Fight the Power. While touring overseas in France Chuck D has come face to face with the unpleasant consequences of the popularization of Jay-Z and Kanye’s hit song “N****s In Paris” and he has been holding a candid discussion about the use of the term and the manipulations of the music industry at length for the last few days. Big shout out to the homies at Radio.com for shining a light on this important discussion. Peep the tweets below: Hit the flip for the real good part — when Chuck takes aim at the label heads for their role. WENN/Francois Hollande For President Continue reading →
Well this is good news … According to Fox Business: The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell last week, offering reassurance that the bottom is not falling out of the labor market despite signs of slower growth. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 16,000 to a seasonally adjusted 339,000 the Labor Department said on Thursday. The prior week’s number was revised to show 3,000 more applications than previously reported. Analysts had expected 351,000 new claims last week. A Labor Department analyst said there was nothing unusual in the data and no states had estimated their claims. The report runs counter to several weeks of signals that economic activity has softened over the last two months, a phenomena economists have dubbed the spring swoon because it also happened in the previous two years. The four-week moving average for new claims, a less volatile measure of labor market trends, fell 4,500 to 357,500. That could help to further ease concerns of a deterioration in labor market conditions after nonfarm payrolls posted their smallest increase in nine months in March. However, claims around this time of the year are difficult to adjust for seasonal swings, so analysts will be cautious about extrapolating too much from today’s data. Economists expect the government next week will report that employers hired 145,000 people in April. Employers added 88,000 workers to their payrolls last month after a solid 268,000 increase in February. It was unclear whether there was any impact in the claims data from a brief shutdown of offices in Boston area last week as police hunted for a man suspected of helping plant bombs at the Boston Marathon. State authorities asked hundreds of thousands of Boston-area workers to stay in their homes on April 19. Thoughts?? Shutterstock
Tameka Raymond scored a bittersweet victory this week when she celebrated the passing of a new Georgia law named in honor of her late son Kile Glover. The mother of five sons returned to Lake Lanier where her son was the victim of a tragic tubing accident during 4th of July weekend last year, for the first time. Although she had previously vowed never to return to the popular vacation area, Tameka made an appearance to celebrate the passing of the Kile Glover boating education law, along with Georgia lawmakers and Tara Prince, the mother of Jake and Griffin Prince who lost two sons just weeks before Glovers death. The Prince boys are also being memorialized with the new piece of legislation. They were killed after a drunk boater struck their craft. Hit the flip for more photos from the event and more information on the new law.
This guy…. Rush Limbaugh Compares Boston Marathon Bomber To Trayvon Martin Babbling bigot and right-wing enthusiast Rush Limbaugh is back on his best bullish in the wake of last week’s Boston Marathon bombing that rocked the nation . In true idiot fashion, Limbaugh took to his nationally syndicated radio show to voice his douche-bag opinion that the media coverage of the bombing suspect mirrors that of the media portrayal of slain teenager Trayvon Martin. via Think Progress Conservative radio prognosticator Rush Limbaugh used his nationally syndicated show on Tuesday to try and tie Dzhakar Tsarnaev, the captured suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings last week, to murdered teenager Trayvon Martin. Last March, weeks after 17-year-old Martin was shot and killed, Limbaugh and the rest of the conservative echo chamber spent a considerable amount of time attacking Martin’s character and pushing back against a widely circulated photograph of the teen, claiming that the media was trying to gin up sympathy for the murdered boy. On Tuesday, Limbaugh compared the media’s portrayal of Trayvon to the treatment of the captured Tsarnaev, citing the media’s use of slightly outdated photographs in both instances: He said that showing images of Tsarnaev at 14-years-old is an effort to humanize him and frame him as a “normal” or “mixed-up kid,” rather than an accused murder[er] and terrorist. ‘The news media are doing to Dzhokhar what they did to Trayvon Martin,” Limbaugh observed. “They’re regularly showing a photo of Dzhokhar that was taken when he was about 14. Soft, angelic, nice little boy. Harmless. Cute. Big, loveable eyes.” “Not at all what he looks like today,” Limbaugh added. “The way, when we’re shown Osama bin Laden, it’s in his shepherd pose with his walking stick, walking through the mountains or whatever.” It’s so interesting how this guy is so quick to point out alleged “similarities” between minorities who are accused of violence but makes no mention of similar media portrayal when the suspects in question are white (see: Sandy Hook gunman Adam Lanza , Batman Massacre gunman James Holmes,etc.) And by “so interesting,” we mean blatantly racist. SMH.
…”what had happened was I had followed Clarence (Thomas) .” According to Business Insider: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made headlines when he called the Voting Rights Act a “racial entitlement,” and now he’s revealing the rationale behind that inflammatory comment. The high court is currently reviewing Section 5 of the VRA, which requires states with histories of discrimination against minority voters (mostly in the South) to get permission from the federal government before changing their election laws. The law was passed in 1965 when Southern states used extreme measures to keep blacks away from the polls, including violence, poll taxes, and literacy tests. Speaking to university students Monday night, Scalia said Section 5 is a “racial entitlement” because the U.S. doesn’t take an equal interest in protecting white voters from racial discrimination, the Wall Street Journal’s Jess Bravin reports. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was meant to be a stopgap measure to respond to racial discrimination but became an “embedded” form of “racial preferment,” Scalia told students at the University of California Washington Center. Interesting…he also brings up his black justice buddy Clarence Thomas . Via Wall Street Journal: Justice Scalia long has resisted claims that the Constitution prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation, and dissented from a 2003 decision striking down sodomy laws that criminalized gay sex. Other questions involved matters of particular interest to lawyers and inveterate court watchers. One student asked if it was true that Justice Clarence Thomas, after joining the court in 1991, was the one who led Justice Scalia to the right, rather than other way around. “Yes, it is true,” Justice Scalia said, suggesting that in the 1990s the news media unsuccessfully tried to pressure Justice Thomas to moderate his positions by painting him as a pawn of Justice Scalia. But behind the scenes, “what happened was I had followed Clarence.” Likewise, Justice Scalia added, media fascination with Justice Thomas’s habitual silence at oral argument was likely to harden his resolve to keep his peace. Justice Thomas is “a very stubborn man,” Justice Scalia said. Discuss…
This guy ain’t isht. Georgia’s Republican governor has refused to endorse Wilcox, GA’s first integrated prom for one small town, claiming that he doesn’t want to take sides on the issues. Via RawStory reports : Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) has refused through a spokesperson to endorse one town’s first-ever integrated high school prom, saying that he would rather not take sides on the issue. According to Atlanta’s WMAZ Channel 13, politicians from both parties have stated their support for black and white students from Wilcox, Georgia, but Deal declined to join them. Raw Story spoke to activist Bryan Long of the progressive group Better Georgia, whose group has asked Georgia elected officials “to publicly support the students of Wilcox County who are fighting to end a ‘separate-but-equal’ high school prom.” “We thought it would be nice if our elected officials would support these students,” said Long. “They’re taking a great stand in their community. We thought that officials all across the state should send a message to the nation that we’ve moved beyond the racial divisions of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.” He added, “We were surprised to read that the governor’s spokesperson said that he wouldn’t be ‘taking sides’ on this issue. I didn’t know that there were sides to take.” Deal spokesperson Brian Robinson told WMAZ on Thursday that Deal is refusing to endorse the integrated prom because of Better Georgia’s bipartisan initiative. “This is a leftist front group for the state Democratic party and we’re not going to lend a hand to their silly publicity stunt,” wrote Robinson. “The kids want to have an integrated prom,” said Better Georgia’s Long. “It’s the 21st Century, Gov. Deal. Get with it.” “The fact that we even have segregated proms in Georgia in 2013 is shocking all buy itself,” he said, “but to have a governor say that he doesn’t want to support the students who are trying to change that horrible tradition? That’s just cowardly.” “We really didn’t think this was going to be a divisive issue,” he concluded. “Plenty of Republicans have already come out to support the kids. So, for the governor, who’s supposedly an opinion leader in the state to just say, ‘I’ll sit this one out,’ well…I didn’t think that was possible.” Wilcox High School was integrated decades ago, but parents have put up their own money for annual private parties rather than have an integrated prom. Students created a Facebook page dedicated to hosting an integrated dance and said they were “embarrassed” that no one had done it before. When is this jerk up for re-election? We sure hope people smarten up and get rid of his azz because he’s clearly not helping the South make any progress. A video posted on YouTube by the Georgia Democratic Party in 2010 shows Deal making a litany of racially-insensitive comments, including, ”We fought against the extension of the Voting Rights Act, you may remember that”; “my wife tells me she can look at her sixth-grade class and tell which one’s going to prison and which one’s going to college”; and that he had “no idea” where President Barack Obama was born. YouTube
