Amiri Baraka Passes Away!

Famed poet and activist Amiri Baraka passed away.

Over the past few days, there's been talk about the New Jersey Republican governor Chris Christie and his ties to a deliberate traffic tie up at the George Washington Bridge to get revenge on the Fort Lee mayor.

While this is the talk of the nation, a famed and yes controversial poet named Amiri Baraka died on January 9, 2014. Baraka born Everett LeRoi Jones was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays and music criticism. He was the author of numerous books of poetry and taught at a number of universities, including the State University of New York at Buffalo and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He received the PEN Open Book Award, formerly known as the Beyond Margins Award, in 2008 for Tales of the Out and the Gone.

Baraka's poetry and writing has attracted both extreme praise and condemnation. Within the African-American community, some compare him to James Baldwin and call Baraka one of the most respected and most widely published Black writers of his generation.

Others have said his work is an expression of violence, misogyny, homophobia and racism.

Baraka's brief tenure as Poet Laureate of New Jersey (2002–03), involved controversy over a public reading of his poem "Somebody Blew Up America?" and accusations of anti-semitism, and some negative attention from critics, and politicians.

Baraka read his 2001 poem on the September 11th attacks "Somebody Blew Up America?", which was criticized for anti-Semitism and attacks on public figures. Because there was no mechanism in the law to remove Baraka from the post, the position of state poet laureate was officially abolished by the State Legislature and Governor McGreevey.

Baraka collaborated with hip-hop group The Roots on the song "Something in the Way of Things (In Town)" on their 2002 album Phrenology.

He first married Hettie Cohen, with whom he had two daughters, Kellie Jones (b. 1959) and Lisa Jones (b.1961). Baraka would author an acclaimed, controversial play Dutchman, in which a white woman accosts a black man on the New York subway. The play premiered in 1964 and received the Obie Award for Best American Play in the same year.

After the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, Baraka left his wife and their two children and moved to Harlem. Now a "black cultural nationalist," he broke away from the predominantly white Beats and became very critical of the pacifist and integrationist Civil Rights movement. His revolutionary poetry now became more controversial.

Baraka married his second wife, Sylvia Robinson, who later adopted the name Amina Baraka.

In 1967, he lectured at San Francisco State University. The year after, he was arrested in Newark for having allegedly carried an illegal weapon and resisting arrest during the 1967 Newark riots, and was subsequently sentenced to three years in prison.

Baraka's daughter Shani (Amina) with , aged 31, and her lesbian partner, Rayshon Homes, were murdered in the home of Shani's sister, Wanda Wilson Pasha, by Pasha's ex-husband, James Coleman. Prosecutors argued that Coleman shot Shani because she had helped her sister separate from her husband.

A New Jersey jury found Coleman (also known as Ibn El-Amin Pasha) guilty of murdering Shani Baraka and Rayshon Holmes, and he was sentenced to 168 years in prison for the 2003 shooting.

Amiri Baraka died on January 9, 2014, at Beth Israel Medical Center in Newark, New Jersey, after being hospitalized in the facility's intensive care unit for one month prior to his death. The cause of death was not reported initially, but it is mentioned that Baraka had a long struggle with diabetes.

Later reports indicated that he died from complications after a recent surgery.

Baraka's funeral will be held at Newark Symphony Hall on January 18, 2014.

We here at Journal de la Reyna send our condolences to the family of Amiri Baraka.

JFK: Thank You!

America mourns 50 yeara of the tragic shooting of the 36th President of The United States.

I wasn't born around the time John F. Kennedy was the President of The United States, but from what I've heard from many, he was probably one the best modern day presidents, ever!

A young vibrant clean smiling guy with a beautiful wife and two adorable children.

November 22, 1963 would be the day the world lost a leader.

When he was in Dallas, Texas, Kennedy was shot in the head by a sniper rifle and was pronounced dead at the hospital.

It lead to the nation's first ever breaking news event. It also thrust his Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson into the forefront as the next in line.

During the 1960s in the South, the United States was going through the segregation of race.

The Civil Rights Movement was at its peak when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his March On Washington (I Have A Dream) speech to a crowd of thousands.

Dr. King, John Lewis and John F. Kennedy. Lewis would later become a U.S. Congressman.

That April, Dr. King got an opportunity to meet Kennedy.

I want to say that Kennedy was the best progressive leader.

Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald was accused of the crime and arrested that evening, but Jack Ruby shot and killed him two days later, before a trial could take place.

The FBI and the Warren Commission officially concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin. However, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that those investigations were flawed and that Kennedy was probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy.

President Barack Obama along with former president Bill Clinton at the Kennedy memorial. Also former First Lady/Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and First Lady Michelle Obama.

Since the 1960s, information concerning Kennedy's private life has come to light. Details of Kennedy's health problems with which he struggled have become better known, especially since the 1990s. Although initially kept secret from the general public, reports of Kennedy's philandering have garnered much press. Kennedy ranks highly in public opinion ratings of U.S. presidents.

Events during his presidency included the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Space Race—by initiating Project Apollo (which would culminate in the moon landing), the building of the Berlin Wall, the African-American Civil Rights Movement, and early stages of the Vietnam War. Therein, Kennedy increased the number of military advisers, special operation forces, and helicopters in an effort to curb the spread of communism in South East Asia.

The Kennedy administration adopted the policy of the Strategic Hamlet Program which was implemented by the South Vietnamese government. It involved certain forced relocation, village internment, and segregation of rural South Vietnamese from northern and southern communist insurgents.

A Vindication For George Stinney?

A 14-year old boy was given the zapper for "allegedly killing" two little White girls in South Carolina. Now about 70 years later, they want to clear his name.

Only in the segregated South, a young Black teen would be executed for allegedly killing two white girls.

And without probable cause and a whole lot of heresy, a 14-year old boy was sent to the zapper.

On the shaky confession and a sense of injustice, a boy dies for just being in the minds of the townspeople, a "natural born criminal".

Betty June Binnicker, age 11, and Mary Emma Thames, age 8, in Alcolu, located in Clarendon County, South Carolina, on March 23, 1944.

Alcolu was a small, working class, mill town where whites and blacks were separated by railroad tracks.

The girls had disappeared while out riding their bicycles looking for flowers. As they passed the Stinney property, they asked young George Stinney and his sister, Katherine, if they knew where to find "maypops", a type of flower.

When the girls did not return, search parties were organized, with hundreds of volunteers. The bodies of the girls were found the next morning in a ditch filled with muddy water. Both had suffered severe head wounds.

Stinney was convicted of murdering two pre-teen girls after police said he confessed to the murders. But the question of Stinney's guilt, the validity of his alleged confession, and the judicial process leading to his execution have been criticized as "suspicious at best and a miscarriage of justice at worst", and as an example of the many injustices African-Americans suffered in courtrooms in the United States in the first half of the 20th century.

Following his arrest, Stinney's father was fired from his job and his parents and siblings were given the choice of leaving town or be lynched. The family was forced to flee, leaving the 14-year-old child with no support during his 81-day confinement and trial. His trial, including jury selection, lasted just one day.

Stinney's court-appointed attorney was a tax commissioner preparing to run for office. There was no court challenge to the testimony of the three police officers who claimed that Stinney had confessed, although that was the only evidence presented. There were no written records of a confession. Three witnesses were called for the prosecution: the man who discovered the bodies of the two girls and the two doctors who performed the post mortem.

