Disqus - Latest Comments for Teacher

Re: Philly Debate Open Thread

Teacher — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 23:56:00 -0000

Luckily, I missed the debate, but turned on the tube in time for the spin on MSNBC. I'm with Angela and I think Obama needs to show some fire in the belly. If I could, I'd ask him if he REALLY wants it. I would ask him if this is a theatrical performance to continue to dupe the american public. He is truly statesman, a gentleman and obviously a Christian. Maybe he thinks the battle is the Lord's. I think that white people are war mongers and warriors, as is evidenced by Chillary's willingness to kick him the private. He won't defend himself for anything. But by not exposing her for what she really is, he is colluding in the deception against the american public. Shrillary has a fraud trial scheduled for April 25th in LA Superior Court and there has been a total media blackout on this story. I have emailed it to several news stations asking them why it isn't newsworthy, but they won't touch it, not even online. You can read about it @ http://youngphillypolitics.com/ with the title Sen Clinton should Disclose her Current Fraud Trial before Primary Young Philly Politics. You can see the court documents @ Go to www.lasuperiorcourt.org , Click on “Case Summaries” in the “Civil” column, then enter this case number: BC304174
I'm not saying that Obama is soley responsible, but I think the people deserve to know. to me this is a legitimate bit of information that people need to know unlike Tanya's spin that he is condescending to them by calling them bitter. Why don't they bring up that Asian guy who was a big contributer and whose $ her campaign was forced to return? I'm sure there are a myriad of unscrupulous people in the lives of the clinton's. I hate to see him roll with their BS.

Re: Note From A New Obama Convert

Teacher — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:53:00 -0000

As In write these words, CNN is airing a`program in Philly hosted by the ever pompas Rick Sanchez. The commentators appear to be all republicans. The crowd is dominated by supporters of Hillbilly. I'm wondering, what the h-e double paint brushes? A CNN program to promote her on Sun. nite and a Larry King program to promote her on Mon. nite. So whack. Angela, if she was hanging like Huckabee, that would be okay, but she's hanging like Hitler! My only consolation to this blatant unfairness in the media coverage is to see him win ANYWAY!!!! Hillbilly is Count Duku and Obama is Yoda. Now back to Star Wars!

Re: Daily Open Thread- Greetings to a New Week

Teacher — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:23:00 -0000

Anonymous in the chicago Tribune, I had never heard of Ayres or the Weather Underground until this story broke. If anyone should be ashamed, it should be the white justice system and power structure that FAILED to bring him to justice. This is a luminous example of white privilege. You are mad at Obama for doing what you & your people weren't willing to do? Ayres was never convicted or arrested. Obviously he is doing fine and living peacefully in Chgo. Obviously, he wasn't murdered in the night like the Black Panthers. A university is allowing him to be a professor there. Why aren't you sweating his university about employing him? If you aren't willing to launch a campaign demanding his termination from his university, you need to STFU. This isn't about affiliation. This is about your attempt at domination and control freakiness.

I think it really stinks that Hillbilly was on Keith Olberman's tonite and on Larry King. They are really giving her (broke ass) campaign the hook up. I think Keith was probably forced into it. He seems not to have his usual fire tonight. He asked her a couple of uncomfortable questions, but in general it appeared to be to her benefit. I hope voters noticed how hawkish she is.She's got her finger on the trigger.

I wish I could be in Philly tomorrow. I hope the weather will not be bad and I hope the Obama campaign will be offering to drive people to the polling places.I hope we win!!!!!

I read a news article the other day (I don't remember where-Daily Kos perhaps) about the forced sterilization of Native Americans happening as recently as the 1970's. The story made me scream in horror on the inside. My prayer is that we will be able to build bridges and coalitions and collaborate with others of color during the general election campaign. The world is way more than black and white alone. This could be a great opportunity.

Re: Daily Open Thread- Greetings to a New Week

Teacher — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:05:00 -0000

I have a book entitled Medical Apartheid: the dark history of medical experimentation on Black Americans from colonial times to the present by Harriet A. Washington. I haven't been able to start reading it yet, but I have read different parts of it. Has anyone else checked it out?

I'm not mad at Nutter. I think he's smart and likeable, even if misguided. I hope he is a good mayor. He is willing to work in behalf of Obama after he wins the nomination. Please be mindful that we will need to win the votes of the crushed and disillusioned. We need to have compassion, because we know how we would feel if Obama lost.

The other thing I've been thinking about is the Mormon situation going on in TX. For one thing, it offers a total redefinition of the Welfare Queen. The way they do it is that the man has one legal wife and the other ones are considered single women with dependents (by the state). About 65% of them are government aid recipients, if you can wrap your head around that one. Needless to say, I would never condone perversion, but if someone came and took my kids away, I would be inconsolable.

Re: Monday Open Thread - How was the weekend?

Teacher — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 08:29:00 -0000

Wright is all over CNN this morning. I haven't seen any of his recent speeches, but I'm glad to hear they seem favorable to most. I wish he would have had the LOVE for Obama to abstain from self-defense until the nomination is wrapped up. To me, his self-defense tour is ego based.

I'm tired of this drawn out process too, but still caught up in it. It's perverse.

I'm thinking that the only way we can affect national change is with the finances.It seems like we will have to sacrifice, individually & collectively, personally and nationally, whether we like it or not.I like boycotting. I think it's good to be financially selective. That said, Cnn just announced that credit cards are raising rates. That stinks.

Ron Paul says he would get rid of income tax. Hmmm.

Re: Jeremiah Wright On BIll Moyers

Teacher — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:27:00 -0000

Yeah, Wright did the Side Show Bob egopalooza extravaganza today. Tony Harris could barely look into the camera after the session ended. Roland Martin and David Gergin were so serious, like cancer surgeons. The prognosis:We aren't sure he's going to make it.We'll have to wait and see. This could be the death knell...Hillary's ticket to ride (her broom back to the white house). Wright justified it by saying that it wasn't about him, but he is defending the Black church. He got this one very wrong.It really was about him and the church isn't going to be effected one way or the other. Like I already said, he didn't have enough LOVE for Obama....What next? Jerry Springer?

"Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy;love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;Does not behave rudely, does not seek it's own, is not provoked, thinks no evil.Does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in truth;Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails."

Why are we so ego driven? There are other groups who do their own thing and work on their own self-determination without a bunch of bruhaha or bombast or how yuh like me now?!? Wright can add his name to a long list of egotistical preachers. So sad.

Re: Jeremiah Wright On BIll Moyers

Teacher — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:46:00 -0000

Friends, you know, I feel what some of you all are saying....but I think Obama is a legitimate presidential candidate, and I honestly and sincerely think he would be better for the country than McSame or HillBilly, which is why I want him to be president. We live in a racist country (hello?) that will use race as an excuse to not give him a chance to try to do something different with the country. There are those who are so blinded by their racism that they are willing the SCREW the whole country, though they obviously don't see it that way. There is a time and a place for everything. What I'm saying that this is not the right time for Wright's commentary or self-defense tour with respect to Obama's campaign. If he speaks the truth at a later date, does that make it less of the truth? So to me, Wright's willingness to SCREW and derail Obama's campaign, if he believes in it, makes him no better than the racists. Both are motivated by what's best for them and not what's best for the nation. It hurts more coming from family than from the racist. To me, his actions don't look very spiritual or christian or even liberation oriented, because a blind person can see that he's letting himself be used as a tool of the enemy! Will we still have the audacity to hope after the pit bull MSM shakes this issue like a chicken? Keep hope alive.

Re: Jeremiah Wright On BIll Moyers

Teacher — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:59:00 -0000

Craig Hickman, you are RIGHT ON!!! Something about this situation simply stinks, is a tangential point that I am also trying to make. No one is perfect and we all have contradictions, subconcious motivations, alterior motives, hypocricy inside us (thought it's easier to see it in other people).

Truthseeker, I really think you captured some of the underlying psychology operating in this saga. I agree with you, and I continue to say again, LOVE should have prompted Wright to wait until a more opportune time to speak his truth to power. And as a professed representative of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who did not defend himself when being crucified, I think LOVE should have been the filter & the forethought, not the after thought.To me, love should have caused him to "cover" Obama, because when you love someone, that's what you do (love covers a multitide of sins).

Tree, I disagree with what you said about Obama trying to downplay his blackness. Obama didn't grow up in the hood. His lack of exposure to other Black people caused him to seek out a more Black experience. It caused him to embrace his African name and take a Black wife (unlike Tiger Woods). By the same token, the embracing of his Blackness hasn't stopped Wright from building a 10 mil. $ home in an all white gated community, but I digress. One might have to have the experience or know someone who had it, to understand. It is lonely and painful at times. He sought out upwardly mobile Black people like himself. He gave Wright the privilege of being the father that he never had, and showed his loyalty and seriousness by not dissavowing him when the media asked him to do so. He said, "I can no more dissavow him than I can dissavow the Black community." And Wright responds with, "I'm coming after him IF he becomes pres. because he will represent a gov. whose policies harm the poor." How about this option. Build yourself a 1 mill. $ home and give 9 (.2) million to the poor instead of threatening Obama. Put your $ where your mouth is or STFU. THE MAN'S EGO IS OUT OF CONTROL!!!!

How many Black people do you think are going to quit the Black church because of the Wright tape loop? The church needs no defense and is not on trial. He used it as an excuse to posture. My grandmother was a member of his church for 20 years as was my brother and some cousins. We had her Home Going celebration at his church. I own several of his study books and tapes, but honestly, if you speak truth to power and have not love, you don't sound like anything to me.

Rhonda, I understand your perspective, and agree a little.Maybe it would not have gone totally away, but I still don't agree with Wright giving them additional foder because of his ego tripping. Tu intiende?

Re: Jeremiah Wright On BIll Moyers

Teacher — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:32:00 -0000

Chris Matthews on Hardball....Preachers Gone Wild!They are painting Wright to be a little loco. They have (a little)sympathy for Obama, but are calling for him to denounce Wright. They are really playing hardball. White people can be so control freaky.What would you do?

Ceedub, you are the voice of reason, fu sho! Sometimes the Obama campaign does seem dumb like a fox.They do seem to eek by and somehow come out ahead. They keep it on the DL. I'm down with that. Thanks.

Re: Jeremiah Wright On BIll Moyers

Teacher — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:19:00 -0000

Craig they are discussing this very issue on Race for the White House as I write these words. The (conspiracy) theory you just offered is juicy and gives me an appreciation for my anonymous and small life. What would Wright's price be to collude with a group who wanted to destroy his "son's" career? Could he really collude with an identified enemy and oppressor of Palestine, God's other chosen people? I may as well save my brain cells for something I can actually figure out.

HillBilly wants to do it with him on the back of a flatbed truck as she sings oblit oblit oblit--obliterate Iran....

Re: Jeremiah Wright On BIll Moyers

Teacher — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:06:00 -0000

Steve Labonne, Wright was speaking bull to shit. I hope he has someone in his life who can/will be honest with him and tell him he is in the wrong.The whole nation is mystified as to what happened. We all smell a huge, egomaniacle rat. I wish Obama would do what Hucabee suggested and go join a new church and introduce his new pastor. What about that Father Fleger?...I'm not sure about the spelling of his name, but he layed it down last week in a faux news interview.I would attend his church, and he really seemed like a sincere, godly man.

There is nothing wrong with a Black liberation theology per se, depending on if it leads one to love or hate or....To me, all paths need to lead to love. Doruba bin Wahad used to say, "Power to the people. Black power to black people, white power to white people, red power to red people, brown power to brown people, yellow power to yellow people." I believe this with every cell in my body, and I think Obama thinks like I think. Thats why I really want him to be our president.I believe he is going to be President, and I'm going to keep hope alive!!!!

Andyfrombrooklyn, I also have a head cold, so I hope you get well soon.They are trying to destroy him, but I believe in his rightousness and I believe he will prevail. He might not want to, because I'm sure the state of the nation is faaaaaarrr worse than any of us can fanthom.Bush has raided the treasury and we probably can't afford anything.

McCain's wife is such a Stepford person. Lord, please don't let anymore crazy people win the presidency.

I'm watching Anderson Cooper, but I'm going to have to turn him off. I can tell.

Re: Jeremiah Wright On BIll Moyers

Teacher — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:37:00 -0000

David Gergin played to "crabs in the barrel card," and Faye Waddleton stabbed him in the back suggesting that Wright is filling in the blanks of what "we" don't know about Obama. It looks like she's fallen for Hillbilly's Jedi mind tricks. Poor Roland is trying to let everyone save as little face, but his face is clearly as upset as it was this morning.

Truthseeker, thank you for your astute and insightful analysis on why the DNC wouldn't just hand the nomination to Hillbilly. Your ideas are totally logical and infused with HOPE.

Re: Jeremiah Wright On BIll Moyers

Teacher — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:39:00 -0000

Rikyrah, please cheer up. I think Obama is going to use this as an opportunity to show us, once again, what he is made of. He seems to really excell in times of adversity. David Gerkin suggested that Obama needs to get angry and show some fire, because americans like fighters. I agree. I hope he will show fire in the belly. I hope he will show that he wants the presidency as much as we want it for him.

I saw Roland, Faye, David & Ed on anderson Cooper, who at 1st fooled me into thinking he was liberated.

Ms. Martin, I don't know what an hhh is, but I'm going to surmise that it's unfavorable.

I'm looking at Larry King now. Lanny whatshisname sucks.

Roland kept talking about people who were close to Wright begging him not to do what he did, but Wright wouldn't listen. If I was his wife I'd be icing him like syberia. I like Eric M. Dyson, but sometimes you have to call a spade a spade. I don't get why his lovely wife, Marcia, supports Hillbilly. Weird. Good night.

Re: Operation Anti-Chaos: The Narrative on ‘ White Voters’ is FICTION

Teacher — Sun, 04 May 2008 00:53:00 -0000

@ Andyfrombrooklyn

Oregon is N of California & S of Washington state on the pacific coast. I often think about moving there when my children are grown because the state is very ecologically progressive.

@Truthseeker

Francis Holland is hardly the only African American to support Hillbilly, especially @ first. When the competition began, I was 60-40 in favor of her over Obama until she started race baiting & such. Thats one reason why it's hard to hear the MSM make statements suggesting that Blacks only vote for Obama because of race. There are a whole lot of Blacks I wouldn't vote for. So I'm saying all this to say that I'm not mad @ him for his initial interest, but after the truth about them has come out, how can any Black person CONTINUE to support them? After they have insulted and made dismissive statements, and implied that our ENTIRE RACE OWES them something....I would not vote for either of them for anything. They have lost my vote for life. I have to think that Black politicians like Nutter & Shiela Jackson Lee are doing so only for personal political gain. I feel that Obama is the only candidate capable of being president of ALL citizens.He is the only one who doesn't have hostilities against Black people.

Re: Operation Anti-Chaos: The Narrative on ‘ White Voters’ is FICTION

Teacher — Sun, 04 May 2008 01:14:00 -0000

I read the list of Clinton affiliates who have died under mysterious circumstances. I first saw it on Field Negro's blog site and then posted by a visitor on Francis Holland's. Reading it might help us understand why "super delegates" are trying to avoid taking sides. If Bill Richardson has an untimely death, we'll know why. It's pretty scary, especialy since it looks like they are going to get away with it.I also don't think the DC Madame killed herself.

Re: Operation Anti-Chaos: The Narrative on ‘ White Voters’ is FICTION

Teacher — Sun, 04 May 2008 21:28:00 -0000

This story is posted by a visitor to http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-10793

IF A PASTOR IS KNOWN BY THE COMPANY THEY KEEP! When the Rev. William Procanick put his hand on the Bible during his sexual-abuse trial in Oneida County Court earlier this year, he swore to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But as the former Clinton pastor was sentenced Friday to three years in prison for inappropriately touching a 7-year-old girl at his home last March, Judge Michael L. Dwyer said , Procanick sacrificed his honesty the day he testified. Okay, so now that Bill and Hillary Clinton''s pastor has been convicted of child molestation, will we see the same furor directed at Hillary that Obama has had to endure these last few weeks? IF A CANDIDATE IS KNOWN BY THE PASTOR THEY KEEP ...... Then you need to email this article to everyone you know. Here the CLINTON''S Pastor is convicted of child molestation. So, if Obama bears the guilt for his pastor''s comments, then Hillary has to be equally tainted by this guy''s crimes.

CBS news....

Re: Operation Anti-Chaos: The Narrative on ‘ White Voters’ is FICTION

Teacher — Sun, 04 May 2008 23:44:00 -0000

Craig & Truthseeker, I have thought for a while now that Hillbilly *might* try to get on the ticket with McoCaine as his VP. If he declines, which he might, then I think she will try to run as an independant, aka the Clinton party. Of course she will be a spoiler for Obama if it happens, but most people won't care.
Rikyrah, as for financing, I think she would get some public support and that she would self-finance the rest, like she is doing now, or by illegal means like they have always done. Who is going to ask about it or call for an investigation? With the media on her side I'm sure it won't be too hard.

Re: Monday Open Thread - It’s a New Week!

Teacher — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:13:00 -0000

Race, Feminism and Hillary Clinton
May, 04 2008

By Betsy Reed

Source: The Nation

Betsy Reed's ZSpace Page

Join ZSpace

In the course of Hillary Clinton's historic run for the White House--in which she became the first woman ever to prevail in a state-level presidential primary contest-- she has been likened to Lorena Bobbitt (by Tucker Carlson); a "hellish housewife" (Leon Wieseltier); and described as "witchy," a "she-devil," "anti-male" and "a stripteaser" (Chris Matthews). Her loud and hearty laugh has been labeled "the cackle," her voice compared to "fingernails on a blackboard" and her posture said to look "like everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court." As one Fox News commentator put it, "When Hillary Clinton speaks, men hear, Take out the garbage." Rush Limbaugh, who has no qualms about subjecting audiences to the spectacle of his own bloated physique, asked his listeners, "Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?" Perhaps most damaging of all to her electoral prospects, very early on Clinton was deemed "unlikable." Although other factors also account for that dislike, much of the venom she elicits ("Iron my shirt," "How do we beat the bitch?") is clearly gender- specific.

Watching the brass ring of the presidency slip out of Clinton's grasp as she is buffeted by this torrent of misogyny, women--white women, that is, and mainstream feminists especially--have rallied to her defense. On January 8, after Barack Obama beat Clinton in the Iowa caucuses, Gloria Steinem published a New York Times op- ed titled "Women Are Never Front-Runners." "Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House," Steinem wrote. Next came Clinton's famous "misting-over moment" in New Hampshire in response to a question from a woman about the stress of modern campaigning. For that display of emotion, Clinton was derided, on the one hand, as calculating and chameleonlike--"It could be that big girls don't cry...but it could be that if they do they win," said Chris Matthews--and, on the other, as lacking "strength and resolve," as her Democratic rival John Edwards put it, in a jab at the perennial Achilles' heel of women candidates. Riding a wave of female sympathy, Clinton won New Hampshire in what was dubbed an "anti- Chris Matthews vote."

Thus, feminist opposition to the sexist treatment of Hillary Clinton has morphed into support for the candidate herself. In February Robin Morgan published a reprise of her famous 1970 essay "Goodbye to All That," exhorting women to embrace Clinton as a protest against "sociopathic woman-hating." In the Los Angeles Times, Leslie Bennetts, author of The Feminine Mistake, wrote of older female voters fed up with the media's dismissive treatment of Clinton: "There are signs the slumbering beast may be waking up--and she's not in a happy mood." A recent New York magazine article titled "The Feminist Reawakening: Hillary Clinton and the Fourth Wave" described how "it isn't just the 'hot flash cohort'...that broke for Clinton. Women in their thirties and forties--at once discomfited and galvanized by the sexist tenor of the media coverage, by the nastiness of the watercooler talk in the office, by the realization that the once-foregone conclusion of Clinton-as-president might never come to be--did too."

The sexist attacks on Clinton are outrageous and deplorable, but there's reason to be concerned about her becoming the vehicle for a feminist reawakening. For one thing, feminist sympathy for her has begotten an "oppression sweepstakes" in which a number of her prominent supporters, dismayed at her upstaging by Obama, have declared a contest between racial and gender bias and named sexism the greater scourge. This maneuver is not only unhelpful for coalition-building but obstructs understanding of how sexism and racism have played out in this election in different (and interrelated) ways.

Yet what is most troubling--and what has the most serious implications for the feminist movement--is that the Clinton campaign has used her rival's race against him. In the name of demonstrating her superior "electability," she and her surrogates have invoked the racist and sexist playbook of the right--in which swaggering macho cowboys are entrusted to defend the country--seeking to define Obama as too black, too foreign, too different to be President at a moment of high anxiety about national security. This subtly but distinctly racialized political strategy did not create the media feeding frenzy around the Rev. Jeremiah Wright that is now weighing Obama down, but it has positioned Clinton to take advantage of the opportunities the controversy has presented. And the Clinton campaign's use of this strategy has many nonwhite and nonmainstream feminists crying foul.

While 2008 was never going to be a "postracial" campaign, the early racially tinged skirmishes between the Clinton and Obama camps seemed containable. There were references by Clinton campaign officials to Obama's admission of past drug use; the tit-for-tat over Clinton's tone-deaf but historically accurate statement that Martin Luther King needed Lyndon Johnson for his civil rights dreams to be realized; and insinuations that Obama is a token, unqualified, overreaching--that he's all pretty words, "fairy tales" and no action.

From the point of view of Obama's supporters, the edge was taken off some of these conflicts by the mere fact of his stunning electoral success, built as it was on significant white support. Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton and an Obama volunteer, recalls that for black Americans "Iowa was an astonishing moment--watching Barack win the caucus felt like Reconstruction. There was something powerful about feeling as though you were a full citizen." In democracy, Harris-Lacewell explains, "the ruled and rulers are supposed to be the same people. The idea that black folks could be engaged in the process of being rulers over not just black folks but over the nation as a whole struck me as very powerful."

Soon enough, however, that powerful idea came under attack.

"More than any single thing, that moment with Bill Clinton in South Carolina represents the rupture that was coming," says Harris-Lacewell. The moment occurred in late January, when the former President compared Obama's landslide win, in which he received a major boost from African-American voters, to Jesse Jackson's victories there in 1984 and 1988. Because the former President offered the comparison unprompted, in response to a question that had nothing to do with Jackson or race, the statement was widely read as chalking up Obama's win to his blackness alone and thus attempting to marginalize him as a doomed minority candidate with limited appeal. Obama was now "the black candidate," in the words of one Clinton strategist quoted by the AP.

By March, multiple videos of Wright, Obama's former pastor, had popped up on YouTube and had begun to play on an endless loop in the right-wing media. "God damn America for treating your citizens as less than human," Wright inveighed, reciting a litany of racial complaints. And he said in his sermon immediately following 9/11, "America's chickens are coming home to roost."

According to Smith College professor Paula Giddings, author of a new biography of Ida B. Wells, Ida: A Sword Among Lions and the Campaign Against Lynching, Wright's angry invocation of race and nation tapped into a reservoir of doubt about the very Americanness of African-Americans. "American citizenship has always been racialized as white. Who is a true American? Are African-Americans true Americans? That has been the question," she says.

In Obama's case--given his mixed-race lineage, his Kenyan father, his experiences growing up in Indonesia, his middle name (Hussein)--questions about his devotion to America carry a special potency, as xenophobia mingles with racism to create a poisonous brew. The toxicity is further heightened in this post-9/11 atmosphere, in which an image of Obama in Somali dress is understood as a slur and e-mails claiming that he is a "secret Muslim" schooled in a madrassa spread virally, along with rumors that he took the oath of office on a Koran. The madrassa and Koran canards have been thoroughly debunked, but still they persist--and few have been willing to stand up and say, So what if he was a Muslim? For her part, Clinton, asked on 60 Minutes whether Obama was a Muslim, said, "There is nothing to base that on, as far as I know."

Giddings calls the Wright association a "litmus test" that Obama must pass, saying, "It will be interesting to see if a man of color, a man who's cosmopolitan, can be the quintessential symbol of America" as its President.

Obama initially responded to that challenge with his speech in Philadelphia on March 18. While condemning Wright's words, he placed them in a historical context of racial oppression and said, "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community." (More recently, of course, Obama did renounce him.) But in the Philadelphia speech, called "A More Perfect Union," Obama also outlined a racially universal definition of American citizenship and affirmed his commitment to represent all Americans as President. "I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together--unless we perfect our union by understanding that we have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction."

A mere three days after Obama spoke those words, Bill Clinton made this statement in North Carolina about a potential Clinton-McCain general election matchup: "I think it'd be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country. And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics." Whether or not this statement constituted McCarthyism, as one Obama surrogate alleged and as Clinton supporters vigorously denied, the timing of the remark made its meaning quite clear: controversies relating to Obama's race render him less fit than either Hillary or McCain to run for president as a patriotic American. A couple of weeks later, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen went so far as to call on Obama to make another speech, modeled after John F. Kennedy's declaration in 1960 that, despite his Catholicism, he would respect the separation of church and state as President--as though Obama's blackness were a sign of allegiance to some entity, like the Vatican, other than the United States of America.

In the Democratic debates, enabled by the moderators, Hillary Clinton has increasingly deployed issues of race and patriotism as a wedge strategy against her opponent. First, in the debate in Cleveland on February 26, she pressed Obama not only to denounce but to reject Louis Farrakhan--to whom he was spuriously linked through Reverend Wright, who had taken a trip with the black nationalist leader in the 1980s. In style as well as content, that attack was a harbinger of things to come. In the most recent debate, ABC's George Stephanopolous and Charles Gibson peppered Obama with questions such as, "Do you believe [Wright] is as patriotic as you are?" and, regarding former Weatherman Bill Ayers, a Chicago neighbor and Obama supporter, "Can you explain that relationship for the voters and explain to Democrats why it won't be a problem?" Time after time, Clinton picked up the line and ran with it. "You know, these are problems, and they raise questions in people's minds. And so this is a legitimate area...for people to be exploring and trying to find answers," she said, seeming to abandon her argument that these issues are fair game now only because they will be raised by Republicans later and thus are relevant to an evaluation of Obama's electability.

The Wright, Farrakhan and Ayers controversies have been fueled by a craven media, and ABC's performance in the debate has rightly been condemned. But given that Clinton is the one who is running for President and who purports to represent liberal ideals, her complicity in such attempts to establish guilt by association is far more troubling. While she has dealt gingerly with the matter of Wright in the wake of his recent appearance at the National Press Club--accusing Republicans of politicizing the issue--she also took pains to remind reporters that she "would not have stayed in that church under those circumstances."

It's disappointing, to say the least, to see the first viable female contender for the presidency participate in attacks on her black opponent's patriotism, which exploit an anxious climate around national security that gives white men an edge both over women and people of color--who tend to be viewed, respectively, as weak and potentially traitorous. Says Paula Giddings, "This idea of nationalism and patriotism pulling at everyone has demanded hypermasculine men, more like McCain than the feline Obama, and demanded women whose role is to be maternal more than anything else."

For Hillary Clinton, the gendered terrain of post-9/11 national security politics has been treacherous indeed. As Elizabeth Drew observed in The New York Review of Books, Clinton took steps in the Senate, like joining the Armed Services Committee, "to protect herself from the sexist notion that a woman might be soft on national security." As a 2002 study by the White House Project, a women's leadership group, found, "Women candidates start out with a serious disadvantage--voters tend to view women as less effective and tough. Recent events of war, terrorism, and recession have only...increased the salience of these dimensions." Clinton has been quite successful in allaying these concerns, although she faces a Catch-22: her reputed toughness and ruthlessness have helped ratchet up her high negatives. The White House Project study found that a woman candidate faces a unique tension between the need to show herself "in a light that is personally appealing, while also showing that she has the kind of strength needed for the job she is seeking."

Of course, Clinton's decision to play the hawk may have had other motivations. Perhaps she really believed that voting to authorize the war in Iraq was the right thing to do (which is, arguably, even more worrying). But her posture in this campaign--threatening to "totally obliterate" Iran after being asked how she would respond in the highly improbable event of an Iranian nuclear strike against Israel, for example--has at least something to do with a desire to compete on a macho foreign policy playing field. It's the woman in this Democratic primary race who has the cowboy swagger: the nationalist and militaristic rhetoric, the whiskey- swilling photo-ops, the gotcha attacks for perceived insults to a working-class electorate (as in "Bittergate") that is usually depicted as white and male.

Clinton has, to be sure, faced a raw misogyny that has been more out in the open than the racial attacks on Obama have been. But while sexism may be more casually accepted, racism, which is often coded, is more insidious and trickier to confront. Clinton's response to "Iron my shirt" was immediate and straightforward: "Oh, the remnants of sexism, alive and well." Says Kimberlé Crenshaw, law professor at Columbia and UCLA and executive director of the African American Policy Forum, "While sexism can be denounced more directly, that doesn't mean it's worse. Things that are racist have yet to be labeled and understood as such."

While on occasion Obama's campaign has complained of racial slights, Obama himself has avoided raising the charge directly. Even so, Clinton supporters make the twisted claim that it is Obama who has racialized the campaign. "While promoting Obama as a 'post-racial' figure, his campaign has purposefully polluted the contest with a new strain of what historically has been the most toxic poison in American politics," wrote Sean Wilentz in The New Republic in an article titled "Race Man." Bill Clinton recently groused that the Obama camp, in the controversy over his Jackson remark, "played the race card on me."

As for the way the Clinton campaign has dealt with race, Crenshaw says, "It started with a small drumbeat, but as the campaign has proceeded, as Hillary has taken part in things, more people are really seeing this as a 'line in the sand' kind of moment."

Among the black feminists interviewed for this article, reactions to the declarations of sexism's greater toll by Clinton supporters--and their demand that all women back their candidate out of gender solidarity, regardless of the broader politics of the campaign--ran the gamut from astonishment to dismay to fury. Patricia Hill Collins, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland and author of Black Feminist Thought, recalls how, before they were reduced to their race or gender, the candidates were not seen solely through the prism of identity, and many Democrats were thrilled with the choices before them. But of the present, she says, "It is such a distressing, ugly period. Clinton has manipulated ideas about race, but Obama has not manipulated similar ideas about gender." This has exacerbated longstanding racial tensions within the women's movement, Collins notes, and is likely to alienate young black women who might otherwise have been receptive to feminism. "We had made progress in getting younger black women to see that gender does matter in their lives. Now they are going to ask, What kind of white woman is Hillary Clinton?"

The sense of progress unraveling is profound. "What happened to the perspective that the failures of feminism lay in pandering to racism, to everyone nodding that these were fatal mistakes--how is it that all that could be jettisoned?" asks Crenshaw, who co-wrote a piece with Eve Ensler on the Huffington Post called "Feminist Ultimatums: Not in Our Name." Crenshaw says that, appalled as she is by the sexism toward Clinton, she found herself stunned by some of the arguments pro- Hillary feminists were making. "There is a myopic focus on the aspiration of having a woman in the White House-- perhaps not any woman, but it seems to be pretty much enough that she be a Democratic woman." This stance, says Crenshaw, "is really a betrayal."

Frances Kissling, the former president of Catholics for a Free Choice, attributes this go-for-broke attitude to the mindset of corporate feminism. "There's a way in which feminists who have been seriously engaged in electoral politics for a long time, the institutional DC feminist leadership, they are just with Hillary Clinton come hell or high water. I think they have accepted, as she has accepted, a similar career trajectory. They are not uncomfortable with what has gone on in the campaign, because they see electoral campaigns as mere instruments for getting elected. This is just the way it is. We have to get elected."

The implications of all this for the future of feminism depend significantly on the outcome of the primary, says Kissling. "If Clinton wins, the older-line women's movement will continue; it will be a continuation of power for them. If she doesn't win, it will be a death knell for those people. And that may be a good thing-- that a younger generation will start to take over."

Many younger women, indeed, have responded to the admonishments of their pro-Hillary second-wave elders by articulating a sophisticated political orientation that includes feminism but is not confined to it. They may support Obama, but they still abhor the sexism Clinton has faced. And they detect--and reject--a tinge of sexism among male peers who have developed man-crushes on the dashing senator from Illinois. "Even while they voice dismay over the retro tone of the pro-Clinton feminist whine, a growing number of young women are struggling to describe a gut conviction that there is something dark and funky, and probably not so female- friendly, running below the frantic fanaticism of their Obama-loving compatriots," wrote Rebecca Traister in Salon.

It's not just young feminists who have taken such a nuanced view. Calling themselves Feminists for Peace and Obama, 1,500 prominent progressive feminists--including Kissling, Barbara Ehrenreich and this magazine's [The Nation] Katha Pollitt--signed on to a statement endorsing him and disavowing Clinton's militaristic politics. "Issues of war and peace are also part of a feminist agenda," they declared.

In some sense, this is a clarifying moment as well as a wrenching one. For so many years, feminists have been engaged in a pushback against the right that has obscured some of the real and important differences among them. "Today you see things you might not have seen. It's clearer now about where the lines are between corporate feminism and more grassroots, global feminism," says Crenshaw. Women who identify with the latter movement are saying, as she puts it, "'Wait a minute, that's not the banner we are marching under!'"

Feminist Obama supporters of all ages and hues, meanwhile, are hoping that he comes out of this bruising primary with his style of politics intact. While he calls it "a new kind of politics," Clinton and Obama are actually very similar in their records and agendas (which is perhaps why this contest has fixated so obsessively on their gender and race). But in his rhetoric and his stance toward the world outside our borders, Obama does appear to offer a way out of the testosterone-addled GOP framework. As he said after losing Pennsylvania, "We can be a party that thinks the only way to look tough on national security is to talk, and act, and vote like George Bush and John McCain. We can use fear as a tactic and the threat of terrorism to scare up votes. Or we can decide that real strength is asking the tough questions before we send our troops to fight."

As comedian Chris Rock quipped, Bush "fucked up so bad that he's made it hard for a white man to run for President." Rock spoke too soon: many are hungry for a shift, but the country needs the right push to get there. Unfortunately, from Hillary Clinton, it's getting a shove in the wrong direction.

About Betsy Reed

Betsy Reed is the executive editor of The Nation. She is the editor of Unnatural Disaster: The Nation on Hurricane Katrina, a collection of the magazine's coverage of the storm and its aftermath published by Nation Books on the hurricane's one-year anniversary.

She also edited the anthology Nothing Sacred: Women Respond to Religious Fundamentalism and Terror, published by Nation Books in 2003.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread: What’s Up, People?

Teacher — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:14:00 -0000

As I write these words, CNN is saying the Obama is getting his butt kicked in Indiana. So sad. They are all but totally ignoring NC.

This political competition has really contributed to my personal malaise.I have serious issues on my mind, lke this. If Clinton wins, what are we (African-Americans) going to do? What I think is that it will be business as usual, and this is what depresses me so thoroughly. What if Obama wins? What are we going to do to promote our own uplift? Most Black people I've met don't want to leave america. I'm sure I will HAVE to leave because I won't be able to afford to live in america when I reach retirement age.Even now, I have to go to Mexico to get affordable dental care, and I've basically decided to get any serious health care in Mexico, because the Drs. and dentists are MUCH nicer and more thorough. My insurance is not worth the paper it's printed on and I hope I get the courage to totally drop it....But sorry, I didn't mean to go off on this tangent.

I don't really see us (Blacks) having the will to change our circumstances. If I had magic dust, I would cause us to to love and support each other like I see other races and ethnicities doing.We are so consumer oriented...Why can't we put our $ together and do something substantial? One of my co-workers loves S. Africa and goes as much as he can. He has an import/export business & safari business with a S. African partner. He was telling me how he almost bought a hotel in Swaziland. Why can't some like-minded Black folks get together and get a hotel? If there is a deal to be made, an affluent Black will do it on their own and increase their personal wealth. I have seen people of other races do things differently. I've heard all the theories of being scarred by slavery, Willie Lynch, yada,yada, but I also think those are excuses to stay the same. If you don't move out of the gate as an individual, too bad. Get as much as you can for you and yours because we aren't getting ready to do anything collectively. It's unfortunate, but you'll have to get over it.So, that's what I do. I nurture relationships with my foreign friends so I can have some place to send my son when the draft is reinstated, and so I can have somewhere to take my family when the shoe drops. I am actively preparing to emigrate and adopt the culture of people who like each other and try to work together. Is anyone else discouraged?

Re: Tuesday Open Thread: What’s Up, People?

Teacher — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:29:00 -0000

Keith Boykin is getting things together over @ The Daily Voice. I read an "article" by Maya Angelou on why she still supports Hillbilly. Well, the people who responded cut Maya up just like she is not a Black icon and national treasure. It was bloody,harsh and ugly. You know the invective came from the youth. Not that some valid points weren't made, but duhzam. The disrespect was depressing and illustrates yet another aspect of our collective pathology. I pray that my children will not be like that.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread: What’s Up, People?

Teacher — Tue, 06 May 2008 20:28:00 -0000

I pray not to offend anyone with my comments. I read a couple of articles and comments on The Daily Voice. I followed a link of a story about a principal who outted a couple of gay boys for pda (public display of affection). So the link led to a couple of stories about rampant homosexuality at Morehouse College. These stories totally shocked me, because I did not know the school had this particular reputation. So I don't know what to think, but I talked to my son about it last night since my cousin's son attends there as well.

My world is very small & insular. I am on the outs with my church/religion because of the materialism and because of anti-gay sentiments. I just don't want to bash God's children or pretend that I don't love them, cause I do.

That said, I read stuff that suggests that homosexuality is rampant among Black men. There is the whole DL thing and statistics stating that around 75% of adult Black females are unmarried. We somewhat have a kind of undercover, highly disorganized polygmany of sorts among those who participate in having children with a variety of partners.

So I wonder,can all these men be gay? If so, why? What is attractive about homosexuality, and why are so many willing to participate/experiment with it? I guess I don't have a grip on the homosexual inclinations of the non-effeminate man. I still think that some might be born with these inclinations and some might just choose to participate due to pleasure, the same way one might like liquior or recreational substances that are illegal.

People can be whatever they want to be, but what kind of impact does this have on the Black community? Sexual promiscuity is injurious to our people, whether it is hetero or homosexual. It deeply disturbs me that a man would marry a woman and use her as a front because he wants society to look at him a certain way (or whatever), and then would go on to endanger her life by exposing her to the possible consequences of his double life style.

Are there more gay men now than in the past? Does it have an impact, positive or negative, on the Black community at large? Is monogomy a possible and desirable state for African Americans to aspire toward? If not, what are the viable, healthy alternatives?

There was a post on this site by a lady who had to do her taxes multiple times because her life mate was also female. I was not offended by her being gay, because of her attempts to build a life with one person. I have been to gay weddings. I guess I dislike promiscuity more than homosexuality. I would not want my son or daughter F-ing around with many people. I just don't think it's healthy for the body or soul.

Thanks for listening.

Re: Election Thread…Obama Wins North Carolina

Teacher — Tue, 06 May 2008 23:19:00 -0000

I would be so happy if Obama eeks out even the most miniscule lead in IN. They are talking about her huge debt now on MSNBC, hence, her begging in her "victory" speech. Her speech stunk. It was stupid. She is so fake. And what's up with Bill? His face looked so red on my tv, and everyone else looked normal.

Tim Russert talked about her dropping out if Obama agrees to pay off her debt. I hope he doesn't do it!!!!! Let her pay for her own dirty politics.

Harold Ford also plucks my nerves.

I don't think Hillbilly is going to campaign for Obama like the spinners think they are. And I wouldn't trust them anyway. When bill goes out to campaign,he wants to talk about what all he has done anyway. If she was his VP, I wouldn't vote for him, because to me, that would show crazy judgement.

Re: Clinton Wins Indiana Via Rush Limbaugh’s ‘Operation Chaos’

Teacher — Wed, 07 May 2008 01:02:00 -0000

They are talking VP's on MSNBC and keep discussing the possibility of Hillbilly on the ticket. Why, why, why? Chris Matthews mentioned Rendell. NO WAY!!! I say Claire McKaskle, Bill Richardson or Mayor Bloomberg.

It is so gratifying to see all these jerks being forced to strategize for Obama instead of against him. They spun everything against him as hard as they could. They gave her continuous free air time via so-called "interviews" when they found out she was broke.They circled the wagons around her and kicked fair and impartial journalism to the curb. I hope they feel as stupid & embarassed.

Re: Clinton Wins Indiana Via Rush Limbaugh’s ‘Operation Chaos’

Teacher — Wed, 07 May 2008 01:25:00 -0000

Wolf and that white Lake County mayor were trying to blast the Black mayor form the slow count. He pretty much accused him of impropriety.

The constant and continuous racism is so very draining. As much as I'm happy for and supportive of Obama, I'm not sure I can hang in with the racist media coverage for 6 more months. Then after he wins the presidency, they will be challenging and disrespecting him in press conferences, etc. I might be forced to tune out.

Re: James Clyburn -Trying to be the Canary in the Mine

Teacher — Sat, 10 May 2008 22:57:00 -0000

This website might help locate the supers:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/campaign08/primaries/2008_superdelegates.html

I hope I can find the time and courage to call WVA tomorow. I love it and miss it so much and get very emotional when I think about it. I dont want to be on the phone crying about how much I miss my grandparents, though I miss them everyday. I had such a positive and probably unusual experience there in (totally) rural W. Virginia. Lets not forget that WVA has it's share of AA dignitaries just like everywhere else; Tony Brown, TD Jakes, Booker T. Washington, Henry Louis Gates Jr, and many more....

I love the ad Obama is running there and I think it should be run nationally. I'm not sure what people's objections might be to it. I've heard some of my white co-workers say that he is trying to keep his white ancestry in the closet, and that he only promotes his Black ancestry when his daddy didn't even raise him. They don't know why, and think he is ashamed of his whiteness. America pretty much demands that a person pick which camp they're in, which is very much based on looks. You can be white if you look white, which is the case of some of my relatives. But if you look like you have any black in you, as in 1 drop, then you are treated accordingly. I guess it is easier for us to accept him in his ethnic/racial totality since we have a similar experience. I've never heard of a person being dead to their Black family for marrying outside of the race, but I've known quite a few biracial people who had no contact with their white or Asian relatives. I'm not sure why so many white people are in deep denial about this and other issues.

I read @ dailykos that the "Obama might pay off Hillbilly's debts" story might be a story circulated to kill his financial momentum. Its against the campaign finance laws. I understand that he wants to appear as a good guy and appease her more militant white female following, but I won't personally be contributing to that specific kitty. Let her pay for it. She is trying to RUIN his chances at winning so she can try again in 2012. There are many female politicians who are so much better than her in so many different ways. I hope she is finished for LIFE.

Re: James Clyburn -Trying to be the Canary in the Mine

Teacher — Sat, 10 May 2008 23:25:00 -0000

@ Craig:
Craig, I agree that Obama is a brilliant strategist and that we all need to relax. But I'm not sure Edwards is going to commit for Obama at this time, if ever. I think I would also prefer that he not commit if it means that Liz (his wife) is going to commit to Hillbilly at the same time. At this writing, I think the most dangerous thing she (Hillbilly) can do is to announce her continuing campaign running as an independent. To me, that would be the only way Obama would lose the GE.

As far as the supers are concerned, I think it's easy for us to criticize and be dismissive about their unique, individual situations. Let's face it, they all want to keep their jobs, and their situations are very sensitive. My congressperson is flagrantly campaigning for clinton and I have to admit that I'm a little mad at her. I'm not prepared to write her any hate letters at this time. I have never donated to her campaign, but I'm considering donating to her opponent in the future, especially if I don't see her campaigning her ass off for Obama in the GE. I'm saying all this to say it isn't as cut and dried as we want it to be.

I wish there was a way to punish the MSM for their clear bias and discrimination. I swear that Pat Buchanan is MSNBC's resident klansman. I just can't take any more of his viagra induced racist invective. He was on this morning with Keith Boykin, who I love and miss as an MSNBC comentator. I have emailed them so many letters requesting his termination (Pat's), but I guess it's not going to happen. This past Friday's Morning Joe was the best I've ever seen (since joe's dumb self wasn't there). I wonder why Tiki Barber is willing to be their token Black? They treat him like the spook who sat by the door or something.

Re: Obama Launches Vote For Change, A Massive 50-State Registration Drive

Teacher — Sun, 11 May 2008 05:09:00 -0000

Here are some amusing videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFZL33nPoEU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6Lstkiexhc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exsmFDYyK4U

The URL listed below has a good story about how politicians/super delegates fall so far.

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2008/5/10/13921/7570

Re: Sunday Open Thread

Teacher — Sun, 11 May 2008 16:04:00 -0000

Happy Mothr's Day to all the mothers.

There sure have been a lot of fatalities & property damage from tornados lately. I know this is going to cut into O's contributions.

I was just trying to make phonebank calls to WVA, but the website won't give me any #'s (SAVED!). I hate talking on the phone unless I'm in the mood. They callers are talking about how hard WVA is..that is, how resistant the citizens are. They don't want to talk to Obama supporters. If we take a trip this summer, I might try to stop there and campaign.

Ali Velshi just interviewed a commentator who said that wages haven't increased for us in 8 years, and have only increased for the top 10% of income earners.He said that Obama would work to redistribute wealth.

Raving Black Lunatic said this:

"Black people commonly say that we would rather an openly racist person to one that hides in the shadows, but, man, when you see that crap out in the open it is pretty jarring. I mean, it's one thing when somebody is racist and they have no power over your lives, but an openly racist person that can affect your life is a frightening prospect.

For me, the scary part is that once you've established that someone or some people are just blatantly racist, what's your next step. Can you really appeal to the better nature of a racist? If you become angry and denounce their racism, will they even care? They may try to avoid the public scorn, but will it affect their hearts in any way?"

IMO we are enduring racism in our faces in a more confrontational way than usual. I think it is having an adverse affect on our mental/emotional health. We are trying to keep hope alive, but we have a collective fear that "they" are going to cut some deal to cheat our candidate, and there won't be a darned thing we can do about it. The biased, unfair and racist media coverage is draining. I guess one solution is to tune out. Another is to do something positive in behalf of a cause you believe in. I sought out the Black blogosphere and left/liberal leaning news so that I wouldn't think I was going nuts all by myself. I work (a lot) and don't talk politics with my co-workers in general. quite q few christians that I know are apolitical, and my family members have the same feelings as me. To me it's positive to be able to read the ideas of others that are similar, but not exactly the same.

Re: Sunday Open Thread

Teacher — Sun, 11 May 2008 17:27:00 -0000

Why is Hillbilly so desperate? Why won't she let her campaign give up the ghost? Personally, I think it's because they have made promises to various entities. They might end up with their legs broken or pinkie fingers cut off. We already know that he has accepted $ from Columbia & China. They refuse to release the list of donors to his library. They are obviously beholding to someone.

Another blogger suggested that it is her religious (?) affiliation wih "the family," which believes that God almighty has ordained them as leaders and that it's God's will for them to be in charge. If she doesn't fight to the death, she will be betraying God's plan. So, between her "religious" "family" and her mafia-might-find-a dead-horse-in-the-bed family, I guess she finds herself in a desperate situation. I don't know why some people have these extreme delusions of grandeur....Hillbilly, warren Jeffs, David Koresh....The Jim Jones cool aide will put her out of her misery. Hillbilly, driiiink the cooool aaaaiiiddde.

Re: Sunday Open Thread

Teacher — Sun, 11 May 2008 23:24:00 -0000

Different Side Of Clinton Seen By One Tennessean
ANDY MEEK | The Daily News

In a front-page story in Thursday's edition of The Hill, the newspaper covering Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Tenn., was reported to have turned down an invitation to meet with presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton.

Davis was among a group of so-far-uncommitted Democratic "superdelegates" who were approached in the last day or so by the Clinton camp in the hopes of garnering their endorsement.

"He says that's not true," U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., told The Daily News about Davis' refusal to meet with Clinton. "But that's on the front page of The Hill. I told him he might as well go ahead and endorse Barack (Obama), because once Hillary sees that he's a dead man anyway."

Frosty ties

That sentiment from Cooper is the product of a long and famously sticky relationship he's had with the former first lady, one that has been the focus of sporadic national media attention over the years. Before he came to Memphis Friday at the request of U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., to give a speech at the Shelby County Democratic Party's Kennedy Day Dinner, Cooper talked at length with The Daily News about some of that history.

Cooper, the state chairman of Obama's campaign in Tennessee, said his speech at the Holiday Inn-University of Memphis would focus on the 2008 presidential contest in general terms. But a look at his dealings with the first lady in the 1990s helps put his current political stance into context.

The year was 1993, and the focus was on comprehensive health care reform. The Clinton administration was mounting a full-court press in persuading congressional leaders to sign on to a health care bill championed by the White House.

Cooper had a health care bill of his own.

"They turned up their nose at my bill, and that's fine. But then they constructed this secret 500-person task force to draft a whole new bill - and I knew it would go nowhere," Cooper said. "So I went privately to the White House to warn (Hillary Clinton). No publicity. No nothing.

"She brought in a camera to record the meeting. And she has not released the memos on this meeting. She immediately declared war on me. I warned her we didn't even have the votes (for her bill) in our subcommittee. She said, 'We're going to (politically) cut your legs off.' I've never gotten such a cold reception as I got from her."

Cooper said the first lady set up a war room to undercut Cooper, who was gearing up for a run at the U.S. Senate in 1994. And a former television news reporter from Nashville was tasked with leading that war room, he said.

"Bill Clinton couldn't have been nicer to me during this period," said Cooper, who still keeps an old photograph of himself that was taken during a visit to the first lady's West Wing office in the White House during the 1990s. "I went running with him. I played golf with him. I was asked to hang out in the White House with him.

"I respect Hillary supporters because they haven't had the chance to get to know her like I have. She does not have the political skills of her husband. Or Barack. You need somebody who can bring people together. She criticized my health care bill because it wouldn't achieve universal coverage until 1998. Well, today we'd be celebrating the 10th anniversary of having every American with insurance."

Still in it

The Clinton campaign, meanwhile, declined to respond to Cooper's remarks. When asked, some of her prominent local supporters still affirm their commitment to her, despite a widening lead in the primary race for Obama.

Memphis City Council member Myron Lowery, one of the Democratic superdelegates from Tennessee already committed to Clinton, said he had not felt any recent pressure to shift his allegiance.

"I am still firm with Clinton. I made that commitment, and as long as she's there, I will be there supporting her," he said. "Right now I've made my commitment, and that's where I am."

Another staunch Clinton backer is former Tennessee Gov. Ned McWherter. He's long been a close friend, sounding board and prominent backer of both Clintons.

Speaking with The Daily News, McWherter said Clinton's political skills would be put to good use in reforming the nation's current health care system.

"With her leadership and her knowledge of health care, I believe she could put a good health care program together and pass it in the House and Senate," he said. "We can all talk about having a health care program, but to go to Washington and get legislation on the books and make it real - that's a different proposition. And I believe Hillary possesses that leadership and has that commitment to develop and pass a health care bill for all Americans."

Cooper, meanwhile, is insistent that the country needs to metaphorically turn the page by electing Obama as president.

"I was just with him. ... It's incredible the appeal he has," Cooper said. "We walked from a townhouse near Capitol Hill up to the Capitol to vote. And kids were screaming. He's like a rock star. It's fabulous.

"Democrats would be crazy to throw this away. There's like a million new voters registered in North Carolina and Indiana. Nobody else has been able to do that. The Clintons had eight years. You don't get a do-over in American politics. They had eight good years. Now it's time to turn the page. We need to change."

Re: Monday Open Thread - How was the weekend?

Teacher — Tue, 13 May 2008 02:02:00 -0000

@ B Serious-Thanx for the awesome post, Friend. Reading it has been the highlight of my day. I totally agree with the yin/yang analogy. In my experience, the yang speeches have often fired us up to do nothing. At this stage of my life I could pretty much skip it, and I am much more concerned with doing something practical. I would like us to have leadership (parlimentary moreso than charasmatic) that can organize us to effect practical change in our communities. My dream action is a collective boycott with 75-80% AA participation. Money ALWAYS talks. It is the god of our society. It's siamese twin is power.

@ Rikyrah-In what context are you talking about the clothing? Unless I missed something, you gave a response without posting the story. That said, it is often very challenging to find appropriate girl's clothing that your child also likes. The dept stores sell grown women's clothing in miniature. You can buy a size 6x shirt that says "Hottie," and little wedge heel sandals. Luckily, my daughter doesn't like that stuff, but neither is she willing to look like one of those FLDS girls. I saw an ad for Beyonce's mama's clothing line, House of Derion (or whatever-derriere) and that stuff looked pretty bad. It can be an issue, and a lot of people really don't know any better because they lack standards and discernment.

As for Obama and anger, the MSM has also been calling for him to be more forceful and exhibit more testosterone. He's darned if he do and darned if he don't. After the bowling fiasco, morning joe said he bowled like a little girl. It was tre' insulting. This is another aspect of america's collective unconscious. We glorify the thug, the mafia, John Wayne, Shaft or hillary. We like assholes and ass kickers. Thats why McCain polls so high sometimes even though most people claim to be against the war. Its a conundrum.

As for Michelle, I'm not a big fan of hers either (please, no hating). I have also wondered why she has said some of the things she has said, and I have wondered if she is mad at him and exacting revenge. I wasn't crazy about her saying things about his socks stinking, etc., and I wondered why I was supposed to care. To me, it was kinda like her saying, "He's not all that!" So I'm thinking, you can take the sister out of the hood, but....Why is she doing this? What is the point of saying "I love accessories. I'm married to one." She did an interview where she told someone he has 1 shot at this only, and that there would be no more chances. I guess I should assume that they had discussed it and come to a mutual agreement, but my initial impression was that she is some kind of dominatrix. That said, she did slam dunk for him in a tv appearance I saw with Caroline Kennedy. She was GREAT and redeemed herself with me. I just think that if she can't muster the self-control, she needs to say nothing.

They do appear to have the warmest union of all the candidates. I think Obama is a kind and decent person. He doesn't have the harshness or edginess of those of us raised in the continental 48. I've seen him be generally affectionate and huggy on the campaign trail.

I also feel sorry for Cindy McCain. She's married to the crypt keeper. Not only did he call her a cunt, he called her that in public. He probably wanted a more passive woman after being raised by his mother. What a shrew. She reminds me of hillary.

I don't want to see Hillbilly get any post or appointment. I want to see her flat ass go down in flames.

Re: Wednesday Open Thread - Speak your mind

Teacher — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:32:00 -0000

Friends, please help me calm down. I just heard on cnn that Howard Dean is prepared to announce a joint fundraising plan between the Obama and kkklinton campaigns. Then they show her continuing to talk about how she isn't going anywhere....Wolf Blitzer is interviewing her and she commented how she (my paraphrase) thinks Obama is too idealistic or doesn't know how it the system works. she said you can't just go hold hands and hope that things happen. What an insult! I'm afraid I won't be donating to Obama any longer if she is going to get any of the $.I understand that he has to do what he has to do, and I have to do what I have to do. If she ends up as his VP, I'm truly done. I'm going to email his website. What a bummer!

Re: Wednesday Open Thread - Speak your mind

Teacher — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:37:00 -0000

OK. I read more asbout it on Daily Kos Dean's press release says:

"The fund will allow both candidates to raise money for the Party, forming one joint fundraising committee account that will accept money for the nominee’s primary and general election and for the DNC."

and I feel better. It's "allegedly" for the DNC, which is low on $.

Edwards is endorsing Obama! I'm glad he has the spine to show some leadership. It's hard for me to understand that if they are really for the success and progress of the party, why won't they show more leadership. I think the floodgates will open after the final contest on June 3rd. KKKlinton insists that Fl & MI be seated just the way they voted. Why don't white people consider her to be a cheater? Marion Jones is in jail for cheating, and Barry Bond is being continuously harassed...Why is it ok for KKKlinton to cheat and not be censured by the party? I'm not going to be able to donate to them to cheat Black people, even if he is going to win in spite of it. I think I'm going to email them and let them know.

And as far as Obama not wanting us to support 528's or whatever the right # is, I understand him and I disagree. They are going to tell scurrilous lies about him. I think there needs to be someone to tell the TRUTH about McCryptkeeper.

Re: Wednesday Open Thread - Speak your mind

Teacher — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:43:00 -0000

Rules posted on Daily Kos:

Joint Fundraising Notice

General Rule

In addition to any notice required under "Disclaimer Notices on Communications" and "Solicitation Notices," participants must include a joint fundraising notice with every solicitation for contributions. The notice must contain the following information:

• The names of all participants, regardless of whether they are registered political committees or unregistered organizations;

• The allocation formula;

• A statement informing contributors that they may designate contributions for a particular participant; and

• A statement that the allocation formula may change if any contributor makes a contribution that exceeds the amount he or she may lawfully give to any participant. 102.17(c)(2)(i).

Special Situations

In two situations, participants must include additional information in the joint fundraising notice:

• If a participant is engaging in the joint fundraiser to pay off outstanding debts, the notice must state that the allocation formula may change if the participant receives enough funds to pay its debts. (emphasis mine)

• If, under State law, any unregistered participant is permitted to receive contributions prohibited under the Act, the notice must say that such contributions will be given only to participants that may legally accept them. 102.17(c)(2)(ii

Re: The Buchanan Theorem

Teacher — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:43:00 -0000

I think Pat Buchanan should lose his job. There is no way that a nazi, a Black Nationalist or a Muslim "extremist" (I'm not comparing them. I'm using them in the context of each of them being offensive to a racial/ethnic group)would be regular commentators, yet we are expected to put up with him. When I turned on morning joe and saw him, I changed the channel. I've written at least 4 email letters to MSNBC requesting his termination. The only way they would respond is with petitions and letters to sponsors.

Ronnie B, you are very correct in your assertion sbout Blacks and the DNC. I think we should consider defecting from it enmass. We can't really control who a candidate appoints to their cabinet, because we don't vote about it. They can (and do) tell us anything. Aside from that, america as a nation is going to be too caught up in survival to watch politics as closely as we have been able to do in the past.

The DNC has not done right by Obama. They have stood by silently and witnessed the ugly, scurrilous and low down political tactics of hillbilly. In their silence they have communicated to the public that they condone this mess. They stand by and watch Joe Lieberman do whatever kind of traitorous thing he wants to do, and they are too spineless to kick him out. They listen to hillbilly elevate a republican "opponent" over a fellow party member, and again, they are too spineless to speak up and let the public know, this does not represent what we are about. I don't know why they have so much fear of hillbilly, but they have carte blanche to do and say whatever the hell they want without censure. Worst of all, they seem unwilling to publicly denounce hillbilly's cheating and assertion that they "won" FL & MI. Are they saying to all the young people that are interested in this historical political contest that it's OK to cheat as long as you are able to spin it? I don't really get it, and I really don't get all the american who are OK with the spin. At this writing, I won't be able to financially support them.

