News/Politics 7-18-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

First up, the Race Card, how original. 🙄

From CNSNews  “Addressing the annual NAACP convention in Orlando, Fla., Health and  Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that opponents of  Obamacare are the same kind of people who opposed civil rights  legislation in the 1960s.”

“”The  same arguments against change, the same fear and misinformation that  opponents used then are the same ones opponents are spreading now. ‘This  won’t work,’ ‘Slow down,’ ‘Let’s wait,’ they say.”

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Holder wasn’t gonna be outdone.

Also from CNSNews  “The  nation’s top cop indicated that police treatment of black men and boys  is part of America’s (alleged) racial problem. “And we must confront the  underlying attitudes, mistaken beliefs, and unfortunate stereotypes that  serve too often as the basis for police action and private judgments,”  Holder said.

Just as his own father warned him about the police, so Holder says he has felt it necessary to warn his son:”

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And here’s a story on the NAACP conference Holder and Sebelius attended blackballing conservative black leaders.

From TownHall  “According to author and Fox News contributor Deneen Borelli and her husband, Tom Borelli, black conservatives have been blacklisted from the NAACP’s national conferences for years. When the Borellis, who are employees of the conservative group FreedomWorks, attempted to pay for booth space at this year’s 104th National NAACP conference in Florida, they were told there was no room for them despite plenty of exhibit space remaining open.”

Meanwhile Obama tells Telemundo that the reason Republicans are against his amnesty plan is because they fear minorities in the majority. Race baiters, from the top down.

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Jay Carney was shocked to hear about threats made to the Zimmerman family. Again, the first he’d heard there was a problem.

From TheWaPo  “A high school intern with the conservative Daily Caller Web site got into a testy exchange with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney Wednesday after asking if the White House would intervene to protect George Zimmerman from death threats in the wake of his acquittal on murder and manslaughter charges.

“Because of the death threats being received by George Zimmerman and his parents, is the president going to take any action for their security or are they on their own?” Gabe Finger asked.

Carney responded that he wasn’t aware of the threats and that Florida authorities would be responsible for handling them, but that Obama opposes “any violence of any kind” in response to the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case.”

Sure Jay.

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Liberals of all colors play along, so yeah, more white guilt. Always with the Race thing.

From Time  “If there is one hopeful note amidst all the anguish and recrimination from the  acquittal of George Zimmerman, it’s that growing numbers of white people have  come to appreciate whiteness for what it is: an unearned set of privileges. And  as a result of that dawning awareness, it’s become possible to imagine a day  when that structure of privilege is dismantled – by white people.”

Yeah. 🙄

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And a little more background on the Zimmerman prosecutors. Can you say “malicious prosecution”? Yeah, I knew you could.

From NationalReview  “And that was moderate. When Corey was appointed to handle the Zimmerman case, Talbot “Sandy” D’Alemberte, a former president of both the American Bar Association and Florida State University, criticized the decision: “I cannot imagine a worse choice for a prosecutor to serve in the Sanford case. There is nothing in Angela Corey’s background that suits her for the task, and she cannot command the respect of people who care about justice.” Corey responded by making a public-records request of the university for all e-mails, text messages, and phone messages in which D’Alemberte had mentioned Fernandez. Like Littlepage, D’Alemberte had earlier criticized Corey’s handling of the Fernandez case.

Not many people are willing to cross Corey. A Florida attorney I spoke with declined to go on record because of “concerns about retaliation” — that attorney has pending cases that will require Corey’s cooperation. The attorney mentioned colleagues who have refused to speak to the media for the same reason. And to think: D’Alemberte crossed Corey twice. He should get a medal.”

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And the CBC is up to their usual.

From TheHill  “Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) are readying a flurry of  bills in response to George Zimmerman’s acquittal on charges in last year’s  fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin.

The lawmakers are drafting proposals intended to rein in racial profiling;  scrap state stand-your-ground laws; and promote better training for the nation’s  neighborhood watch volunteers, among other anti-violence measures. CBC  members had remained largely silent throughout the trial, but following the  verdict, argued forcefully that, decades after the civil rights movement, the  nation’s criminal justice system still discriminates against blacks and other  minorities.”

