Petey Pablo is facing nearly three years in prison after sentencing on a guilty plea of possessing a stolen firearm, according to federal prosecutors.
Pablo, whose real name is Moses Barrett, was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court in New Bern, North Carolina, to 35 months in prison. The sentencing came following a March guilty plea from the 38-year-old performer, who lives in Wake Forest, North Carolina.
According to a statement from Thomas G. Walker, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, Pablo was going through security at Raleigh-Durham International Airport on September 11, 2010, when a loaded semi-automatic 9 mm pistol was found in his bag. Pablo was attempting to board a flight to Los Angeles, the statement said.
Federal authorities determined that the pistol had been stolen during a residential burglary in California in 2005.
Pablo, who is best known for his songs “Raise Up” and “Freek-a-Leek” is scheduled to begin serving his sentence in December.
Jamaica’s governing party announced Sunday that Prime Minister Bruce Golding will step down as leader in the coming weeks, possibly averting a rebellion from ruling party members that could have led to his ouster.
Golding would resign once a new leader of the Jamaica Labor Party is elected, expected at an annual general conference in November. The party’s leader automatically becomes the prime minister.
The announcement was made in a brief statement credited to Golding and the party. It said Golding informed its central executive committee of his decision at a quarterly meeting in the capital of Kingston. The 63-year-old Golding is a veteran lawmaker who was expected to lead his party into the 2012 general elections.
“(Golding) said the challenges of the last four years have taken their toll and it was appropriate now to make way for new leadership to continue the programmes of economic recovery and transformation while mobilizing the party for victory in the next general elections,” the statement said.
Dennis Meadows, a senator and member of the Jamaica Labor Party’s executive committee, said there has been an “overwhelming response” for Golding to stay on as party leader.
“He feels the chances of the party winning the next elections are at a disadvantage with him at the head, but there’s no questioning of his competence,” Meadows said.
Later in the day, party chairman Mike Henry said the central executive voted to reject Golding’s decision to resign as party leader. However, Information Minister Daryl Vaz said on local radio that the decision about the prime minister’s upcoming resignation was final.
Education Minister Andrew Holness, also from the Labor Party, dominated a poll conducted earlier this year asking islanders who should lead the Caribbean country if Golding were to step down.
Golding’s career has been in jeopardy since 2009 because of his handling of the extradition of Jamaican drug kingpin Christopher “Dudus” Coke to the United States. Critics have slammed Golding for allowing the contracting of a law firm to lobby Washington to drop their request for extradition.
Golding resisted Coke’s extradition for nine months, arguing the U.S. indictment on gun and drug trafficking charges relied on illegal wiretap evidence. Golding’s Parliament district included Coke’s West Kingston slum stronghold.
The stance strained relations with Washington, which questioned Jamaica’s reliability as an ally in the fight against drug trafficking.
When Golding finally agreed to send Coke to the U.S., a hunt for the fugitive led to days of fighting in May 2010 that killed at least 73 civilians and three security officers. Coke was captured about a month later and extradicted.
Last month, Coke pleaded guilty to racketeering and assault charges, admitting his leadership of the brutal Shower Posse gang. He is due to be sentenced in December.
The Coke controversy prompted Golding to offer his resignation last year, but it was rejected by his party.
Peter Phillips, a spokesman for the main opposition People’s National Party, asserted that the ruling party’s announcement was brought on by the Coke saga, one of the bloodiest episodes in Jamaica’s recent history, and the government’s inability to fix the island’s poor economy.
“I think it is reflective of the low standing the prime minister has amongst the Jamaican people. His credibility was destroyed in the Christopher Coke fiasco,” Phillips said during a Sunday phone interview.
From its national executive council gathering in the northern city of Montego Bay, the People’s National Party called on Golding to immediately call general elections “to resolve the crisis of governance in the country.”
Golding, the son of a successful businessman who also served in Parliament, returned his party to power in 2007 after 18 years in opposition.
Last year, he vowed to crush street gangs and replace their strong-armed rule with social programs for the poor. While security forces have since launched a sustained crackdown on gangs that has resulted in decreases in homicides and other crimes, Jamaica’s sprawling underclass is still struggling.
Golding has repeatedly denied any ties to Coke, and even resigned from the Labor Party in the mid-1990s to form a new party that would be free of gang links. He rejoined Labor in 2002.
Political observers say Golding could not have been elected to his parliament seat without the support of Coke, the former don of Tivoli Gardens, which has a long-standing reputation as a vote-rich stronghold for the Jamaica Labor Party. Coke also thrived under the opposition People’s National Party, which led the island for nearly two decades before Labor’s 2007 win.
Jessy Dixon, a singer and songwriter who introduced his energetic style of gospel music to wider audiences by serving as pop singer Paul Simon’s opening act, died Monday. He was 73.
Miriam Dixon said her brother died Monday morning at his Chicago home. She said he had been sick but declined to provide additional details.
During a more than 50-year career, Dixon wrote songs for several popular singers, including jazz and rhythm and blues singer Randy Crawford. He later wrote songs performed by Cher, Diana Ross, Natalie Cole and Amy Grant.
But it was for his gospel singing…religious music that combined the rhythmic beat of blues, jazz and soul—that Dixon first gained attention. It was during an appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1972 with his Jessy Dixon Singers that Dixon first came to Simon’s attention. For the next eight years, Dixon toured with the pop icon, collaborating on Simon’s ‘Live Rhymin’ Simon’ and ‘Still Crazy’ albums.
Dixon also played keyboard with Earth Wind and Fire and guitarist Phillip Upchurch.
Miriam Dixon said her brother
Dixon, who began studying music at age 5, aspired to be classical pianist but told The Associated Press in a 1997 interview that he always knew his talent was destined for use in the church.
Born March 12, 1938, in San Antonio, Dixon’s professional compass was set by gospel music legend James Cleveland, who heard Dixon’s teen group perform at a theatre in the south Texas city. Dixon said Cleveland liked the group, but he liked Dixon more and persuaded him to move to Chicago to join his group, the Gospel Chimes, as both a singer and pianist.
Chicago’s South Side was the place to be for a gospel musician, especially in the early 1960s.
“Going to church was like going to school,” Dixon said. At church, he heard the likes of Mahalia Jackson and blues pioneer Thomas A. Dorsey, who is credited with creating modern gospel singing.
“Reading his (Dorsey’s) music and studying it, he was the one who wrote for Tennessee Ernie Ford, Elvis Presley and Pat Boone,” Dixon said. “All these people were singing his music and were making it commercial.”
Dixon credited the creativity of artists like percussionist Maurice White and blues singer Willie Dixon, no relation, inspired him to compose. He started with choral music for Chicago’s Thompson Community Singers, for which he sat at the keyboards. Several of his early songs have become classics, sung in churches across America, including: “Sit At His Feet and be Blessed,” “These Old Heavy Burdens” and “I Love to Praise His Name.”
His more recent compositions gained him even wider acceptance. Dixon’s “I Am Redeemed,” released in 1993, lingered on Billboard magazine’s gospel chart for more than five years.
After his stint with Simon ended, Dixon rode a wave of increased gospel music interest during the 1980s to build a following in Europe.
During his 1997 interview, Dixon noted that when he first began touring on his own outside the United States in the 1980s, the small audiences didn’t have much respect for gospel as religious expression.
“At first it was viewed as entertainment,” he said. “But now when I go, they ask me to share my faith as a Christian.”
In the United States, Dixon was a long-time fixture on composer and singer Bill Gaither’s Gospel Series, video concert broadcast on religious oriented cable television stations.
During his career, Dixon was able to produce five gold records and garner several Grammy nominations.
By most accounts, President Obama gave a fiery speech at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual awards dinner in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, telling blacks to “quit crying and complaining” and support him in the fight for jobs, according to the Associated Press. But was the AP transcription of Obama’s remarks racist?
That’s the subject currently being debated after the issue was raised on Chris Hayes’ MSNBC show on Sunday.
On MSNBC, the African-American author Karen Hunter complained the news service transcribed Obama’s speech without cleaning it up as other outlets did–specifically including the “dropped g’s.”
The Early Show: Waters on Obama’s call to “Stop crying”
By the way Maxine he was talking to yo a$$ & the ones in the black community that’s hating on him don’t play dumb!
“Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes,” he said, his voice rising as applause and cheers mounted. “Shake it off. Stop complainin’. Stop grumblin’. Stop cryin’. We are going to press on. We have work to do.”
Hunter called the AP’s version “inherently racist,” sparring with New Republic contributing editor and noted linguistics expert John McWhorter, who argued the g-less version “is actually the correct one,” noting that the president’s victory in the 2008 election was due, in part, to how effortlessly “he can switch into that [black] dialect.”
Whatever the reason, Hunter found it offensive. “I teach a journalism class, and I tell my students to fix people’s grammar, because you don’t want them to sound ignorant,” she said. “For them to do that, it’s code, and I don’t like it.”
