We Have A Black President And This Country Is STILL Racist

One of the things that has irritated me lately is when I get into conversations online is when some conservafool starts trying to deny that racism American style exists by deploying the 'We have a Black president' line followed by reciting the usual conservabullfeces and talking points. 

The bottom line is this country is still racist, and no matter how much you wallowing in vanillacentric privileged 'proud conservatives' want to deny it, this country is as racist as ever, and I submit it's gotten worse since 2008. 

Hell, you conservafools have demonstrated foaming at the mouth hatred of the POTUS and severe cases of Obama Derangement Syndrome since November 4, 2008, so it's disingenuous for you to try to hold him up as your justification in your minds that racism doesn't exist. 

The bigot eruptions from Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling blow that lie up along with the ranting of Limbaugh and all of your hive mind radio and FOX Noise commentators. 

I haven't even addressed the dog whistle racist comments of  Rep. Paul Ryan and his fellow Teapublicans who continue to execute Southern Strategy 2.0 and foment racial animus in white conservative ranks for political gain.

Race matters.  Racism exists in the United States, it is systemic and as Justice Sonia Sotomayor so eloquently stated in her recent blistering dissent in the Schuette vs Bahm Michigan affirmative action case:

"In my colleagues' view, examining the racial impact of legislation only perpetuates racial discrimination,” Sotomayor said. “This refusal to accept the stark reality that race matters is regrettable. As members of the judiciary tasked with intervening to carry out the guarantee of equal protection, we ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society."

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination,”     

And until the out of touch and willfully clueless in this country grasps the point that Justice Sotomayor made, and get serious about tacking the systemic racism in this country beyond cosmetic measures, these problems will continue.

Evon Young Finally Gets Justice

I've been keeping track of the Evon Young case and the five people, Victor Stewart, Ashanti Mcalister, Billy R. Griffin, Ron Joseph Allen, and Devin L. Seaberry who were arrested and charged with the murder of the 22 year old transmasculine rapper.   

It took a while for the five people accused of his murder and their cases to work their way through the justice system in Wisconsin, but it has finally happened.  

It won't bring 'Yung LT' back, but justice has been served in this case.  And now, here's the final judicial scorecard and update of what happened to all the people involved.

23 year old Devin Seaberry pled guilty to a lesser charge of second degree reckless homicide on July 2 in return for his testimony against Griffin, Mcalister and Allen.   Seaberry was sentenced to eight years in prison and seven years of extended supervision..

27 year old Victor Stewart pled guilty June 5 to second degree reckless homicide in exchange for his testimony against Griffin, and was sentenced to 16 years in prison and seven years of extended supervision.
     
19 year old Ashanti Mcalister was found guilty of first degree intentional homicide on June 27, and was sentenced on September 12 to life imprisonment.   He'll be eligible for parole in 2066.  

38 year old Ron Allen was found guilty of one count of first degree intentional homicide and sentenced April 14 to life imprisonment without the eligibility of extended supervision. 

26 year old Billy Griffin, whose first trial ended in a hung jury on June 17, was arraigned on first degree intentional homicide charges,  Just before Griffin's retrial was set to start, he plead guilty February 17 to amended charges and was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison and an additional six years and two months of extended supervision.

Four African-American Women Make 2014 US Olympic Bobsled Team

The US men's and women's bobsled teams were named yesterday by the USA Bobsled and Skeleton Federation for the Sochi Games.  One of the interesting to note facts about the women's bobsled team is that it will have four African-American women on it. 

Lolo Jones did make it onto the women's team as one of the three push athletes along with fellow Olympic sprinter Lauryn Williams and Aja Evans. 

The US bobsled team drivers will be Jamie Greubel, Elana Meyers and sister Jazmine Fenlator.   

Jones and Williams by making the team also made a little sporting history by becoming the ninth and tenth Americans to make a Winter and Summer Olympics team.  Williams was a 100m silver medalist at the 2004 Athens Games and won gold in the 4x100m relay at the 2012 London Games.   

Jones will be in search of the Olympic medal that keeps eluding her.  She was on her way to victory in the 100m hurdles at the 2008 Beijing when she clipped the last one and fell.   In London she finished fourth and after being asked to try out for bobsled team made it and medaled in her first World Cup race.
  
So hopefully the Olympic medal will finally happen for her in Sochi.  She and the other US women want to keep the tradition going of a US women's sled collecting a medal in every Olympiad since the women's Olympic bobsled competition started in 2002.

The four African-American bobsled women in Jones, Evans, Williams and Fenlator will be trying to join Vonetta Flowers as African-American winter Olympic bobsled medalists.

If she does so, Fenlator would be the first to do so as a bobsled driver.

So I'll definitely be tuned in when the women's bobsled competition starts February 18-19 to see how the Team USA women do in Sochi.  
 

When Does Finishing In Third Place NOT Get You An Olympic Spot?

The various trials and selection processes to assemble our US Olympic team are happening as you read this in preparation for Team USA to go for gold in Sochi next month.

In many cases the criteria has been clearly laid our for every Olympic hopeful to know.  Perform at the trials and finish in the top three and you make the team.  In other sports the federation will select the athletes who go like in hockey or the bobsled and luge team.

