We are respectable negroes: Brother X-Squared, black radical genius, speaks on the New Black Panthers, voter intimidation, and the Obama administration

Shakesville: An honest tea bagger

The Brad Blog: CA cop shooter upset at "left-wing agenda"

Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues: Great Moments in Conservative History

his vorpal sword: The Most Busted Name in News

Box Turtle Bulletin: Creepy 'ex-gay' crap

The Tea Party/conservatives really are losing their minds.
Here's Terry Savage:

Last week, I was in a car with my brother and his fiancee, driving through their upscale neighborhood on a hot summer day. At the corner, we all noticed three little girls sitting at a homemade lemonade stand.

We follow the same rules in our family, and one of them is: Always stop to buy lemonade from kids who are entrepreneurial enough to open up a little business. My brother immediately pulled over to the side of the road and asked about the choices.

The three young girls -- under the watchful eye of a nanny, sitting on the grass with them -- explained that they had regular lemonade, raspberry lemonade, and small chocolate candy bars. Then my brother asked how much each item cost.

"Oh, no," they replied in unison, "they're all free!"

I sat in the back seat in shock. Free? My brother questioned them again: "But you have to charge something? What should I pay for a lemonade? I'm really thirsty!"

His fiancee smiled and commented, "Isn't that cute. They have the spirit of giving." That really set me off, as my regular readers can imagine.

"No!" I exclaimed from the back seat. "That's not the spirit of giving. You can only really give when you give something you own. They're giving away their parents' things -- the lemonade, cups, candy. It's not theirs to give."

I pushed the button to roll down the window and stuck my head out to set them straight.

"You must charge something for the lemonade," I explained. "That's the whole point of a lemonade stand. You figure out your costs -- how much the lemonade costs, and the cups -- and then you charge a little more than what it costs you, so you can make money. Then you can buy more stuff, and make more lemonade, and sell it and make more money."

I was confident I had explained it clearly. Until my brother, breaking the tension, ordered a raspberry lemonade. As they handed it to him, he again asked: "So how much is it?"

And the girls once again replied: "It's free!" And the nanny looked on contentedly.

No wonder America is getting it all wrong when it comes to government, and taxes, and policy. We all act as if the "lemonade" or benefits we're "giving away" is free.

And so the voters demand more -- more subsidies for mortgages, more bailouts, more loan modification and longer periods of unemployment benefits...read on

Savage Truth, or just sickness?

Newshoggers: Meet the new COIN boss, same as the old COIN boss.

Balloon Juice: Their own made-up, fictional universe.

Gin and Tacos: Marchel Duchamp versus Harry Reid, and the war on the poor.

Brad DeLong: How have we lost the argument?

Rumproast: Jeb Bush and his brother Fredo.

Guest post by Batocchio. Temporarily e-mail tips to batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com.

Bill's Big Diamond Blog

In the midst of the all-Rove discussions this weekend, a little reality seeps through. Passing through the blogosphere, I stopped by Riverbend to see if she had weighed in recently from Baghdad. She had. Riverbend reported sadly that another blogger, Khalid Jarrar, author of Tell Me a Secret, had been abducted by “the new Iraqi mukhabarat.”

It’s one thing to read the numbers and the see the faceless stories from Iraq. It’s another to be touched by someone’s words and then to know they’ve been taken off, to God knows where, perhaps to rot in jail, perhaps to worse. You get a glimpse of what someone cares about and what their daily existence is like, then see they’ve offended the authorities your own government has set up. By doing what? By simply writing about their life, or turning the wrong corner at the wrong time on the wrong day. Who knows?

Khalid is a blogger I’ve read off and on. His brother Raed is a prolific blogger and both of them have been good sources of information about daily life in occupied Baghdad since the invasion. Khalid had most recently been in Amman, Jordan. He had finished exams at university in Baghdad and had reported about a mortar blowing up one of his fellow students this May (he had suffered from some student laziness and missed class that day). Before that, there was a car bomb 100 meters away from his family’s home. And before that…well, you get the picture. Go, read his blog.

Khalid had recently posted about using real names in his blog and about transparency, a post that makes me now worry for him. Naturally, he’s been critical of the madness around him.
He is now somewhere in an Iraqi prison. His family is thankful to know he isn’t dead. His brother Raed writes today, “my brother is spending his 6th night in jail. He's just one of the thousands of people in Iraq who disappeared and ended up in one of the many jails and prisons around the country without a clear reason.”

Make Judy Talk    The Talent Show is a prolific blogger and both of them have been good sources of information about daily life in occupied Baghdad since the invasion. Khalid had most recently been in Amman, Jordan. He had finished exams at university in Baghdad and had reported about a mortar blowing up one of his fellow students this May (he had suffered from some student laziness and missed class that day). Before that, there was a car bomb 100 meters away from his family’s home. And before that…well, you get the picture. Go, read his blog.

