multiple "Premier" and "Elite" leagues

[Unregistered]

Will John Kerry be banned for life after his comments about Israel ?

Johnny has really stepped in it.

"Inflammatory rhetoric comparing Israel’s democracy to repugnant apartheid policy is irresponsible, inaccurate & counterproductive." - Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D, NY) ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee

"Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and any linkage between Israel and apartheid is nonsensical and ridiculous." - Senator Barbara Boxer

“Secretary Kerry knows as well as anyone that negotiating lasting peace in this region of the world is difficult but it’s not productive to express his frustration in this way. This remark also implies Israel should ignore the pact between Abbas and Hamas. Last time I checked, the U.S. didn’t negotiate with terrorist organizations and we shouldn’t expect the Israeli government to either.” - Senator's Mark Begich (D-AK)

[Unregistered]

Not that liberals care that 4 Ameticzns were killed in Benghazi, but....

Email links White House advisor to spin blaming Benghazi on film

New documents suggest a senior adviser to President Obama played a central role in preparing former UN ambassador Susan Rice for her controversial Sunday talk show appearances where she wrongly blamed a video for the Benghazi terrorist attack.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/inte...ghazi-on-film/

And BTW Ben Rhodes is brother to David Rhodes, president of CBS News, the same CBS News who canned award winning journalist, Sharyl Atkinson for her investigative journalism that made this administration look bad. Welcome to America, "dear people".

[Unregistered]

Great piece, in part, by Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

http://time.com/79590/donald-sterlin...jabbar-racism/

.... inspired to vigilantly seek out, expose, and eliminate racism at its first signs.

Nicew of the racist wingnut to lecture everyone. Remember that this comes from the same racist that told us a couple of months back that we are living in a post-racial culture....

Jabbar's point (one of them, I can't say I agree with his take on everything but I can with this) is that it was obvious Sterlinmg has been a racist for a long time.

Hey I concur. That's why I've been banging away like I do on the racist wingnuts.

We all ignore systemic racism all the time. Not intentionally for many but hey, if thats out of sight its out of mind....to some. But when the racists feel emboldened to actually SAY it out loud, well the reaction has been appropriate.

Wingnuts lash from defending the guy to criticize those who had the decency to respond to his words.

Not the kind of people you want living next to your elderly parents.....or your children.

Too funny....now the wingnut is off on his new "outage du jour" without missing a beat...

LMAO @ the wingnut
ROFL
tee hee
bwa ha ha

Its already to the point where just a few of them...horrible human beings like Bill Kristol ....will defend him using their own names.

Please note that the people most aggrieved by Sterling have comported themselves with the most dignity. Non-violent and measured comments from leaders.

Its a shame that old white male cranks like cliven Bundy and his conservative enablers as well as Donald Sterling and his conservative apologists can't learn from the example set by people of color.

[Unregistered]

He was discriminating against black and Hispanic families for years, preventing them from getting housing. It was public record. We did nothing.

He already paid the ;largest settlement in apousing discrimination case EVER in the USA...almost three million....but that's the problem with these rogue billionaires....when you have that much money you are refractory to corrective measures like fines.

I think what's happening now can be more productive. many of these billionaires are big egotists. They love owning their sports clubs and being high profile. Donald Sterling will never enjoy that again. it will hurt him more than fines.

I've said before that I think the Amish practice of shunning might have some merit ...

The making and release of this tape is so sleazy that just listening to it makes me feel like an accomplice to the crime.

amazing.....feels like an accomlice to his racism so wished that he didn't know about it? Shaming the victim of the tirade? So typical.

So, if we’re all going to be outraged, let’s be outraged that we weren’t more outraged when his racism was first evident.

How many wingnuts can dance on the head of a pin?

LMAO
ROFL
tee hee
bwa ha ha

Oh folks....just so you know.....my PROGRESSIVE father's 99th was last week....you know a chilkdhood term of affection he had for me? when I was like 5? maybe younger?

"the professor"

oh yes, its true. See why we'll win? Things the wingnut doesn't anticipate are that his idiotic name calling (yes typical wingnut stuff....call out people who worked hard to get an education don't you know) will only have me dig in even more.

Yeah, I told you dad would be proud of how I tee this wingnut up ;)

[Unregistered]

Only the Professor could mock the words of Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

[Unregistered]

Oligarchy in the Twenty-First Century

http://freebeacon.com/columns/oligar...first-century/

[Unregistered]

remember the " horrible Bush economy " ?

That's all we heard from the LIbs..Nancy and the gang " horrible Bush economy ". over and over

Well, after today's GDP figure was announced, where are the Libs ?
Obama owns this, and over his tenure, the GDP growth has been LOWER than under Bush.
Remember when gas prices went up , Nancy Pelosi " two oil men in the White House"

How about now Nancy ?

And the media ? Blaming the dismal GDP on the weather ?
What ? People can't click and order on line in bad weather ?
We never had bad weather in the winter before that slowed GDP ?
Are Libs and the media serious?

Two wars, the financial crisis , the end stream of the Clinton recession, and Bush GDP growth was better than under Obama.

What is Obama's excuse for not hitting HIS OWN projections ?

[Unregistered]

home ownership @ 19 year low

some recovery.

American home ownership at 64.8 %, a 19 year low.
Prices are down, rates are low, but no buyers .

Thanks Obama !

[Unregistered]

You forgot this statistic. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is reporting that 20% of American families in 2013 had no one working. That's 4 years running.

[Unregistered]

You forgot this statistic. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is reporting that 20% of American families in 2013 had no one working. That's 4 years running.

Obama Nation !

I must have missed that one in the " major media " ******s.

[Unregistered]

The Tea Party, ... quite diverse in those who support the movement (Rubio, Cruz, Allen, Sowell, Williams, Palin, etc, etc.) are a huge threat to the ruling class.

Wingnuts get lathered up and defend the darndest people, dontcha know? Cliven Bundy is a "patriot" and "American hero" to them. We just witnessed the fact that our own local wingnut and Bil Kristol win the prize of going further than even perennial misogynist and racist Donald Trump in defending Donald Sterling....

So I am sitting at the edge of my seat to see how our little wingnut spins Palin's latest.

Tee hee
Bwa ha ha

Everyday you come here and see fresh, explicit, out-of-their-own-mouths stuff from the wingnuts and their heros that show you everything i have been pointing out for some time is true in spades. meanwhile, winguts recycle the same tired rhetoric about "nancy" and everything else that they have been spewing for decades....like a bucket of no-longer-even-warm spit.

Remember before the last Presidential? I commented there would be civil war in the Republican party, that Obama was going to BREAK the decades long coalition that allowed the reactionary party to stand still and not be punished at the ballot box.

No, Sarah Palin, Baptism Isn’t A Good Punchline For A Terrorist Joke

April 27, 2014 By Mollie Hemingway

Sarah Palin gave a speech to members of the National Rifle Association, gathered in Indianapolis this weekend. She said something that struck me as sacrilegious.
...
What did she say? Here’s how The Hill reports it:

“They obviously have information on plots to carry out Jihad,” she said at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual meeting on Saturday evening, referring to prisoners. “Oh, but you can’t offend them, can’t make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen. Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.”

Emphasis mine. When my husband (who was baptized 10 years ago today, as it happens) told me about this, I had a hard time believing that she actually said it. Not just because baptism couldn’t be taken more seriously in traditional Christianity but because the media routinely misquote or fail to provide context for quotes. But the video makes the statement seem even worse.

So why did the crowd cheer when she said it? And why did some folks defend or downplay the statement on Twitter? I couldn’t begin to say, but they shouldn’t have done so.

The Lutheran catechism, ... goes through the commandments and creed and sacraments and what not. The section on the sacrament of baptism explains what baptism is — the water connected to God’s word; what that word of God is — the Gospel of Jesus, and what baptism gives us:

It works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare.

Is waterboarding how we baptize terrorists? However powerful waterboarding might be (and whether or not it is defensible, a good idea or achieves the goals of those who advocate its use), it doesn’t hold a candle to the power of the Christian baptism, as historically understood. Does it deliver those who are subjected to it from the devil, as Christian baptism does? Does it give them eternal life, as Christian baptism does? Is it voluntary, as Christian baptism is? It is none of these things.

Joking about baptism in the context of this aggressive action suggests that we don’t think baptism is as life-giving or important as it is.