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It’s odd that they’d want to scrap “Stand Your Ground”. Especially when you consider the facts.

From TheDailyCaller African Americans benefit from Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law  at a rate far out of proportion to their presence in the state’s population,  despite an assertion by Attorney General Eric Holder that repealing “Stand Your  Ground” would help African Americans.

Black Floridians have made about a third of the state’s total “Stand Your  Ground” claims in homicide cases, a rate nearly double the black percentage of  Florida’s population. The majority of those claims have been successful, a  success rate that exceeds that for Florida whites.”

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And in non-race news, again, from the top down.

From TheWaPo  “The chief counsel’s office for the Internal Revenue Service, headed by a political appointee of President Obama, helped develop the agency’s problematic guidelines for reviewing “tea party” cases, according to a top IRS attorney.”

Like everyone didn’t already know this went back to the White House. 🙄

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And did anyone really believe it ended with phone tapping and e-mail snooping?

From TheACLU  “Automatic license plate readers are the most widespread location tracking technology you’ve probably never heard of. Mounted on patrol cars or stationary objects like bridges, they snap photos of every passing car, recording their plate numbers, times, and locations. At first the captured plate data was used just to check against lists of cars law enforcement hoped to locate for various reasons (to act on arrest warrants, find stolen cars, etc.). But increasingly, all of this data is being fed into massive databases that contain the location information of many millions of innocent Americans stretching back for months or even years.”

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More here from FoxNews  “Law enforcement officials also point out that the  technology is legal in most cases, automating a practice that’s been done for  years. The ACLU found that only five states have laws governing license plate  readers. New Hampshire, for example, bans the technology except in narrow  circumstances, while Maine and Arkansas limit how long plate information can be  stored.

“There’s no expectation of privacy” for a vehicle  driving on a public road or parked in a public place, said Lt. Bill Hedgpeth, a  spokesman for the Mesquite Police Department in Texas, which has records  stretching back to 2008, although the city plans next month to begin deleting  files older than two years. “It’s just a vehicle. It’s just a license  plate.””

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26 thoughts on “News/Politics 7-18-13

  1. I don’t understand why SYG continues to be brought up in relation to this case. If it had been an issue, they would have to admit that Tayvon was the aggressor, which they continually deny. What am I missing?

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  2. …Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that opponents of Obamacare are the same kind of people who opposed civil rights legislation in the 1960s.”

    Will she admit that it was Democrats who opposed Civil Rights in the 60s? Nah, doesn’t play into her view of the race issue.

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  3. Police bias/”white privilege” — as much as the term is an academic invention, police bias is real … simply looking at whom the police target in the “stop and frisk” program in NYC, the bias appears.

    Opposition to immigration reform is not bigotry on the part of Republicans but political survival. In terms of Hispanic and other immigrant voting trends, the Republicans crossed the Rubicon and haven’t looked back. They need to prevent immigration or risk becoming politically irrelevant.

    Zimmerman/Martin — the skeletons of everyone involved is being dragged out of the closet and hung for everyone to see. The right talks about alleged drug use and school trouble, the left brings up Zimmerman’s previous brushes with the law and now the lawyers are being hung out and almost none of it is relevant for the night in question.

    The Daily Caller is being slightly circumspect. Black use of SYG is almost exclusively black on black. In cases of black on white its only been successfully used once.

    Strange that the judge would invoke SYG when Zimmerman’s lawyers wouldn’t.

    License plate tracking is only a natural progression for police forces in the US who have slowly moved from community policing to para-military. Its inevitable in a climate where fear is invoked for political expediency. And there should be no assumption of privacy in your car (although people do act like there is)

    I imagine most senior civil servants are Obama appointees by now — its still not a smoking gun.

    Peter L — historically the Democrats who voted against civil rights became Dixiecrats became Republicans. This was the result of Nixon’s Southern Strategy. Johnson knew it would happen when he signed the civil rights bill.

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  4. HRW, You are being slightly circumspect. White on black assaults are very rare. When blacks are assaulted, the assailant is almost always black.

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  5. “historically the Democrats who voted against civil rights became Dixiecrats became Republicans.”
    As a white southerner, I originally became a Republican because I wanted conservative policy without the racism of the Dixiecrats. This is a different generation. The left likes to say the Republican party is racist because Southerners vote Republican and everyone knows they are still racist. How do they know southerners are still racist. Because they vote Republican.

