Sandra Faye “Sandi” Patty (born July 12, 1956) is an American Christian music singer. For many years she was known as Sandi Patti. She has been dubbed “The Voice” by critics because of her wide range and flexibility. Patty was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, into a family of musicians; her father was a minister of music and her mother served as the church pianist. She first performed at the age of two when she sang “Jesus Loves Me” for her church, Phoenix First Church of God (Anderson, Indiana). First growing up in Phoenix, then San Diego, she and her brothers joined her parents in a performing group, known as “The Ron Patty Family,” and sang at churches across the nation during summer holidays. After high school graduation from Crawford High in San Diego, CA, she attended San Diego State University and Anderson University in Anderson, Indiana, where she studied voice and conducting. While studying at Anderson University, she worked as a studio musician for area recording studios, singing background vocals and recording commercial jingles, including one for Juicy Fruit gum. Her reputation as a performer and studio singer grew during the late 1970s, and it was during this time that she initiated contact with legendary Christian musician, Bill Gaither.
http://youtu.be/CjEQ5V0KQhQ
That moment was truly AMAZING! I fell to the floor and cried.
Good Lord, I love me some Spandan.
Spank them, Spandan.
Spank.them
……………………….
Professional Left’s Professional Pimp Julian Assange Comes Out as Far Right Extremist
Sunday, August 18, 2013 | Posted by Spandan C at 12:21 PM
For some time now, the pragmatic Left has been warning that Wikileaks, its Founder Julian Assange, and their cohorts in The Guardian (think Glenn Greenwald) are nothing more than right wing libertarian moles trying to fool the Left in America, just as Ed Snowden did. That truth came into some stark relief yesterday:
But but but, you say. It’s not like Assange was celebrating the entire political ideology of the Pauls; he was merely speaking approvingly of Rand Paul’s crusade against domestic surveillance programs of the NSA. Well, beyond completely ignoring the fact that nothing is being done by the government that is illegal, abusive or unchecked, the idea that Assange is merely advancing the libertarians’ anti-surveillance agenda is devastatingly incorrect. In Assange’s own words:
Isn’t that great? The Professional Left’s Great White Hope and worshiped hero is not only avoiding extradition on sexual assault charges (because for some reason, it is appropriate to be outraged over sexual assaults in the military – and it is – and at the same time rank-canonize a man who is accused of sexual assualt of multiple women), but is also takes extreme anti-tax positions and believes that abortion is “violence.”
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2013/08/professional-lefts-professional-pimp.html
No One At the Wheel
by BooMan
Sun Aug 18th, 2013 at 11:23:45 AM EST
RNC chairman Reince Priebus won a lot of applause at the committee’s summer meeting when he announced that NBC and CNN were cut out of any future Republican debates, but the rest of his message fell flat:
……………………………………….
The simplest way of understanding this is that the interests of the Conservative Movement, on the one hand, and the Republican Party, on the other hand, are beginning to diverge. But the Conservatives still have effective control of the Republican Party, which means that they are winning the argument for the time being. This also means that Reince Priebus only has nominal control. He can propose things, and there are some things that he can implement, but he can’t really steer the kinds of changes that he thinks he needs to make to give the GOP a chance to win in 2016. It’s basically the same problem that John Boehner is experiencing and, to a lesser degree, that Mitch McConnell is facing. No one has enough power to effectively lead the party in a new direction because the conservatives don’t want to give up their power.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/8/18/112345/398
The Party Of Old, Rich White Men Finding Themselves In Trouble Because Of Lack Of Women
Author: Rika Christensen August 7, 2013 5:09 pm
House Republicans are starting to realize just how under-represented women are in their party, and the gender gap is starting to worry them (just like underrepresentation of minorities has been “worrying” them since last November). Around the country, the GOP finds itself run primarily by men, with scant representation for women. Just 8 percent of House Republicans are women (19), and only four Senate Republicans are women. By contrast, 32 percent of House Democrats are women (62), and 16 of the Senate Democrats are women. Unlike the 2012 presidential election, the current list for 2016 has not a single woman on it. The low numbers forced the House recently to choose Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) to bring their abortion bill to the floor, as the House Judiciary Committee has 23 male members and no female member
According to The National Journal, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is working hard on reaching out to women, creating what they call Project GROW to help with GOP messaging, in addition to recruiting more women for Congress and teaching the men how to better connect with women. Executive director Liesl Hickey believes that the reason Republicans haven’t had much political success with women as the Democrats is simple: The party simply hasn’t focused hard enough on it.
