Saturday, January 7, 2012

Charles Blow Delivers Rhetorical Beatdown of Racist Republican Candidates for the Presidency

Damon Winter/The New York Times
Charles M. Blow

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/07/opinion/blow-the-gops-black-people-platform.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB#comments

All,


Another fine right on target piece by Brother Blow who's quickly becoming one of my favorite writers in the so-called "mainstream media". Always blunt and even scathing in his precise and critical takes on the racist/sexist/homophobic elites who "run" this country Blow knows exactly what to say and how to say it, unlike most columnists. And any journalist who would openly quote Dr. DuBois's magnificent 1935 tome "Black Reconstruction"--one of the most politically profound and intellectually powerful books on U.S./African American history ever written--in the course of properly serving his rancid white supremacist targets the rhetorical arsenic they so richly deserve is strictly ACES in my book. Some morons however have the nerve to say that Brother Blow is a little too "uppity" in his always incisive takedowns of the pompous psychopaths he routinely skewers in his column. Yeah....Right..."Uh huh"...

Kofi


OP-ED COLUMNIST The G.O.P.’s ‘Black People’ Platform
By CHARLES M. BLOW
January 6, 2012

New York Times



That didn’t take long.

As we’ve gotten around to casting votes to select a Republican presidential nominee, the antiblack rhetoric has taken center stage.

You just have to love (and despise) this kind of predictability.

On Sunday, Rick “The Rooster” Santorum, campaigning in Iowa, said what sounded like “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” At first, he offered a nondenial that suggested that the comment might have been out of context. Now he’s saying that he didn’t say “black people” at all but that he “started to say a word” and then “sort of mumbled it and changed my thought.”

(Pause as I look askance and hum an incredulous, “Uh huh.”)

Newton Leroy Gingrich has been calling President Obama “the best food stamp president” for months, but after plummeting in the polls and finishing fourth in Iowa, he must have decided that this approach was too subtle. So, on Thursday in New Hampshire, he sharpened the shiv and dug it in deeper, saying, “I’m prepared, if the N.A.A.C.P. invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.” On Friday, Gingrich defended himself, as usual, by insisting that exactly what he said wasn’t exactly what he said. He was advocating for African-Americans, not disparaging them.

“Uh huh.”

The comments from Santorum and Gingrich came after a renewed exploration of Ron Paul’s controversial newsletters, one of which said in June 1992 about the Los Angeles riots: “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began.”

Paul has, of course, insisted that he didn’t write or review the newsletters, although they were written under his name, he made money from them and he used to brag about them.

“Uh huh.”

First, some facts. Take the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, commonly known as food stamps. PolitiFact has rated Gingrich’s “food stamp president” charge as only half-true. Yes, participation in the program is at a record high, but Bush-era efforts to increase participation and broaden the program “produced consistent increases in the number of average monthly beneficiaries. The number rose in seven out of the eight years of Bush’s presidency — most of which were years not considered recessionary. All told, the number of recipients rose by a cumulative 63 percent during Bush’s eight-year presidency.”

Now to the singling out of blacks. The largest group of SNAP beneficiaries is by far non-Hispanic whites. However, it is true that the rate of participation is much higher among blacks than whites. Put the emphasis where you wish.

Finally, as to the false dichotomy of “food stamps” versus “paychecks.” First, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, most SNAP participants are either too old or too young to work. Forty-seven percent were under age 18, and 8 percent were 60 or older. Second, “nearly 30 percent of SNAP households had earnings in 2010, and 41 percent of all SNAP participants lived in a household with earnings.”

But race is usually less about facts than historical mythology, which evokes the black bogyman, who saps the money from the whites who earn it. Ever since blacks first arrived on these shores in chains, they have been perceived as lazy and dependent on whites — first as slaves, and then as “entitled” citizens.

It is the Shackles-to-Bootstraps Doctrine of Self-Defeat that disavows any and all structural inhibitors to success.

The preface of the “Encyclopedia of Black Folklore and Humor” tells a story about the first black captives arriving in the New World and one slave “muttering angrily to himself.” The captain of the boat says to him, “What’s the matter with you? You’ve been in this country for only five minutes and already you’re complaining!”

Folklore or fact, this is the way many have viewed blacks in this country throughout history and even now: with scolding disdain and shocking blindness.

In 1935, W.E.B. DuBois’s “Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880” pointed out that one of the major themes that American children were being taught in textbooks about that period was that “all Negroes were lazy, dishonest and extravagant.”

The themes are eerily resonant of today’s Republican talking points on welfare.

One textbook theme excerpted by Mr. DuBois stated that “legislatures were often at the mercy of Negroes, childishly ignorant, who sold their votes openly, and whose ‘loyalty’ was gained by allowing them to eat, drink and clothe themselves at the state’s expense.”

Another stated that “assistance led many freed men to believe that they need no longer work.”

This tired trope was reprised in 1976. After losing the Iowa caucus to Gerald Ford and heading into the New Hampshire primary, Ronald Reagan glommed onto the idea of the “welfare queen.”

Reagan explained at nearly every stop that there was a woman in Chicago who “has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards and is collecting veteran’s benefits on four nonexisting deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000.”

Coincidence? “Uh huh.”

Racial politics play well for Republicans. Santorum and Paul finished second and third in Iowa. Time will tell if Gingrich rebounds. Playing to racial anxiety and fear isn’t a fluke; it’s a strategy that energizes the Republican base.

Kevin Phillips, who popularized the right’s “Southern Strategy,” was quoted in The New York Times Magazine in May 1970 as saying that “the more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans.”

“Uh huh.”



I invite you to join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter, or e-mail me at chblow@nytimes.com.

The Fierce Ongoing Persistence of Racism in the 2012 Presidential Election


http://www.thenation.com/blog/165531/seven-days-gop-bigotry?rel=emailNation

All,

Welcome to the (real) Terrordome...again...Katie Halper opens the lid of the filthy stinking box we call "America" and (predictably) all the vicious demonic cretins come crawling out right on cue...

Kofi


Seven Days of GOP Bigotry
by Katie Halper
January 10, 2012
The Nation

These guys must be pooped! I don’t know how they do it. How do these GOP presidential candidates manage to pack so much racism into one week? They are prolific! You know who could learn a thing or two from Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich’s strong Catholic work ethic? The blacks! I mean the blahs.

Sunday: Rick Santorum tells supporters in Sioux City, Iowa, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better, by giving them someone else’s money.”



Monday: Santorum does some amazing damage control, explaining,

"I’ve seen that quote, I haven’t seen the context in which that was made…. Yesterday I talked for example about a movie called, um, what was it? Waiting for Superman, which was about black children and so I don’t know whether it was in response and I was talking about that."

Wednesday:

Santorum realizes that he was totally misunderstood—apparently by himself as well as by others! Who said anything about black people? He said “blah” people. I’m not making this up. Watch the video (at 2:09) and hear him actually say [I] didn’t recall using that particular word… It was probably tongue-tied moment.… In fact, I’m pretty confident I didn’t say ‘black.’ I sort of started to say a word and sort of mumbled it and changed my thought. I don’t recall saying ‘black.’ No one in the audience heard me say that.”



Thursday: Not to be outdone, Newt Gingrich comes up with his own nugget of racist condescension, saying, “And so I’m prepared if the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.”



Friday:

Newt responds with the humility and sensitivity for which he is known.

"I think you would have to be nuts to read those two paragraphs and conclude anything except that I was saying that every young American deserves the right to pursue happiness. Every young American deserves chance to have a job. Every neighborhood in America deserves a chance to have pay checks instead of food stamp.… And for the life of me I can’t understand why having a conservative Republican who cares about young people having jobs should be seen as such a terrible idea or should be seen as somehow a racist characterization."
Related Topics: US Politics | Conservatives and the American Right


http://loyalopposition.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/race-and-politics-revisited/?src=recg

All,

Thanks to Mr. Rosenthal for boldly cutting through the relentless racist bullshit that rules this heinous country (The "United Hates") and telling it like it IS and has ALWAYS been no matter what some may stupidly claim otherwise (Welcome to the "land of the spree, home of the knave" and eternal domain of the 3H club--Hatred, Hubris, and Hypocrisy)...

Kofi


ABOUT

In The Loyal Opposition, Andrew Rosenthal offers political commentary on breaking news stories. The Times’s editorial page editor since January 2007, Mr. Rosenthal oversees the editorial board, the letters and Op-Ed departments, and Sunday Review. He has held numerous positions at The Times, including assistant managing editor for news, foreign editor, national editor, Washington editor and Washington correspondent. He has contributed to the paper’s coverage of every presidential election since 1988.


Race and Politics, Revisited
By ANDREW ROSENTHAL
January 6, 2012
New York Times

A post in my blog on Tuesday, about the undertone of racism in American politics, drew a great deal of angry e-mail and critical commentary, most recently from the Bill O’Reilly program on Fox News. I thought the subject was worth another visit.

Some people who have reacted to the post have sincerely taken issue with my opinions, which is one of the reasons we publish opinions – to generate debate.

Other responses – comments on the blog that we did not post, through e-mail, on Twitter and from other sources – have been more unpleasant. Some have been overtly racist themselves, including bigoted references to my last name. Some have attacked me for saying that anyone who criticizes President Obama is a racist. That would be a ridiculous claim, had I actually made it, which I did not.

And others have made the argument that I should have accounted for anti-white racism, which some readers say is a real problem in this country. There are members of minority groups who make racist comments, but if there is some evidence that white Americans, especially white men, suffer from racial discrimination, I’d love to see it.

