Notice that it is perfectly acceptable for black people to oppose the demographic change of their neighborhood. If the races had been reversed, the national media would be screaming “RACISM!”
Consider this statement from the Portland African American Leadership Forum. They “remain opposed to any development in N/NE Portland that does not primarily benefit the Black community.” This would be a national controversy if the races were reversed. They would be denounced as the Ku Klux Klan.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The Trader Joe’s grocery-store chain has dropped a plan to open a new store in the heart of the city’s historically African-American neighborhood after activists said the development would price black residents out of the area.
The grocer, whose stores are found in urban neighborhoods across the nation, said Monday it wouldn’t press its plan, given community resistance, The Oregonian (http://bit.ly/1n7Jyqb ) reported.
“We open a limited number of stores each year, in communities across the country,” it said in a statement. “We run neighborhood stores, and our approach is simple: If a neighborhood does not want a Trader Joe’s, we understand, and we won’t open the store in question.”
The Portland Development Commission had offered a steep discount to the grocer on a parcel of nearly two acres that was appraised at up to $2.9 million: a purchase price of slightly more than $500,000. The lot is at Northeast Alberta Street and Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and has been vacant for years.
So, why did Trader Joe’s decide not to build there, well for two reasons:
Critics said the development would displace residents and perpetuate income inequality in one of the most rapidly gentrifying ZIP codes in the nation.
…and the biggest reason? This:
The Portland African American Leadership Forum said the development commission had in the past made promises about preventing projects from displacing community members but hadn’t fulfilled them.
It sent the city a letter saying it would “remain opposed to any development in N/NE Portland that does not primarily benefit the Black community.” It said the grocery-store development would “increase the desirability of the neighborhood,” for “non-oppressed populations.”
Mayor Charlie Hales and the urban renewal agency’s executive director, Patrick Quinton, signed a letter in January that described what they said was the commission’s contributions “to the destructive impact of gentrification and displacement on the African American community.“
Translation:
We don’t want no honkeys in our neighborhood! If you ain’t black, we don’t want your business here!
Now, could you imagine, if a business, who was owned by a black man, wanted to open a store, say in like Troy, Michigan or Rochester Hills, Michigan; which are, for what it is worth, predominantly upper middle class/wealthy class, white neighborhoods and a group of white people starting complaining about it and starting saying that it would cause the neighborhood to go into decline? Man, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would be all over it!
There would huge protests and it would be all over the media. However, because this is a black thing, and the company is white owned; it is no big deal, nothing to see here, move along. 🙄
This is why I continue to run this blog; regardless of the fact that I make little or nothing on this blog at all, despite the fact that I make little or nothing on this blog, since Google Adsense dropped me. Because this sort of stuff is NOT reported by the national media; least of all by MSNBC and CNN. Fox News most likely will not touch it either, because of the taboo subject.
Furthermore, I believe that the Conservative right just will not touch this one; because they are afraid of being called racists. I do not have such issues. I simply do not care what blacks really think of me; least of all black liberals. Considering what happened to my cousin and myself; I think I’ve earned the right to point this stuff out.
By the way; these are Obama’s people and don’t you ever forget it. 😡
This is great; a Trotskyite Zionist goes for a debate; and the minute he sees that he is losing the debate — he storms off the stage, takes his marbles and goes home.
I am referring to the greatest Trotskyite, Zionist, Neoconservative of them all — John Podhoretz.
Bottom line: I’d had a long day and I didn’t see the point in spending more of it getting booed and shushed. So I left. So sue me.
If only we could sue you and your family for all the trillions of dollars — and the 4000+ lives that were wasted in the Iraq War —- which you and your satanic Father were cheerleaders for, after 9/11. Actually, I would very much like to see criminal charges filed against you and few of your Trotskyite friends as well. However, as we realists know; that will never happened to a protected class as yourself.
You want to know what got wrong with Conservatism? You want to know why the GOP is in the shape that it is in? Look no further than this man here and his idiotic Trotskyite magazine that he runs. They are the true enemies of America; they are the ones who put us in the war that almost broke this Nation and ruined its standing in the world.
It is a pity that there is not true justice in this Nation of ours; otherwise, this man and his friends would be sitting in jail cells.
Okay here is the little small problem with trusting Dick Cheney and his boss George W. Bush, they lied, as in like 935 times in a row, during their Presidency and Vice Presidency.
The Center for Public Integrity was founded in 1989 by Charles Lewis. We are one of the country’s oldest and largest nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organizations. Our mission: To enhance democracy by revealing abuses of power, corruption and betrayal of trust by powerful public and private institutions, using the tools of investigative journalism.
Anyhow, here is why I don’t trust Neocons, nor do I trust Democratic Party liberals or Neo-leftists:
President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).
The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.
Consider, for example, these false public statements made in the run-up to war:
On August 26, 2002, in an address to the national convention of the Veteran of Foreign Wars, Cheney flatly declared: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” In fact, former CIA Director George Tenet later recalled, Cheney’s assertions went well beyond his agency’s assessments at the time. Another CIA official, referring to the same speech, told journalist Ron Suskind, “Our reaction was, ‘Where is he getting this stuff from?’ “
In the closing days of September 2002, with a congressional vote fast approaching on authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, Bush told the nation in his weekly radio address: “The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. . . . This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year.” A few days later, similar findings were also included in a much-hurried National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction — an analysis that hadn’t been done in years, as the intelligence community had deemed it unnecessary and the White House hadn’t requested it.
In July 2002, Rumsfeld had a one-word answer for reporters who asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: “Sure.” In fact, an assessment issued that same month by the Defense Intelligence Agency (and confirmed weeks later by CIA Director Tenet) found an absence of “compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and Al Qaeda.” What’s more, an earlier DIA assessment said that “the nature of the regime’s relationship with Al Qaeda is unclear.”
On May 29, 2003, in an interview with Polish TV, President Bush declared: “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories.” But as journalist Bob Woodward reported in State of Denial, days earlier a team of civilian experts dispatched to examine the two mobile labs found in Iraq had concluded in a field report that the labs were not for biological weapons. The team’s final report, completed the following month, concluded that the labs had probably been used to manufacture hydrogen for weather balloons.
On January 28, 2003, in his annual State of the Union address, Bush asserted: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.” Two weeks earlier, an analyst with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research sent an email to colleagues in the intelligence community laying out why he believed the uranium-purchase agreement “probably is a hoax.”
On February 5, 2003, in an address to the United Nations Security Council, Powell said: “What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources.” As it turned out, however, two of the main human sources to which Powell referred had provided false information. One was an Iraqi con artist, code-named “Curveball,” whom American intelligence officials were dubious about and in fact had never even spoken to. The other was an Al Qaeda detainee, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who had reportedly been sent to Eqypt by the CIA and tortured and who later recanted the information he had provided. Libi told the CIA in January 2004 that he had “decided he would fabricate any information interrogators wanted in order to gain better treatment and avoid being handed over to [a foreign government].”
The false statements dramatically increased in August 2002, with congressional consideration of a war resolution, then escalated through the mid-term elections and spiked even higher from January 2003 to the eve of the invasion.
It was during those critical weeks in early 2003 that the president delivered his State of the Union address and Powell delivered his memorable U.N. presentation.
In addition to their patently false pronouncements, Bush and these seven top officials also made hundreds of other statements in the two years after 9/11 in which they implied that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or links to Al Qaeda. Other administration higher-ups, joined by Pentagon officials and Republican leaders in Congress, also routinely sounded false war alarms in the Washington echo chamber.
The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war. Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, “independent” validation of the Bush administration’s false statements about Iraq.
The “ground truth” of the Iraq war itself eventually forced the president to backpedal, albeit grudgingly. In a 2004 appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, for example, Bush acknowledged that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. And on December 18, 2005, with his approval ratings on the decline, Bush told the nation in a Sunday-night address from the Oval Office: “It is true that Saddam Hussein had a history of pursuing and using weapons of mass destruction. It is true that he systematically concealed those programs, and blocked the work of U.N. weapons inspectors. It is true that many nations believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As your president, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. Yet it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power.”
Bush stopped short, however, of admitting error or poor judgment; instead, his administration repeatedly attributed the stark disparity between its prewar public statements and the actual “ground truth” regarding the threat posed by Iraq to poor intelligence from a Who’s Who of domestic agencies.
On the other hand, a growing number of critics, including a parade of former government officials, have publicly — and in some cases vociferously — accused the president and his inner circle of ignoring or distorting the available intelligence. In the end, these critics say, it was the calculated drumbeat of false information and public pronouncements that ultimately misled the American people and this nation’s allies on their way to war.
