Getting this off of my chest

This is an old Donald Duck cartoon; it is about 8 minutes long. But the ending, while completely corny, almost brings me to tears.

Yes, our country isn’t perfect; at the time the cartoon was made, things like this

and this

going on. Fortunately, most people see these as sins and have worked to correct things.

Nevertheless, during the time that this video was made, other countries had this

and this

and, much, later, this

Yes, I am getting some flack from the racists. But it is a minor price to pay for living in a country with free speech rights; many others have paid a far higher price in a variety of settings.

Without the sacrifices of many (in war, civil rights struggles, etc.), we might well be living under a repressive dictatorship or a racist society.

Something different…

Workout notes 1500 yards swimming (some drill/swim sets, some fly/free/back/free sets). Then yoga class, then 4 miles of running on the mill (played with the incline; the first 3 were at a pokey 9:40 minutes per mile, a bit slower on the last mile) then enough walking to get 7 miles.

During the yoga session, my teacher found me slacking a bit. She gave me some attention.

Steamboat Photos are up; mine is here. This site allows for you to pay for a photo download, which I did. Too bad there wasn’t one of me with Barbara.

Non athletics

I am going to talk about something other than Leonard Pitts and Nazis. Well…maybe one cartoon.

Obama

Some good Obama videos:

Prescription coverage for Seniors.

Obama on fatherhood. A nice follow up article to this video is here:

The subject is absent fathers. The implications for black America are dire. The fact is that “there are a lot of men out there who need to stop acting like boys; who need to realize that responsibility does not end at conception; who need to know that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one.”

The speaker is Barack Obama, for whom fatherhood is a defining issue, both political and personal. Father’s Day has come and gone — new ties have been put away, new golf clubs tried out, new flat-screen televisions mounted — but Obama says he will continue to talk about black fatherhood in an attempt to change self-destructive attitudes and behaviors.

“Many black men simply cannot afford to raise a family — and too many have made the sad choice not to,” Obama said Friday in what aides touted as a major speech.

You might have heard that Obama is running for president, which makes it impossible to ignore the politics involved. The men-acting-like-boys speech was given in a black church in South Carolina, an early-primary state where half of Democratic voters are African American. It’s not at all rare for a black leader to challenge black Americans on issues of personal responsibility — that same message, phrased in much stronger terms, is delivered every Sunday from pulpits across the country. The political significance is for the scolding to be given in such a way that white America can’t help but overhear what’s being said. [...]

Is Obama speaking to African Americans, or is he really trying to reach those whites who believe that most of black America’s problems are self-inflicted? I’m paid to be skeptical, but I think something much deeper than political calculation is involved here. One revelation that comes with spending time with politicians is that they actually have core beliefs. To cite one example, John Edwards may be a multimillionaire, but I can’t doubt his sincerity when he talks about poverty. I’ve seen him volunteer in a soup kitchen without first summoning the television cameras. He grew up poor, and the experience has never left him.

Obama grew up without his black father. It doesn’t take a psychologist to discern the impact this absence had. He has explained it himself in his books, at considerable length. He talked about it Friday in the fatherhood speech, saying that his mother — struggling to raise two children as a single parent — at times needed to rely on food stamps to make it through the month. He also spoke with admiration of his wife Michelle’s father, who had multiple sclerosis yet supported his family by going to work every day at a water filtration plant, “even when he had to rely on a walker to get him there.” [...]

American Workers: law firm shows how to get around hiring them!

I find this very disturbing; I hope there is more to this than I am seeing: (hat tip to BobOak at the Daily Kos)

t’s on video, believe it or not, and even presented as a selling point to peddle their services by Cohen & Grigsby Law Firm. That’s right, this group of attorneys put an entire seminar on how to screw over the American worker on YouTube. Imagine that, a seminar from lawyers on how to make sure one doesn’t have to hire an American worker!

This is about computer programming jobs, but I doubt that these sort of practices are limited to one industry.

So there is absolutely no misunderstanding

Ok, evidently some feel that I would be indifferent if a white person were murdered or raped. YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!! For those who don’t know, I am married to a white woman, have a white (would pass for white anyway) daughter, have a white brother in law, and the vast majority of my friends are white (that is who you tend to meet in math departments, running races and yoga classes).

Let’s look more carefully at the column that Mr. Pitts wrote:

t seems that in January, a young white couple, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, were victims of a brutal crime. They were carjacked, kidnapped and raped. Cleaning fluid was sprayed into Christian’s mouth. She was stuffed in a trash can and apparently suffocated. Newsom was shot and set afire. His body was dumped. Five African Americans, one a woman, have been arrested.

