The Black Informant

When “victims” don’t tell the whole story

‘Ex-Gay’ Controversy Mars Gospel Concert Tour for Obama
By Randy Hall
CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor
[Excerpted]

[…]
However, Regina Griggs, executive director of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX), told Cybercast News Service on Friday that such activities by homosexual activists “demonstrates a disregard for diversity and a refusal to respect a basic human right to dignity and self-determination.”

“Ex-gays have the same right to participate in the political process as other Americans and should not have to endure this type of abuse because they chose to leave homosexuality,” Griggs stated.

While homosexual advocacy groups “demand hate crimes laws and sexual orientation non-discrimination legislation,” they would deny the same protections to ex-gays, which she called “irrational behavior towards those who have overcome unwanted same-sex attractions.”

Griggs also called it ironic that homosexual activists — who often compare their efforts to those of the African-American civil rights movement — “have turned against African-Americans who no longer want to engage in homosexuality.”

“Yet many in the African-American community, especially black churches, support the ex-gay community,” she stated. “PFOX has spoken at black churches and exhibited at African-American conferences, including the NAACP and Congressional Black Caucus.”

As a result, Griggs urged homosexual organizations to show the same kind of compassion and acceptance of ex-gays that African-Americans have. “Gay groups must stop promoting discrimination against former homosexuals,” she stated. “Gay activists cannot claim sympathy as victims when they victimize others.” (more…)

Charlene E. Cothran, Black ex-gay publisher of Venus magazine has written about how the homosexual community dropped her when she announced that she was no longer gay. Do a Google search under her name and see just how “welcomed” she is amongst gay activist now.

A gentleman by the name of Scott Lively wrote the following excerpt on the double standard amongst these activists.

” I hate being called a homophobe. It has such an ugly connotation. Its especially unpleasant because, as a Christian, I’m supposed to have a reputation for loving people, not hating them. So I’ve worked really hard over the years to try to get the homosexuals to stop calling me a homophobe. I’ve pointed out the difference between hating people and hating their behavior (loving the sinner but hating the sin). They hated that. Then I tried “walking my talk” by taking an ex-”gay” man who was dying of AIDS into my family. My wife and I and our children loved and cared for him during the last year of his life. They hated that even more.

Then I began asking for guidance from homosexuals themselves: “Tell me, where is the line between homophobia and acceptable opposition to homosexuality?” I asked. “What if I just agree with the Bible that homosexuality is a sin no worse than any other sex outside of marriage?” “No, that‘s homophobic,” they replied. “Suppose I talk only about the proven medical hazards of gay sex and try to discourage people from hurting themselves?“ “No, you can’t do that,” they said. “How about if I say that homosexuals have the option to change if they choose?” “Ridiculous” they answered. “Maybe I could just be completely positive, say nothing about homosexuality, and focus only on promoting the natural family and traditional marriage?” “That’s really hateful,” they replied.

After I while, I realized that the only way I could get them to stop calling me a homophobe was to start agreeing with them about everything. But here’s my dilemma: I honestly believe the Bible which says that homosexuality is wrong and harmful and that all sex belongs within marriage. I’ve also read the professional studies and know that “gay” sex hurts people because it goes against the design of their bodies. And I’m friends with a number of former homosexuals who are now married and living heterosexual lives. Do I have to give up my religion? Ignore scientific facts? Betray my friends? Is that the only way to avoid being called a hater and a homophobe?

There’s no escape. A homophobe is anyone who, for any reason, disapproves of homosexuality in any way, shape, manner, form or degree. This leaves me with just two choices: agree that everything about homosexuality is natural, normal, healthy, moral and worthy to be celebrated OR be labeled as a mentally ill, hate-filled bigot.” (source)

That does not sound like diversity.

A few months ago I received an e-mail from a reader of this site in the U.K. He described himself as a young Black and gay male who was in search of Biblical references that supported the gay lifestyle. I responded by telling him that the only time the Bible refers to sex in a positive manner is when it is between a man and woman within marriage. I then told him that if he was looking for some justification for his chosen lifestyle, he would not find it in the Bible. I must have hit a nerve because the next few e-mails from him were filled with very hateful comments towards me. Pretty soon, he just stopped e-mailing me altogether.

