So much crime, from so few

Concerning the "Jena 6," I heard someone say that "blacks are criminals." A very harsh thing to say. And untrue.

I'm not one of those who believes that anyone is inherently criminal. But I do believe that the civil rights movement and blacks' unrelenting connection to it has painted them into a corner. And it's all about exploitation.

From the 1960s, an industry was built based on so-called "civil rights." The right to vote, the right to an education, the right to pursue your own life, yes, all of those things are well and good and entitled by God, and affirmed through the U.S. Constitution. But what emerged from the 1960s were people who found that they could make one hell of a good living riding the back of prejudice. Enter the NAACP, the ACLU, and others.

PROFESSIONALS
I'll save everyone a recap of the last 40 years. In the now of 2007, we see an attempt to return to the glory days of civil rights, this time with an exploitation of people and situations. A look at the Jena 6 flap is revealing.

The usual suspects of the civil righteous - Sharpton, Jackson, the NAACP, et.al. - have come out of the woodwork to flex their skin tone and get Mychal Bell released - regardless of what he has done. They're even applying pressure on the Louisiana governor to do so. In hearing their rhetoric, Bell has never done anything wrong, despite evidence that long before the Jena 6, Bell had been in trouble with the justice system (Bell was adjudicated in at least 3 violent crimes prior to the troubles at his high school, leading to his receiving harsher treatment than the rest).

I, for one, don't think for a moment that the aforementioned care a whit about Bell. They see him as a platform to further their "cause," which, by the way, is also their profession. Remember that.

With so much to gain personally, the questions to start asking concern the civil righteous' motives and intent.

INTENT VS RESULT
We can't know what's in someone's head as to intent. But what we can know are the results of actions: assuming Bell gets off from all charges (and considering the politics of the case, there's a good chance he will), he'll still be guilty of crimes, yet free from prosecution, free to commit more crimes.

Because blacks tend to self-segregate, Bell will in all likelihood return to this culture and be committing his crimes in that "'hood," against other blacks. Multiply this times any number of other people you care to, and we start to see why there's so much crime in black communities.

WORLDVIEW
Whites view another white's criminal actions as a very bad thing, and want to see that individual judged on his individual behavior, and punished accordingly. This is in concert with the overall message of the Bill of Rights - everything based on the individual. However, blacks seem to view another black's prosecution symbolically; that all blacks, including themselves, are being prosecuted for the actions of a single one. Of course, it's not the case, but this would explain why black juries tend to dismiss horrendous actions of other blacks in the face of walls of evidence. O.J. Simpson and blacks' hysterically joyous reactions to his freeing is a case in point.

SELF-INJURY
So there we have it: blacks want other blacks freed from the perceived racial injustice of the "white" justice system. However, they victimize themselves when these people return - unpunished, unreformed and unrepentant - to their lives in the black community, to the very places where these jurors live.

Blacks need a better distinction between "prosecution" and "persecution," lest they be taken advantage of by the prostitution of the likes of Sharpton, Jackson, and the NAACP.

Teen at center of 'Jena 6' case back in jail - USATODAY.com

Teen at center of 'Jena 6' case back in jail - USATODAY.com: "LaSalle Parish Judge J.P. Mauffrey sentenced Bell to a secure juvenile facility for 18 months for two prior cases said activist Al Sharpton, who had been working to release Bell. Bell, 17, was convicted earlier this year on a simple battery charge and for property damage in cases unrelated to the beating of the student.

"I call upon the Governor of Louisiana, who has the overseeing powers over the juvenile criminal justice system to meet with us to immediately intervene on this obviously biased decision by the same Judge," Sharpton said in a news release Thursday night."

Who else think that Bell should be released, but only under Sharpton's direct and personal supervision, meaning Bell has to reside in Sharpton's home with him?