Now, it’s also true that Palin, from what we know of her congregational affiliations, is influenced by subsets of Christianity that take a different and far lower view of what baptism accomplishes. They say that it’s mere symbolism rather than means of God’s grace. In fact, that’s exactly what the web site of Wasilla Bible Church says. But I would hope that even these traditions wouldn’t take it so lightly as to joke about it in the context of waterboarding. Or even if it is considered OK to joke about waterboarding being baptism by these folks, I’d hope they recognize how blasphemous it sounds to the ears of Christians who retain the historic and high view of the sacrament.

There’s another problem with what Palin said.

Mary Moerbe, a diaconal writer at the Cranach Institute, notes, “Sarah Palin’s brash words portray herself to be a great and powerful baptizer, not bringing faith or the forgiveness of Jesus—or even the sympathy implicit in secular uses of ‘baptism by fire’—but crossing the line into government aggression, specifically against those already subdued and captive. She merged government with religion in one of the worst possible ways: by making herself judge and arbiter.”

..

So it must be noted that, again apart from the debate over such interrogation techniques, waterboarding is the opposite of traditional Christian baptism. It does not work forgiveness of sins. It does not give eternal life in Christ. It is not voluntary. And even as important as fighting murderous Islamist terrorists who want to destroy America is — and it is — making that fight not just more important than the means by which many of us have become Christians but losing the particulars of that faith in Jesus Christ in the name of that fight is an intolerably high price to pay.

In all seriousness folks, sarah's comments offended a lot of the people she calims to speak for. I'm not Lutheran like the author but my brand of Christianity rejects her comments as well.

Put Sarah down with the Sterlings, Bundy's, etc of the world. Horrible just horrible and it comes right out fo their mouths plain as day. And their enablers like the local wingnut run around talking about Nancy and thrill to what people like sarah said.

Its unconscionable isnt it that this man"

http://cdn.breitbart.com/mediaserver...n_growl_AP.jpg

put her one heartbeat away from the presidency to get the support of men like this:

https://www.vdare.com/sites/default/...ne/Lowry_2.png


who works for this guy:

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/image...am-kristol.jpg

at the right wing rag National Review.

Let's take a look at what this guy:

https://www.vdare.com/sites/default/...ne/Lowry_2.png

said about Palin when she was running because I think it tells us a lot about why our local wingnut has enthusiasm for her despite the fact the she just doesn't uphold those Christian values she and the wingnuts like to pretend they support:

I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it.

You know I really wish that people like Lowry and the local wingnut would crush on sarah PRIVATELY. I find what the kind of thing that the conservative Lowry wrote to be unbecoming of an adult man....but I guess I am showing that I am a traditional old white male dinosaur here...I actually hearken back to a school where men didn't act like hormonal teenagers. actaully, i was a hormonal teenager back in the day and I never acted that....pathetic. I also have sons and I can assure you that here at Chez Progressive all the males are a little more secure in their....maleness...that they never stoop to such juvenile and puerile beahvior.

Conservative men....built in the mold of all those great american heros that they idolize.

LMAO
ROFL
tee hee
bwa ha ha

Busy and cant' come by as much but let's see whether the wingnut white old mansplains why its ok for sarah to talk like that just as surely as he defended Sterling and Bundy.

[Unregistered]

The only topic that matters is the absolute decline of America under Obama.

11.2 biilion lost on GM
National Debt up , up and away
Stagnant economy, probally negative GDP
Inflation and higher energy costs ignored by the media
His picks
John Kerry, a failure
Clinton, Bengazi blood on her hands
Holder, in contempt
IRS scandal, Fast and Furious
Huge increase in Food Stamp usage
Obamacre - tax increase and destruction of lives- Nancy said it would add 1 million jobs
Pipeline fence sitting
Didn't he say he was going to close Gitmo ?

Foreign policy ?
Iran, N. Korea, Middle East, Ukraine,
What did Romney say about Russia , and Libs laughed it off

What a sahme. Had Romney been elected, the economy would be booming

After all this, we should all get down on our knees to thank George W. Bush, as he defeated Al Gore and John Kerry. Throw in the self destuction of John Edwards, and what we would have seen under any of those guys would have been devestating to the country. Obama has been bad enough.

[Unregistered]

professor what say you? Good idea or not? From the Herald.

U.S. Sen. Edward J. Markey wants the government to study and recommend ways to stop the Internet, TV and radio from “encouraging hate crimes,” but First Amendment advocates say the bill is a menace to free speech.

