Wednesday, August 07, 2013

playing with that rahowa fire...,

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

please don't judge all caucasians by the actions of a few...,


HuffPo | Boston Marathon bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev befriended a brain-damaged anti-U.S. government conspiracy theorist through their mother's health care aide job years before the deadly attack, a lawyer said Tuesday.

Attorney Jason Rosenberg, who represents the family of Donald Larking, said Larking shared publications with the brothers and discussed theories including that the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and the Newtown, Conn., elementary school shooting didn't happen or the U.S. government was behind them.

The attorney said the Tsarnaev family had a relationship with the Larkings that started years ago when the brothers' mother began working as a personal care assistant for Larking's wife, a quadriplegic since birth.
Rosenberg said Larking, who lives in West Newton, just west of Boston, was shot in the head in 1974 in an attempted robbery while working in a convenience store. He said Larking suffered brain damage that led to problems with his decision-making and judgment.

Authorities say the Tsarnaev brothers orchestrated the April 15 marathon bombing, in which two pressure cookers loaded with shrapnel exploded near the finish line, killing three people and injuring more than 260 others. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty last month to charges including using a weapon of mass destruction to kill. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died after a shootout with police a few days after the bombing.
Rosenberg said Tuesday the Tsarnaev brothers got to know Larking while substituting for their mother sometimes by helping to care for his wife. The attorney said the brothers "helpful" and "kind" to the couple and Larking shared his views with them as he found anti-U.S. government websites and became angrier and irrational.

The lawyer's account first emerged in a Wall Street Journal article, which included Tamerlan Tsarnaev's former landlady talking about publications that had been in his Cambridge apartment.

Landlady Joanna Herlihy told The Associated Press she salvaged publications after authorities had searched the apartment and items were discarded. She confirmed that among them were an Alabama-based publication that uses a Confederate flag on its website and a weekly publication that the Southern Poverty Law Center calls anti-Semitic.

Rosenberg said Tuesday he doesn't think Larking helped the Tsarnaev brothers, ethnic Chechens from Russia, formulate ideas but may have made them believe others felt as they did.

"(They) were seeing someone who was Caucasian and was born in America who was saying the same things," the attorney said.

right wing extremism and peasanthood don't mix...,


theatlanticwire | Alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev become absorbed in magazines about wild conspiracy theories, mass killings and white supremacy, all courtesy of a convalescent older gentleman who has trouble facing "the realities of the world," according to his lawyer.

Yesterday, the BBC program Panorama reported on the telling reading material authorities found in the dead Tsarnaev brother's apartment. There were, for example, magazines that sympathized with Hitler, promoted a white supremacist agenda, and outlined how other mass murderers had performed their crimes.
The Wall Street Journal tracked down the individual who gave those magazines to Tsarnaev: 67-year-old Donald Larking. Larking was a client of Zubeidat Tsarnaev, who made a living in the U.S. caring for the elderly. Larking had been left with disabilities after surviving being shot in the face during a robbery at his job 40 years ago.

Larking subsequently became interested in magazines that pushed right-wing conspiracy theories about 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombings, and the Newtown school massacre. Tsarnaev, already a fan of conspiracy sites like InfoWars and Islamist websites, became close with the older man:
Ms. Tsarnaev began asking Tamerlan Tsarnaev or his brother to care for Mr. Larking when she wasn't available to work. Mr. Larking's wife, Rosemary, a quadriplegic, also needed help at home. Mr. Tsarnaev seemed to have found a kindred spirit in Mr. Larking. They became friends and had animated talks about politics, people close to the Larking family said.
Tamerlan started reading the anti-Semitic American Free Press and absorbed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Tuesday, August 06, 2013

unspeakable busy mumbling about "terra" again...,


atimes | When the going gets tough, count on the Ministry of Truth to get going.

The end of Ramadan was imminent. The jihadi chattering classes of that fuzzy entity, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), went on overdrive. It was jailbreak galore from Libya to Pakistan via Iraq. And all this in perfect synch with two successive fatwas issued by that perennial bogeyman, former Osama bin Laden sidekick Ayman "Doctor Evil" al-Zawahiri.

Imagine a rushed crisis meeting at the highest levels of the Orwellian/Panopticon complex: "Gentlemen, we have a golden opportunity here. We are under siege by defector spy Edward Snowden - liberated by the Soviets - and that terrorist hack Greenwald. Snowden may be winning: even among US public opinion, there's a growing perception we may be more of a threat than al-Qaeda.

So we must show we are vigilantly protecting our freedoms. Yes; we're gonna scream Terra, Terra, Terra!"

The bottom line is that the Bush-Obama continuum never ceases to reassure us - not to mention that old fox al-Zawahiri. Doctor Evil, as warped a strategist as he is, figured out a while ago that if the "al-Qaeda" global bogeyman myth is now "stronger than ever" it's thanks to the Obama administration and its poodles, European and Persian Gulf-based, with their Three Stooges strategy from Libya to Syria. Afghanistan is a completely different story; there's no "historical" al-Qaeda left, only a handful in the Pakistani tribal areas.

So al-Zawahiri knew the bogeyman would inevitably be resurrected, in total synch with his recent fatwas, because "long" - or "infinite" - war equals perpetual funding for the Orwellian/Panopticon complex. And a convenient foreign enemy is essential; no one in Washington could possibly admit on the record the real "enemy", as in strategic competitor, is the Chinese dragon.

Doctor Evil and the Orwellian/Panopticon complex are on the same side - and that explains why he'll be allowed to be a motor mouth fatwa machine for as long as he wants, and won't be nabbed like some patsy in the underwear bomber mould. The complex is back in offense. Reform the NSA? Interfere with our metadata? What for? We have just alerted the US government to "pre-9/11" levels of terrorist chatter!

AQAP might well decide not to participate in this worldwide "pre-9/11" script. Real jihadis, after all, are not foolish enough to be caught by XKeystroke. So here's a Dylanesque riddle for you. All along the watchtower, a false flag is approaching - said the joker to the thief. There's too much Terra confusion, and we won't get no relief.

what if your country begins to change and no one notices? welcome to post-constitutional america...,


tomdispatch | Close your eyes for a moment, think about recent events, and you could easily believe yourself in a Seinfeldian Bizarro World [5].  Now, open them and, for a second, everything looks almost familiar... and then you notice that a dissident is fleeing a harsh and draconian power, known for its global surveillance practices [6], use of torture, assassination campaigns [7], and secret prisons [8], and has found a haven in a heartless world in... hmmm... Russia.  That dissident, of course, is Edward Snowden, just granted a year’s temporary asylum [9] in Russia, a.k.a. the defender of human rights and freedom 2013, and so has been released from a Washington-imposed imprisonment in Moscow’s international air terminal and the threat of far worse [10].