The problem is deeper than that, however, given the apparent goals of Project GROW. The GOP’s overall message is astonishingly anti-woman. Their actions are very anti-woman. Their ideals seem to focus on the idea that women are not equal to men. Focusing on recruiting women is all well and good, but when a party tries to tell women how to live, what they can and cannot do with their bodies, that they aren’t good enough for equal pay, and more, “connecting” with women gets difficult.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/08/07/the-party-of-old-rich-white-men-finding-themselves-in-trouble-because-of-lack-of-women/
in case you didn’t know…the latest poutrage
………………….
The partner of the Guardian journalist who has written a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programmes by the US National Security Agency was held for almost nine hours on Sunday by UK authorities as he passed through London’s Heathrow airport on his way home to Rio de Janeiro.
David Miranda, who lives with Glenn Greenwald, was returning from a trip to Berlin when he was stopped by officers at 8.30am and informed that he was to be questioned under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The controversial law, which applies only at airports, ports and border areas, allows officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals.
The 28-year-old was held for nine hours, the maximum the law allows before officers must release or formally arrest the individual. According to official figures, most examinations under schedule 7 – over 97% – last under an hour, and only one in 2,000 people detained are kept for more than six hours.
Miranda was released without charge, but officials confiscated electronics equipment including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/glenn-greenwald-guardian-partner-detained-heathrow
some tweets:
Imani ABL @AngryBlackLady
Guardian paid for dude’s trip AND he was visiting Poitras. So maybe he’s more than just “ @ggreenwald’s partner.” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/19/world/europe/britain-detains-partner-of-reporter-tied-to-leaks.html …
Arapaho415 @arapaho415
@AngryBlackLady Outrage in my Twitter timeline have all been from white, mostly male. Let’s ask the outraged about “Stop & Frisk,” shall we?
3:04 PM – 18 Aug 2013
Finally logged in. I oin’t know what happened?
Good to see your fonts again, SG2! :-))))
Sirota goes all in on the “incompetent or liar” argument
OK…so its David Sirota and he’s an idiot with an acute case of Obama Derangement Syndrome. I should probably ignore him. But he’s taken something we see pretty regularly to an extreme. So I’ll just use him as a test case to make a point.
Sirota dusts off the argument of “either he’s incompetent or a liar” and applies it to President Obama. Of course President Obama is too smart to be incompetent – and so he is, by default, a liar. The line about incompetence vs liar made sense when President Reagan said he didn’t know about Iran/Contra. But its not like President Obama is suggesting he doesn’t know about NSA surveillance. What it comes down to in Sirota’s case is that he’s using it as a tool to try to stop people from considering the President’s arguments. In other words, its a rhetorical device used to distract rather than engage.
So lets take Sirota’s three examples and break them down. First he suggests that President Obama said the FISA court is transparent. Here’s what the President actually said in speaking about warrants issued by FISC.:
It is transparent…that’s why we set up the FISA court. Look, the whole point of my concern before I was president…has always been not that we shouldn’t do intelligence gathering to prevent terrorism, but rather, are we setting up a system of checks and balances…
He didn’t say – as Sirota suggests – that the FISA court was transparent. He said the process was transparent. As I pointed out recently, the President admitted during his press conference a week ago that he had assumed – like all presidents since the Church Committee (when the FISA court was formed) – that court and Congressional oversight of intelligence programs were sufficient transparency as a system of checks and balances on the executive branch.
The conversation Sirota wants to avoid by creating this distraction is that we are now in the midst of creating a new historical precedent of including the American public in the conversation. That is a leap forward by this President that Sirota won’t acknowledge.
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2013/08/sirota-goes-all-in-on-incompetent-or.html
hopefruit2
August 18, 2013 at 11:35 am
I’m alerting folks to a Libertarian front group – here’s their Twitter page: https://twitter.com/ForeignPolicy
I notice that some of our regular TODers are following them, but they are nothing but another anti-Obama “movement” disguising their agenda. The site is filled with condescending and disrespectful articles undermining PBO’s foreign policy – while praising Rand Paul. And if you notice, their articles/headlines NEVER refer to the PBO as President Obama – it’s always “Obama.”
If you are following them because you want to be aware of the crap they’re spreading – then fine, but if you’re following them because you think they have the US’ and PBO’s best interests, then I suggest you rid yourself of that notion right now and unfollow….
Fuck Rand Paul, the horse he rode in on, and all the fools who follow along and sniff the horse’s shitty ass.
FLOTUS is beautiful, INSIDE & OUT. Just love her…
Hey 3CP!
So, @RegalMovies theater in Silver Spring, MD had armed guards inside the movie theater, facing the audience during The Butler? WTFF?!
Tiffany @MsFlowersTweets on Twitter is reporting ABC 7 has picked up the story and doing an interview with her right now. We can’t have any peace not even when we watch a movie. Folks have lost their dang minds!
