Free Republic

Dan Rather: 'Articulate' Obama Couldn't Even 'Sell Watermelons' By Geoffrey Dickens Created 03/08/2010 - 14:41 HDNet's Dan Rather stepped on one mine after another in the racial minefield that exists when talking about the nation's first black President as the former CBS anchor, on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show on March 8th, uttered the following take on the President's ability to get health care passed and how the GOP and independents would view it. DAN RATHER: Part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama's leadership. And the Republicans will make a case and a...

It sounds like a cheesy Hollywood movie: White college girls from Arkansas go to a national step dancing competition -- a dance form that is a hallmark of black fraternities and sororities -- and, gee whiz, win the whole darned thing! Boy, are the black sorority sisters steamed! But wait! In the final reel, five days after the results set off a national ruckus, show organizers say they discovered a "scoring discrepancy." They say the second-place sorority from Indiana University, the pink-and-green Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation's oldest black sorority, is also a winner! Each team gets $100,000 in scholarships!...

A committee of scholars appointed by Boston University concluded today that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. plagiarized passages in his dissertation for a doctoral degree at the university 36 years ago. "There is no question," the committee said in a report to the university's provost, "but that Dr. King plagiarized in the dissertation by appropriating material from sources not explicitly credited in notes, or mistakenly credited, or credited generally and at some distance in the text from a close paraphrase or verbatim quotation."

CINCINNATI (AP) — Some Cincinnati civil rights leaders are demanding more work for blacks on public school construction projects. Members of the NAACP and a Baptist ministers group warned at a school board meeting Monday night that they would oppose future tax levies if minority contracting figures aren't improved. School officials say nearly 12 percent of the $704 million spent so far on a sweeping school-rebuilding effort has gone to minority-owned companies. But National Association for the Advancement of Colored People local president Christopher Smitherman and others contend the district is overstating things. While disagreeing with the NAACP estimates, school...

Irish authorities say a Slovak man unwittingly carried hidden explosives on board a weekend flight to Dublin after a Slovakian airport-security test went awry. The 49-year-old electrician was arrested Tuesday, but released without charge after Slovak security officials alerted their Dublin counterparts to the screw-up.

Video Of Bing Crosby Singing "White Christmas" from movie Holiday Inn.

Personalized license plate owner: It's an ode to Harleys, not racism By Chad D. Lerch | Muskegon Chronicle December 10, 2009, 3:11PM MUSKEGON COUNTY -- Richard Macaulay is a Harley-Davidson lover through and through. The Muskegon man said he takes pride in his Harley-Davidson Dyna Wide Glide motorcycle, which he keeps in immaculate condition. Macaulay said he was shocked to receive a letter from the Michigan Secretary of State's office recently stating that his personalized license plate of seven years had been revoked. The Secretary of State's office informed the retired factory worker that a complaint from a Muskegon Heights...

If you are easily offended, please don't read this.I've found the relatively new autosuggest feature on Google to be a pretty useful heuristic.  When you don't quite know what exactly you're searching for, this feature suggests phrases to complete or refine your query. It's not clear what the properties of the algorithm are that Google utilizes for this feature--i.e., how the phrases magically appear, but it's fair to say that they are correlated with the number of searches performed for the combination of words typed by users at a large scale.

Speaking to a respected Hispanic leader in KCK, Dennis Moore reportedly called decorated and disabled Marine Veteran and Congressional Opponent "White Trash" in a recent (recorded) telephone conversation. The KCK leader, who has formally supported the incumbent congressman, is supporting Daniel Gilyeat's candidacy for the Kansas 3rd District Congressional seat. Dennis Moore called the KCK man after hearing the Hispanic community leader's support had changed. Dennis Moore said he had $7 million for the campaign and could not believe the naturalized citizen was supporting "White Trash" over Moore.

TGL has been following the devolution of political discourse into fear-mongering and apparent race-baiting since Van Jones, the former adviser to the Council on Environmental Quality, first got entangled in it. Like many commentators, this blogger has felt that the level of disrespect shown for Obama, and indeed the office of the president, of late was fueled by racism. At least as far as Rush Limbaugh goes, the nagging question has been answered. Limbaugh called for segregation of school buses in response to an incident in which a white boy was beaten up by two black boys. Here's the chain...

