World Mental Health Day is October 10

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OUR PRAYERS GO OUT TO THE FAMILY OF ALTON ELLIS - ON HIS PASSING THIS MORNING IN THE U.K.

We will never forget his silky soulful vocals and foundation style, as they have blessed our shows many days - including today. please listen to our tribute to Alton Ellis on BadGalsRadio all weekend.

we will post details of his memorial and the location when they are announced later.

Jah Bless and Guide Our Idren to Glory

Bharrat Jagdeo is an embarassing, lowlife, panhandler - Jamaican PM Bruce Golding
For The Record - We Wholeheartedly Agree with PM Golding. - ED.

the glen lall: In what must be considered one of the most vicious attacks on another Caricom leader since the birth of Carifta, Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding made a devastating critique on one of his Caricom colleagues, using the plural to avoid specificities.

It is clear to a majority of political observers and commentators that Mr. Golding had Guyana’s President in mind when he lashed out at “some” Caricom leaders who go begging the international community all the time.

Perhaps only the “yard fowl” remark of late Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, directed against Barbadian PM Tom Adams in 1983, could be seen as a more acerbic remark within the Caricom family since the integration movement was born.

How unfortunate that this could come from Jamaica, when that island’s people tend to treat Guyanese with immense friendliness.

Let’s quote the outspoken Jamaican leader: “They go around, hat in hand, to every capital of the world like panhandlers on the street, telling people how we are like the wretched of the earth; we are poor and that we need all sorts of charity.

Not only am I tired of it, but I believe that we have allowed it (the constant begging for aid) to cause us to put off indefinitely the need to confront some of our own weaknesses and deficiencies and to deal with them.”

Mr. Golding did not mention the Guyanese President, but any analyst should use logical deduction to arrive at whom he had in mind. Surely, he could not be speaking about Barbados and Trinidad.

any analyst other than PPP Rickey Singh

It is the first time in the 35-year history of the 15-member Caribbean Community that a Caribbean leader has chosen to engage in such an unprovoked emotional public outburst aimed at his counterparts over a perceived mendicant attitude in going around capitals of the world like beggars appealing for development aid.
Given his usually informed and conciliatory positions at Caricom meetings, it is not at all clear what may have prompted such a verbal onslaught in public against his counterparts, and with no examples given. [PPP rickey needs examples]

get the full dosage of freddie over at the glen lall

Barack Obama makes his own weather in the storm - Times Online

The banking crisis was a lucky break for the Democrat. But he has an ability to make the most of his good fortune

AFL-CIO leader defends Obama against racism; says economy should trump culture bias.

As the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain prepares to step up personal attacks on Democratic rival Barack Obama, a YouTube clip has resurfaced of AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Richard Trumka defending Obama against voters whose only issue with the candidate is his race.

11 Racist Lies Conservatives Tell to Avoid Blaming Wall Street for the Financial Crisis

By Sara Robinson, Campaign for America’s Future.

Conservative pundits and politicians have piled onto the excuse like shipwreck victims clinging to a passing log: The real blame for the current economic crisis, conservatives would have you believe, lies not with anything they did, but rather with the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act — a successful Carter-era program designed to get banks to stop covert discrimination, and encourage them to invest their money in low-income neighborhoods.

It’s always easy to tell when the cons are completely lost at sea. The lies get more absurdly preposterous — and also more transparently self-serving. But when they go so far as to openly and unapologetically latch onto race and class as an excuse for their woes (which this is, at its heart), you know they’re taking on water fast — and scared of going under entirely.

You can hear the conservative commentators burbling this CRA fable from the Wall Street Journal to the National Review; from Rush to YouTube. Neil Cavuto put the essence of the argument right out there on Fox News: “Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster.” See! It’s all the liberals’ fault for insisting on social justice!

Conservatives are twisting the facts beyond the breaking point to support their revisionist history. But don’t be fooled: the financial crisis was caused by conservative financial follies and bankers run amok and nothing more. Here are the basic myths they’re trying to push about the CRA — and the facts that will enable you to fire back.

