TALLAHASSEE - A black Republican group has put up billboards in Florida and South Carolina saying the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican, a claim that black 
leaders say is ridiculous.
The National Black Republican Association has paid for billboards showing an image of the civil rights leader and the words "Martin Luther King Jr. was REPUBLICAN." Told about the billboards, the Rev. Joseph Lowery let out a soft chuckle that grew stronger as he began to think more about the idea.
"These guys never give up, do they?" said Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King. "Lord have mercy."
Seven billboards have gone up in six Florida counties, and another in Orangeburg, S.C., said Frances Rice, the Republican group's chairwoman. Part of its mission is to highlight what she said is the Democratic Party's racist past.
"I knew the King family well. We were all Republicans," said Rice, 64. "There was no way Dr. King would have wanted to be in the party of the Ku Klux Klan."
Her assertion angered state Rep. Joe Gibbons, a Democrat who chairs the Florida Legislative Black Caucus.
"Nobody knew who was leading the Ku Klux Klan, they had sheets over their heads. Was she at the cross burning meetings?" Gibbons said with a disgust that was just as strong when he talked about the billboards. "To make a statement like that is ridiculous. To make a claim without presenting proof is bogus."
The King Center in Atlanta says there is no proof that King was ever a Republican. Rice stands by her claim.
Monday, July 07, 2008
Martin Luther King Jr. Was A Republican?
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
How Can We Call Ourselves Civilized?
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Hospital video shows no one helped dying woman
BY JOHN MARZULLI
A shocking video shows a woman dying on the floor in the psych ward at Kings County Hospital, while people around her, including a security guard, did nothing to help.
After an hour, another mental patient finally got the attention of the indifferent hospital workers, according to the tape, obtained by the Daily News.
Worse still, the surveillance tape suggests hospital staff may have falsified medical charts to cover the utter lack of treatment provided Esmin Green before she died.
"Thank God for the videotape because no one would have believed this could have happened," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
"There's a clear possibility of criminal wrongdoing with regard to recordkeeping, and that has to be investigated."
The city Department of Investigation is part of a sweeping probe that has brought some changes to the ward known as G Building.
A federal suit filed last year in Brooklyn alleged neglect and abuse of mental patients at the hospital. The suit sparked an investigation by the Brooklyn U.S. attorney's civil rights unit before the June 19 death.
Two different security guards spotted Green, a native of the island of Jamaica, prone on the floor and did nothing, the tape shows. They have been fired, along with four other staffers.
Green, 49, taken to the unit for "agitation," keels over out of her chair at 5:32a.m., according to the time stamp on the video. She had been sitting about 3feet from an observation window. Two other patients were in the room.
Green is lying facedown on the floor, her legs splayed, when a security guard strolls by at 5:53 a.m., looks at her for about 20 seconds and then walks away.
She is writhing on the floor, thrashing her legs, about 6 a.m., when her medical chart contends she was "awake, up and about, went to the bathroom."
Green rolls on her back at 6:04a.m. She stops moving at 6:08 a.m., but two minutes later a security guard pushed his chair into camera view.
He never gets out of the chair, but looks at Green and scoots away. A female patient who was in and out of the room finally brings a clinic staffer to check the woman and a crash cart is summoned.
The medical chart claims she was "sitting quietly in [the] waiting room" at 6:20 a.m., although she was already dead. The cause of death is still under investigation.
"We are shocked and distressed by this situation," the Health and Hospitals Corp. said in a statement.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
McCain Would Make Blacks Miss Bush
John McCain is showing no love to black Republicans say some who are being left out of his campaign outreach. According to Yvonne R. Davis, a former national co-chair for African Americans for Bush, McCain's efforts to enlist black support pale in comparison to soon to be former President George Bush's.
Minus a couple of black folks seen with him on the campaign trail, you still don't see many in the room with McCain when he is meeting and greeting or standing in crowds.
What you see with McCain are packs of what Ron Heifetz in the Harvard Executive Leadership School calls older "silverback" white males. When President Bush was on the stump in 2000 and 2004, and later in the White House, African American Republicans often heard that President Bush strongly admonished his staff for inviting the same old white guys to everything.
As fellow Afrospear bloggers Jack and Jill Politics points out, come November, black Republicans may find themselves down with Obama afterall. In general, black folks are pretty slow to warm to John McCain because although he has consistently stated that he was wrong, many remember that John McCain once voted against the holiday celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King and recently voted against raising the minimum wage. And he refuses to end the war.
