GOP Group Mocks Obama on Bill With Watermelon, Fried Chicken.

The head of a Republican group in California is denying that a newsletter it put out had any racist intent, despite the fact that it depicted Democratic candidate Barack Obama on a food stamp with a watermelon, a bucket of fried chicken and a rack of spare ribs. While GOP officials have denounced the link of Obama to racist stereotypes, the president of Chaffey Community Republican Women tells a newspaper in Riverside, Calif., “it was just food to me.” She says she had received the illustration in e-mails and decided to reprint it to poke fun at a remark by Obama that he doesn’t look like other presidents. The Obama campaign has declined to comment, saying it does not address such attacks.  However, a Black member of the GOP club did address the issue. Sheila Raines says she cried for 45 minutes after hearing about the illustration. She added, “this is what keeps African-Americans from joining the Republican Party.” 

The Washington Post Endorses Obama

The Washington Post believes Barack Obama’s the man to be president and has officially endorsed the Democratic presidential nominee.  However, while the paper expressed high hopes about an Obama presidency, it noted some  reservations about his limited experience.   The Post said McCain made the choice easy after his disappointing campaign and selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate - who the paper says is not ready to be president.

A Double Dose of Difficulty for Toni BraxtonToni Braxton’s health problems are a lot more serious than she first let on to. The 41-year-old singer tells People magazine that she’s been diagnosed with microvascular angina, a condition in which the heart is not receiving the amount of oxygen it needs to function properly. She tells the magazine that the condition caused nearly a-quarter of the blood flow to her heart to be blocked. Several years ago, Braxton was diagnosed with pericarditis, an inflammation of the heart tissue that kept her sidelined for a while. Braxton says she sometimes wonders why all of this is happening to her. Meanwhile, the songstress is also dealing with health issues with her 5-year-old son, Diezel, who has been diagnosed with autism. The recording star says she has come to terms with that challenge and has become a spokeswoman for the group Autism Speaks. Braxton is currently competing on “Dancing With The Stars.”

Hurricane Katrina: three years later. As New Orleans braces for another potentially destructive storm, we look back to the impact and the progress made in the last three years after Hurricane Katrina here.

BET News Quiz: An HBCU gets millions; McCain gets a surprise endorsement; and Yung Berg was allegedly jumped. Test your knowledge here! 

Police are thankful for saggy pants … this time. Instead of enforcing laws against saggy pants, police departments around the country might want to start issuing pairs of the below-the-butt slacks to hoodlums. In Atlanta Wednesday, police shot and wounded a fleeing 21-year-old suspect as he allegedly turned toward officers and aimed his gun but stumbled while struggling to keep his pants up. Police said that Emmanuel Uzowihe was sprinting down one of Atlanta’s busiest streets when he was felled by officers, stopping traffic. His injuries were not life-threatening, and he was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital for treatment, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Officers with the department’s Auto Theft Task Force pulled over Uzowihe for an undisclosed traffic violation, Sgt. Lisa Keyes told the Constitution-Journal. Uzowihe jumped from the car and ran down the sidewalk, she said. Police pursued, ordering the suspect several times to stop, she said. A witness, Trevious Grier, said she saw Uzowihe’s weapon as he ran past. “He had a long black handgun he was holding in front of him,” Grier said. “I’ve never seen a gun that big before.” But as soon as he pointed the weapon, an officer shot him twice, police said. But according to witness Darrell Jackson, Uzowihe’s baggy pants is what landed him in the hospital. “He was running pretty fast,” Jackson said. “The only thing that messed him up is he was trying to pull his pants up.” Kelly agreed, saying, “I bet he won’t wear baggy paints again.”

Obama bills are “racist,” some say. A Republican Party leader in Washington state apologized Thursday for phony $3 bill with a picture of Sen. Barack Obama wearing Muslim headgear and sporting a camel that was sold at a booth at a county fair. “I want to apologize to anyone upset or offended by seeing it,” Snohomish County Republican Party Chairwoman Geri Modrell told The Herald newspaper. Underneath the likeness of a smiling Obama is the tag “Da Man,” and there are signatures from purportedly from “Teddy Kennedy, Chief Socialism Advisor” and “Al Sharpton, New Spiritual Advisor.” Modrell said that she asked volunteers to remove them when she discovered them on Tuesday. Some visitors to the fair called the bills “racist” and “offensive.”

