Have you heard about the latest overwrought tempest in a P.C. teapot on this post-Super Bowl Monday morning?

It’s over Michigan Republican Pete Hoekstra’s “insensitive” Senate campaign ad using an Asian-American actress portraying a Chinese worker gloating over incumbent Dem. Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s big spending habits.

Watch:

Black ministers and Asian activists have decried the commercial.

Both left and right are up in arms:

The portrayal of a young Asian woman speaking broken English in a Super Bowl ad being run by U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra against Michigan incumbent Debbie Stabenow is bringing charges of racial insensitivity.

GOP consultant Nick De Leeuw flat-out scolded the Holland Republican for the ad.

“Stabenow has got to go. But shame on Pete Hoekstra for that appalling new advertisement,” De Leeuw wrote on his Facebook page Sunday morning. “Racism and xenophobia aren’t any way to get things done.”

A media consultant who has advised Democrats also thought it could prove problematic.

“Some Asian-Americans may be offended by the stereotype that is portrayed in the spot,” said Robert Kolt, who teaches advertising part-time at Michigan State University and had previewed a number of

Sunday’s Super Bowl ads. “Pete seems like a nice guy in the ad, but I think he is wasting a lot of money now. … It’s just not Super Bowl-worthy. It’s not cute, it’s not funny and it’s not memorable.”

Is the ad less than tasteful? Yes.

Is it “xenophobic” to point out that China is benefiting ginormously from our fiscal recklessness, indebtedness, and outsourcing of jobs? Certainly not.

Oddly enough (in other words: predictably enough), there was little uproar when Vice President Joe Biden — a serial P.C. offender — mocked an Indian accent in decrying outsourcing of call center jobs just last month:

Back in 2006, Biden joked about Indian accents and Dunkin’ Donuts and gas stations — with a hardly a peep from the Sensitivity Police:

Liberal Democrat Bob Beckel mocked GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal’s State of the Union response address and likened it to a “call center ad in Mumbai:”

The P.C. police, as always, are P.C. only when it’s P.E. — politically expedient.

As for all the lefties decrying the ugly nativism of the “Buy American” message that resonates with Rust Belt voters, I remind you that it’s not just Republicans who have channeled Pat Buchanan for electoral gain:

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

Obama’s “Razist” Lobbyist Moves Up
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2012

With public attention focused on the GOP primaries, the White House quietly promoted another self-dealing lobbyist to serve as President Obama’s top domestic policy adviser. Promises? What broken promises?

Cecilia Munoz, the current director of intergovernmental affairs at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., will now serve as head of the Domestic Policy Council. She’ll wield heightened influence at Obama’s daily morning briefings and expand her reach from immigration issues to education, health care and beyond.

Gushing headlines heralded the advancement of Obama’s top Hispanic civil rights “advocate” as a win for the “middle class.” But Munoz is a veteran member of the Beltway lobbyist class whose former organization is reaping a taxpayer-funded windfall as she climbs the government ladder.

Before joining Team Obama, Munoz spent two decades as chief registered lobbyist for the National Council of La Raza (“The Race”). Whose “middle class” does The Race represent? I’ve tracked the radical identity politics-driven group for years as it promoted drivers’ licenses and in-state college tuition breaks for illegal aliens; opposed cooperative immigration enforcement efforts between local, state and federal authorities; and opposed a secure fence along the southern border.

Under Munoz, The Race advised the Mexican government on how to lobby for illegal alien amnesty in the United States. Mexico’s Institute for Mexicans Residing Abroad rewarded her with its Ohtli Prize for her service to the country. Their country, not ours.

The Race vehemently protested post-9/11 homeland security measures and joined a failed lawsuit to block immigration information-sharing between the feds and local police. The group also has called for TV and cable news networks to keep immigration enforcement proponents (including yours truly) off the airwaves, in addition to pushing for Fairness Doctrine policies to shut up their foes.

Most recently, The Race and other open-borders groups pressured the White House to deliver the DREAM Act illegal alien student bailout by executive fiat — after it was defeated repeatedly by bipartisan majorities on Capitol Hill. Obama started issuing the amnesty waivers last August. This week, the White House announced an even wider expansion of waiver status to illegal aliens claiming “hardship.”

Who has benefited from Munoz’s Beltway lobbying? No, not the American middle class. The biggest beneficiary has been La Raza’s coffers. According to analysts at nonpartisan Judicial Watch in Washington, The Race raked in $4.1 million in federal subsidies in 2009 and more than $11 million in 2010. Much of that money came straight from the Obama stimulus boondoggle, and much of it went to mortgage counseling.

As a result of “strategic partnerships” with Wachovia and Bank of America, The Race has succeeded in lowering mortgage application requirements and watering down documentation standards. Illegal aliens have secured countless federal and private home loans over the past decade thanks to the lending industry’s version of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

In addition, Munoz’s group collected a $1 million Democratic earmark that funded “community development” projects. And the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services kicked in $25,000 to co-sponsor the group’s annual conference in 2010.

Munoz’s multi-culti armor has shielded her radical lobbying from scrutiny. You’ll recall that the Obama administration made a lofty vow to end lobbyist conflicts-of-interest as we know them. The declaration was crystal-clear: “No political appointees in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years. And no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving government service during the remainder of the administration.”

But something got lost in translation when the White House brought registered lobbyist Munoz aboard — to work on the very open-borders agenda she pushed at The Race. Team Obama invoked a shady “public interest” exemption to waive the lobbyist ban because, it determined, “Ms. Munoz’s knowledge and expertise are vital to the functioning of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.”

