Alan Keyes: On Crack?

By early 1986, crack had a stranglehold on the ghettos of New York City and was dominated by traffickers and dealers from the Dominican Republic. Crack distribution and abuse exploded in 1986, and by year-end was available in 28 states and the District of Columbia. According to the 1985-1986 National Narcotics Intelligence Consumers Committee Report, crack was available in Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, Kansas City, Miami, New York City, Newark, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis, and Phoenix.

By 1987, crack was reported to be available in the District of Columbia and all but four states in the Union. Crack was abundantly available in at least 19 cities in 13 states: Texas (Dallas), Oklahoma (Tulsa, Oklahoma City), Michigan (Detroit), California (Los Angeles, Riverside, Santa Barbara), Florida (Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Tampa), New York (New York City), Oregon (Portland), Washington (Seattle), Missouri (Kansas City), Minnesota (Minneapolis), Colorado (Denver), Nevada (Las Vegas), and Maryland (Hagerstown, Salisbury). By 1988, crack had replaced heroin as the greatest problem in Detroit, and it was available in Los Angeles in multi-kilo quantities.

Meanwhile, wholesale and retail prices for cocaine had declined, while purity levels for kilogram amounts of the drug had remained at 90 percent or higher. Street-level gram purity rose from 25 percent in 1981, to 55 percent in 1987, to 70 percent in 1988. By the late 1980s, over 10,000 gang members were dealing drugs in some 50 cities from Baltimore to Seattle. The crack trade had created a violent sub-world, and crack-related murders in many large cities were skyrocketing. For example, a 1988 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that in New York City, crack use was tied to 32% of all homicides and 60% of drug-related homicides. On a daily basis, the evening news reported the violence of drive-by shootings and crack users trying to obtain money for their next hit. Smokeable crack appealed to a new group of users, especially women, because it did not have the stigma associated with needles or heroin, and because it was smoked, many mistakenly equated crack with marijuana. As a result, a generation of addicted children were born to--and frequently abandoned by--crack-using mothers. By the late 1980s, about one out of every 10 newborns in the United States (375,000 per year) had been exposed in the womb to one or more illicit drug.

Also see Barry, Marion.

Alan Keyes Is Making Sense.
Lightning Bolt Is Chilling Out.
Sigur Ros Is Kicking Ass.
etc.

Anything else I can answer for you?

Seriously, what did he say? I'd listen to the archive but I hate 'Fresh Air' and NPR in general.

Whats the difference? I live in the US. I could really care less who wins what beyond hoping for as much deadlock as possible (this seems to be helped if those on the far left or right are elected).

"Yes, Alan Keyes. He's a rightwing lunatic, but he's OUR rightwing lunatic!"

x-post - maybe someone in the right wing has compromising photos of Judy Baar Topinka or something. I don't understand it, because the GOP bigwigs in Illinois are so moderate and they can't stand the right-wingers. I think they'd rather see Obama win, maybe.

Right. He's the least embarrassing loser because he's the most embarrassing candidate.

The article is here

When I was in college, I got an assignment to cover a victory party for Thompson. I hung out with the Republicans all night, expecting them to be a bunch of Reagan types (I didn't know very many Republicans growing up). I interviewed one seventysomething woman who told me, off the record, that they weren't 'those kind' of Republicans. I got the impression that she thought the emotionally-driven politics of the religious right crude and base. Low-class and embarrassing, you know.

I have to say, it was kind of a fun party. And Hugh Hill and a few other local celebrities were drunk.

Are they related I wonder?

I already referenced it on the other thread.

the oberweis ice cream shop on fullerton closed!

say what you will about mr. oberweis, but he made a very good dulce de leche.

9 results found.

The prosecution had surveillance camera footage of him actually sparking up. (Even though, as many a comedian said, he seemed to have gone to the hotel more in pursuit of a "a different sort of crack.")

Yeah, it certainly hasn't stopped hstencil before so I don't know why he's all bent out of shape now.

am I on crack or is no one mentioning CAMEROON??!?

-- hstencil (hstenci...), May 25th, 2004 9:31 AM

But Keyes isn't from New Jersey!

xpost

Isn't 8/26 Mandingo's birthday?

http://images.viacomlocalnetworks.com/images_sizedimage_224175004/xl

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-patt07.html

""Admittedly, I was willing to fall into the mosh pit, but I'll tell you something. You know why I did that? Because I think that exemplifies the kind of trust in people that is the heart and soul of the Keyes campaign ... And when you trust them, they will in fact hold you up."

Unfortunately, it was the Phil Collins version.

which was freaky-funny till israel actually followed through.

August 15, 2004

If U.S. Senate candidate Alan Keyes had any notions of capturing the hearts and minds of Chicago's black electorate, the annual Bud Billiken Day Parade on Saturday proved that this task will be nothing short of daunting for the Republican.

Keyes, the conservative political figure from Maryland who entered the Senate race last week after GOP nominee Jack Ryan withdrew his candidacy, made his first trip Saturday into the heart of Chicago's black community. Keyes, an African-American, was greeted with a resounding chorus of jeers and boos that bordered on outright hostility.

"Go back to Maryland!" and "Down with Keyes!" were the most common refrains.

The 75-year-old Billiken parade, which ran south along Martin Luther King Drive from Pershing Road to 55th Street, is touted as the largest African-American parade in the country and the biggest in Chicago. Besides baton twirlers, cowboys on horseback and colorful floats, politicians seeking black votes are wise not to forgo the gathering on the South Side.

By contrast, Democrat Barack Obama was treated to a king's welcome, with thousands of parade-goers hoisting blue-and-white Obama signs, wearing Obama stickers and shrieking in pure joy as his float passed by. They serenaded the Hyde Park Democrat with chants of "O-Ba-Ma! O-Ba-Ma! O-Ba-Ma!"

Obama, a state senator, has achieved celebrity status among national Democrats after his much-ballyhooed keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in Boston. And in Chicago's black community, Obama, also an African-American, apparently has ascended to supercelebrity status.

So when Obama's political challenger appeared Saturday, the reception was not pretty. Over the first couple of blocks of the parade route, Keyes got a few down-turned thumbs and groans of dissent.

Up-close opposition

But as the crowds grew thicker and Keyes inched closer to a sea of Obama supporters, spectators grew more aggressive in denouncing him. As Keyes tried to shake hands between 47th and 48th Streets, a woman ran up to him, lifted an Obama sign above her head and screamed repeatedly into Keyes' face: "Obama for president! Obama for president!"

Another man briefly grabbed Keyes' arm and advised Keyes, "Take your [expletive] back to Maryland."

Yet others were courteous, shaking Keyes' hand and flashing a smile at him. A few requested his autograph, and he obliged in each instance.

Indeed, through all the mayhem, Keyes kept a smile on his face. Always a fiery speaker, he even stopped on occasion to preach to his naysayers.

"Why are you representing hate?" he asked, wagging a finger at a throng of people dressed in Obama T-shirts who were jeering him.

Keyes referred to Obama's abortion rights' position. Thus far, Keyes, a conservative Christian who on Saturday wore a gold crucifix around his neck, has centered his many attacks on Obama around the Democrat's support of abortion rights.

Before stepping off on the parade route, Keyes charged in an interview that Obama is indirectly supporting the "genocide" of African-Americans by endorsing a woman's legal right to an abortion.

"We're the first people who have ever been pushed into genocide before our babies are born," Keyes said. "So the people who are supporting that position are actually supporting the systematic extermination of black America."

Many spectators said such views, along with his conservative economic policies, place Keyes at the extreme right end of the political spectrum, far from the beliefs of black Americans, perhaps the most loyal of all Democratic voting blocs.

"It's just hard to come from where we come from, from the working class, and be a Republican," said Jay Little, 33, an electrician from the South Shore neighborhood. "Mr. Keyes doesn't reach me at all. I don't think he will ever see things from our perspective."

One of Keyes' supporters, Ceasar LeFlore, responded that blacks were foolhardy to be nearly uniform in their support of Obama.

"Alan Keyes is a nationally known individual who is pro-life, pro-family and doesn't want to waste our tax money or de-incentivize our businesses," said LeFlore, who runs a non-profit agency in South Holland. "We need to be a free-thinking people who discuss the issues and then vote on our values. Once we refuse to disagree, then we are lost as a people."

Tense moment halts parade

There was one incident even more tense than the heckling of Keyes. About 2:15 p.m., the parade was halted for about 45 minutes when a man threatened to jump from the high scaffolding erected around Corpus Christi Church at 49th Street and King Drive. It took police nearly an hour to talk him down.

Obama's float, meanwhile, was two blocks ahead of Keyes, and the two candidates never crossed paths. Before the parade, Obama said Keyes has been so strident in his criticism of the Democrat because Keyes' campaign is "underfunded and undermanned" and he is desperate to gain free media attention. On Saturday, there was no disputing that Keyes received much attention, but whether he picked up any votes is another question.

Still, Lee Walker, a Keyes supporter who directs a conservative Chicago-based think tank, observed that Keyes could have been forgiven had he ducked out of the parade when things got tough. "He's not running from all this, and I think folks will eventually realize that," Walker said. "You have to give him credit for courage."

Interesting theory, but a little (a lot) too X-Files for me. So he is clearly a madman on crack. Thus we return to previous question. End of thread.

Keyes' latest loony statement :

"I don't think that's a coincidence, I think that's a shot across the bow. I think that's a way of Providence telling us, 'I love you all; I'd like to give you a chance. Wake up! Would you please wake up?' "

*weeps in terror*

"The Lord shared with me that, Alan, the child that you are defending in the womb … in the act of procreation, people are joyfully, ecstatically, with great joy in every fiber of their being, saying "yes" to the coming of that new life. The invite the child in. And then in abortion, they kill it. So what, in point of fact my political career is, is the paradigm and pattern of that which I am trying to stop for the child. I kind of represent, in political terms, the abortion. You're invited in, but they kill you. You're invited in, but they kill you."

the audacity of eep

That is kind of a weird double case of thinking "no" means "yes," isn't it.

barak obama has done crack.
-- La Monte (La Monte), Sunday, 15 August 2004 20:48 (3 years ago) Link

LOL who ever heard of this guy before 2007?

Uh

Mr. Young was making records in the 60s, son.