WASHINGTON — President Obama has long suggested that he would like to move beyond race. The question now is whether the country will let him. He woke up on Wednesday to a rapidly intensifying debate about how his race factors into the broader discussion of civility in politics, a question prompted in part by former President Jimmy Carter’s assertion Tuesday that racism was behind a Republican lawmaker’s outburst against Mr. Obama last week as the president addressed a joint session of Congress. Even before that, several conservatives had accused their liberal counterparts of unfairly tainting them as racists for engaging...

The Hill: Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said that it's not enough for African-Americans to levy allegations of racism against the right-leaning protesters, and that the media must look into their views. "I want those people talked to; I want them interviewed," Waters told the liberal Bill Press Radio show in a podcast. "I want journalists to be all over those rallies and the marches with the birthers and the teabaggers."

The media should investigate the racial views of conservative activists like the ones who descended on Washington last weekend, one liberal congresswoman said Wednesday. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said that it's not enough for African-Americans to levy allegations of racism against the right-leaning protesters, and that the media must look into their views. "I want those people talked to; I want them interviewed," Waters told the liberal Bill Press Radio show in a podcast. "I want journalists to be all over those rallies and the marches with the birthers and the teabaggers." "What I'm looking for is the very people...

As public outrage in some parts of the country against President Obama seems to grow louder by the week, some Democrats believe that his sharpest critics are driven by racism. At a fall gathering of the Democratic National Committee in Austin, several Democrats expressed dismay with the anger exploding mostly from white Americans, such as the tens of thousands who marched on the nation's capital Saturday. African-American lawmakers like Texas Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson say the tone of the president's critics increasingly suggests what is motivating their vitriol. "It's hurting the spirit of this country," Johnson said, expressing worry about...

CNN: The longtime congresswoman, whose district includes much of Los Angeles, also described some senators who are opposed to the health care reform bill as "Neanderthals." "Not only are we going to do everything we can to organize and put pressure on the senators — some of whom are Neanderthals — we're going to say to the president, 'We want you to use every weapon in your basket in order to get those senators to do what they should be doing,'" Rep. Maxine Waters said.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama said Thursday the Supreme Court was "moving the ball" on affirmative action in this week's decision favoring white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., but he added that the court had not ruled out the use of racial preferences in the future.

PHOENIX — The Rev. Al Sharpton on Friday called for opponents of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has aggressively cracked down on illegal immigration, to videotape alleged racial profiling by the sheriff’s office. The civil rights leader said the videos will help the U.S. Department of Justice in an investigation of alleged civil rights abuses by Arpaio’s office. “We’re gonna start some freedom rides around this county, to show how people of a certain skin color are treated different than other people,” Sharpton told a crowd of several hundred people at the Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church in Phoenix. Sharpton...

ATLANTA (AP) - It's been two months since 2-year-old Cori pulled the gold stud from her left earlobe, and the piercing is threatening to close as her mother, Maggie Anderson, hunts for a replacement. It's not that the earring was all that rare—but finding the right store has become a quest of Quixotic proportions. Maggie and John Anderson of Chicago vowed four months ago that for one year, they would try to patronize only black-owned businesses. The "Empowerment Experiment" is the reason John had to suffer for hours with a stomach ache and Maggie no longer gets that brand-name lather...

Vow-renewal ceremonies are always inherently offensive, but Seal and Heidi Klum really took the (Hostess, cream-filled) cake when they decided to give their ceremony a “white trash” theme. Which begs the questions: Is the concept of white trash offensive? Is it mostly or only offensive when implemented by a German model and a British black man wearing a mullet and American flag jacket? Here’s the thing with Heidi Klum: She’s never been one to tread carefully when it comes to issues of race, either because she’s German and doesn’t understand America’s brand of political correctness, or because she’s kind of...

“No contact anywhere with an illegal alien!” conservative talk show host Michael Savage advised his U.S. listeners this week on how to avoid the swine flu. “And that starts in the restaurants" where he said, you “don’t know if they wipe their behinds with their hands!” And Thursday, Boston talk radio host Jay Severin was suspended after calling Mexican immigrants "criminalians" during a discussion of swine flu and saying that emergency rooms had become "essentially condos for Mexicans." That’s tepid compared to some of the xenophobic reactions spreading like an emerging virus across the Internet. “This disgusting blight is because...

Did you know that only racists turned out for the recent nationwide "tea parties"?! "Let's be very honest about what this is about," actress/comedian Janeane Garofalo said on Keith Olbermann's MSNBC show. "It's not about bashing Democrats. It's not about taxes. They have no idea what the Boston Tea Party was about. They don't know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of tea-bagging rednecks." Oh. A few days after Garofalo's analysis of why many Americans took to the streets in...

In a country long divided by race, Barack Obama argues that Americans generally have been colorblind in judging him. Yet old racial stereotypes and Internet-fueled falsehoods flourish about the first black president. In Obama's first two months in office, a New York tabloid took heat over a cartoon appearing to portray the president as a monkey; a California mayor resigned after distributing a picture of watermelons on the White House lawn; and an e-mail making the rounds refers to Obama as "the magic mulatto," with exaggerated ears and nose. Disproved and disputed claims about his religion and citizenship, namely untruths...

The NAACP is accusing Wells Fargo and HSBC of forcing blacks into subprime mortgages while whites with identical qualifications got lower rates. Class-action lawsuits will be filed against the banks Friday in federal court in Los Angeles, Austin Tighe, co-lead counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, told The Associated Press. Black homebuyers have been 3 1/2 times more likely to receive a subprime loan than white borrowers, and six times more likely to get a subprime rate when refinancing, Tighe said. Blacks still were disproportionately steered into subprime loans when their credit scores, income and...

President Obama declined to make race a central theme of his campaign, but the man he tapped as the country's top law enforcement officer is making it clear that race relations will be a priority. In a speech last week, Attorney General Eric Holder called America a "nation of cowards" when it comes to discussing race, a statement applauded by civil rights leaders. "The civil rights community now has a partner in the Justice Department rather than an adversary," said Robert Rubin, legal director for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco.

I write today regarding the College's decision to invite a particular speaker to our campus. This decision to invite her on behalf of the College is one that involves our whole campus and signals that we as a whole will receive her openly. Unfortunately, I am certain she will not receive many of us so kindly. I'm speaking of Ann Coulter, and I am advising you to rescind her invitation. The United States is a nation that prides itself on acceptance and diversity and refuses to accept any less. The same holds true for the College. We are proud of...

There was a time when it was considered poor taste for comedians to attack a current President of the United States, but that day ended with SNL and Richard Nixon. The world has since flipped, and now people worry when the comedians are not ripping the President. Thus far, most comedians are having difficulty targeting President-Elect Obama. The reason is simple; most comedians are liberals. They just don't see anything worthy of mockery in him. Case in point, this loon, who actually gets paid to "direct talent" for Comedy Central. Comedy Central Director of Talent JoAnn Grigioni says she sympathizes...

In 2006, Publix Supermarket Charities donated almost $30 million to causes that included Habitat for Humanity, the March of Dimes and United Way. But Al Piña isn't satisfied. Mr. Piña, the chairman of the Florida Minority Community Reinvestment Coalition, believes Publix isn't giving enough to people of color who donate to other people of color. Welcome to the latest trend in racial extortion. According to a study that Mr. Piña commissioned from the California-based activist group Greenlining, Publix gave only 2.81% of its grants in 2006 to "minority-led organizations." Minority-led is defined as groups whose staff and board of directors...

On Thursday’s Countdown show on MSNBC, New York Times columnist Frank Rich charged that it looks "morally bad" and "idiotic" that Republicans have not elected a black candidate to federal office in six years. The Republican party also seemed to remind Rich of South Africa’s racist Apartheid policy of the past: "The fact is, this isn`t South Africa 25 years ago, this is a major political party that is essentially all white. And the hierarchy of it is definitely white. There hasn`t been a new black Republican elected to federal office, I think, in six years. And so, what does...

From NBC's Don Teague I’ve heard some things over the past few weeks that raise alarm bells in my head. Among the most concerning, coming from members of the media and pundits, is that racism is the only way Barack Obama can lose the presidential election. As a person who’s worked in “red states” for much of my career, I feel compelled to offer an alternative view. Specifically, I want to give you the perspective of my neighbor, Dan. Yes, you can call him “Dan the neighbor.” “Dan the neighbor” is not a racist. (snip) He’s also a conservative. He...