Has Munoz recused herself on any of the myriad public policy issues she has advised the president on over the past two years? Who knows? The most transparent administration ever refuses to disclose recusal orders involving the nearly 100 lobbyists and ex-lobbyists on its payroll. Obama’s “Razist” revolving door isn’t a victory for “civil rights” or the 99 percent. It’s a triumph of politically correct business as usual.

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

1980s Death Row cop-killer Mumia abu Jamal, darling of Hollyweird and the progressive Left, will live out the rest of his natural life. Prosecutors announced today that they will no longer pursue the death penalty:

“The decision by District Attorney Seth Williams, made with the support of the officer’s widow and the city police commissioner, comes after nearly 30 years of legal battles over the racially charged case.

“There’s never been any doubt in my mind that Mumia Abu-Jamal shot and killed Officer Faulkner. I believe that the appropriate sentence was handed down by a jury of his peers in 1982,” said Williams, who is black. “While Abu-Jamal will no longer be facing the death penalty, he will remain behind bars for the rest of his life, and that is where he belongs.”

Abu-Jamal was convicted of fatally shooting Philadelphia police Officer Daniel Faulkner on Dec. 9, 1981. He was sentenced to death after his trial the following year.

Abu-Jamal, who has been incarcerated in a Pennsylvania prison, has garnered worldwide support from those who believe he was the victim of a biased justice system.

This Friday marks the 30th anniversary of the murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.

Justice delayed for three decades. Justice denied. Tragedy compounding tragedy.

***
Flashback – Our Hot Air segment on Officer Daniel Faulkner from 2006:

Flashback: Another life line for Death Row cop-killer Mumia abu Jamal
Flashback: Mumia Abu Jamal won’t go away
Flashback: Mumia Abu Jamal gets another day in court; a “human rights campaigner?”.
Flashback: Challenging the cult of Mumia Abu-Jamal
Flashback: Remembering Danny Faulkner
Flashback: Denouncing Mumia Chic
Flashback: A street named Mumia Abu Jamal
Flashback: Philadelphia fever: The Mumia parade

(h/t Dan Collins)

Huffington Post explains (h/t collegepolitico Stephen Gutowski):

CNN anchor Kyra Phillips had to apologize Wednesday after the network accidentally played a Coolio song featuring the N-word.

For a clip on a 103-year-old Pennsylvania woman who still drives, CNN played Coolio’s “Fantastic Voyage” to go into break.

The clip of the song they used?

“Ain’t no bloodin’, Ain’t no crippin’ / Ain’t no punk-a** n***a’s set trippin’ / everybody’s got a stack and it ain’t no crack / and it really don’t matter…”

“We aired some music just a few minutes ago, and, obviously for those of you that heard it, it was the wrong music that aired,” Phillips said shortly thereafter. “We apologize for that. It was a terrible mistake. And we’re working very hard to make up for it.”

Like Dan says: “What if this had happened on Fox?”

Over to you, NAACP, Al Sharpton, the Congressional Black Caucus, and FCC.

Police barricade on fire lit by protesters to disperse tear gas

Approx. 100 officers from Alameda County

Hayward PD and Concord PD also on scene

***

Earlier today…

I’m starting a fresh thread on tonight’s Occupy Oakland “strike.” (Previous post and background here.)

They’ve welcomed the Black Panthers and Communist revolutionary thug Angela Davis, and are currently marching to the Port of Oakland.

Various sympathizers and observers are tweeting live. Mother Jones reports that the Oakland Whole Foods store — after being falsely accused of threatening to punish workers who walked out on the job today — has been vandalized.

One person on scene writes: “Straight into window breaking and street furniture smashing at whole foods. #generalstrike #occupyoaklandwindow breaking and street furniture smashing at whole foods.”

Whole Foods is defending itself online. To no avail.

A big mob dressed in black is roaming around the streets. They’ve sprayed graffiti on the walls of businesses.

Wells Fargo windows have also been reportedly smashed.

Chase Bank vandalized.

Maybe the city enablers will use federal stimulus money to clean it up.

Overheard on livestream: Occupier sneers: “They can afford new windows.”

East Bay Express reports that approximately 75 shoppers were barricaded inside the Whole Foods as protesters threw rocks and smashed the windows.
Livestream here.

I’ll keep you posted as they head to the port.

****

Teamsters are in the house, of course…

Charter buses taking protesters to the Port of Oakland now. One occupier says there about a dozen buses on site. It looks like they are getting police escort…overhead shot via ABC7:

****

A swarm is gathering at the Oakland port:

At 732pm Eastern/432pm Pacific, an ILWU rep just consulted with occupiers at the Port of Oakland on which trucks to blockade. Broadcast here.

Union leaders are coordinating with occupiers to form a picket line that will allow them to turn around and stay in the port while abiding by their contract.

At 824pm Easter/532pm Pacific, the Port Authority has reportedly said that the port is shut down. Protesters have turned back vehicles and are climbing on top of trucks:

Brilliant: Protesters are preventing a trucker dad from picking up his son.

***

9:19pm Eastern/6:19pm Pacific: Classic. Occupier complains of thirst, complains that businesses are closed, finds food truck, buys cold soda, then proceeds to reprimand other workers for not staying home for the strike.

Priceless.

***

Factions splitting between rabble-rousers who want to mob the Bay Bridge and others waiting around for orders from the union goons.

Sideshow: The guy with the big Gandhi puppet…

***

More ugly Occupy Oakland pictures that won’t make MSM front pages.

***

Update: Midnight. Riot police apparently from Alameda County Sheriff’s office have fired on protesters, tear gas dispersed, warnings issued to leave.

A Mother Jones reporter tweets that “people are throwing firecrackers at the police.” And beer bottles.

Van Jones and Boots Riley approve.

And here are the midnight tweets from worst mayor in America, Oakland’s Jean Quan:

Idiocrat. Reaping what she has sown. Heckuva job, Jeanie.

Occupy Oakland strike promoter Boots Riley, who penned “5 million ways to kill a CEO,” celebrates the attack on the World Trade Center

My new column spotlights the Occupiers’ “general strike” action scheduled for today — and climaxing tonight in an anticipated shutdown of the Port of Oakland (Calif.). Many of the same old agitators I’ve covered over the past decade are behind the latest manufactured chaos. I refresh your memories below of the Bay Area Left’s violent Oakland port shutdown in 2003 and the ignominious Oakland agitator and strike leader Boots Riley, and also connect the dots between Riley, Oakland’s Van Jones, Occupy Oakland, and the violent ILWU thugs and their supporters who kicked off the Day of Rage warm-up show in Longview, Washington in September.

Related reading: Here’s the scathing open letter from Oakland’s police union blasting the quivering Democrat mayor Jean Quan. She’s a UC Berkeley-bred moonbat now more interested in restoring her prog credentials than in cleaning up her dysfunctional city and standing up for law-abiding businesses and taxpayers. The organizers have distributed their chants for the day, including:

“Strike, Occupy, Shut it Down! Oakland is the People’s Town”
“Every Hour, Every Day! The occupation is here to stay!”
“Occupy Everything! Liberate Oakland”
“Politicians & Bankers, Liars & Thieves, We’re taking it back! We’re not saying please!”
“No more cops, we don’t need ‘em! All we want is total freedom”
“Shut Down OPD! Not the Public Library!”
“Let’s Go Oakland! Let’s Go!” [clap] [clap]

Perhaps they’ll throw some of Boots Riley’s violent rap lyrics into the mix, too.

The mob enablers in Oakland’s city government — and the voters who keep putting these stooges in office — have only themselves to blame for disgracing their basket-case city. Shame.

***

Occupy Oakland’s dangerous “strike” follies
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

The next stage of the Aimless Occupation of America is upon us: On Wednesday, rabble-rousers in the San Francisco Bay Area will walk off jobs they don’t have and encourage everyone else around the country to abandon work to protest high unemployment.

The Occupiers are calling their organized day of inaction a “Mass Day of Action.” The Carpenters Local 713, the Service Employees International Union, the United Auto Workers, and the Industrial Workers of the World have all endorsed the “general strike.” Longshore workers and their union agitators are rooting for the shutdown of the Port of Oakland. Teachers’ unions will push students and educators to play hooky. Their posters urge: “No Work. No School. Occupy Everywhere.”

A city suffering from chronic poverty, out-of-control crime, a $76 million budget deficit, and a 15 percent unemployment rate (nearly 50 percent for Oakland’s youth) can hardly afford such social justice follies. But a pushover Democratic mayor and an overwhelmed police force have left what’s left of gainfully employed Oakland taxpayers at the mercy of professional freeloaders and anti-capitalism saboteurs.

Instead of unequivocally condemning efforts to paralyze downtown commerce, Oakland city officials have all expressed sympathy for the protesters. For a brief moment, the city council president fretted meekly about the city’s image after a violent clash between Camp Chaos inhabitants and law enforcement officers last week. Nevertheless, city leaders — or rather, city enablers — have informed public employees they can use vacation or other paid time to ditch their offices and raise their fists in solidarity with the Occupiers.

Instead of targeting local bank branch managers and private-sector entrepreneurs, the protesters should be camping out at government offices asking where all the tens of millions in federal Obama stimulus funding for Oakland went over the past two years – including $40 million from the Department of Health and Human Services, nearly $30 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, $26 million from the Department of Justice, $24 million from the Transportation Department, $15 million from the Department of Education, and $5.3 million from the Environmental Protection Agency.

One local analysis found last year that the Oakland Housing Authority squandered nearly $11 million in federal project renovation and clean-up stimulus grants to create a measly 10.7 jobs.

It would all be an amusing object lesson on the impotence of the welfare state, if not for the looming shadow of violence that hangs like stubborn Bay Area fog over the movement. In 2003, a like-minded mob of police-provoking anarchists, anti-war organizers, and progressive activists descended on the Port of Oakland to coordinate a “Day of Action.” They hurled concrete, wood, and iron bolts at cops while attempting to block military shipments to soldiers in wartime – then whined about police brutality.

Fast-forward eight years. This week’s “Day of Action” is spearheaded by the likes of Oakland rapper Boots Riley, a militant, self-declared “communist” who penned “5 million ways to kill a CEO” (“Toss a dollar in the river and when he jump in/If you find he can swim, put lead boots on him and do it again”) and “Lazy Muthaf**kas” (“You ain’t never learned to drive or tie your shoe/I got my ear to the street and my eye on you/… You’re a lazy ********** ! Lazy **********!). After the 9/11 attacks, I reported on Riley’s appalling album cover depicting him partying in front of a doctored image of the World Trade Center being blown up.

