Posts filed under ‘Racism’
Mayor Who Mocked Latinos Gets Buried in Tacos
What an asshat. And yes, he’s a Republican:
East Haven, CT Mayor, Joseph Maturo, Jr. (R) /Jessica Hill, AP
The office of East Haven’s [CT] mayor was blasted with prank phone calls and a delivery of hundreds of tacos Thursday after his now-famous quip that he would address accusations of anti-Latino bias by eating tacos, a remark that left emotions raw in the town’s large Hispanic community.
Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. has apologized several times but resisted calls for his resignation over remarks he made to a television reporter following Tuesday’s arrests of four town police officers, men described by one FBI official as “bullies with badges.”
[...]
A federal indictment accuses the four police officers of assaulting people while they were handcuffed, unlawfully searching Latino businesses, and harassing and intimidating people, including advocates, witnesses and other officers who tried to investigate or report misconduct or abuse.
The taco flap came after a reporter for New York’s WPIX-TV asked Maturo on Tuesday, “What are you doing for the Latino community today?”
Maturo’s response: “I might have tacos when I go home; I’m not quite sure yet.”
[...]
Many residents were still angry Thursday in East Haven, where 38-year-old Jose Tapia, a cook originally from Ecuador, joked, “We’ve got tacos!” as he left a bakery with a bag of bread.
“I took it as a joke, but deep inside, it’s the true version of racist, that comment,” he said.
Wow. Maturo is the ultimate in insensitive. He’s going to do something for the Latino community by eating a taco? I can’t decide whether to laugh or cry. I’m leaning toward cry. Unreal.
But hooray to the folks who sent all those tacos!
Atrocious Racism in Gwinnett County, GA School District
What kind of a person would come up with this, much less put it on paper and distribute it to elementary school kids?
(Image via.)
Gwinnett County parents and activists have blasted the school district’s response following reports that students at a Norcross elementary school received a math worksheet that used examples of slavery in word problems.
School district officials said the principal at Beaver Ridge Elementary School will personally work with teachers to come up with more appropriate lessons and will offer more opportunities for staff development following the uproar created by the worksheet that included questions such as the following: “Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?” and “If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week?”
Ugh. Those poor kids. No wonder their parents are outraged. They have every right to be.
What an awful story.
Deep, deep racism is alive and well in the U.S. of A.
Stay Classy Conservatives!
Gosh, it must be an election year:
A baldly racist depiction of First Lady Michelle Obama that appeared Tuesday on a right-wing website is based on a 1775 portrait of Marie Antoinette by Jean-Baptiste André Gautier-Dagoty (1740-1786). The full-length painting hangs outside Paris in the Palace of Versailles.
The Internet image grafts Obama’s face onto Gautier-Dagoty’s lavish depiction of the French queen, dressed in full regalia. It also replaces the draped left arm of the young monarch, then barely 20, with a muscular black arm and shifts the position of the right hand to place it in front of a world globe.
The caricature of Obama as a profligate queen relies on the racist stereotype of an “uppity Negro,” which emerged among slave masters in an earlier American era. Obama, born into a working-class Chicago family whose roots are traced to the pre-Civil War South, graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, prior to holding several high-level positions in the academic and private sectors.
I can’t imagine spending my time concocting things like this. And you know, I’m willing to bet that the people who do think of themselves as patriots and Christians.
Ugh. It’s going to be a long, hate-filled year.
Oh, and while we’re at it, there’s this (again, stay classy Republicans!):
Herman Cain Claims He’s the Victim of a “High Tech Lynching”
Check out Herman Cain’s new ad:
Cain uses video of Clarence Thomas saying he (Thomas) was the victim of a “high tech lynching” and Cain implies he’s a victim of both that and the “liberal media,” even though Cain himself has accused the Perry campaign of being behind the whole sexual harassment thing.
It’s really disgusting but it highlights the universal ah, quality of the wingers: being a victim.
Herman Cain, Federal Reserve
This would be Herman Cain before he was a presidential candidate who talked about hating big government:
Herman Cain (born December 13, 1945) is an American business executive, syndicated columnist, and radio host from Georgia. He is the former chairman and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza and served as chairman and deputy chairman of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Before his business career he worked as a mathematician in ballistics as a civilian employee of the United States Navy.