"Using terms that would send Republicans into the history books, Jimmy Carter on PBS calls Barack this Black Boy" I couldn't believe it until I heard it for myself.

Geraldine Ferraro was forced out of Hillary's campaign for commenting that Barack Obama was successful only because he is black. Cf. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article3541772.ece Joe Biden said the following about Clarence Thomas: "I think that the only reason Clarence Thomas is on the Court is because he is black." Cf. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Thomas-Hill+hearings+revisited-a016139240

A special meeting about Dallas County traffic tickets turned tense and bizarre this afternoon. County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts. Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections "has become a black hole" because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office. Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole." That prompted Judge Thomas Jones,...

TRENTON, N.J. - A local Republican Club in New Jersey has removed a slogan from its Web site that read, "Obama loves America like O.J. loved Nicole." The Pemberton Republican Club removed the slogan after Democrats alleged racist campaign tactics. The club's Web master, Ed Kuck, tells The Philadelphia Inquirer that he saw the slogan on an Internet site and copied it onto the club's Web page as a joke. The chairman of the Burlington County Democratic Committee says comparing Obama to O.J. Simpson was reprehensible.

TAU mathematician finds humanity was genetically divided for as much as 100,000 yearshe human race was divided into two separate groups within Africa for as much as half of its existence, says a Tel Aviv University mathematician. Climate change, reduction in populations and harsh conditions may have caused and maintained the separation. Dr. Saharon Rosset, from the School of Mathematical Sciences at Tel Aviv University, worked with team leader Doron Behar from the Rambam Medical Center to analyze African DNA. Their goal was to study obscure population patterns from hundreds of thousands of years ago. Rosset, who crunched numbers and...

Dr. F. Javier Cevallos, president of Kutztown University, a publicly funded college located in Pennsylvania, is facing new pressure to step down from his post amid criticism from the university’s faculty union. The union’s leadership — which is comprised of a 10-member executive board — is planning to call for a vote of no-confidence in Cevallos later this week, claiming that he has mismanaged the day-to-day operations of the university, leading to an increase in class size, cramped office space and poor building conditions across campus. In addition, they charge that the morale among faculty is at an all-time low....

With Virginia considered Hillary Clinton’s best chance in the Potomac Primary, Bill Clinton packed his schedule with three stops Monday in the Old Dominion, where he tried to convince voters that his wife’s experience trumps Barack Obama’s “smoke and mirrors” candidacy. Clinton’s first stop of the day was at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, where he barely referred to Obama by name but alluded to him often as the lesser choice for the Democratic nomination, a candidate who has style but lacks Hillary Clinton’s substance. “You have to decide what this election is about,” Clinton told a room...

Tempers flared and emotions erupted Tuesday at a meeting between U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen and a group of black ministers, stemming from the freshman congressman's support for a federal hate crimes bill. More than 100 ministers and guests showed up Tuesday for the weekly meeting of the Memphis Baptist Ministerial Association, where Cohen had been invited to speak. During a volatile question-and-answer forum that followed, many loudly commented that Cohen, who is white, can't adequately represent the primarily black Ninth District. "He's not black and he can't represent me, that's just the bottom line," said Rev. Robert Poindexter of Mt....

When Eliseo Hernandez came to the United States 30 years ago, he thought he drove better after a few beers. Driving drunk had been normal back in Mexico, he said. But Hernandez, 54, learned of its perils firsthand. He quit the practice after falling asleep at the wheel and hitting a tree 18 years ago. Then, last year, a young Hispanic man who authorities say was drunk nearly killed Hernandez's only son, Diego, in a crash on a rural Johnston County road. Eliseo Hernandez's daughter, who was nine months pregnant, lost her unborn child in the accident. Hernandez has spent...

West and Mike Myers had been paired up to appear about halfway through the show. Their assignment: Take turns reading a script describing the breach in the levees around New Orleans. Myers: The landscape of the city has changed dramatically, tragically and perhaps irreversibly. There is now over 25 feet of water where there was once city streets and thriving neighborhoods. (Myers throws to West, who looked extremely nervous in his super-preppy designer rugby shirt and white pants, which is not like the arrogant West and which, in retrospect, should have been a tip-off.) West: I hate the way they...