Democrats Sell Out On The Snap Program

Last week while the nation was collectively lost in the NSA wiretapping scandal and the news that we are inching closer to a war in Syria, the United States Senate, like thieves in the night passed the latest iteration of The Farm Bill which will cut the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) also known as food stamps by $4.1 billion over the next ten years.

 

The bill, which was co-authored by the junior Senator from Michigan Debbie Stabenow, is the latest glaring example of the inability of Democrats in Congress to resist the temptation of buying into deficit hysteria, which Congressional Republicans have been hyping for the last 4 ½ years.

 

Stabenow, who just wrote a bill that will take food out of the mouths of poor men, women, and children, almost pulled an arm muscle while patting herself on the back said “The Senate today voted to support 16 million American jobs, to save taxpayers billions and to implement the most significant reforms in agriculture programs in decades.” What’s that Senator, no mention of cuts in the SNAP program? Why not be completely honest with the people who voted to send you to Washington, the people who you pay lip service to all of the time.

 

What’s even more galling is that The House of Representatives, which by now you know is being held hostage by Tea Party Conservatives, has yet to come to an agreement on it’s own version of the Farm Bill. If John Boehner and the gang had their way not only would they take food out of the mouths of the poor they would also take away their knives and forks.

 

Last month The House Agriculture Committee did pass a bill that cut funding for the SNAP program by $20.5 billion by removing “categorical eligibility.” Boehner himself is on record as saying that he supports the level of cuts, describing them as changes “that both parties know are necessary”. The only thing missing from Boehner and The House’s hinted proposals is a David Vitter like amendment barring food stamps to anyone who has been convicted of certain crimes, which means not only preventing them from qualifying for a valuable and needed Government program but their families as well.

 

Between the $4 billion in cuts offered by Senate Democrats and the $20 million offered by The House Agriculture Committee the one thing that is certain is that poor and working people are going to be hurt significantly. Both political parties are playing a game of tug of war over budgetary issues except that while Republicans are pulling their end with their feet standing at their own starting position, Democrats are pulling their end with their feet somewhere around the middle of the field.

 

The same thing played out earlier this year when it came time for both sides to put out their prospective budgets. Paul Ryan, the guy who lost the 2012 Presidential election big as one half of the Romney/Ryan ticket while moonlighting from his day job as a Congressman from Wisconsin has never met a poor person he likes and all of the versions of the budget proposals that bear his name have been as equally draconian as the previous one that came before it.

 

How did Democrats respond? Democratic Senator from Washington Patty Murray threw her budget into the ring that was only slightly to the left of Ryan’s rather than being the polar opposite. Then, just when you thought it couldn’t be any more frustrating as a Progressive, President Obama offered his own budget that took it’s position squarely in between Ryan’s and Murray’s. Nobody knows how to negotiate like Democrats.

 

The fact of the matter is these cuts couldn’t have come at a worse time. Despite what the brought and paid for honks on CNBC and Fox Business Channel tell you, the economy is not recovering as fast as it needs to be. Wall Street setting record highs on a daily basis is only good for the same Wall Street cheats that took the country to it’s knees with all of it’s shady practices in 2007 and 2008.

 

One in seven Americans use the SNAP program. An overwhelming majority of these people work full time and still don’t make enough in wages to feed their families on their own paychecks. Yet there are constantly dehumanized and made to feel worthless, like ingrates and thieves by one political party and simply lied to by the other.

 

Where is the shame of Democratic Senators for passing this kind of bill? Where is the shame of the President if he doesn’t use his veto power to stop this bill? When is the Political Party that is supposed to be championing the rights of the poor and working class going to start living up to the standards that it’s constituency expects?

Chris Hayes Is Right With MLK-NSA Analogy

Tuesday night on his show “All In With Chris Hayes” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes made an analogy that has been made a lot over the last two weeks in the wake of the current NSA leak scandal plaguing the nation. Hayes, like civil liberties hawk Glenn Greenwald, brought up the massive Government surveillance experienced by civil rights leaders of the 1950′s and 60′s, most notably Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Hayes walked his audience through audio taped quotes offered up by then President John F. Kennedy who expressed concern over aligning himself with MLK saying that King coming to the White House was like “ (Karl) Marx coming to the White House.” Kennedy also referred to King as being “our boy.” There was also the public admittance of authorized wire taps of the home and various hotel rooms of MLK by then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Combine that with the ruthlessness exhibited by then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and you come to the conclusion that what King and others like him faced is something that is on a completely different level.

