The Devil and Mitt Romney: Lessons from Stravinsky & Robert Johnson

The anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the RNC convention in Tampa really got me thinking about what's in store for this country, so I needed music to help me make some sense of it all.

As my recent blog post about punk rock will attest, my musical tastes run the gamut but nothing soothes my senses while writing quite like classical does; I'm partial to baroque choral arrangements when working at the keyboard.

A few days ago I listened to Igor Stravinsky's "The Soldier's Tale" for the first time on WWFM radio. The unusual piece is one of Stravinsky's (pictured left) more eclectic compositions, which is saying a lot for the Russian-born composer known for creating in a wide range of musical styles.

According to the Good-Music-Guide.com Website, Stravinsky's concert version of  "The Soldier's Tale"  is scored for just 7 musical instruments in a jazz-influenced style and interestingly features four characters with speaking parts; a princess, a soldier, the Devil and a narrator. The story is based on an old Russian folk tale about a soldier who decides to sell his soul to the Devil in exchange for a book that reveals things about the future.  

The Faustian origins of selling one's soul to the Devil (or a demon) in exchange for youth, knowledge, power, wealth or love resonate in American folklore as well. British guitarist Eric Clapton and the band Cream popularized the song "Crossroads", but it was written by influential Delta Blues master Robert Johnson as "Cross Roads Blues" in 1936 two years before his death.

One of only two known photos of Robert Johnson.

Blues fans are aware of the claims that Johnson, who died under mysterious circumstances at age 27 in relative obscurity, was said to have sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his mastery of the Blues guitar; but there are many possible explanations for this popular explanation for his exceptional musical talent.

While Johnson was in many ways an enigma, interviews with many people who actually knew and played with him do shed some light on the origins of the Crossroads claims; that Johnson literally went down to a cross roads one night and met the Devil, who took Johnson's guitar, tuned it and gave it back to him along with an astounding ability to play.

As a spiritual person, I'm not in a position to say whether Johnson actually made a pact with Satan, but such stories probably have more to do with misunderstanding and Johnson's peculiar nature. In the late 19th and early 20th century, African-American musicians who played Blues often earned the  disapproval of the Baptist Church, and might be accused of having "sold his soul to the Devil"; owing more to the fact that Blues was associated with late night carousing in "juke joints" or little local bars where Blues musicians played live and alcohol (Johnson had a fondness for whiskey) smoking, dancing, casual sexual encounters and other behaviors perceived by more conservative "church folk" as "evil" were popular.

Another possibility stems from Johnson's relationship with Blues guitarist Ike Zimmerman. Ike was a black farmer born in Grady, Alabama in 1907 and he was not only an extremely gifted Blues player, he also taught a number of people to play; including Robert Johnson. Blues scholar Bruce Conforth interviewed Zimmerman's daughter who claims that Johnson (known to the Zimmermans as RL) was a diligent student who practiced frequently under Ike's tutelage during his lengthy stays with the family.

In order to play at night and not disturb anyone, the two of them would walk along a dirt path, pass a cross roads into a nearby white-owned graveyard known as the Beauregard Cemetery and sit on top of tombstones and play for hours; as it was quiet there and no one would disturb them. Neighbors who lived near the cemetery recall hearing them both playing at night and during the day and it's possible these accounts evolved into the stories of Johnson's guitar skill being mystical in origin.

During his all-too-brief life, Johnson traveled widely to various towns, hamlets and cities, some who knew him claim he was known to be in the habit of simply walking off and disappearing after playing onstage; and might not be seen for weeks or months. That may or may not be attributed to his love of whiskey; I worked as a bartender in New York for 6 years and knew many people prone to what's known as the "Irish Exit" - where some people get drunk and just leave the bar without telling their friends or anyone else; it's a habit of some drinkers.

According to Wikipedia, a widely-read article in 1966 by Pete Welding in Down Beat Magazine in which he related a story told to him by Blues guitarist Son House (who knew and played with Johnson), House alleged that he knew Johnson when he was younger and more of an average guitarist, but the next time he saw him play he had morphed into an exceptional player. House attributed that jump in skill to the "pact with the Devil" theory but as researchers discovered in later interviews, there was at least a 24 month period between the time House saw Johnson play; so it's quite possible during that time Johnson had been staying with Ike Zimmerman and mastering his technique so he was just a much better guitar player because of practice.

I strongly recommend you pick up a copy of "Searching for Robert Johnson: The Life and Legend of the King of the Delta Blues Players" by Peter Gurainick (1998). You can order a used copy for as low as $2.10 plus shipping from Amazon. It's a really informative read that gives fresh insight into Johnson's life and accounts of his peculiar, eccentric behavior; I tend to think it's those things, coupled with his short life and immense talent which serve as the fertile breeding ground for the stories of his supposed pact with the Devil.

Unfortunately there are tendencies, in my opinion, for historical achievements by people of African descent to be labeled as "mysterious" or attributed to other-worldly types of explanations because some people (sub-consciously or not) can find it hard to accept that a person of color was simply that gifted, or intelligent.

Take the ancient Egyptians for example, I read "Chariots of the Gods" when I was younger, I saw and enjoyed Roland Emmerich's 1994 Sci-Fi film "Stargate" ; there's a slew of oddball explanations that have become entrenched in popular culture as to how (and why) the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids, most having to do with extraterrestrials in spaceships coming down out of the sky to do it for them.

As someone who's fond of history, I think such theories tend to trivialize African history and their contributions to world culture. Some popular fiction entertainment (like Stargate) tends to function as a substitute to accepting the fact that ancient Egyptians had simply mastered complex concepts of advanced mathematics, science and engineering in the Nile River basin 3,150 years before Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth after Upper and Lower Egypt were united under the first Pharaoh Menes.

Back in 2009, I blogged about an Austrian scientist who determined that Cleopatra was in fact, of African descent; despite slews of films and television productions depicting her as a Caucasian female.

In a similar fashion, I think that illustrates the root causes of the stories of Satan bestowing magical guitar powers on Robert Johnson; the guy was just a prodigy, a highly-gifted guitar player. But for  some people, reckoning his skill with his dark skin and African-American features is hard. So they go with the Devil theory.

These things were on my mind as I watched bits and pieces of the Republican National Convention this week. Not because I think Mitt Romney is the Devil or anything, though the Mormon religion has some really strange origin theories that Willard avoids talking about in public.

As I watched speaker after speaker up on the stage in Tampa sharing their narrow-minded vision for America, I just kept thinking about all the billionaires who've poured hundreds of millions of dollars into his campaign and into Super PACs in an all out effort to defeat President Obama. Men like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers don't shell out dough like that unless they expect to get something in return.

As Mitt smiles and waves next to Paul Ryan, I can't help but wonder; if Mitt does win, what happens to the 300 million Americans who aren't in the top 1% when all these billionaires come-a-calling to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to collect on their investment? Like the main character in Stravinsky's "The Soldier's Tale", it's all good and well when you get that coveted prize you wanted from the Devil; but what's in store for the soul of America when the Devil comes to collect?

By the way, ever wonder why Mitt never discusses his religion?

Countdown in Ohio: Will Jon Husted Really Fire Two Board of Elections Members for Standing Up for Voter's Rights?

Tonight millions of people across the nation are holding their breath as Hurricane Issac chugs towards New Orleans; threatening landfall on the Gulf coast on the eve of the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

But a potential storm is brewing in Ohio too.

