Precious leads winners at NAACP Image Awards

Related searches: image awards, naacp, naacp awards, naacp wiki, naacp image awards 2010, Precious NAACP Image Awards, naacp precious

As reported, the gripping Lee Daniels modern classic that is Precious got well-deserved respect at the 41st NAACP Image Awards, Friday night. Precious beat The Blind Side, Invictus, Michael Jackson's: This Is It", and
"The Princess and the Frog" for the NAACP Image Awards Best Picture nod.

Precious not only won Best Picture, but it scored outstanding independent film, outstanding actress in a motion picture (Gabourey Sidibe who's photo is to the left), and best supporting actress (Mo'Nique). But most of all, Precious wins made a statement that African Americans had in full force embraced a very real movie about very real problems in American Society, and not just in the black community.

Moreover, because the winners were chosen by online vote, the results do reflect a broad cross-section of America and the World, and not just African Americans. Precious' victory marks a first turning point in a maturation of how the World looks at people of color and how people of color look at themselves.

While it's not a front running pick in any awards category, it will be interesting to see how Precious does at the Oscars.

Stay tuned.

If government-run health care is an evil, socialist plot, why do 55 Republican Congress members participate?

As of October, 151 Congressmen had "government-controlled" health care insurance plans. That's close to 30% of our elected officials. 55 Republicans on that list have steadfastly opposed other Americans getting the public option, like the one they have chosen.

Here's the list.

If they think government controlled health-care is a problem, why do they continue to trust it for themselves and their families?

Thomas Hayes is an entrepreneur, journalist, and political analyst who contributes regularly to a host of web sites on topics ranging from economics and politics to culture and community.

Berkeley Riot: students battle police on Telegraph Av, Thursday

Related searches: UC Berkeley, student day of action, UC Regents, Cal Berkeley, Berkeley riots

Very late on a Thursday night that saw Cal Basketball get to one win from the Pac-10 Title, Berkeley saw a riot: people - some students, others not - battled Berkeley police on Telegraph Avenue, not far from Haas Pavilion.

According to The Daily Californian, the late night melee started as an occupation of Durant Hall as prelude to the March 4th statewide "Day of Action" and it became a fight with Berkeley and BART Police that included an estimated 200 people, burning trash cans, throwing glass jugs of wine, and damaging a retail establishment.

The video below captures the scene at the point where the police formed a wall along Telegraph Avenue blocking access to the intersection of Bancroft and Telegraph Avenue. In the video, the woman was talking about how police punched her in the nose, when they just quickly arrested her as she was talking:



UPDATE: ABC News video:



The Daily Cal reports:

Several protesters occupied Durant Hall in support of the statewide day of action on March 4, according to a statement given by Asaf Shalev, a spokesperson for the occupiers. Shalev is a former employee of The Daily Californian.

About 15 occupiers occupied the hall since around 11:15 p.m, according to Callie Maidhof, a student organizer and UC Berkeley graduate student. People appeared to be moving in and out of the building and some were on the roof.

Around 1:30 a.m., people appeared to be leaving the hall and marching to Upper Sproul Plaza. Protesters marched onto the intersection of Telegraph Ave. and Bancroft Way throwing over trash cans. One individual broke the window to Subway.

The blog UC Regents (Live) reports that Durant Hall was selected as the place to occupy because the protesters say increased student fees were used to finance a construction bond of $1.3 billion to re-start a once-stalled renovation process. This is a reprint of the organizer's manifesto:

Why Durant Hall?

This communique was issued by organizers of the event….

Architecture has, like other growing phenomena, to go to school before it can wisely be emancipated. It is a distinctly promising sign of future power, for a young people . . . to forget self for the time being in the quiet, assiduous acquisition of knowledge already established by others. The time for fresh personal expression will come later.

–John Galen Howard, 1913
Accelerate: we are here to help architecture make the leap to emancipation. The architect John Galen Howard, who designed and oversaw the construction of what is now called Durant Hall at the beginning of the last century, was a hesitant man. We say: the time for fresh personal expression is now! There is no question that we are already the product of other people’s assiduously accumulated knowledges, so many that they become impossible to catalog exhaustively. The accumulation of knowledge is a library, perhaps, but it is also a struggle, a movement, a tactic. Likewise, the acquisition of knowledge does not have to be quiet — next to the sound system, self is forgotten and the commune emerges. The dance party: a distinctly promising sign of present power.

Future power too. On March 4, UC Berkeley students, workers, and faculty will march in solidarity with those from other UCs, CSUs, community colleges, and K-12 schools across California and the country as a whole. Like this building, reclaimed from the graveyard of financial speculation, we will reclaim the streets of Oakland in conjunction with an international day of action for public education to be free and democratic.

For the last two years, Durant Hall has been little more than a shell, surrounded by piles of rubble and heavy machinery, themselves surrounded by uneven rows of chain-link fencing. No longer is there any trace of the library it once was — the East Asian Library, now moved across campus to a new building named after an insurance mogul who founded the notorious AIG. Language has been uprooted, pruned, and replanted as well. The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures went with the library, and in the process lost half its Japanese, Korean, and Chinese classes as well as the faculty that taught them — over 1,500 curious students will be turned away this year. Subtracted from the flow of campus life, Durant Hall has existed only as a barrier, an inconvenience, a silent witness to the frustration of the thousands of students, workers, and faculty protesters who surrounded the neighboring Wheeler Hall and clashed with police last November.
But apparent emptiness conceals the movement beneath the surface, behind its fenced-off walls: capital flows through its veins. “Capital Projects,” the administration of the University of California calls them. As we now know, the UC administration has used not only students’ tuition, but also the promise of future tuition increases, to secure the bonds and bond ratings necessary to channel ever increasing resources into construction projects. They will always need more money, and it will always be our money. A general concern that changes the way we see the campus that surrounds us. But if there is one building in particular that exemplifies this process, it is Durant Hall: its renovation was halted in 2008 for lack of funds, and only started up again after the administration sold $1.3 billion in construction bonds last May backed by our fee hike as collateral. Its melancholy fate is to become yet another administration building. Durant Hall will be inhabited by deans and staff of the College of Letters and Science, but it has already been occupied by a bloated administration with private capital on its mind.

Capital, like architecture, is a growing phenomenon, but one that never matures. It pushes outward continuously in all directions, always presupposing an endless, spiraling expansion. New endpoints replace old ones in smooth succession, projecting themselves onto the grid of the future, erasing languages, knowledges, and histories that do not fit easily into the right angles of its blueprints. But we will not let their future bulldoze our present. We have our own bulldozers: dance parties to reclaim dead buildings, marches to reclaim the streets. On March 4, fight back!
ESCALATE-OCCUPY-RECLAIM
Signed,

The College of Debtors in Defiance.

Stay tuned.

For DISH Network Charles W. Ergen: DISH equipment scam must stop

DISH Network is a company I use for cable access. The programming availability is competitive, but I really have DISH so that I can look at my TV show, The Blog Report with Zennie62 as it comes on The DISH Network.

But this is what's very bothersome about DISH Network: they sent a receiver that malfunctioned, but then and contrary to what they promised, didn't send a shipping box to return the equipment with a paid waybill.

The end result is a system where you the consumer ends up paying for the cost - $300 - of equipment they made just because it failed to work. And that's the other issue - the receivers apparently stop working for unknown reasons because the matter of having to return it is all too common.

On top of that, DISH Network representatives are really awful. They argued with this blogger at length and tried to turn a phone conversation into a high school debate.   They explained that I was to place the receiver in the box that the new receiver came in, but that was after another DISH Network rep told me that they were going to send a box!

I told the person, a DISH Network rep called Tom and his supervisor Rodriguez, that I would take the matter up with Charles W. Ergen the CEO of DISH and the appropriate DISH staffers (Like Tom Cullen, Dish Network's executive vice president of sales).

They didn't believe me.

DISH Network should really stop its practice of charging consumers for defective receiver products. What DISH is trying to do is eliminate what in business is called the "cost of goods sold" by creating a scenario where a defective product (the cost of goods sold that are bad) is actually paid for by the customer. That's not right. Moreover, it may be illegal to do in California.

Stay tuned.

Growing Pains actor found dead; friends Facebook page for Andrew Koenig gone

Related searches: andrew koenig, walter koenig, growing pains, andrew koenig growing pains, andrew koenig actor

As announced here earlier, Andrew Koenig, the son of Star Trek TOS star Walter Koenig, was found dead Thursday of an apparent suicide. Friends and Family of Andrew went to 1,000 acre Stanley Park on Thursday and made the discovery of Andrew's body themselves, according to the Boston Globe. They found Koenig's body in a heavily wooded area 100 feet of what is called The Bridal Path. It could not be seen from walking along a path.

Walter Koenig was nearby when his son's body was discovered.

Over last weekend, and the week before, friends and family of Andrew Koenig used the Facebook page of burlesque artist Jenny Magenta, with whom Andrew stayed with. For reasons not known to this blogger, Jenny's entire Facebook page is down, gone.

The observation that Andrew Koenig committed suicide has not yet been officially confirmed as of this writing.

If anyone has information on why Jenny Magenta removed the Facebook page, please email this blogger at zennie@zennie62.com. Of all the Facebook pages on Andrew, hers was the most important since she was one of the people who saw him just before he passed away.

Health Care Summit: John Boehner panned on Twitter

Related searches: Twitter, John Boehner, Barack Obama, John McCain, Republicans and Democrats, Health Care Reform, Health Care politics, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Boehner tanning color, GOP and health care

The 7.5-hour-long Health Care Summit of Thursday is history and one clear message has been sent: Republican House Minority leader John Boehner (R- Ohio) does not play well on Twitter. While Democrats view the Health Care Summit as proof that it's almost impossible to close ranks with the GOP on Health Care Reform, they may get some Republican cross-over once the GOP gets the news of how the public responded to their performance at the Summit, especially that of Boehner.

At one point in the day, Boehner was the fourth-largest trending topic on Twitter, and that status only started to fade after the news of the death of actor Andrew Koenig propagated through the Internet.

Twitter is a valuable resource for determining unvarnished public opinion. In this case, John Boehner needs a makeover.

While Boehner the topic was hot on Twitter, and even when it was not, Representative Boehner the elected official was taking a beating on the Health Care Summit. When the tweets didn't focus on his "orange" tan, they zeroed in on his performance.

Many of the tweets also praised President Barack Obama, even many tweets from Republican supporters expressed displeasure with Boehner against the President; others read that Obama "schooled" Boehner.

myrnatheminx @QueenofSpain Boehner is still tan
26 minutes ago from TweetDeck

justmelidia “The American people want us to scrap this bill,” said House GOP Leader John Boehner of Ohio. Hmmm - Which... http://tumblr.com/xtv6todgy
26 minutes ago from Tumblr

mistymaiden RT @shannynmoore: RT @Greytdog: Boehner keeps talking about a "clean sheet of paper". . . someone hand that man some toilet paper to wipe up all his bullshit
27 minutes ago from TweetDeck

T1theinfamous @QueenofSpain Boehner got pwned by the president,republicans had a hissy fit and nothing got accomplished
30 minutes ago from web

mwk4HCR @sfgeek Boehner strikes me as a slimy character.Pure eviil works too. I think of him as Bonehead-which is nicer than what I used to call him
30 minutes ago from web

QueenofSpain Now while I monitor the child laying in bed... someone please tell me what happened as I fled the summit for the ER somewhere around Boehner

genjunky @RepDaveCamp The republicans did'nt do enough. Where was the anger when Obama said to McCain we are not Campaiging anymore, Boehner weak!
about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

sfgeek @mwk4HCR It's like watching Einstein argue with apes. And is it me or Does Boehner strike the same 'Pure evil' chord that Cheney did?
about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

Balkingpoints #failedGOP #hcr #hc10 #p2 #obama - #hcrsummit exposed McConnel and Boehner as transparent liars
about 1 hour ago from web

adamisacson Did you know that too much Vitamin A makes your skin turn orange? I bet John Boehner can read 4-point type in the dark.
about 1 hour ago from Brizzly

mytngenes RT @bccohan: RT @GOPLeader: NBC Nightly News: Boehner Holds White House Accountable on Taxpayer Funding of Abortion http://bit.ly/bxsapc
about 1 hour ago from UberTwitter

shmoove I'm only just watching the #HCS now. Is Boehner afraid to talk? He keeps yeilding.
about 1 hour ago from web

SteelSun1 RT @GOPLeader: Boehner: Democrats Shameful for Targeting U.S. Intelligence Professionals for Criminal Prosecution http://bit.ly/bqCl5j
about 1 hour ago from HootSuite

omaha_ Obama Does Play Professor To Boehner's Petulant School Kid: http://bit.ly/buqR2g via @addthis
about 2 hours ago from web

Those tweets capture the flavor - both in percentage and in tone - of what was tweeted during and after the Health Care Summit. If Representative Boehner and Republicans think they scored points with the American public, Twitter shows they failed miserably.

City of Oakland Parking Issue: Oakland policy harms poor? Told you so!

Related searches: City of Oakland, Oakland, parking enforcement, car traffic, bay area parking laws, parking and racism, classism, oakland budget, california politics, oakland blogs, east oakland

The latest news in the City of Oakland Parking Issue comes from an San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate report that the City of Oakland deliberately avoided issuing tickets in the Broadway Terrace and Montclair areas of Oakland, after the discovery of a July 24th memo written by City of Oakland Parking Supervisor Ronald Abernathy,

Why some are surprised is a laugher to this blogger, especially since this space has been devoted to explaining that the City of Oakland was working to balance its budget on the backs of Oakland's poor, and that tickets have been issued at odd hours of the early morning. Moreover, Oakland has also worked to order new parking meters, even though the cost to obtain them is greater than the revenue return.

Wake up! When will some learn that classism and racism are still alive and well in Oakland? Oakland is a city where the poor of color not only don't have as many advocates but Oakland's poorest sections don't have blogs that represent them.

The point here is information and discussion about Oakland is heavily biased toward a young, white set of bloggers that represents North Oakland and Downtown and seem interested in maintaining the parking strategy that's harming Oakland's poor people, mostly of color. It's just to point out a fact that any study of Oakland media patterns would reveal. The poor in Oakland - especially East Oakland - don't have a media voice; thus policies which harm them remain in place.

But that's a necessary digression.

The Oakland parking cat was always "out of the bag" and to the point that the discovery of a "July 24th memo" confirming what parking observers have always known should come as no surprise. The question is, what is the Oakland City Council going to do about it? But that was the question last year and we saw what happened: nothing at all other than more tickets, more cars towed, and more people put in a terrible position, forced to ride the AC Transit Bus and risk being in the middle of fist-fights between drunks and angry guys with names like "Epic Beard Man."

At least one Oakland Councilmember has vocally supported Oakland's parking policies, yelling in the ear of this blogger that it's necessary to, in effect, squeeze Oakland's poor to balance the city's budget because that politico sees no other way. Seriously.

Where's Councilmember Larry Reid, Desley Brooks, and Ignacio De La Fuente on this issue? And what about the City of Oakland's whistle blower law? If it has any real enforcement teeth, those parking staffers who did come forward and tell the truth should have their jobs next week. The law covers all employees and not a select few. And what about Ronald Abernathy? Does he live in the same Oakland areas his memo protected?

Stay tuned.

Andrew Koenig found dead in Vancouver, Canada

Related searches: Walter Koenig, Growing Pains, AK-47, koenig missing, actor missing in Vancouver, Canada, Koenig son missing

CNN just sent an email that Andrew Koenig, the former star of Growing Pains and the son of Walter Koenig, was found dead in Vancouver, Canada. First, this blogger sends his heartfelt condolences to the Koenig family and to all of his friends and fans, especially those who have taken time to send e-mails with information or just to connect after blog posts on Andrew Koenig were posted.

Andrew Koenig's passing in the middle of the joy that Vancouver should gain from the Winter Olympics is nothing short of sad. This is what CNN's reporting:

(CNN) -- Actor Andrew Koenig, missing since February 14, was found dead in Vancouver, British Colombia, Thursday, a source close to the family told CNN.
The body of the former "Growing Pains" star was found in a park, according to the source, who spoke to Koenig's father after Koenig was informed of the discovery.
The source asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Koenig, 41, was reported missing by his parents after he missed a flight to Los Angeles from Vancouver last week.
Vancouver police confirmed a body was found in Stanley Park around noon Thursday, but they would say only that it was "believed to be that of Andrew Koenig."
A police news conference was set for 5 p.m. PT (8 p.m. ET).

This news ends a search that started February 16th after Andrew Koenig was reported missing after staying with friends in Vancouver. Walter Koenig reported that Andrew Koenig was despondent and suffered from depression.   But the news also opens a new set of disturbing questions.

More after the press conference.

Angelina Jolie Salt Movie Trailer - Summer 2010

Related searches: movie trailers, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, Columbia, Sony Pictures, Iron Man 2

Look out. Angelina Jolie is back on film, this time without Brad Pitt, and in a kick-ass movie called Salt. Here's the Salt movie trailer for the Summer 2010 Columbia Pictures movie.

>

Salt has Angelina Jolie playing the role of a spy accused of working to get the President of The United States, only she swears she's innocent!

 The result is a dramatic chase, with Angelina Jolie performing amazing stunts and fights. The real female version of James Bond.

(In fact, the movie does have the feel of the rough, modern Bond in it.)

Stay tuned for more about Angelina Jolie in Salt.

Shamu whale kills trainer: eyewitness account of SeaWorld death

Related: searches: shamu, shamu attack, shamu the killer whale, shamu trainer, shamu attacks trainer

Shamu whale kills trainer Wednesday; videos show eyewitness account of SeaWorld death and give clues to the past of the killer whale named Tilikum.

The Orlando, Florida SeaWorld park was the unfortunate scene of a murder. As reported by the Associated Press, the giant killer whale called Tilikum suddenly attacked and killed its trainer, 40-year-old Dawn Brancheau. Reportedly it's the third time Tilikum has killed a human being, yet this 12,000 pound killer whale was still performing.

