REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES IGNORE BLACKS

4 Top G.O.P. Candidates Skip Debate With Minority Focus
absence of the four leading Republican presidential candidates at a forum at a historically black university prompted a debate among Republicans about whether their party is attentive enough to minority voters.

By MICHAEL COOPER
Published: September 28, 2007
The moderator and the panel of well-known journalists were there. A large live audience was there, too, along with the public television cameras that carried the forum to television sets across the nation. But where the four leading Republican presidential candidates were to have stood and debated, four empty, silent lecterns sat on the stage.

That was because the four all cited scheduling conflicts and did not participate last night in the long-planned debate, where they were to be quizzed by black and Hispanic journalists about issues important to minority voters. And their conspicuous absence prompted a debate among Republicans about whether their party is attentive enough to black and Hispanic voters.
If the top Republican candidates were physically absent from the forum, held at Morgan State University, a historically black university in Baltimore, they were very much on the minds of those who came.

“Let me take a moment right here and now to say hello to those of you viewers from home: Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Senator John McCain, Gov. Mitt Romney and Senator Fred Thompson,” Tom Joyner, the syndicated radio host, said in his opening remarks, to knowing laughter from the audience.

And several candidates who did show up wasted little time in criticizing the no-shows.
“I’m embarrassed for our party, and I’m embarrassed for those who did not come,” said Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas. “Because there’s long been a divide in this country. And it doesn’t get better when we don’t show up.”

Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas began by saying: “I think this is a disgrace that they’re not here. I think it’s a disgrace for our country, I think it’s bad for our party, and I don’t think it’s good for our future.”

“You know,” he said, “you grow political parties by expanding your base, by reaching out to people and getting more people. What they’re doing is sending a message of narrowing the base.” Representative Duncan Hunter of California said, “When we have family reunions, and some of the family members don’t show up, we do talk about them — but I’m not going to do that.”

Alan Keyes, the conservative former diplomat who recently entered the race, defended the absentees.
“I think it is a little unfair to assume that they didn’t show up tonight because they were sending some message of a negative kind to the black community,” said Mr. Keyes, who is black. He noted that they also skipped a recent debate that was held to address issues important to conservatives.

The debate comes shortly after Univision, a Spanish-language network, canceled a Republican debate only Mr. McCain agreed to participate. All the leading Democratic candidates participated in a Univision debate this month, and all appeared at the first All-American Presidential Forum, which was held in June at Howard University in Washington.

Tavis Smiley, the television host who moderated both PBS forums, said at the outset: “Some of the campaigns who declined our invitations to join us tonight have suggested publicly that this audience would be hostile and unreceptive. Since we are live on PBS right now, I can’t tell you what I really think of these kinds of comments.”

Without the front-runners, some of the candidates who have been overshadowed in past debates got a chance to be heard on a variety of issues, among them the crisis in Darfur, capital punishment and concerns about the racial discrimination in the justice system.
Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado noted that he was the only Republican candidate who showed up this summer at a forum held by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Representative Ron Paul of Texas was cheered for his calls to bring the troops back home and end the war on drugs.

Candidates in both parties have shunned debates that fell outside their comfort zones. The leading Democratic candidates did not attend a debate on Fox News after liberal online groups urged them to boycott Fox over what they said was its conservative bias.

A number of prominent Republicans have complained that the decision by the top candidates to skip the debate could endanger the party’s recent efforts to reach out to black and Hispanic voters, and warned that it could turn off independents and swing voters in the general election.
Even Mr. McCain, who defended his decision to skip the debate at a breakfast speech in New York City, voiced concerns.

“I think we have work to do in the African-American community,” he said, adding that he is concerned that Republicans are also failing to reach out to Hispanic voters. “I think that we have to remind ourselves, as well as our constituents, that we are the party of Abraham Lincoln.”

see also http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=9623

NBC to Offer Downloads of Its Shows

By BILL CARTER
Published: September 20, 2007

NBC Universal said yesterday that it would soon permit consumers to download many of NBC's most popular programs free to personal computers and other devices for one week immediately after their broadcasts.