One thing I could have made clearer in my blog post is that racially tinged and outright racist attacks did not begin with the election of Mr. Obama. They have been going on for a long time, and yes, particularly from Republicans. This bitter strain was evident in my first assignment for The Times in the 1988 general election, when the infamous “Willie Horton ad” was used against Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, the Democratic nominee. Mr. Dukakis was also the target of xenophobic attacks based on his Greek heritage. The debate over immigration reform has had a river of racism running through it.

The racial theme continues in the 2012 presidential campaign. One day after coming in fourth in the Iowa caucuses, Newt Gingrich appeared at a town hall in Plymouth, N.H., where he offered to attend the NAACP convention and explain “why the African-American community should demand paychecks instead of food stamps.”

The idea that black Americans don’t want paychecks is condescending and outrageous.

(Mr. Gingrich, who calls Mr. Obama the “food stamp president,” also has been advocating employing children from housing projects to clean toilets in public schools so they can learn there are alternative careers to pimping and drug dealing.)

The NAACP did not comment on Mr. Gingrich’s offer to speak, but the organization attacked Rick Santorum for a remark he made at a voter forum in Iowa. “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money,” Mr. Santorum said. “I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money and provide for themselves and their families.”

(Mr. Santorum later said that he’d been misunderstood, that he was stumbling over his words and it just sounded like he said “black.”)

In a statement on Wednesday, the NAACP President, Benjamin Todd Jealous, said: “Senator Santorum’s targeting of African Americans is inaccurate and outrageous, and lifts up old race-based stereotypes about public assistance. He conflates welfare recipients with African Americans, though federal benefits are in fact determined by income level.”

That’s very well put.


http://www.thenation.com/blog/165531/seven-days-gop-bigotry?rel=emailNation

All,

Welcome to the (real) Terrordome...again...Katie Halper opens the lid of the filthy stinking box we call "America" and (predictably) all the vicious demonic cretins come crawling out right on cue...

Kofi


Seven Days of GOP Bigotry
by Katie Halper
January 10, 2012
The Nation

These guys must be pooped! I don’t know how they do it. How do these GOP presidential candidates manage to pack so much racism into one week? They are prolific! You know who could learn a thing or two from Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich’s strong Catholic work ethic? The blacks! I mean the blahs.

Sunday: Rick Santorum tells supporters in Sioux City, Iowa, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better, by giving them someone else’s money.”



Monday: Santorum does some amazing damage control, explaining,

"I’ve seen that quote, I haven’t seen the context in which that was made…. Yesterday I talked for example about a movie called, um, what was it? Waiting for Superman, which was about black children and so I don’t know whether it was in response and I was talking about that."

Wednesday:

Santorum realizes that he was totally misunderstood—apparently by himself as well as by others! Who said anything about black people? He said “blah” people. I’m not making this up. Watch the video (at 2:09) and hear him actually say [I] didn’t recall using that particular word… It was probably tongue-tied moment.… In fact, I’m pretty confident I didn’t say ‘black.’ I sort of started to say a word and sort of mumbled it and changed my thought. I don’t recall saying ‘black.’ No one in the audience heard me say that.”



Thursday: Not to be outdone, Newt Gingrich comes up with his own nugget of racist condescension, saying, “And so I’m prepared if the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.”



Friday:

Newt responds with the humility and sensitivity for which he is known.

"I think you would have to be nuts to read those two paragraphs and conclude anything except that I was saying that every young American deserves the right to pursue happiness. Every young American deserves chance to have a job. Every neighborhood in America deserves a chance to have pay checks instead of food stamp.… And for the life of me I can’t understand why having a conservative Republican who cares about young people having jobs should be seen as such a terrible idea or should be seen as somehow a racist characterization."


Related Topics: US Politics | Conservatives and the American Right

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Judge Robert L. Carter, 1917-2012: Legendary Legal Pioneer, Civil Rights Leader, and Social Activist

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Robert L. Carter in 2004

Associated Press The lawyers for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. From left, Louis L. Redding, Robert L. Carter, Oliver W. Hill, Thurgood Marshall and Spottswood W. Robinson III.



All,

A real legal and civil rights pioneer died today at 94. This man was a GIANT and we owe him and his generation of legal and social activists an enormous debt. May you RIP Judge Carter... Kofi


Robert L. Carter, an Architect of School Desegregation, Dies at 94
By ROY REED
January 3, 2012

New York Times

Robert L. Carter, a former federal judge in New York who, as a lawyer, was a leading strategist and a persuasive voice in the legal assault on racial segregation in 20th-century America, died on Tuesday morning in Manhattan. He was 94.

The cause was complications of a stroke, said his son John W. Carter, a justice of the New York Supreme Court in the Bronx.

Judge Carter presided over the merger of professional basketball leagues in the 1970s and was instrumental in opening the New York City police force to more minority applicants. But perhaps his greatest impact came in the late 1940s and 1950s as a member of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., led by Thurgood Marshall.

Often toiling behind the scenes, Mr. Carter had a significant hand in many historic legal challenges to racial discrimination in the postwar years. None was more momentous than Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark case that led in 1954 to a Supreme Court decision abolishing legal segregation in the public schools.