Like Lively, I too have come to realize over the years that “tolerance” amongst homosexual activists simply means a full AGREEMENT of their chosen lifestyle. This definition in of itself slaps in the face of the actual meaning of diversity.

“Stop talking down on Black folks!”

This is by far the #1 whine I hear and see all the time online being directed towards individuals who are simply stating what they see within certain segments of the Black community. I have met more than my fair share of Black folks who are oftentimes very hesitant to state the obvious when there is the remote possibility that Whites are within earshot. This is why I find it interesting that when these same things are being said on the comedic stage, all of a sudden its alright.

The following is a video that I put threw together over the weekend. It provides a very good example of how “beating up on Black folks” can be so funny.

(The skips are because of quick editing to remove 4-letter curse words)

600 rapes a day

Kenya: Report Shows 600 Women Raped Daily
East African Standard (Nairobi)
29 October 2007

Edith Fortunate
Nairobi

More than 600 females are raped daily, a new report shows.

The report, compiled by Gender Violence Recovery Centre (GVRC), indicates that the youngest rape survivor is five-months-old while the oldest is 86.

The statistics, which have been compiled in hospitals and community-based organisations where the victims go for treatment and counselling, approximate that there are at least 16,482 rape cases every year.

Reported cases of assault and battery in the country have also increased from 6,255 to 9,169 while a third of adolescent girls’ first sexual experience is coerced, Health Policy Initiative Kenya adds.

The girls, who end up married at a tender age, report of power inequality in these relationships.

The risk of violence and sexual abuse is high among girls who are orphaned by Aids, many of whom face a heightened sense of hopelessness.

Most of the reported cases of rape are coupled with severe physical injury like excessive bleeding, strangulation and swollen faces.

The report also shows that incest contributes to the high number of rape victims while minors between the ages of one month to eight years are the highest targets. These cases are still rampant despite implementation of the Sexual Offences Act.

Of the 717 reported sexual abuse cases, 43.5 per cent involved are girls between the ages of one month to four years, while 33.2 per cent are aged between five and eight. (more…)

#

Dance making its way back to center stage in hip hop

Dancing is all the rage again as hip-hop lightens up
By MALCOLM VENABLE, The Virginian-Pilot

Rapper Soulja Boy might be just a kid doing a simple, extremely popular dance, but he also represents a sea change.

Back in the glory days of hip-hop - the late 1980s and early ’90s - every real fan could perform a catalog of moves - The Roger Rabbit, The Running Man (the MC Hammer), The Wop, The Cabbage Patch.

Kids were just expected to do them with the right song at the right time. Otherwise, they stood awkwardly on the sidelines at backyard barbecues and school functions.

In the late ’90s, though, everything changed. As landmark artists including Wu-Tang Clan, the Notorious B.I.G. and Snoop ushered in a “gangsta” ethos, dancing was out. Being “hard” was cool. Shuffling frantically and dropping to the floor was not.

The pendulum is swinging back.

YouTube.com is propelling a new dance revolution. Enthusiasts have a whole slew of new dances to perform these days, each with its own song. There’s the Aunt Jackie, The Heisman and the Chicken Noodle Soup. In a matter of months, these songs go from local fads to YouTube phenoms to mainstream radio and MTV hits. (more…)

Yeah, gangsta music really took the fun out of hip hop. You can’t do much dancin’ over someone singing about getting a capped in the chest.

I remember times when our family would get together for parties, we would do things like the Soul Train line, The Bump and The Robot.

Dang, I’m getting old.

Is this an accurate picture of the American church?

Food elitism

When it comes to the offerings in the open market, I will always side with the consumer–no matter how much I may not like the product. Pornography is something that I despise, but I am totally against the creation of any laws that attempt to eliminate it (except of course child pornography–which involves minors). Hip hop videos and music that degrade our woman is another thing I despise, but as one commenter on this site described, there will always be a segment of our society that will always pay their money and attention for such entertainment I deem as ‘crap’.