It’s worth noting that the same sorts of arguments arose during George W. Bush’s presidency, with the White House cleaning up the president’s speeches to make him sound smarter, and news outlets sometimes not doing so.
According to Mark Smith, the AP reporter who filed the story, Obama was making a point by dropping his g’s, making the transcription a no-brainer.
“Normally, I lean toward the clean-it-up school of quote transcribing—for everyone,” Smith told Mediaite. “But in this case, the President appeared to be making such a point of dropping Gs, and doing so in a rhythmic fashion, that for me to insert them would run clearly counter to his meaning. I believe I was respecting his intent in this. Certainly disrespect was the last thing I intended.”
“The AP Stylebook counsels against using spellings like gonna or wanna–or in this case, complainin’ and cryin’–‘in attempts to convey regional dialects or informal pronunciations, except to help a desired touch or to convey an emphasis by the speaker,'” Tom Kent, the AP deputy managing editor for standards and production, said in a statement to The Cutline. “In this case, our reporter, who was there in person, felt the spellings were appropriate to convey a particular touch that President Obama appeared to be intentionally making use of.”
Conservative bloggers agree–mainly because the story showed Obama pandering to a black base.
“The first job of a journalist is to report a story as accurately as possible,” Howard Portnoy wrote on HotAir.com. “Part of the job of reporting Obama’s speech last night was to highlight his obvious pandering, which is borne of desperation. The only element missing from the story is whether any of the listeners were offended by the president’s ‘blaccent.'”
“The AP did not print the words as written for the president,” Mike Opelka wrote on Glenn Beck-owned TheBlaze.com, “instead choosing to transcribe the speech with what might be considered a bit more accuracy.”
“He was specifically, and intentionally, using an African-American linguistic style to emphasize his message,” a conservative blog called the Last Refuge noted.
“Now that the presidential campaign season has begun,” Courtland Milloy wrote in an op-ed column for the Washington Post, “it’s okay for President Obama to openly court black people again.”
You don’t have to come and confess, Antoine Dodson ….but you should take care of an old warrant.
The internet sensation was arrested on Saturday after police pulled him over and discovered that he had an outstanding warrant for failing to appear in court over an April 23 arrest for second-degree marijuana possession.
A Huntsville, Ala., police spokesman told TheWrap that officers pulled Dodson over for playing music too loudly. Police said they had planned to let him off with a warning, but arrested him after running his plates and discovering the warrant.
Dodson bonded out of jail on Sunday.
Dodson gained internet fame last year when a local news broadcast an interview with him after an intruder broke into his home and attempted to rape his sister. Dodson’s spirited, passionate warning to the intruder — which included the lines, “You don’t have to come and confess, we’re looking for you, we’re gonna find you, so you can run and tell that, homeboy” …..quickly caught on with YouTube audiences.
An auto-tuned version of Dodson’s interview, recorded by the Gregory Brothers as “Bed Intruder Song,” cracked Billboard’s Hot 100 list.
President Barack Obama told blacks on Saturday to quit crying and complaining and “put on your marching shoes” to follow him into battle for jobs and opportunity.
And though he didn’t say it directly, for a second term, too.
Obama’s speech to the annual awards dinner of the Congressional Black Caucus was his answer to increasingly vocal griping from black leaders that he’s been giving away too much in talks with Republicans…. and not doing enough to fight black unemployment, which is nearly double the national average at 16.7 percent.
“It gets folks discouraged. I know. I listen to some of y’all,” Obama told an audience of some 3,000 in a darkened Washington convention center.
But he said blacks need to have faith in the future…. and understand that the fight won’t be won if they don’t rally to his side.
“I need your help,” Obama said.
The president will need black turnout to match its historic 2008 levels if he’s to have a shot at winning a second term, and Saturday’s speech was a chance to speak directly to inner-city concerns.
He acknowledged blacks have suffered mightily because of the recession, and are frustrated that the downturn is taking so long to reverse. “So many people are still hurting. So many people are barely hanging on,” he said, then added: “And so many people in this city are fighting us every step of the way.”
But Obama said blacks know all too well from the civil rights struggle that the fight for what is right is never easy.
“Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes,” he said, his voice rising as applause and cheers mounted. “Shake it off. Stop complainin’. Stop grumblin’. Stop cryin’. We are going to press on. We have work to do.”
Topping the to-do list, he said, is getting Congress to the pass jobs bill he sent to Capitol Hill two weeks ago.
Obama said the package of payroll tax cuts, business tax breaks and infrastructure spending will benefit 100,000 black-owned businesses and 20 million African-American workers. Republicans have indicated they’re open to some of the tax measures — but oppose his means of paying for it: hiking taxes on top income-earners and big business.
