The (LIE) Impact Leadership Coalition-Lying For Da Man

One of the things that has really irritated me over the last decade is the emergence of the group of conservative Black sellout megachurch ministers who do the dirty work that their white fundie paymasters can't.

When the Reichers opposed the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act they called upon go-to homobigot Harry Jackson and his fellow Negro ministers in the Hi Impact Leadership Coalition back in April to browbeat the Congressional Black Caucus into withdrawing support for the bill. That group included Grammy-winning gospel artist and Detroit minister Marvin Winans.

The Congressional Black Caucus is not known as the 'Conscience of the Congress' for nothing. The CBC members and their staffers thankfully saw through the lies that Jackson and his merry band of homohaters were pushing. The homobigots pastors were taking their talking points from James Dobson and asserting that passage of HR 1592, which is now pending in the Senate as the Matthew Shepard Hate Crime Bill would keep them from expressing their First Amendment rights to preach anti-gay sermons and open them up to prosecution.

You know something, maybe people should file civil suits against you idiots if it's proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that your anti-gay diatribes inspired someone to go run out after the bendiction and kill a GLBT person.

The bottom line is that Jackson and his band of bigots are straight up prevaricating. There has been no law ever enacted in United States history that curtails First Amendment free speech protections and this one is no exception. In fact, the ACLU noted that HR 1592 "has stronger protections for free speech than any other federal criminal law now on the books."

How dare these so-called men of the cloth even part their lips to parrot James Dobson's false witness on this bill. Are you that joined to the hip and pockets of white fundamentalists that you can't even come up with your own creative BS in an attempt to kill this bill?

By the way, you failed. The House passed it 237-180 and it's now in the Senate.

Y'all are on the wrong side of history and this issue along with your Reicher buddies. 68% of the country is in favor of passage of this legislation, and that support according to a June 10-13 Gallup poll is BIPARTISAN. It even includes your homobigot base.

The evidence is crystal clear that bias crimes committed against transgender people are rampant and something needs to be done about it. I posted earlier about today being the seventh anniversary of the Amanda Milan killing in New York. It should be of great concern to you so-called Black preachers that your fellow African-Americans are disproportionately affected by it. Since 1999 70% of the over 300 victims posted to the Remembering our Dead list are predominately people of color.

So why in Hades would you oppose a bill that has the support of law enforcement personnel, prosecutors and the NAACP when you as an African-American know better than anyone what it's like to live life with a target on your back?

We Don't Want Ann Coulter, Either

I've been amused over the last four years about the 'Mann Coulter' epithet directed at the Queen of Conservamean in addition to the comments, jokes and rumors circulating that she's transgendered.

If she is, I'd like to state for the record that y'all can have her.

While there are many women that we in the transgender community would be estatic to find out are actually one of our sisters and we would welcome them with open arms, please let Ann Coulter NOT be one of them.

Frankly, it's an insult to the transgender community for y'all to call her one. I have T-girlfriends that are much better looking and have far more elegance and class in their pinky fingers than Ann Coulter does in her entire body.

While I'm on this tip, what's up with this trend in the blogosphere and elsewhere to label women you don't like as transsexuals? Paris Hilton has had that comment thrown at her repeatedly along with her sister Nicky by Perez Hilton and others. Even Tina Fey took a recent swipe at Paris using the same attack line. I'm not a big fan of Paris Hilton, but enough is enough. If you wish to insult her, find another way to do it without calling her a transsexual. It really annoys those of us who are transwomen and who are proud of it.

But back to Ann. Every time Coulter opens her mouth something hateful and asinine comes out of it. Oh, her conservative friends were loving it when it was anti-liberal bile spewing from her lips or quotes such as, "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."

When she attacked 9-11 widows Kristen Breitweiser, Lorie Van Auken, Mindy Kleinberg and Patty Casazza last year by calling them the 'Witches of East Brunswick' among other comments, she found herself being called out by many peeps in her own party.

She put her pumps in her mouth again during the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington D.C. last week when she called 2008 Denmocratic presidential candidate John Edwatds a 'faggot'.

It's not the first time that she's used anti-gay rhetoric to smear Democrats either and they egged her on. Now were entering the 2008 presidential election cycle and the GOP and the rest of the conservative movement is in extreme makeover mode. They're trying to look look less hateful and bigoted than they really are and now they want to disown her.

Too late now. Y'all were the ones enabling her behavior in the first place. Buying those wastes of trees she called books, paying her speaking fees and laughing the loudest at her remarks. Now the chickens have come home to roost.

I don't care if home girl is six feet tall, does have a huge Adam's Apple, a double-digit shoe size and a rather murky background, that does not make Ann Coulter a transsexual unless she makes that declaration. There's a better chance of the Cubs winning the World Series than Ann having a press conference at the Washington Press Club and uttering those four words.

For the record, that's one press conference I hope I'll never see.

Don't You Conservatives Have Your Own Heroes?

Conservatism: n, The disposition and tendency to preserve what is established; opposition to change; the habit of mind; or conduct, of a conservative.

I have a conservative that likes to post comments every now and then on this blog. This person seems to think like all conservatives tend to do that they are smarter than everyone else. I've got to call him out on one of his more ludicrous statements.

To borrow an old saying, those of you who THINK you are intelligent really annoy those of us who ARE.

One of the things that I have noted in my decade long battle of wits on and off the Net with conservatives is that they always make this claim that a Democratic or progressive hero if he were alive today would vote GOP.

Excuse me for a moment while I double over in laughter. (cue The Proud Family Papi Boulevardez laugh here)

One of the people whose name they love to try claim as one of theirs, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had this to say about conservatives in an October 26, 1939 radio address:

"A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward."

Obviously FDR wouldn't be voting GOP right now because the Republicans are the peeps who playa-hated the New Deal for decades and have spent the latter half of the 20th century working tirelessly to dismantle it and its crown jewels of Medicaid and Social Security.

Abraham Lincoln said about them in a February 27, 1860 speech:

"What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?"

John F. Kennedy? Please. There's as much chance of JFK voting Republican as George W. Bush has of successfully completing a Dale Carnegie speaking course.

"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."

Does that sound like a man that would vote GOP? Nope.

They sank to new lows last year when the National Black Republican Association ran ads in support of Michael Steele's failed 2006 US Senate campaign in Maryland claiming that Dr. Martin Luther King would have voted Republican.