No witnesses were called for the defense. The trial before a completely white jury and audience (African-Americans were not allowed entrance) lasted two-and-a-half hours. The jury took ten minutes to deliberate before it returned with a guilty verdict.

The execution of George Stinney was carried out at the South Carolina State Penitentiary in Columbia, on June 16, 1944. At 7:30 p.m., Stinney walked to the execution chamber with a Bible under his arm, which he later used as a booster seat in the electric chair.

Standing 5 foot 2 inches (157 cm) tall and weighing just over 90 pounds (40 kg), his size (relative to the fully grown prisoners) presented difficulties in securing him to the frame holding the electrodes. Nor did the state's adult-sized face-mask fit him; as he was hit with the first 2,400 V surge of electricity, the mask covering his face slipped off, “revealing his wide-open, tearful eyes and saliva coming from his mouth”...After two more jolts of electricity, the boy was dead."

Stinney was declared dead within four minutes of the initial electrocution. From the time of the murders until Stinney's execution, eighty-one days had passed.

The Huffington Post reports that the South Carolina Attorney General's Office will likely argue the other side of the case before the Clarendon County judge. A spokesman said their lawyers had not seen the motion and do not comment on pending cases. A date for a hearing on the matter has not been set.

The request for a new trial has an uphill climb. The judge may refuse to hear it at all, since the punishment was already carried out. Also, South Carolina has strict rules for introducing new evidence after a trial is complete, requiring the information to have been impossible to discover before the trial and likely to change the results, said Kenneth Gaines, a professor at the University of South Carolina's law school.

"I think it's a longshot, but I admire the lawyer for trying it," Gaines said, adding that he's not aware of any other executed inmates in the state being granted a new trial posthumously.

The request for a new trial is largely symbolic, but Stinney's supporters say they would prefer exoneration to a pardon.

Stinney's case intersects some long-running disputes in the American legal system — the death penalty and race. At 14, he's the youngest person executed in the United States in past 100 years. He was electrocuted just 84 days after the girls were killed in March 1944.

The request for a new trial includes sworn statements from two of Stinney's siblings who say he was with them the entire day the girls were killed. Notes from Stinney's confession and most other information deputies and prosecutors used to convict Stinney in a one-day trial have disappeared along with any transcript of the proceedings. Only a few pages of cryptic, hand-written notes remain, according to the motion.

"It was strange to see them in our area, because white people stayed on their side of Alcolu and we knew our place," Ruffner wrote.

The girls never came home and hundreds of people searched for them through the night. They were found the next morning in a water-filled ditch, their heads beaten with a hard object, likely a railroad spike.

Deputies got a tip the girls had been seen talking to Stinney. They came to Stinney's home and took him away. His family wouldn't see the boy again until after his trial. Newspaper accounts suggested a lynch mob was nearly formed to attack the teen in jail.

Stinney's dad worked for the major mill in town and lived in a company house. He was ordered to leave after his son was arrested, said Stinney's brother Charles Stinney, who was 12 when his older brother was arrested. Charles Stinney's statement explains why the family didn't speak to authorities at the time.

"George's conviction and execution was something my family believed could happen to any of us in the family. Therefore, we made a decision for the safety of the family to leave it be," Charles Stinney wrote in his sworn statement.

Charles Stinney said he remembered the events vividly because "for my family, Friday, March 24, 1944, and the events that followed were our personal 9/11."

Both statements were made in 2009. Lawyer Steve McKenzie said he planned to file the request for a new trial then, but heard from a man in Tennessee who claimed his grandfather was with George Stinney the day of the killings. McKenzie thought the information from someone not related to Stinney would be especially powerful, but the person suddenly stopped cooperating after stringing the lawyers along for years.

The request for a new trial points out that at 95 pounds, Stinney likely couldn't have killed the girls and dragged them to the ditch.

The motion also hints at community rumors of a deathbed confession from a white man several years ago and the possibility Stinney either confessed because his family was threatened or he was given ice cream. But the court papers provide little information and the lawyers also wouldn't elaborate.

At 14, Stinney was the youngest person executed in this country in the past 100 years, according to statistics gathered by the Death Penalty Information Center.

Newspaper stories from his execution had witnesses saying the straps to keep him in the electric chair didn't fit around his small frame and an electrode was too big for his leg.

Executing teens wasn't uncommon at that time. Florida put a 16-year-old boy to death for rape in 1944 and Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio and Texas executed 17-year-olds that year.

Lawyers also filed a request for to pardon Stinney before the state Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services in case the new trial is not granted.

There is precedent for that. In 2009, two great-uncles of syndicated radio host Tom Joyner were pardoned by the board nearly 100 years after they were sent to the electric chair in the death of a Confederate Army veteran. Joyner's lawyers showed evidence the men were framed by a small-time criminal who took a plea deal that saved his life and testified against them.

But Frierson said a pardon would be little comfort to him in the Stinney case. "The first step in a pardon is to admit you are wrong and ask for forgiveness. This boy did nothing wrong," Frierson said.

This is the movie Carolina Skeletons. Based off the novel from David Stout and based similarly to the George Stinney situation.

North Carolina GOP Fires Chairman After He Said Some Racist Sh*t!

Don Yelton and Neo-Confederate extremist H.K. Edgerton. Yelton was fired from his duties after he appeared on The Daily Show to show his funny side. Edgerton is a Black extremist who believes that he's a descendant of the Black Confederacy soldiers.

Reince Priebus: So how's that diversity tour?

I am guessing that rainbow will still have more shades of White.

The Republican's rehabilitation tour is a disaster. They still haven't learned their lesson from the 2012 U.S. Elections.

Looks like Jon Stewart has knock one out the park again. As a comedian and satirist, it almost hits close to home on how he's criticizing the president and Congress.

Stewart figured that the politicos in Washington are pretty useless.

He's so right!

The Daily Show covers the ongoing controversy with North Carolina's voter identification laws that will probably affect thousands of its residents who may not have access to the ballot box.

This jackass Don Yelton was let go after he made some inflammatory statements about Blacks and President Barack Obama.

Of course, now that's he's out, he's now saying that the Republicans are "just like him" and they're a bunch of "wusses" for not speaking what is the truth.

Aasif Mandvi is a comedian and writer for The Daily Show. He managed to interview Congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia) on the Supreme Court's decision this year to strike down the key proponent of the Civil Rights Act.

And of course, this asshole Yelton had the nerve to call Blacks "LAZY" and hope the Republican governor Pat McCrory continues his path to guarantee Republican victories.

Keep telling your Republican friend, that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wasn't a Republican. If he was, he would be ashamed of the Republican Party today.

We Still Remember The 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing!

We will never forget about the four girls who lost their lives in a horrible act of terrorism.
(Clockwise from top left, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Denise McNair)

We mark 50 years of a horrible tragedy. The 16th Street Baptist Church in the city of Birmingham, Alabama is a national historic site. The site was ground zero of a horrible incident. Four innocent girls died in an act of terror.

After the March on Washington, many racial extremists were not happy about the meddling of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the NAACP, and President John F. Kennedy.

They wanted to send a message to those who stood in the way of Jim Crow.

