Dan Riggsby being...well...Dan

Click Here to listen to the August 2nd show as Dan celebrates his birthday on the air! Also, Aimée is back this week!

We had a great time, but we miss Aimée and will be glad to have her back.

Aimée Riggsby being lovely as usual

With the return of our internet stream comes the return of the recordings. Thank you all for your patience. Click here to hear tonight’s show.

A CBS poll showed that of those polled who identified themselves as Tea Party Supporters, 89% identified themselves as White and 8% identified themselves as non-white. I attempted to Contact the NAACP to discuss the demographics of their members, but the membership department was at the national convention and would not be returning calls for another week. So, I will simply ask the question, “Does the NAACP have more than 8% of it’s membership who is not colored?

Let’s look at the websites for both organizations:

The following is taken from the NAACP website under the Advocacy and Issues section. The sections are in bold.

Civic Engagement

From voter registration to census participation, the NAACP has been on the front lines of educating and training communities to become active and engaged in their communities and in civic life.

Climate Justice Initiative

Global climate change has had a disproportionate impact on communities of color in the United States and around the world. The NAACP Climate Justice Initiative was created to educate and mobilize communities to address this life or death issue.

Economic Opportunity

Fairness plays a role in any economy, and for that reason, we have developed a number of programs designed to elevate civil and human rights as they pertain to economic opportunity. As the nation recovers from the worst fiscal crisis in more than three decades, the NAACP will be there to ensure that this is done in a fair and just manner. Please take a moment to discover the program descriptions and resources available on this site. We will update this site with announcements, information, and materials as they become available.

NAACP Financial Freedom Campaign Center
The mission of the NAACP Financial Freedom Campaign Center is to facilitate the enhanced capacity of African Americans and other underserved groups to obtain affordable and competitively priced credit and financing, including mortgage loans, small business loans, and consumer loans. The Center will be designed to monitor lending practices to ensure fairness and to provide African Americans and other underserved groups with knowledge and information to effectively manage their personal finances and credit in today’s economic environment.

Education

The NAACP National Education Program strives to ensure that all students have access to an equal and high-quality public education by eliminating education-related racial and ethnic disparities in our public schools

Federal Advocacy

Since 1941 the NAACP has been the premier civil rights advocacy entity on Capitol Hill. The NAACP was a leading force behind the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the 1968 Fair Housing Act, the 1991 Civil Rights Restoration Act and the 2002 Help America Vote Act, the most current reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act among countless others.

Alerts

Here is a sample of the list of Alerts in order from the website Below the alert, some have an excerpt from the alert itself.

First: Both houses pass resolutions saluting NAACP on 101^st birthday

Second: WHITE HOUSE ESTABLISHES CLAIMS FACILITY TO HELP SMALL BUSINESSES COPE WITH EFFECTS OF OIL SPILL

NEW PROGRAM IS CRUCIAL FIRST STEP TO HELP SMALL RACIAL AND ETHNIC MINORITY OWNED BUSINESSES AND INDIVIDUALS

Third: NAACP SUPPORTS LEGISLATION TO HELP STATES REDUCE PRISON POPULATIONS

H.R. 4080, THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE REINVESTMENT ACT, WOULD HELP STATES DEVELOP INCARCERATION REDUCTION STRATEGIES AND REINVEST MONEY SAVED

The United States is the world’s leader in incarceration with 2.3 million people currently in the nation’s prisons or jails — a 500% increase over the past thirty years. These trends have resulted in prison overcrowding and state governments being overwhelmed by the burden of funding a rapidly expanding penal system, despite increasing evidence that large-scale incarceration is not the most effective means of achieving public safety. This over-reliance on incarceration has also had a disproportionately serious impact on communities of color: 57% of incarcerated inmates are racial or ethnic minorities and 88% of inmates are male. Specifically, as of mid-year 2009, whites represented 42.5% of all incarcerated inmates; African Americans, 39.2%; and Hispanics, 16.2%.

Health

The NAACP is committed to eliminating the racial and ethnic disparities in our health care system that plague people of color in the United States. African Americans continue to have the highest incidence, prevalence and mortality rates from chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. Additionally issues like HIV and infant mortality have continued to overwhelm the Black community. Systemic imbalances in the health care delivery system disproportionately affect African Americans and Latinas more than their White counterparts.

Justice

We Can Build a Better America Together

The United States is home to the world’s largest prison population. As “tough on crime” laws have put an unprecedented number of non-violent offenders behind bars in recent years, our neighborhoods feel no more secure.

The NAACP advocates for smarter, results-based criminal justice policies to keep our communities safe, including treatment for addiction and mental health problems, judicial discretion in sentencing, and an end to racial disparities at all levels of the system.

Litigation

Legal History: In 1909, the NAACP commenced what has become its legacy of fighting legal battles to win social justice for African-Americans and indeed, for all Americans

Media Diversity

The NAACP has fought against negative portrayals of people of color in film and television since “Birth of A Nation” in 1915.

Today the NAACP Hollywood Bureau is a satellite of the National office that deals with issues of diversity programming and minority employment in Hollywood, and oversees the production of the NAACP Image Awards.

Now, this is Mission Statement and Core Values listed on the Tea Party Patriots Site:

Tea Party Patriots Mission Statement and Core Values

Mission Statement

The impetus for the Tea Party movement is excessive government spending and taxation. Our mission is to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy consistent with our three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets.

