Your source for breaking U.S. & international news, political & social commentary geared towards the black community
BREAKING NEWS: NYPD officer Kevin Brennan shot in Brooklyn, en route to Bellevue Hospital. The officer was shot at about 9:10 p.m. in front of 370 Bushwick Avenue in East Williamsburg, NBC New York reports. He is expected to live. Officer Kevin Brennan is lucky to be alive, after being shot in the back of the head. He defied the odds.
Mitt Romney: "Remember When the White House Reflected Who You Are, Not Worst of Europe"
Mitt Romney won the Florida primary by a landslide — 47% to Newt Gingrich’s 32%. Well, he deserved to win, considering he outspent his closest rival by 5:1, essentially buying his way to a win. I marveled as I listened to his victory speech and how he took it directly to President Obama saying he needed to “get out of the way.” The line I marveled the most was his comment that he wants to take us back to a place when we “remember when the White House reflects the best of who you are and not the worst of Europe.”
Um, too bad he dodged the draft by living in France and had money stashed away in a Swiss bank account, as well as speaks French. So, if Europe was such a horrid place, why was he living in France and even put his money in a European bank? Sounds a little hypocritical to me. I wonder how he felt about the White House when George W. Bush lived in it for eight years? It was certainly not the best of who we were as Americans.
Let me be the first to say, I don’t believe for a moment Mitt Romney was engaging in racial politics, but there are some fringe elements of the Republican Party who will take it as such. Yeah, the black man in the White House doesn’t reflect what they want to see.
Some Georgia college students are using food stamps to survive. Isn’t that a low down dirty shame? Is this the new reality we are living with today?
Georgia’s college students are facing the prospect of the HOPE Scholarship paying less and less toward their tuition in the next few years.
So how are they dealing with rising tuition and fees? Many are working whatever part-time jobs they can rustle up, mornings, nights and weekends. But they’re also tapping into an unconventional form of student financial aid: food stamps. Source
This is problematic on so many levels. One, it’s a little hypocritical to tell students that a college education is their ticket to a better life and a good job, when they have to beg and borrow to stay enrolled. Second, the HOPE scholarship program is literally squeezing many students out because of its requirements. Third, where are the parents of these students who have no choice but to apply for food stamps and lastly, are these students living on campus or off-campus?
If you live on campus and have signed up for the meal plan, you shouldn’t have to worry about food, but I guess some have pared down their room and board to the bare minimum. Either way, if Cubans can go to college for free, why can’t we educate our kids with the least amount of financial constraints?
Columbia Grad Student Samantha Kwek Commits Suicide After Break-Up with Boyfriend
How many of us have had break-ups with significant others? That doesn’t mean it was the end of the world or that you wallow in your pity by committing suicide. Samantha Kwek, a Columbia University graduate student, who was distraught over breaking up with her boyfriend, Benjamin Small, jumped from his 16th-floor balcony at a luxury East Side New York City building, the NY Post reports.
Earlier on Sunday, Samantha Kwek had texted her boyfriend, Benjamin Small, saying that she had taken OxyContin and that she wanted to come over to his apartment at 100 United Nations Plaza, police sources said.
There was an argument and she said words to the effect that she couldn’t live without him, the sources said. Then she went out to the balcony and jumped at around 11:40 p.m., the sources said. Source: NY Post
Crazy is all I can say to this. Just plain crazy. If Samantha Kwek really committed suicide over a break-up with her boyfriend, then she obviously had some emotional issues. No relationship ending is worth taking your life. None.
SHAME: Mark Berndt, a former Los Angeles elementary school teacher, was arrested after he allegedly gagged and made bondage photos of nearly two dozen children, possibly inside a classroom, Fox News reports.
Mark Berndt, 61, was arrested at his Torrance home on Monday and remained jailed Tuesday on $2.3 million bail. He has been charged with committing lewd acts with 23 boys and girls ages seven to 10.
Mark Berndt worked for more than 30 years at Miramonte Elementary School before being fired. I’m pretty sure there will be more victims.
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — A new survey(1) examined American’s bill payment behavior and found that more than one-third (35 percent) of consumers are struggling to pay their monthly bills either sometimes, often or always. The consumer survey was conducted by Independent market research firm Toluna, on behalf of BillFloat, Inc., the nation’s only bill payment provider to give consumers more time to pay when they need it. The survey also found that one quarter (25 percent) of respondents would turn off their TV for an entire month to have someone else pay their bills, while one in five women would abstain from sex for six months.
To read entire press release, CLICK HERE.
Newt Gingrich Should Step Aside and Let Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum Battle it Out for Presidential Nomination (Wikipedia)
End of the road for Newt Gingrich? If we could be so lucky. Dana Milbank seems to think the writing is on the wall for the erratic egomaniac.
