What’s wrong with Barack Obama?
By Ricky L. Jones

I am reposting this from - http://africanamerica.org

What’s wrong with Barack Obama? One of my noon basketball buddies at work joked, “His name sounds too much like Osama.” Outside of that, he certainly seems flawless. To be sure, Obama (who recently visited Louisville to stump for local Democrats) is nothing short of the greatest political phenomenon this decade.

He is tall, good looking, of exotic racial heritage (his father Kenyan, mother white American), clearly intelligent, masterful with words and charismatic. Obama is only the fifth black U.S. senator in the history of the country — only the third since Reconstruction. The man has even won a Grammy for the spoken-word version of his autobiography.

Obama is easily the dumbed-down, spineless Democrats’ hottest commodity. I mean, let’s be serious. As bad as the Republicans have mucked things up in the country (and the world), you would think neither the midterm nor 2008 elections should be in doubt. The Democrats, however, are so woeful that they can’t “win” anything — the Republicans have to “lose.” And they very well may — at least a few races. (more…)

I have been keeping half an eye on this wire tapping by the NSA over the past year or so. Under the guise of “protection” from terrorism (which seems to be the standard mantra chanted when issues of civil liberties arise now adays) the warrantless system of wire tapping was ok’d by Bush. Back when the story first broke the rationale seemed palpable. The argument was that we needed the government to have the ability to wire tap prospective terrorist for the “protection” of US citizens. Recognizing that what the government taketh it rarely giveth back, and what the government taketh usually groweth exponentially over time I was alarmed at these Big Brother like tactics of the Bush administration.

Fast forward to this past week’s news revealing that the government and major phone corporations had been securing the phone records of millions of Americans under the guise of ‘protection’ from terrorist (did you read above about what the government taketh?) As one of those who approach this issue from an I told you so perspective and also as one who will no doubt hear the applause by pundits such as Rush Limbaugh and others for Bush’s progressive tactics against terror, one group contrary to my expectations is ominously and conspicuously silent on this issue, the Christian Right. (more…)

Kite Flying in a Hurricane

http://map.pequenopolis.com/

Bt BT

The odds line in Vegas is about 20:1 that the Brokeback Cowpinkie won’t be in office come 2008 due to impeachment or resignation.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/04/19/DDG9EIAGN61.DTL

In a fit of singular Rethugly stupidity, unprecedented – at least in the last 120 years, the Rethugly Congress decided to cut taxes…

While their breakneck spending has resulted in a $400 billion a year deficit.

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

Almost as intelligent as- :

In 1898 young Albert Einstein applied for admission to the Munich Technical Institute, but was turned down on the grounds that he “showed no promise” as a student.

In 1880 a house master at Harrow wrote of one of his pupils, “He is forgetful, careless, unpunctual, irregular in every way…. If he is unable to conquer this slovenliness he will never make a success of public school.” The boy in question was Winston Churchill.

Let’s look at this from an average consumer standpoint. The price of heating your home and driving your car to work has doubled in the last year. If you are a Rethugly (or otherwise mentally inhibited by occupying the far left flatline of the bell curve) you immediately quit your $50,000 a year job and apply for an $8.00 an hour job at McDonalds…

NO WONDER the job market is “so good”!

“Middle-income households would receive an average tax cut of $20 from the agreement, according to the joint Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, while the 0.02 percent of households with incomes over $1 million would receive average tax cuts of $42,000. “

As a note to the Playas out there…

At least the “Hummer” deduction survived for another 2 years.

“The bill also would extend for two years provisions sought by small businesses to let them write off up to $100,000 in investments in equipment.”

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/05/10/MNGAQION9J1.DTL

Get one – and a 3rd Mortgage to pay for the gas before the Fed hikes the interest rates next week!

Liberalism is paternalistic and racist, and conservatism is stagnant and impractical, pick your poison.

Liberal paternalism as represented by the Democratic party:

1) Seeks to erode our African Moral fiber by forcing us to party with individuals who represent moral positions abhorrent to us as Africans. It makes us passively accept post-modernism & relativism, and tells us to be effective we have to be aligned with other ‘agenda’s’ that in many cases are polar opposites of our fundamental world view. One such agenda is the homosexual agenda.

