Yes, there’s no better way to calm the racial seas than by getting Al Sharpton involved in the conversation.

From The Hill:

Newt Gingrich was confronted by a black man outside Tommy’s Country Ham House, who questioned him on his comments on having poor children work as janitors.

The man said what Gingrich was asking for amounted to a “new form of slavery” and would force young African Americans to drop out of school.

Gingrich engaged the man, speaking levelly and holding eye contact with him. He said that he suggested the jobs so that “They can get paid — they’d go to school, stay in school instead of dropping out.”

The man persisted. “You say you want Afro-Americans to come into your political party but you’ve ratcheted [your rhetoric] up since you got down here,” he said.
[...]
The man then said he’d spoken with Rev. Al Sharpton and asked Gingrich to meet with him, Roland Martin of CNN, Ben Jealous of the NAACP and Juan Williams.

“Sure — glad to do it,” Gingrich said. “I’d be willing to do it. I know Al.”

The protester kept pushing for the meeting as Gingrich talked, demanding that he meet with the black community.

Gingrich nodded his head after the man interrupted him, and agreed. “Sure — and find a way to have everybody have a chance for a better future,” he said.

Going to Al Sharpton for advice on the subject of improving the tone of racial rhetoric is like getting help overcoming an addiction to prop comedy by talking to Carrot Top.

Newt and Al aren’t strangers, but if Gingrich does follow through on a meeting, for his own good I hope he waits until the current campaign is over… just in case the mini-summit culminates in another ill-advised public service announcement. Resist you much, Newt.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

MSNBC has been leaning forward head over heels to apologize to Mitt Romney over this Thomas Roberts item:

What was that all about? Roberts was quoting a blog that took a phrase Romney has used and found out that the KKK used something similar in the 1920′s. There hasn’t been a more incriminating link established since somebody noticed that Sarah Palin and Nathan Bedford Forrest are both right handed.

Anyway, today, Roberts apologized:

The Roberts apology was preceded yesterday by Chris Matthews:

Matthews yesterday: “It was irresponsible and incendiary of us to do this, and it showed an appalling lack of judgment. We apologize, we really do, to the Romney campaign.”

Roberts today: “It was irresponsible and incendiary of us to do this and showed an appalling lack of judgment. We apologize to the Romney campaign.”

The latter is dangerously close to adding apology copycatting to the list of things for which he needs to ask forgiveness.

And even Al Sharpton even got in on the apology (“you know it’s bad when…”):

Sharpton also later apologized for accusing Romney of eating all the blueberry pie.

Maybe MSNBC has changed how they operate, because “irresponsible, incendiary and an apalling lack of judgment” didn’t used to be things some of their hosts apologized for — they were job requirements. What gives?
*****

Update: A reader emails to say that Nathan Bedford Forrest was actually left-handed. That’s based on a book about him. I assumed he was right-handed because of a painting and a photo that showed him carrying a firearm on his right hip. Now that I think about it though, if Forrest was actually left-handed, the slight inaccuracy makes the analogy even more appropriate so I’ll leave well-enough alone.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

We’ve had some fun with Al Sharpton, from “resist we much” to the blueberry pie promo, and last night Saturday Night Live got in on the action:

The IRS still isn’t laughing.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Al Sharpton has a new “Lean Forward” promo for MSNBC in which he explains how Republicans have ruined the economy and deny the obvious. President Obama’s “car in a ditch” analogy was too technical for non-economists to follow, so here Sharpton simplifies it in terms of blueberry pie:

Hard to believe MSNBC is having so much trouble catching up in the ratings.

Here’s a video of some young Republicans in training.

Speaking of pie, we’re on pins and needles at my place. We’re hosting dinner tomorrow and haven’t yet received this year’s official pie waiver from FLOTUS. As a result, what, if anything, is for dessert is still totally up in the air.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Two things really surprised me about this. 1) Sharpton’s show is still on the air. And 2) The “Lean Forward” network hasn’t leaned forward far enough to offer Al access to even a makeshift fact-check team. Or maybe this is the MSNBC fact-checked version.

Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters sets the scene:

As Al Sharpton ridiculed Herman Cain on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” Friday for saying blacks have been brainwashed into voting for Democrats, the reverend ended up proving the Republican presidential candidate’s point.

Seconds after claiming, “What [Cain] does not have the right is to rewrite history by saying that blacks were brainwashed by becoming Democrats,” Sharpton showed his ignorance of the subject by stating, “We went with a Party that stood up for the Civil Rights Act of ’64 and Voting Rights Act of ’65.”

If Sharpton had gone with a party that stood the tallest for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he might be a Republican like Herman Cain:

The House version of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was supported by only 61 percent of that Chamber’s Democrats versus 80 percent of the Republicans.

More importantly, it was Republicans that ended a Democrat filibuster preventing a vote on this bill in the Senate. 82 percent of Republicans voted for cloture versus 66 percent of Democrats.

In the final Senate vote on the Act, 82 percent of Republicans voted “Aye” versus 69 percent of Democrats.

Quite contrary to what Sharpton and most liberals think, a greater percentage of Republicans than Democrats supported this Civil Rights Act.

Ditto for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Take it away, Al:

It’s enough to make you want to jump on the Sharpton bandwagon:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

On Al “Resist We Much” Sharpton’s MSNBC show, Mayor Michael “Resist We Salt” Bloomberg said that we must see to President Obama’s success for the sake of the future of our children and grandchildren (apparently in the future the cures for cancer and heart disease will be debt and unemployment checks, respectively).

Transcript from Story Balloon:

“But I think he is our president. And what we have to step back and say is, whether we voted for Barack Obama or not, whether we agree with Barack Obama or not, whether we like Barack Obama or not, he is our elected president. And our success, your children`s success and your grand children`s success depend on he being a good president while he`s in office. You may want to change presidents. You may yourself want to run against him. That`s fine. You can do that in a campaign. But you also have a responsibility as an American to make him be successful because the country is not successful if the president is not successful.”

He went on, but you get the point. If Bloomberg had been interviewed by anybody remotely inquisitive, a good follow-up might have been, “Can you please define ‘successful’?” That and “Do you think there is a difference between respect for the office and blind allegiance?”

If a president’s programs, dealings, morals and ethics — no matter what they are — are automatically in the best interest of America, why bother ever having elections?

Americans having the responsibility to make Obama successful must be why MSNBC has yet to mention Solyndra in any of their prime time programming. You don’t see that level of patriotism much these days:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

“But resist, we much… we must… and we will much… about… that… be committed.” – Al Sharpton, August 9, 2011

A new opposition movement is born, and in a matter of hours. It’s Al Sharpton’s “Resist We Much!”

As a matter of fact, the t-shirts are already for sale:

Sharpton spawned the latest political craze just last night. I didn’t necessarily want to post this, but it’s so funny that I just couldn’t resist… we much:

And to think I’ve been ignoring his show up to now. I had no idea he was this good.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Oddly enough, “don’t take advice from Al Sharpton” is nowhere to be found:

Despite the chuckles some might have at the idea of Reverend Al Sharpton giving someone advice about how to be taken seriously, while appearing on Morning Joe, Sharpton was humorous and even insightful with some of the wisdom he gave to Sarah Palin. The panel reacted to a new poll showing Palin’s favorability significantly dropping, which prompted Sharpton to recommend that there may be a path back for Palin.

Sharpton suggested, “the challenge is, if she’s going to be serious, she has to do what many of us did, expand that into policy.” Although Palin hasn’t advanced detailed policy proposals, Sharpton thinks Palin should actively advocate for an issue, like he is doing now with education reform. Given that some have recently called Palin “the Al Sharpton of the Republican party,” Sharpton admitted such a comparison probably is not “a compliment to her or me.” Although Sharpton pointed out that one difference between them was that he had to raise grievances because he was always an outsider, but at least until recently, Palin was an insider.

“Two words: Bearskin bullhorn.”

Up next: Former Rep. Christopher Lee advises Palin about how to use Craigslist to give her political career a boost.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

When last we visited the financial monkey business taking place in race-hustling Rev. Al Sharpton’s non-profit “National Action Network” last September, an internal audit showed delinquent taxes, shoddy bookkeeping, and campaign finance law-skirting.

The hijinks continue unabated.

Yesterday, the NYPost reported a new tax tab for Sharpton and Co.:

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has vowed to clean up his fiscal house, has a new tax lien to pay.

Sharpton owes $359,973 to the IRS for 2009 personal income tax, according to documents on file with the city.

Public records show he owes a total of $3.7 million in city, state and federal taxes, including penalties, dating to 2002. But Sharpton’s spokeswoman, Rachel Noerdlinger, said that he had paid back “well over seven figures” as part of agreements with the state and IRS and that the liens remained on the books as “a matter of bureaucracy.”

Perhaps Sharpton’s rent-a-mobsters should get out of Rush Limbaugh’s business and stick their noses in the National Action Network’s books instead.

Arizona voted to recognize the MLK holiday in 1992, but Donnie Deutcsh and Al Sharpton apparently get their information from the same courier service James Clapper uses:

Come on, guys — Lean Forward and pick up a contemporary American history book.