Like fellow Occupier, 9/11 conspiracy theorist, and Oakland community organizer Van Jones, Boots Riley has long stoked anti-police grievances. In “Pork and Beef,” he rapped: “If you got beef with c-o-p’s/Throw a Molotov at the p-i-g’s.”

Add to this toxic mix the thugs of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. The planned march on Oakland’s port is being billed as an expression of “solidarity with longshore workers in their struggle” against grain importer EGT. In Longview, Washington, wildcat union workers cut train brake lines, smashed windows, dumped grain, and took hostages earlier this fall to protest the company’s decision to employ not non-union workers, but workers from a competing shop. A federal judge fined the ILWU $250,000 after it defied a court restraining order; even Obama’s National Labor Relations Board was forced to issue a complaint against the union’s “violent and aggressive” actions.

The unapologetic local union president vowed: “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

Mark those words.

***

UPDATE: Men’s Wearhouse = moonbats.

Thousands “strike”…

Thousands of Wall Street protesters marched in the streets of Oakland on Wednesday as they geared up with labor unions to picket banks, take over foreclosed homes and vacant buildings and disrupt operations at the nation’s fifth-busiest port.

Demonstrators as well as city and business leaders expressed optimism that the widely anticipated “general strike” would be a peaceful event for a city that became a rallying point last week after an Iraq War veteran was injured in clashes between protesters and police.

Embattled Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, who has been criticized for her handling of the protests, said in a statement that she supported the goals of the protest movement that began in New York City a month ago and spread to dozens of cities across the country.

…Nurse, teacher and other worker unions are taking part in the protests, and Oakland is letting city workers use vacation or other paid time to take part in the general strike. About 5 percent of city workers took the day off Wednesday, according to City Administrator Deanna Santana.

About 360 Oakland teachers didn’t show up for work, or roughly 18 percent of the district’s 2,000 teachers, said Oakland Unified School District spokesman Troy Flint. The district has been able to get substitute teachers for most classrooms, and where that wasn’t possible children were sent to other classrooms, he said.

The day’s events in Oakland began with a rally outside City Hall that by midmorning drew more than 1,000 people who were spilling into the streets and disrupting the downtown commute.

About three dozen adults with toddlers and school-age children formed a “children’s brigade, gathering at Oakland Public Library for a stroller march to the protest in downtown Oakland. Demonstrators handed out signs written as if in a children’s crayon that read “Generation 99% Occupying Our Future,” which the marchers attached to their baby backpacks and strollers.

The protests were expected to culminate with a march to the Port of Oakland, where organizers said the goal would be to stop work there for the 7 p.m. shift. Organizers say they want to halt “the flow of capital” at the port.

Stay tuned.

You just have to laugh.

Heartily.

When I noted that the Occupy Wall Street movement was filled with a sea of progressives of pallor and challenged the Tea Party-bashing media double standards on calling attention to the demographics two weeks ago, the occupiers filled my Twitter stream with profanities and racial epithets. Soros Monkeys tried to “debunk” my basic point by picking out a few brown faces in the Kamp Alinsky Kids’ crowd.

And also: By screaming “RAAAAAAAAACIST” at me.

Now, the progs are admitting out loud what I needled them for when this whole thing started: They don’t practice what they preach. They never have.

The Associated Press reports:

Jason Woody immediately recognized a shared struggle with many of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators: The 2007 college graduate has been out of work for two years, and it’s been longer since he’s seen a doctor. He also noticed something else — the lack of brown faces on the front lines of the Occupy movement.

“When I started out here … I realized there was not a lot of diversity out here,” said Woody, who is black and graduated from Morehouse College and has camped in a downtown Atlanta park with other protesters for more than a week. “It’s changed in the course of the past week. I’d like to see that grow.”

…The Occupy Wall Street protest in New York has been more diverse than other cities. Although the majority of protesters are white, many blacks and a smattering of Asians and Latinos have participated.

Among them is Omar Henriquez, a Long Island resident who emigrated from El Salvador. He passed out Spanish-language copies of the Occupied Wall Street Journal on Friday. He has been taking the newspaper to Latino and immigrant rights groups. He also is unemployed.

“That’s why I’m here,” said Henriquez, 55. “It’s incumbent on us, Latinos here, to bring more Latinos here. We don’t have to be invited to come, we just come.”

Actually, they don’t “just come.”

Remember: Many non-English-speaking day laborers are being PAID to come.

Manufacture/Subsidize Diversity!

***

So I was shocked to see that he was prosecuted and found guilty today in a federal court case over two columns he wrote in 2009 about race, entitlements, and politics.

It’s chilling. There’s no other word for it. And I shudder to think how “progressives” here in America would relish the legal bludgeon Australia’s politically correct mob used to punish Bolt’s views.

Via the Australian Herald Sun:

THE assumed right of unfettered freedom of speech was trumped by laws protecting against racial vilification this morning after the Federal Court delivered its decision on the controversial “white Aborigines” case of Pat Eatock v Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt.

Justice Mordy Bromberg found Bolt and the Herald and Weekly Times contravened the Racial Discrimination Act by publishing two articles on racial identity which contained “errors in fact, distortions of the truth and inflammatory and provocative language”.

Speaking outside court, Bolt said it was “a terrible day for free speech in this country”.

“It is particularly a restriction on the freedom of all Australians to discusss multiculturalism and how people identify themselves,” Bolt said.

“I argued then and I argue now that we should not insist on the differences between us but focus instead on what unites us as human beings,” Bolt said.