He admits that the crime was brutal. I totally agree.

And, whoever did this deserves the harshest possible penalty. I am against the death penalty, but if the creeps that did this were executed, I’d shed no tears for them.

Can I possibly make that any clearer?

So what does Mr. Pitts say?

And here I’m obligated — because I’m black — to say that if the defendants in this case did what they are accused of doing, I’d be happy to see them rot under the jailhouse.

There you have it. Mr. Pitts doesn’t approve of this crime either! He called it brutal and said that those who committed the crime ought to be punished!!!

Could he make this any clearer?

So, what was the gist of his column? It was merely this: this crime was an example of thugs murdering people, period. Yes, in this case, the criminals were black and the victims were white, and this isn’t the only time it happened.

But, please, this isn’t a part of any idiotic race war or a part of some attempt for Afircan Americans to surpress whites!!! This was simple thuggery.

And I will NOT retreat from this: I hold the criminals themselves responsible for this horrible crime, NOT African Americans in general. Why is that so difficult to understand?
After all, I don’t hold all white people accountable for the horrible hate crimes that some others commit. (for hate crime statistics, see the FBI website)

Where it is true that African Americans commit violent crimes at a rate that is disproportionate to their numbers, this is more a function of the fact that blacks are overrepresentented at the lower socio-economic scale and that those at his end of the scale tend to disproportionally commit these type of crimes (see, Andew Hacker’s book Two Nations)

I can recommend this book for its brutal honesty and for its even-handedness; it considers both liberal and conservative arguments and gives each a fair shake.

Also, most violent crimes committed by blacks are, in fact, black on black.

And no, I am not saying this because I fear that the nazi groups might try to beat me up or anything; I know that these hate groups do use violence, but in fact, I have a better chance of being assaulted or killed by a common street thug (which there are too many around here) or hit by a drunken driver.

If you are wondering what this post is about, see this comment. I am deleting a few words from it (names and address, which, hey, anyone can find with google).

Roshi Johnny N. Logan

Mr. Nanyes I highly doubt that a man of your academics cannot understand how upsetting your ignorance on this matter is ! lets turn the tables a bit here, were you even aware of the facts and reasons behind the Knoxville rally , and the subsequent hate filled trash that Mr.Pitts , for some reason, deemed fit to author on the matter? At the chance you actually have any human compassion or emotion left to share, let me put the story to you this way………..
According to police, on January 7, a band of 4 to 5 black men with previous criminal records carjacked (your wife and kid) on there way to a local movie theater, they were then both treated to a nightmare of sexual torture. The blacks proceed to kidnap the females and took them to the basement of a small run down house in the crime ifested neighborhood of one of the black assailants, there the two were bound and held captive. Soon after there abduction the four underpriveleged minority assailants then proceeded to repeatedly gang rape Barbara, over the next few hours she was sexually tortured and mutilated then shot with a small caliber handgun into her head until she was dead. Her body was then wrapped in bedding that was soaked in gasoline, then set ablaze. Afterward, they dumped (her) body on some nearby railroad tracks in hopes that passing trains would help destroy the remainder of her corpse and thereby help conceal the crime. During (her) orgy of torture and rape, the group of blacks had forced her (kid) to watch her Mothers ordeal to show her what was in store for her. The gang of poor disenfranchised, racially oppressed blacks then repeatedly (and savagely) orally, anally and vaginally gang raped her, after which liquid cleaner was sprayed into her mouth and orifices to erase their residual DNA, while she was still conscious. After torturing and raping the young girls over a period of three days, the group of black victims of our white controled, rascist society then sexually mutilated and finally killed her, the proud, strong African Americans then dismembered her young but brutally savaged body, placed her into several trash bags and stuffed her body parts into garbage cans. When reached for comment (me) the father and husband of two slain , said “He could not see what all the fuss was about.”
Please Mr. Nanyes i understand that this sort of thing may not trouble you, possibly you would even relish the idea of four or five hate filled blacks raping and torturing your own white wife and mixed breed child, but just this once ,you repugnant idiot, reach deep down into what may be left of your heart and try to understand how this might affect the people who do care about victims of crimes like these.

Sincerely yours with blessings.
Ven. Johnny N. Logan

A very quick reply Mr. Logan: again, this was a horrible crime and those responsible should be severly punished. But that would be true no matter what race the criminals were nor what race the victims were.

Update: evidently, I was wrong about the following sentence.

ps: this coward didn’t use his own e-mail address, nor did he use his own blog.

I offer my apology.

Nevertheless, if there are true conservatives (not Nazis or KKK types) who might have a misunderstanding about what I feel, this post is for you.