All Out in '06

Details coming soon!!

Rosa Parks and why Republicans lose the PR war

I've been a little sad this week and at a loss to write a fitting tribute to Rosa Parks whose funeral was held today in Detroit.

Looking at the footage and some Yahoo pictures of the event made me realize that Republicans will never win the PR war for the hearts and minds of Black voters, because they are unwilling or unable to engage. So once again, the Democrats look like the only party that cares about black people.

I know that the Bush's and various Republican congressional leaders paid their respects at the Capitol Rotunda, but are you telling me that no one could be bothered to go to the actual funeral of the woman who revolutionized American society? Nelson Mandela attended. Oprah Winfrey attended. Barack Obama attended. John Kerry attended. Bill and Hillary attended. Couldn't the president have at least sent his dad? What was he doing in Washington today that he couldn't do on Air Force One?

B****, Please!!!

I'm calling bullshit on Kathy Trant.

Kathy Trant is the widow of Dan Trant, a Cantor Fitzgerald employee who died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Kathy was a guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Monday, October 24, 2005 where she discussed how she blew through $5 million dollars worth of "blood money" that she received from the government funded Spetember 11th Victim Compensation Fund ($4.2 million) and from the donations of stangers (between $300,000-3 million); in addition to life insurance. Each of her 3 children has $800,000 of the settlement money set aside in trust funds that will be disbursed on their 18 birthdays (which the olderst child has already received and spent $700,000 of).

In addition to referring to her settlement as "blood money" she said that she wanted to draw attention to the grief of families who she believes have been mistreated by the government and denied their right to grieve at a proper memorial.

Funny. That's not what she told CNN in 2003. In this article

Kathy Trant, who has received her payment, decided to enter the fund after her husband, Dan, a 40-year-old bond trader for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor of the trade center's north tower, was killed along with 657 co-workers on September 11, leaving her alone to parent three young children.

"I could never forget the love of my life, but I have to move on. I have to find some happiness in my life, and this is enabling me to let my children play tennis still and do basketball and live the lifestyle I lived before my husband was murdered," Trant said.

With the help of attorneys working pro bono, Trant assembled family photos and a 2-inch-thick stack of documents, including her marriage license and her husband's death certificate, for her submission.

"They took every aspect of my life into consideration and they were very, very fair, I believe," she said.

Apparently, Mrs. Trant believes that the lifestyle the wife of a man who makes $130,000 a year in salary leads includes regular purchases of $5,000 purses and $800 shoes. According to a NY Post article from June 12, 2005:

Sept. 11 widow Kathy Trant has turned her Long Island home into a $2 million showcase, traveled from the Vatican to Las Vegas, blown $500,000 on shoes, and bought breast jobs for pals and even strangers.

In the 31/2 years since her husband, Dan, died in the World Trade Center attacks, she has burned through nearly all the more than $5 million she received in compensation and donations. She says she treated the millions "like Monopoly money."

The mother of three has become a self-described "shopoholic" - and her compulsive buying has left her with intense guilt, shame and sadness.
...
She spent $350,000 installing a full basketball court, also equipped for volleyball, tennis and Rollerblading, and a heated pool and hot tub in the back yard.

The kitchen has white marble countertops lined with gleaming appliances she rarely uses. The floors are rich Brazilian walnut.

A red-white-and-blue den, which includes a shrine of Dan's mementos, features four Peter Max paintings of the Statue of Liberty, which ran her $15,000. There are seven flat-screen TVs around the house. In the finished basement stands a $20,000 cherry-wood pool table.

The walls are decorated with sports memorabilia, including a Boston Celtics ball autographed by players on the team that once drafted her husband, who played professionally in Ireland.

In her master bedroom, she added a glass-enclosed fireplace that also serves the bathroom, with its claw-foot tub.
...
A floor-to-ceiling shoe rack is filled with $400 to $1,200 pairs: Prada, Marc Jacobs, Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, Emilio Pucci, Vera Wang. Handbags include Fendi and Judith Leiber, designs priced at $5,000 each. The gowns have labels like Versace, Christian Dior and Roberto Cavalli - each costing her thousands.

"It's disgusting. I'm ashamed of it," she said, adding she hopes that telling her story will help others with the same problem.

"This is my misery. This does not make me happy. When I come home with it, I have guilt, horrible guilt. You know how many starving people I could feed with all these shoes?"

She wears 10 percent of the clothes, she said, and gives armloads away to friends. But she keeps buying more.
...
Trant's pet Yorkie, Mollie, cost $3,500; her daughter has three others. She paid $60,000 cash for a Chevy Tahoe SUV, and also bought a BMW.

She has traveled to Italy, Jamaica, Asia and Europe; taken friends and relatives on four Caribbean cruises for $50,000; taken 20 to the Bahamas for $30,000; 10 to Las Vegas for $15,000; and six to the Super Bowl for $70,000. The last couple of summers, she's paid $13,000 to rent a 10-room North Carolina beach house for a week for her kids and all their pals.
...
She gave one friend $20,000 to pay her bills. She gave her former housecleaner $15,000 to buy a home in El Salvador. She's sent $1,000 checks to a friendly clerk at Bergdorf Goodman, and treated salesgirls at Saks to shoes.

After getting a facial in Las Vegas, she gave the beautician, a single mom, $4,000 for breast implants. She gave a friend $7,000 for a boob job because, Trant said, the woman "hated her breasts and didn't want to spend her son's college tuition money."

She buys wrinkle-reducing Botox injections for girlfriends. A plastic surgeon gives her a discount - $600 for three at a time. Trant tattooed an American flag and "9/11" on her back and got a permanent black stripe of "eyeliner" tattooed around her eyes, which never runs when she cries.

She gave one friend a $3,000 watch. "She didn't take it, and I just threw it at her," Trant said.

Why not donate to the Red Cross or some other non-profit in her husbands name?

Some People Don't Take Well to Criticism

And they just so happen to be New Orleans police officers.

Robert Davis, 64 year-old retired teacher, 9th Ward property owner, tax payer and AARP member was beaten like a man 40 years his junior by some "stressed out" New Orleans police officers after he pointed out that one of them was being rude and unprofessional.

Meanwhile, in Memphis, your tax dollars were at work training a new gang of theives:three more cops were charged with robbing "drug dealers" who turned out to be undercover FBI informants. They were probably stressed out, too.

Except for that one who's been corrupt for years. According to the Commercial Appeal:

One officer named on Tuesday, Patrick Joynt, 35, has been called up on disciplinary charges nearly 50 times since 1997, according to Memphis police personnel records. He has been fired twice, the last time in March. Joynt has been accused of brutality, sexual harassment, and he's been in nearly a dozen wrecks in his police cruiser.

Memphis Police officials said they have tried repeatedly to have Joynt removed, only to see him put back by civil service rulings.

Protect, Serve and Rip-off Drug Dealers:

Two other Memphis officers were indicted in August on similar charges of ripping off FBI informants posing as drug couriers. A third officer was charged with obstruction of justice.

Former officer David Tate was sentenced in July to serve 14 years in prison on a wide array of police corruption charges. Two officers charged with him await sentencing.

And on Friday, former officer Reginald Alexander is to be sentenced for plotting to rip off a drug dealer.

Affirmative Action bad, Cronyism good

Apparently, Bush still thinks Brownie did a good job. That is why he’s nominating another unqualified friend, Harriet Miers (a lawyer who has never served as a judge), to the Supreme Court. Because she is a lesser-qualified woman this could easily be construed as a case of affirmative action. But it is not. It’s just your normal, garden-variety upper class cronyism. And regardless of your political leanings, you should be concerned.

The problem with affirmative action is that it compels employers to look outside their friends and family for a pool of applicants, thus leaving their own friends and family unemployed. Under this system, said friends and family may become a burden to the wealthier people individually. Just like what happens to everyday people.

This is a problem for conservatives especially because they don’t like to fund social programs that help support people who are not working, so they become very uncomfortable with the idea that someone they know personally may become homeless, have to buy a used car or cancel a family vacation.

If affirmative action for strangers is enforced then there will be few positions for all those unqualified well-connected people. This could lead to hardship for the powerful and they’re just not having that.

Someone who secures a position through cronyism is likely to continue the practice. Harriet Miers is a very well connected attorney. She will now preside over cases presented by many people who she has come to know very, very well over the many years that she was a high-paid legal gun for large corporations.

I hope she can be impartial, because justice and equal opportunity are hard to come by in this country when you don’t have friends in high places.

Rumors and Panic

Even in the best of times too much news reporting is heavy on the opinion and short on facts, but apparently the Katrina disaster brought out the worst of people in one unexpected way: people lied and spread rumors. The most damage was inflicted by the national news media, many of whom repeatedly spread myths, uninformed opinions and outright lies and stereotypes.

Apparently, reports of violent crime and murder among the New Orleans evaucees at the Convention Center and Dome were greatly exaggerated. According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.

"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying.

The real total was six, Beron said.

Also:

Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.

At the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, just four bodies were recovered, despites reports of corpses piled inside the building. Only one of the dead appeared to have been slain, said health and law enforcement officials.

One soldier on the ground calls bullshit:

As the fog of warlike conditions in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath has cleared, the vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported by any evidence, according to key military, law enforcement, medical and civilian officials in positions to know.

"I think 99 percent of it is bulls---," said Sgt. 1st Class Jason Lachney, who played a key role in security and humanitarian work inside the Dome. "Don't get me wrong, bad things happened, but I didn't see any killing and raping and cutting of throats or anything. ... Ninety-nine percent of the people in the Dome were very well-behaved."

The New Orleans DA weighs in:

Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan said authorities had confirmed only four murders in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina - making it a typical week in a city that anticipated more than 200 homicides this year. Jordan expressed outrage at reports from many national media outlets that suffering flood victims had turned into mobs of unchecked savages.

"I had the impression that at least 40 or 50 murders had occurred at the two sites," he said. "It's unfortunate we saw these kinds of stories saying crime had taken place on a massive scale when that wasn't the case. And they (national media outlets) have done nothing to follow up on any of these cases, they just accepted what people (on the street) told them. ... It's not consistent with the highest standards of journalism."

Although to be fair, print media did a better reporting job. The NY Times was the first media outlet to report that rumors of rescue helicopters being fired on were unsubstantiated. According to one national guardsmen sent in to control the "near riot" conditions at the Convention Center:

Another commander at the scene, Lt. Col. John Edwards of the Arkansas National Guard, said the crowd welcomed the soldiers. "It reminded me of the liberation of France in World War II. There were people cheering; one boy even saluted," he said. "We never - never once - encountered any hostility."

The one confirmed shooting at the Convention Center of a National Guardsman, turned out to be the friendliest of friendly fire: he shot himself:

Inside the Dome, where National Guardsmen performed rigorous security checks before allowing anyone inside, only one shooting has been verified. Even that incident, in which Louisiana Guardsman Chris Watt of the 527th Engineer Battalion was injured, has been widely misreported, said Maj. David Baldwin, who led the team of soldiers who arrested a suspect.

Watt was attacked inside one of the Dome's locker rooms, which he entered with another soldier. In the darkness, as he walked through about six inches of water, Watt was attacked with a metal rod, a piece of a cot. But the bullet that penetrated Watt's leg came from his own gun - he accidentally shot himself in the commotion. The attacker never took his gun from him, Baldwin said. New Orleans police investigated the matter fully and sent the suspect to jail in Breaux Bridge, Baldwin said.

As for other shootings, Baldwin said, "We actively patrolled 24 hours a day, and nobody heard another shot."

As for those widespread reports of gang members and thugs running rampant in the convention center? Well one man's thug is another's life-saving volunteer:

"Some of these guys look like thugs, with pants hanging down around their asses," he said. "But they were working their asses off, grabbing litters and running with people to the (New Orleans) Arena" next door, which housed the medical operation.

You can read the entire article here.

Let's end with a scripture from that great prophet Chuck D, the book, Fear of a Black Planet Chapter 1, Verse 4:

I've been wondering why people livin' in fear of my shade (Or my hi top fade)
I'm not the one that's runnin' but they got me on the run, Treat me like I got a gun
All I got is genes and chromosomes , consider me black to the bone
All I want is peace and love on this planet (Ain't that how God planned it?)

Let the people say, Amen...

Bush Takes Responsibility

I almost don't believe it. Apparently, someone other than Karl Rove is pulling the puppet strings this week because Bush is finally saying that he is responsible for any failures at the federal level regarding response to Hurricane Katrina.

Read about it here.