The columnist said he would read and consider the full judgment before commenting further.

Justice Bromberg said it was important to note his judgment did not forbid debate or articles on racial identity issues if done “reasonably and in good faith in the making or publishing of a fair comment”.

“Nothing in the orders I make should suggest that it is unlawful for a publication to deal with racial identification, including by challenging the genuineness of the identification of a group of people,” Justice Bromberg said.

Ms Eatock and a group of eight other Aboriginals took Bolt and the Herald and Weekly Times to court claiming racial vilifiication over two articles in which he criticised fair-skinned Aborigines for what he argued was a choice they made, as people of mixed racial background, to emphasise their indigenous heritage over their white heritage.

Ms Eatock welcomed the judgment, saying it was a statement against discrimination.

She said the court’s decision meant racial identity could be debated, but with respect.

Here’s the full text of the ruling.

There’s at least one free-market think tank and free speech defender in Australia standing up for Bolt.

But don’t look for any “dissent is patriotic” progs to protest the criminalization of politically incorrect speech.

When I commented about the court case on Twitter tonight, a liberal Australian wrote to me:

“So you think it’s right for headlines such as ‘White fellas in the black’ to be used? What if your Asianess was questioned?”

To which I replied:

*People “question my Asianness” every damned day. [See here for tonight's freshest serving.[ So what? Thank God it's not a CRIME here in America.

*Liberal racist filth flung at me constantly. [See the minions of Alec Baldwin.]

My response is MORE/BETTER speech to counter it, not less speech.

***

On a related note: How long before we dissenters from the liberal racial orthodoxy are all sentenced to eat “conscious cupcakes” and repent? Click the link to read about the prog backlash against UC Berkeley conservatives’ mock affirmative action bake sale:

vent organizers received numerous threats on Facebook, and some of the group’s members changed their names and profile pictures. “This event was not organized by a bunch of white guys,” Mr. Lewis said. “We’re not racists.” The group’s 10-member board of directors includes several Asians and a Latino, he said, and more than half the board members are women.

Student leaders worried that the bake sale would make students uncomfortable and aggravate tensions on campus.

“A number of students have come to me very concerned,” said the student body president, Vishalli Loomba, 20, a fourth-year molecular and cell biology major. “Many feel the differential pricing is offensive and that it makes them feel unwelcome.”

Despite the outcry, organizers said the sale would go forward unless they were threatened with physical violence. Mr. Lewis said Republican groups from nearby colleges — including the University of California, Davis; California State University, Sacramento; and Saint Mary’s College of California — had called to say they were sending carloads of supporters to the bake sale.

The race-based prices will be posted on signs, but organizers said they would not enforce them and would instead allow students to pay whatever they wanted.

One group of students decided to protest pastries with more pastries.

As of Monday afternoon, more than 600 people had R.S.V.P.’d on Facebook to attend the “Conscious Cupcakes Giveaway,” scheduled for the same time and place as the Berkeley College Republicans’ bake sale and the student government’s phone bank.

“Join us in celebrating and representing U.C. Berkeley’s diverse community!” read the event announcement. “We recognize we still have a long way to go in bridging the gaps in understanding the complexities of race, gender and sexuality, but we take the first steps by taking our first bite of free Conscious Cupcakes in solidarity!”

One Berkeley student wrote on the event’s page: “conscious cupcakes > discriminatory cupcakes.”

Hmmmm. “Operation Vote.” That’s the new name of a Chicago-run voter recruitment drive launched this weekend by Team Obama to target minorities and shore up his left flank.

As usual, everything old is new again…

Photoshop credit: Leo Alberti

Via the Washington Post:

President Obama’s campaign is developing an aggressive new program to expand support from ethnic minority groups and other traditional Democratic voters as his team studies an increasingly narrow path to victory in next year’s reelection effort.

The program, called “Operation Vote,” underscores how the tide has turned for Obama, whose 2008 brand was built on calls to unite “red and blue America.” Then, he presented himself as a politician who could transcend traditional partisan divisions, and many white centrists were drawn to the coalition that helped elect the country’s first black president.

Today, the political realities of a sputtering economy, a more polarized Washington and fast-sinking presidential job approval ratings, particularly among white independents, are forcing the Obama campaign to adjust its tactics.

Operation Vote will function as a large, centralized department in the Chicago campaign office for reaching ethnic, religious and other voter groups. It will coordinate recruitment of an ethnic volunteer base and push out targeted messages online and through the media to groups such as blacks, Hispanics, Jews, women, seniors, young people, gays and Asian Americans.

Just a few weeks ago, “Operation Vote” was “Project Vote.”

And the last time Obama fronted a massive campaign machine coordinating minorities and tied into the Chicago/ACORN social justice machinery it went by the name… “Project Vote.”

Obama denied aaaaanything having to do with ACORN and on his campaign’s “Fight the Smears” snitch watch site, he flatly denied any connection between Project Vote and the fraud-plagued ACORN:

• Fact: Barack was never an ACORN community organizer.
• Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee.
• Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992.

The truth? Well, Project Vote whistleblower Anita MonCrief (now at Emerging Corruption) has been exposing the racket for years. As the “new” “Operation Vote” gets underway, it’s worth reminding the electorate how the old Project Vote skirted campaign finance, disclosure, and tax laws in its single-minded bid to lock up minority voters. If you weren’t paying attention back then, pay attention now.