Embattled Secretary of State Jon Husted (who just canceled a featured-speaker appearance at the True the Vote Ohio summit in the wake of increased media scrutiny over his voter suppression tactics) will have to decide whether to fire Democratic Montgomery County Board of Elections members Dennis Lieberman and Thomas Ritchie (pictured left).

Both men made an appearance on tonight's edition of Politics Nation with Al Sharpton and I was impressed by Lieberman's statement that, "I can find another job but I only have one conscience." in reference to the very real possibility that he will loose his job because of Republican efforts to suppress voter participation across the nation.

Lieberman and Ritchie (who also made an appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show) were suspended last week for defying Husted's order that early voting and weekend voting hours be curtailed; despite the fact that 197,000 Ohio voters cast their votes early or during evening and weekend hours during the 2008 election.

Between the flood of money from billionaires and Super Pacs, the constant stream of negative TV ads distorting President Obama's record and the voter suppression efforts, clearly there's a method to the Republican madness and it may just be the numbers. Earlier this evening Rachel Maddow and her guest, former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, discussed the startling fact that this election will likely be the last presidential election where a white demographic will have enough voters to be able generate a sufficient majority to elect a president.

By 2016 with the rapidly-expanding Hispanic and Asian populations changing the fabric of the nation, the traditional Republican demographic (as it now stands) just won't have the numbers to elect a president. That's a huge shift for this nation and it scares a lot of people on the Republican side.

Enough for them to start laying the foundation to be able to suppress voters in heavily-Democratic districts. If Jon Husted fires Dennis Lieberman and Thomas Ritchie tomorrow for simply supporting expanded hours for Ohio citizens to take part in the electoral process, a basic foundation of the United States reinforced by the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, the GOP may very well unleash a storm that could end up doing more damage to their own brand than simply loosing an election. 

GOP Efforts to Strip Voter Rights: Jim Crow Rides Again

Say hello to one of the faces of voter suppression in 2012. He's not some thug you'll find standing around the ballot box with a club trying to intimidate people attempting to exercise their Constitutional right to vote.

Nor is he some mafia hood like the kind gangster Al Capone sent to Cicero, Illinois in 1924  to physically beat voters into casting ballots for his hand-picked corrupt Republican candidate Joseph Z. Klenha.

The man pictured here is Jon Husted, the Secretary of State of Ohio and his name is popping up in the mainstream media after he led efforts to cut back the available hours for Ohio citizens to vote during the upcoming elections; including totally eliminating early voting and night and weekend voting hours.

Just so we're clear here, during the 2008 Presidential elections many voters in Ohio complained about facing waits as long as six hours to cast their ballots; the same year 48% of voters in Franklin County cast their votes early.

It's not like it's a big secret about why Republicans nationwide are going out of their way to make it more difficult to vote. The Franklin County Republican chairman Doug Preisse freely admitted the rule changes would restrict black voter turnout in an e-mail to the Columbus Dispatch. According to Priesse, a former primary adviser to Newt Gingrich, "...we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban voter-turnout machine."

But Republicans should contort it to keep people from participating in the Democratic process? What has happened to the GOP? And when did they decide to turn America into a Banana Republic?

Have you heard of the organization called 'True the Vote'? Last night Rachel Maddow featured a spot on this right wing group openly dedicated to intimidating voters at polling stations. True the Vote claims it's training millions of members to simply show up at polls (mostly in places where minorities vote) like they did in Houston, Texas.

Yup, same Texas that had four cases of voter fraud in the last two general elections. Make no mistake this isn't a "black or Hispanic-thing"; this an "American-thing". All Americans should be very concerned at this kind of hijacking of people's right to vote; not just because it's immoral, illegal and a mockery of American values, it's a blatant violation of the most basic premise of Democracy.

The same sort of mindset who embrace abstract patriotic rhetoric to send US troops over to foreign lands to kill people in the name of "Democracy" are actively trying to obstruct the Democratic process here in America. Think about that. If you don't, you're just going to make it easier for the GOP to obstruct the votes of whichever demographic that disagrees with them.

"The sides are being divided now. It’s very obvious. So if you’re on the other side of the fence, you’re suddenly anti-American. Its breeding fear of being on the wrong side. Democracy’s a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it’s no longer democracy, is it? It’s something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism."

SAM SHEPARD, The Village Voice, Nov. 12, 2004

Mainstream America Meets the Real Republican Party

Looks like the proverbial chicken of extremist GOP rhetoric is coming home to roost.

Frantic members of the GOP leadership, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, are tripping over themselves in an effort to distance themselves from Congressman Todd Akin's now infamous comments and paint him as some kind of rogue radical who strayed off the ranch. But with 76 days left before the 2012 Presidential election Americans of all stripes are getting a good look at one of the central planks of the GOP platform and a sense of just how archaic their views on woman's health really are; it's also becoming clear Akin isn't alone. Not by a long-shot.

In an article in yesterday's New York Times, Jonathan Weisman quoted Missouri GOP Committee member Sharon Barnes (pictured above) as not only agreeing with Akin that rape rarely results in pregnancy, she also said, "at that point if God has chosen to bless someone with a life you don't kill it."

Her views aren't that different than Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan's either. Ryan's name is next to the 200 other House members of the GOP who supported House Resolution #3, the 'No Taxpayer Money for Abortion Act' (sponsored by Representative Chris Smith of NJ) which sought to restrict exceptions on Federal funding for abortions for women in the case of rape or incest.

Ryan also supported House Resolution 212, the 'Sanctity of Human Life Act' which went even further and sought to ban abortion even in cases of rape; it was sponsored by Georgia Congressman Paul Broun; who also tried to de-fund the Voting Rights Act.

These views, while clearly way out of step with most Americans stance on abortion, have been a central theme of the GOP since the rise of the Tea Party in 2010. The right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has helped Republican state legislators from around the nation pass almost 1,000 anti-abortion bills around the nation.

Back on January 20th of this year when former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum was asked what a woman who was raped and became pregnant should do, the poster-boy for the pro-life movement argued that rather than have an abortion, she should be compelled by law to keep the baby and "make the best of a bad situation."  'American Exceptionalism' indeed.

Let's see how presidential hopeful Mitt Romney makes the best of this situation as he contemplates the grim reality of his going up against an incumbent after having chosen a loose-cannon running mate who's views are repugnant to the majority of American women and offensive to those of us who believe the government has no business dictating moral or medical choices for anyone.

Any political party that would place it's ideology over the victims of rape has no business running the nation in the 21st century. What are they thinking? Oh and speaking of chickens coming home to roost, Akin totally chickened out of an appearance on Piers Morgan on CNN. Check it out.

Chase Austin Tapped as A.J Foyt's Driver for 2013 Indy 500

Between GOP Missouri Rep. Todd Akin's comments about rape  and my last blog about Dinesh D'Souza's crazy ass I gotta switch gears, so lets talk auto racing. You wouldn't know it from most of my posts here but I'm a true gear-head who's loved fast cars since I was old enough to know that they were loud and went fast.

So when I read an Associated Press article about a young African-American race car driver prodigy named Chase Austin, I had to blog about it. That's Chase pictured in the box and I'm a bit jealous because he looks like the age I was when I was still playing with my prized Hot Wheels collection.

As reported by AP sports writer Rusty Miller, Austin, 22, has been racing different types of cars including go-carts, sprint cars, stock cars and Indy Lights, since he was 8-years old. He inked a development driver deal with the prestigious Hendricks Motorsports when he was just 14.