Two men who had ties to the Ku Klux Klan set a bomb around the side of the 16th Street Baptist Church.

The bomb went off during a nice Sunday in September.

It would kill four young girls. Girls who were doing what Americans would do on Sunday mornings, attend church. Addie Mae Collins (age 14), Denise McNair (age 11), Carole Robertson (age 14), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14), were killed.

Following the tragic event, white strangers visited the grieving families to express their sorrow. At the funeral for three of the girls (one family preferred a separate, private funeral), Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke about life being "as hard as crucible steel." More than 8,000 mourners, including 800 clergymen of all races, attended the service. No city officials attended.

The bombing continued to increase worldwide sympathy for the civil rights cause. On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ensuring equal rights of African Americans before the law.

The 16th Street Baptist Church is a national historic site.

These young girls futures were cut short by a bunch of extremists.

The United Klan of America, a breakaway group that associated with the Klan in the past had four men involved in it. The Klan was at it peak of strength during the 1950s all the way to the mid 1970s.

Bobby Frank Cherry, Thomas Blanton, Herman Frank Cash, and Robert Chambliss were the individuals involved in planting a box of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the church, near the basement.

Civil rights activists blamed George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama, for the killings. Birmingham was a violent city and was nicknamed “Bombingham”, because the city had experienced more than 50 bombings in black institutions and homes since World War I.

A witness identified Robert Chambliss,  as the man who placed the bomb under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. He was arrested but only charged with possessing a box of 122 sticks of dynamite without a permit.

Chambliss received a hundred-dollar fine and a six-month jail sentence for having the dynamite.

At the time, no federal charges were filed on Chambliss.

All that would change when the FBI finally took interest into the case. FBI investigations gathered evidence pointing to four suspects: Robert Chambliss, Thomas E. Blanton Jr, Herman Cash, and Bobby Frank Cherry. According to a later report from the Bureau, “By 1965, we had serious suspects—namely, Robert E. Chambliss, Bobby Frank Cherry, Herman Frank Cash, and Thomas E. Blanton, Jr., were KKK members. Most of them claimed they've renounced their past and were innocent in the incident.

Witnesses were reluctant to talk out of fear for retaliation and physical evidence was lacking. Also, at that time, information from our surveillances was not admissible in court. As a result, no federal charges were filed in the ’60s.”

Although Chambliss was convicted on an explosives charge, no convictions were obtained in the 1960s for the killings.

Alabama Attorney General William Baxley reopened the investigation after he took office in 1971, requesting evidence from the FBI and building trust with key witnesses who had been reluctant to testify in the first trial. The prosecutor had been a student at the University of Alabama when he heard about the bombing in 1963.

“I wanted to do something, but I didn’t know what.”

Chambliss was indicted in the murder of all four girls, tried and convicted of the first-degree murder of Denise McNair, and sentenced to life in prison. He died eight years later in prison.

Thomas E. Blanton, Jr. was tried in 2001 and found guilty at age 62 of four counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Herman Cash died in 1994 without having been charged. Bobby Frank Cherry, also a former Klansman, was indicted in 2001 along with Blanton. Judge James Garrett of Jefferson County Circuit Court ruled "that Mr. Cherry's trial would be delayed indefinitely because a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation concluded that he was mentally incompetent.”

He was later convicted in 2002, sentenced to life in prison, and died in 2004

Sarah Collins, the sister of Addie Mae would survive the bombing and become a civil rights leader and speaker.

A tragedy that sparked the Civil Rights movement.

The president, Congress and many Civil Rights leaders show solidarity on this day.

We here at Journal de la Reyna will never forget the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.

We send our condolences to the families of those innocent young girls.

Ben Jealous Leaving NAACP!

NAACP president Benjamin Jealous is leaving the organization.

The head of the nation's civil rights group is leaving by the end of the month.

Benjamin Jealous is stepping down as the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

He wants to spend more time with his family.  He is the youngest ever national leader of the organization.

Under Jealous' lead, the NAACP has had a number of notable achievements during his tenure, including: registering 374,553 voters and mobilizing 1.2 million new and unlikely voters to turn out at the polls for the 2012 presidential election; leading the charge for Connecticut and Maryland to abolish the death penalty; endorsing marriage equality; and fighting laws the NAACP claims were intended for voter suppression in states across the country.


During Jealous’ tenure, the NAACP's online activists have increased from 175,000 to more than 675,000; its donors have increased from 16,000 individuals per year to more than 132,000; and the number of total NAACP activists has topped one million.

Jealous will step down as president of the NAACP at the end of December 2013 Jealous is married to Lia Epperson, a law professor at American University and a civil rights attorney.

He leaves behind a somewhat controversial history. I mean he was around during the whole Shirley Sherrod fiasco in 2010.  During a convention, Jealous stated that the Tea Party was the last elements of racism.

He slammed those ignorant Republicans like Tim Scott (the only Black U.S. Senator), Rand Paul, Palin Da Ass, and Glenn Beck as panderers of racism. He was completely right on that one.

It pissed off that agitator Andrew Breitbart. That agitator tried to get back at the NAACP by releasing a video of then U.S. Agriculture representative Shirley Sherrod talking about her experiences in the South.

Sherrod lost her father to the racial extremists who murdered him. She had some resentment towards White people at a time. As a community advisor, Sherrod was hoping to help save families from losing their homes.

She was dealing with a White family from the South who was on the verge of losing their home, changed her views.

So as she shared this experience, Breitbart took all the good parts out of the speech and put it together to make it seem like the NAACP was hosting a Black extremist and President Barack Obama allowed this person to be on the "gubmint" payroll.

The video was posted on the Breitbart websites and it was going to be on the Chalk E. Becker show.

President Barack Obama ordered Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to send that woman packing.

The NAACP also overreacted to it too by issuing an apology.

Soon as the controversy was starting to built up. The truth came out.

The video was doctored, the controversy soon swung to the president overreacting and the media's rush to judgement. Also this fiasco left egg on the face of Andrew Breitbart. His credibility was ruined during that event.

He managed to rebuilt himself as the guy who took down Anthony Weiner, a Democratic congressman who texted his penis to women. Weiner was the only success that Breitbart had during his time as an agitator.

Weiner would later try to run for mayor only to be sent back to the cesspool he's created out of his arrogance.

Breitbart would later die of a heart attack in 2012.

Jealous and Breitbart were not the best of friends. The conservative agitator was trying to smear the NAACP and have Jealous fired.

Jealous also criticized the president. He believes the president has to throw a little more weight into the issues in the Black and Hispanic communities. The unemployment rates for Black and Hispanic workers is very high.

Jealous, Rev. Perm and the president spoke at the March On Washington rally last month.

He made it clear that Black America must speak up about issues such as unemployment, racial profiling and the U.S. Justice system (in regards to the George Zimmerman verdict).

Under his leadership, the NAACP endorsed the rights for gay couples to marry.

Republican About Face On Civil Rights!

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. marches through Selma. John Lewis (right) was injured in the event. He would later run for U.S. House as a Democrat.

The past doesn't seem to match up with the present. It's unfortunate that Republicans of present day are trying to rewrite history on the backs of the Black community. They have no freaking clue on what impact the Civil Rights Act of 1964 done for America.

That law banned discrimination in the workplace, retail establishments and services.

