Welcome to the Finger-Wagging Olympics

By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Moral outrage is exhausting. And dangerous. The whole country has gotten a severe case of carpal tunnel syndrome from the newest popular sport of Extreme Finger Wagging. Not to mention the neck strain from Olympic tryouts for Morally Superior Head Shaking. All over the latest in a long line of rich white celebrities to come out of the racist closet. (Was it only a couple days ago that Cliven Bundy said blacks would be better off picking cotton as slaves? And only last June Paula Deen admitted using the “N” word?)
Yes, I’m angry, too, but not just about the sins of Donald Sterling. I’ve got a list. But let’s start with Sterling. I used to work for him, back in 2000 when I coached for the Clippers for three months. He was congenial, even inviting me to his daughter’s wedding. Nothing happened or was said to indicate he suffered from IPMS (Irritable Plantation Master Syndrome). Since then, a lot has been revealed about Sterling’s business practices:

2006: U.S. Dept. of Justice sued Sterling for housing discrimination. Allegedly, he said, “Black tenants smell and attract vermin.”
2009: He reportedly paid $2.73 million in a Justice Dept. suit alleging he discriminated against blacks, Hispanics, and families with children in his rentals. (He also had to pay an additional nearly $5 million in attorneys fees and costs due to his counsel’s “sometimes outrageous conduct.”)
2009: Clippers executive (and one of the greatest NBA players in history) sued for employment discrimination based on age and race.

And now the poor guy’s girlfriend (undoubtedly ex-girlfriend now) is on tape cajoling him into revealing his racism. Man, what a winding road she led him down to get all of that out. She was like a sexy nanny playing “pin the fried chicken on the Sambo.” She blindfolded him and spun him around until he was just blathering all sorts of incoherent racist sound bites that had the news media peeing themselves with glee.
They caught big game on a slow news day, so they put his head on a pike, dubbed him Lord of the Flies, and danced around him whooping.
I don’t blame them. I’m doing some whooping right now. Racists deserve to be paraded around the modern town square of the television screen so that the rest of us who believe in the American ideals of equality can be reminded that racism is still a disease that we haven’t yet licked.
What bothers me about this whole Donald Sterling affair isn’t just his racism. I’m bothered that everyone acts as if it’s a huge surprise. Now there’s all this dramatic and very public rending of clothing about whether they should keep their expensive Clippers season tickets. Really? All this other stuff I listed above has been going on for years and this ridiculous conversation with his girlfriend is what puts you over the edge? That’s the smoking gun?
He was discriminating against black and Hispanic families for years, preventing them from getting housing. It was public record. We did nothing. Suddenly he says he doesn’t want his girlfriend posing with Magic Johnson on Instagram and we bring out the torches and rope. Shouldn’t we have all called for his resignation back then?
Shouldn’t we be equally angered by the fact that his private, intimate conversation was taped and then leaked to the media? Didn’t we just call to task the NSA for intruding into American citizen’s privacy in such an un-American way? Although the impact is similar to Mitt Romney’s comments that were secretly taped, the difference is that Romney was giving a public speech. The making and release of this tape is so sleazy that just listening to it makes me feel like an accomplice to the crime. We didn’t steal the cake but we’re all gorging ourselves on it.
Make no mistake: Donald Sterling is the villain of this story. But he’s just a handmaiden to the bigger evil. In our quest for social justice, we shouldn’t lose sight that racism is the true enemy. He’s just another jerk with more money than brains.
So, if we’re all going to be outraged, let’s be outraged that we weren’t more outraged when his racism was first evident. Let’s be outraged that private conversations between people in an intimate relationship are recorded and publicly played. Let’s be outraged that whoever did the betraying will probably get a book deal, a sitcom, trade recipes with Hoda and Kathie Lee, and soon appear on Celebrity Apprentice and Dancing with the Stars.
The big question is “What should be done next?” I hope Sterling loses his franchise. I hope whoever made this illegal tape is sent to prison. I hope the Clippers continue to be unconditionally supported by their fans. I hope the Clippers realize that the ramblings of an 80-year-old man jealous of his young girlfriend don’t define who they are as individual players or as a team. They aren’t playing for Sterling—they’re playing for themselves, for the fans, for showing the world that neither basketball, nor our American ideals, are defined by a few pathetic men or women.
Let’s use this tawdry incident to remind ourselves of the old saying: “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.” Instead of being content to punish Sterling and go back to sleep, we need to be inspired to vigilantly seek out, expose, and eliminate racism at its first signs.