PROFILED AT THE SHOWING OF THE BUTLER!
Police presence inside a showing of ‘The Butler’ causes outrage
http://thegrio.com/2013/08/18/police-presence-inside-a-showing-of-the-butler-causes-outrage/
A Washington D.C. woman says a weekend trip to see the movie, “The Butler” was marred by the presence of police inside the theater.
Tiffany Flowers says she and her boyfriend, Alan Hanson, were attending a screening of the Lee Daniels film at the Regal Cinemas Majestic Stadium 20 theater in Silver Spring, Maryland Saturday, when the experience turned sour. She said that after waiting in line and having their tickets double validated, with the second ticket taker just ten feet from the first employee to tear their stubs, she and Hanson approached the theater entrance, only to find a police officer directing people’s movements.
Flowers told theGrio the officer “herded everybody to the right, and then around the corner there’s another police officer, then we round the corner and there’s a third police officer.”
She said the uniformed police who remained inside the theater throughout the show were in full uniform, complete with heavy black vests, and that she later learned they were contracted by the Montgomery County Police Department. The Department did not have a spokesman available on Sunday.
And she said the crowd inside the theater was anything but rowdy.
“I’m 35 [years old] and Alan is 38,” she said. “There was not anyone there who would make you think there would be a possible disturbance.”
Flowers said that she was “seething” over the police presence throughout the film, but didn’t immediately say anything to theater personnel. “You don’t want to play the ‘black card,’ so to speak, and you almost don’t want to feel what you’re feeling, but then everyone around me was talking about feeling racially profiled and saying we don’t need the cops [in order] to see an Oprah flick. I turned to a couple next to me asked if they had ever experienced anything like this at the theater and they said no, and the woman was going to speak to management about what she thought was ill treatment.”
Flowers tweeted about the experience on Sunday, and her story drew an immediate and sharp Twitter response. Her tweet that “the almost entirely black audience” watching the film “was subjected to watching the film while armed guards faced the audience. Why?” received more than 400 retweets. She directed another tweet at Oprah Winfrey, who stars in the film alongside Forrest Whitaker, who plays the title role.
PROFILED at the showing of The Butler. What’s Next?
I mean really! Black people can’t even watch a movie in peace. @RegalMovies, check your own damn insecurities.
This is positively absurd
WTF, just WTF. Was the theater threatend? bomb threats, WHAT? Why would they need armed policemen in a theater in broad day light?
Black people! Black people everywhere! Profiled!
How an African ‘Princess’ Made $3 Billion in a Land Where Most Live on $2 a Day
by Forbes Aug 16th 2013 2:00PM
Updated Aug 16th 2013 2:03PM
By Kerry A. Dolan and Rafael Marques de Morais
Last December, Isabel dos Santos commemorated her tenth wedding anniversary to Congolese businessman Sindika Dokolo with a party. Subtlety wasn’t on the menu. She jetted in dozens of friends and relatives from as far as Germany and Brazil, who joined with hundreds of local guests in Angola for three days of lavishness, including a bash at the Fortress of Sao Miguel in the capital city of Luanda and a beachside Sunday brunch on the posh Mussulo peninsula. The invitation, according to one attendee, came in a sleek white box, promising a celebration of “a decade of passion/ a decade of friendship/ a decade worth a hundred years. …”
A decade worth $3 billion is more like it. At 40, Dos Santos is Africa’s only female billionaire, and also the continent’s youngest. She has quickly and systematically garnered significant stakes in Angola’s strategic industries — banking, cement, diamonds and telecom — making her the most influential businessperson in her homeland. More than half of her assets are held in publicly traded Portuguese companies, adding international credibility. When FORBES outed her as a billionaire in January the government disseminated the news as a matter of national pride, living proof that this country of 19 million has arrived.
The real story, however, is how Dos Santo — the oldest daughter of Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos — acquired her wealth. For the past year FORBES has been tracing Isabel dos Santos’ path to riches, reviewing a score of documents and speaking with dozens of people on the ground. As best as we can trace, every major Angolan investment held by Dos Santos stems either from taking a chunk of a company that wants to do business in the country or from a stroke of the president’s pen that cut her into the action. Her story is a rare window into the same, tragic kleptocratic narrative that grips resource-rich countries around the world.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/08/16/african-princess-isabel-dos-santos-billionaire-kleptocrat-angola/?ncid=webmail3
Sybrina Fulton speaks to Meet The Press.
Ms. Fulton gives me strength
Continue to lift her up in prayer.
Sybrina, just keeps marching on. I believe if she were to stop now, she’d lose it. She knows that Trayvon’s death needs vindication.
superb segment.
Joy Ann Reid did the letter to Rand Paul yesterday. On point and blistering.
For Black Moms, Opting Out Is Not an Option
While other mothers who left the workforce are trying to get back in, we never left in the first place.
By: Helena Andrews | Posted: August 18, 2013 at 12:19 AM
On the long list of rhetorical questions that remain perpetually unanswerable, the problem of whether or not women can “have it all” is right there at the top. Adding to this never-ending debate is a recent New York Times Magazine article that checked in with a group of women who a decade ago “opted out” of the workforce in favor of motherhood, but who now want back in.
But even as the Times article and the philosophical question of motherhood versus career was predictably a top Twitter topic for much of last week, there was a subset of women — highly educated, equally motivated and happily married — who thought the point particularly moot: black women.
“Historically, black women, even of means, have always worked outside of the home and have always valued education,” explained Bari, a wife, in-house attorney and mother of a 3-year-old.
New mom Aliah echoed those same sentiments.
“Generally the black women who are in positions to even have this conversation — in other words, successful, well-educated professionals — are the kind who were raised and taught to be independent and take some larger role in society,” explained Aliah. “It was never a question for me about being a working wife and mother.”
Both women, among the others with whom I spoke, reaffirmed an as-yet-untested theory that I, as an as-yet-unmarried and childless woman, have held for quite some time. That, all things being equal, most working black moms see their careers as integral parts of who they are, not as hindrances to marriage and motherhood. So much so that the recurring popular refrain about “having it all” and “opting back in” have been conversations they’ve simply opted out of.
Even those who had replaced high-powered careers with more family friendly hours still believed in the power of the working mom.
“I was an attorney for 10 years and I ‘opted-out’ at the end of 2011 because the stress and guilt of working while my kids spent their afternoons and evenings at aftercare and with our nanny became unbearable,” explained Stacey Ferguson.
But Ferguson didn’t dream of opting out completely. Law school loans, an expensive home and three young children keep her and her husband from making what she described as “rash decisions.”
“I’m very much still a working mom,” explained Ferguson, who is the co-founder of Blogalicious, an online community and annual conference for bloggers of color.
Nicole Blades — a novelist, wife and mother — left her 9-to-5 job in magazine publishing to work from home when her son was born. Emphasis on work.
“Many moms I know, me included, feel it’s very important for their children to see Mama working, see Mom handling a career, see the different parts of the person who makes up Mommy,” explained Blades, who added that as a “creative” she never simply stops being a writer.
Family history also played a huge role in how many of the black mothers with whom I spoke viewed their own legacies in the work place and at home.
“Part of valuing that education is putting it to use,” said Bari. “My great-grandparents were college-educated, as were my husband’s, and so the idea of taking that for granted and not utilizing that education seems wasteful to me.”
http://www.theroot.com/views/black-moms-opting-out-not-option
White Is the New White
Aura Bogado on August 16, 2013 – 11:10 AM ET
Slave narratives became most fashionable among abolitionist circles in the mid-nineteenth century. These narratives remain deeply powerful, yet each one is framed by a white introduction, which authenticates the black experience. The white practice of verifying the lives of black fugitives who were skillfully plotting their own liberation has changed in circumstance and in medium—but the role of white people at its center has not. Today, its latest manifestation is playing out in the Netflix hit series, Orange Is the New Black.
I first saw a poster for the new series on a subway platform. The word “black” plastered near women of all colors in prison jumpsuits made me shake my head in disappointment, but I soon forgot about it along with all the other racist images I’m surrounded by daily. The next time I saw a reference to Orange Is the New Black was on a giant video billboard during the massive march in New York following George Zimmerman’s acquittal in connection with the killing of Trayvon Martin. As thousands of people took to the streets against white supremacy, there was an intense irony about a fictionalized depiction of black women cheering on a prison fight as a very blond white woman stood there, shocked with horror. I crudely tweeted, “Racist shit playing W 35 and 6th. It never ends. Neither do we. #HoodiesUp,” with a looping vine to illustrate my disappointment.
Since that time, many a friend and colleague has taken the time to explain to me that I was wrong about my gut reaction to Orange Is the New Black. They point out that the series is based on a book, whose author, Piper Kerman, spent time in prison. I answer that Assata Shakur wrote a brilliant book titled Assata: An Autobiography that includes details about her time as the only woman in an all-men’s prison—yet I’ve not seen it developed into a series. It would be timely to do so now that Shakur is the first woman on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list.
