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This guy helped found the Ella Baker Center, a modern day civil rights organization in Oakland, California, providing the launching pad for  needed activist groups such as Books Not Bars and Color of Change AND he provided shelter and advocacy for families who lost their homes to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina.  He wrote the definitive book on rescuing both our jobless and our environment, “The Green-Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems“.

His sin?  Once signing something that wondered whether or not 9/11 was an inside job.  And believing in a society of equality.

Westboro Baptist Church?  What have they done for a city, the oppressed, the overlooked, the homeless?  Nothing.  They show up at funerals and picket the dead, with whom they have NO connection.  They carry signs that say ‘God Hates Fags’.  They showed up at a memorial for a bus accident…  They showed up at a memorial for the Sago Mine Disaster.

They show up at the funerals of U.S. soldiers who die in the line of duty.  They showed up and one brave father sued them for disrupting his own right to privacy, to grieve his son who died in battle.

What is Westboro’s sin?  For which no one has yet caught or stopped them?  For which Conservative Pundits DO NOT attack???  They honestly believe that their hate-filled God is killing AMERICAN innocents around the world as a SIGN that we are doomed because the United States is becoming more tolerant of homosexuality.  (Forget that their Jesus said ‘do not judge’…)  The Dixie Chicks suffered more for saying ONE THING in 2003 (in the run-up to invading Iraq): “we don’t want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas”, than Westboro has EVER suffered for their far, far worse inflammatory calls to civil war.

They believe 9/11 was an inside job.  They believe that the pregnant woman who jumped from the burning, collapsing Tower ‘deserved’ to die, along with her 3700 fellow Americans murdered that day.  They don’t care if you are gay or straight, their God wants to kill you.

Where are the Conservative pundits now?  Why did they attack (like ravenous wolves) a man who stood up for the poor and the incarcerated?

Why are the Conservative pundits now silent, when a soldier’s father is forced to pay the legal bills of a pseudo-religious group that wants to incite riots?  WHY ARE THEY SILENT?

Could it be that the activist is black?  And the preacher is white?  Their base is white and Christian…

We are sitting on a powder keg.  These protests are not lawful.  They are meant to incite real violence.  Letting them scream their vitriol is like allowing the shouting of ‘FIRE’ in a crowded theater.  Until now, there have been no riots, because individuals or groups like the Patriot Guards show up and buffer the crazy protesters from the grief stricken families.

We give tax exemption to anyone who claims they are a religion.  Let’s outlaw that.  Why should one portion of society not pay the costs of the society they operate within, especially when they cost us LOTS OF MONEY for increased police protection when they host these HATE events?  The Roman Catholic Church’s Legion of Christ is worth $20 billion. Scientology is a rich religion.  Why allow tax benefits to nut jobs like Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church?  Let them be taxed at the same rate as regular Americans.

And where are the same Conservative pundits who ripped Van Jones to shreds, when Westboro says exactly the same thing, only crazier?

Sitting on their hands, silent.  As usual.

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Honey, I couldn’t make this stuff up.

Under current federal law, a first time simple possession of five grams of crack cocaine requires the same five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence as a person in possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine.

Dick Durbin and Jeff Sessions think they did a FANTASTIC job, equalizing the criminal justice playing field 4/5 more, by changing the sentencing disparity, instead of eliminating the unconstitutional disparity between crack and powder cocaine.

“If you ever wonder if anything good ever happens there (in the Congressional Gym? the weights room or the shower?? ed. comment), it appears something good might have happened there,” Durbin said, which may or may not have been an oblique reference to former Congressman Eric Massa‘s tale about being lobbied by Rahm Emanuel in the House gym. “Senator [Orrin] Hatch was there to witness it.”

Dick thinks quid pro quo is more important than doing the right thing:

The compromise was that Durbin would accept Sessions’ amendment to change the disparity from 100 to 1 to 20 to 1. In return, Sessions offered to withdraw his amendments that would have narrowed the circumstances under which a judge could reduce penalties for offenders who acted with “fear, impulse or affection,” and would have imposed a 10-year mandatory maximum for simple possession rather than eliminating the five-year mandatory minimum for simple possession entirely.

“My position is for one to one, equity and equality in sentencing, but in order to get things done you have to be prepared to make mutual concessions,” Durbin said. “That’s what we have done.”

Tell that to the poor person with 1/100th the amount of one type of cocaine in their possession, who serves as much time as the wealthier person with the 100x of a different type of cocaine in theirs.  Changing that sentencing law to ‘a poor person with 1/20th the amount of one type of cocaine in their possession serves as much time as the wealthier person with 20x of a different type of cocaine in their possession’ doesn’t seem to be doing much more than moving chess pieces on a board.

And since when is legislation decided between TWO MEN, instead of the entire Senate?  These guys act as though they single-handedly solved the racial crisis in our prison systems, by bartering.  The sad thing is, for those caught in the wrong social strata, these two men create the rules.

We need a rule about qualifying to work for the U.S. Government.  You should have to work in a day-care, deliver food to the elderly, sit with kids in school, and visit the incarcerated AND their families.  You should not be able to legislate in such an impotent way when it harms one racial group more than your own, period.

Then we would have some protection against this kind of ‘wasted time’ legislation.

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Today is a national day of protest for students:

Students, professors, teachers and unions around the country will organize today to protest America’s imperiled system of education with more than 100 events in 32 states.

The movement started in California, where the public college system has been seized by tension and dissatisfaction over proposed tuition hikes, budget cuts and a series of racist events on University of California and California State campuses.

