The Death Of Rosa Parks
November 9, 2005

DETROIT—Nearly 50 years ago, Rosa Parks made history by refusing to give her seat to a white man on a segregated public bus in Montgomery, AL. This week, following the passing of the woman known as "the mother of the civil-rights movement," Americans from every walk of life—regardless of race, gender, or creed—can finally put the subject of racial equality behind them, once and for all.

"During today's service, America not only bade farewell to a seamstress from Alabama," President Bush said at a special GOP fundraiser Monday evening, "America buried the idea of civil rights itself."

Once upon a time, back when The Atlantic's online presence was wide open, I used to participate in their forums. It started with a response to an article by Randall Kennedy titled, "My Race Problem -- And Ours."

It was a lively discussion.

At one point some guy said to me, "I assume you're one of those people that differences aren't inherited but are caused by socialization." I said I recognize traits can be inherited but we're not clear which traits those are. That we need to find what derives from our common human nature and find an explanation why white folks deviated in one direction and Black folks deviated in another. That sorta killed that particular branch of the thread.

Bush's Tortured Logic
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, November 8, 2005; 11:59 AM

Just what did President Bush mean yesterday when he said: "We don't torture?"

News outlets all over the world reported Bush's words as if they were definitive. But they are in fact enigmatic at best, because it's not at all clear what the president's definition of torture is.

His comments came yesterday in a press availability with President Martin Torrijos in Panama, in response to a question about secret CIA prison camps and Vice President Cheney's crusade against legislation that would prohibit U.S. government employees from using cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

...the past in this case being the Pentagon Papers. 

GOP Leaders Urge Probe in Prisons Leak
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 9, 2005; A01

Congress's top Republican leaders yesterday demanded an immediate joint House and Senate investigation into the disclosure of classified information to The Washington Post that detailed a web of secret prisons being used to house and interrogate terrorism suspects.

The Post's article, published on Nov. 2, has led to new questions about the treatment of detainees and the CIA's use of "black sites" in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. The issue dogged President Bush on his recent trip to Latin America and has created consternation in Eastern Europe.

"If accurate, such an egregious disclosure could have long-term and far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences, and will imperil our efforts to protect the American people and our homeland from terrorist attacks," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) wrote in a letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Gentlemen, if accurate, the "far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences" came about long before the Washington Post's article was published. Don't you realize the people you're afraid of don't get their information from the U.S. media?

Quote of note:

"He never apologized once for trashing every one of us," said Mike Jimenez, president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. "And I can tell you, tomorrow we're not going to apologize for the way this election turned out. Tomorrow starts Round 2."

Voters Reject Schwarzenegger's Bid to Remake State Government
The governor's four ballot proposals, the foundation of his sweeping plans for change in Sacramento, are halted at the polls.
By Michael Finnegan and Robert Salladay
Times Staff Writers
November 9, 2005

In a sharp repudiation of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Californians rejected all four of his ballot proposals Tuesday in an election that shattered his image as an agent of the popular will.

Kansas education board downplays evolution
State school board OKs standards casting doubt on Darwin
MSNBC News Services
Updated: 8:34 p.m. ET Nov. 8, 2005

TOPEKA, Kan. - Risking [P6: Risking? There's no risk here...] the kind of nationwide ridicule it faced six years ago, the Kansas Board of Education approved new public-school science standards Tuesday that cast doubt on the theory of evolution.

The 6-4 vote was a victory for “intelligent design” advocates who helped draft the standards. Intelligent design holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.

Critics of the new language charged that it was an attempt to inject God and creationism into public schools, in violation of the constitutional ban on state establishment of religion.

Aww...Bruce..
You didn't ask to be like this! But you do have to
admit, you have some reaaaal repressed anger
issues. You're a good guy! Until someone pisses
you off! You aren't really a superhero..You're
more of a monster who can go either way in
situations. But all around, you're the kind of
guy that needs a hug..That..and some prozac


Which superhero are you? (This is for the boys)
brought to you by Quizilla

Check this thread at The Blogging of the President.

a funny thing happened on the way to learning... by jamila

I was embarrassed for me. for you. for all of us.

There I was. A little black face in the crowd listening to two men go on and on about unknown, but important chapters in African American history. Why embarrassed?

Neither were black.

Because we will have more impact on the way the world develops than y'all.

THE DIASPORA STRIKES BACK
REFLECTIONS ON CULTURAL REMITTANCES  
Migrants carry and send back much more than just money. Ideas, values, political causes and cultural styles all make their way from diaspora to homeland settings. This remittance process, generated "from below," can have a redicaly unsettling impact when it collides with the traditional cultural and ideological values in home countries.

