Obama Shows His Ass (and that is good news)

There are certainly more articulate ways of expressing myself, but why beat around the bush? When Barack Obama spoke at the Congressional Black Caucus annual event this weekend he showed himself to be the pompous jackass that he has always been.

"I expect all of you to march with me and press on. Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on. We’ve got work to do, CBC."

While this display of condescension initially made me angry, I now have second thoughts. I am glad that Obama insulted black people for the 100th time.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, always among my favorites, made the case this way. She is savvy and knows that she will alienate her constituents if she directly criticizes Obama. She said as much publicly at a Detroit town hall.

" 'We don't put pressure on the president,' said Waters. 'Let me tell you why. We don't put pressure on the president because ya'll love the president. You love the president. You're very proud...to have a black man [in the White House] ...First time in the history of the United States of America. If we go after the president too hard, you're going after us... When you tell us it's alright and you unleash us and you tell us you're ready for us to have this conversation, we're ready to have the conversation.' "

Obama has now given Waters and others the cover they need in order to take him on.

“ 'I found that language a bit curious because the president spoke to the Hispanic Caucus and certainly they are pushing him on immigration and despite the fact that he's appointed [Justice Sonia] Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, he has an office for excellence in Hispanic education right in the White House, they’re still pushing him and he certainly didn’t tell them to stop complaining,' she said.

'And he never would say that to the gay and lesbian community who really pushed him on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Or even in a speech to AIPAC, he would never say to the Jewish community ‘stop complaining’ about Israel.' ”

I have always suspected that the huge black voter turn out from November 2008 would not be repeated in 2012. We have already seen that turn out in elections held since 2008 has been very low. Despite all the talk of renewed energy and interest in politics, the truth is far simpler. Black people were excited to see a black president and not excited about much else.

Now they have seen one and that initial thrill has gone. Obama has not even made token efforts to help black people and regardless of how much his critics are despised, his lack of action is noted and will have consequences. Most black people will not directly and openly criticize Obama, they will just stay home next November and I don't think that is a bad thing. The democrats have proven themselves to be no friends of black people, of labor or of the left in general. It is time for them to go. If we are going to have a president willing to cut social security, we may as well have a republican anyway.

Congresswoman Waters should cheer up. She can consider herself "unleashed."

9/11 Conspiracy

"That’s the real political world, in which Giuliani and others have never been held accountable. The conspiracists disdained the real world because they wanted to promote Bush, Cheney and the Neo-Cons to an elevated status as the Arch Demons of American history, instead of being just one more team running the American empire, a team of more than usual stupidity and incompetence (characteristics I personally favor in imperial leaders)." - Alexander Cockburn

No, there was no 9/11 conspiracy and Cockburn pretty much proves it. He answers the questions the "truthers" have raised and makes it easier to stomach the dreaded 9/11 anniversary celebrations. Yes, there are logical explanations for the towers falling, for WTC7 to appear to implode and yes a plane did hit the pentagon.

Now about that Israeli moving company...

"We don't know why on this trip that he [Obama] is on the United States now why he is not in any black communities."
Give him hell Maxine!

Does Obama Believe in Global Warming?

"Global warming caused by burning fossil fuels is melting the Arctic's ice. The melting of that ice makes it possible to exploit the region's reserves of fossil fuels, which will contribute even more to warming of the Earth's temperature.

And, remember, we will be trashing the Arctic for, at best, three years worth of oil."
Randolph Holhut

Liberal snootiness and snobbery is really and truly making me sick. These people care nothing about issues or ideology and will run like sclalded dogs rather than wage a political fight against the ruling classes. It makes sense I suppose. They don't call them rulers for nothing.

This week republican presidential candidate John Huntsman made news because he says that global warming is a fact. His rivals, most prominently Texas governor Rick Perry, say that it is unproven theory.

Progressives watch and laugh and stick their noses high in the air. They have yet another chance to proclaim their intellectual and moral superiority over conservatives.

Of course, this would have been a perfect week to point out that president Obama, just like Rick Perry, could give a rat's backside about global warming. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has given preliminary approval for Royal Dutch Shell to begin drilling in the Alaskan arctic next year. Yes, I know, the EPA and Fish and Wildlife and heaven only knows who else must also agree. But seriously, do you really think that one agency said yes without knowing what the boss, Obama, wants the rest of them to do?

Are memories so short that the BP disaster in the gulf last year has been forgotten already? It took BP five months to figure out how to resolve the Deep Water Horizon disaster and the gulf is still paying the price.

Obviously every living creature on earth is paying the price for global warming. More fossil fuel accelerates the dangers and drilling in the arctic ocean is needlessly dangerous. But never mind. Perry is an ignoramous and Michelle Bachmann is stupid, so we need an ivy league smarty pants to send us on the road to hell. We'll feel better knowing that a constitutional law professor sent us there.

The United States Starves Somalia

The New York Times published a photo of a starving Somalian child in today's edition of that newspaper. As expected, the photo has elicited comment and deep emotion, as it should. Unfortunately, the Times headline states that the Shabab, Somalia's resistance group, is responsible for the starvation. What a difference one year makes. In February 2010 the Times said the following. "U.N. Officials Assail U.S. On Limiting Somali Aid ."

It is the United States which instigated Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia, destroying that country and killing thousands of people. Black Agenda Report has done great reporting on how the U.S. and Ethiopia are deliberately starving Somalians. Chris Floyd has also reported a story which has largely been ignored.

Don't believe anything our government says about its actions abroad. As in all other ways, the Obama administration continues the very worst policies of the Bush regime, and killing Somalians is no exception.

Quote of the Week

"The Tea Party held America hostage during "the debt debate"? No, you fool, you idiot; fucking rich people did it. The Tea Party is just some shit they cooked up to keep you busy, to keep you fuming at each other while they steal your tooth fairy money and grandma's dentures. Every policy that you abhor and mistakenly ascribe to the ersatz conservative revanchism of the so-called tea-party movement is a willful policy of oligarchic centralism with the end goal of extracting every last red cent from every last human being on the earth.

Yea verily, I have returned unto you to put it straight to yinz: there is no tea party; there are no Democrats; there is no America. There is only global capital. There is no keeping American competitive for the future against the Chinese children of the math-science learning gap to win tomorrow today with the power of innovation. There is a single transnational elite whose allegiance is to itself. They would've fucked you on Saturday; they'll fuck you next Wednesday instead. There was no debt crisis. THERE IS NO DEBT CEILING. You are like prisoners in a concentration camp, tearing each other apart over crusts of bread. The guards check their rifles. The kommandant shtups his mistress. The carrion birds circle against the concrete sky.

You must destroy the rich." - Who is Ioz?

Good News, Boehner Walks

Hallelujah! Boehner left the budget talks. Why is this good news? Glen Ford explained in Black Agenda Report.

"In other words, when the debt-limit showdown arrives, pray for gridlock, which would at least mean there is still resistance to Republican extortion."

So cheer up! Obama can't, in Glen's words, ". . . face down and brow-beat the remaining defenders of the social safety net in his own Democratic Party, who have always been the most immediate dangers to his grand center-right coalition."

Let's hope Boehner never comes back to the table.

Diet Soap Podcast

I love being a guest on Doug Lain's Diet Soap podcast. Here is the latest.

Debt Ceiling? Budget Cuts? Arthur Silber Explains It All

Arthur Silber is one of my favorite bloggers. His insights are amazing and make sense of the madness we are subjected to on a daily basis. Unfortunately, he has been very ill and doesn't always post on a regular basis. This week he is back and in great form.

While other commentators make the budget discussions seem confusing, Arthur spells it out simply. The ruling classes are behaving as they always do, terrifying us into accepting our own demise. Obama and his friends who have helped him raise $86 million, one full year before the election, are putting us in our places, convincing us that our safety net and anything else tht helps us ought to be expendable.

"Your national leaders are terrorists. Look on the bright side: they aren't shooting at you or sending drones into your neighborhood. Not yet. You still have that to look forward to, you fortunate idiots.

But most Americans can't or won't acknowledge the fact that terrorists rule them. The ruling class counts on that, and they're absolutely right. Are there millions of Americans camped out in Washington, or even thinking about it? Don't make me laugh."

Obama is telling us to accept cuts in medicaid and medicare so that he can make a deal with the republicans. He could fight back and tell his supporters he will defy the republicans, but that doesn't get you $86 million in the campaign bank and in any case, he isn't interested. Obama could give a sh*t. Or is that couldn't give a sh*t? Whatever.

Juneteenth and Modern Day Slavery

June 19th is Juneteenth. It celebrates the day in 1865 when news of emancipation reached Texas. Slaveholders conveniently came down with a case of mass amnesia and didn't relay the news of the Emancipation Proclamation issued in 1863 or of the wars ending two months earlier.

Today I came across an article in the Root about Juneteenth and modern day slavery. The authors quite rightly focused on the horrors of human trafficking which exists in this country and around the world. However, I assumed they would also make mention America's mass incarceration which is not only a form of slavery but which is largely targeted at black people.

The United States has both a greater percentage of its population behind bars and a greater number than any country on earth. There is no despot or dictator on earth who puts as many people in jail as this nation does. While black make up approximately ten percent of our population, we comprise half of all people in jail, prisons, or on parole or probation.

While the authors of the Root article may also suffer from a form of selective amnesia, there are thousands of people across the country dedicated to ending this scourge of our so-called civilization. Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, is spreading the word about a group of clergy dedicated to raising awareness of this issue. The Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference is dedicated to addressing many social justice issues and they are in the forefront of exposing and opposing mass incarceration.

It isn't really surprising that the Root has no interest in people who are under the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system. We have been propagandized into demonizing them as being unworthy of our attention or concern. The truth is that most of them have not committed violent crimes, but are victims of the forty year long war on drugs and the efforts to literally profit from it and other law enforcement measures. We have private prisons which exist to make a profit. Unemployed people are in jail for failing to pay child support and the child support enforcement system has itself become a privatized profit making venture.

Prisoners are subject to sexual and other violence in jails and prisons, are denied medical care and of the right to vote and to work once they are free. They are victims of involuntary servitude and we must never forget that fact.

I Told You So

Two weeks ago I wrote about The Obama Surveillance State in the Black Agenda Report. Today the New York Times revealed what I and others have been reporting.

The FBI has approved a new manual which expands the powers which agents can utilize in the field. They will be able to go through trash, infiltrate organizations, attend religious services, and conduct database searches without even opening an assessment, which beginning in 2008, were permissible without proof of illegal activity.

The bar gets lower and lower. As I reported last week, the illegal activities which Richard Nixon undertook against Daniel Ellsberg are now legal. The FBI can do anything it wants in order to investigate citizens without fear of committing any illegal activity.

Don't just blame George W. Bush. This new manual emerges from the Obama justice department.

Nixon's Crimes are Now Legal

In last week's Black Agenda Report I commented on the ever expanding surveillance state brought to us by Barack Obama. There is now a dangerous bipartisan consensus in support of the further erosion of our civil liberties. Don't believe me? Just read these words from Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon papers forty years ago.

"Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in human life. (And his aide Henry Kissinger was not the last American official to win an undeserved Nobel Peace Prize.)

He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal.

That includes burglarizing my former psychoanalyst's office (for material to blackmail me into silence), warrantless wiretapping, using the CIA against an American citizen in the US, and authorizing a White House hit squad to "incapacitate me totally" (on the steps of the Capitol on May 3, 1971). All the above were to prevent me from exposing guilty secrets of his own administration that went beyond the Pentagon Papers. But under George W. Bush and Barack Obama,with the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendment Act, and (for the hit squad) President Obama's executive orders. they have all become legal."

Contrast Ellsberg's treatment with tht of Bradley Manning, who is accused of giving government secrets to Wikileaks. Ellsberg's conviction was over turned while Manning has been imprisoned, tortured psychologically, and denied the right to have private visits. In essence, Obama is now worse than Richard Nixon.

I told you so.

The dirty trick that launched Anthony Weiner's career

The dirty trick that launched Anthony Weiner's career

I didn't know that Weiner used race baiting to win elective office. Forget the weiner double entendres. This is what counts.

I love Tom Tomorrow. I wrote on the same subject in this week’s Black Agenda Report.

Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin on a motorcycle, Sarah on a bus, in Iowa, in New Hampshire, with her kids! Will she? Won't she? Enough already.

Today a NATO air strike killed 15 people in Afghanistan. Obama has publicly pledge to kill people in Libya and force regime change, even if Libyans have to die from bombs or sanctions in the process. What difference would it make if she were president? Yes, she is dumb, but so what? Our smarty pants president does what anyone who wants to be president has to do.

I don't really care if liberal snobs hate Sarah Palin. We will end up with more of the same, giving public money to the private sector, and endless war, regardless of who lives in the white house in 2013. Sarah on a motorcycle. Whatever.

The First Memorial Day

David Blight is Yale professor of history who specializes in the study of the civil war era. In today's New York Times, he tells the story of the first memorial day which was celebrated in Charleston, South Carolina.

In the last year of the war, a race track in Charleston was used as an open air prison for union soldiers where more than 200 died and were buried in a mass grave. When the confederates evacuated the city, the newly freed people of Charleston reburied the dead properly and erected a high fence around the new cemetery. On May 1, 1865, they held a parade and ceremony at the site.

The procession was led by 3,000 black schoolchildren carrying armloads of roses and singing the Union marching song “John Brown’s Body.” Several hundred black women followed with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Then came black men marching in cadence, followed by contingents of Union infantrymen. Within the cemetery enclosure a black children’s choir sang “We’ll Rally Around the Flag,” the “Star-Spangled Banner” and spirituals before a series of black ministers read from the Bible.

After the dedication the crowd dispersed into the infield and did what many of us do on Memorial Day: enjoyed picnics, listened to speeches and watched soldiers drill. Among the full brigade of Union infantrymen participating were the famous 54th Massachusetts and the 34th and 104th United States Colored Troops, who performed a special double-columned march around the gravesite.

I now have a reason to celebrate memorial day. Aside from enjoying a long weekend and an opportunity to have a little more time for fun, I hate this holiday. I hate the celebration of war and death and the implied mandate to have more of both. The first memorial day was a commemoration of America's only good war, the war which killed chattel slavery.

Blight has once again done a great service to history lovers with his research. In 2008 he gave a series of lectures on the war and reconstruction which are available for free download. They are indispensable to anyone interested in that period of American history.

Happy memorial day.

"USA" Chant on NYC Subway FAIL

New Yorkers do not like being screamed at while on the subway. It is especially true when some dumb ass asks if anyone with "a pair" wants to join in shouting something stupid. New York, it ain't Podunk.

Hold Me Barack!








This lady in Tuscaloosa may be worried about the tornado aftermath, but she wasn't going to miss her moment with the president. It didn't matter that his wife is standing right there. No one was going to get between her and her idol.

Tornado Disasters

TVA safely shut down its Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Alabama with emergency backup power this week, but power outages across the Tennessee Valley still left the utility without enough emergency sirens to warn nearby residents of potential safety problems at both Browns Ferry in Alabama and the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant near Soddy-Daisy.

In a notice to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission released Friday, TVA said more than 60 percent of its sirens around Browns Ferry and about a third of its warning sirens around Sequoyah were inoperable this week when electricity service was lost to the sirens following Wednesday’s tornadoes and wind storms. - Times Free Press

Three days ago tornadoes tore across the southern states of Mississipi, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia and Kentucky. Last week tornados touched down and damaged St. Louis' Lambert Field international airport.

The tornados this week killed more than 300 people, mostly in Alabama. President Obama made the obligatory visit, shaking hands and making trite statements about devastation being really, really bad, and people sticking together and blah, blah, blah.

The facts are undeniable. These weather extremes are a result of human made climate change and even advanced countries like the U.S. do not have the means to care for people when natural disaster strikes. Nuclear reactors in Alabama were without power after the tornados and unable to warn residents should the need arise because alarm systems were without power, not to mention the reactors' cooling capacity. Sounds too much like Fukushima for my taste.

By the way, we can't talk about climate change denying republicans without mentioning how Barak Obama sabotaged the conference at Copenhagen. Mr. Environmentalist used his bully pulpit to force an agreement which allows world temperatures to rise two degrees. It doesn't sound like much, but that is the difference between having an ice age or not.

In any case, this country does not have a plan for dealing with large scale disaster and Alabamians and others will suffer like their fellow citizens during the Katrina crisis.