Obama Tortures Republicans

Well I must say hope is in the air again. For the last few months I was starting to suspect that President Obama was a coward or worse, a turn coat. But all of that changed after watching him courageously go to the Republican Retreat in Maryland to debate, and he destroyed the Republicans and their talking points. It was like watching a skilled professor lecture and at times chastise a classroom of dishonest and disobedient students.

President Obama didn't show anger, he didn't loose his cool, he remained presidential and he just beat the republicans down with the facts. He showed that he was knowledgeable on all the subjects and issues. Obama destroyed all of the republicans ideas and talking points with the facts.

The republicans fucked up by inviting Obama to their retreat to speak and debate, thinking they could embarrass the president and get him to say something that they could run campaign ads against for the 2010 congressional campaigns. They were 'feeling themselves', over confident I guess because of the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts and the recent gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia.

But what the republicans forget is that they don't have any new ideas, they don't have any plans for the 21st century. They only have old stale talking points. They are still running on Reaganomics that has proven to be a flawed and discredited economic plan.

If you haven't seen the debate you really need to watch it, it's over an hour long but it will be an hour well spent.

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.

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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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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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

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?"

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

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 Escalate Afghan War With A 20,000 Troop Surge

Well if you thought Obama was the guy to bring change to US foreign policy then I must say you were sadly mistaking or worse mislead. It seems every American president has got to get their war on, I guess to show the world that they're not to be fucked with. While the American presidents shows the world his bonafides you are going to have some non white people in some far off land being used as live battlefield targets for the US Military. The US Military Industrial Complex is a very powerful and influential business organization and Barack know not to cross the UMIC unless he want to end up like JFK.

From The Telegraph UK:

Barack Obama is preparing to send at least 20,000 more US soldiers into Afghanistan in a "surge" similar to the deployment that contributed to security improvements in Iraq.

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The President-Elect's intention to shift the focus of the fight against terrorism to Afghanistan has been bolstered by Robert Gates agreement to stay on as Defence Secretary.

Mr Gates is a strong believer in an Afghan surge, which would not only put thousands more boots on the ground but involve negotiations with malleable branches of the Taliban

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A spokesman said the final number was likely to be "well north of 20,000", and indicated that countries such as Britain already fighting in the south would not face strong US demands to provide more troops.

Defence department staff members are privately delighted Mr Obama has chosen to retain a popular boss in the interests of stability. Mr Gates is expected to be officially introduced as part of an experience and centrist national security team on Monday.

"The president-elect has already indicated that he wants to put additional troops in Afghanistan," said an official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Over the weekend Mr Obama reiterated that he wanted to begin drawing down the 146,000 US troops in Iraq as soon as he takes office, saying he wanted to "shore up efforts" in Afghanistan.

The economy is about to go bottom up, people are losing their homes and their jobs, there is no money for health care or college tuition but our govrnment always have money to wage wars. What a fucking shame.

Are Progressives Starting To Feel Betrayed By Obama?

If you've been paying attention to Barack Obama cabinet appointments so far you will have noticed that there haven't been any true liberal or progressive politician offered a cabinet position. So far Obama has only tapped centrist or right leaning democrats to serve in his administration. Most of Obama's progressive supporters are still confident that Obama will live up to his campaign promises and they trust his decision. But you have some progressive that are starting to question Obama based on his cabinet appointments so far. For instance you have Chris Bowers making the following statement:

I know everyone is obsessed with the "team of rivals" idea right now, but I feel incredibly frustrated. Even after two landslide elections in a row, are our only governing options as a nation either all right-wing Republicans, or a centrist mixture of Democrats and Republicans? Isn't there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration? Also, why isn't there a single member of Obama's cabinet who will be advising him from the left? It seems to me as though there is a team of rivals, except for the left, which is left off the team entirely.


It is just so very frustrating. It seems like the only place progressives are making any gains is in the House. We are being entirely left out of Obama's major appointments so far. I guess everyone gets to play in Obama's administration, except progressives.