Core Values

Fiscal Responsibility

Constitutionally Limited Government

Free Markets

Fiscal Responsibility: Fiscal Responsibility by government honors and respects the freedom of the individual to spend the money that is the fruit of their own labor. A constitutionally limited government, designed to protect the blessings of liberty, must be fiscally responsible or it must subject its citizenry to high levels of taxation that unjustly restrict the liberty our Constitution was designed to protect. Such runaway deficit spending as we now see in Washington D.C. compels us to take action as the increasing national debt is a grave threat to our national sovereignty and the personal and economic liberty of future generations.

Constitutionally Limited Government: We, the members of The Tea Party Patriots, are inspired by our founding documents and regard the Constitution of the United States to be the supreme law of the land. We believe that it is possible to know the original intent of the government our founders set forth, and stand in support of that intent. Like the founders, we support states’ rights for those powers not expressly stated in the Constitution. As the government is of the people, by the people and for the people, in all other matters we support the personal liberty of the individual, within the rule of law.

Free Markets: A free market is the economic consequence of personal liberty. The founders believed that personal and economic freedom were indivisible, as do we. Our current government’s interference distorts the free market and inhibits the pursuit of individual and economic liberty. Therefore, we support a return to the free market principles on which this nation was founded and oppose government intervention into the operations of private business.

The NAACP does nothing but talk about race and encourage racial tension in this country while the Tea Party doesn’t even talk about race. In fact, the only time you hear about race and the Tea Party is when someone else is talking about it. I’ve been to Tea Party events. I’ve been the MC at a Tea Party rally. I have never seen a sign of racism. But every time I encounter the NAACP they are complaining about white people.

So, tell me, who is the racist organization?

Ok. It’s their money, they can do with it what they choose. But it begs the question. How much hell would he be getting if he specifically omitted one of those on the list? What if his list read:  Are Caucasian and left it at that? Would the same people be supporting him then? He would be crucified for being racist.

Well folks, it’s still racist. He’s basing his scholarship on race. Why is race an issue? Folks there are underprivileged kids of all races in this country and around the world. Why do we still have scholarships devoted to specific races?

I do want to make it clear, that 4 of the 6 scholarships (or 5 of 7 if you count the achievement scholarships separately) are available to people of all races. The question is, why differentiate? Dr. King said it very well. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

I do not want minority children excluded. I want everyone included. Why are we still basing things on the color of the skin? Why do we have terms like African American, Hispanic American, White American? What happened to Americans? Why can we not embrace the line from the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

We have the son of a bi-racial couple, raised by his grandmother grow up to be President of the United States. We have had a man raised by a single mother in the poverty of Arkansas grow up to be President. This is a country of opportunity. That’s what we promise. We don’t promise that this is country of opportunity if you are of a specific race. Is there racism on both sides? Yes. Only a fool would say otherwise. However, they are the true minority. It’s time to put race aside and start treating people as Americans. So long as we continue to divide ourselves into groups, we will fail. Like a pair of legs. If they work together, they can run marathons. If they try to work separately, there’s just a lot of stumbling.

Now let’s look at some African-American firsts in our country’s history. The first African-American Federal Judge was William Henry Hastie a well-respected civil rights leader and accomplished leader. The first African-American Supreme Court Justice was Thurgood Marshall. Thurgood Marshall was a liberal and we disagreed on many things. That in no way lessens his accomplishments and his character. He was a strong man and a leader of men. He devoted his life to the pursuit of justice. His most famous case, Brown v. Board of Education still echoes through the schoolhouse hallways today. The first African-American Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State was General Colin Powell. This is a man whose words inspired man, woman and child to hold their head high and take pride in their country. This man led the nation, regardless of the color of their skin, people believed in him and followed him.

Why the rambling down the road of history you ask? Because I’m now looking towards the end of the first year of the first African-American Presidency and I’m sad. History deserves better. The African-American Community deserves better. Our country deserves better. The first African-American President should have been a strong decisive leader like many of the African-American firsts before him. Instead, we got a sleazy Chicago Politician. That’s really what this Presidency is, that of a cheap Chicago Politician. He doesn’t really do anything, but when looking at his career, he never did.  He just makes a lot of speeches and plays politics regardless of the damage to people or the country. I’m not convinced that he’s fighting for an agenda because he thinks it’s the right thing, but because he wants the win.

One of the big differences between Barack Obama and the other firsts of this nation is that there is no moral compass present. Other people who are first, usually fight and sacrifice to get there. That requires a moral compass to overcome the difficulties, because you know you are right. Barack Obama has overcome nothing and fought for nothing in his entire life. He’s a slick talking politician who has had his entire life handed to him and doesn’t understand the words sacrifice. Because he has earned nothing, he respects nothing. Unfortunately, that makes him the poster child for the latest generation, but it doesn’t make him the shining example that the first African-American President should be.

We got swindled. We got swindled out of what should have been a glorious moment in History. We got swindled by a generation of slackers who celebrate mediocrity and entitlement instead of meritocracy. I wanted to be able to look back on the first African-American President with pride. I wanted to be able to say that this was a brilliant man of character like the firsts before him. Unfortunately, that boat has sailed. For that, I am sad.