The Lost art of saying F*** it

It is difficult for me to understand why politicians and our civilian population in America are so distracted and seem to display the ability to see through the shady penumbra of what is promulgated both in the media and inside the beltway.

I have been told by the aforementioned that we as Americans should be worried about what a fringed right wing psychopathic zealot in Florida plans to do on this up coming anniversary of 9/11. I cannot see how this man with a following somewhere around the size of a professional football team.

The more it is discussed the more I am able to figure out why it is news worthy unless there is some unseen or unspoken back room motive behind it. The truth is that I could care less as to what this man does as well as other Muslim fundamental extremist. So what really can this idiot do to put us at risk after all that we have done in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan already?

I obviously have a different purview than Secretary Clinton and General Petraeus. It is lucid that they separate what our military and political actions are and have been in the past. From our documented torture of detainees, targeted assassination and drone strikes, our incessant occupation of Muslim countries, tens of thousands of civilian casualties and the recent report of US soldiers killing Afghan civilians for fun and collect their fingers as trophies.

How quickly we forget or worse do not see, that we are doing exactly what extremist desire for us to do. To hate and openly discriminate, to retract the freedoms we take for granted from others. I am an American and although and African American, I know there is much more that can be done to make this country support me as the mainstream. However, still, I am not afraid

I just don't see how this is less of a provocation that a confederate throwback preacher oral plan to burn Qurans. We as Americans are so used at deflecting blame and impetus too others that we can't even own up to our own shit. Personally, I say fuck it, fuck what the extremist think here and abroad. But I do see that America has become sissified, for saying such is truly a lost art.

Still Discriminated Against in Jury Selection in South

The history of the South is replete with documented practices of prejudice and racial discrimination. From slavery to the Black Codes, Jim Crow to segregation, the general tenor was to implement practices that placed white people as being pure and close to God and African Americans as being less than human and akin to livestock. Those days have changed, or have they?

A new report published and released by the Equal Justice Initiave called “Illegal Racial Discrimination in Jury Selection: A Continuing Legacy,"paints a different picture. The two-year study was conducted in eight southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee), and includes interviews with more than 100 African Americans who had be absolved from jury duty. In addition, the study looked at historical court records to complete its report. Findings of the study suggest that the "variation among states and counties concerning enforcement of anti-discrimination laws that protect racial minorities from illegal exclusion" is wide, and that defense lawyers often fail to present adequate challenges regarding racially discriminatory jury selection.

The report also supports the notion that racially biased use of preemptory strikes with regards to jury selection is a prevelant practice in the South, even noting that prosecutors have removed African Americans for reasons ranging from appearing to have “low intelligence,” wearing eyeglasses, and even having dyed their hair. In some communities such as in Houston County, Alabama, 8 out of 10 African Americans who qualified for jury service have been struck by prosecutors from death penalty cases. Likewise, in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, African Americans have no representation on the jury in approximatelly 80 percent of criminal trials.

These findings are serious and show the slow nature of change in the United States, especially in the South. Although we may have an African American president, America is still super-saturated by race. These findings come more than 130 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was passed by Congress to eliminate racial discrimination in jury selection. The objective fact is that race is still a major construct in the judicial process of America.