More proof Bush is an idiot

FOXNews.com - Death Penalty Case Puts Bush and Texas at Odds Over Mexican's Fate - Local News |

The case of Jose Ernesto Medellin has become a confusing test of presidential power that the U.S. Supreme Court, which hears the case this week, ultimately will sort out.

The president wants to enforce a decision by the International Court of Justice that found the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexican-born prisoners violated their rights to legal help as outlined in the 1963 Vienna Convention.

That is the same court Bush has since said he plans to ignore if it makes similar decisions affecting state criminal laws.

"The president does not agree with the ICJ's interpretation of the Vienna Convention," the administration said in arguments filed with the court. This time, though, the U.S. agreed to abide by the international court's decision because ignoring it would harm American interests abroad, the government said.

Texas argues that neither the international court nor Bush has any say in Medellin's case.

Medellin was born in Mexico, but spent much of his childhood in the United States. He was 18 in June 1993, when he and other members of the Black and Whites gang in Houston encountered two teenage girls on a railroad trestle.The girls were gang-raped and strangled. Their bodies were found four days later.

Medellin was arrested a few days later. He was told he had a right to remain silent and have a lawyer present, but the police did not tell him that he could request assistance from the Mexican consulate.

Medellin gave a written confession. He was convicted of murder in the course of a sexual assault, a capital offense in Texas. A judge sentenced him to death in October 1994.

22 homicides in a month brings 'chaos' - Examiner.com

22 homicides in a month brings 'chaos' - Examiner.com:
"“What we need is people’s outrage toward the violence in the city to be directed toward working with the police to put an end to it,” Clifford said. “This young man was shot in broad daylight along a busy street. There should be a line of people waiting to tell police what happened and what they saw.”"

And herein lies the problem: no outrage, except for the petty, juvenile silliness that took place in Jena, Louisiana. Especially telling, the young man shot in broad daylight was a student of Morgan State University, the same place where students mobilized and took a civil rights party train to Louisiana. They should have walked down to City Hall and protested the shootings. Stupid.

Filmmaker's excess political donations draw fine -- baltimoresun.com

Excess political donations draw fine -- baltimoresun.com: "Robinson used 20 corporations in which he is the sole stockholder to give $34,000 to Gov. Martin O'Malley's campaign, $58,000 to Lt. Governor Anthony G. Brown's campaign and $33,000 to Peter Franchot's campaign for state comptroller. Robinson also contributed $4,000 in his name to Franchot's campaign."

On Congress

We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex--but Congress can.
- Cullen Hightower

Televised Debates

Here's a quote from comedian Gallagher that I thought was well-applied to televised political debates:

"Don't you wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence? There's one marked 'Brightness,' but it doesn't work. "

How black liberals (subliminally) view America?

Whose broad stripes and bright stars? -- baltimoresun.com:

"Republican front-runners weren't the only things missing from the presidential debate stage. The American flag was AWOL, too.

"The backdrop to the "All-American Presidential Forum," brought to you by Tavis Smiley and PBS, was a map of the United States, superimposed with a checkerboard of multicultural faces.

"Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, one of the presidential hopefuls, asked debate organizers to get Old Glory up there, too, according to Chris Cavey, first vice chairman of the state GOP.

"Cavey was acting as an escort for another candidate, Tom Tancredo of Colorado, and heard Hunter's request over his earpiece about half an hour before the show began.

"Escorts were wired. I heard [in the earpiece], 'Congressman Hunter is requesting a flag on stage,'" Cavey said.

"Request denied.

"Forum organizers also did not return calls seeking comment.

"The buzz among some Republicans was that organizers thought the flag might "offend" some members of the audience."

Baltimore's voter turnout is lackluster at 28%

City's voter turnout is lackluster at 28% -- baltimoresun.com: "Though state officials had been predicting a paltry 30 percent of Baltimore's 331,987 registered voters would cast ballots in Tuesday's citywide primary, late in the day it seemed hitting even that would be a stretch.

"City election officials estimated that 82,921 ballots were cast at polling places Tuesday, representing about 28 percent of registered Republicans and Democrats."

