[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] A high-ranking Department of Veterans Affairs official on Tuesday defended the VA's failure to discipline two employees accused of misconduct, and blamed the outrage over their lenient treatment on "considerable external pressure" by the media and Congress to punish personnel who may not have done anything wrong.
Sloan Gibson, deputy VA secretary, praised a judge's recent decision in personnel cases that stopped the demotions of Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves, two VA officials accused of together stealing more than $400,000 in benefits from the government.
The allegations against Graves and Rubens came in a September 2015 inspector general report, which found the two officials had created job openings for themselves in far-away cities and gamed a VA program meant to pay the moving expenses of agency employees.
But Gibson said Tuesday the inspector general report was flawed, arguing Graves and Rubens should never have been demoted in the first place.
According to the inspector general, Graves had pressured a colleague to leave his job so she could manipulate the VA's employee relocation program and pocket nearly $130,000 in benefits. The same report found Rubens had created a less-demanding position for herself at the VA's regional office in Philadelphia, then netted $274,000 in moving benefits to take the job while retaining the same six-figure salary.
Gibson denied either official had stolen taxpayer money.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/05/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
Gibson and the other two should be part of a Jan 21st housecleaning
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/05/2016 5:42 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Repeal the Civil Service Act. If they're going to be crooks and operatives for one party, they might as well be cleaned out every four or eight years.
#3
Patronage was intended to be for the senior leaders of government agencies to be selected to reflect the current administrations policies that were approved by the voters since they elected the President based on them. Essentially lifetime tenure in the Civil Service and a massive disparity in ethnic, demographic, and political positions held by civil service workers now, along with their overwhelming Union political contributions, have made them a permanent overclass for the democrat party. Democrats have salted away a massive and permanent constituency in places like Justice Civil Rights Division, the IRS, the EPA, increasingly DHS, Treasury.....and they make all the tens of thousands of regulations and rules that are choking the Republic.
[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] Former drug company CEO Martin Shkreli came to Congress Thursday, refused to answer questions from Congress about his decision to jack up an anti-parasite drug, and then called members "imbeciles" over Twitter.
Shkreli, who boosted the price of an anti-parasite drug by 5,000 percent last year, attended a House Oversight Committee hearing Thursday on high drug prices. Shkreli, wearing a suit instead of his usual hoodie, took the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer questions.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/05/2016 00:00 ||
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[11125 views]
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#1
You don't tug on superman's cape
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask off that old lone ranger
And you don't mess around with Jim
#2
They're not 'imbeciles.' They're just envious and curious regarding your method of margins and handsome 5000 percent profit. Shkreli, Big Pharma, and the congress are all on the same team. Why can't we just get along ?
[ALMANAR.LB] The US state of Georgia executed its oldest death row inmate Wednesday, just days before his 73rd birthday, in a move critics denounced as emblematic of capital punishment's excesses.
Brandon Jones received a lethal injection at a state prison in Jackson, a corrections front man told AFP.
The African American man had spent more than 36 years behind bars for the 1979 murder of a white convenience store clerk. It doesn't matter what color the convenience store clerk was, but why did Mr. Jones spend half his life on death row? Presumably he was filing appeal after appeal, but it's an indication of the sickness of the legal system that they weren't dealt with by, say, 1980.
His lawyers had launched last-minute appeals to halt the execution, including with the US Supreme Court, but they were rejected.
Critics point to his case as an example of the "double punishment" faced by some death row prisoners -- spending decades in solitary confinement with no prospects but death. Why does it take 36 years for the appeal process to exhaust itself? The obvious solution to the long wait for an execution never seems to be broached in court...
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer spoke out last year against "unconscionably long delays that undermine the death penalty's penological purpose."
Death penalty opponents note that many death row inmates were sentenced to death at a time when they lacked a satisfactory defense system and that if they were tried today, the outcome would be different. Murder a clerk at a convenience store today while committing a robbery? There are any number of state prosecutors today that will seek the death penalty, and a fair number of judges and jurors who will impose it. Be careful what you wish for...
