Brentin Mock, Colorlines:  “Voter Suppression Groups Plot a Million-Person Army to Swarm Polls”

A spin off of the King Street Patriots Texas Tea Party, a group who gained notoriety during the 2008 and 2010 elections for harassing and intimidating Houston voters, True the Vote supports the voter ID laws championed by ALEC and other right-wing groups. But their primary role in the effort to suppress the vote will manifest on Election Day. By then, True the Vote hopes to have trained a million poll watchers around the country to crackdown on cases of voter fraud—people voting on behalf of dead citizens, undocumented immigrants attempting to vote and people voting twice.

MSNBC’s Tamron Hall kicks conservative Tim Carney off of her show for not answering the question asked

Stacy Barthe, “Comfy Little Coffin”

Julian Pereira, Complex: “Killer Mike Breaks Down The 2012 Presidential Candidates”

“Rick Santorum is the face of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant Republican ideals. He represents that Republican fringe idealism and people who believe the Bible is absolutely true, the playing-field is fair and equal, everyone has an opportunity, and no one has excuses.

“He’s all for taking women’s personal control of their bodies away and saying ‘you’ve got to have these babies,’ but when they get here, he’ll never support a welfare program to provide health care or food to feed them properly.

He’s as wacky as they come, and really doesn’t stand a chance. I’d rather have the Mormon than this guy.”

Cindy Boren, Washington Post: “Jeremy Lin says ESPN’s offensive references were unintentional”

“I don’t think it was on purpose or whatever, but they have apologized and so from my end I don’t care anymore,” Lin said in a TV interview after his 28-point, 14-assist performance in the Knicks’ 104- 97 victory over Dallas on Sunday. “[You] have to learn to forgive and I don’t even think that was intentional. Or hopefully not.”

Alexander Burns, Politico: “Poll: Santorum has big Texas lead”

Santorum would get the votes of 45 percent of the respondents if the election were held today, according to the survey. The other three candidates in the GOP race — former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas — are clustered well behind. Gingrich got 18 percent, Romney received 16 percent and Paul garnered 14 percent.

The Grio: LA radio hosts suspended for Whitney Houston “crack ho” comments

KFI AM 640 suspended John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, the hosts of the “John and Ken Show,” for “making insensitive and inappropriate comments about the late Whitney Houston,” it said in a statement Thursday.
“Management does not condone, support or tolerate statements of this kind,” the station said.
According to audio posted online at UrbanInformer.com, the hosts called the late singer a “crack ho” and said she was “cracked out for 20 years.”

Paul Krugman, NY Times: Moochers Against Welfare

Cornell University’s Suzanne Mettler points out that many beneficiaries of government programs seem confused about their own place in the system. She tells us that 44 percent of Social Security recipients, 43 percent of those receiving unemployment benefits, and 40 percent of those on Medicare say that they “have not used a government program.”

Presumably, then, voters imagine that pledges to slash government spending mean cutting programs for the idle poor, not things they themselves count on. And this is a confusion politicians deliberately encourage.

Britni Danielle, Clutch Magazine: TBS Orders Up 35 More Episodes of Tyler Perry’s “For Better Or Worse,” Do You Watch?

According to Deadline, For Better Or Worse is basic cable’s top sitcom, averaging 2.9 million viewers in its first season. Although its ratings were lower than Perry’s other shows House of Payne and Meet the Browns, For Better or Worse is still a hit for network and embraced by black audiences.

Cake or Death trailer

You Don’t Like It (ft. DJ Boogie Blind), Cookies Or Comas

It’s The Most Fucking Wonderful Time – Hellpit Faeries

Black opposition to gay marriage baffles me.  While I understand, though completely disagree with, the theological argument that God bans gay relationships, such an argument is irrelevant.  Less than 40% of Americans report attending religious services regularly.  Hence, the majority of folks using their interpretation (or perhaps the interpretation they’ve been given by some conservative minister and have not taken serious efforts to verify independently) of The Bible as their sole reason for opposition are probably sleeping in on Sunday mornings watching football alongside the heathens.  My personal experience is that God is the crutch my family uses when they encounter something they would rather ignore or do not want to understand.  (“Let go and let God,” “Give it to God, “God works in mysterious ways,” “Just pray about it”…any of these sound familiar?)  I don’t reject the value of religion in our lives and culture; just because I’m critical of the ways that we use religion does not at all mean that I’ve eschewed Christianity.  Seek the Lord when you are in need and give him praise in all things if that’s your thing, but recognize that is not everyone’s belief system or that those who believe may not do so in the same way that you do.  It is never acceptable for the majority to impose their rights onto the minority simply because they can.