But at times, Obama also sounded like he was discussing his own embattled tenure.
“The future rewards those who press on,” He said. “I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I’m going to press on.”
Caucus leaders remain fiercely protective of the nation’s first African-American president, but in recent weeks they’ve been increasingly vocal in their discontent ….. especially over black joblessness.
“If Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House,” the caucus chairman, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, recently told McClatchy Newspapers.
Like many Democratic lawmakers, caucus members were dismayed by Obama’s concessions to the GOP during the summer’s talks on raising the government’s borrowing limit.
Cleaver famously called the compromise deal a “sugar-coated Satan sandwich.”
But Cleaver said his members also are keeping their gripes in check because “nobody wants to do anything that would empower the people who hate the president.”
Still, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., caused a stir last month by complaining that Obama’s Midwest bus tour had bypassed black districts. She told a largely black audience in Detroit that the caucus is “supportive of the president, but we’re getting tired.”
Last year, Obama addressed the same dinner and implored blacks to get out the vote in the midterm elections because Republicans were preparing to “turn back the clock.”
What followed was a Democratic rout that Obama acknowledged as a “shellacking.”
Where blacks had turned out in droves to help elect him in 2008, there was a sharp drop-off two years later.
Some 65 percent of eligible blacks voted in 2008, compared with a 2010 level that polls estimate at between 37 percent and 40 percent. Final census figures for 2010 are not yet available, and it’s worth noting off-year elections typically draw far fewer voters.
This year’s caucus speech came as Obama began cranking up grass-roots efforts across the Democratic spectrum.
It also fell on the eve of a trip to the West Coast that will combine salesmanship for the jobs plan he sent to Congress this month and re-election fundraising.
Obama was leaving Sunday morning for Seattle, where two money receptions were planned, with two more to follow in the San Francisco area.
On Monday, Obama is holding a town meeting at the California headquarters of LinkedIn, the business networking website, before going on to fundraisers in San Diego and Los Angeles and a visit Tuesday to a Denver-area high school to highlight the school renovation component of the jobs package.
Editors note: What America fails to recognize is the importance of the class war being waged. It’s not a Black thing, not a Hispanic thing, not any kind of skin color thing. It’s all about wiping out the middle class by the right.
Morgan Freeman opened up about politics on CNN Friday. Morgan Freeman says conservative opposition to President Obama has enflamed racism in the U.S.
The Oscar-winning actor opened up about politics to CNN’s Piers Morgan and insisted that the Tea Party was racist.
“The Tea Partiers who are controlling the Republican party … their stated policy, publicly stated, is to do whatever it takes to see to it that Obama only serves one term,” Morgan said in an interview that’s set to air Friday evening.
“What underlines that …\[mentality of\] ‘Screw the country, we’re going to do whatever we can to get this black man out of here?’” he asked. “It is a racist thing.”
Morgan said he was unnerved that the Tea Party was gaining traction.
“It just shows the weak, dark underside of America. We’re supposed to be better than that,” he said.
Morgan, who endorsed Obama in 2007, said he was slightly disappointed that Obama hasn’t been more aggressive in taking on the Tea Party.
But “I also understood that he was trying to hold onto his own promise,” said Freeman. “He would be president of all the people.
Freeman endorsed Obama during his run for the presidency, but declined to campaign with him, saying that he was an actor, not a politician. He also said he was slightly disappointed that Obama hasn’t been more aggressive in taking on the Tea Party. He attended a White House Civil Rights concert in 2010.
Vesta Williams, the diva known for her powerful voice and 80’s hits, was found dead in her California hotel room last night, according to reports. Though news sources have reported the singer was 48 years old, Williams can be seen in a 2010 interview saying she was 53.
TMZ is reporting that bottles of prescription pills were found in the hotel room, and that the authorities are treating the singer’s death as an accident or suicide.
Williams scored a big hit with “Congratulations,” a song about a woman who is distraught upon learning that her former lover is getting married. “Congratulations,” with its vocal acrobatics and dramatic story, became a talent show staple.
Jackeé Harry, the television actress, tweeted her condolences about the singer’s passing.
“…just received truly devastating news: R&B great, and my friend of many yrs, Vesta Williams (@vesta4u), has passed away. #RIPVesta”
In the 1990s, Williams made headlines for her dramatic weight loss. She told Ebony that she started to rapidly gain weight when her singing career began to falter. Williams, who was 5-foot-3, eventually reached a size 26. She said her size was the reason she lost her recording contract.
