Bush calls Kanye West’s criticism over Hurricane Katrina the lowest moment of his presidency

By Holly BaileyTue Nov 2, 8:07 pm ET

Following the http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101102/pl_yblog_upshot/in-new-book-bush-admits-he-considered-replacing-cheney">New York Times’ scoop on George W. Bush’s upcoming memoir, NBC is out tonight with excerpts of an interview Matt Lauer conducted with the former president set to air next week.

Among other things, Bush says the lowest moment of his presidency was when rapper Kanye West declared in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that “Bush doesn’t care about black people.” “That ‘he’s a racist,’ ” Bush told Lauer. “I resent it, it’s not true, and it was one of the most disgusting moments of my presidency.”

Bush writes, per Lauer, that he can barely think about the moment “without feeling disgust” and that it outranks people criticizing him for the war in Iraq or his efforts to cut taxes to benefit the rich.

In the interview, Lauer interjects, telling Bush he’s likely to take “heat” for saying the “worst moment” was not watching the post-Katrina misery in Louisiana but rather when someone insulted him because of that misery. “The misery in Louisiana affected me deeply as well,” Bush told Lauer. “There’s a lot of tough moments in the book. And it was a disgusting moment, pure and simple.”

Source: The Upshot on Yahoo News

Floyd Mayweather Jr. took to the Internet again on Friday, this time to apologize for a profanity-filled racist rant against Manny Pacquiao that he recorded on uStream.com Thursday.

Mayweather continued to mispronounce Pacquiao’s surname, repeatedly referring to him as “Pooch-ee-ow.” But a day after making racist and homophobic comments on uStream, Mayweather offered an apology to those who were offended.

“I do want to apologize for what happened the other night,” Mayweather said. “I want to apologize to everybody. They felt it was a racist comment that came from me. I don’t have a racist bone in my body, you know. I love everybody. Some of my guys are Muslims. Some of my guys are Jews. Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Mexicans, whites, it doesn’t matter. There is nothing but love in my heart, you know what I’m saying?

“I heard this from a few people. The only thing I want to say is, anybody who was offended by what I said the other day, I apologize as a man. I apologize. Forgive me for saying what I said. I was just having fun. I didn’t really mean it, nothing in a bad way. So let’s stay on this roller coaster ride and keep riding, baby. It’s all love.”

Prior to apologizing, Mayweather embraced two Asian women, who said they were Thai and Chinese. He asked one of them if she spoke Thai and kept asking her to “Speak some Thai.” As he embraced them, he promised them front-row tickets for a fight with Pacquiao. Representatives of each camp twice in the last nine months attempted to make a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, but were unable to finalize a deal.

Mayweather also sent condolences to his former promoter, Bob Arum of Top Rank, with whom he has long had a contentious relationship. The body of Arum’s 49-year-old son, John, was discovered in the Cascade Mountains in Washington state Friday. John Arum appeared to have fallen 300 feet in a hiking accident.

John Arum had been missing for several days and it’s not clear in the video whether Mayweather was aware the body had been discovered. However, he offered consoling words to Bob Arum.

“God bless Bob Arum and his whole family, because I heard that Bob Arum’s son had a bad accident,” Mayweather said. “Love to the whole Arum family.”

In the original video, he referred to Pacquiao, a native of the Philippines, as “a yellow chump,” and said “Once I stomp the midget, I’ll make that [expletive] make me a sushi roll and cook me some rice.” In addition, he said, “I’m going to cook that [expletive] with cats and dogs. Have some rice with a little barbecue dog.” He also referred to Pacquiao by using a derogatory slang term for a homosexual.

Source: Yahoo News

H/T to @brownfist

“Hindi ko pa rin matanggap na the basis of the termination was the language,” nurse Hachelle Natano told ABS-CBN News.

Corina Capunitan-Yap, Anna Rowena Rosales, Jazziel Granada and Natano were fired from their jobs at the Bon Secours Hospital last April 16.

“I feel I was harassed and discriminated against because of my national origin,” Natano explained.

“They claimed they heard us speaking in Pilipino and that is the only basis of the termination. It wasn’t because of my functions as a nurse. There were no negative write-ups, no warning before the termination,” she added.

Last November, Bon Secours imposed for the first time an English-only language policy in the Emergency Room, the nurses said.

Many hospitals, especially those with foreign medical staff, implement the rule in trauma facilities because it’s critical everyone understand each other as they respond to life-and-death situations.

They were asked to sign the hospital’s “Emergency Department Expectations” that set the length of their lunch and snack breaks; lays down when they can take a rest; and directs that English should be the only language spoken while the nurses are on ER duty.

Granada was surprised when she too got the boot.

“I was shocked. I’m not even a nurse. I’m a secretary so I’m not involved with patient care. It came as a big shock and I was asking myself, why I was included,” she told ABS-CBN News.

Lawyer Arnedo Valera of the Virginia-based Migrant Heritage Commission has filed a complaint with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

The nurses, he pointed out, were “arbitrarily terminated from work without due process,” and the English-only rule violated their basic rights.

Fired because of bagoong?

This is not the first time hospital workers have been fired or disciplined for speaking in a language other than English.

In 2005, the EEOC led a federal law suit against the Highland Hospital in Rochester, New York on behalf of five Hispanic housekeepers.