Yeah, the Republicans were instrumental in helping Democrats pass Civil Rights and Voting Rights laws. They deserve credit. But to keep saying it was only them when the Democrats held the majority and presidency is kind of disingenuous.

Today's Republican Party has no care for Civil Rights. They're proceeding to tear apart the very fabric of equal rights for Blacks, Hispanics and those in the LGBT community.

People like Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) would gladly repeal Civil Rights laws, if given the opportunity.

Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Senator Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) claim they're a product of diversity within the Republican Party. Yet, they're the ones who vote to restrict your rights to vote. They rather see Blacks, Hispanics and Muslims locked up just like their fellow Republicans.

In a party that's 90% WHITE and 10% EVERYONE ELSE, you would think the problem solely lies within the party not the Democrats they love to attack for being a "racist" party.

The Republican governors are so eager to pass voter identification laws and rolling back early voting days.

They feel that "voter fraud" is a huge problem in urban community. Say if Tyrone Boykins and Shenquia Teasunae Johnson were without their state issued identifications and they were registered to vote. They wouldn't have an opportunity to vote. Even though you have to sign a book letting you are present, you still don't have enough credibility according to the Republicans. You're only allowed to vote once. Obviously you're not carrying three different identities to vote.

Black conservatives love to rail against the Democrats about being the party that supported racism.

Instead of looking into the facts, they'll just pull stuff right out of their asses.

Harry J. Enten of the Guardian wrote a pretty interesting piece about Republicans "claim" to Civil Rights.

Andrew Breitbart talks to Black Tea Party protester. The conservative agitator died of a heart attack in 2012.

He debunks the theory that Republicans mainly contributed to passage of Civil Rights. He even says that if the Democrats were the "racist" Black conservatives claim them to be, why did they nominate Barack Obama for president?

Enten wrote that Republicans are having trouble with minorities. Some like to point out that the party has a long history of standing up for civil rights compared to Democrats. Democrats, for example, were less likely to vote for the civil rights bills of the 1950s and 1960s. Democrats were more likely to filibuster. Yet, a closer look at the voting coalitions suggests a more complicated picture that ultimately explains why Republicans are not viewed as the party of civil rights.

He wrote that if look you at the party vote in both houses of Congress, it fits the historical pattern. Republicans are more in favor of the bill:

80% of Republicans in the House and Senate voted for the bill. Less than 70% of Democrats did. Indeed, Minority Leader Republican Everett Dirksen led the fight to end the filibuster. Meanwhile, Democrats such as Richard Russell of Georgia and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina tried as hard as they could to sustain a filibuster.

This guy represents Republicans. This guy is probably one of the reasons why Blacks hate the Republican Party.

Of course, it was also Democrats who helped usher the bill through the House, Senate, and ultimately a Democratic president who signed it into law. The bill wouldn't have passed without the support of Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana, a Democrat. Majority Whip Hubert Humphrey, who basically split the Democratic party in two with his 1948 Democratic National Convention speech calling for equal rights for all, kept tabs on individual members to ensure the bill had the numbers to overcome the filibuster.

Put another way, party affiliation seems to be somewhat predictive, but something seems to be missing. So, what factor did best predicting voting?

You don't need to know too much history to understand that the South from the civil war to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 tended to be opposed to minority rights. This factor was separate from party identification or ideology. We can easily control for this variable by breaking up the voting by those states that were part of the confederacy and those that were not.



You can see that geography was far more predictive of voting coalitions on the Civil Rights than party affiliation. What linked Dirksen and Mansfield was the fact that they weren't from the south. In fact, 90% of members of Congress from states (or territories) that were part of the Union voted in favor of the act, while less than 10% of members of Congress from the old Confederate states voted for it. This 80 pt. difference between regions is far greater than the 15 pt. difference between parties.

He concluded that nearly 100% of Union state Democrats supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act compared to 85% of Republicans. None of the southern Republicans voted for the bill, while a small percentage of southern Democrats did.

The same pattern holds true when looking at ideology instead of party affiliation. The folks over at Voteview.com, who created DW-nominate scores to measure the ideology of congressmen and senators, found that the more liberal a congressman or senator was the more likely he would vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, once one controlled for a factor closely linked to geography.

That's why Strom Thurmond left the Democratic party soon after the Civil Right Act passed. He recognized that of the two parties, it was the Republican party that was more hospitable to his message. The Republican candidate for president in 1964, Barry Goldwater, was one of the few non-Confederate state senators to vote against the bill. He carried his home state of Arizona and swept the deep southern states – a first for a Republican ever.

Then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Congresswoman from California holds hands with Georgia's Democratic Congressman John Lewis (a former civil rights leader) as they walk across the U.S. Capitol lawn to vote on the Affordable Healthcare Reform Law.

Now, it wasn't that the Civil Rights Act was what turned the South against the Democrats or minorities against Republicans. Those patterns, as Trende showed, had been developing for a while. It was, however, a manifestation of these growing coalitions. The South gradually became home to the conservative party, while the north became home to the liberal party.

Today, the transformation is nearly complete. President Obama carried only 18% of former Confederate states, while taking 62% of non-Confederate states in 2012. Only 27% of southern senators are Democrats, while 62% of Union state senators are Democrats. And 29% of southern members in the House are Democrats compared to 54% in states or territories that were part of the Union.

Thus, it seems to me that minorities have a pretty good idea of what they are doing when joining the Democratic party. They recognize that the Democratic party of today looks and sounds a lot more like the Democratic party of the North that with near unity passed the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 than the southern Democrats of the era who blocked it, and today would, like Strom Thurmond, likely be Republicans.

Dr. Cornel West: Get Me A Ticket Outta Al Sharpton's Coonsville!

Black agitators feuding with one another.

The feud seems to be boiling between Black liberal agitators Rev. Perm (Al Sharpton) and Dr. Cornel West.

You see the New York righteous ones are Black civil rights leaders. Rev. Perm is the host of PoliticsNation on Obama News. He also is a talk radio host and signed entertainer on Cash Money Records.

West on the other hand is a professor of African American studies at the Union Theological Seminary. He was the famous professor of studies at Princeton and Harvard University. He's a frequent collaborator with PBS news agitator Tavis Smiley and they both host a radio show that is on WCPT in Chicago.

West offered harsh words for the March On Washington and the primary speakers.

“Brother Martin himself, I think, would've been turning over in his grave,” West said of the event. “[King would have wanted] people to talk about Wall Street criminality, he wants people to talk about war crimes, or drones dropping bombs on innocent people,” he asserted.

“Instead,” he lamented, “we saw the coronation of the bonafide house negro of the Barack Obama plantation, our dear brother Al Sharpton.” West then declared that Sharpton’s decline was “supported by [MSNBC analyst] Michael Dyson and others who’ve prostituted themselves in a very ugly and vicious way.”

West was once good friends with President Barack Obama and Rev. Perm. All that seemed to change.

He would talk to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now about his outrage.

“…Lincoln isn’t Lincoln if Frederick Douglass isn't pushing him. FDR isn't FDR if A. Philip Randolph and Eleanor Roosevelt aren't pushing him. LBJ isn't LBJ if MLK isn't pushing him.

“We don’t believe in making excuses. We believe that if [Obama] is not pushed, he’s going to be a transactional president and not a transformational president. And we believe that the time is now for action and no longer accommodation. But that doesn't happen unless you’re pushed.”

