Ed Gordon and The Roundtable, From March 3rd.

Topics- Congress, Supreme Court, and Hustle and Flow. I agree with the panelists 110% that the 'Hustle & Flow' role was basically a disgrace that will feed the stereotypes about Black men. Stereotypes that say we are all animals, all uneducated, we all glorify the "pimp" "hip hop" "thug" lifestyle, we all listen to rap music (I personally hate it), etc. Now the main song from the soundtrack is being marketed as an award winning result of musical genius.

It's embarrassing really. That's why I never went to see the movie.

Hustle And Flow is a perfect example of why I don't identify with so called popular "Black Culture"....I HATE IT! I don't think that I like anything about it. And I hate being lumped into a group based on my skin tone. It's so disrespectful. No other ethnicities in this country have to go through such issues regarding racial identity and being boxed into some category based on race.

And it's interesting how Hollywood & the Tony Awards never seem to notice other great black performances....more positive performances (I can name countless performances from Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Halle Berry, Denzel Washington and others that basically went unnoticed).... but they seem to notice and recognize the performances that show blacks in negative stereotypical roles, as ignorant, as sex objects, etc. The institutional racism is pretty obvious at this point. I wonder if Black Hollywood will ever stand up to say anything about it. What's even worse is that there are black folks who support this kind of material. Blacks often tend to join in and celebrate the degradation of their own image. It is no wonder why kids in the inner city aspire to be pimps, NBA players, Football players, drug dealers, playboys, models, sex objects, video girls, rappers, etc. These have become the virtues of "Black Americas" urban youth. The impact of these negative stereotypical images goes deeper than the CD's and the movie theaters. It affects how blacks view themselves, and how White America (and the world) perceives blacks in this country.

Here is the link for this roundtable discussion:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5243598
They discuss "Hustle and Flow" at the end of their segment. Just click the audio icon. This is the movie that Hollywood will be celebrating. (I get sick just thinking about it). I don't watch awards shows.... American awards organizations lost any sense of "art" a long time ago.

Will Black Elites Please Shut Up About The Voting Rights Act!

I wish that the Black elites in this country would shut up about the renewal of the Voting Rights Act set to expire soon. This is just another example of their tendancy to think small. And i'm getting tired of hearing their mindless ranting about this issue. It makes me want to puke.

They are begging rich white folks in Washington D.C., who don't give a damn about their right to vote, to renew something that never lived up to its original promise in the first place. They act as if this piece of legislation really gave them a fair vote. Instead, they should think big and demand real voting reform in this country- such as:

1. Standardized voting across the country.

2. Demanding an end to the 50 separate and unequal votes in the State by State voting system.

3. More national political parties so that the 300 million people in this country could be better represented and balance could be brought into the system currently run by two thoroughly corrupt organizations.

4. Demand that votes are actually counted.

5. Demand that votes are counted by non-partisan election officials.

6. Voter verification and ballot verification.

7. A Nationwide voter registration system....or at least Statewide systems. This would allow voters to vote anywhere in the State that they choose...no more designated polling places...which is outdated policy. This would prevent the problem of the same person voting twice at different locations.

8. Allow people to register to vote at more locations...including the neighborhood grocery store, Walgreens, Banks, Drivers License offices, Public Libraries, Colleges/Universities, etc. Voting and voter registration should be as easy and convenient as possible.

9. Have a popular vote for President.

10. Stop voting on Tuesdays. Saturday or Sunday voting should be the new norm.

Black elites should be fighting for these things and more. Instead, they are begging for the weak system that we have had for the past 40 years to be reinstated. That is nonsense! The same voting rights act that they are begging for was almost never enforced.

*Throughout the 1990's, when Republicans were able to dominate the media and manipulate voting- The Voting Rights Act was in place. Didn't help.

*In 2000, We all know what happened there. All sorts of trickery all over the country, especially in Florida with partisan voting officials controlling the vote, votes not being counted, votes thrown out, ballot tampering, bags of ballots thrown in the trash or missing, vote rigging of various kinds, entire areas where votes were thrown out, and an election that would have gone to the other candidate had all the votes been handled properly. THE SAME VOTING RIGHTS ACT WAS IN PLACE. It didn't make one bit of difference. The election was STILL a fraud with the Voting Rights Act in place. Didn't help!

*2002, more Republican trickery allowed Republicans to gain even more seats in the U.S. Congress. One of the main tricks used was changing the bounderies of the voting districts...called redistricting, in a way that gave Republicans an advantage. Now, most Congressional seats have no serious competition, and run uncontested due to all the redistricting that has taken place. This is an example that shows how far the U.S. is from being a real Democracy. THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT WAS IN PLACE in 2002. But to no avail. It didn't help.

*2004, Even more political trickery occurred in 04. Ohio and other States like Florida, have Secretaries of State who are responsible for counting the votes, but these same people are also the chairpersons for one of the political parties involved in the election. International Observers (the OSCE) were shocked to learn about this system in 2004. Then there were all of the scandals regarding voters being turned away, fraudulent organizations working for the Republican party, posing as independent voter registration groups but were really throwing away voter registration cards made by Democrats... all sorts of undemocratic behavior took place during the 2004 election season..., in particular a lot of media manipulation of the voters. ALL TAKING PLACE WHILE THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT WAS IN FORCE. Didn't help.

