This Is Why Black Folks'll Probably Stay on the Democratic "Plantation"

:eyeroll:

Ten conservatives who have praised slavery

10. Rep. Loy Mauch. This Arkansas GOP state legislator has found biblical support for his pro-slavery position. He wrote to the Democrat-Gazette to inquire, “If slavery were so God-awful, why didn’t Jesus or Paul condemn it, why was it in the Constitution and why wasn’t there a war before 1861?

And just think, he's only #10. There're 9 more!

No, I Haven't Finished Reading It Yet, But . . .

I ask you, who do you think are the "lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it" who're making "very much" (emphasis mine)? By Rolling Stone's Matt Taibi:

Me?" he says proudly. "Oh, I'm a property appraiser. Have been my whole life."

I frown. "Are either of you on Medicare?"

What Really Matters

In honor of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, I decided to post on issues the Movement would be concerned about:

Poverty in the United States

• Over 37 million people in the United States lived in poverty in 2007
• The number of people living in poverty has increased by almost 6 million since 2000. U.S. Census Bureau, 2008
• Over 15.5 million people lived below half of the poverty line in 2007. U.S. Census Bureau, 2008
• 37 percent of households headed by women with children present lived in poverty in 2007. U.S. Census Bureau, 2008
• In 2007, the poverty threshold for a family of four was $21,203. U.S. Census Bureau, 2008
• Children in the United States have the highest poverty rate of all age groups
• Over 13 million children (age 18 and younger) lived in poverty in 2007. U.S. Census Bureau, 2008
• The poverty rate for children was 18 percent in 2007—much higher than the poverty rates for adults 18-64 (10.9 percent) and for the elderly (9.7 percent). U.S. Census Bureau, 2008
• A family of four generally needs to earn twice the poverty threshold to provide children with basic necessities. National Center for Children in Poverty, 2008
• Employment alone is not always sufficient to provide a family’s basic needs
• 55 percent of children in low-income families have at least one parent who works full-time, year-round. National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP), 2008
• 36 percent of households receiving emergency food assistance had at least one employed adult. Feeding America, 2007 (Formerly America’s Second Harvest)
• In 2005, 25 percent of all workers earned a poverty level hourly wage.Economic Policy Institute, 2008
• Minorities and immigrants are disproportionately affected by poverty
• 24.5 percent of black and 21.5 percent of Hispanic people live in poverty, compared to 8.2 percent of white people. 34.5 percent of black and 28.6 percent of Hispanic children live in poverty, compared to 15 percent of white children. U.S. Census Bureau, 2008
• 16.5 percent of foreign born US residents experience poverty versus 11.9 percent of native born residents. This number is particularly high among immigrants who have not naturalized, at 21.3 percent.U.S. Census Bureau, 2008
  

You Must Be a Racist If . . .

. . . you're Tea Party Express chairman Mark Williams.

I Think I Feel a Lil' Prayer Wheel Turning

Here're two video clips from CNN. In the first one, Don Lemon  (Keep your lemonade, I'll take the Lemon!) interviews a favorite of mine, Tim Wise, about the whole Confederacy month nonsense. The next clip, Tony Harris interveiws as tea pot leader who demonstrates their asininity. (That's the tea pots' stupidity not CNN.) After all, it's not the new healthcare bill mandates insurance companies to do what they were doing before the bill passed, ie raise premiums and co-payments.

Damn.: ACORN Finally Cracks For Good

I can hardly even enjoy the signing ceremony for the health care reform bill and the little boy wearing the tie that matches Obamas's tie. Now, Stephanie Menciner thinks once people actually experience the bill's provisions and Grandma doesn't die, the tea parties just might. (Well . . . Grandma probably will die, but it won't be by the hand of some government bureaucrats.) But not even that makes me feel better. The tea pots just rallied around hate and fear and failed conservative policies. ACORN actually helped people.

ACORN Finally Cracks For Good
A right wing target falls for good; "community organizing" is forever marked as un-American.
By Adam Weinstein | Mon Mar. 22, 2010 3:35 PM PDT

Congratulations, Andrew Breitbart and James O'Keefe. You killed ACORN. Who's next? The Salvation Army?

I'm Sure You've Heard This Before . . .

. . . cause I have. If a person can't debate the impact of racism on the facts, they resort to citing the potential for acquiring a "victim mentality" as the reason blacks shouldn't dwell on racism. 'Cause,' the rationalization goes, 'if we think about it too much, we'll just give up and not try to succeed in life. ' If the inherent racism of such notions weren't bad enough, the sheer ignorance of history is. Just in case you have heard it and want to add some extra pop to your retort.