West even knocked at fellow Black educators Melissa Harris-Perry and Michael Eric Dyson. They are liberal agitators who a featured host on Obama News as well.

I love Brother Mike Dyson… but we’re living in a society where everybody is up for sale. Everything is up for sale. And he and Brother Sharpton and Sister Melissa and others, they have sold their souls for a mess of Obama pottage. And we invite them back to the black prophetic tradition after Obama leaves. But at the moment, they want insider access, and they want to tell those kind of lies. They want to turn their back to poor and working people.

I would expect that Rev. Perm and Melissa Harris-Perry will no longer invite Tavis Smiley and West on their programs for the time being.

Scratch that! Melissa Harris-Perry will address West in some fashion soon! So I will say she'll debate him in the coming weeks.

Now didn't I say I can't stand West and Smiley!

Okay, here's your moment in the sun. There are Black extremists. You may think of people like Rev. Perm, Cut His Nuts Off Jackson, President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, or even the First Lady Michelle Obama to be extremists.

You're dead wrong!

The president is an elected leader. You may not like him whether for his policies, his race or his actions. That's fine. But he's no where near the extreme some of these folks paint him out to be.

I call Rev. Perm and Cut His Nuts Off Jackson, two civil rights leaders that piss off the racist right. They're Black liberal agitators who inspire action. Just like Chalk E. Becker and Palin Da Ass, these guys are in the game of group hoarding. If they speak, people will listen.

You don't have to be Justin Bieber to know that the old school folks love to see people they've grown accustomed to see everyday ranting and raving.

But for Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, I can at least say their the Black extremists the racist right outta be focusing on. Sure they're good friends with White people and all. I understand that. But deep down inside, I think they're actively supporting a race war just like That Guy Who Throws Shit To The Wall and other extremists.

These two bozos are B-list Black agitators who are jealous of Rev. Perm getting a show and they're being shown the door.

You can't blame them for being passionate about the Black community and issues in the world. They have a right to say whatever they're programmed to say.

But do we have to listen.?

Just like those dolts who support that "no accomplishment" turd Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky). They idol worship a politico who (like his daddy) has nothing but conspiracies masquerading as accomplishments.

Name one thing that Paul has accomplished in the nearly three years of him being in the U.S. Senate?

And I am talking about legislation victories he sponsored.

Anyways, Black extremism is alive and well. I didn't pass off on the extremism within the Black community.

It's not a gang ritual or a group mentality.

It's a few individuals who are so off the rails with issues they don't see clearly or they are the vocal minority in a group that's overwhelmingly against them.

Cornel Ronald West (born June 2, 1953) is an American philosopher, academic, activist, author, public intellectual, and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Cornel West publicly supported 2008 Democratic Presidential candidate then US Senator Barack Obama. He spoke to over 1,000 of his supporters at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, N.Y.C., on November 29, 2007.

West has described himself as a "non-Marxist socialist" (partly because he cannot reconcile Marxism with Christianity) and serves as honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, which he has described as "the first multiracial, socialist organization close enough to my politics that I could join".

West criticized President Obama when Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, saying that it would be difficult for Obama to be "a war president with a peace prize"; West further retracted his support for Obama in an April 2011 interview, stating that Obama is "a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it."

In November 2012, West said in an interview that he considered Obama a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface."

Melissa Harris-Perry, a professor of political science at Tulane University, criticized what she described as the "utter hilarity" of West's statements, writing that his comments are a "classic projection of his own comfortably ensconced life at Harvard and Princeton Universities" and that West "offers thin criticism of President Obama and stunning insight into the delicate ego of the self-appointed black leadership class".

West later called Harris-Perry a "fake and a fraud".

In 2011, West participated in a "Poverty Tour" with Tavis Smiley, his co-host on the Public Radio International program Smiley & West. The tour became a two-part special on their radio program as well as a five-night special on the PBS television program Tavis Smiley. They recounted their experience on the tour in their 2012 bestselling book The Rich and the Rest of Us. The stated aim of the tour was to highlight the plight of the impoverished population of the United States prior to the 2012 Presidential Election, whose candidates West and Smiley stated had ignored the plight of the poor.

I wonder what Dr. Cornel West thinks of Senator Tim Scott (R-South Carolina)?

Here's the video.

Bill O'Reilly Falsely Claimed MLK Event Had Barred Republicans!

And like always he got it wrong. But since Loserville is the channel that promotes the talking points of conservative agitators, it's not going sway anyone's mindset.

According to his own statements The March On Washington event excluded black Republicans and conservatives. Bill-O said that “All the speakers were Democrats. That was a glaring error and does not indicate a desire for inclusion.”

Many of the speeches were uplifting and respecting to America, but not all, according to the Factor host. Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, said this: “Somewhere along the way, white sheets were traded for buttoned down white shirts. Attack dogs and water hoses were traded for Tasers and widespread implementation of stop and frisk policies. Nooses were traded for handcuffs.”

Bill-O says this is “grievance mongering” and slap to the heroes of civil rights.

Bill-O says that President Barack Obama advocates "illusiveness" of achieving the American dream.

“Whose fault is that? The reason working Americans are having such a hard time is twofold. First, Mr. Obama’s attempt to manage the economy from Washington – that has largely failed. The private sector must drive economic expansion, not the Feds.” says the conservative agitator.

We're busy! Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). He and Congressman Eric Cantor (R-Virginia, House Majority Leader) were invited but declined. 

 “Even if jobs become more plentiful, you have to be able to do them, you have to speak proper English, be able to do basic math and conduct yourself responsibly. Millions of Americans have not mastered the basics of the marketplace.”

Bill-O didn't listen to the speech. He figured that the president is "boring" and too much like a "professor".

Code words for "uppity!"

“[…] If we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that during the course of 50 years, there were times when some of us, claiming to push for change, lost our way. […] Legitimate grievances against police brutality tipped into excuse-making for criminal behavior.” - President Barack Obama.

Bill-O would say, “And what had once been a call for equality of opportunity, the chance for all Americans to work hard and get ahead was too often framed as a mere desire for government support, as if we had no agency in our own liberation, as if poverty was an excuse for not raising your child and the bigotry of others was reason to give up on yourself. All of that history is how progress stalled.”

He called it an important and accurate statement, but also charged that the president and civil rights leaders want the government to provide for those who fail, even if it’s their own fault.

“The left wants paternalism, cradle-to-grave protections. And if you oppose that philosophy, there’s something wrong with you, and in some cases, they’ll accuse you of bigotry.”

As far as it goes, conservatives believe that the event was another attempt to play upon "racial grievance".

It's an event that worships President Barack Obama. After all they were flying around a flag with his image.

Besides Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter's mentors were once the segregationists who voted against civil rights anyways.

The Republicans were responsible for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. It was those Dixiecrats who stood in the way of passing civil rights.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican, don't you know!



But as the White conservatives and conservative agitators of color repeat these false talking points over and over, their allies in the Republican Party have passed restrictive voter identification laws. The conservative wing of the Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act. It makes it possible for state legislators to create voting precincts that could make it harder for the elderly and minorities to have access to the ballot box.