Austin caught Foyt's attention after Chris Miles, a principal with Starting Grid, Inc., (an organization that promotes minorities in racing motor sports) helped promote Austin as an Indy Lights driver for Willy T. Ribbs Racing. Racing legend A.J Foyt (himself a 4-time Indy 500 winner) recently tapped Austin to drive his A.J. Foyt Enterprises racing teams Indy car entry next year. If he can qualify for the race in 2013, he's poised to become just the third black driver to compete in the prestigious Indianapolis 500.

Willy T. Ribbs raced at Indy in 1991 and 1993 (backed in part by comedian Bill Cosby), and George Mack raced in 2002.

For guys and not a few women, race car drivers occupy a special place atop the apex of popular culture. You don't need to know a lot about cars or auto racing to recognize names like Jackie Stewart, Michael Schumacher, Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt or even one of my childhood favorites, the mysterious animated Racer-X from the classic Japanese cartoon Speed Racer; which I watched religiously as a child. Was there anything cooler than the Mammoth Car?

Growing up I watched races like the Indy 500 and Daytona 500 but rarely saw people of color involved with the sport. Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton of England has emerged as one of the best drivers in the world in a sport where few people of color had any real presence until he came on the scene. But as Formula One broadens its reach past it's Euro-centric origins with drivers of many different nationalities and new Grand Prix races in places like Abu Dubai, China, Malaysia and Singapore, popular drivers like Hamilton have come to symbolize auto racing's efforts to diversify it's ranks.

There's little question the world of Indy racing recognizes it's own need to follow suit. Time will tell if Austin has the right stuff, but either way it's an exciting moment for auto racing and a special moment for American race fans. Kudos to A.J. Foyt for giving a young talented brother a chance too; that's big.

Somehow I doubt the mainstream media will fawn all over him the way they do Danica Patrick.

Dinesh D'Souza: The 'Sheriff Joe' of the Conservative Media Movement?

So I'm reading film reviews in the New York Times last Friday August 10th when I came upon a full-page ad for a film called "Obama's America: 2016". The cryptic subtitle read: "Love him, hate him, you don't know him - He is downsizing America."

Uh oh, I thought. I scroll down to check the credits and sure enough this cinematic masterpiece was co-written and co-directed by none other than right-wing writer Dinesh D'Souza (pictured above). For those of you who've been kind enough to follow my blog, you may recall that I wrote about D'Souza back on September 20, 2010 in the lead-up to the 2010 Presidential elections. [Read the blog to get the full story.] Disclaimer: it may be a bit self-serving to link to my own blog, but hey, you do what you gotta do.

Those of you who might not be familiar with D'Souza, don't let that bookish appearance fool you.
Ideologically, this guy is as far right as Ann Coulter and just as nutty as Michelle Bachmann. Two months before the 2010 Presidential election D'Souza penned a widely-panned Forbes Magazine article in which he tried to make the case that Obama, was somehow trying to radically re-shape US foreign policy in an effort to mirror the political views of his estranged Kenyan father.

Well, we've seen how that turned out. Bin Laden is dead, the war in Iraq is over, America has played a quiet but definitive role in the collapse of regimes in Egypt, Libya and soon, Syria; and US troops will soon wind down the war in Afghanistan.

D'Souza, born in India but raised in Arizona, has had nothing but contempt for African-Americans, Jews and homosexuals since he was offending people with his not-so cleverly disguised hate speech in college. Now it seems he's moved on to film.

It would take a psychiatrist to explain how a dark-skinned immigrant would allow himself to be used by American conservatives to bash minorities with pseudo-intellectual theories and baseless assumptions. It's almost like he's the 'Sheriff Joe Arpaio' of right-wing conservative media.

Speaking of media spotlight-loving unapologetic racists, the August 16th Rolling Stone article 'The Long Lawless Ride of Sheriff Joe' offers a really penetrating look into the life of notorious Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Like D'Souza, Arpaio has a long history of hating racial minorities in America, RS contributing editor Joe Hagan peels back the layers of this poster boy for intolerance with a must-read profile. Check it out.

The Republican Smear Job on Obama

After Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 Presidential election, Republican organizers conceded that his campaign had soundly beaten them to the punch when it came to using the Internet to galvanize massive support, communicate with the voter base and channel campaign contributions.   

It's certainly no secret the GOP has pulled out all the stops to make Obama a one-term president. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision made a mockery of the Democratic process and opened up the spigots for unprecedented floods of cash to pour into the 2012 presidential race. Take a look at Tim Dickinson's article entitled  'Right Wing Billionaires Behind Mitt Romney' in the May 24, 2012 issue of Rolling Stone, it offers a frightening look at the kinds of money flowing into GOP Super Pacs from wealthy individuals.

While the Obama campaign uses it's massive e-mail outreach to communicate with supporters and coordinate volunteer efforts, it's apparent the GOP is actively using it's e-mail lists to fuel the Republican Smear Campaign. I trade e-mails with a Republican friend of mine out in California, last night he told me he's been receiving huge numbers of e-mails from right-wing organizations that are stirring up resentment for Obama by spreading claims that the President never went to Columbia.

Snopes.com offers ample proof the President DID in fact attend and graduate from Columbia. Despite the baseless GOP & Tea Party accusations, clowns like Donald Trump (pictured above) continue to sling the lie to the masses. Rather than supervise the crime in his own territory, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio continues to harass Hispanics and beat the dead horse of the Birther movement; continuing his own bizarre investigation into Obama's birth certificate. Makes you wonder if it's really about the deficit, policy or the skin color of the President for Republicans; regardless, Obama's opponents, misinformed voters who stay informed through Fox News, actually believe it's truth. Scary.

Separating Skinheads & Punks from Ignorant Neo-Nazi Posers

With all the mainstream media attention suddenly (and rightfully) being focused on 'Hatecore' music and the skinhead music scene where Wade M. Page was a recognized figure, it's worth noting that not all skinheads and punk rockers are neo-Nazis.

My high school classmate, trusty friend and business partner James Blackburn read my blogpost yesterday about Page and his neo-Nazi ex-girlfriend Misty Cook. Like me and many different members of our West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South class, James was a big fan of punk rock, heavy-metal and alternative music in the late 1980's.

Last night he reminded me via e-mail that within the punk rock scene in the 80's and 90's, the numbers of peaceful skinheads who oppose the neo-Nazi influence of more right-wing skinheads, far outnumbered their goose-stepping counterparts. People unfamiliar with the scene have often mistaken music-loving skinheads with neo-Nazi skins.

The skinhead music subculture that emerged in England in the late 1960's was racially diverse, a product of the unique merger of the Jamaican reggae, 'Rude Boy', Ska and British Mod music scenes. Only in the 1970's when high unemployment left millions of UK youth without jobs, did the rising white nationalist ideology espoused by angry right-wing extremist groups like the National Front and Blood and Honor begin to merge with a revived skinhead music scene. Media attention tended to focus on the violent 'white power' skinheads, and as the hardcore music movement spread to New York and other cities in the US; punks were often mistakenly branded as violent racists.  

As 'punk rock' in the US grew in popularity in the late 70's and early 80's, 'real' punks and skinheads  began pushing back against being wrongly lumped into the same basket as their extremist counterparts and various efforts to distinguish themselves emerged. For example, some peaceful skinheads began wearing blue or yellow shoelaces in their Doc Marten boots as opposed to the red or white shoelaces often worn by neo-Nazi skinheads.

Influential hardcore punk bands like the Dead Kennedys began to incorporate their ideological opposition to fascist punks with popular songs like 'Nazi Punks, Fuck Off' released in 1982 which mocked racist skins for their views and violent behavior at hardcore shows and became something of an unofficial anthem.

In 1987, Marcus Pacheco and Steven M started Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice, or SHARP as a movement to demonstrate that the skinhead and punk music scene was based on racial diversity and socio-political expression rather than hate and racism. James sent me the image of the SHARP patch above and told me that while he was attending art school in New York City in the 80's he often saw 'white power' skinhead toughs on the Lower East Side at places like CBGB's or over at the bars and head shops on St. Mark's Place trying to pick fights; but they usually ended up getting stomped on by SHARP-aligned skinheads violently opposed to racist skinheads.

I saw many hardcore shows at City Gardens in Trenton, New Jersey between 1985 and 1989 and the vast majority of people there to see bands were all about the energy of the music. Sure I saw a few 'white power' punks hanging around there, but as a 6-foot 7-inch, 260-pound black guy who played football, I was never intimidated by them.

I recall standing at the back bar of City Gardens one night waiting for the Ramones to go on stage and I saw this scraggly-looking white kid wearing a black t-shirt with a swastika on it. Having had a few beers, I walked over and asked him why he was wearing that shirt given the US and the Allies lost thousands of soldiers, airmen and sailors in their effort to destroy the Third Reich in WWII - he had no answer, he just looked kind of feeble and embarrassed and couldn't make eye contact with me. 

My older sister first took me along to punk shows in 1983-1984 in Washington, DC when we lived in Bethesda, Maryland. I remember going to see the influential DC punk band 9353 and how mind-opening it was to see Rastafarians, alongside punks and skinheads of all different races at places like the 9:30 Club and DC Space. It was my first introduction to a vibrant music scene based on social consciousness, alternative expressions of guitar and vocals; a culture that stood far outside the rigid confines of mainstream suburbia where I and many other alternative fans lived; and longed to escape.

Fringe 'Hatecore' assholes like Wade M. Page who try and use the scene to espouse their narrow-minded views of hate and violence are just blots on the radar, nasty splotches on the windshield rooted in ignorance and fear who will never co-opt the unique spirit and energy of this highly influential form of musical expression.

Wade Page's Murder of Innocent Sikhs: What are the Feds Doing About Neo-Nazis in the US?

As mainstream media begins to delve deeper into the facts about the troubled life of Wade M. Page (pictured left) the fact remains that his brutal unprovoked murder of six of innocent Sikh Americans in a Wisconsin temple clearly could have been prevented.

Could the signs have been any more clear? His membership in the Hammerskin Nation, close association with the neo-Nazi 'Hatecore' music scene, white supremacist ideology, and desire for 'Holy Racial War' (painfully grandiose neo-Nazi speak for murdering innocent people who don't look like them) was known to Federal authorities, ex-Army associates and former work supervisors. 

Disturbing details are emerging about Page's neo-Nazi nursing student ex-girlfriend Misty Cook too.

According to an article by John Eligon of the New York Times Frau Cook, 31, who was arrested and released on weapons possession charges on Sunday, not only works as a waitress at the Prime Table Family Restaurant less than a mile down the road from the Sikh Temple where the rampage took place; for 3 years she's also been an active member of a Hammerskin Nation support group called Crew 38.

Misty's no doe-eyed fringe member of the movement either. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch blog, she's active on the Crew 38 online forum under the name "LuLuRoman" and has an eye-popping 856 posts on their Website to her credit. The SPLC also claims she's linked to the Volksfront; a Skinhead group founded in 1994 inside the Oregon State Penitentiary by four inmates convicted of (drum-roll please..) hate crimes.

If he was 'indoctrinated' into the neo-Nazi movement during his less-than-distinguished stint in the US Army, why doesn't the Army or the Defense Department commit resources to keep closer track of discharged soldiers known to be associated with violent right wing extremist groups?

Were the Feds tracking Hammerskin Nation or Crew 38 members? It wasn't that long ago that Former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called the Black Panther Party "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country" and poured massive resources into COINTELPRO; a vast law enforcement initiative of police harassment, assassination, surveillance, infiltration and other illegal tactics used to dismantle the Black Panther Party.

What's the FBI doing about the dozens of neo-Nazi groups across the nation today? Is it enough? Which groups are active in your state? Check out the SPLC list.

Ryan Seacrest Offers Useless Facebook Friend Stats in Lieu of Sports Analysis

Was Ryan Seacrest's on-air comparison of which Olympic athletes had the most Facebook followers on Sunday night meant as actual sports analysis?

Maybe it was some kind of clever commercial product placement to help Facebook try and bolster it's sagging stock price by showing advertisers that being able to show the number of friends you have on Facebook justifies it's initial $104 billion market capitalization?

If you didn't watch the Olympics broadcast on Sunday night, at some point during the coverage NBC cut away from track or gymnastics coverage and returned to Bob Costas on the set, who turned to his left and looked at the analysts chair next to him where Ryan Seacrest (pictured above) was seated.

Before I knew what was happening Seacrest was standing up offering analysis; but not about any of the events that had just taken place, or the athletes who'd competed in them. Instead Seacrest turned to a big color monitor with a Facebook logo on it and proceeded to launch into a comparison of which athletes had the most social media followers.

I had a WTF? moment, then quickly changed the channel. Nothing against Ryan Seacrest but watching him do post-event Olympic analysis was kind of like watching Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News in the same chair where Cronkite and Rather sat; you just felt there was just something awkward about it and it didn't quite work.

Seacrest sits at the top of the media food chain as a veteran radio personality and television producer. Okay so he's executive producer of Keeping Up With the Kardashians and Denise Richards: It's Complicated, it's not a crime to work with attention-seeking Kardashians or Charlie Sheen's ex is it?

He's certainly a veteran television host with shows like American Idol, the 2008 Superbowl pregame and halftime shows, E! news and the 59th Primetime Emmy Awards to his credits; but what's he doing offering Olympic sports analysis of any kind? He's never covered mainstream competitive sports on TV, he's not an Olympic medal winner - or even an athlete for that matter.

To be fair to NBC, broadcasting daily continuous coverage of the 2012 Olympics has to be an enormous undertaking. We can appreciate the need for the various athlete profiles, interviews and assorted "filler types" of pieces used to fill time between the transitions between different events.

Maybe Seacrest's out-of-place social media/Web metrics piece was just a klutzy way of NBC Universal trying to woo Seacrest's coveted American Idol demo; God knows there have been enough commercial promos for NBC's The Voice with Howard Stern. (Fifteen years ago the former self-crowned "King of All Media" would've mocked HIMSELF for doing that show) 

There are dozens of former Olympic athletes with personality, camera presence, media savvy and intricate knowledge of specific Olympic sports who would have made better (and more insightful) analysts than Seacrest.

On a Sunday night when Jamaican Usain Bolt outran a talent-rich field to set an Olympic record in the 100 and US gymnast McKayla Maroney fell on her second vault to take silver; I think NBC could have done better than Ryan Seacrest. I'd venture the sports-savvy American audience was probably expecting something a little more substantive than "which athlete has the most Facebook friends". 

Private Danny Chen: Victim of Intolerance Inside US Army Culture?

Despite evidence that US Army private David Chen, (pictured left) was the target of a long pattern of racial slurs, insults, harassment and physical abuse aimed at his ethnicity from the time he entered boot camp, Sgt. Adam Holcomb (the first of eight soldiers court charged in a violent racial hazing just prior to Chen's death) was found not guilty of negligent homicide in a court martial at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina last week.