The service, which is set to start in November after a test period in October, comes less than three weeks after NBC Universal said it was pulling its programs out of the highly successful iTunes service of Apple Inc. That partnership fell apart because of a dispute over Apple's iTunes pricing policies and what NBC executives said were concerns about lack of piracy protection.
NBC's move comes as companies throughout the television business search for new economic models in the face of enormous changes in the business. Networks continue to lose audience share, and viewers — especially many of the highly prized viewers under 30 years old — are increasingly demanding control of their program choices, insisting on being able to watch shows when, where and how they want.

At the same time viewers are finding more and more ways, like TiVo machines, to avoid watching the commercials that have long provided the bulk of television revenue.
Jeff Gaspin, the president of the NBC Universal Television Group, said, "The shift from programmer to consumer controlling program choices is the biggest change in the media business in the past 25 or 30 years."

NBC makes many of its popular shows available online in streaming media, which means that fans can watch episodes on their computers. Under the new NBC service, called NBC Direct, consumers will be able to download, for no fee, NBC programs like "Heroes," "The Office" and "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" on the night that they are broadcast and keep them for seven days. They would also be able to subscribe to shows, guaranteeing delivery each week.
But the files, which would be downloaded overnight to home computers, would contain commercials that viewers would not be able to skip through. And the file would not be transferable to a disk or to another computer.

The files would degrade after the seven-day period and be unwatchable. "Kind of like 'Mission: Impossible,' only I don't think there would be any explosion and smoke," Mr. Gaspin said.
The programs will initially be downloadable only to PCs with the Windows operating system, but NBC said it planned to make the service available to Mac computers and iPods later.
In a second phase of the NBC rollout, customers would pay a fee for downloads of episodes that they would then own, and the files would be transferable to other devices. NBC hopes to offer this service by mid-2008, depending on how quickly the company can put in place the secure software necessary to allow payment by credit card.

The latter system is what is already available through iTunes.
Chris Crotty, an analyst for iSuppli, an independent firm that specializes in analysis of new electronic media, said of the NBC move, "I think it's a stretch." He argued that consumers have shown they are extremely happy with the iTunes service and that it would not be attractive to consumers to have to range far and wide over a number of services to find the programs they want to download.

"It's not just a shift from a supermarket to a mom-and-pop story, it's a shift to one store that only sells bread, another store that only sells dairy products. The consumers have decided they want to get their content from iTunes."
Mr. Crotty said NBC had come across to consumers as "highly greedy" in its dispute with Apple. Apple reported that NBC was insisting it raise the price of some downloads on NBC shows to $4.99 from the $1.99 iTunes charges for all programs.
NBC hotly denied that, saying that the disagreement was over what Mr. Gaspin termed the wholesale price that Apple was charging, not the retail price. NBC wanted a better wholesale price for its heavily downloaded shows, like "The Office," the biggest seller on iTunes.
But, Mr. Gaspin said, "piracy was and is our No. 1 priority." He said that the music industry had been devastated by the free exchange of music, much of it facilitated by iTunes.
Apple representatives did not respond to requests for comment last night.

Mr. Gaspin said that one important attraction of the NBC service was the option it would offer consumers to receive programs on a temporary basis free, but including commercials, as well as the choice to pay a fee for episodes without commercials and own the programs.
NBC hopes to extract significant revenue both ways, though it is not estimating what kind of money the service may generate. Nor did NBC Universal project what the service would cost.
Mr. Gaspin noted that none of this meant that NBC was moving away from its traditional model of a nightly schedule of programs supported by advertising. He pointed to sales of television sets, driven by high-definition equipment, which are soaring to levels, he said, that surpass those of the biggest booms in color set sales.

"Our research shows that 83 per cent of the viewers would still rather watch on a TV than a PC," Mr. Gaspin said. But he acknowledged that the numbers were different for younger viewers, a trend stirring much of the concern about the business's future.
"What we don't know is if habits will change when people get to their 40s," Mr. Gaspin said.
But he added, "I don't think anyone would argue with the idea that the customer is going to be in control."

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The REAL Gay Anthem!! "I Was Born This Way!"

