Prometheus 6

Knowing no more than is reported here, it's almost like the L.A.P.D. wants to end the Black-Latino beef by providing a common enemy. 

Witnesses dispute police version of man's death
Three women say Mauricio Cornejo was beaten after he was cuffed. Officers say he wasn't. The man later died in custody.
By Jessica Garrison and Adrian G. Uribarri
Times Staff Writers
February 7, 2007

Three significantly different accounts of how a 31-year-old man came to die in police custody emerged Tuesday, one from the Los Angeles Police Department, the others from three people who said they saw officers beating the handcuffed man.

The death of Mauricio Cornejo, 31, has sparked tensions at the Ramona Gardens housing project, where dozens of police in riot gear converged on a crowd Tuesday evening at a makeshift carwash intended to raise funds for his funeral.

"We never have and never will seek to remove a United States attorney to interfere with an ongoing investigation or prosecution or in retaliation for a prosecution."

That's right...but we will order one to close a case and fire him for disobeying orders

Obviously I don't believe the Justice Department official.

Justice Department official denies firings were political
Declines to specify why US attorneys were dismissed
By Laurie Kellman, Associated Press | February 7, 2007

WASHINGTON -- A top Justice Department official acknowledged yesterday that more than a half-dozen US attorneys were fired in the last year, in some cases without cause, but denied allegations by Democrats that they had been dismissed for political reasons.

Reason for edit. All the rest is true.

Not funny.

Someone, I hope by mistake, has nominated Daily Darfur for a Koufax Award under "Most Humorous Blog." Daily Darfur is a daily round-up of news stories and commentary about the Darfur genocide. It's about GENOCIDE. It's not intended to be "humorous." I have requested that it be removed from this list. Good grief.

Nope. It wasn't a mistake. It was another shining example of the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory in action.

At Media Matters for America, if you want to actually hear this dick.

From the February 1 edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: U.S. blacks -- young U.S. blacks believe in politics, according to a new study. "Many U.S. blacks are as confident" -- and we're talking about the clean ones here, folks, I must stipulate this -- young, clean U.S. blacks -- "believe in politics. Many young U.S. blacks are as confident as their white and Hispanic peers that they can use politics to make things better, but a majority of young blacks feel alienated from today's government." Why would that be? The government's been taking care of them their whole lives. Why would they feel alienated from -- maybe "today's government" means the Bush administration.

Snakes used in massage treatment in Israel
www.chinaview.cn 2007-02-06 09:41:33

Spa owner Ada Barak gives a snake massage treatment, where she lets loose the reptiles on the body of customer Liz Cohen, at her spa in the northern communal village of Talmey El'Azar Feb. 1, 2007. Barak uses California and Florida King snakes, corn snakes and milk snakes in her treatments, which she said were inspired by her belief that once people get over any initial misgivings, they find physical contact with the creatures to be soothing. Picture taken Feb. 1, 2007. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

I told you what to expect.

Well, here it is.

Worst Column of the Week?

Stuart Taylor makes a bid with an utterly inane column. He writes:

Yes, a shamefully large percentage of black children do not get good educations. But that is not because of residual white racism. Indeed, some of the nation's worst -- and most lavishly funded -- schools are run by black-dominated local governments. Nor is "white privilege," to borrow the jargon of race-obsessed professors, a major obstacle to black success today....

Obama’s soaring success should tell black children everywhere that they, too, can succeed, and they do not need handouts or reparations. It should tell those white Americans who still don’t get it that people with African blood can and regularly do achieve at the highest levels.

John Ridley. Again.

That Harry Belafonte could get away with calling Colin Powell a "house nigger" with nary a ripple from the media speaks to their tacit approval of racism from the left toward the right.

So "the left" is a race? "The right" is a race?

God, he's useless for real discussion. Except as an example. maybe.

As a noise-maker for the OLD racist right, he's a wunderkind.

Ampersand did a link dump. How to win arguments and influence debate is excellent.

RULE 1: Forget about trying to convert your adversary. In any serious polemical confrontation (as opposed to genuine intellectual discourse) the chances of success on this score are so remote as to exclude it as a rational objective. On the very rare occasions when it does happen, it will be because the person converted has already and independently come to harbour serious doubts concerning his existing position and is teetering on the edge of defection. This will be due, more often than not, to some outrageous action by his own side or some shocking revelation:

Rightfully listed as the first rule. In fact, I will say that in the wild-west open discussion forums of the internets the goal is not to convince your opponent but is to shut him up.