By Juan Flores

...In her book, The Transnational Villagers, on relations and interactions between Dominicans in Boston and the Dominican Republic, sociologist Peggy Levitt coins the term “social remittances.” She uses the term to account for the range of ways that individuals and communities in the diaspora send and bring back social values and experiences along with the concomitant repercussions of such flows when they land “back home.” Levitt writes of social remittances as “the ideas, behaviors, identities, and social capital that flow from host- to sending-country communities.” She calls for an understanding of how the social and cultural resources that migrants bring with them “are transformed in the host country and transmitted back to sending communities such that new cultural products emerge and challenge the lives of those who stay behind.” Using ethnography and interwoven life-stories, Levitt addresses forms of business practices, political participation and changing gender relations to illustrate the dynamic effects brought to Dominican social experience at a local level and in everyday life.

Every time I see those pictures of Scooter hobbling around on those crutches I think, "They must have had to beat the hell out of him to make him take the fall."

Negroponte won't back Cheney on torture

WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. intelligence czar John Negroponte is declining to support Vice President Dick Cheney's effort to exempt the CIA from law banning mistreatment of detainees.

"It's above my pay grade," he told a secret briefing for Senators last month, Time Magazine reported Sunday, adding that Negroponte then "artfully dodged another question about whether the harsher interrogation tactics Cheney wants the agency to be free to use actually produce valuable intelligence."

GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona has attached an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill which would specifically incorporate the Geneva Conventions' ban on cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners into U.S. law. But the vice-president and -- according to Time magazine -- Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, have been lobbying against it on Capitol Hill, and the White House has threatened to veto the bill if the language is included.

Oh, don't think I quoted anything like the whole article, or anywhere near the best points. And I hope Mr. Jackson tells us all about the email he gets in response to it. 

Quote of note:

But before we go there, let's deal with the greater issue: the cultural and racial ignorance of Phil Jackson.

The first comment was made upon his first comeback. It came in a conversation with the media during training camp about the Lakers learning the intricacies of the triangle offense.

The second comment was made upon his second comeback. It came in a conversation with the media during training camp about his feelings toward the implementation of the NBA's new dress-code policy.

Notice a pattern? Notice a recrudescence?

Sacred ignorance
By Scoop Jackson

I used to love H.I.M.

He used to be my man 50 grand. The Revolverlutionary. The Phrenologist.

I used to hold him down to no end.

Triangle offense? Ride or die.

Phil Jackson was the one dude, despite all his flaws, who I publicly protected and defended. Said nothing when others would criticize him or find fault with him. "Damn you, Red Auerbach!!!"

I had to do that for him. I shared his last name.

But over the years something's changed. Something's flipped. The openness, the acceptability of individualness, the personal liberalness -- all disappeared. It seemed that the minute Bill Clinton left office, Phil also left the building. Turned to the dark side, turned righteous, turned into Billy Graham, became … conservative.

Which is cool, because as long as he kept winning basketball games, as long as he kept the Lakers relevant, everything was golden, all good, irie.

Do or die, I had his back.

In October 1999, these words came out of his mouth:

"I don't mean to say [that] as a snide remark toward a certain population in our society, but they have a limitation of their attention span, a lot of it probably due to too much rap music going in their ears and coming out their being."

OK. Let that one slide. Chalk it up as generational hate. Cultural Alzheimer's.

Then…

In October 2005, these words came out of his mouth:

"I think it's important that the players take their end of it, get out of the prison garb and the thuggery aspect of basketball that has come along with hip-hop music in the last seven or eight years."

OK … the camel's thoracic and lumbar vertebrae just went into trauma. Forget a broken back, this is spondylitis. A disease.

Now, I'm not calling Phil Jackson an Al Campanis, a Marge Schott or a Jimmy the Greek, but I will say for those comments he needs to meet the same fate.

Not necessarily being fired -- something beyond that. At this point he should be placed in the same sports pantheon of bigots and frauds that have come along in this post-Adolf Hitler/Jesse Owens generation of athletics.

"Limitation of their attention span … due to too much rap music"? "Prison garb and thuggery … that has come along with hip-hop music"?

Forget calling the kettle black, let's just call the hypocrite white.

Or should I say, hippie?

One who was a member of an anti-American culture that made marijuana mainstream, one that dressed in Woodstock and Vietnam garb.

Quote of note:

It's amazing to remember that when Mr. Bush first ran for president, he bragged about his understanding of Latin America, his ability to speak Spanish and his friendship with Mexico. But he also made fun of Al Gore for believing that nation-building was a job for the United States military.

