N-words in celebrity land, and a Pennsylvania Shell game.

I swear you Negroes are so sensitive. White folks just don't know how to act around you. Pretty soon you won't have any friends at all. Poor Gwyneth Paltrow. She tried to be down with you all and all she got for her troubles was a twitter firestorm. Come on now, what's a little "N-word" between friends?

Anyway, some of you celebrity Negroes who are used to white folks (unlike those Negroes in the hood who never see white folks) are jigging coming to Gwyneth's defense.

"...a couple of nights ago, a similar milestone occurred in Paris with Jay and Kanye's Watch The Throne Tour. It was at this show that my friend Gwyneth Paltrow tweeted something that got me a little twisted. I follow Gwyneth on Twitter and when I saw her tweet about the “N*ggas in Paris” show in PARIS, I said ‘Damn everybody is there but me.’ I’m a bit older and I don’t get to jet-set to concerts like I used to, but when I saw Gwyneth was there, I must admit, I got a little jealous. The tweet she sent has since angered some in the black community, since she used the n-word. But when I saw it, it didn’t faze me - not even one bit.

I have to throw my hand up and stand up for Gwyneth. I know her intentions were not to be offensive ... she was just proud of her friend, Jay-Z. My words are in defense of her.

I don’t have a permanent answer to the n-word controversy that appeases everyone. I remember when I tried to fix it and said we should maybe beep that word and a few others on the radio, Oprah quoted me as if I said not to use the n-word. However, for the record, I have NEVER told any artist not to use that word or any word in my life and I never will; a poet can choose their own words to describe whatever they want in their art."

Ahhhm....Russell, I have a news flash for you: Gwyneth is not a poet. But I get your point. Still, if I was Gwyneth, I would just stop hanging around you Negroes.  

Finally, as another governor fights for his political life tonight, my governor is busy selling out Pistolvania to Shell Oil. $1.7 Billion??!! That can buy a lot of school books.

My friend Will Bunch wrote an excellent article exposing Governor Big Oil:

"They are the world's second largest corporation by revenue, and last year Royal Dutch Shell made an astronomical $31 billion in profits - more than triple what the global oil giant was earning just two years earlier.

But Gov. Corbett apparently doesn't think the hard-earned cash you fork over every time you pull into a Shell station is enough.

He wants to give them your tax dollars, too - perhaps as much as about $1.7 billion over the next 25 years.

It would actually be too kind to call Corbett's corporate-welfare scheme involving Shell's planned ethane-cracking plant on Pennsylvania's far western border a tax break - because the deal has already won state approval to avoid taxes, in a specially created Keystone Opportunity Zone. So this proposed new deal - which was being negotiated in secret until long-time Harrisburg journalist Pete DeCoursey broke the news Monday - is essentially just a straight-up cash giveaway to Big Oil.   

For a facility it is already planning to build here.

In the state where it arguably would have been built anyway without a single dollar of tax incentives, since this is where ethane wells are already being drilled.

Did I mention that this is the same Tom Corbett who wants struggling unemployed folks getting food stamps to prove they don't have money stashed away, whose steep 2011 cuts to school funding deeply exacerbated an education crisis that's risking everything from school plays in Upper Darby to the janitor who cleans your son's classroom here in Philadelphia? I guess janitors didn't realize the threshold to get Corbett's attention is $31 billion.

"It's essentially a big giveaway of money we didn't have, to attract a company we were already getting," said Sharon Ward, the director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, a progressive think tank, who called the proposal "unprecedented." [Article]

This is not "unprecedented" this is the new normal here in America: Corporations first, people second. Oh wait...corporations are people. Never mind. 

Winning back the White House by any means necessary.

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A Governor comes clean, and wingnuts are considering execution parties.

I would like to thank Governor Tom Corbett of Pistolvania for confirming what I believed all along about the state's move to change how Pistolvania awards electoral votes.

I blogged about it a couple of days a ago, and some of you declared that it was crazy to think that the motives behind the political move was to keep black  "urban" voters from having any influence over the national election process.

Well.....

"HARRISBURG - Philadelphia's big Democratic turnouts tend to drown out the voices of voters elsewhere in Pennsylvania when America elects presidents.
That was the gist of Gov. Corbett's argument Thursday as he detailed for the first time his support of a Republican-led charge to change the way Pennsylvania awards its electoral votes.