He lived on the dole as an employee of the United States Navy and — big time — as a member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City for God’s sake.
Yep. “Big government” is a very bad thing.
Our Expectations Have Been Too Low For Too Long
Our Tweet of the Day: A heartbreaking quote from a protester at OccupyWallStreet:
Herman Cain: Slavery Was No Big Deal
This would be our Tweet of the Day, about Herman Cain today at the “Values Voters Summit:”
My take?
Why Rick Perry Might be the Winner in NiggerheadGate
I presume you’ve heard the story by now about Rick Perry’s Texas hunting camp that he and his father named, “Niggerhead.”
That said, despite what seems intuitive — that Perry and his campaign will suffer as a result of this revelation — the opposite seems to be the likely outcome in the crazy world of the GOP:
So far, only one of Perry’s GOP rivals has commented on N-WordheadGate: Herman Cain. Asked yesterday about the story, Cain, the only black Republican in the race, lashed out at Perry. “Since Governor Perry has been going there for years to hunt, I think that it shows a lack of sensitivity for a long time of not taking that word off of that rock and renaming the place,” Cain said on This Week. On Fox News Sunday, Cain added that there “isn’t a more vile, negative word than the N-word and for him to leave it there as long as he did before, I hear, that they finally painted over it, is just plain insensitive to a lot of black people in this country.”
Cain’s reaction is certainly understandable. Anyone could find the revelations offensive, and Cain is a black man who grew up in the segregated South. And yet, as Michael Tomansky points out today, it’s Cain, not Perry, who could be damaged the most by this story. To understand why, you have to consider that there are two things Republicans hate more than anything. One is being accused of racism, which has happened with increasing frequency since President Obama became president, and, if you ask Republicans, is never, ever justified. Two is unfair treatment by the allegedly biased mainstream media. So among Republicans, the widespread response to the Post story was not, “wow, Rick Perry messed up.” It was, “the liberal media is smearing another Republican as a racist!”
Amazing. Just amazing.
CNN Plays Music Using the N Word
UPDATED 9-27-11 (below).
How. In. The. World. Did. This. Happen?
Oh. My. God.
(Via.)
UPDATE: Per my friend Chrish (see comment below) the above is an over-dub, and this is the real version (though not much better, as she said).
Obama Wants to Give Your Money to the Blacks!
This is the headline on the Drudge Report right now (@1:47 p.m. ET):
Click on it and you go here.
Hey Drudge, how about using this picture:
It was taken on August 6 and it shows people lined up for:
Houston’s first-ever, citywide back-to-school event at George R. Brown Convention Center, where free backpacks, school supplies, uniforms, haircut vouchers, immunizations and fresh produce were provided.
[...]
School Superintendent Terry Grier posted a Twitter message Saturday morning that security personnel had estimated the crowd at 100,000. At about 10 a.m., officials made the call to close the doors.
MSNBC’s Pat Buchanan Thinks Murdering Liberal Kids Might be a Good Thing
This would be Pat Buchanan, the former Republican presidential candidate and a guy MSNBC (that liberal bastion) holds out as their wise old sage:
Today, in a World Net Daily op-ed, failed presidential candidate and conservative pundit Pat Buchanan offers an example of the ethnic bigotry and racial insensitivity that has come to define him. Offering his take on the horrendous terrorist attacks in Norway, Buchanan joined the Wall Street Journal and the Jerusalem Post in arguing that the far-right extremist perpetrator Anders Breivik may have had a valid point.
[...]
As for a climactic conflict between a once-Christian West and an Islamic world that is growing in numbers and advancing inexorably into Europe for the third time in 14 centuries, on this one, Breivik may be right, [Buchanan said].
There are lots of posts up about this today but for the most part the wording of the articles are way too deferential to home boy Pat. (You know: misspoke and stuff like that.) It’s time to cut through the crap. Pat thinks mowing some people down (liberals and Muslims I presume) is, hey, a good thing.
He’d be off the air if he was an Ed Schultz, a Cenk Uygur or a Keith Olbermann, all MSNBC’ers who’ve been disciplined or fired for not being a part of the establishment. So, this is “the establishment??
