Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith Interview with Barack Obama

Video time: 7 min 13 sec

President Obama Refuses To Sign Treaty Banning Landmines

One of the most insidious weapons is the land mine, that small, explosive device filled with shrapnel that burns or blinds, maims or kills. Triggered by the touch of a foot or movement or even sound, more often than not it's the innocent who are its victims -- 75 to 80 percent of the time, in fact.

As a weapon, variations of land mines have been around since perhaps as early as the 13th century, but it was not until World War I that the technology was more or less perfected, if that can be said of weapons that mangle and mutilate the human body, and their use became common.

The United States has not actively used land mines since the first Gulf War in 1991, but we still possess some 10-15 million of them, making us the third largest stockpiler in the world, behind China and Russia. Like those two countries, we have refused to sign an international agreement banning the manufacture, stockpiling and use of land mines. Since 1987, 156 other nations have signed it, including every country in NATO. Amongst that 156, more than 40 million mines have been destroyed.

Just days before Obama flew to Oslo to make his Nobel Peace Prize speech, an international summit conference was held in Cartagena, Colombia, to review the progress of the treaty. The United States sent representatives and the State Department says our government has begun a comprehensive review of its current policy.

Last year 5,000 people were killed or wounded by land mines, often placed in the ground years before, during wars long since over. They kill or blow away the limbs of a farmer or child as indiscriminately as they do a soldier. But still we refuse to sign, citing security commitments to our friends and allies, such as South Korea, where a million mines fill the demilitarized zone between it and North Korea.

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I wonder why the Nobel Peace Prize winning Barack Obama refused to sign the treaty? That would have been such a small gesture to toss to the progressive and the anti war groups that supported him. The liberals would have cheered and then Obama could have told Rahm Emanuel to pass the word along to Congress that he’d much prefer the legislators not ratify his decision.

But Obama’s too chicken to risk a gesture like that. What people are suddenly realizing is that with Obama there is a absolute disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality.

Militaristic, corrupt America increasingly resembles a Third World state

Despite a change of presidents, America remains mired in economic, institutional, and cultural purgatory, with Obama’s exalted oratory circling the stratosphere like a taunt.

Angry nationalism shouts down prudence. Disproportionate military spending threatens economic wellbeing. Industry has its hand so deep in the government’s purse that private enterprise is becoming public property. The currency falters, the infrastructure crumbles. And a supine media, once a watchdog of the powerful, happily licks the strongman’s hand.

If the picture looks familiar, that’s because we’ve seen it many times before, from Argentina to Chile to Russia. The U.S. is third worlding.

That statement may smack of hyperbole. It may also understate the phenomenon, for many of the countries that the United States increasingly resembles are not only Third World—they are authoritarian, even rogue.

This is not to say the U.S. will be indistinguishable from a Third World country any time soon. We’re clearly nowhere near Sudanese levels of violence or Bangladeshi depths of poverty. But in terms of institutional structure, financial stability, and even national spirit, the U.S. looks little like the country it was a generation ago and more like nations it has long condemned.

The turning point came on 9/11. Terrorism is now a weary concern: other issues dominate the headlines—stimulus, healthcare, climate change. Yet the attacks were a pretext for a host of foreign and domestic policies that promised to secure America against its hell-bent enemies but have instead dragged the country down, eroding the qualities that distinguished it from the rest of the world.

The Third Worlding of America is less cinematic but more serious than empire-in-decline analogies suggest. After all, Britain no longer wields global supremacy, but it is still firmly in the First World, its political class scrutinized by an independent, assertive media. And even after its post-World War II penury, it did not backpedal on political reforms at home. This is not to excuse the colonizer’s brutality abroad but rather to distinguish Britain’s imperial decline from America’s homeland decay.

The United States has transgressed her traditions in the fog of war before, only to redeem herself later. But we are now engaged in a war without borders against a self-multiplying enemy. There is no army to trounce, so no clear end to the bloodletting or bankrupting.

The patchouli-scented youth, who protest in the streets of D.C. with their towering papier-mâché effigies, may have been correct after all in highlighting the breadth of America’s all-encompassing problems—if not their remedies. Crisis has pushed the U.S. toward Third World policies with alarming swiftness. But the risk is not that Americans will bring out the pitchforks and join the protestors. Rather, citizens seem as disaffected and resigned as their Third World brethren, only occasionally roused from reality TV by their favorite pundit peddling the outrage du jour.

The far Right wallows in paranoia with its dreams of overturning an election by discovering a Kenyan birth certificate. Most on the Left seem too mesmerized by the president to hold him accountable. The media ranges from insipid to hysterical. This country may never see the reasons for—and the parallels to—its disintegration.

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Rap legend Tupac Shakur makes it on the Vatican playlist

The Vatican recently released an official music playlist -- and slipped in among the Mozart and Regina Coeli, the late Tupac Shakur made the cut.

On the Vatican's MySpace page, the playlist is described like so:

This playlist is a perfect mix of classical, world and contemporary music. The genres are very different from each other, but all these artists share the aim to reach the heart of good minded people.

The Tupac song picked is Changes. Listen to it below:

How to create millions of jobs in the U.S. imediately

By repealing NAFTA, CAFTA and renegotiating or scrapping GATT altogether.

Ban the sale of goods in America by American companies that use foreign slave/serf labor. Known as reimportation.

Ban reimportation.

Tax/tariff all imports that were produced by low paid sweatshop type labor. So that said products are forced to compete with products produced by workers who are paid a fair wage.

An American company should never again be allowed to produce a product in a foreign country then reimport it back into the US to sell it in America.

It's a sad day in America when the term "American Made" has become a foreign concept.

Is it too much to ask and expect that Dems actually act like they give a fuck about the little fella?

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In order for this to happen, we would first need politicians that will stand up and regulate the corporations and that's not happening anytime soon because too many of our politicians are bought and paid for by the Wall Street blood. corporations.

Obama and the democrats have abandoned the regular folks

Little wonder the US can’t afford health care for the uninsured and unemployed. It is far more important to finance multi-million dollar bonuses for investment bankers. I mean, what would we do without capitalism?

Of course, it is not really capitalism. It is an oligarchy or a financial plutocracy.

In a failed state, the government’s priorities are totally separate from those of the people. The US can’t afford health care or a bailout for jobless homeowners, but it can afford a pointless war and multi-million dollar bonuses for banksters who wrecked the economy.

Millions of laid-off workers lost their health insurance subsidies on December 1, the day President Obama announced a $30 billion “surge” in Afghanistan.

Why does President Obama think the US can afford a war in Afghanistan when the US economy is falling apart? Massive joblessness. Massive homelessness. Millions of Americans without medical care.

There was a time when Democratic presidents represented the little man, and Republicans represented business. Today both parties represent the moneyed interests. On December 3 at the jobs summit with business leaders, Obama said, “We don’t have enough public dollars to fill the hole of private dollars that was created as a consequence of the crisis.”

In other words, all the public’s money has been spent on the banks and the wars.

Despite Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and the ease with which Obama won the presidential election over McCain/Palin, the Democratic Party has totally collapsed. The Democrats have abandoned every constituency. Democrats have discarded the American people. Democrats, in pursuit of campaign contributions, represent the moneyed interests on Wall Street, the munitions companies, the insurance companies, the agri-businesses that have destroyed independent farmers, despoilers of the environment, unaccountable police, and the builders of detention centers. The exception is Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

The Democrats have become brownshirt Republicans.