I have only this to say. Better yet, I think I'll let Dr. King's words speak for themselves.

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

Is the conservative movement so bereft of its own heroes that you have to disingenuously try to appropriate mine and attempt to twist their words to support your political agenda when that person's lifetime body of work is geared toward progressive causes and themes?

Yep.

Both parties have been in existence over 100 years. Their constituencies have flipped over time. It is now the GOP that has since 1964 been the home of the Dixiecrats and race-baiting bigots. The once solidly Democratic South has flipped the script in our time period to become Republican. Conversely the Democratic Party since 1964 is the one pushing progressive forward-thinking legislation and the one taking the lead role in civil rights matters.

It must be frustrating to be a conservative. Y'all have a longer losing streak than the Chicago Cubs and you're not as loveable. Ann Coulter and the conservative pundits that spout similar poisonous rhetoric devoid of facts just illuminate the image problem y'all have and the moral bankruptcy of conservatism as a political philosophy.

I gues it's tough being on the WRONG side of every issue in American history.

Y'all were on the losing side (and still are) in terms of American independence, slavery, the 40-hour workweek, women's suffrage, the Civil Rights Movement, interracial marriage, US involvement in World Wars I and II, the environment, meat inspection laws...Shall I continue?

You conservatives will also lose on gay rights, universal health care and campaign finance reform.

But back to the originally scheduled post.

If conservatism is as superior as you peeps claim it is to liberalism, why would you spend so much time hatin' on liberals? Why do you always go negative in your campaigns and use vote suppression tactics if your conservative ideas are supposedly superior election winning ones? Why is it necessary for you to use Orwellian weasel words and deception to articulate and implement your policies? Why do you come up with bogus theories, excuses and spin to hide your policy failures?

With such a losing track record and a political philosophy that has more in common with communism in terms of stifling freedoms and individual rights, I can see why you'd attempt to falsely attempt to claim our progressive icons as your own. If I had folks like Richard M. Nixon and George W. Bush as shining examples of conservative leadership I wouldn't claim them either.

Oh well, at least y'all have Ronald Reagan.

Hardaway Hates Gays-So Do Some Other Black Peeps

Tim Hardaway's anti-gay comments made me recall a conversation I had with my father when I was a teen. He stated that he had more respect for the Klan than he did for some of the Black community's so-called friends.

When I asked him to clarify that, he pointed out that a Klansman's hatred for Black people is well known and out in the open. With the people that profess to be our friends, they can eat dinner with you and still hate you with the intensity of a Klansman. His thought was that he'd rather know who his enemy was upfront so the appropriate response to deal with him could be formulated.

That conversation resurfaced in my mind as I listened to the replay of Tim Hardaway's radio interview. It turned ugly when the interviewer asked questions about retired NBA center John Amaechi's announcement last week that he is gay.

"You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people," he said while a guest on Sports Talk 790 The Ticket. "I'm homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States."

When the host asked Hardaway how he would interact with a gay teammate, he said, "First of all, I wouldn't want him on my team. And second of all, if he was on my team, I would, you know, really distance myself from him because, uh, I don't think that is right. I don't think he should be in the locker room while we are in the locker room."

Incredibly, he went there and indicated that he'd ask for the gay player to be removed from the team.

"Something has to give," Hardaway said. "If you have 12 other ballplayers in your locker room that's upset and can't concentrate and always worried about him in the locker room or on the court or whatever, it's going to be hard for your teammates to win and accept him as a teammate."

John Amaechi, who just released his autobiography Man in the Middle, yesterday said that he hoped his coming out would be a catalyst for intelligent discourse.

Unfortunately, it seems that the words 'intelligent discourse' don't enter some peeps minds when it comes to GLBT issues.

When Amaechi was asked by the Miami Herald about Hardaway's comments, "I'm actually tempted to laugh." he said. "Finally, someone who is honest. It is ridiculous, absurd, petty, bigoted and shows a lack of empathy that is gargantuan and unfathomable. But it is honest. And it illustrates the problem better than any of the fuzzy language other people have used so far."

To his credit, Hardaway later apologized for the remarks during a telephone interview with Miami's WSVN-TV. "Yes, I regret it. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said I hate gay people or anything like that," he said. "That was my mistake."

Hardaway has reportedly been removed from any further league-related appearances by NBA commissioner David Stern. "It is inappropriate for him to be representing us given the disparity between his views and ours," Stern said in a statement to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

If anyone questions the fact that homophobia in the African-American community needs to be confronted, then this should leave no doubts not only as to the extent of the problem but the work we need to do in our community to eradicate it.

There are other Tim Hardaway's out there in our community. Unfortunately some of them stand in pulpits and utter the same rhetoric as he just unleashed except they try to hide their homophobia behind scriptures.

Thanks Tim for letting us know that you're on the same team as the Eddie Long's and Gregory "I'd ride with the KKK" Daniels' of the world.

On Transgender Human Rights Issues in Africa

From Fahamu (Oxford)
Visit their site: http://www.fahamu.org/

December 7, 2006
Posted to the web December 7, 2006

by Juliet Victor Mukasa


In most African states, homosexuality is illegal. Juliet Victor Mukasa writes that in Africa, transgender people are punished and ostracised for being who they are. "While still with my parents, I was always beaten by my father for "behaving" like a boy. In school, the same story. While peeing one day my neighbour's daughter found me peeing while squatting and she screamed like she had seen a monster."

As a transgender person who is attracted physically and emotionally to other women, issues that African women and trangenders face are of particular concern to me. The one thing that all transgender people have in common is that we do not fit into traditional gender categories.


We're taught that that a human being must behave, present themselves, dress and so on in only two ways...male or female. There are rules that govern genders, unfortunately. Such gender rules include:

-How a man should dress in order to appear masculine;

-What types of jobs are fitting for a woman

-That a woman must only be in a relationship with another man, not with a woman

These rules to govern our behaviour are socially constructed, meaning that they are not "natural". They are rules made up by people, sometimes with horrible punishments for not following them.

In Africa, transgender people are seriously punished for being who they are. While still with my parents, I was always beaten by my father for "behaving" like a boy. In school, the same story. While peeing one day my neighbour's daughter found me peeing while squatting and she screamed like she had seen a monster. I became the laughing stock of the village and I expelled myself because of the humiliation. I could speak the whole day about the discomforts I have suffered in life more because I am a transgender person.

All trans-people that I have interacted with mention such, or even worse, moments in their lives. It can be a very deep violation of our being to be forced to perform our gender differently to who we feel it for ourselves.

Some people, like myself, are born with a sense of ourselves as male in some ways, even though we are biologically female.

As a transgender person, it is constantly demanded of me to explain and justify why I do not fit into other people's ideas of what a woman or a man should be.

As a Human Rights defender, I am working to protect a space for people to exist freely without facing harassment, threats, or violence for not fitting into traditional gender categories.

I can give specific examples of human rights abuses and violations of transgender people in Africa:

- Raped to prove that you are really a woman

- At school and public assembly - humiliation and beatings

- Thrown out of the family home

- Thrown out of subsequent homes by landlords

- Losing jobs because of feeling violated wearing a skirt

- Psychological Effects of Abuse: Depression, Anger, Drinking, Suicide

- Holding a full bladder for 12-18 hours daily

- Being undressed and humiliated

- Being abused by government when trying to get a passport

- In church - I was once stripped naked before a multitude of people. The pastor 'saw' the spirit of a young man inside me and they burnt my clothes and shoes in order to kill the male spirit.

- By Police: humiliation, mocking, mistreatment

However, transgender people have also been successful in overcoming these abuses.

In Uganda there is tremendous energy and anger on the part of activists. Many LGBTs are ready to rise up. For example, some transgender men are dressing up in drag and declaring that they have had enough.

Another victory is the establishment of the first specifically Transgender organization on the continent: Gender DynamiX, located in Cape Town, South Africa.

We are now claiming language and claiming spaces. Sometimes it is even difficult for us to understand ourselves because the world has been constructed to make us completely invisible. But now we are finding words to use for ourselves such as He She Che.

As an illustration of why we need your support, I would like to highlight the work of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). SMUG is an organization made up of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Human Rights Defenders. Many of us in leadership in this organization are women and several of us are transgender. We face many challenges such as in Uganda, on a weekly basis, gay men are arrested and face detention if they do not pay a bribe to be released. This has become a business from which the police benefit. The basic Human Rights of LGBT people are completely disregarded in this process as the police abuse our rights.

Many of us do not receive protection from the police when we face violations of our rights by the surrounding community. One of SMUG's primary emphases in our workplan for this year is sensitising the police and creating a better working relationship with them.


By having the support, awareness, and protection of international Human Rights bodies, we will be much more effective in this endeavour. Through our work, we aim to help people realise the ways in which we are all connected, whether straight or LGBT, the societal rules governing what a woman has to be like and what a man has to be like hurt us all.

However, we still have many needs. We are an invisible population when it comes to protection. There is almost NO research to understand transgender people's lives in Africa.We have an undocumented history and are still invisible.

The secrecy and covert nature of our work in Africa also makes us invisible to the larger gender and human rights sector, and to each other. There is almost NO action in this area to protect people who do not fit into traditional gender categories. At the same time we are highly visible and therefore highly vulnerable to discrimination.

Transgender people have the potential to radically challenge discriminatory practices in a way that helps to free all people from sexism. People who cross gender boundaries make transformation of society more possible, and make gender transgressions more acceptable and enable societal gender transformation. We - the transgender community - have the right to tell our stories and have them heard, and to have our lives protected.

Mainstream Human Rights organizations, for the most part, are not accepting or protecting us on any level. As people from all over the world who are concerned about human rights and gender injustice, we need to work together to protect our most vulnerable Human Rights Defenders.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

1. Research and understand the complex self-identification of transgender people in Africa.

2. More effectively monitor human rights situations abuses and violations against Transgender People (such as systematic rape, intimidation, forced undressing, and economic exclusion).

3. Educate the UN bodies and its partners about transgender concerns.

4. Provide training, support, and protection to transgender Human Rights Defenders and allies.

5. Put pressure on local governments, donors, economic powers and human rights institutions toprovide protection for those who do not fit into traditional gender categories and to recognize the way in which transgender people add to the freedom of expression and quality of life of all people.

• This paper was presented at the World International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) PANEL AT 2ND UNCHR SESSION. Juliet Victor Mukasa is the Chairperson of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). Mukasa is also in the ILGA Board of Representatives

Zimbabwean Drag Queen Reveals All

By Lucy Fleming
BBC News website
Originally posted August 10. 2006

Looming over the audience on high heels and batting enormous eyelashes, voluptuous Zimbabwean drag performer - the Queen of Africa - demands attention.

"I'm gay; I'm a drag queen; I love sleeping with men; I love having fun and I was born gay," says Kudah Samuriwo, cooling himself with a fan after a performance in a hot and sticky London theatre.

During the 1990s, Kudah courted controversy in Zimbabwe, where homosexuality is illegal, when he became the first black drag queen to win the Jacaranda Queen beauty contest - a crown usually worn by coloured (mixed-race) transvestites.

At more than 1.8m (six feet) tall, he models himself on African pop divas such as Brenda Fassie and Yvonne Chaka Chaka, whose name he used as his original stage name.

"To me a drag queen is something outrageous, more than a woman. I'm proud to be a man. I'm a drag queen because I'm different."

Provocative

This in-your-face attitude put him on a collision course with Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, who regards homosexuality as un-African.

Mr Mugabe infamously described gays as "worse than pigs and dogs" at the opening of the Zimbabwe's International Book Fair in 1995.

"That changed the world, just those words," says Kudah, who after subsequent harassment fled into exile to the UK.

Nearly four years on, he is taking a qualification to become a care-worker and is writing his show, Queen of Africa.

It is a work-in-progress - written in collaboration with Nigerian playwright Dipo Agboluaje - and is a funny, provocative and often moving account of his experiences.


"I don't know what Mugabe has against pigs and dogs; he must have had the worst sex ever with them.

"Maybe he's had gays as well that's why he makes comparisons. Experts can be so one-sided," he says during a workshop of the play.

Despite his outspoken performance, Kudah says he grew up a shy man "suppressing what I really wanted to do".

As early as seven years old he was aware that he was different, but as the eldest son of a local chief, coming out in such a conservative society was out of the question.

"I had to be an heir, a man who could go and hunt, so it was difficult hiding behind my mother's skirt," he says.

Spies

Kudah lost his virginity at 14 to a distant uncle, the night he returned from the post-independence war against the Ndebele people in the south of the country.

But it was not until he went to live in the capital, Harare, after leaving boarding school that his parents found out that he was gay.

To escape their anger he went to South Africa for several years, only reconciling with his family in his twenties after his father's death.

The play not only charts Kudah's personal story, but the crackdown on the gay community since 1995 when homosexuals have been repeatedly bribed, detained, beaten and sometimes raped by the authorities.

"My experience was very hard, because the policemen were clever. They would take us, arrest us and release us without charge, so we didn't have any proof," he explains.

Events organised by the Association of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (Galz), which he helped form, were often infiltrated by government spies.

"I would end up sleeping with them and teaching them about oral sex."

Roll call of death

For Kudah, it has been HIV and Aids that has had the most devastating effect on the gay scene in Zimbabwe, where many cannot afford anti-retroviral drugs.

"Organising and attending funerals took a fair share of my time as one by one friends and relatives answered the roll call of death," he says in the play.

"We knew it wasn't a divine curse to punish us for what we are. Ignorance was killing more people than HIV."

In the end, it was the constant police intimidation - and petrol shortages that had crippled his minibus business - which prompted his departure.

He says he will not return to Zimbabwe until President Mugabe "has left", but he yearns for his former life.

"I had a nice car; I had money; I had friends to talk to in my language; I had a maid.

"I never used to do any washing, I didn't even know how to iron," he says.

Kudah now sees himself as a gay activist and "freedom fighter" and hopes his play will one day go into production so that he can continue "the struggle" and one day return home.

"A queen must protect her subjects even if the president refuses to do so," he says.

Letter To Black Conservatives

This is a letter written September 6, 2005 in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster by Steve Gillard.

------------------------------

Dear Black Conservatives,

I would laugh at you, if thousands of dead didn't litter the streets of New Orleans. Have you read what your conservative allies have written? How they regard black people?To all you black ministers doing "outreach" with Bush: as Dr. Phil says, "how's that working for you?"Seen enough dead black corpses yet to get the point? George Bush is incompetent. He kills Americans with his slovenly ways. Sure, he talks big, but underneath is a tiny man, a man who cannot see beyond his nose. Sure, he talks about being a God-fearing man, but when it comes to Jesus's good works, he could care less. He did nothing to allivate their suffering. How can you face your congregations now? How can you look them in the face, after your betrayal of them is in such stark relief. The man you thought would help you has done nothing but let people suffer and die. How will you explain that to your parishoners? Getting government funding is more important to me than my soul?

To the lackies like Deroy Murdoch and LaShawn Barber: your God, George Bush, has failed you. Have you seen what they think about you, Powerline, Instapundit, Ben Stein, they all think those black people deserve to be dead. The people you suck up to, the people you rely on for praise and support , they hold black people in contempt, in disdain. In short, they are now saying what they have always thought, always believed as they smiled in your face. Deroy, how can you stand to fetch Jonah's coffee, when he suggested the women and children in the Astrodome grow gills. Doesn't it make you ashamed, as you shine his shoes and fetch his laundry, to work with such a man.

LaShawn, after all your praising of Bush as a good Christian, is this what your Bible says: let the meek drown beacause it isn't my fault. I am not responsible. Is that how Jesus would act. How can you look in the mirror, knowing you defended these people, people who mock the suffering of your people.

Armstrong Williams, you knew your conservative friends would abandon you at the drop of a hat, now they abandon an entire city of black people to drown and starve. They blame them for their own fate, even laugh at them, insult their intelligence. How does that make you feel? How can you look at yourself and realize you have not only defended, but promoted these people and their agenda, and when your people were in trouble, would rather toss insults than offer help. Doesn't it prove the bankruptcy of your life so far, the waste it is?

John McWhorter, can you look at the faces of the dead and dying, the suffering of the victims and justify your subservience to whites? Do you now get the reasons for black anger, human anger. It may make you uncomfortable, but do the dead make you any more comfortable? How can you serve the people who would mock the fate of your breathern. Black conservatives must face the reality that they have been lackies to some of America's bitterest racists, people who would mock the suffering of children because they were the wrong color. Doesn't that trouble your sleep? Black conservatives have betrayed the community and must now come to account for their treason. How can they face themselves, much less the community. They have been the allies of racists and those who hold even black children in contempt.The dead and suffering of New Orleans demand no less.

Why Should I 'Come Home' To the GOP?

Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman has been on a campaign to increase African-American membership in the Republican Party. He has rhetorically called for African-Americans to come “back home” to the GOP.

Why should I?

Mehlman and other GOP offcials keep pointing to MD Lt. Governor Michael Steele US senate seat run, Ken Blackwell's run for governor of Ohio and Lynn Swann's run for Pennsylvania governor as evidence the Republicans are serious about competing for African-American votes.

Over the years many of the African-Americans that the GOP anointed as candidates for office have proven time and time again their willingness to sell out their own people for personal gain or how out of touch their views are with mainstream African-Americans. Those candidates end up having zero credibility with many of us.

In Ken Blackwell's case, I guess Mehlman thought we'd forgotten about how Kenny Boy sold us out during the 2004 presidential election. He was more concerned about being the point negro of the 2004 Bush campaign committee than his role as Secretary of State.

It's also still fresh in our memories the less than speedy response to Hurricane Katrina's devastating New Orleans landfall. When our brothers and sisters needed help last summer it was slow in coming. The only silence more defeaning than President Bush's was the sellout Black megachurch ministers who support y'all.

But back to Ken Blackwell and the other GOP Blacks y'all have running this fall. Their success is predicated on clearing a historically high hurdle for Black politicians: Winning white voters.

That's proving to be difficult in Ohio because Blackwell has at this writing only 35% support in his Ohio race despite sounding like a caramel colored clone of Pat Robertson. Lynn Swann is trailing incumbent PA Governor Ed Rendell 50%-40%

In recent US history only Douglas Wilder of Virginia has been elected governor in the United States and by the way, he was a Democrat. Tom Bradley couldn't get elected to the governor's chair in California in 1982 and 1986 despite having served as mayor of Los Angeles since 1973. Deval Patrick is attempting to make history by running for governor of Massachusetts this fall.

Voter pattern analysis between 1982 and 2000 reveals that Black and White voter turnout increases up to 3 percentage points with each African-American Democratic Party candidate on the ballot. When the candidate is a black Republican voting turnout does not show a significant increase.

*Whites of both the Republican and Democratic parties are less likely to vote for their parties' candidate when he or she is black, regardless of the politician.

So y'all can stop perpetrating about Condoleezza Rice's chances of winning the 2008 presidential nomination. They're about as good as Condi showing up at a White House gala with a weave down to her behind.

*Nationally, white Republicans are 25 percent more likely on average to vote for a Democratic senatorial candidate when the GOP candidate is black.

I saw an example of that in November 1994. In my hometown there were two African-Americans running for Harris County judgeships as Republicans during the 'Angry White Male' midterm elections. Guess who were the only Republican challengers to lose their races to incumbent Democratic judges?

*Whites who identify themselves as politically independent are more inclined to vote for a white Democrat than a black Republican.
*In races for the US House of Representatives, white Democrats are 38 percent less likely to vote for their party's candidate if that candidate is black.

That applies to US Senate races, too. Harvey Gantt lost twice in North Carolina to Jesse Helms, although Jesse had to pull the GOP race-baiting card to stave off defeat. Ron Kirk lost the 2002 US Senate race in Texas to John Cornyn despite serving two successful terms as mayor of Dallas. I'm interested in seeing if that plays out again if Harold Ford gets the Democratic nomination for senate in Tennessee.

I'll call the Dems out later about that. Right now I'm focused on the GOP.

Explain to me why I should 'come home' to a party that's homophobic, anti-science, anti-intellectual and racist? You GOPers can protest all you want, but until you repudiate the 'Southern Strategy' and stop spending millions to suppress our votes, I'll continue to support Democratic Party candidates.

Until the GOP gets serious about doing something about the problems that vex African-Americans besides cutting off funding to programs that help end those problems, moralizing sermons, actively opposing issues the African-American community considers vital to its progress or demonizing poor people, the GOP will have as much credibility in Black America as Vanilla Ice at a gangsta rap reunion.

NGLTF Takes Aim At GOP’s Courting Of Black Churches

by Roberta Sklar


WASHINGTON, D.C. — The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute (NGLTFPI) released a report April 4 that exposed the dishonesty of attempts by leaders of the Republican Party to lure black voters based on ‘moral values’ and spotlight the false promises inherent in Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman’s call for African-Americans to come “back home” to the GOP.

The report, “False Promises: How the Right Deploys Homophobia to Win Support from African-Americans,” compared the voting records of key Republican policymakers in Congress to polling of African-Americans’ top voting priorities and found that Republican lawmakers have abysmal voting records on these issues. Authored by Task Force Policy Analyst Nicolas Ray, the report showed that legislators with low ratings on LGBT equality also received low ratings from organizations that promote the rights of people of color, including the NAACP and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

Strange bedfellows

The report outlined the incongruity between historic Republican strategies, including Nixon’s “Southern strategy,” Reagan’s “welfare queens” and George H. W. Bush’s Willie Horton ads, all with disturbing racist undertones, and the Republican Party’s current push for African-American voters to “come home.” The study suggested that the current moral values rhetoric espoused by many in the GOP was designed in part to generate support by stoking homophobia in the African-American community.

“The right wing of the Republican Party has a long-standing record of using fear and bigotry to set Americans against each other for its own gain,” said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “It is supremely ironic and profoundly sad that this is the party of Lincoln, a party that once sought to unify a nation. It was a party in which ‘freedom’ was a principle, not an empty platitude espoused purely for political gain as is done so often by present-day Republican leaders.”

“This report should be a wake-up call to all black advocates for racial justice and social equality,” said H. Alexander Robinson, chief executive of the National Black Justice Coalition. “We can ill-afford having our voices dissipated by those who would exploit our differences over issues of sexual orientation for their own sinister political gain. Now that their thinly disguised attempts to render our votes meaningless has been revealed, it is up to us rebuild our coalition for change. Poll taxes, literacy tests and lynching didn’t stop us and I am confident we will prevail against this new tactic.”

According to data compiled from polls of the African-American community by the conservative Black America’s Political Action Committee and the progressive Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (JCPES), top priorities for black voters include economy and jobs; health care and prescription drugs; education; and Social Security. “Moral values” was not a significant concern of the poll respondents.

Despite the Republican Party’s attempt to use LGBT equality as a wedge issue, according to the JCPES poll, 47 percent of African-Americans would support some form of legal recognition of same-sex relationships.

“I’d be excited to see the GOP finally making a serious push for black voters — if the party was offering fresh ideas on police profiling, housing discrimination, unemployment and other issues of importance to black folks. But, the focus (isn’t) on any of that. Rather, it’s on the gosh-darned ‘homosexual agenda,’” said Leonard Pitts Jr., an African-American author quoted in the report.

Conservative Voting Records Is Bad For Blacks

The report outlined the voting records of members of Congress who received the highest ratings from conservative political organizations such as the American Conservative Union and the Family Research Council. All but one of these 125 representatives and 34 senators (a group which includes Sens. Trent Lott and Rick Santorum, and Rep. Tom DeLay) are Republican. The most conservative members of Congress also received some of the lowest ratings from people-of-color rights organizations such as the NAACP and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. These legislators also received low ratings from other progressive organizations concerned with LGBT equality, including the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and Americans for Democratic Action.

In addition to these GOP legislators’ sometimes disturbing affiliations with racist organizations such as the Conservative Citizens Council (Lott) and opposition to reauthorization of parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (DeLay), people-of-color civil rights organizations were concerned with these legislators’ lack of support for established priorities of the African-American community. These legislators have consistently opposed affirmative action, raising the minimum wage, full funding for education initiatives, including No Child Left Behind, and funding for Medicaid initiatives that disproportionately affect African-Americans.

In addition, the report examined in detail the voting index scores of members of Congress from the six states with the highest proportion of African-American residents — Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi and South Carolina. Republicans from these states consistently scored high on conservative measures, low on indices addressing African-American concerns and near zero on HRC’s measure score of support for LGBT equality. Conversely, while some Democrats managed moderately well with conservative groups, they simultaneously scored much higher on issues of significance to African-Americans, the poor and the LGBT community.

African-American leaders: LGBT rights = Civil rights

Finally, the report pointed to anti-LGBT rhetoric used by religious right figures, including James Dobson, the Rev. Lou Sheldon and Bishop Henry Jackson, as a part of the attempt to bring African-American voters into the Republican Party and spotlighted just how out of step these folks are with major figures of the African-American community, including the late Coretta Scott King, Rep. John Lewis and the NAACP’s Julian Bond.

Rep. John Lewis: “It is time to say forthrightly that government’s exclusion of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters from civil marriage officially degrades them and their families…this discrimination is wrong.”

Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP: “There are no ‘special rights’ in America; we are all entitled to life, liberty and happiness’ pursuit. … I see this as a civil rights issue. That means I support gay civil marriage.”

Coretta Scott King: “I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King’s dream to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”

Bush Acknowledges Racism Still Exists

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - President Bush acknowledged persistent racism in America and lamented the Republican Party's bumpy relations with black voters as he addressed the NAACP's annual convention Thursday for the first time in his presidency.

"I understand that racism still lingers in America," Bush told the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "It's a lot easier to change a law than to change a human heart. And I understand that many African-Americans distrust my political party."

That line generated boisterous applause and cheers from the thousands in the audience, which generally gave the president a polite, reserved reception.

"I consider it a tragedy that the party of Abraham Lincoln let go of its historical ties with the African-American community," Bush said. "For too long, my party wrote off the African-American vote, and many African-Americans wrote off the Republican Party."

Black support for Republicans in elections has hovered around 10 percent for more than a decade. In 2004, Bush drew 11 percent of the black vote against Democrat John Kerry.

Most of the president's remarks were greeted with smatterings of applause, but many in the convention center stood up to clap when he urged the Senate to renew a landmark civil rights law passed in the 1960s to stop racist voting practices in the South.

"President Johnson called the right to vote the lifeblood of our democracy. That was true then and it remains true today," Bush said.

Bush, joined by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and chief political adviser Karl Rove, spoke as the Senate debated a bill to approve a 25-year extension of expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The House has passed the bill, and the Senate was expected to pass it quickly, propelled by a Republican push to increase the party's credibility with minorities.

For five years in a row, Bush has declined invitations to address the NAACP convention. This year, he said yes. He was introduced by NAACP head Bruce Gordon.

"Bruce was a polite guy," Bush said. "I thought what he was going to say, `It's about time you showed up.' And I'm glad I did."

He knew it would be a tough audience. According to AP-Ipsos polling conducted in June and July, 86 percent of blacks disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job as president, compared with 56 percent of whites who disapprove.

Bush said he saw his attendance at the convention as a moment of opportunity to celebrate the civil rights movement and the accomplishments of the NAACP.

"I come from a family committed to civil rights," Bush said. "My faith tells me that we are all children of God — equally loved, equally cherished, equally entitled to the rights He grants us all.

"For nearly 200 years, our nation failed the test of extending the blessings of liberty to African-Americans. Slavery was legal for nearly 100 years, and discrimination legal in many places for nearly 100 years more."

The White House denied claims that Bush's appearance was a way of atoning for the government's slow response to Hurricane Katrina. The Rev. Jesse Jackson and some black elected officials alleged that indifference to black suffering and racial injustice was to blame for the sluggish reaction to the disaster.

Bush, noting that he has met several times with Gordon, and that they have discussed Katrina. "We've got a plan and we've got a commitment," Bush said. "It's commitment to the people of the Gulf Coast of the United States to see to it that their lives are brighter and better than before the storm."

Bush also recalled his visit in June to Elvis Presley's Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tenn., with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. While in Memphis, the two made an unscheduled stop at the National Civil Rights Museum at The Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Bush and Koizumi emerged from a tour to stand on the spot on the motel balcony where King was slain.

They were joined by former NAACP head Benjamin Hooks.

"It's a powerful reminder of hardships this nation has been through in a struggle for decency," Bush said. "I was honored that Dr. Hooks took time to visit with me. He talked about the hardships of the movement. With the gentle wisdom that comes from experience, he made it clear we must work as one. And that's why I have come today."

Toward the end of his remarks, two protesters interrupted the president, shouting inquiries about Vice President Dick Cheney and the situation in the Middle East. "Don't worry. I'm almost done," Bush whispered to NAACP board chairman Julian Bond, one of the dignitaries with him on the stage.

"I know you can handle it," Bond replied.

GOP Postpones Vote to Renew Voting Rights Act, Senate May Follow

By Laurie Kellman, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - House Republican leaders on Wednesday postponed a vote on renewing the 1965 Voting Rights Act after GOP lawmakers complained it unfairly singles out nine Southern states for federal oversight.

"We have time to address their concerns," Republican leaders said in
a joint statement. "Therefore, the House Republican Leadership will
offer members the time needed to evaluate the legislation."

It was unclear whether the legislation would come up this year. The
temporary provisions don't expire until 2007, but leaders of both
parties had hoped to pass the act and use it to further their
prospects in the fall's midterm elections.

The statement said the GOP leaders are committed to renewing the
law "as soon as possible."

The four-decade-old law enfranchised millions of black voters by
ending poll taxes and literacy tests during the height of the civil
rights struggle. A vote on renewing it for another 25 years had been
scheduled for Wednesday, with both Republican and Democratic leaders
behind it

The abrupt change of plans in the House could affect the renewal in
the Senate, where an identical bill was set for consideration next
week by the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to Chairman Arlen
Specter, R-Pa.

"There's less pressure to do it if the House is not doing it,"
Specter said in a telephone interview.

The shift came after a private House GOP caucus meeting earlier
Wednesday in which several Republicans also balked at extending
provisions in the law that require ballots to be printed in more than
one language in neighborhoods where there are large numbers of
immigrants, said several participants.

"The speaker's had a standing rule that nothing would be voted on
unless there's a majority of the majority," said Rep. Lynn
Westmoreland, R-Ga., who led the objections. "It was pretty clear at
the meeting that the majority of the majority wasn't there."

The legislation was approved by the Judiciary Committee on a 33-1
vote. But despite leadership support, controversy has shadowed the
legislation 40 years after it first prohibited policies that blocked
blacks from voting.

Several Republicans, led by Westmoreland, had worked to allow an
amendment that would ease a requirement that nine states win
permission from the Justice Department or a federal judge to change
their voting rules.

The amendment's backers say the requirement unfairly singles out and
holds accountable nine states that practiced racist voting policies
decades ago, based on 1964 voter turnout data: Alabama, Alaska,
Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and
Virginia.

