Back From the West

Hey all y'all. I was out west last week enjoying the spoils of my radio contest victory in which I won a stay at the London Hotel just off Sunset in West Hollywood and dinner at Gordon Ramsay's restaurant at the same hotel.

Really, I need to get myself a laptop. When we travel, Ben takes his work computer with us. Innocent googling of tourist traps and directions to freak shows are allowed. Logging in to my blogger account - not. There's lots and lots I want to say about our trip, but I haven't got the time to plop it all down in one post. Maybe I'll just be an ass and sprinkle little tidbits in all my conversations, on my own blog and yours too: 'Well, when I was following that Bentley up the Pacific Coast Highway it dawned on me....." Yeah, no.

Perhaps you recall that before I left for this trip I positively expected to hate Newport Beach and to love L.A. Well, I got that backwards. (Except that "The O.C.^TM is so conservative there were McCain signs in the art gallery windows. I ain't saying I'd live there!) More on that later.

Here's a nugget: We had lunch at a sidewalk cafe in Venice Beach. Across the sidewalk was a black man selling Barack Obama t-shirts. A mother and her young son, also black, walked up to the man's table. I saw the man put his hand on the young boy's shoulder, bend down and whisper something to the boy. That child grinned from ear to ear and happily put on his Obama shirt. I've no idea what was said between the man and the child, but what I saw on the boy's face was what Obama is all about - Hope. The future. Change.

Tax Widget - Check Out Your Obama Tax Cut

Click to embiggen.

Actually, given my real circumstances (I do not make 500k/yr yet), my tax cut would be about $500 dollars. Which is a real tax cut and not borrowing against my tax return to give me an economic stimulus check. Kinda cool, eh?

Here's your link

Judgement.

They did a good job of getting this across last night at the convention.

Better Diplomacy, (brought to you by grown-ups)

I think this is a fabulous post

Will Bunch, who writes for the Philadelphia Daily News and who tries to rein herd at his blog Attytood has written this piece about the events during the week that Barack Obama was born in 1961.

The following article was datelined Aug. 5, 1961, and appeared in the Sunday New York Times the following day. It was headlined: BLIND RIDER HELPS BREAK COLOR LINE:

JACKSON, Miss., Aug. 5 (AP) -- Two Freedom Riders, a blind white woman and a Negro, broke the segregation barrier today in a Jackson, Miss., bus depot.

When that landmark event took place, Barack Obama was all of one day old. He was born on Aug. 4. 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Here's some other stories that appeared in the Times the week that Obama was born:

3 U.S. SUITS SEEK VOTES FOR NEGROES:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 (UPI) -- The Government filed three civil rights suits today. They charged that Negroes had been denied voting rights in Montgomery County, Alabama, and Walthall and Jefferson, Davis Counties, Mississippi.

NEW CANAAN GETS HOUSING-BIAS POLL:

NEW CANAAN, Conn., Aug. 5 -- A survey to determine whether Negroes would be welcomed as home owners here is being taken by the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

On the day that Barack Obama was born, there were no black federal judges in the United States -- that would not happen until the day after:

HYANNIS PORT, Mass., Aug. 5 (AP) -- President Kennedy has decided to name James Benton Parsons as a Federal district judge. He will be the first Negro appointed to such a judical post in the continental United States.

On the day that Barack Obama was born, black people in a number of cities and towns across the United States could not swim in the same public pool, drink from the same water fountain or use the same restroom as white people. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was still nearly four years away on Aug 4, 1961.

Between the day that Barack Obama was born and 1968, at least 28 people were killed as they actively worked for the rights of black people to live in an integrated society, vote, and eventually run for public office. Their names are:

Louis Allen, Willie Brewster, Benjamin Brown, James Chaney, Vernon Dahmer, Jonathan Daniels, Henry H. Dee, Cpl. Roman Ducksworth Jr., Medgar Evers, Andrew Goodman, Samuel Hammond Jr, Jimmie Lee Jackson, Wharlest Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr, Rev. Bruce Klunder, Herbert Lee, Viola Gregg Liuzzo, Delano H. Middleton, Charles E. Moore, Oneal Moore, William Moore, Rev. James Reeb, Michael Schwener, Henry E. Smith, Clarence Triggs, Virgil Ware, Ben Chester White, Samuel Younge Jr.

These men and women did not die in vain.

They died because somewhere in their souls they knew that someday in America, there would be a night like this night, a night like June 3, 2008:

[T]onight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another—a journey that will bring a new and better day to America. Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.

This is not to say that Barack Obama is some kind of Messiah, or even that he will win in November -- he now has five months and a fair opportunity to try to do what 43 other men before him have done, to prove that he has the leadership skills to become the president of the United States. This is just to say how remarkable it is that a man who wasn't even guaranteed the right to vote when he was born is now the Democratic nominee for the White House -- and to say thank you to the people who fought and who even gave their lives to make this moment happen.