The American people, except for the one percent of super-rich, have been abandoned.

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We are witnessing the corporate merger of the Democratic & Republican parties

Just look at all the signs:

The holdover of key cabinet and management positions. No radical rocking of policy, more continuance of same rather than change. Completely unnecessary "bi-partisan" appointments despite electoral wishes/mandates.

The hard-core remnants of both parties will be spun off as specialty shops - "Teabaggers" on one side "Old-fashioned Liberals" on the other. Makes for good theater. The stances of the candidates of the two parties will become increasingly difficult to differentiate. The bare minimum legislatively will be passed by either/both parties and they will blame the other for obstructionism. They will all grant each other plausible deniability for why we end up with the crap legislation we will get for time immemorial.

Notice how well this kabuki is working in the sham we have going on for what passes for "Healthcare Reform". We will get the barest, crappiest reform possible, in fact a great victory for profit healthcare, but it will be framed as a Herculean struggle to get the populace some crumbs - that we will celebrate and be grateful for.

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"Taxpayer March" - Real Outrage or White Angst II?

Today the Right Wingers are having a march on Washington, DC today. The crowd will be filled with all the right wing wackos like the Tea Baggers, Birthers, Town Hall Screamers, Deathers and other racist fucks across the country. I always ask, where were these right wing nuts when the Bush Gang was looting the country? Most people have figured it out, it's not about policy with these clowns instead it is about the man residing in "their" White House. Brian Ross hit the nail on the fucking head with an article on The Huffington Post about this "astro turf" outrage from these people and the motive behind it. Here is what he had to say:

The "Taxpayer March" that is expected to draw between 2,000 and 200,000 people to the streets of Washington, D.C. represents a hodge-podge of interests from Birthers to Bailout Bashers to Health Care Hysterics.

Like those aerial cam shots of schools of sharks swarming off of some eastern seaboard town, today cameras will get to watch what happens when the GOP scrapes up a smorgasbord of screw-loose-sharks and dumps a bucket of political blood from the Wilson nonsense on to the streets of Washington, D.C. to stir them into a feeding frenzy.

If the events leading up to the "march" are any indication, they will be white, largely middle and lower-middle income and angry.

Politico calls into question whether they represent a movement, or they are just the scrapings of the bottom of the Reactionary Right's Tea Party movement scam.

They are John McCain's people. His contribution to American politics. Yes, the white angst and anger that both the dyed-in-the-wool and the closet racists share was always there. McCain, though, in the final days of his campaign, wheeled in the microphones and the cameras in for a close-up on a small part of society that is seldom heard.

They gave that white angst about a black man running the country shape and form, molding a Joe the Plumber out of that racist, xenophobic clay, and dropped Sarah Palin, Miss White Angst of 2008, into his team to capitalize on it.

These are indeed Joe Wilson's people - Ignorant 99% white Americanists who somehow feel that they are losing "their country." They are easily manipulated, as they will believe just about anything that is dropped in front of their face that affirms their world view.

They have bought into the Birther business. They turned out for tea parties. They are the tiny, louder, more radical fraction of the 57% of white voters who voted for McCain.

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What I see is pathetic: A rag-tag band of political puppets performing for unseen neo-con masters who pull their angst-strings, manipulated political Punch-and-Judys, dancing for the cameras with their placards and their angry white faces, screaming out childish cries like "Liar liar pants on fire" at yesterday's "rally."

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This is not about a black man in office for the white men behind the scenes. It is about throwing human debris in the path of change. They are the pawns of a corporate America which has profited from complacency and ignorance, which apparently fears the return of regulation and accountability that they have spent, since the days of Ronald Reagan, billions to employ the right people in government to aid in its dismantling.

I couldn't have said the shit better myself.

United States of Morons

Not much has changed since 1922 when H. L. Mencken described the United States as "the commonwealth of morons." The majority of Americans are under-educated, pathetically misinformed, generally lacking critical thinking skills, and apparently incapable of fact-based analysis. Indeed, American ignorance about current events, their own culture, history and government, as well as international current events, cultures and history, is well documented. For further evidence, simply talk to your neighbors, read comments on political blogs or listen to call-ins on talk radio. You will be astounded and even frightened.

In addition to being uninformed and incapable of connecting the dots, many Americans actually take pride in their ignorance and lack of civility. Currently we are subjected to the unmitigated ignorance of "birther" morons and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin making the ludicrous assertion that health care proposals include a "death panel." The media whores on television and braying jackasses on talk radio actually report these inanities as newsworthy of serious discussion.

Meanwhile, organized right wing efforts disrupt attempts at informed health care discussion by Democratic members of Congress with their home constituencies. These disruptions are supported by many Republicans and receive financial support from the health care industry. The spittle-screaming thugs at recent town meetings are reminiscent of the goose stepping brown shirts in the latter days of the WeimarRepublic.

Anti-intellectualism, Bible thumping ignorance and thuggish behaviors have become patriotic hallmarks. Anyone who is reasonably educated, reasonably informed and behaves in a reasonably civilized manner is branded an elitist.

In the 1980s voters agreed with Reagan that "government is the problem" and entrusted their jobs, homes, health, retirement and future of their children to corporate America. The overturning of the Glass-Steagall Act and other government regulations transformed the corporate exploitation of America in the 1980s and 1990s into the savage rape of the 21st century.

American morons are suckers for any scam as long as they are manipulated with proper flag waving, Jesus praising and fear mongering. Other effective strategies include declaring any government assistance program "socialism" and calling for more tax cuts despite national insolvency and the obscene tax breaks already scammed by corporations and the wealthy. Perhaps we should cease funding Social Security, Medicare, public school education and other such "socialist" abominations.

Now Americans stare like deer in headlights as the United States plunges into cultural and economic free fall. Homes are foreclosed and millions are unemployed while manufacturing and high tech job are lost permanently overseas. Health care bankruptcy, depleted retirement savings and a bleak future for the next generation is the new American reality.

Government was never the problem. The problem was and is American morons and the corrupt corporate stooges they elect and re-elect to public office. The commonwealth of morons deserves its fate.

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Clinton and Obama -- The Worst and Best Thing to Happen to the Democratic Party in Years

Bill Clinton was the worst thing to happen to the Democratic Party and to progressives since that racist warmonger Woodrow Wilson won the presidency and dragged the U.S. into the utterly pointless and incredibly bloody First World War.

Clinton, by posing as a progressive, confused and undermined, and ultimately betrayed the liberal/progressive wing of the party, shattering what was left of the New Deal coalition and leaving the American left adrift and riven by the conflict between those who thought the Democratic Party was the only viable vehicle for progressive reform and those who thought it was hopelessly in the grip of corporate interests.

Barack Obama offers the hope of bringing that era of debilitating confusion to an end.

Not because he is the Great Black Hope of progressives, but because he has taken the concept of selling out to corporate interests and compromising with Republicans to such remarkable heights that progressives hopefully can no longer be confused about the irretrievably corrupted nature of the Democratic Party.

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Last fall, I and many progressives urged voters to elect Obama, not because we thought he was a progressive, but because we hoped that his background -- community organizer, raised by a single mother, experience living in a third world country (Indonesia), multi-racial -- would lead him to make at least some right decisions. We, or certainly I, hoped too that the energized young and working class electorate that came out for him in the fall would continue to press him aggressively to do the right thing on war, environment, civil liberties, and the economy.

