Broadway Carl 2.0

I have said & written this over & over. It is easy for us white folks to sit in our houses in our white neighborhoods & pass judgment on black folks. Yet,  we have no clue what it's like to tell our sons how to be safe from cops when they walk down a street. We don't know what it's like to be stopped & frisked for no reason. We have no reason to have an inherent distrust of the justice system because our youngsters aren't serving 25 yrs for minor offenses. As a matter of fact, we weren't sent to separate schools for years & years. We weren't denied entrance to most universities because we were white. Our people weren't lynched as sport. We aren't denied the ability to buy a home we want & can afford. We aren't followed around stores as a matter of routine. We act like black folks should just move on, let the past go. I have friends my age & younger who had to go in a separate door for "coloreds" in dept stores or...

My dear friend posted this on her FB wall & I asked her for permission to blog it. My beautiful and talented nephew  Marc K. Galette Hsi  who is 6'2 and a chef who creates amazing Caribbean dishes and my understanding and loving husband  Von Samedi  who is a pathologist and faculty member at the University of New Mexico Medical School: do they deserve to be shot down by a police officer who is so afraid of their skin color that they don't take the time take to assess that they are not a threat or hostile.

Salon is a piece of crap.  Sorry I  couldn't  think of a snappy intro.  Of course, I am referring to Thomas Frank’s hit piece in Salon , “Right-wing obstruction could have been fought: An ineffective and gutless presidency’s legacy is failure.” Yep, that’s the one. I know from my journalism classes that editors often write the headlines, but even if Frank did not write it, the headline pretty much summarizes the article.  By the way, Kevin Drum at Mother Jones did a decent job rebutting Frank’s article in “If the Left Wants Scapegoats, Just Look in the Mirror. “ One point in the Drum’s article I latched onto is “The rest of us, who were unable to take advantage of an epic financial collapse to get the public firmly in favor of pitchforks and universal health care, deserve most of it. The mirror doesn't lie.” He could have written that one sentence, and his article would have been brilliant. That’s the point of this post.  It’s that one sentence I’m going...

In light of the Hobby Lobby decision by the Supreme Court, I thought I'd post this piece again with a follow up. Many on the left have set their hair on fire over President Obama's solution to the conflict between religious institutions, primarily the Catholic church, providing health care coverage which includes birth control to women and the teachings of the church. One would have to be in the wildest parts of Siberia to have missed this controversy, so I will not recount the drama that has unfolded. However, once again the ubiquitous word "cave" has appeared in association with this decision. There was a time when this would infuriate me, but now I laugh at the predictability of the critical left. Of course, if you dare disagree with them, then they launch into name calling that would make any junior high student proud. I think one reason for their childish, often surly, reaction is their unstated, unreasonable expectations of President Obama. It's ...

When I came across this photo, I was struck by the callousness it conveyed, as well as the arrogance of the idea that whites get to determine the connotation of words that are insulting at best and racist at worst. First, white folks don't get to determine what is racist or isn't, nor do we get to determine what offends other races, ethnic groups, or cultures because we are the ones who created the offensive words or phrases in the first place. No equivalent racial slur used by minorities toward whites comes close to the worst of the slurs used toward minorities. It's impossible for whites to know the kind of anguish that minorities feel when hateful words and phrases are flung at them. That's why I defer to minorities on whether or not words are racial epithets. It's true that some within a minority group may refer to one another with racial slurs, but I would offer that the tone and context are different. However, that doesn't really ...

Reason #37 to dismiss George Will as a conservative "intellectual": The jury is still out on climate change according to Will . And the only reason the "climate alarmism" trojan horse exists is for liberals and progressives to control your lives. In his latest screed, Will begins by once again bringing up the Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus) and claims that it was just a handout to "unionized, dues-paying, Democratic voting government employees." Never mind that a full third of stimulus funds were in the form of tax cuts to everyone ( yes, even the 89% of non-union employees of the United States ) and another third was in the form of tax incentives for individuals and companies (yes, even non-unionized individuals and companies). And now, according to Will, President Barack Obama and like minded liberals are fear mongering about climate change in order to control our lives! "Climate alarmism validates the progressive impulse to mi...

Dear Friends, My friend Nancy's (@planetscape) friend Nicole just lost her sweet little boy. Nicole, who also has serious health issues, barely scrapes by, frequently with Nancy's help. The other tragedy in this story is that Nicole doesn't have the money to pay for her beloved son's funeral. Please let's join together and do what we can to relieve Nicole of this burden. Obituary http://wagesandsons.com/obit/samuel-david-edwards/ The following is a letter Nancy wrote to her friends at PerlMonks, a forum for programmers. I am deeply saddened to report that David, [koolgirl]'s 6-year old son, has passed away suddenly and unexpectedly from pediatric myocarditis caused by coronavirus infection. David was the sweetest child you will ever have the privilege to know. He was bright, funny, cheerful, autistic, and loved animals, especially his beloved dog, Gizzy, who passed late last year. He loved pirates, riding his brand-new bike that Santa brought, and Di...

Every once in a while, I'll come across an email that accuses President Obama, his administration or even Michelle Obama of some malfeasance because you know, he's an illegitimate, Kenyan born, Socialist, Marxist, Manchurian candidate Antichrist hell bent on destroying the United States from within, and she's an angry black woman who dares to question if America's kids are getting enough exercise and not eating enough healthy foods, and you can't trust those uppity negroes for a second or some such nonsense. A friend told me he had received an email about the First Lady and was wondering about its legitimacy. I told him that if it had anything to do with Michelle Obama it was probably a bunch of bullshit, but if he'd like to forward it to me I would gladly research it so he could then shove it up the ass of whoever sent it to him - in this case, his uncle. You gotta love family. So, here's the email: "I guess we can just add this little tidbit to ...

Uh-huh. By the way, at the 3:00 mark, Christie is railing about losing out on a $400 million Race To the Top federal education grant because there was missing information on a months long application that he forced his staff to redo over a Memorial Day weekend because he didn't like that it favored the Teachers Union. When they blew it, he tried to blame the Obama administration on not letting them know about the missing info. Passing the buck. It turns out that they actually WERE informed and had two weeks to comply, and didn't. Christie then threw his Education Secretary under the bus . Passing the buck. Funny, I don't remember Christie apologizing to anyone in the Obama administration after accusing them of his screw up.