Prometheus 6

via African American Political Pundit

Obama's AIPAC speech. Text as prepared for delivery.

AIPAC Policy Forum
March 2, 2007
Chicago, Illinois

Thank you so much for your kind introduction and the invitation to meet
with you this morning.

Last week, this event was described to me as a small gathering of
friends. Looking at all of you here today; seeing so many of you who care
about peace in this world; who care about a strong and lasting friendship
between Israel and the United States, and who care about what’s on the
next page of our shared futures, I think “a small gathering of
friends” fits this crowd just right.

Their Gods Speak

Rush Limbaugh - conservative icon, White House guest, Republican propagandist (also racist, misogynist, and junkie) - calls John Edwards a woman as he continues the tradition.

I'm talking about 300.

I like cartoons and superhero comics. I liked Sin City. I'll probably like 300 because it is so obviously a cartoon.

Not everyone agrees. Some of the commentary is laughable

Mr. Bush has been compared to Xerxes at least since his “axis of evil” speech in the wake of 9/11, for instance, while the Spartan cry “Molon labe,” or “Come and take them,” has long been a rallying call for supporters of the right to bear arms.

In a statement, David Rhodes, a vice president of Fox News, said: "News organizations will want to think twice before getting involved in the Nevada Democratic Caucus, which appears to be controlled by radical fringe out-of-state interest groups, not the Nevada Democratic Party."

News organizations will have no problem with the Nevada Democratic Party. Call back when you become one.

Nevada Democrats Drop Debate
By Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 10, 2007; A05

The Nevada Democratic Party canceled yesterday an August debate in Reno it had been scheduled to co-sponsor with Fox News, after weeks of complaints from liberal groups and a controversial remark by the network's chairman.

How can you say this

“This detective is an impeccable officer”

...about a guy who wasn't even sure he fired his weapon when he EMPTIED HIS CLIP, RELOADED, AND EMPTIED HIS CLIP AGAIN?

In the moments after the shooting, Detective Oliver, 35, told a supervisor at the scene that he was unsure whether he had even fired at all, according to the Police Department’s preliminary report.

I believe Undercover Mike fired without consciousness. And his ass needs to go. Don't worry about his family...he'll be hired at an increase in salary by some Conservative.

Detective Who Fired 31 Shots Testifies in Killing by Police
By AL BAKER and COLIN MOYNIHAN

A grand jury in Queens weighing evidence in the fatal police shooting of Sean Bell heard yesterday from the last of the five police officers involved in the case, a detective who fired 31 of the 50 shots at Mr. Bell’s car.

The actions of the detective, Michael Oliver, who emptied his 9-millimeter Sig Sauer pistol, reloaded and emptied it again during the barrage of police gunfire, have been among the focal points of the investigation into the shooting, which took place outside the Club Kalua strip club in Queens on Nov. 25, hours before Mr. Bell was to be married.

While there is widespread agreement about the importance of early years education, there is a fundamental difference of approach between, on the one hand, preparing children for life, and on the other, preparing them for school.

Giving children the right start
By Mike Baker
Education correspondent, BBC News

Are we giving our children the right sort of educational start in life?

This week school inspectors from Ofsted had some tough words to say about the failure of nurseries, children's centres and infant schools in England to develop literacy and calculation skills amongst three to five-year-olds.

They also told us that - even at this tender age - girls are pulling ahead of boys.

"Until we get a clear and credible answer from the Bush administration on who made the decision to fire these U.S. attorneys and why they did it, we will continue our investigation," Conyers said in a statement.

Said Sanchez: "The threshold for cooperation in Washington used to be `Trust, but verify.' We are sending these letters today because, at this point, we'd be happy just to verify."

Nice diss, Rep. Sanchez!

Investigation into firings of U.S. attorneys hits the White House
By Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - A congressional investigation into the firings of eight U.S. attorneys reached into the White House on Friday, with Democrats saying that they'll call in President Bush's former counsel Harriet Miers and other unidentified White House officials for interviews with the House Judiciary Committee.

That the prime minister was able to venture out at all testified to the modest improvements in security in the capital since the crackdown began last month.

I saw this headline

Maliki ventures out in Baghdad
Under heavy guard, Iraq's prime minister chats with people on the street to show a crackdown is working.
From Times Wire Services
March 10, 2007

BAGHDAD — Flanked by guards armed with submachine guns, Iraq's prime minister on Friday ventured out of the Green Zone to tour parts of Baghdad, chatting with bystanders and police to demonstrate that a U.S.-led security crackdown is making progress.

And asked my self, "how sad is that?" as I laughed. I stopped laughing at the second paragraph.

Oh, yeah.

Black culture.

By creeping. 

This is a repost of a biggie, given we just rediscovered a division of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government was found to have abused the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act in 2003

(you DID read my I told you so, didn't you?)

I need to see what is in the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act extension the Senate is about to vote on. The one that didn't quite make it in had this gem:

`(b)(1) Under the direction of the Director of the Secret Service, members of the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division are authorized to--

`(A) carry firearms;

`(B) make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence, or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony; and

`(C) perform such other functions and duties as are authorized by law.

I need to see if that's still in there.

...so I give The Adventures of God.

Let me remind you of a couple of things. No, don't just read the clip. There's a real good thing for you to read below the fold.

Bush shuns Patriot Act requirement
In addendum to law, he says oversight rules are not binding
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | March 24, 2006

America’s Secret Police?
Intelligence experts warn that a proposal to merge two Pentagon intelligence units could create an ominous new agency.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Mark Hosenball
Newsweek

Conservative Scholars Argue Bush’s Wiretapping Is An Impeachable Offense

Gingrich asserted in the interview, however, that he should not be viewed as a hypocrite for pursuing Clinton's infidelity.

Yes hell you should.

"I drew a line in my mind that said, 'Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being...

And it's not about the money, it's about the principle.

More hypocrisy. Whenever someone starts with "I'm not judging you," a judgment is no more than 20 seconds away.

Gingrich Rejects Accusation of Hypocrisy
Associated Press
Friday, March 9, 2007; A06

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Bill Clinton over the Monica S. Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE HISTORY OF RACE IN AMERICA NOW THAT BLACK HISTORY MONTH IS OVER
J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
March 9, 2007

Interesting, isn’t it, how much of the country continues to react to the complications surrounding the issue of race like the little boy who finds himself amazed, after multiple trips to the zoo, that the zebra continue to have stripes. The zebras have always had stripes, since they have been zebras, and the stripes have been there on the zebras each of the times the boy comes to visit. But each time, upon viewing the phenomenon, the little boy’s mouth drops in amazement, his eyes open wide, and he stands on tiptoe and leans over the railing to get a better look at this wonderful curiosity which has never been pointed out to him before, except for all of the many other times it was pointed out in the visits prior to this.

So it is with (most) Americans and race, particularly—though not exclusively—in those matters which involve the race which used to define America’s race issue, African-Americans.

Some thoughts growing out of recent controversies on the issue.

There has long been the myth—fostered both inside and outside the South—that there was no social contact between African-Americans and their Southern white neighbors during the days when segregation of the races was the law of the Southern land. Actually there was quite a bit, not all of it under the table or under the bedsheets, which was how Elvis Presley was able to spend so much of his youth time in the Black churches of his native rural Mississippi listening to gospel groups and choirs, and so, therefore, how the inflections and cadences and accents of Black music ended up so much a part of his own.

'Prison Break' star charged with manslaughter

Lane Garrison has been charged with vehicular manslaughter in connection with a fatal car crash in Beverly Hills in December that left one of his three teenage passengers dead, reports TMZ.com.

Along with the felony charge, Garrison was charged with driving under the influence causing injury to multiple victims, driving with a .08 percent blood alcohol level causing injury and furnishing alcohol to a minor. The DUI counts alleged that Garrison was driving with a blood alcohol level of more than .15 percent.

The actor was at the wheel when he plowed into a tree. Vahagn Setian, a 17-year-old high school student who was a passenger in the car, was killed.

"We urge the U.S. government to acknowledge its own human rights problems and stop interfering in other countries' internal affairs under the pretext of human rights."

Beijing Hits Back at U.S. for Raising Rights Concerns
In Rebuttal of State Dept. Report, China Points to Iraq, Guantanamo Abuse Cases
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 9, 2007; A16

BEIJING, March 8 -- Responding to U.S. complaints, China charged Thursday that the Bush administration has no standing to criticize other countries on human rights because its own record is full of blemishes at home and abroad.