Re: Sunday Open Thread

Teacher — Sun, 18 May 2008 15:36:00 -0000

Anonymous, when the camapigning first started, I was excited about (KKK)clinton and thought she would be my candidate of choice. As time progressed they showed me a total lack of ethical standards. They showed me that they were willing to insult my entire race for political expediency. As adults, most people realize that there is a line in relationships that ought not be crossed. Once someoneone says the thing that cannot be unsaid, dynamics change forever. The KKKlintons went there, as far as I'm concerned. They were willing to sacrifice their good standing with my entire race to garner a few votes from racists instead of standing for something more noble and rightous. Additionally, as Lawrence O'Donnell recently said on MSNBC, HRC IS NOT VETTED as a candidate. She is involved in a lawsuit with a man named Peter Paul involving campaign fraud.I'm not sure why the MSM refuses to cover it. They (the KKKlintons) refuse to release the donor list of billy's library. I'm sure it would be a bombshell if not the actual bomb. She continuously gets caught in lies. billy has accepted $ from Columbia and China, and probably other countries that we don't know about. Do you think he could convince hill to enact policies that favor the other countries over ours? I do. She has also promoted a political opponent over a member of her own party. She has shown a willingness to injure/destroy the party or anything that stands in the path of her victory. She would pimp anyone to get what she wants! She has shown a willingness to cheat to win. She signed a document saying she would NOT campaign in the 2 states that broke party rules, and then proceeded to break her agreement. HER WORD DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING!!! Yet, she wants to hold herself up as a role model for young people, especially females, and all americans. Her philosophy is "do whatever it takes to get what you want." It is the same philosophy shared by drug dealers, pedophiles and all the bottom dwellers of our society. If that's not enough, her management of her campaign has been deplorable. She is 21 (known) million dollars in debt. Small vendors have had to publicly humiliate her just to get paid. Her own staff has has to wait for their paychecks & insurance payments to be made late. I'm not sure why you would want this (lying, cheating, racist, scandalous, non-bill paying, disorganized, non-managerial, disloyal, pimp of a) person in charge of our nation, but you are entitled to vote for whomever you want. I'm just very thankful that the majority citizens are smarter than we seem. Obama is our only hope to turn things around during this current cycle. And the mess he is going to inherit will be mind boggling, needless to say.

As for Ivy league Blacks, people are people. You will find some who are good or bad, smart or dumb, proud or humble, honest or deceptive, etc. You don't need to be overly impressed or overly intimidated by them. Just be yourself and develop yourself to a level that gives you confidence. They worked hard for those degrees. The only people who get unearned degrees are rich white people.

Good luck to you, Anonymous. I am interested in reading your defense of HRC, why she is your candidate, & why Obama isn't, if you ever feel like sharing.

Re: Sunday Open Thread

Teacher — Sun, 18 May 2008 16:09:00 -0000

OK, I got fooled (sigh). I'm not quite ready to apply for the position of village idiot, but....I asked a Puerto Rican co-worker why Puerto Ricans are more for hillbilly & less for Obama. She said that they remember that times were good for them when billy was in office, that they know them & don't know Obama, and something else that I don't remember. Most people who are members of Afro-hispanic culture identify more with the Hispanic than with the Afro. I love PR and want to think that they are open minded to Obama. Does anyone have any information about his campaign there?

I wish O wouldv'e gone to Kentucky.

Re: Sunday Open Thread

Teacher — Mon, 19 May 2008 03:14:00 -0000

Friends, I guess hillbilly is in the 4th stage of death (kinda sounds like a martial arts film-smirk). I would also make her an ambassador...to Gilligan's Island. I'd put her on a boat with a map and give her the "call me" sign with the fingers. She is becoming more irrelevant by the minute.

I think O should go to all the places where he isn't popular because he is going to be their president too. To know him is to love him. I always tell students, you don't run from challenges, you run to them (yes, I'm really a teacher).

And when all is said and done, everyone better be glad that O won the presidency instead of Hillbilly. Her 1st act as president would be to deploy troops to Iowa. She'd be telling N & S Carolina, "I hope you like the roads you have, cause you won't be getting any new ones for a loooong time." Poor Bill Richardson's face says it all. I wouldn't be surprised if he held up a sign that said "help me!" during his next interview. I'm sure he knows about the clinton death list, which has way too many people to be coincidental. He might have to hire illegal aliens to start his car for him.

As for Condolezza Rice, I wonder what would make her say "my husband" when she is unmarried/never married? My cousin is totally convinced that she & W are paramours, but I can't see Laura bush putting up with it unless she has her own extra-marital action. Condi might have some fantasy about him, but I can't see him being attracted to her because she is smart.

As for Hispanics, I think we must build alliances with them. I also consider them to be our cousins (genetically). One of my interests is studying African history, which one can find in many places in the world. I'm not really sure why, but many Hispanics I have met have been of African descent. I live in a city with many, many Hispanics, and a whole lot of Black Mexicans. Some will admit they have African heritage & some won't, but it seems like many of them are aware of it.Below is a link with genetic research showing that about 10% of Latin americans have African ancestry.

http://www.ancestrybydna.com/welcome/productsandservices/ancestrybydna/ethnicities/#mexicanhisp

African affiliation in Mexican Hispanics

Mexican Hispanics commonly show African affiliation, presumably as a consequence of the slave-trade importation of Africans to North America, the Caribbean and Latin America.

Underhill et al., 2001 showed that about 10% of the Y-chromosome haplotypes in Latin America are of African origin (see Figure UNDERHILL ). In contrast, the frequency of African haplotypes for North American Native American Amerindian and South American populations was insignificant. Here is a link about the 2nd Pres. of Mexico who had African ancestry and abolished slavery in Mexico.

http://www.frenchcreoles.com/CreoleCulture/famous%20people/vincenteguerrero.htm

There are a few websites devoted to Black Mexicans if you care. I would love to talk about it any time. In central america, the Black people of Honduras, Nicaragua and Belize are called Garifuna. I saw them last summer when we went to Honduras and I also have students at my school representing. Most of my Columbian students have been Black (all but 1), as well as the people I've met from Panama, Venezuela,Cuba, Domican Republic & Puerto Rico.

As a race, we've received the worst PR in the history of humankind. Everyone on the planet has been brainwashed to put us down, including ouurselves. Our children are still saying that Black dolls are ugly compared to white dolls (if you saw the David Wilson documentary recently). Hispanics have not had our experience of Black excellence and Black power. They don't have the audacity to hope that we have. We have to help them be more progressive. I always tell them that they are my people and that we share common ancestry.I speak the language of my colonizer and they speak the language of theirs.

Re: Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment from Tonight

Teacher — Sat, 24 May 2008 23:33:00 -0000

Friends, have a good holiday.

I think hillbilly has put a hit out on Obama as well. Now we REALLY know and understand the meaning of "anything," as in "she will do *anything* to win the nomination. And in light of the kkklinton death list, we need to take her veiled threats with the utmost seriousness. On the positive side, she killed (excuse the pun)any chance of "forcing" Obama to offer her a vice-presidency, so we no longer have to worry about that.

I don't like the feelings of hatred that I feel for them. My feelings are so intense, and I seldom have that much negative passion. I also feel it for that MSNBC resident klansman, pat buchanan.

If we haven't been previously convinced, this political episode really illustrates how desperately we need our own tv media outlet(s). I saw a Black politician on tv a few months ago, and I think his name is JC Watts, from Oklahoma. He is a Black republican. He said he was going to start a Black Political tv station. I wish we could put our dollars together and have a People's tv station. I hardly ever watch BET and I forbid my children from watching it. And even while I can get a little raw, I do not consider myself to be in or have much in common with the ghetto demographic. I also think we need to financially secede from all the institutions that show bias against us, especially the msm. I feel that their blatantly biased/racist spin on local and national events wages an assult on our mental health, which is what racism does. Everyone I know is so upset and drained, unless they are totally apolitical. Racism creates an environment where we are called dysfunctional for having the temerity to call something racist. We are dismissed and convinced that we don't see what we see, hear what we hear, or feel what we feel, and that WE are the ones who are racist for bringing it up. We need to hear from our Black psychologists about now because we are being assulted on a daily basis. On the positive side, the hardcore racists are dying out more & more with each generation.

If you feel bus tire tread marks on your ass, it's because the DNC & the supers are trying to protect their jobs from the ire,backlash & revenge of white, female kkklinton supporters. These are the people she is sending to storm the May 31st meeting. That said, I do think there is a flurry of activity going on behind the scenes that we aren't privy to at this time. I have the greatest confidence in Obama & his crew to have a brilliant plan. I will hold on to this belief until June 4th. If everything isn't tied up & packaged by then, I'll freak out again.

The high point of my day yesterday was hearing Keith Olbermann rip hillbilly a new asshole, and hearing Janet Napolitano say "beat down the strawman." Aside from that, I envisioned a video game where the players are snipers shooting @ hillary clinton. She can hide behind bill, chelsea, women's organizations & various lies. She can start out in a dark pants suit, and as the player gets more points, her pants suits get lighter, and she becomes an easier target. If the player stops her before she gets to the white house, her head explodes... Then she grows a new one and keeps running, because she won't quit.

Re: Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment from Tonight

Teacher — Sat, 24 May 2008 23:38:00 -0000

Heart of fury, how would one find out who hillbilly's unpaid vendors are? How do you know for a fact that there are any deliquent accounts? Obama said that he really doesn't want 503's (or whatever the # s) making smear ads against competitors.

Re: Saturday, It’s A Saturday Open Thread

Teacher — Sun, 25 May 2008 03:01:00 -0000

Truthseeker, your post was really interesting and insightful. Let me also add that she doesn't strike me as a very self-aware person. How could she be when a majority of her life and actions are based on a charade, lies & denial? Even though I think those are her personal problems, there is still something very tragic about her & her life choices. Humiliation follows her like a dog following a floating pork chop. It's weird. She's in the closet in so many ways. Let's count them later.

Babyming, what you said was so succinct: Assassination is to African Americans as oven is to Jews. That truly summarizes it.

Craig, I read the article about the Obama campaign allegedly asking bill to campaign for him to heal the rift in the party. To me that seems like somewhat of a faulty strategy, and one that I am vehemently opposed to. For one, bill hasn't done that great for hill. I have seen quite a bit of footage of him talking about himself and his accomplishments when he is (so-called) campaigning for his (so-called) wife. It's almost as if he is saying "if you vote form her, you'll get me back." Secondly, he didn't campaign all that great for Al Gore, who he knows well and "respected." You never hear of them having anything to do with each other since then either. I think the best bill would be able to do would be similar to a John Edwards fake ass endorsement, suggesting that hillary is better, but since she's not going to win, I endorse Obama. Who needs it? Third, I think billy is a lose cannon and can't be trusted. He has also endorsed McCryptkeeper over Obama along with her. Part of why these people keep doing this unsavory stuff is because they continuously get bailed out. I honestly don't believe he wants to heal his relationship with AA's except for the sake of continuing his career & having power. He didn't hesitate to play the race card & then blame it on Obama & neither did she. Let them just live with the ramifications of that.

Re: Sunday Open Thread

Teacher — Sun, 25 May 2008 14:18:00 -0000

It is hard to figure out...I feel as strongly & adamantly about my candidate as kkklinton supporters feel about hillbilly. I did start out favoring hillbilly, but could not continue after they made racial and dismissive comments & after she showed herself to be a psycho bitch. I have tried to understand where they are coming from and I can't. I do believe that many, even a majority, of white people have a master race complex and feel that they and their ways are vastly superior to all others. They feel like every nation should line up to support their agenda and best interest, which of course is vastly superior. They are willing to kill anyone or any group percieved to be weaker and who doesn't line up with their agenda. But "they" don't see it that way. They can't heal until they realize they have a problem. Just like, I do believe in supporting Isreal, but I don't like that whoever doesn't support Isreal will be destroyed (politically or economically). I don't like how it it politically incorrect to have any sympathy for Palestinians, who are also people. It's a challenge for everyone I guess. I wish humans could be more compromising and less selfish. The concept of domination is so primitive, but has a stronghold in the collective unconscious of America,and probably most humans.

Re: Monday Open Thread - It’s a New Week!

Teacher — Mon, 26 May 2008 15:47:00 -0000

Hillary Clinton Leaves Behind Unpaid Bills
May 24, 2008

Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign has moved on from Indiana, leaving behind $55,000 in unpaid bills for campaign events at Indiana University.

The debts are for appearances made by Clinton, former President Bill Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea, during March and April leading up to Indiana's May 6 primary.

Barack Obama's campaign, meanwhile, has already paid the $108,142 it owed IU for two Assembly Hall events — a rally featuring the Illinois senator and an Obama-sponsored concert by Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds.

The university charged the campaigns for sound equipment, security and other needs for their events, but school officials knew there was a risk that the bills would not be paid, IU spokesman Larry MacIntyre said.

"We are very happy that we were able to have both Democratic candidates here," MacIntyre said. "We feel it was a great thing for the students, and we don't have any regrets. We'd like to get paid, and certainly we believe that ultimately, we will be paid."

The Clinton campaign has received two invoices from IU for the events and expected to pay both during the next few weeks, spokesman Isaac Baker said yesterday.

"We try to pay our invoices as they come in within about a month," Baker said. "We very much appreciate the university's hospitality and being willing to host us."

In spending reports filed this week, Clinton listed $19.5 million in debts, including $10 million she has lent her campaign.

Clinton and Obama both spent millions of dollars on television commercials, campaign offices and events around Indiana for more than a month before the primary, which Clinton won.

The Clinton campaign report listed several smaller debts around the state through the end of April, including about $900 to Kim Brand's company for setting up the computers at Clinton's state headquarters in downtown Indianapolis.

Brand said he was paid after making repeated telephone calls to the campaign.

"We didn't want to let it get too far out because then memories fade, relationships lapse," he said.

MacIntyre said he was not sure what IU would do to pursue the Clinton debt if the campaign did not pay it.

"She owes $20 million. I suspect we're probably not going to get paid in a timely manner," he said. "But what a great opportunity for students. They had … a chance to be up close and personal with both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton."

Source: AP

This is from www.againsthillary.com</br>

Re: Monday Open Thread - It’s a New Week!

Teacher — Mon, 26 May 2008 15:52:00 -0000

Loan ties Hillary’s campaign to Bill’s fundraising
May 9, 2008

By Greg Gordon

Hillary Rodham Clinton's decision to lend her presidential campaign $6.4 million from assets she holds jointly with her husband is rekindling questions about millions of dollars that special interests have paid Bill Clinton for speeches and other work since he left the White House.

In tapping some of that cash, "the Clintons have effectively bypassed campaign finance reform in a manner that's ingenious — using Bill Clinton effectively as a front for the fundraising," said Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political science professor.

Since 2001, the ex-president has spoken roughly 250 times on tours worldwide that brought him more than $40 million.

The sponsors have included investment banks that later suffered billions of dollars in losses in the subprime mortgage debacle and now have a big stake in regulatory changes; an insurance group with an interest in any overhaul of the health care system; a group that favors the reunification of Taiwan with mainland China; a Colombian business development group that backs a free-trade agreement; and more than two dozen Jewish groups, synagogues and museums.

Clinton campaign spokesman Jay Carson dismissed concerns, saying, "There are no conflicts of interest, and every dollar either of (the Clintons) have made is all publicly available."

However, said Jacobs, the director of the university's Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, "There appear to be a number of prominent, wealthy corporations in the financial services sector, the health care sector and others that stand to gain considerably from the election of Hillary Clinton as president."

When Hillary Clinton lent her campaign $5 million in early February, she made it clear that those funds came from her own money. Her pre-tax earnings have totaled about $11 million from her salary as a New York senator and from advances and royalties for her book Living History.

But her last-ditch decision to tap joint funds to remain financially competitive with rival Barack Obama exposes her husband's financial dealings over the last seven years to greater scrutiny.

On Wednesday, when Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson disclosed that she'd lent her campaign $6.4 million more since April 11, he said that the funds came from their shared assets. Wolfson said that Clinton is legally entitled to use up to 50 percent of their jointly held assets for her campaign.

Source: Mcclatchy-Tribune

Re: Monday Open Thread - It’s a New Week!

Teacher — Mon, 26 May 2008 18:33:00 -0000

B-Serious, I am celebrating along with you. Only 9 more days and hopefully we will be able to move on to a new phase and the national cmpaign, which is in 180 something days, I think. When you put it like that, it seems really close. Sen. Graham of FL was just now on CNN, and said he would like to see all the delegates of FL seated. The way he would like them to be allocated is kinda hard to figure out, but he said 50/50, and that it should reflect the voting patterns of the country. I hope that means 50% for kkklinton & 50% for Obama. He asid the FL is a victim because the republicans selected their voting day which went against the rules of the DNC. My question is, why is this just now being handled? If the date was determined last year, why wasn't the problem handled last year?

Re: ABOUT THOSE STATE BLOGGING CREDENTIALS

Teacher — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:26:00 -0000

Francis Holland has this story on his blog too. To forbid AA bloggers is very suspect & unsettling, because we do represent a constituency or voting block. I also think that Unapologic Mexican is going to represent. If you know anyone on the inside, call them & ask them to look into it. I would even email Obama's website, because I think they would care about us havivg representation. Don't give up yet. Keep Trying. Let us know if there is any way we can assist.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread: Hi Everybody

Teacher — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:13:00 -0000

Obama wore a light suit today. I thought his speech was good as usual, but it was a serious speech dealing with issue #1 (the economy) so he should've worn a dark suit.

To the mongers, the anti-war aren't going to agree with the pro-war. Personally, I would never agree with OCCUPYING a soverign nation anymore than I would be ok with being occupied. I remember 4 or 5 years ago when soldiers were interviewed and said, straight out, that they were guarding the oil pipeline.So to some of us, our tax $s have been paying for oil companies to siphon those people's gas out of their land, and we are still being charged astronomical prices (paying twice). Sadam Hussein was in the way. John McCain himself recently said that the war was started over oil. Bush & cheney are HEAVILY connected to the oil industry as well as those companies that have received no-bid contracts (Halliburton, KBR). But people need to have a different reason to put their lives on the line, thus the whole political, WMD, al Qaeda, yada-yada string of anything but oil excuses.This is what is meant when people use the term, "unjust war." Now that we have "bombed Iraq back to the stone age," I think we should help them rebuild and get out. What we did to their country was unconscionable.

Lanny Davis is a McCain operative. I read it yesterday on DailyKos. That explains some things and is another verification that the MSM sucks.

The kkklinton campaigen death watch: 7 days til liberation!

Will she take it to the convention? Historically, anytime it has gone to the convention, the dem candidate has lost. I'm sure she knows that.

The Moveon.org ad about Charlie Black is scurrilous! Whoo-wee. I think it's valid. No one would tolerate a nazi sympathizer or person affiliated with a so-called militant group or...You know, anyone controversial.

I read an article Rikyrah posted called "Running Mate Choice," and I thought it was a true vanity piece. I disagreed with a lot of what the writer said. For one,he spoke repeatedly about Obamas's lack of experience and how he is going to need help doing whatever. I'm thinking that this writer is dense. He has run the most brilliant campaign in modern history. He has used the primaries to build bases and open offices in 50 states that can & will be utilized in the GE. He is registering voters for the benefit of the party as well as for his own benefit.He is building a data base.He has surplus money. I think he'll be fine. I think he will be able to figure out how to implement what he wants to implement.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread: Hi Everybody

Teacher — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:57:00 -0000

Rikyrah, The CBN journalist said today that Crist wasn't favored by evangelicals because he is or has been pro-life.

I had as weird vision of the McCain weekend candidate gathering being something like Flavor of Love where they have to show why they are for McCain. I kinda like Lindsey Graham except for him being in the 527 with Lieberman.He seems smart and is quite glib. I think he is on the VP list as well. I like Huckabee, but I haven't yet forgiven him for the so-called joke about shooting Barak. I wouldn't think that he would stoop so low.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread: Hi Everybody

Teacher — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:01:00 -0000

Truthseeker, McCain is physically impaired. He can't raise his arms up. He can't even comb his hair. Thats why he hugs W down low (excuse the pun).

Re: Tuesday Open Thread: Hi Everybody

Teacher — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:45:00 -0000

I hope O will build good relationships w/ Nigeria & (dare I say it)Venezuela and get the oil flowin & the prices to drop, even just a little. A whole bunch of folks will have to shut up! It would be such a coup. I would also like to see the development of highspeed rail. The airline industry can't handle it, and we really need an alternative.We can model ours after Europe or Japan. I hope we will be able to work on alternatives to oil and I'm not 100% against nuclear even though it's scary.

What about Libertarianism? I don't know much about them. John Stossel, Tucker Carlson & Glen Beck are Libertarians. Unimpressive, I know. I think they believe in every person for him/herself. They believe in the least government of all. I would let them haul their own garbage and fix the streets in front of their homes. Go for it.

If you want to change political parties, you have to go to the DMV and fill out a new form. I think I'm going to register indy. I can't say that dem fits me any longer.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread: Hi Everybody

Teacher — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:59:00 -0000

Libertarians strongly oppose government infringement of civil liberties such as restrictions on free expression (e.g., speech, press, or religious belief or practice), prohibitions on voluntary association, or encroachments on persons or property. Some make an exception when the infringement is a result of due process to establish or punish criminal behaviour. As such, libertarians oppose any type of censorship (i.e., claims of offensive speech), or pre-trial forfeiture of property (as is commonly seen in drug crime and computer crime proceedings). Furthermore, most libertarians reject the distinction between political and commercial speech or association, a legal distinction often used to protect one type of activity and not the other from government intervention.[20]

Libertarians also oppose any laws restricting personal or consensual behaviour, as well as laws against victimless crimes. As such, they believe that individual choices for products or services should not be limited by government licensing requirements or state-granted monopolies, or in the form of trade barriers that restrict choices for products and services from other nations (see Free trade). They also tend to oppose legal prohibitions on recreational drug use, gambling, and prostitution. They believe that citizens should be free to take risks, even to the point of actual harm to themselves. For example, while most libertarians may personally agree with the majority who favour the use of seatbelts, libertarians reject mandating their use as paternalistic. Similarly, many believe that the United States Food and Drug Administration (and other similar bodies in other countries like Health Canada in Canada) shouldn't ban unproven medical treatments, that any decisions on treatment be left to patient and doctor only, and that government should be limited to passing non-binding judgments about efficacy or safety, if it is allowed to do anything at all.[20]

Some libertarians believe such freedoms are a universal birthright, and they accept any material inequalities or wanton behaviour, as long as it harms no one else, likely to result from such a policy of governmental non-intervention. They see economic inequality as an outcome of people's freedom to choose their own actions, which may or may not be profitable. However, many libertarians believe that extreme concentration of wealth in a few hands is a result of state intervention, and that liberty ultimately leads to a more diffuse distribution though not necessarily an equal one. A prime cause of extreme wealth disparity stems from government granting special privileges to some businesses at the expense of consumers and other businesses.[citation needed] Many libertarians, including Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard, consider that the most fundamental government grant of special privilege involves the legitimization and protection of fractional reserve banking through the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. They therefore call for the abolition of the Federal Reserve System.

Re: Sick of this Shyt (Yeah, I said it)

Teacher — Fri, 30 May 2008 02:17:00 -0000

Shout out to CPL, Texas Girl & Smoothie! I'm writing you from H-Town (Acres Homes). Shout out & BIG CONGRATULATIONS to Rhondacoco for graduating (I read it on What about our Daughters-you go girl)!I'm so glad to hear about JJP blogging at the convention!!! This is great news!!

Only 5 more days in the hrc campaign deathwatch! I'm glad the party elders are growing a spine at the last minute. Better late than never, I guess. I appreciate that some of them have delicate situations, but it has also been suggested (by someone I know on the very outter regions of O's campaign) that the Supers have been garnering a lot of favors, attention, gifts, etc.,and that they are milking it.

I wonder if the DNC can sue hellory for breach of contract? She signed a document agreeing to abide by certain rules and didn't honor it. Aren't they all lawyers & isn't this an obvious idea? I know they don't want to look like they are beating up the mistress.

I also read somewhere that since hillbilly can't beat O fair & square, they are trying to fulfill their obligation (to whoever hired them) by weakening him, hopefully fatally. They are clearly willing to sacrifice their entire political empire....We shall see.

I have mixed feelings about Shiela Jackson Lee. I'm actually surprised that she backed hillbilly, because she is a consumate professional & highly opportunistic. I haven't heard her diss O (please let me know if you have). She is going to get on the Obama train in 5 days. I recently voted for her. There are slim pickings here in Houston in the voting dept., which is one reason that I have seldom darkened the doorstep of a polling place. Let's face it. Tom Delay is from here. There are a lot of klansmen on the ballot. We recently got rid of the district attorney (Chuck Rosenthal) who got busted sending racist jokes by city owned email. He was in a long time before he got caught. If I have to pick between Sheila & a klansman, I'll go with Sheila.

Re: DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee Meeting Open Thread

Teacher — Sat, 31 May 2008 14:02:00 -0000

If I understood him correctly, Levin said that MI deliberately broke the rules because they didn't agree with them, that they didn't think any state should be 1st. How can the party elders be ok with that? I don't understand the democratic party (which is why I'm going to quit it as soon as this is over).

BTW, I loved the story posted yesterday about Clinton & Rich Women. It really illustrated what really happens in power politics that I would never know about otherwise.

There is a tornado watch in DC. Maybe it will pick up hellory's minion and transport them to Oz.

Re: DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee Meeting Open Thread

Teacher — Sat, 31 May 2008 14:21:00 -0000

Rachel Maddow is sans makeup today. Hmmm. Harold Ickes is icky. He sucks and is a devil. I read that he has been behind EVERY candidate that took the fight to the convention.

Why aren't the MI party leaders being held accountable for deliberately breaking the rules? Why isn't hellory being held accountable for signing the agreement? How do you know when the rules don't count? Rules not counting is a very slippery slope and dangerous precedent to set.

Re: DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee Meeting Open Thread

Teacher — Sat, 31 May 2008 15:24:00 -0000

Whoa Demar2.0! Please spare us of the sexual imagery involving anyone with the last name of clinton.

Rachel is right. Obama is going to have to play hardball if he wants to win. It's time to smack down hellory's arguments and show his fire in the belly to win the nomination. We can't always have everything we want. Things don't always go the way we want them to go. Maybe he is going to have to reconcile himself to the idea that he will have to put on the gloves and punch her out even though he doesn't want to. His campign needs to be MUCH more proactive and less reactionary.

And here is racism. White MSM thinks they have the right to pick hellory as O's VP. I think I need to turn it off now.

Re: DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee Meeting Open Thread

Teacher — Sat, 31 May 2008 18:30:00 -0000

Dermar2.o, no worries, but thank goodness for bleach!

MGM, I wrote my 1st protest email to MSNBC because buchanan told Kelli Goff to shut up. And you know what? I haven't seen her on there since.

Angela & all, there have been 2 stories about Lanny Davis on Huffington Post about Lanny being a republican operative & in fact a McCain supporter. What irks me is that the MSM continues to hold him up as a clinton supporter/surrogate, and we continue to go for it. Everything he says should either be filtered thru the lense of of his REAL affiliation or summarily dismissed. I have personally decided to dismiss him.

I'm glad that O left his church. It's about time.

Non-delusional, I think you will get your wish about many folks leaving the Dem party very soon. Insulting Black folks doesn't help as much as stating your case in a clear, concise manner. We are for the thinking hu/man's presidential candidate. You hold the koolaide. I drink from your straw.

Re: DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee Meeting Open Thread

Teacher — Sat, 31 May 2008 23:26:00 -0000

Pamela or any other rebublican, why are you republican? What is your attraction to that particular party? I'm not sure I know any Black republicans. What does the party have to offer African americans, if anything?

Delusional, I think you are distorting & exaggerating people's support of Obama. No one is worshipping him, at least as far as I can tell. S'matter of fact, AA's didn't really get on his bandwagon until he started winning among White people. I've stated several times on this blog that I was 60-40 in favor of hellory at the beginning. I also liked Richardson & Edwards, & lastly Dodd & Huckabee. I was totally open to being wowed & wooed. Before Obama, I had never donated to a political campaign in my life. I barely even vote! But I have been impressed with O's integrity, intellect & organization. I have also been deepy offended by hellory's lack of same. How could I support her after the race baiting (she & billy insulted my whole race!)? How could I support McCain when he says that he is going to extend a war that I don't agree with? I don't know anything about Barr, but from what I know of Libertarians, I would not be inclined to be one or vote for one. I lean more toward socialism. Everyone has their own story on how they came to prefer O to become president, and this is mine. As others have mentioned, you are obviously angry about something, though I haven't been able to ascertain what Obama has to do with it. I'm not sure why all those white women hate him either, except that they believed hillbilly's spin.

Please don't refer to anyone by the N word. It's just not right to use that word, friend.

Re: DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee Meeting Open Thread

Teacher — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 00:20:00 -0000

Wow Plantsmantx! I saw that youtube link you posted...Geraldine Ferraro in about 2 years. I sure hope to see hellory denounce & repudiate this old heffer with a quickness! It's very sad though.

Webb, she is not going to quit without taking a stake to the heart. I posted earlier that O might have to slam her, even though he truly doesn't want to. He may have to pick between winning or not winning. Rachel M. has said it several times & I agree, she is looking for all excuses to take it to the convention. pat buchanan has stated that she can be voted onto the ticket as VP against Obama's will!!! All she needs to do is have someone bring it up. I don't want to see O make any concessions to this witch, but if he does, who can blame him? There might be a lot to lose if he doesn't.

Re: Sunday Open Thread

Teacher — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 16:25:00 -0000

Friends, I also love the kitties. Cats are my #1 favorite animal, & lucky me, I own the most beautiful cat in the world.

Pamela, thank you for your honest & sincere response to my query. I asked because I'm shopping for a new political affiliation, & because I don't really have an opportunity to talk to any Black republicans.

Even though we are not a monolithic people, I think your sentiments reflect those of a majority of AA's (of a certain class). I can't disagree with a majority of what you said. My personal exception would be that I prefer gov involvement in certain circumstances, & I think the military should be for defense rather than to try to take over the world (I'm not saying you said the military should take over the world-k?). Like yourself, I have been to 20+ countries & our gov support really seperates us from 3rd world nations, imo. In 3rd world countries you can really get the idea of what "you're on your own" means. I know so many immigrants who appreciate so much about our country. I have been to countries without compulsory education & I'm glad that we have it. I'm glad that my tax dollars help rebuild towns that have been devastated by natural disasters. If we could get socialized medicine, I wouldn't have much else to complain about. I also believe that people must pursue education or else they won't get one. It's all about self-determination. Yet I wouldn't want the educational resources to be doled out based on tax base alone.

I would also discourage abortion, but I believe in personal choice. I believe in marriage, though close to 75% of Black females are unmarried. To me, it seems like many repubs don't know any black people. My stereotypic image of them is someone like Mitt Romney, who would refer to the whole race as "you people," because, even as a politician, businessman or organizer of a large event, he wouldn't have met or gotten to know any people outside of his demographic. Yeah, he knows they exist because he's seen them on tv or heard others talk about them, but he isn't in the least bit curious to get to know about the diversity that exists among God's children. They have no interest in anything outside of their white world, unless it involves finding the cheapest labor pool in a Brown country. Am I wrong?

Re: Sunday Open Thread

Teacher — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 16:27:00 -0000

So sorry. Make that separates.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread: What’s Up, People?

Teacher — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:13:00 -0000

This looks like it, ya'll! O needs 5 more delegates to win. Tonight is our night,& we aren't going to let hillbilly steal the thunder or extort the VP spot. It has been so gratifying to see those hacks on CNN have to give it up to O & the historical event that this is. We won the 1st round! Now, on to the GE!!!! Dead woman walking!

Congratulations, Craig!!! Take some ear plugs so you don't go deaf at the convention. I can't wait to get the play by play.

I finished cleaning my classroom and I'm done til August! It's truly a blessed and awesome day

Re: Tuesday Open Thread: What’s Up, People?

Teacher — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:33:00 -0000

I LOVE to see the delegates leave the hillbilly and get behind the winner! She has been bragging so much about winning the individual state primaries, I hope he kicks her tail in delegate lead.

She did her usual low class act today and had her lackies announce that she wants the VP slot. How could she do that without talking directly to him 1st? Why? Because she wants her evil minion to continue to pressure him. It's not going to work. I wish non-delusional was here to say, "GIVE IT UP, BITCHES!"

How many hours until O gives the victory speech?

Re: Montana & South Dakota Primaries - Open Thread

Teacher — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:53:00 -0000

McCrypt Keeper is giving a speech to other crypt keepers. Its a geriatric convention. He is lying like a DOG!! He panders to the kkklintonites. I gotta put him on mute.

Re: Montana & South Dakota Primaries - Open Thread

Teacher — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:57:00 -0000

Agreed, he is a walking corpse, Demar2.0. How many days before hillbilly concedes? What do you think O is going to offer her to get lost? He'll pay her 30 million debt. I say thats all. I wouldn't give her anything else.

Re: Montana & South Dakota Primaries - Open Thread

Teacher — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:25:00 -0000

Oh yeah, baby!!!!! It's time for the happy dance!

CNN has really tried to make it a black victory for a Black candidate. They are so small. O's speech must be soon! The crowds have gathered in the stadium. I can barely wait!!!

Jeff Toobin just cracked hard on McCain's speech!!!! Duhzam! He said the audience was practically catatonic. Hillbilly is getting ready to screech, and then it's....to the batcave!

Re: Montana & South Dakota Primaries - Open Thread

Teacher — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:46:00 -0000

Hellory is the master of the game face, but her eyes are so red they look like they're bleeding. She is such a lowdown dirty heffer. I wish she would get run over by a garbage truck.

She is giving a campaign speech. She is a liar!

Re: Montana & South Dakota Primaries - Open Thread

Teacher — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:59:00 -0000

Her whole family looks stepford. She has her cullards in a row waiting to hug her, when they should be switching their votes. Bill's game face wasn't as good. He looked like he tied a couple on. He was red as hell (as usual). They all suck.

She is still trying to threaten O. I say he should call her on it.

Re: Montana & South Dakota Primaries - Open Thread

Teacher — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 23:16:00 -0000

Yes, Michelle was a vision of lovliness tonight. Obama is the epitome of classiness & magnanimity. Basically I am overwhelmed by the gravity of the event and so very proud to be represented by such an incredible ethical leader. If the country doesn't get it, we don't deserve him. He has raised the bar so much and we couldn't even envision it let alone have any idea it would happen....

Jeff Toobin said the kkklintons showed deranged narcissism. He nailed that one.

I can't believe that they are actually discussing (dismissing, excusing) hellory's speech like it's ok....

You know what else? They are going to change the whole electoral process after using it since the inception of the nation. They are going to change it because the white man can't game it anymore. I'm not saying that it would be wrong to change it, but I think the reason & timing would be suspect.

Now shameless Clinton News Network is spinning to get her on the ticket. If she gets on, I'm not voting.

I hope O hires David Gerkin & Donna Brazile & Keith. I love them all.

Re: The Democratic Nominee for President of the United States of America

Teacher — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 23:30:00 -0000

Re: The Democratic Nominee for President of the United States of America

Teacher — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 23:31:00 -0000

Maxine Waters is on board for Obama!

Re: The Democratic Nominee for President of the United States of America

Teacher — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:01:00 -0000

I don't remember who mentioned it, but I also noticed that the SS was on the future 1st couple like gas on beans. They were not playing. Thank God.

Ms. Martin, hellory is either going to concede by Fri. or take it to Denver. Everyone keeps saying they have an inside tip stating that she is going to stand down, but they keep being proved wrong. Unless she wants to go down in flames, she is going to concede, because she would get her face cracked in Denver. They haven't made enough botox to fix the cracks that would be in her face.

Re: The Democratic Nominee for President of the United States of America

Teacher — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:26:00 -0000

What I wish I could see is an interview with Michelle where she announces that hillbilly will not be VP. That would be a smackdown and a half, and it would give her a taste of her own medicine.

Lanny Davis is such a punk bitch. He was talking on Larry King and there was all this CLANK-CA-CLANK-CLANK in the background. The college where hellory spoke was tearing down the bleachers.He isn't as dumb as he looks. He's getting paid by democrats & republicans.

I HATE Pat Buchanan. He sucks with a vacuum cleaner. I would do almost anything to get him off MSNBC so I can watch it again.

Re: The Democratic Nominee for President of the United States of America

Teacher — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:36:00 -0000

Rikyrah, I was thinking the same thing as you said! Craig called it...hillary rodham nixon!

Re: The Democratic Nominee for President of the United States of America

Teacher — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:40:00 -0000

Hey Webb, so what? They can hold their 17 votes or drop them. OBAMA HAS ALREADY WON. Game over. Let 'em be punk bitches.

Re: The Democratic Nominee for President of the United States of America

Teacher — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 01:11:00 -0000

Craig, tucker is a fucker.

Larry Elder is now on Larry King. I wish I could mute him & let the others talk. I'm going to question his mental health right now before he evev says word 1....OK, he isn't cracking on Barak. I guess I have to eat my words (chomp-swallow). Sorry Larry Elder. I misspoke.

hellory is a bucktooth punk bitch. Not letting the Obama's have their day is so very petty. She sucks.

How about that republican lady, KellyAnn? She spoke the truth & shamed the devil tonight. She said that the repus are able to do what hellory is not able to do, which is to acknowledge Obama's victory. The looks on their faces when she finished; priceless.

Re: Wednesday Open Thread - Holla at us!!

Teacher — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:50:00 -0000

"I believe there were many in the Democratic party who also didn't want a black man as their nominee. Why else would they have allowed Hillary the time to damage him."

Ms. Martin & BPM, the person I know who is on the outter regions of O's campaign said the same thing. He said,"Many of the superdelegates aren't comfortable with a Black candidate."

Cnn headline news showed a soundbite today showing a naval aircraft carrier. The story was that Myanmar refused the shipment of humanitarian aid because they don't want the USA to invade them and take their oil reserves. Dang. Wow.

I think O gave a good speech to the pro Isreal PAC. I'll have to admit that I'm not up on the demands of Isreal, so I'm not sure what would be pro or con for them. I don't like to think that any of our politicians would put the interests of Isreal above our national interests, but it also seems like their lobby is so strong that it can make or break political careers. I'm generally supportive of Isreal, but they don't need to be picking our presidents.

Finally,Jenny-girlfriend of Jim Carey is holding a rally to promote green vaccinations. If any of you all are chemists, that would be a good thing to try to develop. My kids haven't had any vaccinations. They enjoy robust health and are seldom sick. I really don't understand why any medical professional would advocate the vaccination of a newborn baby. That defies logic to me. The gov. has a billion$ fund to pay vaccine victims. Did you know?

Re: Wednesday Open Thread - Holla at us!!

Teacher — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:05:00 -0000

O has assembled a team to search for VP. PLEASE LET IT BE A WOMAN!!!! I hope he tells her (she whose name is irrelevant) that he won't pick a woman and then picks one. I hope he lets Michelle work on the national healthcare program AND get credit for it. If she wants to play high stakes poker with her career, let her. she has the most to lose. She is being a political jihadist with her career. I hope he calls her on all her bluffs-yes, every single one.
Realistically, she would get a deal that she wants AND STILL NOT KEEP HER END OF THE BARGAIN. What has led any of us to believe that she is going to keep her word? She is not going to do a 180 and start casmpaigning for O, even if it's whats best for the party.

I KNOW billy didn't use the N word to Clyburn. No way!!!

Poor McBush. They are playing clips from his speech last night and he looks so pathetic. How humiliating.

Re: Speeches

Teacher — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:35:00 -0000

Hellory had the face of death on today when she spoke @ AIPAC. Either she got the email I sent to her website (smirk) or reality sank in that she is going to have to hang it up (& closet it). She "suspended" her campaign today. I think some party elders got with her & mandated her expedient exit...To the left, to the left, everything you own in the box to the left....Yeah, I think she was finally "pushed" out by the leadership. Still, she continues to play games. It's friday-No, it's saturday...And I'm keeping my delegates just incase he gets whacked.

