-hop industry, to perform in an improvisatory freestyle session with a couple of other rappers, Joell Ortiz and Saigon.

For moral support, Gravy had assembled a sizable entourage—three or four dozen men—and outfitted them with extra-large blue T-shirts that read “Gravy” on the front and, on the back, “Brooklyn ‘Get Up,’ ” a reference to the first single from his forthcoming album. Punctuality is unusual in the rap world, but Gravy and his crew arrived early for his session, and when he presented himself at the Hot 97 studio, on Hudson Street in the West Village, at a quarter to seven, Flex sent him away and told him not to return until ten. Gravy went around the corner to get something to eat.
A couple of hours passed. “Then, after I got a sandwich and came out of the store—da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da! ” Gravy told me later, mimicking the sound of gunfire. “The only thing I remember is falling, and knowing that I’m shot—just don’t know where. It’s not like, when you get shot, ‘Oh, I got shot here.’ Nah. You know you hit, so your mind frame is—you pumped, your adrenaline is going. I reach my hand over, and I see I’m bleeding. I didn’t see the hole. I can’t see behind my ass.”

Gravy is an enormous man—well over six feet, and more than three hundred pounds—with a caboose to match. The bullet, it turned out, had struck him in his left buttock. “Straight clean shot— through the ass, through the thigh,” he said, gently rubbing the front of his pants leg.
Five stories up that night, in the building that houses Hot 97, Amy Hackett, the director of institutional relations at Legal Momentum, a women’s-rights nonprofit, was at her desk, working late. She heard the shots, followed by shouting, and decided to wait another hour or so before attempting to leave. Hackett’s taste in radio tends toward NPR. When she finally ventured downstairs, she saw police lights and yellow tape everywhere, and asked one of the detectives, “Is this another gangster-rap event?”

More here
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060710fa_fact1

Is Corporate America to Blame for Hip-Hop Violence?

April 22, 2005 — From Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to Alice Cooper, musicians have long tried to project a "bad boy" image, often to help pique public interest in their music. But what's going on these days in the world of rap music — and its surrounding culture, known as hip-hop — is really something else.

The very first rap record — 1979's "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang — was a revelatory paean to fun and equality — with even a dash of patriotism. But here's the new message of rap and hip-hop, courtesy of the top-selling artist Curtis Jackson, also known as 50 Cent: "I put a hole in a n—— for f—-ing with me / Better watch how you talk, when you talk about me / 'cause I'll come and take your life away."

It's telling that Jackson chose the moniker 50 Cent to pay homage to Kelvin Martin — a legendary Brooklyn stick-up kid from the 1980s, who is believed to have committed more than 30 murders and was also known as "50 Cent." This outlaw quality is not just an image from a music video on MTV or BET — it has, in some cases, become a reality.

On Feb. 28, after 50 Cent criticized his former protégé, Jayceon "Game" Taylor, during an interview on New York City's popular hip-hop radio station, Hot 97, members of the two stars' entourages got into a confrontation that erupted with a spray of bullets.

In January, Irving Lorenzo, aka "Irv Gotti" — chief executive officer of the major rap label The Inc. (formerly known as Murder, Inc.) — was indicted for his alleged ties to a notorious New York drug syndicate that, according to prosecutors, was "a crime partnership that dealt in three commodities: drugs, murder and money laundering."

In March, hip-hop diva Lil' Kim was convicted of three counts of perjury for lying to a grand jury about another hip-hop shooting.

Punches were thrown and a man was stabbed in November at the nationally televised awards show hosted by Vibe magazine, which covers hip-hop culture. Feuds have long been a part of hip-hop, but are supposed to be kept in the realm of performance.

Clearly, something has changed in the world of hip-hop in the last 26 years.
Enter the Rev. Al Sharpton, former presidential candidate and civil rights activist. He is now leading a crusade against what he sees as an increase in violent criminal acts that are becoming hip-hop's major selling point. "We must do something about this pattern of violence that is then used to promote product and records," Sharpton told ABC News. "I think that that is the wrong signal to send to young Americans."

Sharpton says that record companies and radio stations often glamorize criminality and promote the feuds — sometimes with bloody consequences. He wants to hold the hip-hop industry accountable. "They ought to announce a 90-day ban on any artist who's found to engage in violence or allow those around him to engage in violence for the purpose of some kind of disagreement in the industry," Sharpton said.

Sharpton says if the government can get involved with steroids in baseball or obscenity in broadcasting, it should certainly involve itself when the marketing and promotion of hip-hop on the public airwaves results in violence.

More on ths article here http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/News/story?id=694982&page=1

Hip Hop And Violence: ''I have to ask myself - did I help promote violence'

The question of whether the media is irresponsible in promoting music with violent lyrics won't go away. And for journalist Sonia Poulton, once part of the scene, the answer is becoming clearer


David Cameron caused a stir when he told Radio 1 recently: "Do you realise some of the stuff you play on Saturday nights encourages people to carry guns and knives?"

The Tory leader's attack on gangsta rap was directed at the BBC but, as this debate has grown, I wonder if there were other journalists, PRs, television producers and radio executives out there who - like me - are feeling a little guilty about their own roles in promoting this music?

Gangsta rap emerged in the Eighties from the West Coast of America. It was rap's seamy underbelly and very different from the conscious polemics of the likes of Public Enemy over on the East Coast. It was my job, as a music journalist until the late-Nineties, to report on it for music and style magazines and newspapers. I also relayed tales of my adventures in rap-land for Kiss FM radio listeners every week. I was rewarded with unrivalled access to the biggest artists and the scoops that came with it.

I have discussed Tupac Shakur's murder around P Diddy's dining table (he knew the rumours and denied involvement) and listened to a fearful Snoop Doggy Dogg prior to his murder trial (he also claimed innocence and was acquitted).

My commitment to the hip-hop cause frequently found me caught up in the artist's personal skirmishes. I have wiped mace from the eyes of the Wu-Tang Clan's Raekwon and Ice Cube (real name O'Shea Jackson) has shown me bullet holes in his living room. His mother Hosea, meanwhile, has shown me his nice college photos and questioned why her son has made millions from rapping about "Fuck Tha' Police". "I don't see my O'Shea saying those curse words. I see him like an actor," she told me. And an actor is what he later became.

As a white female from the Cotswolds, hip-hop, and the promotion of it, may not have seemed like a natural vocation - but it suited me. Rap music and its inherent edginess spoke to my desire to live dangerously.

Racial inequality also motivated me. It seemed hip-hop - and by extension black people - was under attack. In America, the music-censorship lobby the Parent Music Resource Centre raged against rap and rock music and eventually triumphed with the emergence of the Parental Advisory stickers.

NWA (Niggaz with Attitude), arguably the first mainstream gangsta rappers, were investigated by the FBI for incitement to violence. And the subsequent furore over Ice-T's "Cop Killer" - in response to the brutal beating of Rodney King in 1991 by the LAPD - resulted in his release from Warner Brothers Records.

It seemed an uneven playing field. Eric Clapton's "I Shot the Sheriff" cover didn't outrage the public. And John Lennon's "Happiness is a Warm Gun" could be construed as glorifying guns. Apparently it was OK for white boys.

Today satellite and cable channels show rap videos of young, primarily black men swaggering, pack-like, through grimy estates, pulling imaginary triggers with their fingers. Young men who perceive violence as cool. Marketing executives, who grow rich from the sales of the brand-name hoodies and trainers, the music, the magazines and the satellite subscriptions, well know of this association.

I acknowledge my role in this. Aside from articles endorsing the work of rappers, there are several pieces which fill me unease. Like the article solely about Tupac's transgressions, alleged beating of a video director and accused raping of a fan, for a popular monthly music magazine. The commissioning editor, a white university graduate, was visibly gleeful when he asked me to write the piece. Encouraged that a big-budget, international magazine wanted to promote what had previously been an underground music, I enthusiastically went along with it. I regret that now. The highly salacious piece appeared under the headline: "It's Slammer Time! Shot! Jailed! Album Out!...Latest"

The editor was excited by the perilous adventures of "gangsta rap" and, in this respect, he was similar to others in significant roles within the hip-hop industry. Whether that was me, as a writer, Jerry Heller, the "money" behind NWA, or national DJs like Radio 1's Tim Westwood.

This voyeuristic tendency wasn't restricted to white people. I had a spot on Kiss FM's weekly rap show and the hosts, DJs Max & Dave, two black men, delighted in the exploits that I relayed. The more outrageous (read: dangerous) the better. We were all, misguidedly, passionate in our justification of the music. So when Bel Mooney condemned gangsta rap and called for a Radio 1 ban in the Daily Mail I was outraged and responded with a heartfelt appeal to her that "this would be further suppression of what is already the outpourings of the oppressed".

I wrote that instead of condemning gangsta rap we should instead question the environments that inspired this music.

My views on the dangers of hip-hop began to change in 1997 when the great rapper Notorious BIG, who had overcome a desperate childhood to become a platinum-selling artist, was shot dead in California. I winced again more recently when teenage London rap fan Alex Mulamba was knifed to death in the street, prompting Cameron's comments.

Remorsefully, I accept the role I have played in championing gangsta rap and its attendant lifestyle - but I am not alone. There are DJs, concert promoters, video producers, record company personnel, managers and marketing executives, music outlets and all media who benefit from their association with this lucrative but dangerous genre.

Like basketball and other sports, hip-hop has served as a legitimate route out of the black American ghetto. It has acted as a global conduit that has united people and inspired many other music genres to borrow its beat.

Hip-hop remains hugely relevant, musically and politically; and I still love it. But there is a saturation of one type of rap music that celebrates violence. It's down to economics and the sponsorship deals that many gangsta rappers enjoy, such as 50 Cent's lucrative deal with Reebok, highlight the way many young people are attracted to danger, just as I once was.

As a mother, I fear for them and yearn for the return to prominence of positive rap, such as that made by De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and Kanye West. But today rap's many young impressionable followers are bombarded by the words and imagery of the "Thug Life" - the two words which Tupac had prophetically tattooed across his abdomen before he was shot dead.

David Cameron caused a stir when he told Radio 1 recently: "Do you realise some of the stuff you play on Saturday nights encourages people to carry guns and knives?"

The Tory leader's attack on gangsta rap was directed at the BBC but, as this debate has grown, I wonder if there were other journalists, PRs, television producers and radio executives out there who - like me - are feeling a little guilty about their own roles in promoting this music?

Gangsta rap emerged in the Eighties from the West Coast of America. It was rap's seamy underbelly and very different from the conscious polemics of the likes of Public Enemy over on the East Coast. It was my job, as a music journalist until the late-Nineties, to report on it for music and style magazines and newspapers. I also relayed tales of my adventures in rap-land for Kiss FM radio listeners every week. I was rewarded with unrivalled access to the biggest artists and the scoops that came with it.

I have discussed Tupac Shakur's murder around P Diddy's dining table (he knew the rumours and denied involvement) and listened to a fearful Snoop Doggy Dogg prior to his murder trial (he also claimed innocence and was acquitted).

My commitment to the hip-hop cause frequently found me caught up in the artist's personal skirmishes. I have wiped mace from the eyes of the Wu-Tang Clan's Raekwon and Ice Cube (real name O'Shea Jackson) has shown me bullet holes in his living room. His mother Hosea, meanwhile, has shown me his nice college photos and questioned why her son has made millions from rapping about "Fuck Tha' Police". "I don't see my O'Shea saying those curse words. I see him like an actor," she told me. And an actor is what he later became.

As a white female from the Cotswolds, hip-hop, and the promotion of it, may not have seemed like a natural vocation - but it suited me. Rap music and its inherent edginess spoke to my desire to live dangerously.

Racial inequality also motivated me. It seemed hip-hop - and by extension black people - was under attack. In America, the music-censorship lobby the Parent Music Resource Centre raged against rap and rock music and eventually triumphed with the emergence of the Parental Advisory stickers.

NWA (Niggaz with Attitude), arguably the first mainstream gangsta rappers, were investigated by the FBI for incitement to violence. And the subsequent furore over Ice-T's "Cop Killer" - in response to the brutal beating of Rodney King in 1991 by the LAPD - resulted in his release from Warner Brothers Records.

It seemed an uneven playing field. Eric Clapton's "I Shot the Sheriff" cover didn't outrage the public. And John Lennon's "Happiness is a Warm Gun" could be construed as glorifying guns. Apparently it was OK for white boys.

Today satellite and cable channels show rap videos of young, primarily black men swaggering, pack-like, through grimy estates, pulling imaginary triggers with their fingers. Young men who perceive violence as cool. Marketing executives, who grow rich from the sales of the brand-name hoodies and trainers, the music, the magazines and the satellite subscriptions, well know of this association.

I acknowledge my role in this. Aside from articles endorsing the work of rappers, there are several pieces which fill me unease. Like the article solely about Tupac's transgressions, alleged beating of a video director and accused raping of a fan, for a popular monthly music magazine.

The commissioning editor, a white university graduate, was visibly gleeful when he asked me to write the piece. Encouraged that a big-budget, international magazine wanted to promote what had previously been an underground music, I enthusiastically went along with it. I regret that now.

The highly salacious piece appeared under the headline: "It's Slammer Time! Shot! Jailed! Album Out!...Latest".

The editor was excited by the perilous adventures of "gangsta rap" and, in this respect, he was similar to others in significant roles within the hip-hop industry. Whether that was me, as a writer, Jerry Heller, the "money" behind NWA, or national DJs like Radio 1's Tim Westwood.

This voyeuristic tendency wasn't restricted to white people. I had a spot on Kiss FM's weekly rap show and the hosts, DJs Max & Dave, two black men, delighted in the exploits that I relayed. The more outrageous (read: dangerous) the better. We were all, misguidedly, passionate in our justification of the music. So when Bel Mooney condemned gangsta rap and called for a Radio 1 ban in the Daily Mail I was outraged and responded with a heartfelt appeal to her that "this would be further suppression of what is already the outpourings of the oppressed".

I wrote that instead of condemning gangsta rap we should instead question the environments that inspired this music.

My views on the dangers of hip-hop began to change in 1997 when the great rapper Notorious BIG, who had overcome a desperate childhood to become a platinum-selling artist, was shot dead in California. I winced again more recently when teenage London rap fan Alex Mulamba was knifed to death in the street, prompting Cameron's comments.
Remorsefully, I accept the role I have played in championing gangsta rap and its attendant lifestyle - but I am not alone. There are DJs, concert promoters, video producers, record company personnel, managers and marketing executives, music outlets and all media who benefit from their association with this lucrative but dangerous genre.
Like basketball and other sports, hip-hop has served as a legitimate route out of the black American ghetto. It has acted as a global conduit that has united people and inspired many other music genres to borrow its beat.

Hip-hop remains hugely relevant, musically and politically; and I still love it. But there is a saturation of one type of rap music that celebrates violence. It's down to economics and the sponsorship deals that many gangsta rappers enjoy, such as 50 Cent's lucrative deal with Reebok, highlight the way many young people are attracted to danger, just as I once was.

As a mother, I fear for them and yearn for the return to prominence of positive rap, such as that made by De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and Kanye West. But today rap's many young impressionable followers are bombarded by the words and imagery of the "Thug Life" - the two words which Tupac had prophetically tattooed across his abdomen before he was shot dead.

"The world, as Thomas Friedman has noted, is flat. Africa's young professional middle class have left their governments to wallow in their own mire by going to work abroad. They know the depredations of their governments better. They also know that governments on the continent are saved from suffering the consequences of their thieving ways by the international humanitarian lobbyists through foreign aid.

They have decided to express their political rejection of this alliance (between corrupt, nepotistic African regimes and international donors) by choosing the exit option -- they go to countries where their skills are best appreciated and rewarded. The world is flat, and highly skilled labor has limited barriers to travel and work elsewhere.

Africa's brain drain is therefore a form of political protest by the continent's most skilled professional against the folly of their governments. Now you begin to see why the middle class in Africa does not turn to protest -- like has happened in many regions of this world in the past. There are other options because of the way the world has changed. Governments in Africa recruit people on the basis of tribe, religion or political loyalty.

That is why they are incompetent. But the moment the West stops subsidizing this incompetence with foreign aid, governments in Africa will discover the importance of rewarding professional merit, of offering long term career rewards to their most skilled citizens and begin to devise ways to attract their most talented human resource back home."

– Andrew Mwenda, Ugandan libertarian radio and print journalist, on how the African continent can progress

Dutch Sony PSP Ads Racist ?

Ripclawe, a black conservative Republican blogger, writes about a controversial ad campaign in Europe: "If you only saw the one pic with the white model holding the black model['s] face, you would go what the hell were they thinking. But looking at all three, at very least they were trying to get a black vs white psp catfight with the artsy edge to it. But it still plays to stereotypes that are not thought of as much in Holland/Mainland Europe as it would in America or the UK. Someone should get a slap upside the head. But I wouldn't lose sleep over it. Three Pics here. Scroll down.

"Angela Winters, a black moderate blogger, puts in her two cents about the campaign: "Oh yes and WTF is this? I get that Sony wants to be shocking to get attention, but give me a break? Even the anti-PC police have to cringe a little when they see this. I don't know what they wanted, but they certainly got a lot of publicity. This is in Holland by the way. I sincerely doubt they would try this mess in the U.S., but really, with the internet everything is everywhere now."

Quote Of The Day


Bishop T.D. Jakes

"Though the black community was served well by ministers who doubled as political leaders in an era when the pulpit was often our only podium, today, the African-American community is no longer limited to the pulpit as our primary lecture post. We now have thousands of African-American politicians elected to serve our interests, nonprofit leaders funded to lead our communal efforts and academics educated to research our options, and convey their findings to the world.

Just as the black community is not monolithic in its religious choices, personal opinions, or political affiliations, the black clergy is not limited in its sermonic topics to one perspective.

Enforcing unanimity of voices is a dangerous proposition. Throughout our history, various voices have served our communities well simultaneously. Booker T. Washington shared the public spotlight with W.E.B. DuBois. Ida B. Wells worked against the lynching of black men, while Mary Church Terrell worked on behalf of black women.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s voice calling for nonviolent integration echoed alongside that of Malcolm X demanding freedom to do for self by any means necessary. As it is in all American communities, no one person or perspective speaks for all African-Americans.

If we as African-American ministers allow anyone to script our sermons for us, where will it end? I respect each minister's views and recognize his right to tout them, but it is dangerous to try to force all members of any group to align themselves with anyone's viewpoints, including my own.

Each of us must answer the call that he or she receives from God, not the direction of any man. In the final analysis, no singular approach will end America's most pressing problems.

Rather, a multiple approach that includes direct assistance, personal empowerment lessons and self-help initiatives as well as speeches, marches and organized resistance, will help to dismantle the political and civic structures working against us. We are better together than we are apart." – Bishop T.D. Jakes, arguing that black American preachers should focus less on politics

Republican Senator saves Hip Hop Artist Ass!!

SALT LAKE CITY -- U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, a musician in his own right, helped secure the release of Atlanta rhythm and blues producer Dallas Austin from a Dubai jail after a drug conviction, the senator's office has confirmed.

In a statement released through his staff Saturday, the conservative Republican said he was contacted by Austin's attorneys, then called the ambassador and consul of the United Arab Emirates in Washington on Austin's behalf.

A Grammy winner who has produced hits for Madonna, Pink and TLC, Austin was arrested May 19 and convicted of drug possession for bringing 1.26 grams of cocaine into Dubai.

On Tuesday a court sentenced him to four years in jail and said Austin, 34, should be deported after serving the term. Hours later, Dubai ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum pardoned and released Austin.

Beyond saying Hatch has "good relations with the ambassador and other good people in Dubai," his office gave no specifics about Hatch's dealings with the Dubai government.

Hatch spokesman Peter Carr said he did not know whether the senator and Austin had ever met, but he confirmed that both employ Atlanta entertainment lawyer Joel A Katz. Hatch has written and recorded hundreds of religious and patriotic songs.

Katz traveled to Dubai to try to secure Austin's release, The New York Times reported Saturday.