Orange Is the New Black defenders repeatedly tell me that Kerman is invested in prison reform. She very well might be. But the problem here lies in the fact that her investment in the issue has been repaid through a very different kind of investment in her by book publishers and budding media empires like Netflix. I don’t necessarily doubt that Kerman wants to see a change in the criminal justice system—just like I don’t doubt that she’s made a cottage industry for herself doing so. This started about a decade ago, when Kerman began selling “Free Piper” T-shirts through Paypal. As a bestselling author who’s sold the rights to stories of women that aren’t even hers, she’s profited from the criminalization of black and brown women who are disproportionately targeted for prison cages.
But most often, Orange Is the New Black fans tell me I need to give the series a real chance. If I can just get through the first two episodes, I’ll be content by episode three. And so I watched and cringed through six whole episodes, called it quits and hope to never again see another one in my entire life. With very little exception, I saw wildly racist tropes: black women who, aside from fanaticizing about fried chicken, are called monkeys and Crazy Eyes; a Boricua mother who connives with her daughter for the sexual attentions of a white prison guard; an Asian woman who never speaks; and a crazy Latina woman who tucks away in a bathroom stall to photograph her vagina (the pornographic image is indiscriminately paraded throughout an entire episode)
http://www.thenation.com/blog/175786/white-new-white#
I haven’t seen this series, but I heard Chris Hayes saying he just LOVED it. So I had a feeling it was not going to go over well with me.
15 Black Feminist Books Everyone Should Read
Solidarity may be for white women and black power for black men, but these books are for everybody.
By: Diamond Sharp | Posted: August 16, 2013 at 4:03 PM
White feminism’s disregard for black women’s issues is nothing new, and sexism in black power movements from the United States to South Africa is also well documented. So it was no surprise when Twitter exploded on Monday with the #solidarityisforwhitewomen trending topic. Writer Mikki Kendall started the tag in response to the insensitivity of some noted white feminists toward victims of writer Hugo Schwyzer’s vicious attacks on feminists of color.
On Tuesday, Ebony’s Jamilah Lemieux’s #blackpowerisforblackmen continued the conversation, this time focusing on the plight of black feminists within the black community. With these hashtags, black feminists used Twitter to revisit discussions that are often ignored in both mainstream feminist media and historical accounts of black liberation struggles. Unsurprisingly, by the end of the night, the #solidarityisforwhitewomen stream was full of tweets from people who clearly don’t read books about black feminism. The #blackpowerisforblackmen hashtag was filled with comments from those who refused to acknowledge black male privilege.
It’s not a good idea to tell black feminists anything about black feminism if you don’t know what you’re talking about. Or, as my grandmother always tells me, don’t open your mouth if you don’t have anything intelligent to say. While I’m tempted just to tell everyone to Google this information on their own, I’ve also compiled a list of black feminist books that everyone should read before entering conversations like the ones these hashtags started.
http://www.theroot.com/views/15-black-feminist-books-everyone-should-read
Good Morning, Everyone! :-)
‘The Butler’: Lifting the Veil on Black Life
The film, which may spark a real conversation on race, truly captures how we live behind closed doors.
By: Henry Louis Gates Jr. | Posted: August 16, 2013 at 1:45 PM
I watched Lee Daniels’ The Butler in a standing-room-only theater on Martha’s Vineyard, with a thoroughly integrated audience of well-educated black and white people, whose ages ranged from teenagers and college students to midcareer professionals and retirees. The audience sat riveted over the entire course of the film, alternatively moved to laugh at the intraracial humor, to cry at the frailties and foibles of the all-too-human characters so vividly brought to life and to sit in pained — sometimes stunned — silence at the film’s most poignant revelations about the mysteries and horrors of race and race relations in 20th-century America.
I have to confess that I, a film junkie and a student of black cinema, past and present, found myself deeply and profoundly moved by The Butler from start to finish. There are several reasons that I was so engrossed with the film’s plot and the brilliantly subtle ways that Daniels brought Danny Strong’s extraordinary screenplay to life, but upon reflection, I think the most important of these is Daniels’ and Strong’s uncanny capacity to lift the veil, as W.E.B. Du Bois so famously put it, on how black people actually talk to one another behind closed doors, when they are free to speak unconsciously, without censoring themselves in front of white people or in the presence of the black thought police. In other words, when no one is around to disturb the unconscious flow of black culture at its most honest and direct.
How many other black films have ever achieved this quality? Not many, I am afraid. For even our most accomplished black filmmakers, when bringing the complex reality of African-American history and consciousness to the screen, still have a tendency to worry about “what white people will think of us,” or how telling the truth about ourselves might be “misused” by right-wing commentators or Tea Party detractors of our great president. So they censor themselves, for what they naively and mistakenly believe is the “greater good” of the political destiny of our people.