 

I like Hayes, in large part because his work and political ideology pretty much line up with my own so I think that it is a safe assumption to make that he wasn’t saying the admitted NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden is the same type of martyr that Dr. King was or is. While Snowden is, in my opinion, already being unfairly treated and will be unfairly prosecuted by his government he still has certain advantages. How many people of color who weren’t born into a middle class family and just so happened to be a high school dropout would land a good paying job with an American consulting firm that has secured millions in Government contracts over the years.

 

More importantly here is where Hayes got it right. There is Government overreach taking place with the NSA leak scandal. Individual Americans are having their phone calls listened to, their text messages screened despite President Obama’s assurances that safeguards are in place to prevent these things. Is this intrusion to the level of what Dr. King and others faced in the 60′s, probably not but we don’t know that for sure because so much of the information is classified. Elected officials in Congress can’t even get on the same page in terms of whether or not they have been briefed on the information.

 

The backlash that Hayes received on Twitter was typical. Everything from the theory that invoking Dr. King’s name was a ploy to draw in African-Americans who haven’t been that responsive to the NSA leak story to white liberals caring more about “fake” Government spying cases more than black and brown kids being “Stopped and Frisked” on the streets of New York City.

 

First of all in defense of Hayes, his work has taken on everything from Stop and Frisk to mass incarcerations of people of color to the right’s assault on America’s public school system and how it effects young black and brown kids. Secondly, while some white liberals have been tone deaf to the plight of people of color in certain areas (one example being the silence of some prominent white feminists concerning The Onion’s disgusting tweet of 9 year old actress Quvenzhane Wallis back in March) that doesn’t mean the issues of poor black and brown men, women, and children have been completely absent from liberal websites, blogs and television shows.

 

At the risk of going all Tavis or Cornell, a large portion if not all of the backlash that Hayes and liberals like him receive is due to the notion that to a lot of people on the left feel as though Barack Obama should not be criticized in any shape, form, or fashion. I wonder how many of the B.O. supporters would be as up in arms if the far left were criticizing President Bill Clinton for spying on everyday Americans, I would imagine that there would be more silence. I understand the urge for people who are intrigued by politics to defend or even blindly trust “their guy”. If Barack Obama says everything is being followed to the full letter of the law and nobody’s phone calls are being listened to then most people who pulled that lever in that voting booth for him will say okay and go about their business. What happens though, god forbid if President Marco Rubio, or really god forbid President Ted Cruz says the same thing in four or five years.

 

Hayes wrapped up the opening portion of his program on Tuesday by interviewing the legendary civil rights icon Julian Bond, who talked about receiving his own file that was compiled by the FBI and why they spent their time watching him and not catching real criminals. Bond also wondered about our elected officials doing things that they shouldn’t “Governments do these kinds of things and once they do them they can’t control them.” he exclaimed.

 

When asked about Barack Obama and whether he trusts the Obama Administration on the handling of these matters Bond said “ I’m conflicted too, I have a lot of trust I want to trust, but I’ve seen this happen before, I seen us go down this road before and I’m afraid we may well go down this road right now. I don’t see anyone stopping it or telling me we are not doing it. Just telling me to trust people is not enough for me.”

 

If a legend like Julian Bond, who has experienced the wrath Government surveillance firsthand is saying that blind trust is not the remedy he should be listened too. Apparently Chris Hayes is listening and that’s why he is absolutely right on this issue.

 

 

The NSA Scandal Isn’t About The Media

Allow me to put forth my feelings concerning one Glenn Greenwald, I’m not a fan. I’m at least not a fan of certain aspects of his political leanings and positions that he has taken in the past. Greenwald, a columnist for the United States edition of The Guardian and former constitutional lawyer who has made the defense of civil liberties pretty much his life’s work has backed some head scratching causes in the past.

 

In the preface of his first book “How Would A Patriot Act?” Greenwald talks about his initial support for the Iraq War even though most people with a brain and the ability to look at the shocking lack of evidence put forward by the Bush Administration could see that even from the outset it was and will always remain a really bad idea.

 

Greenwald also has been very vocal in his defense of the Supreme Court’s decision on Citizens United. Apparently he is under the impression that corporations are people too and that not having your name disclosed for donating a small fortune to politicians for the express purpose of having your agenda become a reality is indeed a First Amendment right.

 

Greenwald in breaking the story of an ex C.I.A. Operative who leaked classified information on Government surveillance hasn’t exactly covered himself in glory either. He has come off as the guy in the end zone who goes on just a little bit too long with his touchdown dance given his constant media appearances and his one man coming attractions previews concerning future bombshells.

