The New Black Panther Party’s King Samir Shabazz (left)

While it could be said that their failure is because there is nothing to find, one can’t help but also figure they are clumsy investigators.  After all, how could such altruistic groups not be outraged at the very blatant and obvious racism and extremism of the New Black Panther Party?  And how could they fail to see the latest racist and extremist craziness coming from high within the Party’s ranks?

First, there’s the latest issue of the NBPP’s The New Black Panther newspaper (“America’s fastest growing black national newspaper”).  It’s cover story — The Ballot or The Bullet: Which Way for Black People? — is very hostile to President Obama.  The cover alone seems to beg for a violent response.

In the paper, NBPP chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz writes about Obama: “The black community is no better off that [sic] before he was in office.  We are curious as to what his agenda is for Black people in America and if he even has one.”  Shabazz adds: “Black America, you must decide who will best represent you in 2012.  You must decide if you will choose the ballot as a means to change, or the bullet… [D]emanding change does come by any means necessary.”

Chawn Kweli, the paper’s editor, is also very ungracious in his demeanor toward the President.  He writes: “With strategy, Obama will sing a little Al Green, do a little dance and win black votes.  Sadly, like obedient sheep’s [sic], we go to the polls and vote for ‘Black skin,’ no matter how destructive the policies.”

Very angry.  Very racial.  And very much not on the radar screens of liberal watchdogs.

Project 21 spokeswoman Shelby Emmett comments on the double standard that critics of the Tea Party movement are exhibiting in the face of true racial hostility:

It’s almost funny.  When a conservative says something even remotely similar to this, it is racist.  You can’t hear enough condemnation of it.  When the far-left black nationalists say it and really mean it, all you hear are crickets.

And then there is our old friend King Samir Shabazz, the NBPP’s national field marshal.  In a new screed attributed to him that is posted on the Internet (warning: extreme content), Shabazz advocates violence against white people.

He says, among other things:

I hate the white man.

There is no such thing as a black KKK.  Because you should be thankful we’re not running around her hanging crackers by nooses and that kind of stuff yet… Yet!… Yet!  You should be very thankful!

We’re taught to send this cracker to the cemetery…  So kiss ‘em goodbye.

Once again, it’s heavy stuff.  And there is nary a peep from anyone left of center.  It ruins their credibility, does it not?

Project 21 spokesman Kevin Martin thinks so.  Kevin says:

As a conservative black American, I’m not shocked by the latest statements by the New Black Panther Party’s King Samir Shabazz.

Even the most casual observer must agree that the New Black Panther Party’s actions regularly get a free pass from the mainstream media as well as the Obama Administration Department of Justice.  Shabazz’s latest hate-filled tirade once again shows that the group has violent intentions.  Like the KKK, they must be considered a domestic terrorist group for their work to incite racial violence among Americans.

While the mainstream media worked hard to find evidence of racism within the Tea Party movement, it seems the New Black Panther Party is overlooked because charges of racism today are instead too often misappropriated to demean the character and ideas of those who oppose liberalism.  I figure that is why the actions and statements of the New Black Panther Party are overlooked by establishment liberals and the mainstream media.  Their lack of outrage should be considered silent approval of the group’s mindset.  After all, that is the attitude they have taken regarding conservative leaders and the Tea Party movement.

Governor McDonnell and the state of Virginia are to be commended for the steps they are taking to ensure that the votes of lawful residents are counted. Ballot integrity and self-government go hand-in-hand.

Virginia now joins the majority of states in the US requiring this simple and transparent technique -- Voter ID cards -- to ensure that real voters decide who our elected officials will be.

She is slated to join co-host Heather Childers and other Fox News contributors during the “Power Panel” segment of the “America’s News Headquarters” program.  The group will talk about the top news stories of the past week and breaking news should it be occurring.

Deneen’s segment is expected to air at approximately 4:40PM eastern.

Check your local listings for Fox News Channel on cable.  Fox News is available on channel 118 on Fios, channel 205 on Dish Network and channel 360 on DirecTV.

Oscar pretty much backed Time Warner chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes into a corner about the outrageous political radicalism of actor Morgan Freeman and how it might harm the profitability of the company’s movies that feature him.

Last year, Freeman went on CNN to promote the movie “Dolphin Tale,” but ended up alienating more than half of the politically-active population when he declared that conservatives, Republicans and tea party members were acting in a “racist” manner when they opposed the President and wanted to “screw the country” in order to make Obama look bad.

At the meeting, Oscar pointed out that there is evidence that Freeman’s fiery remarks may have harmed the box office returns for “Dolphin Tale,” and that Freeman doubling-down on his extremism could potentially hurt the upcoming Warner Brothers Studios film “The Dark Knight Rises” if those who are offended decide to boycott the movie.

But Bewkes said there was “not much” he could do when an actor pipe up.

Really?

He could — as the man at the top — take responsibility for the mistake and apologize.  That’d be a start.  Bewkes could ask Freeman to “stick to the script” and not use a company press tour to promote his political predilections.  If all else fails, there are plenty of actors in Hollywood who can take Freeman’s place in the next movie.

The National Center’s star turn at the shareholder meeting in Burbank was a hit with the media.  To follow is some of the media citations and interviews related to the Time Warner Inc. shareholder meeting since Tuesday:

The Hollywood Reporter

The Guardian (U.K.)

Esquire magazine

The Atlantic Wire

CRN Radio Network

EURweb

India Times

Yahoo! News

American Family Radio/OneNewsNow

MovieLine

KVEL – Vernal, Utah

The Grio

Independent Film News and Media

WFOY – St. Augustine, Florida

ComicBookMovie.com

Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli says that President Obama has “thrown the black community… under the bus” in favor of gays with the announcement of his support for same-sex marriage.  With the news that many black pastors are speaking out against the President on the decision, Deneen points out that Obama has put himself “on the wrong side of the issue,” alienating some of his most loyal supporters by going against closely-held moral values in the black community.  Joining Deneen in this panel discussion is Fox News Channel’s “Happening Now” on 5/15/12 is co-host Bill Hemmer and talk radio host Santita Jackson (Jesse’s daughter).

Discussing the increase in drone attacks on terrorists in Yemen and the foiling of another airline bomb plot, Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli notes that it is good to know that the war on terrorism is still taking the fight to the terrorists’ bases rather than only concentrating on frisking American kids and the elderly in airports. On another topic in which a New Jersey standardized test asked schoolchildren to reveal a secret, Deneen pointed out that this overreach by educators is not only wrong but also “undermines what the definition of what a secret is.”

Deneen is joined in this 5/13/12 discussion on the Fox News Channel’s “America’s News Headquarters” by Fox News host Heather Childers as well as journalist Judith Miller and businesswoman Patricia Powell.

School bake sales: No longer on the endangered list in Massachusetts

The ban was quickly repealed following a public uproar, which led to a vote to repeal the ban in the Massachusetts state House and an order by Governor Patrick to the state's Department of Public Health to lift the ban.

The National Center for Public Policy Research was extremely active in publicizing the ban, helping instigate the public revolt that restored the rights of localities to set their own policies, and send a message to nanny state activists across the country.

These are among the many National Center activities that helped lead to this rollback:

Jeff Stier, interview, WXKS Boston, May 8

Jeff Stier, interview, KNX Los Angeles, May 8

Jeff Stier, interview, Terry Lowry syndicated radio (11 markets), May 9

Jeff Stier, interview, WTPL Concord, May 9

Jeff Stier, CNS News, May 9

David Almasi, interview, Brad Davis syndicated radio (4 markets), May 9

Jeff Stier, interview, G. Gordon Liddy syndicated radio (150+ markets), May 9

Jeff Stier, interview, WYSL Rochester, May 9

Cherylyn LeBon, interview, WFOY St Augustine, May 9

Op/Ed, "Opinion: Obesity Forecast is Overblown," New York Newsday, May 9, by Jeff Stier and David W. Almasi

Cherylyn LeBon, interview, WEAA Baltimore, May 9

Cherylyn LeBon, interview, Falls Radio Network (3 markets), May 9

Jeff Stier, interview, WIBA/WISN Madison/Milwaukee, May 10

Cherylyn LeBon, interview, KVEL NE Utah, May 10

David Almasi, interview, WCam & Company (NRA News)

Jeff Stier, interview, WGSO New Orleans, May 11

Cherylyn LeBon, interview, American Family Radio/One News Now, May 11

Jeff Stier, website, The Hay Ride

We wrote,

Take those grim claims about a fat future for America with a grain of salt.

Several grains of salt, in fact. Add flour, sugar, baking powder, shortening, milk, eggs and vanilla. Mix them all together and bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

Enjoy the cupcake this will create with the realization that the predictions are only half-baked. But eat in moderation. That’s the key to beating obesity.

In a media blitz that includes a taxpayer-funded conference, reports from the Institute of Medicine (the health policy arm of the National Academy of Sciences) and Duke University, and a four-part HBO “Weight of the Nation” documentary beginning next week, a study led by researchers at Duke predicts that 42 percent of Americans will be obese by 2030. That’s a huge increase from about 36 percent in 2010 — a figure that’s held relatively steady for about a decade.

The assertion, however, is as reliable a predictor as a Magic Eight Ball. It’s based on projections like the number of fast-food restaurants likely to be built over the next two decades. Wall Street analysts can’t predict such things five years out. Yet the researchers claim to guess not only the number, but what people will eat in those establishments and how those choices will fit into their overall lifestyles.

That’s about as nutty as predicting obesity based on Internet access, which the researchers also did, predicting technological advancement encourages laziness.

Another factor they threw into the mix was the price of alcohol. The thinking is that if alcohol prices are low, people will drink to excess and gain weight. That is a very speculative assumption for what is supposed to be a scientific report.

The real purpose of the report is to ease the public into an acceptance of authoritarian interventions. The proposed solutions — which include high soda taxes, minimum pricing on alcohol (already being considered in Europe) and restrictions on where fast-food restaurants can open (already law in Los Angeles) are very unpopular. So activists feel the need to overstate the risk to make the case that we need emergency measures, no matter how drastic.

Institute of Medicine committee member Shiriki Kumanyika said as much in a Reuters interview, claiming: “The average person cannot maintain a healthy weight in this obesity-promoting environment.”

Other remedies for America’s junk-food junkies would likely include food restrictions that mimic today’s tobacco regulations. Expect to see higher taxes on food that government bureaucrats don’t want you to eat, as well as marketing restrictions, and more laws like the one passed this week in Massachusetts — a ban on public school bake sales.

These activists underestimate the American people. Amid the calls for government control over the nation’s cupboard, scant credit is given to the public’s willingness to adopt healthy eating habits. The Walt Disney Co. found more than half of its theme park customers took to its healthier food offerings. The Chop’t Creative Salad fast-casual restaurant chain in New York City, Westchester and Washington, D.C., had a 260 percent growth in revenue between 2006 and 2009.

Another missing element is skepticism. A true indicator of rigorous research is lingering doubt. There seems to be none here, as if the conclusion magically fit the hypothesis. One wonders if the reception would be the same if the report projected dramatically falling obesity rates.

To be sure, obesity is a public health problem that should be addressed with scientific discipline. Instead, as the current campaign illustrates, activists are politicizing obesity — using it as a vehicle to try to remake the American way of life.

Just as too much candy and soda crowd out more nutrient-rich and lower-calorie food and drink, flawed approaches such as this taxpayer-funded nanny-state blueprint could crowd out better ideas.

This decision does not sit well with Project 21 member Council Nedd II, who is also the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Missionary Church & Bishop Ordinary of the Diocese of the Chesapeake and Northeast.

Bishop Nedd says his opposition to the President’s current sentiment to favor creating a new civil right at the expense of traditional marriage is not about bias or discrimination as it is about preserving the sanctity of faith.  Council says:

Opposition to gay marriage is not about hating homosexuals.  It is simply about preserving the sanctity of marriage and what our God has ordained as a blessed thing.

While New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the President’s announcement is a major turning point in American civil rights, gay marriage actually mocks the institution at the foundation of all civilization.

I preached about this very point this past Sunday.  What’s happening is nothing new in the history of the world, but our modern society is now primed for decline.  The Book of Judges in the Bible outlines the pattern that mankind seemingly never learns from.  First, social and sexual morality breaks down.  Next, the crime rate rises slowly – then exponentially.  Finally, society disintegrates altogether.  That cycle has begun again.

Council does not just dwell on the morality.  He also is appalled by the political and international facets of the Obama announcement.  He continues:

Putting aside the moral aspect of all of this, President Obama expressing his support for same-sex marriage also takes political pandering and governing by poll numbers to a new level.

It is more than just one man’s opinion when Obama chooses to use the bully pulpit of the presidency.

It’s essentially policymaking by referendum.  Obama is acting like a puppet on the string – dancing to the whims of the left-wing special interests.  Is he that beholden to them?

I recently returned from an extended stay in the Persian Gulf.  Christians and Muslims alike there believe America is at the heart of the world’s moral decline.  I would try to come to the defense of my country, blaming the French.  But, despite the fact that no one has paid attention to the French much for decades, we actually now seem to be following their lead.

The Borelli’s will be on during the first hour of GBTV at 5:00PM eastern.  GBTV is a pay-per-view service.  More information about it can be obtained by clicking here.

On August 1, the only food that can legally be sold in Massachusetts public schools is food that is prepared or distributed by the school.  That means the era of the bake sale is over in the Bay State.  As if that isn’t enough, regulators are looking to further ban any similar sales as they relate to after-school activities such as banquets, sporting events and door-to-door candy sales.

Interviewed by UPI, one PTA parent succinctly explains the effect this ban will have on fundraising for extracurricular organizations such as clubs and sports teams: “If you want to make a quick $250, you hold a bake sale.”

But the Massachusetts Department of Public Health says selling Bundt cakes to buy bats is no way to combat childhood obesity.  DPH medical director Dr. Lauren Smith says: “We know that schools need those clubs and resources.  We want them to be sure and have them, but to [fundraise for] them a different way.”

So good luck with that, parents!

Project 21 spokeswoman Cherylyn Harley LeBon says this is yet another example of the rise of the nanny state in America, and that the government needs to realize it is the home where habits are acquired and not their institutions of learning.  Cherylyn says:

As the mother of two young children, I am just as concerned as anyone else about alarming obesity rates in our country.  No one wants their child to be obese.  However, it is not the government’s job to police what our children consume.  It is parent’s responsibility to provide their children with healthy and nutritious meals.

States and schools can ban whatever food they prefer, but children will learn healthy eating habits at their own kitchen table — not from a state imposed law.

 

The Food and Drug Administration is supposed to be the scientific arbiter concerning the safety of dietary supplements. Instead, it is acting arbitrarily, choosing to target one product not because of any actual risk, but as an attempt to justify its own forthcoming regulations.

The FDA issued warning letters late last month to ten makers of popular workout supplements containing the ingredient DMAA. The products are supposed to give users the feel one would get after drinking a few cups of coffee.  DMAA is found in geranium plants, but it is more efficiently produced in a lab, just like many vitamins and minerals Americans use every day.

Interestingly, the FDA warnings didn’t go so far as to actually ban DMAA, perhaps realizing it doesn’t have the science or legal authority to do so. Instead, the letters threatened a ban sometime in the future — still a powerful regulatory action – and implicitly pressured the supplement makers to take their products off the market.

What would be the basis for FDA’s authority to ban a nutritional supplement it hasn’t shown to be harmful? 

