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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...

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...