“We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming about how dumb Sarah Palin is…”

(h/t Fox Nation)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

That didn’t last long.

After exhorting the nation to steer away from discourse that “has become so sharply polarized,” President Obama and his administration will mark Martin Luther King Day by framing Obamacare as a “civil rights victory” (which means if you oppose it, you’re akin to slavery proponents, as Harry Reid posited earlier this year) and by consorting with one of the worst race-hustling demagogues in America, Al Sharpton:

Though it’s officially a holiday, most Obama administration officials will spend the day participating in volunteer activities as part of the National Day of Service.

Here’s a rundown of the schedule of events, as provided by the White House:

– President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are scheduled to participate in a community service project in the Washington area. Vice President Biden and Jill Biden will participate in a community service project in their hometown of Wilmington, Del.

– Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is scheduled to attend the Defense Department’s official observance program in the Pentagon’s auditorium.

– Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is scheduled to speak at the opening convocation of the Howard School of Divinity. Keeping in line with her ongoing defense of the health-care reform law, Sebelius is expected to discuss how the Affordable Care Act is a victory for civil rights, according to the White House.

– Education Secretary Arne Duncan is scheduled to speak at a breakfast hosted by Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and will later participate in a service project at Kramer Middle School in Southeast Washington. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is also scheduled to attend the breakfast.

Yes, that Al Sharpton.

How about, in the interest of “healing,” giving the race card a rest?

Through the Bush years, race-card demagoguery escalated to insane levels.

Under Obama, Democrat leaders at the highest levels, government bureaucrats, and “mainstream” journalist enablers pushed it farther:

Harry Reid openly sneered at Hispanic Republicans;

Harry Reid, Jesse Jackson & Company likened Obamacare critics to white supremacists and slave owners;

Journolist members conspired to paint Jeremiah Wright’s critics as racists;

MSNBC attacked conservatives who bought Sarah Palin’s book as paranoid white Tea Partiers;

Charlie Rangel attacked NYPD officers as racists who would arrest President Obama if he weren’t surrounded by Secret Service agents;

Former House Democratic whip James Clyburn played the race card over earmarks;

The FCC played the race card to expand its regulatory powers over the Internet;

The Congressional Black Caucus invoked the race-card shield to deflect widespread corruption charges against its members;

Liberal minority mobsters played ethnicity police against GOP Florida Sen. Marco Rubio;

Democrat Rep. Loretta Sanchez pulled out a divisive mega-race card to whip up Hispanics’ anti-Vietnamese fervor;

DREAM Act radicals bitterly accused opponents of xenophobia and race traitorism;

Progressives led the race-card attacks on the Tea Party from day one;

An NPR commentator cheered the fact that Tucson massacre suspect Jared Loughner was a “gringo;”

And the NAACP has morphed into the National Association for the Advancement of Coddled People.

For starters.

On this day of reflection about the need to judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin, I can’t put it any better than this black C-SPAN caller who spoke truth to race-hustling power in September…

And from Jerome Hudson, who wrote “A Black Man Goes to Glenn Beck’s Rally,” for Human Events:

Like most Americans, I’ve had enough with this administration’s policies. I was fed up and fired up.

I am even more so in the wake of the most moving gathering I’ve ever been privileged to be a part of.

At one point, some of the people attending the Rev. Al Sharpton’s “counter rally,” coined “Reclaiming King,” stopped me. I guess they must have been judging me by the color of my skin not the content of my character, because they asked if I was going to come join them.

“No, I won’t be there,” I told them. “Why?” one of them asked with a grimace on his face. I looked at him and said, “I want to be where the Lord is and the Lord is in this place.”

One of the older black women in the group asked me if I felt like I was “selling out” for being one of the “tokens” in the Beck rally crowd?

I laughed and said “Ma’am, Al Sharpton is a pretender. He is going to tell you to pretend that the color of your skin matters. He is going to ask you to ignore the now overwhelming proof that 50 years after the Civil Rights movement, blacks are now destroying each other faster than the KKK could have dreamed.”

As I walked away, the group stood frozen, not knowing how to reply.

Later, as Sharpton preached a divisive message void of actual solutions on how to “close the education and economic gap” in the “black community,” Dr. Alveda King, Martin Luther King’s niece, invoked the spirit of her slain uncle proclaiming, “I too have a dream, that white privilege will become human privilege and that people of every ethnic blend will receive everyone as brothers and sisters in the love of God.”

Her comments on restoring the “foundation of the family” in America were met, not with boos, but with a thunderous applause.

(What bigots those white folks! Having the audacity to cheer Dr. King’s niece like that. Racists the whole lot of them!)