Dana Milbank on Gingrich’s Florida hijinks: ”Sunday night at a Hyatt bar in Jacksonville, Newt Gingrich approached a table of reporters to announce that a new poll would put him within striking distance of Mitt Romney. “It’s hard to know what the most pitiful part was: That a presidential candidate was whiling away the night at a hotel bar …? That he felt the need to do his own spinning? That the survey he was spinning was a ‘robo-poll’ done by machines? Or that the pollster who did it used to work for Gingrich?” Other polls actually show Romney pulling way ahead, but that hasn’t stopped Gingrich from deceptively citing older polls on the trail or making “religion-bating” references to accuse Romney of mistreating Jews and Catholics, or generally provoking the media, Milbank recounts. Gingrich “said there shouldn’t be ‘any doubt’ that he will remain in the race after Florida. ‘The establishment in both parties is terrified,’ he boasted. Well, at least the Republicans are.”
I didn’t realize the U.S. now has official religions. Um, this is coming from the man who wants to build a colony on the moon, oblivious to the fact that such as feat would be an enormous financial undertaking, which speaks indirectly to the kind of administration he would lead. This is also the same man who erroneously said Nancy Reagan implied her husband had passed the torch on to him to lead the Reagan conservative movement. Newt Gingrich also erroneously announced yesterday that a “brand new poll” had shown a tied race. Newt Gingrich thrives on stirring up dissension based on racial politics.
He accused Mitt Romney of discriminating against Catholics and Jews saying, “I think we need to have a government that respects our religions. “I’m really tired of being lectured about respecting every other religion on the planet. I want them to respect our religions.” Here’s my two cents, it’s time for Newt Gingrich to respect American voters like you and I. He needs to step aside and let Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum battle it out for the nominee. He can’t beat Barack Obama. Well, Santorum can’t either, but he’s more of a conservative in my viewpoint, than Newt Gingrich ever will be.
In closing, the endorsement from Herman Cain and the half-way endorsement from Sarah Palin amount to absolutely nothing. In fact, I would consider both to be the kiss of death for his campaign. Who really takes either seriously?
MURDER-SUICIDE: The disturbing murder-suicide trend continues to rise, with no end in sight. Mary Mauger, 47, and Kenneth Borkowski, 53, of Oak Lawn, Ill., were found shot to death in an apparent murder-suicide Monday morning. Kenneth Borkowski has been identified as the shooter, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The bodies were found during a welfare check at the request of family members.
Separately, Kenneth Sherman, 86, reportedly killed his wife, Anna Wadsley Sherman, and then turned the gun on himself in an apparent murder-suicide in their Porters Corners home in Greenfield, NY, Sunday night, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Robert King killed his twin daughters Caroline and Madison King, in an apparent murder-suicide in Virginia after a turbulent relationship with his wife.
A report released by Washington D.C. advocacy group, The Corporation for Enterprise Development, found 43 percent of Americans would fall into poverty within three months if they experienced a sudden financial shock, such as losing a job or a medical emergency.
“Growing numbers of families have almost no savings or other assets to see them through if they lose their jobs or face a medical crisis,” said Andrea Levere, president of CFED. “Without savings, few will be able to build a more economically secure future, including buying a home, saving for their children’s college educations or building a retirement nest egg.” The tenuous financial position of so many households is due to a combination of “flat wages, the high cost of medical treatment and the nationwide drop in housing values leaving homeowners with less wealth.”
Eugene Robinson Paul Krugman Maureen Dowd Kathleen Parker Robert Reich Memeorandum REUTERS BUSINESS NEWS REUTERS POLITICS AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE WORLD NEWS
Rep. Allen West Backpedals on Calling for President Obama and Liberals to “Get Hell Out of America”
Rep. Allen West Backpedals on Calling for President Obama and Liberals to "Get Hell Out of America"
Rep. Allen West (R-FL), who Sarah Palin endorsed during his campaign, is trying to walk back comments he made during a demagogic speech in Florida last weekend saying President Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz should “get the hell out of the United States of America.” He appeared on both CNN and Fox News insisting he didn’t make such a call. The more I hear this man speak, the more I wonder just who is really still on a Southern plantation?
During an interview on CNN with Soledad O’Brien, he demanded that she view the entire speech to see that “he was simply trying to draw attention to the decline of a country” at the expense of people who hold values that are “not in concert with our constitutional republic.” “And if you can’t understand that, please come down to South Florida, you and I can read the Federalist Papers,” he said. During his appearance on Fox and Friends, Allen West told host Steve Doocy, “I did not refer to any person leaving.” Thanks to the voters of Florida, who drank the Tea Party Kool-Aid, we have to listen to this sh*t from this fool. Allen West is a disgrace to the military and to the black community.
Thank God for modern technology, we can now hold people like Allen West accountable for incendiary comments like this: