Al Sharpton

`Todays black leadership pretty much lives off the fumes of moral authority that linger from its glory days in the 1950s and 60s` ~ Shelby Steele

Published by Papa Giorgio


Shelby Steele via The Wall Street Journal

The verdict that declared George Zimmerman not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin was a traumatic event for America’s civil-rights establishment, and for many black elites across the media, government and academia. When you have grown used to American institutions being so intimidated by the prospect of black wrath that they invent mushy ideas like “diversity” and “inclusiveness” simply to escape that wrath, then the crisp reading of the law that the Zimmerman jury displayed comes as a shock.

On television in recent weeks you could see black leaders from every background congealing into a chorus of umbrage and complaint. But they weren’t so much outraged at a horrible injustice as they were affronted by the disregard of their own authority. The jury effectively said to them, “You won’t call the tune here. We will work within the law.”

Today’s black leadership pretty much lives off the fumes of moral authority that linger from its glory days in the 1950s and ’60s. The Zimmerman verdict lets us see this and feel a little embarrassed for them. Consider the pathos of a leadership that once transformed the nation now lusting for the conviction of the contrite and mortified George Zimmerman, as if a stint in prison for him would somehow assure more peace and security for black teenagers everywhere. This, despite the fact that nearly one black teenager a day is shot dead on the South Side of Chicago—to name only one city—by another black teenager.

This would not be the first time that a movement begun in profound moral clarity, and that achieved greatness, waned away into a parody of itself—not because it was wrong but because it was successful. Today’s civil-rights leaders have missed the obvious: The success of their forbearers in achieving social transformation denied to them the heroism that was inescapable for a Martin Luther King Jr. or a James Farmer or a Nelson Mandela. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton cannot write a timeless letter to us from a Birmingham jail or walk, as John Lewis did in 1965, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., into a maelstrom of police dogs and billy clubs. That America is no longer here (which is not to say that every trace of it is gone).

The Revs. Jackson and Sharpton have been consigned to a hard fate: They can never be more than redundancies, echoes of the great men they emulate because America has changed. Hard to be a King or Mandela today when your monstrous enemy is no more than the cherubic George Zimmerman.

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In the Zimmerman/Martin case the civil-rights establishment is fighting for the poetic truth that white animus toward blacks is still such that a black teenager—Skittles and ice tea in hand—can be shot dead simply for walking home. But actually this establishment is fighting to maintain its authority to wield poetic truth—the authority to tell the larger society how it must think about blacks, how it must respond to them, what it owes them and, then, to brook no argument.

The Zimmerman/Martin tragedy has been explosive because it triggered a fight over authority. Who gets to say what things mean—the supporters of George Zimmerman, who say he acted in self-defense, or the civil-rights establishment that says he profiled and murdered a black child? Here we are. And where is the authority to resolve this? The six-person Florida jury, looking carefully at the evidence, decided that Mr. Zimmerman pulled the trigger in self-defense and not in a fury of racial hatred.

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One wants to scream at all those outraged at the Zimmerman verdict: Where is your outrage over the collapse of the black family? Today’s civil-rights leaders swat at mosquitoes like Zimmerman when they have gorillas on their back. Seventy-three percent of all black children are born without fathers married to their mothers. And you want to bring the nation to a standstill over George Zimmerman?

There are vast career opportunities, money and political power to be gleaned from the specter of Mr. Zimmerman as a racial profiler/murderer; but there is only hard and selfless work to be done in tackling an illegitimacy rate that threatens to consign blacks to something like permanent inferiority. If there is anything good to be drawn from the Zimmerman/Martin tragedy, it is only the further revelation of the corruption and irrelevance of today’s civil-rights leadership.

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Narratives are Important (updated)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Here is one narrative:

That an innocent “boy” with a clean record was bringing Skittles and an ice-tea to his father, was stalked and set upon by a racist.

Here is another… does it matter?

Would it matter if the “boy” was 6’3″, a football player, and that those Skittles and ice-tea were stolen? There is more:

Trayvon Martin was suspended from school three times in the months before he was shot dead by a neighborhood watchman, it emerged today.

The new claims, revealed in a leaked report, paint a different picture of a teenager who frequently found himself in trouble with authorities.

It was also revealed that he might have attacked a bus driver, according to a Twitter account that it is claimed belonged to the teen.

The Miami Herald claims that in October, he was caught with a ‘burglary tool’ – a flathead screwdriver – and 12 pieces of women’s jewellery. Martin insisted that they did not belong to him.

Earlier, he had been suspended for skipping school and showing up late to class. And most recently, in February, he was suspended again when officials found a ‘marijuana pipe’ and an empty baggie with traces of the drug….

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While I still think Zimmerman should have ceased-and-desisted when the 911 dispatcher asked him to, and that he countered the neighborhood watch mantra of observe and report, the most I see Zimmerman being charged with is manslaughter. And he may beat the case:

“With a single punch,” the Orlando Sentinel, citing police sources, reported Monday, “Trayvon Martin decked the Neighborhood Watch volunteer … climbed on top of [him] and slammed his head into the sidewalk several times, leaving him bloody and battered.”

“That is the account Zimmerman gave police,” the paper said, “and much of it has been corroborated by witnesses, authorities say.”….

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However, this hasn’t stopped the dinosaurs holding on to their “leadership” roles of a minority group from coming out in front of cameras:

Former NAACP leader C.L. Bryant is accusing Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton of “exploiting” the Trayvon Martin tragedy to “racially divide this country.”

“His family should be outraged at the fact that they’re using this child as the bait to inflame racial passions,” Rev. C.L. Bryant said in a Monday interview with The Daily Caller.

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Here is a great interview with one of Zimmerman’s friends where you can see the two narratives but-heads:

Take note as well that many have come forward to defend Zimmerman’s character:

George is a Spanish speaking minority with many black family members and friends. He would be the last to discriminate for any reason whatsoever. One black neighbor recently interviewed said she knew everything in the media was untrue and that she would trust George with her life. Another black neighbor said that George was the only one, black or white, who came and welcomed her to the community, offering any assistance he could provide. Recently, I met two black children George invited to a social event. I asked where they met George. They responded that he was their mentor. They said George visited them routinely, took them places, helped them, and taught them things and that they really loved George. The media portrayal of George as a racist could not be further from the truth.

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This doesn’t matter to the two dinosaurs below:


Mind you, early reports are that Zimmerman had a criminal background, in fact Lawrence O’Donnell was set to ask Zimmerman’s lawyer the following question before he left the MSNBC studio: “Did you represent him when he was arrested for assault on a police officer in 2005?” This hurts Zimmerman’s “clean” narrative as well. This matters to me and my view of Zimmerman. However, in my talks with black person’s in regards to this case, a majority of them display no regard or concern to Martin’s character and its contribution to this incident.

In my opinion, this was a perfect storm for a tragedy. But if Zimmerman is found innocent, expect riots, crime, and more violence, as is always the case from the Left.

Three books I recommend are the following — for the bibliophile:

1) Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson, by Kenneth R. Timmerman
2) Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America, by Jesse Lee Peterson
3) It’s OK to Leave the Plantation : The New Underground Railroad, by C. Mason Weaver

Follow link below for the apparent use of “coon” in the 9/11 call. (UPDATED, VIDEO BELOW)

!UPDATED!

Here is an update on the audio of Zimmerman supposedly saying “coon,” and a CNN reporters retraction from him previously stating it was a racial slur (via The Blaze):

And here is George Zimmerman’s father relaying portions of the story of that night that have yet to hit mainstream media:

And here is enhanced video showing the wounds to the back of Zimmerman’s head, that from more grainy film footage was said to be a fabrication:

Al `not so sharp` Sharpton Showing His Lack of Knowledge on MSNBC (Plus: Congressman John Campbell)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Forbes explains the gig

…[Romney’s] low rate is due to the fact that almost all of his income was in the form of dividends and capital gains, which are currently taxed at only 15%.  (As he pointed out in the last debate, he would have paid almost nothing under his opponent Newt Gingrich’s proposal to not tax investment income at all.) He then used large charitable contributions and other deductions to further reduce his taxable income.

While this doesn’t apply much to those of us with earned income (which is taxed at higher ordinary income tax rates plus the FICA tax), there are lessons for how we can similarly minimize our taxes on our investments. Specifically, we can take advantage of the differences in how various investments are taxed. Qualified dividends and long-term capital gains are taxed at a maximum 15% rate while cash and bond interest are taxed at ordinary income tax rates, which can be as high as 35%. By keeping as many of our tax-inefficient investments like bonds and cash in retirement accounts as possible, we can pay more of our investment taxes at the 15% capital gains and dividend rate and less at the higher ordinary income tax rate.

Let’s take an example. Imagine you have a total investment portfolio of $500k and you want to have $300k of that in stocks and $200k in bonds and cash. Let’s say that you have a pre-tax 401(k) with $300k. To minimize your taxes, you would have the entire $200k of bonds and cash in the 401(k) plus an additional $100k of the money in the stocks. The remaining $200k in taxable investments would all be in stock so that most of your taxable investment income would be at the 15% rate for long-term capital gains and qualified dividends.

There’s another advantage of having stocks and stock funds outside of retirement plans. In this case, you can actually make the volatility of the stock market work for you. That’s because when we have an investment that loses value (and who didn’t have at least one over these last few years) we can sell it at the end of the year and write the loss off of our taxes. These capital gain losses can offset gains we have that year or even better, up to $3k of regular income tax if we don’t have any capital gains. You can carry losses over $3k to future years.

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Sen. John Campbell explains the issue with how the press twists Romney’s tax return info to suit their needs:

The Teleprompter must be Racist! More from the chronicles of Al `the not so sharp` Sharpton

Published by Papa Giorgio

It is unbelievable that the black community would accept Al and Jessie as “black leaders” instead of brains like Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams in some sort of “leader” position. They [Sowell and Williams] are intelligent, came up from hard circumstances, are prolific thinkers and authors, professors, etc. Not dime store confirmed “reverends/liberal activists.” Instead you get the below: