It's a bird!
It's a plane!
It's a frog!
A frog???
Not plane, nor bird, nor even frog . . .
It's just 3 Chords & the Truth -- back from a break and found on this blog!
In other words . . . never fear! The Big Show is here!
"I believe this has crossed the line where we are endangering lives of those who wear a uniform to protect us. How can we expect a criminal – a potential criminal – who might want to commit a gun crime or any kind of crime against law enforcement, to read a transcript and try to understand context or hyperbole? Words matter. And Sen. Chambers said these words."-- Nebraska Sen. Beau McCoy
State senators confronted Sen. Ernie Chambers Thursday during an extraordinary two-hour discussion about his remarks last week comparing police interaction with black citizens to ISIS treatment of its victims in the Mideast.
One freshman legislator, Sen. David Schnoor of Scribner, demanded the Omaha senator resign from the Legislature.
But Chambers dismissed insistent calls that he apologize or retract statements he made during a committee hearing last week.
His critics focused their criticism on a brief remark by Chambers that if he carried a gun -- which he doesn't -- and found himself confronted by a police officer, he'd want to shoot first and ask questions later, "like they say the cop ought to do."
Gov. Pete Ricketts weighed in on the discussion from outside the legislative chamber by issuing a news release urging Chambers to "issue a full apology for his remarks (and) condemn all violence against law enforcement."
During an interview after the Legislature adjourned for the week, Chambers said "there's not a person in my (legislative) district who thinks I would want to shoot a cop."
"The kids in my community are too smart to put that interpretation on those words," he said.
During the debate, Chambers said he's "used to be being piled on" after growing up as a black youth in a white culture and later during a public career of confronting senators in a Legislature in which he usually was the sole black senator. Two of the 49 current senators are black.
"I don't expect you to understand what I'm talking about," he said.
A number of senators who took exception to Chambers' comments last week defended his right to express his views even if they disagreed with him.
"It's a wonderful opportunity to pile onto Sen. Chambers," Sen. Dave Bloomfield of Hoskins said after the flood of criticism had begun.
"I do not condone what Sen. Chambers said, (but) let those among us who are without sin cast the first stone."
Chambers, he said, has "done a great service to this body for 40 years."
Sen. Bob Krist of Omaha said he now regrets that he didn't "nudge Senator Chambers and express my disappointment" when he made the remarks during last week's Judiciary Committee hearing, but he said he also needs to be prepared to call a colleague to account the next time he hears a reference to "a retard."
Sen. Ken Haar of Malcolm said he has heard a senator refer to people who receive public assistance as "leeches," and he reminded colleagues that Sen. Beau McCoy of Omaha, who initiated Thursday's debate, dismissively knocked a bobblehead doll rendition of President Barack Obama off a fence post in one of his 2014 gubernatorial campaign TV ads.
My ISIS is the police. And you know what the county attorney said, Don Kleine: If the officer makes a mistake, if he's wrong but he had reason to think that he was right, then he's clear. I cannot get away with that and shoot you and say, well, I thought he was going to do something. They say, uh-uh, buddy, that doesn't work.
Well, now we presume that these officers are trained. To show how little their training means and how they hide behind it, some guy out east was fired because he was dealing with a guy who had a mental problem and wound up...he was on duty, shot the guy 14 times, and he was fired. Now he's trying to get his job back. And you know what the lawyer is arguing? And he's justified in view of the not finding any fault in what these cops are doing. He said, yes, he shot the man 14 times, but it was within his training.
So now, if the police are trained to shoot somebody in the back, then the cop who shoots in the back says, it was pursuant to my training, and he's home free. That's what's happening. I would tell young people: If you tell somebody to go across the world to fight for ISIS, they can put you in jail if you just talk about it. If you want to fight injustice, don't...you don't have to go around the world to find the ISIS mentality. Your ISIS is in America and you're likely to die over there, one way or the other. So if you're going to die, die making your home safe. My home is not threatened by ISIS. Mine is threatened by the police. The police are licensed to kill us, children, old people.
They showed a guy on a highway. The highway trooper, he had this elderly black woman down on the ground, just beating the stew out of her, and nothing was done to him. That's what I see. Now suppose somebody told me somebody from ISIS did that. Then everybody is up in arms: See what cowards they are? They beat women in broad daylight. But when a cop does it, it's all right. I don't feel that way.
And if I were going to do something -- but I'm not a man of violence -- I wouldn't go to Syria, I wouldn't go to Iraq, I wouldn't go to Afghanistan, I wouldn't go to Yemen, I wouldn't go to Tunisia, I wouldn't go to Lebanon, I wouldn't go to Jordan. I would do it right here.
Nobody from ISIS ever terrorized us as a people, as the police do daily. And they get away with it and they've been given the license now. And people don't like me to say this. Then you rein in your cops. And you know what they say, the racism of the cops is merely reflective of the racism in this society and they accept the existence of racism to excuse the cop.