A President of 'All the People'?

By Richard Winchester

....The Martin-Zimmerman case seems to have been a watershed in how the Obama administration has dealt with race relations. Prior to early 2012, one has to comb through Obama’s record very finely to uncover overtly “race-conscious” conduct. After the verdict, the administration’s racialist tilt has become evident.

Three examples suffice.

First, on November 18, 2013, Obama nominated Debo Adegbile, who had fervently defended cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, to head the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. Despite Harry Reid’s efforts, a bipartisan coalition of Democrats and Republicans rejected the nomination on March 5th, 2014.

On February 27th, 2014, Obama announced the creation of the $200 million “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative for “young men of color” and no one else. Obama said that the idea came to him after Trayvon Martin’s death, and that the money would be used to prevent young black males from dropping out of school.

(No such fund exists for young women [of any color], or for young white males mired in abject poverty in places like Appalachia.)

The third example is Obama’s reaction to reports that Los Angeles Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling is alleged to uttered racist remarks. Speaking from Malaysia, without any firsthand knowledge of what was said, Obama told reporters that Sterling’s remarks are “incredibly offensive.” Obama also said the U.S. “continues to wrestle with the legacy of race and slavery and segregation, that’s still there, the vestiges of discrimination.” As M. Catharine Evans notes, “[t]he president certainly does rush to judgment a lot when it comes to race issues.”

Can a president with Obama’s record be chief executive of all Americans? Sadly, the answer appears to be no.

Welcome back, Mr. President; Here's your worst job approval ever

By Andrew Malcolm

For consuming a week of presidential time and Lord knows how many millions of borrowed dollars, Barack Obama's admirable Asian adventure was not terribly productive.
The much-anticipated trade agreement with Japan fell through, as trade talks with Japan are wont to do for decades now. Obama did sign a new base agreement with the Philippines.

... a new ABC News/Washington Post Poll. It shows that after a minor tick up during the recent long winter of global warming, Obama's job approval has sunk a full five points since March to its lowest point ever, 41%. Obama's lost ground among his core support groups, possibly growing impatient with his promised economic recovery that's been just around the corner now for four years. Fifty-two percent of adult Americans now disapprove of his job performance, and strong disapproval exceeds strong approval by a bruising 17 points.
The Democrat can claim the economy is improving all he wants. Only 28% buy that line now, down nine points since Mitt Romney was not elected president.
The unaffordable Affordable Care Act has lost support too, down five points in one month to 44%.
Since he's been overseas a lot this year and this month, maybe foreign affairs remain Obama's forte. Well, actually not. For example, on Ukraine, which drew new administration sanctions on Russia Monday, Obama's job approval is barely one-third, 34%.
Perhaps most ominously for Obama's second-term agenda -- whatever that is -- a majority of Americans now prefer a Congress completely controlled by Republicans.
As poll director Gary Langer puts it:
"Registered voters by 53-39 percent in the national survey say they’d rather see the Republicans in control of Congress as a counterbalance to Obama’s policies than a Democratic-led Congress to help support him. It was similar in fall 2010, when the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives and gained six Senate seats."

Another six-seat gain on Nov. 4 gives the GOP control of the Senate. And Obama can finally focus on his presidential library.

Politico gives away the game

By Thomas Lifson

If you ever wondered what the real political issue of the day is when it comes to presidential politics, an article in Politico gives you the answer. Wall Street Big Money wants a presidential candidate who will allow the financial games enabling hedge fund billionaires, investment banks, and other financial engineering specialists to continue their merry ways. This group dominates the top one percent of the top once percent of income earners – the people who have expanded their share of national income, while the rest of the one percent (and the rest of us) get to divvy up the rest.

Of course, the Politico story doesn’t say that outright, but you can read between the lines. Ben White and Maggie Haberman write:

Wall Street Republicans' dark secret: Hillary Clinton 2016

This is not to say that Clinton is the preference of Republicans in the financial sector — far from it. Most shake their heads when asked directly if Clinton is someone they could support. But when the contrast is against some of the non-establishment hopefuls, their comfort level becomes clearer.