1. The CRA was a liberal boondoggle designed to con banks into funding housing for undeserving, unqualified minorities.

False. The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 was the result of decades of disinvestment in poor and working-class neighborhoods. It was designed to put an end to “red-lining” — a widespread practice in which banks refused to write mortgages for houses in certain neighborhoods, no matter who was applying or how creditworthy they were.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 had made it illegal for real estate agents and banks to discriminate against homeowners on the basis of race. Red-lining soon emerged as a not-so-subtle way to continue this discrimination, by declaring, ahem, certain neighborhoods as unfit to invest in. By 1977, the results of this practice were becoming all too obvious, so Congress stepped and gave lenders a choice: if you want the FDIC to insure your deposits, you need to knock off the redlining.

The CRA didn’t force lenders to make riskier loans than they would have otherwise. It simply required that they take each applicant on his or her own merits, and give people in poorer neighborhoods the same fair chance at a mortgage that everybody else in town was getting. It wasn’t about preferential treatment. It was just about basic equality.

2. The CRA forced banks to lower their standards and make loans to all low-income families and people with poor credit — and find banks that refused to comply.

No. The CRA has encouraged banks to lend fairly and responsibly for over 30 years. It does not impose fines. It does periodically examine FDIC-backed banks, and issues them a CRA compliance rating. A highly-rated bank must meet the financing needs of as many community members as possible, and must not discriminate against racial and ethnic groups or certain neighborhoods. However, a bank will not receive a high rating unless it is also maintains “safe and sound banking practices.”

In other words, the CRA requires banks to lend to working-class families and people of color — but only when those people have been deemed as creditworthy as anyone else.

3. The housing bubble burst when too many people with home loans mandated by the Community Reinvestment Act failed to make their mortgage payments.

False. The CRA only applies to FDIC member banks and thrifts. Back in the 1970s, these institutions were responsible for most of the country’s mortgage lending. But starting in the 80s and on up to the present, we saw a huge boom in lending businesses– such as finance companies like Countrywide — that weren’t banks, and didn’t take deposits that required FDIC insurance. Thus, they didn’t have any obligation to the CRA. And they were free to set their own lending standards, which were often far less cautious than those required of FDIC-insured banks.

4. The bulk of the “junk” loans that have been packaged into mortgage-based securities are CRA loans.

False. An analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data in the country’s 15 biggest metropolitan areas found that 84.3% of the high-cost loans made in 2006 were originated by non-CRA lenders — including 83% of high-cost loans to low- and moderate-income individuals. The Federal Reserve notes that, across the country, non-CRA lenders were twice as likely as CRA lenders to issue subprime loans to vulnerable borrowers. Furthermore, the Fed also reports that responsible mortgages made by CRA lenders have about the same low rate of foreclosure as other traditional mortgages.

5. If the government had just set the lenders free to do their thing, the market would have prevented this. It’s just another example of how government oversight always leads to market failure.

Wrong again, buckaroo. As explained just above, up to four-fifths of these loans were issued by financial institutions that operated with little or no federal regulatory oversight. In fact, in 2006, only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was a CRA institution. A few others were mortgage/finance company affiliates of CRA-covered lenders; but even these were separate businesses that didn’t operate under CRA rules (including Countrywide, CitiMortgage, and Wells Fargo Home Mortgage). Likewise: the vast majority of the top 20 issuers of risky interest-only and option ARM loans were not CRA-affiliated lenders.

If anything, the CRA example proves — once again — that government oversight not only works; it’s essential to maintain safe and sane capital markets.

6. The CRA is just another failed liberal handout program.

No. The benefits of CRA have been substantial. Robert Rubin recently estimated that the law has channeled upwards of $1 trillion into distressed neighborhoods across the country — including both inner cities and rural areas without much access to investment funds — without putting up any taxpayer money beyond what it takes to operate the CRA itself. In these areas, home ownership is up — and with it, the local tax base, which means more parks, more cops, more street repairs, and so on. There’s more decent rental housing, too, because landlords can get loans for upgrades and improvements.

Small business ownership is also up. Low-income communities have become more attractive to outside investors, and more able to support community redevelopment efforts. And in places where people once cashed their paychecks at the convenience store and depended on payday loans, there are now full-service bank branches offering the same affordable financial services people in better neighborhoods take for granted.

The cons like to talk about the “ownership society.” There is no ownership without access to capital. For 30 years, the CRA has been making private capital available to qualified people who want to bootstrap themselves into home and business ownership, and a secure place in the middle class.

7. OK — if it works so well, why do we still need it? Haven’t the banks finally figured by now out that redlining was a stupid idea?

If only. The very fact that the conservatives are trying to blame the mess on the CRA is, in itself, ample proof that we still need anti-redlining laws on the books. Fifty years into the civil rights era, and they’re still arguing that it should be acceptable to permanently exclude people from the capital markets on the basis of race and class. Different millennium, same ugly story: “See? This is what happens when you give money to minorities and poor people. You end up wrecking the country!”

In other words: no, they haven’t learned their lesson; and yes, they still believe in red-lining as much as they ever did. Racism is alive and well, and there are still plenty of Americans who would bring back housing discrimination in a heartbeat if the law allowed them to. Which is precisely why we can’t allow them to.

8. If we can’t blame the CRA, then who can we blame? How about the federal banking agencies, which outright told banks to go ahead and adopt risky lending practices? In particular, a 1992 Boston Federal Reserve Bank publication, Closing the Credit Gap: A Guide to Equal Opportunity Lending, told the banks that it was OK to adopt unsound lending practices.

Nice try, but still wrong. According to the National Community Reinvestment Association, the document cited above offered three new guidelines to lenders — none of which are applicable to the current subprime crisis.

The first guideline was that the lack of proper credit history shouldn’t be counted as a negative factor for potential homebuyers. Banks could use other evidence to assess the borrower’s payment habits, including the timely payment of rent, utility bills, and other scheduled loans. Borrows still need to prove that they’re reliable; they’re just allowed to use documentation besides a credit report.

The second was to remind bankers that some households with debt ratios above the standard 28/36 criteria might still qualify for home loans. This guideline is very conservative by today’s standards. Many problematic subprime loans were granted to borrowers with debt-to-income ratios above 50 percent, which was in no way sanctioned by the 1992 guidance document.

The third was that lenders could count Social Security, second jobs, and other verifiable income streams as valid sources of income when evaluating loan applications. But most subprime loans failures aren’t related to alternative income sources. The real problem has been with “liars’ loans,” in which the reported income streams are never verified at all.

9. Well, then…it must be Bill Clinton’s fault, right? In 1995, Clinton changed the Community Reinvestment Act to allow the securitization of CRA and subprime mortgages. That’s what started all this.

Talking point regurgitation at its worst. The 1995 revisions to the CRA only changed the way in which a bank’s CRA compliance is evaluated. They made no mention of mortgage securitization at all. Under the 1995 rules, banks are rewarded only for making mortgages in their communities, not for re-selling mortgages as securities.

10. OK, then — it’s the Democratic Congress’s fault! President Bush and Senator McCain tried to stop the subprime mortgage crisis, but Democrats blocked their efforts.

It’s not lying. It’s a gift for fiction. This one’s actually made it into a TV ad. The claim is that Bush and McCain supported the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, which would have created a new government agency to oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and other federal housing programs.

However, there’s no pony in this manure pile. This bill would have done nothing to stop the rash of subprime lending that preceded the housing bubble. It only provided oversight for Fannie and Freddie — but it said nothing at all about the companies that issued subprime mortgages.

11. No serious conservative economist would have ever approved of the CRA.

False. In March 2007, Federal Board Chairman Bernanke — no liberal he — noted that CRA has helped institutions discover and enter new markets that may have been previously under-served and ignored by insured depositories.

These myths are floating around everywhere this week — a Big Lie that’s being repeated so often that Americans may well start to believe it. The real objective of the “blame the CRA” campaign is to pre-emptively discredit any future progressive proposals that involve using government regulation to make the capital markets behave — and to get the free-market fundamentalist faithful back in the fold.

Time to fire back, and replace the Big Lie with some real truth

Four Students Are Behind the Obama Cut-Out Lynching Case

Four students are behind the Obama cut-out lynching case. George Fox University in Oregon announced Tuesday that four students have been punished for lynching a life-sized cardboard cutout of Sen. Barack Obama last week. The Newberg, Ore.-based Christian college told about 1,000 students who attended a general assembly where the news about finding the four students

Alliance to Galliance

Macka Diamond has formed the Money-O Galliance. - Sadeke Brooks

Dancehall artiste Macka Diamond has joined forces with fellow female deejays to form the ‘Money-O Galliance’.