2) It seeks to exploit our vote while not providing quid quo pro in terms of economic power, ownership, and independence. Since the Democrat ideal of social justices is rooted in civic equality and not economic equality its effect is to keep the average African American community of lower economic affluence and therefore less powerful than the average white community, while simultaneously attempting to enact wealth redistributing plans to programs to ensure civic equality but never creating BLACK POWER.

3) It is paternalistic and maintains White Man as God “save a po’ black” approach to politics and policy, by attempting to use the government (their party) as a black family and black power surrogate. Their execution of policy and their perception of social justice is the only perception tolerated when decisions are made on “the problem of race”. Those blacks who counter their solutions to race, such as nationalist, reparationist, etc. are castigated as “Going contrary to Dr. King” and “Radical”, with the presumption that white derived liberalism ideology on race elevation is superior to black derived perspectives on race elevation.

4) It is racist for the same reason that it is mentioned as paternalistic in the last sentence above. Implicit in liberal sentiment is the under girding belief that we blacks can not be entrusted to A) Independently derive solutions to control our communities B) Independently support our families C) Independently educate our children, without needing white participation and white governance to do so.

—

The worst thing that could occur to the democratic party as it pertains to securing the black vote is our holistic success as a people. Their whole paradigm in dealing with blacks is highlighting things that are not done for blacks in America and then providing solutions in the form of programs that only they can provide for us (read that again and think about it) and only they control. If we holistically have success, local community control, dynamic economic inner-cities, and a success for model for our own education, there is nothing left for them to ‘sell’ us. That is why it is incumbent on them to keep us in a status quo state.

Liberal politics and policies aren’t driven by blacks for blacks in an effort to create black power, but by whites for blacks in an effort to keep a black voting block and maintain THEIR power.

In America we have a jobless percentage of about 4.5% plus or minus .5 as a general rule. In our African-American communities, the jobless rate is roughly double that, and usually hovers around the 8% to 9% range. We hawk that number, using it to evaluate Presidential effectiveness, and where the economy is at at any given time. When that unemployment rate increases, we groan, we start assigning blame to inept fiscal management by the Republican or Democrat who happens to be in the White House at the time. When that unemployment rate decreases, the President generally gets a little more flexibility and freedom on the economic front. That is the way it works in America, people want jobs, they want to work, and when they can’t the incumbent president probably will have a difficult time winning the next election. (more…)

I am reposting this in response to BT’s Pucker Up Thread, something I wrote awhile back.

It’s Not the Party You Are in, It’s the Color of Your Skin
By Dell Gines

Our Votes Our Logic
Yes, a heck of a lot of us vote democrat. We do it the same reason anyone votes for anybody, because we feel they will represent your best interest. We line the two parties up side by side, and theorize as to which party will, if elected, represent our best interest. With our ballot, we show that WE BELIEVE democrats will create policies that are much more conducive to our improvement as a race of people. Even though our rationale for voting democrat is normal and logical, the question must be asked as to whether this logic has lead to the improvement the promise of a democratic vote said it would bring.

I ask this question because I hear so many arguments by us, laymen and leader alike, that the Republican party is the devil, and that so many of our problems were caused by Republicans and the Republican party. But does this belief that we hold stand up to objective scrutiny? Bear with me.

Party Control & Per Capita Income Disparity
Since the Civil Rights act in 1964, roughly 42 years ago, the democrats controlled the full congress 12 of those years. 8 of those years, the democrats controlled both the House and the Senate while a Republican was president.

From 1964 to 1981, roughly 17 years from the Civil Rights Act to Reagan first year in Office, the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate, the legislative divisions of our government. Logic dictates that if our democratic vote was based upon our belief that that party would do what was in our best interest, then it is also safe to assume that that party in reality should have done the most in our interest when they had power. Makes sense right? However, in doing a basic analysis of per capita income disparity, meaning the difference between what a black individual makes and what a white individual makes, and this gap shrinking over time, we find this is not the case. (more…)

Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Remember the lion stalking the gazelle slowly through the high grass, pouncing at the perfect moment to strike down his unsuspecting prey? The circle of life, to live something must die, and in the case of the carnivore it is the beast, which eats the beast, which eats the grass, which grows from the compost of other dead organisms.

Internally we are like this, and as I constantly struggle to make heads or tales of the politics and sociological nature of our situation as Black people, what I realized is this, it is not what you believe that always tells the tale, but at what point of the food chain that particular belief is, and what eats it. Bear with me for a moment.

If someone asked me today what are the things I value in rough order, I would say my family, my faith, my race, my community and then my country. In other words, at the top of the food chain is my family, that which kills all others if necessary to survive. As we go down the food chain at any given moment a ‘value’ higher on the food chain may be forced to eat something lower on the food chain. My family will always come before my community if I am forced to choose, and my race and faith will always come before my country if forced to choose and so on.

It is the nature of these internal struggles that defines how we see the world, particularly from a socio/political perspective. What I have come to realize now is that certain ideologies aren’t so bad per se, but it is where individuals place these ideologies in their value system that I have a problem with. (more…)

If you watch 24, then you are aware of the moral ambiguity involved in politics. Being that I force fed myself the first 3 seasons in the past 3 weeks, I am acutely aware of the difficult decisions folks, particularly President Palmer, had and have to make during the process of politics and governing.

I feel blacks in the political process are forced into this same land of moral ambiguity due to a two party system that isn’t, nor never was designed to adequately address our needs as a forced immigrant population in which whole systems of historic legislation have been targeted specifically against US or about us.

When President Palmer had to order Jack Bauer to kill a fellow agent to save millions of lives in season three, was it right? Most individuals would distinctly say, “Yes”, like Spock said when just before he died in Star Trek II, “The good of the many outweigh the good of the few”. The problem is the few catch it for the good of the many in the scenarios, similar to blacks (the few) amongst whites (the many) in this nation. But maybe I am tossing out to many quotes eh? (more…)

I know this is a couple days old, but I just got to it. Excerpts on McCain’s letter to Obama, after Obama withdrew from a deal to be part of a Bi-Partisan lobby reform platform.

Click HERE for the full letter…

Dear Senator Obama:

I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere. When you approached me and insisted that despite your leadership’s preference to use the issue to gain a political advantage in the 2006 elections, you were personally committed to achieving a result that would reflect credit on the entire Senate and offer the country a better example of political leadership, I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable.

Thank you for disabusing me of such notions with your letter to me dated February 2, 2006, which explained your decision to withdraw from our bipartisan discussions. I’m embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in politics to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble. Again, sorry for the confusion, but please be assured I won’t make the same mistake again.

…

As I noted, I initially believed you shared that goal. But I understand how important the opportunity to lead your party’s effort to exploit this issue must seem to a freshman Senator, and I hold no hard feelings over your earlier disingenuousness. Again, I have been around long enough to appreciate that in politics the public interest isn’t always a priority for every one of us. Good luck to you, Senator.

Dang!!!

Chance writes: Now, that Hamas has won the majority of the Parliament seats in the Palestinian government, there will be no peace between Palestinians and Israel. But some people believe that president Bush, secretively does not want peace in the Middle East. Even though Bush, says he wants peace for the Middle East.

President Bush, Hamas, And The Set Up

By Chance, Chancellorfiles

Chance: GAZA, the terrorist organization Hamas recently won 70 or more out of 132 parliament seats (Palestinian legislative council). Hamas defeats the Fatah political party in Hebron, Gaza, and Nablus; Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and his cabinet resigned Thursday after their party was defeated by Hamas in a parliamentary election. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ruling Fatah party confirmed claims from Hamas that it won a majority of the seats in Parliament.

This means there will be no peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs why? Because Hamas is a terroist organization that has carried out hundreds of terrorist attacks against Israel. Hamas a sent suicide bombers to blow themselves up killing many Israeli civilians. Hamas has set off bombers in inside the country of Israel and against Israeli community settlements inside of Gaza. (more…)