Cenk Uygur interviews Michael Skolnik of GlobalGrind.com about his decision to do more than wring his hands over the killing of Trayvon Martin, and he says it in a way that resonated with me. In his essay on GlobalGrind, he reminds readers that no one will ever consider him suspicious, even in a hoodie, because he's white. How true that is.

Contrast Skolnik's essay with that of Ajani Husbands' letter to his unborn black son:

When confronted by an armed individual, assume that this person is the police. As such, begin by placing your hands behind your head, fingers interlaced. This will assure that in the eventuality that you are shot and executed, there will be minimum opportunity for analysts and pundits to later ponder if you were the aggressor. Keeping your fingers behind your head is key as it prevents your fingerprints from ending up on your assailant or his weapon. If at all possible, turn your back on the person (whom we will assume always to be the police). In this manner, you will be shot in the back, another telltale sign that you were the victim.

You will not survive your encounter, so it is important to remember to show investigators, the courts, and critics alike that you were in fact the victim. This will be difficult as the assumption is ever-present that somehow, in some way, you did something wrong. That perhaps there was something different you could have, should have done. Perhaps you should have worn something different or walked in a less suspicious manner. I assure you, my son, this is not the case. Regardless of your actions, you were not meant to survive. All you can hope for is an easier postmortem investigation. This will be of some comfort to your mother and I as we cope through your loss, and so I ask you to follow these directions carefully.

Be clear and concise in your cries for help. This will not in any way add to the chance that you will survive the encounter. Instead, it serves to ensure that bystanders and anyone recording just the audio of the encounter will have a clearer depiction of what is happening. Phrases such as "help me!" are not enough. You must be clear. "Please do not shoot me! I am just a kid!" will alert others to the fact that it is you that is about to be shot, rather than your assailant. "I do NOT have a weapon! Please don't shoot me!" further emphasizes that you are unarmed (for after your death, no one is ever certain).

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I'll let the man himself confirm it:

My days as a political analyst at MSNBC have come to an end.

After 10 enjoyable years, I am departing, after an incessant clamor from the left that to permit me continued access to the microphones of MSNBC would be an outrage against decency, and dangerous.

The calls for my firing began almost immediately with the Oct. 18 publication of Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?? A group called Color of Change, whose mission statement says that it “exists to strengthen Black America’s political voice,” claimed that my book espouses a “white supremacist ideology.” Color of Change took particular umbrage at the title of Chapter 4, “The End of White America.”

Gosh, can't imagine why anyone would find that racist, Uncle Pat. But like all true white supremacy-championing, Hitler-excusing, Mexican soccer-hating, Palin-promoting isolationists, it's not his fault that he's been kicked off the network. No, no, no. It's the fault of a conspiracy of liberal groups who think he's a racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic isolationist out of step and blatantly offensive to most people:

The modus operandi of these thought police at Color of Change and ADL is to brand as racists and anti-Semites any writer who dares to venture outside the narrow corral in which they seek to confine debate. All the while prattling about their love of dissent and devotion to the First Amendment, they seek systematically to silence and censor dissent.

Without a hearing, they smear and stigmatize as racist, homophobic, or anti-Semitic any who contradict what George Orwell once called their “smelly little orthodoxies.” They then demand that the heretic recant, grovel, apologize, and pledge to go forth and sin no more.

Defy them, and they will go after the network where you work, the newspapers that carry your column, the conventions that invite you to speak. If all else fails, they go after the advertisers.

Oh, cry me a river, little man. Why is it that conservatives tout the "free marketplace" until it works against their privileged position? Buchanan's First Amendment rights haven't been abridged. The government isn't censoring him. He's still free to say every ugly little thing that comes out of his hateful little brain. But his First Amendment rights do not guarantee him a position on a national news network. The free market has spoken and decided that his voice doesn't need more airtime.

And that is a very good thing.

Now, it's time for PBS's The McLaughlin Group to come to the same conclusion.

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By now, you've probably have seen the ad Michigan's former congressman Pete Hoekstra released targeting Debbie Stabenow in his bid for a seat in the Senate. In it, an Asian woman bicycles through rice paddies to thank Debbie "Spend-it-now" for spending so much money, presumably to benefit China. Hoekstra denied the racist undertone of the ad, of course.

