I am not sure how I received this email or why.  It could have been forwarded by my mother who lost her enlightened hippie status when she started listening to Rush Limbaugh in the 1980's.  Anyway, it is a compilation of the greatest hit-jobs by the right wingers.  I am wondering who Floyd Brown is?  

I am wondering what the National Campaign Fund is? And if this is considered a 527?  The address is only a few blocks from the White House, who could it be? Here is a Floyd Brown.  Maybe this guy.  Oh he's the one that made the Willie Horton ad.  I think this is the one.  
Update:
the website with "all of the Evidence"  
expose obama website

Well, most of my previous posts on Mumia have created quite a firestorm.  While there are the expected hate-mongers who seem to be just foaming at the mouth when attacking the integrity of my work supporting Mumia, there have also been folks expressing an interest in learning more, and asking for some more general background.

I am writing this post mostly for them (the open minded ones)...  But this also gives those folks that have been extremely rude to me, an opportunity to explain why my writing is such poor quality. Please, try and find a flaw here.

Here are several key facts from the case (esp look at the alleged hospital confession, and the story of Veronica Jones). Can anyone really claim that the trial was not unfair, and Mumia was not framed? Be sure and watch the Dec. 6 Today Show here:  http://www.youtube.com/...

Today was a an eye-opening day for me. I live in Houston, a cultural melting pot where hints of southern racism still linger. I knew it existed, but I never encountered it personally in my 20 years on this earth until a few hours ago. Of course I've seen it on TV, in movies, and on the news, but today I came face to face with the misguided element of ignorance that is racism. I'll explain more below the fold.

Cross-posted at Facing South.

What does one say at the funeral of a bigot? Politicians and pundits have been grappling with that question since the passing of Sen. Jesse Helms on July 4, and the collective reaction to Helms' death speaks volumes about the state of race relations and social progress in our country.

Let's mash-up two of today's rec diaries: thereisnospoon analyzes why the GOP is screwed if Obama wins , because anti-black racism has been key to  molding their "base". The author goes on to show that it is dangerous to try to replace blacks with browns (Hispanic immigrants), as they constitute a large voting block that is dangerous for the GOP to alienate.

In another diary, Geekesque reports on the McCain campaign declaring war on "Muslims"..

Put the two together. The GOP needs its hate figures. Blacks and browns are off the table. So who better to replace them with then Muslims? That's why they want to continue the war in Iraq; that is why McCain seems so keen to start in with Iran.

Everyone who pays any attention to politics knows that the GOP is on its heels.  On every issue from the war to healthcare to the environment to the middle-class economy, the American people have sided firmly with Democrats and progressives.  The issues have always favored Democrats, of course.  But the prominence of those issues as the basis for voting as well as the strength with which those issues clearly favor Democrats first made itself abundantly clear in 2006.

And the same thing is likely to happen in 2008, with the outside chance of a filibuster-proof Senate to boot.

Racism and ignorance, which are not mutually exclusive seems to have hit another all time high as Obama campaigns to be the "first black president."

First we had the fool who thought it was cute to sell t-shirts with a monkey called Obama.

Then we had the fools selling the Obama monkey doll.

Then the fools really showed their ignorance and decided a to sell buttons at the Texas Republican Convention "If Obama Is President...Will We Still Call It The White House?"

Well now we have the "Obama is my slave" t-shirt."

I think the (slightly belated) occasion of the passing of the vile, venal and despicable former Senator from North Carolina calls for a song.  A raucous, celebratory, insulting, ding-dong-the-witch-is-dead kind of song. With a tuba.  A song called:

The Senator Goes To Hell

Click play to hear the song -- full lyrics after the jump!

Via The Cincinnati Beacon

Photo courtesy of here.

John McCain came to Cincinnati this week to court the black vote at the national NAACP convention.  McCain has a miserable record with the NAACP, receiving multiple grades of "F" from the organization in prior years.  Meanwhile, the McCain campaign has just named Hamilton County prosecutor Joe Deters as its local chair, a move which has already caused Ohio Democratic State Chair Chris Redfern to issue a denunciation.  

It's an early morning here at my desk, as I've just finished editing several of my team's articles. They are a team of student journalists, rising high school juniors and seniors, responsible, bright students of color. The children are the future, and many of these students will eventually make their impressions and contributions, with their pens in hand, and their ears tuned in to Hip-Hop music.

Tuesday, the rap legend NaS released his "Nigger" album, I haven't bought it yet, but my (blue, pink, green, red) friends who got it say it rocks, and I will buy it because NaS is my favorite rapper. I ask high schoolers what they think about the title and it doesn't really offend anybody. They don't want a white person calling them by that name, but most of these students call each other that. This is so passe.

It almost seems picture perfect that Reverend Jackson, who has so denounced the use of the so-called "nN" word, would be shown using it himself. And this latest shoe to drop reveals what we young ones have known all along - that objections to the word are more about politics than pain.

What would we have seen on the cover of  The New Yorker?

Would Remnick, who I generally respect, have dared to run and defend the satire of  a cover cartoon that depicted Senator Clinton wearing the uniform of an SS storm trooper, Eva Braun wig and standing in a hallway holding a burning bra in one hand and a leash reminiscent of Lyndie Englund in the other with a nude, except for a top hat, Uncle Sam on the floor at the end of the leash?  With one high heeled boot firmly planted on a Bible.  Add a poster on the wall with a picture of Bill Clinton sporting a Hitler mustache. Wouldn’t such an image be entirely consistent with the messaging of the rightwing about the Clintons?  As completely false and incendiary as the image of the Obamas on the latest issue of The New Yorker?  As filled with irony?

and sometimes it's just racist. As I watched the Larry King interview last night I couldn’t help but feel a little bit of air slip out of the balloon. "He just wasn’t Presidential" said my wife, next to me on the couch, and while I agreed, I forgave him that, he wanted to be one of us, to connect with middle America, whatever that meant. No, it was more than that... it was what could have happened in that interview that deflated my balloon just a bit. I’m nowhere near walking away from Barack, the best candidate the Dems have had in years! But eventually, as my hero Billy Bragg has said, the shine is gonna wear off and we’re all gonna see that he’s just a regular person with faults too, lol! And last night, yeah... he could have really zapped us with some brilliant anti-racism, some real sock-it-to-me anti-discrimination rhetoric, some tell-it-like-it-is American melting pot discourse! But not once did he give us any hint that the New Yorker cartoon cover is even racist! Wow.

I'm sometimes mistaken for an Obama hater. In fact, I'm something less interesting: a critic from the left. There are much more authoritative and prominent versions of me, like Paul Street and Adolph Reed Jr.  I generally share their views on Obama's politics, but I part company with them when they say or suggest that it's not important that Obama win.

I want Obama to win not just because he's up against a fanatical freetrader who has Norman Podhoretz's foreign policy and James Dobson's position on abortion; I want Obama to win because he embodies important progressive principles that must be defended. It's a central irony of his campaign: while his policies and political philosophy are frustratingly moderate, a victory by Obama would be a victory for vital progressive principles: racial tolerance, mutli-culturalism, general acceptance of difference. On the other hand--and this is the focus of this piece--a defeat would be a devastating defeat for those principles.

According to Wonkette, and a few other places, our old friend Alan Keyes has been nominated by the American Independent party of California as it's candidate for president. Why is a washed-up has-been wingnut being nominated by the shriveled up reminants of a wingnut third party a true sign of progress in America?

the answer below the fold.

I remember one evening sitting in a coffee shop in San Francisco. I was reading a news article in the Chronicle about African-American collectors of racist momentos from the 19th and 20th centuries.

There were piggy banks and clocks and cartoons adorned by dehumanizing depictions of people of African descent. And then there was that word, "pickaninny."

"What the hell is a 'pickaninny'"? I thought to myself. Supposedly, as an American with a skin color who therefore is part of the larger national discourse on racial inheritance, I was perceived to know what this word meant. The author at least assumed I did. But I didn't. I had never heard the term before in my life; nor, I might add, seen the clocks and piggy banks and poster art that was now being collected for posterity.

So what did I do? I asked my friend who attended Wesleyan what the term meant. {For your sake, it's an old derogatory term for African-American children} My friend informed me of its meaning, but confessed that he too had only learned about it in a class on race relations in America.    

Today's New York Times piece about the role of race in American politics and American society is a deeply disappointing expose of how far we've got to go.  But instead of wringing our hands and lamenting the problem, let's confront the issue directly, all the better to put it aside.    

A color-blind society may never be in the cards for us.  We're too pluralistic a society, for one, and second of all it's an oversimplification to think that even those of us who share the same skin color would think with one voice, or be one monolithic entity.  This is the nation of rugged individualism, after all.  And by this, I aim to emphasize we may simply be unable undo the ways things are and may always be.    

I was born in Jacksonville Florida in 1972.  All throughout my childhood use of the "N" word in my house was common place.  Was my father then a Klan member, complete with white sheets, etc?  No he wasn't.  But he had no problem disparaging blacks and other non-whites in front of his children.  One of the most vivid memories I have from childhood was when I was in third grade and had a black friend named Michael Laney.  My father was none to pleased about this and let me know it.  Right after I graduated high school, another black friend of mine came by the house one night.  I was not home, and my father told him I had run off and got married and to not come back again.  I was pissed when I found out.

More after the fold.

And just what in the world does a former South Carolina mill worker have to do with Jackie Robinson?

So much. Oh, so much.

Today in 1888 was born a man talked about more than all but a handful of his contemporaries.

He was in MLB for 13 years, to the tune of 1772 hits. In 1908, his first full year, he hit .408.

And he's part of why you know Jackie Robinson as the man to reintegrate Major League Baseball. He's part of why Satchel Paige and Ted Radcliffe didn't do it, why Josh Gibson's contract got figuratively dumped in a trash can by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

"Shoeless" Joe Jackson, born on July 16, 1888, is part of the story of racism in baseball.