Now, close your eyes, open them again, and for just a moment, doesn’t the world look a little more orderly?  After all, a draconian imperial power has taken one of its own dissidents, who wanted to reveal the truth about its cruel war practices and global diplomatic maneuverings, thrown him in prison without charges, abused and mistreated him, brought him before a drumhead military court and, on essentially trumped up charges of “espionage,” convicted him [11] of just what its leaders wanted to convict him of.  That power, of course, must be Russia and all’s right with the world... oops, I mean, that’s U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning [12] and the “evil empire” that mistreated him is... gulp... the United States.

Think about it for a moment: if Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a place of asylum for American dissidents and the U.S. is doing a reasonable job of imitating aspects of the old USSR, we are on Bizarro Earth, aren't we?
Today, former State Department whistleblower [13] Peter Van Buren, author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People [14], considers how America’s distant wars have come home and how, under that pressure, this country is morphing into something unrecognizable.  Worse yet, it’s quite possible that we’re only at the beginning of that transformation.  To give but a small example of what the future might hold, psychiatrist and author [15] Jonathan Shay, famous for his work with traumatized Vietnam veterans, suggested in Daedalus [16] in 2011 that no one knows what it means for similarly traumatized employees of our Warrior corporations [17], the rent-a-gun “veterans” of our recent war zones to come home to no health care and no support system.  And he offered an eerie, if provocative, comparison to the footloose German veterans of World War I who, in the 1920s, joined the Freikorps [18] and played their part in the radicalization and then Nazification of that country. 

“I am not saying,” he wrote, “that I know that the Weimar Republic would still exist today, with all that implies about a different course to history, if Germany had had Vet Centers and VA Mental Health Clinics. But historians generally agree that the Freikorps contributed to the weakening of the new German political fabric in the immediate aftermath of World War I.”  His is a chilling reminder that, wherever we are now, it might just be a rest stop on some bizarro road to hell. -Tom

Monday, August 05, 2013

in 2011 the fbi allowed informants to commit 5600 crimes


usatoday | The FBI gave its informants permission to break the law at least 5,658 times in a single year, according to newly disclosed documents that show just how often the nation's top law enforcement agency enlists criminals to help it battle crime.

The U.S. Justice Department ordered the FBI to begin tracking crimes by its informants more than a decade ago, after the agency admitted that its agents had allowed Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger to operate a brutal crime ring in exchange for information about the Mafia. The FBI submits that tally to top Justice Department officials each year, but has never before made it public.

Agents authorized 15 crimes a day, on average, including everything from buying and selling illegal drugs to bribing government officials and plotting robberies. FBI officials have said in the past that permitting their informants — who are often criminals themselves — to break the law is an indispensable, if sometimes distasteful, part of investigating criminal organizations.

"It sounds like a lot, but you have to keep it in context," said Shawn Henry, who supervised criminal investigations for the FBI until he retired last year. "This is not done in a vacuum. It's not done randomly. It's not taken lightly." 

USA TODAY obtained a copy of the FBI's 2011 report under the Freedom of Information Act. The report does not spell out what types of crimes its agents authorized, or how serious they were. It also did not include any information about crimes the bureau's sources were known to have committed without the government's permission.

Crimes authorized by the FBI almost certainly make up a tiny fraction of the total number of offenses committed by informants for local, state and federal agencies each year. The FBI was responsible for only about 10% of the criminal cases prosecuted in federal court in 2011, and federal prosecutions are, in turn, vastly outnumbered by criminal cases filed by state and local authorities, who often rely on their own networks of sources.

"The million-dollar question is: How much crime is the government tolerating from its informants?" said Alexandra Natapoff, a professor at Loyola Law School Los Angeles who has studied such issues. "I'm sure that if we really knew that number, we would all be shocked." Fist tap Arnach.

fbi ran a child porn site for two weeks...,


gizmodo | Last November, the FBI raided a bulletin board-style site that was known to be a home of child pornography. But rather than shutting it down, they decided to keep it running—and see just how many users they could identify.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Bureau agents posed as child porn dealers, actively distributing pornography while the site was under their control—just as other agencies perform sting operations with drugs and prostitution. 

It's not yet clear if the technique worked that well: in the two week period, the FBI attempted to identify 5,600 users who had shared over 10,000 images of children, but s0 far it's only known that one suspect's computers have been seized. Still, it might be too early to judge. The investigation is still, apparently, in its early stages and, while nobody has yet been prosecuted, charges are believed to be forthcoming.

What can, perhaps, be judged, is the ethical position of distributing child pornography to incriminate suspects. Is it worse than supplying drugs in a sting? Or is it fair game given the end result? What do you think? [San Francisco Chronicle via Verge]

half of tor sites compromised, including tormail...,


twitlonger | The founder of Freedom Hosting has been arrested in Ireland and is awaiting extradition to USA.

In a crackdown that FBI claims to be about hunting down pedophiles, half of the onion sites in the TOR network has been compromised, including the e-mail counterpart of TOR deep web, TORmail.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/fbi-bids-to-extradite-largest-childporn-dealer-on-planet-29469402.html

This is undoubtedly a big blow to the TOR community, Crypto Anarchists, and more generally, to Internet anonymity. All of this happening during DEFCON.

If you happen to use and account name and or password combinations that you have re used in the TOR deep web, change them NOW.

Eric Eoin Marques who was arrested runs a company called Host Ultra Limited.

http://www.solocheck.ie/Irish-Company/Host-Ultra-Limited-399806
http://www.hostultra.com/

He has an account at WebHosting Talk forums.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=157698

A few days ago there were mass outages of Tor hidden services that predominantly effected Freedom Hosting websites.

http://postimg.org/image/ltj1j1j6v/

"Down for Maintenance
Sorry, This server is currently offline for maintenance. Please try again in a few hours."

If you saw this while browsing Tor you went to an onion hosted by Freedom Hosting. The javascript exploit was injected into your browser if you had javascript enabled. Fist tap Arnach.

Logical outcomes from this?

1. FBI/NSA just shut down the #1 biggest hosting site and #1 most wanted person on Tor

2. Silkroad is next on their list, being the #2 most wanted (#1 was Child Porn, #2 is drugs)

3. Bitcoin and all crypto currenecies set to absolutely CRASH as a result since the feds can not completely control this currency as they please.

I don't always call the Feds agenda transparent, but when i do, I say they can be trying harder.

Sunday, August 04, 2013

All behavior begins as unconscious -the product of contingencies of reinforcement. We share unconscious behavior with the other animals. Behavior becomes conscious when society gives us reasons to examine ourselves...,


salon | A June 2013 Gallup poll revealed that 70% of Americans hate their jobs or have “checked out” of them. Life may or may not suck any more than it did a generation ago, but our belief in “progress” has increased expectations that life should be more satisfying, resulting in mass disappointment. For many of us, society has become increasingly alienating, isolating and insane, and earning a buck means more degrees, compliance, ass-kissing, shit-eating, and inauthenticity. So, we want to rebel. However, many of us feel hopeless about the possibility of either our own escape from societal oppression or that political activism can create societal change. So, many of us, especially young Americans, rebel by what is commonly called mental illness.

While historically some Americans have consciously faked mental illness to rebel from oppressive societal demands (e.g., a young Malcolm X acted crazy to successfully avoid military service), today, the vast majority of Americans who are diagnosed and treated for mental illness are in no way proud malingerers in the fashion of Malcolm X. Many of us, sadly, are ashamed of our inefficiency and nonproductivity and desperately try to fit in. However, try as we might to pay attention, adapt, adjust, and comply with our alienating jobs, boring schools, and sterile society, our humanity gets in the way, and we become anxious, depressed and dysfunctional.

the establishment is destroying american prospects both home and abroad...,



globalresearch | Congress seems unaware of its schizophrenia. On the one hand Congress is outraged about the National Stasi Agency’s illegal and unconstitutional spying--especially on Congress--and is attempting to defund the Stasi Agency’s surveillance program. The amendment to the military spending bill by Justin Amash, a Republican from Michigan, almost passed. The amendment was barely defeated by votes purchased by the spy industry.

On the other hand, despite its outrage over being spied upon, Congress wants the scalp of the brave hero, Edward Snowden, who informed them that they were being spied upon. Here we have a demonstration of the historical stupidity of government--shoot the messenger.

Only a few right-wing crazies believe that universal surveillance of every American is necessary to US security. The National Stasi Agency will fight hard and blackmail every member of the House and Senate, but the blackmail itself will lead to the National Stasi Agency’s wings being clipped, or so we can hope. If it is not done soon, the Stasi Agency will have time to organize a false flag event that will terrify the sheeple and bring an end to the attempts to rein in the rogue agency.

The United States is on the verge of economic collapse. The alleged “superpower,” a bankrupt entity, was unable after 8 years of efforts to occupy Iraq and had to give up. After 11 years the “superpower” has been defeated in Afghanistan by a few thousand lightly armed Taliban, and is now running for cover with its tail between its legs.

Washington compensates for its military impotency by committing war crimes against civilians. The US military is a great killer of women, children, village elders, and aid workers. All the mighty “superpower” can do is to lob missiles shot from pilotless drones into farm houses, mud huts, schools, and medical centers.

The schizophrenic denizens of Washington have made Americans a hated people. Those with the foresight to know to escape from the growing tyranny also know that wherever they might seek refuge, they will be seen as vermin from the most hated nation and subjected to being scapegoated as spies and evil influences, and at risk of being decimated in reprisals against Washington’s latest atrocity.

Washington has destroyed the prospects of Americans both at home and abroad.

everybody wants an admin account on unspeakable's global logging and monitoring system...,


NYTimes | The National Security Agency’s dominant role as the nation’s spy warehouse has spurred frequent tensions and turf fights with other federal intelligence agencies that want to use its surveillance tools for their own investigations, officials say. 

Agencies working to curb drug trafficking, cyberattacks, money laundering, counterfeiting and even copyright infringement complain that their attempts to exploit the security agency’s vast resources have often been turned down because their own investigations are not considered a high enough priority, current and former government officials say. 

Intelligence officials say they have been careful to limit the use of the security agency’s troves of data and eavesdropping spyware for fear they could be misused in ways that violate Americans’ privacy rights. 

The recent disclosures of agency activities by its former contractor Edward J. Snowden have led to widespread criticism that its surveillance operations go too far and have prompted lawmakers in Washington to talk of reining them in. But out of public view, the intelligence community has been agitated in recent years for the opposite reason: frustrated officials outside the security agency say the spy tools are not used widely enough. 

“It’s a very common complaint about N.S.A.,” said Timothy H. Edgar, a former senior intelligence official at the White House and at the office of the director of national intelligence. “They collect all this information, but it’s difficult for the other agencies to get access to what they want.” 

“The other agencies feel they should be bigger players,” said Mr. Edgar, who heard many of the disputes before leaving government this year to become a visiting fellow at Brown University. “They view the N.S.A. — incorrectly, I think — as this big pot of data that they could go get if they were just able to pry it out of them.” 

Smaller intelligence units within the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Secret Service, the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security have sometimes been given access to the security agency’s surveillance tools for particular cases, intelligence officials say. 

But more often, their requests have been rejected because the links to terrorism or foreign intelligence, usually required by law or policy, are considered tenuous. Officials at some agencies see another motive — protecting the security agency’s turf — and have grown resentful over what they see as a second-tier status that has undermined their own investigations into security matters.

Saturday, August 03, 2013

the nsa's hold on top people...,



peterbcollins | In our interview in June, NSA Whistleblower Russell Tice told Sibel Edmonds and PBC flatly that Senate Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein was one of many targets of NSA surveillance, using wiretapping and other methods.  Big Question:  does Feinstein know this, or has NSA kept it secret even from its highest-ranking oversight official?We kept this interview brief, and to the point:  Is Sen. Feinstein unaware that NSA targets top elected leaders, including herself?  If she is aware, does she support domestic surveillance programs because she is compromised by blackmail or other leverage?  And even if she is not compromised, does she see the potential for abuse by a rogue NSA?

We open with a quick summary of Tice’s background, and then he details the wiretapping of Feinstein’s offices, homes, and family.  Tice also says NSA used other surveillance methods on Feinstein, and places the initiation of wiretaps in 2004 or 2005.  He responds to questions about evidence for his disclosures, and his motive for revealing them now.

And he recaps the story of his appearance with Feinstein and Sen. Orrin Hatch on CNN’s Larry King show, where the senators defended the programs that Tice knew were also monitoring them.

Please share this widely:  if Feinstein will answer these questions honestly, we might see a break in the hold NSA appears to have over top elected officials.

everything snowden said was true, and then some...,


slate | If you have ever searched the Internet for something the NSA has deemed “suspicious,” you may have found yourself flagged up on the screen of a government spy. At least, that’s what a series of newly published secret documents suggest—raising fresh privacy concerns about the pervasive reach of the NSA’s global surveillance programs.