*In 2006 and 2008, you will see the same nonsense.... culminating in a fake ceremony that Americans take part in every 2-4 years, giving themselves the illusion of being a Democracy, without actually being one.

*The Voting Rights Act hasn't done a goddamn thing to guarantee or protect my vote. And even if it did, what good does it do to protect a vote within a larger broken, corrupt, un-democratic system?

Black Elites...wake up and stop thinking small! Shut Up about the Voting Rights Act and push for real Democracy.

DUBAI NOW PURCHASING U.S. DEFENSE INTERESTS IN A SECOND DEAL

U.S. continues to give away its infrastructure to foreign interests. The fathers of this country would no doubt be shocked and troubled by these events. They were concerned about the U.S. giving away certain interests to foreign control. I think that eventually the overall trend of giving these interests away one by one will eventually come back to haunt the U.S.

Currently, foreign countries manage our debt, the U.S. relies on foreign energy sources, foreign labor, foreign port operators, foreign vendors of various kinds, etc.
Republicans constantly preach about how well they handle security, but that just doesn't match the reality of what it taking place.
How much more will the U.S. give away?
U.S. defense interests to be taken over by Dubai organization. Part of a strange pattern.

New Zogby Report Finds That U.S. Troops Have Dramatically Changed View Of War In Iraq

U.S. Troops, usually the most militant, Gung Ho, Pro-War, and Pro-Republican, are now having a change of heart. Most Troops want to pull out of Iraq within 1 year. U.S. troops gave very strong unwavering support for the war in Iraq early on.

This study also points out something even more troublesome. It shows that 90% of soldiers believe that the Iraq war was retaliation for 9/11. This shows just how misinformed, uninformed, uneducated, and misled, and really brainwashed these soldiers are.

It has been made clear on several occasions, and by several different entities (including the F.B.I., CIA, and the 9/11 Commission) that Iraq was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Yet, the right leaning media, especially FOX news, helped to perpetuate this lie by suggesting that there was a link between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks. This was a major reason that this ignorance was allowed to fester among the American public, especially among the troops.
If you were someone who was not familiar with the world before 9/11, you could easily get confused about what was going on afterwards. This is what happened with the troops. The fact that 90% still hold that view is really troubling.

U.S. troops should be more educated and more aware of the world. This just supports the idea that most of these guys (and girls) really have no clue of where or why they are fighting and dying. That's the problem with allowing recruiters into U.S. High Schools. We put kids into schools that don't teach civics, don't teach world geo-politics, don't teach international relations, don't teach foreign policy, don't teach world history, don't teach world geography, don't teach world religion and culture, yet we allow them to be hunted by these recruiters who send them to wars that they, in turn, don't understand because the same system that sent them, has not educated them. This condition actually makes it easier for the recruiters to recruit these young people (in addition to other reasons such as a weak, hollow economy that operates off the backs of the working poor). It's almost as if the U.S. education system is designed to breed soldiers...soldiers who won't ask questions....because they have been miseducated and bred not to be curious. That's how it appears to me. Why else have they not educated young Americans? They know that with proper education, fewer will want to join the military. This is true because on one hand, such students would presumably have more options for higher education, and on the other hand, students will be more reluctant to join due to a more skeptical conscience brought about by their educational experience. If you're running a military industrial complex and you need warm American bodies to fill uniforms, one of the main things that you would want to do is dumb down the masses, so that they would be less resistant to joining, fighting wars and accepting propaganda. This is in fact what has happened to young Americans. They have been turned into little more than pieces of military equipment on a conveyor belt; almost dehumanized, in order to become these easily trainable fighting machines.

For Information on this Zogby Poll, here is a summary of the report.

An additional article from Zogby.

Operations At More U.S. Ports Being Transferred to Foreign Control

More than 7 Ports involved in Dubai Port deal. Dubai set to takeover operations at 21 U.S. Ports.
Read on...

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Ever Wonder What Things Would Be Like If The South Had Won The Civil War?

Ever Wonder What Things Would Be Like If The South Had Won The Civil War? NPR takes a look at the film CSA, "Confederate States Of America". NPR also offers a review of the film.
Filmmaker Kevin Willmot, takes a no holds barred look at Slavery and the social implications of a Southern victory. It's a mockumentary, but still carries a strong message.
Watch trailers and get other information at the films website. Also get information from another official website for the film- from the film company, IFC Films.

And I don't give a damn if I offend right wing Southerners. Kevin Willmot is speaking the truth in his own way here. Hell, you have millions of Conservative Whites who are STILL MAD about the South not winning the civil war.

New Media Matters Study Confirms Right Wing Advantage in Media

New Media Matters Study reveals the right-wing slant in news and talk shows.
I wish that it would have taken a closer look at radio shows, where Conservatives dominate by a a much wider margin.

Ed Gordon and the Roundtable, Feb. 28

Good discussion on the roundtable today from Ed Gordon program.
Topics: Situation in Iraq, and more bafoonery from Black Hollywood.