 

Now that we have gotten all of that out of the way, the NSA leak story has nothing and I mean absolutely nothing to do with Glenn Greenwald or his colleagues in the media Laura Poitras and Barton Gellman and has everything to do with the United States Government.

 

In a Press Conference from California last Friday, one that was meant to discuss the Healthcare Law President Obama pretty much confirmed that the information that was leaked by a man that we now know as Edward Snowden was indeed accurate while telling the American public that they have to swallow hard and choose between 100% privacy and 100% safety.

 

While going on to say that National Security and the levels to which it is practiced is a debate that he and his Administration welcome, even though most people know that he and they really don’t the President is buoyed by the fact that he has broad bipartisan support from elected officials in Washington D.C. who see Snowden as the next Bradley Manning, a traitor who should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Give me another issue where two people like Dianne Feinstein and Lindsay Graham are in totally agreement.

 

While the President and Congress have disparaged Snowden and the media certain aspects of both Conservative (which is to be expected) and Liberal coalitions have also taken Greenwald and company too task for their coverage of the issue and have expressed their own flat out ambivalence to the Government possibly overstepping it’s bounds.

 

In a Washington Post/Pew Research poll 56% of people consider the NSA accessing telephone records as “acceptable” while only 41 % of people consider it “unacceptable.”

 

Some liberals have also had a problem with Greenwald pointing out that the United States Government used it’s powers to spy on Civil Rights Leaders of the 1950s and 60s most notably Martin Luther King Jr.. They say that Dr. King was a private citizen who hadn’t broken any laws and therefore shouldn’t have been exposed to that kind of treatment, (which he was and shouldn’t have been.) but the Government then, namely J. Edgar Hoover and Robert F. Kennedy said there was probable cause for them to spy on Dr. King, The Black Panthers, anti-war protesters, and left wing radicals of that time.

 

Sounds a lot like what the Bush Administration fed us and what the Obama Administration is feeding us now. People who are not terrorists or any other kind of law breakers are indeed under Government surveillance right now. Also forgive me if I don’t take the President at his word that “Nobody’s phone calls are being listened to.”

 

The media can sometimes be infuriating for it’s uncontrollable urge to make the stories they cover somehow about them, Glenn Greenwald has once again confirmed this, That doesn’t mean however that American public should give in to cynicism and express outrage or ask questions of the beltway press that they should be asking of the people they sent to D.C..

 

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The AP’s Phone Records And Why Progs Should Be Concerned

Let’s just cut to the chase shall we. The Obama Administration assuming that it has the authority to seize the phone records of the Associated Press in the manner in which they did is rich, about as rich as the Chicago Bulls loudly expressing that Lebron James is a flopper. (Go Heat!)

 

The uproar that has surrounded the news of the Justice Department’s actions was taken to another level yesterday when Attorney General Eric Holder gave an impromptu press conference.

 

The Attorney General said that the investigators at the DOJ were pursuing a “very serious leak” that put the “American people at risk.” Forgive me but that sounds an awful lot like the words of past Administrations who have tried to throw their weight around and bully a free press into doing it’s bidding instead of reporting facts no matter where they may lead. Think Nixon White House, Daniel Ellsburg, and the Pentagon Papers.

 

What’s even more galling is Administrations of both parties find no problem whatsoever concerning leaks from within when they can either benefit from them or use them to settle a score. The Obama Administration in their eagerness to flex their foreign policy muscles came under scrutiny last summer for repeated leaks about it’s cyberwar against Iran, and it’s targeting of militants for drone attacks. There were also leaks from the Administration concerning the raid that led to the capture of Osama bin Laden.

 

Clearly this Administration learned from the previous one on this issue. If you gave Dick Cheney a considerable amount of time I’m sure he could come up with a plausible explanation for the leaking of the name of former CIA Agent Valerie Plame Wilson. What was even more deplorable on the part of Darth Vader was him ordering his boy Scooter Libby to take his (Cheney’s) hit and fall on justice’s sword.

 

Talking to NPR, The AP’s lawyer David Schultz said that there are laws and guidelines that were put in place during the reign of Nixon that protected the media from the wrath of elected officials.

 

The Attorney General himself must sign off on a subpoena to a reporter. Prosecutors must also demonstrate that they made every effort to get the information in other ways before even turning to the press.