Mr. Carter’s well-honed argument that the segregation of public schools was unconstitutional on its face became the Supreme Court’s own conclusion in Brown. The decision swept away half a century of legal precedent that the South had used to justify its “separate but equal” doctrine.

Mr. Carter and his underpaid, overworked colleagues at the Legal Defense and Educational Fund argued before the court that the South’s schools rarely offered anything like equal opportunities to black children. But that was beside the point in any case, they said. Segregation itself, they argued, was so damaging to black children that it should be abolished, on the ground that it was contrary to the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal rights to all citizens.

Mr. Carter spent years doing research in law and history to construct that legal theory before it reached the Supreme Court. Though aspects of segregation law had been struck down before World War II, Mr. Carter’s task was still daunting. His challenge was to persuade the Supreme Court to overturn, finally, a looming obstacle to equal rights, the court’s 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. That ruling upheld a Louisiana law requiring racial separation on railroad cars. The South used that decision to justify a wide range of discriminatory practices for years to come.

“We have one fundamental contention,” Mr. Carter told the court. “No state has any authority under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens.”

Mr. Carter insisted on using the research of the psychologist Kenneth B. Clark to attack segregated schools, a daring courtroom tactic in the eyes of some civil rights lawyers. Experiments by Mr. Clark and his wife, Mamie, showed that black children suffered in their learning and development by being segregated. Mr. Clark’s testimony proved crucial in persuading the court to act, Mr. Carter wrote in a 2004 book, “A Matter of Law: A Memoir of Struggle in the Cause of Equal Rights.”

As chief deputy to the imposing Mr. Marshall, who was to become the first black Supreme Court justice, Mr. Carter labored for years in his shadow. In the privacy of legal conferences, Mr. Carter was seen as the house radical, always urging his colleagues to push legal and constitutional positions to the limits.

He recalled that Mr. Marshall had encouraged him to play the gadfly: “I was younger and more radical than many of the people Thurgood would have in, I guess. But he’d never let them shut me up.”

Robert Lee Carter was born in Caryville, in the Florida Panhandle, on March 17, 1917, the youngest of nine children. His family moved to New Jersey when he was 6 weeks old, and his father, Robert L. Carter, died when he was a year old. His mother, Annie Martin Carter, took in laundry for white people for 25 years.

Mr. Carter recalled experiencing racial discrimination as a 16-year-old in East Orange, N.J. The high school he attended allowed black students to use its pool only on Fridays, after classes were over. After he read in the newspaper that the State Supreme Court had outlawed such restrictions, he entered the pool with white students and stood up to a teacher’s threat to have him expelled from school. It was his first taste of activism, he said.

He attended two predominantly black universities: Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where he enrolled at 16, and Howard University School of Law in Washington. He then went to Columbia University as a graduate student and wrote his master’s thesis on the First Amendment. He used parts of the thesis in preparing for the school segregation cases in the 1950s.

Mr. Carter joined the Army a few months before the United States entered World War II. His military experience made a militant of him, he said, starting with the day a white captain welcomed Mr. Carter’s unit of the Army Air Corps at Augusta, Ga. The captain, Mr. Carter said in his memoir, “wanted to inform us right away that he did not believe in educating niggers.”

“He was not going to tolerate our putting on airs or acting uppity,” Mr. Carter said.

In spite of repeated antagonisms, Mr. Carter completed Officer Candidate School and became a second lieutenant. He was the only black officer at Harding Field in Baton Rouge, La., and promptly integrated the officers’ club, arousing new anger. He was soon transferred to a training base in Columbus, Ohio, where he continued to face racial hostility.

He left the service in 1944 and got a job as a lawyer at the Legal Defense and Educational Fund, then the legal arm of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. (It later became an independent organization.) He had become Marshall’s chief deputy by 1948, and soon became active in school segregation cases, notably Sweatt v. Painter, in which the Supreme Court ruled in 1950 that the University of Texas Law School had acted illegally in denying admission to a black applicant.

Mr. Carter was also involved in housing discrimination cases, the dismantling of all-white political primaries in several Southern states and the ending of de facto school segregation in the North.

Mr. Carter was disappointed when Marshall passed him over and chose a white staff lawyer, Jack Greenberg, to succeed him as director-counsel of the fund in 1961. Mr. Carter moved to the N.A.A.C.P. — by then a separate entity — as its general counsel. He considered that a demotion, and resented what he saw as Mr. Greenberg’s undercutting him.

Mr. Carter resigned in protest from the N.A.A.C.P. in 1968 when its board fired a white staff member, Lewis M. Steel, who had written an article in The New York Times Magazine critical of the Supreme Court. After a year at the Urban Center at Columbia, he joined the New York law firm of Poletti, Freidin, Prashker, Feldman & Gartner. President Richard M. Nixon nominated him to the federal bench for the Southern District of New York in 1972 at the recommendation of Senator Jacob K. Javits, Republican of New York.

On the bench, Judge Carter became known for his strong hand in cases involving professional basketball. He oversaw the merger of the National Basketball Association and the American Basketball Association in the 1970s, the settlement of a class-action antitrust suit against the N.B.A. brought by Oscar Robertson and other players, and a number of high-profile free-agent arbitration disputes involving players like Marvin Webster and Bill Walton.

In 1979, his findings of bias shown against black and Hispanic applicants for police jobs in New York City led to significant changes in police hiring policies and an increase in minority representation on the force.

Mr. Carter, who lived in Manhattan and died in a hospital there, married Gloria Spencer of New York in 1946. She died in 1971. Besides his son John, Judge Carter is survived by another son, David; a sister, Alma Carter Lawson; and a grandson.

Well into advanced age, Mr. Carter retained the fire of a civil rights agitator who believed that much remained to be done in the pursuit of racial equality.

“Black children aren’t getting equal education in the cities,” he said in an interview with The Times in 2004. “The schools that are 100 percent black are still as bad as they were before Brown. Integration seems to be out, at least for this generation.” But, he said, “I have hope.”

“In the United States, we make progress in two or three steps, then we step back,” he added. “And blacks are more militant now and will not accept second-class citizenship as before.”



Dennis Hevesi contributed reporting.


President Obama finally Stands Up To The Republicans and protects new Consumer Agency


http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/defying-republicans-obama-to-name-cordray-as-consumer-agency-chief/?emc=na

All,

YES YES YES YES...YES! Like many people throughout the country I've been waiting three years for the President to FINALLY show some guts and real political independence and stand up to the truly crazed thugs in the Republican/Tea Party who have been relentlessly pushing him around and defeating nearly every single proposal his administration has put forward since he took office (and thoroughly kicking his often far too timid political ass in the process!). And while I fully realize that Obama is no doubt being assertive now simply because he wants to get re-elected this year (and thus clearly realizes that defying the brazen opposition of the notorious crypto-fascist rightwingers who dominate the Republican Party is a very necessary move if he wants the liberal/progressive base of the Democratic Party to enthusiastically come out in large numbers and electorally support him) I'll take it for now and give credit where it is due because it is ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE that whoever becomes the Republican nominee this year MUST BE DEFEATED NO MATTER WHAT. Anything less than that will be a major castastrophe for this society on every conceivable level imaginabl and we must not become so cynical, fatalistic, and smugly indifferent to this fact despite the obvious limitations, inadequacies, and weaknesses of the President and his agenda up to this point. Today's decision by Obama was a definite step in the right direction for once and it will be absolutely crucial from this point on that he continue to FIGHT and fiercely oppose/defeat the right's agenda. Needless to say it will be even more important for the rest of us to do the same...

Kofi



JANUARY 4, 2012

Defying Republicans, Obama to Name Cordray as Consumer Agency Chief
By HELENE COOPER and JOHN H. CUSHMAN JR.
New York Times


Philip Scott Andrews/The New York Times
Testifying before Congress in September, Mr. Cordray said he would make judicious use of lawsuits to enforce financial regulations.


President Obama will challenge Senate Republican foes of the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by naming Richard Cordray as its director while Congress is out of town, according to a senior administration official.

That would allow the agency to establish new regulations over financial institutions, putting into effect elements of the financial regulatory overhaul that was one of the administration’s main achievements in Congress.

Mr. Obama’s exercise of constitutional powers to name top officials without Senate confirmation while Congress is in recess is a stiff challenge to Republicans, who have attempted to block the maneuver by holding “pro forma” sessions over the holidays.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, objected strenuously, saying Mr. Obama was overstepping the bounds of his executive power and leaving the agency open to legal challenges.

“Although the Senate is not in recess, President Obama, in an unprecedented move, has arrogantly circumvented the American people,” he said. This recess appointment represents a sharp departure from a long-standing precedent that has limited the President to recess appointments only when the Senate is in a recess of 10 days or longer. Breaking from this precedent lands this appointee in uncertain legal territory, threatens the confirmation process and fundamentally endangers the Congress’s role in providing a check on the excesses of the executive branch.

“The president is committed to seeing Richard Cordray as head of the consumer bureau,” a senior administration official said. “We believe this appointment is fully within his legal rights.”

Senator Tim Johnson, a Democrat of South Dakota who is chairman of the Banking Committee, praised the move.

“Mr. Cordray is eminently qualified for the job, as even my Senate Republican colleagues have acknowledged,” he said. “It’s disappointing that Senate Republicans denied him an up-or-down vote, especially when it’s clear he had the support of a majority of the Senate.”

Mr. Cordray boarded Marine One with Mr. Obama on Wednesday for the short flight to Andrews Air Force Base, where he is to accompany the president to his hometown of Cleveland for the announcement. The president is expected to deliver remarks on the economy at a high school in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights.

The move came hours after the conclusion of the Iowa caucuses, and was sure to turn attention away from the Republican Party and back to the president.