***

Flashback May 2009:

(Photo source: 2008 ACORN slideshow presentation)

They thought it would go away. They were wrong. Obama and the Left thought ACORN’s scandalous racket was a dead issue. But whistleblowers, investigative bloggers, and talk radio continue to press for transparency and taxpayer accountability. Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King has renewed efforts for congressional hearings into the financial structure of the massive, publicly subsidized activist group and its non-profit affiliates. Judicial Watch sheds light on ACORN’s partnership with the Census. Keep an eye on ACORN’s propaganda role in the Obama push for a government health care takeover. And Glenn Beck spotlights the left-wing strategy session to rescue ACORN.

My column today returns to one of the Obama campaign’s big lies — that Barack Obama “never organized with ACORN” and that ACORN had nothing to do with Project Vote. They were joined at the hip back then and they remain joined at the hip today.

Here’s the text of e-mails from ACORN and affiliate staffers patting themselves on the back for their role in Obama’s voter registration drive (click here for the original). Note the addressees, including Frances Piven. Yes, that Frances Piven:

From: Kevin Whelan [specialprojects@citizensservices.org]
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2008 10:54 PM
To: mslater@igc.org; ‘Sanford Newman’; poldirect@acorn.org; ‘Frances Piven’; lcm25@columbia.edu
Cc: ‘Sarah Massey’; nhendersonjames@projectvote.org; kgillette@projectvote.org; ‘Michael McDunnah’
Subject: RE: Obama’s Voter-registration Drive

Find it on news stands now.

It’s the coordinated corruption, stupid. And if the GOP doesn’t start fighting back, the consequences will be permanent.

***
The truth about ObamACORN
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

Left-wing groups in Washington, D.C., are panicked. The New York Times and other Team Obama whitewashers have tried hard to suppress mounting evidence of legally suspect coordination between the Obama presidential campaign, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), and Obama’s old employer Project Vote (ACORN’s non-profit canvassing arm). Alas, the truth keeps seeping out.

At a closed-door pow-wow hosted Thursday at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, activists discussed how to combat a relentless stream of corruption charges from ACORN/Project Vote whistleblowers. But it’s too late for a reputation bailout. Former Project Vote official and whistleblower Anita MonCrief has harnessed the Internet to crowd-source a massive cache of documents showing ties between Obama staff and the supposedly “non-partisan” ACORN operations.

Last fall, the New York Times abandoned an investigation into whether Obama had shared donor lists with Project Vote, a 501(c)(3) organization that is prohibited from engaging in political activity. Public editor Clark Hoyt earlier this month called it “the tip that didn’t pan out.” Critics suggested that the donor lists could have been compiled through public records. But I have obtained the lists — not only of Obama donors, but also lists of Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry contributors. The records [view them here] include small donors to the Obama campaign who are not disclosed in public campaign finance databases. It’s information only a campaign could supply.

MonCrief testified under oath last fall that her then-boss, Karyn Gillette, gave her the Obama donor list and told her the campaign had furnished it. Moreover, e-mail between ACORN, Project Vote, and other affiliates, including ACORN’s subsidiary, Citizens Services, Inc. (CSI), make explicit references to working on “Obama campaign related projects.” [Click here for the e-mail.] The “list of maxed out Obama donors” is explicitly mentioned in staff e-mail. [Click here for the e-mail.] Another message from ACORN/Project Vote official Nathan Henderson-James warns ACORN and affiliated staff to prepare for “conservatives…gearing up a major oppo research project on Obama.”

Henderson-James wrote obligatorily, “Understand I’m not suggesting that we gear up to defend a candidate’s campaign.” But that, of course, is exactly what the ACORN enterprise did.

Text of full e-mail [click here for original]:

From: Nathan Henderson-James [sworddirect@citizensservices.org]
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2008 5:09 PM
To: ‘Zach Polett’; ‘mslater@igc.org’; Kevin Whelan (specialprojects@citizensservices.org)
Cc: Karyn Gillette; ‘communications@acorn.org’; Nordette Adams
Subject: Oppo Research On Obama

Folks,

The attached link goes to a story on TPM Muckraker that says that conservatives are gearing up a major oppo research project on Obama.

We should prepare for this information being used to tie Obama to the bogus voter fraud charges leveled against PV and ACORN from the last two election cycles. It may or may not gain traction, it may or may not be chosen as a way of attacking him, but I think we cannot afford to ignore the possibility and plan what our response(s) might be (if any).

Understand I’m not suggesting that we gear up to defend a candidateís campaign, but prepare for the scrutiny and possible ancillary attacks that will come our way because of this.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/tabula_rasa.php

Nathan
—–

Nathan Henderson-James
Director, Strategic Writing and Research Department
Citizens’ Services, Inc.
3655 S. Grand Ave #250
Los Angeles, CA 90007
213-747-7202 phone, 213-747-4221 fax, 510-213-1970 cell
sworddirect@citzensservices.org www.citizensservices.org

Why does this matter? Transparency, tax dollars, and electoral integrity. ACORN’s own lawyer, Elizabeth Kingsley, acknowledged last year that a vast web of tax-exempt ACORN affiliates were shuffling money around – making it difficult to impossible to track whether campaign rules and tax regulations were being followed. ACORN receives 40 percent of its revenues from taxpayers. Americans deserve to know whether and how much commingling of public money with political projects has occurred over the last four decades – and what role the Obama campaign played in this enterprise.

Remember: Last August, the Obama team admitted its failure to properly disclose $800,000 in payments to ACORN’s subsidiary, CSI – which works hand-in-hand with Project Vote and the ACORN parent organization. Obama mysteriously re-classified the campaign advance work expenditures as “get-out-the-vote” activities. Nary a peep from electoral integrity watchdogs.