At the same time that we’re upping their educational costs, think about this:

The founding fathers said that our national debt should be paid off every generation. They said it is immoral to saddle the next generation with debt. Today we are saddling not only the next generation but the next and the next. This is taxation without representation because we are putting our posterity in debt when they are not old enough to vote on it.

Its not exactly fair to make students pay more for the ability to discover the ways in which we’ve betrayed them.

In California, Governor Schwarzenegger wants to tie education spending to prison spending, because only 7.5% of the general fund goes to higher education but a whopping 11% goes to the prison system.

So kids, we won’t educate you, but we’ll sure house you for life!

On this day of protest, let’s give students our support.  We’d rather have them smart so they can dig us out of the mess we’re in, so they can provide GOOD FOOD to us when we’re in nursing homes in just a few decades… We’ll be in trouble if they are all uneducated or incarcerated.

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Is it just me, or does ANYone else notice that the bosses of our Representative Leadership are all old white guys, and that they look just like the guys who got us into this recession, the old white guy bankers?

And are they hard at work, both sides of the aisle working together to pull American taxpayers out of this recession?  Are they spanking the bankers?  Are they creating jobs?

No, they’re involved in a political death match.  WITH EACH OTHER.

Nothing is getting done.

First, Sen. Richard Shelby put a blanket hold on all executive branch nominees to extort the executive branch into rigging procurement to guarantee that the company he favored won a bid on a defense contract. Oh, and he wanted the FBI to build a crime lab in his state, too.

And now, Sen. Lindsey Graham is copycatting, placing a hold on the closing of Gitmo hostage to extort the Department of Justice into not having a civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

What are they doing? Holding up the smooth working of the Government of the United States of America?  For their own political good?  We have 3 branches of Government and all three are being held up by partisan politics in Congress.

These old white guys do NOT represent the color of America, they do NOT raise their own kids, they do NOT send their own kids into the Military, they DO have family lifetime health insurance, they DO have generous retirement plans… These guys live lives free of the worries of their constituents.

They have NO IDEA what regular Americans are going thru right now.  Because they can head off to Hawaii to caucus, or dine with lobbyists at expensive restaurants.  They don’t have to listen to regular Americans.

They get to play their little power trips, while utterly ignoring the people who elected them.

FAIL.

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White Girls

If you’re part of the white privilege world, you might not notice something strange about this photo, the cover of Vanity Fair extolling HOLLYWOOD! 2010.

They’re all white!  And SUPER SKINNY.  Utterly lacking in diversity.  They do not represent Hollywood’s future.  But Vanity Fair thinks they do!

Vanity Fair writer Evgenia Peretz calls out the young cover stars by their best attributes: “downy-soft cheeks,” “button nose,” “patrician looks and celebrated pedigree,” “dewy, wide-eyed loveliness,” “Ivory-soap-girl” features.

Hmmm, patrician looks? That’s code for ‘white’.  ‘Button nose’? That’s what most plastic surgeries are trying to create, also code for ‘white’.  ‘Ivory-soap’?  Its a white bar of soap.

Totally lacking creativity, Vanity Fair has missed out on these lovely young women:

Zoe Saldana, from both blockbusters AVATAR and STAR TREK,

and they forgot Gabourey Sidibe from PRECIOUS,

and they forgot Freida Pinto from SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE.

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Now he’s on FOX News saying ‘This was all a HUGE misunderstanding’.  He says its investigative journalism.  Yeah right, just like David Letterman’s extortionist is saying he was simply asking for a ‘silence payment’ similar to that paid to Tiger Wood’s ho’s…  We live in a world of murky interpretation of ethics and these ‘Jedi mind wipes’ provided by FOX News, ‘this wasn’t a felony trespassing, this was conservative activism’ are now considered a legal defense.

Do the crime?

Do the time, buddy.

But let’s watch what justice prevails for him, the white boy ‘conservative filmmaker’ who dressed like THIS

thinking he was a Pimp. Pimp?  He looks like a drunken FRAT BOY thinking he’s all that.  He’s so lucky he found ‘easy to dupe’ employees at ACORN, where he said he was bringing in underage prostitutes and wanted business advice.

He’s arrogant, has an unhealthy sense of entitlement and his own righteousness.  That’s not criminal, but it is annoying.  It is, however, criminal to trespass onto a Federal Building, a Senator’s office space, have listening devices and tamper with phones.

Let’s see if he does any hard time.  Then let’s compare that to non-white, lesser known, low-income sentencing for similar crimes committed by less media-savvy perps, minus the felony wiretapping charges that he thinks he’ll squiggle out of.  He’s the poster boy of ‘anti-corruption’ for the right wing pundits now.  I bet this boy gets off, and his real brethren, other criminals, do hard time.

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I just came across a post at Sociological Images about an outrageously racist flash video game called Border Patrol. They note that in the game, “you try to keep three types of Mexicans from crossing the border: drug dealers, Mexican nationalists, and ‘breeders.’” Video game site Kotaku — which thankfully also calls the video game racist — gives a highly similar description. As you’ll notice in the image above, which is of a heavily pregnant and barefoot caricatured woman crossing the border, she is also on her way to the welfare office.

But you may also notice something else. Looking at the image, there are bullet holes in the sign that says “Welcome to the United States” (with a picture of a flag that seems to indicate an anti-Semitic message that the country is run by Jews — am I missing something?). The woman in the game also looks like her head is in the cross hairs of a gun.

That’s right, in this game we’re not “stopping” Mexican immigrants from crossing the border without documentation by, oh, calling the police. Or by using another horrific and degrading option like catching them in a net to send them back over the border.

No, players are shooting them dead.

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