Thank you.

A.B.A. Panel Would Weaken Code Governing Judges’ Conduct
By ADAM LIPTAK

A commission of the American Bar Association has recommended that the group weaken its code of judicial conduct by changing, from a mandatory rule to nonbinding advice, an instruction to judges to “avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety.”

Supporters of the change say disciplining judges for violating a concept as vague as “the appearance of impropriety” is unfair. Opponents denounce any retreat from the longstanding and widely embraced standard, and one critic — Robert H. Tembeckjian, the administrator of the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct — has resigned in protest as an adviser to the A.B.A. commission.

A side-effect of the recent release of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid is I get to see a n interesting conversation among Jewish folk. It got me thinking this morning about why they can have public discussions like this one, when Black folks having an equivalent one would make the entire nation got batshit crazy.

Part of it comes down to the Jewish discussion being seen as discussing what kind of white person to be. I'm having trouble framing how the equivalent Black discussion would be seen.

Can we just assume Black culture drove the woman insane?

In The War To Save The Surge, E. J. Dionne Jr. asks a question with a really obvious answer.

When political opponents tell you that to prove your seriousness you need to pursue a strategy they know is doomed to failure, shouldn't you be skeptical of their advice?

I have another, I think related, question. The Republican Senators just rejected the known will of the people for the purely political purpose of supporting an unpopular President's failed policies. So when will it be obvious Republicans have as little interest in what the nation's citizenry thinks as in working bipartisanly?

via OW

Report: Supremacist activity flourishes
Factions fueled by anti-immigrant passions grow by 33 percent, study says
The Associated Press
Updated: 7:07 p.m. ET Feb 5, 2007

NEW YORK - Huge street protests made millions of immigrants more visible and powerful last year, but they also seem to have revived a hateful counter force: white supremacists.

Groups linked to the Ku Klux Klan, skinheads and neo-Nazis grew significantly more active, holding more rallies, distributing leaflets and increasing their presence on the Internet — much of it focused on stirring anti-immigrant sentiment, a new report released by the Anti-Defamation League says.

This is beyond incompetence. It smacks of intent.

Almost a year ago, Congress appropriated $10.4 billion in special housing funds for reconstruction in Louisiana. Federal bureaucrats at the hearing last week were at pains to tell the senators why the requirement that the state ante up 10 percent of that total in matching funds was being enforced, since this statutory provision was waived in other recent disasters such as the Sept. 11 attacks and several Florida hurricanes.

And no one even tried to explain why Washington won't just let Louisiana write a check for its 10 percent share, and instead wants the state to write, justify and track a separate 10 percent check for each individual rebuilding project -- thousands upon thousands of checks.

Everyone knows this is insanity. Nobody does anything about it.

A 'Road Home' to Lunacy
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, February 6, 2007; A17

NEW ORLEANS -- It's beyond frustrating to hear well-meaning bureaucrats cite all the reasons that so little has been done to rebuild this ruined city and the rest of the Gulf Coast -- why, for example, out of more than 100,000 Louisiana households that have applied to the state government for their share of $7 billion in federal reconstruction funds, fewer than 400 have received their money.

...but The Angry Black Woman's idea is interesting, so

A Paternal Great Grandfather

A Maternal Great Grandfather

Each of these pictures is over 100 years old.

"Let me put it this way -- after living 20 years in the Bay Area I had 80 telephone numbers in my cellphone and after living here two years I have 200," said Gandi. "Life in the US can get a bit lonely, but here there is something happening all the time. People don't wait until the weekend to party."

Indian immigrants enticed to go home
Stronger economy, old ties beckon
By Jehangir S. Pocha, Globe Correspondent  |  February 5, 2007

MUMBAI -- Lured by the booming Indian economy and fed up with living as outsiders in a foreign society, many Indian and other South Asian immigrants in the United States are returning to their homeland -- and bringing with them cutting-edge American skills.