The best the agency could do is cite its own bizarre draft guidance that because the DMAA used in the supplements is created in a lab, rather than extracted from geranium plants, it can’t be used as an active ingredient. Those guidelines – which do not have the force or effect of law – have not been finalized and have been criticized by the authors of the law which dictates how the agency regulates supplements.

In the draft guidance issued last year, the FDA claims that synthetic copies of botanicals (like DMAA) cannot be “dietary ingredients.” This approach simply makes no sense. The vitamins that millions of Americans take every day are synthetic copies; it’s not like oranges are being squeezed to produce the Vitamin C for daily capsules.

As the American Herbal Product Association reasonably asserts, “If DMAA exists naturally in geranium - which has been in the food supply for years - synthesized DMAA is also a lawful dietary ingredient permitted for use in supplements.” 

Senators Orin Hatch and Tom Harkin, who wrote the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), which gives FDA authority to govern supplements, harshly criticized the agency’s draft guidance last year.  They wrote that the agency’s draft guidance undermines the very law it is supposed to interpret and that it “attempts to assert that synthetic copies of botanicals can never be a dietary ingredient, an assertion that is wholly without statutory basis, and in fact, contradicts longstanding FDA policy.”

Under the FDA’s distorted logic, if only manufacturers changed the source of their DMAA from labs to fields, the product would be perfectly fine.

Well, not exactly. The FDA, struggling to justify the warning, also makes unsubstantiated allegations about the safety of DMAA. Hundreds of millions of products containing DMAA have been sold since it became popular over the last five years with only one reported adverse effect. If only FDA approved pharmaceutical products had the same safety record. The agency should be held to higher standards.

I’m no advocate for dietary supplements. I disagree with the supplement industry’s resistance to widespread calls for DSHEA to be reformed. Most scientists, including many at the FDA, believe we should hold supplement makers to the same standards as pharmaceutical companies. Why? Because agents that claim to have a medicinal effect on the body should be shown to be safe and effective, regardless of whether they are pharmaceuticals or dietary supplements. Most simply put, if a product can change you to make you well, it can also change you to make you ill.

But here’s the kicker: this holds true whether the product is made by scientists or made by nature. Yet ironically, this is the very truism that FDA now is ignoring to force manufacturers to withdraw DMAA, since the source used in popular products such as Jack3D comes from a lab, not nature. DSHEA is flawed. But under any reasonable legal and scientific interpretation of the law, there’s no basis for FDA’s heavy handed regulatory threats against DMAA. If the agency wants more regulatory authority, it should persuade Congress to grant that authority. But until then, the agency should stick to the science and stick to the law as it is written.

On the 5/6/12 edition of “America’s News Headquarters” on the Fox News Channel, Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli calls Vice President Biden’s recent comments favoring gay marriage a “trial balloon” for President Obama potentially changing his own view on the issue.  Deneen says it is “insulting” to compare gay marriage advocacy to efforts against discrimination of American blacks in the past, saying gay marriage is “not a civil rights issue.”

On another topic discussed during the segment, Deneen and her fellow panelists agree that a female lawyer involved in a terrorism trial has every right to dress in a way that she says will not offend her Islamic clients, but she has no right to demand a similar dress code be enforced against other women in the courtroom.

Later in this “Power Panel” segment, Deneen says “you can’t change the rules in the middle of the game” with regard to a 13-year-old boy who was kicked off an otherwise all-girl field hockey team because of fears that his presence on the team would cause it to someday be dominated by boys.  This situation delves to the heart of the arguments about gender parity in youth-related sports in America.

Deneen is joined in this discussion by Fox News Channel guest host Heather Childers, Fox News contributor July Roginsky and talk show host Mary Walter.

Democratic state Senator Susan Fargo, chairwoman of the Joint Committee on Public Health, told the Herald that childhood obesity has reached “crisis” proportions. She justifies the draconian measure, “If we didn’t have so many kids that were obese, we could have let things go.”

I’ll be speaking out about the absurdity on Boston’s Talk 1200 with Jeff Katz at 8:05 AM Tuesday.