Dinesh D'Souza Exposed as Adulturer and Moral Hypocrite

Dinesh D'Souza & mistress/"fiancee" Denise Odie Joseph II.

Over the years conservative writer and critic Dinesh D'Souza has delighted Republicans and right-wing media pundits by targeting African-Americans, Democrats, the poor, unions, homosexuals, pro-choice advocates and President Obama with unsubstantiated theories, a long-winded mix of pseudo-intellectual editorializing and uninformed revisionist American history.

D'Souza, a converted Catholic now aligned with the evangelical Christian church, has carved out a career with his self-righteous condemnation of the personal beliefs, political choices and life style choices of people who don't think like him. Now he's crying foul over the humiliating public revelation that he was recently spotted staying in a hotel room during a conference with Denise Odie Joseph II, a significantly younger married evangelical Christian woman; who herself is married according to Jordan Sargent of Gawker.com.   

A recent article by David Sessions on the Daily Beast Website claims the story was broken by World (an evangelical Christian magazine) after two conference organizers learned D'Souza was shacking up in a South Carolina hotel with a woman who was clearly not his current wife of 20 years.
                        
Don't get me wrong, D'Souza's personal life is his own business, but when he writes books and films documentaries based purely on some wildly speculative theory that the President has some kind of secret agenda for the nation based on a seething hatred of colonialism, his own personal life becomes relevant and subject to scrutiny.

Just recently D'Souza had the gall to accuse the President (who regularly attends church, is happily married with two daughters and lives with his mother-in-law) of 'Attacking the traditional values agenda' according to an article posted on the rightwingwatch.com Website. 

Perhaps D'Souza should spend less time obsessing over what he perceives to be other people's moral failings and more time reflecting on just what his own 'traditional values' are. He certainly will have plenty of time for reflection, in the wake of the scandal D'Souza resigned as president of King's College in New York City, a small Christian school funded by Campus Crusade for Christ. Their Website states in part:  
"The King’s College educates students to lead with principle as they aspire to make America better. We prepare students for principled leadership. And nothing else."

Unfortunately for D'Souza, I suspect the media (and his current wife Dixie), will be a lot less forgiving than Jesus.

More "Palin Pageant Walkin" and GOP Code Talkin!

Even though she mistakenly believed the continent of Africa was a nation, couldn't comprehend the function of the Federal Reserve and got famously flustered on-camera when Katie Couric had the gall to ask her what newspapers she read, I can't help but be just a little bit nostalgic for Sarah Palin's unique brand of uninformed feistiness as the 2012 presidential race winds to a close.

She's caught a lot of heat in recent days for using the term "Shuck and Jive" during a Wednesday evening attack on the President's foreign policy response in Libya. As usual, her inflamatory attack made little sense and simply cemented the common perception of her precarious grasp of global events. It was certainly quotable but not really surprising; and no stranger than the news that she's a distant relative to actress Halle Berry.

Palin is just the latest right-leaning member of the GOP to be trotted out to sling code words at the President in an effort to try and make voters uncomfortable with his race. Remember Newt Gingrich suggesting poor school children in urban areas (GOP Code for "black and Latino kids") could be compelled to work as janitors in their schools to teach them work habits?  Or labeling Obama a "food stamp President?"

Perhaps the most notoriouos Code-Talker in this bunch (aside from the Donald Trump) is the co-chair of the Mitt Romney for President Campaign, the perpetually angry former New Hampshire governor John Sununu. He's been called upon by the Romney camp to serve up a remarkable feast of unapologetically bigoted cheap shots over the past few months. Most recently slamming General Colin Powell for voting for Obama only because of the color of his skin.

Funny, when I watched General Powell (arguably one of the most respectd public fugures in the country) lay out his reasoning for choosing to vote for the President, they were well thought out arguments based on facts, logic and the President's record; at not time did he mention voting for Obama because of the color of his skin. Watch for yourself if you missed it.

Curious, when the GOP Code-Talkers talk about Obama, they seem to say much more about themselves and their perspective of the nation we live in.


 

Trump Embarrasses Himself, Maricopa County Tries to Dupe Hispanic Voters

President Obama laughs off Trump's latest gaff on Leno

No amount of blogging away my frustrations could possibly sum up mainstream America's collective response to perpetually-coiffed attention whore Donald Trump's anti-climatic "challenge" to President Obama any better than Barbara Walter's choice words on ABC's "The View".

