Told You So

"Does it make sense to want a black president? Will we feel better seeing a black president even if he can't find the right time to leave Iraq, institute single payer health care, end mass incarceration, or fight for affirmative action? In the future, we will again see a black presidential candidate claiming that there is no black America. If we adhere to the belief that a black face in a high place is always good, that throwaway line in a speech might just take on a more ominous meaning."

Sorry if quoting myself is considered bad manners, but the above words of wisdom come from yours truly. I said that in my Black Agenda Report column in May of 2007 and was I ever right.

On Sunday Barack Obama insulted black people by spewing hate speech against black men and by the end of the week he announced that he would support the FISA bill cooked up by Pelosi and Hoyer that would give immunity to telecoms who spied on us illegally. When he was in the throes of a knock down drag out fight with Hillary Clinton, he was pressured to do the right thing.

“To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.”

No Hillary, no pressure. Now he says he supports the compromise.

As they used to say on late night television commercials, "But wait, there's more." Not only did the double talking bastard find a way to justify criminality perpetrated on the American people, but he endorsed a white conservative Congressman, John Barrow, in his primary fight against a black progressive state legislator, Regina Thomas.

"Barrow cynically waited until after Obama's sweeping primary victory in Georgia to endorse him. He did so only once he saw that Obama would likely be the nominee and obviously with the hope of having Obama encourage Barrow's sizable African-American constituency to support him. And now Obama turns around and intervenes in a Democratic primary on behalf of one of the worst Bush enablers in Congress -- not in order to help Barrow defeat an even-worse Republican, but to defeat a far better and plainly credible Democratic challenger."

You can contribute to Thomas' campaign here through Act Blue, but I digress. We all know what will happen to Thomas now. Black voters will go with Massa Obama. They will do what he says and his stab in the back to Thomas will be explained away or ignored outright. No one cares except me and ten other people, and I know them all by name.

This is a sad time for black people and for democracy, the little that is left of it.