I was probably the only 24-year old black college student in the crowd. It’s hard to know, because we had over 300,000 people there. But that didn’t matter to me. As we all stood hand-in-hand, American shoulder to American shoulder, our myriad faces streaked with tears as we sang “Amazing Grace.” It was a moment I will be proud to tell my grandkids about one day.

What that moment taught me is this: Something profound is happening in America that runs far deeper than politics. The ground is shifting, and it’s in freedom’s direction.

Let’s hope.

Every year for the past few years, I’ve noted the annual Al Sharpton Suck-Up — the annual grievance-mongering convention held by the race hustler’s non-profit “National Action Network.” It’s a purported grass-roots activist network that only seems to surface in the news once a year when Democrat leaders — and at least one RNC chairman — show up to the convention to pay homage and kiss Sharpton’s ring.

Biggest non-shocker of the year: The “National Action Network” is a fiscal mess, delinquent on taxes, and has run afoul of campaign finance laws. The NY Post reports:

An accounting firm hired by Al Sharpton’s National Action Network found the civil-rights group in such financial disarray that it flunked its record-keeping — and may not even survive, The Post has learned.

The scathing critique was spelled out in a hard-hitting internal audit of NAN’s books, a copy of which was obtained by The Post.

“The organization has suffered recurring decreases in net assets — and has been dependent upon advances from related parties and the nonpayment of payroll tax obligations — to maintain continuity,” the firm KBL concluded in an April 2 audit of NAN’s 2008 financial records, the most recent available.

The audit, which was submitted to NAN’s board of directors, warned, “These circumstances create substantial doubt about the organization’s ability to continue.”

KBL said it was “unable to form an opinion” on the accuracy of NAN’s financial figures “because of inadequacies in the organization’s accounting records.”

In 2008, federal prosecutors decided to drop a criminal probe into the finances of Sharpton and NAN. But Sharpton — who also has a lucrative syndicated radio show and a speech-making and consulting business — agreed to pay back more than $2 million in overdue personal and NAN taxes.

The audit said NAN still owed $1.348 million in delinquent city, state and federal taxes and penalties at the end of 2008. The IRS has filed dozens of liens against NAN over the past decade, including one as recently as April of this year.

Last year, the Federal Elections Commission slapped Sharpton with $285,000 fine, in part for illegally using NAN funds to cover the costs of his 2004 presidential campaign.

Thanks to Sharpton’s race shield, NAN has engaged in financial monkey business for years with impunity.

Yes, monkey business. Sue me.

***

Heh. JWF on Sharpton’s money troubles: “This ought to qualify him as a financial adviser to his pal Obama.”

(h/t Sissy Willis via F.A.M.)

And right on again, from Jerome Hudson via Human Events:

Like most Americans, I’ve had enough with this administration’s policies. I was fed up and fired up.

I am even more so in the wake of the most moving gathering I’ve ever been privileged to be a part of.

At one point, some of the people attending the Rev. Al Sharpton’s “counter rally,” coined “Reclaiming King,” stopped me. I guess they must have been judging me by the color of my skin not the content of my character, because they asked if I was going to come join them.

“No, I won’t be there,” I told them. “Why?” one of them asked with a grimace on his face. I looked at him and said, “I want to be where the Lord is and the Lord is in this place.”

One of the older black women in the group asked me if I felt like I was “selling out” for being one of the “tokens” in the Beck rally crowd?

I laughed and said “Ma’am, Al Sharpton is a pretender. He is going to tell you to pretend that the color of your skin matters. He is going to ask you to ignore the now overwhelming proof that 50 years after the Civil Rights movement, blacks are now destroying each other faster than the KKK could have dreamed.”

As I walked away, the group stood frozen, not knowing how to reply.

Three cheers for hope and change from independent-minded minorities revolting against their self-appointed civil rights “leaders.”

It’s a long time coming.

See also: Tolerant liberals attacking minority conservatives – ““Christianity Is A White Man’s Religion.”

So much for the separation of race baiter & State:

President Obama’s top education official urged government employees to attend a rally that the Rev. Al Sharpton organized to counter a larger conservative event on the Mall.

“ED staff are invited to join Secretary Arne Duncan, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and other leaders on Saturday, Aug. 28, for the ‘Reclaim the Dream’ rally and march,” began an internal e-mail sent to more than 4,000 employees of the Department of Education on Wednesday.
[...]
The Washington Examiner learned of the e-mail from a Department of Education employee who felt uncomfortable with Duncan’s request.

Had Duncan encouraged 4,000 Department of Education employees to attend Glenn Beck’s rally, he would have been discarded like yesterday’s jobless claims report… unexpectedly, of course.

If any DoE employees actually took Duncan’s advice and went to Sharpton’s rally, how many do you think spotted the flaw on this SEIU banner:

(h/t Weasel Zippers & Drudge)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

President Obama is headed to New Orleans this weekend to mark the 5th anniversary of Katrina. The papers and airwaves will be clogged with all sorts of retrospectives. My column today reminds you of the ugly racial demagoguery by leading Democrats and “civil rights” leaders from Jimmy Carter to Charlie Rangel to Malik Zulu Shabazz. It’s a divide that has also deepened in Obama’s imaginary age of post-racialism.

Related from Charles Krauthammer: The last refuge of a liberal. “What’s a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that preempts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument. The most venerable of these trumps is, of course, the race card.”

***

Hurricane Katrina and the race card: 5 years later
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

This weekend, on the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, civil rights activists and hip-hop stars will hold what they call a “healing ceremony” to commemorate the disaster. President Obama will speak at a separate event in New Orleans on Sunday. But don’t expect any of these reconciliation-seeking leaders to confront the indelible stain of racial demagoguery left by the left in Katrina’s aftermath. Hating George W. Bush means never having to say you’re sorry.

The Olympic gold medal for racial grievance-mongering went to rapper Kanye West, who railed during a supposedly nonpolitical nationwide telethon that the government was shooting “us,” that “those are my people down there,” and that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people!” West’s vulgar exploitation of a charity drive — which was meant to unite America — left most viewers with the same aghast, frozen expression as the one on comedian Mike Myers’ face as he tried to rescue their fundraising segment from the sewage.

Not to be outdone, the Congressional Black Caucus convened a press conference to blast news reporters for describing Katrina victims as “refugees.” Yes, really. The Rev. Jesse Jackson echoed their complaint: “It is racist to call American citizens refugees.” Refugees are, by dictionary definition, “exiles who flee for safety.” How this could be construed as bigoted remains as much a mystery as the source of unhinged Huffington Post blogger and self-proclaimed “social justice advocate” Randall Robinson’s bogus claim “that black hurricane victims in New Orleans have begun eating corpses to survive.”

Robinson retracted the report, but did not apologize for spreading the black cannibalism tale around the world and using Katrina to vent his own anti-American venom about his country being a “monstrous fraud.” Nation of Islam race hustler-in-chief Louis Farrakhan trafficked in his own baseless conspiracy-mongering about “a 25-foot-deep crater under the levee breach” indicating that the levee “may have been blown up to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry.” Director Spike Lee stoked the levee truthers further, declaring, “If they can rig an election, they can do anything!”

New Black Panther Party head Malik Zulu Shabazz chimed in, calling the Katrina rescue and recovery operation a “racist occupation of subjugation rather than a relief effort,” and saying it was designed “to keep non-white people in a state of subjugation on all levels, and they are viewed as expendable in order to protect the interest of the system.” Donning her own tinfoil hat, Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee suggested that Republican suppression of the black vote in 2000 and 2004 was to blame for the government’s botched Katrina response.

Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel drove the racial wedge in deeper by comparing President Bush to brutal Alabama segregationist Bull Connor. “If there’s one thing that George Bush has done that we should never forget,” Rangel spewed, “it’s that for us and for our children, he has shattered the myth of white supremacy once and for all.” At a House hearing, a Katrina witness testified unchallenged that black New Orleans residents were victims of “genocide and ethnic cleansing.”

The execrable Jimmy Carter waited a few months to unleash his own Bush-bashing bile — at the funeral of Coretta Scott King, no less — in February 2006. “We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, those who were most devastated by Katrina, to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans.”

Carter’s speech not only lacked basic decency. It lacked any grounding in reality. According to vital statistics released just months after the storm by the primary morgue that processed the bodies of the deceased, 48 percent of those who died in the natural disaster were black, 41 percent were white, with another 8 percent unknown and 2 percent Hispanic. Little-noted follow-up analysis confirmed those preliminary results and also debunked the myth that the poor were disproportionately affected by the storm.

Five years later, the same color-coded paranoia and political opportunism that poisoned the Hurricane Katrina recovery permeates every current conflict in the public square: Ground Zero Mosque opponents are all suspiciously funded bigots, according to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The Tea Party movement is the new Bull Connor, according to every liberal New York Times columnist. President Obama’s critics hate black people, according to every major black Hollywood director and hip-hop mogul. As for the soul-fixing, Nobel Peace Prize-winning commander-in-chief whose election was supposed to heal the divide, I will guarantee you he won’t ever lift a finger to repudiate the cynical smear tactics against his unjustly accused predecessor.

Post-racial America, we never knew you.