No lobbyists! Change Washington! The old ways must go! Blah, blah, blah. The Spokesmodel-In-Chief, Black Obama, has used, and, continues to use, these and other similar rah-rah phrases as his stock-in-trade bamboozle shtick, reading variations of them from cards and TelePrompTers, ad nauseum, throughout his national career, riding them to the White House like a gangster rapper in a pimped out Escalade,(or a good old boy in a cherry F-350, or a bailed out executive in a fully appointed private jet, or…you get the idea). And, to paraphrase Steely Dan, the poor people keep sleeping with the shade on the light; dreaming they’re awake, participating, and even (giggle) making a difference.
Have a house party and talk about me! Play poker with Obama playing cards, use Obama coins for chips! Read my quotes in your little blue Pocket Obama books while wearing your official Obama drawers, panties, and sneakers! Tell me what you would do if you were me! Pay no attention to what I’m doing behind this curtain, how I spend your money is my business! And, the(L)Obotomized sheeple gleefully dip into their meager financial reserves, toddle off to Smart ‘n Final for mega-sized Tubs O’ Treats so they can stimulate themselves and other like-minded Obots into a frenzy over the fact that the Mean Ol’ Republicans won’t help their Obamessiah screw the people exactly the way he wants to. Boo fucking hoo.
While the Great and Powerful Odd transforms Washington into a new, improved model of the Same Old Shit (copyright pending) the nation’s attention is skillfully diverted by the spectacle of the masterful artistry of the Wizard’s prestidigitation skills while tap dancing. And, indeed, it is a wonder to behold. For, the man who swore that lobbyists would have no place in his shiny new, bright, clean, articulate, transparent Washington is not-so-quietly assembling a team of cheats, liars, and (horrors!) lobbyists, right in front of your face. Par-tay!
Faced with the J. Edgar Hoover-like 7 page vetting questionnaire cabinet appointees were required to fill out, New Mexico Governor and Commerce Secretary-designate, Bill Richardson decided to cut and run, getting the hell out of Dodge before anybody could turn his pay-to-play allegations into a Blagojevich-type full-fledged media assault and impeachment.
Turbo Tax Cheat Timothy (Ooops!) Geithner revealed to Transition Team O that he had made a bunch of “innocent mistakes” on his own taxes as he was about to be confirmed as the country’s Treasury Secretary and overseer of the Internal Revenue Service. No mind, they were Turbo Tax’s fault, and he made good, so no sweat. Besides, Oboyi’mpresident really likes him ‘cuz he’s the only one, in the whole wide world, who can lead us out of the financial crisis he helped put us in. Duh.
Two days after proclaiming from on high that lobbyists would have no place, get it, no place, I tellya, in his administration, Obiteme quietly put out the “except for” word on one guy, and then snuck a whole buncha more guys in while the door was open. Sssshhhhhh!
The latest O’Kerfluffle combines all the elements of the classic O’Drama, lobbying and tax cheating and other stuff, oh, my! Tom Daschle, Obuhbuh’s pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services, is going to work in a similar capacity in the Obama administration whether his newly revealed tax troubles prevent him from being confirmed or not, since he’s also been tapped as Director of the White House Office of Health Reform for backup. Daschle, the “consultant” for lobbyists who suddenly remembered he had tax issues, is married to a lobbyist, and is himself being lobbied by health care groups who have paid him money in the past. Gotta cover all those bases, right? From Politico:
Tom Daschle, tapped to be President Obama’s health czar, was paid more than $200,000 by the health-care industry in the past two years, according to documents obtained by Politico.
The former Senate majority leader, who gave speeches to firms and groups with a vested-interest in the administration’s upcoming health reform, collected the checks as part of a $5 million windfall after he lost reelection to his South Dakota seat.
This weekend, Daschle’s nomination to be secretary of Health and Human Services became embroiled in controversy over the last-minute revelation that he had only recently paid long-overdue taxes.