In response to Trump's pathetic video effort to raise the long-dead ghosts of the vanquished  Birther movement by offering up $5 million to submit his passport applications and college records, Walters opined:  

“Donald, you’re making a fool of yourself,” she continued. “You are not hurting Obama — you’re hurting Donald, and that hurts me, because you’re a decent man. Stop it. Get off it, Donald.”

Amen sister. "The Donald" has clearly relegated himself to the media scrapheap of totally irrelevant personalities intoxicated by their own brilliance. Someone please put some cheese on that clown and set the table, cause he's done.

By the way, if Trump wants to drop $5 million on something, maybe he should try giving back the tuition money to the hundreds of enraged students duped into paying for a degree from his sham Trump University.

Even as poor Mitt Romney struggles to distance himself from his own views and pass himself off as a moderate, members of his own party continue to horrify American women with their archaic views on abortion and rape. Indiana Senate nominee Richard Mourdouk sailed right into Todd Aikin territory with another jaw-dropping pro-life soundbite that further increases the President's already significant lead over women voters nationwide.  

GOP efforts to criminalize voters who aren't very likely to support them at the polls on November 6th just keep getting more despicable and bizarre. In good 'ole Maricopa County, Arizona, home to notorious bigot Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the county's own elections department has been caught putting out two Spanish-language documents with the wrong election date on them.

Even though they're direct English-to-Spanish translations of English elections documents; there's just one error. The date. The Spanish-language version incorrectly lists the date of the Presidential elections as November 8th; the date of the election is actually November 6th. Go figure!

Do NOT adjust your television folks, this is the year 2012 and we are in fact in the United States of America.

Bain Capital-Owned Clear Channel Helping GOP Voter Suppression Tactics

Signs like these popping up in Black & Latino Communities

For a party that spends as much time as it does trumpeting patriotic values and chiding the Obama administration for not doing enough to support Democracy in Syria and Libya, Republicans are employing a variety of reprehensible tactics to suppress voter participation.

With the cooperation of media giant Clear Channel (owned by Mitt Romney's former company Bain Capital) an "anonymous family foundation" is posting billboards in primarily  black and Latino neighborhoods in Wisconsin and Ohio to intentionally intimidate and mislead voters who would tend to vote Democratic. What's next? Asking voters to recite Shakespeare from memory in order to vote like they used to do in the Reconstruction-era South? 

What's got civic-minded Republicans all riled up? Apparently nothing. As Natasha Kahn and Corbin Carson reported on the Minnesota Post Website back in August, a careful analysis shows that voter fraud is virtually non-existent in Minnesota, and despite millions of tax-payer dollars spent on questionable anti-voter fraud initiatives in Pennsylvania, no actual cases of voter fraud have been found.

But facts and data aren't stopping people like Colin Small, an employee of a company hired by the GOP called PinPoint. As reported by Stephanie Saul in the New York Times last Friday, Small a voter registration supervisor in Harrisonburg, Virginia was charged with 13 counts of destruction of voter registration applications. Specifically, Small was caught when he parked behind a building and dumped a trash bag containing an envelope with 13 completed voter registration forms into a dumpster.

According the to the Times article, a suspicious local retailer spotted Small and went to retrieve the bag and found the registration applications. Fortunately they were turned in and will be processed accordingly. Guess which party the trashed applications were for?

If that's not enough, last week it leaked out that Mitt Romeny is sinking even lower by sneaking around the country asking CEO's to instruct their employees to vote for Romney. People like Arthur Allen, CEO of ASG Software solutions, who sent an e-mail to all of his employees "requesting" that they contribute to the Romney campaign and vote for the Romney/Ryan ticket.

The most pathetic thing about all this is that even Romney knows he just can't sell his platform to mainstream Americans, or convince them he's the better candidate.      

Bullet Fired at Obama's Campaign Office in Denver

The blown-out window at the Obama offices in Denver

We can really only wonder what was going through the mind of the person or persons who fired a gunshot through the window of the Obama field office in Denver on Friday afternoon.

According to the Denver Post Website police are trying to track a suspicious vehicle seen near the scene at the time of the shooting. Fortunately no one was hurt, but there were campaign personnel inside at the time.