SeaWorld trainer Brancheau, had the most experience with Tilikum, though it's said that trainers were forbidden to swim with him.

Videos related to Wednesday's incident are now appearing on YouTube. The first video is an eyewitness account of exactly what happened. A word of warning: the explanation is graphic:



In the video, the woman, Eldon Skaggs, said the "trainer was massaging the whale on his belly, then the whale took off really fast, came around, right up to the glass, popped up and started thrashing, grabbed the trainer by the waist, started thrashing, and her shoe came off. The sirens went off."

Skaggs said that people, including kids, were covering their mouths in disbelief over what they had seen. The park staff yelled and forced people to leave the stadium; eventually the park was closed.

This is the video account by MSNBC:



In this video a "killer whale expert", Jr. Janet Mann of Georgetown, says it's impossible to tell if a killer whale is in an aggressive mood:



In the video below, the Orange County Sheriff's Department said they're conducting a death investigation. It appeared to be an accident, with no sense of fowl play. Then Dan Brown, of Sea World Orlando explained that they too had initiated an investigation. "We have never in the history of our parks experienced an incident like this and all of our standard operating procedures will come under review."



This video below, made by Tilikumtrainer on YouTube (who's name is Rose) in 2007 is one to watch twice. It tells the "life story" of Tilikum. The video reports that Tilikum was born a male Orca calf in 1981 in an Icelandic Pod and spent two years with his mother and and her family until it was taken from them in 1983.

That year, Tilikum was flown to Sealand of the Pacific in Canada, where he performed and lived with two female Orcas that "constantly picked on him", according to the video.

After an incident at Sealand (which must have been the 1991 death of trainer Kelly Byrne), and the birth of his first calf, Tilikum was sold to Sea World Florida in Orlando. He enjoyed a larger pool and was the largest known male at Sea World. While at SeaWorld, Tilikum has sired 15 calves between 1993 and 2007.

The video ends with "Though he was brought in from the wild, we have learned so much with having him and the others around. But one thing's for sure: Tilikum is the wild guy you gotta love...I know I did.

What that means, as of this writing, I do not know. Rose's YouTube channel has a link to a MySpace profile that was deleted. Here's the video:



Stay tuned.

Conan O'Brien on Twitter, for real - @conanobrien

After a hoax Fox Twitter account, Conan O'Brien is really on Twitter, for real. According to Mediaite, On Wednesday, the new, Twitter-verified account called @ConanOBrien was launched, and Conan issued this tweet:

Today I interviewed a squirrel in my backyard and then threw to commercial. Somebody help me.
about 2 hours ago via web

As of this writing, Conan O'Brien has 55,652 followers on Twitter, one of them this blogger. Considering Conan's last tweet was two hours ago, he's got to step up his tweet count.

Come to think of it, so do I.

San Francisco's Haight Ashbury to get surveillance cameras?

The Haight Ashbury, a place in San Francisco known historically for freedom and "free love" is to get surveillance cameras because of an increase in crime, if the Haight Ashbury Improvement Association (HAIA) gets its way.

According to a discussion on "The Wall", a place where San Francisco political news is regularly posted, HAIA President Ted Loewenberg made that announcement this month (February) and posted it on the organization's website. The basic message on the page reads as follows:

On Wednesday, 17 February, 2010, HAIA announced the Street Safety Program, designed to help increase the public safety by increasing the presence of security systems cameras at Upper Haight merchant's storefronts. To reduce the cost to our merchants, HAIA will pay each of the first 10 merchants in the Upper Haight who respond, $100 toward the cost of a security camera / Digital Video Recorder (DVR) system. Having as many as 20 surveillance cameras watching day and night in our commercial areas will give the police the ability to catch criminal behavior in the act, and hopefully increase the successful prosecution of the perpetrators.

Whether it is recording graffiti vandals tagging private property or street thugs intimidating residents on the sidewalks, the cameras should act as a deterrent to illicit behaviors. HAIA recognizes both the problems seen on Haight Street recently, and the weakened economy causing local merchants to struggle to make ends meet. The HAIA Board feels this program is a good use of our resources to help in a substantive way. The technology of such DVRs and cameras have become reasonably priced, and can be applied on a large scale to help our community deal with the challenges of crime through deterrence and prosecution.

The discussion on the proposal over at Able Dart's Forum at SFWall.Net is starting to heat up. One question, not answered as of this writing, is who will pay for the smashed cameras?

Stay tuned.