So what many people are asking is how does a figure skater who finished fourth at the 2010 Vancouver Games, but didn't fall during her more difficult routine at the US Figure Skating National Championships and finishes third get bumped off the Olympic team by someone who finished fourth during the same event in Boston, has no Olympic experience and fell twice during her program?

And yeah, I'm going there.  How do you explain that snubbing US Figure Skating Association, when the skater who finished third was Asian but the one who cratered is a blonde haired blue eyed white female who has been the focus of NBC's pre-Olympic marketing of the games and spoken out against the anti-LGBT laws in Russia?

Can you say vanillacentric privilege?   Thought you could.  

That's the question many people, and especially those of us who are non-white are asking in the wake of 20 year old Mirai Nagasu being passed over by the US Figure Skating Association and named an alternate on the team in favor of Ashley Wagner, the skater who fell twice during last weekend's US Championships that determined who would make the Sochi Olympic squad. 

Unlike the US Track and Field trials and other sports, where the first three people across the line at the trials regardless of past performance make the squad, USA figure skating takes past performances into account and gives them an unspecified weight in the selection process.

Did vanillacentric privilege and bias become one of those unspecified factors that influenced the process?

Wagner was the two time defending US champion entering the TD Garden before that event.  She was a fourth-place finisher at the 2012 world championships and the fifth-place holder at the 2013 worlds.  But she cratered badly during this event and even admitted the pressure got to her.

So if Wagner can't handle the pressure of the US Championships that determined who makes the US Olympic skating team going to Sochi, what makes her and the US Figure Skating Association think that she'll do any better when the pressure is ramped up several more notches and she's in the Iceberg Skating Arena at Sochi with medals on the line.having to compete against defending Olympic champion Kim Yu-Na of South Korea and defending Vancouver Games silver medalist Mao Asada of Japan?  

Meanwhile Nagasu arrives in Boston without a coach, people gave her no chance of making the Olympic team, but when the pressure was on she performed when Ashley Wagner didn't.  As a matter of fact she was the only person out of the top four that didn't fall during this competition.   That says a lot about the mental toughness of Nagasu.

But barring an injury to the other three, Nagasu will not get the opportunity to go for the medal that eluded her in Vancouver four years ago. 

And once again, a bitter lesson of American society gets harshly taught to its non-white residents.  No matter how good the person of color is or they earn their spot through their performance, merit  and hard work, whiteness will find a way to take it from them, hand it to a white person who didn't earn it and then try to justify and spin the reason they did so.

And FYI, here were the scores for the final night of competition.

1. Gracie Gold 211.69
2. Polina Edmunds 193.63
3. Mirai Nagasu 190.74
4. Ashley Wagner 182.74
 
If Wagner couldn't handle the pressure last weekend, that's nothing compared to the pressure and scrutiny that will be on her from now until the Sochi Games are over. 

Wagner has to prove to casual fans who feel like Nagasu was screwed (and I'm in that camp) that she belongs on the team.  There's also a lot of people that will be tuned in February 19-20 ready to pounce if she falls on her pretty behind once again and fails to make the Olympic medal podium.

I have a feeling karma will be making an appearance in Sochi wearing figure skates.

  

Hey Renee, USA 2014 Women's Olympic Hockey Team Is Set

The NHL's Winter Classic between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings happened yesterday at Michigan Stadium.

It was played in front of a record New Year's Day crowd of 105,591 fans who endured 13 degree temps and blowing snow that fell through the entire game at The Big House. 

It was the largest crowd to ever witness a hockey game be it collegiate or professional, and the Maple Leaf fans making the five hour drive to Ann Arbor, MI went back across the border to Toronto happy after the 3-2 shootout win over Detroit.   

But of more importance to moi was what occurred during the Winter Classic second intermission, the  introduction of the 2014 USA Women's Olympic hockey team.   These are the 21 women who will attempt to earn our first gold medal in women's hockey since the 1998 squad did so at Nagano. 

Ahem, here's the Team USA women's hockey roster. for Sochi. 

Forwards: Alex Carpenter, Kendall Coyne, Julie Chu, Brianna Decker, Meghan Duggan, Lyndsey Fry, Amanda Kessel, Hilary Knight, Jocelyne Lamoureux, Monique Lamoureux, Kelli Stack

Defensemen: Kacey Bellamy, Megan Bozek, Gigi Marvin, Michelle Picard, Josephine Pucci, Anne Schleper, Lee Stecklein

Goaltenders: Brianne McLaughlin-Bittle, Molly Schaus, Jessie Vetter

Julie Chu made it to her fourth USA Olympic squad and is one of the 11 Olympic vets on the 2014 team.  Chu is also their oldest player at age 31.  The other ten vets who join her are goaltenders: Jesse Vetter, Molly Schaus and Brianne McLaughlin-Bittle, Kacey Bellamy, Meghan Duggan, Hilary Knight, Jocelyne Lamoureux, Monique Lamoureux, Gigi Marvin and Kelli Stack. 

Amanda Kessel is the sister of Toronto Maple Leafs forward Phil Kessel (who made the men's squad) and is also on this Sochi Olympic team.  While this is her first USA Olympic team, she already knows the thrill of beating Canada in international hockey competition. 

The College Player of the Year, Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award winner (the equivalent of the Heisman Trophy in women's collegiate hockey) for unbeaten NCAA national champs Minnesota scored the winning goal in the IIHF championship game against Canada last April.  

Amanda Kessel, as y'all found out on your home soil last year is all that and four bags of chips. 

Speaking of world championship winning gold medalists, 18 of the 21 members of this Sochi squad were members of the IIHL World Championship team  in Ottawa, and all 21 have played in the IIHL championships for Team USA. 

And this time a woman will be large and in charge of coaching our Olympic squad in Katey Stone.  She is the most successful coach in our NCAA women's hockey ranks as the head coach at Harvard.  She was also the head coach of the 2013 IIHF World Championship squad.

So now that our team is set, can't wait for the Olympic women's ice hockey tournament to start on February 8.  And yes Renee, February 12 is already circled on my new 2014 calendar.  

That's the day we play y'all in the final Group A match in Sochi before it heads to the medal round..   

Olympic Gender Drama-Flo Jo

Since the 1960 Rome Olympics, with the exception of the period from 1976-1984 when the steroid fed East German women were tearing up the tracks, the USA women have had a multiple medal sprinting star in athletics.  

It was Wilma Rudolph in Rome.  Wyomia Tyus did so during two Olympiads at Tokyo in 1964 and the 1968 Mexico City Games.  In Los Angeles in 1984 it was two American women who shared that golden Olympic spotlight in Valerie Brisco-Hooks and Evelyn Ashford.

In the 1988 Seoul Games, no star shone brighter or with more style than Florence Griffith-Joyner's.

FloJo's story was beginning to be told as the hometown girl competing in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics with the glamorous looks, long nails with speed to burn.  She took home a silver medal in the 200m in 22.02 behind Valerie Brisco-Hooks gold medal winning Olympic record time of 21.81 seconds.

Now it was four years later and Griffith-Joyner after a trying post LA Games period served notice at the US Olympic Trials in Indianapolis in July 1988 the Seoul Olympics was going to be her party. 

In her 100m opening heat in the 1988 Olympic trials she ran a wind aided 10.60, which was below Evelyn Ashford's then four year old world record of 10.76 seconds.  Undaunted, Griffith-Joyner obliterated the world record in her quarterfinal heat by clocking an astounding 10.49 time that STILL hasn't been matched.  The wind gauge was showing 0.0 meters per second (no wind) so it stood.

She then ran 10.70 in the 100m semifinal (wind a legal 1.6 mps) and 10.61 in a legal 1.2 meters per second wind in the final to claim her ticket to Seoul. 

If anyone had doubts that those Flo-Jo times were flukes, in her specialty, the 200m, she just missed by .06 of a second matching East German Marita Koch's world record with a 21.77 quarterfinal time and clocked a 21.85 in the final.  

After running the four fastest 100m times for any woman in history in Indy, setting a world record in the 100m, barely missing the 200m world record and setting an American record in the 200m Trials quarterfinal, Flo-Jo was a heavy pre-Olympics favorite to dominate the track in Seoul

She didn't disappoint. On her way to the 100m gold medal she broke the Olympic record three times with 10.88, 10.62 and 10.54 times.  Her 10.54 time to capture the gold over defending 1984 Olympic champion Evelyn Ashford was unfortunately wind aided, so 10.62 is the current Olympic record.  

It also gave Griffith-Joyner at the time the seven fastest 100m times in history.

But Flo-Jo wasn't finished.  In the 200m, she warmed up with a quarterfinal time of 21.76 to erase Valerie Brisco-Hooks' Olympic record she set in 1984.   Flo-Jo then obliterated Marita Koch's 21.71 world record with a semifinal time of 21:56, then lowered it to 21:34 in the 200m final to capture her second gold medal of the Seoul Games. 

She added another gold in the 4x100m relay  but her attempt to become the first woman ever to win four gold medals in a single Olympic track meet was dashed when she couldn't catch Olga Bryzgina of the Soviet Union down the stretch. 

The Soviet 4x400m relay quartet ran a world record setting time of 3:15.17 just to get the gold with Griffith-Joyner and her American teammates having to settle for silver.   That 4x400m relay was not only the first time Flo-Jo had run an internationally rated 400 meter relay, the 3:15.51 time they ran is still the second fastest ever run. 

But because Ben Johnson failed a post race drug test and had to give up his 100m gold medal and the 9.79 world record he ran to beat Carl Lewis to get it, it cast a pall over the Games and the times of Flo-Jo came under suspicion. 

1984 LA Games 800m gold medalist Joaquim Cruz of Brazil started throwing shade at Flo-Jo by claiming she was on steroids or other performance enhancing drugs and there was no way she could have run those times.

She denied it, the tests came up clean, and Griffith-Joyner later won that year's Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete male or female in the US.  She moved on after the 1988 Games to retirement, have her daughter Mary Ruth Joyner in 1990 and her post Olympic life.

But those questions about alleged drug use kept coming up, and dogged her to her untimely death at age 38. While sleeping in her Mission Viejo, CA home she died of suffocation during a severe epileptic seizure on September 21, 1998.  An autopsy conducted by the Orange County Coroner's office noted she had not died from drugs or banned substances.  

After Griffith-Joyner's death in 1998, Prince Alexandre de Merode, the Chairman of the International Olympic Committee's medical commission, stated that Joyner was singled out for extra, rigorous drug testing during the 1988 Olympic Games because of rumors of steroid use.  She was rigorously tested according to him by Manfred Donike, the foremost expert at the time during the 1988 Games, who failed to find anything

"We performed all possible and imaginable analyses on her...We never found anything. There should not be the slightest suspicion [on Florence Griffith Joyner]  

So stop hating, and give Flo-Jo her due as the fastest woman ever.

Houston Has A New Women's Pro Soccer Team!

Another team joins our lineup of professional sports franchises in the Houston area and will start play in April.   Even cooler is the fact they are a women's professional spots team. 

They are the Houston Dash, our new expansion team in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) that started play earlier this year.

“We are thrilled to have our very own NWSL franchise here in Houston,” said Houston Dynamo president Chris Canetti in a statement. “It is an important addition to our sports landscape and will bring added value to our community.”

The NWSL has been set up as the top echelon women's pro soccer league in North America and is supported by the national soccer federations of the United States, Canada, and Mexico with the goal of building a elite level league for their top national players to play in when they are not competing in the Olympics or the FIFA Women's World Cup.

it also has the goal of building the women's game in these nations and developing talented players for future national teams in Canada, Mexico and the US. 

The NWSL's originating eight teams are the Boston Breakers, Chicago Red Stars, FC Kansas City, Portland Thorns FC, Seattle Reign FC, Sky Blue FC (New Jersey), Washington Spirit and the Western New York Flash (Rochester, NY). 

The NWSL features 23 members of the US women's national team, including stars of the team that won the gold medal at the 2012 Olympics in London, including: Heather O'Reilly (Boston Breakers); Amy LePeilbet and Shannon Boxx (Chicago Red Stars); Nicole Barnhart, Amy Rodriguez, Becky Sauerbrunn and Lauren Holiday (FC Kansas City); Rachel Buehler, Alex Morgan and Tobin Heath (Portland Thorns FC); Megan Rapinoe, Hope Solo and Sydney Leroux (Seattle Reign FC); Kelley O'Hara and Christie Rampone (Sky Blue FC); Ali Krieger (Washington Spirit); and Carli Lloyd and Abby Wambach (Western New York Flash).

The NWSL's Canadian national team stars include Diana Matheson (Washington Spirit); Desiree Scott and Lauren Sesselmann (FC Kansas City); and Christine Sinclair (Portland Thorns FC).

The NWSL players from Mexico's national women's team includes Maribel Dominguez (Chicago Red Stars); Renae Cuellar (Washington Spirit); Teresa Noyola (FC Kansas City); and Monica Ocampo (Sky Blue FC).

In the inaugural NWSL Championship game the Portland Thorns defeated the top seeded Western New York Flash 2-0 in Rochester.

But back to talking about the Houston Dash.    

The Dash are the NWSL's first ever expansion club and are the second in the league after the Thorns supported by an MLS club.   The Dash are owned by the same group that owns the Houston Dynamo

The Dash will train at the Dynamo's complex and play their 12 home games at BBVA Compass Stadium.

They are currently looking to hire their head coach and unveil their uniforms for the upcoming 2014 season later.

As for the inaugural season roster of the Houston Dash, the 18-20 woman roster for the inaugural team will be filled by allocation of players from the U.S., Canada and Mexico national teams, the expansion draft, the January 17 NWSL collegiate draft, and other discovery signings.

The only thing I wish they'd done is given the fans an opportunity to choose the nickname, but I can understand the Dynamo brass reluctance to do so after the Houston 1836 drama. 

Should be fun to watch a women's pro sports team here in H-town for the first time since the Houston Comets (sniff sniff) departed the scene and looking forward to checking out some of their games when I can.

 

Renee, Sochi Olympic Hockey Is Coming!

I know you and other Canadian women's hockey fans are still crying in your Timmy's after you lost the IIHF women's ice hockey championship to us for the fifth time in seven years.

What was even sweeter about this IIHF title win was it happened in Canada and in your nation's capital. 

It may be your game, but y'all got your butts kicked on your home soil in your nation's capital in the IIHF final.  And we didn't even need overtime this time to beat you.3-2.

USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

Just sounds so good rolling off my tongue along with the words '2013 IIHF Women's Hockey World Champions.'
  
So now let's get to talking about the next major international women's ice hockey tournament, and it's going down in Sochi during the Olympic Games.   Yeah the Russian women claim they'll be motivated to prevent a USA-Canada Olympic final, and to be honest they have some recent positive results to back up those woof tickets they're trying to sell to the peeps back home.   They did take a bronze medal back home to Mother Russia from Ottawa, but we know who the real women's hockey powers are according to the 2013 IIHF Women's World Rankings that the (ahem) USA sits on top of..

The Olympics are a mere two months away from starting, and the hockey competition will start at the Shayba Arena on February 8. 

Unfortunately we'll be in the same preliminary Group A with Finland and Switzerland while the host Russians will be in Group B with Germany, Japan and Sweden.

But circle February 12 on your calendar because that's the night the USA and Canada meet in the final game Group A play.  If both teams play the way they normally do, that game will probably decide who wins Group A and who gets the runner up spot.

Yeah yeah, big deal that Canada has won the last three women's Olympic gold medals, but you didn't win the first ever one in the 1998 Nagano Games.  

And yes, all winning streaks must come to an end.

 

Lolo's One Step Closer To Going To Sochi

I love Lolo Jones and still feel for her when I see that video of her hitting that second to last hurdle on her way to what looked like a legacy cementing gold medal performance in the 100m hurdles final at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and failing to place. 

She gracefully handled that tremendous disappointment and busted her butt to make the Olympic team again in 2012 only to finish in fourth place in London behind her silver and bronze medal winning teammates Dawn Harper and Kellie Wells in the 100m women's hurdle final won in Olympic record time by Australia's Sally Pearson.

At age 31 Lolo Jones is still chasing Olympic gold, although at a different time of year and in a different event.  This is the second year that Jones has competed in bobsled as a push athlete, and she and fellow sprinter Lauryn Williams were recently named to the nine member USA Women's Bobsled team for the upcoming FIBT World Cup event later today in Calgary.  

She has also added 30 pounds to her previously 130 pound frame in order to help her in her quest to make the USA Bobsled team bound for Sochi. 

Jones and Williams will be joining Emily Azevedo, Katie Eberling, Aja Evans and Kristi Koplin as sled pushers, with Elana Meyers, Jamie Greubel and Jazmine Fenlator serving as drivers.

Depending on the results in this World Cup event the USA could qualify as many as three two woman sleds for Sochi.  The team will also be named in mid to late January, so this is an opportunity for Jones to make one last impression on the powers that be in the US Bobsled and Skeleton Federation before that selection happens. 

In case you're wondering about the prospects for Jones should she make the team of medaling in Sochi, there is a precedent for a track athlete crossing over into the sport and experiencing success in it.

After several failed attempts to make the US Olympic track team Vonetta Flowers at the urging of her husband tried and embraced the sport.  In the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games she and her driver Jill Bakken won gold in the inaugural two women bobsled event.  With the win Flowers made history by becoming the first African descended athlete ever to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics.  Two years later Flowers would earn a bronze medal at the FIBT World Championships at Konigsee, Germany.

During Jones' rookie season on the FIBT World Cup circuit she did medal in three races.  So she does have an excellent chance at making this team, attempting to match Vonetta Flowers and getting that Olympc gold medal that has eluded her so far in the Summer Games.

    

Happy Veterans Day 2013 Trans Vets

Today is Veterans Day in the US, and once again I get to express my love, gratitude and appreciation to the over 140,000 trans vets according to a Williams Institute survey who served our nation, are still serving in silence, or who paid the ultimate price in our nations' armed forces. 

As I constantly remind people and will not allow the LGB community to forget until that is rectified,  the 2011 repeal of DADT did nothing for trans people.

Unlike transpeople in nine nations, transpeople in the United States who wish to do so are banned from sering in our armed forces.  

As many of you know I support open military service for trans people, and support the efforts of the new organization SPART*A  that formed July 22 to make that a reality. 

Trans veterans not only served our nation, they have and continue to provide principled and solid leadership for not only their fellow veterans, but our trans community and all the communities they intersect and interact with.  And yes, many of the trans community's leaders and icons such as the late Christine Jorgensen have the common thread of having served in our nation's armed forces.

Trans veterans have not only helped to fight for expanded human rights laws for all Americans, but policies that help make the lives of people in the trans community and veterans like themselves better. 

Happy Veterans Day trans vets!   Thank you for your service to our nation and to our community.

30th Anniversary of Able Archer 83

I wrote last year about the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis that nearly led to a global nuclear war.   Today is the 30th anniversary of the start of the ten day 1983 NATO Able Archer nuclear exercise that almost triggered another one. 

According to a 1997 CIA analysis by Benjamin Fischer, the incident had its roots in Soviet anxiety over the US defense buildup that began during the Carter Administration. The Russians knew they couldn't compete spending and technology wise and feared they would soon be outgunned. 

The USSR was also spooked by stepped-up probes of their early-warning intelligence system and other mind games played by the American military starting shortly after Ronald Reagan took office in January 1981.

Whatever the impetus, the Soviet leaders persuaded themselves the US was planning a sneak nuclear attack on the USSR and in 1981 under then KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov ordered their spies to look for evidence in an effort incongruously code-named RYAN, the Russian acronym for "nuclear missile attack."

Soviet nuclear first strike fears were heightened a few more levels in February 1983.  The US prepared to counter the Warsaw Pact conventional arms numerical superiority in Europe augmented by deployment of the mobile Soviet SS-20 intermediate range missiles against NATO by stepping up their conventional military readiness in the region and deploying their own next-generation mobile Pershing II intermediate range nuclear missiles in West Germany.  

From their West German bases the Pershing II missiles could reach hardened targets in the Soviet Union in just four to ten minutes.

It also didn't help during this period of heightened tension and deteriorating relations between the two superpowers President Reagan was also ratcheting up the anti-Soviet rhetoric by denouncing the USSR in March as an "evil empire" and shortly afterward announced the SDI "Star Wars" missile-defense initiative designed to create a missile defense shield to make the US invulnerable to Russian nukes.  The mere thought of American military R&D being put to work to make that a reality put the Soviets aging leadership team now headed by a gravely ill Yuri Andropov and their military and Strategic Rocket Forces commanders in freak out mode.

On September 1 Soviet air defense military units in the Far East, under pressure from their upper echelon political and military leadership for responding lackadaisically to previous US military air incursions during Fleet Ex 83 conducted in the North Pacific Ocean, shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, which had strayed into Russian airspace and been misidentified as a spy plane.  All 269 passengers and crew aboard the flight were killed, including US congressman Lawrence McDonald who was headed to South Korea.  Former president Richard Nixon was supposed to be on that flight seated next to McDonald but decided not to go on that trip at the last moment. 

The US condemned the attack as evidence of Soviet barbarism and the increased worldwide anti-Soviet attitudes and revulsion for the attack on KAL 007 greased the political and public opinion skids to begin the European deployment of the Pershing II's.

Soviet leaders were making the counterargument (and to some extent believed) that the KAL 007 incident was an intentional US provocation and declared that accommodation with the US was impossible.

We also didn't know at the time that in the early morning hours of September 26 if it hadn't been for the cool headed thinking of duty officer Stanislav Petrov, we would have plunged that day into a accidental nuclear war. 

Lieutenant Colonel Petrov, who was fortuitously on duty doing an extra shift in the air defense bunker in the Moscow area that day was faced with malfunctioning computers and blaring alarms all over his control bunker telling him five missiles had been launched from US territory.   He knew that if the real thing were happening, the US wouldn't be launching just one to five Minuteman III missiles at the USSR.  Petrov correctly dismissed it as a false alarm and didn't report it to his superiors in breach of Soviet military protocols.  If he'd wanted to play it safe, Petrov would have informed the higher authority immediately. 

Had he done so, knowing that Soviet armed forces policy was launch on warning, it probably would have resulted in a first strike attack that killed millions of people based on the mentality of the senior Soviet leadership at the time believing the US was already making preparations to do so and Reagan would order it. Subsequent investigations proved Petrov was correct and the false alarms were caused by a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds and the Molniya satellites' orbits.

Further complicating matters and adding to the tense and worsening diplomatic relations between the superpowers was the October 25 invasion of Grenada by US forces in the wake of a Marxist coup in that island nation that led to the Cubans building a military aircraft capable airstrip on the island that concerned the US.   The invasion of Grenada took place two days after the suicide bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon that killed 241 American military personnel there.

With tensions between the superpowers at code-red levels and especially in the USSR, NATO launched Able Archer 83.   This was an annual military exercise simulating the outbreak of hostilities between NATO and the Warsaw Pact nations that the Warsaw Pact was aware was happening.

But this year's version of Able Archer involved an unusually realistic buildup to a simulated NATO nuclear strike involving the NATO senior political leadership like British PM Margaret Thatcher, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and command and control levels of NATO that was scheduled to last ten days. President Reagan and Vice President Bush were supposed to take part in it but decided not to.

The Soviets knew Able Archer was happening but wondered if something else was afoot, having long planned to use war games as a cover for launching a first strike themselves and suspecting the US might do likewise.  The Soviets also had the attitude the only way to preempt a first strike if that is what the US and NATO were gearing up for was to beat them to it and launch their own.  They raised their own state of alert to a wartime footing in order to be in a better position to do so if the attack confirmation intel came from the RYAN protocol. 

The increased coded traffic picked up by the KGB between Washington and London in reality was chippy diplomatic chatter being generated because Great Britain was pissed about the Grenada invasion but was being read by RYAN analysts as coordination communication prior to launching an attack. 

But the coded traffic combined with NATO forces simulating during the Able Archer 83 exercises the moves and communications necessary to transition from a conventional to nuclear conflict through all alert phases, from DEFCON 5 to DEFCON 1 led alarmist KGB agents to mistakenly report them as part of the Soviet RYAN intel gathering protocols as actual preparations for a NATO first strike on the USSR.


The result was the Baltic Military District in the USSR being placed on alert status along with units in Czechoslovakia, nuclear capable aircraft units in Poland and East Germany being activated and prepped for action and Strategic Rocket Forces ICBM silos and units prepped for launch as the Soviet leadership frantically sent high-priority telegrams from Moscow to its KGB stations in Western Europe on November 8 demanding information about the feared surprise NATO nuclear first strike attack on the USSR.   

The CIA picked up on the increased military and civilian leadership communications activity on the Soviet side, but didn't connect it to Able Archer.  Neither did they pick up on the USSR leadership's paranoid national beliefs since 1982 that it was backed into a global strategic military corner and their only way out of it was to launch a first strike. 

Granted, the most recent example being World War II of Russia being surprise attacked gave them a reason to be wary, but the USSR's 'America's Going To Nuke Us' paranoia almost ended up triggering World War III. 

It's also interesting to note that there were several broadcasts, songs and movies released that year with accidental war (WarGames), Men At Work's 'It's A Mistake' and Nena's '99 Luftballons' and nuclear holocaust (The Day After) reflected the public anxiousness about nuclear war.  

Little did we realize at the time how prophetic those songs and movies almost became. 

Those anxieties eased a bit with the end of the Able Archer exercise, the subsequent death of Yuri Andropov in February 1984 and the restarting of INF treaty talks with the USSR.  But it's sobering and scary to think about the fact the world once again by the slimmest of margins barely escaped nuclear annihilation.

Uh Oh-The SCOTUS Is In Session

When I last had a chance to vent about the US Supreme Court, I was highly pissed along with many other African-Americans about the 5-4 conservafool majority decision in the Shelby case that eviscerated Section 4 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

And what incensed me even further was that once again Uncle Thomas was eagerly living up to his 'honorary white man' status Pat Buchanan bestowed him with by voting in lockstep per usual with Antonin Scalia  

The conservafools in Texas and NC within hours of that unjust SCOTUS decision passed or implemented voter suppression laws that US Attorney General Eric Holder is now suing them over using Section 2 of the law.

Texas GOP AG Greg Abbott implementing the unjust Voter Suppression law that was blocked in court prior to the Shelby decision is a major reason I'm supporting Wendy Davis for governor.

It's the first Monday in October, and the Roberts Court is now back in session for another term that will last until June 2014.   What cases will the Court hear during this term so the conservative justices can roll back the human rights of African-Americans again?

We also come into this new 2013-14 term with three of the justices in their middle 70's and liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg turning 80 years old.  Conservative Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy are both 77 and liberal Justice Stephen Breyer is 75.  

So when is the next SCOTUS vacancy going to pop up that President Obama will have a chance to fill and who will he appoint to do so?   Will he appoint an African-American woman to fill it or will he go with someone from the Native American, Asian or Latino community if that happens?. 

It'll need to happen by 2015 because after that, there is no way a SCOTUS justice nominee, especially if its one of the conservative ones being replaced by a moderate to liberal nominee to FINALLY change the balance our way will get confirmed during a presidential election year and the last of President Obama's term as much as the GOP foaming at the mouth hates him.

But once again we'll have to keep an eye on developments from the Supreme Court building that have just as much if not more impact on our lives than any legislation coming from Capitol Hill or executive orders from the White House.

I Repeat: DADT Still Hasn't Died For Trans People

Today is the second anniversary of the day the DADT repeal became official and gay, lesbian and bi soldiers in the US armed forces could openly serve our country.  But that's still not the case for trans people.  We not only still can't openly serve, we aren't even allowed to sign up. 

Trans military service should have happened for us in 2010, but we unfortunately got thrown under the Humvee by GL peeps desperate for a policy win. 

But thanks to the new group SPARTA and the work of many dedicated people and allies over the last year to shed light on this unjust issue, the prohibition on trans people serving in the US military may finally be heading to the dustbin of history.

While there are some critics like Professor Dean Spade who believe the trans military service issue is not a fight we should engage in at this time, I disagree.  It's no accident that after World War II and the heroic myth-busting service of African-Americans in the 761st 'Black Panthers' Tank Battalion and the Tuskegee Airmen the first cracks in Jim Crow segregation began to appear with the 1947 desegregation of the military by President Truman.

Allowing trans people to serve in our nation's military will not only remove the stigma of second class citizenship that taints transpeople, it will make a dent in our unemployment numbers as well. 

And some of our leaders in the modern trans rights movement were military veterans. It's why I support SPARTA and our allies in this efforts to end the unjust ban on trans military service.         

As Brynn Tannehill of SPARTA pointed out in a HuffPo article, military service is also seen as an honorable profession, the door to respectability for marginalized people in this country and will have the complementary effect of accelerating our trans human rights march.  

And if trans people can openly serve in Canada, Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands, Thailand and Israel, why not here?

Patriotic trans people shouldn't have to hide who they are to serve our country. It's past time we had to ability like the trans people in ten other nations to openly serve our country. 

And that needs to happen as soon as possible.

 

Happy 52nd Birthday Mr. President!

Today is the 52nd birthday of President Barack Hussein Obama II who reality based peeps know was born on this date in Honolulu, HI back in 1961 

This birthday is one his legions of haters in the conservafool movement spent billions in a failed attempt to ensure he would be celebrating it in Chicago but the American people said otherwise.

Yep, he'll be in office from now until January 20, 2017 so he'll have three more he'll be celebrating as a resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue until that date.  

So hate on haters.

Happy birthday Mr. President.  You'll have to wait until next November before we can give you the birthday present I'm sure you'd like for this weekend.

A Democratically controlled House and Senate so you can get thing done on behalf of this country.

POTUS Remarks On Trayvon Martin Case

President Obama after a few days of noticeable silence emerged Friday to speak about the Trayvon Martin and the unjust Zimmerman verdict.

 

MSNBC's Thomas Roberts Goes Off

Too bad I didn't see this when it was first broadcast Monday morning, but thanks to the magic of video, I get to see it now.

MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts launched into a rant calling out the conservafools favorite disparaging talking points to 'other' people, and challenged his network to do more to debunk them.

“When we talk about these laws, don’t we need to do more about our social contract with each other in this country when it comes to being ‘others’?” the MSNBC host asked. “Because when we look at this we can use this as a great pivot point to talk about race relations in this country. But being an ‘other,’ whether it’s LGBT — because you’re then suspected of being a pedophile and a rabid disease carrier. And if you are a woman, well, you certainly don’t have a right to your own body and your own reproductive health. Because if you do then you’re just a slut who wants to sleep around and use abortion as birth control. And then if you’re Hispanic, you’re just a taker, you’re not a maker, and you want to come here and have anchor babies and you just want to lay off the land [sic].”
 

Cemia Dove Acoff Case Update

The last news I had in the Cemia Dove Acoff case was that her alleged killer Andrey Bridges had been arrested on May 6 and charged with her murder on May 10. 

Unfortunately the stenographers at the Cleveland Plain Dealer are still thumbing their noses at the local trans community and still disrespecting Cemia by not only using old name in the story but that old mugshot and unflattering pics every chance they get.

And naw, I wasn't the only person who thought the jacked up Plain Dealer coverage of Cemia was problematic.

My fear is that the Cleveland Plain Dealer's ongoing journalistic hate crime and disrespectful coverage is poisoning any potential jury pool for the Bridges trial and will make it harder for Cemia and her family and friends to get justice in this case. 

But back to the update. 

Bridges was charged with aggravated murder, murder, kidnapping, felonious assault, tampering with evidence and crime against a human corpse in the death of Cemia Dove Acoff. 

Many Cleveland area advocates and Cleveland City Council member Jim Cimperman believe there should have been a hate crime charge added to the indictment and I concur with that assessment.   

Judge Hollie L. Gallagher was assigned to the case and Bridges' bond was set at $5 million and there was a scheduled May 21 pretrial hearing that as of yet I haven't found any additional information on..

I will be keeping an eye on this case until justice is served in it.

Nerve Wracking SCOTUS Watch Week

Good thing I'm going to be hitting the road in the middle of the week for a long interstate highway journey to Denver.  It'll keep me from not being stressed out reading SCOTUSblog about the potential results in several cases of importance to me and the various communities I'm a part of.  

I'm keenly interested in the Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder case which takes aim at Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Fisher v UT Austin one and the ones the marriage equality peeps are sweating in Hollingsworth v Perry and United States v. Windsor.

Note to John Aravosis and the rest of you GL peeps pimping that tired Blacks are keeping us from getting gay marriage meme, let me drop another 50 megatons on knowledge on to you irradiate that lie. 

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund wrote friend of the court briefs in support of striking down DOMA and was part of the coalition of organizations filing in the Hollingsworth v perry care to take down Prop 8.

The LDF has been filing friend of the court briefs on behalf of the LGBT community since the 1996 Romer v Evans case. 

But back to the SCOTUS and these upcoming landmark cases.  The only thing we know about these cases is that there is no way of knowing which way they will go, and we can't even say for certain the vote will break down on 5-4 conservative-liberal lines as has been the pattern in the Roberts Court era.

For those of us who like to see human rights expand, all we can do is watch, hope and pray that justice prevails. 

These SCOTUS decisions will drop either sometime this week or next, and you will definitely know when it happens because the online chatter will be off the charts when it does.

Huge Social Security Win For Trans Community

The worldwide trans community has been on a good karmic roll lately with either policy or legislative victories in various nations, and we had a huge one come from the Social Security Administration.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) announced the modernization of the medical requirements transgender people must show to update the gender marker in a person’s social security record, eliminating the archaic genital surgery requirement and replacing it with “appropriate clinical treatment” as several other federal agencies already have done.

SSA also issued guidelines on how staff should interact with transgender people. This includes important protections: confidentiality, proper pronoun usage, and treating trans people with respect and dignity.

This is a crucial change because the Social Security number is used as a defacto national ID and because the varying standards of changing identity documents from state to state lead to inconsistent documentation for trans people.. 

It also a huge win for trans individuals because access to employment, housing, health care and travel all can hinge on having appropriate documentation. When employers and governmental agencies like state Departments of Motor Vehicles encounter SSA document gender discrepancies while verifying a person’s identity, transgender individuals often face discrimination or other hardships.

For our trans elder population on Medicare it's also important because the gender marker on the face of Medicare ID cards is pulled directly from the Social Security database. State government agencies, including Medicaid, also often match data with SSA, causing problems for trans people with mismatched SSA documentation.

50th Anniversary Of Medgar Evers Assassination

It didn't take long for reaction to come from the Southern segregationists and Klan terrorists to come in reaction to President Kennedy's civil rights speech the previous night

50 years ago today civil rights leader and NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers was shot and killed in the driveway of his Jackson, MS home by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith as he returned from a meeting with NAACP lawyers in the early morning hours of June 12, 1963.

After his funeral in Jackson, the Army veteran was buried with full military honors June 19 in Arlington National Cemetery as President Kennedy and other leaders of the time condemned the murder.

De La Beckwith was arrested for murder within weeks of Evers’ shooting but his first trial in 1964 ended with a hung all-white male jury. When a second all-white male jury also failed to reach a decision, De La Beckwith was set free. 

With the persistence of his widow Myrlie Evers-Williams, who later became the chair of the NAACP herself in 1995, pressure was applied three decades later by the Evers family and civil rights leaders to force the state of Mississippi to reopen the case based on new evidence.   

Evers body was exhumed from his grave for autopsy during the trial and on February 5, 1994 a racially mixed jury convicted the then 73 year old unrepentant white supremacist De La Beckwith for the 1963 assassination of Evers and sentenced him to life in prison, where he died in January 2001 at age 80.
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