While the 10-person jury did find Sgt. Holcomb guilty of maltreatment of a subordinate and assault, the max he'll get is two and a half years. It leaves Chen's family, friends, neighbors and members of the Chinese-American community across the US still seeking answers and justice in the wake of the murky circumstances surrounding Chen's death in Afghanistan last year.

On the night of October 3, 2011 the 19 year-old Lower East Side Manhattan native (assigned to Company C, 3rd Battalion of the 25th Infantry Division) was found in the guard tower of a remote Army base known as Combat Outpost Palace near the Pakistan border in Kandahar Province southwest Afghanistan with a single self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Army lawyers claimed it was suicide resulting from Chen's struggle to adjust to the intense demands of infantry life coupled with depression over being disowned by his Chinese parents.

Chen's mother Su Zhen Chen took the stand to vehemently deny she, her husband and family were estranged from their son, or had disowned him in any way. His lawyer, Army prosecutor Captain Blake Doughty argued Chen was driven to suicide as a result of a pattern of physical abuse and harassment (including ethnic and racial slurs) that started when Chen began basic training as the only Asian-American in his platoon.

New York Times reporter Kirk Semple provided excellent insight into the case including details from the first day of the court-martial being held at Ft. Bragg, NC. [Read it.]. But with suicide rates among active duty US personnel stationed overseas at an all-time high, I thought this case was deserving of more extensive mainstream media coverage than it has received.

Chen was stationed in Fort Wainright, Alaska prior to his deployment overseas. An article in the Anchorage Daily News claims he documented the racism he faced from his Army peers and superiors in a journal he kept. [Read the ADN piece.]. The article also offers accounts from older Asian-American military veterans who document patterns of discrimination in the Army going back for years.

Few accounts encapsulate the historic struggle of Asian-Americans to overcome the obstacles of bigotry and racism within the US military more than the incredible story of the US Army's 442nd Regimental Combat team during World War Two. A unit comprised of Japanese-Americans recognized as the most highly-decorated regiment in the history off the Army. [Read about the 442nd]

In light of such lessons, paid for with the blood and sacrifice of American soldiers, you'd think the Army would've learned to crack down harder on officers, NCO's or soldiers who discriminate against any fellow soldier based on ethnicity or race.

Regardless of the outcome of the court martial it's clear lack of oversight by the Department of Defense and the Army allowed this kind of harassment to exist at the unit level. During his stint in the Army Chen was harassed because of his ethnicity at bases both here while he was training and later overseas where he was serving. Seems to me he was fighting two wars.

Hair-Gate: Gymnast Gabby Douglas Dissed by Hair-Obsessed Black Trolls

16 year-old Gabby Douglas helped lead the US woman's gymnastic team to gold on Tuesday night, then became the first African-American woman to win a gold medal in the individual all-around competition on Thursday; just the fourth American woman to win the latter.

Despite a performance that millions around the globe found inspiring, Gabby found herself the subject of criticism on Twitter. Not because of her dismount, but because of her hair.

Who would use Twitter to critique something as inconsequential as Gabby's hair? The Huffington Post Website offers a few samples of the kinds of negative comments Gabby received from, get this; black people. [Read for yourself]. Only in America folks. There's something vindictive, childish and snarky about the whole mess. 

My Grandmother had little tolerance for African-Americans who cultivated negativity within their own communities by tearing down successful people of color with snide comments. She likened them to "crabs in a bucket", pull one out of the bucket as the adage goes and two or three will be clinging on trying to drag them back down. 

Wouldn't you think a 16 year-old US gymnast could count on all Americans getting behind her efforts to compete on the world stage in one of the most difficult Olympic events?

The vast majority of us (of all races) who watched the woman's gymnastics competition on Tuesday night did just that. Watching the composure and athleticism of those five young women gave me pause to appreciate a glimpse of the essence of true American Spirit; something I hadn't really sensed in awhile.

No empty political soundbite ideology, no gloomy reports about the sluggish pace of the economy. Just a diverse group of five young American women who came out onto the floor determined to win gold.

Gabby Douglas was the perfect image of grace and athleticism; and despite the Twitter nonsense, she looked beautiful. As an African-American it made me proud to see her win and I was reminded of the qualities that make this the greatest nation on Earth.

With all the challenges we face as a nation and as a global community, someone who ignores the two Olympic gold medals Gabby won to Tweet trite, superficial comments about something as trivial as her hair seriously needs to turn off the TV, shut down the computer, get off the couch and get a life.

Sad but true: If a group of white people had started Tweeting about Gabby's hair, the same self-hating black people who actually DID Tweet about Gabby's hair would've been up in arms, outraged and calling them racists. But when we insult our own THAT's okay?

Remember how radio talk show host Don Imus was vilified when he called members of the Rutgers University basketball team "nappy-headed ho's" on the air in 2007? 

The Web is full of Trolls who use social media to insult and degrade people, but the fact that some African-Americans used their Twitter accounts to mock a 16 year-old athlete's hair says less about Gabby than it does about black self-esteem and self image.

UPDATE: Friday, August 3, 2012

Just listened to an informed discussion on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC  about the global conversation being generated by Gabby Douglas and learned there's a larger presence of black female gymnasts than I thought. A caller noted that the 2012 British, Dutch and French woman's Olympic gymnastics teams all currently have black athletes on their rosters; other countries do too.

 Another woman called in to remind listeners that Wendy Hilliard made the Olympic team in 1980 and Betty Okino was a member of the 1992 team that won a bronze medal.     

Who can forget Dominique Dawes? The first African-American gymnast to win a gold medal in an individual event during the 1996 Olympics as a member of the "Magnificent Seven".   

Listen to a podcast of the segment if you're interested, it's not that long.

Tony Mack's Bridge to Himself

In an era of scarce tax revenue, empty city coffers and drastic cutbacks in Trenton, New Jersey, mayor Mack's decision to drop $17,000 dollars on a sign fashioned after the landmark two-lane Warren Street Bridge (the one with the historic "Trenton Makes the World Takes" sign on the side that spans the Delaware River) has come to symbolize his embattled administrations troubled tenure.

Hanging over the entrance to Trenton's Cadwalader Park, (where many puzzled Trenton residents note, there are dilapidated swing sets with no swings for kids to play on) the $17,000 price tag includes a painted blue sign with yellow letters prominently featuring the mayor's name. This while many city libraries, pools and recreational facilities remain closed because of lack of funding.

Allegations of financial mismanagement, the appointment of unqualified cronies and friends to important municipal posts and shady political deals straight out of the HBO series "The Wire" are just some of the low-lights of Mack's administration that bring to mind ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's scandal-ridden tenure in Detroit.

The July 18th FBI raid of Mack's home in the Berkeley Square section of Trenton came the same day Feds searched the Ewing, NJ home of Joseph "Jo Jo" Giorgianni; a convicted child molester, Trenton business owner and prominent financial contributor to Mack's campaign. [Read about Jo Jo]. The next day agents descended on City Hall to question employees and seize boxes of records in response to allegations of bribery, extortion and corruption.

Mack, just back after slipping out of town for a well-timed "vacation" that began when the Feds arrived over ten days ago, denied the FBI allegations as he re-opened another closed city library under the name "Learning Centers"; meaning they are now staffed four hours per day by unpaid volunteers - but no one can check out the books. Sign of the times indeed.

Manuel Diaz: Anaheim Cops Claim Another Victim

With the bulk of national media coverage understandably focused on the horrific mass shooting in a Aurora, Colorado movie theater last Thursday, less coverage was devoted to another victim of unjustified gun violence; 25 year-old Manuel Diaz of Anaheim, California (pictured left).

The circumstances of his death are by now, all-too-familiar to opponents of gun violence and the justified use of excessive police force in poor urban communities from New York City to New Orleans, Houston or Chicago - yet another a young, unarmed African-American or Latino male shot and killed by police. Read the facts.
On the afternoon of Saturday July 21st Diaz was talking with his friend, Jose Gallardo, 30, in the alley behind an apartment building in a working class, mostly Hispanic neighborhood just a few miles from Disney Land. According to Gallardo, two Anaheim police officers pulled up in an unmarked vehicle and Diaz, a known member of a local gang, and others fled. Gallardo heard two shots and ran back to find Diaz laying on the ground bleeding with a bullet in his neck and lower back.

Tensions between police and the local community were already tense, Diaz was the 5th victim to be shot and killed by Anaheim Police this year. Local residents protesting the shooting found themselves attacked by police who fired rubber bullets into a terrified crowd that included women and children. According to the Occupy California blog, one officer at the scene released a police dog that attacked a woman protecting her baby and bit 19 year-old Junior Lagunas in the forearm after he went outside with his girlfriend and 1 year-old child to see what was happening.

Angry protests over the police response and the shooting continued Sunday morning at a police press conference, but after another Anaheim Police shooting on Sunday, the violence escalated into rioting that shook the downtown area on Tuesday.

Outraged local residents watched helplessly as young rioters damaged local small businesses during chaos that lasted for hours. Despite the FBI agreeing to look into the shooting on Saturday and the Orange County DA opening an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the officer's actions leading up to Diaz's death, police are bracing for more protests scheduled for today.

What kind of nation are we living in when "acting suspiciously" or "furtive movements" become abstract legal justifications for using lethal force against young black or Latino males? Manuel Diaz and Trayvon Martin will never get the chance to answer that question haunting the collective conscience of America.

Willard's 'Disconcerting' Foreign Affairs Blunder

If Mitt Romney thought a well-timed international trip to meet with the leaders of England and Israel would bolster his foreign policy cred and give him a welcome respite from the growing calls to release more than two years of his tax returns, he was sorely disappointed. His klutzy efforts to backtrack from awkward comments questioning the state of London's preparedness for the 2012 Olympics have thrust him into the spotlight of the British media, irked millions of Brits including Prime Minster David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson; and given the world a glimpse of how Romney's simplistic worldview makes him seem detached and out of touch. Back on the home front Willard's sketchy off-shore accounts and evasive statements on his taxes recently drew criticism from not-so Mitt-friendly New Hampshire in a recent Manchester Union Leader op-ed. (Read it) 'Disconcerting' performance for someone trying to sell himself as a presidential candidate.

Evolutionary Psychologist Satori Kanazawa Uses Bogus Science to Suggest Black Women Are Less Attractive

Last week Dennis Romero of the LA Times reported about the backlash from a blog posted on the Psychology Today Website by Japanese "Evolutionary Psychologist" Satoshi Kanazawa (pictured left).

In an article entitled, "Why Are Black Women Rated as Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women, But Black Men Are Rated Better Looking Than Other Men?", Kanazawa puts forth the absurd conclusion that Sisters are less attractive based on a survey and his interpretation of black female intelligence and data about body mass index.

Kanazawa's Wikipedia page lists a strange list of controversial sociological theories that have raised eyebrows before; such as his assertion that people in some countries had poor health because they were less intelligent rather than because of poverty.

According to Wikipedia, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Minnesota, P.Z. Meyer, identifies Kanazawa as "the great idiot of social science."

One has to seriously wonder if any of the editors at Psychology Today actually read Kanazawa's piece before they posted it on their Website - and what he's doing as a member of the faculty at the London School of Economics.

Insane! Trump & Buchanan Move from Proof of Birth to Obama's GPA

Republicans just keep getting crazier.

With President Obama's surprise morning news conference to release his long-form birth certificate to confirm what he and other legal experts have been saying since 2007 (that he was born in America) still reverberating in political circles, the right wing extremists who currently dictate the GOP's agenda and policy direction struck back.

Apparently undaunted by factual proof that the entire basis for the "Birther" movement is in fact, not true, members of the right immediately moved on to questioning the President's qualifications for getting into Columbia and Harvard.

In one of the most overt displays of racism I've ever seen, quasi-Presidential hopeful/media whore Donald Trump along with former-Presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan launched into a bizarre attempt to discredit the President's academic qualifications for getting into college and law school.

Meanwhile Media Matters reports that since March 2nd, Fox News has stoked the irrational flames of the Birther movement by promoting the Birther story an astounding 52 times - 84% of those reports went unchallenged or uncorrected.

At least it's evident to Americans that the 2012 GOP presidential campaign will be about one thing - the President is black.

Russia's Treatment of Foreigners Seeking Asylum Echoes an Ugly Trend of Hate, Intolerance & Violence

An interesting investigative report by the BBC on the treatment of foreigners seeking asylum in Russia echoes a steady rise in extremism under the oligarchy of Russian Prime minister Vladimir Putin. Check out the 2007 Pod from Current TV on the right.

I visited Russia in the summer of 1987 as part of a high-school trip when it was still the Soviet Union. While Russia had a much stronger "law & order" central government authority back then and I met many, many cool Russian men and women of all ages; I still saw evidence of the kind of blanket racism directed against people of color the report talks about.

A Russian professor I had dinner and conversation with told me that Russian racism against people of color usually stems from resentment rather than the kind of indoctrinated, systematic racism based on ignorance (birthers) and fear one finds in the US.

When the Soviet Union was at the height of it's ideological and Cold War battles against the West in the 60's/70's, they made huge efforts to forge ties with poorer African, South American and Caribbean nations in an effort to extend their sphere of Communist/Socialist influence and gain access to the wealth of minerals, oil, gold/precious metals and crops. One of the results was that the Soviets allowed thousands of Africans to come to the Soviet Union and attend their best universities for free. Many working class Russians were locked into a rigid class system (despite Communist propaganda that touted an equal "worker's state"..total BS, never existed) that left them shut out of being able to send their kids to the best universities to become engineers, doctors, scientists, lawyers, musicians etc to gain entry to the "privileged class". Only rich and influential Soviets could send their kids to those schools - with rare exceptions (i.e children of high-ranking military officers, gifted athletes etc.)

So when many Russians SAW Africans in their country, they had a "built-in" internalized resentment towards them that was only magnified by the stark difference in skin color, race, language and physical characteristics. They saw these Africans as having access to privileges they themselves couldn't afford, and they hated them for it. It's still happening.

What's sad is Russia is such a rich, beautiful nation with a rich cultural history that stretches across music, literature, science and math. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, you saw the lifting of a heavy blanket of authority that had kept regional conflicts subdued under the proverbial "iron fist". The conflicts in Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia for instance, exploded after the Soviet authorities departed and we all know the horrible ethnic cleansing, murder, torture and violence that resulted from simmering conflicts between religions and peoples that stretch back centuries that were allowed to rage.

Clearly Africans (or African-Americans) Cubans are NOT the only victims of racism within Russia. Nationalist movements and extremist groups that embrace violent Neo-Nazi ideology and fascism (curious given that ACTUAL Nazis murdered tens of MILLIONS of Russians in WWII...yes, racism is THAT ignorant) in recent years have targeted Jews, Muslims, political opponents of Vladimir Putin, journalists, human rights activists, foreigners and other ethnic minorities from various parts of the former-Soviet Union.

