North Coast Online

Straight From The Horse's *ss

And the media claims that it's the white evangelicals who will attack Romney.

Do you suppose Hillary or Barack are principled enough to call him out on this latest in a long line of bigoted statements?  Do you think they (or the media) will even care?

The Flying Imams

More continues to come out about the saga of the now-famous flying imams.

A passenger on that flight - I'll call her "Pauline" - has inadvertently publicized some facts via a much-forwarded e-mail; she gave me more details in an interview this week. The airport police report confirms some of her claims and holds more revelations of its own. And U.S. Airways spokeswoman Andrea Rader also confirmed much of Pauline's account.

One detail that's escaped most reports is that other Muslim passengers were left undisturbed and later joined in a round of applause for the U.S. Airways crew.

"It wasn't that they were Muslim," says Pauline. "It was all of the suspicious things they did."

The whole affair begins to look like a deliberate attempt to create a scene and then cry profiling.  Read the whole thing.

[UPDATE:] An amusing and satisfying post about press coverage of the flying Imams on a Fox News show that most liberals don't even know exists -- because their overlords rarely complain about it.

Apologies We've Yet To Hear

Larry Elder

Dear Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton

Please accept my apology for launching into a racist tirade against two black hecklers at my comedy show. Because I attacked two blacks in particular, I know this means I harbor deep-seated racist feelings about all blacks. While, in return, I heard words like "f---ing white boy" and "cracker-ass motherf---er," I know those epithets were directed toward me, as an individual, and not at the entire white race.

Again, please accept my deepest apologies.

Michael Richards, aka "Kramer" of "Seinfeld"

And . . .

Dear Anti-Defamation League,

Once again, please accept my apology for calling Jews "Hymies" and referring to New York City as "Hymie-town." As I said at the time, "Charge it to my head . . . not to my heart."

Sincerely, Rev. Jesse Jackson

Read the whole thing.

Racism For Thee But Not For Us

The attempts to smear Senator Allen continue.

"Allen said he came to Virginia because he wanted to play football in a place where 'blacks knew their place,'" said Dr. Ken Shelton, a white radiologist in North Carolina who played tight end for the University of Virginia football team when Allen was quarterback. "He used the N-word on a regular basis back then."

A second white teammate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution from the Allen campaign, separately claimed that Allen used the word "nigger" to describe blacks. "It was so common with George when he was among his white friends. This is the terminology he used," the teammate said.

I should imagine that the "n-word" escaped the lips of another United States Senator from time to time in his youth.  That would be the former Ku Klux Klan organizer, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV.)  Odd how that little historical fact never makes it into the news at election time.

Misstating the "Problem"

Leonard Pitts writes of the death of a young black girl in Miami.

Makes you wonder about our priorities, the things we deem important. The fact that such a thing can happen and not stir the nation to moral outrage says something. It says that random inner-city murder occurs so often it barely registers as news. And it says, too, that when certain things happen to certain people in certain places, we find them easier to accept. You might even say we expect it, anticipate that from time to time, black kids in the projects will die because punks and gangsters can't shoot straight.

I can't know for sure, but I wonder if Sherdavia, her tender age notwithstanding, didn't expect it, too: she was giving her doll a funeral. It has been said, after all, that black kids in poor and violent places plan their funerals like other kids plan their proms.

Very touching -- and very sad.

And so it goes. This is not a black problem. It is, emphatically, an "American" problem. Unfortunately, it is not an American priority. Until it is, children like Sherdavia will continue to bury their dolls. And their parents will continue to bury them.

Yes, it's an American problem.  But it's a problem that white Americans aren't allowed to comment on or attempt to fix -- unless, of course, the shooter is white.  If he's black, then we have to shut up and ignore it as if it didn't really happen.  That's the problem, Mr. Pitts,  and you know it.

He Had A Dream -- But It Was Poorly Implemented

High court to consider ending integration formulas in schools

What a blessing it would be if the Supreme Court finally found these cockamamie race quotas unconstitutional.  The decisions that threw out the separate-but-equal laws were justified; those forced children living across the street from each other to attend different schools because of their races.  But in the '70s, not content that we'd done enough, judges ordered schools to take elaborate and artificial measures to strike racial balance.

This resulted in the infamous busing programs that not only saw cities erupt in violence, but eventually led to the severe decline of their neighborhoods as many of the parents who could afford to just moved away.  Busing turned out to be not only divisive, but incredibly expensive and never achieved any better educational results.  30 years later, students are only doing worse.

And while busing is no longer mandated by the courts, it's held on as a relic of a racial dream that never came true -- the one which saw us all living in understanding because as children we'd been exposed to the others.  It's time we turned our attention to fixing the schools for the children who live in each neighborhood -- whatever race they may be -- and stopped trying to engineer human lives.

The old dream (and I'm not talking about Martin Luther King's) won't die easily though. Despite its failure, there are still plenty of well-meaning but non-results-oriented do-gooders who still insist -- rather insultingly -- that black children only have a chance of success when they attend class with whites. There's more evidence to show that's not the case then there is to support it, but when has the race-crowd ever let evidence bother them?

Paris Is Serious Trouble

The riots in Paris  will result in a huge French lurch to the far-right.  With the experience of the Netherlands,  four nights of rioting in Aarhus, Denmark, and now this -- you can count on an overreaction. 

The Europeans have maligned Americans for decades for our seeming inability to solve our racial problems. Now, it's hit them.  That wonderful German word schadenfreude comes to mind even though I know that's an evil thought.

Racemonger

Spike Lee's making a movie, isn't that nice?

Filmmaker Spike Lee on Tuesday announced he is making a film for HBO about the post-Hurricane Katrina flooding in New Orleans, and said he wouldn't be shocked if conspiracy theories of intentional government involvement in the flooding proved true.

Lee's appearance on CNN, to promote his new co-authored memoir/biography, Spike Lee: That's My Story and I'm Sticking To It, followed a report on the rumors circulating among evacuees that the government somehow engineered the flooding of the largely black and poor Ninth Ward section of New Orleans.

CNN's report stressed that there is no evidence anyone caused the flooding on purpose. Brig. Gen. Robert Crear, who commands the Army Corps of Engineers, told CNN there was no truth to the rumors.

But after a handful of unidentified evacuees told CNN they believed something was afoot, anchor Daryn Kagan asked Lee if he thought there was potential for a movie in the tales.

Lee, 47, said he is already in development on a film with HBO called When the Levee Broke.

Asked about the possibility that the rumors of government involvement had any truth, Lee said it wouldn't surprise him.

"It's not too far-fetched ... I don't put anything past the United States government," Lee said. "I don't find it too far-fetched that they tried to displace all the black people out of New Orleans."

Uh-huh.

Hurray for Dick Cheney

So the despicable Charlie Rangel who recently called George Bush our Bull Conner, is supposedly offended at Cheney's response.

Vice President Dick Cheney's feud with Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel was perpetuated Wednesday when the 75-year-old congressman said Cheney "ought to be ashamed of himself" for a remark about his age.

Months of verbal attacks from Rangel turned into a back and forth on Monday when the 64-year-old vice president said Rangel is "losing it," later adding that "Charlie is a lot older than I am, and it shows."

After an appearance at City Hall on Wednesday, Rangel was asked when the dispute would die.

"I think it ends when he apologizes for attacking me as a senior citizen. It's true that I'm much older than he is, but that has nothing to do with mental alertness," Rangel said.

Rangel has suggested in recent interviews that Cheney, who suffers from heart trouble, might not be healthy enough to do his job.

"I would like to believe he's sick rather than just mean and evil," Rangel said last Friday on the cable channel NY1.

I'd like to believe the same of Rangel.

Jesse Jackson, Altruist Extraordinaire

Jesse Jackson plans to bus Katrina victims back to New Orleans.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, decrying what he claims is a lack of local labor taking part in hurricane cleanup efforts, said Wednesday he plans to bus evacuated residents back to the city.

Jackson said the federal response to the hurricane has enabled large government contractors to win no-bid contracts that could instead be serviced by local residents who now are unemployed and living in shelters around the country.

"We're talking about cleanup, debris removal, driving trucks, driving bulldozers -- these are skills within the realm of people who are being victimized by this crisis," he said.

All of which is true of course.  On the other hand the prospect of a majority-white New Orleans that tips Louisiana into the red-state column can't be too pleasing a prospect for him.