But this is always a mistake: Censorship — even, or especially, self-censorship — is to art as lynching is to justice. It aborts creative genius; it aborts the quest to find a language, in this case the language of film, to tell the truth about one aspect of the human experience, in its fullest complexity. But Daniels and Strong avoid this pitfall, a pitfall deadly to the creation of art, and do so magnificently. For this reason alone, although there are many other strengths in this film, both Daniels and Strong, in my opinion, deserve Academy Award and NAACP Image Award nominations for this great achievement.
But there is a second reason that I love this film: It achieves, implicitly, what so many black political figures and talking heads have been calling for since the George Zimmerman verdict was announced — that proverbial “conversation about race” called for, it seems, every time another racist incident is inflicted upon a black person. Let me admit that I am dubious about “conversations about race” — not because we don’t need to continue to address how the historical or systematic manifestations of structural and institutional racism persist in affecting how each and every black person can conduct his or her daily life. We do. And not because I think that the other source of anti-black treatment of our people — individual attitudes, often unconscious ones, that reflect a deep-seated prejudice, rooted deep in the psyche — should not be analyzed and worked through in a collective, national therapy session. We so urgently need this kind of psychological cleansing of personal bias.
It’s just that I don’t think either of these two causes of anti-black racism can be addressed sufficiently, once and for all, in a single “conversation about race,” no matter who is leading it, how many tears its participants shed and how many choruses of “We Shall Overcome” that sort of feel-good session ends with.
http://www.theroot.com/views/butler-lifting-veil-black-life
Hubby and I are going to see “The Butler “this afternoon.
I refuse to watch this movie with white folks that I know. They can watch it on their own and do their own work.
I hear you.
We whites individually have to work on our own messed up heads and hearts.
Have I Wasted the Civil Rights Legacy?
On the eve of the March on Washington, a writer asks if she’s made the most of hard-fought victories.
By: Danielle C. Belton | Posted: August 15, 2013 at 12:52 AM
I have a friend, a good friend, with whom I share an affliction. He, too, comes from a good family that has done many great things in the face of dire situations, which he and I would learn about only in books. We read about the “Whites Only” bathrooms, lunch counters, the inferior schooling and poverty, things we would never experience firsthand or know, thanks to the hard work of those who came before us.
And yet, neither of us felt good about ourselves. He, a graduate student at a prestigious university, and I, a writer, were both battling a form of guilt — a survivor’s guilt, or what could be better explained as “successor’s guilt.” Meaning, we were the heirs of a revolution, and this was the best we could do?
We were staring into the abyss and blinking profusely, partially immobilized with fear. We would be the first generation in our families not to do better than our parents, thanks to our own well-meaning, but at times faulty judgment and careers crippled by “the perpetual, slow-moving recession” black people have been in since 2009.
Both of us had chosen to do exactly what we wanted in life, assuming that we would, naturally, do great things. And I’m sure, if you asked our mothers, they’d say they were proud of us, but a mother’s unconditional love brings little solace. After all, the obstacles of segregation and abject poverty were successfully removed from our lives, thanks to our parents and those who fought and died for us. We had to do better.
And yet, we had not.
This month we will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the historic March on Washington, an iconic moment in civil rights history. As I reflect on what my parents and grandparents witnessed, I wonder if my generation can live up to its potential. Or, more personally, will I live up to my potential, standing on the shoulders of those who came before me?
Like my friend, I was raised on “the movement.” I was taught my history. I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Dick Gregory’s memoir, Nigger, when I was 12. I watched and read and learned so much about the movement that my father once joked that if I kept watching the documentary Eyes on the Prize, it was going to turn me into a militant.
It didn’t. But it did make me self-aware.
http://www.theroot.com/views/have-i-wasted-civil-rights-legacy?wpisrc=root_lightbox
Check Yo’ Privilege: Man Gets $6.5 million to Make Same Lady Blog Everyone Else Made First
August 15, 2013 by Danielle C. Belton
Bryan Goldberg just discovered that women read and wants to tell you all about it.
Heck, he’s even made a site for it called Bustle.com! And with the help of $6.5 million in venture capital funding he’s managed to put together a site that offers pretty much the same thing most “lady blogs” offer … only with even fewer people of color.
I know. How is that even possible? But yes. You can always have fewer people of color.
Anyway, everyone on #whitetwitter is talking about it! But in the most not nice way possible!
From Valleywag:
When I first saw the title of Goldberg’s article “I’ve raised $6.5 million to build and grow my new company: Bustle.com” I thought it was going to be like one of those “I raised a kabillion dollars for my site and HERE’S HOW YOU CAN TOO!” But instead it was just a blathering of unchecked white male privilege spilling out all over the place.
……………………………..
Yes! It is time! To create! The same site! Everyone else has already created! Like The Hairpin or Jezebel or XO Jane or Feministing or The Frisky. It is time to boldly go where many have gone before, but went without $6.5 million to start.