You may have heard of C.L. Bryant, the former NAACP president of Garland, Texas. He's the newest Black tin soldier of the racist right. He defends the Republican faithful. He is a member of the Tea Party and a co-chair for Freedom Works. Bryant has defended the group against allegations of racism. He is the founder of OneNationBacktoGod.com and the creator of the independent film documentary Runaway Slave, "a movie about the race to free the Black community from the slavery of tyranny and progressive policies."

He along with Alveda King, Dr. Benjamin Carson, Deenen Borelli, Juan Williams, Jesse Lee Peterson, Allen West as the Black tin soldiers of the racist right. They are the defenders of the bigotry, hate, and divisiveness within the Republican Party.

These guys are getting massive airplay on Loserville and Bill-O and That Guy Who Helped Obama Win are willing to have these guys on. Willing to allow these Black extremists say some of the most nastiest things about the Black community. After all if there's a Black person talking negative about the Black community, there's no racism.

The Guy Who Throws Shit To The Wall posted on Wednesday evening that the only Black senator wasn't invited to the March On Washington event. Calling it an act of segregation.

Senator Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) created a controversy where there was none. The racist right claims that the event barred Republicans. Being the only Black lawmaker in the U.S. Senate, one would think that's an accomplishment. He was promoted to U.S. Senator this year after Jim DeMint resigned to run the Heritage Foundation.

It turns out that Scott was invited to attend. He didn't want no part of it. The racist right claimed that Scott wasn't invited to speak at Wednesday’s 50th anniversary March on Washington.

Scott’s office declined an invitation to attend the ceremony as a spectator, according to a source connected to the event.

I've would have came but there were too many Black folks there! - Senator Tim Scott (R-South Carolina)

“Much of the speaking program was created based on those who were able to confirm availability to attend the event, and thus were able to speak at the event,” the source explained.

And based on an email exchange obtained by CQ Roll Call, the South Carolina Republican did receive an invitation to attend the festivities commemorating Martin Luther King Jr.’s delivery of the famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

The invitation, sent August 8th from the Coalition for the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, appears to have been a form letter to all members of Congress, with invitees listed as “Representative” rather than by name.

Within a day, Rachel Shelbourne, a staff assistant to Scott, had replied to the email with the following message:

“Thank you for extending to Senator Tim Scott the invitation to the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington on August 28th. Unfortunately, the Senator will be in South Carolina during this time, so he will be unable to attend the event. Please do, however, keep him in mind for future events you may be hosting.”

He's running for reelection (to serve the remaining term) in 2014 along with Senator Lindsay Graham R-South Carolina).

Turns out that an invite was sent to Scott, Congressmen John Boehner (R-Ohio), Congressman Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) and the Bush family. Each of them declined an offer to attend. Boehner is the current House Speaker and Cantor is the Republican Majority Leader.

George W. Bush is recovering from a heart surgery. George H.W. Bush is wheelchair bound and hardly makes speaking engagements.

Looks like Bill-O owes the people an apology.



You know that Bill-O would have been invited to the event. His friend Rev. Perm would be happy to have him at the podium. After all, I mean there's no one in the crowd saying "M-Fer I want more ice tea!"

Rev. Perm was a headliner at the March On Washington event. He offers Bill-O some advice about jumping to conclusions and what the Republican Party can do if they want to win Black voters.

See how he delivers the message.

Former GOP Congressman Acting A Like A Racist Fool!

Ex-Republican congressman acting a fool yet again! The dead beat Joe Walsh wants Blacks to achieve his dream of being out of the hood and into serving his buddies at the table.

Former Congressman Joe Walsh, the one term Republican from Illinois makes even more noise outside of the beltway.

He was defeated by Democrat Tammy Duckworth, a double amputee military veteran. She is the first Asian American woman from Illinois to serve in the U.S. congress. 

He is one of the many known Republican assholes who open mouth insert foot and part of their ass in. 

He is annoying. Just like Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota), Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa), Congressman Steve Stockman (R-Texas) and Congressman Darrell Issa (R-California).

Even out of the public limelight requires a former member of Congress to at least show dignity.

Apparently, the dead beat can't stay out of trouble. He can't keep his trap shut about race in America.

Is this what the Republican Party represents? 

Apparently so! 

Because this is what they think of the Black community, President Barack Obama and others of non-color.

They can line up the Black tin soldiers of the conservative media and racist right. Wind them up and make them move around and speak their two pennies of ignorance on behalf of the Black community.

He's some talk radio agitator in Chicago. Apparently he's gearing up for Savage Weiner or King Hippo's position when they croak. He're his version of an "I Have A Dream" speech. Prepare yourselves for the vomit bag.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. 

Unless you've been living under a rock, you should know that today is the anniversary, as over the last week, every columnist, pundit and cable news host has been emphatically asking if Dr. King’s dream has been realized. 

In the build-up to this momentous occasion, many people have invoked King’s legacy to promote their own various causes. Yesterday, President Obama was asked by morning radio host Tom Joyner what King would think of Obamacare. 

The president quickly responded that King, “would like it.” While our commander-in-chief usurped King’s dream to selfishly promote his own legacy, our country’s race-baiter-in-chief, Rev. Al Sharpton is using this week to push back against the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling to strike down parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. 

Of all the commentators who have been  asking whether King’s dream has been achieved, FOX News’ Juan Williams seems to be the only one with whom I agree. When asked by Chris Wallace if the dream has been fulfilled, 

Williams noted that there isn't, “any question that [African Americans] have come along way,” before importantly pointing out that blacks have to address the problems that are created within their communities. 

“I think that if you look at the realities of today, you've got to talk about things like family breakdown,” Williams said. 

“You've got to talk about the fact that 70 percent of black children today are born out of wedlock. I think Dr. King would cry.” 

I agree with Juan, but instead of invoking King’s legacy to lament about present problems I’ve decided to share my own dream. 

I have a dream that all black parents will have the right to choose where their kids attend school. 

I have a dream that all black boys and girls will grow up with a father. 

I have a dream that young black men will stop shooting other young black men. 

I have a dream that all young black men will say “no” to gangs and to drugs. 

I have a dream that all black young people will graduate from high school. 

I have a dream that young black men won’t become fathers until after they’re married and they have a job. 

I have a dream that young unmarried black women will say “no” to young black men who want to have sex. 

I have a dream that today’s black leadership will quit blaming racism and “the system” for what ails black America.

I have a dream that black America will take responsibility for improving their own lives. 

I have a dream that one day black America will cease their dependency on the government plantation, which has enslaved them to lives of poverty, and instead depend on themselves, their families, their churches, and their communities.

Hey Joe, do me a favor! Take care of them five kids! You're "unemployed" and you can't raise them children. You're a 50 something year old White guy. How the hell can you say that Black women are unmarried and having children when you were twice divorce and owing the government hundreds of dollars for failure to appear and child support? 

You and Allen West need to take a seat and go back to the abyss. The Tea Party is dead.

There's a reason to continue the march for progress and prosperity. It's because of people like him. He's the reason why I conclude that Republicans are the condescending bigots the left points them out to be.

Keep lining up these clowns up and we'll be having a circus.

This is a reason to defeat the Republicans in the midterm elections.

The March On Washington Told By First Black President!

Obama: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech inspired a nation. King. The 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington.