In December, Mr. Cordray’s nomination was rejected after Democrats failed to achieve the 60 votes they needed to move his nomination forward.

The power struggle between the financial sector and its check-cashing, card-carrying customers has developed into one of the fault lines along which the political parties are playing out their own rivalries as the election year arrives.

Mr. Cordray is a former attorney general of Ohio noted for his aggressive investigations of mortgage foreclosure practices. Currently in charge of enforcement at the consumer agency, he was nominated in July to lead it.

Previous opposition from Republicans led to the withdrawal of Elizabeth Warren from consideration for the post. She is a Harvard law professor who was the driving force behind the agency’s creation and is now a Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in Massachusetts.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

BEHOLD: SONNY ROLLINS, THE SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS!












Theodore Walter "Sonny " Rollins
2011 Kennedy Center Honoree

SONNY ROLLINS' NEXT ALBUM MILESTONE RECORDS, 1972

Freedom Suite by Sonny Rollins, 1958
http://www.sonnyrollins.com/:

Sonny Rollins--The Official Website of the Saxophone Colossus

All,

In the incredibly rich pantheon of African American art and culture there have been many legendary musical artists from the Jazz tradition who through their prodigious art have dramatically changed the very course of cultural history in the modern world. These astonishing and truly revolutionary figures: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Jelly Roll Morton, Art Tatum, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillispie. Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Max Roach, Clifford Brown, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Sarah Vaugyhn, Betty Carter, Wayne Shorter, Ornette Coleman, Joe Henderson, Horace Silver, Roy Haynes, Kenny Clarke, Herbie Nichols, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Bobby Hutcherson, Herbie Hancock, Jackie McLean and Archie Shepp-- just to name a few icons from a HUGE collection of truly extraordinary artists in this always fecund tradition--have played a major role in our fundamental understanding of what exactly constitutes "GREAT ART" in the world. It is this grand, profound, and tirelessly powerful legacy that the living legend and saxophone genius SONNY ROLLINS (b. September 7, 1930) embodies and epitomizes in every improvisational gesture that he expresses and is the very source of his magisterial command of his instrument. A consummate master who continues at age 81 (!) to enthrall and captivate his many listeners around the world, Theodore Walter "Sonny" Rollins was one of five Kennedy Center Honorees for 2011 on December 3, 2011 (broadcast on CBS television this past tuesday night December 27, 2011). It is in direct response to and heartfelt appreciation for this great honor that the following TRIBUTE TO THE SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS is made. Long May this GIANT continue to grace our lives with the depth, courage, insight, clarity, beauty, and creative authority that marks his tremendous artistry and his eloquent, humble and generous humanity. SONNYMOON FOR US ALL INDEED...

Kofi

"America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms, its humor, its music. How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as its own, is being persecuted and repressed, that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in its very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity."
--Sonny Rollins

Liner Notes to "Freedom Suite" 1958

SONNYMOON FOR US ALL
(For the greatest saxophonist in the world: Sonny Rollins)

By Kofi Natambu

WHEN SONNY STANDS IN FOR THE MOON
WE HEAR SUCH A GLORIOUS TUNE
IT'S ALWAYS A BIT OF A SWOON
WHEN SONNY STANDS IN FOR THE MOON

THE SONG COULD BE AUGUST OR JUNE
A HELL OF A BURST OR A BOON
WAILING AT MIDNIGHT OR NOON
WHEN SONNY STANDS IN FOR THE MOON

TRANSVERSING HARMONIC LAGOONS
HE PLAYS THRU OUR FEARS AND OUR WOUNDS
HIS HORN IS A RHYTHMIC PLATOON
WHEN SONNY STANDS IN FOR THE MOON

I THINK I WILL SOON BE A LOON
OR AT LEAST A RAVING BABOON
IF I DON'T GET TO HEAR SOME MORE TUNES
FROM THAT SOARING MELODIC BALLOON

O ROLLINS BLOWS HEAT CAN BE FIERCE OR SO SWEET

YEAH SONNY SWINGS FULL LIKE THE MOON
YEAH SONNY SWINGS FULL LIKE THE MOON
YEAH SONNY SWINGS FULL LIKE THE MOON
YEAH SONNY SWINGS FULL LIKE THE MOON...
FROM THE POETRY VOLUME THE MELODY NEVER STOPS by Kofi Natambu (PAST TENTS PRESS, 1991)


Sonny Rollins Talking to Former President Bill Clinton at Awards Ceremony

Sonny Rollins iPhone App Ver 2.0 on iTunes

Hear Sonny with Cornel West and Tavis Smiley

View Sonny on "Tavis Smiley" on PBS

Grammy Nominations: "Road Shows, Vol. 2" - Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Best Improvised Jazz Solo for "Sonnymoon for Two" (And JazzTimes Album of the Year)





Sonny's Oral History

On February 28, 2011, Larry Appelbaum conducted a video interview with
Sonny Rollins for the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Project.

This Chapter: Live Music and Dancing











Sonny Rollins was one of five individuals who received the Kennedy Center Honors of 2011.

Along with fellow recipients singer Barbara Cook, singer and songwriter Neil Diamond, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and actress Meryl Streep, Rollins was honored at the 34th annual national celebration of the arts on December 4.

"I am deeply appreciative of this great honor," said Mr. Rollins, "In honoring me, the Kennedy Center honors jazz, America's classical music. For that, I am very grateful."

Other jazz artists who have been Kennedy Center Honorees are: Ella Fitzgerald (1978), Count Basie (1981), Benny Goodman (1982), Dizzy Gillespie (1990), Lionel Hampton (1992), Benny Carter (1996), Quincy Jones (2001), and Dave Brubeck (2009).

The Gala was broadcast on CBS-TV on December 27, 2011 at 9:00-11:00 p.m., ET/PT.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HxI2Z9uhIv4#!






















BIOGRAPHY

Sonny at age 16

Theodore Walter Rollins was born on September 7, 1930 in New York City. He grew up in Harlem not far from the Savoy Ballroom, the Apollo Theatre, and the doorstep of his idol, Coleman Hawkins. After early discovery of Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong, he started out on alto saxophone, inspired by Louis Jordan. At the age of sixteen, he switched to tenor, trying to emulate Hawkins. He also fell under the spell of the musical revolution that surrounded him, Bebop.

He began to follow Charlie Parker, and soon came under the wing of Thelonious Monk, who became his musical mentor and guru. Living in Sugar Hill, his neighborhood musical peers included Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew and Art Taylor, but it was young Sonny who was first out of the pack, working and recording with Babs Gonzales, J.J. Johnson, Bud Powell and Miles Davis before he turned twenty.

"Of course, these people are there to be called on because I think I represent them in a way," Rollins said recently of his peers and mentors. "They're not here now so I feel like I'm sort of representing all of them, all of the guys. Remember, I'm one of the last guys left, as I'm constantly being told, so I feel a holy obligation sometimes to evoke these people."

In the early fifties, he established a reputation first among musicians, then the public, as the most brash and creative young tenor on the scene, through his work with Miles, Monk, and the MJQ.

Miles Davis was an early Sonny Rollins fan and in his autobiography wrote that he "began to hang out with Sonny Rollins and his Sugar Hill Harlem crowd...anyway, Sonny had a big reputation among a lot of the younger musicians in Harlem. People loved Sonny Rollins up in Harlem and everywhere else. He was a legend, almost a god to a lot of the younger musicians. Some thought he was playing the saxophone on the level of Bird. I know one thing--he was close. He was an aggressive, innovative player who always had fresh musical ideas. I loved him back then as a player and he could also write his ass off..."

With Clifford Brown and Max Roach, 1956
Sonny moved to Chicago for a few years to remove himself from the surrounding elements of negativity around the Jazz scene. He reemerged at the end of 1955 as a member of the Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet, with an even more authoritative presence. His trademarks became a caustic, often humorous style of melodic invention, a command of everything from the most arcane ballads to calypsos, and an overriding logic in his playing that found him hailed for models of thematic improvisation.

It was during this time that Sonny acquired a nickname,"Newk." As Miles Davis explains in his autobiography: "Sonny had just got back from playing a gig out in Chicago. He knew Bird, and Bird really liked Sonny, or "Newk" as we called him, because he looked like the Brooklyn Dodgers' pitcher Don Newcombe. One day, me and Sonny were in a cab...when the white cabdriver turned around and looked at Sonny and said, `Damn, you're Don Newcombe!'' Man, the guy was totally excited. I was amazed, because I hadn't thought about it before. We just put that cabdriver on something terrible. Sonny started talking about what kind of pitches he was going to throw Stan Musial, the great hitter for the St. Louis Cardinals, that evening..."

In 1956, Sonny began recording the first of a series of landmark recordings issued under his own name: Valse Hot introduced the practice, now common, of playing bop in 3/4 meter; St. Thomas initiated his explorations of calypso patterns; and Blue 7 was hailed by Gunther Schuller as demonstrating a new manner of "thematic improvisation," in which the soloist develops motifs extracted from his theme. Way Out West (1957), Rollins's first album using a trio of saxophone, double bass, and drums, offered a solution to his longstanding difficulties with incompatible pianists, and exemplified his witty ability to improvise on hackneyed material (Wagon Wheels, I'm an Old Cowhand). It Could Happen to You (also 1957) was the first in a long series of unaccompanied solo recordings, and The Freedom Suite (1958) foreshadowed the political stances taken in jazz in the 1960s. During the years 1956 to 1958 Rollins was widely regarded as the most talented and innovative tenor saxophonist in jazz.

Rollins's first examples of the unaccompanied solo playing that would become a specialty also appeared in this period; yet the perpetually dissatisfied saxophonist questioned the acclaim his music was attracting, and between 1959 and late `61 withdrew from public performance.

Sonny remembers that he took his leave of absence from the scene because "I was getting very famous at the time and I felt I needed to brush up on various aspects of my craft. I felt I was getting too much, too soon, so I said, wait a minute, I'm going to do it my way. I wasn't going to let people push me out there, so I could fall down. I wanted to get myself together, on my own. I used to practice on the Bridge, the Williamsburg Bridge because I was living on the Lower East Side at the time."

When he returned to action in early `62, his first recording was appropriately titled The Bridge. By the mid 60's, his live sets became grand, marathon stream-of-consciousness solos where he would call forth melodies from his encyclopedic knowledge of popular songs, including startling segues and sometimes barely visiting one theme before surging into dazzling variations upon the next. Rollins was brilliant, yet restless. The period between 1962 and `66 saw him returning to action and striking productive relationships with Jim Hall, Don Cherry, Paul Bley, and his idol Hawkins, yet he grew dissatisfied with the music business once again and started yet another sabbatical in `66. "I was getting into eastern religions," he remembers. "I've always been my own man. I've always done, tried to do, what I wanted to do for myself. So these are things I wanted to do. I wanted to go on the Bridge. I wanted to get into religion. But also, the Jazz music business is always bad. It's never good. So that led me to stop playing in public for a while, again. During the second sabbatical, I worked in Japan a little bit, and went to India after that and spent a lot of time in a monastery. I resurfaced in the early 70s, and made my first record in `72. I took some time off to get myself together and I think it's a good thing for anybody to do."

Lucille and Sonny
In 1972, with the encouragement and support of his wife Lucille, who had become his business manager, Rollins returned to performing and recording, signing with Milestone and releasing Next Album. (Working at first with Orrin Keepnews, Sonny was by the early ’80s producing his own Milestone sessions with Lucille.) His lengthy association with the Berkeley-based label produced two dozen albums in various settings – from his working groups to all-star ensembles (Tommy Flanagan, Jack DeJohnette, Stanley Clarke, Tony Williams); from a solo recital to tour recordings with the Milestone Jazzstars (Ron Carter, McCoy Tyner); in the studio and on the concert stage (Montreux, San Francisco, New York, Boston). Sonny was also the subject of a mid-’80s documentary by Robert Mugge entitled Saxophone Colossus; part of its soundtrack is available as G-Man.

He won his first performance Grammy for This Is What I Do (2000), and his second for 2004’s Without a Song (The 9/11 Concert), in the Best Jazz Instrumental Solo category (for “Why Was I Born”). In addition, Sonny received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 2004.

In June 2006 Rollins was inducted into the Academy of Achievement – and gave a solo performance – at the International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. The event was hosted by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and attended by world leaders as well as distinguished figures in the arts and sciences.

Rollins was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art, First Class, in November 2009. The award is one of Austria’s highest honors, given to leading international figures for distinguished achievements. The only other American artists who have received this recognition are Frank Sinatra and Jessye Norman.

In 2010 on the eve of his 80th birthday, Sonny Rollins is one of 229 leaders in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, arts, business, and public affairs who have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A center for independent policy research, the Academy is among the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies and celebrates the 230th anniversary of its founding this year.

In August 2010, Rollins was named the Edward MacDowell Medalist, the first jazz composer to be so honored. The Medal has been awarded annually since 1960 to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to his or her field.


Sonny Rollins Receiving National Medal of Arts Award from President Obama at White House in 2010
Photo: Ruth David

Yet another major award was bestowed on Rollins on March 2, 2011, when he received the Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in a White House ceremony. Rollins accepted the award, the nation’s highest honor for artistic excellence, “on behalf of the gods of our music.”

Since 2006, Rollins has been releasing his music on his own label, Doxy Records (with distribution from the Decca Label Group). The first Doxy album was Sonny, Please, Rollins’s first studio recording since This Is What I Do. That was followed by the acclaimed Road Shows, vol. 1 (2008), the first in a planned series of recordings from Rollins’s audio archives.

Mr. Rollins released Road Shows, vol. 2 in the fall of 2011. In addition to material recorded in Sapporo and Tokyo, Japan during an October 2010 tour, the recording contains several tracks from Sonny’s September 2010 80th birthday concert in New York—including the historic and electrifying encounter with Ornette Coleman.


SONNY ROLLINS ONE OF 10 RECIPIENTS OF 2010 NATIONAL MEDAL OF ARTS

Saxophonist Sonny Rollins was one of ten honorees who received the 2010 National Medal of Arts for outstanding achievements and support of the arts. The presentation was made on March 2 by President Barack Obama in an East Room ceremony at the White House.

“I’m very happy that jazz, the greatest American music, is being recognized through this honor, and I’m grateful to accept this award on behalf of the gods of our music,” Mr. Rollins said of the award.



The National Medal of Arts recipients represent the many vibrant and diverse art forms thriving in America,” said NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman. “Sonny Rollins’ melodic sensibilities, playing style, and solos have delighted audiences and influenced generations of musicians for over fifty years and I join the President and the country in saluting him.”