God. Why didn’t he just spit in every woman-started web site’s face say “I can do everything you can do only worse with a lot more money!”
Now, if I sound a touch bitter it’s because I am. How can I not be? I’m a lady blogger who has written for some of the aforementioned lady blogs. I have watched the independent ones, those not backed by a larger network or publication, struggle in spite of having an established audience. For most lady blogs venture capital funding is hard to come by. Believe me, this site, which gets 800,000 unique views a month according to Google Analytics and wasn’t just born yesterday talking like nothing ever existed before it, has tried to get venture capital funding. And this site has been told the audience needs to be bigger, that no one’s investing in content, that black lady blogs are a “niche.” Yet, Goldberg found funding, but I find it unlikely that he found it because his idea to create what has already been created was so brilliant.
http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2013/08/check-yo-privilege-man-get-6-5-million-to-make-same-lady-blog-everyone-else-made-first/
SMGDH
August 16, 2013 3:19 PM
Hey, Republicans! Obamacare Is Off the Table!
By Ed Kilgore
There’s an increasingly obvious problem with the efforts of GOP congressional leaders to tamp down “base” support for a “defunding Obamacare” drive linked to a continuing resolution to keep the federal government operating this fall: they’re talking about other measures to cripple Obamacare—e.g., a delay in key provisions like the individual mandate—perhaps linked to other “hostages” like the debit limit, instead of talking about using whatever leverage they have to achieve other Republican objectives.
On Wednesday I compared these leaders to a parent trying to bribe an unruly child demanding ice cream with a double scoop sometime later. But what if ice cream production has come to a halt? Can the kids be talked into gorging themselves on some other kind of sugary treat?
I don’t know, but at Salon, the exceptionally well plugged-in Brian Beutler thinks it’s time for Republicans to stop talking about ice cream:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_08/hey_republicans_obamacare_is_o046429.php
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction broke down more than 2,000 of the applicants who wanted to go to 25 of these voucher schools, and it turns out that the vast majority of these kids aren’t coming from public schools.
Senate Conservatives Fund To Make McConnell ‘Feel The Heat’ In KY Campaign
It’s certainly not getting any easier for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
The Senate Minority Leader is on defense on multiple fronts as he seeks re-election in 2014: a well-funded primary challenger in Matt Bevin, a well-connected Democratic opponent in Alison Lundergan Grimes, dismal poll numbers, a fractured caucus seeking deals with the White House and a campaign manager who embarassingly admitted he’s holding his nose for a possible presidential run from the state’s junior senator, Rand Paul.
On Friday, a leading tea party-aligned group previously associated with Jim DeMint announced they were planning a “statewide media campaign in Kentucky” to make McConnell “feel the heat” and support a conservative effort to defund Obamacare.
“Mitch McConnell is telling people he opposes Obamacare while he refuses to oppose its funding. We can’t let him have it both ways. If he funds it, he’s for it,” said Matt Hoskins, the executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund, in an email seeking funds for the campaign.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/senate-conservatives-fund-to-make-mcconnell-feel-heat
Low-income schools struggle under state’s grading system
By Michael Vasquez and David Smiley
mrvasquez@MiamiHerald.com
With dozens of changes in just the past three years, the formula behind Florida’s A-to-F school grading system has been criticized as a confusing mess. But there’s been at least one constant in Miami-Dade and Broward results: The wealthiest schools never get Fs, and schools with high populations of poor students face an uphill battle to even get a C.
The trend is visible through a decade-plus of school grade results, dating back to the first grades issued in 1999.
A Miami Herald analysis of this year’s elementary and middle school grades (high school grades aren’t available yet) shows:
• Although high poverty rates don’t necessarily doom a school to a subpar grade, D and F schools are overwhelmingly serving students from poor neighborhoods, and the few schools that do overcome poverty to achieve an A are outliers. (There were nine such schools this year, all in Miami-Dade).
• Of the 209 schools in Miami-Dade and Broward with at least 90 percent of students receiving free or reduced lunch, 78 percent received a grade of C or worse. Roughly 39 percent of these high-poverty schools received a D or F.
• Of the 43 local schools with much lower poverty rates (30 percent or fewer students receiving free or reduced lunch), 86 percent received an A, and none received a D or F.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/08/10/v-fullstory/3555391/low-income-schools-struggle-under.html?utm_content=buffercdf96&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer#storylink=cpy
GOP Confessions: ‘We want to cut this’ is Code For ‘Ni**er, ni**er’
By: Sarah Jones
Aug. 17th, 2013
If you’re tired of Republicans telling you that they’re not racists because Democrats were the party of the South way back in history, you’re not alone. But don’t blame the conservative—they do, after all, live in their Republican fantasy land of Perfect White America, which naturally was many, many years ago (actually, it never existed).
Here’s the tape to quote when stuck in the logic failure of an argument with a very defensive racist conservative who may or may not be calling you “retarded” in an effort to show prove that you are the bully (irony really is dead and it hurts my head). They won’t get it, but others will, and after all, it’s time to just take pity on the lost people while trying to reach the semi-conscious.
No, that’s not from the 1880s. That’s Lee Atwater in 1981, a major Republican strategist then working in Ronald Reagan’s White House, being interviewed by political scientist Alexander Lamis. Atwater spoke like that while working in the White House under Reagan. Seriously.
But Republicans denied this fact for a very long time. They claimed he was taken out of context, and that Lamis lied. After Lamas died in 2012, James Carter IV (masked avenger of social inequality) approached his widow, Renée Lamis, to see if she might be interested in finally publishing the full interview. She was. After all, for years, Republicans had claimed it was a lie. Carter gave the entire Atwater interview to the Nation last December, where you can listen to the entire audio. Nope. Not out of context. In fact, he clearly admits this after demanding that he won’t be quoted – and that is why Lamis left Atwater’s name off of the quote. Republicans repay ethics and class with character assassination and lies. It’s so sad to see a party without an ounce of integrity left it in.
http://www.politicususa.com/2013/08/17/sitting-we-cut-this-is-hell-lot-abstract-nier-nier.html
Colorado GOP Probe of Alleged Voter Fraud Comes up Empty
By: Keith Brekhus
Aug. 17th, 2013
A month ago, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler (R) sent a letter to Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garrett requesting that he verify the eligibility of seventeen voters suspected of illegally voting as non-citizens. The suspicion was apparently based on the seventeen voters submitting a green card or work visa as identification when they applied for their Colorado driver’s licenses. Garnett’s office was able to easily verify that all seventeen voters were in fact legal US citizens who were eligible to vote and that none of the voters had broken any election laws. Garnett questioned the motives of the Secretary of State ‘s probe, stating:
Despite the GOP’s continued efforts to scare the public into believing in-person voter fraud is common, in order to justify their voter suppression tactics, the Colorado investigation reveals once again that in-person voter fraud remains exceedingly rare. Secretary of State Gessler’s Office identified seventeen cases they thought worth investigating and all seventeen came up without a single instance of fraud detected. So far the state of Colorado has identified one case of voter fraud in the last five elections, a single solitary case from 2004 that was discovered too late to prosecute because the statute of limitations had expired.
http://www.politicususa.com/2013/08/17/colorado-gop-probe-alleged-voter-fraud-empty.html
MSNBC’s Joy Reid to Rand Paul: ‘Take a Deep Breath Before You Talk About Race’
by Matt Wilstein | 6:35 pm, August 17th, 2013
Filling in for Melissa Harris-Perry Saturday, MSNBC’s Joy Reid delivered in open letter to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), admonishing the 2016 hopeful for his attempts to talk about race. “There are some people, who, for their own sake, should take a very deep breath before they talk about race,” Reid said.
The impetus for Reid’s letter were comments made this week by “the right’s new poster child for awkward race talk” Paul about North Carolina’s new voter restrictions. Paul reportedly told a Louisville-based NPR affiliate, “I don’t think there is objective evidence that we’re precluding African-Americans from voting any longer.”
“I get that you’re trying to be the man in the GOP who steps out there on race,” Reid said, before laying out the “evidence” he said he could not find showing that “voter-ID laws preclude African Americans from voting.” She quoted statistics showing that “up to 25% of African-American adults don’t have a photo ID.” And in relation to North Carolina’s cutting down early voting by a full week, she noted that “70% of African Americans who voted in North Carolina last year voted early.”
Moving on a case study from Florida, Reid reported a Dartmouth study, which “estimated that more than 200,000 people who wanted to vote didn’t” in the 2012 election because of long lines, with African-American voters waiting twice as ling as white voters.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/msnbcs-joy-reid-to-rand-paul-take-a-deep-breath-before-you-talk-about-race/
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Good Morning, rikyrah and all!
As the day of the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington approaches, I thought it might be nice to post the video of Areatha Franklin singing “Precious Lord” at the dedication of the Martin Luther King Memorial:
typo correction -Aretha
“How the Streets Honor Martin Luther King Jr.
On city walls across the country, muralists and street artists depict him as a statesman, visionary, hero and martyr.”
by Camillo Jose Vergara – August 14, 2013
http://www.thenation.com/article/175731/how-streets-honor-martin-luther-king-jr#axzz2cJw0K4M7
Beautiful street art displayed in this article!
Happy Sunday, everyone!