I don't think this came out right...

“The good news is we’re finding plenty to inquire about,” said Jay Kimbrough, the special master appointed by Gov. Rick Perry to investigate after a scandal broke last month with news reports that the commission had covered up repeated sexual encounters between at least 10 boys and 2 administrators at the West Texas State School, in Pyote, from 2003 to 2005. More recently, officials said that at least three girls had been sexually abused by a corrections officer at another facility, in Brownwood.

One Account of Abuse and Fear in Texas Youth Detention
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

HOUSTON, March 7 — Joseph Galloway says he was molested at 15 by a female corrections officer in a Texas Youth Commission detention center and later raped by a fellow inmate as a guard stood by.

“That’s when I started to try to kill myself,” Mr. Galloway, now 19, said by telephone from another youth facility as he waited late Tuesday to be interviewed by the Texas Rangers.

Mr. Galloway’s account is among about 150 new complaints that have emerged from 44 secure state schools, halfway houses and residential youth care programs in Texas as a result of several overlapping inquiries into accusations of sexual abuse and other mistreatment there.

I.R.S. Letting Tax Lawyers Write Rules
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

The Internal Revenue Service is asking tax lawyers and accountants who create tax shelters and exploit loopholes to take the lead in writing some of its new tax rules.

The pilot project represents a further expansion of the increasingly common federal government practice of asking outsiders to do more of its work, prompting academics and other critics to complain that the government is going too far.

They worry that having private lawyers and accountants draft tax rules could allow them to subtly skew them in favor of their clients.

Local police departments blame several factors: the spread of methamphetamine use in some Midwestern and Western cities, gangs, high poverty and a record number of people being released from prison. But the biggest theme, they say, is easy access to guns and a willingness, even an eagerness, to settle disputes with them, particularly among young people.

“There’s a mentality among some people that they’re living some really violent video game,” said Chris Magnus, the police chief in Richmond, Calif., north of San Francisco, where homicides rose 20 percent and gun assaults 65 percent from 2004 to 2006. “What’s disturbing is that you see that the blood’s real, the death’s real.”

Violent Crime in Cities Shows Sharp Surge
By KATE ZERNIKE

Violent crime rose by double-digit percentages in cities across the country over the last two years, reversing the declines of the mid-to-late 1990s, according to a new report by a prominent national law enforcement association.

Before giving the go-ahead, the F.D.A. must make sure that this drug — of marginal importance to the cattle industry — will not undercut a drug vital to human medical care.

Healthy Cattle and Healthy Humans

Medical experts have long worried that the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in animal feed is yielding resistant strains of bacteria that may be ingested by humans and cause diseases that can’t be cured. The main concern has been large-scale dosing of big herds or flocks. But an application now before the Food and Drug Administration raises the issue of whether injecting even individual animals may interfere with human medical treatments.

Notice...this is NOT a link. I do not want it googled because the URL is very temporary.

http://dev.intrapolitics.org/

If you have visited the actual P6 site since Jan 1 this year, you should be able to log into this with your username and password from P6. You can play around a bit but the invitation feature (though it's on the sidebar menu) is disabled right now.

I set up a forum on that site because it seems I don't quite cover everything everyone wants to discuss.

via Blackademics:

I like quality Black-themed theatre. Tyler Perry's stuff does not fit the description.

You know what, though? It doesn't have to.

The fact that both he and Mr. Hamlin both work live on stage doesn't mean they're doing the same thing. Drama...comedy. It's like complaining about Girlfriends because it's not Raisin in the Sun. You can do it but it doesn't make sense.

11th Annual Harlem Stage on Screen (formerly Harlem Film Festival)

Curated by Michelle Materre & produced by Neyda Luz Martinez

FRIDAY – SUNDAY, MARCH 9 – 11, 2007

Don’t miss thirty-six provocative, engaging and innovative documentaries, features, shorts and stories that resonate with and convey the spirit and passion of communities of color.

Program I OPENING NIGHT
Friday, March 9, 7:30 PM, $10
2006 Sundance Film Festival Winner
American Blackout by Ian Inaba & Jean Phillipe Boucicaut