USDA EMPLOYEE PLEADS GUILTY

First prosecution in the United States under federal agricultural statute(LAREDO, Texas) - A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) employee has pleaded guilty to illegally permitting infested agricultural products to enter the United States from Mexico.

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Questions of race, ethnic sincerity, creep up again

In an e-mailed letter, Erin Hofteig Director, New Media Media Matters for America, writes:

"This weekend on The McLaughlin Group, the program's host, John McLaughlin, asserted that Obama "fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo -- a black on the outside, a white on the inside."

McLaughlin: "Question: Does it frost Jackson, Jesse Jackson, that someone like Obama, who fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo -- a black on the outside, a white on the inside -- that an Oreo should be the beneficiary of the long civil rights struggle which Jesse Jackson spent his lifetime fighting for?"

Call John McLaughlin and demand he apologize on-air during next week's broadcast.

McLaughlin's statement was so obviously out of touch and inappropriate that two members of the McLaughlin panel refuted the basic premise. Panelist and Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Peter Beinart said: "Who knows what Jesse Jackson is thinking? But that's a completely unfair depiction of Barack Obama."

Later in the discussion, Michelle Bernard, president of the Independent Women's Forum, said: "I want to go back to the point you made about whether or not Obama is an Oreo, because if Barack Obama is an Oreo, then every member of this generation of African-Americans is an Oreo, because we stand on the shoulders of the people who fought for our rights."

Call John McLaughlin and demand he apologize on-air during next week's broadcast.

The all-important weekend political talk shows set the agenda for our nation's newsrooms and the acceptable terms of our public discourse -- McLaughlin's comments weren't just offensive, they were a relic of politics past.

I hope you will take a moment and make your voice heard on this important issue.


Take Action!
Call John McLaughlin and demand he apologize on-air during next week's broadcast.

The McLaughlin Group

John McLaughlin, Executive Producer
(202) 457-0870 x16
jmclaughlin@mclaughlin.com

When contacting the media, please be polite and professional. Express your specific concerns regarding that particular news report or commentary, and be sure to indicate exactly what you would like the media outlet to do differently in the future.

Minority Affairs Consortium

The AMA created the Minority Affairs Consortium (MAC) to address the specific needs of minority physicians and to stimulate and support efforts to train more minority physicians. The philanthropic arm of the AMA each year provides $10,000 scholarships to medical student winners of the AMA Foundation Minority Scholars Award, in
collaboration with the MAC. This year, 12 students received the award.

"Five years ago, the AMA joined with the National Medical Association
and the National Hispanic Medical Association to create the
Commission to End Health Care Disparities," said Dr. Davis. "Our goal
is to identify and study racial and ethnic health care disparities in
order to eradicate them. We strongly support the ‘Doctors Back to
School’ program, which the AMA founded, to inspire minority students to become the next generation of minority physicians."

The Doctors Back to School program, which was developed by the AMA
and adopted by the Commission, has visited more than 100 schools,
ranging from elementary schools to undergraduate colleges,
nationwide. The program has reached out to nearly 13,000 students to urge them to consider a career in medicine.
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Achieving Racial Harmony for the Benefit of Patients and Communities
Contrition, Reconciliation, and Collaboration
Ronald M. Davis, MD

Introduction
By the end of the 19th century, US physicians had formed 2 national
associations: the National Medical Association (NMA) and the American Medical Association (AMA). This peculiar duplication reflected a profession segregated by race. The AMA was almost entirely white; the NMA predominantly black—founded in reaction to the exclusion of black physicians by many state and local medical societies and the AMA's refusal to recognize several racially integrated societies. This professional segregation lasted well into the civil rights era.

The complex history of race in the medical profession is rarely
acknowledged and often misunderstood. Yet US medicine's legacy of
segregation and racism is linked to the current paucity of African
American physicians, distrust of professional associations by some
physicians, and contemporary racial health disparities. The goal of
this article is to encourage a discussion within the profession of
medicine about how to heal and unify the profession in the pursuit of providing equitable health care for all.