"Jones's case raises questions of proportionality and discriminatory application of the death penalty," the Death Penalty Information Center said in a statement.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/05/2016 00:00 ||
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[11127 views]
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#1
The death penalty another one of those things that 2/3rds of Americans want, but the elites and your betters keep dragging out, obstructing, and shutting down. Remember, it's an oligarchy.
#2
but the elites and your betters keep dragging out, obstructing, and shutting down
Keeps the lawyers employed too, dontcha know.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
02/05/2016 9:09 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Of course the elites want to end the death penalty. They are deathly afraid of:
1) its utter, final irrevokability, with no do-overs if they are wrong.
2) the fact that it could be applied to them. Visions of Tumbrels, the screaming mob, and Therimidor are dancing in their heads.
#4
Of course they ignore the literally thousands of 'executions' that happen in their cities, neighborhoods, schools, businesses, et al without any 'due process' or appeal. And you wonder why people won't talk to the authorities. When you avoid certain places, fear for your children when the sun goes down, and lock yourself into your abode at night, don't tell me the death penalty has no effect.
#6
He shouldn't have been executed on account of he had spent so long on death row that it amounted to double punishment - that makes for a great argument, drag out the appeal long enough and win because the appeal took to long.
In an apparent move to show how serious the Pentagon is about countering conventional threats such as Russia and China, Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter announced Wednesday that the U.S. Navy would get a new ship-killing missile.
The SM-6 is a vertically launched system fired from the deck of destroyers and cruisers. The missile was designed and fielded to intercept ballistic missiles in flight while they are passing through the upper atmosphere, but now, with Carter's announcement, the SM-6 will be upgraded to defeat enemy ships.
"It makes the SM-6 basically a twofer," said Carter to an audience of sailors in San Diego. "[It] can shoot down airborne threats. And now you can attack and destroy a ship at long range with the very same missile."
The SM-6 is another step forward as the Pentagon moves to configure certain weapons systems to defeat enemy ships. In February 2015, the U.S. Navy showcased a video of a U.S. destroyer firing a Tomahawk cruise missile that hit a moving barge. Tomahawks are primarily used for hitting stationary land-based targets, so if they could be widely converted and used for anti-ship use it would give U.S. ships an additional, and much needed, long range anti-ship strike capability.
Carter admitted to secretly testing the SM-6 last month and added that the Pentagon's upcoming budget sets aside $2.9 billion to purchase 600 of the missiles.
Currently, the U.S. Navy's anti-ship missiles are the Harpoon variant, which have a range of only around 50 miles.
Writing in the national security journal War on the Rocks, the Hudson Institute's Managing Director for American Sea Power, Bryan McGrath, summarized the advancements in the Navy's anti-ship missile capabilities.
"What this means is that in the space of a year, the Navy's surface force, which many...had believed was becoming 'outsticked' by adversary surface forces, has gone from 50 ships capable of firing missiles out to 75 miles, to 90 ships capable of firing a subsonic anti-ship missile to nearly a thousand miles," McGrath wrote. "Add to this the Navy's plan to 'upgun' the Littoral Combat Ship with medium-range surface-to-surface missiles, and we see that the promise of distributed lethality...is beginning to be realized."
#1
Very nice, but still no match for an Anti-US US = Anti-American Amerikan OWG Globalist POTUS in the Oval Office as CIC + sitting atop the US National Command Authority.
In US Presidential histoire' or tradition, the policies or actions of one POTUS tends to be carried on by the Successor(s), espec iff the original POTUS' Party threatens to filibuster or shut down the Govt iff it isn't.
IOW, THE BAMMER'S + HIS ADMIN'S DECISIONS + POLICIES, ETC. WILL LIKELY GO ON IN ANY SUCCESSOR GOP-DEM ADMIN UNTIL SUCH TIME THE SAME ARE FORMALLY REPEALED OR AMENDED.
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] At least two suspects have been tossed in the slammer Please don't kill me! in connection to the rape case of a 5-year-old child in central Bamyan province of Afghanistan.
According to the local security officials, the incident involving rape of the 5-year-old child took place late on Saturday night.
Provincial police chief Abdul Mubeen Izadyar said the rape case unveiled after the child was admitted to the provincial hospital for the treatment.
He said an investigation is underway in connection the incident and two suspects are in jug of the police.
