July 27, 2013

Bill Maher: Bill O’Reilly, Republicans, Don’t Hear What Obama Says

On Friday’s Real Time on HBO, host Bill Maher compared President Obama’s statement on African-American men and crime with Bill O’Reilly’s statement about statistical evidence on blacks and homicide. One Friday earlier, President Obama said, “Now, this isn’t to say that the African-American community is naive about the fact that African-American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system.” Obama said this during his much talked about and unscripted remarks on Trayvon Martin, the Zimmerman not-guilty verdict, and race relations in America.

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July 24, 2013

Where Have All The Journalists Gone? Democracy, Free Press, In The Age Of Internet Capitalism

Blinded By Journalism - photo by Ahmad HammoudWhat would happen if one day in the not so distant future, traditional print journalism died? I don’t mean what happens if we stop printing newspapers. I mean, what happens if “the press” is simply a collection of bloggers? I know I’m pouring gasoline on a fire with this line of questioning, most notably because I’m a blogger questioning the role of bloggers in journalism and news reporting, but is a person sitting in his bedroom or living room a journalist or a reporter?

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July 23, 2013

Fact of the Day: Executive Compensation Is A Corporate Tax Deduction – Yes, That’s Really A Thing

Obviously I’ve had my head buried in the sand, because I was totally unaware that corporations can deduct executive pay from their federal income taxes. So what this means is, average tax payers are subsidizing a tax deduction for some of the richest corporations on the planet. And that might be fine if it was a tax deduction meant to spur something for the good of society. But no, it’s just a tax deduction that helps wealthy fucks pay other wealthy fucks large sums of money. — Robert Reich explains it with a lot more restraint than I.

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July 22, 2013

Racializing Black-On-Black Crime, A Means To Demonize African-Americans

To listen to many on the Right, we are never to include a racial component in any crime until we eradicate so-called “black-on-black” crime. Conservatives believe the liberal media should not focus on a black victim, portrayed by conservative media as the guilty party, and should instead focus its attention on inner-city black-on-black crime. According to conservative media, we aren’t talking about blacks killing other blacks enough. Until we meet our quota in reporting blacks being murdered by other blacks, we are not allowed to talk about any other crime and the potential that race may have played a role.

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July 22, 2013

NRA, ALEC, Want You To Stand Your Ground, Wild West Style

The National Rifle Association (NRA) and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — I just love these names — want you to stand your ground like it’s still the 19th century Wild West — unless your are black of course. I don’t see the NRA saying if Trayvon Martin had a gun he could have defended himself. What was that saying again — “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.” Was Trayvon Martin the “bad guy” because he didn’t have a gun?

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July 20, 2013

When A Case Against Liberal Media Portrayal Of Racism Goes Horribly Wrong

It is certainly possible to build a solid case that reveals a “jump-to-conclusion” style of reporting when it comes to stories about racism from the so-called liberal media. But Ann Coulter’s piece titled (“To Avoid Looking Like a Criminal, Don’t Commit a Crime“) is not one. We know the news media (less so for local news, more so for newspapers and cable news networks) is quick to add racism into the mix in a white on black crime or a black on white crime. The history of this country shows there’s good reason for suspicion of racism, and it makes for more readers or more viewers, so the mainstream media can’t help itself. So yes, a case could be made that racism is invoked more than can be proven.

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