If he gets his chance, Corbett told a radio audience, he will sign a bill championed by top Republican legislators to do away with the winner-take-all apportioning of the state's electoral votes. Instead, most of those votes would be parceled out based on the popular-vote winner in each of the state's congressional districts.

"It will allow the people across the state to be better represented when it comes to the vote for president," the governor said on his new monthly radio show on WPHT-AM (1210) in Philadelphia. "There are huge portions of Pennsylvania that voted for the other candidate in many of the elections, and their vote really didn't count."

The state, he told WPHT host Dom Giordano, consists of five or six distinct political regions, and he suggested they have "not been represented because of the huge turnout in Philadelphia."

The governor, a Republican, insisted the proposed change was "not a Republican-Democrat issue." But he noted that Pennsylvania has given Democrats its electoral votes in every presidential election since 1988.

In 2008, for example, a strong turnout in Democrat-rich Philadelphia helped Barack Obama win 54.7 percent of the statewide popular vote to Republican nominee John McCain's 44.3 percent. That gave Obama the state's 21 electoral votes. If the proposal backed by Corbett and GOP legislators had been the law, Obama would have split those electoral votes with McCain, 11-10.

The only other states that allocate their electoral votes by congressional district are Maine and Nebraska.

If the law is changed here, Corbett said, next year's Republican nominee might be encouraged not to "write off Pennsylvania too soon..." [Source]

How dare you Negroes come out to vote in Philadelphia and cancel white"rural" votes in other parts of the state?

Just remember folks, you heard it here first.

Some of those republicans cheering on Governor Big Hair for all his kills must be a little down today after hearing that the Supremes put a stay on the execution of Duane Buck.

Bummer.  

But, take heart folks, you still might get a chance to cheer on the death of yet another person who might be innocent in just a few days.

I wonder why they don't just televise these executions and sell commercial time? I bet they would make a killing. (Pun intended) All those wingnuts in front of the television cheering wildly as the executioner pulls the switch or applies the lethal injection. "Look honey, look how his toes are twitching. See how his eyes pop out?" That is soooo cool!"

Hey, come to think of it; there is precedent for this stuff. I am just sayin.

"Brian Williams: Governor Perry a question about Texas. Your state has executed 234 death row inmates more than any other governor in modern times. Have you struggled to sleep at night?

Governor Rick Perry: No sir. I’ve never struggled with that at all… If you kill one of our children or police officers or another citizen in a crime you will face the ultimate justice in Texas.

Then the crowd cheered again… Even louder."

Governor, what happens if you kill the wrong person for killing one of "our children" or "police officers"? Do you get to face the "ultimate justice"? I, for one, certainly hope so.    

*Pic courtesy of Steve Brodner

They should be kicking down the doors to this house.

*

WTF is going on in A-merry-ca? Please tell me that the Department of Education isn't kicking down doors to get their student loan money. (h/t to Steve S for this story) Okay, maybe it wasn't for unpaid student loans, but this is a very curious case.

Seriously, what did Kenneth Wright do to piss off the folks over at DOE so much? I will tell you whose door they need to be kicking in; folks like the governor of Pistolvania [*see pic] who just slashed 1.5 billion dollars from the funding for basic education in this state. Now that's criminal.

“The state budget proposed today will reverse eight years of academic progress in Philadelphia by slashing funding to vital programs created to put our students on equal footing with well-funded, high-achieving school districts.

“Budget cuts of this magnitude will mean increasing class sizes; will force reductions in employees hired to keep students safe and help students and families in crisis; and eliminate programs like honors and advanced placement classes, music, art, school libraries, counselors, vocational and career training and after-school programs that already are in short supply in urban schools.

“The only way to maintain vital services to children, this budget suggests, is for dedicated, hard-working teachers and staff to pay for these programs out of their own pockets through pay freezes, work furloughs and pension cuts and benefit reductions.

“Instead of investing in students by fully funding public education using the Costing-Out study’s recommendations, this budget slashes funding to the poorest students and, in the long run, will undermine our efforts to raise the educational achievement of Philadelphia residents.”

Who cares? They are just poor inner city kids. They will all be in prison soon. Those poor white folks in rural Pistolvania need jobs. That's where we build our prisons and hire the local help. Thank god for crime and prisons. Without them many of these rural towns would go broke.

Finally, am I the only person in A-merry-ca who doesn't care about the Casey Anthony trial? I sure hope not. It's sad what happened to that little girl, but.....sorry, I am starting to have Caylee overload.