Khalid had recently posted about using real names in his blog and about transparency, a post that makes me now worry for him. Naturally, he’s been critical of the madness around him.
He is now somewhere in an Iraqi prison. His family is thankful to know he isn’t dead. His brother Raed writes today, “my brother is spending his 6th night in jail. He's just one of the thousands of people in Iraq who disappeared and ended up in one of the many jails and prisons around the country without a clear reason.”

No matter how hard Sharron Angle tries, she can't shake the fact of her radical associations and ideas away so easily.

In her own words:

"If this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are going to start looking for second amendment remedies..."

Which she then follows up with this:

"The first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out."

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In the span of about a minute or so, Angle advocates for armed insurrection, 'taking out' a duly elected Senator of the United States, and curing Congress' problems with a 'Second Amendment solution'.

Would this be before or after she repeals Social Security, ends unemployment insurance, outlaws alcohol and terminates Medicare? I suppose she would say it's just one of those oaths she keeps, right? Because she's not an Oath Keeper, but a 'keeper of oaths'. So that's how they do that.

Also, let's not forget about her long association with the Independent Right Party, a group so far fringe most of us haven't peeked far enough under the covers to look at them, but we probably should, since they seem to have written some of the current right-wing dialogue:

Hansen's brother, the late Daniel Hansen, founded the Independent American Party in 1967 "after realizing that the Republican Party was growing too corrupt and socialistic," according to the party website. The party lost its ballot position in the late 1970s and didn't get back on until a push by Hansen in 1992. That year, Angle signed the petition to get the Independent American Party back on the ballot, according to multiple party members and news reports.

That was a heady time for the reborn party. A 1992 Los Angeles Times article (via Nexis) describes Hansen at a political rally wearing a Stetson hat and bearing a sign that read, "If Guns Are Outlawed, How Can We Shoot the Liberals?" His rhetoric would not be out of place at a 2010 tea party.

"Don't give up your guns, folks," he told a crowd. "That's all we've got to protect us against the advance of socialism. America is in a survival phase." (via TalkingPointsMemo)

I don't think even Frank Luntz can fix this one.

Cartoon Credit: Danziger Cartoons

Sid Rosenberg not happy about MSNBC issuing an apology for his racist remarks!

Imus: What happened, tell me?

Sid: I guess I said something, and ahhh..MSNBC issued an apology at my behalf last week without even asking me about it...maybe I don't want to apologize.

Then he later criticized Michael Jordan's brother for re-enlisting back into the army.

Sid: He's a no-name, who cares.

Video

On November 23, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced that MSNBC had apologized for racist commentary delivered on radio host Don Imus's Imus in the Morning. In its apology, MSNBC stated: "The views expressed on the program are not those of MSNBC. Having said that, it was unfortunate that these remarks were telecast on MSNBC. We sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by these remarks."

from MMFA

From the November 12 edition of MSNBC's Imus in the Morning:

DON IMUS, host: They're [Palestinians] eating dirt and that fat pig wife [Suha Arafat] of his is living in Paris.

ROSENBERG: They're all brainwashed, though. That's what it is. And they're stupid to begin with, but they're brainwashed now. Stinking animals. They ought to drop the bomb right there, kill 'em all right now.

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I'll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody'll dare

Say to me,

"Eat in the kitchen,"

Then.

Besides,

They'll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

Langston Hughes wrote this poem in 1926 as a response to Walt Whitman's 1881 poem I Hear America Singing, because he felt that the latter poem exalted the diverse voices that made up America, yet ignored a whole segment of the population.

Funny how some things never change...

Open thread below

Please see the updates at the bottom for the most current status. The original post was based upon a mistaken identity. I have left the original post intact with corrections below it.

If you were to believe Jeff Baker, you'd think that he was just a disgruntled small business owner who is frustrated with the economy squeezing him to the point where he needed to shut the doors. It's a story we've all heard, one I can even tell with my own specifics.

But Jeff Baker wanted to be sure the President heard him, so he put up a billboard on Interstate 190 that says "I need a freakin job. Period."

But every lost job hurts, said Jeff Baker, a Buffalo native who was forced to close his niche textile company near Albany, Adirondack Blanket Works, during the financial collapse more than a year ago.

"Losing a business is right up there in catastrophe land," said Baker, who had planned the billboard long before learning Obama was coming to town. "It's personally catastrophic and having to let go of people who were like family for over 10 years, you go through all that heartbreak."

He and his brother put up the sign and launched a website (www.inafj.org) with the hope of steering the conversation in Washington back toward the average American worker.

It's a really nice website, too. Not a homegrown. boring kind of site at all. It's got merchandise, videos, even "inafj.tv"!

A website like that doesn't come cheap, even if they hire a designer who uses a stock template and stock photos. It's nicely done.

See, here's what they didn't tell you. Scott Baker works for Breitbart.TV. [see update #2]

Scott Baker has reported and anchored television news for nearly 20 years.

He became interested in broadcasting while working on political campaigns during his school years at Wheaton College (Illinois).