What frightens me is how some Russian state authorities quietly tolerate these groups, refuse to persecute them and essentially condone this behavior by doing very little about it. There was an excellent article on the bbc Website yesterday about how Russia treats foreigners seeking political asylum; housing Africans in leaky, cheap, substandard trailers in one of the poorest and most remote regions in Russia; people fleeing violence, civil war or worse for a chance to work and live in peace - worth a look to see how Russian immigration authorities "welcome them".

Outrage Over Orange County GOP Member Marilyn Davenport's Racist E-mail

Orange County, California may be known as "Reagan Country" for it's large conservative voting base but give OC Weekly journalist R. Scott Moxley credit for calling out the GOP's growing tolerance of overtly racist ideology within it's leadership ranks.

A recent e-mail sent by Republican Party central committee member (and Tea Party activist) Marilyn Davenport has outraged even GOP members from her own party who have called for her to resign. The image (pictured left) is basically a photo-shopped image of the President's face on a baby chimp that suggests his parents were Apes - the image was accompanied by the words "Now You Know Why No Birth Certificate."

Davenport's callous use of the image and her stubborn denial to even acknowledge that it is in fact, racist shows just how ingrained the dehumanizing, warped image is in the global sub-conscious.

Depicting peoples of African descent as apes, gorillas or monkeys actually predates the United States and goes back to the earliest European encounters with Africans in the 16th and 17th century. In drawings and writings, European explorers and "scientists" first promoted the "Negro-Ape metaphor" to explain away differences in skin tone, facial characteristics and hairstyle and soon thereafter, justify the enslavement of Africans and their forced entry into the global financial juggernaut that was the slave trade.

A long line of people, from French philosophers, to Popes, to scholars have entwined bogus scientific theories with warped images of blacks to present them as sub-human savages and justify pseudo-scientific theories of racial superiority.

So people like Marilyn Davenport, who use these images, do so for a very simple reason; to promote centuries-old stereotypes of peoples of African descent as savage animals, devoid of Judeo-Christian values and justify an extremist ideology that treats non-whites (including the President of the United States) as less-than-human. Can you imagine the GOP e-mails that we DON'T see?

Beck is Out - Roger Ailes' GOP Spin Network Cuts Ties With Delusional Television Host Glen Beck

Fact-challenged Fox News host Glen Beck tried to play off his being booted from his daily TV slot, but the reality is that his lies, distortion of truth and fear-mongering have negatively affected the Fox News brand, which is desperate to re-connect with the main-stream American audience that will ultimately decide who will win the White House in 2012.

As the 2012 Presidential race begins to take shape, clear signs are emerging that the GOP is going all-out to distance itself from the extremist radical fringe element that has dominated the party's agenda in the past few years.

A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows Americans are over perpetual- Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's empty, right-wing soundbite politics and ceaseless wavering over whether she'll actually step into the ring as she criss-crosses the nation racking up speaker fees.

Palin is now tied with former President George W. Bush with a 25% approval rating; that's just one point above Richard M. Nixon according to the Politicususa.com Website; a fact that only confirms whisperings in Washington that the GOP was quietly working to move the former vice-president candidate and her baggage out of consideration for the Republican Presidential nominee slot.

Hoping to capitalize on these setbacks for the Tea Party, Donald Trump has stepped forward to flog the dead horse of Obama's citizenship issue with a string of TV appearances apparently aimed at the fraction of Americans who think the President is not an American citizen.

While the short term gains from such a blatant media stunt might temporarily nudge The Donald's approval ratings above Mike Huckabee's, no serious candidate is going to win the White House stoking Birther's bizarre theories - and ultimately, it's just going to drain away support from the more main-stream Republican candidates who actually might have a chance to score with mainstream American voters - the majority of whom view the GOP as obstructionist and disapprove of their attempts to force a shut-down of the entire government over their ideological budget cuts.

The GOP has a ways to go before it get it's own House in order - but pushing Palin back to the fringe where she belongs and severing it's brand with Glen Beck's strange conspiracy theory nonsense is a decent start.

Welcome to 1984! Wisconsin Republicans Demand Access to Professor Cronon's E-mails

A March 15th blog post about the shadowy American Legislative Exchange Council by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor William Cronon (pictured left) laid out the truth about the American Legislative Exchange Council.

His blog got a huge number of hits.

He also wrote a fascinating Op-ed in the New York Times showing that Wisconsin actually passed unemployment insurance, worker's compensation and public employee bargaining legislation in the early part of the 20th century with the support of Republicans.

Apparently offended that a scholar would dare to disagree with efforts to further erode America's dwindling middle class, Stephan Thompson, deputy director of the Republican Party of Wisconsin is heading up efforts to subpoena Cronon's personal e-mail correspondence using a freedom of information request.

Now I'm not debating the right of anyone to use freedom of information requests for legitimate reasons.

But Wisconsin Republicans trying to sift through the personal/work correspondence conversations of a history, geography and environmental scholar who is the president of the American Historical Association because he wrote something they didn't agree with?

It reeks of vindictive pettiness and an effort to elude substantive debate on a controversial measure to strip state employees of their bargaining rights.

What's next? A tap on his phone? Attacking a history professor? Really?

What a thuggish, McCarthy-like retaliatory tactic.

The Ghost of Diallo Haunts Miami - Chief Miguel Exposito Under Fire in the Wake of Travis McNeil's Shooting

Add 28 year-old Travis McNeil of Miami, Florida to the list.

What was his crime? He was unarmed and sitting in a parked rental car when he was shot in the chest.

When will it end and where's the oversight?

It's been more than ten years since Amadou Diallo (pictured left), an innocent civilian from West Africa who spoke five languages and was armed only with his wallet, keys and beeper was shot more than 19 times by four over-zealous white New York Police officers from the NYPD's "elite" Street Crimes Unit while standing in the vestibule of his own apartment on a cold February night.

An autopsy later showed 15 of the 41 bullets fired entered Diallo's back and sides; one shot even hit the bottom of his foot.

As an African-American male living in Manhattan at the time I vividly recall the sickening sense of fear, revulsion and anxiety all New Yorkers, and indeed, people around the globe of races, religions and backgrounds felt in the wake of one of the worst incidents of excessive police force ever recorded in the United States.

I was instantly reminded of the incident when I read the March 22nd New York Times article by Don Van Natta, jr. profiling a string of 7 killings of unarmed black American citizens in the past 8 months by the Miami police department.

The disturbing cultural similarities between the hyper-aggressive "elite" police units are disturbing. The NYPD's Street Crimes Unit motto "We Own the Night" befitted a rogue police unit with an abstract mission and little organizational oversight that patrolled any of the five boroughs. Their members were known to wear custom t-shirts emblazoned with the famous Ernest Hemingway quote:
"There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter."

Who actually shot Travis McNeil?

According to Don Van Natta's New York Times piece Detective Reinaldo Goyo, a member of Miami's gang unit who appeared in a controversial reality television series called "Miami's Finest SOS" wearing a hoodie with the word 'Punisher' on the front.

Another member of the gang unit, Officer Ricardo Martinez, killed two different men within 9 days in August, 2010. And so it continues. And continues. And continues.

US Bank's Contempt for Consumers

“Why are the most risky loan products sold to the least sophisticated borrowers? The question answers itself — the least sophisticated borrowers are probably duped into taking these products.”

A 2007 quote from former Federal Reserve member Edward Gramlich, as quoted in Paul Krugman's latest op-ed piece in the New York Times, and it pretty much sums up a question that millions of American consumers would like to ask their banks.

I'd sure like to ask Bank of America. Here's a behemoth that defines "too big to fail". BOA got $20 billion in taxpayer funds from TARP then a guarantee of $118 billion to cover the assets of the questionable acquisition of Merrill Lynch

Yet they've fattened their own wallets by feasting on the checking accounts of it's own customers (including the blogger) using bogus charges and inflated penalties. They've used bad math, intentionally slow processing of foreclosure documents and chop shop law firms to boot people from their homes.

And how does Bank of America treat it's "least sophisticated borrowers" (see minorities) and those most subject to it's exorbitant overdraft fees?

I took the picture above with my Blackberry at the Bank of America located just off the intersection of Pico blvd and San Vincente blvd in LA last Thursday night about 8:30pm

The bank is surrounded by moderate to lower income rental apartment units, but there's a good size shopping center with a CVS, Ralph's, hardware store and a police station right there. But at night, if you try and withdraw cash - the machines "mysteriously" don't work.

Instead of dispensing cash - you get a screen like the one above stating that the machine is out of order, "please visit one of our other ATM's nearby". Nearby meaning a machine in an area with less African-American and Hispanic consumers?

Funny, as Paul Krugman observes in his latest column, Republicans seem determined to prevent the Federal government from granting it's own citizens from having even basic measures and protections in place to prevent large banks from praying on them. WTF?

Are Republican State Legislators Taking Marching Orders from A.L.E.C?

If Republicans using their new-found majority-status in state legislatures around the US to broaden efforts to suppress voter rights, strip unions of their collective bargaining rights and cast public sector workers as the villains of economic recovery concerns you, then you should become familiar with the American Legislative Exchange Council.

University of Wisconsin-Madison professor William Cronon offers searing insight into the shadowy activist group and their not-so-behind-the-scenes influence on the recent string of conservative legislative efforts around the country in a must-read blog posted on March 15th.

The A.L.E.C was co-founded in 1973 by conservative icon Paul Weyrich, (pictured above) who used money from the Coors family to launch the Heritage Foundation and coined the term "Moral Majority". Though he died in 2008, his legacy is still being felt around the nation.

Case in point: 2010 efforts by Arizona Republican lawmaker's to pass a series of draconian anti-immigration laws thrust Governor Jan Brewer and the state's conservative legislature into the media spotlight last year. Based on the state's legacy, as in former Governor Evan Mecham canceling Arizona's observance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday as a Federal holiday in 1986 (famously telling critics, "King doesn't deserve a holiday.") like many Americans, I simply assumed the efforts to marginalize illegal immigrants were driven by Arizona's conservative voter base.

According to Cronon''s blog however, the 2010 anti-immigration laws were actually drafted by the A.L.E.C. Which is funny given Republican's tendency to announce their initiatives as "the will of the American people." It's not.

In the March 18th New York Times, Richard A. Oppel reports that a consortium of Arizona business leaders led opposition resulting in five anti-immigration measures in the Arizona State Senate being rejected in the wake of the nationwide backlash against Arizona (thanks to Governor Brewer and State Senate President Russel Pearce) severely impacting revenue from tourism, state contracts and tax revenue.

Seeking to limit the power and scope of the Federal government is one thing; shifting that power to state legislatures who offer up laws drafted by a right-wing organization that envisions America as an Evangelist theocracy is something else entirely.

UCLA Student's Racist Rant Goes Viral

As UCLA political science major Alexandra Wallace learned very quickly, celebrity can be a dangerous thing.

Like fire it can burn you, has an insatiable appetite and can spread REALLY fast.

Wallace, (pictured left) has quickly rocketed to international fame capped by various Facebook pages calling for her expulsion, different Youtube responses mocking her and even a New York Times article.

In the course of a 3-minute rant posted on Youtube, she manages to complain about Asian students in the UCLA library talking too loudly on their cellphones, make fun of Asian accents, bitch about Asian family members (gasp!) visiting their kids on campus on the weekends and permanently brand herself as a conceited, narrow-minded racist.

If the apparently buxom blonde was seeking fame, she's certainly found it. After receiving death threats "Allie" took her offensive op-ed piece down but it's been re-posted all over the Internet.

My favorite line? Wallace describing herself as the "polite nice girl my mom raised me to be." Great job mom!

Tea Party Reality Check: Bill Clinton Dismisses Michelle Bachmann in Davos

It had the potential to be a big "national stage" moment for the Tea Party.

But instead Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann (pictured left) one of the far right's heaviest hitters, came off looking reactionary, uninformed and tediously combative - and according to the Time's Deal Book, Bill Clinton coolly sat down for an interview on the 2nd day of the World Economic Forum and called her out for boldly suggesting "Every American knows we have the greatest health care system in the world."

Actually, we don't. According to the World Health Organization US health care ranks 37th out of 191 countries; just behind Costa Rica. Bizarre gaffes are nothing new for the quotable Bachmann, lists of her jaw-dropping observations are legion online.

Using Bachmann's fact-challenged assumption, Clinton delivered a back-hand to the Tea Party in front of reps from the world's leading nations:

“Everyone knows that is factually untrue,” said Mr. Clinton, “We have to stop conducting our politics in a parallel universe divorced from reality with no facts,”

With the Tea Party Senate Caucus struggling to get more than 4 members in it's ranks and 30 out of 435 in the House, the party is over and it's time to get down to business. Time will quickly tell if the party the Koch Brothers money built can muster the ability to talk straight to the American people and get along on the Hill.

Has Putin's Tolerance of Intolerance Come Home to Roost?

Pictured left, the funeral of Russian journalist Anastasiya Baburova, 25 slain by neo-Nazis in 2009 - pictured below

Last Monday, in a demand for a nationwide crackdown on extremist hate group activity in Russia (amidst the worst racial unrest since the fall of the Soviet Union) Russian President Dimitri Medvedev declared publicly that, "All Nazis, independent of where they come from... they simply undermine the cultural foundations of our state."

Seven days later Medvedev canceled his trip to Davos, Switzerland amid global shock and outrage in the wake of the apparent suicide bombing in Moscow's Domodedevo Airport that killed more than 30 and injured scores of others - raising serious questions of where the government of Vladimir Putin actually stands on the growing violent hate group activity within Russian borders that target ethnic and religious minorities, immigrants as well as Russian scholars, human rights activists and journalists.

Journalists like Anastasiya Baburova, (pictured above) a 25-year old writer for Russian magazine Novaya Gazeta killed in broad daylight less than a a mile from the Kremlin; her work focused in part on exposing Russian neo-Nazis. She was one of 14 people killed in January, 2009 a month before BTO, (a Russian neo-Nazi group) posted a "Death List" on the Internet with the names of dozens of Russian journalists, human rights activists and scholars.

For many of the millions of ordinary Russians shocked at the spike in neo-Nazi activity, the Putin government's alleged acceptance and tacit support for violent ultra-nationalist groups raises the question of whether a tolerance for extremist violence has in fact helped to create the very environment that led to today's bombing.

You can't feed the 800-pound chicken, turn your head when it violates the law using intimidation and violence, then act baffled when it comes home to roost - a lesson tiresome, fear-mongering 'Exceptional American' Sarah Palin still pretends not to have learned.

Does the term "Russian Neo Nazi" strike anyone as absurd given the (real) Nazis were directly or indirectly responsible for over 23,954,000 people killed within the borders of the Soviet Union during World War II?