You Be The Judge

Following are quotes from the comments at the rightwing website Little Green Footballs and from the comments at the leftwing Hillary Clinton supporting Taylor Marsh.

You, dear reader, get to try to see if you can guess from which site each quote originated.


1. When Obama said in one of his speeches that HE would heal America's broken soul, is when I really had enough of his BS. That is not the presidents job! That's a faith healers job. Protecting the Constitution is the presidents job. I don't want Obama mesing with my American soul!

2. The ObamaMessiah is headed off to a synagogue in Florida -- to woo the wary...

3. BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA: YOU ARE GETTING ON OUR NERVES. WE ARE SICK AND TIRED OF HEARING THE REGAL 1ST PERSON PLURAL ROLL OFF YOUR ARROGANT TONGUE. WE DON'T LIKE IT


4. The O'ccult Master will not allow defection in the msm.
The O'ccult Master will send out memo's and re-statements.
Thus say the O'ccult Master of the humming loons of America.
Humm the O'ccult tune or be declared off key.

5. Obama is a nasty piece of work.

6. How terribly sad that so many people have thrown their principles out the window to support a slacker like him

7. .....Thats when POTUS Obama starts Sharia Conversion Jan 21st

8. I recall reading a spin-off link about how the MSM was finally taking the ObamaMessiah to task -- that was months ago...and I think the critical, analytical articles are few and far between (they are flukes) -- the critical pieces drowned out in a vast sea of non-stop praise and worshipful awe


9. If the Dem. Convention becomes a bloodbath, thats best of all!

10. THE FACTS ARE CLEAR, WE WHITE VOTERS WILL NEVER VOTE FOR DUMBO EARS!

11. Better four more years of Republican misrule than the unAmerican BO and his passel of thugs dirtying up our country.


Prizes will be awarded. Do your best!

UPDATE: The answers that are Little Green Footballs are in green, natch. The answers from Taylor Marsh are in red, because that's the way that website's readers hope to turn the country. Goodluck with that formerly progressive people who valued a woman's right to choose and who thought torture was bad. Your new candidate, McCain, is really going to take some getting used to for you.

Can You Believe I Just Listened?And didn't say a word?Me Neither.

Last night at Lotta's dance class two moms were talking politics. I had my nose stuck in "Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein. (Did you know that mentioning Klein's 'No Logo' is one way to brand yourself as a white person who likes things?) I had previously pegged one of the moms as a GOP'er, since she thinks No Child Left Behind might not be such a bad idea. (She had experience with graduates in the Chicago area who could not read).

Nope. Dems.

Now in another age and time we'd have shown each other the secret high sign and pondered impeachment and other dreams (to crib a phrase from a great blogger). But these days, no chance.

The one mom - one I don't know all that well - started talking about the election. The other mom (NCLB lady) was more of a listener, a devil's advocate.

It soon became very apparent that first mom was a Hillaryite. And it occured to me that she was very close to becoming unglued. She was speaking in a low voice at high speed. It seemed feverish. She had the tone of a 9/11 Truther when you say you agree with some, but not all, of their claims.

"And now, Obama says 'lay off his wife,'" she snorts. "I mean, hey, it's an election. She's fair game, she's campaigning for him".

My nose slowly rises from the pages of my lefty book. I squint.

"All the wives campaign. Nobody goes after them," I intrude on a conversation that I'm not really in yet.

"Yah but" (is a Wisconsin expression) "Michelle discusses policy. For instance," the Hillaryite continues, "I think its perfectly fair to go after Elizabeth Edwards for her stand on healthcare".

"As I understand it" (I haven't seen the ad)"they are attacking her personally, portraying her as unamerican. That's not policy." I say. And then I make a Cindy McCain joke that does not include the word cunt, which is not easy, and it does not get a laugh.

The other mom is nodding with me.

"Yah but" rejoins the Hillaryite "Michelle Obama has said A LOT of things that make me wonder about her. Yah know, she's pretty down on a country that's given her so much ....." she searches above her glasses for the word, "opportunity."

"Well, okay aside from the 'for the first time in my adult life' comment, what has she said?" asked the other mother.

"Oh you know" said Hillaryite. Conspiratorial whisper: "there's just a lot out there. And besides I don't think that 'first time' comment was a mistake. I mean, she's the Vice President of the University of Chicago hospitals, she's in Public Relations- she knows how to address a large crowd."

The other mother (okay, actually it was me, but that doesn't fit the narrative of me passively sitting by just listening, does it?) deftly steered the conversation around to things we could all agree on. The fact that the media covers the horse race and ignores the issues. Oddly, Hillaryite comments that it's just not fair that every little gaffe the candidates make gets covered ad nauseum. She sees no hint of irony in her stance.

A few moments later we are called into the ballet studio to watch our daughters' routines. NCLB mom whispers "I hate talking about politics right now. I'm just waiting for this to be over."

Me too.

When I get home I consult Google. I can't find much quantity in anti-American comments uttered by Michelle Obama. I do find much on the "first time" comment. The only other thing I find is a report on her senior thesis at Princeton which discusses the racial experience of blacks at Princeton. How they are treated, if there is assimilation after graduation, etc. I find that this was a controversy from February that completely passed me by. It seems some pearl clutchers see a conspiracy because Princeton is not releasing the thesis. It seems that the number of requests for the thesis is overwhelming the archivists at Princeton.

What has me somewhat perplexed, coming late to this controversy, is how anyone can be shocked that Michelle Obama would look around at Princeton and see racism. It is unforgivable for fellow dems to make this complaint.

The reason?

Samuel Alito.

Concerned Alumni of Princeton. The organization opposed to both women and minorities on the campus of Princeton. The organization devoted to the advancement of privileged white sons. The same people who, nostalgia brimming, longed for the days when the Ivy League had no women, had no blacks, had no hispanics. Might have a Jew. Anyone remember them?

Yeah, that crazy Michelle. Imagining racism at Princeton. What will we do about that?

Perhaps she's just uppity.

You Say Elitist...

I say "uppity nigger".

Don't know how else to explain a kid who grew up on food stamps with a single mother and who made it big through the promise of the American dream, who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, being given the "elitist tag".

Hillary might let that go, now that she's being asked to quit.

But you know McCain won't.

Yes, massah. Bes yah keeps thuh uppity niggahs down.

Calling Bullshit on Bitter

By now you've heard:

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not."

"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

And though he's responded and though this has been a theme of Barack's: the divisive anger bitterness and fear that the republicans spoon out like fake potatoes in the school lunch line; Hillary has gone to full pearl clutching mode over Barack Obama's 'elitism'.

Bullshit, Ms. Wellesley College. Can she get more republican than she has over the last few weeks? How are you going to run against John McCain by becoming John McCain? Rumors are that she's already calling Bill a 'cunt'. Okay, I made that up just to keep my cuss meter rating high. But really.

Here's your response to Obama's statement:

For the last eight years we've been given a steady diet of fear, fear, fear. And when people are afraid they grab for the things that make them feel safe. For some that is religion, for some that is guns. I say get rid of the fear, keep the religion and yes, keep the guns. But this country divided against itself, divided against those who look different or worship different cannot stand.

John Asscroft Can't Say "Obama"

John Asscroft former AG (the one who didn't love torture as much those who came after him, and who saved his special ire for titties on statues - remember?) "accidently" called Barack Obama "Osama". Then he said we all make little slips like that.

We sure do, Asscroft.

BTW, whoever he was speaking to soundly booed him for being such an...ass.

You can watch it. Warning: this video contains scenes of John Asscroft. Who's better off forgotten.

In case you want to check out Senator oBama's floor statement on the Patriot Act Reauthorization bill you can look at it here. Lest you forget that oBama wasn't in the Senate when the first Patriot Act was pASSed.

Hillary's campaign insinuates something about Obama

As you've no doubt heard by now, Clinton campaign staffers released this photo to the Drudge report, trying to create an insinuation of something sinister in Obama's background.


I find it particularly disingenuous of the Clinton campaign. It seems obvious to me that picture is taken completely out of context.


After all, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Hillary's been to a wedding shower or two in her day.

Update: I added the link for the boys who haven't had to play games at bridal showers. Look here.

No, I did not post this video last week.

McCain is just not as inspiring somehow. Pretty dang true.


Here's the original.

The Cheerleaders are always with us

From John Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley"

While I was still in Texas late in 1960 , the incident most reported and pictured in the newspapers was the matriculation of a couple of tiny Negro children in a New Orleans school. Behind these small dark mites were the law's majesty and the law's power to enforce--both the scales and the sword were allied with the infants--while against them were three hundred years of fear and anger and terror of change in a changing world. I had seen photographs in the papers every day and motion pictures on the television screen. What made the newsmen love the story was a group of stout middle-aged women who, by some curious definition of the word "mother," gathered every day to scream invectives at children. Further, a small group of them had become so expert that they were known as the Cheerleaders, and a crowd gathered every day to enjoy and to applaud their performance.

Last week I mentioned that I heard a brief snippet on Bill O'Reilly's radio program of a frightened woman asking O'Reilly if it were true that Barack Obama is a muslim who insisted on being sworn into the senate on a Koran.

The very next day I received an e-mail from a woman who is the wife of one of my husband's high school friends. I'll post the entire e-mail in comments. I'm guessing that it was the radio woman's source for her Obama misinformation, since it not only contains the Koran/swearing in nugget, but claims that Obama refuses to say the pledge of allegiance and turns his back to the flag and slouches when it is being said in his presence.

It ends like this

"The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level - through the President of the United States, one of their own!!!!
----Remember he only move [sic] to this country three years ago. It is scary. Who is funding his campaign? Who is pushing to get him in!!
How did he rise so high in 3 years?"

I was really angry after I read the entire e-mail. I thought of about eight different ways to respond to the e-mail. The first three started with 'fuck you, moron'. Instead, I put it away for a few days. Yesterday I wrote my answer. Here it is:

Snopes.com has a decent rebuttal of the claims made in this e-mail. You can read it here: http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp

Without even going to Snopes for clarification, I should think a few glaring errors would have shown this e-mail to be highly flawed, such as the declaration that Obama has only been in the US for only 3 years, or that a United States' senator would refuse to say the pledge of allegiance.

I am saddened that this piece of bigoted misinformation is making the rounds. I respect anyone's right to make an informed choice about candidates-preferably based on their stand on the issues. But this hatchet piece reeks of the same kind of religious hatred used against John F. Kennedy in 1960.

The tenor of anti-muslim hatred in this country is fast approaching the German hatred for the Jews in the 1930s. I would like to think that if I were a German living then I'd have spoken up per the words of Reverend Neimoller who said
"First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me." Well, as an American in the new millenium, I will speak up for the muslims. This e-mail is just wrong.

I would like to point out that much of the misinformation printed here came from a piece in the Washington Times - owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, just so you know your sources.

In the mean time, Mike Huckabee was hosted yesterday by a southern baptist minister who wrote the following:

"I'm going to submit to you that as believers in Christ Jesus, we are not even of America," Wilton said. "We march according to a different drumbeat. Ours is not the Constitution of America; ours is the constitution of the Almighty God."

http://www.biblicalrecorder.org/content/news/2006/06_14_2006/ne140606sc.shtml

That frightens me a whole lot more than a Harvard Law graduate community activist member of the United Church of Christ (Obama) running the country. That is a christian saying that christians are above the constitution. I imagine that if those words were uttered by a muslim you'd realize how frightening they are to those of us who aren't christian.

I tried to send my e-mail to everyone this woman had sent it to, but my e-mail editor doesn't allow me to do a batch mailing unless I set it up putting everyone in my address book. I would do it, but you can't change idiots with such complicated devices as the facts. I'm afraid I would be wasting my time.

If you get this e-mail and you would like to reply, feel free to use mine. And thank you internet lords for Snopes.

What will Christmas be like at the Giuliani household?

It just gives you the giggles.

How different would Hillary be from what we've got?

One of the reasons I like Barack Obama is that the rest of the world loves him. There will be so much for the next democratic president to undo* that regaining the admiration for the United States by the rest of the world will be no easy task, but one that Obama already has a head start on.

Further, Obama has distanced himself from Hillary Clinton on foreign policy matters. In turn it seems Hillary hasn't really distanced herself from the current Bush Administration standard operating procedure. From John Nichols column:

In the race for the Democratic nomination for president, the two frontrunners are lining up on opposite sides of the question of whether foreign policy should be conducted in public or behind the tattered curtain of corruption that has given us unnecessary wars in Vietnam and Iraq, U.S.-sponsored coups from Iran to Chile, trade policies designed to serve multinational corporations and a seeming inability to respond to the crisis that is Darfur.

Hillary Clinton, the candidate of all that is and will be, wants there to be no doubt that she is in the Kissinger camp.

The New York senator's campaign is attacking her chief rival, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, for daring to suggest that, he would personally meet with foreign leaders who do not always march in lockstep with the U.S. government.

In Monday's night's YouTube debate, candidates were asked it they would be willing to meet "with leaders of Syria, Iran, Venezuela during their first term," Obama immediately responded that, yes, he would be willing to do so. He explained that "the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration -- is ridiculous."

Clinton disagreed in the debate and now her camp is declaring that, "There is a clear difference between the two approaches these candidates are taking: Senator Obama has committed to presidential-level meetings with some of the world's worst dictators without precondition during his first year in office."

Leaving aside the fact that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, a popularly elected leader, is not one of the "world's worst dictators," it is particularly galling that Clinton -- in her rush to trash Obama -- is contradicting her own declaration in an April debate that, "I think it is a terrible mistake for our president to say he will not talk with bad people."

*Not saying the next president will be a democrat. Maybe the president after that. I should really be more optimistic.