This line of thinking is a direct response to fiery rhetoric from people like Rand Paul, who used the 2013 CPAC conference in Washington to rip the financial industry, saying “there is nothing conservative about bailing out Wall Street.”

Ted Cruz, whose wife works at Goldman Sachs, is viewed negatively by many in the industry for his support of last year’s government shutdown and scorched earth approach to political battle. Cruz fired up an activist gathering in New Hampshire earlier this month with the kind of provocative populist message that makes bankers very nervous. “The rich and powerful, those who walk the corridors of power, are getting fat and happy,” Cruz thundered. At the same event, Paul argued that the GOP “cannot be the party of fat cats, rich people and Wall Street.”

That kind of talk leaves some rich people contemplating the notion of supporting Clinton in what would amount to a reversion to 2008, when Wall Street money went nearly 2 to 1 for then-Sen. Barack Obama over Sen. John McCain. Even those who could never back her don’t see her as a huge threat to the business community.

“I tell you this, I hope he does decide to run,” Al Hoffman, a GOP megadonor who chaired George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns, said of Jeb Bush, noting the former Florida governor’s positions on immigration reform and national education standards rile populists but line up well with business groups and the broader electorate.

He said his clear preference is not to see Clinton as president, and he hopes GOP ideals will triumph in 2016. But he added: “Is [Clinton] anti-business? I don’t think so. I hope not. I don’t have any reason to believe that.”

Translation: if those crazy Tea Party types succeed in nominating someone like Cruz or Paul, Wall Street money will go to Hillary. And because Wall Street money plays a major role in overall political fundraising (they have plenty of money and know what they are buying after all), it is seen as determinative in the election outcome by most political professionals, at least off the record and after a drink or two.

Welcome to the oligarchy, suckers.

USDA Made $6.2 Billion in Improper Payments Last Year

Failed to comply with law to avoid fraudulent payments for third year in a row

By Elizabeth Harrington
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) made $6.2 billion in improper payments in 2013, according to the Office of Inspector General (OIG).
The OIG released an audit earlier this month that found that at least $416 million in waste could have been avoided if the agency had met its reduction targets mandated by the Improper Payment Information Act (IPIA). In fact, the USDA has failed to comply with the law for a third consecutive year.
“This occurred because some of USDA’s actions were not effective or completed to achieve compliance,” the audit said. “These noncompliances continue to illustrate the risks of improper payments affecting taxpayers, as USDA could have avoided approximately $416 million in improper payments by meeting reduction targets.”
The report noted that the agency runs more than 300 programs, spending $159 billion a year. Sixteen of those programs are considered “high-risk” for waste, fraud, and abuse, including the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), which administers food stamps, and the school breakfast and lunch programs.

Benghazi Emails Show White House Effort to Protect Obama

Staff attempted to insulate president’s policies from criticism ahead of election

By Adam Kredo
Previously unreleased internal Obama administration emails show that a coordinated effort was made in the days following the Benghazi terror attacks to portray the incident as “rooted in [an] Internet video, and not [in] a broader failure or policy.”
Emails sent by senior White House adviser Ben Rhodes to other top administration officials reveal an effort to insulate President Barack Obama from the attacks that killed four Americans.
Rhodes sent this email to top White House officials such as David Plouffe and Jay Carney just a day before National Security Adviser Susan Rice made her infamous Sunday news show appearances to discuss the attack.
The “goal,” according to these emails, was “to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.”
Rice came under fierce criticism following her appearances on television after she adhered to these talking points and blamed the attack on a little-watched Internet video.
The newly released internal White House e-mails show that Rice’s orders came from top Obama administration communications officials.
...Also contained in the 41 pages of documents obtained by Judicial Watch is a Sep. 12, 2012 email from Payton Knopf, the former deputy spokesman at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.
In this communication, Knopf informs Rice that senior officials had already dubbed the Benghazi attack as “complex” and planned in advance. Despite this information, Rice still insisted that attacks were “spontaneous.”
The newly released cache of emails also appear to confirm that the CIA altered its original talking points on the attacks in the following days.
...Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that the emails show the White House was most concerned with insulating Obama.
“Now we know the Obama White House’s chief concern about the Benghazi attack was making sure that President Obama looked good,” Fitton said in a statement. “And these documents undermine the Obama administration’s narrative that it thought the Benghazi attack had something to do with protests or an Internet video.”
“Given the explosive material in these documents, it is no surprise that we had to go to federal court to pry them loose from the Obama State Department,” Fitton said.

Kerry: 'Partisan Politics' Motivates Critics of My 'Apartheid' Comment

By John Nolte
A quick glance at this morning's news coverage makes clear that the media is more than a little eager to let Secretary of State John Kerry off the hook for accusing Israel of devolving into an "apartheid state" if it doesn't make peace with the Palestinians. The media is also going to let Kerry get away with claiming that those who criticized his reprehensible remark are motivated only by "partisan politics."
"I will not allow my commitment to Israel to be questioned by anyone, particularly for partisan, political purposes," Kerry said after the "apartheid" remark he expressed in private was reported by the Daily Beast.
This is a classic trick in the White House playbook: pretend that the criticism is based only on partisan politics. Kerry of course is being dishonest. Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer was quick to condemn Kerry's remarks as "nonsensical and ridiculous." Another Democrat Senator, Mark Begich of Alaska, added, "Last time I checked, the U.S. didn’t negotiate with terrorist organizations and we shouldn’t expect the Israeli government to either."
A number of Jewish groups also criticized Kerry.
Because Kerry is a Democrat, the mainstream media has already decided to put this story to bed before it can do any damage to the Secretary of State or the Obama administration. Even though there is audio of Kerry's remarks, thus far I have not heard a single media outlet other than Fox News air it.
People mistakenly assume that this kind of audio recording is automatic catnip for the media. But this is only true if the subject caught on tape is not a left-wing Democrat. The media will broadcast Romney's "47 percent" remark until he is no longer a threat to Barack Obama. The media will not play the audio of John Kerry, though, because I doing so risks damaging a Democrat.

The Real Problem With Kerry’s ‘Apartheid’ Myth

By David Harsanyi

After the Daily Beast released excerpts of him warning world leaders that Israel would devolve into an “apartheid” state if it failed to agree to a peace deal, John Kerry is walking back his comments. “…If I could rewind the tape,” he explained, “I would have chosen a different word to describe my firm belief that the only way in the long term to have a Jewish state and two nations and two peoples living side by side in peace and security is through a two state solution.”

This shouldn’t make anyone feel better. It’s not just the incendiary use of “apartheid” that’s the problem, but the well-worn canard about Israel that Kerry rests his position on. And his position shouldn’t really surprise anyone who’s been paying attention. Barack Obama offered basically the same argument only a couple of months ago when he warned that time was running out for “Israel as a Jewish-majority democracy.”

....Kerry has essentially taken the Jimmy Carter position. The theory goes like this: Arab birthrates in Israel and the Palestinian territories will continue to be higher than those of the Jews. And some point, Arabs will become the majority in all the areas that Israel governs and occupies and then Jews will be impelled to act like a bunch Afrikaner Brownshirts to survive.
....Israel isn’t a perfect nation, of course, just more perfect than many. The Israeli Arab minority not only fully participates in the nation’s democratic process but it is protected by the same laws that govern Jews. As Kerry knows, only one side openly demands ethnic dissection. A West Bank and Gaza completely free of Jews is, in fact, the ugly precondition to any peace agreement.

But Kerry suggests that a change of Israeli or Palestinian leadership might offer better conditions for an agreement on the future Palestinian state. This is an interesting assertion considering Fatah has been the only entity to negotiate for Palestinians while Israel has engaged in peace talks with the left-of-center Labor party and right-of-center Likud party and the center Kadima party and it has made absolutely no difference in the outcome.

What did Fatah do this time? Put it this way: Kerry’s tireless work in the Middle East hasn’t been a complete waste. While he’s been pressuring Israel, the erstwhile terrorist group Palestine Liberation Organization and contemporary terrorist group Hamas have set aside their long-standing differences and will form a government in the next few weeks so that a corrupt, radicalized, poverty-ridden society can unite to blame their misfortunes on the Jews. So there’s always that.

