By Debbie Schlussel
This movement has been picking up steam in Detroit in recent years, and it dovetails on a Black Expo, in which the “buy Black products” campaign has been pushed.
There’s nothing wrong with supporting your local community, but when you do so based only on skin color (and drive miles out of your way to avoid buying from White people), there’s a term for it: racism. It’s no different than those who would urge the purchase of only White goods and products.
I wonder if the people supporting this will agree not to use any medicines, inventions, and other conveniences that were invented by and/or are produced by non-Blacks. I doubt it.
They aren’t just racists. They’re hypocrites.

Maggie Anderson drives an average of 16 miles each way to buy groceries. She drives another 20 miles to shop at a general merchandise store and then an additional 16 ¬? miles to buy her children’s clothes.
The long trips are part of Anderson’s efforts to shop exclusively at black-owned firms.
Anderson, an Oak Park, Ill., attorney, and her husband John, decided in January to begin a yearlong campaign to support black merchants, professionals and products made by blacks.
The Andersons [were] in Detroit . . . touting their Empower Experiment program and urging others to become part of it.

More like Empower Racism Experiment.

“We want to give back to our community,” Anderson said Wednesday. “The black community has the worst (statistics) whatever the problem is. We have the highest unemployment rate, the highest dropout rate, the highest incarceration rate.”
Anderson said the campaign is about trying to save black businesses and not exclude others.

Sorry, but when you drive miles out of your way to avoid buying from Black people, it is exclusionary.

Anderson said she has invested $39,000 in Chicago-area black-owned businesses this year. She and her husband, a Detroit native, write down every purchase they make. “We’re asking them to buy more black (goods and services),” Maggie Anderson said. “We’re asking people to make little sacrifices. Pledge to try to spend more with black-owned businesses. For example I’m going to find black dry cleaners … a black caterer for the family reunion.”

Again, how would they like it if White people refused to buy from them or Black businesses because they want to support the White community, which doesn’t get affirmative action, minority set-asides, and other benefits in this poor economy?
They’d be shouting, “RACISM!”
But these racists were allowed to push their campaign at a Detroit area church and another establishment, where anti-White racism is apparently acceptable.

By Debbie Schlussel
Especially in this economy, I love to tell readers about free stuff. And, today, A & W is celebrating its 90th birthday. This great American company (it’s slogan is “All American Food”) has been serving our country for 90 years.
In honor of that, today, from 2:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., you can get a FREE A& W Root Beer Float. Mmmmm . . . with warmer temperatures, it hits the spot. Find your nearest A & W Restaurant.
(For those who are not huge fans of root beer (like me), you can always make your own at home with Vernor’s Ginger Ale, like my grandma used to make. Yum.)

Also in honor of A & W’s 90th, on Sunday, Father’s Day, A&W is selling a Papa Burger for 90 cents, so you can treat yourself and Dad on the cheap. (I keep kosher, so I don’t partake in this stuff, but that doesn’t mean you can’t.)
I love A & W, even though I don’t eat there (again, not kosher). The brand is one of the few to survive for nearly a century in contemporary America. And it provides low cost food for American families. Those are things I celebrate. Roy Allen (the “A” in A & W) was a great American entrepreneur, whose initial remains on a company that grew to titanic size, beyond his wildest dreams. Yes, anything can happen in America.

Roy Allen: Great American Invented A & W Root Beer in 1919
I hope A&W is around for another 90 years and remains an American company.
A & W Restaurants, Inc. is now owned by Yum Brands, Inc. But here’s a little history on how this great American enterprise got started:

One hot day in June of 1919 in Lodi, California an entrepreneur named Roy Allen mixed up a batch of creamy root beer and sold the first frosty mug of this delightful beverage for one nickel. Now, more than seventy years later, A&W Root Beer is the world’s number one selling root beer and is still mixed fresh daily and sold at hundreds of A&W restaurants.
Allen purchased the formula for his root beer from a pharmacist in Arizona. To this day, the unique blend of herbs, spices, barks and berries remains a proprietary secret.
With the success of his first root beer stand in Lodi, Allen soon opened a second stand in nearby Sacramento. It was there that what is thought to be the country’s first “drive-in” featuring “tray-boys” for curb side service, opened up.

First A&W Outlet

In 1922 Allen took on a partner, Frank Wright, an employee from his original Lodi location. The two partners combined their initials – “A” for Allen and “W” for Wright and formally named the beverage, A&W Root Beer. Three units were opened in Sacramento, then on to other northern and central California locations and to the states of Texas and Utah.

By 1933 A & W already had 170 franchises across America.
Read more at the A & W site.

By Debbie Schlussel
Since it’s Friday, it’s Free Chocolate Friday. As regular readers know, every Friday through the end of September is Free Chocolate Friday, meaning that under Mars’ “Real Chocolate Relief Act” promotion, you can get a coupon for a free Mars chocolate candy bar.
Go here for the details and link to free chocolate.

By Debbie Schlussel
If your dad was killed by a drunk driver, would you ask a court to give the killer a lenient 30-day sentence in exchange for a huge cash pay-off?
I certainly wouldn’t.
But the family of 59-year-old construction worker Mario Reyes did just that. They were paid off by Cleveland Browns wide receiver Donte Stallworth, and because of that, justice wasn’t served. Stallworth–who should do years in prison for the killing–will serve only a 30-day sentence. And while he’ll serve two years of house arrest after that, he will be playing for the Browns when the NFL football season starts at the end of this summer. The ridiculously lenient plea agreement allows him to do so.

NFL’s Donte Stallworth Killed a Man Driving Drunk, Got 30 Days
It’s really a disgusting display. But I don’t just blame the family. I blame the justice system and the prosecutors who recommended this, merely because he paid the family off. And I blame the judge who went along with this absurd sentence.


Stallworth’s “cooperation” in the matter–which they cite–is a euphemism for nothing. People get killed by drunk drivers all the time, and they do hard time. The fact that they admitted, hey, I agree with your tests that I had an alcohol level over the limit when I killed a man, doesn’t save them from that.
Unless they are a rich ball player with the capacity to pay someone off.

The 28-year-old National Football League star’s abbreviated jail term came because of his cooperation with investigators and the wishes of the victim’s family.
Stallworth pleaded guilty Tuesday to manslaughter while driving under the influence of alcohol in exchange for a lighter sentence. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail for the car crash that killed a pedestrian in Miami Beach.
The player had faced up to 15 years in jail for the death of 59-year-old construction worker Mario Reyes, who apparently was running across the street to catch a bus when the athlete hit him with his car March 14.
The average jail sentence for similar crimes in Florida is 10 years, but Stallworth reached a confidential financial settlement with Reyes’ family.

What does this say for poor people who commit crimes and are unable to pay off their victims?
It says that, contrary to the trite adage, justice isn’t blind in America. It’s not blind at all. If you have the right dollar amounts in your bank account, you get a separate kind of “justice” applied to you.
But don’t worry, Donte Stallworth will get away with murder, just like his NFL colleague, Ray Lewis, got away with taking part in the murder of three people.
Crime pays when you are a wealthy star athlete and your victims are humans and not dogs (a la Michael Vick).

By Debbie Schlussel
One other thing I need to add to all of you stupid, clueless people all over the American right and left and the rest of the West who are putting green icons on your website, your facebook and twitter pictures, etc.:
I’m laughing at you, along with the Islamic world. You’ve voluntarily colored yourself with allegiance to them. It would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so sad and boneheaded. By projecting “democracy,” “freedom,” and a “free Iran” onto Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who reflects none of these and taking up his green stuff, you’re actually saying you are with the Muslim world. That’s what green means, but apparently you don’t know . . . and more importantly, don’t care.
Are you that clueless? Do you not know that green is the color of Islam? Militant Islam? How does it feel to wear the same color as the lights of the Empire State Building when it honored Ramadan? Are you that ignorant or do you not realize that you’re signifying your unity with the Saudi flag, the HAMAS flag, the green on the Hezbollah flag, and the green that’s on virtually every Islamic nation’s flags?
Get a Clue: A Few Other Things that Are Green . . .
HAMAS Flag . . .

Saudi Flag . . .

Empire State Building on Ramadan. . .

HAMAS-Green Empire State Building

(Artwork by DAVID LUNDE/LUNDESIGNS)
Are you really that incompetent to be unable to connect very simple dots?

By Debbie Schlussel
I continue to marvel and laugh at the many group-think dummies on the right and left who continue to whine over the Iranian election and side with this faux-“uprising” for democracy in Iran.
It’s like siding with one better-spoken HAMAS candidate in a HAMAS election, in which both candidates were picked by HAMAS, and telling me that this is somehow a fight for Palestinian democracy. We’ve already seen Palestinian democracy. And Iranian democracy is no different. The young Iranians in this “Uprising” are haters of Israel and Jews and supporters of Iran’s nuke program. It’s simply a waste to side with these “young democrats.”
The many people all over the internet putting HAMAS green on their sites and Twitter and Facebook icons and telling us “We support Free Iran,” or, “We support Iranian Democracy” are idiots. You’re just clueless.

Top Israeli Mossad Officials Agree w/ Schlussel on Khomeini Disciple Mousavi
I said this last week, and I repeat it now: Mir-Hossein Mousavi is an extremist with nicer language. He’s no different from Ahmadinejad, and no better. As I noted last week, if anything, he’s worse because Moussavi is Ahmadinejad with lipstick on. He doesn’t say what he thinks, whereas Ahmadinejad does and makes it much harder to negotiate with. This is the same old dynamic in the Middle East over and over again.
But ignorant fools with zero critical thinking skills–who prefer slogans and gushing over “democracy” over reality–continue to go with the “Iranians uprising for freedom” false narrative. I guess if Mousavi’s deceased friend, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini got an extremist makeover, these many ignoramuses would be cheering for him and his revolutionaries (you know, the ones–including Mousavi–who took American Embassy officials hostage for 444 days). Or if the guys who head the terrorist group Mousavi founded, Hezbollah (which murdered over 300 U.S. Marines and Embassy officials) were well-spoken and got nice stories on ABC News, you’d be cheering for those “democrats,” too. Nauseating.
And top Israeli officials are now echoing what I said last week. Glad they agree and are far smarter than the “We support Iran” green echo chamber of dummies.
Schlussel, Last Week:

And while an Iran with Moussavi atop of it, would be no different than an Iran with Ahmadinejad at the top in terms of policy and radicalism, it might have been more dangerous. That’s because Moussavi thinks all of the same things as Ahamadinejad, but he’s not prone to stating these nutty views out in the open. We would be stuck negotiating with a kinder, gentler face of a man who is, privately, every bit as committed to the idea of Holocaust denial and Holocaust cartoons.
So, I don’t really care what happened over the weekend in the fake Iranian elections. To me, it’s the equivalent of two competing ants pissing. I couldn’t care less.
If anything, I’m glad the guy with the perpetual truth serum–who tells us exactly what they’re thinking about the Jews, Israel, nukes, and America–is the guy that’s still in there.
He’ll make it much tougher–and far less palatable to the American and Western public–for Barack Hussein Obama to sit at the table with him.

Top Israeli Officials, This Week:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has gained unlikely supporters amid spreading unrest in Iran: officials in Israel, a country he wants to eliminate.
Meir Dagan, chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, told a closed Knesset committee hearing that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s reputation as a Holocaust-denying rabble-rouser makes it easier for Israel to enlist international support against Iran’s nuclear program, a committee member said. A victory for Mr. Ahmadinejad’s moderate challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, in last week’s presidential elections would have presented Israel with “a graver problem,” Mr. Dagan said. . . .
“Both of them pose the same threat. But it’s better for Israel that you have a leader [in Iran] with a very dangerous ideology who speaks clearly so that nobody can ignore him,” said Knesset deputy speaker Danny Danon, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.
A more careful, soft-spoken Iranian president who promised better relations with the West “would have made it harder for us to recruit the world to our side,” Mr. Danon added. . . .
Israel would do well to pin no hopes on political change in Tehran, said former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy. While the recent turmoil might temporarily weaken Tehran’s support for Israel’s Arab foes, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, he said, they will have no effect on the strategic problem of Iran’s nuclear weapons.

(Emphasis added.)
Great minds think alike.
So, I’m awake. Top Israeli officials are awake. Time for the many mindless internet sheep on the right and the left all over the West to wake the heck up from your green phony baloney fantasies. You are no different than some guy who calls an 800 phone sex number and thinks the morbidly obese double-wide resident on the other end is a hot babe.
An extremist in green with nicer language is still an extremist. And he’s far harder to marginalize and ignore.

By Debbie Schlussel
Senator Barbara Boxer tells Brigadier General Michael Walsh, “Don’t You Know Who the F- I Am?!” (thanks to Breitbart TV and reader Jim for the tip):

I can think of many far worse things to call her, all of them much more appropriate. BTW, I don’t recall any male Senator ever objecting to being called “Sir.”

By Debbie Schlussel
Until now, I felt sorry for this guy because he and his family were being kept from seeing his son by an undue snobbery on the part of the mother’s family.
But now, well, a pox on all of their houses. This “extended” member of the family that keeps on giving is now trying to make it as a reality TV star under the name “Ricky Hollywood,” instead of doing what he should be doing: getting a job and fighting for custody of his kid and child support from the mother. Instead, he’s taking an awful cue from his baby’s mother (who recently appeared on the cover of People and on TV all over America, glamorizing teen single motherhood instead of caring for her kid) and tabloiding the hell out of his situation.

These days, 19-year-old Levi is a free agent, no longer engaged to Bristol and thus, no longer under the jurisdiction of the Palin clan’s image police. He’s still, nonetheless, crafting an image for himself, with the help of Tank Jones, his manager from Anchorage who has been coaching him on media appearances and schooling him in entertainment-industry etiquette for the past five months. . . .Now he’s got a baby to support–the idea is to pursue some type of career in Hollywood, whether it be acting or appearing on a reality show. Tank has been fielding pitches, including one for a reality show about hunting. . . .
Besides acting as Levi’s handler, Tank is his personal Tim Gunn and Henry Higgins all in one, instructing him on the subtleties of wearing a fedora and reminding him to be open-minded about the different types of people he might encounter. Tank is the ultimate 21st-century version of an American father: multicultural and media-savvy.

Barf. If this is the new “American father,” we’re doomed.

“I told him, you’re going to meet all different types of people,” interjects Tank. “Don’t overreact. Nobody’s going to hurt you. You gotta be accepting of all different types of people. You’re talking about dealing with Hollywood? You’re going to really meet some strange people.”
Yet, the concept of Levi and Tank working together is just as odd for Hollywood. . . .
Tank revealed [to Mario Lopez on “Extra”], Levi’s father is Mexican. (His mother is Canadian). . . .
“What we did was, we came up with an alter ego, Ricky Hollywood,” explains Tank.
“Levi is not lettin’ the cat out of the bag,” teases Tank. “He is fightin’ the stuff that he really loves, because he wants to stay cool for Wasilla.”

Yup, fighting for all the wrong things.
But with this baggage constantly out there–as the Palin family’s Kato Kaelin–it certainly won’t help the Republicans retake the White House, if a certain candidate is the nominee.
When you make a big deal out of David Letterman jokes, it brings out more stories like these–the baby daddy of your single daughter that did get “knocked up.” And “Ricky Hollywood” won’t be going away. Nor will priceless photo galleries like this one.

By Debbie Schlussel
At the very beginning, I was for NAFTA–the North American Free Trade Agreement.
But, soon after it was enacted, it became clear that there was nothing “Free Trade” about it . . . at least not for America. As I’ve pointed out on this site, NAFTA–as it is practiced and enforced by the Mexicans–is used to shut out American products and export Mexicans to America to steal American jobs. One example I cited is Mexico’s practice of only allowing in American cars from the year 1998. That’s “Free Trade”? I call it, “Phree Trade,” which is my abbreviation for Phony “Free” Trade.
Another practice is this latest outrage. If I were Al-Qaeda’s master planner, I’d instruct a number of my operatives to become mechanics in Mexico and use this program to come to the U.S. to sabotage planes so they crash. It’s clearly a national security problem.

There are more than 100,000 American aircraft mechanics who are out of work or who have left the business.
But aircraft repair is flourishing in the United States for mechanics from Mexico, who can enter the country through a loophole in the NAFTA trade agreement.

Thanks, Stupid Gringo Infidels

For Giving Us Your Airplane Mechanic Jobs

The loophole is called a TN visa, and it’s big enough to drive an airliner through.
News 8 has discovered more than 100 mechanics from Mexico have been recruited by San Antonio Aerospace (SAA) at a time the company is laying off higher wage American workers.
The workers are being brought in as “scientific technicians.”

Hey, maybe we should import “sanitational engineers” from Mexico, too.

Although that part of the NAFTA agreement was designed to allow professionals, such as doctors and lawyers from Canada and Mexico, work in the United States, the law also permits people who are “licensed” to enter the country.

Do we really have a shortage of lawyers in America? Do we really need a special exemption to bring more of them into America from other countries? (The same goes for doctors, of which we have far too many foreigners competing for American medical jobs. And that’s a national security and health concern.)

“If they’re licensed in Mexico, and if they’re a licensed mechanic, it’s possible that they could be considered a ‘professional,'” said Michelle Scopellite, a Dallas immigration attorney.
Documents obtained by News 8 from some of the Mexican mechanics who received TN visas do not indicate they were licensed anywhere. They show the workers may have gone to aircraft repair school in Mexico. The FAA does not recognize foreign aircraft repair licenses. To get into the United States, however, a mechanic must only convince an officer from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that his paperwork means that he is a professional. . . .
The problem with many Mexican mechanics is not necessarily their skill level, but that they don’t speak or read English. They can’t read the repair manuals that are in English, or communicate with the supervisors who have to sign off on their work.
“I would work with these guys sometimes and I was assigned a couple of mechanics,” said one certified American mechanic who used to work for SAA. “I would help them out. But, when it came to critical issues such as operation of flight control and systems and radio correspondence, I would refuse.”
The former employee said the Mexican mechanics were working on structural repairs, as well as complex electronics inside aircraft belonging to Delta Airlines and UPS at SAA.

Wow, remember this, when your plane goes down because it was worked on by someone who can’t speak English.

For the last several months, SAA has been laying off American mechanics. At the same time, SAA president Moh Loong Loh told the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce last week that his company “faces a shortage of skilled workers,” according to the San Antonio Express News . . . .
Immigration attorney Scopellite said once an aircraft worker comes into the United states, his visa could be renewed for three year periods an unlimited amount of times. . . .
The government granted 88,000 TN visas last year, according to USCIS. It does not track how many went to aircraft mechanics. But, the number of TNs is expanding, and there is no limit to how many can be issued.

Watch the video.

By Debbie Schlussel
As I’ve noted previously on this site many times, fathers are under-appreciated in America, and Father’s Day is deemed of less importance than Mother’s Day.
Part of the reason is the constant attack on men and father’s in TV show, movies, and the rest of pop culture. Another part is custody laws that favor mothers and almost never grant custody to fathers.
But perhaps another part of the problem is mothers who are “gatekeepers.” I don’t like the name, because it’s a newfangled, sanitized term used by the Wall Street Journal and a new study, for a phenomenon that’s very old: wives/mothers who denigrate their husbands and criticize everything they do, usually in front of the children.

The benefits of having a positive, involved father are well-documented by decades of research.

Photo by Trevor Romain of Trevor’s Blog

Now, scholars are focusing their microscopes on an obstacle to fathers’ involvement: “gatekeeping” by mothers who control or hamper fathers’ interactions with their children. . . .
“The more we understand these patterns, the more parents will be able to make conscious and deliberate choices” about parenting, says Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, assistant professor of human development at the Ohio State University.
Of course, fathers are free to choose their level of involvement. But negative gatekeeping by mothers — grimaces or criticism when men try to change a diaper or feed or play with a baby — can block out even fathers who believe they should be involved, says a 2008 study in the Journal of Family Psychology, led by Dr. Schoppe-Sullivan. . . .
In other cases, women aren’t conscious of their gatekeeping. Some women whose sense of identity is strongly tied to being a mother may fend off help in order to bolster their self-image, research shows. Others are simply inclined by nature to bond closely; caring for a baby may be so engrossing for these women that they crowd out dads, says a 2008 study in the journal Family Process.

Unfortunately, the study and Wall Street Journal columnist Sue Shellenbarger seem to be more concerned with getting men to change diapers and take part in childcare, which is NOT the same thing as “fathering.” Fathering is setting examples, teaching lessons and skills, and being a masculine role model for both sons and daughters (who need to learn the proper way a real man treats women and not accept anything less). It is NOT being Mr. Mom, which the Wall Street Journal and the study seem not to get.
Changing a million diapers doesn’t make you a great Dad. And “Gatekeeper” mothers aren’t great Moms.