 

Given how aggressively they have gone after whistle blowers (Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, John Kiriakou, and Thomas Drake to name a few) the chances of the Obama Administration following those guidelines are slim and none.

 

I am as much a far left, pro choice, pro marriage equality, redistribution of wealth guy you will ever find. It bothers me that right now in Washington D.C., Republicans have taken the lead on fake scandals like Benghazi and the I.R.S., and some(d)emocrats in congress and some in the media have taken the bait.

 

Some things however defy political description though and the situation with the AP is one of them. Republicans on this issue are blatantly hypocritical because they were quiet during the Bush years, and because last summer they skewered the Obama White House for the amount of leaks coming out at that time, but that doesn’t mean Progressives should be just as quiet now. It’s not those of us on the far left who have moved the goalposts, it’s the Administration and the DOJ.

 

 

 

 

Benghazi Queries Are About Everything But The Truth

Talk about a theater of the absurd. America was treated to the sham that is the Benghazi hearings on Capital Hill last week. The usual Republican cast of characters, California Congressman Darrell Issa and Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz were out front performing the usual song and dance about how the Obama Administration and The State Department, which until February was ran by Hillary Clinton, were involved in a full fledged cover up concerning the terrorist attacks at the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi Libya last September.

 

I must swallow hard here and say that there are legitimate questions that need to be asked concerning this tragic matter which left four Americans dead including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens.

 

As Mother Jones’ David Corn, not exactly a raging conservative, wrote this weekend for the website, Why were the talking points on Benghazi revised on multiple occasions before being handed over to UN Ambassador Susan Rice for her appearances on various Sunday morning talk shows last September. As Corn also writes the revisions were put in place to keep the State Department from looking bad publicly.

 

Rather than just admitting a terrible mistake while also pointing Republican Congressional obstruction that led to protection for foreign embassies being reduced because of budget cuts. The White House and The State Department may have made things worse by not at least being totally transparent on the issue.

 

All of that being said Republicans in Congress have only a couple of things on their minds and that is the impeachment of Barack Obama and the destruction of Hillary Clinton’s political future.

Paraphrasing Eric Bohlert of Media Matters, Benghazi is the “ultimate bank shot” for Republicans, taking down Obama’s Presidency and halting Clinton’s before it even starts.

 

Obama impeachment should and is off of the table first and foremost. Benghazi doesn’t even rise to the level of Watergate or Iran Contra. The list of Impeachable offenses given to us by the George W. Bush Administration are too numerous to mention, but here is a refresher course.

 

Ignoring memos that warned about a terrorist attack by Osama bin Laden, Outing undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame, The absolute incompetence shown in the handling of Hurricane Katrina, and of course manipulating false information to lead this country into a war it never should have gone into ending with the result of almost 5,000 dead American soldiers.

 

In terms of Clinton, her name was mentioned 32 times during last weeks hearing. That to me says witch hunt. John McCain, making what I would assume his 20th Sunday Talk show appearance this year alone basically accused Clinton of being the ringleader of a State Department coverup, and talked about his desire to get her back in front of committee to testify.

 

As has been mentioned on numerous occasions a Hillary Clinton victory in 2016 seems inevitable. The Republican Party thanks to infighting and uncertainty still has settled on who is going to be their standard bearer going forward. For them Benghazi seems like the issue that could derail the train.

 

The great Eugene Robinson writing in the Washington Post made two great points on the matter relating to Clinton this week,

 

“House Republicans who voted to cut funding for State Department security should understand that their philosophy — small government is always better — has consequences. Bureaucrats have to make judgment calls. Sometimes they will be wrong.”

 

Robinson also noted that the decision to not send special troops to Benghazi to help defend the compound. “But the decision not to dispatch troops was made by the military chain of command, not by Clinton or anyone who reported to her. Superior officers decided this team was needed to help evacuate the embassy in Tripoli, which was seen as a potential target for a Benghazi-style attack.”

 

The Political opportunism that stems from the Benghazi attacks is fueling Republicans in Congress who rather than asking serious questions are drunk with visions of Marco Rubio or Rand Paul as our next Commander and Chief.

 

Speaking of Paul, In an effort to allow people to see what he is thinking about as far as his future is concerned he sent out a tweet last Friday Morning saying. “Benghazi proves that Hilary Clinton should never hold high office again.”

 

Gosh Senator, you and your Republican colleagues shouldn’t be so obvious. It’s clear you don’t have the country’s best interest in mind.

 

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Military’s Rape Problem: Even More Infuriating

It is often said that the first step is admitting you have a problem. Apparently the United States Military is still in denial when it comes to sexual assaults on the part of it’s personnel.

On Tuesday the Pentagon released an embarrassing and infuriating survey estimating that 26,000 sexual assaults of members of the military took place last year. That number was drastically up from 19,000 in 2010 and the overwhelming majority of those victims were female.

Keep in mind that this survey was released just two days after the officer who is in charge of sexual assault prevention programs for the U.S. Air Force was arrested in Arlington, Virginia for groping a female in a restaurant parking lot. I have heard the term “lack of leadership” much to much over the last few years (mainly from the American right), but it is extremely fitting here.

Perhaps even more depressing about the Pentagon’s study is that of the 26,000 assaults only 3,000 or so were reported, proving that the camouflage wall of silence is very much alive and well. Many victims refuse to come forward with their stories because of fear of retribution or the lack of being taken seriously. Often when a victim does come forward he or she is given a stern lecture by a superior as to why reporting the crime will be detrimental for themselves and their career.

Back in March a female soldier named Rebekah Havrilla testified before Congress about her tour of duty in Afghanistan. She talked about how she put up with sexual harassment from her male sergeant and team leader, she talked about the insane amount of rape jokes she would hear on a daily basis from her male colleagues and then the unthinkable happened.

“One week before my unit was scheduled to return back to the United States, I was raped by another service member that had worked with our team.”

Having first hand knowledge of the environment that surrounded her Havrilla said she chose not to report the crime. “I had no faith in my chain of command.”

Of the 3300 assaults that are reported on a yearly basis only about 240 of those make it trial. That percentage, while jaw dropping and abhorrent, also calls attention to the fact that criminals cannot and should not have prosecutorial interference ran for them, which is essentially what happens when the higher ups in the military want the issue to go away.

To be the self proclaimed greatest nation in the world, the United States has inflicted itself with a wound so deep and so gaping it would never be able to heal, much in the same way the scars of all the victims will never heal.

There has indeed been tough talk from political leaders. Both the former and current Secretaries of Defense Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel have pledged to take up the charge against sexual assault in the military. President Obama appeared visibly angry about the report when speaking at a White House news conference on Tuesday.

“I don’t want just more speeches or awareness programs or training, or ultimately folks look the other way,” We’re going to have to not just step up our game, we have to exponentially step up our game to go after this hard.”

Tough talk and genuine concern are much appreciated, but the time has come for this nation to get real when it comes to rape and rape culture. The conversation needs to be had on a global scale. Rape, groping, name calling, slut shaming, rape jokes and most importantly cover for all of these despicable acts should be done away with forever. Young men should have these values driven into them from an early age and not just by the parents, but every adult they come in contact with, especially men. We are already seeing the consequence of inaction and apathy. In short the “Boys will be Boys” meme should be a thing of the past.

On a personal note, I have a 7 year old niece, and there is no way in hell I would ever be comfortable with the thought of her joining the United States Military. How sad is that.

 

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Ken Cuccinelli: Virginia’s Worst Nightmare

There could be sad news for Democrats in the state of Virginia this fall. The Cooch may be your new Governor.

 

Ken Cuccinelli, the current Attorney General in the commonwealth, and a man who makes Mitt Romney look as progressive as Barney Frank is leading the state’s race for Governor over businessman and former head of the Democratic National Committee Terry McAuliffe, so says a new Washington Post poll that came out Sunday.

 

Now granted it is six months before election day, and there are questions about why the Democratic Party would nominate McAuliffe, a guy who the public really doesn’t know, a guy who has never held public office and a guy who is right out of the Bill Clinton camp of third way Democrats who pay lip service to the needs of everyday working and poor people. All that being said Cuccinelli as the head man calling the shots in Virginia is a very scary prospect.

 

If your not familiar with Cuccinelli’s infuriating body of worker allow me to enlighten you. As a member of the Virginia State Senate he took positions opposing abortion and gay marriage, while being vocal on his support of limited Government spending, property rights, and the Second Amendment. He also found time after he became Attorney General to take on climate science by issuing a bogus civil investigative demand against the University of Virginia seeking documents that pertained to a Professor

named Michael A. Mann. Mann was accused by Cuccinelli of violating the 2002 Virginia Fraud Taxpayers Act although no evidence was provided to justify the accusation. This act led to charges of McCarthyism by Cuccinelli on the part of some in the Academic community.