It's not the first time someone's distorted political views and irrational anger at the president have prompted them to pick up a weapon and pull the trigger from a car. Remember Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez?

He's the guy who took a shot at the White House at the corner of 16th street and Constitution Avenue from a distance of 750 yards back in November of 2011. His motivation for his assassination attempt according to an anonymous investigator at the time? “He hates the president, he hates Washington, he hates society,” Which of course, is a reason to kill someone in the minds of some.

Maybe, like Jared Lee Loughner, who shot former US Representative Gabby Giffords and 18 others (murdering 6 innocent bystanders) we'll never really know. None of the right-wing media pundits (like Limbaugh) who use the airways to spew a constant stream of extremist, anti-Obama rhetoric  will take responsibility for it.

Nope. They'll just shrug their shoulders. And the band plays on. By the way, I watched the first presidential debate and the vice-presidential debate last night; I don't think I even heard gun control mentioned. Not once. We're lucky it was just a glass window that got damaged today; unlike some in this country, bullets don't discriminate.

Standing Up for Big Bird

 If Mitt Romeney was trying to soften his image as a self proclaimed "severely conservative" politician, I'm not sure his first debate performance really helped him.

Forget about an economic recovery plan that centers on a commitment to Grover Norquist's bizzare pledge to never raise taxes (ever) and slashing government spending programs that benefit the vast majority of Americans while providing even more tax relief for top earners. Forget the 47% gaffe. 

When GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney leaned across his podium during last Wednesday night's debate in Denver and condescendingly assured narrator Jim Leherer that he "loved Big Bird" but would eliminate Federal subsidies for PBS, he crossed a point of no return. Yesterday NY Times columinst Charles M. Blow eleoquently stated what I consider to be a well-versed summary of the majority thinking on the incalcuable intellectual value of PBS.

If a person is running for the highest office in the land who would presume to lead on behalf of all Americans, unquestionably he or she must understand the importance of PBS programming to the educational and cultural enrichment of the nation. Period. (Seriously Mitt, Ken Burn's 'The Civil War?' American Experience? Sesame Street? Word Girl? Really??)

If they don't get that, they're so detached from common-sense Main Street sensibility they simply have no business in the White House. In this age of bloated defense spending, excessive tax subsidies for petroluem behemoths like Exxon-Mobil (which posted 1st quarter profits of $9.45 billion) and trillion dollar bailouts for big banks and insurance companies who greedily gambled on complex-but-crappy financial products, we can afford PBS.

When you consider that the rich variety of PBS educational and entertainment programming costs each tax payer about $1.35 per year, suggesting Big Bird is to blame for the massive US deficit borders on the most absurd kind of delusion at best; and blatant partisan disconnect at worst. Poor Flipper just doesn't understand that PBS refelects what is best about this nation, it's people and our collective values.  

Hip Hop Artists Brawl At BET Awards (Again); Teen Girl Rampage in Chester, PA

Rappers Rick Ross & Young Jeezy had words at the BET Awards

The propensity for petty "beefs", juvenile dust-ups and fights among Hip-Hop artists, rappers and members of their ubiquitous entourages during awards shows has become so commonplace it's almost cartoonish; maybe even buffonish.

It's also potentially dangerous as artists like Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls could tell you - had they not both been gunned down over perceived slights and insults.

The latest ego-inspired fracas occurred over the weekend in Atlanta during the taping of the BET Awards when 36 year-old rapper/producer Rick Ross and rapper Young Jeezy (who's actually 34) apparently had words backstage. The conflict then escalated when the respective entourages of both groups had a confrontation that continued out into the parking lot and according to multiple sources, shots were fired.

It's the latest blight that gives a bad name to the industry and the thousands of legitimate rap artists across the nation who oppose violence and manage to create music without getting their faces plastered on TMZ.com. What's peculiar is on one hand you have artists who demand to be taken seriously for their creative and business/entreprenuerial skills (i.e rap artists who successfully expand their brands into fashion, sports drinks or even fast food) but then totally undermine their own public perception with highly-public confrontations or outbursts.

Remember when Kanye West totally embarrassed himself by blundering onstage during the Video Music Awards a few years ago to disrupt Taylor Swift's award moment with his unsolicited rant?
I won't even get into Chris Brown assaulting singer Rihanna after the Grammy Awards. 

