Monroe Anderson

Sarah Palin gets punked, not ready to be POTUS

With the exception of those who believe that Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster really exist, all the rest of us fully understand that John McCain and Sarah Palin are professional misspeakers or, to put it more bluntly, liars.

Whether you talking about Palin saying "no" to the Bridge to Nowhere or McCain charging that Barack Obama's tax cut is like welfare, the Mavericks have been playing fast and loose with the truth from the St. Paul convention to their last stump speech. 

McCainpeida.org, a project of the Democratic Party, places the number of McPalin lies at 175 and counting.

I knew there was a whole lot of lying going on, but I couldn't put a number on it. But there is one lie, repeated too many times to count, that is heads and shoulders above the rest: Gov. Palin is ready to be the POTUS.

Well, the hockey mom just got punked and the Big Lie about her being ready to assume the office just got exposed for what it is. 

Canadian comedian Marc-Antoine Audette pulled a Borat on Gov. Palin during a prank call where he pretended to be French president Nicolas Sarkozy. During the fake interview, Palin unwittingly admitted that she may be a good American president in eight years.

The funny thing with that confession is that we don't know if she was deferring to McCain, for a change (did you see the Palin Country sign with McCain's name missing at today's rally) and allowing him the post for the next two terms or if she was caught in a moment of candor.


 

I'd like to believe a bit of honesty slipped out of her mouth.

Here's some of what Washingtonpost.com reported on Palin's Sacha Baron Cohen-like moment:

Sarah Palin Pranked by Sarkozy Impersonator

Two well-known Canadian pranksters tricked Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin into thinking she was on the phone today with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The conversation, captured on a Montreal radio program, was, in a word, embarrassing. (Politico's Ben Smith was among the first to pick up on reports fromThe Canadian Press.)

The fake Sarkozy buttered Palin up by telling her he hoped she would president some day. "Haha, maybe in eight years," Palin replied. Then the conversation turned to helicopter hunting, with a mention of Vice President Dick Cheney's infamous bad shot.

"One of my favorite activities is to hunt, too," the fake Sarkozy said. "Oh, very good, we should go hunting together," Palin replied, adding, "I think we could have a lot of fun together as we're getting work done. We could kill two birds with one stone that way."

"I just love killing those animals! Taking away life, that is so fun," the Sarkozy impersonator said.

Palin laughed.

"As long as we don't bring Vice President Cheney," the jokester said. "I'll be a very careful shot, don't worry," Palin said, laughing.

You can hear the entire prank call here. 

To read the rest of the Washingtonpost.com report, click here. 

        And while you chuckling to yourself, consider this: Why would the would-be vice president engage in a talk with the president of France without preconditions?

AIDS epidemic still chalking up young black men

    For young black men, the AIDS epidemic hasn't gone anywhere. In fact, it's coming on strong. The cover story of this week's Gay City News reports that for black gays 24 and under, there has been a 60 percent rise in the disease in a four-year period.

    Here's the beginning of the Gay City News article:

An Epidemic Unabated

By: DUNCAN OSBORNE

04/17/2008

 

For Black Gays 24 and Under, 60 Percent Rise in Four Years

Leaning back in a chair, his arms crossed above his head, Justin D. Walker spoke easily about his life. The 24-year-old paused to sip some water and occasionally stood to look at a computer screen displaying slides from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Using data from 33 states, one slide showed that new HIV or AIDS diagnoses among African-American gay and bisexual men aged 13 to 24 went from just under 1,000 cases in 2001 to more than 1,600 in 2005. Walker is one of those statistics. He learned he was positive at 20.

"I know that my future is altered," he said toward the end of a 90-minute interview. "One of the things that I've always wanted to do was have a family. I know that is not impossible, but it will be hard to do."

New HIV or AIDS diagnoses among white or Latino men who have sex with men in that age group also increased over that time, but the cases among whites hit roughly 600 in 2005 and there were about 500 cases among Latinos in that year.