Incidents involving rape of the children are rarely reported from the central Bamyan province of Afghanistan despite sexual abuse and rape of children have been rampant in Afghanistan, specifically in northern parts of the country.
The latest incident involving rape of a child was reported from northern Jawzjan province of Afghanistan earlier in September last year.
Earlier a teenage girl was gang-raped by a group of four men in northern Samangan province of Afghanistan.
The incident took place in Dara-e-Suf district of Samangan province late in the month of April where the girl was initially kidnapped and was repeatedly raped by the men.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/05/2016 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[11123 views]
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#1
Please don't tell me they are going to stone this girl to death. Or is she underage and therefore innocent?
President Nicolas Maduro called the owner of Venezuela’s largest privately-held company a “thief” and a “traitor” Thursday, blaming him for the country’s economic woes. In televised address, Maduro accused Lorenzo Mendoza, head of food giant Empresas Polar SA, of conspiring against his socialist government and meeting with his political opponents outside Venezuela’s borders.
“He’s a true thief,” Maduro said to a crowd of red-clad supporters. “I call on the people to unmask Lorenzo Mendoza in the streets. I’m waiting for you Lorenzo Mendoza.”
Polar’s billionaire owner this week has criticized the government’s stewardship of the economy and called on the Maduro administration to provide private businesses with much-needed foreign currency for imports. In televised news conference on Tuesday, Mendoza said it was “absolutely critical” that the government fix liquidity issues if it hoped to resolve nagging food shortages.
Maduro has long maintained that Venezuela’s triple-digit inflation and deepening recession are the result of a smear-campaign waged by his rivals. Maduro’s opponents counter that the state of the economy is the result of more than a decade of state controls and government incompetence.
And while discontent over soaring prices and shortages of everything from chicken to car parts largely fueled the government’s defeat in congressional elections last year, Maduro has so far doubled down on his socialist model.
“If you can’t handle your companies, hand them over to the people,” Maduro said.
That is, hand them over to him so that he, like Hugo's daughter, can grow rich...
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/05/2016 00:00 ||
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[11128 views]
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#1
Is there anyone left to blame?
Does this mean that all the economic sectors they nationalized before were not to blame and therefore nationalized by mistake?
Sit up straight. Pay good attention. And have your affairs in order just in case . . . .
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un presided over a meeting of senior ruling party officials aimed at rooting out corruption and abuses of power ahead of a major congress to be held in May, its state media reported Thursday, calling the gathering the first of its kind.
The meeting this week focused on strengthening the ruling party and criticized "the practices of seeking privileges, misuse of authority, abuse of power and bureaucratism," according to a report by the Korean Central News Agency.
It is unusual for North Korea's state-controlled media to make note of such problems within the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, which Kim heads and which has been in power since the founding of North Korea in 1948.
The two-day meeting, which ended Wednesday and was "guided" by Kim, brought together members of the ruling party's Central Committee and the Party Committee of the Korean People's Army.
Though the article did not elaborate on the problems or suggested solutions, outside experts have long speculated that corruption and power abuse within the party are widespread and have been worsening in recent years amid the growth of a quasi-legal capitalist-style marketization of the North's officially socialist and centrally-directed economy.
In its annual report released last month, North Korea and Somalia were listed at the top of Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for the second-straight year as the most corrupt governments in the world, scoring only 8 points on a scale of 100.
The meeting was held as world attention is focused on North Korea's Jan. 6 nuclear test, which it claims was the first of a hydrogen bomb, and its announcement it will launch a rocket this month to put its second Earth observation satellite in orbit. The U.N. Security Council is now discussing whether to slap new sanctions on the North over the nuclear test, which violated U.N. resolutions already in place.
North Korea's ruling regime, meanwhile, is heavily focused on preparing for the 7th Party Congress, a major event that will be closely watched for signs of new policies or priorities that could provide insights into how Kim -- who assumed power after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, in late 2011 -- intends to deal with his country's economy, domestic political issues and external relations.
The KCNA article said the congress, the first since more than 3,000 delegates gathered for the 6th Congress in 1980, will "be recorded as a new landmark in the history of the party."
It said Kim told this week's gathering that the party is faced with "manifold difficulties and ordeals," but added that he said "nobody in the world can block our way."
The marketization of the North Korean economy has been steadily growing since the famine years of the 1990s, when the breakdown of the state-run Public Distribution System that provided most North Koreans with food and basic necessities for free or at highly subsidized prices is believed to have forced many citizens to produce and sell goods on their own to make ends meet.
As such economic activity, often conducted in cash, grew on the fringes and has become more mainstream, it created opportunities for some individuals to amass wealth and has led to what many see as a nascent middle class that is growing in the North and particularly in places like the capital, Pyongyang.
But it is believed to have also opened up more avenues for officials in the party and the powerful military to seek bribes to look the other way or to demand kickbacks.
[ALMANAR.LB] Russia urged North Korea on Thursday to avoid escalating tensions with a planned rocket launch, expressing "grave concern" over the announcement.
The Russian foreign ministry said in a statement that it had summoned the North Korean ambassador in Moscow over Pyongyang's announcement that it will launch a satellite-bearing rocket sometime between February 8-25.
Moscow said it had issued an "urgent appeal to refrain from actions that could further escalate tensions in the region" and called for "unconditional observance of the relevant United Nations ...boodling on the grand scale... Security Council Resolutions".
It urged North Korea to return to talks over its nuclear program and other issues.
North Korea has notified three UN agencies that it plans to launch an earth observation satellite as early as Monday, just weeks after carrying out its fourth nuclear test.
The call from Russia, which last year said it would strengthen military ties with Pyongyang, joins a global chorus of warning against the launch.
UN Secretary-General the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday called it a "deeply troubling development."
UN sanctions prohibit North Korea from any use of ballistic missile technology.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/05/2016 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[11126 views]
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#1
UN sanctions prohibit North Korea from any use of ballistic missile technology
That ship has sailed. What are you going to do about it? Declare another red line?
Posted by: Sven the pelter ||
02/05/2016 12:07 Comments ||
Top||
I think I see how this is going to play out. The FBI will find some confidential emails here and there and then decide that it's a system-wide problem and give everybody a pass with a stern warning not to do it again. Nevermind that an unfinished tally of Hilla the Hun's email had a bazillion classifieds, dozens of top-secrets and also several so secret we can't even talk about them, she will also get to go along with the free ride, too.
[NYTimes] The State Department has discovered a dozen emails containing classified information that were sent to the personal email accounts of Colin L. Powell and close aides of Condoleezza Rice during their tenures as secretaries of state for President George W. Bush.
Two emails were sent to Mr. Powell's personal account, and 10 to personal accounts of Ms. Rice's senior aides. Those emails have now been classified as "confidential" or "secret" as part of a review process that has resulted in similar "upgrades" of information sent through the personal email server that Hillary Clinton used while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. The State Department did not say who sent the emails to Mr. Powell or to Ms. Rice's aides, or who received the messages.
It is against the law to have classified information outside a secure government account.
Of the nearly 30,000 emails from Mrs. Clinton's server that have been released by the State Department under a court order, 18 emails sent to or from her have also been classified as secret, and 1,564 others have been classified at the lower level of "confidential."
Last week, the State Department said that 22 emails had now been classified as "top secret" and would not be released, and would have part or all of their contents redacted, or blacked out. A review of 3,700 more emails by the department and intelligence agencies continues. More blah blah at link.
#1
Condi and Colin set up their own private servers? No
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/05/2016 5:46 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Powell and Rice also had all of those questionable land investment deals, lengthy lists of dead associates, foreign pay-for-play schemes, money laundering Canadian based foundations, and presidential aspirations.
And to top it off, Powell and Rice were 'white black people' and evil Bushitler appointees !!!
Why must we continue to denigrate the helpless Clintons ?
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
02/05/2016 7:23 Comments ||
Top||
#4
So they should indict Colin and Condi, too. Right after Hilly's indictment. Her trial and punishment can set a precedent for all the others. And future scofflaws.
[sigh] I ain't holdin' my breath.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/05/2016 7:48 Comments ||
Top||
#5
My understanding is that these e-mails were only became classified AFTER they left. I'd be very interested to know exactly when they ended up getting these classification. Maybe in the last couple months?
Posted by: Charles ||
02/05/2016 12:11 Comments ||
Top||
#6
My understanding is that these e-mails were only became classified AFTER they left.
Complete and total BS. Classified data were copied off the black internet and inserted into emails that resided on HRC's email server for the entire world intelligence communities to steal.
Posted by: Sven the pelter ||
02/05/2016 12:27 Comments ||
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#7
My understanding is that these e-mails only became classified AFTER they left. I'd be very interested to know exactly when they ended up getting these classification. Maybe in the last couple months?
No, it was a 'cut'n paste' or roving thumb drive operation by somebody or a group of somebodies. Hundreds or thousands of pieces of TS/SCI or SAP traffic are not classified after the fact. The classification markings were removed by unauthorized person(s) and the traffic was ported or re-keyed to an UNCLAS system. It's as simple as that.
Difficult to say what will come of all of this. My guess is nothing. Those involved [and there are probably many] are too big to fail
#8
What security officer would allow USB ports on a classified computer? Or if they did, wouldn't disable the mount removable drive software (or at least flag it to a security admin)?
I am guessing printed, brought outside, and scanned.
Posted by: Sven the pelter ||
02/05/2016 13:31 Comments ||
Top||
#9
I wondered if a Dragon-type verbal recognition software wasn't brought into the SCIF (illegally) and used to write what classified was then read aloud by the staffer(s) who then used it to write to unclass email and send to Hilda. Saves the risk of carrying out classified and having the whole signature receipt risk for the criminal(s) who did this.
#10
Could do Dragon over the phone. Yes, that could work; Yikes. Hard to imagine admins letting users load their own software though.
Posted by: Sven the pelter ||
02/05/2016 13:45 Comments ||
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#11
If Dragon was on the other end of the phone outside the SCIF then yes, that would work.
Posted by: Sven the pelter ||
02/05/2016 13:47 Comments ||
Top||
#12
"What security officer would allow USB ports on a classified computer?" DS had been screaming about this for years. It was not until Manning/Wikileaks that DOS decided to remove USB ports (though I think Manning copied some stuff on CDROM).
USB ports were available during the Beast's term as SecState. Mr. B has it right IMHO - print out class material and hand jam it into uncles system and/or USB airgap from one system to the other. They did it willing and knowingly and none of them will ever be punished.
If I did it I would be placed on admin leave pending dismissal/criminal charges, my office would be sealed with crime scene tape, and my clearance suspended in a flipping heartbeat.
Posted by: Bangkok Billy ||
02/05/2016 14:02 Comments ||
Top||
#13
Amusing that State wants more time to produce Hil's mail, but they do have the resources to root around in Colin Powell's old correspondence.
#14
I can see going back into legacy material to see if anything else was sabotaged. Colin Powell may never have known that the emails sent to him contained classified material, since they WERE sent to him. It depends on who sent them, when, and why. If some of Ms. Rice's senior aides had received classified emails and KNEW they were classified, there was a problem. Several big differences between this and Hillary: Neither Powell nor Rice created an exclusively non-governmental server, and did all their business through it. There is (yet) no evidence that any of either of them routinely received classified material on their personal accounts. Neither of them tried to HIDE their personal email account. And (so far) TOP SECRET Codeword material hasn't been discovered, as it was on Hitlery's account. If Hillary doesn't burn, you can put a fork in the United States -- it's dead.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/05/2016 23:44 Comments ||
Top||
[DAWN] The detection of 50 ghost employees in the Rawalpindi education department has landed the City District Government Rawalpindi (CDGR) in trouble during its last days before the formulation of the new local government.
A senior CDGR official told Dawn that the detection of ghost employees in the department had forced CDGR to halt the salaries of the ghost employees, worth Rs5.5 million, immediately.
He said the 50 fake employees included two in BPS-16, while the rest were in BPS-14 and BPS-9.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/05/2016 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11126 views]
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#1
Petty cash compared to US Ed Dept ghosts or otherwise useless employees.