Pat Buchanan, a political pundit and highly visible commentator, is angry about media diversity.
Conservative columnist and political pundit Pat Buchanan’s “primal racial fears” have blinded him from recognizing the inequities that persist in America, the organization that represents African-American journalists said in a response to one of his recent commentaries. Find out more at BET.com/news.

He allegedly was mad that an African American had slept with his wife

A Florida man targeting African Americans slammed his car into a 25-year-old Black woman who was riding her bike, according to police. Police said that Thomas Cosby, 56, drove his automobile into Nekedia Cato, and in the process destroyed a nearby porch and hit a tree before causing her to roll over three times, according to NBC affiliate WESH Channel 2. “He just hit me because I was Black,” Cato, who was riding her bike home from the store, told the television station. “I actually saw him coming toward me. I tried to move my bike as fast as I [could], but it wasn’t quick enough. He came straight for me.” After Cosby crashed, police said, he got out of his car and yelled the “N”-word and a slew of racist remarks, including how he wanted to kill Black people, WESH reports. “He was screaming out he had to kill all Black people because one slept with his wife,” said Cato, who suffered several injuries, broken bones and a broken leg so severe doctors inserted a metal rod into her leg. “If he could target me just because of the color of my skin, he could target anybody else. “I’m kind of scared walking down the street because I don’t know if people hate me.” Authorities say she could spend several weeks in the hospital. Cosby is facing hate-crime charges for alleged aggravated battery and simple battery.

But some say that angry activists don’t get the cultural importance of Memin.

Black activists are up in arms over a popular Mexican comic book Memin Pinguin recently sold in WalMart. It features a dark-skinned Cuban boy (named Memin) with large ears and big pink lips, who’s always being made fun of because of his color. “This is poking fun at the physical features of an entire people. Making them look buffoonish (and) portraying the young [Black] kid as stupid,” Quanell X, an activist, told The Dallas Morning News. “Whenever they are beating him, they are referring to him as Negro. Even here, when he is being punched, slapped [he is called] Negro. This is a disgrace.” The comic received such a backlash that WalMart decided to remove it from their shelves, saying in a statement: “…[W]e understand that Memin is a popular figure in Mexico. However, given the sensitivity to the negative image Memin can portray to some, we felt that it was best to no longer carry the item in our stores. We apologize to those customers who many have been offended….” The comic, originally published in the 1960s, has been very popular in Mexico for years, so much so that the government decided to issue a stamp commemorating Memin in 2005 – a decision didn’t sit well then with U.S. activists and politicians who said the character was racist. But the Mexican government thinks it’s a misunderstanding and that Americans just don’t understand the character’s cultural importance in their country. Do you think this Memin character is racist?

The murder of his Black daughter-in-law had gone unsolved for more than eight years

A 68-year-old Asian-Indian man accused of hiring a hitman to knock off his new Black daughter-in-law despised African Americans, his ex-cellmate testified Monday. “He said, ‘They’re all scum — everyone of those Black people are scum. I wish I had more money; I would get rid of them all,’ ” said petty criminal Albert Walmer, referring to a conversation he had at the Fulton County Jail with Chiman Rai, the man who allegedly paid $10,000 for a contract against his son’s wife, Sparkle. Rai’s attorneys don’t deny that their client wanted his son, Ricky Rai, to marry an Indian woman, but they contend that he did not hate Blacks, insisting that he was loved in the African-American community, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Walmer, who shared a cell with Rai after landing in jail for forging checks, said that Rai told him that he had paid the money to “get rid of one of them,” the newspaper reports. Walmer said that Rai believed that Sparkle would taint the family’s image. Sparkle was slain eight years ago, one month after marrying Ricky Rai. The case remained unsolved until police arrested Chimon Rai and four others, including the alleged hit man from Mississippi.