Rand Paul, the winner of the Kentucky Republican primary is a prime example as to why minority voter turnout is important in non-Presidential races.
After his win, Paul delivered a message from his tea party supporters. That message is that the tea party wants their government back.
Later Paul made it clear that he has issues with the Civil Rights Act as it relates to private businesses. When asked if he felt it was okay to have segregated lunch counters, Paul blew smoke out of his ass by trying to focus the right to carry a gun inside a private restaurant. On Rachel Maddow he was asked in a way that only required a yes or no answer, and he continued his smoke blowing tactics which strongly suggest that Mr. Rand Paul opposes the the civil rights act as it relates to public accommodations that are operated as private enterprises, and as a U.S. Senator would not vote to extend it.
Unfortunately minorities in this country which includes African Americans, Latinos, Jews and women must depend on this act to avoid being discriminated against because of their protected class. This also extends to our gay brothers and sisters.
Rand Paul is supported by the Tea Party who has already recommended going back to literacy test as a way to qualify to vote. It is clear that minority’s civil rights are not supported by the tea party. In fact minority civil rights are threatened by tea party members who crusade around the country in an attempt to dip their archaic superiority ideology down the throats of people who differ in skin tone, language, religion and sexual preference.
Minorities in Kentucky might want to participate in the November election and send Rand Paul and his tea party a message:
This too is our country and we’re not going back to the black codes or the Jim Crow days and ways. We’re not swallowing your superiority philosophy. We’re just not having it!
Above are the interviews of Rand by NPR and Rachel Maddow on the issue of civil rights. Take a look and see if you agree.
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Today Malcolm X would have turned 85 had he not been gunned down 45 years ago.
Thomas Hagan , convicted of the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X, was paroled last month after serving 45 years of a 20-year-to-life sentence. Now 69 year old Hagan was released from Lincoln Correctional Facility in Harlem, NY where he walked into freedom under the shadow of a sign naming the street in honor of the man he had murdered — “Malcolm X Boulevard.”
Hagan had been in a work-release program since 1992 that allowed him to spend five days working and living with his family and two days in the prison. He reportedly intends to work as a substance abuse counselor and hopes to make a more positive mark in the world.
During his incarceration, Hagan testified to the innocence of the two other men tried and convicted for Malcolm’s murder. Hagan had maintained that others participated in the assassination, but that those arrested and convicted were not the ones. (The two men convicted also said they were innocent.) No other arrests were made in the shooting. While his own requests for parole had been turned down 14 times, Hagan’s accused accomplices were paroled sometime in the 1980′s.
Thomas Hagan 1965
Hagan, then in his 20s was loyal to a brand of Islam that Malcolm, the Nation’s popular spokesperson, publicly abandoned after making a pilgrimage to Mecca and discovering the universality of his faith. The Nation’s founder, the honorable Elijah Muhammad, taught that all white people were devils, but in Mecca Malcolm found himself worshipping alongside men of all races, all with heads bowed in reverence to and love for the same God. He left the Nation and adopted orthodox (mainstream) Islam.
2008 Photo of Thomas Hagan
Malcolm also brought to light some inconsistencies in Elijah Muhammad’s own behavior. When he spoke of his experience, and his changed beliefs, many in the Nation were angered. The Nation had brought dignity, structure and purpose to the lives of many men whose existences had been governed by violence, the indignities of racism, and the hopelessness of poverty. Malcolm himself had been introduced to it while in prison. Loyalty to the Nation, and to its prophet, Elijah Muhammad, was fierce. Malcolm’s body was riddled with bullets when he fell to his death in front of his pregnant wife and four daughters in Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965. Hagan has expressed regret for the killing, telling the parole board on March 3, according to a transcript,”I don’t think it should ever have happened.”
Although he may be remorseful Hagan’s actions sentenced Malcolm’s family to a life sentence.
Drawing from the wisdom expounded by her late husband, Dr. Betty Shabazz worked diligently at avoiding that sentence for her as well as her family by exercising forgiveness and peace for the men who was responsible for his death.
“One of the things Malcolm always said to me is, ‘Don’t be bitter. Remember Lot\'s wife when they kill me, and they surely will. You have to use all of your energy to do what it is you have to do,’” Shabazz said in a May 1995 speech.”
You might detect from the words of her daughter Attallah in the interview shown above, that Dr. Betty Shabazz did in fact focus her energy to raise her children who were never members of The Nation Of Islam in an environment where they would avoid being defined under the notoriety of their father’s Nation Of Islam days. However, all her efforts would not be able to erase the memory of their father being violently assaulted with gun fire before their very young innocent eyes.
Many rumors surrounded the shooting of the man who was and still remains a hero to many African-Americans. It has been said that it had been orchestrated by both the U.S. government and the Nation of Islam. Dr. Betty Shabazz had blamed Louis Farrakhan, who inherited the leadership of the Nation following Muhammad’s death. Perhaps remembering Malcolm’s counsel, Shabazz reconciled with Farrakhan in 1995 — but not before one of her six daughters, Qubilah, allegedly sought revenge.
Qubilah, “was charged in Minneapolis with trying to hire a hit man to kill Farrakhan. Mother, Betty Shabazz stood behind her daughter, insisting that an FBI informant entrapped her. Qubilah Shabazz made a deal with prosecutors in which they agreed to drop charges if she completed treatment for alcohol and psychiatric problems. She signed an affidavit accepting responsibility for her conduct but maintained her innocence.”
Farrakhan and Betty Shabazz made their reconciliation public when Farrakhan, shook her hand “on the stage of Harlem’s Apollo Theater as 1,400 people cheered at a fund-raiser for her daughter’s defense. Dr. Shabazz also spoke at Farrakhan’s Million Man March in October 1995.”
Unfortunately this was not the happy ending to a troubling story trickled down from the unnecessary assassination of the man who was also known as Malcolm El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. Two years later, Betty Shabazz herself was killed – not by strangers but by her own grandson, Qubilah’s child. The 12 year old, reportedly upset because he had been sent to live with his grandmother in Yonkers, NY, set fire to her home. Betty Shabazz was burned over 80 percent of her body.
The young lad also named “Malcolm Shabazz, pleaded guilty to the juvenile equivalent of manslaughter and was given 18 months in a youth detention and treatment center, with extensions possible until he turned 18. There have been several extensions, partly because of several escapes in 1999.” In 2001, his attorney, Merril Sobie, told a NY Times reporter “he thought the teenager had overcome his problems and expressed optimism about him. ‘He wants to go to college,’ [Sobie] said. ‘Malcolm is extremely bright, and I know he has matured a lot.’ ” A year later, the Times reported, that the young Malcolm Shabazz was given three and a half years in prison in connection with beating and attempting to steal $100 from a teenager in Middletown, N.Y. In August, 2006, the same newspaper reported that he was was charged with reckless endangerment, assault and criminal mischief in Mount Vernon, NY, after punching a hole in a doughnut shop window, injuring two people inside.
Hagan has spent a considerable amount of his adult life paying for his irresponsible deed, and unlike Susan Atkins has now been paroled. Atkins was convicted of stabbing to death a pregnant Sharon Tate in 1969 as a part of the Manson gang. Atkins herself was denied parole 18 times including a request after it was discovered that the born again christian was terminally ill. That request was denied and Susan Atkins died in prison on September 24, 2009.
At 69 Hagan will spend the rest of his life with his family and hopes to become a substance abuse counselor making a more positive mark in the world. Should he successful at his quest the children, grand children and perhaps great grand children of Malcolm X will be forever scared by the rippling impact of Hagan’s violent actions inside what is now know as the The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center some 45 years ago.
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A New Orleans newsman took the traditionally awkward on-air banter between anchors to a new low last week.
Following up on WGNO-TV reporter Catherine Shreves’ segment on a woman who used “G-Shots,” a collagen injection designed to improve sexual satisfaction for women, anchor Michael Hill deadpanned: “So she’s enjoying penis a little bit more, is she?”
Hill’s co-anchor Jessica Holly looked stunned as a shocked Shreves laughed nervously.
“Oh, she is enjoying her, her sex life a little bit more, she and her husband,” Shreves stammered.
After shooting Hill a glare, a stern Holly shot back: “Thank you for clarifying, Michael.”
The video has gone viral since airing Thursday, earning about 30,000 YouTube hits and thousands more around the Web.
The website Deadspin.com said it got an e-mail from Hill in which he defended his comments. “Why all the fuss about one word uttered after a segment rarely seen on any traditional station’s late newscast!” the e-mail reportedly read. “The topic invites discussion, debate and commentary. Nothing wrong with also ‘injecting’ or ‘inserting’ a little humor … even for the prudish to the prurient!”
The ABC affiliate has not commented on Hill’s comment, which is being compared to those uttered by Will Ferrell’s crass Ron Burgundy in the big-screen comedy “Anchorman.”
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Jazz great Lena Horne, who died Sunday at age 92, was remembered by thousands of mourners at New York’s St. Ignatius Loyola church on Friday (May 14).
At the funeral — attended by Actress Leslie Uggams, Opera star Jessye Norman, actress Cicely Tyson, actress Diahann Carroll, actress/ singer Chita Rivera, Dionne Warwick, Vanessa Williams, Governor David Patterson, former Mayor David Dinkins crime writer Walter Mosley, her grandaughter, actress Jenny Lumet and many other friends and relatives— Horne was remembered by those who knew her as a girl from Brooklyn who became a world-renowned singer and actress and, in the process, lent her voice to those oppressed by decades of racism. But she was also so much more.
Horne’s granddaughter, actress Jenny Lumet who is also the writer of the 2008 film “Rachel Getting Married, along with former New York City Mayor David Dinkins and Rep. John Lewis gave heartfelt eulogies.
“[She] was so many ideas existing all at the same time, in the same space, and they were all conflicting, and they were all true,” Lumet said, according to reports. “I’ve tried to sum her up and I can’t. … Summing up really means it’s over, and I think she’s not over and that she’s quite infinite.”
“With the passing of Lena Horne we have lost yet another of our greatest treasures and, for many of us, a very dear and precious friend,” Dinkins said. “And it’s very, very hard to say goodbye.”
Broadway star and multiple Tony winner Audra McDonald, sang “Amazing Grace” over the casket.
Back of Lena Horne's funeral program
Horne’s paternal grandparents were early members of the NAACP civil-rights organization, and in a precursor to her lifelong battle on behalf of equal rights, she was the cover girl for the organization’s monthly bulletin in October 1919, when she was just 2 years old. She would go on to sing at Harlem’s legendary Cotton Club, appear in Broadway productions and star in Hollywood films, though she would often refuse to play roles that portrayed blacks in subservient positions, which limited her appearances.
By the 1940s, she was the top-earning black performer in Hollywood, playing lucrative nightclub gigs and gaining popularity among black and white G.I.’s during World War II. Horne’s sultry voice would go on to dazzle fans for decades on hits like “My Blue Heaven” and “Stormy Weather.”
Upon learning of her death, a whole new generation of artists — including Alicia Keys, Diddy and Monica — remembered Horne as a pioneer and a prodigious talent, one the world would probably never see the likes of again.
Thousands of people lined the streets and waiting outside the church to pay their respects to the late entertainer whose life had touched their lives in a good way.
In honor of the legendary Lena Horne, PBS will re-air the 1996 American Masters special “Lena Horne: In Her Own Voice” from May 14 through May 23, 2010. (Check local listings.)
Ms. Horne is survived by her only daughter Gail Lumet Buckley and a host of grand children and great grand children.
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Siohvaughn Wade (right) Dwayne Wade & Gabrielle Union (left)
Wishing something not to happen won’t necessarily stop it from happening. That is all too true when it comes to divorce.
All too often the proceeding becomes complicated and nasty, especially in the case of celebrities.
Such is the case of Miami Heat basketball star Dwayne Wade and Siohvaughn Wade, his high school sweet heart. They are currently locked into a nasty divorce which recently spilled over on Wade’s Hollywood girlfriend Gabrielle Union.
Last week, Siohvaughn Wade filed a lawsuit in Chicago contending that her estrange hubby’s relationship with the actress was causing the couple’s sons emotional distress, alleging, for example, that Wade and Union “engaged in sexual foreplay” in front of the boys. Both Wade and Union shot back denying the allegations by labeling the lawsuit “baseless and meritless.”
Siohvaughn Wade is making Dwayne’s world a complete hell. According to James Pritikin, Mr. Wade’s attorney, Siohvaughn Wade has repeatedly thwarted Dwyane Wade’s efforts to visit his children or talk with them on the phone. Pritikin said she even once called police when Dwyane Wade showed up at the couple’s Miami home to pick them up, falsely telling officers there was a warrant out for the basketball player’s arrest.
Dwayne’s hell may be coming to the end of the road. The soon to be ex-Mrs. Dwayne Wade has hit a brick wall with the court which has had enough of her non complying behavior. The straw that broke the camel’s back came on Monday when Siohvaughn failed to show up for a Monday divorce hearing.
Chicago’s Cook County Circuit Judge Marya Nega ordered sheriff’s deputies to take Wade’s estranged wife into custody for her failure to appear.
The court has grown tired of what Judge Nega describes as a pattern of behavior by Siohvaughn Wade throughout the contentious divorce from Mr. Wade who is also a Chicago native.
“When things don’t go according to Mrs. Wade’s way all of a sudden the phone’s turned off,” said Nega, clearly exasperated when Siohvaughn Wade’s attorney explained she had not been able to reach her client.
Mr. Pritikin had planned to ask in Monday’s scheduled hearing that his client be given physical custody of the couple’s two boys, ages 8 and 2.
Pritikin has also requested that the judge orders the state’s attorney’s office to launch a criminal investigation. In court documents, his office said Siohvaughn Wade is “unstable, dishonest, and unbalanced,” and that more time with her “would seriously endanger the minor children’s physical, mental, moral and emotional health.”
Acknowledging Siohvaughn Wade’s refusal to comply with other court orders, Judge Nega said, Siohvaughn Wade has not followed an order to make sure the couple’s two children talk to their father every day. The Judge also noted the children were not at their Chicago school last week to be picked up by Dwyane Wade’s sister as ordered by the court.
Looking at what is in the best interest of the children, Judge Nega said her main concern was what the ongoing divorce was doing to the children and suggested she may order custody be given to Dwyane Wade.
“Maybe it’s time for the kids to go live with Dad for a month or two,” the judge said.
Nega said she would likely schedule a custody hearing for the summer, then deal with the rest of the case later.
In Siohvaughn Wade defense, Marsha Fisher, her attorney tried to take some blame for her failure to appear. Ms. Fisher said Mrs. Wade had learned Fisher had been in a car accident and apparently thought she did not have to show up in court.
“The fact that you had a car accident does not excuse Mrs. Wade not being here,” the judge said.
Unless the bench warrant is quashed, Siohvaughn Wade will have to post $10,000 bond to be released. It is expected that Mrs. Wade will be presented to the court today by her legal representation who will motion the judge to quash the bench warrant. Whether the judge will grant the relief depends on the reasonableness of Mrs. Wade’s failure to appear.
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