Obscenity
A comment by Chitown Kev
I have a quote from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis generally about changes in the way the state of Florida will teach African American history and, specifically, about American slavery.
“They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.”
Gov. DeSantis said this in support of Florida’s new Social Studies standards which states:
“slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
Now how in the hell is all this benefitin’ and parlayin’ going on without compensatin’? For hundreds of years...no, you know what….see…
I’m not even going to converse about this.
What Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said: the entire conversation and national discourse on DeSantis’s comments is obscene.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Since 1870, the Augusta judicial circuit has been home to the criminal justice system of a three-county area on Georgia’s border with South Carolina. In that time, no African American has been elected district attorney of the circuit – until 2020, when a Black lawyer named Jared Williams upset a conservative, pro-police candidate with just more than 50% of the vote.
But that historic win was short-lived. The day after his election, a lawyer and state lawmaker in the area proposed something unusual: that the circuit’s whitest county separate itself from the Augusta circuit, creating a new judicial circuit in Georgia for the first time in nearly 40 years.
“Does the board of commissioners want to be there [sic] own judicial circuit,” Barry Fleming, a Republican state legislator from nearby Harlem, asked the Columbia county commission chair, Doug Duncan, in a text message.
Duncan supported the plan, and in December 2020 issued a resolution asking the area’s lawmakers, including Fleming, to introduce legislation that would separate Columbia county from the judicial circuit it had been a part of for 150 years. Fleming’s bill passed with bipartisan support.
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You may not have heard of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). But you should: It has saved more lives than any other US government policy in the 21st century. And now, for the first time in the program’s history, it is at risk of losing a critical vote in Congress — for reasons that say a lot about today’s Republican Party.
First passed in 2003 under President George W. Bush, PEPFAR is a vehicle for distributing HIV/AIDS drugs to people in poor countries who wouldn’t otherwise have access to them. It has been astonishingly effective: The most recent US government estimates suggest it has saved as many as 25 million lives since its enactment. It is currently supporting treatment for over 20 million people who depend on the program for continued access to medication.
Given its success, PEPFAR has historically enjoyed bipartisan support. In 2018, Congress reauthorized PEPFAR for another five years without a fuss. But this time around, things look different. Some House Republicans, prodded by an array of influential groups, are threatening to block another five-year reauthorization. Their argument is pure culture war: that PEPFAR has become a vehicle for promoting abortion.
In reality, PEPFAR is legally prohibited from funding abortion services, and the argument against the program on anti-abortion grounds is very thin. But in today’s political climate, where the culture war reigns supreme on the right, this is enough to jeopardize the continued good functioning of a program that the Republican Party used to champion.
“This is not a fact-based argument. It’s an attempt to destroy a program,” Asia Russell, the executive director of the global health advocacy group Health GAP, tells me.
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Voting rights activists are returning to court to fight Alabama’s redrawn congressional districts, saying state Republicans failed to follow federal court orders to create a district that is fair to Black voters.
Plaintiffs in the high-profile redistricting case filed a written objection Friday to oppose Alabama’s new redistricting plan. They accused state Republicans of flouting a judicial mandate to create a second majority-Black district or “something quite close to it” and enacting a map that continues to discriminate against Black voters in the state.
A special three-judge panel in 2022 blocked use of the the state’s existing districts and said any new congressional map should include two districts where “Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority” or something close. That panel’s decision was appealed by the state but upheld in June in a surprise ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which concurred that having only one Black-majority district out of seven — in a state where more than one in four residents is Black — likely violated federal law.
The plaintiffs in the case, represented by the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund and other groups, asked the three-judge panel to step in and draw new lines for the state.
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Monday marks the opening of the three-week window Fani Willis set for a potential decision on whether former President Donald Trump should face charges over his alleged conduct after the 2020 election. CBS: Fulton County D.A. receives racist threats as charging decision against Trump looms
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District Attorney Fani Willis warned Fulton County commissioners this weekend they should "stay alert" over the next month, according to emails obtained by CBS News.
She pointed to a threatening email she received last week with a subject line reading, "Fani Willis = Corrupt N*****." The body of the email said, "You are going to fail, you Jim Crow Democrat whore."
Willis said the message was "pretty typical" of what her office has been receiving and said she is aware of "equally ignorant voicemails" that have come into the county office and to her own office. She said she expects more over the next month. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution first reported Wills' warning to the county commissioners.
"I took an oath. No one other than the citizens of Fulton County put me in this seat. I have every intention of doing my job. Please make decisions that keep your staff safe," Willis wrote.
In response, the Fulton County solicitor general called the message "reprehensible" and said his office's investigative team is making modifications to "align us with other law enforcement partners within the county."
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Gen. Abdourahamane Tchiani, the head of Niger’s presidential guard, with other members of Niger’s armed forces, on Friday declared himself head of a transitional government he called “the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland,” while international leaders and organizations including the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) strongly condemned the coup.
On Sunday, ECOWAS leaders met in an extraordinary summit and gave Tchiani and the other coup leaders seven days to step down and reinstate civilian President Mohamed Bazoum, with the threat of force should they not comply in the timeframe. In the immediate term, ECOWAS closed the borders between Niger and ECOWAS countries, instituted a no-fly zone for commercial flights in and out of the country, froze the country’s assets in ECOWAS central banks and commercial banks, and instituted a travel ban and asset freeze for those involved in the coups and their families, among other actions.
Bazoum was democratically elected in 2021 in Niger’s first peaceful transfer of power, and “remains the only legitimate President of Niger,” as European Union High Representative Josep Borrell said in a statement Saturday calling on the coup leaders to release Bazoum. Members of the military involved in the coup meanwhile warned in a television address Friday of the “consequences that will flow” should any foreign forces intervene. The US built and helps run an air base in Niger, and France has about 1,500 troops in the country, according to France24.
ECOWAS authorities will hold negotiations on Sunday to attempt to convince Tchiani to hand power back to Bazoum; the economic body is reportedly considering sanctions against Niger as a form of leverage, though it’s not yet clear what those measures would look like. The EU has already withdrawn funding and military support “with immediate effect” due to the “unacceptable attack on the integrity of Niger’s republican institutions.” The EU had reserved $554 million of its budget for the 2021 to 2024 period to support education, governance, and sustainable economic growth, as Al Jazeera reported.
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Stepping onto the field against South Korea in Morocco’s second Women’s World Cup match, defender Nouhaila Benzina made history as the first player to wear a hijab while competing at a senior-level global tournament.
A FIFA ban on playing in religious head coverings in its sanctioned games for “health and safety reasons” was overturned in 2014 after advocacy from activists, athletes and government and soccer officials.
“I have no doubt that more and more women and Muslim girls will look at Benzina and just really be inspired – not just the players, but I think decision makers, coaches, other sports as well,” said Assmaah Helal, a co-founder of the Muslim Women in Sports Network.
Benzina plays professional club soccer for the Association’s Sports of Forces Armed Royal – the eight-time defending champion in Morocco’s top women’s league. She did not play in Morocco’s opening 6-0 loss to Germany in Melbourne, and had to wait six days to finally get her start in the Group H game in Adelaide.
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Opportunities for tax breaks, wealth accumulation and equity building are among the reasons why homeownership is part of the American dream. But according to new data, securing a mortgage to purchase or refinance a home can be a devastating detour on the road to that dream for people of color—despite decades old legal protections against redlining and other forms of discrimination in real estate.
Lending Tree, the Charlotte-based online lending marketplace, evaluated publicly available mortgage data from 2021 and 2022 and found that in the country’s 50 largest metropolitan areas, on average, over 14 percent of Black homeowners were denied a mortgage, compared to a 9 percent denial rate for the rest of the population.
Black buyers looking to purchase a home in Miami, Detroit or New Orleans don’t have the odds on their side. The average denial rate for Black borrowers in these areas is over 20 percent – more than double the average across Salt Lake City, Kansas City, and Minneapolis, where the denial rate is lowest.
The data help paint a difficult picture for Black Americans in the real estate market. Mortgage rates are at their highest level in three decades, and home values have swelled due to a historic dearth of available listings—a combination that serves to lock our many buyers who struggle to afford the payments on houses the might have afforded just a few years ago.
And although those rising home values generally benefit those who already own their homes in the form of increased equity, there’s evidence that Black homeowners don’t benefit from the boon either, because appraisers routinely devalue homes in majority Black neighborhoods or those that show evidence of having Black owners.
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