Oh hell yes, it’s Friday and bitch is heading to Chicago!

A bitch is taking a weekend trip to Chicago with my sister C-Money!

Mmmmhmm, we’re heading to the windy city ‘cause C-Money is obsessed a huge fan of Bon Jovi.

Blink

What?

Wink.

C-Money loves her some Bon Jovi and they aren’t coming to St. Louis so we’re traveling to Chi-Town to see them and celebrate her birthday a wee bit early.

The dawgs get a weekend at dawg camp and this bitch gets a fun weekend in Chicago away from dawgs.

Happy, happy, happy and joys times three!

C-Money has promised a guest post…we’ll see if she produces one.

Toodles for now!

An update on Arizona…

Yesterday a federal judge put the brakes on the meat of Arizona’s new immigration law.

Specifically, the federal judge issued an injunction that blocks the provision that requires police to "make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a person stopped, detained or arrested" if the officer determines that she/he has reasonable suspicion that the person is in the United States illegally.

CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin points out that the federal judge’s ruling was based on the likelihood of the federal government to win their argument that the provision violates federal sovereignty and control of immigration laws.  He also believes that this case will ultimately end up in front of the Supreme Court.

Pause...sip coffee…continue.

It’s important to understand that this ruling did not speak to whether the provision would violate a person’s civil rights.  The judge did point out that the law could lead to the detention of citizens who are in the country legally...but she blocked the provision ‘cause it violates federal law.

My take?

I don’t want to live in a country where each state has it’s own immigration law.  We already have a nation where a person’s reproductive freedom varies state to state and that’s a damn shame...that a woman in one state has reproductive rights that a woman in another state doesn’t is fucked up from the floor up and un-American as hell.  So, I’m glad the federal judge blocked that provision and sent a message that the federal government makes immigration policy and enforces that policy for the nation. 

By the gods, I hope support for uniformity becomes a fucking judicial trend.

But that leaves us with a federal government that still needs to revise our immigration policy…and a bunch of polls that seem to say that Americans support the spirit of the now blocked profiling provision from Arizona. 

So we still face the real possibility that the same forces that were at play in Arizona will take their "cause" to the Hill and add that kind of provision to a reform of federal immigration law…and then opponents would challenge it…and our best bet would be for the Supreme Court to take up the case.

Blink.

The struggle continues…

Much better now...

Lawd, have mercy!

My bitchitude has stabilized…but it took a day away from the news to get back to normal.

And decent night of sleep.

And some one-on-one time with my sorta-beagle.

Sigh.

Hold please!

A bitch went to bed feeling like the world has gone to shit and I woke up feeling like I did when I went to bed.

Shit, I think I’ve caught a malaise!

Well, fuck a duck.

I don’t have time for a malaise!

Am I feeling uneasy and out of sorts?

Sort of…maybe…but not really.

Pause…consider…continue.

Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve caught a malaise after all.

Truth is, a bitch’s current state of mind is a wee bit  Fannie Lou Hamer with some Howard Beale thrown in for flavor.

Translation – this bitch is sick and tired of being sick and tired with some tired as hell and not gonna take it anymore on the side!

Mmmhmm, this isn’t a malaise…this is unstable bitchitude!

And unstable bitchitude coupled with this extreme heat is dangerous as a motherfucker.

Shit!

Time to cool it down and soothe my soul a bit.

Toodles until this evening!

Pondering a recent analysis of diversity in media…

Yesterday I watched the Sunday political chats for the first time in a long time.

Shall we?

Things this bitch noticed while watching the Sunday political chat shows…

The round table chat segments lack diversity…big time.  It’s as if producers are working from a 1955 handbook where they can easily check diversity off their to-do list by inviting black men and a white woman on the show.

I’ve long lamented the lack of diversity on shows discussing all things political.  The panels these shows put together rarely feature young people and producers seem unable to find an extra chair that would allow Hispanics and black people to appear on a show at the same time.

This shit jumped out at me yesterday because the chats were discussing how the media treated the Shirley Sherrod story.

Watching Michael Eric Dyson and Cornell West on Face the Nation…two black men who made some good points but who failed to address the role members of the black boys club at the NAACP played in throwing Ms. Sherrod under the bus or the unique experience of black women in the workplace that all too often includes being asked to add teaching Racism 101 to our job descriptions…yeah, watching that shit was frustrating as hell.

But twas also par for the course.

The mainstream press continues to fumble diversity…and, as a result, the panels they put together offer up weak ass analysis because key players aren’t at the table.

And Lawd have mercy, I was fascinated by Sunday’s edition of Reliable Sources where Howie Kurtz had Matt Lewis, Jane Hall and Joan Walsh on to discuss the Sherrod story.

Kurtz then had a segment with Carole Simpson on to discuss the lack of diversity in prime media slots.

Although I enjoyed the discussion of why people of color aren’t even on the short list for prime anchor slots and are too often segregated to the weekend anchor slots, I was more than a little disturbed that black women weren’t featured on the panel to discuss the Sherrod story.

And if women of color can’t get a seat at the table to discuss a high profile story about a woman of color, it’s no wonder we aren’t even on the sort list for invitations to discuss the economy or the war or political tensions with Iran.

Shit.

And I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired of high profile journalists tossing up their hands and indulging in token discussions of the impact the lack of diverse voices has on journalism.

Journalists are journalism.