Bush and the top officials of his administration have so far largely avoided the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their personal responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq. There has been no congressional investigation, for example, into what exactly was going on inside the Bush White House in that period. Congressional oversight has focused almost entirely on the quality of the U.S. government’s pre-war intelligence — not the judgment, public statements, or public accountability of its highest officials. And, of course, only four of the officials — Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz — have testified before Congress about Iraq.
Short of such review, this project provides a heretofore unavailable framework for examining how the U.S. war in Iraq came to pass. Clearly, it calls into question the repeated assertions of Bush administration officials that they were the unwitting victims of bad intelligence.
Above all, the 935 false statements painstakingly presented here finally help to answer two all-too-familiar questions as they apply to Bush and his top advisers: What did they know, and when did they know it?
A video:
The real sick and sad part is this; the same people that are having a hissy fit on the right about this program existing under Obama, are the same ones who were perfectly fine with it existing under Bush. In other words, they trusted the program under Bush. like idiots. My question to that crowd is this; why do you not trust Obama? Because he is black or because he is a Democratic Party liberal?
Anyone and I mean anyone, who puts their trust in this Government of ours, based upon partisanship is nothing more than a darned fool in my opinion. Both of these political parties are two sides of the same coin and that is corruption and big Government socialism. Both parties promote it, both parties contribute to it. Government hand outs are Government hand outs; whether it be in the forum of welfare or Government subsidies. It is big Government statist and it flies in the face of our Constitution and in the face of what this great Nation was founded upon.
LOS ANGELES – When Jane Fonda was cast as former First Lady Nancy Reagan in Lee Daniels’ forthcoming film “The Butler,” some Reagan fans were not pleased. Now, with the biographical due to hit theaters in October, a movement to boycott the movie is gaining some momentum. Larry Reyes, a Navy veteran and founder of the “Boycott Hanoi Jane Playing Nancy Reagan” Facebook page has been particularly vocal about the casting decision, given Fonda’s past frolicking with the enemy during the Vietnam War. “Growing up in a military family I heard my father and uncles talk about what Jane did, so from an early age I knew about her history with the war and how upset veterans were about it. Yet it amazed me that people just turned their backs and kept supporting her exercise videos and movies. I made a commitment early on not to support her projects,” Reyes told FOX411’s Pop Tarts column. “Then when I heard she was going to play such a well-liked and highly respected president’s wife, it got to me. They (the filmmakers) knew by picking Jane for the part they were going to stir up some stuff. I’m not a conservative or a liberal, I’m an American. And that was a slap in the face.” This week, Fonda had a simple message for Reyes and the page’s fans. “Get a life.” In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, Fonda said of her casting: “If it creates hoopla, it will cause more people to see the movie… I figured it would tweak the right. Who cares?” — Jane Fonda tells veterans boycotting her movie ‘The Butler’ to ‘get a life’ | Fox News
The only thing that this ugly woman regrets is that her and her hippy friends attempt to transform American into a fully communist Nation failed.
You know, I hate to be ugly; but I figure if this two-bit hussy of a woman does not care about our Veterans; then I really do not care about being civil. Having said that; I do truly hope that someone tosses a live hand grenade that this woman, when she is walking down the red carpet. Maybe if little Miss Fonda experienced some of the pain and agony that our American soldiers experienced during various wars; all so that this little cunt of a woman could say, “Get a Life”, maybe she would not be so quick, to be that glib and disrespect our Military in that manner.
There are many things that I am fair and open-minded about; wars, politics, and such. But, our United States Military is not one of them. As far as this writer , the insulting and disrespecting of the United States Military is akin to rank treason. Furthermore, if we lived in a sane rational society, these people would be rounded up and tried for treason and spend a nice good few years in re-education camps; if they did not change their treasonous ways, they would be executed. Anyone that is that disrespectful towards our Military does not deserve to live in my book.
I leave you with the following image:
This is the gravesite of my Great-Uncle, John Franklin Hayes. As it says, he fought in World War II. He fought in Germany. He lost a finger tossing a hand grenade at some Germans. It was sewed back on, but he never was able to use it. My Great-Uncle fought to protect this Country and to do his part to stop the axis powers from overthrowing this Country. But yet, Fonda tells people like him; “get a life.”
My friends, something is seriously, seriously wrong with this Country. 😡
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President , the fiery populist who declared a socialist revolution in Venezuela, crusaded against U.S. influence and championed a leftist revival across Latin America, died Tuesday at age 58 after a nearly two-year bout with cancer.
Vice President Nicolas Maduro, surrounded by other government officials, announced the death in a national television broadcast. He said Chavez died at 4:25 p.m. local time.