President Bush's Walkabout

After President Bush's disastrous visit to Latin America, it's unnerving to realize that his presidency still has more than three years to run. An administration with no agenda and no competence would be hard enough to live with on the domestic front. But the rest of the world simply can't afford an American government this bad for that long.

Green monster invocation of note:

Investment bankers are expected to receive increases of 10 percent to 20 percent in their year-end bonuses from a year ago. For a midlevel managing director in investment banking, that could mean total compensation of roughly $1.2 million to $1.8 million for the year. While such gains may not get them back to the go-go years of 1999 and 2000, it gets them much closer.

I was on Wall Street (in operations, not sales, dammit) in the days when Goldman Sachs was handing out million dollar bonuses to trading assistants. I said it then and I'll say it again: you would only get to pay me one million dollar bonus.

Anyway... 

Optimism on Wall Street Over Size of Bonuses
By JENNY ANDERSON

After several years of being outshone by star traders, investment bankers stand to reap some of the biggest gains in Wall Street bonuses this year.

Oh, spare me...

Pentagon Plans Tighter Control of Interrogation
By ERIC SCHMITT and TIM GOLDEN

WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 - The Pentagon has approved a new policy directive governing interrogations as part of an effort to tighten controls over the questioning of terror suspects and other prisoners by American soldiers.

The eight-page directive, which was signed without any public announcement last Thursday by Acting Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England, will allow the Army to issue a long-delayed field manual for interrogators that is supposed to incorporate the lessons gleaned from the prisoner-abuse scandals last year.

The Army intends, for example, to ensure that interrogation techniques are approved, up to the highest levels in the Pentagon, that interrogators are properly trained and that personnel in the field are required to report any abuses, Army officials said.

Those "interrogation techniques" were "approved, up to the highest levels." And stop pretending to be surprised...this is exactlty what progressives said would happen when now-Attorney General Gonzalez' characterization of The Geneva Convention as "quaint" came to light.

The Quote of note comes from the dread DITSUM No. 044-02 itself:

“This is the first report from Ibn al-Shaykh in which he claims Iraq assisted al-Qaida’s CBRN [Chemical, Biological, Radiological or Nuclear] efforts. However, he lacks specific details on the Iraqis involved, the CBRN materials associated with the assistance, and the location where training occurred. It is possible he does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers (emphasis added). Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest.”

Lying with intelligence
Robert Scheer
November 8, 2005

The Duke Ellington Society - An appreciation of the great Duke Ellington.

Ella Fitzgerald: 1917-1996 - A loving tribute to the First Lady of Song.

Ossie Davis reads Langston Hughes - Several "Simple" stories; the broken links make me unsure they're intended for current consumption, but...

Quote of note

The organization strives to unite and motivate progressive Christians at the grassroots level in order to influence local politics, such as school board decisions and campaigns between mayors. “You’ve got to be organized because the country is moving towards a theocracy,” the Rev. Simpson said.

God's Politics
By Brian Fanelli, WireTap. Posted November 7, 2005.

With nearly 10,000 members, The Christian Alliance -- a new national spiritual organization dedicated to progressive causes, such as peace, gay rights, and environmental protection -- is challenging the stances held by the religious right through grassroots activism, national debate, and by reaching out to young people.

DARK CURTAIN OF RACISM SOMETIMES OPENS TO THE LIGHT
By Cynthia Tucker

...When Mrs. Parks refused to yield her seat that December day in 1955, she was regarded by local authorities as an outlaw. She was arrested. And there was no national outpouring of sympathy. President Eisenhower refused to make a strong public stand against segregation, and J. Edgar Hoover had already begun a campaign to smear civil rights activists as godless communists.

Yet, last week, countless Washington notables came to bid Parks farewell. It was hard not to notice the layers of irony: Among those dignitaries was Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, hailed by hard-core conservatives as a jurist contemptuous of the sort of judicial "activism" that gave Parks full citizenship. Without federal judges who were courageous and farsighted, after all, Rice and I might still be sitting in the back of the bus.

Perhaps it's a plague spread by linguistic contagion... 

Quote of note:

Precisely because religious beliefs purport to deal with the most important realities, one would think that the public discussion of competing faiths should be, in the words of the Supreme Court in a famous 1st Amendment case, "uninhibited, robust and wide open."

But Tony Blair apparently doesn't believe that, and neither do a lot of Americans.

The right to revile religion
MICHAEL MCGOUGH
November 7, 2005

IN BRITAIN, WHERE I just spent a busman's holiday, civil libertarians, religious leaders and even the comedian Rowan Atkinson are savaging Prime Minister Tony Blair for proposing to criminalize "incitement to religious hatred."

No matter how you spin your justification, the actual actions that took place are no embarassment to Black folk.

Quote of note:

Such stories are rarely recounted. To whites, they are largely alien, while to blacks, they are almost too commonplace for comment. But they help explain and illustrate the American racial divide as surely as Hurricane Katrina. They help explain the otherwise inexplicable, like those black crowds cheering O.J. Simpson a decade ago.

'Save me, Joe Louis!'
An oft-told tale of a condemned black man's final words is a myth. The real story illustrates America's painful racial divide.
By David Margolick
DAVID MARGOLICK, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, is the author of "Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink" (Knopf, 2005).
November 7, 2005

Tornado Rips Through Ky., Ind.; 22 Killed
- By DEANNA MARTIN, Associated Press Writer
Sunday, November 6, 2005
(11-06) 19:22 PST Evansville, Ind. (AP) --

A tornado with winds exceeding 158 mph ripped a path of destruction through western Kentucky and Indiana as residents slept early Sunday, reducing homes to splinters and leaving entire blocks of buildings in rubble. At least 22 people were killed and 200 others injured.

Rescuers who reached the hard-hit Eastbrook Mobile Home Park shortly after 2 a.m. found children wandering in the broken glass and debris, looking for their parents, as parents called out for missing children.

Quote of note:

On June 9, the church received a letter from the IRS stating that "a reasonable belief exists that you may not be tax-exempt as a church … " The federal tax code prohibits tax-exempt organizations, including churches, from intervening in political campaigns and elections.

The letter went on to say that "our concerns are based on a Nov. 1, 2004, newspaper article in the Los Angeles Times and a sermon presented at the All Saints Church discussed in the article."

Antiwar Sermon Brings IRS Warning
All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena risks losing its tax-exempt status because of a former rector's remarks in 2004.
By Patricia Ward Biederman and Jason Felch
Times Staff Writers
November 7, 2005

If I could devise a way for the various folks that resist mainstream dominance in their various fashions to talk things out reasonably, I would be very, very happy.

I linked the last one in the series so you'd get all three parts.

The Time I Got Arrested For Holding A DVD (Part 3) by The Assimilated Negro The Unlawful Arrest and Imprisonment of TAN Trilogy continues...

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3/Denouement:
“The Tombs” are what they call the holding area downtown. And that’s where I was headed after leaving the precinct.

Just a random thought...

The other night Lou Dobbs answered an email from someone saying neither the Republican nor Democratic Parties are believable or acceptable with, "We're working on it."

I believe him.

I'm had the weird thought...which I am not endorsing...that the Conservative Party will wind up aligning with the DLC. I'd call it the Purple Party (the color you get when you take all the green out of white). 

He does one trick only
It's the principal source of his revenue
And when he steps into the spotlight
You can feel the heat of his heart
Come rising through

See how he dances
See how he loops from side to side
See how he prances
The way his hooves just seem to glide
He's just a one trick pony (that's all he is)
But he turns that trick with pride

DeLay Uses Campaign Tactics to Fight Charges
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 6, 2005; A07

Quote of note:

Lawyers for the state said no previous group has been allowed to protest on Capitol grounds unclothed. Those protesters who have disrobed were ordered to put their clothes on or face arrest.

"It has always been our policy that we do not allow nudity on the Capitol's grounds," said Tom Marshall, a CHP spokesman.

Allowing public nudity on the Capitol grounds would also be disruptive and possibly dangerous, the state argued.

Stupid question of note:

"Do you think the founding fathers had this in mind when they drafted the First Amendment?" he asked Matthew Kumin, the lawyer representing Breasts Not Bombs.

Judge tosses a blanket on topless protest
Breasts Not Bombs told nudity not part of free-speech rights
- Lynda Gledhill, Greg Lucas, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau
Saturday, November 5, 2005

Point:

Corruption, hypocrisy will always prevail
By Joshua Muravchik

THE VOLCKER Commission's revelations of widespread corruption in the U.N.'s oil-for-food program with Iraq have set off another round of reform at the world body. It's happened dozens of times.

Counterpoint: 

It works well. Tweak it.
By Stanley Meisler,
Stanley Meisler, who covered the U.N. for the Los Angeles Times during the 1990s, is the author of "United Nations: The First Fifty Years." He is currently writing a biography of Kofi Annan.

AMERICAN POLITICIANS have urged U.N. reform for decades. Lately, the cries have become so loud and incessant that it is hard to imagine what will satisfy the critics. Abolish the veto for all nations save the United States and elect John Bolton as secretary-general?

Strange as it seems, even those steps might not be enough — not for critics whose demands for reform mask a deeper goal. They will not be satisfied unless the U.N. submits to the will of the United States.