Today’s photo of the day shows the incomparable Estelle Getty, better known as Sophia Petrillo from the Golden Girls, which I regard as the best sitcom of all time! Tragically, Getty passed away a few days ago at the age of 84. May she rest in peace…

Today’s videos of the day come from Fox News Channel, where I debated the significance of Obama’s decision to form a transition team. In the first video, they were arguing that Obama’s actions were unprecedented, thereby proving that he is arrogant. Before the second video, I did some digging and found out that many candidates, including President Bush, have done the very same thing.

Of Terrorist Lists & Listers
[col.  writ. 7/5/08] (c) ‘08 Mumia Abu-Jamal

With the news that Nelson Mandela, former South African president, was, until some scant days ago, on a U.S. government terrorist watch list, comes knowledge of how false and political such a process is.

For, you can bet your bottom dollar that no U.S. terrorist list ever included the names of the white Afrikaners who led South Africans Nationalists, who used the machinery of government to inflict terror on millions of Africans for generations.

Mandela though, as part of the Black resistance movement against racism and apartheid, had his name, and those of others who were members of the African National Congress, added to U.S. government terrorist lists.

Does this at least suggest that something other than terrorism motivated American list-makers?

The government that shot down Black school kids for protesting at Sharpville didn’t merit listing.

The government that relegated the lives, hopes and dreams of millions – the majority of its population — to half-lives of poverty, ignorance and servitude through brutality and violence, didn’t merit such a listing.

Yet those who opposed it did.

What does this tell you about the list-makers?

When the International community, voting through the United Nations, opposed the racist apartheid regime, one government in the world used its vote to veto and block all actions against the South Africans: the United States.

When young people around the world protested, the U.S. (often through president Ronald W. Reagan, and his colleague in the Senate, the late Jesse Helms) called for “constructive engagement.”

The State terrorists who ran South Africa had no greater ally than the USA.

Why should it then surprise us that the opponents of that racist, white supremacist government were listed (until a few days ago) by the U.S. government, as terrorists?

–(c) ‘08 maj

Ebert and Roeper Leaving ‘Ebert and Roeper’

Film critic Roger Ebert and Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper have opted not to renew their contract with Disney, thereby ending their show after eight years together. What do you think?

Rebecca Roos,
Upholsterer
“And thus the sun sets on the golden era of opposable-digit-based art criticism.”

Sam Ryder,
Filing Clerk
“Ebert said the elephant acting like a dog in George Of The Jungle ‘blindsided him with laughter.’ Now how do you feel about the news?”

Chris Lowry,
Systems Analyst
“This is going to be like navigating a canal without a gondola driver. Whoa, isn’t that a great metaphor? Should I be a movie critic?”

Today’s photo of the day shows Germany’s official Barack Obama impersonator. I’m now convinced that white people think we all look alike!!!