However, Macka Diamond says the ‘Money-O Galliance’ should not be confused with the Galliance (an offshoot of the Bounty Killer-led Alliance), which includes Alebra, K-Queens, Ruffi-Ann, Lexi-Lee, and Tasha Rozez.

She also said it is not an attempt on her part to ‘gimmick’ the group.

Original Galliance

“If dem (Galliance) have a problem wid it dem can join in too since dem a di original Galliance,” she told THE STAR. “Mi kno seh Killer would maybe tell dem fi join it to. No hard feelings. Mi just kno seh wi love the name. It nuh have nutten wid Alliance or seh wi a segregate from anybody,” Macka said.

Bounty Killer, who issued a statement via his publicist Julian Jones-Griffith, said the Galliance was far from being defunct. “I guess we have done something good forming the Alliance and Macka wants to replicate it with her own Galliance.”

He continued: “We have our own Galliance, Macka has hers but we don’t have a problem with it, we endorse that. It’s all positive. Macka Diamond is a great and long-standingfriend of the Alliance so it’s all positive.”

Nonetheless, Macka Diamond says she is willing to change the name of the group if the original Galliance has a major problem with the name.

Other artistes who make up the Money-O Galliance are Lady G, Queen Paula, along with newcomers Black Queen and Champagne. But the group is not limited to artistes as it also includes dancers Dahlia and Latesha.

Macka Diamond is also inviting other female artistes to join the movement, which she says started more than six months ago.

Macka believes this unity is important in the dancehall because the aim is to help the women get more airplay and recognition in the industry.

Just a hunt a food

“Wi just a hunt a food,” she told THE STAR. “We as woman hungry and dem nah give wi di run weh dem give the man dem.”

She said members of the Money-O Galliance have been bombarding various selectors at dances to play their songs.

“It’s like a campaign and wi pulling together the forces. Unity a di strength fi di woman dem,” she said. “Wi jus’ waan wi freedom, title and respect from the man dem.”

Macka Diamond says the women get reasonable airplay but their presence in the street dances and parties is almost non-existent. She is also making a plea to female disc jocks to support the women in dancehall.

? Macka Diamond launches all-female ‘Money-O Galliance’

URL: Statue of Caribbean woman breaks new ground

The statue is a tribute to African-Caribbean women

London’s first public statue of an African-Caribbean woman has been unveiled as a memorial to women in the Caribbean community.

The 3m (10ft) high Bronze Woman statue of a woman holding a baby has been installed in Stockwell Memorial Garden, south London.

The anonymous figure is based on a poem of the same name by Guyana-born Cecile Nobrega, who lives in Stockwell.

The statue comes after a 10-year-long campaign by Ms Nobrega.

Olmec, a community investment foundation, raised £84,000 funding and found the sculptors and a location for the statue.

The statue was unveiled by a “circle” of women of Caribbean origin including artist Anissa-Jane, Baroness Rosalind Howells OBE and Music of Black Origin (MOBO) Awards founder Kanya King.

Windrush anniversary

An initial model of the statue was first designed by sculptor Ian Walters, who also created the Nelson Mandela statue in Parliament Square in 2005.

Following his death in August 2006 the project was completed by Aleix Barbat, a final year sculpture student at Heatherley’s School of Fine Art in London.

Olmec director Tanzeem Ahmed said the monument was “a tribute to the diverse communities that make up British society and a symbol of the potential of women everywhere”.

The installation of the statue marks the 60th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush ship to Britain carrying 500 West Indian immigrants, and the 200th anniversary of the end of the transatlantic slave trade.

St Kitts opposition calls for inquiry into black out

In St Kitts Nevis, the Opposition People’s Action Movement, PAM, has called for a full-scale public inquiry into a recent electricity outage that plunged the island into darkness.

Opposition leader Lindsay Grant made the call in a national address today in which he also urged citizens to demand answers from the government.

He charged that the recent island wide power outage had come about as a result of irresponsible spending by the Denzil Douglas administration.

He said despite repeated warnings from the Opposition, Government had decided to purchase prototype generators valued at over 11-million US dollars that have proven to be faulty.

An October 2 fire at the lone power station damaged two generators, leaving thousands in the dark.

Two staff members of the power company also had to be treated for smoke inhalation.

URL: Immense volume of money is laundered in Dominican Republic, Fannin warns

Puerto Plata. - United States ambassador Robert Fannin yesterday warned that an immense volume of money originating from drug trafficking is laundered in Dominican Republic and urged industrialists to collabrorate with the government in its war against it.

The diplomat affirmed that drugs pose a danger for the tourism industry and the world, for which the country should seek new ways to attack the problem of the demand, “as demonstrated by the fact that narcotics consumption has fallen 24 percent since 2001.”

Fannin made the request in the conference “Opportunities in Commercial Interchange and Investment between the United States and Dominican Republic,” that dictated in the American Chamber of Commerce’s monthly luncheon here, held in the hotel Gran Ventana, Playa Dorada.

The U.S. ambassador said the around two billion doses of cocaine transported through Dominican territory produced much money that has been brought here, where it’s being laundered. “The private sector is in a very good position to help identify and alert the authorities on these activities in this area.

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yes it’s time for our MCSame Video of the week - this one is so far the best.

enjoy,

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It’s time to spend the weekend laughing at these McSames - no joking there.

One of our favorite sites - Urban Swirl; featured Geriatric Barbie today and we just have to Big Them Up for the Guts to Tell It Like it T. I. S.  Make sure you Check out Urban Swirl because they got it all, from Obama to Old Mama.

but ya know we still workin for our girl Paris - check out Geriatic Barbies’ response

and this is the Real Paris puttin it like it TIS Baby - getting Fake Advice from the Fake Prez Martin Sheen. this is hilarious and Really Doh, Geriatric Barbie could learn a thing or two from These Two Actors; acting like they really serious. wonder if Geriatric and Caribou Barbie got this on they Ipods ?  where is Tina Fey and Freddie when you really need em.

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

~RE

Geriatric Barbie Makes a Speech

Written by ChiMeng Chang on Wednesday, 08 October 2008

The McCain Camp is slowly losing their grip for the White House so they immediately released their secret weapon = Cindy McCain. In Bethlehem, PA today, Cindy McCain blasted Obama on Troop funding. Link

“The day that Senator Obama decided to cast a vote to not fund my son when he was serving sent a cold chill through my body, I would suggest Senator Obama change shoes with me for just one day and see what it means to have a loved one serving in the armed services.”

Wow - the blonde can talk! I think it would be most appropriate for a super-rich white lady to change shoes with a black man. Let her walk in a black man’s shoes in the Reddest Red-Neck of States and see how she holds up.

In her speech, Mrs. McCain was referring to a vote that Obama cast last year against a defense funding bill because it did not include a timeline for pulling out of Iraq. Obama subsequently did voted for a version that included a timetable. Gee, where was Cindy when her husband voted on the recent GI Bill. Yikes, McCain didn’t vote that day. How about when McCain voted to cut off funding for troops who were serving “in harms way” in Somalia?

A recent report card from the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America www.iava.org rated all members of Congress on their votes to support legislation for our military. Obama was given a grade of “B”, McCain was given a “D”.

By making this bold attack - it is so FAIR GAME to criticize and bash the very being of Cindy McCain.

So, who is this rich bitch?

Cindy McCain seduced a married John McCain which led him to divorce his crippled wife to marry the young (18 years his junior), filthy rich heiress of a beer baron. Today they have seven mansions, servants, a dozen imported cars, etc.

“…In the spring of 1979, while conducting official business for the Navy, the still-married McCain encountered Cindy Lou Hensley, a willowy former cheerleader for USC. Mutually smitten, the two lied to each other about their ages. The 24-year-old Hensley became 27; the 42-year-old McCain became 38. For nearly a year the two carried on a cross-country romance while McCain was still living with Carol: Court documents filed with their divorce proceeding indicate that they “cohabitated as husband and wife” for the first nine months of the affair.

Although McCain stresses in his memoir that he married Cindy three months after divorcing Carol, he was still legally married to his first wife when he and Cindy were issued a marriage license from the state of Arizona. The divorce was finalized on April 2nd, 1980. McCain’s second marriage — rung in at the Arizona Biltmore with Gary Hart as a groomsman — was consummated only six weeks later, on May 17th. The union gave McCain access to great wealth: Cindy, whose father was the exclusive distributor for Budweiser in the Phoenix area, is now worth an estimated $100 million.

McCain’s friends were blindsided by the divorce. The Reagans — with whom the couple had frequently dined and even accompanied on New Year’s holidays — never forgave him. By the time McCain became a self-proclaimed “foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution” two years later, he and the Gipper had little more than ideology to bind them. Nancy took Carol under her wing, giving her a job in the White House and treating McCain with a frosty formality that was evident even on the day last March when she endorsed his candidacy. “Ronnie and I always waited until everything was decided and then we endorsed,” she said. “Well, obviously, this is the nominee of the party.”

Cindy McCain, stole narcotic prescriptions while working for an international charity orginization, along with buying percocett and vicodin on the street during her decade long drug habit.(while married to John McCain)

“The McCains soon found themselves entangled in more legal trouble. In 1989, in behavior the couple has blamed in part on the stress of the Keating scandal, Cindy became addicted to Vicodin and Percocet. She directed a doctor employed by her charity — which provided medical care to patients in developing countries — to supply the narcotics, which she then used to get high on trips to places like Bangladesh and El Salvador.Tom Gosinski, a young Republican, kept a detailed journal while working as director of government affairs for the charity. “I am working for a very sad, lonely woman whose marriage of convenience to a U.S. senator has driven her to . . . cover feelings of despair with drugs,” he wrote in 1992. When Cindy McCain suddenly fired Gosinski, he turned his journal over to the Drug Enforcement Administration, sparking a yearlong investigation. To avoid jail time, Cindy agreed to a hush-hush plea bargain and court-imposed rehab.

Ironically, her drug addiction became public only because she and her husband tried to cover it up. In an effort to silence Gosinski, who was seeking $250,000 for wrongful termination, the attorney for the McCains demanded that Phoenix prosecutors investigate the former employee for extortion. The charge was baseless, and prosecutors dropped the investigation in 1994 — but not before publishing a report that included details of Cindy’s drug use.

Notified that the report was being released, Sen. McCain leapt into action. He dispatched his top political consultant to round up a group of friendly reporters, for whom Cindy staged a seemingly selfless, Oprah-style confession of her past addiction. Her drug use became part of the couple’s narrative of straight talk and bravery in the face of adversity.

What an admirable “trailer trash with money” type of woman you are, Cindy!
Oh, I also want to mention that Cindy have had more face lifts than Joan Rivers - nothing wrong with that, just vanity! She needs to go under the knife to compete with McCain’s future mistress from the State of Alaska. You know that State - everybody there has foreign policy experience because its proximity to Russia!

Have another vicodan, Cindy!

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My Friend at Stephen Humor posted this hillarious piece

Have you ever wondered what those rappers were really saying? Well, wonder no more. Enjoy the hilarious translation of a freestyle rap battle.

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We’ve been noticing a trend of people displaying their support for Barack Obama’s Democratic presidential campaign by using his logo as their avatar, or visual representation on the web. We thought, “what can we do to show our support?”

So we created Logobama, a place for you to create your own custom Obama logo and use it wherever you want. As Obama says, “we are the change we have been waiting for.” That’s what Obama is representing… someone who wants all of us to participate in changing the world. And together, we can make this change, one logo at a time.

7th-Grade Teacher to Students: Obama is a ‘N’-Word

Angry parents in the northwest Florida community of Marianna want a middle school teacher fired after he put the “N”-word on the board to describe Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama.

The Marianna Middle School teacher, Greg Howard, is now serving a 10-day suspension after writing an acronym on the dry-erase board on Sept. 26: “C.H.A.N.G.E. - Come Help A N*gg*r Get Elected.”

But many parents want the 17-year teacher fired. The seventh-grade social studies teacher’s class has 17 White students, six Black students and one Asian student. Initially he was suspended for the day without pay, but that was elevated to the 10-day punishment.

He must also write a letter of apology to students. “We feel like the punishment is sufficient,” Larry Moore, superintendent of the Jackson County School District, told The Detroit Free Press.

“We did not feel he had to be fired.” NAACP officials say they will reserve their actions in the case until their investigation is complete. Audrey Wad, who has nieces and nephews at the school, didn’t need any more information before expressing her outrage.

“To me, it’s hurtful,” she told the Free Press. “The idea that he would impose his political opinion on the children is wrong to me. That’s where he crossed the line.”

URL: Debate verdict

Voters had a chance to ask questions directly

By Kevin Connolly
BBC News, Nashville

The idea of the town hall meeting reaches far back into the American folk memory - to a time when a community solved its problems by gathering all its people together for an open debate.

It is an inspiring idea - ordinary folks gathered in a common purpose to identify the right thing to do. No party politics, no expensive campaigning, no negative profiling of the other guy.

How ironic that Campaign 2008 should offer us a town hall meeting just as it starts to turn negative in the build-up to its colossally expensive climax.

The town in question of course was a purely notional one, conjured up in the grounds of Belmont University, Nashville, with a population consisting entirely of well-informed but undecided voters presided over by “Mayor” Tom Brokaw, who has a day job as an NBC anchorman.

It promised to be the most interesting of the four debates of the general election campaigning season, if only because it offered voters the chance to ask their questions directly.

On paper, the format should have favoured John McCain, who conducts lots of campaign events as town hall meetings

God forbid, though, that any real debating should take place - both camps employ negotiators to limit the amount of time spent in “discussion” after each answer, more or less eliminating any prospect of real, sustained exchange that might catch someone out on network television.

‘Dancing backwards’

In practice both candidates went wildly over time on a number of occasions - at one point Mayor Brokaw observed that the debate would be running a bigger deficit than the federal government if they didn’t get it back under control.

John McCain is trailing in nearly all the key polls

On paper, the format should have favoured John McCain, who conducts lots of campaign events as town hall meetings, in which he prowls the stage taking questions from anyone who wants to ask one.

In fact, I thought Barack Obama did rather better, measured in manner and clear-minded in content where Mr McCain seemed to spend too much time attempting to score points directly off his rival, with what felt like carefully-rehearsed digs that didn’t seem quite to find the mark.

Mr Obama offered a performance reminiscent of a great boxer who knows he is ahead on points and only has to keep dancing backwards around the ring avoiding trouble to win. He didn’t land many scoring punches, but then he didn’t have to.

Mr McCain, who is now trailing in nearly all the important local and national opinion polls, went into the contest knowing he needed a clear-cut win to change the game.

He duly headed off around the ring on the offensive more than once, but he tended to telegraph his punches and they mostly felt like they missed their target.

At one point he played what is clearly his ace - his relative experience - by saying directly: “There’s no time for on-the-job training, my friend.”

But in such an intimate forum it felt oddly inappropriate to say it so bluntly - better surely to demonstrate the proposition with a superior grasp of the facts?

Husky sincerity

The problem with reaching back into the briefings and bulletin points for ammunition is, of course, that if you don’t deliver pre-prepared material well, it can sound a little odd.

At one point, Mr McCain tried to skewer Mr Obama as a big-spending liberal by claiming he’d once voted for a plan to give $3m of federal money to buy an overhead projector for a planetarium in Chicago. I’m surely not the only viewer who spent the rest of the evening wondering what kind of projector that kind of money buys you.

Mr Obama seemed more relaxed than Mr McCain - partly, no doubt, because he knows the polls show he is heading for victory unless his rival can change the race.

Senator McCain is the man who sang ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran’ and talked about annihilating North Korea Barack Obama

He seemed steady and relaxed and held his natural inclination to the high-flown rhetorical flourish in check.

Mr McCain had gone for a soft note of slightly muted, husky sincerity which briefly made me think of Ronald Reagan’s delivery, but mainly sounded like the tone of a children’s storyteller with a sore throat.

There were some sharp exchanges of course, when Mr Obama was goaded into trading jabs.

The sharpest came after Mr McCain made the familiar charge that Mr Obama was naive to indicate that in some circumstances he would launch an attack into Pakistan to “get” Osama Bin Laden.

He quoted Teddy Roosevelt’s maxim: “Talk softly and carry a big stick.”

Mr Obama looked stung, perhaps for the first time in the evening, and replied: “Senator McCain is the man who sang ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran’ and talked about annihilating North Korea.”

Both men’s advisers will feel they did competent jobs getting across competing visions of what America should do about health, tax and the economic bail-out package but neither had any surprises - and neither offered undecided voters anything they hadn’t seen and heard hundreds of times before.

A good question

One of the most telling moments of the evening, in fact, was prompted by a question sent in over the internet by a member of the public, who asked what sacrifices Americans might be called on to make in the current difficult circumstances.

It was a question that called for poetry - a good question because it tried to drag them away from the answers to predictable issues they have been hot-housing in debate camp.

Tellingly, neither of them had a convincing answer. Mr Obama offered something about how George Bush had told America to go shopping in the aftermath of 9/11 and Mr McCain told a story about how he once saved the country $6.8bn on a contract to build a new tanker for the air force.

On the vision thing, Mr McCain spoke again about his national service and Mr Obama about how America had given him opportunities which he wouldn’t have had elsewhere.

By this stage of the campaign, it’s all starting to sound a little familiar.

If you were feeling generous, you might call that section of the debate a tie - but overall the message of the night seemed to me to be clear.

Barack Obama emerged as the clear winner on the night in Nashville - if only because John McCain needed a game-changing victory on the night and he clearly didn’t manage one.

Kenya Deports American Author Who Criticized Obama;

(bbc - 10/08/08)

Kenyan authorities questioned then deported an American author who was in the nation to promote a book criticizing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, reports the BBC.

Jerome Corsi was going to hold a news conference about his book “The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality” before Kenyan authorities brought him in for questioning at immigration headquarters and took him to the airport and deported him.

According to Corsi, his book would “expose deep secret ties between U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama and a section of the Kenyan government leaders.” The book also accuses Obama of contributing $1 million to Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga during Odinga’s run for president. (Odinga is from the same town as Obama’s father.)

The book further claims that Obama was raised as a Muslim. Obama denies these charges. Obama, whose father was from Kenya, is wildly popular in the country so some are questioning the timing of immigration officials. Kenyan officials contend he was deported for not having all of his immigration papers. Corsi was taken in right before a press conference for the controversial book, but had already been in the country for a week.

Photo by Fashion Indie

Posted August 14, 2008

A man selling controversial t-shirts that refer to Senator Barack Obama as a slave was attacked in his New York City boutique. The man, known as “Apollo Braun,” claims that two African-American men entered his store Wednesday afternoon and shouted “Who do you call a slave, you f***ing Jew?!” before assaulting him.

Last month Braun - real name Doron Braunshtein - made news when a woman threatened to sue him after she was assaulted while wearing one his shirts that bore the words “Obama is my slave.” At the time, Braun defended the shirts, saying that they reflect the views of “ordinary WASPs [white anglo-saxon protestants].”

According to an account from his publicist, the two men worked together - one grabbed Braun’s hands while the other kicked him in the testicles. Now, after experiencing the physical fallout for himself, the shirt peddler is reconsidering his merchandise.

“I don’t want to be killed for my t-shirts. I am still shocked about what happened today but there is a big chance that I will stop selling my anti-Obama merchandise after what happened today. I mean, tomorrow someone can show up at my store with a gun, and I don’t want that to happen.”

After the incident, Braun was found on the floor of his store by a passerby. He then called the police and filed a report. It was the third time police had come to the store since the owner appeared on the cover of New York newspaper Metro wearing the Obama slave shirt. Since then, Braun has been flooded with phone calls and emails protesting his wears - some threatening death, according to his publicist.

Though he’s considering halting the sale of the inflammatory shirts, Braun calls the tees “art” and defends his right to make them.

“This is very disturbing to me that I am living in New York City and that I own a boutique for more than five and a half years [in] neighborhoods which are suppose to be the most open-minded and tolerant to any kind of art, but instead, people don’t understand me, hate me and don’t let me express myself the way everyone should be able to in New York.”

Braun maintains that his distaste for the presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States has nothing to do with the candidate’s race. Instead he dislikes Obama because he believes he is a Muslim.

The shirts causing all the trouble sell for $69 and include several other slogans such as “Jews Against Obama,” “Obama = Hitler” and “Who Killed Obama?”

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