But then when I say there is racism in the society, they say, you're playing the race card, your talking about it makes it happen. But when they want to justify the cop, they say, he's merely reflective of the community where there is white racism. And that's what I look . . . you don't have to deal with that. You're privileged. You're free of that. You don't have to think about it every day. If I was going to carry a weapon, it wouldn't be against you, it wouldn't be against these people who come here that I might have a dispute with.
Mine would be for the police. And if I carried a gun, I'd want to shoot him first and then ask questions later, like they say the cop ought to do. But could I get away with it? You know I couldn't get away with it. They'd better hope I never lose my mind and find out that I'm on my way out of here.
(Laughter)NOW, WOULD I have made this point in the manner the senator made it? No. No, I wouldn't have.I always get into trouble when exercising my right to hyperbole. On the other hand, I suck at attracting attention, too.
The festival board’s publicist Shelley Matherne told WBRZ that the painting for the poster was selected in an open contest in which two entries were submitted.WELL, THAT'S fair enough, and it would be pure knee-jerk speculation to say there was any malevolent intent on the part of the artist, Kalle Siekkinen, but I think it does show an abject cluelessness on the part of Siekkinen and festival organizers about the minefield that is race in the South.
“Art is subjective; there was no intent other than to pay tribute to the festival and the strawberry industry,” she said in a statement. “This is Kalle’s interpretation of a similar world-renowned local Ponchatoula artist, now deceased, who he drew his inspiration from.”
Dozens of protesters took to the street in front of the home of a former University of Oklahoma student and fraternity member who was shown in a video leading a racist chant aboard a bus.THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: Is this Dallas protest proper, or is it harassment -- the creating of the same sort of "hostile environment" that University of Oklahoma officials alleged in kicking two (so far) Sigma Alpha Epsilon members out of school.
Dozens of demonstrators Wednesday evening marched up and down the North Dallas residential street in front of the home of Parker Rice. Watching them were about two dozen news media representatives and six police officers.
The protesters chanted, "Racism is taught," and, "Racism is a choice."
CBS Dallas reported that the group, Next Generation Action Network, says Rice and Highland Park-graduate Levi Pettit, another SAE member seen in the OU video and now also expelled from the university, made a bold statement that was caught on tape and now it time for protesters to make theirs.
Their numbers didn't pack the street, but their message was heard loud and clear. "This is what democracy looks like," they chanted. "Teach your kids another way, no modern day KKK!"
Daniel Boone was a man, he was a big man,Folks who grew up in the North -- or should I say grew up in the North and didn't hear the N-word 200 times a day amid a culture where racism and segregation, both de jure and de facto, was as pervasive as the air you breathed? -- generally get to remember their silly childhood songs and rhymes with a certain wistful fondness. If you're a Southerner seeking to rise above your upbringing, trying to do like Jesus said and love your neighbor as yourself, that luxury is forever denied you. You get to remember with a sense of regret and shame.
But when the bear was bigger, he ran like a n***** up a tree
O'Colly photograph |
There will never be a n***** in SAE
There will never be a n***** in SAE
You can hang 'em from a tree
But they'll never sign with me
There will never be a n***** in SAE
A story on the expected same-sex marriage ruling was posted to http://t.co/FIrQLPI4OA in error Tuesday night.
— Lincoln Journal Star (@JournalStarNews) February 25, 2015
Gov. Bobby Jindal continued his attacks on President Barack Obama, proclaiming just outside the White House Monday (Februrary 23) that Obama is "unfit to be commander in chief" based on his refusal to commit resources needed to defeat and kill radical Islamic terrorists.LOUISIANA'S gallivanting governor also outlined in the Fox opinion piece what he expected the president to do when dealing with Islamic terrorists:
"I take no joy in saying that," Jindal said after he and other governors met with the president for nearly 90 minutes. "I don't say so for partisan or ideological reasons."
But he said a president who cannot call the enemy "radical Islamic terrorists," or is willing to rule out ground troops, except for very limited missions, isn't leading the United States to victory over a brutal enemy that he says only can be stopped by killing them.
Jindal,who is expected to seek the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, had expressed the same sentiments in a column that appeared Monday on www.foxnews.com.
Wrote Jindal: "Let's review some of what these radical Islamic terrorists have done recently in broad daylight: beheaded American captives and filmed it; beheaded 21 Christians in Libya and filmed it; burned a Jordanian pilot alive in a cage and filmed it; and attacked a school in Pakistan, killing over a hundred children and teachers."
Radical Islamic terrorists are cutting off people’s heads, killing children, crucifying people, and burning people alive, and we need to find jobs for them? An international jobs program is not a strategy to defeat terrorists.PERHAPS Obama should listen to Jindal, who knows a thing or two about killing -- killing his state's health-care system, killing his state's university system, killing his state's ethics-enforcement system. . . .
Perhaps the most incredible statement yet from this administration came from our State Department, which said, “we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war.”
This is madness. Killing the enemy is exactly the way you win a war. More than any other statement, this one demonstrates in broad daylight that the president is not up to the job.