I was wrong on the first count: Obama has been a corporatist through and through on all the major issues that matter. And I was wrong on the second. Most of the left in the U.S., from the labor movement to the environmentalist movement to the anti-war movement, has to date remained glumly quiescent as Obama has sold them out on each of their key issues.

But here is the silver lining: The sellout this time is so much more blatant, and so much more serious, than it was with Clinton, and for all the talk about Obama's ability to string words together, he is so much less of a charismatic figure than the gregarious Bill Clinton, that he is unlikely to hang on to the ardent support that propelled him to his victory last November. The disappointment and sense of betrayal among progressives this time is palpable, especially because, while Clinton, by 1994, had the excuse that he was working with a Republican, or partially Republican Congress, Obama has solid control of both houses, but refuses to use it. If, as I expect, the recession continues to deepen, with more and more people losing jobs and homes, if, as I predict, health care continues to be unaffordable and inaccessible, if, as I know will happen, evidence of deadly climate change continues to pile up, and if, as I am equally certain, Iraq explodes and the war in Afghanistan continue to worsen, the left is going to see Obama and the Democrats in Congress as the failures and corrupt frauds they are, and will abandon them.

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OH police forward Air Force One N166ER image from work

Two Ohio Police dispatchers have been caught forwarding from their places of work racist emails depicting Air Force One with an aircraft registration number that spelled out the word nigger as N166ER. This was reported on Daily Kos back in March and it appears the emailed smears have only grown and are spreading among those who are supposed to serve and protect with fairness and impartiality.

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Michael Jackson's Plastic Surgeon Tells All

Allure has done an exhaustive retrospective on Michael Jackson's face with the help of Steven M. Hoefflin, his plastic surgeon through the 1980s and '90s, and his dermatologist/suspected sperm donor, Arnold Klein.

Here are a few of the reference points from his metamorphosis:

1979: Jackson falls and breaks his nose. This gives him an opportunity to change the feature he has come to detest, thanks to merciless teasing. He will later tell Oprah Winfrey, "I'd hide my face in the dark." The results of Steven Hoefflin's surgery are visible on the Off the Wall album cover.

1990: Jackson's skin tone here is much lighter, the result of skin-bleaching creams, pale makeup, or both. There is no sign of the blotchy pigment caused by vitiligo, but as a friend points out, "You'll notice that Michael often wore long sleeves and military high collars to hide his neck." What he can't cover with clothing and wigs, he covers with makeup. The tip of his nose seems narrower, more pointed, and upturned.

2009: Jackson's gaunt look reflects a loss of fat in the face. Klein has said he was using injections of Restylane, a temporary tissue filler, to build up some areas and even out others. Previous steroid injections in the nose have likely made the skin there so thin that the tissue-filling gel injected by Klein seems visible underneath. One expert says the indentation on the side of his nose may be from a recent skin-cancer biopsy.

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Thousands Line Up for Promise of Free Health Care

They came for new teeth mostly, but also for blood pressure checks, mammograms, immunizations and acupuncture for pain. Neighboring South Los Angeles is a place where health care is scarce, and so when it was offered nearby, word got around.

For the second day in a row, thousands of people lined up on Wednesday — starting after midnight and snaking into the early hours — for free dental, medical and vision services, courtesy of a nonprofit group that more typically provides mobile health care for the rural poor.

Like a giant MASH unit, the floor of the Forum, the arena where Madonna once played four sold-out shows, housed aisle upon aisle of dental chairs, where drilling, cleaning and extracting took place in the open. A few cushions were duct-taped to a folding table in a coat closet, an examining room where Dr. Eugene Taw, a volunteer, saw patients.

When Remote Area Medical, the Tennessee-based organization running the event, decided to try its hand at large urban medical services, its principals thought Los Angeles would be a good place to start. But they were far from prepared for the outpouring of need. Set up for eight days of care, the group was already overwhelmed on the first day after allowing 1,500 people through the door, nearly 500 of whom had still not been served by day’s end and had to return in the wee hours Wednesday morning.

The enormous response to the free care was a stark corollary to the hundreds of Americans who have filled town-hall-style meetings throughout the country, angrily expressing their fear of the Obama administration’s proposed changes to the nation’s health care system. The bleachers of patients also reflected the state’s high unemployment, recent reduction in its Medicaid services for the poor and high deductibles and co-payments that have come to define many employer-sponsored insurance programs.

Many of those here said they lacked insurance, but many others said they had coverage but not enough to meet all their needs — or that they could afford. Some said they were well aware of the larger national health care debate, and were eager for changes.

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Why wasn't the network news cameras at this free health care event instead of giving so much attention to those screaming right wing clowns at the the town hall event. -Fraze2K

The Democratic Party is Fucking Worthless!

I've had it. I'm done. I have reached my limit on capitulation, corporatism, cronyism, and stupid.

The Democratic Party is facing a do-or-die moment. It has a supermajority control of the legislature, and, oh yeah, the White House. There is nothing the Democratic Party should not be able to accomplish.

If it wants to.

National, socialized -- yeah, socialized -- health care meets every supposed ideal of the Democratic Party:

Affordable, Quality Health Care Coverage for All Americans?

We believe that quality and affordable health care is a basic right - THE 2008 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL PLATFORM

But instead of delivering its promises, the Democratic party is now being held hostage by the insurance industry, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the mouth-breathing, half-literate, flat-earther wingnut screamers who want government to stay out of their Medicare.

And I have fucking had it.

You told us you needed control of Congress in order to stop the Republicans. Fine. We gave it to you.

But that wasn't enough, because then you said you needed 60 seats in the Senate. Fine. We gave that to you too.

Never mind that George Bush was able to completely remake America with a fucking minority in Congress, and then a tiny little sliver of a majority. You need huge numbers to be able to stand up to those oh-so-scary Republicans? Fine. You got 'em.

But now? Now you have to take your marching orders from the idiots who literally think "end of life care" means "kill granny"? Are you fucking kidding me? Do you not realize that this ridiculous capitulation gives them all the power and further motivation they need to keep calling you with death threats, vandalizing your offices, and screaming in your faces?

Stop pretending the opposition has valid points to make. It doesn't. Stop pretending that their lies and distortion have any place in this discussion. They don't. Stop acting as if continued sacrifices to the screamers will end with a bipartisan bill. It won't.

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'Racist' Baby Doll Pulled From Stores

Wholesale giant Costco is pulling thousands of dolls from its store shelves after parents complained that the toys are racist.

The "Cuddle with Me" doll features an African-American baby that comes packaged with a plush monkey. A cap on the baby doll has the words "lil' monkey" on it.

Many parents expressed disbelief that the doll was being sold.

"Somewhere along the production line of this doll, whether it was in the store, at the manufacturer or somewhere, someone should have noticed that this was potentially going to be a problem," said Gendolyn Bookman, a concerned mother.

A Costco spokesman said he regrets that the product offended anyone.

The store said it's pulling the dolls from all of its stores.

Brass Key, the company that makes the toy, has also apologized, saying the offensive meaning was not within their company's "realm of thinking."

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Angry White Man Snatches and Rips Black Woman's Poster at Town Hall

Among the many eyebrow-raising clips aired on major news networks yesterday from Senator Claire McCaskill's health care town hall was one of a women being half-escorted, half-dragged from the building.