I noticed today that O recites most of his speeches instead of reading them. It seems like the others read theirs. That makes O even more impressive.

Like last nite when the Cryptster was giving his speech, it seemed like he hadn't read it prior to the event, so he kept laughing at things he found amusing or something he found to be "a good one." He was tickling himself.

Re: Obama Makes Vice-Presidential Move

Teacher — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:55:00 -0000

Don't forget Lord Duku! That's a reference to Star Wars, not VP.

Re: Clinton to Finally Concede, Says New York Times

Teacher — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 02:51:00 -0000

CNN missed the biggest story of the day by neglecting to report that the only reason hillbilly is willing to quit is because one of her staffers called a bunch of politicians to do an intervention on her! The story posted @ DailyKos stated that she hadn't realized that she has lost!!! Isn't that amazing? There is no way to get inside the head of a crazy person.

And the worst thing is that these people will continue to humor her for the rest of her life/career. They won't see her as being unstable, or if they do, they won't do or say anything about it. When she returns to the senate, they will tell her how great she did, what an awesome & brilliat campaign she waged...Some will agree with her that it was stolen from her. They will welcome her back to the senate with open arms & no one will tell her she's a psycho bitch and totally unfit for public service. No one will admonish her for practically tearing the party apart single handedly. But I guess she isn't totally nuts, because they got her to (pretend to) stand down for now.They will probably even reward her with a prestigious job, like senate majority leader, or Gov of NY. But we'll see what happens at the convention. I don't think she is going to sacrifice her whole career to feed her ego the biscuits of futility. I hope she returns to the senate like she's the queen of England & they diss her like a leper. They aren't going to though.

Re: Clinton to Finally Concede, Says New York Times

Teacher — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 03:22:00 -0000

Hearts&flowers;, I don't believe she wrote that letter because there would be a few more "I's, me's or my's" in it if she wrote it.

She has mind control like Hitler had, or Damien in The Omen. It's sad. I went to 1 of her sites for the very 1st time, & it really made me understand the term feminazi. I always thought rush limpball used that term because he was bitter about having to pay for sex, but it looks like he may have had a close encounter with a militant white woman. I'm ready to take on the white feminist because I'm not getting ready to take any of their crap. They might be mad for a long time over hillbilly losing, but they better take it to the Lord, cause if they start a tirade in my presence I'm going to shut the shit down. I'm not as nice and diplomatic as Obama. This is really going to redefine Black feminism. We can't be in their camp. Yes, we want them to vote for O, but there is a faction that hates him as much as we loathe hellory, and they will not be moved. We need to do a big outreach to other minorities to make up for the feminazi demographic. I think he needs to hire some additional strategists so his campaign can be more pro-active & less reactive.

Re: Thursday Open Thread- Let it all hang out

Teacher — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:32:00 -0000

Smoothie, thank you for the awesome & inspirational post you gave in attempt to reach a hillary supporter. I hope I can absorb your generous & understanding attitude. By the way, I'm your (Acres)homie.

Jonzee, good luck in recruiting your Mom. I think she will get use to the idea that hillary is out in time. Please tell me, how does she justify the race baiting that they did?

S, I actually agree with your hypothesis on feminist anger. Part of my problem is that they feel they are above Black people, so they can take their anger out on Obama as opposed to Bush. They hate Obama but they don't hate Bush, and they are willing to vote for Mccain to hurt Obama, even though McCain WILL repeal Roe v Wade & RECENTLY VOTED AGAINST EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK. So my question is, are they REALLY feminists or are they just recists?

I didn't read all of Ms. Irish's post, but from what I did read, I've gathered that O doesn't appeal to her and she isn't interested in knowing his positions on issues & other substanitive things. Disliking him because he is popular and can fill a stadium? That's petty. Did you dislike caucases before hillary started losing them? If not, why not? I hope we keep our prima-caucus here in TX forever. If you condem Obama for his association with Wright, do you also condem hillary for her association bill? After all, he has been continuously cheating on her for years. How can you have a champion who disrespects his wife and daughter like that? I remember seeing Ashton Crusher on Jay Leno a few years ago. He expressed his shock & amazement that when he met Pres. clinton with his wife, Demi Moore, clinton was hitting on his wife right in front of him! He was probably thinking, do I feel like getting my ass kicked by the secret service right now or am I gonna let this slide? What is feminist about tolerating a whorish husband? Nada.

Ms. Irish said: Every time i hear someone from the Obama camp complain about Clinton wanting to seat the delegates from FL and MI I want to scream. Is it really a good idea to piss off voters in big swing states that have cost entire elections before?

Why is this Obama's fault to you?

Why aren't you launching a campaign against the politicians who broke the rules thus nullifying the votes of THEIR CONSTITUENTS? All this happened before Obama even announced his candidacy! The Local politicians were willing to sacrifice the votes of their constituents to make a point instead of working within the system or selecting a different form of protest. If I go to a store and take an item without paying for it, I will be punished (arrested,jailed, fined). Why? Because I would be breaking the RULE that states that I must pay before I leave the store with the item. Even if I give 101 reasons/excuses on why I should be able to take the item, everyone is going to insist that I either follow the rules or deal with the consequences of not following them. To take the item without paying is called STEALING, and that is what hillary did when she was given those illegal votes. And she STILL lost even thought she cheated. How can you have a champion who is a cheater?

Ms. Irish, I could go on, but I'll spare you and invite you to examine your feelings about race & sexism again. Let me also say that I feel that this forum is a place where I can express myself, even if I say things you don't necessarily approve of. The internet is a big place, and I'm sure you can find a like-minded group. Best wishes.

Re: Thursday Open Thread- Let it all hang out

Teacher — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:58:00 -0000

Evita!!! I'm right with you! They aren't about equality, they are about privilege; theirs. Like I recently posted, I can't be in the camp of white feminists, and I really don't want to use the word "feminist" to describe myself any longer. They erroneously define themselves by their male counterparts, which suggests that victory is about having power instead of having choice. It's kinda pathological if we REALLY analyzed it.

Chicagopolitical-GO FOR IT!!! The single population is huge. Our nation needs all kinds of diversity. I think it is a minor issue. Best wishes.

Re: Thursday Open Thread- Let it all hang out

Teacher — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:11:00 -0000

Here is a post lifted (without permission) from blackwomenvote, which was suggested by Hearts&Flowers.; To me, it is very powerful and perfectly articulates some of my sentiments as well as those of some sisters here. What do you think?

i don't think this political season is the beginning of the rift between black women and white women for a multitude of reasons.

i think that this season has the potential to shine the light on the other side of the white supremacy coin. for centuries white women have been written passes by both black men (for obvious reasons) and black women.

just as with Chisholm, when all the sisterhood, feminism, anti- sexism, women must stand together talk stops...white women will scurry right to the sides of those that have elevated them above all others, given them untold social privilege, labelled them minorities so they could successfully usurp the benefits black folks died to obtain, and the list goes on and on... all roads lead right back to the sides of white men. hrc has already endorsed in so many words mccain. remember? anything else at this point is more lies. she has demonstrated she will sell lie after lie as long as people are willing to buy.

white women are the flip side of the white man coin. for those of us that pay attention, hrc has only made us wonder if all the johnny come latelys to the truth were getting the message. i have blogged about it well before the priest came out talking about her entitlement. her "right" to be president has been hard to miss since the beginning for me. her supporters tend to be the entitled, shrill, pushy, aggressive "feminists" that couldn't care less about the voices or concerns of w.o.c. these women seem to want us to focus on our vaginas and leave everything else alone...as we would have to in order to stand in unity with white women while they refuse to acknowledge their active, diligent white supremacy/racism. considering that hrc has w.o.c. supporters it would be interesting to hear their voices right about now. anyone? anyone?

i don't think that black women should be entertaining negative energy on behalf of black men with anyone. black men do not belong to black women. black men belong to black men and that is typically who they look out for---even O. God knows rocking the boat on behalf of black women isn't being done by black men to any great degree; as in most cases black men would have to stand against themselves to protect black women. if someone knows otherwise, please point me in the direction where i can see black men of their own volition stand on behalf of black women and girls; i could use some encouragement right about now. maybe i could even get back to blogging. usually when black men stand they stand for their own interests. BlkSeagoat i see you and give you mad props and respect! out of curiosity, where are the straight men? hello?:-)

we are NOT the protectors of black men. just as O hasn't come out about any of the atrocities, challenges. concerns black women face on the regular; i think he weighed in on Jena 6, no? i get the distinct impression that he wishes folks would "lay off" black women in general, but he isn't quite prepared to make a fuss. so...neither am i on behalf of him and others like him. reciprocity. when i see him consistently "change" i will and not a moment sooner.

black men are focused on the interests of black men and we are as well. this is why black women are faring so poorly. in fact, as we wait to see if O can make a stand on anything, it would be wise to keep in mind that we are simply seeing white women behave as i have witnessed being a southern american black woman numerous times. at the end of the day quite a few black men will still hold an unnatural love of white women, and will treat them gently, with respect, courtesy, consideration; even when she affords them none of that. for those that have white mothers i get it. i wish the black man collective would get that, too. but that's a whole other Oprah:-)

white women will still decide they are God's gift to the univers, all that come before them should bow and worship; that the rules don’t apply to them as with hrc. ( and many will fall, obediently, at the white altar and worship! all colors) white men will reinforce the notion and protect them fiercely against all that challenge the white is right crock. at the end of the day black women will still need to focus on ourselves, our own issues, concerns, agenda and learn to protect/provide for ourselves. in most cases by our selves. there is nothing in this political season that suggests anything otherwise to me.

b.e.t. johnson's presence just reinforces the notion that the acceptable, historical and on-going mistreatment of black women has nothing to do with white women. i have never seen white women stand against it and i don't think i ever will. how else would they be superior if we were not inferior? this is the same woman that breathed fire at the mention of her daughter and pimping. she has no problem with pimping, even as a feminist, just not her daughter. we all know that america would never allow unchallenged her white daughters to be depicted in that manner, just ask the i can’t stay out of jail francis guy; or even hefner and flynt---they were not left unchallenged in their quest to make white women the face of porn. (and we all know there are plenty white women that can't wait to...go wild...on camera.)

so as i watch the white women scurry to the sides of their powerful white men i for one will not be surprised. white women, too, as they seek to be like their men; love black men for sex and financial exploitation. the claws come out when colored and black folks start reaching for their white institutions. the place white women hold in our society is only secure as long as these constructs remain in tact as far as i can see. call me cynical but i never thought for a moment they named the house, in this nation's capital, white because of the color of the building.

thanks for allowing me share.

blessings,

focusedpurpose

Re: Thursday Open Thread- Let it all hang out

Teacher — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:12:00 -0000

Re: Thursday Open Thread- Let it all hang out

Teacher — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:54:00 -0000

Djchefron said: "There's nothing feminist about siding with worst impulses of white America. The fact is we're tied to each other. The same fuckers who've turned the incarceration of black men into a business, are the same fuckers who'd love nothing better than to drag women back into the dark ages."

Wow, DJ. I give you a standing ovation for this one.

Re: Thursday Open Thread- Let it all hang out

Teacher — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:07:00 -0000

O has already mandated that the DNC no longer accept $ from lobbyists & PACs...AND HE ISN'T EVEN PRESIDENT YET!!!! Talk about being ready on day one! That's leadership. Lou Dobbs had to give it up to him because he already has a rule that his appointees can't become lobbyists for 2 years after their job ends(Lou wants it to be 5). Lou is dumbfounded over all the things O has done today that he agrees with. He had to put his ears down.

Truthseeker, I seriously doubt if Elizabeth will say much when Michelle is there. I'm sure she will be afraid and none of them are going to back her up. She'll have a plastic smile on her face like View Barbie. Michelle already has the reputation as a person not to fuck with.

Ms. Irish said: "And hey- if the Senators in question really are apples and apples then why won't Obama mention his record and performance in his public appearances and speeches?"

Because he isn't the egomaniac that hillory is? That information is PUBLIC. You really need to look it up because Hillary lied about and exaggerated hers just like she lied about dodging bullets in Bosnia. I know it's hard for you to hear, but she counted on you all NOT verifying what she said.

Is anyone still counting delegates? I was happy to see Rangel & many other from NY endorse O today.

Re: Rep. James Clyburn Gets Nasty Racist Calls from Clinton Supporter

Teacher — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 21:57:00 -0000

Rhonda, you need to write a letter to your HR dept and allude that you don't think this is an appropriate discussion for the work place and it is making you feel unsafe.

O is meeting with hillbilly tonight.I hope he doesn't give her shit. I think the only way she is going to campaign for him is under the threat of her ass being shunned by her colleagues. Because the clinton empire has crumbled, and she is scrambling to hold on to crumbs of power. There is no way they will be vetted because bill is a lobbyist for foreign countries.Her brothers sold presidential pardons & she is currently involved in a campaign finance fraud lawsuit. She already knows that. She probably hates him all the more because he is ethical.

Maya Angelo was on CNN talking about why she loves hillbilly. She is elderly now. Pretty sad.

Re: Obama Moves In On The DNC- Changes Money Rules

Teacher — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:21:00 -0000

TruthSeeker said:"On her site, there's a video still harping on her 17 million voters and no sign that she's thrown her support to Barack."

TruthSeeker, she probably fired her webmaster. Her campaign is in the red. It also goes to show why she lost...inefficient. Yep, mediocrity keeps rearing it's head in her campaign.

Re: Thursday Open Thread- Let it all hang out

Teacher — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:58:00 -0000

Town & Ms. Martin, you all are warriors.

A POX on the warmongers!

You want to keep the war going so you won't feel like you "lost" but you don't want your taxes raised to pay for the war you want? The cost of the illegal, unethical war is bankrupting our country! We are borrowing from China and one day we will have to repay. This is stupid.

Re: Friday Open Thread…..yeah, it’s Friday

Teacher — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 19:41:00 -0000

Val, thank you for that beautiful prayer. I will be praying it for him every day. I was also concerned about him today as I watched footage of him shaking hands with the masses. I said, "Lord, please don't let anyone stick him with anything." I feel better since I've prayed that beautiful prayer for him.

Jack Cafferty blasted the Cryptster today, & many emailers blasted hillbilly. Cafferty implicated McCain, who has been in office since 9-11, in agreeing with the invasion of a soverign nation who hadn't done anything to us & not working to secure the borders, yet saying that he has the plan & experience for national defense. Some emailers said to him that if hillary is serious about party unity, then she will transfer her delegates. They predict that she will have a big surprise for all of us at the convention. You know there is going to be bus loads of them at the convention.

Re: Hillary " Deranged Narcissist" Clinton Concession Speech Open Thread

Teacher — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 12:47:00 -0000

They just entered the building to make the loser speech. They are all wearing black.

After this, I'm going to have to cut my dose od MSM to 3 days a week. I just can't take any more coverage about hillary and him (him being Obama). Somebody gag Candy Crowley.

Re: Hillary " Deranged Narcissist" Clinton Concession Speech Open Thread

Teacher — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 13:22:00 -0000

To me, the speech was lame & luke warm, & as usual, mostly about her. I still maintain that she can't be trusted.

Donna Brazile is lying. She is clearly disappointed.

Re: Hillary " Deranged Narcissist" Clinton Concession Speech Open Thread

Teacher — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 13:52:00 -0000

hellory's smile was no where to be found as she so-called endorsed Obama. It really sounded as though she is still campaigning for VP...like she is still trying to extort the VP position. No one is going to call her on it. How pathetic. Her speech was clearly a not so veiled attempt to salvage the power that they once had.

Rikyrah, yes, I think Rangel gave her the smack down, and I don't think he was the only one.

As for Sheila Jackson Lee, she is largly funded by white people. Who is the talent out there to replace her? I'm not so mad @ Sheila. I think she would support Obama whole heartedly. I would only agree with her being replaced by another AA.

Re: Hillary " Deranged Narcissist" Clinton Concession Speech Open Thread

Teacher — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 16:05:00 -0000

Lexasoakland, it sounds like you have a cool job. Are you independant or employed by a company?

Over @ the Field, they loved her speech. It's not that I want her to grovel, it's that I want her to show more honesty & humility. Given her particular disorder, I guess it's not possible. As far as being punched in the gut,she insulted my WHOLE race, which to me was harsh. She & bill said things that cannot be unsaid, & as smoothie pointed out, they are being replayed in an endless loop on the republican website. They were advertising the website on CNN yesterday. It's no secret that she wants to run in 2012, which is why she was willing to sacrifice her standing in the AA community, & whty she was willing to say that which can't be unsaid.

I am also furious/frustrated over what I perceive to be the coddling of her by the MSM inspite of her low down, dirty campaign. I perceive it to be false & unfair & it reeks of entitlement & white privilege. To hear all day, every day how great she is and how much she has done for women (ain't I a woman?) or whats next for hillary? or the perpetuation of the lie that she won the popular vote (wtf!!!!), that she "deserved her day" on the night Obama won the nomination, she needs time to heal because this was so hard on her....I need time to heal too. You all are going to have to cut me some slack, because having the covert racism become overt has been psychically injurious to me. I know I'm not the only one, but gosh, I'm just a black woman. We need to offer the healing balm to hillary's followers because they are upset & traumatized. I guess I'm feeling more Malcolm than Martin right now. Sorry if I discourage anyone here.

Re: Hillary " Deranged Narcissist" Clinton Concession Speech Open Thread

Teacher — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 19:14:00 -0000

Some are discussing unity and some aren't. At the link below they are saying this:

"The Democratic Party is divided because the people in charge played fast and loose with the rules, disenfranchising voters in 2 states, discounting the desires of whole segments of the population in favor of the AA and youth vote, and allowing the sexism Hillary encountered to go unchecked.

I will not be voting for Democrats in November except for my Congresswoman, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, who stood with Hillary throughout the campaign.

Thank you, Ms. Tubbs Jones."

And this:

"Take Obama for instance: With everything that has gone on in this campaign, the cheating, manipulation, deception, intimidation, data mining and backroom dealings, is there any thinking person who thinks Obama will be changing the Bush administration? The only change is that this anointed candidate is black which to many is the extent of “CHANGE”. For those who really are not racist enough to look at a person as a human being, Obama is not the answer to our country’s problems.

Then my next question is, how can so-called leaders force him down our throats? Is it because Hillary is Real Change and she has promised to examine/review all govt. contracts, no-bid contracts and everything financial connected with the Iraq war? Is this what really scared the invisible powers running our country? The same ones who control the banks, the insurance companies, the oil consortiums, AND the media?

And so they create this cultist personality and keep people from really thinking, so that they would applaud someone with their votes ala choosing a winner in “Dancing with the Stars” or American Idol?

Not only is the democratic party divided; the whole country has been divided into factions. Hillary has been backed into a corner and pressured into throwing her support behind Obama. But if others like me have sent letters to her campaign, she also knows that our support is non-transferable."

These are some crazy, racist MFers. They defected from DailyKos-thank goodness. Cause if they didn't I wouldn't be able to read their stuff. It's weird.

http://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2008/06/07/why-is-the-party-divided/#comments

Re: Tim Russert Dead At 58

Teacher — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:38:00 -0000

It looks like Tom Brokaw is about to break out in tears. Larry King was shaken too. This is so sad. What a great loss to lose an old school journalist who actually tried to be unbiased & neutral. Its hard to determine which is more tragic: the loss of Tim Russert or the R. Kelly verdict. Tim, you will be missed so much.

Re: R. Kelly Found Not Guilty

Teacher — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:57:00 -0000

Well, if his victim had been a white girl, his life would be a living hell like OJ's. I have never been a fan of his, so I've never contributed to his livlihood in any way. I wish there was a way to make him pay.