Then you have Christopher Hayes at the Nation expressing his frustration in what he see so far:

Not a single, solitary, actual dyed-in-the-wool progressive has, as far as I can tell, even been mentioned for a position in the new administration. Not one. Remember this is the movement that was right about Iraq, right about wage stagnation and inequality, right about financial deregulation, right about global warming and right about health care. And I don't just mean in that in a sectarian way. I mean to say that the emerging establishment consensus on all of these issues came from the left. There's tons of things the left is right about that aren't even close to mainstream (taking a hatchet to the national security state and ending the prison industrial complex to name just two), but hopefully we're moving there.

And yet, no one who comes from the part of American political and intellectual life that has given birth to all of these ideas is anywhere to be found within miles of the Obama cabinet thus far. WTF?

I'm hoping Barack Obama live up to his pledge to bring change to Washington but looking at his appointments so far, I'm starting to question it. The people he have offered jobs to so far, all supported the Iraq war. For Obama to claim the Iraq war was the biggest foreign policy mistake in the history of this country, why would he put these people, Hillary Clinton, Rahm Emmanuel, Joe Biden, etc into top cabinet and advisory positions. There's even rumors he's going to keep the George Bush appointee, Robert Gates on at Secretary of Defense. What kind of fucking change is that.

Violent And Racist Threats Against Obama Spreads Around The Country

If you thought America was entering a new day on race relation in this country with the election of Barack Obama, the first African American President, you may be sadly mistaking. With right wing hate radio spewing hatred daily against Barack Obama, you also have the gun lobbyist out and about with their campaign against Obama and you have a dangerous situation on your hand. I just ran across a chilling story of students with guns openly talking about assassinating Obama. From Editor&Publisher

A few days ago, the Associated Press and some other news outlets picked up on the disturbing. But at Editor & Publisher we are still receiving tips and personal accounts every day, often from small towns in both red and blue states.

Just this morning, for example, the Mount Desert Islander weekly in Maine reported that a third effigy of a black man had been found hanging from a tree in the area since the election. This was was in Somesville, following reports of others in Tremont and Bar Harbort. The paper observes: "State police also are investigating the incidents, which are believed to be in response to the election of Sen. Barack Obama as president."

Here is the latest note to us today from a student in Iowa (I have her name and address but won't release it here), a state Obama carried rather easily. It is much in line with reported incidents of other school kids, some as young as 7 or 8, talking about "assassinating" Obama. Of course, they couldn't carry that out themselves but what is chilling is that they are likely just repeating language or threats they hear at home.

Here is that email:

"I'm not sure who to email on this, but there have been several derogatory things said about Obama in our school, and one of them got a student suspended. I go to a school in a little town called Letts, Iowa. We are pretty down home, country road farm kids out here. But never, in my 11 years at the school, have I ever heard the conversation take such a negative turn.

"The remark that the student was suspended for was this, "Well, it's called the White House for a reason. We need to get that God damn N----- out of there."

"There were other remarks, mostly by students who hunt. They were discussing how far a shotgun could shoot, and decided that they could get to a high enough vantage-point to shoot Obama from at least 2 miles away, without anyone ever knowing where the shot came from. 'Another Kennedy' they were saying."

Last night a reader tipped us off to an incident in another Obama-friendly state, Michigan, in the town of Buchanan. Members of the South County Democratic Club woke up Saturday to find their building vandalized with swastikas and racist comments, spray painted on the side of the structure. These kind of incidents have been too common to list all of them.

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The weekly based in Wasilla, Alaska, which boosted hometowner Sarah Palin throughout the election campaign, provided column space this week to a local student who alleged anti-Obama racial comments the day after his election. Here's an excerpt from The Frontiersman op-ed by Waverli Raine.

Finally the campaign was over and I was actively supporting our new president, even though I knew I would be vastly out numbered at school. I expected complaints and qualms about the new president, but I was not prepared for the flat-out racist remarks said openly in the halls and classrooms. I was appalled. While I sat at my desk trying to do my work I could hear my fellow classmates:

“I think we should kill Obama,” one said.

“I hope someone comes up and shoots him in the head,” another would say.

“I hate Obama … he’s black.”

On went the racist words for the full 80 minutes of that class. Angered, I began to think of the injustice of it all and the ignorance of the students I was surrounded by. I wondered where they learned to be so hateful, and I wondered why the teacher never stepped in - why no adult, no student, including myself, had the guts to cut in and say it was not OK. Because it’s never OK for intolerance.

You know those fucking kids got those ideas from home. I swear I despise those racist right winger so much. Sometimes I wish we could just wall off a part of the country and dump all those vile people in one place and let them have their George Bushes and Sarah Palins as their leaders.

Wright, Jackson & Sharpton: The Role They Played In Getting Obama Elected

From Daily Kos:

[During Obama's campaign], Reverends Wright, Sharpton and Jackson were in a dilemma. They were three men caught in a web of their own historical press clippings. Even Dirty Harry knew that a man’s gotta know his own limitations. They had no choice, really. It was either distance themselves from Barack Obama, or cost him the Presidency.

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Reverend Wright was a firebrand noted for his take-no-prisoners rhetoric from the pulpit. He was the kind of inner-self black spirit that African Americans only surrender to in audience with other like-minded African Americans. He was the Black Power salute of contemporary black dialog – respectably vocal, but never allowed to escape beyond the inside breast pocket of a Brooks Brothers suit. Upper middle class black folks listened to him on Sunday mornings to make more palatable the glass ceilings they had to navigate Monday mornings at work.

Reverend Al Sharpton, on the other hand, had become the quintessential civil rights leader of the 21st Century, in the tradition of Frederick Douglass – "agitate, agitate, agitate." In the white community he had become a caricature of himself, but his gift was the ability to cut through the bullshit and tell it like it is or, shall I say, how he thought it was. He brought the cameras and the microphones which, in some cases, were all that was needed to affect surface level Change.

Jesse Jackson, over the recent years, had lost more credibility than he had gained, but in the eyes of his detractors, he still represented the civil rights camp - heir apparent to the Martin Luther King, Jr. legacy in the absence of any King Family member who wanted the torch more than a movie role. Reverend Jackson’s civil rights cavalcade always seemed to set up shop just outside of operational government and therefore seemed doomed to forever knock on the door of viability... from the wrong side.

In early Spring of 2008, as Barack Obama’s bid for the presidency began to approach the rarified air of serious money, there must have been an unspoken meeting of the minds among these men. It was a moment when all four had to realize that The Black Agenda had to be set aside in favor of The American Agenda. This had to happen in order for Obama to reach unprecedented heights in the presidential campaign. In was like members of the old Negro Leagues bidding farewell to Jackie Robinson as he cleared his locker. It was never "Why him?" They knew he had to move forward so that others could move forward after him, and it was time for them to step aside.


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Barack Obama would have never disavowed Reverend Wright had it not become evident that Wright’s rhetoric had the potential of slicing and dicing his campaign. So Wright intentionally pushed the issue. And he pushed it so far to the radical left that Obama had no choice but to respond emphatically.

Reverend Sharpton did his part by holding off on his endorsement of Barack Obama for as long as possible, before his motives were beginning to be questioned by his own constituency. Thus he helped to move Obama a tad further to the center.

Jesse Jackson’s particular stroke of genius was to enlist the aid of the enemy - FOX News Network. He knew it would only work once, and in order for it to work, it had to be Fox News, one of the most racist new organizations in the world. They would never not broadcast an apparent rift between two newsworthy black men. Jackson made the comments to a guest before an interview on "Fox & Friends," whispering that Obama was "talking down to black people" and that he (Jackson) wanted to "cut his nuts off." FOX jumped on this with all four feet. Not only did Jackson not ask FOX to hold back the tape, he went on CNN to apologize for his comments, thus ensuring that the tape would be broadcast. It played perfectly on the evening news. Jesse set himself up to take the hit, and even his own son, Jesse Jackson, Jr, an Obama staffer, had to denounce his father’s comments. How much more real does it get? Jesse played FOX like a cheap pawnshop trumpet. Here is a man who has been in public life for almost 50 years. He had been scrutinized by Hoover, wire-tapped by the FBI in the King era. And we’re supposed to believe that he forgot he was on a hot microphone... at the FOX News Network, no less?
Puh-leeeze!

Jeremiah Wright, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson fell on their swords so that Barack Obama would have a greater audience at center court. Someday a filmmaker will study the screenplay, and even she won’t believe it. Rod Serling wouldn’t believe it, either, and he knew something about irony.