 

For all of the racist, homophobic and anti-science positions Cuccinelli has taken he may be most known for he is stance against women and their reproductive rights, apparently he doesn’t think they should have any.

 

The Attorney General is endorsed by the Republican National Coalition of Life and has sponsored numerous bills that discourage abortions. As a first lieutenant in the “barefoot and pregnant” army of Governor Bob McDonnell, Cuccinelli had his hands all over last year’s controversial ultrasound bill, a bill that would have required a woman to undergo a vaginal ultrasound examination before being allowed to have an abortion.

 

Like most Republicans his hypocrisy on this issue as a whole knows no bounds. While he supports forcing women to go through with an unwanted pregnancy. He has been an advocate of state funded abstinence only programs in public schools and was quoted as saying “The longer you delay the commencement of sexual activity, you have healthier and happier kids and more successful kids.” Republican logic at it’s worst folks.

 

The possibility of Governor Ken Cuccinelli is the exact reason why registered Democrats have to start to show up to the polls in local mid-term and Governors races. While Democrats may not be able to win back the House of Representatives in 2014 thanks to GOP gerrymandering, winning back seats in state legislatures and Governor’s mansions means putting the kibosh on ultrasound bills, abstinence only education, and bigoted laws that continue to support unabashed homophobia.

 

Terry McAuliffe is not my idea of great progressive politician, he is however the lesser of two evils and if you live in the state of Virginia that has to be good enough. The thought of “The Cooch” signing Republican backed legislation into law is as scary locally as Rick Santorum signing that legislation nationally.

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Jason Collins Tells Pro Sports To Prove It

For years now we have heard from a sizeable segment of male professional athletes in the four major team sports about how open and accepting they would be if they were faced with the possibility of having a gay teammate. As of Monday afternoon that sizeable segment may be in a position to put their money where there mouths are.

In a self-pinned op-ed that will be featured in this week’s issue of Sports Illustrated, Jason Collins, a 12 year NBA veteran who was most recently a member of the Washington Wizards, announced on Monday that he is gay, the first active professional athlete in the big four to do so.

While society’s bigoted walls have been weakened over the years and Collins’ announcement is a lot easier to make in 2013 than it would have been in 1993 those same walls are still very strong and the voices coming from behind them are still very vocal.

The Religious Right is still very much a strong part of the American fabric (unfortunately). One of homophobia’s longtime flag bearers, Pat Robertson is still alive and well and spewing his unabashed hate of the LGTB community daily on his 700 Club program, of course this is in between the time that Pat is busy with God who is most likely telling him why he brought terrorist attacks and killer hurricanes onto sinners and pagans living in certain regions of the country. There is also the embarrassing specter of The Westboro Baptist Church, a family of religious kooks who get their attention seeking fix from picketing the funerals of fallen American soldiers with bigoted diatribes about who God hates.

Professional sports certainly has it’s fair share of Robertson’s and Westboro Church members. Back in January at Super Bowl 46 in New Orleans, San Francisco 49ers defensive back Chris Culliver made waves for a comment he made about gay players in NFL Lockerooms. I don’t do the gay guys. I don’t do that,” We ain’t got no gay people on the team, They gotta get up out here if they do. Can’t be with that sweet stuff. … Nah, can’t be … in the locker room, man.”

Apparently that nasty homophobic bug has spread from certain players who play the games to certain journalists who cover them. ESPN The Magazine Senior NBA writer Chris Broussard threw his two cent in on the Collins story on Monday saying. “I’m a Christian. I don’t agree with homosexuality. I think it’s a sin, as I think all sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman is. [ESPN's] L.Z. [Granderson] knows that. He and I have played on basketball teams together for several years. We’ve gone out, had lunch together, we’ve had good conversations, good laughs together. He knows where I stand and I know where he stands. I don’t criticize him, he doesn’t criticize me, and call me a bigot, call me ignorant, call me intolerant.

“In talking to some people around the league, there’s a lot Christians in the NBA and just because they disagree with that lifestyle, they don’t want to be called bigoted and intolerant and things like that. That’s what LZ was getting at. Just like I may tolerate someone whose lifestyle I disagree with, he can tolerate my beliefs. He disagrees with my beliefs and my lifestyle but true tolerance and acceptance is being able to handle that as mature adults and not criticize each other and call each other names.

“… Personally, I don’t believe that you can live an openly homosexual lifestyle or an openly premarital sex between heterosexuals, if you’re openly living that type of lifestyle, then the Bible says you know them by their fruits, it says that’s a sin. If you’re openly living in unrepentant sin, whatever it may be, not just homosexuality, adultery, fornication, premarital sex between heterosexuals, whatever it may be, I believe that’s walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ. I would not characterize that person as a Christian because I do not think the Bible would characterize them as a Christian.”

Culliver has since apologized for his comments and has met with a few LGTB groups, whether he is sincere about his newfound thoughts is still up for debate. As for Broussard, whether or not he understands it his views are indeed bigoted and he is indeed homophobic and intolerant.

The big question however is how do people who say they are on the opposite side of the issue from Culliver and Broussard react now that the prospect of an openly gay peer is now a reality.

Los Angeles Laker superstar and future Hall of Famer Kobe Bryant sent out a tweet of support for Collins Monday. Proud of @jasoncollins34. Don’t suffocate who u r because of the ignorance of others #courage#support#mambaarmystandup#BYOU

This is of course is the same Kobe Bryant who was fined $100,000 by the league two years ago for directing a homophobic slur at an official. Bryant has since said he has learned his lesson but can the same be said for the rest of the macho sized world of professional sports and it’s fans.

Yes fans, they seem to be the forgotten party in this and they shouldn’t be. What is going to happen when Jason Collins or another out athlete in sports travels with his team to play a game in Charlotte or Jacksonville or Nashville or Oklahoma City. What is going to happen when the first drunken idiot with beer muscles says something he shouldn’t be saying, and more importantly what are teammates of the player going to do when it happens. Will they be in the stands to beat the hell out of any clown who voices his ignorance, I personally would hope so.

The time has come for the American sports world and it’s fans to now Walk the Walk and not just Talk the Talk when it comes to the treatment of out gay players. It’s much easier to say what you will do when you really don’t have to do it, Hopefully Jason Collins and others like him have changed that way of thinking forever.

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John King: Irresponsibility To The Max

“Source of that description was a senior government official. And I asked, are you sure? But I’m responsible. What I am not is racist,” Those were the words of CNN’s John King, who took to Twitter last Thursday to sort of explain his now infamous “dark-skinned male” comment during the network’s wall to wall coverage of the bombings in Boston.

 

The entire quote in context was “I want to be very careful about this because people get very sensitive when you say these things. I was told by one of these sources, who is a law enforcement official, that this was a dark-skinned male.” Yeah who wouldn’t be sensitive about that, particularly dark-skinned males like me.

 

Let me be clear, I don’t think King is the type of guy who would burn a cross on my or any other minority’s lawn, he is also a very smart guy and a skilled reporter which makes this particular situation a classic example of a privileged-middle aged white guy displaying the bubble the he apparently lives in to the entire nation.

 

Despite trying to preface his comments and brace his audience King still passed along the “dark-skinned male” info as if he was giving the number of a car’s license plate or describing an article of clothing. What was even more mind-numbing was that he did not give any thought to the fact that he put a target on the chest and back of every black and brown male in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

 

What kind of sand did King have his head buried in on Monday when in the aftermath of the tragic bombings news broke that a 20-year old Saudi national was chased down and tackled by a civilian and turned over to law enforcement officials for questioning, because as we all know being from Saudi Arabia or Jordan or Turkey makes you a terrorist hellbent on blowing up the United States.

 

As was proven later in the week that same Saudi national turned out to be innocent, but more on that later. King clearly wasn’t aware of the anxiety and frustration that “dark-skinned males” in metropolitan cities live with on a daily basis because of racial profiling by law enforcement. When he is not fighting the NRA with his money (which is great) or embarrassing teenage mothers with ridiculous billboards plastered all over the city (which is shameful) Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made “Stop and Frisk” the focal point of his third term as New York City’s chief. Couple that with the green light that the NYPD has to spy on American Muslims in public places like mosques and the Bloomberg administration is batting 1,000 on the whole guilty until proven innocent meme. In his time as a reporter I’m sure John King has visited and reported on NYC a time or too right?

 

King also couldn’t have been familiar with the city of Boston’s sad history as it relates to race relations and one incident in particular. In 1989 Charles and Carol Stuart, who was pregnant were both shot by a black gunman, Carol tragically died and her baby who was delivered died 17 days later. Stuart picked a black man named Willie Bennett out of a photo lineup after Boston PD had ransacked the city’s black neighborhoods looking for suspects. The problem with this story was that Stuart made it up, he was the one who had indeed killed his wife and child to cash in his wife’s insurance policy.

 

The Stuart case once again revived old tensions in Boston and those wounds to this day still haven’t fully healed. Ask any black person born and raised in Beantown and they will give you what I call the “yeah but” conversation about the city. King is not a young guy, clearly he must have heard of the name of Charles Stuart right?

 

Let’s be real folks John King isn’t the only culprit here, Even more at fault than King are his bosses at CNN, who long ago lost it’s great journalistic reputation that it earned for it’s coverage of the first Gulf War in 1991.

 

The fact that no higher ups, no one in the chain of command at CNN thought that it was a bad idea for King to go on the air with such an irresponsible charge is beyond me. The Cable News Network didn’t help itself later when it was completely wrong about an arrest being made in the case.

 

By Friday morning we knew the names, the relation, and the nationality of the two bombing suspects in Boston and neither would be consider a “dark-skinned male.” Clearly this was the ultimate swing and miss by King and CNN in the media’s never-ending game of “Get it First even if it isn’t right” baseball.

 

This shouldn’t be a career killer for John King, very rarely should one mistake take away a person’s livelihood, but this should be a lesson for King and all other journalists out there, Get out of your hermetically sealed bubble every now and again and walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.

 

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MLK’s Message 45 Years Later

This past week marked the 45^th anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The man who was the father of the modern day Civil Rights Movement was failed by an assassin’s bullet on a hotel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. The remembering of Dr King’s life this week has brought attention to the issues he was fighting for in 1968 and sadly how the need to fight for those issues is still required in 2013.

 

Dr. King was in Memphis to take part in a protest on behalf of the city’s sanitation workers, an overwhelmingly majority of whom were African-American. Two months prior, on February 1, 1968 two workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were tragically crushed to death inside one of the city’s outdated and malfunctioning dump trucks. The two were taking shelter inside the truck from a torrential thunderstorm and got caught inside the compactor. The city of Memphis had no problem with discarding Cole and Walker just like the trash the two man hauled but felt that it was extremely important to make a city wide announcement of the birth of Lisa Marie Presley that same day.

 

This incident proved to be the final straw for a group of men who were being treated as anything but. Garbage workers in 1960s Memphis were subjected to some of the worst working conditions imaginable. In addition to driving dangerous and faulty trucks, another one of which had earlier killed two other employees in 1964, workers lifted huge, heavy tubs of trash on their shoulders and heads all without the benefit of the city providing them gloves, uniforms, or a place to shower at the end of the day. The stench was so bad that workers who didn’t have the benefit of a car (which was most) would be forced to walk him after their shift because cabs and city buses would refuse to pick them up. To cap it all off they weren’t given a lunch break or two 15 minute breaks and most infuriating of all made so little in their weekly paychecks that most of them drew welfare just to make ends meet.

 

This was again the climate that brought Dr. King to Memphis, this was the climate that gave us his famous “Mountaintop Speech” on April 3 1968, and even though his life would be taken just a day later the gratitude shown by those striking workers is still felt now. In 1973 one worker was asked what King had meant to the strike and he summed it up by saying “I don’t think we can show enough appreciation for what Dr. King gave.” Five years after King’s death Memphis’ sanitation workers had eight hour shifts, a five day work week, lunch and two fifteen minute breaks, and wages and benefits that had steadily improved.

 

Poverty, unemployment, and issues of labor had always been at the heart of the Civil Rights movement, and after the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act, King saw poverty and income inequality as the next challenge, thus the idea of the Poor Peoples Campaign. The events of April 4^th took away any chance of seeing that become a reality.

 

What’s really sad is that the issues of yesterday are still very much the issues of today. Fast food workers in New York City took the streets this week to protest inhumane working conditions donning the same “I AM A MAN” picket signs that those Memphis sanitation workers did 45 years ago. The corporations that they are working for are raking in billions yet employees of Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonalds, and Taco Bell try everyday to make ends meet on $7.25 an hour.

 

Immigration policy is being debated amongst the United States lawmakers in Congress. Too many politicians on both sides favor a “guest worker policy” that allows us as a nation to take advantage of the blood and sweat of the undocumented without giving them the benefit of being citizens and providing a future for them and their families.

 

In 1961, Dr King gave a speech at the 4^th Annual AFL-CIO National Convention and in it he stated how African-Americans and union workers were aligned in their desires for ‘‘decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children, and respect in the community.”

 

Those desires haven’t changed in the 45 years since King’s death but God knows the environment and the conditions that workers experience on daily basis needs to.

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email me at ebrew79@hotmail.com and follow me on twitter @ebrew79