Some great progress has been made at Umoja.com and a new version is coming in the next month!

I’m beginning to think that older celebrities like Bill Cosby are joining twitter simply to be able to rebut claims that they are dead.

http://twitter.com/BillCosby/status/20163336496

Again, I’m rebuttaling rumors about my demise. But, I’m confirming I have an app – http://bit.ly/BillCosbyApp

http://twitter.com/BillCosby/status/20171613296

Emotional friends have called about this misinformation. To the people behind the foolishness, I’m not sure you see how upsetting this is.

So, straight from the mighty and all powerful Coz, he’s still alive and kicking!

(h/t Black Snob)

Veteran Journalist Amy Alexander examines her time at the NAACP and describes the 100+year old organization as gradually becoming a vehicle for the NAACP President to massage their ego.

At very detailed length, Alexander describes her time as the “voice” of Jealous, writing his editorials, crafting his talking points and attempting to get him media ready. The key word is “attempting.” Many people have remarked that Jealous’ jump to erroneous conclusions on Sherrod smelled to high heaven of someone who’s not media savvy (or even regular savvy). Alexander paints an even more damning portrait — of a man in love with himself and in love with the limelight, but incapable of meeting the needs of the 101 year old, historic civil rights organization.

Amy Alexander

Rachel Maddow shows an excellent piece about the consistency of Fox News use of the “Southern Strategy” in an attempt to scare white voters by depicting blacks (and in particular POTUS Barack Obama’s administration) as somehow being “out to get them.”

h/t Talkingpointsmemo.com
USDA Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s apology to Shirley Sherrod, he discusses new opportunities for Sherrod in the administration.

The Full Shirley Sherrod Video

In 2009, Brietbart launched his foray into “investigative” journalism with a then searing expose ACORN (Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now a non-profit that worked to ” advocate for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other social issues” via en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Community_Organizations_for_Reform_Now)

After the story and “expose” ran through the news cycle — from Brietbart to Fox News to Conservative radio — it all ended with ACORN losing Federal contracts, funding and needing to abandon their name.

However, after the facts came out it was shown that the Brietbart “contractor” responsible for the story, James O’Keefe had not only selectively edited the “documentary” he went so far as to slice footage into the documentary that had nothing to do with the Acorn employees. The worst example was Mr. O’Keefe’s use of a pimp costume in introduction, then lied on numerous Fox and conservative talk radio interviews that he had dressed as a pimp during the documentary.

Yet, the damage had already been done — ACORN was defunded and Fox and conservative talk radio did not bother with correcting the record.

In 2010, the same “Brietbart magic” is happening to Shirley Sherrod a now former USDA official who’s comments on race, redemption in 1986 ! were a cautionary tale to always do your best for people regardless of prejudice were a case file in doing your best. Brietbart now claims he received the edited video and posted it along with commentary without actually bothering to view the original unedited video (this after the O’Keefe issue with Acorn — and the criminal charges fired against O’Keefe for tampering with a Senator office telephones).

Although very little can be done to repair the damage done to Sherrod’s reputation after Fox News, the NAACP and various organizations piled onto the deceptively edited video — ultimately leading to her being forced out of the USDA, at least vindication came days later.

So, I’m trying to get back to daily blogging, now that I’m not using my free time monitoring World Cup action.

There’s an interesting story out today by Politico.com ;”Carlson Launches Olbermann Site” in the Politico “Click” section — which is kind of like a political gossip magazine.

Here’s the money quote:

But the battle has been kicked up a notch today, as the Daily Caller has purchased www.KeithOlbermann.com. The site, as you can imagine, directs readers to Daily Caller’s online offerings.

Politico seems to have received the information directly from @TuckerCarlson which had a retweet from @dailycaller directing Olbermann to check the dailycaller.com homepage.

While I have been oblivious to the on-going feud between Olbermann and Carlson because of World Cup action, I’ve found this latest stunt by Carlson a fairly lame attempt to “punch-up” and grab headlines. Currently, Olbermann not only has his own popular MSNBC show, he still does sports-casting and plenty of guest spots on other talk shows. Tucker Carlson has been fired from several shows, (although I’m sure he does plenty of guest spots) and is likely burning through money as he attempts to grow dailycaller.com. Carlson simply wants to get into to a war of words with Olbermann to get free links from outlets like the politico.com, huffpost and other outlets.

So, here’s a quick tear-down of this stunt:
1.) Carlson probably spends X,XXX to buy KeithOlbermann.com from the previous domain owner who had the domain parked at godaddy.com.

2.) Carlson taunts Olbermann in an attempt to get him to give some free publicity by “punching-up”

3.) Huffpost, Politico and others take the bait and print up articles that link to dailycaller.com and keitholbermann.com .

4.) When Olbermann, notices and comments via twitter that Carlson knows what he is doing a pretty clear-cut case of the abuse of a domain name via ICANN (the regulating body for domain names), Carlson responds by calling Olbermann a “CRYBABY.” Then Carlson uses first amendment issues to try to hide his behavior; however, there’s a big problem with Carlson’s strategy beyond the mere ICANN arbitration process…

Carlson actually has used the ICANN arbitration process called UDRP to get TuckerCarlson.com in a very similar situation!

Tucker’s situation is explained on domainnamewire.com here:

Celebrity wins decision for TuckerCarlson.com.
Conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson has won rights to the domain name TuckerCarlson.com.  The decision handed down through World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) under UDRP on June 2. In Carlson’s complaint, he claimed common law rights to the name “Tucker Carlson” Domainnamewire.com

As a result, the longer Tucker Carlson carries on this particular tactic the more he will look like a hypocrite. It’s really hard to call someone a crybaby about the abuse of a domain name when you have used a remedy to acquire your own domain name from a commercial user. Worse, Carlson wasted the Daily Caller’s money by purchasing the domain name from the previous owner.

Will Carlson and the DailyCaller.com disclose how much they paid for KeithOlbermann.com ?

Update:
So a few people on twitter have stated that dailycaller is using “parody and criticism” — um not so much, the domain redirects to dailycaller . com. Even if the name was a special Keith Olbermann version of the dailycaller.com, Carlson & Co are still capitalizing on Keith Olbermann’s name in a confusing manner in a commercial fashion.

Politicians names are fair game, while public figures / celebrities are not.

Hopefully Carlson will hand the name over to Keith Olbermann and allow the filing fees to go to charity rather than lawyers and others.