What's most troubling is the message that gets absorbed by young people. The same night I heard about the debacle at the BET Awards taping, I saw the horrifying news report about six teenage girls in Chester, PA who recorded a totally-unprovoked vicious assault of a 48 year-old mentally disabled woman sitting on her front stoop minding her own business; then had the audacity to post it on Facebook. The teens are seen laughing while they beat the woman.

The attack has outraged citizens (including me) from all walks of life not just in the Delaware Valley and Philadelphia area, but across the nation including Boston and Chicago. In response, assistant DA Greg Dawson is charging all six girls as adults and I agree with the vast majority of the reader-comments that all six should be locked up as an example of what happens when you prove unable to function within the laws of decent, civilized society.

Now I certainly can't blame any one rap artist or Hip Hop impresario for the sick teenage girl rampage in Chester, but I do hold the adulation of thuggish behavior and misogynistic themes that still permeates much of Hip-Hop culture, music and media at least partially accountable; and where the hell are the parents? Odds are NOT at a PTA meeting.    

Neither Rick Ross or Young Jeezy were arrested for their BET Awards melee on Saturday; but if the six Chester girls were arrested and charged as adults, maybe Ross and Jeezy should be too. If for nothing else than to demonstrate that people in this society must take responsibility for their actions - and that there are consequences for acting like a fucking asshole.

On that note, I admit I don't always agree with the actions of the NYPD, and I've called them out in my blog on a number of occasions, but props to Commissioner Ray Kelly for announcing stepped-up efforts to control local gang violence in communities in New York.  

Bobby Tillman's Murderer Tracen Franklin Sentenced to Life Without Parole

18 year-old Bobby Tillman, the victim of a savage beating.

For my money Pulitzer Prize-winner Cynthia Tucker is one of the most insightful journalists/commentators in the business.

A syndicated writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I first heard her as a semi-regular color commentator on the PBS Newshour who always brought a succinct and highly-principled perspective to discussions on a range of domestic and international issues.

On Saturday Tucker wrote a column about the aftermath of the murder of 18 year-old Bobby Tillman that opened my eyes to a horrifying case of violence that highlights the tragedy of one of the most insidious problems afflicting the African-American community (and indeed, America); senseless black-on-black crime.

This particular travesty had nothing to do with gang violence or a marginalized inner-city community.

Tillman, a college student who aspired to be a sports agent, was outside a crowded teenage party in the suburbs of Atlanta almost two years ago when a group of four African-Americans led and spurred on by Tracen Franklin, attacked Tillman and viciously stomped and beat him to death in a heinous crime that shocked the nation.

One of the saddest things about this incident, and a factor that is all too common among violent black-on-black crime, the attackers didn't even know Tillman; they were just angry and feeling "dissed" after one of the four were struck by a female guest during the party. Apparently feeling the need to vent their sense of inadequacy, they made the ill-fated decision to take it out on an innocent victim who happened to be Tillman.

Last Friday Franklin was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Franklin's accomplices Emanuel Boykins, 30 will serve life with a possibility of parole in 30 years and the other two charged, Quantez Devonta Mallory and Horace Damon Coleman are also facing pending charges of murder.

And so it continues. Tillman's death did draw national attention, but I know I'm not alone in wondering when crimes like the killing of Bobby Tillman draws the same sense of national outrage amongst African-Americans that the shooting of Travon Martin by a non-African-American did. Seems as if there's too much of a complacency for the former that black Americans especially, from all walks of life, must take a greater collective responsibility for.

Let's be honest about the deeper racial component of this case; if four white teens had killed Bobby Tillman after a party in Georgia black folks would still be marching. I don't mean to sound cynical or in any way make light of Tillman's death, I'm just tired of young black men preying on each other like it's some kind of insane race to see who can devalue life the fastest.

Looking at the statistics alone, one might think young African-Americans had declared some kind of sick cultural jihad on each other. According to the Bureau of Justice, (thanks to Bossip.com) between 1976 and 2011 there were 279,384 African-American murder victims. Given that 93-94% of blacks are murdered by other blacks, 262,621 black people were murdered by people of their own race between 1976-2011. Bobby Tillman's death is more than a sickening tragedy, it's a startling statistical reality in America that can't just be blamed on the media.