Disqus - Latest Comments for thoughtmerchant

Re: President Obama’s Weekly Address

thoughtmerchant — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 16:05:02 -0000

MUST READ!!!! Obama’s First Wag the Dog?!?!?

http://thoughtmerchant.net/...

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

thoughtmerchant — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 23:44:00 -0000

http://thoughtmerchant.net/...

Matt Taibbi: "Obama's Big Sell Out" Links to the full article with video

Thought Merchant
Politics and Commentary for the Thinking Person of Color
"Better to sell an idea than to buy a lie!!"

Re: The Obama Presidency: A Year in Pictures

thoughtmerchant — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 23:34:17 -0000

http://thoughtmerchant.net/...

Matt Taibbi: "Obama's Big Sell Out" Links to the full article with video

Thought Merchant
Politics and Commentary for the Thinking Person of Color
"Better to sell and idea then to buy a lie!!"

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

thoughtmerchant — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 10:03:30 -0000

How Barack Obama Hurt Historically Black Colleges and Universities

http://thoughtmerchant.net/...

Re: Barack Obama Notices That People Ain’t Got No Jobs

thoughtmerchant — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:29:56 -0000

You wanna know what Obama going to do about??? Black Unemployment??? WELL CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO AT:

http://thoughtmerchant.net/...

"OBAMA REJECTS CALL TO ADDRESS AFRICAN AMERICAN UNEMPLOYMENT"

Check the video and tell me how Black America would react if a White President had made those statements

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

thoughtmerchant — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:02:18 -0000

Obama Rejects Call Address Black Unemployment

http://thoughtmerchant.net/...

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

thoughtmerchant — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:50:26 -0000

Congressional Black Caucus Challenges Obama: What about Black People?

http://thoughtmerchant.net/...

Re: President Obama’s Primetime Speech on Afghanistan Open Thread (Updated)

thoughtmerchant — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 08:16:47 -0000

Cornel West Takes on Obama:

http://thoughtmerchant.net/...

Re: Depression 2.0 Hits Young African-Americans…Hardcore

thoughtmerchant — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:35:12 -0000

Can America Afford Another Term for Ben Bernanke?: http://thoughtmerchant.net/...

Leave Comments!

http://thoughtmerchant.net/...

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

thoughtmerchant — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:39:44 -0000

http://thoughtmerchant.net/...

Why We Must Audit the Federal Reserve :http://thoughtmerchant.net/...

Leave Comments!!

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

thoughtmerchant — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:27:49 -0000

http://thoughtmerchant.net/...

Timothy Geithner asked to Resign in Congressional Hearing: http://thoughtmerchant.net/...

Leave Comments!!!

Re: President Obama’s Foreign Trip

thoughtmerchant — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:59:52 -0000

http://thoughtmerchant.net/...

Obama’s Geithner Problem: http://thoughtmerchant.net/...

Come check it out and leave comments!

Re: Casting a Wider Net for Green Jobs

thoughtmerchant — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:23:47 -0000

Can Senator Chris Dodd Succeed Where Obama has Failed?

http://thoughtmerchant.net/...

Hot off the Press!!!

Re: Congressman Artur Davis – the ONLY member of the CBC to vote AGAINST healthcare reform

thoughtmerchant — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:40:40 -0000

http://thoughtmerchant.net/...

THE SCAM OF HEALTH CARE REFORM: http://thoughtmerchant.net/...

Artur Davis might be smarter than we give him credit for. Check the blog post above.

Re: Cory Booker’s Week in Review. Great Mayor. Crap Singer

thoughtmerchant — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:02:21 -0000

From: FRUIT OF THE POISONED TREE:The Hard Right's Plan to Capture Newark NJ

See whole piece here: http://blackcommentator.com...

The billionaires who fund the American Hard Right are salivating over the prospect of seizing control of City Hall in Newark,New Jersey, May 14. They have found their champion: Cory Booker, Black mayoral candidate from the city's Central Ward, a cynical pretender who attempts to position himself as the common people's defender while locked in the deep embrace of institutes and foundations that bankroll virtually every assault on social and economic justice in America. His benefactors sponsor anti-affirmative action referendums, press for near-total disinvestment in the public sector, savage what's left of the social safety net, and are attempting to turn public education over to private suppliers. Along the way, Booker's soul mates are busy ravaging the environment and trampling civil liberties everywhere they find them.

Booker owes his growing national prominence to this crowd, whose influence has provided the 32 year-old with a campaign war chest rivaling that of four-term incumbent Sharpe James. Never has a Newark election been more closely watched by the super-rich and their political network. Booker is their Black Hope for electoral legitimacy. Although only a first-term councilman from a medium-sized city, the former Rhodes scholar is already at the top of the Right's list of New Black Leaders.

