Ever since Paul's Tuesday night Republican primary victory in the Kentucky Senate race, some strange things have been happening.
A sudden surge in economic activity has swept the country. Sales are up in seemingly unrelated industries with activity unevenly distributed across the country.
To find out more about this amazing phenomenon, follow me beneath the crease.
Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) claimed Saturday that healthcare protesters at the Capitol directed racial epithets at Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) as he walked outside.
Carson, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus along with Lewis, told The Hill that protesters called Lewis the N-word.
Tea Party protesters held a rally outside the Capitol on Saturday, which included speeches by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and actor Jon Voight, and then proceeded into the halls to lobby members at the 11th hour.
As our Brian Beutler reports, a few moments ago in the Longworth office building, a group swarmed a very calm looking Henry Waxman, as he got on the elevator, with shouts of "Kill the bill!" "You liar! You crook!"
Not long before, Rep. Barney Frank got an uglier version of the treatment. Just after Frank rounded a corner to leave the building, an older protestor yelled "Barney, you f****t." The surrounding crowd of protestors then erupted in laughter.
At one point, Capitol police officer threatened to throw a group of protestors out of the building but that only seemed to inflame them more; and apparently none were ejected.
I recently received a thoroughly debunked chain email from a co-worker (who knows that I was an Obama delegate to the DNCC) called "Not Exactly." One it's more xenophobic claims:
Barack Hussein Obama is not half black. If elected, he would be the first Arab-American President, not the first black President. Barack Hussein Obama is 50% Caucasian from his mother's side and 43.75% Arabic and 6.25% African Negro from his father's side. While Barack Hussein Obama's father was from Kenya , his father's family was mainly Arabs.. Barack Hussein Obama's father was only 12.5% African Negro and 87.5% Arab (his father's birth certificate even states he's Arab, not African Negro). From....and for more....go to.....
"I have a dream that my four little children
will one day live in a nation where they
will not be judged by the color of their skin
but by the content of their character."
This election marks a potential turning point in American history. The American people will either elect the first black President, following the dictates of logic, self-interest and absolute common sense... or they will elect John McCain and prove that at least a slim majority of the voters in this nation are ignorant fools, religious extremists, blind believers of the partisan propaganda of the right wing, outright racists -- or some horrifying combination of those descriptors.
The Greater Terre Haute Branch NAACP calls for ALL CITIZENS of the Terre Haute community to join the leadership of Government, Business, & Organizations!
Date: Thursday, August 14, 2008
Place: Vigo County Courthouse (Steps) on 3rd Street
Inclusion, Tolerance, Diversity, Justice, Equality, Civil Rights
Terre Haute United
** 7:00 p.m. Join Us at City Hall for the Terre Haute City Council Meeting
A Resolution urging State Lawmakers to pass a hate crimes bill will be considered. By outlawing hate crimes in Indiana, the Hoosier State can become a better place to live for everyone. Show your support!!!
Gary officials said they were busing in hundreds of high schools students to vote in advance of the May 6 primary as a learning experience.
The Times of Northwest Indiana reported today that Gary high school students are culminating a unit of civics education by participating in early voting in Lake County, Indiana.
But thanks to the comments of Mayor Thomas McDermott, Jr. of Hammond, Indiana about the experience -- a mayor who was re-elected in a city of 100,000 with only 4,500 votes last November -- the story takes an ugly, seemingly racist twist.
I want to believe that we live in a country where what matters is not the color of one's skin, nor the class they were born in, but instead the content of their character. Let's set the record straight before we start with the story I have to tell. I'm white as the snow, but what I know is that the things going on back home aren't right. Unless we stand together, we'll fall apart.
Those were the words of Hurley Goodall on Friday night as he gathered with about 100 other local residents, most of them black, to speak out against what they say is an unnecessary and unfair Republican investigation of voting in Precinct 18, a predominantly black precinct.
(An important story, even if not Indiana-specific. Thanks, Bil. - promoted by Thomas)
I just learned about a case of segregation-era oppression happening today in Jena, Louisiana. I signed onto ColorOfChange.org's campaign for justice in Jena, and wanted to invite you to do the same.
Last fall in Jena, the day after two Black high school students sat beneath the "white tree" on their campus, nooses were hung from the tree. When the superintendent dismissed the nooses as a "prank," more Black students sat under the tree in protest. The District Attorney then came to the school accompanied by the town's police and demanded that the students end their protest, telling them, "I can be your best friend or your worst enemy... I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen."
A series of white-on-black incidents of violence followed, and the DA did nothing. But when a white student was beaten up in a schoolyard fight, the DA responded by charging six black students with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
(From the user diaries: I had been meaning to post on this, but had not gotten around to it. Thanks finifinito. - promoted by Thomas)
WTHR is reporting via Kevin Rader's Statehouse Blog on a story that first appeared in the Washington Time Herald on Friday concerning remarks made by Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita at the annual Daviess County Lincoln-Reagan Dinner. While speaking to the assembled GOP members at the Washington Conservation Club, Rokita referred to unsourced statistics that African Americans vote in favor of Democrats 90 percent of the time and compared the relationship between Democrats and black voters to the relationship slaves had with their slave masters.
Rokita spent some time revisiting the party's history, especially concerning the African-American vote. He said that African-Americans vote 90 percent Democrat and questioned why.
"How can that be?" Rokita said. "90 to 10. Who's the master and who's the slave in that relationship? How can that be healthy?"
Kevin Rader has requested an on camera clarification from Rokita and I am sure this is only the beginning of this story. In this day and Information Age, with YouTube and camera phones everywhere to capture comments made in public and every small town newspaper able to report to the world via the Internet, you would think a politician like Rokita would choose his words more carefully even when speaking to the base such as he was doing.
Boneheaded comments like Rokita's and Don Imus' recent incident showcase that speaking before thinking is a continuing problem for some folks. The insensitivity of the remarks Rokita made is astounding, but were probably greeted with nodding approval by the assembled soulless minions of orthodoxy that make up these types of gatherings.
I'm sure Rokita will give Rader an on camera clarification in which he will try to pass off his comments as innocuous but the damage is done here already. Comparing black voters to slaves and Democrats to slave masters not only is insensitive but damages the GOP on the subject that Rokita was addressing which is black voter recruitment. Rokita just kicked down the center pole in the GOP's big tent to close it up in a wrong headed effort to get his party to try to think of ways to gain a bigger share of the African American vote. Nice going, Todd.
UPDATE 4:30p: Brian Howey confirms this with Rokita's acknowledgement of an "insensitive metaphor" issued via a statement from Rokita's office today.
Shorter Todd Rokita: I was trying out this whole diversity thing but messed it up. My Bad.
The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men--conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits. Six of the 12 were so infuriated they quit.
A special thanks to the national officers of Delta Zeta for reinforcing the negative image of the Hoosier state as a racist. We have a hard enough time as is keeping college graduates in this state as is, things like this just give graduates a reason to leave. My favorite partfrom the story?
Speaking of sorority sisters brought in from the IU chapter to recruit new members at Depauw.
"They had these unassuming freshman girls downstairs with these plastic women from Indiana University, and 25 of my sisters hiding upstairs," she said. "It was so fake, so completely dehumanized." I said, `This calls for a little joke."
One of my friends who's a foreign student here at Purdue recently made the statement to me that the whole Greek system served a social purpose much like the Tory party does in England. To reinforce social distinctions by ensuring that people of similar social classes and ethnic background are in a position to meet one another and get married.
Tory babies to rule a Tory England. Greek babies to rule a Greek America.
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