From the Huffington post website

Dr. Laura Schlessinger has apologized after a shocking rant on her radio show this week during which she said the n-word 11 times over the course of five minutes.

In conversation Tuesday with a black female caller who was complaining about her white husband’s racist friends and their use of the word, Schlessinger said:

Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO and listen to a black comic, and all you hear is n****, n*****, n*****. I don’t get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it’s a horrible thing. But when black people say it, it’s affectionate. It’s very confusing.

editor update

Sarah Palin via twitter showed her support for Dr. Laura by tweeting the information below

Written by Aerial

Last week The Atlanta Post reported that there were 13 top selling Black Authors that readers may not agree with as the best representation of the genre but that these 13 authors were some of the best selling black authors over the last five years.

Ok I was interested from the title to read about my favorite artists and learn about new ones but the information preceding the pictures of the authors as well as information about the authors were skinny. The Atlanta Post could have at least mentioned the books that made these people famous and or information on how long they have been writing… I don’t know, something more than the back flap of their books.

The fireworks of the story didn’t start for me until I read the comments. Had me laughing, agreeing, researching the viewers suggestions… everything the article should have had me doing. But, readers and commenters of The Atlanta Post, I will say they warned us, they said “the list hinges on book sales, rather than critical reviews.”

We need to learn how to read and discern differences between fact and opinion. This writer was just stating the statistics (the fact). Click on the link below, click on the numbers to go through authors one through 13, then come back and tell us what’s your opinion on the piece, readers of The Black Intel.

The Atlanta Post’s 13 Top Selling Black Authors

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

CNN’s Interview

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

From AOL News & CNN

(July 20) — The NAACP said today it was “snookered” into condemning former black USDA official Shirley Sherrod after seeing a partial video clip in which Sherrod made comments about not helping a white farmer as much as she should have.

The civil rights group’s reversal came after Sherrod said her comments had been taken out of context and the farmer’s wife came to her defense. Eloise Spooner said Sherrod had helped save her family farm and is “a friend for life.”

Spooner told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Sherrod was not being treated fairly. “I said, ‘That ain’t right. They have not treated her right,’ ” she told the newspaper.

Sherrod said the U.S. Department of Agriculture didn’t know the whole story and succumbed to political pressure in forcing her to step down. She resigned Monday as the agency’s rural development director for Georgia after a clip of the speech was posted online by conservative outlets BigGovernment.com and later Fox News.

In a poor-quality clip from a speech she reportedly gave March 27 at an NAACP Freedom Fund banquet, she talks about working with a farmer, identified by CNN as Roger Spooner, who was condescending to her.

“What he didn’t know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me was, I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him,” Sherrod says in the video, as the crowd laughs.

“I was struggling with the fact that so many black people have lost their farmland, and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land. So I didn’t give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough.”

But Eloise Spooner, 82, said Sherrod’s efforts were good enough for her. “She gave enough that it helped us save our farm,” she told CNN in an interview today.

Sherrod told the Journal-Constitution early today that she was relating an event that happened 24 years ago, before she worked for the federal government. And she denied she is racist.

Sherrod, 62, told the paper the short clip left out the rest of the story, when she says she eventually worked with the farmer to help him avoid foreclosure, and became friendly with him and his wife. At the time, Sherrod worked with the Georgia field office for the Federation of Southern Cooperative/Land Assistance Fund.

“And I went on to work with many more white farmers,” she told the paper. “The story helped me realize that race is not the issue, it’s about the people who have and the people who don’t. When I speak to groups, I try to speak about getting beyond the issue of race.”

In an interview with the newspaper today, Eloise Spooner said she spoke to Sherrod on the phone today and will publicly support her. “She helped us and we’re going to help her,” she said. She later told CNN that the government “didn’t do the right thing” in forcing Sherrod out.

The USDA condemned her comments in the clip.

“There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA, and I strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement carried by several news outlets. “We have been working hard through the past 18 months to reverse the checkered civil rights history at the department and take the issue of fairness and equality very seriously.”

The NAACP initially supported Vilsack’s decision to accept Sherrod’s resignation.

“We are appalled by her actions, just as we are with abuses of power against farmers of color and female farmers,” NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said in a statement.

But the group retracted its criticism late this afternoon. It said in a statement that it was changing its stance on Sherrod after viewing the whole tape, talking to the former official and listening to the farmers involved in the story, who “personally credit her with helping to save the family farm.”

“We have come to the conclusion we were snookered by Fox News and tea party activist Andrew Breitbart into believing she had harmed white farmers because of racial bias,” Jealous said in the statement.

Asked this morning on CNN why she didn’t tell the USDA the rest of the story, Sherrod said, “I did say that. But they, for some reason, the stuff that Fox and the tea party does is scaring the administration.

“I told them, ‘Get the whole tape’ … and look at how I tell people we have to get beyond race and start working together,” she said, adding later: “I tried to fight, but I didn’t have any support from the United States Department of Agriculture.”

Her resignation came after the NAACP passed a resolution condemning what it called racism within the tea party movement.

From CNN site

A gay rights group accuses comedian D.L. Hughley and “The View” co-host Sherri Shepherd of perpetuating “dangerous myths” about African American gay and bisexual men.

In a June 22 episode, Hughley and the hosts of the daytime ABC show were discussing an FDA rule that bans gay men from donating blood because of HIV. During the discussion, Hughley said, “When you look at the prevalence of HIV in the African-American community, it’s primarily young women who are getting it from men who are on the down low.”

Shepherd described that the “down low is black men who’ve been going out. They are having sex with men and they’re not telling their girlfriends or their wives that they’re gay…” and added that it’s “very prevalent.” Watch the video here

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the Black AIDS Institute and the National Black Justice Coalition said the two were “blaming African American gay and bisexual men for increased HIV rates among straight African American women.”  They published a full page advertisement in Variety magazine this week urging ABC and “The View” to make an on-air correction.  The groups commended “The View” for tackling tough issues, but said it’s important to provide accurate information.

ABC responded with this statement to CNN: “ On June 22, during a discussion about blood donation and the transmission of HIV/AIDS, a guest moderator on the show expressed his interpretation of data about one way the virus can be transmitted.  The topic of HIV/AIDS has been raised many times over the show’s 13 years, with many voices and opinions contributing to a conversation that we expect to continue as long as The View is on the air.”

The down low has been a widely reported phenomenon in the media and remains a controversial issue.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the most common methods of transmission for black women living with HIV/AIDS is high-risk heterosexual contact and injection drug use.  The agency states: “The phenomenon of men on the down low has gained much attention in recent years; however, there are no data to confirm or refute publicized accounts of HIV risk behavior associated with these men.”

While African Americans represent about 12 percent of the U.S. population, they make up nearly half of the 1.1 million HIV/AIDS cases.

Six months ago, the world seemed united with commitments to help Haiti recover. Now, half a year later, the rubble remains and misery blankets the refugee camps. July 12th marked the six-month anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti that killed as many as 300,000 people and left much of the country in ruins. Up to 1.8 million people are living in unlivable tent cities, with inadequate, if any, sanitation, no electricity, and little protection from the intense heat and the worsening rains. Rape, hunger and despair are constant threats to the people stranded in the camps.

I am not surprised that Haitians are angry. I join them in questioning where the billions of dollars donated in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake have gone. The Disaster Accountability Project found that of the 197 organizations that solicited money following the earthquake, only six had publicly available reports detailing their activities.

From the “international donor community,” more than $9 billion was pledged, but to date, only Brazil, Norway and Australia have paid in full. Most of the United States’ pledge of $1.15 billion is held up in Congress.

According to The Washington Post, only 2 percent of promised reconstruction aid has been delivered. The hurricane season is active in Haiti, and millions there are counting on all of us making good on our pledges.

If you want to support Haiti and her people please consider supporting the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund
and to stay up to date please visit Haiti Action

Credit Denis Moynihan and Amy Goodman, host of “Democracy Now!” who have been providing on going coverage on relief efforts in Haiti and were referenced for this article.

Cross-posted on Ella’s Voice

From WebMD and Science Express

July 9, 2010 — National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists now have “proof” that the search for an AIDS vaccine can succeed.

In the blood of an HIV infected person, the researchers discovered two powerful antibodies that neutralize 91% of HIV strains.

“The discoveries we have made may overcome the limitations that have long stymied antibody-based HIV vaccine design,” Peter D. Kwong, PhD, chief of structural biology at the NIH Vaccine Research Center, says in a news release.

The finding has implications far beyond HIV and AIDS. The new techniques used to find the anti-HIV antibodies can be used to spur research into vaccines against other diseases that have long stymied researchers.

It’s major news that humans are capable of making antibodies that neutralize the AIDS virus. But finding antibodies — even such powerful antibodies as these — is not the same as finding a vaccine capable of eliciting the antibodies. It will be years, at least, before the discovery leads to a vaccine that can be tested in people.

Even so, the discovery of the antibodies was a major scientific feat. The researchers, led by Kwong, Vaccine Research Center Director Gary J. Nabel, MD, PhD, and Vaccine Research Center Deputy Director John R. Mascola, MD, used newly developed molecular techniques to build “resurfaced” protein probes to trap the antibodies.

It seems surprising that a person with HIV infection can carry powerful anti-HIV antibodies and not be cured. But other recent studies suggest that as many as one in four people with HIV infection may carry such antibodies.

The problem is that the antibodies appear naturally only long after HIV has established a death grip on the body. Because the virus replicates often and mutates quickly, people don’t just carry a single strain of HIV — their blood swarms with a vast number of HIV “quasi-species.” By the time a person develops neutralizing antibodies, the virus has had time to evolve escape variants.

But if a vaccine were able to elicit neutralizing antibodies before a person was exposed to HIV, it’s very likely the antibodies would keep the virus from taking root.

That’s the hope, anyway. And because of the new findings — announced just before the 18th International AIDS Conference — there’s a lot more of that hope than there was before.

The study findings are reported in the July 8 online issue of Science Express.

A little harsh aren’t we..

Dear Cleveland, All Of Northeast Ohio and Cleveland Cavaliers Supporters Wherever You May Be Tonight;

As you now know, our former hero, who grew up in the very region that he deserted this evening, is no longer a Cleveland Cavalier.

This was announced with a several day, narcissistic, self-promotional build-up culminating with a national TV special of his “decision” unlike anything ever “witnessed” in the history of sports and probably the history of entertainment.

Clearly, this is bitterly disappointing to all of us.

The good news is that the ownership team and the rest of the hard-working, loyal, and driven staff over here at your hometown Cavaliers have not betrayed you nor NEVER will betray you.

There is so much more to tell you about the events of the recent past and our more than exciting future. Over the next several days and weeks, we will be communicating much of that to you.

You simply don’t deserve this kind of cowardly betrayal.

You have given so much and deserve so much more.

In the meantime, I want to make one statement to you tonight:

“I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF-TITLED FORMER ‘KING’ WINS ONE”

You can take it to the bank.

If you thought we were motivated before tonight to bring the hardware to Cleveland, I can tell you that this shameful display of selfishness and betrayal by one of our very own has shifted our “motivation” to previously unknown and previously never experienced levels.

Some people think they should go to heaven but NOT have to die to get there.

Sorry, but that’s simply not how it works.

This shocking act of disloyalty from our home grown “chosen one” sends the exact opposite lesson of what we would want our children to learn. And “who” we would want them to grow-up to become.

But the good news is that this heartless and callous action can only serve as the antidote to the so-called “curse” on Cleveland, Ohio.

The self-declared former “King” will be taking the “curse” with him down south. And until he d

With all the coverage of Lebron James decision, the Oscar Grant cased just slipped into media obscurity with out much more than a peep. Former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle was found guilty of involuntary man slaughter, the charge packing the least amount of heat. For most cases, involuntary man slaughter carries a sentence of 2-4 years, however extra time can be added on because of the circumstance surround this crime. But I got to ask the question, was this really justice for Oscar Grant? Mehserle defense was that he thought he pulled out his taser and shot the unarmed, hand cuffed 23 year old man in the back. After only six hours the juror came back with the verdict. Involuntary manslaughter sounds like a pretty light sentence in the context of the situation. A young man lost his life because a trainer professional that is suppose to keep the peace, “accidentally” grabbed for this gun.

Small groups of people gathered in Los Angeles and Oakland to listen to the verdict. There was no civil unrest (which I think some news folks were hoping for) no violence, just a irie silence of shock and a feeling of what now.

Don’t know about Oscar grant…check out the story below

Update Video Oscar Brown: