Mizzou: Justice or a chance to act out?

MoonHowler


Msn.com:

COLUMBIA, Mo. — The University of Missouri system’s president, Tim Wolfe, and the chancellor of the flagship campus, R. Bowen Loftin, announced on Monday that they were resigning their posts in the face of growing protests by African-American students, the threat of a walkout by faculty and a strike by football players who said he had done too little to combat racism on campus.

Wolfe made the stunning announcement at the start of a special Board of Curators meeting Monday morning that had been scheduled to address the growing crisis at the Show Me state’s flagship university. The board voted in favor of accepting his resignation. Several hours later, Bowen Loftin, chancellor of the university’s flagship campus, announced he will step down from his post by the end of the year as well.

I have not been able to find any specific examples of the systemic racism that supposedly exists on the Campuses of the University of Missouri. I do know what their demands were. Some of them are absurd.

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Who are the Oath Keepers and what is their mission?

MoonHowler

Washingtonpost.com:

The Oath Keepers describe themselves as a group focused on fulfilling “the oath all military and police take to ‘defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’ ”

On Monday night, protesters again gathered in the streets of Ferguson, Mo. Demonstrations in the St. Louis suburb have flared up in recent days to mark the first anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager who was fatally shot by a white police officer.

Also on the scene overnight: Members of a citizen militia group known as the Oath Keepers.

The men — all of them white and heavily armed — said they were in the area to protect someone who worked for the Web site Infowars.com, which is affiliated with talk-radio conspiracy theorist and self-described “thought criminal against Big Brother” Alex Jones.

Reporters and Black Lives Matter activists immediately took note.

I can’t see how the presence of Oath Keepers could be helpful to this situation.  Perhaps I am wrong. I went to oathkeepers.org to see what I could find out.

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ALL lives matter!

MoonHowler

Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley was midsentence when the chanting began. “What side are you on black people, what side are you on!” rang the chorus of around four dozen mostly black protesters streaming into a convention hall in Phoenix, Arizona, on Saturday.

A woman named Tia Oso grabbed the microphone as the protestors stormed the room.

“We are going to hold this space and acknowledge the names of black women who have died in police custody, and then Governor O’Malley we do have questions for you!” Oso said as the former two-term governor and his interviewer, Jose Antonio Vargas, watched helplessly. “As leader of this country will you advance an agenda that will dismantle structural racism in this country?” Oso asked.

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Inappropriate mayoral racist rant: But I am not a racist!

MoonHowler

rushing rant

Huffingtonpost.com:

The mayor of a small city in Washington admits he called President Barack Obama “monkey man” and first lady Michelle Obama “gorilla face,” but says he will not resign over the racist comments.

“Gorilla face Michelle, can’t disagree with that,” Patrick Rushing, mayor of Airway Heights, reportedly wrote in a Facebook post. “The woman is not attractive except to monkey man Barack. Check out them ears. LOL.”
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Go Set a Watchman: Tonight’s the Night

MoonHowler

Washingtonpost.com:

And herein lies the paradox at the heart of “Watchman” that many white Americans still cannot or will not comprehend: that one can at once believe in the ideal of “justice for all” — as Atticus once purported to — and yet maintain a deeply ingrained and unexamined notion of racial difference now based in culture as opposed to biology, a milder yet novel version of white supremacy manifest in, for example, racial profiling, unfair and predatory lending practices, disparate incarceration rates, residential and school segregation, discriminatory employment practices and medical racism.

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Time to retire the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia in South Carolina

MoonHowler

For starters, the flag I see flying over the capital grounds of South Carolina isn’t THE Confederate flag. Having said that, it doesn’t really matter.

I have not one problem with any southern state incorporating its history during the Civil War within its current state flag. That part of history clearly impacted that state. What most of us do object to is flying the lone flag thought of as the “Rebel Flag,” standing beside the state flag and the United States flag. I simply do not see why it is necessary. It just looks redneck.

What I did not realize is that flag wasn’t flown in South Carolina until the 60’s as a symbol against integration and the Civil Rights movement. This display of the “Rebel Flag” is not time-honored tradition. It appears to be an open “in-your-face” display of defiance and intolerance.

I don’t think this is the time to make any changes, however. The “Rebel Flag” was no more cause of the Charleston Massacre than the Rising Sun was the cause of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Change needs  to come to South Carolina because it is time.  That flag has been hi-jacked and used outside its historical context.  It has been to reinforce and prop up the notion of racial superiority and power.  I would have no problem if the flag was in some way supporting history and used in that context.  It is not.  The history and culture excuse is pure bull crap.

The change needs to come from the South Carolina General Assembly. They need to retire that display once and for all and get on with life.

A twitter account and the racists will come

MoonHowler

Isn’t this just a damn shame! Regardless of what thoughts are in a person’s head, haven’t most of us been raised to have good manners? Calling someone, anyone, the N word, is just bad manners. Calling the President of the United States anything other than (to date) “Mr. President” or “Sir” is just ill-mannered and a tremendous breach of protocol.

Maybe the First Amendment just isn’t all it is cracked up to be.  Can we at least take away people’s Twitter account for just being low class?

Citizens of Charlottesville and beyond clash over Lee / Jackson Day

MoonHowler

confederate

Dailyprogress.com:

A debate over whether to pan Charlottesville’s annual observance of a holiday honoring Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson plunged the Charlottesville City Council Chambers into chaos at times Monday.

On Feb. 17, the council is scheduled to decide whether Charlottesville will continue to mark the Friday before Martin Luther King Jr. Day — the third Monday of January — as a local government holiday.

“There is a sentiment in our community that the holiday is outdated and offensive to many, and should be retired here in the City,” City Manager Maurice Jones wrote in a Jan. 28 email to city employees.

Charlottesville does not give employees a paid day off on Veterans Day, he noted, at the meeting.

The debate Monday drew speakers from Petersburg and Richmond and letter writers from Oregon, Maryland and Ohio, some of whom signed their notes “In Honor of Old Virginia” or “Respectfully … a daughter of the South.”

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Darren Wilson not indicted for death of Michael Brown

MoonHowler

washingtonpost.com:

ST. LOUIS — A grand jury has declined to indict Darren Wilson, the white Ferguson, Mo. police officer whose fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager sparked days of turbulent protests and a national conversation about race and police interactions with African Americans, prosecutors said Monday.

The decision means that Wilson, 28, will face no state charges in the August shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Although a parallel federal civil rights investigation of the shooting is continuing, federal investigators have all but concluded they do not have a case against Wilson, either, law enforcement officials have said.

A separate federal probe of the Ferguson Police Department is underway. But the prospect that Wilson will face no direct legal consequences for Brown’s death was expected to trigger protests in the St. Louis area, and in the hours before the announcement, scores of demonstrators gathered near the area where Brown was killed.

Protests are going on nationwide.  In Ferguson,  some businesses are going up in flames.  Gun shots have been heard.   I am not sure what protests will do.  Would the behavior be the same if Wilson were not white?  I am not sure.   I have never felt that Officer Wilson was guilty, from what I read.  However, I wasn’t there.  Neither were most of the people out in the streets rioting.

As you comment, please attempt to be judicious in your comments.  None of us were there.   A set of parents have lost their son and a community has lost one of its young.  Those things hurt.  Michael Brown has become an icon, rightly or wrongly, for police brutality, especially in communities of color.

Arizona School Superintendent John Huppenthal: I’m not a racist but…..

MoonHowler

huffingtonpost.com:

Arizona state schools Superintendent John Huppenthal (R) is facing mounting pressure to resign from his post after he admitted to authoring numerous incendiary posts across several political blogs starting in late 2010.

Last week, Huppenthal acknowledged that in 2010 he anonymously posted online commentary calling welfare recipients “lazy pigs” and accusing Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger of having “fed 16 million African-Americans into abortion mills.”

Although Huppenthal apologized for using “certain inflammatory words” in a statement to The Arizona Republic on Wednesday, he maintained that he participated in the blogs anonymously because he didn’t want his position as an elected official to obstruct a free and open exchange of ideas.

“I love talking about public policy, and I have a passion for engaging in debate,” Huppenthal explained to The Republic in an exclusive interview Wednesday. “I probably have 300,000 words out on the Internet, and 100 of them are getting me in trouble. When all of your missteps are there all together for people to see, it’s not a pretty picture.”
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Is Mark Cuban the latest bigot?

MoonHowler

Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban has addressed what he terms his own bigotry.  Is he wrong?  Is he really a bigot?

 

Cuban has since apologized for referencing the hoodie. He apologized to the family of Trevon Martin. That was a nice gesture but I don’t think that Trevon Martin owns the hoodie. Millions of kids of all races where hoodies pulled up over their heads.

I respect Mark Cuban for addressing his own trigger points and for speaking out on what many people simply don’t feel like they can acknowledge.

Cat Scratch Racist rears his ugly head…again

MoonHowler

Ted Nugent said:

 “I have obviously failed to galvanize and prod, if not shame enough Americans to be ever vigilant not to let a Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel like the ACORN community organizer gangster Barack Hussein Obama to weasel his way into the top office of authority in the United States of America”.

How long is the NRA going to harbor this racist pig?  It’s time for them to fire him and disassociate themselves from Nugent if they want to remain a viable organization.  At what point does his behavior simply make the NRA a redneck organization?

Free speech be damned.  He can say whatever he wants.  At some point, however, the NRA is going to have to take ownership of his remarks as long as he sits on their board of directors.  If I were the NRA and the NRA my parents used to belong to, I would want to at least try to sound like the voice of reason.

Additional offensive remarks by Nugent.

Domestic Terrorism: 50 years ago yesterday

MoonHowler

September 15, 1963

Birmingham Sunday

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Terrorism is really nothing new in this country. The bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church was just as much as act of terrorism as Oklahoma City. The KKK has long been known for its terrorism. Perhaps we should make sure we call their actions exactly what they were. Terrorism. People who commit terrorism are terrorists. It’s really that simple.

The death of 4 girls whose only sin was going to Sunday School let America know that no one was safe.  Perhaps on that day Americans were shaken from their complacency. Perhaps that day, September 15, 1963, real change began.