He has worked at the Voice of America in Washington, D.C., CBS News in New York, and at local television stations in Erie, Pennsylvania, and Saginaw, Michigan, and for the last 13 years at WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh.

Viewers have come to know Scott best for both his humor and his skills anchoring and reporting during breaking news events.

According to Jeff Baker, Scott Baker paid for the sign, and likely for the rest of their 'movement', too. Or Breitbart did.

A movement? No. A campaign? Yes. Non-partisan? No. Hidden agenda? Yes.

Got it? Good. Now tell everyone else, including the MSM like CNN.com, CBS.com, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and anyone else you can think of, because presenting this as the effort of one disgruntled businessman and his brother is just a lie, and Andrew Breitbart knows it.

John Amato is debating Breitbart in Beverly Hills next week. I hope he nails him with this duplicitous nonsense. [See update #2]

Update: A commenter points to this article published in the Buffalo News after mine was written which states that Scott Baker lives in Akron and is "vice president of operations at a local manufacturing company."

Would that be a local manufacturing company in Akron, or in Buffalo? Quite a commuting distance between the two. (3:40pm Although it is true that there's an Akron, NY as well near Buffalo.)

It goes on to say this about the video and website:

The CBS segment included two of the Buffalo State College students who appeared on the billboard and on a video posted on the brothers’ Web site, www.inafj.org . Scott Baker said his brother designed the site and produced the professional- looking video, using students Scott found through a friend on the college faculty, Jim Mayrose.

Obviously, if this article is accurate, I am inaccurate. And if I am accurate, the other article is inaccurate. Yes, the name Scott Baker is a common one, and I was able to find a listing for a Scott Baker in the Cleveland/Akron area. There's even a listing for a Scott Baker, HR Director of Cintas Corporation online, though one could wonder why a human resources specialist would be open to promoting this particular campaign. Still, those facts certainly support the conclusion that I was incorrect. Despite the fact that one of the earliest mentions (2 days ahead of the President's visit) was on Breitbart.com and Fox News got the first "exclusive" with the "creator of the movement", these facts would have cast enough doubt to stop me from concluding what I did.

I've given you the additional references so you, the reader can decide. Based on this additional information, I would not have made the definitive conclusion that I did last night. I would have said that given the commonality of the name no firm conclusion can be made.

I'd also recommend Jeff Baker consider web design or video production as his next career, since he did such a splendid job on the site, the integrated Facebook page, the social media PR management and the billboard. He's obviously quite talented.

I have one more question to ask Andrew Breitbart. When will he admit his "error" by publishing video edited to make ACORN look guilty when in fact, they acted in strict compliance with the law?

Update #2: I believe it's fair to say, at this point, that the Scott Baker associated with Breitbart.tv is NOT the same Scott Baker. In this case, it would appear that MSM has it right, that *I* got it wrong, and for that, I apologize to the Baker brothers, Scott Baker and Andrew Breitbart for getting it wrong. Additional information supports what was reported in the Buffalo News article in my first update.

I could ask to have this post pulled down completely but for the fact that bells can't be unrung, and I believe in owning my words AND my mistakes.

Please note: John Amato was not involved in the creation, research or updated information attached to this post. I take full responsibility for it and apologize to all readers for misleading them on this one.

(graphic via DetNews.com)

My good friend Doug Fieger, lead singer of The Knack just died this morning from a long bout against cancer.

Doug Fieger, the lead singer of the rock band The Knack, has died after a battle with cancer, his brother, the prominent Southfield attorney Geoffrey Fieger, confirmed today.

He was 57.

Fieger sang lead vocals on the 1979 hit "My Sharona," which held the No. 1 spot for six weeks.

I was lucky enough to play with him a few times over the years, mostly for fun and even then he was very serious about his music. Doug was a great man who helped a lot of people in his life. He put up an incredible struggle that came to an end around 6am this morning.

I'm sure there will be more details released on the band's website so if you are a fan---tune in.

He will be sorely, sorely missed. My heart goes out to his family.

Farewell, my friend.

Man, cameras are racist too? What is this world coming to?

When Joz Wang and her brother bought their mom a Nikon Coolpix S630 digital camera for Mother's Day last year, they discovered what seemed to be a malfunction. Every time they took a portrait of each other smiling, a message flashed across the screen asking, "Did someone blink?" No one had. "I thought the camera was broken!" Wang, 33, recalls. But when her brother posed with his eyes open so wide that he looked "bug-eyed," the messages stopped.

Wang, a Taiwanese-American strategy consultant who goes by the Web handle "jozjozjoz," thought it was funny that the camera had difficulties figuring out when her family had their eyes open. So she posted a photo of the blink warning on her blog under the title, "Racist Camera! No, I did not blink... I'm just Asian!" The post was picked up by Gizmodo and Boing Boing, and prompted at least one commenter to note, "You would think that Nikon, being a Japanese company, would have designed this with Asian eyes in mind."

Open thread below...