But the actress in the ad, Lisa Chan, isn't buying into Hoekstra's plausible deniability. And her conscience bothered her enough about her participation in these kind of ugly stereotypes that she issued an apology:

"I am deeply sorry for any pain that the character I portrayed brought to my communities," Chan wrote on her Facebook page, as first reported by the Angry Asian Man blog. "As a recent college grad who has spent time working to improve communities and empower those without a voice, this role is not in any way representative of who I am. It was absolutely a mistake on my part and one that, over time, I hope can be forgiven. I feel horrible about my participation and I am determined to resolve my actions."

Look at that: a genuine apology. Not the kind that we get from Republicans so often ("I'm sorry if someone was offended...") but a real, no excuses, owning-up-to-my-mistake apology. Take note, Republicans, this is how it's done.

Now it's time for Hoekstra to apologize. Here's the "Contact" page from his campaign website. Ask him (politely, of course) to apologize forthrightly for the ad. And perhaps that his failure to do so already has spurred you to support Debbie Stabenow.

When Newt Gingrich invoked the name of Saul Alinsky during his "victory" speech in South Carolina, a speech that sounded anything but presidential, I looked at my husband and asked, "how many of those supporters has any idea who Saul Alinsky was and what he did?"

The answer we came to was pretty much none of them. Glenn Beck likes to invoke Saul Alinsky as well, as some sort of malevolent force driving Obama's agenda. I can pick off who are Beck disciples at the instant they say "Alinsky". I would love to see a journalist with integrity (HA! What an oxymoron that's become!) actually confront these yahoos and ask them to define "Marxism", "socialism", "Communism" and what Alinsky had to do with any of these -isms, and what makes him so scary to Republicans. For the record, Wikipedia's bio on Alinsky:

Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909 – June 12, 1972) was an American community organizer and writer. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing, and has been compared to Thomas Paine as being "one of the great American leaders of the nonsocialist left.

Oooh...scary! I'll bet $1,000 that I could take any random tea party nut and they wouldn't know even that much, much less that Alinsky died 40 years ago. The only thing radical about Alinsky--who made it his life's work to help those marginalized in ghettos--was the title of his most famous book, Rules for Radicals.

In the first chapter's opening paragraph, Alinsky writes, "What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away."[1]

Outlining his strategy in organizing, Alinsky writes:

There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoyevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families – more than seventy million people – whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971]. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don't encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let's not let it happen by default.[2]

For Alinsky, organizing is the process of highlighting whatever he believed to be wrong and convincing people they can actually do something about it. The two are linked. If people feel they don’t have the power to change a situation, they stop thinking about it.

The only people who find Alinsky's writings radical are the Haves, because it suggests that the Have Nots have the power to equalize the system a little more. That's a scary concept for the one percent for which the GOP is entirely dedicated. But unlike former Reagan Budget Director David Stockman in the clip above, I do think this resonates with those Republican voters notorious for voting against their own interests. Because not one of them will bother to get informed on Alinsky. Not one of them will bother to do any critical thinking but simply categorize Alinsky as one of those nefarious bad things from which to be frightened or suspicious of the liberal agenda.

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Third graders in in Gwinnett County, Ga., were given math homework Wednesday that asked questions about slavery and beatings.

Christopher Braxton told ABC News affiliate WSB-TV in Atlanta that he couldn't believe the assignment his 8-year-old son brought home from of Beaver Ridge Elementary school in Norcross.

"It kind of blew me away," Braxton said. "Do you see what I see? Do you really see what I see? He's not answering this question."

The question read, "Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?"

Another math problem read, "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?"

Another question asked how many baskets of cotton Frederick filled.

According to the school district, the teachers had put together interdisciplinary coursework, incorporating what they had been studying in Social Studies into their math, but holy cow! What were they thinking in devising these questions for third graders? Did anyone...any person...have a gut check on the appropriateness of these questions? How many beatings did Frederick the slave get? Who thinks this is an acceptable way to introduce algebraic thinking to third graders?

The mind reels. I really miss the days when racists attempted to hide their ignorance and bigotry.

Condoleezza Rice was interviewed by 700 Club correspondent Kristi Watts, who finished her interview with a softball on the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. When Rice proclaimed her favorite Thanksgiving dish to be mac and cheese, Watts immediately bonded with her fellow carb lover. But that choice just befuddled founder and host Pat Robertson, who asked Watts, "What is this 'mac and cheese'? Is that a black thing?"

To be charitable (and it's the holidays, so let's try), it's unclear to me if Robertson is completely unfamiliar with the dish itself, or the concept of serving it for Thanksgiving. It's say the chances are about 50/50 either way, but Robertson himself is no stranger to the befuddling or just plain hateful statements either.