He leaves behind two daughters and a wife. My condolences to his family. I will say one thing; as mach as I disagreed with the man’s politics, I did admire the fact that he stood for what he believed in, and was willing to take it to his grave.
Trust me on this: If the Tea Party had stood in a circle and made a little black boy dance for them, it would have been The Racist Event of the Century. But here — it’s perfectly OK. Move along, nothing to see.
On November 19, Pravda’s Xavier Lerma wrote an article asserting that President (I use the term loosely) Barack Obama had been re-elected “by an illiterate society.” Some conservatives have been wont to dismiss and ridicule some of the dead-on assessments of the former Soviet newspaper since it was once in fact a Soviet newspaper.
Some of this dismissal and ridicule did occur relative to Lerma’s piece; I think however, that such observations made by those who have been there and done that ought to be considered, if not heeded.
Lerma writes “He [Obama] is a Communist without question promoting the Communist Manifesto without calling it so… His cult of personality mesmerizes those who cannot go beyond their ignorance. They will continue to follow him like those fools who still praise Lenin and Stalin in Russia. Obama’s fools and Stalin’s fools share the same drink of illusion.”
Sounds pretty dead-on if you ask me…
[…]
Over the past two weeks, congressional lawmakers have been posturing over the “fiscal cliff” upon which America is allegedly teetering, and the resulting debate on taxes: Obama wants to raise taxes; the Republicans in Congress ostensibly want to cut spending; the Democrats offer some spending cuts in trade for raising taxes, and so on… Considering the intellectual indolence of the American public thus far, I suppose there’s no reason for Congress and the Obama administration to believe we’d call them out for this blatant display of smoke and mirrors.
With the knowledge that increasing income taxes to 100% on all earners in the US, and confiscating every dollar we currently possess wouldn’t make a ding in the national debt or the deficit, let alone a dent, it becomes obvious that all of the maneuvering by Republican lawmakers is mere pretense. Why not simply detail the detrimental effects that raising taxes will have on the economy?
Perhaps because they don’t want advertise these facts to the American public any more than Obama does…
While it might be a no-brainer to you and me, the average non-partisan American voter will not be aware that this is the worst possible time for Republicans to be conciliatory with regard to this administration on any issue. Thus, they will perceive Republicans as obstructionist if they do not compromise with evil. Any Republican lawmaker possessed of the knowledge of Obama’s intent ought to be fighting him at every possible turn as a matter of course, publicity be damned.
I would also submit that there aren’t any GOP lawmakers who are sufficiently stupid or uninformed not to know that Obama is taking us down the road to communism. If they presume to this, they are engaging in deception.
(UPDATED with ECI comment and J Street cartoon, below)
My synagogue listserve in northern Virginia is abuzz with a Robocall campaign, by the Emergency Committee for Israel.
The caller ID is that of William Kristol, who founded the group.
Robocalls are not known for straight-up accounts of the issues. Still, the deceptions in this one are a little stunning.
The call is in the form of a "debate" between President Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu.
There has never been any such debate, of course, and it’s immediately clear to me that it’s a mock-up, with "answers" spliced in from different appearances. But I’m steeped in this. I don’t know how clear it would be though to someone who doesn’t follow this day to day.
More substantively, the quote grabs have almost nothing to do with one another, although this is not evident in the calls. A more accurate presentation of the Netanyahu quote that is used would suggest that the two leaders are actually more in agreement on nuclear Iran — the issue of the "debate" — than not.
Obama’s "opening remark", in which he "respects" Iran’s sovereignty, is from a press conference in 2009, in which he rejected Iranian claims of U.S. involvement in post-election protests — and also decried Iranian repression of the protesters. It had nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear capability.
ECI exists to provide opportunities for faux liberal outrage.
I will just say it; Bill Kristol is a NEO-CON piece of shit, he always has been and always will be! Between Him and John Podhoretz; if the Republican Party loses this election, it will be because of Kristol and Podhoretz. We have a good chance to stop this socialist from destroying this Country and what does this schmuck do? This sort of idiotic crap.
Also too, yes, I know JStreet is a liberal Jewish organization; I get that, alright? But, this sort of stuff, a week before the election is just damned uncalled for. Maybe, just maybe Kristol is doing this to sabotage Romney’s prospects, seeing that Kristol and his ilk are making a killing being Obama’s kneecapper, maybe he is protecting his interests.