What the clip failed to catch was that the woman was provoked. She and a few other women had brought posters to the town hall, but they rolled them up after being booed and berated by the crowd. When the woman unrolled one to show to a journalist, an angry man in the crowd rushed over and tore it up. A poster of what, you ask? Rosa Parks. When the woman moved to take her poster back, the police stepped in and escorted both parties from the building. But only the woman made national news.

Watch Video Below:

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Nader Was Right: Liberals Are Going Nowhere With Obama

By Chris Hedges

The American empire has not altered under Barack Obama. It kills as brutally and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under George W. Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury to enrich the corporate elite as rapaciously. It will not give us universal health care, abolish the Bush secrecy laws, end torture or "extraordinary rendition," restore habeas corpus or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of citizens. It will not push through significant environmental reform, regulate Wall Street or end our relationship with private contractors that provide mercenary armies to fight our imperial wars and produce useless and costly weapons systems.

The sad reality is that all the well-meaning groups and individuals who challenge our permanent war economy and the doctrine of pre-emptive war, who care about sustainable energy, fight for civil liberties and want corporate malfeasance to end, were once again suckered by the Democratic Party. They were had. It is not a new story. The Democrats have been doing this to us since Bill Clinton. It is the same old merry-go-round, only with Obama branding. And if we have not learned by now that the system is broken, that as citizens we do not matter to our political elite, that we live in a corporate state where our welfare and our interests are irrelevant, we are in serious trouble. Our last hope is to step outside of the two-party system and build movements that defy the Democrats and the Republicans. If we fail to do this, we will continue to undergo a corporate coup d’etat in slow motion that will end in feudalism.

Read the entire article Here

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I still support Barack Obama, I would like to see him succeed but he seems to be making decisions just to make the moderates and right wing nutcases feel at ease. People on the left have been waiting 8 long years for a liberal champion to come along. We thought we had a champion in Mr. Obama but he seem to have traded his core values for political reason similar to what Bill Clinton did when he was president, and look how the right wing did him. Fraze2K

Addicted to War: America's Brutal Pipe Dream in Afghanistan

Looks like the "Good War" in Afghanistan is morphing even more directly into the "Drug War" that the U.S. government has been waging all over the world -- and especially against its own people -- for almost 40 years now, with all the attendant aggrandizement of authoritarian powers and degradation of civil liberties and human rights.

As The Times reports, and Pentagon brass confirmed, the "continuity government" of the Obama Administration has drawn up yet another "hit list" of people to be arbitrarily assassinated: 50 "drug lords" allegedly associated with the Taliban. No doubt the many drug lords associated with the American-installed Afghan government -- and those cooperating directly with the Western occupation -- are exempt from this dirty laundry list.

Of course, the runaway cultivation of opium in Afghanistan -- which is now flooding not only the West but also vast swathes of Central Asia with cheap heroin -- is a direct result of the American invasion in 2001: an operation ostensibly designed to capture Osama bin Laden, who somehow curiously slipped away from the Americans' curiously porous encirclement, never to be seen again (except of course for a few curiously timed transmission that seemed, curiously enough, to be geared to the domestic political needs of America's militarist factions). Of course, before the invasion, the Taliban had largely -- if ruthlesssly -- eliminated the cultivation of opium in the areas under its control. But the American military -- and its gung-ho CIA operatives ("We're killing people!" as one CIAer exulted to the Boston Globe) -- instead empowered the Northern Alliance: the Russian-backed conglomerate of warlords and druglords who were freely growing opium in their territories.

Now the Afghan insurgents -- themselves a loose conglomeration of factions given the conveniently misleading monolithic moniker of "the Taliban" -- have taken up the opium trade to help finance their operations as well. Meanwhile, poor Afghans are dependent on the opium trade, which fetches prices far above anything else they can grow. After all, their society and economy have been systematically destroyed by 30 years of savage war, kicked off not by the Soviet intervention in 1980 but by a terrorist campaign by religious extremists armed, funded and encouraged by the good Christian administration of Jimmy Carter, whose "national security" honcho, Zbigniew Brzezinski, wanted to draw the Soviets into "their own Vietnam" in support of their client regime in Kabul. Now, as Jason Ditz – an indispensible chronicler of the Terror War in Central Asia – points out, the Americans are adopting the Soviets' own failed strategy in Afghanistan: death-dealing military "surges" combined with wads of cash thrown blindly into the economic chaos caused by the military action.

But you can't "build" a state while you are simultaneously waging war inside it. And you certainly can't build it by killing cucumber farmers, as U.S. forces did the other day. Expect even more of this as the Pentagon gears up its "Drug War" weaponry to eliminate the rivals of its favored criminals – sorry, I mean to wipe out the scourge of Afghanistan's Taliban drug lord devils.

Read the entire article Here

American's are some stupid fucks. If it wasn't for the goddamn wars, the fucking military bases all around the fucking globe, we could afford health care for all citizens, we could afford to send young people to college for free if they met set requirements. Life would be a lot better in this country if we were not trying to maintain a fucking empire and the people here were not so fucking selfish - Fraze2K

Man brings gun to Obama's NH townhall !

Armed and Dangerous?
08.11.09 -- 11:40AM
By David Kurtz

MSNBC just aired footage of the crowd gathering at the Obama town hall meeting on health care that's supposed to start later today in New Hampshire and pointed out one man in a group holding protest signs with a gun in a holster on his hip. Apparently not a law officer, but a civilian.



Whatever the concealed carry laws in New Hampshire, you have to figure guns not allowed at a presidential event. Right?

Late Update: Also important to note, the gun-toting protestor was holding a sign referencing the Jefferson quote: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants." It's a well known quote from one of the archetypal founding fathers. And in itself it's part of the American heritage, something that echoes with Jefferson's always ambivalent and frequently dilettantish attitude toward political violence. But in the context of these townhall excesses and while carrying a firearm at a presidential event, it's quite a menacing statement, in as much as it is about the need to kill tyrants. -- jmm

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A lot of money is spent on propaganda to make us fear Al Qaeda and to justify our immoral wars around the world. But the real motherfuckers we should fear is these psycho, angry ass right wingers running around the country. Seriously I'm more worried of being harmed by some racist right winger than I am worried about some motherfucker in Afghanistan. - Fraze2K

Are Obama's Supporters On The Left Feeling Betrayed

I understand President Obama has a tough job and he has to make some tough decisions, I understand he will not be able to make everyone happy but there seem to be a pattern forming here. It seem the people that are constantly being taken for granted and are constantly getting the short end of the stick are his supporters from the left who was down with him from day one. A blogger from Daily Kos sums up these growing sentiments as follows:

You warned us from the beginning not to expect too much. You told us that you were a centrist.

OK, we said. You are intelligent, you understand constitutional law, you are inspiring, you speak of real change, you are saying all the right things about special interests. You are a natural leader. We want you to be the leader of all of us.

You were everything that George Bush was not.

You gave us hope.

We understood.

But today, Mr. President, we are devastated.

We were forgiving when you compromised on FISA.

We understood, you had to get elected, you didn't want to spook those who were still scared, and you didn't want to make this an issue.

We were puzzled when you appointed the guys from Goldman Sachs to run the economy.

OK, we knew these guys are smart and they have experience. They do understand how the system works. We gave you the benefit of the doubt on this.

We were patient when you asked us to be patient on Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

Well, we still don't really understand why you can't end this now, but at least we know you're committed to fixing this. Most of us said we'd be patient.

We cheered when you vowed to shut down Guantánamo within twelve months.

Maybe a little longer than we'd hoped, but at least you've given a firm commitment.

We were concerned about what we were getting into with the increased mobilization in Afghanistan.

But you ran on this during your campaign, and nobody really knows the best answer for this. We again gave you the benefit of the doubt.

And we were thrilled at the real prospect of health system reform.

Maybe not what many had hoped for, but we were going to get real reform, real structural changes in the system, a real Public Option, a new paradigm.

But then, Mr. President, but then, things started going not so well.

First there were the second thoughts about indefinite detentions without charge or trial. And whether Guántanmo would really shut down within twelve months.

OK, the fools and cowards in Congress threw you a lead anchor on this. We know you'll do the best you can.

We heard you loudly and clearly about wanting to move forward, and not look backward.

But we remain increasingly alarmed, as more and more comes out about torture, rendition, the shredding of our Constitution, and now the alleged abuses of Blackwater, that we will never restore the precedent that the rule of law must come first, and can never be abrogated with impunity by an Executive branch that has claimed unaccountable power, beyond the rule of law.

And transparency, Mr. President. You promised transparency.

And you are more and more defending the idea that we can't afford transparency. That it's a luxury, not something we should expect of our government.

Then there was the DOJ brief not merely defending DOMA, but using language that would have made Sean Hannity proud.

What was that all about?? Was this a Bush mole run amok at DOJ?

We expected the pushback from the right on health system reform, albeit nobody quite expected the ferocity of the hatred and venom.

But at least we can understand where it's coming from. So, we'll be out there at all the town halls, we will mobilize, we will defend, we'll use calm logic where the other side uses slander and lies, we'll be there defending you and defending health system reform.

But despite all this, the talk of "bipartisanship" has continued, relentlessly, when it is clear as the New Mexico sky on a cold December morning that this would buy you nothing -- that maybe with one or two exceptions, the Republicans will oppose you every step of the way on this, and will extract concessions that would gut the bill.

And with this, Mr. President, we started to see the writing on the wall.

And at the same time, Mr. President, even the Senators like Bingaman and Durban who have supported real reform, who have spoken of the importance of a robust public option, have started to back down, using terms like "on the ropes", that maybe "co-ops are sorta the same thing".

We really, truly don't like this, Mr. President. This is not going well. The writing on the wall looks like it's written in blood now.

Amidst all of this, Mr. President, your Chief of Staff, Mr. Emanuel, decided that he'd had enough of interference from the people who were questioning how all this was going. He decided that it was the moment to exercise his superb powers of diplomacy to look in our direction -- in the direction of progressives, of the people who have given you our all, who sent in millions of donations during the campaign, who have worked for you tirelessly, endlessly, with faith that ultimately, finally, we would have a president who would lead us back from the abyss that we faced after eight long years wandering in the wilderness of ignorance, lies, greed and destruction, with faith that even when you felt you had to compromise, your heart was in the right place and you would do the best you possibly could -- your Chief of Staff looked in our direction, looked right into our eyes and smiled and extended his middle finger.

To this, Mr. President, I cannot begin to even offer a response.

And now, Mr. President, now we are dumbstruck. Over this weekend, we have learned of the deal with Big PhRMA. A deal that George Bush would be proud of -- the deal to buy their support, their advertising dollars, in return for their pledge to cut their profits by a defined margin, but not more than that, and that it would be promised that WE WOULD NEVER SEEK TO NEGOTIATE FOR THE BEST DRUG PRICES. I don't have to outline the details of why this leaves us speechless. Robert Reich spelled that out with great clarity today.

The Barack Obama we voted for in November of 2008, the guy who spoke eloquently of not allowing special interests to run the government, would understand. He wouldn't require Robert Reich or any of us to explain it to him.

This is not reform, Mr. President. It does not even remotely resemble "change". This is business as usual. It sends the message that true change is impossible, that there is no hope at all, that all we can do is capitulate.


With all due respect, Mr. President, those who love you are all sitting here tonight with tears in our eyes, saying: "WTF, Mr. President. WTF are you doing?"

Terrell Owens bashes NFL for treatment of Michael Vick

T.O. speaks! And surprisingly it was highly relevant. Terrell Owens recently spoke on Michael Vick’s recent conditional reinstatement and suspension. Owens suggested Vick has paid his debt to society and he shouldn’t have been punished further by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

Speaking at Buffalo Bills training camp the wide receiver recently issued the following on Vick:

"I think the way the commissioner is handling it is unfair to Michael Vick," Owens said. "I think he's done the time for what he's done. I don't think it's really fair for him to be suspended four more games. It's almost like kicking a dead horse in the ground.”

Owens continued: "A lot of the guys around the league need to speak up. I think the players' union needs to step in because the guy's already suffered so much, and to add a four-game suspension onto a two-year prison sentence, I mean, that's ridiculous."

Also, after his press conference Owens suggested Goodell should try spending 23 months in prison and see how it feels.

Halleluiah! There is hope!

When Owens spoke out I was pleasantly surprised that an African American athlete used their platform for something other than self-promotion and to appease to white corporate America. Finally, someone said something that was relevant and timely and yet it the media didn’t give it much attention.

Gee, I wonder why.

Source

Frank Schaeffer Rips Current Right Wing Movement

Frank Schaeffe author of Crazy for God was recently on the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. Mr Schaeffer had a lot to say about the current right wing movement in this country. He explained what their true intentions are and he nailed them.



This Video needs to go Viral...

Right Wing Mob Disrupts Town Hall In Tampa

TBO.com

Published: August 6, 2009

U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, the focus of tumultuous reaction at a town hall meeting last night, said in an interview this morning that the event has strengthened her conviction to support health care reform.

"It has strengthened my resolve to stand up for families and seniors," Castor said. "Floridians are bearing a great burden in health care costs, more than almost any other state."

"A healthy debate is good, but the rude behavior is not helpful," she said. "I think it backfires. The response we're receiving today is pretty overwhelming to speak up for families and bring down the cost of health care."
:::
Personally I think those white right wingers are more Frightened of a black man being in the White House as most of them no doubt believe he is Muslim, a communist, and a terrorist. I think this is more about Obama being President than Healthcare.

Healthcare is just a front for them, a cover, for being racist and sore losers.

I beleive in free speech but those people aren't "speaking their mind," they're DISRUPTING. They're preventing anyone else from speaking. They're not saying anything; they're simply making noise. This is NOT a "freedom of speech" issue. If you were to ask even one of them to elaborate on their "views," you would discover they can't. They don't have any "views." They are knee-jerk reactionary assholes who can't think for themselves. They are sheep who are easily swayed by outlandish lies and propaganda. - Fraze2K

Why White Right Wingers Are Attacking The First Black President

President Barack Obama recently met over beer with Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley, hoping to diffuse tense debates over racial profiling and racial bias triggered by the arrest of the Harvard University scholar by the Cambridge, Mass., police department officer.

Though that racially charged conversation may be over, vicious attacks on the first Black President of the United States are not. Analysts say don't expect the attacks to end anytime soon.

The most outrageous charges may have come from radio and TV talk show host Glenn Beck. “I'm not saying that he doesn't like people I'm saying he has a problem. He has a, this guy is, I believe a racist,” he said during a morning show on Fox News Network July 28. The president has a deep seated hatred for White people or their White culture, said Mr. Beck.