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  6. I’m an Independent so Im not up on all the nuances but I thought the right was interested in LEGAL immigration, not giving a prize to law breakers over those who have gone through the system set up by our lawmakers.

    When you fait accompli wave your magic wand and everyone who wants to be a citizen with full voting rights and no knowledge or sense of responsibility (What is the Bill of Rights?), you set up a system that’s unbalanced and ripe for exploitation.

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  7. I had an e-mail this morning that said Obama has done an executive order saying that all Americans must be tested for HIV/AIDS. Is that for real? Has anyone else seen anything on that?

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  8. kbellls — as a I said the skeletons are being dragged out of closets everywhere. It seems to be the default method of reasoning.

    I agree that the progression from Southern Democrats to Dixiecrat to Republican doesn’t neatly coincide with racism nor is it exclusive to the old South. However, the southern strategy did succeed in bringing an entire new bloc of voters to the Republican party. Some have said that the Republican party buried overt racism and replaced it with the use of code words and more subtle forms of racism. They point to Goldwater and the inheritors of that arm of the Republican party. I’m note entirely sold on this but I do note a general tendency to base policy and ideas on fear and uncertainty about change.

    Eisenhower probably wouldn’t fit into the modern Republican party. A good solid president he was fairly ambiguous about party lines, was quite pragmatic and for the most part saw gov’t as a legitimate tool to help the middle class. In that way, Eisenhower is closer to me than to Reagan.

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  9. “I imagine most senior civil servants are Obama appointees by now — its still not a smoking gun.”

    Sure HRW. And exposing the lie that it was “low level employees in the Cincy office” isn’t either right?

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  10. Janice
    1. It would be unconstitutional and unenforceable to require everyone to get Aids/HIV testing.
    2. If Obama had issued such an executive order, it would be on Drudge by now.
    And I haven’t seen any thing.

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  11. HRW, using the Alexander case that way was more than a few skeletons in the closet. It is deliberate misrepresentation of the facts to order to smear individuals and groups for political reasons. Pretty much like the Zimmerman case was used.

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  12. “Some have said that the Republican party buried overt racism and replaced it with the use of code words and more subtle forms of racism. ”
    Sounds like profiling people for the sins of their ancestor and because of personally held stereotypes.

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  13. “I don’t understand why SYG continues to be brought up in relation to this case. If it had been an issue, they would have to admit that Tayvon was the aggressor, which they continually deny. What am I missing?”

    Under SYG, it isn’t <u<about who is the agressor in the sense of shooting first or throwing the first punch. The whole point is that you do NOT need to wait passively and see if you will be attacked. IF you feel threatened, THEN you can stand your ground, shoot first, and ask questions later.

    SO if TRAYVON felt threatened because there was a person following him, he did NOT have to wait to see if he’d be jumped or shot. He would be within his rights to try to disable the person, ie ZIMMERMAN whom he felt threatened him.

    http://www.newpittsburghcourieronline.com/index.php/opinion/15014-what-about-trayvon-martin-s-right-to-stand-his-ground

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  14. Chas — Truman and FDR would certainly be dismissed as fringe leftist candidates similar to Kusinch. As for JFK, he’s not much different from Clinton and Obama — lots of rhetoric but governs from the center.

    kbells — there’s no sins of the father. The southern strategy was meant to appeal to more than the old south. In fact, it was probably more successful in the midwestern cities such as Detroit and Chicago where white flight to the suburbs created an eager audience for the Republican message (creating the so-called silent majority and later the Reagan Democrats). It was a strategy based on exploiting fear and uncertainty in an era of change.

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  15. SO if TRAYVON felt threatened because there was a person following him, he did NOT have to wait to see if he’d be jumped or shot. He would be within his rights to try to disable the person, ie ZIMMERMAN whom he felt threatened him.

    Patently false. A sense of being threatened isn’t anywhere near the sole basis for a SYG reaction.

    The reason skeletons were dragged out of Martin’s closet was and is because he was portrayed as a sweet kid, and that misrepresentation has been played up to heighten the sense of racism that has supposedly been at play in the case. It’s a joke.

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