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August 30, 2012

  • Black Men More Likely to Die Following Prostate Surgery

    surgery by Frederick H. Lowe Black men suffering from prostate cancer receive lower-quality surgical care than white men, according to a study by Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center that was published in the Aug.

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  • Photo-ID Laws Pose Hurdle for College Voters

    Photo-ID Laws Pose Hurdle for College Voters New America Media College students returning to campuses in states with new voter photo-ID laws may find registering to vote far more challenging than registering for classes.

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  • will.i.am’s New Song Is a Hit on Mars

    will.i.am’s New Song Is a Hit on Mars will.i.am, the frontman for the Black Eyed Peas, has sold 56 million records on Earth. So what’s the next challenge? Mars, of course. NASA held an educational event on Tuesday to share its findings with students about Mars.

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  • State and Local Jobs Shrink

    State and Local Jobs Shrink by Frederick H. Lowe Jobs in state and local governments declined last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011 Annual Survey of Public Employment & Payroll. In 2011, there were 16.

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  • Group Asks for IRS Inquiry on Baptist Nod to Akin

    Group Asks for IRS Inquiry on Baptist Nod to Akin The Missouri Baptist Convention violated its tax-exempt, non-profit status by endorsing controversial U.S. Rep. Todd Akin for the U.S.

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  • Morris Brown College Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

    Morris Brown College Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy by Frederick H. Lowe Morris Brown College, a Historically Black College, founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Church, has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, citing debts of $10 million to $50 million and assets equal to that amount, according to court documents obtained by The NorthStar News & Analysis. In a U.S.

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  • Thousands In Togo Defy Ban on Rallies

    Thousands In Togo Defy Ban on Rallies (TriceEdneyWire.com) – Police wielding tear-gas cannons attempted to disperse more than a thousand Togolese citizens rallying in the capital, Lome, for fair elections scheduled for October.

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  • Art Africa Fair Calls For Entries

    Art Africa Fair Calls For Entries The Art Africa Miami Arts Fair has issued a call for entries for the event that will take place Dec. 5-9, 2012, in the city’s Overtown neighborhood.

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  • FAMU Lifts Restrictions on Organizations

    Florida A&M University’s clubs and organizations will resume recruitment in September under new rules intended to prevent hazing, promote better academic performance and emphasize  community service.   Greek-letter organizations will be able to start their membership-recruitment process beginning September 11 through on-campus interest meetings for the fall 2012 semester, William E.

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  • New Orleans Property Owners Sue Over Displacement for Hospitals

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) - Businesses and homeowners in New Orleans say they were underpaid when they were forced from lower Mid-City to make room for the University Medical Center and Veterans Health Administration hospital—both of which are under construction now. Property owners are suing the state, and the concern is that the city may end up paying for jury awards.

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  • Zimmerman Can Leave County to See Lawyers

    Zimmerman Can Leave County to See Lawyers A judge in the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case agreed Friday to let the defendant travel out of Seminole County but only to go to his lawyers' offices in Orange County, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

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  • Majority Polled Predict Obama Will Win

    Majority Polled Predict Obama Will Win Despite Mitt Romney-affiliated political action committees’ abilities to out fund raise President Barack Obama, most voters believe the president will be re-elected. A USA Today/Gallup Poll, which surveyed voters Aug.

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  • The NorthStar’s Week in Black History

    The NorthStar’s Week in Black History August 30 through September 5 August 30 1932 ----- The United States Public Health Service, in conjunction with the Tuskegee Institute, conducted an infamous clinical study of syphilis from this date until 1972.  Black men were used exclusively as the research subjects.  A whistleblower’s report brought the specious 40-year study to a halt. Study researchers recruited poor, uneducated African-American men, most of whom were sharecroppers from rural Macon County, Ala., to study the progression of syphilis in the body.

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  • Jobs Are Priority No. 1 in South African Poll

    South Africans want the country’s government to create jobs as a way of ending double-digit unemployment. A Gallup Poll survey reported that 51 percent of South Africans wanted the government to create new jobs, compared with 18 percent who wanted the government to reduce corruption.

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  • Healthier Meals Await Oakland Students Returning to School

    Healthier Meals Await Oakland Students Returning to School New America Media BERKELEY, Calif. – Jennifer Le Barre, Oakland Unified School District’s nutrition services director, vows that students in Oakland’s public schools will know what a fresh peach is when they pick it up. Le Barre was speaking at a news briefing here August 16 on what some are calling a food revolution in Oakland’s public schools.

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  • Oprah Is Still the Top Paid Celebrity

    Oprah Is Still the Top Paid Celebrity Oprah continues her reign as Forbes magazine’s highest paid celebrity. Between May 2011 and May 2012, Oprah earned $165 million, besting filmmaker Michael Bay, who finished in the No.