And consider this: Maryland now offers convicted and released felons the opportunity to vote. There are about 50,000 ex-felons now re-enfranchised. [UPDATE: Sheila Dixon won the primary with fewer than 50,000 votes cast for her, total.]

Here's the part that should scare you: It's no stretch to see how they could not just influence an election, but actually put in place their own candidate, with such low numbers of the law-abiding turning out.

Larry Craig, we hardly knew ye.

I'm not sure what to think about Idaho Senator Larry Craig. The media certainly painted him as getting busted doing homo-trolling in an airport men's room. However, after hearing the post-arrest interview recorded by the policeman who nabbed Craig, I'm not so sure that's so.

During the interview, the cop very much minimalized the offense by saying something on the order of "pay the fine, and that's it." Because the only thing they could agree on was that their shoes touched under the stall divider, Craig characterized the event between the cop and he as "entrapment." It seems it may be so, if Craig is to be believed. If one man's foot touches another, is that playing footsie? Of course, maybe the rules change when the pants are down. But a reflection on context may be in order, and maybe because the cop was looking for something, he mischaracterized innocent events as something else.

That an interview was even conducted under such circumstances, and that the cop berated Craig, saying he was "disappointed," and "no wonder we're going down the tubes," has me scratching my head. This just ain't kosher.

Craig did his dumbness by admitting guilt. I mean, that might take the prize for Stupid Acts by Congressmen, and that's takes some doing. Then, when the news hit Washington, the sharks came on in a feeding frenzy.

The surprise were the Republicans. It's going to be a tough election year for them, so it's no wonder they were antsy. Still, their vociferousness in denouncing Craig was a little off-putting. Doth the ladies protest too much?

The hypocrisy is still stinging. All over American politics are scandals and closet-skeletons, so much so that were should be used to them by now. Just discussing homosexuality and Congress, the first recollection should be the Democrats gay PooBah, Barney Frank. Remember, he had a live-in boy-toy that was a hooker running a gay prostitution service from Frank's residence. But the Dems rallied around him; they had the etics probe, but Frank survided the reprimand. That was what, 2 decades ago? And Frank is still there.

Guilty or innocent, Craig's situation really doesn't matter. We The People will never know the truth, anyway, would have never known the truth, and at the end of the day, Craig wasn't shacked up with a gay pimp running a homo brothel at his crib.

I'm just trying to figure out which is worse, and why one is forced to resign, while the other is held in high regard.

Politicians really live in a different world than the rest of us.

John Edwards and SUVs: Do the Math

John Edwards and SUVs: Do the Math:

"The Detroit Free Press (and just about every other media outlet on planet Earth) reports that U.S. presidential hopeful John Edwards wants you to surrender your SUV. Speaking at a forum sponsored by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Mr. Edwards said if he was (emperor) president he would (order) ask Americans to (turn in) give up their gas-guzzling SUVs and 'drive more fuel-efficient vehicles.' Of course, the millionaire friend of the working class didn't address the exodus' impact on the United Auto Workers, or how he might dispose of all these abandoned vehicles.

On a related topic, Edwards defended his $6m energy-sucking 28,000-square-foot mansion by saying he's worked hard all his life and has always supported workers– especially those who built, clean and maintain his energy-sucking 28,000-square-foot mansion. (OK, I added that last part.) And all those people who worked hard to buy a gas-sucking SUV? Apparently, that's different."

Appropriate Endorsements

CNN.com - CNN Political Ticker:

"WASHINGTON (CNN) — White House hopeful Hillary Clinton has raked in several high profile endorsements as she campaigns for president, but the latest may not be greeted with open arms.

Heidi Lynne Fleiss, the former 'Hollywood Madam' who was convicted on charges connected to her prostitution ring, is a big supporter of the New York Democrat's White House bid, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports."

President Ronald Reagan once said something relevant about this topic:

"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."