President Barack Obama, former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter are headliners at the 50th Anniversary of the March On Washington. It's not clear if the two other living presidents will be speakers at this event, but the Bushes aren't speaking. It's clear that Republicans have no intent on making any statements on this historic day.

Oh, I see that The Guy Who Throws Shit On The Wall posted that Senator Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) wasn't "invited" to the event. He could of have went to the event. The more the better. But unlike, the president, Scott doesn't have any intentions to help those of color. Scott would never have been there. He wouldn't even join the Historically Black Caucus members.

The racist right once had Chalk E. Becker, Alveda King and Palin Da Ass speak on the steps of the Lincoln memorial for their stupid Tea Party rally. They had the audacity to speak upon the name of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. while attacking the first Black president.

Alveda King is the niece of the late civil rights leader. She thinks "Uncle Martin" was a great man. Being only a single digit at the time of his death, she and others created the notion that her uncle was a Republican.

And also being a former member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King has spoke out against her cousins (the surviving children of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) and the NAACP for advocating a "racist" agenda against Whites and the Republican Party.

President Barack Obama delivers his passionate remarks.



His speech would have detractors. The detractors are of course, the racist right.

They'll complain no matter what the president does!

So it wouldn't matter.

Cory Booker: It's Alright If They Think I'm Gay!

Newark mayor Cory Booker is addressing gay rumors.

The candidate for the open U.S. Senate seat in New Jersey may have stepped one foot out the door and may eventually come out the closet.

The Newark mayor Cory Booker is one of the rising stars in politics. He declared his interest in running for senate a few years back to take on ailing Frank Lautenberg.

The ailing senator died this year and now it streamlined Booker's intent to run.

Now as he's now the Democratic nominee, he's getting flack from the left and the right. The left thinks that Booker is too inexperienced and they think his business intentions along with his cozy relationships with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and the Republican governor Chris Christie are too controversial.

What got the news buzzing about the Super Mayor is his love life.

The Washington Post interviews the Newark mayor and they get to talking about why he hasn't settled down with a woman.

After that, Booker says, he started dating more — although, he clarifies, not with Arianna Huffington, with whom he was rumored to have been involved. But he has kept that part of his life private because he says he needs some sacred spaces. Huffington is the president of AOL News and founder of The Huffington Post.

“Because how unfair is it to a young lady to put them in the spotlight if they haven’t signed up for that yet?” he says. “And people who think I’m gay, some part of me thinks it’s wonderful. Because I want to challenge people on their homophobia. I love seeing on Twitter when someone says I’m gay, and I say, ‘So what does it matter if I am? So be it. I hope you are not voting for me because you are making the presumption that I’m straight.’ ”

The right openly hates this guy. They think he's another Barack Obama. They think of the president as a "Socialist", "Marxist", "racist", "anti-American", "ineffective leader". That's what Booker will be facing if he should intent on running for president in 2016.

Now if he would win the U.S. Senate special election, he will serve out the remaining term. He will join Senator Tim Scott (R-South Carolina). Scott is the only Black senator. Mo Cowan, the first Black man to served as a Massachusetts senator. He served the term for eight months. Scott has signaled intention to run for a full term in 2014.

Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) is the current senator. He won the special election and took office this month.

The Washington Post stated that during Saturday’s events for the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, Cory Booker dabbed his dome with a white handkerchief on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and bellowed, “We still have work to do.” The next morning, the mayor of Newark appeared as a guest on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and bemoaned “too much division going on in our politics.”

Booker is no stranger to Washington. His parents met here. He was born here. He spent his Christmas breaks from Oxford here. Now a political sensation and media darling with nearly 1.5 million Twitter followers, the 44-year-old seems to have been engineered in a political lab to walk the halls of Congress.

He has gained a reputation for his personal involvement in public service, including going on a ten-day hunger strike outdoors to draw attention to the dangers of open-air drug dealing, living on a "food stamp" budget to raise awareness of food insecurity, shoveling the driveway of a constituent upon request, allowing Hurricane Sandy victims into his home, helping a constituent propose to his girlfriend, rescuing a dog from freezing temperatures, saving a woman from a house fire at his own risk and rescuing a dog that had been locked in a crate.

Considered one of the most prominent Democrats in New Jersey, he formally declared his candidacy for the United States Senate in the 2013 special election to succeed Frank Lautenberg, who died in office. Prior to announcing his decision to run for the Senate, Booker had been considering a run in 2014, and following this announcement Lautenberg had announced (prior to his death) that he would not seek reelection in 2014. On August 13, he won the Senate Democratic primary, and will face Steve Lonegan in the October 16 general election.

Laura Ingraham Pops Off At John Lewis And Civil Rights Leaders!

Apparently the conservative agitator hated the March On Washington celebration. She goes off on the civil rights leaders and Congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia).

And she knows Congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia). Media Matters for America puts another huge one out there for the folks to decide on.

Laura Ingraham (Lo-In) is a fixture as the official stand in for Bill-O.

Lo-In competes in an industry of sharks. She been bounced from network to network affiliate for the last ten years now and it's apparently going to happen again. Sometimes some of the stuff she says is pretty stupid.

Media Matters has always keep the conservative agitators in the spotlight whenever they say something so offensive, the advertisers distance themselves from them.

The Raw Story reports that Ingraham was bitching about the March On Washington commentators.

Congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia) is an active participant in the Civil Rights Movement. He was criticized by that conservative agitator. That agitator personally knows Lewis.

Following the lead of conservative media outlets like Breitbart and The Blaze, Ingraham lashed out Martin Luther King III for saying on Saturday that “the color of one’s skin remains a license to profile, to arrest and to even murder.”

“But it all comes down to just George Zimmerman?” she asked. “The goal was, as our caller said, to divide. To co-opt the legacy of Martin Luther King into a modern day liberal agenda, a left-wing agenda, progressive agenda. Whatever you want to call it. From gay marriage to immigration amnesty was thrown in for good measure. We talked about the Voting Rights Act.”

To make her point about immigration, Ingraham played a portion of Lewis’ speech.

“We must say to the Congress, pass comprehensive immigration reform,” Lewis said. “It doesn’t make sense that millions of our people…”

But the congressman’s remarks were interrupted by a loud echoing gunshot followed by a few moments of silence. Ingraham offered no explanation for the sound effect.

In a 1965 march for voting rights that would come to be known as “Bloody Sunday,” Lewis had his skull fractured by Alabama State Troopers while walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Even after his friend Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by a gunman in 1968, Lewis continued his commitment to the civil rights movement. He went on to settle in Georgia and run for Congress.

Colin Powell: I'm Worried That My Fellow [Republicans] Are Too Extreme!

Former Bush secretary of state Colin Powell disgusted with Republicans continued obstruction.

Former Bush adviser is really considering his options. He may drop the Republican label and become an independent. Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State under George W. Bush went to CBS to talk about Civil Rights in America. He had an opportunity to talk about the Republican infighting, the George Zimmerman verdict and the 50th Anniversary of The March On Washington.

In 2008 and 2012, the former secretary of state endorsed Barack Obama for president pissing off the racist right. Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) and his allies think that Powell's endorsement of Obama is an example of "Blacks voting solely on race and not issues"! Perennial loser Mitt Romney's camp thought that Powell was already a "Republican In Name Only."

King Hippo slammed the endorsement as an example of "us Black folk" willing to support Obama no matter what he does because "he's protected by his race" and "we Black folk" already assume that the Republicans and their conservative allies are racist anyway.

That Guy Who Throws Shit To The Wall and others of the racist right outlined an alleged affair that Powell had with a Romanian politician. The cyber hacker pushed the alleged affair to the conservative agitators.

Former Vice President Dick Chaney calls Powell a turncoat and refuse to acknowledge him as a friend.

They're currently feuding with one another.

Powell appears on Face The Nation along with civil rights leader and politico Congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia).

Powell has been critical of the divisive voting laws that Republican governors signed on. They've signed on voter identification laws that requires residents to provide state identification to vote. It's a means to undermine "voter fraud".

Again voter fraud makes up less than 5% of the issues facing America right now. What many critics call it is another ploy to undermine the Democratic Party's core supporters Black, Hispanic and young voters.

See you can have a firearm permit as proof of identification. But a college identification isn't valid. If you don't drive and you have no means of obtaining an identification (but your registered to vote), you can't vote.

The United States Justice Department is suing the state of Texas right now for this type of nonsense.

North Carolina is one of the many states that passed intrusive voter's identification laws. It's being challenged by civil right groups. Powell openly criticized the Republican state governor Pat McCrory over this.

Colin Powell warned that Republicans are chasing for a needle in a haystack. He said that the Trayvon Martin situation and these intrusive laws like voter identification are going to be the rally call for Black Americans.

Also as a father, Powell elaborates on the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman situation.

“I think that it will be seen as a questionable judgment on the part of the judicial system down there, but I don’t know if it will have staying power,” Powell said. “These cases come along, and they blaze across the midnight sky and then after a period of time, they’re forgotten.”

Powell also said that President Barack Obama was right to speak about the case, and the experience of African Americans in general, and encouraged more leaders to do so.

“I’d like to see [Obama] be more passionate about race questions, and I think that was an accurate characterization of some of the things that we were exposed to,” Powell said.

Bob Schieffer asks Powell about Syria, Egypt, the president's reaction to the Zimmerman verdict, Chris Lane murder, the Republican infighting, the voter's ID laws and the March On Washington.

Conservative Outrage Over Obama Flag!

The March On Washington wants participants to Revisit The Dream. The Racist Right considers it another worshiping cult for President Barack Obama.

The racist right once again proves that even a freedom of expression is too much for them to tolerate.

You have to be a clear cut racist bigot to get all flamed up over a demonstrator waving a mock American flag with the image of President Barack Obama.

At the 50th Anniversary of the March On Washington, many Americans had an opportunity to listen to speakers promote the visionary of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This is suppose to be about progressive change. A rally call to get things done. Promotion of equal rights for all Americans. Not one group! Everyone!

The conservative agitators didn't go. They're on the sidelines bitching about how these people disgrace Old Glory with the image of the president.

The Turd Flipper and her friends are worked up over the flying of the Obama flag.

They consider it "hero worship" and "cult brainwashing".

Yes, let your freedom of speech parade down the social networking shitholes you visit.

Hell we'll throwing you a tissue for all that bitching and crying over it!

Here's some of the racist responses to the flag!






This is your America, people. The racist right once again rise out of the ugly cesspool. The freedom of speech and expression is only good when they're protesting the president. Of course with pictures of the president looking like Hitler or with a bone in his nose is not offensive! But his image on a mock flag is!

Totally backwards!

March On Washington Celebrates 50 Years!

Can we achieve the dream?

August 28, 1963 was the movement of progressive change. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. managed to pull hundreds of thousands of individuals from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument to deliver a speech to demand equal rights.

The celebration of 50 years will commerce on Washington today with the Rev. Perm (Al Sharpton) and Martin Luther King III. They're promoting the March On Washington in regards to issues that made the news.

The leaders say their agenda revolves around five areas: Economic parity, equity in education, voting rights, health care access and criminal justice.

Of course, priority one is the Supreme Court's striking down a portion of the Voter's Right Act. That's one of the main issues that has the Civil Right leaders upset. Then comes the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial. Yeah, a lot of Black people are upset that a reckless man walked free when he shot an unarmed teenager. We also have the controversial NYPD stop and frisk tactics. The federal court rejected the policy and the New York mayor Michael Bloomberg tells the media, full steam ahead. And of course, the Chris Lane murder. The racist right have made noise about the Oklahoma tragedy. A man from Australia was killed by two Black teens and the racist right has claimed that the Civil Rights leaders don't care about crimes against White people. This will be a topic at the event.

In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech advocating racial harmony during the march.

The march was organized by a group of civil rights, labor, and religious organizations, under the theme "jobs, and freedom".

Estimates of the number of participants varied from 200,000 to 300,000.

It's not determined on how many will show up for this event. But if people are hoping for progressive change, it's going to be a large crowd. Hopefully a large crowd can bring forth a voice of reason and voice of change.

The president's agenda has been squandered by the racist right. The Republicans and their allies in the conservative movement have maintained this notion that if the president fails, the country wins or perhaps they win.

They've lost. They're losing badly in the shifting demographics. They can't rally the old bigots anymore.

They're dying off. And now what's left is trying to convince their offspring that it's possible to save what's left of the "good ol' days".

The mission statement:

August 28, 2013 citizens from across this country will converge upon our nation’s capital to commemorate and celebrate the historic March On Washington which occurred 50 years ago on August 28, 1963.This site provides information and updates on the numerous commemorative marches that are being planned throughout this country.  In addition, this site provides citizens an opportunity to leave their remembrances and pictures of the march that changed the world.

SCOTUS Gives Voting Rights The Ax!

Conservative wing of the Supreme Court struck down provision that prevents voter discrimination.

In a major decision, the conservative wing of the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act that advocated for Southern states to be monitored for scheming during elections.

The progressive movement is outraged by the decision. Many figured that the Supreme Court is now acting like a bunch of activists. The 5-4 decision once again proves that each decision made by the court will greatly affect everything.

In Shelby County v. Holder, the United States Supreme Court struck down Section 4(b) of the Act and its formula for requiring preclearance as unconstitutional based on current conditions, saying it was rational and needed at the time it was enacted but is no longer necessary, notwithstanding the fact that Congress had nearly-unanimously reauthorized the Act in 2006. Preclearance itself was not struck down, but has no effect unless Congress passes a new formula.

That portion of the Act in question was designed to prevent discrimination in voting by requiring all state and local governments with a history of voting discrimination to get approval from the federal government before making any changes to their voting laws or procedures, no matter how small. In an opinion by Chief Justice John G. Roberts that was joined by Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito, the Court did not invalidate the principle that preclearance can be required.

Petitioner Shelby County, in the covered jurisdiction of Alabama, sued Attorney Genera Eric Holder in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C, seeking a declaratory judgment that sections 4(b) and 5 are facially unconstitutional, as well as a permanent injunction against their enforcement. The District Court upheld the Act, finding that the evidence before Congress in 2006 was sufficient to justify reauthorizing §5 and continuing §4(b)'s coverage formula. The D. C. Circuit affirmed. After surveying the evidence in the record, that court accepted Congress’s conclusion that §2 litigation remained inadequate in the covered jurisdictions to protect the rights of minority voters, that §5 was therefore still necessary, and that the coverage formula continued to pass constitutional muster.