In recent years, the fast food industry has been under attack by those who are rightly concerned about our nation’s health, but constantly go after the wrong and easy target: big business.

When my family and I lived in Atlanta, GA, both my wife and I were overweight. I was about 235/240 and my wife—do you think I am that crazy to tell you her weight?

What was the main contributor to our obesity? Our constant diet of fast food and fatty meals we prepared in our home. Long story short, we lost much of that extra weight since that time thanks to a drastic reduction of fast food restaurant trips and educating ourselves on healthier options for home-cooked meals.

Wendy’s has been taking a lot of heat recently for their Baconator sandwich which according to their website has a whopping 830 calories. Critics have already been condemning the company for creating such a sandwich, but one important point they are missing here: Wendy’s is driven by consumer demand. No matter how unhealthy this sandwich may be, time and sales will ultimately tell whether or not if the company is out or in touch with what their customers want. Who am I to enforce my preferences on what others want?

Before someone goes there, companies DO NOT have any responsibility to see to it that customers are eating healthy. Leave that responsibility to the consumer.

Bottom line, if you don’t like it, get out of the line.

This is what happens when the consumer speaks:

(2006)

(thisislondon.co.uk) McDonald’s is closing its outlet in a town known for quality food and healthy, local produce.
The fast food chain in Tavistock, Devon, simply wasn’t being used enough by locals.(more…)

I wouldn’t know what to do with myself

Found these on the net.

Imagine waking up to this view?

Zimbabwe and its woes

Story #1

‘Miracle’ fuel that made a mockery of Mugabe
Jan Raath in Harare
timesonline.co.uk

When Nomatter Tagarira, a spirit medium, claimed that she could conjure refined diesel out of a rock by striking it with her staff, ministers in Robert Mugabe’s Government believed that they might have found the solution to Zimbabwe’s perennial fuel shortage.

After witnessing her apparently miraculous gift they gave her five billion Zimbabwean dollars in cash (worth £1.7 million at the start of the year but now worth one seven-hundredth of that) in return for the fuel. Ms Tagarira was also given a farm, said to have been seized from its white owner during Mr Mugabe’s lawless land grab, as well as food and services that included a round-the-clock armed guard on the rock in the district of Chinhoyi 60 miles (100km) from Harare, the capital.

More than a year later officials realised they had been duped. Ms Tagarira is now in custody, awaiting trial on charges of fraud or, alternatively, of being “a criminal nuisance”. Details from court papers published this week said that over 15 months, until July this year, Ms Tagarira convinced Cabinet ministers, ruling party heavy-weights and top army and police officers that by striking the rock with her staff she could produce enough fuel to supply the country for 100 years.

[SNIP]

According to the police docket at the court, Ms Tagarira, 35, discovered a large bowser of diesel last year, suspected to have been abandoned in the hills of Chinhoyi during the country’s civil war in the 1970s.

She laid pipes from the bowser to a point at the bottom of the hill. Whenever she assembled an audience, she would strike a rock and an assistant at the top of the hill would open the tap and lo, fuel would pour out. The bowser eventually ran dry but that didn’t stop Ms Tagarira. “They would buy diesel from lorry drivers and keep it in the pipe on the pretext it was coming from a rock,” the docket said. (more…)

Story #2

Zimbabwe’s millionaires worth only $1
Jan Raath in Harare
timesonline.co.uk

Zimbabwe’s currency has fallen to record levels, with one million Zimbabwean dollars buying a single US dollar (48p) and inflation reaching 8,000 per cent.

The bleak data was announced as people in the capital Harare struggled to cope without electricity for the third day. “We closed our business today,” said a woman who helps to run a major petrol supplier. “We just can’t operate like this.”

The National Blood Transfusion Services said that it had been unable to test blood since Tuesday. “We are in serious trouble,” said a doctor.

At independence in 1980, the Zimbabwean dollar held parity with the US dollar but the currency has suffered from the recent economic policies of President Mugabe; at the beginning of this year it was $Z2,800 to one US dollar and ten days ago $Z500,000.