“Beck is paid to do just what he did and his remarks represent a psychological game that's being played by people who have no program, nothing positive, and no alternative and it's absurd for them to even start throwing around that Barack Obama is racist when his mother's White and most of his cabinet is White,” said Dr. David Horne, executive director of the California African American Political and Economic Institute, a political think tank in Southern California.

“The criticisms are nonsense and really are the desperate acts of people who don't like being displaced in terms of their image and sense of who they are,” Dr. Horne said.

Since he announced his candidacy, Mr. Obama and his family have been maligned, slandered, and targeted by right wing and so-called independent media hosts. Among those who have focused on largely discredited issues are right wing radio host Rush Limbaugh and self-described “independent” CNN host Lou Dobbs.

Verbal assaults against Mr. Obama have ranged from outright racist insults to doubts about the president's citizenship, his religion, his patriotism and his racial loyalties. Whites known collectively as “the Birthers” have refused to accept proof Mr. Obama, the son of a White American mother and a Kenyan father, was born in Hawaii. They haven't been satisfied by the birth certificate circulating on line, or produced by both the Obama campaign and the state of Hawaii. They aren't alone.

Read the entire article here

Black Intellectuals criticize White House 'Beer Summit'

Despite the overwhelming election of President Barack Obama, the inherent prejudice against people of color remains alive and well in American society, said a panel of Black intellectuals, critics and activists today.

"This whole notion of a post-racial society is ridiculous, we need to stop saying it, we need to stop even talking about it," said BET's Jeff Johnson. "Let's be honest about the fact that many of us from all races are racist…. We've lied about progress."

The statement was part of an assessment of the "State of Black America," an annual conversation held at the yearly convention of the National Urban League, which produces a report of the same name.

Johnson's statement emerged out of a conversation that revolved around – you guessed it – beer.

:::

Unlike some in the media who saw the meeting as a significant step forward in resolving the issue of racial profiling and the underlying prejudice, many on the panel thought it was a mostly empty gesture.

"It is a significant brouhaha [but] I'm not sure it gets to what 'ales' (ails) us," commented George Washington University professor Michael Eric Dyson. "The real problem is still on the streets where disproportionate numbers of Black and Latino men and women are subjected to arbitrary forms of police power."

Johnson agreed in even starker terms.

"I'm offended by the discussion at the White House," the political commentator said, "because if they were serious about solving this problem, Gates would be there, Crowley would be there, but so would Tyrone and Shaniqua and other young people who have dealt with this kind of psychosis from the police; they are not represented in this conversation."

Where Gates was coming from is a history of Black men like Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo, who have been shot and killed by police, and longtime criminal policies that disproportionately target Black and Hispanics, several on the panel said. And those structural inequities would not be addressed by looking only at individual cases like Gates'.

"We're looking at a macro problem through micro lens," said Schott Foundation President John Jackson, who said the larger problem was the law enforcement environment created by former President Ronald Reagan.

"In 1980, the Reagan administration institutionalized new criminal justice policies [and] you began to see a 70 degree spike in the number of incarcerations for Black males," Jackson said. "So we can't have this conversation without talking about the systemic policies and practices. And you're not going to solve that macro challenge by just tipping back a few beers at the White House."

Johnson said solving that overarching problem of deep-seated racism is something that has to happen on a personal level, he's more concerned about acts of discrimination within government agencies.

"I don't care if you're racist or not…I am concerned with the way you do your job," he said.

Read the entire article Here

Chirac: Bush Said Invasion Of Iraq Was Biblical Mission To Stop Armageddon

The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their ‘common faith’ (Christianity) and told him: ‘Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.’

This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its ‘coalition of the willing’ to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and ‘wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.’

Source

GOP Returns To The " White Voters Strategy"

I guess leaders of the Republican party has made a decision. They are no longer going to go after the minority vote, it's full steam ahead as the party of white voters. At one point they use to at least pretend to be concerned about attracting the non white vote but not any more. Thomas Edsall has a good article on this new reality:

With Republican party leaders so constrained by ideological blinders that none of their positions is likely to produce gains among non-white minorities, especially Hispanics, the GOP is finding it has no real alternative but to revert to a "white voter" strategy.

To some extent, it's working. The party's opposition to President Obama's agenda -- particularly his cap-and-trade energy proposal and health care reform plan -- is resonating strongly with disaffected white Democratic voters. Republican grievances about Obama, combined with race-baiting commentary from the far-right ideologues who have become some of the most dominant voices of the modern GOP, have led to a precipitous drop in the president's approval ratings among whites.

It's all very reminiscent of the party's notorious Southern Strategy, which carried the GOP for decades. But that strategy backfired spectacularly in the 2006 and 2008 elections, and there's no reason to think it will work any better in 2010 -- especially given the ever-growing importance of the minority electorate.

In this respect, even if the GOP picks up a few House and Senate seats in 2010, many of the party's top analysts believe that it will remain mired in minority status through 2012 and beyond. Other analysts say it may even decline to the level of a minor regional party, with its only real strength in the South.

:::

Republican pollster Bill McInturff notes that his party must make substantial gains among Hispanic voters or be relegated to minority status. But that just isn't likely.

With a solid majority of Republican senators opposed to the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina nominee to the Supreme Court, and a solid phalanx of adamant Republican opposition to any immigration reform which provides a path to permanent residency of illegal immigrants, the GOP has no real chance of increasing its share of the Hispanic vote.

In the short term, McInturff and others point out that virtually all the Democrats' vulnerabilities are among Anglo voters, especially white men. These trends are likely to produce some victories for Republican candidates in 2010, but the party continues to have long-term problems in building a sustainable election-day majority.

President Obama faces 30 death threats a day

Since Mr Obama took office, the rate of threats against the president has increased 400 per cent from the 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, author of In the President's Secret Service.

Some threats to Mr Obama, whose Secret Service codename is Renegade, have been publicised, including an alleged plot by white supremacists in Tennessee late last year to rob a gun store, shoot 88 black people, decapitate another 14 and then assassinate the first black president in American history.

Most however, are kept under wraps because the Secret Service fears that revealing details of them would only increase the number of copycat attempts. Although most threats are not credible, each one has to be investigated meticulously.

According to the book, intelligence officials received information that people associated with the Somalia-based Islamist group al-Shabaab might try to disrupt Mr Obama's inauguration in January, when the Secret Service co-ordinated at least 40,000 agents and officers from some 94 police, military and security agencies.

More than a dozen counter-sniper teams were stationed along the inauguration parade route and the criminal records of employees and hotel guests in nearby buildings were scrutinised.

Despite all this, there were glaring loopholes in the security. Kessler describes how more than 100 VIPs and major campaign donors were screened by metal detectors but then walked along a public pavement before boarding "secure" buses and were not checked again.

It could have been relatively simple for an assassin to have mingled with them in order to get close enough to shoot the new president.

After Mr Obama was elected president, his two children Malia, 11, codenamed Radiance, and Sasha, eight, codenamed Rosebud, began receiving Secret Service protection. Mr Obama's wife Michelle is codenamed Renaissance. The Secret Service also started to protect Vice-President Joe Biden's children, grandchildren, and mother.

Instead of bringing in more agents - instantly identifiable because of their bulky suits, worn over bullet-proof jackets, and earpieces - the Secret Service directed agents to work longer hours to cover the extra load and to miss firearms training, physical fitness sessions and tests.