On Wednesday, the Guardian disclosed a range of new details about an NSA program called “XKEYSCORE,” which is an international system used by the NSA to secretly siphon data directly off of Internet networks. A small amount of information was first revealed about this system earlier this month by Brazilian newspaper O Globo, which published secret documents that appeared to show how the NSA was able to use XKEYSCORE to spy on Google maps searches.

The new release compounds the earlier disclosures, revealing how the NSA can use XKEYSCORE to collect and monitor huge troves of data on unencrypted Internet browsing sessions in countries across the world. In one 30-day period in 2012, at least 41 billion total records were collected and stored in XKEYSCORE, according to the Guardian. The NSA claims to have more than 700 XKEYSCORE servers located around the world at approximately 150 sites. At some of these locations the NSA claims it gobbles up more than 20 terabytes of data every day—the equivalent of about 20,000 copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Metadata collected by the system is typically retained, according to the slides, for 30 days at a time. It also appears to be able to sift through the content of unencrypted communications sent over the Internet.

Particularly notable is a series of secret NSA slides on the program, dated from 2008. The slides are marked “release to” United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, suggesting XKEYSCORE is accessible to spy agencies in each of these countries. (It is also reportedly used by German authorities.) They show how the NSA collects data on emails, browsing sessions, and what people are searching for online—“nearly everything a typical user does on the internet,” as one slide puts it. The system enables analysts to trawl through this information in order to find what is described in the slides as “anomalous events.” Anyone sending encrypted emails or documents, searching for things deemed “suspicious stuff,” or using a language that is “out of place” for the region they are in may get flagged up as a potential target for further surveillance.
However, the increasing adoption of encryption in recent years may have to some degree thwarted the scope of XKEYSCORE’s capabilities. Back in 2008, the NSA could certainly use the XKEYSCORE program to mine vast quantities of data directly from networks about Google searches, email correspondence, and Facebook chats.

Friday, August 02, 2013

with nothing obvious to struggle against, who you obliged to struggle for?


theroot | We've been here before: Both Lemon and Cosby approach the growing crisis of racial injustice and economic inequality in America from the view of "racial uplift." In the 19th century, "racial uplift" meant that respectable black women and men projected an air of education and erudition that, in many instances, aped that of their white counterparts. The crucial difference was the way in which the "Talented Tenth" openly struggled against Jim Crow, racism and white supremacy. But even the most passionate black social reformers, including W.E.B. Du Bois, at times felt unease about the way in which poor blacks (and their behavior, penchant for crime, proliferating children) cast a long, negative shadow on the entire race.

Some went even further. Unable or unwilling to confront racism's brutal institutional, political and cultural manifestations, they settled on demonizing poor blacks. Arguing that pathological behavior resulted in social marginalization and economic misery, the most conservative "race" men and women of the era distanced themselves from the black poor even as they fought mightily to gain access to predominantly white institutions.

By the 1960s, with the release of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's report on the black family, myths of black pathology became enshrined in our national discourse. The erroneous idea that African Americans were stuck in a generational culture of poverty because of their own deviant behavior (reflected primarily although not exclusively in the high rates of out-of-wedlock births) informed debates over race and poverty in the post-civil rights era. What became known as America's urban "underclass" was rooted in a long-standing racial, cultural and political stereotyping of the black poor.

This stereotype is deceptively simple. If young black men could just pull their pants up, stop using the n-word and go to school and get a job, their lives would be transformed. Similarly, if young black women abandoned teen-age promiscuity and delved instead into academic studies, black poverty rates would be dramatically reduced. What this story ignores is the links between institutions and behavior, the binds that tie public policy to positive and negative outcomes large enough to affect whole neighborhoods, towns, cities, states and nations.

community consciousness: individual vs collective empowerment in the fin d'siecle


theroot | Although inelegantly expressed, Jay Z's position that his presence, along with that of President Obama, provides resources for the black community deserves closer examination. Insofar as Obama's watershed presence in American culture promoted a renaissance of interest in race and African-American history in politics, cable news, publishing and universities throughout the nation, Jay Z's point is well-made. Similarly, Shawn Carter's own burgeoning iconography has helped make hip-hop into a global phenomenon and inspired countless black entrepreneurs and artists to follow his example. In many respects, Michael Jordan innovated the model of the apolitical black superstar that subsequent generations in sports and entertainment have adopted. Belafonte has every right, of course, to criticize such a perspective, especially since it flies in the face of the ethos of collective and group empowerment upon which the civil rights and Black Power eras were built.

Jay Z's acknowledgement that he spent two sleepless nights in the aftermath of the George Zimmerman verdict included an admission that America still has residues of past racial discrimination. Beyond this fleeting recognition, however, racism appears as ghosts from the nation's dark past, shadowy apparitions that are not easily recognizable and almost impossible to fight.

This narrative views racism as more of an antiquated series of individual prejudices, pernicious stereotypes and ancient wrongs committed lifetimes ago than a systematic and institutional phenomenon that persists in every facet of American life. When Jay Z points to hip-hop's multicultural audience as providing not just a balm for past racial discrimination but, in fact, a cure, he means it. The shared experiences of a multicultural hip-hop generation represent the culmination of the civil rights movement's search for transcendent racial justice. Although this ignores the most important aspect of contemporary racism -- unequal outcomes -- it's a comforting myth that has been propagated by our "postracial" moment.

Jay Z sees his own wealth and status, along with the election of Barack Obama, as examples of racism's decline. In other words, he mistakes individual achievement for collective advancement. While Jay Z's individual entrepreneurial spirit, musical genius and discipline facilitated his escape from Brooklyn, N.Y.'s Marcy Projects, he doesn't see the value in committing his time, resources and talent in political causes that might help those left behind in America's countless urban and rural ghettoes.

Belafonte's generation grew up believing that the ascendance of black faces in higher places carried less weight and meaning if the entire community could not be uplifted as well.

lawsy, what's goin'on by the woodpile out behind the big house?!?!?!?



people |  U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona and his wife Cindy shared in a happy occasion Saturday night – the wedding of their son Jack McCain to Renee Swift, the senator's rep confirms.

The younger McCain, 27, serves as a lieutenant in the Navy, stationed in Guam where he is a helicopter pilot. Swift, 29, a Bay area native, is a captain in the USAF reserve. The couple met in Guam.

The wedding ceremony was held at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, with a reception following at the California Academy of Sciences, said the rep.

The festivities were attended by all of the McCain children, reports The Washington Post. Also attending the couple's rehearsal dinner Friday night at the Tonga Room of the Fairmont Hotel, said the newspaper: former presidential candidate and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
The groom's sister, Meghan McCain, 28, shared the joyous occasion through live Tweets throughout the weekend.

The couple planned to honeymoon in Africa, after which Jack McCain is slated for another deployment.

you know of course that the first black speaker of the house's orange daughter married a rasta?


dontgetherhairwet | The Root and other media outlets are reporting that Lindsay Boehner, daughter of Speaker of the House John Boehner recently married Dominic Lakhan,  ”a Jamaican-born construction worker” , who in the words of Root author Keli Goff  ”happens to be black.”  She goes on to say ” he also happens to have been previously arrested for marijuana possession.”

Umm ok. . . weird wording and perhaps unnecessary information, but nevertheless, good for everybody involved.  As opposed to some websites that see this as a gleeful excuse to write headlines like “NO JOKE: John Boehner’s Daughter to Marry Jamaican Pothead Construction Worker With Criminal Record”  I see this as an awesome thing. Who cares! They are happy, they want to be together. Let’s all love one another! . . . Republicans. . . I tell you, just when I start to paint you all with the same sweeping stereotyping, generalizing brush, you go ahead and surprise me.

Here are two extremely fuzzy aerial shots of the wedding obtained by the Daily Mail UK. I think the second pic is supposed to be of John Boehner, enjoying himself at the wedding. Or at the very least attending the wedding.

Thursday, August 01, 2013

"my presence is charity...,"



counterpunch | Veteran civil rights activist and world-renowned entertainer Harry Belafonte hit a raw nerve last year when he suggested Black artists be more outspoken about their besieged communities.

“I think one of the great abuses of this modern time,” he observed, “is that we have such high-profile artists and powerful celebrities, but they have turned their back on social responsibility. That goes for Jay Z and Beyoncé, for example.”

Even though Belafonte continuously emphasizes his remarks were not intended to be personal and that he earnestly desires a private, fraternal conversation not a public dispute, Jay Z clearly took it all very personal, criticizing Belafonte in the media and on the title track of his new album, “Magna Carta…Holy Grail.”

Jay Z also responded by elaborating his own alternative version of “social responsibility.”

He told the press that “I’m offended…and this is going to sound arrogant, but my presence is charity. Just who I am. Just like Obama. Obama provides hope. Whether he does anything, the hope that he provides for a nation and outside of America is enough.”

On this point, I beg to differ. Preaching hope is not enough to solve our problems, not by a long shot. Neither do charitable donations even comes close to fulfilling basic social needs.

Leaving aside self-serving tax benefits, mostly accruing to the wealthiest donors who itemize a myriad of exemptions, individual handouts, no matter how well-intentioned and admirable, cannot solve deeply rooted problems of our day.

Plus, with a July 28, 2013 AP wire service report indicating four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, there is absolutely no justification for government to abandon its social contract with the people.

It would be yet another bad example of outsourcing state duties to the profit sector. Fist tap DD.

jay-z: objectivist exemplar...,


nydailynews | Thanks to Keli Goff of The Root for writing the definitive word on the war of words between singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte and Jay Z, the budding sports agent, Atlantic Yards cheerleader and former owner of a tiny sliver of the Nets.

“These men are not equals in any way,” Goff writes. “Jay Z will never be in Belafonte's league, no matter how many CDs he sells or millions he earns (or how many presidents he pays to hang out with through political fundraisers). The only thing making this fake ‘feud’ marginally interesting is that Jay Z seems oblivious to this fact, as do some of his fans, a few of whom are so intellectually lacking that they are unaware of how much greater Belafonte's legacy is and will always be than that of ‘Hova.’

Goff follows up with five reasons why Belafonte is “more relevant and more of a man than Jay Z will ever be.”

She notes that Belafonte provided financial support to Martin Luther King Jr. and his family when the civil rights icon was a struggling pastor and even helped bail King out of jail following his arrest in Alabama. She also points out that Belafonte helped fund the freedom rides.

Jay Z, meanwhile, donated just $6,431 of the $63 million he earned in 2010 – and that money went to his own charity.

Meanwhile, over at Atlantic Yards Report, Norman Oder examines Jay Z’s claim that his very presence is charity and that his rise from crack dealer to hip-hop star is inspiring.

“Jay Z has a point: many, many people (like NPR's Frannie Kelley) found the presence of Jay Z opening the Barclays Center trumping any controversy: ‘The Barclays Center is fraught, but watching Jay open it was touching, and that night, I did not feel complicated about him.’

“And Jay-Z neutralized/deflected a lot of criticism of the arena and Atlantic Yards project.

“But ‘my presence is charity?’ Puh-leeze. He's a business, man.”

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

the hon.bro.preznit's minister of negroe affairs indeed...,

townhall | If we put ourselves into the shoes of racists who seek to sabotage black upward mobility, we couldn't develop a more effective agenda than that followed by civil rights organizations, black politicians, academics, liberals and the news media. Let's look at it.

First, weaken the black family, but don't blame it on individual choices. You have to preach that today's weak black family is a legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and racism. The truth is that black female-headed households were just 18 percent of households in 1950, as opposed to about 68 percent today. In fact, from 1890 to 1940, the black marriage rate was slightly higher than that of whites. Even during slavery, when marriage was forbidden for blacks, most black children lived in biological two-parent families. In New York City, in 1925, 85 percent of black households were two-parent households. A study of 1880 family structure in Philadelphia shows that three-quarters of black families were two-parent households.

During the 1960s, devastating nonsense emerged, exemplified by a Johns Hopkins University sociology professor who argued, "It has yet to be shown that the absence of a father was directly responsible for any of the supposed deficiencies of broken homes." The real issue, he went on to say, "is not the lack of male presence but the lack of male income." That suggests marriage and fatherhood can be replaced by a welfare check.

The poverty rate among blacks is 36 percent. Most black poverty is found in female-headed households. The poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits since 1994 and is about 8 percent today. The black illegitimacy rate is 75 percent, and in some cities, it's 90 percent. But if that's a legacy of slavery, it must have skipped several generations, because in the 1940s, unwed births hovered around 14 percent.

Along with the decline of the black family comes anti-social behavior, manifested by high crime rates. Each year, roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered. Ninety-four percent of the time, the murderer is another black person. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims. Using the 94 percent figure means that 262,621 were murdered by other blacks. Though blacks are 13 percent of the nation's population, they account for more than 50 percent of homicide victims. Nationally, the black homicide victimization rate is six times that of whites, and in some cities, it's 22 times that of whites. I'd like for the president, the civil rights establishment, white liberals and the news media, who spent massive resources protesting the George Zimmerman trial's verdict, to tell the nation whether they believe that the major murder problem blacks face is murder by whites. There are no such protests against the thousands of black murders.