During that same period, new diagnoses among gay and bisexual men aged 35 to 44 went from over 6,000 to roughly 6,500, cases among 25- to 34-year-olds went from 5,000 to 5,500, and cases among 45- to 54-year-olds went from roughly 2,500 to more than 3,000.

The 13- to 24-year-olds account for just four percent of all male AIDS cases, according to one CDC estimate, but that anyone in that age group is getting infected is shocking.

"It's a very serious problem when the very young are becoming infected and it's increasingly so," said Dr. M. Monica Sweeney, assistant commissioner for the Bureau of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control in the New York City health department.

City data show that 3,596 13- to 24-year-olds first received an HIV diagnosis from 2001 to 2006. Sixty-six percent, or 2,388 cases, of those diagnoses were in men and, among the men, 68 percent, or 1,633 cases, were gay or bisexual men. Fifty-two percent of all the young men were African-American and 34 percent were Latino.

    To read the rest of the Gay City News article click here.

    One reason for AIDS not abating among young Africa Americans may be that while the face of AIDS is now black, the funding to fight disease still goes to white organizations. Here's the op-ed page Chicago Sun-Times column I wrote about it nearly two years ago.

Those most affected by AIDS don't control research dollars

Chicago Sun-Times
By Monroe Anderson
June 11, 2006

When AIDS was first diagnosed 25 years ago, it wore a gay, white male face. Today that face is black and poor. Africa, which has slightly more than one-tenth of the world's population, accounts for nearly two-thirds of those living with HIV/AIDS worldwide.

In the United States, the numbers for African Americans are devastating just the same. Blacks make up slightly more than 12 percent of the population, but account for more than 70 percent of all new HIV infections and more than half of all AIDS diagnoses.

In Illinois, African Americans are affected by HIV/AIDS more than any other group. Though African Americans make up 15 percent of the state's population, in 2004 they accounted for more than half of the reported HIV cases. Among all women who reported HIV infection last year, 70 percent were African American, and between both sexes, 46 percent were African American. Chicago's South and West Sides are home to most of the state's blacks who are living with the virus.

This being the case, logic might dictate that the money follow the numbers. But life isn't logical or fair, and that's not how the funding fared. Those who command the lion's share of the money, and dictate how the disease will be treated, prevented and fought, are reflecting the old face of AIDS -- not the new.

Over the years, AIDS has become big business. Treatment costs $1,200 to $3,600 a month per person. The old heads fight for funds so they can continue to do what they do and maybe more. Take Howard Brown Health Center. Boasting an annual budget of $12,420,000, the Midwest's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organization is so flush with funding that it has set up an HIV testing program in China. Across town, the Let's Talk, Let's Test Foundation, a black AIDS awareness organization on the South Side, scrapes by on an annual budget that is exactly $12 million less.

"Funding doesn't traditionally go to black organizations in the same amount it does to other communities," asserts Lloyd M. Kelly, executive director of the foundation. "We have got to be included in the decision-making process."

With the potent combination of a voice and a multimillion-dollar budget at stake, do-gooding is a habit that's hard to kick. But no matter how good-willed, white organizations don't do as well on Chicago's South or West sides as they do on the North because they aren't as familiar with the black community. A while back, the Howard Brown center considered coming to the South Side before meeting resistance from black organizations suspicious that it was setting up stakes not as missionaries but as mercenaries.

The health center's services might have been useful because many African Americans still won't face the facts about the AIDS epidemic. "The black community is socially conservative," explains Rae Lewis-Thornton, who says AIDS still has a negative connotation among African Americans that "leaves us paralyzed."

You get AIDS "because of your behavior," she said. And, that behavior -- intravenous drug use, gay sex, unprotected sex -- is not acceptable to middle-class, morally right African Americans. "The stigma that's attached to the disease is killing us."

