Moonhowlings

I guess Rush Limbaugh has just announced that he will vote for whatever white candidate is on the ticket. According to News One:

Right wing talk show host, Rush Limbaugh reiterated what he said during the 2008 Election when he said that Powell supported the candidate Barack Obama “because he’s Black” on his radio show.

After Colin Powell told CBS News “Face The Nation” that he wasn’t sure who he was going to vote for in the 2012 Election, Limbaugh said on his radio show that Powell will vote for President Obama in 2012 because “melanin is thicker than water.”

Colin Powell is one of the most respected military and political leaders of our time.  He has served his nation in time of war as a general and again as Secretary of State under George W. Bush.  He is hardly  ’wink wink nudge nudge’ material. 

Using Limbaugh logic (is that an oxymoron?), the United States must have a great many more blacks than are showing up on the census in order for Obama to ever have been elected in the first place if “melanin is thicker than water.”   Perhaps Limbaugh is math challenged. 

This kind of thinking is popping up in all sorts of places.  Rush was actually a little kinder than a couple of the local blogs here in Prince William County who have busied themselves with making fun of those individuals and organizations supporting local “minority” candidates for office.   I suppose they forget that PWC is now a majority-minority  county.  As of 2008, about 10% of the counties in the United States were designated at majority-minority which simply means that non-Hispanic whites are less than 49% of the population.  More areas are joining those majority-minority ranks, according to today’s Washington Post. 

I would hate to see our  elections break down along racial lines, especially our local elections.  Locally, some groups seem to have little compunction against name-calling and finger pointing if the candidates aren’t “their brand.”  Perhaps some of the blogs need to stick to topic  and issues rather than   trying to hang labels on certain candidates.

The codification of same sex marriage rights has passed the house but not the Republican held senate in NY State.  Observers expect the needed vote to come as early as next week.  NY is significant because it it the third largest state by population. 

President Obama stopped short of endorsing the efforts to pass  marriage equality legislation by stating that he is evolving on this issue.  The President sees the issue as a civil rights equality issue but personally struggles with his comfort zone of one man-one woman marriage. 

Should marriage equality  or same-sex marriage be decided at the state level  or should it be national?  Will the courts decide or will legislatures decide?  Should the nation just go with civil unions for all and leave ‘marriage to churches and other religious institutions?  Is this a civil rights issue such as the President believes?

Fox and Friends was trying to stir it up early this morning.  Flesh colored crayons, colored pencils, and markers are now available from Crayola, the crayon company.  Fox and Friends presented this coloring media in terms of multiculturalism.  Is this an attempt at social engineering by corporate America?

When I was a kid, which granted, has been many years ago, the only choice  for me was pink, even in the 64 box set, which was as big as it got.   People either got to be pink or you left the page white.  If you had brown skin you were actually luckier, you got to get a little closer.  People just aren’t pink or white. 

The colors which are white, black, peach, apricot, tan, burnt sienna, mahogany and sepia  come as thick crayons, colored pencils and markers.  You can probably find all the colors now in a regular large box of crayons, but these are conveniently separated into their  box, exclusively for coloring flesh. The 8 crayons are also more expensive than a box of 24.  It’s probably a money-making gimmick rather than an attempt to blindside our children with ideas of diversity. 

I would say its a good thing to be able to represent ourselves, our friendsm  family and others when we color.  We aren’t all the same color, even within families.  Human beings are diverse.  I see this as a good thing.  And Fox and Friends never misses an opportunity to stir the pot with a little pinch of dissension and a heaping tablespoon of ‘out to get us.’ 

Let the foolishness begin.  Now we  don’t have mothers and fathers.  I still haven’t recovered from the girl winning damages about 20 years ago for being called a water buffalo.  Now we have this, and out of the State Department no less!

According to the Washington Post:

The State Department has decided to make U.S. passport application forms “gender neutral” by removing references to mother and father, officials said, in favor of language that describes one’s parentage somewhat less tenderly.

The change is “in recognition of different types of families,” according to a statement issued just before Christmas that drew widespread attention Friday after a Fox News report.

The announcement of the change was buried at the end of a Dec. 22 news release, titled “Consular Report of Birth Abroad Certificate Improvements,” that highlighted unrelated security changes.

I don’t care if gay people adopt children or have children by whatever means that happens.  But, I am not willing to become parent 1 or parent 2 for the sake of a situation that  rarely occurs.  As far as I am concerned, the gay parents can just flip over who gets to be the mom and who gets to be the dad.  

Read more…

At least according to Brian Kilmeade, that’s how it is.  According to the Huffington Post:

On both TV and radio Friday, Kilmeade said that, while not all Muslims are terrorists, “all terrorists are Muslims.”

Keith Olbermann responded with the following:

“There is stupid and there is bigoted and there is paranoid and there is Islamophobic, but it takes a big man to combine all four of them,” Olbermann said of Kilmeade.

Olbermann also rattled off a list of non-Muslim terrorists, including several murderers from the radical right and Oklahoma City bomber. Timothy McVeigh

“So, here’s one for Mr. Kilmeade: not every unamerican bastard is Brian Kilmeade, but all Brian Kilmeades are unamerican bastards,” Olbermann said.

I don’t know what either of them are thinking.  Certainly we can all think of terrorists who aren’t Muslims. I immediately thought of the man who charged into the Holocaust Museum and killed a guard and Scott Roeder who assassinated Dr. George Tiller while he was attending Sunday church service.  Keith Olbermann also knows better than to call someone an unAmerican bastard. 