THINK YOU DESERVE A BETTER BATHROOM THRONE?
ROTO-ROOTER IS GIVING AWAY ONE-OF-A-KIND "PIMPED OUT JOHN"

No. 1 Plumbing and Drain-Cleaning Service Provider Creates Ultimate Toilet, Complete with flat-screen TV, DVD Player, Laptop, Refrigerator, Xbox™ 360, iPod™

(Cincinnati, Ohio — January 27, Thomas Crapper Day, 2007) — The average person spends 11,862 hours in the bathroom — which equals one year, four months and five days — in a lifetime. It's amazing the crapper, or as some say, "the toilet," has evolved so little since the Romans invented the latrine in 2500 B.C., with the most significant advance happening when Albert Giblin, an employee of Thomas Crapper, perfected an effective flush toilet in 1898. The days of emperors and queens have ended, but that doesn't mean you don't deserve your very own bathroom throne.

I notice some folks are having comment issues. I'd like to share a couple of resources that didn't actually help my views but encapsulate major sections of it. First, from News You Can Bruise for 2001 October 28

Perusing some Linux Today talkbacks today, I was reminded of the "Tar Pit From Hell" theory of discussion boards which I expounded to my co-workers many months ago. It is basically the following: when you add a public discussion forum to your site you are placing your site on a big slab of plexiglass which floats around on the Tar Pit From Hell. As long as no one actually uses the discussion forum, you are safe. But the more people pile on to use the discussion forum, the deeper your site sinks into the Tar Pit From Hell. There are various measures you can take to slow your descent into the Tar Pit From Hell, but none of them deal with the fundamental problem, which is the fact that your site is sinking into a damn tar pit.

A bit overstated. Still...

Next is the concise Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

I have gotten great utility from this principle, both rhetorically and philosophically.

Now consider this, because it will tell you all you need to know about racial justice in the South. A 19-year-old black man named Richard Dunn was shotgunned to death as he was heading home from a benefit dance in support of Mr. Tyler at Southern University in New Orleans in 1976. A white man, Anthony Mart, was arrested and convicted of shooting Mr. Dunn from a passing car.

Gary Tyler’s current attorney, Mary Howell, ruefully explained what happened to Mr. Mart for the cold-blooded killing of a black stranger: He was sent to prison for life but was pardoned and freed after serving about 10 years.

[TS]Gary Tyler’s Lost Decades
By BOB HERBERT

There is no longer any doubt that the case against the teenager, Gary Tyler, was a travesty. A federal appeals court ruled unequivocally that he did not receive a fair trial. The Louisiana Board of Pardons issued rulings on three occasions that would have allowed Mr. Tyler to be freed.

But this is the South and Mr. Tyler was a black person convicted of killing a white. It didn’t matter that the case was built on bogus evidence and coerced witnesses, or that the trial was, in the words of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, “fundamentally unfair.” Mr. Tyler was never given a new trial and the pardon board recommendations were rejected by two governors....

Lest ye forget

Posted 10/6/2003 10:02 PM Updated 10/7/2003 6:52 AM
Rice will manage Iraq's 'new phase'
By Judy Keen, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — President Bush is giving his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, the authority to manage postwar Iraq and the rebuilding of Afghanistan.

While some saw it as a sign of frustration with the handling of postwar efforts, Bush and other officials said the move is a logical next step and reflected no dissatisfaction with progress.

"We want to cut through the red tape and make sure that we're getting the assistance there quickly so that they can carry out their priorities," Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said. "It's a new phase, a different phase we're entering."

Rice will head the Iraq Stabilization Group, which will have coordinating committees on counterterrorism, economic development, political affairs and media messages. Each committee will be headed by a Rice deputy and include representatives of the State, Defense and Treasury departments and the CIA.

---

Bush puts Rice in charge of reconstruction
By Caroline Daniel and Guy Dinmore in Washington
Published: December 14 2005 17:10 | Last updated: December 15 2005 02:21

President George W. Bush on Wednesday announced that the State Department would lead all US post-conflict reconstruction, a move that supersedes the controversial decision to give that task to the Pentagon in Iraq following the 2003 invasion.

The announcement came as Mr Bush delivered the last of four speeches intended to rebuild public support for the war on the eve of Thursday’s election for Iraq’s first official parliament.