President Mugabe has struggled to keep inflation under control and in July ordered businesses to halve their prices to alleviate the country’s woes. The order resulted in the arrest of about 10,000 business people as thousands of police officers raided companies, shopping malls and markets to take goods marked above price control levels. Now the supermarkets are bare and it is almost impossible to buy food. (more…)

Today’s Black Woman: Superhead

Don’t know who she is? Do a google search under Superhead (Hint: If you are under 18, ask your parent first).

Read the title of this post s-l-o-w-l-y (for those who may not be too swift).

More commentary that writes itself.

Hat tip: rtkzradio.com

“It’s yo’ fault!” “No, it’s yo’ fault!”

Anytime there is a natural disaster, you can count on the fact that the finger pointing is just over the horizon.

Before I get to the article, it appears that our community has been spared because the fire never came over the mountain peak behind our homes. As you can see from the third picture I posted yesterday, it came pretty close.

Folks from the community began calling us because word was out that the community next to us was evacuating. One family had already packed and another family was getting ready to do the same. Seeing all of this, my neighbor, his friend from out of town and myself climbed into his truck to go straight to the horse’s mouth–the homeowners association of the community that supposedly was evacuating. Long story short, although the air was worst that it was in our neighborhood coupled with the fact that they are right against the Cleveland National Forest, there was no planned evacuation. We also went to the local fire department and they told us the same thing. Apparently the low winds coupled with the hard work of our firemen was able to keep it from coming over those mountains.

Another lesson getting your facts from the source learned!

Our area today looks much clearer with white smoke and the smell of it in the air.

Anyway, let’s go to the article.

Air Tankers, Helicopters Grounded as California Fires Burned
Friday, October 26, 2007

LOS ANGELES — As wildfires were charging across Southern California, nearly two dozen water-dropping helicopters and two massive cargo planes sat idly by, grounded by government rules and bureaucracy.

How much the aircraft would have helped will never be known, but their inability to provide quick assistance raises troubling questions about California’s preparations for a fire season that was widely expected to be among the worst on record.

It took as long as a day for Navy, Marine and California National Guard helicopters to get clearance early this week, in part because state rules require all firefighting choppers to be accompanied by state forestry “fire spotters” who coordinate water or retardant drops. By the time those spotters arrived, the powerful Santa Ana winds stoking the fires had made it too dangerous to fly.

The National Guard’s C-130 cargo planes, among the most powerful aerial firefighting weapons, never were slated to help. The reason: They’ve yet to be outfitted with tanks needed to carry thousands of gallons of fire retardant, though that was promised four years ago.

“The weight of bureaucracy kept these planes from flying, not the heavy winds,” Republican U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher told The Associated Press. “When you look at what’s happened, it’s disgusting, inexcusable foot-dragging that’s put tens of thousands of people in danger.” (more…)

Slap ‘em all!

Good for him

High Court Frees Wilson

ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia Supreme Court ordered Genarlow Wilson released from prison today after ruling that his 10-year prison sentence for having consensual oral sex with a fellow teenager is cruel and unusual punishment.

The 21-year-old Wilson has served more than two years in prison.

The state’s highest court reached the decision after a split 4-to-3 vote.

[SNIP]

The state Supreme Court had turned down Wilson’s appeal of his conviction and sentence, but the justices agreed to hear the state’s appeal of a Monroe County judge’s decision to reduce Wilson’s sentence to 12 months and free him. The Monroe County judge had called the 10-year sentence a “grave miscarriage of justice.” (more…)

Based on the Monroe County judge’s comment, I say a lawsuit is in order

HBCU roundup for 10/26/07

SC State bringing 400,000 more textbooks to African school
Leonard Haynes Appointed Executive Director of White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges
New $100,000 Donor Joins FVSU Pioneers’ Group
Associate Dean Authors New Book on Congressional Medal of Honor Winners of Color
NSF Awards PVAMU $1 Million to Fund Research to Study Gifted Black Students
Spelman College Lehman Brothers partnership

Black mayors take stand against the EPA

Black Mayors Oppose Tightening Smog Standards

Written By: Ralph W. Conner
Heartland.org

In a hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and National Conference of Black Mayors (NCBM) expressed their opposition to an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plan to tighten air quality standards.