Bill Clinton says Barack Obama must 'kiss my ass' for his support
Bill Clinton is so bitter about Barack Obama's victory over his wife Hillary that he has told friends the Democratic nominee will have to beg for his wholehearted support.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Rove picks the wrong metaphor to slam Obama
Karl Rove has made it clear on multiple occasions that he actively dislikes Barack Obama — if there’s a more helpful testament to the strength of Obama’s character, it doesn’t come to mind — and he continues to make his criticisms of the Democratic candidate more and more personal.
ABC News’ Christianne Klein reports that at a breakfast with Republican insiders at the Capitol Hill Club this morning, former White House senior aide Karl Rove referred to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, as “coolly arrogant.”
“Even if you never met him, you know this guy,” Rove said, per Christianne Klein. “He’s the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by.”
Rove said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., “needs to come right at him.” He referred to the latest Newsweek poll showing Obama with a 15-point lead over McCain as nonsense, though he used a more scatological synonym. Rove said he was heading over to the White House for lunch and a chat with the President, Klein reports.
Andrew Sullivan noted that Rove is “revealing more about his own insecurities than Obama’s.” I think that’s certainly true, but it’s worth going even further.
Promised Obama-Native event in limbo
WASHINGTON - Scheduling for an event to have Sen. Barack Obama make an appearance before several tribes and Indians has turned problematic.
Before the Illinois senator became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, he made a pledge to Kalyn Free, founder of the Indigenous Democratic Network, that he would appear at a tribally focused town hall-style meeting. Initial logistics of the agreement called on him to speak at a reservation or Indian-owned venue somewhere in the Southwest before the Democratic National Convention in August if he became his party's candidate.
Obama's verbal promise was seen as key among influential Indian political activists, and it played a factor for some Native individuals who threw their support behind his candidacy. The promise even partially influenced the decision of at least one of the four Native superdelegates who will attend the DNC to cast their votes for him. All four Native superdelegates, including Free, have verbally pledged their support to the senator from Illinois.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Obama donates, asks donors to help Clinton's debt
WASHINGTON — Barack Obama told Hillary Rodham Clinton's top financial backers Thursday that he personally has donated $2,300 to her campaign and more significantly has asked his biggest donors to help pay off her more than $20 million debt.
Obama made the announcement at a meeting with Clinton donors who have been frustrated that the Democratic presidential nominee-in-waiting had not done more to help her pay the bills even as they are expected to help fund his campaign.
My Blog is Two Years Old
Here's several news and links:
A requiem for James Byrd whose life was taken by hate:
http://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/james-byrd-jr-may-2-1949-june-7-1998/#comment-7482
Thanks, Ann, for posting the article and the beautiful rose that was presented in James Byrd's memory. May he rests in peace.
Abagond's post on why so few White men marry Black women:
http://abagond.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/why-so-few-white-men-marry-black-women/
A very hard-hitting, yet truthful article. It's not for those who are invested in the status quo.
Hate Crimes, More than Black and White:
http://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/racism-not-always-black-and-white/
That's so true as this nation is becoming more and more multiracial, multicultural, and mutiethnic by the hour. People who hate the changes are getting more vocal and sometimes violent. This is a must-read post by Ann. Thanks, Ann!
Ann also have another post regarding how America treats Black women who are victims of serial killers:
http://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/from-the-archives-poor-black-female-cheap-lives/
From slavery onward, Black female lives have always been expendable by the larger society, even from our own Black community. As long as people think that there are no Black serial killers, that Black women's lives worth little from the larger society, no woman is safe. Check out my older article here.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Thamia Kelley is missing
http://www.letstalkhonestly.com/missingblackwomen.html
Queen Strips Mugabe of Knighthood
Queen Elizabeth II has stripped Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s strongman president for nearly 30 years, of his honorary knighthood as a “mark of revulsion” at the human rights abuses and “abject disregard” for democracy over which he has presided, the British Foreign Office announced Wednesday.
The rebuke showed the extent of international frustration over Mr. Mugabe’s insistence to go ahead with a presidential runoff on Friday, even though his sole opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai, pulled out of race on Sunday because of the persistent violence and intimidation against him, his party and their supporters.
Five Myths About the New Wiretapping Law
Sometime today, the Senate is likely to approve the most comprehensive overhaul of American surveillance law since the Watergate era. Unless you're a government lawyer, a legal scholar, a masochist, or an insomniac, chances are you haven't read the 114-page bill. Don't beat yourself up: Neither have most of the 293 House members who voted for it last week. Ditto the mainstream press, who seem to have relied chiefly on summaries provided by the same lawmakers who hadn't read it.
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