On Stands Now...

Monday
What He Believes...
The presumptive Democratic nominee told Senior Editor Lisa Miller and Senior White House Correspondent Richard Wolffe that as a 20-year-old Columbia University student he was torn a million different ways: between youth and maturity, black and white, coasts and continents, wonder and tragedy. "I did a lot of spiritual exploration. I withdrew from the world in a fairly deliberate way," he says. On restless Sunday mornings, while living in New York, he would wander into African-American congregations such as Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. "I'd just sit in the back and I'd listen to the choir and I'd listen to the sermon," he says. "There were times that I would just start tearing up listening to the choir and share that sense of release."

Obama's religious journey is a uniquely American tale. It's one of a seeker, an intellectually curious young man trying to cobble together a religious identity out of myriad influences. Obama embarked on a spiritual quest in which he tried to reconcile his rational side with his yearning for transcendence. He found Christ-but that hasn't stopped him from asking questions. "I'm on my own faith journey and I'm searching," he says. "I leave open the possibility that I'm entirely wrong."

Obama has spoken often and eloquently about the importance of religion in public life. But like many political leaders wary of offending potential backers, he has been less revealing about what he believes-about God, about prayer, about the connection between salvation and personal responsibility. In some respects, his reticence is understandable. Obama's religious biography is unconventional and politically problematic. Born to a Christian-turned-secular mother and a Muslim-turned-atheist African father, Obama grew up living all across the world with plenty of spiritual influences, but without any particular religion. He is now a Christian, having been baptized in the early 1990s at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. But rumors about Obama's religion persist. In the new Newsweek Poll, 12 percent of voters incorrectly believe he's Muslim; more than a quarter believe he was raised in a Muslim home.

The story of Obama's faith begins with his mother, Ann. Raised in the Midwest by two lapsed Christians, she lived and traveled throughout the world appreciating all religions but confessing to none. One of Ann's favorite spiritual texts was "Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth," a set of PBS interviews with Bill Moyers that traces the common themes of religion and mythology, Obama's half sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, tells Newsweek. When the family lived in Indonesia, Ann would take the children to Catholic mass; after returning to Hawaii, they would celebrate Easter and Christmas at United Church of Christ congregations. Ann later went back to Indonesia with Maya, and when Obama visited, they would take him to Borobudur, one of the largest Buddhist temples in the world. "These kinds of experiences were a regular part of our childhood and our upbringing, and were important to [our mother] because they involved ritual," says Maya. "She thought that ritual was very beautiful. The idea of human beings' striving to be better, having the curiosity and questions about all these things, [was] perpetual and constant inside her."

Obama's organizing days in Chicago helped clarify his sense of faith and social action as intertwined. "It's hard for me to imagine being true to my faith-and not thinking beyond myself, and not thinking about what's good for other people, and not acting in a moral and ethical way," he says. When these ideas merged with his more emotional search for belonging, he was able to arrive at the foot of the cross. He "felt God's spirit beckoning me," he writes in his book "The Audacity of Hope." "I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth." The cross under which Obama went to Jesus was at the controversial Trinity United Church of Christ led by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. "That community of faith suited me," Obama says. At the point of his decision to accept Christ, Obama says, "what was intellectual and what was emotional joined, and the belief in the redemptive power of Jesus Christ, that he died for our sins, that through him we could achieve eternal life-but also that, through good works we could find order and meaning here on Earth and transcend our limits and our flaws and our foibles-I found that powerful."

But Obama's faith is not without its critics. Some on the right say his particular brand of Christianity is a modern amalgam-unorthodox, undisciplined, even insincere. Last month Dr. James Dobson accused Obama of "deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own world view, his own confused theology." The campaign responded that Obama was reaching out to people of faith and standing up for families.

Since severing ties with Wright and Trinity, Obama is a little spiritually rootless again. He lost a friend in Wright-and he lost a home, however tenuous those ties may have been toward the end, in Trinity. He has not found a new church, and he doesn't plan to look for one until after the election. "There's an aspect of the campaign process that would not make it a good time to figure out whether a particular church community worked for us," he says. "Because of what happened at Trinity, we'd be under a spotlight."

Nevertheless, his spiritual life on the campaign trail survives through prayer and reading the bible. And although he and Michelle do not have a systematic course of religious study for their daughters, "we say grace at the table. They are inquiring minds, so whenever they have a question about God or faith, then I have a conversation with them," he says. "I'm a big believer in a faith that is not imposed but taps into what's already there, their curiosity or their spirit."

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Obama and NASCAR team up for Pocono

SI.com has learned that for the first time in history, a major presidential candidate may sponsor a race car in NASCAR's premier series. According to sources, Barack Obama's campaign is in talks to become the primary sponsor of BAM Racing's No. 49 Sprint Cup car for the Pocono race on August 3. Details of the agreement are expected to be worked out over the coming days.
Read more

Polls: Obama ahead by eight

Obama is up over McCain in the latest CNN poll of polls.
(CNN) — As the dog days of summer set in and Americans take a break from the daily political band-and-forth, a new CNN analysis of several recent national opinion surveys show Barack Obama with a sizeable lead over John McCain.
Read more

Polls show poverty tops interest list

Americans want the news media to focus more on poverty during the current presidential campaign, according to a new poll commissioned by Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, an initiative that raises awareness about economic distress in America.
Read more

With All Due Respect: Please be QUIET, Rev. Jackson!

Why in the world would the good Reverend say something like that?
Emasculating Barack Obama!

Barack gives me the impression that he is waaay more cunning than to let that happen. If he beats up (verbally) the Reverend, then he is seen as a brute beating up on an old man. If he does nothing--well--I dunno--what would happen?

Because Barack stood up for all of the fatherless children and husbandless/boyfriendless/babydaddyless women, Reverend Jackson wants to cut Barack's nuts off. That doesn't even make sense. His nuts should be cut off.

Barack wasn't talking down to me because I take care of mine. Barack was talking to all of the sperm donors walking around blinged out while their children suffer and go without.
Who even cares if Reverend Jackson fits into the latter category. Who cares!
What I did care about is Jackson winning the presidency. He didn't. He ran twice.
I need one black man to really take care of this community by climbing out of the barrel of crabs and rise to success--that now realistically includes becoming president of the U.S.A.
Apparently, that one black man is Barack Obama.
What he is doing takes a personal commitment from him and all of us--his supporters.
We should be donating money, hosting fundraisers and talking to each other about how we can play a role in Barack's multi-point plans.
The point Barack was trying to make during his Father's Day speech is that he would have liked to have his own father around but he left when he was two. His mother, grandmother and grandfather raised and shaped his life. And his uncles.
I don't know how if feels to be raised fatherless because mine was there and still is there so I can only speak from my experiences. My ex-husband is now sick and laying in a hospital bed. I don't know what will become of us so I guess we'll be finding out soon.
I found most people haven't even listened to Barack's speeches enough to comment intelligently from what I have heard on talk radio.
Reverend Jackson looks like a publicity hound right now.
Barack is trying to win over the white vote. Not the vote of the decent, smart forward thinking whites because he already has their support but the opposite whites--ignorant, uneducated, prejudiced, whites who are hurting financially just as bad as the next black man but won't let go of the white supremacist idea enough to wake up and vote Barack.
That is what Barack is doing--running for president. He is climbing out of the barrel of crabs. He is not grandstanding, seeking publicity, or promoting himself to gain riches.
He is wanting to right the wrongs that have occurred in the past eight to 200 years.
And instead of helping him, some of us are taking this opportunity to kick him and bring him back down into that barrel.
Most of us cannot even discuss his candidacy without bristling white folks who saw Hillary as the last great white hope.
It will be a great blessing to finally find a middle ground with them so that we can move on as one Democratic group and win the election. The win is within reach and all we have to do is hold it together enough to reach out and grab it.
So keep ya mouth shut Reverend Jackson!