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October 9, 2009
September 14, 2009
August 25, 2009
August 5, 2009
Reality Bites
PBE on the teachable moment from the gates thing
prettybrowneyez said
I mean, look, Obama tried to avoid facing race issues head-on during the campaign, and understandably so. All I’m saying is that he can not NOW come back and do what he failed to do a few months ago.
The race speech he gave, Obama wasn’t talking to us, black Americans. He was talking to white Americans. And I think most of us understand that. We also understand why he couldn’t run as a “black man” during the campaign, he probably wouldn’t have won.
So for him to come back now, and start talking about huge concerns in the black community like racial profiling, well, it’s going to fall flat. With blacks, because we know he’s not – and can’t speak freely and truth to power; and with whites because they don’t like it. Too many want to pretend that it doesn’t exist.
Everybody knows that once you start “passing,” you gotta keep “passing.” It’s hard to cross-over, and you definitely can’t have it both ways. Obama got “passed” during the campaign, and he needs to continue doing so if he wants to remain in the Oval Office. He can’t start talking that “race” stuff.
You have known me long enough to know that I have never been an Obama-maniac, but I try to be fair and call a spade a spade.
Obama slipped the other week, which I wrote about. And then he tried to get back into character. He’s the president of the United States and had to practically apologize to this cop who more than likely was in the wrong for saying something that was probably 100 percent accurate.
The president forgot his “place,” and that speaks volumes. So in that respect, it was a learning experience for him.
But the fact that a black man, who happens to be the leader of the free world, still has a “place” should be a wake-up call to everyone.
So yes, in that respect the rest of us learned something. But I don’t think many of us realize the meaning behind what we learned.
exactly. couldn’tve said it better myself.
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July 29, 2009
Maddow and Harris-Lacewell on Racist Obama
awesome piece – I love Rachel Maddow and Melissa Harris-Lacewell – here they are analyzing Beck and Limbaugh among others trying their darndest to race bait and stoke people’s fears of Obama’s initiatives being pro-Black rather than pro-American. This is why Obama dare not address race – and we saw with the Gates comments – it’s a battle he cannot win. He has to let others fight that fight. What the hell is Biden doing these days anyways besides insulting Russia?
wrt the conversation on race, MHL linked to this article she wrote about Katrina and how whites and blacks interpreted the problem of the botched response to Hurricane Katrina ( incompetent governance vs systematic racism ) and how it affected the views of how to solve the problems:
AbstractThis article explores the interconnection of race, politics and emotion in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Not only did Americans of different races perceive vastly different realities about the events in New Orleans, but black and white Americans felt different about what happened. The affective responses of African Americans were more pronounced than those of their white counterparts. These emotions are rooted in America’s racial history and it resonance in contemporary US society. Using data from several national surveys conducted in the weeks following September 11, 2001, and the weeks following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, this article maps the differences in emotional responses among black and white Americans to both disasters. The survey data is used to suggest that Americans’ political and racial beliefs were significantly related to their psychological experiences in the weeks following Katrina.
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July 26, 2009
May 9, 2009
April 29, 2009
April 28, 2009
This is HUGE isn’t it?
Proof that Obama diplomacy is indeed bearing fruits?
The Iranian president signaled that Iran could accept the existence of Israel, in stark contrast to both his previously reported statement that Israel must be “wiped off the map” and the position of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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April 27, 2009
Maine Republican helped strip Flu Pandemic funds from the Stimulus – OOOOPS
AWESOME – Got this all linked thru the HuffPo article at the bottom – which drew parallels to Bobby Jindal’s speech about volcano monitoring being useless – a few weeks before a volcano erupted in Alaska. These guys are proving that they are out of their depth with this policy and governing stuff:
GOP Know-Nothings Fought Pandemic Preparedness
When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year’s emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.Obey and other advocates for the spending argued, correctly, that a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse — with workers ordered to remain in their homes, workplaces shuttered to avoid the spread of disease, transportation systems grinding to a halt and demand for emergency services and public health interventions skyrocketing. Indeed, they suggested, pandemic preparation was essential to any responsible plan for renewing the U.S. economy.
…
Famously, Maine Senator Collins, the supposedly moderate Republican who demanded cuts in health care spending in exchange for her support of a watered-down version of the stimulus, fumed about the pandemic funding: “Does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill No, we should not.”
Even now, Collins continues to use her official website to highlight the fact that she led the fight to strip the pandemic preparedness money out of the Senate’s version of the stimulus measure.
as seen here:
.: United States Senator Susan M. Collins :: Press Room :.
Maine Sen. Collins Leads Group of Moderates Seeking to Trim Package to $700 Billion or Less; Obama Calls for Quick Action…
After meeting with Mr. Obama, Sen. Collins expressed concern about a number of spending provisions, including $780 million for pandemic-flu preparedness. “I have no doubt that the president is willing to negotiate in good faith, that he wants to have a bipartisan bill,” Sen. Collins said.
The Youtubes have picked up on it too:
GOP Stripped Flu Pandemic Preparedness From Stimulus
All of this is playing out at a time when HHS nominee sits on the sidelines, her nomination held up at the behest of pro-life organizations who want to paint her as the “Abortion Queen.” The hold up is pointless – merely delaying the inevitable for “another week.” Maybe the swine flu would be good enough to wait!
It must hurt to be wrong so many times. Where are the Whig party these days?
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