For the past 13 years, Lewis-Thornton, who was diagnosed with AIDS in 1986, has been speaking out against that stigma. At the peak in 1993, she was speaking three to five times a week. Those engagements are now three to five a month. But after years of basically ignoring the problem, the mainstream black organizations are now beginning to make an about-face. Next month she keynotes at the NAACP's 97th Annual Convention.

This latter-day move by the venerable civil rights organization just might be the saving grace. An in-your-face approach will address the AIDS epidemic in the black community much more effectively than playing peek-a-boo.

The sludge report: feds use poor black children as guinea pigs

    This just in for all those who have labeled Rev. Jeremiah Wright a crackpot for reportedly preaching in one of his sermons that  "the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied."

    I didn't hear the sermon. I haven't heard a snippet of the sermon. I've only heard the accusations repeated and repeated and repeated some more. But...whether Wright's facts were right or wrong, his suspicions were well rooted in reality.

    On Sunday, the Associated Press reported that the U.S. government had used poor black children in Baltimore and East St. Louis as guinea pigs by testing sludge as a means of saving them from lead poisoning. The HUD-funded study, which began in 2000,  resulted in a paper in 2005 that sort of released the results of putting human waste and industrial waste in soil that young black children might put in their mouths.
    With a hat tip to Richard Prince of Journal-isms, here's how reporter John Heilprin's story began:

Scientists using federal grants spread fertilizer made from human and industrial wastes on yards in poor, black neighborhoods to test whether it might protect children from lead poisoning in the soil. Families were assured the sludge was safe and were never told about any harmful ingredients.

Nine low-income families in Baltimore row houses agreed to let researchers till the sewage sludge into their yards and plant new grass. In exchange, they were given food coupons as well as the free lawns as part of a study published in 2005 and funded by the Housing and Urban Development Department.

The Associated Press reviewed grant documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and interviewed researchers. No one involved with the $446,231 grant for the two-year study would identify the participants, citing privacy concerns. There is no evidence there was ever any medical follow-up.

Comparable research was conducted by the Agriculture Department and Environmental Protection Agency in a similarly poor, black neighborhood in East St. Louis, Ill.

The sludge, researchers said, put the children at less risk of brain or nerve damage from lead. A highly toxic element once widely used in gasoline and paint, lead has been shown to cause brain damage among children who ate lead-based paint that had flaked off their homes.

The researchers said the phosphate and iron in the sludge can bind to lead and other hazardous metals in the soil, allowing the combination to pass safely through a child's body if eaten.

The idea that sludge — the leftover semisolid wastes filtered from water pollution at 16,500 treatment plants — can be turned into something harmless, even if swallowed, has been a tenet of federal policy for three decades.

In a 1978 memo, the EPA said sludge "contains nutrients and organic matter which have considerable benefit for land and crops" despite the presence of "low levels of toxic substances."

But in the late 1990s the government began underwriting studies such as those in Baltimore and East St. Louis using poor neighborhoods as laboratories to make a case that sludge may also directly benefit human health.

Meanwhile, there has been a paucity of research into the possible harmful effects of heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, other chemicals and disease-causing microorganisms often found in sludge.

A series of reports by the EPA's inspector general and the National Academy of Sciences between 1996 and 2002 faulted the adequacy of the science behind the EPA's 1993 regulations on sludge.

The chairman of the 2002 academy panel, Thomas Burke, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says epidemiological studies have never been done to show whether spreading sludge on land is safe.

"There are potential pathogens and chemicals that are not in the realm of safe," Burke told the AP. "What's needed are more studies on what's going on with the pathogens in sludge — are we actually removing them? The commitment to connecting the dots hasn't been there."

That's not what the subjects of the Baltimore and East St. Louis research were told.

    A Senate committee led by California Sen. Barbara Boxer plans to look into government funding of study.
    Meanwhile, the Tuskegee Experiment, which began in the 1930s and continued for 40 years, during which time researchers allowed syphilis in black men in Alabama to go untreated, comes to mind. And anybody who doesn't at least give serious consideration to Rev. Wright's alleged AIDS charge may be the crazy one.