"We have half the number of agents we need, but requests for more agents have fallen on deaf ears at headquarters," a Secret Service agent told Kessler. "Headquarters' mentality has always been, 'You can complete the mission with what you have. You're a U.S.S.S. agent'."

From Telegraph.co.uk:

The Corporate Media Is Behind The Racist Birther Movement

From Buzzflash.com:

Okay, just answer this question below: Is the Corporate Mainstream Media Responsible for Reviving the "Birther Movement"?

While GE is reining in progressive programming on MSNBC, the corporate media, which is all of mainstream television, is ginning up -- in fact, reviving -- the lunatic "Birther Movement."

Now that the nutcases have obtained multiple and different forged Kenyan Obama birth certificates, the so-called "establishment" (big-money owned) press is going to keep kicking this fringe psychotic racist political campaign down the road. It's like the "Swift Boat" campaign on steroids, run by Jim Jones.

Of course, try to get a single payer healthcare spokesperson on television and you're met with a corporate media cry of how out of the mainstream such advocates are, that Medicare for everyone is a "fringe" movement.

We've written over ten years about how when the corporations control the media, they control our government by persuading people that misinformation favorable to the plutocracy is true. They've started to succeed even with the lunacy of the "Birther Movement."

Would the "Birther Movement" been confined to people in white sheets with billboards on their backs, walking aimlessly down sidewalks and handing out mentally unstable pamphlets if it weren't for the corporate media?

Where's Dave Chappelle When You Need Him?

By Stephen Marche:

With race relations back on the front burner and all eyes on a bunch of guys drinking beer in the White House, Stephen Marche wonders where all the angry black entertainers have gone. Here, an exclusive preview of his October column, A Thousand Words About Culture.

Nobody wants to hear it, but this fact is too important to ignore: So far, the first African-American presidency has been one of the worst ever for African-Americans. The economic crisis has predominantly hit non-white working class men; the collapse of the auto industry is threatening to destroy the basis of the Midwestern black middle class. Key matters for African-Americans languish — the overincarceration of young black men that makes a mockery of American justice being the number one example. Government aid? That goes to bankers in Connecticut. If the President were white, there would be riots. In this contradictory atmosphere — pregnant with the tension between symbolism and reality — the Henry Louis Gates Jr. scandal has landed with a force out of all proportion to what may or may not have happened in Cambridge. While the bizarre story of his arrest in his own home may seem like an anomaly, it has emerged from a deep national confusion evident everywhere in popular culture. Call it the Obama Discrepancy: Race is much less prominent as a subject while its effects are no less toxic.

Network television has somehow become even whiter since the inauguration, a nearly impossible feat. The Game is gone. Everybody Hates Chris is gone. In May, the Congressional Black Caucus sent a letter to the networks wondering why the Sunday morning talk shows weren't asking any of them to the grand festival of pompous palaver. Fred Armisen does blackface nearly every weekend on SNL, and the main objection to his performance is that he's not objectionable enough; he has no bite, no edge. To make matters worse, the first post-election crop of new shows starring African-American characters coming out this fall is dreadful. Cleveland, the black spun-off character from Seth MacFarlane's The Family Guy, loses every molecule of his funniness the moment he leaves Quahog. "We have a black president," Cleveland's new friends say. "It's about time we had a black friend. We can talk to him about the President." Fox's second offering in the we-have-a-new-president line is Brothers. It's just another dumb sitcom, but I guess I hoped the political transformation of the recent past would leave some mark. Nuthin'. Obama offers America a new model of black male power: become a lawyer, be nice to everybody, marry a good woman, be loyal to her, fight hard, and eventually you will be in charge of whether to blow up the world with the push of a button. The model of black power in Brothers? Play football well and your brother might open a restaurant. The comedy in Brothers is terminally dated; the jokes deflate before your eyes like a soufflé when the oven's been turned off unexpectedly.

One could argue that since the creators behind both Brothers and Cleveland are white, the shows never really had a chance: white people have never known how to talk about race, hiding their shame and fear behind silence or awkwardness. But African-Americans are beginning to retreat from race as well. Chris Rock — half-comic genius, half-prophet — has been keeping busy, and quiet, with a documentary about the culture of African-American hair. Dave Chappelle remains in hiding. Tyler Perry's oeuvre is, essentially, one long-running, feel good "yo momma" joke. The kind of monumentally new, staggeringly fresh hip-hop album the Obama Event seems to cry out for has not emerged. The Wire proved that virtually all the best actors in America are African-American. Why is Idris Elba not doing Othello on Broadway right now?

grant that the situation is tricky. Now that an urban African-American male is the world's most powerful person, the cultural symbols of race and disenfranchisement have become much more complicated to negotiate. The social context has been pulled out from under even the most sophisticated iconography. Take the case of Kehinde Wiley, one of my favorite new painters from the past decade. His most famous portraits present hip-hop stars in scenes culled from the Old Masters: Grandmaster Flash holding a scepter, Ice-T as Napoleon. His contrasts between the European and the African-American modes of projecting power are slippery and fascinating. Or rather they were. Now that Obama wears a crown, Wiley's work has moved from art into the realm of the art-historical. And he's only thirty-two. The problem is that every day, just by his existence in power, Obama makes race seem less relevant. Take any of his major decisions, good or bad. Iran? Closing Guantánamo? How have any of them been shaped by his race? The quantity of melanin in his pigmentation has not meaningfully affected the world. All of the best African-American comics used to do bits about the First Black President. It was a hilariously preposterous concept even a few years ago. Eddie Murphy imagined him giving all his speeches on the run to stay a moving target, Chris Tucker thought he wouldn't bother with bodyguards and just pack his own gun and Rock did a regrettable feature length film on the premise (Tag line: "The only thing white is the house"). To me, Chappelle's Black Bush was the finest of them all and the funniest skit in the whole show. ("Stankonia has said they're willing to drop bombs over Baghdad.") But last November, the world called their bluff, and the color of Obama's skin doesn't make a damn bit of difference in the daily business of running the world.

Chappelle's Show
Black Bush
www.comedycentral.com
Buy Chappelle's Show DVDs Black Comedy True Hollywood Story

It's easy for Eric Holder to say that America is "a nation of cowards" for not talking about race. He's the first African-American Attorney General in history, a figure of transcendence from the nausea and awfulness and brutishness of quotidian experience. Imagine a New York City subway car if it weren't filled with "cowards" but instead with honest and frank discussion of what everyone is really thinking. No one would get to work. Everyone would be murdered by the end of the ride. So why are we forcing Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley to have a beer together at the White House? Surely, this small gesture isn't going to accomplish anything and has to be one of the more preposterous, awkward bits of political theatre to emerge from recent media cycles. A little chat is not going to deal with the reality that a short, grey-haired and somewhat fragile old man was led out of his own house in handcuffs for absolutely no good reason. No. We need artists and entertainers to confront the nastiness that the rest of us don't want to confront. The difficulty and confusion of the present moment are bursting with potential. Let's not waste it.

President Obama Needs To Grow A Pair

By Larry Flynt:

President Obama:

You have proven to be a great campaigner. You have yet to demonstrate your ability to govern. Who needs the Republicans? They don’t know what compromise is. They’re just out to derail your presidency. Bitch slap ’em at every opportunity and put them in their place. They lost; you didn’t.

As for disloyal Democrats, you need to yank the carpet out from under them. Remind them that their survival is dependent upon yours. Don’t pull punches, Mr. President. You need some gonads, and if you don’t have any, as Hillary would say, you’d better grow some.

You have failed to keep many campaign promises. You’ve ignored civil-liberty violations such as warrantless wiretapping. You passed a stimulus package that is obviously full of pork for Democrats. You handed over billions more in taxpayer dollars to crooked bankers. You listened to the very people who created our economic meltdown, the Mutt and Jeff team of Larry Summers and Tim Geithner. You’ve let the insurance lobbyists hijack health-care reform to the detriment of every man, woman, and child in America.

You must say what you mean and mean what you say. Closing Guantanamo means just that. You could do it right now, Mr. President. You don’t have to wait until January. You can place terrorist suspects in the federal correctional system without creating any risk to our citizens.

You’re a nice guy. Everybody likes nice guys. Sometimes they finish last. You don’t want that, and neither do those of us who voted you in.

The American people have placed their future in your hands. For heaven’s sake don’t let them down. Don’t let yourself down.

Being President while Black

From the Huffington Post:

Barack Obama sure knows how to throw a bad party. Last night's Rose Garden get-together was the most awkward beer bash in history. It was as if Obama invited a couple over and didn't know they were exes. Good times.

Seriously, this was our teachable moment? What exactly were we taught -- that racism can be fixed with a cringe-inducing photo op?

I'm not saying that the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, in his own home and after providing ID, was racist. I wasn't there so I don't know. Only Officer Crowley knows. But as Obama correctly said in his press conference last week, black men are too often pulled over by cops because of race. (Actually, everything he said about the Gates case in that press conference was correct, including his use of the word "stupidly." Too bad he was cowed into retracting it.)

The phenomenon called "Driving While Black" is nothing new. But now the so-called Birthers have come up with a novel variation on it: President While Black. They are essentially pulling Obama over and asking him to show his license and registration.

Here's my teachable moment: let's not be afraid to use words like "stupid" and "racist" when they apply; let's stop using the word "post-racial" altogether; and please, just when the conversation is starting to get interesting, let's not settle it over a few beers

Obama to CIA: Bombs Away! No Let Up in US Drone Attacks

From ABC News:

The CIA's bombing campaign against al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan continued with two more attacks today, an indication, senior officials say, that President Barack Obama has approved the U.S. strategy that has killed at least eight of al Qaeda's top 20 leaders since July 2008.

The two attacks today in Pakistan were the first since President Obama took office on Tuesday.

Asked about it at his daily press briefing, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, "I'm not going to discuss that matter."

During the campaign, Obama called for cross-border attacks against high-value al Qaeda targets in Pakistan, even before the CIA campaign began.

Pakistani officials and villagers told ABCNews.com that 17 people were killed in two successive strikes against compounds in North and South Waziristan.

A senior U.S. official said one of al Qaeda's top 20 leaders may be among the dead today, although it is too soon to be certain.

Since July, the CIA has carried out a relentless bombing campaign against that has targeted the top leadership of al Qaeda, based on a sophisticated intelligence collection effort similar to what was used against insurgents in Iraq.

Eight of the top 20 have been killed in the attacks, according to the U.S. official.

What are we doing in Afghanistan? It is becoming exactly like Bush's Iraq war. Are we there to find Bin Laden? Are we there to bring democracy? Are we there to protect women from the Taliban? Or are we just there to kill muslims to make us feel like we are doing something? Why is the richest country in the world always killing the poorest people in the world? The US spends billions to ship Pizza Huts and Burger Kings to the other side of the earth to feed troops who kill people who run around barefoot and live in dirt-floored mud huts. What a country.

Obama to GOP: "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done"

From The New York Post:

President Obama warned Republicans on Capitol Hill today that they need to quit listening to radio king Rush Limbaugh if they want to get along with Democrats and the new administration.

"You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done," he told top GOP leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.

One White House official confirmed the comment but said he was simply trying to make a larger point about bipartisan efforts.

"There are big things that unify Republicans and Democrats," the official said. "We shouldn't let partisan politics derail what are very important things that need to get done."

That wasn't Obama's only jab at Republicans today.

In an exchange with Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) about the proposal, the president shot back: "I won," according to aides briefed on the meeting.

"I will trump you on that."

Not that Obama was gloating. He was just explaining that he aims to get his way on stimulus package and all other legislation, sources said, noting his unrivaled one-party control of both congressional chambers.

British Prime Minister condemns Israel's attack on UN

From Mail Online:

Israel shelled the UN headquarters in Gaza yesterday - a move condemned as 'indefensible' by Gordon Brown.

As the bombardment intensified, two hospitals were also hit.

And using unusually strong language, the Prime Minister said: 'UN staff are working on behalf of the international community.


Chaos: An injured boy is taken to hospital in Gaza after the bombardment on Thursday


'Indefensible': A woman flees the UN building in Gaza as fire-fighters battle to put out the flames after an Israeli attack

'Any attack on them is unacceptable, as Israel has acknowledged.'

Hours before, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had said: 'I conveyed my strong protest and outrage to the defence minister and foreign minister.'

The shelling engulfed in fire the UN compound and a warehouse, destroying thousands of pounds of food and humanitarian supplies intended for Palestinian refugees.

About 700 Palestinians had been sheltering in the building.


Sorry: Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, left, has apologised to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, right, over the shelling of the UN compound

Israel's attack was another blow to efforts to ease the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.
The compound houses the UN Works and Relief Agency, which distributes food aid to hundreds of thousands of destitute Gazans in the tiny seaside territory of 1.4million.

John Ging, director of the Agency's operations in Gaza, said the attack caused a 'massive explosion' which wounded three.

Shells first hit the courtyard filled with refugees, then struck garages and the UN's main warehouse.

Later, fuel supplies went up in flames, sending up a thick black plume of smoke.


UN workers fight to put out the flames inside their headquarters. The UN claimed Israel had used white phosphorous in the attack


Outside the compound Palestinian fire-fighters joined in the battle to save the UN building

'It's a total disaster for us,' Mr Ging said. The Israeli military knows the precise location of the compound.

But although prime minister Ehud Olmert apologised, he said the bombardment had been in response to fire from Palestinian gunmen at the compound.

The Al-Quds and Red Crescent hospitals, and a tower block housing journalists, were also hit, as the death toll rose to at least 1,073 with more than 5,000 wounded.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces pushed deeper into Gaza city, unleashing their heaviest shelling yet.


Ablaze: Palestinians gather as firefighters try to control the fire after an Israeli airstrike in the Rafah refugee camp

Hamas's interior minister, Saeed Seyyam, was killed in an air strike.

Analysts believe that Israel is stepping up military operations to complete its action before Tuesday's inauguration of Barack Obama as U.S. president.

It began the offensive on December 27, saying it aimed to end Hamas rocket


Deadly: Flares light up the sky during shelling over Gaza City

Rockets have killed 13 Israelis since then. Police said 20 rockets hit southern Israel yesterday, injuring ten.

Israel and Hamas have met with Egyptian mediators who are proposing a truce.
But diplomats said the two sides remained at odds over the fine print.


Dazed: Palestinian families flee their homes as the war continued to ravage Gaza


'The gates of Hell': An explosion tears through the sky after an Israeli air strike in Rafah