There's an organization called NeighborhoodScout. Using 2011 population data from the U.S. Census Bureau, 2011 crime statistics from the FBI and information from 17,000 local law enforcement agencies in the country, it came up with a report titled "Top 25 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods in America." They include neighborhoods in Detroit, Chicago, Houston, St. Louis and other major cities. What's common to all 25 neighborhoods is that their makeup is described as "Black" or "Mostly Black." The high crime rates have several outcomes that are not in the best interests of the overwhelmingly law-abiding people in these neighborhoods. There can't be much economic development. Property has a lower value, but worst of all, people can't live with the kind of personal security that most Americans enjoy.

Disgustingly, black politicians, civil rights leaders, liberals and the president are talking nonsense about "having a conversation about race." That's beyond useless. Tell me how a conversation with white people is going to stop black predators from preying on blacks. How is such a conversation going to eliminate the 75 percent illegitimacy rate? What will such a conversation do about the breakdown of the black family (though "breakdown" is not the correct word, as the family doesn't form in the first place)? Only black people can solve our problems.

about Double-0's minister of negroe affairs and the other establishment negroes on msnbc...,


democracynow | Cenk, welcome to Democracy Now! What happened?

CENK UYGUR: Well, it’s exactly as I explained on The Young Turks. You know, I was going along doing a program. You know, they did have, early on, some stylistic comments. I was trying to listen to them, you know, in terms of body language—don’t wave your arms, act like a senator. I don’t know why you would want a talk show host to act like a senator, but fine, it’s the medium that you’re working in. If I’m working on the internet, you know, it’s different than working on television. And, you know, taking those points is no problem at all.

But in April, when they pulled me in, Phil Griffin gave me this big speech about how we’re the establishment, and it would be cool to be like outsiders, but we’re not, we’re insiders, and we have to act like it. And I remember thinking at the time, well, there’s no way I’m going to do that. So I’m going to give them what I got. And then, if they like it, they like it. If they don’t, they don’t.

And honestly, I didn’t know which way they were going to go with it, because I know how much they care about ratings. So I figured if I delivered good ratings, that that would probably do the job. Well, it didn’t, because I delivered really good ratings, beating CNN significantly, handily, and also improving upon the numbers from last year. So there’s no question about the ratings. And then they pulled me in and said, "Well, you know, we’re going to go in a different direction at 6:00 anyway." And when I asked them about it, they didn’t really have a good answer as to why, leading me to believe that that giant conversation we had three months ago might have been part of the reason.

AMY GOODMAN: In December of last year, Phil Donahue joined Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker on their show to discuss his ouster from MSNBC during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Donahue was the lone journalist daring to publicly oppose the war at its onset.
PHIL DONAHUE: I opposed the war.
ELIOT SPITZER: And was that one of the reasons they pushed you off?
PHIL DONAHUE: Oh, read the memo—
ELIOT SPITZER: Right, right.
PHIL DONAHUE: —published by the New York Times.
ELIOT SPITZER: So, your—
PHIL DONAHUE: "Donahue’s antiwar voice is not going to work against the flag waving on the other station." Donahue and any antiwar voice in 2002—
ELIOT SPITZER: Right, right.
PHIL DONAHUE: Remember, they’re all doing what I did then now.
ELIOT SPITZER: Right.
PHIL DONAHUE: I mean, the whole channel is now.
KATHLEEN PARKER: But listen—
PHIL DONAHUE: You could not criticize this war four months before the invasion.
ELIOT SPITZER: Right.
PHIL DONAHUE: It was not good for business. You had—General Electric had no interest in featuring an old talk show host who was against the president’s war. It was—it was unpopular. You weren’t American. This is what you get with corporate media. It’s going to happen again.
AMY GOODMAN: Cenk Uygur, does your situation compare to that of Phil Donahue’s? Do you think Al Sharpton would take a very different political line than you would?

CENK UYGUR: So, there’s a couple of different things here. First of all, it’s not just Phil Donahue. I had Jesse Ventura on The Young Turks a little while ago, maybe over a year ago. And what people don’t remember is that he also had a big contract from MSNBC at the time to do a show, and they told him, "You know what? It’s OK. Take the money. You don’t even have to do the show." Why? He said they found out that he was against the Iraq War and said, "That’s OK. We don’t want you on air then." OK?

And Ashleigh Banfield, when she gave a great speech in Kansas about how the war didn’t make any sense, she went from their star reporter to literally being moved into a closet. And they wouldn’t even let her out of her contract so she can go on another network and talk. It was unbelievable.

Now, the distinction there is Donahue, Ventura, Banfield were all under different management at MSNBC. So you have to be clear on that, and you can’t put that on them. But the similarity is that it is corporate media, right? And whether it’s the pressure to go right, the pressure to go left, pressure to appease the Bush administration, or pressure to appease the Obama administration, it exists. And it’s not just MSNBC. You think that the CNN hosts can aggressively challenge government officials? I don’t think so. It doesn’t look that way at all. And of course, when you get to Fox News, they’re a whole different animal: they’re purely propaganda. So, to me, this is not an issue of just MSNBC management now, no.

poetic justice moralizes, it excuses hedonic uselessness, it eschews excellence...,


theroot | Buried beneath the ever-growing pile of rubble that is the negative reaction to CNN anchor Don Lemon's "tough love" comments about the black community was the excellent rebuttal by Global Grind's editor-in-chief, Michael Skolnik.

"It's a reflection, it's a mirror," said Skolnik when asked by Lemon if rap and hip-hop "glorify prison culture," specifically the apparently cutting-edge trend of wearing baggy pants.

"Don't break the mirror," continued Skolnik, visibly upset. "Look at yourself."

"Well, that's, it's that, well, isn't that what --" stuttered Lemon after the briefest moment of dead air. He seemed taken aback and most of all confused by Skolnik's call to self-reflection.

"Isn't that what I'm trying to do here by telling people, 'Hey listen, I love you, but these are things you need to work on'?" asked Lemon, still not getting it. "I'm just being honest here.'"

Pointing the finger and peering into a mirror are two very distinct actions. One requires little save griping, and the other forces you to do more than simply judge. Forgive me for quoting two of Oprah's favorite gurus, Dr. Phil and Iyanla Vanzant: A mirror compels you to "get real with yourself" and "do the work." A pointed finger is nothing but a cocked gun aimed at the dreaded and scary other. But like my great grandmother (and probably yours, too) always said, "When you point a finger at someone else, three more are pointing right back at you."

folks gotta get that eudaimonic groove back...,


sciencedaily | Human bodies recognize at the molecular level that not all happiness is created equal, responding in ways that can help or hinder physical health, according to new research led by Barbara L. Fredrickson, Kenan Distinguished Professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The sense of well-being derived from "a noble purpose" may provide cellular health benefits, whereas "simple self-gratification" may have negative effects, despite an overall perceived sense of happiness, researchers found. "A functional genomic perspective on human well-being" was published July 29 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Philosophers have long distinguished two basic forms of well-being: a 'hedonic' [hee-DON-ic] form representing an individual's pleasurable experiences, and a deeper 'eudaimonic,' [u-DY-moh-nick] form that results from striving toward meaning and a noble purpose beyond simple self-gratification," wrote Fredrickson and her colleagues.

It's the difference, for example, between enjoying a good meal and feeling connected to a larger community through a service project, she said. Both give us a sense of happiness, but each is experienced very differently in the body's cells.

"We know from many studies that both forms of well-being are associated with improved physical and mental health, beyond the effects of reduced stress and depression," Fredrickson said. "But we have had less information on the biological bases for these relationships."

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

first class...,

npr | Cornish: You take us back into the 1860s ... and in those days in Washington, D.C., what makes this place a fertile ground, actually, for the education of blacks?

"It's so interesting to think that — not interesting — it's so stunning to think that in the South, before the Civil War, you could have a finger cut off if you were caught trying to learn to read if you were a slave. But Washington, D.C., while there weren't any schools for blacks, they weren't going to stand in the way of blacks getting an education.

"So as early as 1807, these small schools started popping up in churches and homes. A lot of Quakers came down from the North to Washington. They understood that this was a place where there was an opportunity to lay the groundwork for what turned into a pretty spectacular education system for black Americans."

And it helps that there's this large population of free blacks already living there.

"Exactly. And they were fighting so hard to continue the progress of education. For a long time, there were grammar schools only and elementary schools, and a few free blacks got together and they saw their moment. Because after the Civil War, the U.S. government said, 'OK, we've got all these free black children, we have to give them schools.' So a group of free blacks got together and said, 'We're going go make a high school. We see this moment in time. We're just going to do it.' And it started in 1870 with four students in the basement of a church."

Now talk a little bit about what the goals are for this school in particular. From its very beginning, academic standards are just so incredibly high.

"What ended up happening is the first African-Americans to go to competitive colleges — Oberlin, Amherst, Brown, Harvard — they would graduate from school and have nowhere to go. Many of them came back to teach at this high school. My mom and dad went to this high school in the 1940s; they had a very different experience. My mother was born and raised in Washington, D.C. My dad was born and raised in Harlem, and my grandmother picked him up at 14 and took him to D.C. just to go to Dunbar, which many people did. People moved to D.C. just to send their kids to this high school.

"And my mom used to talk about having teachers who were Ph.Ds. You had the first three black women to get Ph.Ds; two of them went to Dunbar, and two of them taught at Dunbar.

"So what ended up happening was that these next two and three generations were these hypereducated African-Americans."

So the school was basically in a way benefiting ... from the glass ceiling of segregation. That these high-achieving African-Americans, they don't have anywhere to go once they get out of these schools and broken these barriers. And they come back into the community.

"It's a perversity of it, right? And it's funny because I stayed up at night, worried that someone would think I was actually writing a book that talked about 'segregation is a good thing' because it of course isn't, it of course was horrible. And that was the other part that I found so fascinating about this story. You had all these people who were so educated, speaking two and three languages, going to a school and getting an education on par with white student in Washington, D.C., but had these other restrictions on their lives."

don lemon backs o'lielly over the hon.bro.preznit's minister of negroe affairs....,



rawstory | CNN anchor Don Lemon came to the defense of Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on Saturday regarding O’Reilly’s heavily-criticized take regarding crime in the African-American community.

“In my estimation, he doesn’t go far enough,” Lemon said in a commentary, before going on to list five tips for Black Americans to improve their living situation, starting with an entreaty to young African-American men to stop letting their pants sag as a fashion choice.

“Walking around with your a*s and your underwear showing is not okay,” Lemon said. “In fact, it comes from prison. When they take away belts from prisoners so they can’t make a weapon. And then it evolved into which role each prisoner would have during male-on-male prison sex.”

Lemon also advised Black viewers to stop saying “the N-word,” to encourage young members of the community to finish their education and to “respect where you live.”

“I’ve lived in several predominantly white communities in my life,” Lemon said. “I rarely, if ever, witnessed people littering. I live in Harlem now. It’s a historically Black neighborhood. Every single day, I see adults and children dropping their trash on the ground when the garbage can is just feet away. Just being honest here.”

Additionally, Lemon cited an oft-mentioned statistic saying 72 percent of African-American children were born out of wedlock. But that figure has been in dispute since as far back as 2009, when columnist Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed out in The Atlantic that the birth rate among Black women was actually declining at the time, and that the birth rate for married Black women was lower than among married white women.
“There is no data to show that the black ‘illegitimacy’ figure of 70 percent has been caused by unmarried black women having more kids than they did in the past,” Coates wrote at the time. 

Lemon’s remarks were also ripped in a subsequent panel discussion by Global Grind editor-in-chief Michael Skolnick.

“I think your remarks sound like a conserative preacher on a Sunday,” Skolnick told Lemon. “Certainly Bill O’Reilly should welcome you on his show. I’m disappointed in you. You’re talking about sagging pants? I’ve heard this rap for years, talking about sagging pants. Let’s talk about why we incarcerate 2.2 million people in this country, and why young kids look up to guys who come out of jail.”

“Michael, not every Black kid is in jail,” Lemon countered. “And there are rules. People should know where that style comes from. Whether it’s a Black kid, a white kid, a Black kid, whether it’s Justin Bieber. That is glorifying prison culture. Who wants to see someone’s butt-crack?”

When Lemon asked Skolnick whether hip-hop culture glorified that aethetic, Skolnick shot back that the music is a reflection of society.

“Don’t break the mirror, look at yourself,” Skolnick told Lemon.

o'lielly doubled down on the minister of negroe affairs...,


O'Reilly called on "civil rights folks to stop maligning the country and face up to a huge problem that is directly harming millions, primarily, in the African American community." He continued to blame these problems mainly on the collapse of the traditional black family unit, saying that the civil rights industry ignores it, along with an entertainment industry that embraces "gangster culture."

O'Reilly then turned to Sharpton, who he said "attacked the messenger, implying that I am a racist." In response to Sharpton playing O'Reilly's infamous "motherfucking iced tea" moment, O'Reilly accused him of taking it out of context, declaring that Sharpton and other TV pundits are "attacking me because I am a threat to them."