A few weeks back we told you about a proposed bill in Tennessee that would strip benefits from families if children in their household fail to meet satisfactory academic progress. Via Yahoo! reports : An 8-year-old followed Republican state Sen. Stacey Campfield around the Tennessee state Capitol in an effort to convince the lawmaker to drop a bill that would link children’s academic performance to a family’s welfare benefits. The Tennessean reports that Aamira Fetuga, 8, confronted Campfield while he was on his way to vote. She presented Campfield with a petition signed by people opposed to his bill. Approximately 60 other protestors were also in attendance. The child asked, “Why do you want to cut benefits for people?” while on a Capitol escalator. Campfield responded that “as long as the parent shows up to school and goes to two parent-teacher conferences … they’re exempt.” News cameras followed as the girl continued to ask questions. Campfield was heard to say, “I love it when people use children as props.” The lawmaker did end up withdrawing the bill, which was on shaky ground already. On the Senate floor, he asked to have the bill examined by a committee over the summer. The Tennessean reports that Campfield’s move spared him “from potential defeat and some of his fellow Republicans from casting politically dicey votes.” The bill would have cut up to 30 percent of assistance to needy families whose children fail a grade in school unless the parents attended an eight-hour parenting class, met twice with teachers, enrolled the student in summer school or arranged for the child to receive tutoring. Campfield had argued that the bill’s aim was to inspire parents to play a larger role in the education of their children, but opponents argued that the bill would have added yet another burden to families with financial difficulties. “The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart joked that Campfield was apparently trying to “turn Tennessee education into the actual ‘Hunger Games.’ “ Campfield told reporters that the bill’s withdraw doesn’t mean it is dead. “This may be a slight detour, but honestly I think this could hopefully make it even better.” SMH. It’s great news that the bill was withdrawn but WTF is wrong with people looking for a reason to take food out of kids’ mouths. And who the fawk does this azzhole think he is treating a little girl like this?
Yeezy might have to come out of the that kilt skirt and handle his business like a man Sources Say Kanye West Thinks Ray J Released “I Hit It First” Out Of Jealousy Guess we don’t have to wait too long to find out what Kanye thinks of Ray J’s new tune Via Examiner It’s no secret that artist Ray J was seeking some form of attention with his recent track titled “I Hit It First”. The song has been taken as a diss towards fellow star Kanye West, who is presently dating Kim Kardashian, with whom he is expecting a child later this year. Ray J himself used to date Kim, and played his part in helping her gain stardom, as he was involved in her “Superstar” sex tape that garnered her all kinds of attention. And while Ray-J’s song is obviously directed towards West, it appears now that Kanye is responding to the track. “Ray J is crazy,” claimed an insider connected to West. “Kanye don’t condone broke *ss, jealous [guys] who be trying to bite off he and Kim’s fame.” And even though West has expressed extreme displeasure over the song, the source indicates that West likely won’t be coming up with a diss track of his own to fire back any salvos. “Tell him to call [Kanye] when he gets to the $100-million mark,” added the insider. “[Because], guess what? [Kanye] hit that first.” We don’t condone violence here at Bossip, but this kind of public disrespect calls for something a little more personal than just rap lyrics and press releases… Image via GSI
Big Sean is the same MC repping the D he’s always been. That’s the theme of his new single, “Switch Up,” featuring Common. Kid Cudi may have defected, but this joint serves as evidence that G.O.O.D. Music will carry on. Over a upbeat, swinging groove, the Detroit rappers drops a pair of verses while Com holds him down for the second…. Continue
Breaking Sports Video