They were sanctioned after they were overheard saying “hasta la vista” or goodbye as they were leaving work.

The EEOC said the English-only rule was unlawful and violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits job discrimination based on a person’s race, sex or national origin.

Valera believes the English-only rule at Bon Secours Hospital was too broad and so lacking in clear guidelines to be fairly and legally implemented.

“If you speak just a single Tagalog word and someone hears you, that can be grounds for termination which is what happened to our nurses,” he explained.

“All it takes is just one word. That can be a greeting, a remark or even the name of a Filipino dish. Based on this rule, you could say ‘bagoong’ (a fermented fish sauce) and lose your job,” Valera said.

Granada, still in the dark what Pilipino word she uttered to get the pink slip, speculates it might have been because she called a Filipino doctor in the hospital “Kuya” – a word of respect akin to the English “Sir.”

The Filipinas’ plight has been aggravated, they say, by the hospital’s inability to show any documentation of when the alleged violations took place.

Their dismissal was so abrupt it took several days for the termination papers to catch up with them.

Nurses’ rights

Valera said this incident goes deeper into the problems Filipino and other foreign nurses face in US hospitals.

“There is no business necessity, there is no rational justification or direct relationship between speaking in Pilipino to the performance of their job,” he said.

Lured by higher pay and wider opportunities for advancement, Filipino professionals – doctors, nurses, engineers – have flocked to the US for the past 50 years.

The Philippines, India and Nigeria are the top suppliers of nurses in the US. In the 1980s, nearly half of all foreign nurses entering the US were Filipinos.

“America is supposed to be land of the free but in our case we were terminated because we spoke in our native language,” Rosales said.

“It is so unfair for Filipino nurses. I am making an appeal to nurses’ associations that with this incident we should let them know that no patient is harmed when we speak in our native language,” she declared.

Source: ABS CBN News, via Angry Asian Man

Related:

Troops to the Mexican border: Obama to send 1,200

H/T to MRKPMNTL, courtesy of the Huffington Post

SEATTLE — Internal affairs detectives have launched a review after seeing a racially charged videotape of two Seattle police officers stomping on an innocent detainee.

KIRO Team 7 Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne received the footage from a freelance photographer.

Before the camera rolled, here was the scenario, gleaned from redacted public records provided by SPD:

On April 17, Seattle police responded to several 911 calls near the China Harbor Restaurant on the west side of Lake Union. Patrons of a nightclub complained of an armed robbery occurring in the parking lot. They told dispatchers the suspects were Hispanic.

About eight blocks away, a pair of guys who appeared to be Hispanic were strolling along the boardwalk when Seattle police officers saw them.

The videotape shows it’s about 2 a.m. At least six squad cars full of Seattle police are trying to sort out suspects about a half-mile from a robbery scene.

Three men are being detained, but two of them appear to have nothing to do with the alleged crime.

A member of the SPD gang unit can be seen, down on his knees, yelling at a young man lying face down on the ground. It was unclear what he was saying until the camera moved a little closer.

The audio then became much clearer. The camera microphone picked up the following threat from the officer to the detainee:

“You got me? I’m going to beat the f***ing Mexican piss out of you homey. You feel me?”

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE AND WATCH THE VIDEO HERE

“This is Alabama. We speak English. If you want to live here, learn it.”

‘English-only’ ad stirs debate in campaign

An “English-only” ad by a candidate in the Alabama governor’s race has drawn the state into the national debate over immigration …

By PHILLIP RAWLS

The Associated Press

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — An “English-only” ad by a candidate in the Alabama governor’s race has drawn the state into the national debate over immigration stoked by a new Arizona law and generated an Internet crowd for the political scion running in a crowded Republican field.

The ad by construction-business owner and candidate Tim James — viewed more than 500,000 times on YouTube since its release last week — also is generating criticism that it could reverse years of economic development based on luring foreign companies, including carmakers from Germany, Japan and South Korea.

James, son of former two-term Alabama Gov. Fob James, says in the ad that he would drop the practice of giving the state driver’s-license exam in 12 languages other than English.

“This is Alabama. We speak English. If you want to live here, learn it,” James says.

In his view, it will make highways safer, save the state money and hasten the assimilation of legal immigrants into Alabama society.

The ad comes as members of both parties in Congress maneuver to either add or duck immigration as a midterm-election issue and as immigration advocates file legal challenges to a new Arizona law that makes being an illegal immigrant a state crime enforced by police.

Critics say James’ idea is counterproductive in a state that has received substantial help from 358 foreign businesses to build a manufacturing base that includes Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai and Honda assembly plants.

They note that 40 other states — including every one in the Southeast — that compete with Alabama for new industry give the test in multiple languages.

State officials don’t have numbers tracking how many foreigners work in the state. Many are managers, engineers and other high-salary employees who may have non-English speaking spouses.

In 2000, according to the last U.S. Census, there were 108,000 people in Alabama, or 2.9 percent of the state’s population, who spoke a language other than English at home.

Bill Johnson, a GOP rival of James in the June 1 primary, said his opponent’s ad is not good for business development.

“If Tim wanted to attack illegal immigration, I wish he would have just said so,” said Johnson, who as a member of he current governor’s Cabinet helped put together Alabama’s industrial recruitment program.

“Instead, I believe his ad sent the wrong signal and possibly insulted thousands of our legal international citizens and business partners.” Johnson said.