O'Reilly declared, "The day of the race hustlers is coming to an end." He said people like Sharpton aren't interested in solving the real problems of the black community,

the hon.bro.preznit's minister of negroe affairs responds to o'lielly


MSNBC's Al Sharpton took Bill O'Reilly's recent comments about race head-on Friday evening, after the Fox anchor singled him out last night for being "in business with people who put out entertainment harmful to children." Sharpton called it "ridiculous" that O'Reilly is somehow the "expert on what the vast majority of African-Americans want."

"In the time since George Zimmerman's acquittal," Sharpton declared, "some right-wingers have gone into overdrive to push the most negative stereotypes of the African-American community for their own gain." He lumped O'Reilly in with Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity as the "unholy triumvirate of right-wing reaction" that has "been desperate not to have a real conversation about the injustices of the justice system."

Sharpton mocked O'Reilly and others for their sudden concern about gang violence in Chicago, something he said "many of us in African-American community" have been talking about for months. "Better late than never, I guess." On O'Reilly's focus on the breakdown of the African-American family, Sharpton asked, "Is Bill O'Reilly saying George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin because Trayvon was born out of wedlock, even though he wasn't? That's ridiculous, right?"

"All of this is an effort to avoid addressing the urgent topic that something is fundamentally flawed with our justice system if laws like Stand Your Ground allow a kid to be gunned down," Sharpton continued. "But Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly don't want to talk about that."

Sarcastically calling O'Reilly the "expert on the vast majority of what African-Americans want," Sharpton said, "we need a real conversation about justice in this country, not the same old right-wing divide and conquer garbage. Bill O'Reilly, the Willie Horton stuff has got to go."

bill o'lielly went in on the brouhaha...,


 "The sad truth is that from the president on down, our leadership has no clue, no clue at all about how to solve problems within the black community," O'Reilly said. "And many are frightened to even broach the issue. That's because race hustlers and the grievance industry have intimidated the so-called 'conversation,' turning any valid criticism of African-American culture into charges of racial bias." He said it's these attitudes that have forced African-Americans to "fend for themselves in violent neighborhoods."

Coming back to Trayvon Martin specifically, O'Reilly said there is only evidence that George Zimmerman "profiled" the 17-year-old because he was "dressed in clothing sometimes used by street criminals"--not his skin color. "It was wrong for Zimmerman to confront Martin based on his appearance," he said. "But the culture that we have in this country does lead to criminal profiling because young black American men are so often involved in crime."

This led O'Reilly to pinpoint the primary cause of these statistics: "The disintegration of the African-American family." More than anything else, he chalked up black crime to the fact that "73% of all black babies are born out of wedlock," a problem that he said Obama and other civil rights leaders refuse to address. He also pointed fingers at the entertainment industry, and particularly "gangsta culture," for "encouraging irresponsibility" and "glorifying bad behavior."

O'Reilly outright rejected the notion, put forward by "race hustlers and limousine liberals" that "unfair" incarceration rates for "non-violent" drug offenses contribute to the problem, calling out Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Obama for refusing to condemn drug dealers. Getting more and more heated as he progressed, O'Reilly argued that blacks' disadvantages "has nothing to do with slavery. It has everything to do with you Hollywood people and you derelict parents."

In conclusion, O'Reilly said, "it's now time for the African-American leadership, including President Obama, to stop the nonsense. Walk away from the world of victimization and grievance and lead the way out of this mess."

Monday, July 29, 2013

stranded by sprawl...,


NYTimes | Detroit is a symbol of the old economy’s decline. It’s not just the derelict center; the metropolitan area as a whole lost population between 2000 and 2010, the worst performance among major cities

Atlanta, by contrast, epitomizes the rise of the Sun Belt; it gained more than a million people over the same period, roughly matching the performance of Dallas and Houston without the extra boost from oil.
Yet in one important respect booming Atlanta looks just like Detroit gone bust: both are places where the American dream seems to be dying, where the children of the poor have great difficulty climbing the economic ladder. In fact, upward social mobility — the extent to which children manage to achieve a higher socioeconomic status than their parents — is even lower in Atlanta than it is in Detroit. And it’s far lower in both cities than it is in, say, Boston or San Francisco, even though these cities have much slower growth than Atlanta. 

So what’s the matter with Atlanta? A new study suggests that the city may just be too spread out, so that job opportunities are literally out of reach for people stranded in the wrong neighborhoods. Sprawl may be killing Horatio Alger. 

The new study comes from the Equality of Opportunity Project, which is led by economists at Harvard and Berkeley. There have been many comparisons of social mobility across countries; all such studies find that these days America, which still thinks of itself as the land of opportunity, actually has more of an inherited class system than other advanced nations. The new project asks how social mobility varies across U.S. cities, and finds that it varies a lot. In San Francisco a child born into the bottom fifth of the income distribution has an 11 percent chance of making it into the top fifth, but in Atlanta the corresponding number is only 4 percent. 

When the researchers looked for factors that correlate with low or high social mobility, they found, perhaps surprisingly, little direct role for race, one obvious candidate. They did find a significant correlation with the existing level of inequality: “areas with a smaller middle class had lower rates of upward mobility.” This matches what we find in international comparisons, where relatively equal societies like Sweden have much higher mobility than highly unequal America. But they also found a significant negative correlation between residential segregation — different social classes living far apart — and the ability of the poor to rise. 

And in Atlanta poor and rich neighborhoods are far apart because, basically, everything is far apart; Atlanta is the Sultan of Sprawl, even more spread out than other major Sun Belt cities. This would make an effective public transportation system nearly impossible to operate even if politicians were willing to pay for it, which they aren’t. As a result, disadvantaged workers often find themselves stranded; there may be jobs available somewhere, but they literally can’t get there. 

The apparent inverse relationship between sprawl and social mobility obviously reinforces the case for “smart growth” urban strategies, which try to promote compact centers with access to public transit. But it also bears on a larger debate about what is happening to American society. I know I’m not the only person who read the Times article on the new study and immediately thought, “William Julius Wilson.” 

A quarter-century ago Mr. Wilson, a distinguished sociologist, famously argued that the postwar movement of employment out of city centers to the suburbs dealt African-American families, concentrated in those city centers, a heavy blow, removing economic opportunity just as the civil rights movement was finally ending explicit discrimination. And he further argued that social phenomena such as the prevalence of single mothers, often cited as causes of lagging black performance, were actually effects — that is, the family was being undermined by the absence of good jobs.

Master Arbitrageur Nancy Pelosi Is At It Again....,

🇺🇸TUCKER: HOW DID NANCY PELOSI GET SO RICH? Tucker: "I have no clue at all how Nancy Pelosi is just so rich or how her stock picks ar...