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Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.
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Chidike Okeem: The End of Artificial Black Conservatism
Black people are dramatically declining in sociopolitical power in the United States. While many recognize the problematic nature of the hegemonic control that the Democratic Party has on the black vote, many do not concern themselves with the fact that black conservatism is generally not respected as a serious intellectual movement. Black conservatism has the reputation of being an ideology associated with blacks who have self-worth issues and feel it is necessary to trash the entire race for validation—and remuneration—from white conservative audiences.
It is an analytical mistake to confuse blacks’ rejection of mainstream conservatism as a wholesale rejection of conservative thought. Rather, it is simply a rejection of artificial black conservatism. Manifestly, the most visible form of black conservatism in American society is the artificial strain. That is to say, many prominent black conservatives use their blackness as a convenient cosmetic feature, but blackness is truly foreign to their ideology. They use the problems in the black community as an opportunity to deride black people—as opposed to persuading blacks about the superiority of conservative solutions.
The mixture of blackness and conservatism is incorrectly looked at as an oddity by many political observers. In American society, people marvel at the sight of a black person who “astoundingly” supports limited government, entrepreneurialism, and social values rooted in authentic morality. Black people who hold conservative values are not odd. What can be considered odd, however, are blacks who are willing to unquestioningly repeat the talking points of the mainstream conservative movement. Black conservatives who are serious about the betterment of the black community cannot simply co-sign every talking point offered by the mainstream conservative movement. It is simply impossible to be a serious black conservative without demonstrating notable differences from the mainstream right.
The mainstream conservative movement has no respect for independent black conservative thinkers. Creative and intrepid black conservative intellectuals are counterproductive to the role that the black conservative is supposed to fill in the mainstream American conservative movement. Blacks in the mainstream American conservative movement are simply resigned to being convenient spokespeople who dutifully absolve the white right of any unpleasant charges of racism. Indeed, artificial black conservatism is more beneficial to the white right than it is to the black community. Artificial black conservatives are every bit as subservient to the right as many left-wing blacks are to the American left.
In post-Trayvon America, it is simply farcical to suggest that mainstream conservatives do not show a casual disregard for black life. Only an artificial black conservative could have stood with mainstream American conservatives as they enthusiastically supported George Zimmerman and treated the shooting death of Trayvon Martin as an inconsequential episode. In order to advance as an artificial black conservative within mainstream conservatism, showing a callous disregard for black life and black suffering is a prerequisite, which explains why an otherwise brilliant man like world-renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson flippantly compared Obamacare to slavery—and received whistles and applause from a largely white conservative audience. Attempting to persuade black people to join a version of black conservatism that has no discernible difference to mainstream conservatism is a fool’s errand.
http://www.hiphoprepublican.com/chidike-okeem-the-end-of-artificial-black-conservatism/
Quixotic ’80 Campaign Gave Birth to Kochs’ Powerful Network
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
MAY 17, 2014
He backed the full legalization of abortion and the repeal of laws that criminalized drug use, prostitution and homosexuality. He attacked campaign donation limits and assailed the Republican star Ronald Reagan as a hypocrite who represented “no change whatsoever from Jimmy Carter and the Democrats.”
It was 1980, and the candidate was David H. Koch, a 40-year-old bachelor living in a rent-stabilized apartment in New York City. Mr. Koch, the vice-presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party, and his older brother Charles, one of the party’s leading funders, were mounting a long-shot assault on the fracturing American political establishment.
The Kochs had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the burgeoning libertarian movement. In the waning days of the 1970s, in the wake of Watergate, Vietnam and a counterculture challenging traditional social mores, they set out to test just how many Americans would embrace what was then a radical brand of politics.
It was the first and only bid for high office by a Koch family member. But much of what occurred in that quixotic campaign shaped what the Kochs have become today — a formidable political and ideological force determined to remake American politics, driven by opposition to government power and hostility to restrictions on money in campaigns.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/us/politics/quixotic-80-campaign-gave-birth-to-kochs-powerful-network.html?hp&_r=0
Joe Madison, “The Black Eagle” — Eagle’s Nest Studios, Artist, Gilbert Young stopped by the Eagle’s nest to unveil his portrait created and presented to First Lady Michelle Obama.
http://youtu.be/Pq3ptPDkGJU
https://twitter.com/DHSgov/status/468142983129612288/photo/1
http://youtu.be/C98MXH007MQ
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
WTF? Morehouse College of Medicine needs a good ASS WHHIPPING
THE MAN IN THE MIRROR: AN OPEN LETTER TO BILL O’REILLY REGARDING HIS VERY OWN WHITE PRIVILEGE
Trevor LaFauci May 17, 2014
Dear William,
s a fellow White male who has also studied history, I felt compelled to write to you today to respectfully disagree with your stance on White privilege in America. You see, William, on your show The O’Reilly Factor on May 15, you stated that, “I do not believe you are granted favorable treatment in this country because you are White. You have to work for success.” This point was conceded as a followup to your May 14th program during which you had a segment discussing how the Kennedy School at Harvard was considering including a portion of its orientation to discuss issues associated with White privilege as a way for students to be made aware of the issue going forward as they began to think about it impact in relation to public policy. As always William, your guests had some interesting things to say on the topic but unfortunately I don’t think either they or you truly understand what White privilege is. Allow me to share some of my thoughts as it relates to you and your own life, if I may.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/main/2014/5/16/the-man-in-the-mirror-an-open-letter-to-bill-oreilly-regarding-his-very-own-white-privilege#disqus_thread
AT&T and DirecTV have announced a $48 billion merger that would create a new telecom and television behemoth to rival cable firms — while raising fresh concerns over competition and options for consumers.
The combined firm would be able to offer phone, high-speed Internet and paid television subscriptions to more customers — packages only cable firms such as Comcast have been able to sell.
Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/atandt-directv-announce-50-billion-merger/2014/05/18/62ffc980-dec1-11e3-810f-764fe508b82d_story.html
The Government Just Turned the Internet Into the Equivalent of First Class and Coach
It’s official: The FCC is moving ahead with their plan to replace its discarded open Internet rules with new ones that will allow Internet companies to pay for fast lanes, voting 3-2 in favor of the ISP-favored plan.
Here’s how it works: Under the FCC’s new rules, companies that deliver content over the Internet like Netflix, Amazon Instant, YouTube, and even PolicyMic could now pay ISPs for direct access to their customers. Those who don’t pay will be treated like all other data, even if they need to relay high-capacity things like streaming video or cloud storage. That means paying companies’ content will arrive much faster than content from other Internet companies, who will be stuck in a de facto slow lane. The end result is that companies that can’t afford to pay for special treatment will reach fewer people and be at a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace.
Detractors of the new proposal fear that ISPs will simply charge escalating fees for direct access and continue to stall upgrading their outdated communications infrastructure, meaning slow lanes will end up even further behind the fast lanes. Further opposition to such agreements stems from the widespread perception that rich, established companies will be able to wall off the market, preventing competitors that would need to send large amounts of data from entering the market.
http://www.policymic.com/articles/89475/the-government-just-turned-the-internet-into-the-equivalent-of-first-class-and-coach
https://twitter.com/KateAurthur/status/468113580278050816/photo/1
BWA HA HA HAAAAAA
LOL!
Net Neutrality: Why You Should Care and What You Can Do
May 18, 2014 Posted By Luvvie
What’s been happening is that Net Neutrality is being threatened because there’s a plan by the FCC that will allow companies like Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner and AT&T to create an internet fast lane and a slow lane, based on what folks can pay for. The best comparison was PolicyMic’s, saying the government is trying to turn the internet into First Class and Coach. This means many of us will end up in the back of the plane, with no snacks and drink. It ain’t right and it’s certainly not fair.
It also means the companies who cannot afford to pay to play might be left behind.
here’s an issue that we should be paying attention to that not enough of us know about: Net Neutrality. Long issue short, Net Neutrality is our ability to access information freely online. The world wide web is supposed to be an open space where we all have equal access to content (and foolery).
http://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/2014/05/net-neutrality.html
White privilege is based on character & achievement? Really?
Hit the road Jack!
LOL and don’t you come back no more, no more, no more no more, hit the road Jack, and don’t you come back NO MORE!
LOL!
jdub321 @VerbDC
Lost in the dominant narrative: Abramson made a hamfisted move, Dean Baquet found out, & she didn’t have enough goodwill to survive.
jdub321 @VerbDC
Pay inequality is real. A woman making $500K isn’t a perfect sympathetic case & lying to the boss isn’t helpful to job security.
Talk to the FCC
Posted by constitutional mistermix at 11:58 am
May 182014
If you want to comment on the FCC’s proposed “fast lane” rule, here’s where to go. I’d suggest that you tell them to regulate ISPs as common carriers.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2014/05/18/talk-to-the-fcc/
from TOD:
57andfemale
May 18, 2014 at 9:56 am
My fear is that the Clintons will take that terrifyingly comfortable racist/entitled stance they took against PBO and be more interested in getting big business and racist white working people than they are in the Obama coalition. They figure the blacks and liberals will vote for her no matter what because the alternative is too horrible to imagine. And then be comfortable in their RW world where they really live.
In 2007/2008, it became clear to me that Hillary Clinton was nothing more than a myth that had been carefully created. She had an opportunity to recognize greatness in PBO and at least rise to the occasion to exhibit her own greatness. Instead her instinct was to crawl into the gutter and she was terrifyingly comfortable there. She was undistinguished as SoS (she will blame PBO for that, because crafting the myth is the only thing the Clintons are good at. They are not concerned about the good of the country or the good of the people – their ambition is ALL.
Tell the truth, 57andfemale, and shame those Clinton DEVILS.
No doubt about it, PBO came into the office of the presidency and cleaned up Bubba Clinton’s SHIT from the 1990s.
Who Gets to Graduate?
Rich students usually complete their college degrees. Working-class students usually don’t
By PAUL TOUGH
For as long as she could remember, Vanessa Brewer had her mind set on going to college. The image of herself as a college student appealed to her — independent, intelligent, a young woman full of potential — but it was more than that; it was a chance to rewrite the ending to a family story that went off track 18 years earlier, when Vanessa’s mother, then a high-achieving high-school senior in a small town in Arkansas, became pregnant with Vanessa.
Vanessa’s mom did better than most teenage mothers. She married her high-school boyfriend, and when Vanessa was 9, they moved to Mesquite, a working-class suburb of Dallas, where she worked for a mortgage company. Vanessa’s parents divorced when she was 12, and money was always tight, but they raised her and her younger brother to believe they could accomplish anything. Like her mother, Vanessa shone in school, and as she grew up, her parents and her grandparents would often tell her that she would be the one to reach the prize that had slipped away from her mother: a four-year college degree.Continue reading the main story
‘I just started questioning everything: Am I supposed to be here? Am I good enough?’
There were plenty of decent colleges in and around Dallas that Vanessa could have chosen, but she made up her mind back in middle school that she wanted to attend the University of Texas at Austin, the most prestigious public university in the state. By the time she was in high school, she had it all planned out: She would make her way through the nursing program at U.T., then get a master’s in anesthesiology, then move back to Dallas, get a good job at a hospital, then help out her parents and start her own family. In her head, she saw it like a checklist, and in March 2013, when she received her acceptance letter from U.T., it felt as if she were checking off the first item.
Five months later, Vanessa’s parents dropped her off at her dorm in Austin. She was nervous, a little intimidated by the size of the place, but she was also confident that she was finally where she was meant to be. People had warned her that U.T. was hard. “But I thought: Oh, I got this far,” Vanessa told me. “I’m smart. I’ll be fine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-graduate.html?smid=tw-nytimes
THIS: ‘There’s got to be a part of them that is afraid,’ Laude said, ‘a part of them that wonders if they can make it. My bet is that the vast majority of them will make it. And they will, because nobody will give them the chance to simply give up.’
Vanessa had one helluva SUPPORT system, and that seemed to have made all the difference.
http://youtu.be/lNcJg5svv9A
Holder swipes at Roberts on race
By JOSH GERSTEIN | 5/17/14 9:07 PM EDT
Attorney General Eric Holder took a swipe Saturday at Chief Justice John Roberts’s jurisprudence on the issue of race, arguing that forcing the government to be entirely color-blind isn’t the way to heal America’s racial ills.