FCC Announces New Net Neutrality Rules

By John Sexton

The Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is proposing new rules which would allow Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to charge higher rates for services that use more resources. This has created a fresh battle in the debate over net neutrality.
The net neutrality rules require that ISPs not limit subscribers' access to any service and treat all content indiscriminately. Some ISPs have argued that a handful of services, primarily YouTube and Netflix (but also other video streaming sites like Amazon and ESPN) account for a disproportionate amount of internet traffic. The ISPs want to be able to charge these services for their high use of resources.
In January the ISPs won a victory when an Appeals Court sided with Verizon and rejected the FCC's neutrality rules, which had been in place since 2010. The new rules being proposed by the FCC appear to follow the court's guidance in allowing ISPs to charge some services additional fees.
A statement posted on the FCC blog by chairman Tom Wheeler last week says, "The Notice does not change the underlying goals of transparency, no blocking of lawful content, and no unreasonable discrimination among users established by the 2010 Rule. The Notice does follow the roadmap established by the Court as to how to enforce rules of the road that protect an Open Internet and asks for further comments on the approach."
Under the new rules, the FCC would not prohibit ISPs' charging extra to companies like Netflix, but it would retain the right to judge whether those deals are "commercially reasonable." Chairman Wheeler's blog post on the issue defines one example of what the FCC would consider unreasonable: "favoring the traffic from an affiliated entity."
The New York Times came out against the new proposal immediately. In an editorial published last week, the Times editors wrote, "It would essentially give broadband companies the right to create the digital equivalent of high-occupancy vehicle lanes for content providers, like Netflix and Amazon, wealthy enough to pay a toll."
This argument was also made at the Daily Beast, i.e. that new start-ups who have ideas for businesses that involve streaming video won't be able to afford the high-tier payments, limiting future entrepreneurial activity.
Proponents of net neutrality also point out that fees charged by ISPs such as Comcast or Time Warner Cable to companies like Netflix will simply be passed back to consumers via rate hikes. While consumers may not see the change in their monthly ISP bill, they will see it in their Netflix (or other streaming service) bill.
Last week Netflix announced it would be gradually raising prices on its streaming services from $1 to $2, with a grandfathering of current customers for as much as a year. This decision to raise prices came a few weeks after Netflix signed an agreement to pay fees to broadband provider Comcast. Asked whether the fees played a role in the price-hikes, a Netflix spokesperson told the Washington Post, "content delivery costs are part of the costs we have to pay."

PK'S NOTE: All you can do is shake your head at this type of racist thinking. It's too late to change it.

Professors decry Disney’s ‘Jungle Book’ as racist, demand a less ‘offensive’ remake

By Katherine Trimpf
Multiple professors have turned to the media to decry Disney's The Jungle Book as racist and demand that the live-action remake, which the company is currently discussing, be modified to make the film less offensive.
“One of the main reasons that 'The Jungle Book' needs to be rebooted is to fix the things that became controversial not long after it was released in 1967," Syracuse University media professor Robert Thompson said in an interview with Yahoo Movies.

"The King Louie character can have his speaking mannerisms updated in a way that suggests he speaks in a manner similar to other characters."

Critics have stated that the scene where the ape character, King Louie, sings "I want to be like you” to the human character, Mowgli, he is not just a cartoon animal wishing to be human. Rather, Louie represents an African-American stating that he wants to be a member of the white race, which is represented by Mowgli.
The Mowgli character is not white, and the King Louie character was voiced by Italian-American Louis Prima, not an African-American.
But Thompson said the song is racist regardless of who sings it, because it has a jazzy tone similar Louis Armstrong’s music.
"The original choice would have been offensive — Louis Armstrong as an ape," Thompson said. "The choice they went with had a minstrel show feel to it, also offensive.”
DePauw University professor Jeffrey M. McCall said he also believes that King Louie is a blatantly racist character because he speaks differently than other characters.
"The King Louie character can have his speaking mannerisms updated in a way that suggests he speaks in a manner similar to other characters," he said.
"[The film] can be updated with a keener eye to avoiding stereotypical language or behaviors that could be translatable to ethnic definition," he added.
The movie is scheduled for release in 2015.