[LA Times] They gathered at the Beverly Wilshire, the men in tuxes, the women draped in evening gowns. The finest black talent in Hollywood was there that night in 2002, Quincy Jones, Samuel L. Jackson, Morgan Freeman, James Lassiter, Doug McHenry and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs among them. The "Mystic Knights of the Sea" as depicted in the pre-1943 serial version of "Amos 'n' Andy" were clearly intended as a Masonic parody. Perhaps an Oscars parady is in order.
It was an annual gathering held at one posh hotel or another on the eve of the Academy Awards. Officially, it was called the Tree of Life Awards. But most people called it by its informal name: the Black Oscars. Can we bitch and moan that there aren't enough white people represented?
"It was always a celebration of what accomplishments black people had done in the film industry," said actress and director Debbie Allen, who was honored by the Black Oscars and its sister event, the Black Emmys. "Sound, music, directors, actors, whatever your participation was, you were honored."
The annual event was launched in 1981 at a time when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rarely recognized black achievements. By that time, only 27 African Americans had been nominated in the 52-year history of the Oscars, with only three winning. The Tree of Life Awards ended in 2007.
But with the academy nominating an all-white slate of actors for the second year in a row, Gil Robertson, president of the African American Film Critics Assn., says the circumstances that prompted the Black Oscars are prevalent again.
"It began as a way to fill a void in the city and in the community," he said. "People work hard and invest in their craft and were being ignored ... so the Black Oscars became a way for them to receive acknowledgment of their talents and their craft."
#1
But wait! You want to be represented in the established Hollywood Oscar programme, and a separate, non-integrated 'black only' Oscar system as well ?
I'm sure some accommodation can be made. Separate criteria, standards, and systems are already widely accepted.
The re-segregation of America driven by one community. Because it's really about Power not Integration.
[no one has mentioned the legion of other actors, producers, writers, et al who were passed over who coulda, shoulda have been nominated even through they weren't of the aggrieved community]
#3
To hell with Hollywood.. Don't patronize their trash. The Oscars are just a trade show.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/05/2016 10:22 Comments ||
Top||
#4
The affirmative action Oscars?
Posted by: Albert Ebbeamble1562 ||
02/05/2016 12:28 Comments ||
Top||
#5
The same laws that would prevent a "whites only Oscars" would prevent a "blacks only Oscars". They would have to include token Asian and white nominees.
Is that really what anybody wants?
Posted by: Sven the pelter ||
02/05/2016 12:33 Comments ||
Top||
#6
A valet scratched my Cadillac
With whitey on the screen
I bet did it cuz I'm black
And whitey's on the screen
I've cultivated urban tics
While whitey's on the screen
For half a century, no new tricks
But whitey's on the screen
Unlikely doc, or geek, or God
With whitey on the screen
My audience is deeply awed
Yet whitey's on the screen
I play myself so expertly
But whitey's on the screen
And all his roles were meant for me
Not whitey on the screen
Taxes takin' my living wage
The haters make me ess my aitch
Obama's way back in the rough
And if all that crap wasn't enough
The valet scratched my Cadillac
With whitey on the screen
And Hollywood don't got my back
Cause whitey's on the screen
With all that money I made last year
For whitey on the screen
I guess I'm still a millionaire
Thanks, whitey on the screen
But still, I've really had my fill
Of whitey on the screen
I'll send this reparations bill
Western Union
To whitey on the screen
#10
Well, Will Smith is not a good actor anymore, if he ever was, and NWA wasn't as cool as the grown up white suburbanites remembered. What does that leave for black actors/actresses?
Admittedly, I think Fifty Shades of Black should get some recognition for simply attempting the parody, though I have not seen either film.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[ALMANAR.LB] The US state of Georgia executed its oldest death row inmate Wednesday, just days before his 73rd birthday, in a move critics denounced as emblematic of capital punishment's excesses.
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] At least two suspects have been 
President Nicolas Maduro called the owner of Venezuela’s largest privately-held company a “thief” and a “traitor” Thursday, blaming him for the country’s economic woes. In televised address, Maduro accused Lorenzo Mendoza, head of food giant Empresas Polar SA, of conspiring against his socialist government and meeting with his political opponents outside Venezuela’s borders.
North Korea
the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon