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  • Romney’s Creed: Blessed Are the One Percent

    Romney’s Creed: Blessed Are the One Percent by Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. (TriceEdneyWire.com) - Raise taxes on the rich? “Class warfare," the Republicans rail.

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  • Same Old Song

    Same Old Song by Julianne Malveaux (TriceEdneyWire.com) - When I was all of 16 years old, I went to get a passport.  Why?  Richard Nixon had been elected president, and I was sure that he would impose such oppression that I might need to get out of the country.

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  • Obama’s Race Still Has Bearing on Media Coverage

    Obama’s Race Still Has Bearing on Media Coverage by Nadra Kareem Nittle (TriceEdneyWire.com) - Long before a little-known Illinois politician ran for president, the mainstream media focused on his race.

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  • Group Pushes for Weekend Early Voting in Ohio

    Group Pushes for Weekend Early Voting in Ohio ColorOfChange.org, a black online political organization, has launched an online petition drive demanding that Jon Husted, Ohio’s Secretary of State, extend early voting to weekends.

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  • Camerawoman Insulted Racially at Republican Convention

    Camerawoman Insulted Racially at Republican Convention Two Republican convention attendees threw peanuts at a black CNN camerawoman before screaming, “This is how we feed animals,” CNN said. “CNN can confirm there was an incident directed at an employee inside the Tampa Bay Times Forum earlier this afternoon.

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  • Right Attacks President Obama in New Film

    Right Attacks President Obama in New Film by Barry Cooper Conservative Indian-American writer and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza is back bashing Barack Obama again – just in time for the November elections.

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A. Peter Bailey
A. Peter Bailey

A Race About Race: Get Whose Country Back?

by A. Peter Bailey
(TriceEdneyWire.com) - It was the 1992 Bill Clinton-George H.W. Bush presidential campaign that introduced the memorable political slogan: “It’s the economy, Stupid.” That slogan was a way of explaining why Bush was in danger of losing his job.

During the 2012 campaign between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, a clarifying explanation as to why the president is in danger of losing his job is similar: “It’s race, Stupid.”

Of course, one would never know this if one depends on commentators on radio and television and op-ed columnists with major newspapers and magazines. They go on and on about everything that threatens President Obama’s re-election prospects except the fact that many, if not most, whites in this country, especially white males, have had more than enough of seeing a black man in the White House.

For example, hosts of public-affairs programs on television and radio and newspaper and columnists in magazines have analyzed and discussed the speech made by Rep. Paul Ryan after he was chosen as Romney’s running mate without once dealing with the most revealing statement he made. After citing several actions that must be taken by those who detest Obama being in the White House, Ryan noted that if those things were done, “We will get our country back on November 6.”

In all the vitriolic, partisan attacks made on Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush by their opponents, I don’t recall a single attacker insisting that the president must be defeated for re-election so “we can get our country back.” That has been the mantra only about President Barack Obama.

Rep. Ryan and those who share his sentiment believe the following: That the United States must be rescued and that President Obama -- with his Muslim father from Kenya, African-American wife, Asian-American sister and other Kenyan blood relatives -- is an outsider who can’t possibly be as American as they are.

They insist this is so despite the fact that the president’s policies helped save thousands of jobs in the automobile industry, have maintained the Bush tax cuts by helping those who have money get more money. The president's policies have also provided health care support for working class and middle-income citizens, primarily white  families that are one catastrophic illness away from financial disaster.  They have provided a stimulus package that gave money even to the congressional districts of hypercritical anti-stimulus politicians such as Rep. Ryan, and have created an economic climate in which corporations have made record-setting profits.

Obama's policies also resulted in the killing of U.S. public enemy number one, Osama bin Laden and have nearly crippled al-Qaeda with constant drone attacks that also killed dozens of non-combatants.  Furthermore, they have continued the neo-cons’ war of choice in Afghanistan and have significantly expanded economic sanctions against Iran, among other things.

Most notably, President Obama has determinedly avoided any kind of gesture or policy that could honestly be described as reaching out to African-Americans. He has kept his cool to avoid being labeled an angry black man, even when Glenn Beck mocked his daughter and even when he was insulted personally by the use of code names such as “food stamp president”.

Though one may oppose Obama's policies or regard them as insufficient for what is needed, they don’t remotely reflect a person from whom the country must be rescued. All that remains is the conclusion that for Rep. Ryan and his cohorts, a black man in the White House, any black man, including brothers from another mother like Herman Cain, Rep. Alan West of Florida, Rep. Tom Scott of South Carolina, Artur Davis and others of that ilk, is unbearable, a severe shock to the white psyche. In other words, "It’s Race, Stupid.”

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