NAM and NCBM support the existing clean air quality standard of .08 parts per million for particulate matter emitted by cars, trucks, buses, and industrial power plants. EPA is proposing a stricter range of 0.07 to 0.075 ppm.

John Engler, former governor of Michigan and president of NAM since 2004, told the Senate committee in July, “the fact that the EPA’s own analysis shows that air quality continues to improve demonstrates that the current standard is working. Emissions from the key pollutants regulated by the Clean Air Act, including ozone, have dropped by more than 54 percent during the past 30 years.”

A local elected official, George L. Grace, mayor of St. Gabriel, Louisiana and president of the National Conference of Black Mayors, said stricter controls would hurt communities like his. “The emission control strategies required in a stricter standard will significantly impact the economies of local communities, including jobs and future growth. Such impacts manifest themselves in the form of increased costs to industry, permitting delays, restrictions on industrial expansion within an area, impacts on transportation planning, increased costs to consumers and for commercial and consumer products,” said Grace.

Environmental activist groups immediately went on the offensive against the NCBM. Robert D. Bullard of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark-Atlanta University urged residents who live in cities with black mayors to write their mayors to have them contact EPA to demand more restrictive regulations for air quality, down to .06 ppm instead of the EPA-suggested .07 ppm.

Bullard also insisted residents of cities with black mayors should write letters to the NCBM demanding Grace retract his Atlanta statement.

Beverly Wright, director of the Dillard University Deep South Center for Environmental Justice in New Orleans, said the views of the NCBM are “abominable,” claiming, “The National [Conference] of Black Mayors evidently is not speaking for the people they represent.” (more…)

No, they are not speaking for you.

These mayors are right to stand up against the EPA and environmentalists who have 0 regard for the economic implications on businesses which in turn affects things like cost of product and employment. I am all for doing things that will improve the environment, but if the technologies currently in place are not at an affordable cost, it can wait until it is at a cost that does not have a negative economic impact on the poor.

New Orleans, can you help out a brotha?

Former D.A. kicks out all White employees in favor of Blacks. Jury has found him guilty after numerous appeals and guess what? The city does not have the money in its coffers to cover the $3.7 million suit. Guess who is being considered to help cover the costs?

New Orleans taxpayers.

Nice!

Jordan: N.O. needs to bail out DA
The Times-Picayune
By Gwen Filosa
Staff writer

Only the city of New Orleans can pay off District Attorney Eddie Jordan’s $3.7 million debt to the employees he wrongly fired in 2003, his office says in documents filed at federal court.

Having exhausted — and lost — a series of appeals over the federal civil rights case that originated in 2003, Jordan says his budget can’t handle the verdict and that his only option is to persuade Mayor Ray Nagin to ask the City Council for the money owed to 36 workers who successfully sued him for employment discrimination.

A federal judge this week ruled that the award could come from assets of the district attorney’s office, refusing to place any more delays on the judgment. Interest on the award grows by $20,000 a month.

Plaintiffs are through waiting, their attorneys said Tuesday, warning once again that they will seek to seize assets of the district attorney’s office — from payroll accounts to cars — if Jordan’s office does not pay up.

[SNIP]

Jordan, the city’s first African-American district attorney, violated employment discrimination laws when after taking office he ordered the wholesale firing of white employees and replaced almost all of them with black workers, a jury found more than two years ago.

Jordan wanted U.S. District Court Judge Stanwood Duval to freeze the $3.7 million award until the city has a chance to approve a new budget that includes enough money to pay off the legal debt, but that didn’t happen.

[SNIP]

Jordan’s office wants the City Council to add the $3.7 million to the 2008 annual budget to cover the judgment. The DA’s office lacks the property or cash to pay the judgment, a top aide said, and tapping its assets would provide only a fraction of the $3.7 million, but disrupt the entire criminal justice system in New Orleans.

“The disruption would be so severe that it would virtually shut down the DA’s office and render it impossible (for it) to perform its functions,” said Val Solino, an executive first assistant to Jordan, in an affidavit filed at federal court this month.

“If the DA’s office is forced to close, even for a short period, the Orleans Criminal District Court may find itself without sufficient assistant district attorneys to prosecute approximately 2,500 cases, which are currently awaiting trial,” Solino said.

And if paychecks were to bounce, the most experienced prosecutors probably would quit, Solino said. (more…)

#

In the news: Alternative Minimum Tax (What is it?)

From Wikipedia:

“Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) is part of the federal income tax system in the United States. There are two AMTs, one for individuals and one for corporations; the AMT for individuals is described here.

The AMT is imposed under 26 U.S.C. § 55 and disallows many deductions and exemptions allowable in computing “regular” tax liability. (Regular tax liability is defined in 26 U.S.C. § 55(c)(1), with reference to 26 U.S.C. § 26(b), and does not include AMT and various other categories of taxes imposed under Chapter 1 of Subtitle A of the Internal Revenue Code.) The AMT sets a minimum tax rate of either 26% or 28% (depending on the amount of the taxpayer’s “alternative minimum taxable income,” as adjusted) on some taxpayers so that they cannot use certain types of deductions to lower their tax. By contrast, the rate for a corporation is 20%. Affected taxpayers are those who have what are known as “tax preference items”. These include long-term capital gains, accelerated depreciation, certain medical expenses, percentage depletion, certain tax-exempt income, certain credits, personal exemptions, and the standard deduction.

The AMT was introduced by the Tax Reform Act of 1969, and became operative in 1970. It was intended to target 155 high-income households that had been eligible for so many tax benefits that they owed little or no income tax under the tax code of the time.
In recent years, the AMT has been under increased attention. Because the AMT is not indexed to inflation and recent tax cuts, an increasing number of upper-middle-income taxpayers have been finding themselves subject to this tax.

In 2006, the IRS’s National Taxpayer Advocate’s report highlighted the AMT as the single most serious problem with the tax code. The advocate noted that the AMT punishes taxpayers for having children or living in a high-tax state, and that the complexity of the AMT leads to most taxpayers who owe AMT not realizing it until preparing their returns or being notified by the IRS.

A brief issued by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) (No. 4, April 15, 2004), concludes:

Over the coming decade, a growing number of taxpayers will become liable for the AMT. In 2010, if nothing is changed, one in five taxpayers will have AMT liability and nearly every married taxpayer with income between $100,000 and $500,000 will owe the alternative tax. Rather than affecting only high-income taxpayers who would otherwise pay no tax, the AMT has extended its reach to many upper-middle-income households. As an increasing number of taxpayers incur the AMT, pressures to reduce or eliminate the tax are likely to grow.”

Read more about it here.

Related information:

The Alternative Minimum Tax (smartmoney.com)
Alternative Minimum Tax 101 (cnn.com)

Believing the hype on AIDS in Africa

African AIDS Statistics Overblown, Experts Say
By Pete Winn
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
October 25, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - With World AIDS Day just around the corner on Dec. 1, many AIDS activists continue to portray the 25-year-old epidemic as totally out-of-control.

“This year, tell the truth on World AIDS Day,” wrote former Ambassador Richard Holbrooke on Oct. 9 in the Washington Post. “Admit that we are still losing.”

Holbrooke, president of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said despite some progress, the epidemic continues to run unabated - especially in Africa, the continent hardest hit by AIDS.

But two epidemiologists - one at Harvard and the other at Berkeley - say this picture of AIDS isn’t borne out by the statistics. Indeed, both say that while the epidemic is still serious, it is no longer raging out of control in most of the world, and the numbers reflect that fact.

Even in Africa, once portrayed as being a cemetery continent where an estimated one in every three adults would die from AIDS, the epidemic now appears to be turning a corner, especially in some parts of East Africa.

[SNIP]

There is another reason why official infection rates are declining, the experts claim. Until recently, the world’s centralized AIDS agency - the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS, known as UNAIDS - has been providing the world inflated statistics.

Chin, who headed the World Health Organization’s AIDS statistics office in Geneva, Switzerland during the ’80s and ’90s, said that for decades UNAIDS could only provide estimates on the epidemic - and “has been over-estimating it for years.”

Since the introduction of highly accurate census-like population-based studies in the last five years, however, Chin said UNAIDS has been quietly forced to scale-back its estimates. (more…)

If he could turn back time…

Biden ’stumbles’ over education question

WASHINGTON (CNN) — In what the Washington Post is describing as a “stumble,” Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said in an interview with the paper Wednesday that Washington’s high minority population is one of the reasons for the city’s education problems.

[SNIP]

“There’s less than one percent of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than four of five percent that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you’re dealing with.”

[SNIP]

“When you have children coming from dysfunctional homes, when you have children coming from homes where there’s no books, where the mother from the time they’re born doesn’t talk to them — as opposed to the mother in Iowa who’s sitting out there and talks to them, the kid starts out with a 300 word larger vocabulary at age three. Half this education gap exists before the kid steps foot in the classroom,” the Delaware Democrat added.

The paper reports Biden’s campaign quickly sought to clarify the remarks, saying in a statement that the senator was not making a “race-based distinction” but rather a “socio-economic” one. (more…)

#

If the Senator was quoted correctly in this article, then yes he was making a race-based distinction.

I guess it is safe to assume that he will not be getting the Black vote.

Check out Cityblack.com

From website:

“CityBlack.com provides local event listings for cities across the United States. All events are user submitted, and anyone can post an event free of charge.”

[Link]

Ash Thursday

These are a couple of pictures I took near our house yesterday. Just on the other side of those mountains are some of the fires in Orange county (Santiago canyon area). During the first days of the fires, the winds were blowing eastward which resulted in the smell of smoke and traces of ash all throughout our community. Since then, the winds have been blowing westward. Nevertheless, smoke has covered all of our blue skies giving us a sun and a moon (second picture–I took that about 8:00pm last evening) that looks something like a glowing orange. Today, there is a very orange haze covering our skies. Our kids go to school in the OC and MAN, the air is pure crap! In fact, the school kept all of them in class for recess.

**UPDATE** The first picture looks nothing like it does now. Either the fires are moving deeper in the Cleveland National Forest (those mountains you see), or the winds have shifted.

**UPDATE 2** The smell of smoke is back in the air. Looking at the fire map, this is coming from the Santiago fire in the Mission Viejo area.

**UPDATE 3** Smoke and falling ash has totally taken over our part of the city. My car is covered with ash.

**UPDATE 4** My wife got a call from the county fire department. They are planning for a possible evacuation. Local talk radio has been blowing up because some of the truth is starting to come out regarding state bureaucracy and our preparedness for fire. For example, Orange county has only 2 helicopters for the whole county—Vietnam-era helicopters.

I just took this one (below) about 2 hours ago (2:20 PST)

I think the use of one of those prison holes in Nam would be appropiate

W.Va. Woman Speaks About Torture Ordeal

By SHAYA TAYEFE MOHAJER – 1 day ago

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Megan Williams thought she was going to a party. That’s why she tagged along with a woman she hardly knew, up a remote southern West Virginia hollow to a run-down trailer surrounded by beer cans and broken-down furniture.

“But there wasn’t no party,” Williams said. “I realized I’d made a bad mistake.”

For at least a week, authorities say, the 20-year-old black woman was kept captive in a shed, tortured, beaten, forced to eat rat, dog and human feces, and raped by six white men and women who taunted her with racial slurs.

“They just kept saying ‘This is what we do to niggers down here,’” Williams told The Associated Press in one of her most extensive interviews since the shocking case made national headlines last month.

Seated in a rocking chair in her mother’s living room, about 50 miles from that shed, the slight woman with cocoa-colored skin says she was hopelessly outnumbered by people who just wanted to hurt a black person.

“I just hope they fry for what they did to me. That’s really all I got to say,” she said. “I hope they fry.”

West Virginia does not have a death penalty, but the six suspects could spend the rest of their lives in prison if convicted of rape and kidnapping charges. (more…)

#