The Day after the #SOTU and the Repubs are mad now....#IWonTwice

Does Boener have to look like he's getting a colonoscopy everytime Obama says something good about America? I thought Repubs loved America?
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) January 21, 2015

President Obama didn't call out the republicans (and some democrats) to my satisfaction, but he did  throw some major shade  with a drop the microphone moment  that has republicans begging for cheese to go with their whine. 

Republicans tried to get snarky with President Obama during the State Of The Union, but were quickly shot down by an off the cuff presidential reply. After the exchange, conservative media cowered and whined about the president’s “rudeness.”

They can dish out the rudeness but they can't take it, and I suspect rudeness  is code for Uppity, but I digress. Obama isn't the first democratic President to throw shade at republicans, but he's the first African American President, and that's what makes them mad.

So how are they going to get Obama for daring get Uppity  I mean rude to them?  Well, first it was the Voting Rights Act now the republican controlled Supreme Court's Poised To Make It Easier To Deny Someone A Home Because They are Black. 

 For four years, civil rights advocates have struggled to keep the Supreme Court from eliminating a key prong of federal fair housing law. This year, their luck is probably going to run out. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, a case that could leave many victims of housing discrimination unable to win their case in court. Based on the justices’ unusual eagerness to hear the issue presented by Inclusive Communities, their decision is likely to end badly for civil rights.

Let's be clear, republicans showed us who/what they really are last night.

They don't want your child(ren) to have access to a quality public education.

They don't want anyone to have access to quality, affordable health care.

They want to build more new prisons than new schools.

They want to recruit our sons and daughters to fight wars based on dead wrong intelligence.

They are against Fair Housing.
 
They are against poor women (not to be confused with rich women) having access to a safe legal abortion.

They are against equal pay for women, heck they against fair pay for period.

They hate us for our freedom.  I thought I would throw that one in for flavor.

This is the party the media enabled to take control of the House and the Senate.

I HOPE they are happy.

"A Ball of confusion, that's what the world is today"

And the band played on.

The 3 Wings of the Republican Party: The Crazies, the Corporatists ... and Democrats
Democrats must endorse progressive principles again and hammer home the distinction between the party that cares about everyday Americans, not just the wealthy.

If Congress didn't impeach Bush and Dick for sending our troops to war based on DEAD WRONG Intelligence then they shouldn't be talking about impeaching President Obama for Libya. Just cut the funding for Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq and bring our troops and our tax dollars HOME.

Maybe they did kill the dream. Decades after King's assassination Memphis reignites labor struggle.

The plight of Memphis sanitation workers is still an emotional issue four decades after the strike, which was sparked by the death of two workers due to a faulty trash compactor. The strike developed into a rallying point for the African-American community in their struggle against the city's white establishment.

Racial overtones surfaced again in the privatization fight, which appeared suddenly last month. One councilman dismissed the 1968 struggle as belonging to another era. Another said privatization represented the next step of "change" for which King -- and President Obama -- fought, a suggestion that horrified civil-rights veterans.

The city faces a $60 million budget shortfall and council members are selling the privatization proposal with claims it could save about $18 million a year. Local media support the bid uncritically.

At the council meeting, a Firefighters official called for the city to restore a property tax worth $20 million a year, which was eliminated three years ago. He accused white council members of looking out for their gated communities and not the city as a whole.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (r. secessionist) is polishing off his Bats#it crazy credentials so he can join the rest of the Bats#it crazies.

White privilege and arrogance on full display. Watch Andrew Breitbart get confronted after he crashes Netroots Nation. H/T to the Beer Party for the video.

Keep an eye on this debate. The South Huntsville righty's are trying to convince themselves HUD (Housing and Urban Development) are a bunch of Thugs who are trying to *snicker* intimidate them because they exercised their first amendment and criticized the government. This is rich coming from a gang that bans speech they don't like. Oh well, you know what they say...it takes one to know one.

People moving out
People moving in
Why? Because of the color of their skin
Run, run, run, but you sure can't hide!

The Feds are Fed Up with the city of Huntsville

A Tale of two Hoods, separate and unequal.

Whats that you say? The city of Huntsville is facing a full scale fair housing investigation and it wasn't chosen at random? I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you!
Not.

Huntsville has stumbled into the cross hairs of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Mayor Tommy Battle said HUD's Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Program Center in Atlanta recently notified the city that it will conduct an exhaustive civil rights compliance review of local affordable housing programs.
The probe will look for any evidence of discrimination in the city community development office's use of HUD dollars from 2008 to 2010.

The spin is in!

Battle said he strongly believes that office, led by Michelle Jordan, follows civil rights guidelines in administering HOME, Community Development Block Grant and Neighborhood Stabilization Program money.
The city gets about $1.8 million a year from HUD for affordable housing activities.

For those who don't know Michelle Jordan just happens to be an African American, so they are already playing blame it on the black woman game because in addition to claims of racial discrimination the Feds are focusing on the actions of the previous director of Community Development.

Michelle Jordan, the city's community development director, said two auditors from HUD's Atlanta regional office were in Huntsville from Feb. 7 until late May looking into Mirabeau's finances.
Jordan's predecessor, Jerry Galloway, began lending large chunks of the city's HOME dollars to Reynolds in March 2002 to stabilize what had become a crime-ridden apartment complex.
While the money was primarily used for construction work, part of it went to pay Reynolds' developer fees and to hire lawyers and marketing experts.
Reynolds used the largest of the low-interest loans, $932,831 in November 2004, to refinance old debt at Mirabeau, according to a timeline provided by the city.

Now the righty's, bless their hearts, just can't understand why Huntsville is being reviewed because of negative public comments about fair housing in The Times and local blogs.

Psst! Here's a clue.

Battle said HUD officials have been watching closely since the housing authority’s 2009 purchase of Stone Manor Luxury Apartments ignited a public outcry.

On April 6, 2009, about 1,000 south Huntsville residents jammed into the Chaffee Elementary School lunchroom to protest the relocation of public housing residents from downtown to Stone Manor.

From the stage, Mo Brooks, now in Congress, advocated ending public housing and giving tax credits to low-income families instead.In the weeks that followed, two civic groups sprang up to monitor housing authority activities. Republican state lawmakers floated bills to strip the authority’s eminent domain power and require it to notify adjacent homeowners before buying property.

Oh, and this might have helped put Huntsville in the *ahem* cross hairs.

the Senate haWhile no one should minimize the many positive things accomplished during the just-concluded state legislative session, it is nevertheless bitterly disappointing to many in this area to learn that, despite having overwhelming Republican majorities in both houses, the legislature could not manage to pass the public housing reform bills.

There were two bills under consideration, both introduced by Rep. Mike Ball. The first would have required public notification before a public housing authority could purchase property. That bill was later amended so that it only applied to Huntsville. The second bill would have stripped the state’s public housing authorities of the power of eminent domain.

Rep. Ball did yeoman’s work shepherding these bills through the committee votes and getting them passed in mid-April by the full House. The bills then went to the Senate, where they were approved at the committee level during the first week in May. At that point, d a full month to bring the bills up for a vote, but it never happened.

But then again, it was probably blog post like this

Dear SHCA Members,

The included link will take you to a story on flashpoint blog. With the exception of Dr. Moores involvement, SHCA leadership has worked with the author in confirming the details reported. The initial incident reports provided to the media by the Huntsville Police Department were so highly sanitized, that they gave no details which cought the attention of the media. We have been told that this sanitation is due to laws which protect minors. Unfortunately, these laws encouraged the continued endangerment of the child who was assulted (sic) in the second attack.

SHCA will continue looking into this matter. We would like to know whether the perpetrator was transferred to another south Huntsville school. If you have any first hand knowledge of this situation which has not been reported, please reply to this message. The identity of members who wish to help will be kept confidential

.

But then again, it might have been comments like this

"Poor kids deserve exposure to a more normalized atomosphere(sic) if they are ever going to have a chance to integrate."

I agree! My kids (and, of course, myself and my wife) deserve to be relocated to The Ledges immediately! How are we supposed to integrate socially if we are forced to live in the area that we can actually afford? It's discriminatory and outrageous that we should be turned away and forced to live in a "bad" area.

Oh, wait. I don't live in a bad area. I live in an area consistent with my economic means, but instead of whining about it I keep going to work and paying my bills. I don't sit at home smoking crack and complaining about how I'm being kept down by The Man. I don't break into my neighbor's house when he's at work. I make sure my kids are in school and not running around with gang-bangers. I mow my yard and keep the house up so as not to bring down the value of my property or the properties around me. I don't pick-up truck with no wheels sitting on cinder blocks in my front yard.

In other words, I behave and live in a manner consistent with the neighborhood I wish to live in.

What revbob said!

I just love the reaction of white conservatives in the comments. "We aren't racists. It's all you damn Americans who are racists!"

If you want to learn exerything that's important about white conservative power in Alabama, just read those comments.

The feds read about it in blogs (let's all take a bow). They didn't read about it in the papers.

The South Huntsville White People's Times completely dropped the ball on the story on Huntsville's continued segregation and their Massive Resistance to integration.

Segregation: it's as conservative as Ku Klux Pie.