Moreover, I’m baffled by opponents’ inability to recognize the oppression inherent in the denial of marriage to LGBT couples and how that oppression is closely tied to the racial oppression of blacks in America. The LGBT community has asked nothing short of what black folks strive for daily—the right to exist and live in a manner they determine as well as equal access to the services and opportunities available to anyone else. How can we not recognize their struggle as our own?  The LGBT community is not some distant people hidden in the mountains of Appalachia.  They are our children, siblings, friends, co-workers and neighbors.  We see and interact with them every day and their love has never been to our detriment.

We cannot continue to support the oppression of others simply because their lives are distasteful to our religious sensibilities.  How many times has an oppressor used religion to justify their abuse?  The African diaspora isn’t overwhelmingly Christian today because protestant slave owners and Catholic missionaries in Africa kindly asked people to convert.  White oppressors forced Christianity upon us to break our spirits, disconnect us from our history and systematize our oppression.  Think about that the next time you thump your bible and curse the existence of someone you don’t even know.

Sabrina Tavernise, NY Times: Gay Marriage a Tough Sell with Blacks in Maryland

Maryland’s Democrats are sharply divided by race on the issue. A Washington Post poll published on Jan. 30 found that 71 percent of white respondents supported it, while 24 percent did not. Among blacks, 41 percent were supportive, while 53 percent were opposed. African-Americans are an important constituency here: their share of the population — 29 percent — is greater than in many Southern states, including Alabama and South Carolina, according to the Brookings Institution.

Jean Grae: U & ME & Everyone, We Know

Jorge Rivas, Colorlines: Petition Calling on XXL. to Fire Editor Surpasses Signature Goal

Petitioners are calling on Satten to be fired after XXL magazine and rapper Too Short published a video about the ‘birds and the bees’ that encouraged middle-school-aged boys to “turn girls out.”

“Push her up against the wall” and “take your finger and put a little spit on it and you stick your finger in her underwear and you rub it on there and watch what happens,” Too Short told viewers in the video published last week.

And a few from NYC straphangers…

The performance troubled observers for a number of reasons, but the overwhelming consensus is that the performance was memorable, though not for the reasons Nicki may have hoped. From a purely artistic viewpoint, I personally thought it was an unorganized, inartistic exhibition of megalomania by a mildly talented rapper with no one in her inner circle to check her ego. Others—notably Brown University professor of Africana Studies and noted hip-hop scholar Dr. Tricia Rose—found some promise in the unsettled, if not incoherent, work. Shortly following the performance, Dr. Rose tweets the following:

Dr. Rose is brilliant (and anyone with an interest in academic hip-hop literature may consider starting with her 1994 book Black Noise), but there is no way Nicki Minaj put that level of thought into that performance. Even if she did, the horrendous execution overshadowed any politics hidden in her performance.

Whatever one may have thought of Nicki’s performance, herein we see the true tragedy of Nicki’s career. With talent enough to stand toe-to-toe with some of mainstream hip-hop’s most formidable rappers, a massive following of zealous fans and a stage with more than 40 million viewers to make any statement one wishes, Nicki did nothing substantive. Nicki does not extend the legacy of other female emcees that, wittingly or not, used their stages at the heights of their careers to extend hip-hop feminism and women’s politics in creative, substantial ways. Whether Lil’ Kim taking ownership of her sexuality in a manner reminiscent of, yet incredibly different from her male counterparts or Queen Latifah demanding respect from the men in her community by challenging the language of her peers, female emcees have pushed forward social thought in the hip-hop communities and have often been the caretakers of hip-hop’s historic legacy. Nicki on the other hand, with perhaps the greatest opportunity to influence the prominence of women in hip-hop (and popular culture generally) that we’ve seen in quite sometime, settles of musical mediocrity and outlandish attempts to attract gawking attention that she squanders on exhibitions like the one we witnessed Sunday night.

During the Grammy red carpet coverage, Bassey Ikpi tweeted, “Nicki Minaj is so beautiful. I need to understand why she insists on looking like a poorly drawn cartoon.” While I eagerly await that explanation, I’ll add a request for someone to explain the vapid nature of her bravado.

Winnie Hu, NY Times: “$5 Billion in Grants Offered to Revisit Teacher Policies”

“Our goal is to work with teachers in rebuilding their profession and to elevate the teacher voice in federal, state and local education policy,” Mr. Duncan said in a statement.

The new program would follow the general format of Race to the Top, with states designing their own proposals for teacher improvement and the federal Education Department selecting the most promising ones for multiyear funding. It would focus only on teaching, though, while the Race to the Top program had a broader agenda for kindergarten to 12th-grade education.

Aurin Squire, Racialicious: “Whitney:  Why Does It Hurt So Bad”

What’s sad is that Whitney’s death was shocking but not surprising. What’s sad is that the news seemed overdue and inevitable. That’s what a Greek tragedy feels like.

Jennah Bell, “3 hrs, 59 min. (New York)”

Shhhh…