On certain days, I bet Nancy Pelosi wishes she were Republican. When they get together, they usually don’t boo their politicians. But, the Democratic base is made up of many different constituencies so, people don’t just fall in line. In fact, some supporters, like me, may not even be Democrats so, you actually have to work for our support.

Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that recently, while addressing the group, Campaign for America’s Future, Nancy Pelosi was greeted by a chorus of boos from protesters in the crowd who, like me, believe that the Dems haven’t stood up to do their part to end the occupation in Iraq. Pelosi acknowledged the protesters but, finished her remarks by saying, “Instead of fighting with us, which is your right to do, let’s work together.”

Maybe Pelosi is missing something — these people have been “working together” with them. These are the people who helped get here into her position as Speaker of the House in the first place. What they are asking for is a return on their investment. Right now, they are doing little more than their Republican predecessors and acting as enablers for the President and his policy.

Honestly, I think that, much like the President, the Democrats are just biding time and hoping to use the public’s disdain for the war to help them with elections. But, the base is not satisfied with just waiting — they want substantive action and they want it now.

Perhaps Speaker Pelosi needs to recognize that , if she would like to stay part of a majority, she and her members in the House need to really do something help bring about an end to the war.

Popularity: 14% [?]

A few weeks ago, columnist Leonard Pitts inflamed racists across the country for a column he did deriding them for playing the victim card. Certain individuals in the Knoxville, Tenn area were calling for the carjacking,rape and murder of a white couple, allegedly done by 5 black suspects, to be categorized as a hate crime. Obviously, the crime was barbaric and those who perpetrated it should have the book thrown at them but, this appears to have been motivated by opportunity, not race.

Pitts was not belittling the crime. Instead, he was chastising those who, incorrectly, seized upon the racial differences between the victims and the accused, stating that if the races of the people had been reversed, the crime would have been reported more widely. Pitts went on to dissect this argument, including citing a 2001 study that showed “Blacks and Latinos are underrepresented in news media as victims of crime and significantly overrepresented as perpetrators, based on crime statistics; newspaper articles about white homicide victims are longer and more frequent than those about black ones; and interracial violent crime is more likely to be reported even though it is just about the rarest kind of violent crime.”

Well, this had the white racists up in arms, which lead one white supremacist web site to post his address, phone number and wife’s name (another site followed suit, as well). So, Pitts has been receiving death threats via phone and email. The owner of the site refuses to take the information down. When the editor of the Miami Herald called the site’s editor, Bill White (this has to be a pseudonym), he was told that “We have no intention of removing Mr. Pitts’ personal information. Frankly, if some loony took the info and killed him, I wouldn’t shed a tear. That also goes for your whole newsroom.”

The FBI has been called in to investigate the threats. Let’s hope that this madness does not rise above the level of mere threats and that Pitts will continue to speak out and continue to speak the truth as he sees it.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Is it possible that State Farm had engineering reports rigged to avoid paying Hurricane Katrina claims. That’s what one lawsuit is alleging. The suit contends that State Farm, in collusion with two engineering firms, engaged in a “pattern of racketeering” to deny coverage to homeowners seeking relief from the hurricane’s damage.

This suit was brought on behalf of homeowners in the Mississippi Gulf Coast region and claims that State Farm attempted to have the damage attributed to flooding, not the hurricane:

Scruggs’ 103-page lawsuit claims State Farm engaged in racketeering by procuring “scientifically dishonest” inspection reports and conducting “sham re-inspections” of homes so that damage could be falsely attributed to Katrina’s flood water.

State Farm and other insurers say their homeowner policies cover damage from wind but not rising water, including storm surge.

The bottom line is that this game-playing has gone on long enough. These people deserve to be made whole and somebody, even if it’s our government, needs to make this happen.

Popularity: 17% [?]

In a previous post (see: Stretched Too Thin?), I talked about the Army planning to extend troop tours in Iraq to 15 months with the “promise” that these troops would get the year off between tours that they were supposed to have in the first place.

Notice that I put “promise” in quotes?

Now, the Army is talking about the possibility of extending troops past the 15-month time frame. Of course, the chickenhawks (including Joe LIEberman), say that we need to do whatever is necessary to “win” in Iraq. Of course, they say that from an air-conditioned office in Washington so, take that for what it’s worth.

In the end, what we are seeing is how the President is “supporting the troops” to death. I wonder if this is enough to make America move on getting out of Iraq. As much as I hope so, people in this country never cease to amaze me when it comes to how much madness they will accept.

Popularity: 13% [?]

The longer the “Attorneygate” scandal goes on, the more questions arise. Yesterday, two Democratic senators are calling for a probe into the actions of former Arkansas U.S. Attorney Tim Griffin. Specifically, Sens. Edward Kennedy and Sheldon Whitehouse want to know Griffin’s role in disenfranchising black voters in Florida.

This goes back to a time before he became a U.S. Attorney and was working as an operative for the Republican National Committee during the 2004 election cycle. As Republicans were busy playing games with the rights of black voters, emails were flying around between operatives that, if made public, would have shown that what they were doing was, in a word, illegal.

Well, some errant emails were sent to georgewbush.org, a site that actually was/is critical of President Bush but, Griffin must have thought he was sending them to someone at georgewbush.com, a site for the Bush re-election campaign. Attached to the email was a list of some 2,000 names of black Jacksonville, FL residents who were potential voters. The titles of the emails were “caging”. The attached file was a “caging” list.

The idea behind a caging list was that the Republicans would send out letters to these folks by registered mail with a card they would have to return. If they did not return the card, the Republicans could then challenge the votes of those people by claiming that they were voting fraudulently by claiming that their home address was bogus.

However, the most sinister part of this was that the Republican party knew that many of the folks on this list would not be able to respond. Why? Well, some were away at school so, they wouldn’t be able to respond in a timely manner. But, there were others, also, who wouldn’t be able to respond either — the black soldiers on the list who were serving in Iraq.

Yes, while black soldiers were away fighting on behalf of their country, their right to vote was being taken away.

Griffin said he never heard the word “caging” before but, the emails he sent bore the subject line “Re: caging” and one of them contained this list.

Hmmm…an email title “caging” with a list attached. Coincidence?

As the heat came, Griffin stepped down as attorney general for Arkansas but, he’s not immune from prosecution. Congressman John Conyers is very interested in Griffin’s actions of 2004 and Sens. Kennedy and Whitehouse, in a very strongly-worded letter (read here), the senators want to know why the Justice Department would hire someone of such dubious credentials as a U.S. Attorney.

Stay tuned. This drama is still heating up.

Also, if you want to be sickened by the lack of coverage in the U.S. media in regards to issues of importance, read Greg Palast’s report on this for the BBC…from 2004.

Popularity: 17% [?]

A couple of months back, I posted about the White House email scandal. Actually, these are two related scandals. The first was that they were trying to avoid scrutiny by using the Republican National Committee’s email system to conduct official United States business — a big no-no. But, more scandalous was that these emails had supposedly gone missing. The story’s changed since then but, one thing’s clear, millions of official White House email may have been destroyed by the RNC — perhaps, as I believe, purposely. Accidentally or not, destroying these emails is illegal because it violates the Presidential Records Act, which strictly prohibits the destruction of documents and emails regarding official White House business. We already knew that these included emails from people like current White House political director Karl Rove, former chief of staff Andy Card, former White House political director Ken Mehlman and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Now, it has come out that as many as 88 other White House officials were using RNC email accounts to conduct official business and many of these had their emails completely erased from the RNC servers.

CrookAndLiars.com has posted a video of Keith Olbermann’s report on the debacle:

 

 Whites House Email Scandal Grows Bigger: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 35% [?]

“He Say, She Say”

Popularity: 50% [?]

At least one Department of Justice official thought so. Bradley Schlozman, the former U.S. Attorney for Missouri and former senior Justice Department official, has been called on the carpet after an anonymous leaked complaint showed that he had tried to purge the Department’s appellate section of the Civil Rights Division of minority women attorneys (read the complaint here).

The three attorneys (A Black woman, a Jewish woman and an Asian woman) were transferred out of the division by Schlozman. He said his intent was to replace them with “Good Americans”. What is “good American” to Schlozman? Maybe this excerpt might hold a key:

“Bradley J. Schlozman is systematically attempting to purge all Civil Rights appellate attorneys hired under Democratic administrations,” the lawyer wrote, saying that he appeared to be “targeting minority women lawyers” in the section and was replacing them with “white, invariably Christian men.” The lawyer also alleged that “Schlozman told one recently hired attorney that it was his intention to drive these attorneys out of the Appellate Section so that he could replace them with ‘good Americans.’”

Interestingly enough, the attorneys were transferred back after Shlozman left. Schlozman clearly intended to, at least, replace career attorneys (we are not talking about political appointees) with other career appointees based, primarily, on Republican loyalty. That seemed apparent in his exchange with Senator Chuck Schumer when questioned about it a little over a week ago:

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY): Did you ever boast to anyone that you hired a certain number of Republicans or conservatives for any division or section at the Justice Department?

Schlozman: I mean, I probably have made statements like that.

What this means is that he sought to stack the division with people who wouldn’t respect the minority vote, much less enforce violations of the Voting Rights Act. I’ll continue to say it — pay attention because this is about OUR vote.

Popularity: 17% [?]

I still chuckle when I think of how, early in his presidency, Bush visited Brazil and was surprised that the country had black people. In fact, it had to be explained to him that Brazil had more black people than the United States. Of course, this was not before he asked the Brazilian president, “Do you have Blacks,too?”

With some 90 million black folks, Brazil has the largest population of black people outside of Africa. Unfortunately, even with all those black people, racism against blacks is still all too prevalent and more blatant than what many of us are used to here. So, like here, the lot of black people is one of disproportionate poverty and life at the lower rungs of society’s ladder.

However, more and more blacks are fed up and pushing back against the racism that has dominated their existences there.

From university classrooms to television airwaves, black Brazilians are fighting for what they say is long-denied space in a society that has kept them on the margins.

They’re pushing for two affirmative-action bills in Brazil’s Congress that would open college enrollment and government payrolls to more Brazilians of African descent. Already, many state universities have implemented their own affirmative-action programs.

In 2005, black entertainer Jose de Paula Neto launched the country’s first television station aimed at black audiences, TV da Gente. Meanwhile, hundreds of communities known as quilombos that were founded more than a century ago by escaped slaves are winning recognition and federal protections.

And Brazilians are finally discussing race after decades of telling themselves and the rest of the world that the country was free from racism.

“The Brazilian elite says this is not a racist country, but if you look at whatever social indicator, you’ll see exclusion is endemic,” said Sen. Paulo Paim, author of one of the pending affirmative-action bills. “We want to open up to more Brazilians the legitimate spaces they deserve.”

So, Black Brazil, stand up! In the process, maybe you’ll wake up your brethren up north out of their slumber, as well.

Popularity: 55% [?]

Forbes has released its Celebrity 100 list and, for the first time, included hip-hop artists in the list of highest-paid performers.

It’s almost mind-boggling to think about how much money is coming from hip-hop and related businesses in comparison to what I saw when I first started listening to the music in 1979.

Just check out the figures and see if you were as amazed as I:

Jay-Z landed inside of the top 10 at #9, with earnings of over $83 million, much of it due to the sale of Rocawear clothing to Iconix in March for $204 million in cash.

In sheer earnings Jay-Z landed at #7, ahead of actor Tom Hanks, but just behind legendary rockers The Rolling Stones.

50 Cent landed at #32, with earnings of $33 million, based on earnings from his G-Unit empire, which includes music, movies and clothing.

Forbes expects 50 Cent’s to chart high next year, due to the sale of $4.1 billion sale of Glaceau to the Coca-Cola company.

50 Cent owned a reported 10% stake in the company, netting the rapper hundreds of millions of dollars, although the exact earnings figure has yet to be revealed.

Forbes closed on the issue prior to the information being released.

In sheer earnings, 50 Cent landed at #29, beating out Rush Limbaugh but coming in behind LA Laker star Kobe Bryant.

Sean “Diddy” Combs landed at # 43, based on earnings of $23 million, derived from his Bad Boy Entertainment and Sean John empires.

In sheer earnings, Combs landed at #55, acing tennis star Maria Sharapova, but defaulting to Matt Damon.

Philadelphia rapper Will Smith landed at #57 with earnings of $31 million.

In sheer earnings Will Smith landed #38, beating rockers U2, but came in under basketball legend Michael Jordan.

So, needless to say, rap has evolved to the point where some can take their stardom and cash in to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s good to see that some realize that a car or a chain is not the highest aspiration for a performer in their field.

Popularity: 54% [?]