(h/t MediaMatters)

Rachel Maddow thinks of him fondly as crazy "Uncle Pat" although she's very careful not to let him go unchallenged. Chris Matthews considers him the go-to guy for all race issues. From Morning Joe to Andrea Mitchell Reports to Hardball, Pat Buchanan appears to show up at the NBC studios in Washington DC first thing in the morning and just hang out for the entire day, appearing more than any other pundit on the array of programming offered. Remember, this is the same network that blackballed Markos Moulitsas for upsetting Joe Scarborough on Twitter; fired Keith Olbermann for making donations to Democratic candidates and being loud advocating for liberal politics; replaced Cenk Uygur for being too tough on Republicans; and indefinitely suspended David Shuster for auditioning for another network. Pat Buchanan has outlasted them all, despite a rather bewildering portfolio of racist, sexist and just plain hateful statements.

The operative question then, is 'why in the hell does Pat Buchanan still have a job at MSNBC?'

Color of Change would like to know the answer to that and ask for your signature on a petition to MSNBC:

For years, Pat Buchanan has passed off white supremacist ideology as legitimate mainstream political commentary. And MSNBC continues to pay him and give him a platform on national TV to do it.

Buchanan has just published a book which says that increasing racial diversity is a threat to this country and will mean the "End of White America." This weekend, to promote his book, he went on a white supremacist radio show whose host has said things like "MLK's dream is our nightmare," and "interracial sex is white genocide."

Buchanan has the right to express his views, but he's not entitled to a platform that lets him broadcast bigotry and hate to millions. If MSNBC wants to be seen as a trusted, mainstream source of news and commentary, it needs to fire Buchanan now.

Please join us in calling on MSNBC to fire Pat Buchanan: http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/buchanan/

There's no excuse for lending legitimacy and a national platform for such archaic and hateful attitudes. MSNBC has fired others for much less. Pat Buchanan needs to go.

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This post was e-mailed to me by a C&L reader. It's pretty sickening, but Limbaugh is a racist thug, and so is the Conserva-hack named Ken Rogulski -- a lowbrow reporter miscreant who uses the pain and suffering that the people of Detroit are experiencing and turns it into a racist giggle fest for RushBo's audience. Is there no decency in the world of conservative talk radio? Obviously not.

(photo via Detroit News)

King Crimson writes:

It was Wednesday when Rush Limbaugh received an .MP3 from the Desk of WJR Detroit's Ken Rogulski, the white-haired beat reporter, who also occasionally anchors certain top hour newscasts in the conservative talk station's broadcast day. The audio gift would be the gavel with which Rush would pound out hate and bigotry, revelry in personal suffering, and twisting of words and ideas for the rest of the week.

Earlier, Rogulski scurried down to the Cobo Convention Center, locally referred to as Cobo Hall to see what kind of audio he could bring back from the huge crowd developing as the applications for federal aid for the poor and destitute were being handed out. It was to be a brief windfall of assistance to one of the hardest hit cities in the country, where bankrupt auto companies and massive home foreclosure have helped define a new level of pain and suffering for these innocent human beings. But you could hear the hope in their voices flapping in a breeze of unsureness like an untethered sail in a storm, these proud, innocent residents.

The conservo-talk reporter cherry picked through the audio booty until he found the absolute best soundbite that would most perfectly frame the city as one filled with Obama-fawning morons, black Sambos, and greedy welfare grabbers - precisely, as Limbaugh would later argue, the kind of rank idiots who would vote for someone like America's first black president. Surely Ken's heart must have been pounding as he attached the audio to his corporate email and double checked the top-secret "To" address that would land the .MpP3 directly onto the desk of Rush's long time producer, Kitt Carson. JACKPOT!

Carson fast-tracked the audio to the OXYmoron, and by noon it was airing live.

"Where's the money coming from?!" Rogulski quickly quizzes.

"Obama!," the giddy resident chirps, confident the day will end in a bill being paid, or a week's worth of groceries to stuff into the old fridge.

"And where does Obama get it from?!" Rogulski follows up. To the more politically refined in the conservative talk world, the answer is loud and clear - TAXPAYERS. But Rogulski knows full well these "Motown simpletons" will not be so cynical as to believe he's recording them with intentions of caricaturing them later as thigh-slapping morons.

"I dunno! His stash, I dunno. But he givin' to us! We love him!"

Thursday, Rogulski, a small time nobody in comparison to his conservative mentor, decided to use this opportunity and momentum, and keep the mentions of his unimportant name ratta-tatting over the world-famous EIB Network going and sent another one. This one even more sensational than the first.

Rogulski gently pushes the "save" button on his MP3 recorder and slickly slides it into his pocket. Mission accomplished. Limbaugh doesn't poll affiliate stations daily to see if there's any news he needs to know about. He has a team of producers scouring the net daily. So when an affiliate sends something to the Golden Microphone ... it's because the sender knows Rush will want it, and knows precisely how he will use it.

And Rush could not have been happier. No editing necessary for his staff, no double checking, it was packaged, edited and air ready. And for three straight days, the AM Shock Talker pounded the audio candy like he had just been told the funniest joke this week.

Listen to how the first audio soundbite is edited to end with a laugh, which to the racist's ear is a dog-whistle. To a bigot, it is the laugh of bug-eyed Jemima. But to the rest of America, it is the innocent guffaw of a child holding out her hands for a cool drink of water in one of the hottest economic downturns in a century. Note how Limbaugh allows the sound of her laugh to hang in the air for a moment, to let it be the last thing you hear, to let it resonate with the comedic timing of George Burns before going on to the next soundbite. A pause so small and so seemingly insignificant. but silence is a moment as important as a word, that has been practiced and mastered by comedians and even broadcast greats like the similarly conservative late Paul Harvey.

Rush Limbaugh, and the affiliates who support his message of bigotry are not just racists. They are the worst kind of racists. They are the ones who can say the "N" word in code publicly, laugh out loud and hearty, and then argue that you are missing some bigger message if you think it's meant as anything but good, clean fun.

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Credit: TPM

They don't even try to hide it anymore.

Alabama state Sen. Scott Beason, a cooperating witness in a federal corruption case, called black gambling hall customers "aborigines" when he was wearing an FBI wire and recording conversations with his fellow lawmakers, it was revealed in court this week.

Beason and two other Republican legislators were joking about economic development in predominantly black Greene County and the customers of the Greenetrack casino, the Associated Press reports.

"That's y'all's Indians," one Republican said.

"They're aborigines, but they're not Indians," replied Beason.

The transcript was read Wednesday in the federal trial of casino owner Milton McGregor.
The Justice Department indicted eleven defendants, including McGregor, in a massive bingo bribery probe back in October. Feds charged that the four current and former state legislators, three lobbyists and two businessmen with casino interests were part of a conspiracy to influence pro-bribery legislation. Some defendants, including McGregor's lobbyist, have plead guilty. McGregor's trial got underway last week.

In another recorded conversation, Beason -- who cooperated with the feds' investigation and has not been charged -- agreed with other Republican legislators who said that there would be a big turnout of black voters if bingo was on the ballot because casino owners would offer free buffets and gambling credits to lure African-American customers and then bus them to the polls.

Beason is the same bastion of tolerance that advocated that if the Republicans wanted to really deal with illegal immigration, they should just “empty the clip, and do what has to be done.” There are calls for Beason to resign for his racist statements, although so far, Beason has resisted doing so.

Will the media hound him and his party relentlessly until he does resign? Or is this another case of IOKIYAR?

David Neiwert covered it originally when Eric Bolling went ghetto describing a White House visit by the President of Gabon. I, of course, am not one of the two dozen regular viewers of Fox Business Channel, so I missed it, which is probably a good thing for the switchboard operators at Fox Business.

But like me, Whoopi Goldberg heard it after the fact and decided to let Eric Bolling know just what she thought of his attempt to be street. Surprise, surprise, even Elizabeth Hasselbeck thought it went over the line. Will she remember that the next time she's on Fox?

For what it's worth, this is hardly Eric Bolling's first time being openly racist. Media Matters (who has to be at least 2-3 of the two dozen viewers Fox Business Channel enjoys) has documented Bolling's previous racist statements, but hell, why stop there?

Bolling's History Of Other Inflammatory Rhetoric And Smears

Bolling Habitually Scapegoats And Stokes Fear Of Muslims

Bolling Has Promoted Numerous Conspiracy Theories

Bolling Has Demonized Immigrants

Bolling Has Made Numerous False Claims About Energy And Repeatedly Shilled For More Oil Drilling

Bolling Regularly Mocks, Denies Climate Change

Bolling Has A Long Track Record Of False Claims About The Economy And Taxes

"Crush Collective Bargaining": Bolling Targets Labor Unions

Bolling Has Made False Claims Regarding Obama And Foreign Policy

Bolling Hyped Debunked ACORN Videos, Attacked ACORN