THE REAL GAY ANTHEM

I remember the first time I heard "I Was Born This Way" by Carl Bean. It was years ago

at a club, and everyone in the place went crazy.. Everybody was dancing in joy, dancing out frustration, dancing in a unity of spirit.. because we were all feeling the lyrics ...And NOBODY has ever created a song like it since.. Nobody has summed up the experience of what it feels like to be happy and gay.

Carl Bean - I Was Born This Way

I'm walking through life in nature's disguise

You laugh at me and you criticize

Just because I'm happy, I'm carefree

And I'm gay, yes, I'm gay

T'ain't a fault tis a factI was born this way

You call me strange cause you don't understand

God's roll for me in life's overall plan

Oh yes, I'm happy, I'm carefree

And I'm gay, yes, I'm gay

T'ain't a fault tis a fact, I was born this way

Now I won't judge you and you don't judge me

We're all the way nature meant us to be

Just human beings -- born to be free

I can't be you and you can't be me

T'ain't a fault tis a fact, t'ain't a fault tis a fact

I was born this way

I've learned to hold my head up high

Not in scorn nor disgrace

Doing my thing individually

Entwined with the human race

Grooving in time -- playing in space

Oh, yes, I'm happy, I'm carefree

And I'm gay, yes, I'm gay

It'ain't a fault tis a fact

Yes, I was born this way

So be happy, be carefree

Yeah, ain't nothing wrong with being a little gay

T'ain't a fault tis a fact

I was really really born this way

I'm happy, I'm carefree

Yeah, I'm gay

If you never heard how he sings the song,

Listen to the remix here..(assume nothing about the sexuality of anyone in the pics,

they're just something nice to look at while listening to the song)

ABOUT CARL BEAN..

Carl Bean gave up a promising entertainment career to pursue his vocation as a clergyman. He felt the call to found a church to minister to the particular needs of glbtq Christians of color, and thus the Unity Fellowship Church was born. The Reverend Bean and his denomination have shown a strong commitment to caring for people with AIDS.

Bean realized from a very early age that he was attracted to men but "somehow knew not to talk to anyone about it" at first. When at the age of twelve he did acknowledge to his foster parents that he was gay, they sought pastoral counseling for him. The session left him feeling so rejected and despondent that he attempted suicide by taking all the medicines that he could find in the house.

Bean subsequently returned to his birth mother, whose greater acceptance of his sexual orientation made his next years happier.

Despite the emotionally wrenching meeting with the

homophobic minister, Bean never wavered in his devotion to the church. Throughout his younger years he attended the Baptist World Youth Seminars, where he always excelled.

Bean left his Baltimore home at the age of sixteen to become a gospel singer. His decision to use his musical gifts to spread the word of God led him first to New York. For several years in the early 1960s he lived and performed in Harlem, appearing at such prestigious venues as the Apollo Theater.

He next went to Chicago, which was home to a number of prominent black gospel performers. Bean sang with the Gospel Chimes and the Gospel Wonders, then joined the Alex Bradford Singers.

With the Bradford group he appeared in Langston Hughes's Black Nativity. More stage roles followed. Bean performed in productions including Bradford and Micki Grant's Your Arms Too Short to Box with God. He left the stage in 1972, however, after appearing in Grant's Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope on Broadway.

Bean moved to Los Angeles, where he was working in a department store when a recording opportunity came his way. Producers at Motown, who had heard him sing on the gospel album Gotta Be Some Change (Carl Bean and Universal Love, ABC Records, 1974), asked him to record "I Was Born This Way" by Bunny Jones in 1977. The disk reached number 14 on the Billboard disco chart.

With its lyrics including such sentiments as "I've learned to hold my head up high / Not in scorn or disgrace" and "We're all the way nature meant us to be," as well as its chorus proclaiming "I'm happy, I'm carefree, I'm gay. / I was born this way," the song became something of a gay anthem.

Given this success, Motown wanted Bean to do additional records--but to sing more commercially viable love songs about women. Bean declined and asked to be released from his contract. He thus ended his career as a recording artist and decided to pursue his vocation as a minister.

Bean had become a member of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) soon after his arrival in California. He recalls that, overcome by a sense of joy and community, he began to cry when he first entered the ramshackle building where MCC founder Troy Perry and his flock celebrated the love of God for all people.

Bean enrolled at MCC's Samaritan College in 1978 and was ordained as a minister four years later. He felt that his special calling was to serve the black community, and so he began his work in south-central Los Angeles.

Bean's Unity Fellowship Church (UFC) began as a weekly Bible study group in 1985. Initial meetings were held at the home of a black lesbian, but steadily increasing attendance soon necessitated a move.

The UFC, which officially organized and received non-profit status later in 1985, held services at the Ebony Showcase Theater for most of the next three years before acquiring its own site. The congregation bought an old warehouse in 1988 and converted it into the denomination's Mother Church.

At the same time that Bean was founding the church, he initiated the Minority AIDS Project (MAP). Moved by the suffering of AIDS patients and distressed that the black community was too often dismissing the disease as "a white gay thing," Bean set off on an educational mission. An interview on a black radio station, KJLH, led to a Los Angeles Times piece, and soon Bean was flooded with inquiries.

MAP got off to a decidedly modest start with a rummage sale fund-raiser. Bean called on Maxine Waters, then an Assemblywoman, for help, and with her assistance was able to secure some seed money for the project. Waters, now a United States Representative, remains a strong supporter of MAP.

Financial difficulties, however, plagued MAP. A 1988 benefit gospel concert starring Dionne Warwick helped keep the enterprise afloat. Three years later, when MAP was again in dire circumstances, Bean undertook a fast to publicize its plight and to appeal for donations. Later, in 1998, he organized the non-profit L.I.F.E. Records company and produced a CD, Right Now, the proceeds from which were given to the cause. Bean wrote all the songs himself and performed them with the Unity Fellowship Church National Mass Choir.

From the beginning MAP has primarily served the African-American community, but some 20 percent of its clients are Hispanic. The organization offers a wide range of programs, including HIV testing and counseling, AIDS prevention education, and the provision of food, clothing, and transportation to patients.

Bean was executive director of MAP until 1989, when he gave up the post to devote more time to the needs of his growing church. In 1990 UFC became the Unity Fellowship Church Movement when new congregations began forming. The denomination now has some four thousand members in fifteen cities around the United States.

Bean espouses liberation theology and stresses that his church is committed to defending the rights of historically oppressed groups, including women, persons of color, and glbtq people.

Bean has received numerous awards from both religious and secular organizations for his work in providing a spiritual home for glbtq Christians, combating AIDS, and continuously striving to improve the lives of those in the minority community.

Among these honors are an NAACP Image Award (1987) for his work on AIDS, a Prophetic Witness Award (1993) from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and a Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund Liberty Award (1994). In addition, the AIDS Health Foundation has recognized his dedication to helping people with AIDS by naming one of its residential care facilities the Carl Bean House.

Bean is proud to shepherd a church that nurtures Christians faced with oppression because of both their sexual orientation and their ethnicity, but he emphasizes that the UFC welcomes all people. He points out that heterosexuals and indeed whole families are members. This is consistent with the motto that Bean has given his church, "God is Love and Love is for Everyone."

NUBIANNEWYORKER

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NBC FALL SHOWS... mini review

Two of the several definitions of the word GENIUS from dictionary.com are;

1. Extraordinary intellectual and creative power

2. A person who has great influence over another


Genius is easy to find if you look for it. Genius is trendsetting... Anytime genius does something it is unique, creative and soon to copied.

NBC released "HEROES" last year.. but they didnt just release it.. they let 14 minutes of the pilot episode be seen on You Tube... and

after the Pilot aired it let every episode be available on the net after broadcast. That way anybody who ever heard someone else talking

about the show could go right to NBC.com and watch every episode for himself....GENIUS

NOW EVERY NETWORK DOES IT.


...THIS YEAR NBC has does something else unique and creative... They've made pilots of some of their new shows available for rent at

Blockbuster. Somebody at that network REALLY knows what he or she is doing... I just love when I see people thinking outside the box.


I rented the DVD of upcoming shows. The shows are "CHUCK", "JOURNEYMAN", "LIFE" & a preview of some scenes from "THE BIONIC

WOMAN"

HERE'S WHAT I THOUGHT OF EACH...

BIONIC WOMAN- http://www.nbc.com/Bionic_Woman/ there wasnt enough scenes for me to get a clear grasp on whether the show is worth it

CHUCK-http://www.nbc.com/Chuck/ I think this show will eventually be cancelled. Dont get me wrong its funny and cute. But I think this show will eventually
be cancelled. What was the last comedy action show that lasted?

JOURNEYMAN- http://www.nbc.com/Journeyman/At first I thought this show was a rip off of "The Dead Zone" on The USA network, but its more like a rip off of touched by
an Angel and that Taye diggs show on ABC last year (that got cancelled) "DayBreak". Honestly I actually said out loud while watching it, THIS MUST BE THE MOST DEPRESSING SHOW.. but the last five minutes got me, I'll give it another chance.

and LIFE- About a cop who was wrongly accused for a crime, but it was only found out that he was innocent 12 years after he was put in jail. When he was released he was given a $50 million dollar settlement and allowed to become a detective again. But while he was
in jail every bad thing you could imagine happened to him. He delas with it now by trying to be spiritual but you see signs of bitterness and sadness in him as he relives his pain and tries to solve new cases. I loved this show.. I didnt expect to... The acting, the writing, the directing were all "genius" .. I never saw a show like this, even the people playing small roles were all good and they played their scenes with uniqueness. this show and concept are brand new and delivered in a brand new way and I LOVED IT. It struck me as the kind of show you usually see on HBO.. they made a fan out of me.

But dont take my word for it.. rent the previews from Blockbuster or wait til later this month and watch them on tv or NBC.com

NUBIANNEWYORKER

NubianNewYorkers Post #1

Years ago, when I came up with the name "NubianNewYorker" is was basically out of necessity.. I had lost my AOL account which I was using and I lost the screen name that I was using at that time.. A screen name that I prefered.. So I had to come up with a new one

I always like to be unique and create names that are catchy and have meaning, so I quickly came up with the name NubianNewYorker... When I started my Yahoo Group I decided to name it "NubianNewYorkers" because i wanted it to reflect the type of things I like and the type of people I wanted it to represent.

"NubianNewYorkers" quickly grew into something even bigger and even better. The smart people who began to join the group enjoyed my contibutions and began to contribute their own thoughts, news articles, experiences, poetry, sport scores and ESPECIALLY sexy pix of men.

The group has grown, and just like NewYork, we represent people and thoughts from ALL OVER THE WORLD!! Our main group now has over 22,000 members, we have 5 other Yahoo Groups and a VERY interesting You Tube group. ALL smart, fun,

spiritual and sexy places to visit while online.

Many, many of our members have been inspired to start their OWN groups.. Some have succeeded, many have failed. Two such members that deserve great mentioning are Brotha Tray and Redflava (you will see more about each of these men and their groups soon).

I have also seen that "NubianNewYorkers" has inspired others . Unfortunately, human nature being what it is.. there has been a series of people who have attempted to fool the public into thinking they are

"NubianNewYorkers".. I have seen a slew of .coms come up in our name & there is currently an individual trying to use our name to dive traffic to his site. (SAD)

I dont know what to say about people who attempt to capitalize on the thoughts and work of another. I feel sorry for them because if they cant even think of an original name or theme..how the heck can anyone

trust them or believe in them? Uniqueness is not a weakness, I think.

Well, .. Welcome to the new NubianNewYorkers blog.. I dont know if this will be a constant new feature or what, but we'll see. I am the kind of person overflowing with good ideas all the time, many i use for work.. this blog will be another hobby.

I know I dont have the writing ability of some of my favorite bloggers, but i do have my own voice and some success navigating the information superhighway... so PLEASE bookmark this page and come back often.

Stay tuned for new features and interesting topics coming up in the future.. And I will also place links to my favorite blogs and sites so you can have a great experience everytime you visit the "NubianNewYorkers" Blog Site.

And your comments are always welcome!!!

Bless you and thanks!!!

nubiannewyorker

NubianNewYorker@aol.com

and my smart and sexy groups for you who love men of color...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NubianNewYorkers/

(always in black and white)

http://www.youtube.com/group/nubiannewyorkers

(videos and snippets)

(beware of parasites who attempt to use my name, just follow the above links

to have the pure, original NubianNewYorkers experience!)