Don't they have the power to change that which they sometimes critique but rarely take action to change?

Blink.

Sealife is tired of our shit!

Let’s jump in, shall we?

Pause…consider…continue.

Or maybe we shouldn’t.

This bitch has been catching up with the sorta-news on the internets.  My dawg-based companions, Betsey the sorta-beagle and Theo the Bay Master, assisted by curling up next to me and getting their snore on.

I read the story about the whale that dropped some serious whoop ass on a yacht off the South African coast.

Then there were reports of a jellyfish that stung 150 or so humans…even after it died.

And…well, it would seem that sealife is tired as hell and not gonna take it anymore!

Mmmhmm, these sea-based creatures are sending a message – “Don’t fuck with us!”

Oh, ‘tis easy to dismiss an angry whale’s attack on a yacht as a random thang…but, even if reports that the yacht harassed the whale aren’t true, this bitch thinks that whale was pissed at the eco-damage humans have done and indulged in a public display of aqua-anger.

Shit, I don’t blame the whale – some assholes in a yacht are getting their sail on in the middle of the whale’s dinner plate and probably disturbed the whales groove too.

She…and I just know it was a sistah…had enough of that shit and decided to remind the yacht that she’s the Head Whale in Charge!

As for the jellyfish…well, the same holds true – a day at the beach for a pack of humans is a motherfucking mob riot in her water-based living room for a jellyfish.

And no water-based life, be it sea or river or pond, wants to go out like that catfish in Missouri…to live long enough to get big as hell only to be taken down by some humans killing time out on the river.

That was some fish’s Great Grandma Cat, damnit!

Shit.

Pause…sip coffee…continue.

These incidents of sealife anger cast the recent appearance of sharks off the coast of Maine in a different light.

People need to ask themselves if those sharks are just taking a swim…

…or could they be planning something.

Blink.

Serious questions remain…

Okay, I’m not done chewing the Shirley Sherrod bone, ‘cause serious questions remain.

Why the fuck aren’t reporters asking some serious questions of the blogger who got all this shit stirred up?

ABC News has a piece online about how Andrew Breitbart got his start…but I couldn’t care less about that shit.

Has he corrected his story?

Will this pile of absolute bullshit push the mainstream media to revisit some of his other work…will it result in folks not buying what he’s selling anymore?

As a blogger, this is a big fucking deal.

I’ve gotten shit wrong before…it sucks but it happens and when it does happen bloggers need to correct that shit.

But it doesn’t look like Breitbart simply got the story wrong.

It looks like he crafted this non-story story based on bullshit from jump.

Sooooooo…

….what the fuck?

In a world where a reporter can be fired after private emails are released…where comments on YouTube can end a career…hell, in a world where Shirley Sherrod is kicked to the curb faster than I can type “bullshit”…in that world Breitbart should be eaten alive for this story.

I’m not saying that we should ignore the role the Obama administration may or may not have played in this shit….

And I sure as shit am not saying that we shouldn’t examine and critique the knee jerk tossing of Sherrod under the bus by the NAACP…

But this story came from Andrew Breitbart…and this bitch thinks the same journalists who failed in their investigative duty by embracing this shit at face value need to get back to basics and apply some motherfucking due diligence to the How The Fuck Did This Story Happen? angle.

Go out and get your journalist on and follow the money.

Shit, this isn’t even that complicated – just follow the fucking stank.

Blink.

Take a sniff…note the flies…

Dear Secretary Tom Vilsack, reporters and pundits who just were and keep getting played,

When you see a swarm of flies hovering…

…and then the unmistakable smell of steaming hot fresh shit hits you…

…just as you spy a guilty looking bull over yonder…

…you can trust that the steaming stinking fly attracting pile in the corner is bullshit.

How many motherfucking times do y’all have to get played by some not slick and not even bothering to try to be slick conservative asshole empowered by a quick i-Movies How to Edit a Video tutorial and a lust to be Tea Party minion of the month…Lawd, have mercy…before you pause and consider before buying what they are selling?

And cease acting surprised!

Cease!

If I have to listen to another sorta-reporter talk about the “surprising turn of events” in the Shirley Sherrod resignation story I’m going to call ABC News and go off on whoever answers that damn phone.

Shirley Sherrod’s statements on race at the NAACP conference were uber-edited to make her look bad.

No shit!

Someone on the right got pissed that the NAACP called them out on their racist bullshit…then that same asshole or group of assholes got frustrated that their dear leader fucked up his response by indulging in a public display of racism to claim that he and his aren’t racist…so, said asshole or assholes did what assholes do – lied by doctoring a video to attack to reputation of an innocent woman who just happened to say something that could be doctored to serve their needs.

And then they sent that shit out…and y’all dove at it without a pause or consideration to the source or the timing or basic journalism.

That’s what happened…and that’s what has happened with everything from the ACORN fabrications to the New Black Panther Party non-scandal to the horrible treatment of Ms. Sherrod to [insert next target of the right scheduled to be tossed under The Knee Jerk Express bus].

Y’all got played…and the shocking thing isn’t that you got played, but that you still don’t get that you got played and are probably being played on another manufactured story even as I type.

A bitch urges y’all to try something different, for the love of all that’s easy...take a sniff, note the large amount of flies hovering about and then give the next non-scandal pile of bullshit dressed up as a legitimate information what it deserves...

...your complete lack of attention.