Re: Cory Booker’s Week in Review. Great Mayor. Crap Singer

thoughtmerchant — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:55:25 -0000

I was simply trying to balance the seeming lack of differing opinions. I don't have a hat in this either way.

Re: Cory Booker’s Week in Review. Great Mayor. Crap Singer

thoughtmerchant — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:03:23 -0000

Just sharing various perspectives. I've made no comment on my opinions.

Re: Cory Booker’s Week in Review. Great Mayor. Crap Singer

thoughtmerchant — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:52:36 -0000

Just sharing various perspectives. I've made no comment on my opinions.

Re: Cory Booker’s Week in Review. Great Mayor. Crap Singer

thoughtmerchant — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:30:52 -0000

On Cory Booker:

From The Black Commentator: http://www.blackcommentator...

"BEWARE OF THE BLACK TROJAN HORSE"

Dr. Martin Kilson, Guest Commentator

When Cory Booker emerged as a real contender for Mayor of majority Black Newark, New Jersey, some African American intellectuals sounded the alarm. Among them was Harvard's Dr. Martin Kilson, a research professor of political science who was the first African American to be granted full tenure at the college, in 1968. Dr. Kilson wrote a letter to his friend, Lee Daniels, publications director of the National Urban League, in New York, warning of Booker's close ties to the Hard Right:

Lee Daniels

National Urban League

My Dear Lee:

I think I sent you a copy of George F. Will’s column that appeared two weeks ago in which he informs his nationwide conservative rightwing network about Cory Booker’s campaign for the mayoralty of Newark, NJ. As soon as I read Will’s column celebrating Booker’s run against four-term Mayor Sharpe James it was clear to me that—Sharpe James’ limitations to the contrary notwithstanding—Booker was a “Black Trojan Horse” so to speak, Lee. As you know, George Will represents the most reactionary intellectual and public policy elements among Republican conservatism in today’s America. I mean even the conservatism of Pres. George Bush has recognized the need to ethnically and racially diversify executive offices in today’s Republican administration, something George Will and his rightwing circle—Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Richardson Scaife Foundation, etc.—have yet to publicly endorse. The fact of the matter is that George Will and his particular circle of American conservatives (which includes my Harvard Dept. of Government rightwing colleague Professor Harvey Mansfield) would turn-back-the-clock on civil rights for African-Americans to the Plessy v. Ferguson era if they could get away with it, Lee Daniels…

Thus any celebration of Cory Booker’s campaign in Newark by George Will and his ilk must be viewed automatically as bad news for Black people of Newark. This was my immediate reaction to the celebratory column on Cory Booker’s campaign by George Will—my sort of knee-jerk progressive Black intellectual reaction, Lee. Then earlier this week I received from my old friend Gregory King, who’s an administrator in the Newark Public School Administration and a very talented fellow…a copy of a recent talk Cory Booker delivered to one of George Will’s favorite Republican research centers—the Manhattan Institute. It’s where White conservatives like Nathan Glazer, Abigail Thernstrom, William Bennett, and other conservative opponents of the mainstream Black American leadership’s civil rights agenda hang their hats, Lee. When you put together the appearance of George Will’s celebratory column on Cory Booker and Booker’s address at the Manhattan Institute, the only conclusion to make Lee is that Booker is a “Black Trojan Horse” for the Republican rightwing.

For the first time, the Republican rightwing network—not the liberal Republican network that gave us civil rights activist oriented Black Republicans up until the Reagan Administration—now has a bear hug around a potential Black Mayor of a major city with a Black and Latino majority population. Mind you, Lee, we on the liberal and progressive side of Black leadership have no generic bias against a Republican mayor governing our Black/Latino majority cities. After all, we’re pluralistic and pragmatic in our approach to American politics, not ideological or xenophobic….

But a Black Mayor aligned with and indeed controlled by the kind of conservative Republican circles that now control President Bush’s White House and represented by the Manhattan Institute, and Republican circles celebrated by Negro-phobic and feminist-phobic pundits like George Will is a very different matter altogether, Lee. Without doubt, these kinds of Republicans aim to reverse the equalitarian-advancement and opportunity-expanding uses of modern governance to what it was before the rise of the New Deal under FDR.

Of course, Cory Booker is perhaps the shrewdest of those we might call the New Wave Black Conservatives, Lee, for unlike the Old Guard Black Conservatives who first surfaced in the middle-‘70s and got institutionalized during Reagan/Bush Republican Administrations (e.g., Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Glenn Loury, Robert Woodson, Clarence Thomas, etc.), Booker knows the necessity of packaging his critique of the mainline Black civil rights and city leadership through his own version of liberal civil rights discourse. Booker knows that the nasty hardline anti-civil rights conservative discourse practiced by Old Guard Black Conservatives like Shelby Steele wouldn’t let him get-off-first-base among Black voters in Newark, Lee.

I gained some insight into Booker’s success in masking his essentially rightist Republican conservatism in populist-leaning liberal civil rights language (e.g., attacking inefficient city bureaucrats, attacking wasteful expenditures, critiquing corrupt usage of patronage practices, critiquing failures that still exist in education regimes for working-class Black kids, etc.) through a telephone call I received this week from a former Harvard graduate student…. She’s now working in New York City but keeps ties with her professional childhood buddies who live in Newark, and along with them she’s been involved in Booker’s campaign. He’s a “new face,” so to speak, and has been skillful at appealing to the new generation of Black professionals in the Newark area in terms of his populist-tilted critique of the old guard in Newark….

Now, there is no doubt that important limitations are associated with the Sharpe James Mayoralty, Lee, and one of those limitations relate to the fact that the new generation of professionals…have not been cultivated by Newark’s political class old guard represented by Mayor James. As a result there’s a leadership vacuum because Black community minded activist professionals feel that they have no-place-to-go.

Cory Booker, as a shrewd, well-educated Black professional newcomer to Newark politics (Yale Law degree), recognized this leadership vacuum…. He’s functioning as an errand boy Black politician for conservative Republican power-class penetration of governing control of Black Newark, Lee. From where I sit, this is ominous and as many key middle-class and professional-class African-American citizens in Newark as we can reach must be alerted to what Cory Booker and his campaign stands for.

Feel free to circulate the materials as you wish.

Warmest,

Martin Kilson

Dr. Kilson retired from Harvard’s Department of Government three years ago. He is completing 22 years of work on the two-volume study, The Making of Black Intellectuals, to be published next year.

Re: Cory Booker’s Week in Review. Great Mayor. Crap Singer

thoughtmerchant — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:22:20 -0000

Amiri Baraka on Cory Booker:

"Booker comes in here and in 90 days he raises our taxes eight percent. He fires or sets in motion to fire 1,200 workers, both city workers and people working in the housing authority. He hires a police director from New York City who worked with Giuliani. And, you know, the fact that he's a white police director makes it even wilder because we had sworn in 1970 that we would never, you know, go outside of the city and we certainly would never hire a white police director because we'd have such bad police - experience.

Even today, I mean this police director he has now worked with Giuliani. So, I mean that certainly wouldn't help his resume in a city like Newark that's still 70 percent black."

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

thoughtmerchant — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:00:01 -0000

Obama Administration pushing to extend repressive elements of the Patriot Act allowing spying on Americans

http://www.wired.com/threat...

Can we have some objective analysis of this administration??

Re: Evening Open Thread

thoughtmerchant — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 01:39:20 -0000

That quote doesn't describe the Blogosphere, it describes right wing media. If Obama is worried about such problems then he should attack those media outlets that create the shouting match. That is an unfair and incorrect interpretation of the Blogosphere and what it represents. Its a politically expedient way of lumping Blogs with right wing talking heads in an effort to attack the problem without truly addressing the source.

Re: Evening Open Thread

thoughtmerchant — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 01:30:41 -0000

Too many non avatar havin' clowns talking crap about people without knowing who they're dealing with. If you have a problem with the argument then attack the argument. No need to come out the side of your lip, and keyboard, with personal attacks.

Re: Obama Said to Request That Paterson Drop Campaign

thoughtmerchant — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:21:41 -0000

This is nothing but Obama's cynical racial politics at work again. Let me take any opportunity to Break a Negro and shore up some credibility with the post Skip Gates White folk.

Patterson is weak and vulnerable and should have been handled in a better fashion. Kneecapping him in the middle of his administration is the ultimate example of Cynical racial politics because no WHITE DEMOCRATIC OFFICIAL would have had the courage to tell one of only two Black Governors not to Run for re-election. So Obama can easily be deployed to commit a clear political Black on Black crime. Pathetic and quite transparent to anyone not drunk with Obama Kool Aid.

Sad indeed.

Re: Obama Said to Request That Paterson Drop Campaign

thoughtmerchant — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:13:44 -0000

I wish we thought like that when it came time to electing Obama as well (Don't support a candidate just because he's black). Then maybe we would have a President with some political integrity.