Another thing I find insulting about this argument? Those who mention it acknowledge the extent the racism, even if unintentionally; but, they never talk about ending racism or ways to counter it - just that we shouldn't talk about it. Oh, and they don't suggest not talking about race or racial topics, just not racism.

Now, I haven't finished the article yet, but Tim Wise is a favorite anti-racism activist of mine. But since I did skim it putting in the links and section titles, I can tell you that he mentions the ignorance of history, too. Great minds think like mines!  ~ No1KState

Conservativism, Whiteness, Exploitation and More Ways to Help Haiti

I got two different thoughts and at the moment, neither is so long as to elicit its own post. But, share your thoughts and we'll see what happens.

I came across this:

THAT liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom;

here.

Now I suppose by "economic freedom" they mean low taxes and little regulation. But it's those very policies that have gotten us to where we are now.

Tea Part-(i)ers

Way below is a recent comment I left on Prometheus6 in response to New Yorker article, The Rise of the Tea Party Movement. First though, I should give some explanation.

I've come to realize as of late a couple of things:

1. I do spend maybe too much energy commenting on other blogs.

My health being what it is, I can't afford not being discriminate in how I spend my energy. The thing is, righting something of scholarship takes just an inordinate amount of energy. Starting with deciding what I'm going to right about and keeping everything straight in my head. I mean, sometimes, by the time I've finished thinking out my thoughts on one issue, I've actually gone through 2 or 3 issues. Now granted, I can usually manage to remember what thought prompted another, and I can follow my logic from one argument to the next. But it can be like trying to stretch out a slinky; and as soon as I try to blog, the slinky recoils and I get slapped in the face. Because I'm trying to choose between a number of topics that're all intertwined and can all be gotten at from different angles.

What the what!?!?!

I hardly know what to say about this, people using Psalm 109:8 as an anti-Obama slogan. I mean, did they miss the W Bush years or the part about loving your enemies? And what is it that they're accusing Pres Obama of anyway. If you're one of these haters, please let me know. And being specific. Don't go into bland, political ideological talking points about healthcare reform or the bail out. No, I want you to be specific. Did you not receive your share of the stimulus? Perhaps he aborted your baby. Maybe he started one war and then forgot about it, or maybe he lied us into a completely unnecessary war and let contractors defraud the country out of billions, maybe even trillions of dollars.

Really, I wanna know. But I want specific descriptions of what he did and why it warrants this reaction. No accusations about destroying America. Tell me how he's destroying America, allegedly. Understand? Less adjectives and adverbs, more nouns and verbs. I mean, if it's that bad, I want to know. So what is he doing that you find so abominable that you advocate violence against him?

Oh, My Allah!!

If you think that just because this guy's last name is "Hasan" this was probably an act of psuedo-Islamic terror, you are an awful, awful person.

That said, you gotta give it up to POW Shoshana Johnson! I've mentioned her before. She was captured along with Jessica Lynch, the white girl who got all the media and money love. I'm not mad at Lynch. I'm not. I just think Johnson deserves the same.

Not-Shop List

Yeah, there's a lot going on, including the ignorance of the 9/12ers. But I decline to give them much more attention than calling them ignorant requires. But here's some ignorance you need to be aware of in California, people saying that would try a pro-white party.

By the by, Kurt Warner is ruining my fantasy score! Urgh!

What I really want to share with you is some info about products being sold in the US that are made with slave labor. The Department of Labor just released a list, and change.org blogged about it.

Health Insurance Whistleblower

Yeah, here's some more.

First up, Tim Wise. I thought I had already posted this clip, but I hadn't. Obviously. After him, a health insurance whistle-blower.

"I'm Not a Racist, But . . .

. . . yes, I'm comparing our first black president to a anti-semitic mass murderer even though at no point in US history have black Americans systematically murdered and terrorized white people."

Meanwhile, just today I talked to the lady behind the counter at Subway. We actually started joking about the "$5-Footlong" song. Then, in the course of our conversation, I learned that she and her husband have 5 boys between them, he just lost his job, she only works part-time, and so they have no healthcare.

Hardworking, white, Americans. No healthcare. They make too much to qualify for medicaid, for now at least, but not enough to afford private insurance. 5 boys. 5. No health insurance.

So let me know when you're ready, all of you afraid of losing your country, for a serious discussion about all of us looking out for each other; not just ourselves or the ultra-rich.