Westmoreland says the formula for deciding which states are subject
to such "pre-clearance" should be updated every four years and be
based on voter turnout in the most recent three elections.

"The pre-clearance portions of the Voting Rights Act should apply to
all states, or no states," Westmoreland said. "Singling out certain
states for special scrutiny no longer makes sense."

The amendment has powerful opponents. From Republican and Democratic
leaders on down the House hierarchy, they argue that states with
documented histories of discrimination may still practice it and have
earned the extra scrutiny.

"This carefully crafted legislation should remain clean and
unamended," Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., who worked on the original
bill, which he called "the keystone of our national civil rights
statutes."

By his own estimation, Westmoreland says the amendment stands little
chance of being adopted.

The House also could bring up an amendment that would require the
Justice Department to compile an annual list of jurisdictions
eligible for a "bailout" from the pre-clearance requirements.

That amendment, too, has little chance of surviving floor debate.

Other efforts to chip away at the act have faltered under pressure
from powerful supporters.

One such measure, sponsored by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, sought to
strip a provision that requires ballots to be printed in several
languages and interpreters be provided in states and counties where
large numbers of citizens speak limited English.

However, Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis.,
called that logic an effort to mix the divisive debate over
immigration reform with the Voting Rights Act renewal. Three-fourths
of those whose primary language is not English are American-born, he
said.

Love The Sinner But Hate the Sin: NOT!

Ninety-nine percent of the time I am vehemently criticizing anything Senator Trent Lott (R-MS) says. But I have to agree with this statement that he made on November 8, 1996 to a conservative columnist.

“I’m a firm believer in feeding people their own words back to them, when it’s appropriate.”

It’s time to serve dinner to my fundamentalist friends. On the menu is one of their signature phrases with a generous portion of hypocrisy on the side.

Over the years we’ve heard ad nauseum from them the oft-quoted statement ‘Love the sinner but hate the sin’. They have wielded it like a baton to beat down GLBT people with. Only one problem: Nowhere in the Bible do those words appear together in scripture in either the Old or New Testaments.

I’ll repeat this once again: ‘Love the sinner but hate the sin’ does not appear as a single verse ANYWHERE in the Bible.

Now it is true that God tells us in John 15:12 to love one another as he has loved us. It's also true that God says He hates sin. But unfortunately Fundamentalists have taken these two separate scriptures and melded them into an attack weapon that in their convoluted thought process gives them carte blanche to denigrate gays, abortion doctors, women and anyone else who wants equal rights with impunity.

When you call them out for their Jurassic attitudes against gays, for example, it becomes their all purpose defense for the hatred, bigotry and discrimination they liberally heap upon them. They’ll reply that their actions are okay in "God's eyes." They are just following a literal interpretation of the Bible by denying gay people their constitutional rights to equal and fair treatment under the law and are only showing their displeasure with the sin. Fundamentalists aren't "hating" the sinner when they claim that gays are sick and need healing, should wear warning labels or undergo a godly fumigation. They’re just simply fulfilling their ‘Christian’ mission by showing they need to be "healed."

Yeah right. And Reverend Stanley Kirk Burrell is gonna make a comeback touring as a gangsta rapper.

Fundamentalists have conveniently forgotten that anyone who professes to be a Christian is supposed to forgive the sin, not ‘hate’ it. It is mandatory that you must forgive the sins of any other sinner – including the GLBT peeps you hate. If they can’t or won’t do it and start uttering that ‘love the sinner but hate the sin’ pseudo argument, they will find themselves being condemned by the very God that they claim they love and serve.

Albert Einstein stated that “You cannot simultaneously say that you love someone and use your power against them." Explain to me how you can say with a straight face (pardon the pun) from the pulpit that you ‘love’ someone but demonize them, pass constitutional amendments to deny them the ability to get married, fight tooth and nail to strip away their civil rights protections, openly discriminate against them and work to pressure companies to revoke their domestic partner benefits? That’s not ‘Christian’, that’s just plain evil.

You know something? When The Rapture does happen some of you folks are gonna be in for a big surprise in terms of who gets Left Behind.

Got room for dessert? Let me get that Devil’s food cake for you. Bon appetit.

The Religious Right Ten Commandments

1-Thou shalt exalt wealth and power before me.

2-Thou shalt make unto thee graven political images to bash Democrats with

3-Thou shalt not take the name of George W. Bush in vain

4-Remember the holy Sabbath day is great for pitching GOP policies and talking points

5-Honor the Republican Party and the conservative movement above thy mother and father

6-Thou shalt not kill unless it is a death row prisoner

7-Thou shalt not commit adultery unless you are a GOP legislator or a conservative defender of 'family values'

8-Thou shalt not steal unless it is an election or you’re working for a company that supports GOP candidates

9-Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor unless you work for Fox News or are a right wing talk show host

10-Thou shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbor’s unless it is their oil reserves or other valuable natural resources

How to Talk to a Conservative...If You Must

1- Don't use words with more than three syllables.

2-Remember that they are used to getting their talking points from Rush Limbaugh or other conservative media, so don't assume they can think for themselves

3-Remember they think that George W. Bush ACTUALLY won two elections, so bear in mind that conservatives are slightly delusional

4-If they start ranting, offer them Oxycontinin. If it's Ann Coulter, offer her estrogen.

5-Remember that conservatives are insecure because they've been handed everything on a silver platter from Mumsy and Dadsy, so they have no clue how Real Americans live

6-If you talk about religion with them remember that they worship a God that hates anyone that's not a heterosexual white male who votes GOP and condones cheating, greed, lying, gaybaiting, racism, xenophobia and sexism

7-If you're talking to a wife of a conservative, make sure that you steer clear of any water puddles or aren't standing next to her during a thunderstorm

8-Remember that conservatives don't have a grasp of reading fundamentals or proper sentence construction since many of them are low C or D students who got over...you know...like George W. Bush

9-Be on the look out for them to pull out 9-11 as a crutch to buttress their weak ass arguments every time they are intellectually overmatched or confronted with overwhelming evidence they are wrong.

10-Remember that a conservative will NEVER tell the truth, so don't expect them to be honest about anything or acknowledge that they are wrong.

Join the GOP? No Thank You

TransGriot Note: I wrote this as a rebuttal to an African-American Republican

As a life long African-American Democrat I was amused by Felicia Benamon’s GOP talking point filled essay that completely misses the mark on why 90% of African-Americans are committed members of the Democratic Party.

I have to wonder what alternate universe Ms. Benamon lives in when she states that the GOP is a party of inclusion. Yes, it surely is. It includes rich white men, poor white men, gay white men, bigoted white men, conservative white men, fundamentalist Christian white men...Well, you get the picture. The only Black people I see flocking to the GOP are ministers who are rushing to get their faith based hush money so they can build bigger church sanctuaries, opportunistic party-switching sellouts like J. Kenneth Blackwell and radical out of touch people like Clarence Thomas and Janice Rogers Brown.

I’m reminded of the quote of a longtime Democratic county chair from Oklahoma, the late Julius Caesar Watts, Sr. (the father of former GOP Rep JC Watts)

"Black people voting for Republicans is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders."

The GOP hasn't done jack to earn my vote and won't even compete for it. They spend more time and money trying to suppress my vote instead of making the fundamental policy changes that it will take to get me to support its candidates.

Far from ignoring our community, the Democratic Party embraces it. African-Americans are involved in every level of the party from the grassroots to the DNC. In addition an African-American named Ronald H. Brown ran my party from 1989-1993 before he became commerce secretary under President Clinton. By the way, under Ron Brown’s leadership the Democratic Party captured the White House and majorities in the House and Senate. So when is an African-American gonna run your party?

I’m tired of bait-and-switch GOP election tactics in which they say one thing and do the radically opposite once they are elected. They write Orwellian legislation that does the exact opposite of what its lofty titles promise. The Patriot Act curtails civil liberties. Leave No Child Behind attacks public education and underfunds it. The Help America Vote Act adds more ways to disenfranchise Americans from their precious right to vote. They coddle corporate America at the expense of working class America.

If Republicans (and conservatives by extension) value working people and wants to help you achieve your dreams, then why has the GOP consistently voted against and killed raises in the minimum wage? Why have they made it HARDER for people to sue when a corporation’s shoddy products or discriminatory practices ruin lives in the name of 'tort reform'? Why have they cut taxes for the wealthy, which increases the tax burden on the working class? Why have they made it harder for people to form and join unions? Seems that the only values the GOP appreciates is rising stock prices that put money in their pockets at the expense of working class people.


Felicia, since you went there on Affirmative Action, let me state that it is unrealistic to assume that 40 years of this policy (which by the way started under the Nixon administration) magically wiped out the debilitating effects of 246 years of slavery and another 100 years of Jim Crow segregation. While merit is a wonderful concept and a goal we should all strive for, the reality is that white people control the HR departments of many corporations and some of them disproportionately hire people that look like them without considering whether that person is qualified or not. They also had a 400 year head start in terms of accumulating the wealth that they enjoy today at the expense of the suffering of our ancestors.

Felicia, the thing that binds us is our shared values as Americans. They are not the private property of the GOP. Democrats love our flag, revere our Constitution and our country just as much as you conservatives. Then again you conservatives respect for the Constitution is debatable. It's more like contempt for it.

I have a problem with the GOP definition of values. Disenfranchising gay people because you don’t like them is not an American value. Selfishness is not an American value. Suppressing dissent is not an American value. As African-Americans who have fought our own long and bitter struggle just to get OUR constitutional rights respected, we shouldn’t be standing shoulder to shoulder with the same bigots that opposed us in the 60’s (and still do) when we were the ones marching in the streets

So GW Bush increased his share of the African-American vote from 8% to 12%. You can be very proud of the fact that you bamboozled, frightened, supressed votes and used hatred of gay people to get that 4% increase. Congratulations.

The only thing that has been dragging our country into a pit as you put it is the mean spirited way that conservatives have imposed their views on the country. You don’t want dialogue; you want a monologue a la FOX News.

As far as you hating the term African-American, I love it. It reminds others and myself that I am an American of African descent and I'm proud of my African roots. You can’t put that in small letters to marginalize me as you do if I call myself Black. If Polish-Americans, Irish-Americans, Latinos and Asians can celebrate their cultural heritage, then why can’t we? Or are you black GOP conservatives ashamed of your African ancestry?

I am reminded of a 1978 comment from Adlai Stevenson Jr. concerning the GOP:

‘I have been tempted to make a proposal to our Republican friends that if they stop telling lies about us, we would stop telling the truth about them.’

To quote the word of your late hero Ronald Reagan, "there you go again" in terms of pushing the fiction that the Bush administration is the most diverse in history.

The most diverse administration in US history was the previous one run by William Jefferson Clinton. Brother Bill appointed more African-Americans to his cabinet than Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Daddy Bush, and GW combined. The previous record holder was another Democratic president, James Earl Carter. By the way Felicia, a president APPOINTS people to his cabinet and his administration, not elects them.

So, you mean to tell me that Alexis Herman, Rodney Slater, Hazel O’Leary, Dr. Joycelyn Elders, Dr. David Satcher, Togo West, Eric Holder and Jesse Brown didn’t work hard to get their positions? Or is hard work only the province of negro conservatives?

So where are these emerging black conservatives? Oh yeah, they’re standing in line at GOP headquarters receiving their cash handouts to run for public office (Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele) or getting paid $250K to shill on national TV for Bush administration policies like Armstrong Williams.

Just as you made the decision to support the GOP, I’m a thoughtful person who’s analyzed both sides and made the conscious decision to support the Democratic Party. It just so happens that 90% of African-Americans reached the same conclusion about which party to support.

I am a Democrat because I had quality people like Barbara Jordan and Mickey Leland representing me in Congress when I was growing up in Houston. It was Democrats at the local, county, state and federal levels who looked out for the issues I deeply care about such as the environment, civil rights, education and creating a fair society. It was my Democratic state legislator Ron Wilson who fought for my right to vote in the 1984 presidential election when a white GOP poll watcher tried to deny it to me in my home precinct and Dems who consistently fought for it.

All I ever see from conservatives is consistent opposition to those policies that I know help build a prosperous African-American middle class. I see from many conservative blacks who are GOP members selfish materialism, mind-numbing rhetoric devoid of logic, arrogance, denial of their heritage, and support of racist policies that seek to eliminate or roll back everything that our people have worked hard to implement.

Join the GOP? No thank you