With Rumsfeld Gone, Critics of War Look to Rice
By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — For six years, first as national security adviser and then as secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice worked under the cover of a very effective shield: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was the administration’s lightning rod for criticism over its handling of Iraq.

But in recent weeks, with Mr. Rumsfeld gone, Ms. Rice has faced increased, and somewhat unfamiliar, criticism. At a Senate hearing on Jan. 11, she confronted a wall of opposition from Republicans as well as Democrats. During hearings this week on Iraq, several of her predecessors were pointed in their disapproval of her job performance.

Mr. Jamison said some young men bring the unwanted attention of police on them, “with their pants down to their ankles and drugs in their pockets.” He then urged that he and this reporter keep their voices down because “some of the dealers, they’re out here right now.”

But he said he blames police practices like the stop-and-frisks for tension between the community and the police. He said many officers might want to stop crime in the community, but many cannot discern between common criminals and the common people who live among them.

As Officers Stop and Frisk, Residents Raise Their Guard
By TRYMAINE LEE

At 14, Rocky Harris knows the routine: You raise your hands high, you keep your mouth shut and you don’t dare move a muscle.

Then the police officer’s gloved hands go up and down each leg, around your waist, across your chest and back, then down your shoulders to your wrists.

When they don’t find guns or drugs, Rocky said, they let you go. He said that he had been searched, fruitlessly, at least three times since last summer, and that he had friends who had been searched repeatedly.

“They tell you that you’re selling drugs. But I don’t do nothing wrong. I just play ball,” he said, walking through the Red Hook East housing development in Brooklyn yesterday morning, headed to a community center for a game of basketball.

Many people now see race as a facet of personal identity that changes from time to time or even from place to place. In a follow-up survey just a year after the initial 2000 census, for example, about 4 of 10 people who had listed more than one race decided to change their responses. Kenneth Prewitt, a Columbia University professor and former census director, wrote in the journal Daedalus in 2005 that these people seem to see race not as a fixed demographic fact, but as “something closer to an attitude toward oneself.”

Not quite. It's an in-group, not an attitude. 

On Race and the Census: Struggling With Categories That No Longer Apply
By BRENT STAPLES

Have you noticed that Bush ordered his 'plan' to begin before presenting it to us all? Have you noticed the fact that the plan is already underway is used to challenge those who challenge the 'plan'?

Do you remember the troop build-up for the Iraq invasion...do you remember how the pundits figured out we'd "have to" attack by a certain date because we had all those assets on the ground and you can't just put all that stuff in the area and not use it?

Another war of choice would only pour fuel on the fires of the Middle East. And the history of this administration shows that if Congress does not constrain this president, he could well act recklessly again, in ways that would profoundly damage our national interest.

We are fast approaching the point where Bush or Cheney or whoever is in charge can just give an order and a second invasion can be started by issuing an order. And then comes the recycling of the rhetoric about funding soldiers in combat.

Congress must stop an attack on Iran
By Leonard Weiss and Larry Diamond
LEONARD WEISS is a senior science fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. LARRY DIAMOND is a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
February 5, 2007

DESPITE ANGUISH and anger over the Bush administration's decision to escalate its failing war in Iraq, Congress is unlikely to cut off funding. Even most opponents of the war fear that they could be blamed for not supporting the troops in the field and for a possible descent into even greater catastrophe in the face of a precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

But nothing prevents Congress from using its power of the purse to prevent an American attack on Iran. President Bush's neoconservative advisors and pundit supporters have been beating the drums of war with Iran since 2003, when the president declared Iran to be part of an "axis of evil." Recall that a senior administration official told The Times that Iran should "take a number" in the wake of the invasion of Iraq. In his recent address to the nation on the troop surge in Iraq, Bush issued more threats to Iran. Now the president has named a Navy admiral to head the U.S. Central Command and dispatched a second aircraft carrier and minesweepers to the Persian Gulf, presumably to prevent Iran from closing the Strait of Hormuz in the event of conflict.

These developments and other administration moves could presage an air attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

High Prices Help Sell All-in-One Products
By ALEX MINDLIN

Should you get the whitening toothpaste, the anticavity toothpaste or the one that does both? The detergent that removes stains, the one that makes colors brighter or the all-in-one?

Those decisions are the subject of studies described in a forthcoming paper in The Journal of Consumer Research, titled “Jack-of-All-Trades or Master of One?” The studies show that, when consumers consider all-in-one products side by side with specialized ones, the specialized products seem better at their particular functions than they did when considered alone. The all-in-ones, on the other hand, seem worse at each job.

In Washington, Contractors Play Biggest Role Ever
By SCOTT SHANE and RON NIXON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — In June, short of people to process cases of incompetence and fraud by federal contractors, officials at the General Services Administration responded with what has become the government’s reflexive answer to almost every problem.

They hired another contractor.

It did not matter that the company they chose, CACI International, had itself recently avoided a suspension from federal contracting; or that the work, delving into investigative files on other contractors, appeared to pose a conflict of interest; or that each person supplied by the company would cost taxpayers $104 an hour. Six CACI workers soon joined hundreds of other private-sector workers at the G.S.A., the government’s management agency.

A study published last year in the journal Pediatrics concluded that for white teens, repeated exposure to sexual content in television, movies and music increases the likelihood of becoming sexually active at an earlier age. (Black teens appear less influenced by media, and more by their parents' expectations and their friends' sexual behavior; those who had the least exposure to sexual content were also less likely to have intercourse.) Specifically, the study found that 55 percent of teens who were exposed to a lot of sexual material had intercourse by 16, compared with only 6 percent of teens who rarely saw sexual imagery in the media. That jibes with what many Americans fear: 84 percent of adults in the NEWSWEEK Poll said sex plays a bigger role in popular culture than it did 20 or 30 years ago, and 70 percent said that was a bad influence on young people....

Some observers think the real effect of the Brit Pack on our culture is more subtle, but no less negative. Rather than instantly inspiring kids to rush and have sex, out-of-control celebs create a sense of normalcy about behavior—drinking, smoking, casual sex—that is dangerous for teens. Britney, Paris and Lindsay have no shortage of "boyfriends" but seem to have few real relationships. "It creates a general sense that life is about being crazy, being kooky, having fun and not carrying on serious relationships," says Christian Smith, professor of sociology at Notre Dame. But the really insidious consequence is that teenagers often consider themselves immune to these influences. "They don't have enough perspective on how they are being formed by the world around them—and when they don't realize it, it can be more powerful," he says.

Girls Gone Wild: What Are Celebs Teaching Kids?
Paris, Britney, Lindsay & Nicole: They seem to be everywhere and they may not be wearing underwear. Tweens adore them and teens envy them. But are we raising a generation of 'prosti-tots'?
By Kathleen Deveny with Raina Kelley
Newsweek

Feb. 12, 2007 issue - My 6-year-old daughter loves Lindsay Lohan. Loves, loves, loves her. She loves Lindsay's hair; she loves Lindsay's freckles. She's seen "The Parent Trap" at least 10 times. I sometimes catch her humming the movie's theme song, Nat King Cole's "Love." She likes "Herbie Fully Loaded" and now we're cycling through "Freaky Friday." So when my daughter spotted a photo of Lindsay in the New York Post at the breakfast table not long ago, she was psyched. "That's Lindsay Lohan," she said proudly. "What's she doing?"

I couldn't tell her, of course. I didn't want to explain that Lindsay, who, like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, sometimes parties pantyless, was taking pole-dancing lessons to prepare for a movie role. Or that her two hours of research left her bruised "everywhere." Then again, Lindsay's professional trials are easy to explain compared with Nicole Richie's recent decision to stop her car in the car-pool lane of an L.A. freeway. Or Britney Spears's "collapse" during a New Year's Eve party in Las Vegas. Or the more recent report that Lindsay had checked into rehab after passing out in a hotel hallway, an item that ran on the Post's Page Six opposite a photo of Kate Moss falling down a stairway while dressed in little more than a fur jacket and a pack of cigarettes.

You can't embed this stuff, and if you hit the first link you'll likely get a play list with the other four in nice sequential order. But I don't want you to miss any of it, so here's all five links. 

Archive of American Television Interview with Ossie Davis Part 1 of 5
Archive of American Television Interview with Ossie Davis Part 2 of 5
Archive of American Television Interview with Ossie Davis Part 3 of 5
Archive of American Television Interview with Ossie Davis Part 4 of 5
Archive of American Television Interview with Ossie Davis Part 5 of 5