“This proposed legislation is worse than merely silly. It is dangerous,” said civil liberties lawyer Harvey A. Silverglate, arguing even hate speech is protected absent a crime. “It is not up to Sen. Markey, nor to the federal government, to define for a free people what speech is, and is not, acceptable.”

Markey’s bill would direct a government agency to identify hate speech and create recommendations. Markey in a statement yesterday said the bill makes “crystal clear that any recommendations must be consistent with the First Amendment’s free speech protections.”

Harvard Law professor Alan M. Dershowitz said, “He’s not going to be able to come up with legislation that sufficiently protects the First Amendment. We always have to be able to respond to the racists and bigots, but not at the expense of the First Amendment.”

Gene Policinski of the First Amendment Center and the Newseum Institute said, “Anytime government in any form or level looks to study our speech — even something that we might all consider detestable speech — we need to pay attention. The First Amendment really permits everyone in the marketplace to speak.”

Michael Lieberman of the Anti-Defamation League said he backs the bill, which is similar to a Markey-backed 1993 study that found hate crimes linked to media “scattered and largely anecdotal” and recommended no government bans.

“If we thought this legislation would result in censorship, we would not support it,” said Lieberman. “You could take the position that any legislation could lead to government censorship, but the way we’re looking at this is a net positive. This updates a study that is 20 years old.”

House co-sponsor U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said, “Those recommendations are simply recommendations unless they are acted on. ... If there’s speech that’s protected by the First Amendment, Congress will presumably not act.”

[Unregistered]

This is terrible. This is terrible. This is gonna be a f***in’ n***** town.”


Marie Strumolo Burke (Image source: Facebook)

The aforementioned racist statement, recorded on voicemail, has been identified with “85 percent” certainty by a forensics lab as coming from Belleville, New Jersey, councilwoman and Democratic mayoral candidate Marie Strumolo Burke, according to NJ.com.

Burke also is listed as a municipal chair on the Essex County Democratic Committee, and her bio on Belleville’s website notes she’s served as the town’s Democratic Chairman.

Burke’s alleged racist outburst can be heard on a voicemail discussing proposed changes to Belleville’s tax rates, said Mayor Raymond Kimble, who’s running against Burke in the June mayoral election, adding that he’ll call for Burke’s resignation.

Here’s audio of the voicemail posted to YouTube; Burke’s alleged statement can be heard in the background toward the end just after the main message left by former town planning board chairman Sam Papa, the New York Daily News reported, for town councilman Kevin Kennedy

[Unregistered]

Checking My Privilege: Character as the Basis of Privilege

Tal Fortgang '17 / April 2, 2014




There is a phrase that floats around college campuses, Princeton being no exception, that threatens to strike down opinions without regard for their merits, but rather solely on the basis of the person that voiced them. “Check your privilege,” the saying goes, and I have been reprimanded by it several times this year. The phrase, handed down by my moral superiors, descends recklessly, like an Obama-sanctioned drone, and aims laser-like at my pinkish-peach complexion, my maleness, and the nerve I displayed in offering an opinion rooted in a personal Weltanschauung. “Check your privilege,” they tell me in a command that teeters between an imposition to actually explore how I got where I am, and a reminder that I ought to feel personally apologetic because white males seem to pull most of the strings in the world.

I do not accuse those who “check” me and my perspective of overt racism, although the phrase, which assumes that simply because I belong to a certain ethnic group I should be judged collectively with it, toes that line. But I do condemn them for diminishing everything I have personally accomplished, all the hard work I have done in my life, and for ascribing all the fruit I reap not to the seeds I sow but to some invisible patron saint of white maleness who places it out for me before I even arrive. Furthermore, I condemn them for casting the equal protection clause, indeed the very idea of a meritocracy, as a myth, and for declaring that we are all governed by invisible forces (some would call them “stigmas” or “societal norms”), that our nation runs on racist and sexist conspiracies. Forget “you didn’t build that;” check your privilege and realize that nothing you have accomplished is real.

But they can’t be telling me that everything I’ve done with my life can be credited to the racist patriarchy holding my hand throughout my years of education and eventually guiding me into Princeton. Even that is too extreme. So to find out what they are saying, I decided to take their advice. I actually went and checked the origins of my privileged existence, to empathize with those whose underdog stories I can’t possibly comprehend. I have unearthed some examples of the privilege with which my family was blessed, and now I think I better understand those who assure me that skin color allowed my family and I to flourish today.

Perhaps it’s the privilege my grandfather and his brother had to flee their home as teenagers when the Nazis invaded Poland, leaving their mother and five younger siblings behind, running and running until they reached a Displaced Persons camp in Siberia, where they would do years of hard labor in the bitter cold until World War II ended. Maybe it was the privilege my grandfather had of taking on the local Rabbi’s work in that DP camp, telling him that the spiritual leader shouldn’t do hard work, but should save his energy to pass Jewish tradition along to those who might survive. Perhaps it was the privilege my great-grandmother and those five great-aunts and uncles I never knew had of being shot into an open grave outside their hometown. Maybe that’s my privilege.

Or maybe it’s the privilege my grandmother had of spending weeks upon weeks on a death march through Polish forests in subzero temperatures, one of just a handful to survive, only to be put in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she would have died but for the Allied forces who liberated her and helped her regain her health when her weight dwindled to barely 80 pounds.

Perhaps my privilege is that those two resilient individuals came to America with no money and no English, obtained citizenship, learned the language and met each other; that my grandfather started a humble wicker basket business with nothing but long hours, an idea, and an iron will—to paraphrase the man I never met: “I escaped Hitler. Some business troubles are going to ruin me?” Maybe my privilege is that they worked hard enough to raise four children, and to send them to Jewish day school and eventually City College.

Perhaps it was my privilege that my own father worked hard enough in City College to earn a spot at a top graduate school, got a good job, and for 25 years got up well before the crack of dawn, sacrificing precious time he wanted to spend with those he valued most—his wife and kids—to earn that living. I can say with certainty there was no legacy involved in any of his accomplishments. The wicker business just isn’t that influential.Now would you say that we’ve been really privileged? That our success has been gift-wrapped?

That’s the problem with calling someone out for the “privilege” which you assume has defined their narrative. You don’t know what their struggles have been, what they may have gone through to be where they are. Assuming they’ve benefitted from “power systems” or other conspiratorial imaginary institutions denies them credit for all they’ve done, things of which you may not even conceive. You don’t know whose father died defending your freedom. You don’t know whose mother escaped oppression. You don’t know who conquered their demons, or may still conquering them now.

The truth is, though, that I have been exceptionally privileged in my life, albeit not in the way any detractors would have it.
It has been my distinct privilege that my grandparents came to America. First, that there was a place at all that would take them from the ruins of Europe. And second, that such a place was one where they could legally enter, learn the language, and acclimate to a society that ultimately allowed them to flourish.

It was their privilege to come to a country that grants equal protection under the law to its citizens, that cares not about religion or race, but the content of your character.

It was my privilege that my grandfather was blessed with resolve and an entrepreneurial spirit, and that he was lucky enough to come to the place where he could realize the dream of giving his children a better life than he had.

But far more important for me than his attributes was the legacy he sought to pass along, which forms the basis of what detractors call my “privilege,” but which actually should be praised as one of altruism and self-sacrifice. Those who came before us suffered for the sake of giving us a better life. When we similarly sacrifice for our descendents by caring for the planet, it’s called “environmentalism,” and is applauded. But when we do it by passing along property and a set of values, it’s called “privilege.” (And when we do it by raising questions about our crippling national debt, we’re called Tea Party radicals.) Such sacrifice of any form shouldn’t be scorned, but admired.

My exploration did yield some results. I recognize that it was my parents’ privilege and now my own that there is such a thing as an American dream which is attainable even for a penniless Jewish immigrant.

I am privileged that values like faith and education were passed along to me. My grandparents played an active role in my parents’ education, and some of my earliest memories included learning the Hebrew alphabet with my Dad. It’s been made clear to me that education begins in the home, and the importance of parents’ involvement with their kids’ education—from mathematics to morality—cannot be overstated. It’s not a matter of white or black, male or female or any other division which we seek, but a matter of the values we pass along, the legacy we leave, that perpetuates “privilege.” And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Behind every success, large or small, there is a story, and it isn’t always told by sex or skin color. My appearance certainly doesn’t tell the whole story, and to assume that it does and that I should apologize for it is insulting. While I haven’t done everything for myself up to this point in my life, someone sacrificed themselves so that I can lead a better life. But that is a legacy I am proud of.

I have checked my privilege. And I apologize for nothing.


http://theprincetontory.com/main/che...-of-privilege/