Despite heated denials from Team Obama, the links between ACORN, Project Vote, and CSI are inextricable. As Obama himself reminded ACORN leaders after its political action committee endorsed his presidential candidacy in February 2008:

I come out of a grassroots organizing background. That’s what I did for three and half years before I went to law school. That’s the reason I moved to Chicago was to organize. So this is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it. I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.

As I’ve reported before, the Obama campaign’s “Vote for Change” registration drive, running in conjunction with ACORN/Project Vote, was an all-out scramble to scrape up every last unregistered voter sympathetic to Obama’s big-government vision.

In an e-mail message to whistleblower MonCrief last summer, New York Times reporter Stephanie Strom told the truth: “The real story to all this is how these myriad entities allow them to shuffle money around so much that no one really knows what’s getting spent on what.” By October 6, 2008, Strom had thrown in the towel in the wake of blistering phone conversations with the Obama campaign. She wrote:

“I’m calling a halt to my efforts. I just had two unpleasant calls with the Obama campaign, wherein the spokesman was screaming and yelling and cursing me, calling me a rightwing nut and a conspiracy theorist and everything else…I’d still like to get that file from you when you have a chance to send it. One of these days, the truth is going to come out.”

It’s only just begun.

***

Yesterday, I posted a few of the e-mails between NYTimes Stephanie Strom and ACORN/Project Vote whistleblower Anita MonCrief. You can download the entire series of message by clicking here. Mike Gaynor has transcriptions of several of the message here, including:

1. “I’m a little miffed with the funders, too. They have to be aware that the grants they make to c(3)s like Project Vote are being funneled to Acorn, which, whether c(4) or simply nonprofit corporation under state law, they aren’t supposed to give money to. ” July 10, 2008 8:18:52 PM

“What a mess.” September 13, 2008 9:43 AM

When I do, I’m called a RAAAAACIST and accused of “trying to pit the Latinos against the African-American people.”

Law-abiding victims of such violence know the truth, though. Ask the family of Jamiel Shaw. Or Cheryl Green or Shatavia Anderson.

Today’s self-defense story of the day — which will be ignored by anti-gun Democrats open-borders activists, and multi-culti propagandists — comes from Norwalk, Calif., which is known as an illegal alien sanctuary city (h/t Cameron Gray):

A woman used a gun to fight off two men who forced their way into her house after spray painting racial epithets outside early Thursday, officials said.

Two men, described only as male Latino suspects, scrawled anti-black graffiti on the outside walls of a home in the 12900 block of Lindale Street about 1:30 a.m., Los Angeles County sheriff’s Lt. Bill Evans said.

They then forced their way inside of the home, occupied by a black woman in her 40s, he said.

But the frightened resident was ready with a gun, the lieutenant said.

“The resident, in fear for her safety, fired a firearm at the suspects,” Evans said. “It doesn’t appear anyone was struck.”

The intruders then fled from the home and were not found.

Democrats Reps. Maxine Waters and Andre Carson were too busy demonizing Tea Party members as lynching RAAACISTS to comment.

Shake, shake, shake:

The Congressional Black Caucus is trying to help by organizing job fairs across the country. Congresswoman Maxine Waters also wants to help by putting more pressure on the big banks to help with mortgages.

“If they don’t come up with loan modifications and keep people in their homes that they’ve worked so hard for, we’re going to tax them out of business,” said Waters.

(Hat tip: William Amos)

Pander-mandate-mania!
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

Hey, you know what the beleaguered American economy could really use right now? More special-interest mandates imposed by the White House on employers and taxpayers. Team Obama is “Winning the Future” by strangling it in red, green and rainbow-colored tape.

In a hapless bid to mollify minority politicians and criminal flash mobs of jobless hooligans in their districts across the country, the White House last week issued an executive order “establishing a coordinated government-wide initiative to promote diversity and inclusion in the federal workforce.” Apparently, as record numbers of people collect food stamps and unemployment benefits, what’s really eating at them isn’t their hopeless dependency. It’s the skin color, national origin and gender breakdown of the Nanny State drones doling out their public benefits.

“Only” 39 percent of the federal workforce is made up of minorities and “only” 43.9 percent is female, President Obama’s diversity mandarins decry. But disproportionality does not equal automatic discrimination. How about this: Let’s see the Obama campaign meet fantastical diversity goals for its own donor base before forcing them on the publicly subsidized federal workforce.

While Obama lolls around Martha’s Vineyard with corporate CEOs, Ivy League profs and Hollywood celebrities, his minions at the Office of Personnel Management are now hard at work developing strategies, goals and timetables to meet racial proportionality targets.

Presumably, these will supersede the pre-existing plethora of “diversity” rules long enforced by the racial preference bureaucracy. It’s the bean counters’ stimulus.

The inconvenient truth, of course, is that government-engineered “diversity” has already produced scores of minority-dominated pockets across the elite federal civilian sector. But forcing both public and private employers to hire-by-racial-numbers has done nothing to solve chronic unemployment and underemployment among black Americans outside the Beltway. The jobless rate among blacks is a sky-high 15.6 percent.

You know what else won’t benefit black unemployed Americans all that much? The new White House executive order granting mass deportation waivers. To mollify open-borders activists, Obama signed a blanket directive of immigration non-enforcement last week that will grant reprieves to at least an estimated 2.1 million “DREAM Act” illegal alien students and workers. Instead of deportation papers, they’ll be served work authorization permits and green lights to attend publicly supported colleges and universities. Those who refuse to hire or admit these waiver golden ticket winners will face the certain and immediate legal and political wrath of La Raza, the American Civil Liberties Union, Catholic leaders and the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

When Obama rolls out his hodge-podge jobs plan after descending from Martha’s Vineyard, he’ll undoubtedly tout a regulatory rollback that the administration claims will save $10 billion over five years. But what about the costs of all the pander-mandates they’re furiously heaping on taxpayers as 2012 nears?

According to the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the last DREAM Act proposal (which failed in December on a bipartisan vote), the amnesty now in place by administrative fiat would “increase projected deficits by more than $5 billion in at least one of the four consecutive 10-year-periods starting in 2021.” And that doesn’t include the costs of all the unlimited family members that the millions of DREAM Act beneficiaries will eventually be able to bring to the U.S.

Hispanic politicians can pretend it’s not a zero-sum game. But the rest of us can’t afford such delusions. Indeed, it’s a self-perpetuating, voter-recruitment racket for the Democratic Party. Among the first White House deportation waiver beneficiaries: an illegal alien student from Mexico who led protests on Capitol Hill for the DREAM Act and another left-wing activist from Mexico who was able to evade deportation by marrying her lesbian lover.

On Monday, black Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters hectored an Obama jobs official to spell out exactly which Americans were suffering under the Democrats’ failed policies. “Let me hear you say ‘black,’” she taunted at an economic forum. The crowd whooped it up. But it’s cronies of color like Waters who have joined hands with the open-borders alliance, backed every special-interest bailout and hyped diversity for diversity’s sake as the cures for her community’s ills.

Let me hear you say “pot and kettle.”

Calling the civility police. Oh, never mind. It’s an uncivil corruptocrat with a “D” after her name. Go ahead, progs, and look the other way.

Via the LA Times:

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) came out swinging against Republicans in Congress on Saturday as she addressed the unemployed during a forum in Inglewood.

The event occurred a day after new statistics were released showing that California’s jobless rate last month went up to 12%, from 11.8%. California now has the second-highest rate of unemployment in the nation, trailing only Nevada at 12.9%, and its jobless rate is well above the U.S. average of 9.1%.

Waters vowed to push Congress to focus on creating more jobs. “I’m not afraid of anybody,” said Waters. “This is a tough game. You can’t be intimidated. You can’t be frightened. And as far as I’m concerned, the ‘tea party’ can go straight to hell.”

More than 1,000 people attended “Kitchen Table Summit,” which was designed to give the jobless an opportunity to vent to elected officials and share their struggles about finding a job.

Say, what’s the latest on the Swamp Queen’s stalled ethics trial?

It’s been punted to an outside counsel:

The House ethics committee is poised to pay a half-million dollars by year’s end to resolve the mess that remains of its three-year probe of Rep. Maxine Waters.

An outside counsel and private law firm will sort out how to handle the most substantive case on the committee’s plate this session, as the panel tackles more modest matters. Waters, a powerful California Democrat, and a former senior staffer on the committee have separately questioned the integrity of the panel’s investigation.

…Waters’s scheduled ethics trial in November 2010 was postponed amid the disputes. Both the staff director and the two investigators left the committee, with the case unresolved.

The new outside review of the Waters case is already underway and being led by respected defense lawyer Billy Martin. It aims to determine whether the committee so tainted the investigation that it must drop the charges. If Martin finds the case can proceed, and the ethics committee agrees, he and associates at his firm of Dorsey & Whitney would lead the revived probe.

When the committee’s new staff director, Dan Schwager, arrived in May he immediately reviewed the handling of the Waters case. In a private meeting the week of June 28, the committee agreed with Schwager’s proposal that the panel should hire outside counsel. Chief among the reasons was a lack of public trust in the process and Waters’s accusations that the committee had broken its own rules. Schwager, known as an even-handed counsel to the Senate ethics committee, has been well-received by committee members.

The committee announced Martin’s hiring July 20, and acknowledged that its conduct was the subject of “serious allegations.”

“The outside counsel’s review will . . . help assure all respondents and the entire House community of the integrity of the committee’s process for all matters,” the statement said.

Under his contract, Martin needs committee approval to release any information about the Waters probe and finish his initial review by Jan. 2.

So what, besides cronyism of color, do Water and her Congressional Black Caucus have in mind to reduce dismal job numbers for unemployed black Americans?

The Big Labor infrastructure bank slush fund (which I’ve repeatedly dissected here here and here):

“We’re doing a lot on job creation in our community,” said Waters. “For example, the congressional black caucus has come up with 40 pieces of legislation to deal with various aspects of creating jobs. We support an infrastructure bank that the president is alluding to.”

As usual, the CBC has left vague threats of creating civil disorder hanging out there:

WATERS: The only thing that I think the President should be aware of is people want him to fight. They said, don’t back down from the Tea Party. Don’t let them have their way.

EDWARDS: Waters says several caucus bills targeting the black unemployment rate are stuck in the Republican-controlled House. Georgia Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights icon, says marches may not be the answer this time, but something has to give.

Representative JOHN LEWIS: As representatives of people, we have a moral obligation to stand up, to speak up, to speak out and do what I call get in the way. Sometimes, you have to make some noise. You have to disturb the order of things.

Sounds like a social-justice endorsement for more flash mobs.