Re: Sunday Open Thread - HAPPY FATHER’S DAY

Teacher — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 09:58:00 -0000

This is from politicsincolor dot com.

Nation's Capital Built by Slaves May Soon House Its First Black President

New book shows irony how the Nation's capital was built by slaves

By Neil Foote Updated: Thu, 05/15/2008 - 17:19

The nation is riddled in debt. Elected officials are split among party lines, blaming each other for the inefficiencies of government. Racial politics are at the heart of the on-going debate about the future of the country. The public is disillusioned by the ‘back room' politics driving decision-making.

Sound familiar? That was 1790. Just 14 years after the Revolutionary War, this ‘great' nation was struggling with many of the same issues it is now. In his newly published book, "Washington, The Making of the American Capital" (Amistad/HarperCollins Publishers Imprint, 27.95, 384 pp) author Fergus M. Bordewich offers an insightful, thorough and ironic picture of America.

As the nation chooses what is likely to be its first African-American Democratic presidential nominee and potential president, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) would be making history in many ways. He would move full-time into a city that once was a bustling city for slave trade, and live in a house built by slaves.

"The practice of slavery is embedded in the founding of a capital, but it was hidden history," said Bordewich, whose last book, "Bound for Canaan" focused on the personalities involved in The Underground Railroad. "In a year when an African-American is about to be nominate as president, this book has immediacy and relevancy. If elected, [Sen. Obama] would be the first African-American living in the White House, and not just working there."

In "The Making of the American Capital", Bordewich said he tried to capture the sense that the development of the nation's capital almost became a "huge flop". "It was a race against time," said Bordewich, author of five books who has written for The New York Times, Smithsonian, and Atlantic Monthly, "and Washington treated it like a military campaign because he knew if he had failed, the capital would be returned to Philadelphia."

For President George Washington, his reputation was on the line. If he had failed, it was perceived that the country and the world watching with skeptical eyes would label the notion of the "United States of America" as a farce. For Thomas Jefferson, he struggled with his conflicting views on democracy and slavery.

In fact, Bordewich said construction was almost abandoned because major concerns with the private contractors used to build The Capitol and the White House. Corruption, labor problems, huge cost overruns and political opposition almost put the project to a halt.

Washington, a slave owner, stood firm, seeking to create an ‘imperial city' with its grand architecture. Another irony of this story is that William Thornton from the Caribbean island of Tortola, who designed The Capitol Building, owned slaves, but was an abolitionist.

The other key figure, Benjamin Banneker, was the most prominent African-American involved in the project - who wasn't a slave, Bordewich said. Known as a brilliant self-educated mathematician and astronomer, Banneker had become friends with the Ellicott family in Maryland. The family, devout Quakers who were also abolitionists, let the young genius borrow astronomical equipment.

Andrew Ellicott was hired to do the land survey for the capital project, and along with him, he brought Banneker who distinguished himself with his ability to provide crucial information to Ellicott and the developers. With that project under his belt, Bordewich said Banneker went on to publish numerous almanacs, and was admired by whites for his intellect,

"The construction of the capital was to be the first collective project of United States," Bordewich said. In the end, the project foreshadowed what's currently happening in the country. "In the end, Washington got what he wanted ... and in his waning days, he became an abolitionist."

SEVEN UNKNOWN FACTS CENTRAL TO ‘THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN CAPITAL'

1. Congress originally voted to place the national capital in the free state of Pennsylvania.

2. Establishment of the capital on the Potomac resulted from a backroom deal among Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, which took place over Jefferson's dinner table.

3. The Capitol Building was designed by a slave-owning abolitionist from the Caribbean island of Tortola, William Thornton.

4. The Capitol and the White House were built by slaves.

5. The development of Washington was the biggest real estate boondoggle in American history, up to that point, and was almost wrecked by scandalous machinations of land-grabbing speculators led by the richest man in the country, Robert Morris.

6. Construction of Washington was almost abandoned because of corruption, labor problems, giant cost overruns, political opposition, and public disillusionment.

7. The driving force behind the city's completion was George Washington, for whom the project was a personal obsession. He believed that the Potomac was destined to become a great commercial highway into the heart of North America, and that the city of Washington would become the nation's greatest metropolis.

Source: Fergus M. Bordewich, "Washington: The Making of the American Capital"

Re: Sunday Open Thread - HAPPY FATHER’S DAY

Teacher — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 10:05:00 -0000

Will states topple Electoral College?
States may move to eliminate role of 'College' and move to new system

By PoliticsInColor News Staff Updated: Tue, 06/10/2008 - 19:07

By Pamela M. Prah, Stateline.org Staff Writer

First it was the presidential primary calendar that state legislatures across the country upended to give their voters a greater say this year in choosing candidates. Now a few states are orchestrating an overhaul of the way voters select the U.S. president.

Voters this fall will still use the Electoral College to determine the next occupant of the White House, but a movement is bubbling at the state level to bypass the process and instead ensure future presidents are the candidates who get the most votes nationwide — an outcome not always guaranteed under the current system.

Maryland last year became the first state to approve a “national popular vote” compact that would allocate all of its 10 electoral votes to the candidate who wins the most votes nationwide, rather than to the candidate who garners the most votes in the state, as is the case under the Electoral College.

New Jersey, Hawaii and Illinois have since followed suit and passed laws that would allot their collective 40 electoral votes the same way. Identical bills are moving in Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina and Rhode Island, which have a total of 62 electoral votes.

These bills do nothing on their own and would take effect only when states that collectively have at least 270 electoral votes pass identical measures, since a candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

Those who remember their history classes know that American voters don’t directly elect a president — states do through “electors” who typically vote for the candidate who drew the most votes in their state.

“Why are all the other elections in this country based on the popular vote except for the most important one, the presidency?” asks Barry F. Fadem, president of the National Popular Vote, a group based in California that aims to persuade state legislatures to implement a nationwide popular election of the president. He called today’s system “flat-out, wrong” and expressed optimism that enough states will pass the legislation in time for the 2012 presidential election.

National Popular Vote was launched in 2006 and is largely funded by its chairman, John R. Koza, a scientist best known for inventing the rub-off instant lottery ticket used by state lotteries and his work in genetic programming at Stanford University. In the 1980s, he and Fadem, an attorney, were active in promoting adoption of lotteries in the states.

Fadem and his supporters say that such a system would make every vote matter, not just those in “battleground states,” while critics argue that the approach is an end-run around the U.S. Constitution and wouldn’t necessarily be more fair than today’s arrangement.

John Samples, director of Cato’s Center for Representative Government in Washington, D.C., called the National Popular Vote campaign a “novel gimmick” that he said is “asking for a mess” if enacted.

Calls to reform or abolish the Electoral College were common after the 2000 presidential election, when former Vice President Al Gore won the popular vote, but didn't have enough votes in the right states to carry the electoral vote over Republican George W. Bush. While Bush won the popular vote in 2004, he could have lost the election if John Kerry (D) had won Ohio.

Despite the hand-wringing over what many call an obsolete election system, little has happened, largely because dumping the Electoral College means changing the U.S. Constitution, an arduous task that requires two-thirds approval of Congress and three-fourths of the states. The National Popular Vote would keep the Electoral College, but change the way electoral votes are awarded.

The way Fadem sees it, a national popular vote would generate the same kind of excitement and enthusiasm seen in the recent primaries because all states — and their voters — would matter.

Under the current system, candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, or pay attention to the concerns of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind, Fadem said. For example, presidential nominees have long ignored California because the state is considered a solid “blue” state that will award its 55 electoral votes to the Democratic candidate.

Gary Gregg II, director of the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville in Kentucky and a fan of the Electoral College, agrees that the National Popular Vote would change the way candidates campaign, but not in a good way. Candidates would go where most of the votes are, namely cities. “Rural areas would never see a presidential candidate. Small states would never see a presidential candidate,” he said.

Gregg also predicted chaos if there were a close election and candidates challenged the vote count. “You would have the [2000] Florida recount replayed across the country … It would be a very ugly situation.”

Even some supporters of using the popular vote to elect the president have problems with the National Popular Vote’s campaign. “They are trying to circumvent the U.S. Constitution,” said Burdett Loomis, a professor of the political science at the University of Kansas, who advocates changing the system but by having Congress and the states debate the issue and amend the U.S. Constitution.

Fadem says his group is not thumbing its nose at the Constitution since states still would have their right to decide how to allocate their electoral votes.

Supporters also reject critics’ characterization that backers of the National Popular Vote are Democrats who are bitter about the 2000 elections.

“It’s not a partisan issue. This isn’t about electing a Democrat president, but electing a president democratically,” said Jamie Raskin, a Democratic state senator in Maryland, reiterating what he said when he introduced the National Popular Vote plan that was signed into law by Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) last April. Raskin, a professor of constitutional law at American University in Washington, D.C, spoke to Stateline.org from Massachusetts, where he was discussing the measure with state lawmakers there.

But three Republican governors vetoed the bill when it landed on their desks. In his veto message, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said, “It disregards the will of a majority of Californians," pointing out that the state's electoral votes under the new system could be awarded to a candidate most Californians didn't vote for. Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle voiced the same concern when she vetoed the bill twice, but this year, lawmakers overrode her objection. Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas last month rejected the measure, saying it would decrease the influence of small states, like Vermont.

Cato’s Samples said he wonders if voters who support the concept of a popular vote really understand how it would operate. “Do people in Maryland know under the National Popular Voter system, that their vote may go to someone who didn’t win their state?”

Still, despite the concerns of the National Popular Vote approach, even their critics give the group kudos for bringing the issue to the attention of voters and elected officials. “They are doing a service … We ought to be talking about this,” said Loomis of the University of Kansas.

Re: Sunday Open Thread - HAPPY FATHER’S DAY

Teacher — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 10:11:00 -0000

Will states fix 2012 primary process?
By Pamela M. Prah, Stateline.org Staff Writer

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — What if the presidential primary worked more like a lottery with all the states having a chance at the ultimate prize of voting first in the nominating schedule, ending the coveted tradition of New Hampshire and Iowa leading the pack?

That’s a simplified version of one of several ideas being considered by top party and state officials, who aim to prevent a repeat of states’ helter-skelter scramble for early presidential primary dates in 2008.

While voters in Indiana and North Carolina go to the polls today (May 6) to help Democrats pick Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as their nominee and Republicans rally behind John McCain, party insiders and state election officials are in informal talks to improve the presidential nominating contests for 2012 and beyond.

“Following the frenzied 2008 primary and caucus schedule that began just a few days into the new year, election officials have a strong interest in curbing the impacts of frontloading and restoring order to the process,” said Todd Rokita (R), Indiana secretary of state and president of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) during a bipartisan gathering at Harvard University here April 29 that brought together party and state leaders to discuss the presidential primary process.

While all sides agreed that this year’s historic run for the White House has energized voters, as evidenced by the record voter registration and primary turnout in many states, many are concerned that this cycle’s very early start was unfair to candidates and some voters.

Candidates were forced to start campaigning at Thanksgiving, giving an unfair advantage to highly funded candidates with name recognition, critics say.

And for some voters, their ballots may not count. States like Florida and Michigan were in such a mad dash to be first that they broke party rules and leapfrogged ahead — throwing into question whether their results will count and whether all their delegates can attend the nominating conventions this summer. The parties and states are still working on a compromise.

“It is time to stop the frontloading of the presidential nominating calendar so that states are not pitted against each other in a quadrennial attempt to land a prized early spot in the sequence of voting,” said Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson (R), co-chair of the NASS subcommittee on presidential primaries, who attended the conference.

For nearly a decade, NASS has been pushing its plan to overhaul the way presidential nominees are selected. Under its proposal, states would be divided into regions — the East, South, Midwest and West — and each of those regions would hold primaries, a month apart, between March and June. New Hampshire and Iowa would still be allowed to go first.

NASS’s push to change the system stalled until the past year when 28 states rushed to either move up their primaries or caucuses or decided to have one after not holding one in 2004. Voters in 24 states expressed their presidential preferences on Feb. 5, becoming essentially a national primary.

“It’s about equity,” said Elaine Kamarck, a member of the Democratic rules committee and professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. This year, the states that went very early and very late are getting all the attention. “How do we figure out how to make all states important?” she said.

But changing the current process won’t be easy. If the parties want to revamp the presidential primary system for 2012, the Republican National Committee (RNC) requires that GOP delegates approve the changes during the Republican convention Sept. 1- 4 in Minneapolis. Democratic Party rules allow members to act long after their convention in Denver Aug. 25-28.

States are another wild card. Legislatures would have to incorporate into state law any system that the national parties adopt. State and local governments are responsible for funding and running presidential primaries, which are not necessarily held on the same dates as state primaries. For many state lawmakers, "their own primary is more important than the presidential primary," Ron Thornburgh (R), Kansas secretary of state, said. Every state will ask, “What’s best for me?” he said.

But no one is completely ruling out possible changes for the next presidential cycle.

A variation of the NASS plan called the “Ohio plan” is moving forward after an important RNC panel approved it. The plan faces further party review before it could go to the convention in September.

The proposal would continue to give Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada the opening shots, but the country’s smallest states would always come first after that. Three groups of remaining larger states would vote later on a rotating basis. The Ohio plan already has drawn fire from larger states such as California and Michigan because the approach would guarantee they always go last.

U.S. Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) called the Ohio plan “dead on arrival for Democrats” and is instead pushing his own “Michigan plan” that dethrones Iowa and New Hampshire as kingmakers. His proposed randomly drawn “lottery” would give every state the chance to be part of the first of six voting groups that go first in primaries spread between March and June.

“It’s not about Michigan going first,” Debbie Dingell, vice chairman of the General Motors Foundation and Democratic National Committee (DNC) member, told the gathering here. “It’s about every state having the opportunity to have the kind of attention that those two small states have,” she said, referring to Iowa and New Hampshire.

Also being circulated are the “Delaware plan” that establishes a “pod” system based on the population of each state and the “Texas plan” that divides the country into four groups based on a balance of convention delegates, electoral votes and the proportion of “red” and “blue” states.

Of the various plans, the NASS rotating regional plan has received the most formal support, earning endorsements from the National Governors Association, the National Association of Lieutenant Governors, the Council of State Governments and a 2005 blue-ribbon panel, the Commission on Federal Election Reform, co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

Several governors told Stateline.org earlier this year that they regarded this election’s chaotic rush for early spots on the presidential primary calendar as a mess to be avoided in 2012 — but were quite happy with how the 2008 schedule worked for them (Click here for the story and to access the audio of the governors’ comments).

Some political consultants predict that the push for reworking the primary process will be driven by the party that is defeated this fall. “If the Democrats lose the White House, you’ll see the most fundamental, sweeping changes of the rules since the 1970s,” predicted Tad Devine, a Democratic campaign consultant. If McCain loses, some may argue that he became the front-runner too early and that the selection process ended too soon for the GOP.

On the other hand, whoever wins the presidency may not want to tinker with the system that worked for them, said James Roosevelt Jr., co-chair of the DNC’s rules and bylaws committee.

Despite the various proposals, many state party and state election officials do agree on one thing: They don’t want Congress getting into the act. Competing legislation has been introduced on Capitol Hill that would make the NASS and Michigan plans law. “Anytime you have Congress sniffing around your door, pretty soon, they’ll be inside eating your lunch,” said David Norcross, chairman of the RNC's standing committee on rules.

Re: Sunday Open Thread - HAPPY FATHER’S DAY

Teacher — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 10:57:00 -0000

What My Father Could Learn From Usher
For millions of Americans, the TV version of fatherhood is all we have.

By Helena Andrews

TheRoot.com

Updated: 4:34 PM ET Jun 10, 2008

June 13, 2008--On my desk, in my office, is a picture of my mother and me. I might be 2 weeks old. She's cradling me with one arm against her chest, her slender fingers smoothing down my baby hair. She's got a close-cropped afro, and we're in somebody's kitchen—maybe ours, but probably my Grandmommy's. There's a bag of Wonder Bread on the table.

As with 24 million other Americans, there's no man in my picture or in the picture.

Obviously, I've never been a big fan of Father's Day.

Still as a pop culture stalker, I've been captivated by the new obsession with black fatherhood. On television there's Snoop Dogg's Father Hood, Deion Sanders' Primetime Love, the Rev. Run's Run's House, and Flavor Flav made a big show of "proposing" to Liz, the mother of his youngest son Karma, on VH1.

Even new father Usher has taken up the fatherhood cause. While promoting his latest offering, Here I Stand, the man's been on The Ellen Degeneres Show, in People magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Vibe, and most recently MTV's Total Request Live, talking about marriage and babies—in a real way.

It makes sense that I would be delighted by the attention that higher profile black fathers have been getting lately, but it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I'd rather have the real thing, not the "reality."

In real life, I found a photo of my father in a tin can hidden under my mother's bed when I was around 8 years old. He wore a black afro and black flip-flops. It looked like he was on the floor of a dorm room (actually he was on a ship). He had long legs and light skin. I fell in love with him then. This was him. The man my mother never talked about—badly or in any other way.

I imagined he was on the moon, and if I hoped for him enough, thought of him enough, prayed for him enough, he'd come back down. I didn't need saving, but I needed something. Every night for years, I repeated the same line to baby Jesus or grown-up Jesus or God or whomever like mantra: "Dear Lord, please let our paths cross someday." I seriously said it like this in my little 8-year-old head. I didn't even necessarily have to talk to him. I just wanted him to see me.

Each Father's Day, I'm reminded first of his abandonment and second of my mother's strength. Fortunately it is the latter that has made an impact on my life, but I still count myself among those unfortunate fatherless souls.

In Salman Rushdie's new novel The Enchantress of Florence—a mythological love story starring princes and prostitutes—this line caught my breath: "[Akbar learned] … about abandonment in general, and in particular fatherlessness, the lessness of fathers, the lessness of the fatherless…"

It makes sense that I would see myself in those words—less than culture's "normal" and sometimes unfazed by loss of something I never knew. How do you miss a person you've only seen in pictures—in one picture, in fact? But how do you not?

Nearly one out of every three children grows up in households without their biological fathers. Or two out of every three African American children, according to the National Fatherhood Initiative, a non-profit dedicated to spreading the word about the "crisis" of father absence.

When I think about the black fathers dominating reality television today, none of these real men can stand up to the fatherly fiction that is Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable. On Thursday nights at 8 p.m., the little 8-year-old me pretended a character on a television show was all the things my father wasn't—present, paid and promising.

As unmoved as today's reality dads leave me, though, I'm actually excited about Usher's recent impromptu paternal PSAs. "I want to see more men standing with their women. I want to see more men be open and honest about where they are in life," Usher told Ellen Degeneres recently. "As an African American, to be there for my child is so important when there are so many young African-American kids without their fathers."

And then on MTV's TRL, Raymond had another breakthrough, this time deciding to address rumors about his wife, Tameka, and his son, "baby cinco."

"I'm a black, strong man in America standing up for my people as a man," Usher said to the camera, while taking off his huge sunglasses and looking his television audience (us) dead in the eye.

"To my wife, to my son, to my family, I'm making a stand that a lot of us should make. I could've been like any other man who would have a child and just, you know, live with that woman and continue to just, you know, play the game. I'm tryna do it the right way. This is the way you should do it. Pay attention, fellas."

I wish my father was paying more attention in 1980. I wish I hadn't needed to pay so much attention to Cliff Huxtable eight years later. I wish the fellas watching Usher on MTV get the picture.

URL: http://www.theroot.com/id/46822© TheRoot.com

Re: Sunday Open Thread - HAPPY FATHER’S DAY

Teacher — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 01:30:00 -0000

ptcruiser, Let him say what's on his heart. Either receive it or don't receive it. Don't expect 100% perfection from him @ all times. He is a mere mortal trying to get a job against great obstacles. Be mindful that he has personal issues, most likely with both of his parents. There are times in his life where both of them abdicated their responsibility to him. If my mother asked me to let one of the kids live with her, the answer would be, "no I want him/her with me." My dad's parents gave him away (like a kitten) to relatives. It left a hole in his heart that only God can fill. The negative statistics in the Black community are critical and warrant addressing in a way that goes beyond rhetoric. I hope he inspires male citizens to become good husbands and fathers.

Sasha O. was rocking the kinky twists in church today! You know she is going to be a mainstream trend setter.

Re: Sunday Open Thread - HAPPY FATHER’S DAY

Teacher — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 03:59:00 -0000

Personally, I think the media is unfair, often VERY biased, critical, & stupidly insulting toward Obama. They question his manhood (OVER A BOWLING GAME!),called him a nerd for riding the bike with his daughter, repeat rumors in a continuous loop, often without any truth or facts...Today Rick Sanchez had some new commentator who stated (like he would know) that Obama is pandering only, like he wouldn't speak from his heart at all because he is only out to get more votes. Personally, I think Michelle would confront him about something like that, because his integrity means everything to her. I think he would try very hard not to lose the respect of his wife. I don't like everything he does or says, but I also don't expect him to be all things to all people. I don't think he should have let that vetter go, and I hope he will stop giving in to pressure from people who aren't for him. I understand the differing opinions presented here. It's a very sensitive subject for us (Black family/community/fathers/mothers/etc.) and my bottom line interpretation is that people want to see a balanced perspective. Nothing wrong with that.

I think O is very complicated. We live in a tribal, clannish world, and he has somewhat been a person without a tribe. I am his same age. I know biracial people whose white relatives wouldn't have anything to do with them. Even though his grandparents loved him (eventually), they still communicated to him how they felt about Blacks in general (everyone but him). And just because they were willing to love & support him doesn't mean that their family members were. They may have had to sacrifice some of their relationships to do what they did for him. They may have made disparagements about his dad. I know my grandmother reduced me to tears many times by criticizing my parents when I was a kid. His wife & children give him a tribe without the conflicts he's had to endure, but he is probably still learning not to be a loner. He might always be one.

I also want to see Black people excel individually & collectively. I tell my students that they must pursue education; that no one can "give" them one. Either they will get one or they won't.I tell them that without self-discipline they won't succeed at anything in life. Does that sound like Cosby or Obama, because I'm in their same camp.

Re: Sunday Open Thread - HAPPY FATHER’S DAY

Teacher — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 04:13:00 -0000

ptcruiser, I'm ok that with you disliking the speech he gave. I'm not tryng to tell you how to feel and I agree with you point on the personal counseling. As I've already stated, I wasn't bothered by the speech, and I really don't get why you are. I read and understand your words, I just don't feel them. The speech didn't offend me the way that it offended you.

I also think we (humans) can be influenced by our personal issues or experiences, and respond to life from those, even if we don't do it deliberately or consciously. I also think we all have parts of ourselves that we don't see. This means politicians too. People can be complicated, but are very fascinating.

Re: Monday Open Thread - How was the weekend?

Teacher — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:48:00 -0000

Ms Rice said she was returning to the university when her current job ends.

I would love to see Rachel M. take MTP.

Re: Barack Obama’s Speech on Father’s Day

Teacher — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:56:00 -0000

Is this the open thread? I've been reading so long I don't remember.

I AM NOT FEELING ANDERSON COOPER WITH HIS SHOW ABOUT ANOTHER DISEASE COMING OUT OF AFRICA FROM MONKEYS. Color me crazy, and I know it upsets white people, but I do think these diseases are created in a lab and given to the Africans in vaccintions so "they" can have the continent staight out.

I'm reading the opinions of those, pro & con, re: O's speech. It reminded me that, a few months ago, a judge kicked all the white people out of his courtroom so he could address the kinfolk. The next day he was on tv apologizing because people accused him of being racist for excluding the non-Blacks. The hammer really dropped on him, but he thought he was trying to help. I've invited Black students to the hallway many, many times, to give them an earful tailored specifically for kinfolk. I'm not going to stop either.

We are really adamant about our opinions on this subject. Please try to be respectful.

Re: Barack Obama’s Speech on Father’s Day

Teacher — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:44:00 -0000

Ms. Martin, I really feel sad that you have been adversely effected by this speech. I wish there was something I could say, not to get you to change your vote, but to help you stop feeling like you (we) have been betrayed. I know how I felt when hillbilly started playing the race card, and I reached the point of no return with them. HEY! THEY ARE OFF THE RADAR!!!!! Same with Truthseeker. I respect both of you so much. Please try to be open to redemption.

Re: Barack Obama’s Speech on Father’s Day

Teacher — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 01:03:00 -0000

Well, Ms. Martin, the political system of our nation is corrupt, as is the judicial, educational, financial, health care, etc. Sometimes, we just feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the corruption and wonder why it has to be corrupt.It is discouraging, especially if you think about it too much. It could make a person depressed.

If O starts reading individual groups, he may as well endorse hillary. I pray he doesn't single out Blacks again (because he can get away with it), because too many people have been discouraged, even though I know this was not his conscious intent. I pray he can redeem himself with you & the others who have been offended. We are racially sensitive especially since we are bombarded with insidious racism on a daily basis.It hurts worse when it comes from family. I'm glad you let him know how you feel via his website. I think he would want to know. There are times when we will have to let him know, "We love you and we need you to clean it up." He will be the president of the whole nation, but he will be the 1st one who might really care about us. And I believe he does care about us, even though he made a mistake. Keep speaking truth to power.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread: Hi Everybody

Teacher — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:10:00 -0000

Black Canadians weigh in on US Presidential Campaign

http://www.blogher.com/what-do-black-canadians-think-about-obama

First, why in hell does a Canadian care? Something that I have thought to myself as I feel the heat rising from my chest to my face as I watch FOX news or Lou Dobbs on CNN. It's not about simply disagreeing with them; it is how some political pundits and TV journalists (and some bloggers) intentionally fan the racist and sexist flames to incite fear into socially and culturally ignorant voters by perpetrating falsities that if they had a even basic IQ level, they would realize that their claims don't make any sense. Examples: a) Barak Obama is not a Muslim - if that really even matters if he was, but the insinuation infers to the 9/11 terrorists whom yes, were Muslim but a radical sect of terrorists who just happened to be Muslim. Get it?

Or b) Reverend Wright - What's the big deal? Because some people really think that all black folks are secretly angry and planning to start a race war. See, we all think alike, and we all vote alike, some police officers think we all look alike and apparently, are not allowed to have an opinion that differs from what others feel we should feel and think.

Sigh. From Chandra at Is Greater Than:

Canada prides itself on an expression of multiculturalism that Americans only dream of. This is the legacy of the late great Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Yet, having spent seven years in academia in the USA, I have never seen academics behave as abominably when it comes to the topic of race as I have seen in Waterloo, the world’s Top Intelligent Community in 2007 and 70 miles southwest of Toronto, the second most diverse city in the world. From comments about “whining aboriginals who get away with too much” to “you Black people,” I continue to be shocked and even surprised. It has been pointed out to me repeatedly that all but one of the aggressors in my stories of racism in Canada have been European by birth, not just descent. This supposedly implies that this is not a Canadian problem but perhaps a European problem.

Despite having a rich African-Canadian history, it is my opinion that Black Canadians have always borrowed heavily from African-American culture. We carefully watch what is happening in terms of music, trends and yes, even political and social activism. Canada, despite what many people rather naively think is not the bastion of peacefulness. We have our problems, but here - and I think I can say this as I travel to the States quite frequently - our racism and sexism is covert in comparison to our neighbors - which in some ways, makes it even worse. Sometimes it doesn't pay to be so polite.

Even though we are live in another country, I found while talking to a number of people for the article, we are watching and we have formed an opinion on who we want to win. Despite the title of this post and despite the responses, not everyone was initially an Obamamaniac. Some were vying for John Edwards and some, like myself, really liked Dennis Kucinich . I wondered, what if any social, political or cultural changes Black Canadians might see if Obama does win the Presidency. Here are some outtakes:

(But) wasn’t Obama thinking about (the potential for an increase in overt racism and how his candidacy would be affected) before? Doesn’t / should he be thinking about the future?

You always have to weigh the pros and the cons. But you always have to look at what is good to you. We have never had a black man who has had a credible challenge before. It seems that he has a good shot in terms of delegates and fund raising. He is doing everything right. You have to ask yourself – what is the nature of citizenship? You are entitled to….How does it translate? A lot more Canadian blacks could run for political office. We might be seeing a huge change among the younger generation, as he has reached out to youth like nobody else has. He’s younger and looks young. And he will not be the youngest person but he is inspiring to the younger generation.

Do you think Black Canadians would volunteer to go down to the States and work on Obama's campaign - if they (legally) could?

I don’t think that a lot of Canadian black would go down to help with Obama’s campaign. I think it’s cute I think it’s funny and I think it’s silly. I think that Obama represents all of us. He is an immigrant – but he is not an immigrant, he has roots in Africa, he has other cultures in him he is American but on the other hand, he isn’t. I think that he represents all blacks but he also represents non-blacks, too.

Is it fair to think that an Obama presidency will be a positive influence among black youth? What about Canadians? (Okay I rephrased this a bit better during the interview)

“It will give (black youth) the self-respect and boost the image of the black community in the eyes of the country and in the world. At least I hope it will let people see that we can be more than gang-bangers and ‘ho’s!” Admitting that she is concerned more with American politics and Canadian politics because “I think what happens over there has a bigger impact on the world than what happens here,” she does not think that it will help in unifying the cultural differences that presently lie within the Black Canadian community. “There is not common experience. Black Canadians do not really have that one defining moment in their history. Whatever we experience here is just the byproduct of the African – American experience. Our clothing, the way we talk, the videos we watch – all these are based on the black American culture. Heck, you can’t even name a single leader in the community!”

What I believe, is Black Canadians have a vested interest in the outcome of this election because we realize this about racism: What happens to one person can ultimately happen to anyone who shares the same ethnicity. We also know that because of the 'monolitic' thought that even trumps sexism - more people think that blacks share the same mannerisms more than they think all women share the same emotional and intellectual attributes. We have experienced it, we have to acknowledge it, and more importantly, we know that what happens south of the border will eventually make it's way here.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread: Hi Everybody

Teacher — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:14:00 -0000

Black, Canadian and rooting for Obama
TheStar.com - living - Black, Canadian and rooting for Obama

May 12, 2008

Laina Dawes

Special to the Star

As a Canadian fixated on Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign, I have occasionally had twinges of guilt over my fascination with the political happenings across the border.

Recently a fit of rage led me to try to reach through my television set to choke a legendary CNN host during one of his usual thinly veiled racist tirades. After I regained my composure, I questioned my allegiance to Canada because of my anger over something happening in another country.

In my defence, the negative dynamics of race and gender that have emerged during the Democratic nomination battle are not only of interest to me as a social justice activist, but also because part of my livelihood is based on studying the issues. As a freelance journalist and editor for the "Race, Ethnicity & Culture" section for Blogher.com, I watch and read various reports daily and provide commentary.

Since the race for the nomination began last summer, there have been a number of racially tinged attacks by the Clinton campaign, media and political pundits. Despite Obama's achievements, they attempt to use racial stereotypes and sweeping generalizations to discredit his campaign. It's a disturbing reminder of how some will play the race card, despite boasting of their allegiance and history of support to the same racial demographic.

Some of the generalizations, such as the stereotype of the angry black militant being used against Obama, have been commonly employed to discredit other blacks.

Witnessing an all-too-familiar, below-the-belt racial punch angers me, but I wanted to find out if it affected other people geographically distant from the fight. I decided to ask black Torontonians their opinions on what social changes might occur for black Canadians if Obama goes on to become president.

Are we, as has been suggested by the media, a monolithic group, blindly supporting anyone because they are black? How does residing in a different country change our perspective, if at all?

More people than I expected are watching the primaries, following the debates and forming strong opinions. Public relations executive Gillian Moody feels Obama's race as a factor in his Canadian popularity is overblown.

"I think that black Canadians are secretly proud and fascinated, but they are not going to bring up race and talk about race in the way that American blacks and non-blacks bring it up. ... In general, I think that Canadians are more skeptical than Americans."

Aluba Kalu, a business development co-ordinator, is hopeful that a black president might help dissolve racial stereotypes, partly because of the popularity of American culture amongst black Canadian youth.

"Black Canadians do not really have that one defining moment in their history," she says. "Whatever we experience here is just the by-product of the African-American experience."

When I asked whether a black president might inspire more black youth to enter politics to Moody and Selwyn Pieters, a lawyer with his own firm in the financial district, they indicated I might be pushing it.

Moody believes Canada already has black Canadians in respected political positions and does not see why they would look to another country for inspiration. Pieters believes an Obama presidency might help in easing racial barriers to climbing the Bay Street corporate ladder. "There are a lot of Canadian businesses that do transnational and international transactions," he says. "If they do not start reflecting diversity, they will not create new business opportunities stateside."

"Barack represents many things, and one of the greatest is change," says Jane Musoke-Nteyafas, a writer, poet and cultural critic. "I believe that racism may improve in Canada, as he has already shattered several cultural and racial biases simply by showing that an African-American man of East African descent can run and be successful."

I fear that stupid prejudices could rob Americans of a president who could improve their lives.

Though it is too early for black Canadians to forecast how Obama's campaign will shape our future, all we can do is hope for the best.

Laina Dawes is a Toronto-based music journalist and editor for the Race, Ethnicity & Culture section for Blogher.com.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread: Hi Everybody

Teacher — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:44:00 -0000

CNN just announced that hillbilly is calling her supporters to DC to hold a big fundraiser for Obama. We'll see. I don't like it either. I've been liking having them off the radar.

Re: The Obamas Are NOT Elite - And, That Is Fine With Me

Teacher — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:12:00 -0000

I hate this thread and this philosophy. I hate the ANIMAL HOUSE mentality among humans, and especially people of African descent. I sincerely believe that we have the creativity and intellectual acuity to reject this strawman paradigm. Having the will to do it is always the determinant. I am against us always selecting the caucasian model as the gold standard. We need to reconsider (reject) a model based on domination, control over everyone but self, flagrant greed & narsicism. These societal constructs are so shallow and so... inconsequential. I realize that most of you all are making light of the whole (laughable) elitist rock thrown at the Obamas. At least thats what I hope. I have relatives with phd's that didn't do anything noteworthy. I have rich relatives who didn't do anything noteworthy. My debutante ball was one of the most boring nights of my life. I'm far from being a socialite, though I am usually genteel. What I would prefer to see is servant-leadership. Many of the most important, impressive people in the world are servant-leaders. Those who end up immortalizing themselves are servant-leaders. Yes, many times their wealth affords them the opportunity to be servant-leaders, but it's preferable to them just being rich for no reason other than to indulge themselves. I think Obama gets this concept. Lady Diana (Princess of Wales) got it. Jimmy Carter gets it, and even Bill Clinton is trying to pimp the paradigm (I think he is mainly motivated by power and self- interest). The Obama's have exhibited class and good character to the extreme. They have resisted stooping to the levels of their detractors, and those people have gone pretty low. To me, that trumps old money and complexion/skin tone any day.

BTW, I don't think Michelle is dark, but I do consider her to be brown. I think she is an AKA, though she has the regalness of a Delta (lol!). I saw her name on their list.

I'm lurking due to computer problems. My laptop crashed. Right now I'm on wifi, which is not reliable in my house. I'm in negotiations with AT&T; for a different wireless card to work with a new laptop. Please send good vibes.

Re: The Obamas Are NOT Elite - And, That Is Fine With Me

Teacher — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:17:00 -0000

Also, Happy Birthday to Brother Nelson Mandela, 90 years old on June 26th. Wow. What a life. I'd rather my children be like him than Harold Ford Jr. May God continue to bless him and his work.

Re: noodad » The Scam Called Kid Recital Videos

Teacher — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 13:25:45 -0000

Dance Class cost for you
1. Tuition
2.Costume
3. Pictures
4. Video
5. Ticketrs

All of the above is optional.

It seems like you don\'t agree with the Video part because it is not something directly for you. Forget the fact that you child will want to watch the other classes that her friends are in ect.... We need to get back to what you are getting out it.

Studio\'s rules about no video tapes are for the people like you who think that if you want it you should get it. For example: Why should you have to pay for a video, you should have the right to stand up in front of the parents of the girl beside your daughter who paid the same as you because you should be able to save a bit of cash for this silly little thing your daught would like to do. Why should you have to pay so the studio can\'t afford to offer vidieo\'s for the dad\'s in Iraq or away on business because who cares if it is also their special day.

Why should you pay $30 for a momento for your daughter, man you have already forked out $150 for this experience why should you be asked for more. Because we all know that you are the dad who volunteered to help the dance teacher who loaded in 10 hours earlier all the sets, scenery,ect. To help your daughter have her special day. And to be slapped in the face with Ticket prices because doesn\'t the auditorium know that they should give this to you for free.

Let\'s see that $30 could have bought you some beer, 1/3 of a game of golf, one spin through a fast food drive though. It didn\'t seem that you were too hard up for cash you just didn\'t see anything in for it for YOU.

OH was this about you I thought this was about your daughter.

Re: Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Live Blogging - Grant Writing -- Characteristics of a Grant Writer

Teacher — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 19:03:00 -0000

Thanks for the tips on grant-writing. There are tons of small scale grants out there that are an excellent way for teachers to get to the things they want. I have seen many good teachers and a few great ones out there. The ones that were great and always had new and innovative programs in their classrooms wrote their own grants.

Re: http://www.crimene.ws/2007/10/ignorance-isn-always-bliss.html

Teacher — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:27:55 -0000

The first lawsuit? And who do we sue?

Most parents are unaware of the trend in education to "the least restrictive environment" for students in special education. This classification includes students with pshychological problems as well. The new word for all this is 'inclulsion'. Regular education classrooms are being peppered with special education students. These range from students with mild to profound disabilitioes - and students with documented pshycologial problems. The theory is that these students will perform better in regular education classroom. Theory aside, the effect is devastating to education. Most classroom teachers are simply not trained for this population nor have the unlimited time to adjust the curriculum to this population. Even special education teachers in the classroom are clueless.

And this year our school has a student who has suddenly 'graduated' from a behavior education self-contained (not in regular ed. classes) class to regular eduction classes. He has already been kicked off the bus for disruptive behavior, brandished a knife at another student, and now our literature teacher is cautious about reading any Edgar Allan Poe stories because this kid may get some ideas.

So who do we blame? The regular education teachers who insist this is a bad idea, but must follow school policy? Special education teachers who say inclusion is better? Administrators who enforce the school board policy? Parents who just want their child to be normal? The child himself?

We must seriously re-evaluate our educational goals. Do we educate the few special students to the detriment of the majority of students? Do we place our schools at risk just to be politically correct?

Re: http://www.thenewblackwoman.com/2008/05/sexism-towards-clinton.html

Teacher — Mon, 26 May 2008 15:36:00 -0000

I don't think there has been an inordinate amount of sexism in the campaign. It is obvious that hrc will do or say ANYTHING to get the nomination. What I do see is the media taking up for her continuously. CNN is practically the Clinton News Network. Sexism is an excuse & cover up for a very poorly run campaign. She thought she was going to cakewalk into the nomination. Now that she has to work, manage, plan ahead & be organized, she is crying sexism. She is trying to destroy the democratic party & Obama because she is not getting her way. We are not all crazy. She continues to stoop to lower & lower levels, & continues to say things which cannot be unsaid. Assassination is to African Americans as ovens is to Jews, yet she continues to say it month after month and only now is she receiving censure. To say it once might be a mistake, to say it repeatedly is telling us that she clearly has a deathwish for a member of her political party, for a human who has treated her with the utmost dignity & deference. It also seems like a dog whistle call to her "hard working," white, racist minion to go for it. Hillary is a pathological liar & a sociopath. I would gladly support a Claire McCaskill or Janet Napolitano or anyone who is fit to be president. This isn't about sexism, this is about Hillary. Please check this website:
www.peterfpaul.com