Speaking at commencement exercises for historically-black Morgan State University in Baltimore, Holder alluded to high-profile controversies over racial comments by figures like rancher Clive Bundy and L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling, but said that it’s a mistake to think that America’s most serious racial problems stem from repugnant public statements. The attorney general argued that it’s more important to end policies that perpetuate racial differences than to dwell on occasional spurts of racist rhetoric.
“Chief Justice John Roberts has argued that the path to ending racial discrimination is to give less consideration to the issue of race altogether. This presupposes that racial discrimination is at a sufficiently low ebb that it doesn’t need to be actively confronted. In its most obvious forms, it might be. But discrimination does not always come in the form of a hateful epithet or a Jim Crow-like statute,” Holder declared. “And so we must continue to take account of racial inequality, especially in its less obvious forms, and actively discuss ways to combat it.”
Holder was referring to Roberts’s plurality opinion in 2007 case which overturned the Seattle public school system’s use of race to improve diversity. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” the chief justice wrote.
The attorney general made clear again Saturday that he prefers the formulation Justice Sonia Sotomayor offered in her dissent from a Supreme Court ruling last month on Michigan’s affirmative action ban
http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2014/05/holder-swipes-at-roberts-on-race-188716.html#.U3izaAek9-E.twitter
i’m still waiting for the video of AG Holder’s address. I’ve posted the script.
Deval Patrick on Hillary Clinton: ‘I worry a little bit’
Posted by CNN’s Ashley Killough
(CNN) – Gov. Deval Patrick said he’s concerned that the early attention surrounding Hillary Clinton’s potential 2016 presidential bid could spoil her prospects.
Asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” if he thinks the former secretary of state will go “all the way” in 2016, the Massachusetts Democrat said, “I don’t know.”
“I guess I worry a little bit,” he continued. “She’s an enormously capable candidate and leader. But I do worry about the inevitability thing, because I think it’s off-putting to the average…voter.”
Patrick noted that Clinton was considered the early-on favorite for the 2008 Democratic presidential primary as well but was famously bested by then-Sen. Barack Obama.
“As an enthusiastic Democrat, I just hope that the people around her pay attention to that this time around,” Patrick told CNN’s chief political correspondent Candy Crowley.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/05/18/deval-patrick-on-hillary-clinton-i-worry-a-little-bit/
Hilary has been OFF-PUTTING since she and Bubba started RACE-BAITING in 2008, and thought they were a SHOE-IN, because of the BLACK GUY running against her.
But these Clintons won’t heed Gov. Patrick’s CLARION call to tone it down and get real.
Mayor Kasim Reed in the hizzy.
The “Guardian Of Gridlock” Alison Grimes Lungren should run on this title for McTurtle.
San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro Is Said to Be HUD Pick in Cabinet Reshuffling
By JONATHAN MARTIN and PETER BAKERMAY 17, 2014
WASHINGTON — President Obama is preparing to nominate Mayor Julián Castro of San Antonio as his new secretary of housing and urban development, elevating one of his party’s Hispanic rising stars as part of a cabinet shuffle that has possible implications for the 2016 presidential race, Democrats informed about the plans said on Saturday.
Mr. Castro, who has often been mentioned as a potential vice-presidential candidate for the Democrats, would take the place of Shaun Donovan, who is to become director of the Office of Management and Budget. That job is being vacated by Sylvia Mathews Burwell, whom Mr. Obama tapped to be secretary of health and human services and who seems headed to Senate confirmation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/us/politics/san-antonio-mayor-to-lead-hud.html?_r=0
SNL’s Jay Z, Solange, and Beyoncé Want to Reassure You That All Is Well
Ex-cast member Maya Rudolph made a cameo as Beyoncé, entering scene after the in-laws asserted their love for one another. The whole sketch felt a bit forced, but it generated some audience applause when Rudolph entered the stage.
Funny moment: Beyoncé summing up her family’s statement on the drama: “Surfboardt.”
Watch the cold open below, via NBC:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/snls-jay-z-solange-and-beyonce-want-to-reassure-you-that-all-is-well/
Good Morning, Everyone! Happy Sunday. :-)
These 3 ladies of Gospel singing How I Got Over, now you know this kind of singing is one of the reasons we’re getting over.