Shame on both of them.  Both men need to be setting a better example.  Has the world gone mad?

To his credit, Brian Kilmeade did apologize. Case closed:

Southern people have always had a way of simply not talking about things.  We, as a group, all know the things exist but we don’t talk about them.  Kids learn at an early age  because their mothers have a way of grabbing them up under their arms and giving them this special squeeze….I used to call it the grocery store squeeze….not to ask questions about certain things.  Senator Jim Webb has grabbed the proverbial tiger by the tail in an op/ed piece in the Wall Street Journal as he comments on the myth of white privilege and how 95% of white southerns have perhaps been miscast. 

Senator Webb definitely has cojones for taking on this ‘unmentionable.’

Suggested by Poor Richard, from the Wall Street Journal:

By JAMES WEBB

The NAACP believes the tea party is racist. The tea party believes the NAACP is racist. And Pat Buchanan got into trouble recently by pointing out that if Elena Kagan is confirmed to the Supreme Court, there will not be a single Protestant Justice, although Protestants make up half the U.S. population and dominated the court for generations.

Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers. The time has come to cease the false arguments and allow every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future.

I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness to America’s economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship. Unfortunately, present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.

In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families have been in the country for generations. These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived.

How so?

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A follow up on the original story about  Constance McMillan’s desire to go to her own prom with her girl friend has lead to a less than conclusive end:

ABERDEEN, Miss. — A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Itawamba County, Miss., school board violated the rights of a lesbian student by canceling the prom when the student challenged a ban on same-sex dates, but the judge stopped short of ordering the district to reinstate the April 2 prom.U.S. District Court Judge Glen Davidson said he denied the injunction request because a private prom parents are planning will serve the same purpose as the school prom and because “requiring defendants to step back into a sponsorship role at this late date would only confuse and confound the community on the issue.”

 Did Constance win/lose or did she lose/win?  The school violated her rights.  However the judge isn’t going to make things right.  The school will not be forced to have a prom.  The private prom folks will not be forced to admit Constance.  Constance must go to the gay and lesbian prom instead of to her school prom.  Does this sound like forced segregation to you?

The federal judge sounds like the chicken you-know- what judge to me.  I thought the entire point of these kinds of court rulings was to either say yes her rights were violated and fix things or no her rights were not violated, go home and get over it.   I guess there is a lot of laughter and snickering in the Itawamba County school district today.  I guess they showed “them thar dykes a thing or 3 now didn’t they?”   What a shame that this young woman’s civil rights weren’t upheld. 

Maybe Constance McMillan has the last laugh after all.  She appeared on the” Ellen” and was awareded $30,000 in scholarship money by the talk show host who said she was so proud of her.  DeGeneres said:

“I admire you so much. “When I was your age I never would have had the strength to do what you are doing.”

Meanwhile, her ACLU lawyer is preparing round 2 of her legal battle. 

USA Today story

This story is appalling! The year is not 1960 but 2009, and yet this couple has to search for another Justice of the Peace to marry them because they were denied their right to marry based soley on the color of their skin? I believe the state of Virginia, in Loving V. Virginia, resolved this many years ago, who would, or could, imagine such blantent racism still existed today.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) — A justice of the peace in Louisiana who has drawn widespread criticism for refusing to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple says he has no regrets about his decision.

“It’s kind of hard to apologize for something that you really and truly feel down in your heart you haven’t done wrong,” Keith Bardwell told CNN affiliate WAFB on Saturday.

Bardwell, a justice of the peace for Tangipahoa Parish’s 8th Ward, refused to issue a marriage license to Beth Humphrey, 30, and her boyfriend, Terence McKay, 32, both of Hammond.

“I’m not a racist,” Bardwell told the newspaper. “I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house. My main concern is for the children.” Bardwell, stressing that he couldn’t personally endorse the marriage, said his wife referred the couple to another justice of the peace.

John Bonfadini, of Christmas decoration fame in Sudley also writes for the NOVEC magazine, Cooperative Living. John has sat on the co-op board for years and was a professor at GMU. His kids have all gone through Prince William County Schools.

I occassionally glance at the Co-op Living Magazine. It often has some good articles and the classifieds are great. This month John had a great article under his Food for Thought column.  I hope you enjoy.

A Real American: Are You One?
by Dr. John E. Bonfadini, Ed.D., Professor Emeritus, George Mason University

John Bonfadini

Recently, I received an e-mail with an attached letter. It was one of the many political commentaries floating around on the Internet these days.

The letter, written by a teacher, expresses her concern for the direction America is heading. She used the term “real American,” implying that some Americans are real and others counterfeit. She obviously believes that her position is that of a real, and not a counterfeit, American. I thought about her use of the term real American and wondered if I am one; so I sought out a definition.

 

Read more…

Major thanks to Censored by Bvbl for writing the lead to this thread:

A regional report commissioned by Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald Connolly shows Northern Virginia to be a different place than it was thirty years ago. Amid large population growth, the outer Southern rim of Northern Virginia has seen a demographic change as a more ethnically and racially diversified population has sought affordable housing in the outer suburbs.

The study, which offers a preview of the 2010 census reports:

“Of the 270,000 people who moved to Northern Virginia between 2000 and 2007, 75 percent settled in Loudoun County, Prince William County, Manassas or Manassas Park.
In Prince William, the growth was driven almost entirely by minorities, who accounted for 94 percent of the population increase.

In contrast, the inner suburbs of Arlington County and Alexandria, once considered gateway communities for immigrants, have lost minority residents since 2000, becoming more white and more affluent. “

Read more…