“When I lost my record deal and my phone wasn’t ringing, I realized that I had to reassess who Vesta was and figure out what was going wrong,” she said. “I knew it wasn’t my singing ability. So it had to be that I was expendable because I didn’t have the right look.”
The singer went on to lose 100 lbs, and got down down to a size 6, while finding something of a second career as a songwriter and session singer.
In recent years, Williams had become an advocate for the prevention of childhood obesity and juvenile diabetes.
Our heart goes out to her family. Vesta was a great singer with tremendous talent and range. She will be sorely missed as we recalled Vesta used to date Bruce Willis in the 80’s. R.I.P. EMPRESS!
Now According to Ray J, Floyd Mayweather wasn’t the only one who threw a shot to the face this past weekend in Vegas. On (Sept. 19), Ray J called Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club to share details of an altercation that allegedly occured between him and Fabolous after the Mayweather vs. Ortiz fight.
After Ray J performed “One Wish” before an intimate crowd in celebration Mayweather’s win, Fabolous joked of his performance via Twitter. “Nah but Floyd saying we havin a concert in my living room & the camera cuts to Ray J singing ‘One Wish’ on the piano had me in tears!!” Fab tweeted.
Ray J says he threw a punch after Fabolous said ‘don’t touch me.’ “I socked that ni**a in the face… All I’m saying if you got Fab’s number tell that ni**a to send a picture of his face right now. Don’t disrespect me and Floyd,” Ray J told The Breakfast Club. Check out the uncensored interview between Ray J and The Breakfast Club below. You may want to put on the Beats by Dre headphones for this.
UPDATE: Fabolous Speaks With DJ Clue About Beef With Ray J
Fabolous is always known for roasting , but apparently things have gone too far. As previously reported, Ray J called into the “Breakfast Club” morning show and gave his side about what happened with the Twitter jokes that Fabolous tweeted about his “living room” performance at Floyd Mayweather’s pre-fight party that aired on HBO’s 24/7 documentary.
Now Fabolous has decided to respond and tell his side of the story and umm…they are sounding way different. Check out what Fab had to say about the altercation with who he refers to as “Brandy’s brother”.. (Lil Red Ridin Hood?) ROFLMAO
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Chris Bosh has had his fair share of detractors since he joined the Miami Heat last summer.
Kevin Durant referred to him as a “fake tough guy.” Shaquille O’Neal downplayed his worth by referring to the Heat as possessing “The Big 2.” Even satirical news outlet The Onion has taken shots at Bosh’s futility and irrelevance with the Heat by publishing headlines such as, “Chris Bosh Left In Hot Car For Hours By Teammates.”
On Wednesday morning, Bosh went on ESPN’s “First Take” to confront one of his biggest detractors, ESPN analyst Skip Bayless.
To his credit, Bosh was reserved and diplomatic during the showdown. The six-time All-Star never spoke out of turn and only chimed in when Bayless yielded the floor, which wasn’t often.
Bosh’s problem with Bayless stems from the mocking nickname the antagonistic host had developed for him: Bosh Spice.
“I don’t have a problem with you at all. We’re both professionals, we both do our jobs,” Bosh said. “My whole problem is the misuse of the name… My family, we take a lot of pride in our name. We’re very prideful of the Bosh name. I don’t like it being made fun of and I don’t think they appreciate it either… The Bosh name, that’s all we have.”
Appearing uncharacteristically reserved at first, Bayless defended his use of the nickname, but he grew more strident as he kept talking.
“I respect the Bosh name, but I have no regrets with referring to you occasionally, especially early and at midseason, as ‘Bosh Spice,'” Bayless said. “I thought your performance with the Miami Heat warranted an occasional use of that nickname. You chose to join LeBron James and Dwyane Wade in Miami for $110 million. And you chose to enter the harshest, toughest, roughest spotlight in all of sports.”
Bosh respectfully listened to Bayless’ numerous critiques before delivering the most constructive response possible, “I would like to thank you because you’ve given me a lot of motivation.”
The Miami big man isn’t the first athlete to confront a talking head on his home court. In 1994, NFL quarterback Jim Everett went on the ESPN program Talk2 to speak with Jim Rome after the television host continually called Everett “Chris” in reference to female tennis star Chris Evert. Eventually this sent Everett over the edge and led to him famously attacking Rome on camera.
Bosh was far more civil during his conversation with Bayless, but we’re willing to bet that there’s a large contingent of sports fans — and pro athletes — who wouldn’t have minded if Miami’s third wheel decided to pull a Jim Everett on the controversial host.
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