Obama: Change We Can’t Believe In
I have been agonizing for more than a year as to what I’m going to do come November, 2012. The question as I see it is (1) do I vote for Obama — giving him the benefit of the doubt — who has, in my opinion, gone against most of his prior pronouncements and campaign promises, or (2) do I sit the election out altogether because I am sick and tired of being sick and tired of voting for people who, once in office, seem to be brainwashed and captured by corporate and military interests.
This news makes me want to sit it out because this is not what I voted for and this is not, by far, the first time I’ve been disappointed in Obama.. Obama’s a Constitutional lawyer, yet he has has (1) utterly abandoned his principles or he (2) seems to be so weak that he’s being held hostage by his military advisers:
U.S. President Barack Obama has presided over a threefold increase in the number of detainees being held at the controversial military detention center at Bagram Air Base, the Afghan cousin of the notorious prison at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
There are currently more than 1,700 detainees at Bagram, up from over 600 at the end of the Bush administration.
The situation at Bagram, especially the legal process that determines whether detainees are released, is the subject of a new report by Human Rights First.
It finds that the current system of hearings for detainees “falls short of the requirements of international law” because they are not given “an adequate opportunity to defend themselves against charges that they are collaborating with insurgents and present a threat to U.S. forces”.
Human Rights First also argues that cases of unjustified imprisonment are damaging the broader war effort by undermining Afghans’ trust in the military.
(Image via.)
I’ll probably make up my mind on November 1, 2012 but man oh man, there are so many notches in my bedpost against voting for Obama.
Change Ain’t Easy But Here’s How To Do It
I was alive during the age of the Freedom Riders. I remember the four little girls who died in the bombing of the Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. I was their age. This would be me at 11-years-old:
I remember being afraid because my father took part in civil rights marches in those days. My 11-year-old self was scared someone would throw a bomb through our “picture window” in Bloomington, Indiana because of what he did. Or burn a cross on our front lawn.
Watch Freedom Riders tonight on PBS. It’s a lesson in how to make change, scary as it is:
Mitt Romney’s Dad Was Born in Mexico
Miss this? Mitt Romney’s dad was born in Mexico:
So, where were the birthers back in 1968 when George Romney ran as a Republican presidential nominee?
Oh. Never mind. They didn’t exist because Romney was a white guy.
Silly me.
(Thanks Beth.)
The Donald Whines About Privilege?
One last thing and then I’m done with this: Donald Trump inherited millions of
from his father, yet he’s implying Barack Obama may have had a hand-up getting into Harvard?
Let’s Keep This Train Rollin’!
Tweet of the day:
I say the new national emergency will be WHERE ARE OBAMA’S COLLEGE TRANSCRIPTS?
CNN Touts Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer as “Moderate”
Just saw a segment on CNN’s John King featuring Arizona Governor Jan Brewer captioned: “More Moderate Than Advertised?”
Talk about moving the country to the right of the right of the right.
Let me out of this fucking asylum.
I’ll put up video as soon as I can.
Oh. BTW. Gotta love that “liberal media” huh?
Geezus.
Fox News — Obama as Dictator
Thought I’d drop by to see what Fox is up to tonight (@9:00 p.m. EDT). No surprise — Obama’s a Kenyan-like dictator:
If a black guy says it, it must be true, right?
Fox hopes so.
More on Allen West here.
KKKreating Jobs
Yep, them Republicans are hard at work creating jobs, like like they promised they’d do back in November:
Senate Agrees to Posthumous Pardon for North Carolina Governor
North Carolina lawmakers took a step Tuesday toward clearing a Reconstruction-era governor removed from office 140 years after he was impeached in part for trying to stop violence from the Ku Klux Klan.
The state Senate voted 48-0 in favor of the pardon of Gov. William Woods Holden, who was impeached in 1870 by the House and convicted by the Senate in a trial a few months later.
White Supremacist Arrested in Attempted Bombing of Spokane MLK Parade
Last month an explosive device was found along the Martin Luther King, Jr. parade route in Spokane, Washington:
The Spokane office of the FBI confirmed late Tuesday morning that a suspicious package found along the route of the Unity Parade on Monday morning was a credible threat that had the potential to cause “multiple casualties.”
Today, the FBI made an arrest in the case:
The FBI has made an arrest in connection with the attempted bombing along the route of the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in downtown Spokane.
An FBI source in Washington, D.C., said one man was arrested east of Spokane. Agents, including a bomb expert from Quantico, Va., were preparing to search a house where others associated with the suspect were living, the source said.
The suspects are apparently affiliated with white supremacists.
And tomorrow, NY Representative Peter King (R-Anything for Attention) will hold hearings into the “radicalization of the American Muslim community.”
If Mitch Daniels Was an African American He Would Have Done Jail Time
This is Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels in an interview with The Daily Princetonian:
After Mitch Daniels ’71 was arrested, indicted and convicted on charges of drug use as an undergraduate in May 1970, he said that he thought his aspiring political career was doomed. “Any goal I might have had for competing for public office were shot,” he told The Daily Princetonian in September 1988.
[...]
Perhaps the most pivotal day of Daniels’ four years at Princeton was May 14, 1970 — the day of the drug arrest that Daniels thought would sully his political future. Officers found enough marijuana in his room to fill two size 12 shoe boxes, reports of the incident say. He and the other inhabitants of the room were also charged with possession of LSD and prescription drugs without a prescription. Daniels and his two roommates in 111 Cuyler Hall, Marc Stuart ’71 and Richard Stockton ’71, were arrested and, after plea bargaining, Daniels eventually escaped with a $350 fine for “maintaining a common nuisance.” The charges against Stockton were eventually dropped.
I remember those times. I remember sweating bullets when I had a dime bag on my person or in the car. People went to prison for that — a dime bag. A $350.00 fine for possession of LSD and prescription drugs and enough marijuana to be suspected of dealing?
If Daniels was a black guy from Harlem or a poor white white guy from inner-city Flint, chances are he’d have done at least 5 years.
Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) is a Moron
Republicans can’t open their mouths without putting a foot in it:
Tallahassee: Gov. Rick Scott welcomed black legislators to lunch Tuesday at the Governor’s Mansion, but his choice of words left some feeling more alienated than ever.
In discussing his own humble origins, Scott implied that all black lawmakers grew up poor.
“I grew up probably in the same situation as you guys,” Scott said to the group of 20 Democrats. “I started school in public housing. My dad had a sixth-grade education.”
Rep. Betty Reed, D-Tampa, said she was offended by the remark, but did not protest at the time because she said it was more important to have a productive dialogue with the new governor.
Afterward, she said, “He assumed that everyone [in the room] was poor and that can only be because you’re black.”
That’s some hardcore racism there.
“Isolated Incident” #7
Immediately after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in Tucson on January 8, a defensive right-wing uniformly proclaimed that any acts of violence by those in its ranks were few and far between. They were “isolated incidents.”
Since then — a mere three weeks — I have been keeping track of those, ahem, “isolated incidents,” and today I add “isolated incident” #7:
An ex-Army veteran from California who is accused of driving to Metro Detroit’s largest mosque with a trunk full of explosives is behind bars after being charged with making a terrorist threat.
Roger Stockham, 63, is charged with one count of a false report or threat of terrorism and one count of explosives-possession of bombs with unlawful intent after Dearborn police arrested him Monday outside the Islamic Center of America, one the largest mosques in North America.
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Stockham, a resident of Imperial Beach, Calif., is being held on a $500,000 cash bond. He will be in court on Friday for hearing on the charges before 19th District Court Judge Mark Somers.
FBI special agent Sandra Berchtold confirmed today the FBI is investigating an incident referred to the federal agency by Dearborn police.
[...]
Investigators chose to keep the arrest quiet during the week while detectives determined whether Stockham was acting alone or with others, O’Reilly said. Police worked with the mosque’s Imam during the investigation, he said.
O’Reilly said it appears Stockham was acting alone.
So, we’re working on just over 2 incidents per week here folks. Not exactly “isolated,” are they?
Mom Enrolls Her Kids in a Better/Safer School, Gets Convicted of a Felony
I can’t imagine this happening to an affluent white woman:
Much of the poltical rhetoric on education reform has centered on the ability of parents to send their children to better schools, particularly in situations where they were forced to send them to schools that were failing. But in the case of Kelley Williams-Bolar,
her desire to get her children better educational placement landed her in jail, and may well derail her aspirations of becoming a teacher herself.
Williams-Bolar, 40, and her two children live in housing projects in Akron, Ohio. For two years, she sent them to school in the Copley-Fairlawn district, where her father lived, because it was a safer environment — the high crime rate in her area drove her decision. The suburban school district hired a private investigator to find their residential records and it turned out she listed the children as living in that district, although they actually stayed with her.
Technically, that qualifies as a felony since she falsified records, and Judge Patricia Cosgrove sentenced her to two concurrent five-year prison sentences. She suspended the sentence, though, in favor of a 10-day jail sentence, 80 hours of community service and three years probation. She had been working as a teaching assistant for special needs children and earning a teaching degree, but since she is now a convicted felon, under Ohio law she cannot earn that degree.
Miss This? Arizona Minutemen Kill 9-Year-Old Girl in Cold Blood
There are three 24/7 “news” networks in the United States — two of which the righties claim are “liberal” — but golly gee, a year and a half on, none of them have found time to cover this:
There’s another infamous shooting of a nine-year-old girl that is making headlines this week in Tucson. This time, we wonder if the rest of the media will bother to cover it.
The little girl’s name was Brisenia Flores. She lived near the border with her parents and sister outside the town of Arivaca, Arizona. On May 30 of 2009, a woman named Shawna Forde, who led an offshoot unit of Minutemen who ran armed border patrols for patriotic “fun”. Forde’s gang had decided to go “operational,” which meant they concocted a scheme to raid drug smugglers and take their money and drugs and use it to finance a border race war and “start a revolution against the government.” They targeted the Flores home, which had neither money nor drugs, based on dubious information. They convinced Flores to let them in by claiming to be law-enforcement officers seeking fugitives, then shot him point-blank in the head when he questioned them and wounded his wife, Gina Gonzalez. And then, while she pleaded for her life, they shot Brisenia in cold blood in the head. (Her sister, fortunately, was sleeping over at a friend’s.)
As Terry Greene Sterling at the Daily Beast reports, Shawna Forde’s trial finally opens this week, having been briefly delayed by the Giffords shooting.
Already, we’re getting some fascinating details about that riveting 911 call…
Sometimes I just don’t know what to say.
Pastor Terry Jones Barred from Entering the UK
Remember Pastor Terry — Burn the Quran — Jones? Well, he has been barred from entering the UK because his “presence is not conducive to the public good:”
The pastor sparked outrage when he announced plans by his Florida-based church to burn copies of the Koran to the mark the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the US.
But he has told Sky News he “disappointed” by the ban.
A Home Office spokesman said: “The Government opposes extremism in all its forms which is why we have excluded Pastor Terry Jones from the UK.
“Numerous comments made by Pastor Jones are evidence of his unacceptable behaviour.
“Coming to the UK is a privilege, not a right, and we are not willing to allow entry to those whose presence is not conducive to the public good.
“The use of exclusion powers is very serious and no decision is taken lightly or as a method of stopping open debate.”
Pastor Jones had accepted the invitation to speak to a group called England Is Ours next month.
Driving While Human
Driving while human in the United States of America:
We’ve all heard of the condition known as “driving while black:” the idea that as a black person you are more likely to be stopped even if you haven’t committed an actual crime. But in today’s sensitive and fearful times, being any number of ethnicities can lead to uncomfortable questioning and, on occasion, completely illegal stopping.
That’s why the ACLU has put this video together. There isn’t a need to panic if you know exactly what to do.
Watch the video here. It’s good. Real good.
Maine’s Governor Paul “Kiss My Butt” LePage Attends MLK Event
Last week, Maine’s new Tea Party governor, Paul LePage, told the NAACP to “kiss my butt” when it invited him to attend an event honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. today.
Looks like he might have gotten a crash course over the weekend about just who Dr. King was, and what he stood for, because he ended up going to a breakfast honoring MLK this morning. He even said this:
“Dr. King is someone who spent and ultimately gave his life making sure that people got a fair shake regardless of race. We have come far through the years, but the journey continues to make Dr. King’s dreams a reality,” LePage said. “I urge all Mainers to work as one for a better life for all.”
I wonder if he said it with feeling.
In Case You’re Interested
From 1961 to 1966, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote an annual essay for The Nation magazine on the state of the civil rights movement.
You can find them here.