Daschle also “forgot” to report on his taxes that somebody paid him more than most people make in a whole year, according to the Associated Press:
Daschle also had unreported consulting income of $88,333, in 2007. He also had reductions to charitable contributions totaling about $15,000 over the three years covered, according to the Senate Finance Committee document. The document, marked “Confidential Draft,” is a committee statement concerning Daschle’s nomination.
No worries. Our new Twinkletoes the Magnificent president just waved his magic wand (issued a statement) that made the appearence of impropriety go away, just like he did for Turbo Tax Timmy:
White House spokesman Bill Burton said Daschle’s role in the new Obama administration was not in danger.
“The president has confidence that Sen. Daschle is the right person to lead the fight for health care reform,” Burton said. “In preparation for his nomination, Sen. Daschle and his accountant identified some tax issues and fixed them. They filed amended return with the IRS and made payments with interest.”
Ah, well, it’s a good show. At least we know that with the continued early morning daily Axelrod approved Astroturf talking points delivery to CNN’s James Carville and Paul Begala, direct from the White House via Rahm Emanuel, we’ll get the Michael Jackson-in-his-heyday quality spin we’ve grown accustomed to. And, if you’re on the official Obie sucker donor list, you, too, can give a stimulating stimulus party to celebrate how the wheels on the bus go bumpety, bumpety bump all over the people under it.
Organizing For America/MyBarackObama.com/Democratic National Committee/Obama 2.0, whatever, same thing, is asking supporters to host house parties to rally support for the president’s stimulus bill. Why? Do citizens get to vote on it? What’s the point? And, what if you support Barack Obama (shudder) but think the stimulus package sucks? You and your friends have to eat alone? From a Politico article about Organizing For America’s (Obama’s campaign organization, now a part of the DNC) plans to promote participation in this strange new campaign for support is a portion of the e-mail the organization sent out:
Friend —
Last year, America lost 2.6 million jobs. This week, some of our biggest companies announced plans to cut tens of thousands more.
The economic crisis is deepening, but President Obama and members of Congress have proposed a recovery plan that will put more than 3 million Americans back to work.
You can learn more about how the plan will help your community by organizing an Economic Recovery House Meeting:
Join thousands of people across the country who are coming together to watch a special video about the recovery plan. Invite your friends and neighbors to watch the video with you and have a conversation about your community’s economic situation.
What’s the freaking point? So, they all get together for beer and brats, then watch a video over Doritos and dip, then, when the keg’s empty…what? I seem to remember the last time taxpayers got mad about the bailout, and we know how well that turned out. They called it a recovery program and did it anyway. Nobody seems to have a clue what’s going to be different this time, either:
Democrats involved in the process say the goal is not to get these supporters to lobby their elected officials or pen op-eds in their local newspapers advocating the president’s stimulus plan. But the group’s first call to action targets the Obama campaign’s most active supporters and includes state-by-state economic statistics, as well as information about how the stimulus package would impact each state.
“If we wanted to have a specific action after the house parties, we’d ask for it,” a Democrat involved in the process said. “What we want to do is to make sure that folks are talking about these issues.”
This is what happens when you elect a school teacher who moonlights as a part-time politician until he runs for president, you get roughly the same results as when everybody’s favorite substitute math teacher becomes head of the school board. A lot of ideas that sound good, but accomplish little. A real politician who raised more money than anybody in history and ended up with a surplus, might see the downside of using that money to ask taxpayers to party in an effort to stimulate the economy while he cussed out bailed out executives for taking “shameful” bonuses from the comfort of his overheated office. From the Associated Press:
The e-mail message carefully avoided any specific action: no phone calls to lawmakers, no e-mails to opinion-makers, no letters to the editor. Obama and his aides have been clear that the organization shouldn’t be considered an advocacy group for the White House’s policy agenda.
This is the stupidest idea I ever heard of. Can’t wait to see what’s next, sleep with a hooker on “Screw the Republicans” night? Economy stimulation and getting fucked all in one.
The party Howard Doody Dean called “the white party” has just elected their very own black guy, Michael Steele, as Chairman of the Republican National Committee. All four black Republicans are reported to have said, “groovy.” Okay, I made that last part up, there are at least 5 black Republicans. From the Associated Press:
The Republican National Committee has elected former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele the first black Republican National Committee chairman. Steele was the most moderate candidate in the field and was considered an outsider because he’s not an RNC member. He beat back four challengers, including incumbent Mike Duncan, who was forced to withdraw from the field midway through the balloting in the face of a lack of support.
Oh, goody. Maybe one day Asians, Natives, Hispanics and others will get to run for president of stuff, too. Then, if we’re lucky, we can hope for a woman.
Now that the Illinois State Senate has done its duty and rid the state of the onerous presence of its vilified governor, exercising the “nuclear option” of preventing him from ever holding office in the state again, what happens next? Lots of people probably wonder where he goes, what he does next, when will he come to trial, how does the state recover and all kinds of stuff like that. Not me. What I wanna know is, what happens if he’s never officially indicted; if come April, when U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s extension to file charges is up, none are forthcoming? What happens then? Oooops?
Since the Illinois Senate has gone out of its way to make the case that theirs is a political process and not a criminal one, one wonders, too, on what grounds was Blagojevich really impeached? The media harps on the alleged attempt to sell President Black Obama’s vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder, but Blago has not been indicted for that crime, and Fitzgerald made it clear that he was being arrested to prevent that from happening. The official charges in Fitzgerald’s complaint were mail and wire fraud and solicitation of bribery, so without indicting the people/person Blagojevich conspired with, and sent money to, or, received money from, where’s the crime?
On CNN earlier today, immediately after the vote went down, Wolf Blitzer asked Illinois resident reporters Roland Martin and Don Lemon to weigh in. Now, I have no love for either man, Roland’s over-the-top Soul Brother manlove for Black Obama renders most things out his mouth stupid, and Lemon’s rush-to-exonerate interview with Jesse Jackson Jr. after he was identified as Candidate Number 5, the likeliest co-conspirator in the Blagojevich complaint, undermined his objectivity pretty completely. Yet, both men opined that the impeachment of Blagojevich was more the result of the Illinois legislature’s dislike of, and ongoing disagreement with, him, than of his legal troubles.
This assertion was forcefully and immediately countered by resident Democratic strategist (hack) Paul Begala, whose Obama man crush makes Martin’s look like a vendetta, and for whom I have even less use. Begala’s rah-rah Obaba act is sooooo intense that it makes you wonder if his primary support for Hillary Clinton was as a Patti Solis-Doyle-esque mole, planted in the inner circle to destroy her chances from within. His doofy-goofy gushing sucking up has me convinced that when looking up his name in the dictionary, one would find his picture next to the definition “see Ted Haggard.” And CNN’s other turncoat Clinton supporting “strategist,” Judas Carville, is equally annoying with his “cardboard groping Hillary’s tit is a harmless prank when Obie’s boyz do it,” Obama fluffing shtick. Anyway, Carville-lite jumped in and asserted that Blagojevich’s alleged attempt to sell the object of Begala’s love’s Senate seat and shake down a children’s hospital showed conclusively that Blago was not only a criminal, but a scum sucking sinner.
This is worrisome because Blagojevich has not been indicted for anything, let alone convicted, so Begala’s vehemently defending his impeachment on those grounds is unsupportable. More worrisome is the fact that Begala gets his talking points straight from the White House via his longstanding tradition of daily early morning conference calls with Rahm Emanuel, a practice reported by Politico and decried by News Busters. From Politico:
Under other circumstances, the morning calls between Emanuel, Carville, Stephanopoulos and Begala — pollster Stan Greenberg is another frequent member of the core group, a kind of “fifth Beatle” — might be a Society of Has-Beens, reliving ancient glories from the Little Rock “War Room.”
It was Emanuel’s ascension into Barack Obama’s inner circle — even as Carville and Begala remained closely linked with the defeated Clinton political machine — that saved the group from irrelevance.
The calls “are about what’s happening, what the implications are of what’s happening and what’s going on,” said Emanuel.
edit
Stephanopoulos’ role is as the analyst and the skeptic. “George is really a big-systems thinker,” Begala said. “As a journalist, he is half of a political scientist, and because he’s not in the partisan battles anymore, he sees things differently.”
Begala offers the most academic interpretation of the calls and their daily survey of political news.
Emanuel is the most likely to be talking policy, usually some program Democrats can use to score points in the daily partisan brawl with Republicans.
edit
Begala’s own interest, as a former speechwriter, is in rhetoric — what is likely to be the sound bite that will echo through the news cycle.
Carville is the wild card, “a genius,” in Begala’s view, “who can look at the same operative facts as everyone else and come to a different conclusion.”
Like News Busters, I find this practice deeply troubling in general, but in the case of Blagojevich’s CNN coverage, such complicity is especially egregious, given the lazy copy cat, follow-the-leader nature of the media nowadays. Rahm Emanuel has been interviewed by the Feds in this case, for goodness sake! Blagojevich has repeatedly demanded to call him specifically as a witness in his defense, and this guy is giving talking points to the prosecutors in the court of public opinion case against him? Straight from the president’s mouth, perhaps?
No wonder Blagojevich felt that going straight-to-video was his only option. With the entire news media being covered with government issue Astroturf, what chance did he have against a political process administered by a tribunal of sworn enemies allied with his potential co-conspirator? And, if President Black Obama, the Obamessiah with the power to heal or hurt by the mere laying on of hands, who was also interviewed by the Feds with lawyer present, had a hand in offering up the Senate seat in question for any reason, what better way to cover everybody’s ass than have your Chief of Staff issue daily marching orders to your street crew?
Maybe Blago’s right; if they can do this to a governor…
I just watched a virtuoso performance by a master manipulator. Who cares if he’s guilty or not? The Illinois legislature never did, that much has been obvious from the beginning. But what artistry it took to engineer the opportunity to present an argument equally biased without rebuttal. Bravo!
Savvy Rod Blagojevich knows that anybody can make a compelling, persuasive argument about just about anything as long as he’s the only one talking. The sheer genius he exhibited was in pointing out that that was exactly what the Illinois Senate was doing in his impeachment trial, and then…walking away. Bravo!
The set up was perfect, too. While the shamsters went about the “Serious Business” of presenting their one-sided case based upon gossip, allegation and rumor, in front of cameras used to bolster “news” reports full of more gossip, allegation and rumor about the guilt, character and mental state of Rod Blagojevich in the media, Blago himself was using the media to plead his case. As the blowhards of the blogosphere and mainstream media maniacs bashed Blago at every turn, they seemed oblivious to the fact that their perceptions, critiques and conclusions about Rod’s performance were completely irrelevant. This was not about judgment, or fairness, it was about theater, and ratings. Bra-fucking-vo, Blags.
Once the sufficiently swelled audience was properly primed and perched precariously on the edge of their sold-out seats, the Cabbage Patch Weeble’s play in one act, “How Can You Impeach A Governor?” began. And though it ended with stunned silence and not a standing ovation, the result was just the same; the audience had been moved. Probably not the Blago Inquisitors, as Hot Rod pointed out, their minds have been made up all along; the trial was just a tool to facilitate a foregone conclusion. No, what Blago masterfully accomplished was to bring to the fore the reality that while the shamsters may be well within their rights to dispatch him from public service in precisely the manner they’re employing, they no longer look so high and mighty and noble doing so.
Barack Obama has been pimping faith, any faith, for political power since the beginning of his professional career as a community organizer. Early on he made a conscious, callous decision to use the pulpit, any pulpit, to attempt to mobilize people into action. This is not a secret, it has been documented repeatedly, yet it has been marketed as most things Obama have been, it is what it is, but it means anything you want it to.
Until recently, when Barack Obama touted his Muslim family members and growing up in a Muslim country on Al Arabiya TV, associating the word, “Muslim,” or anything that might possibly remotely hint at a relationship of any sort between Obama and anything Islamic, including his given name, was considered a completely out of bounds “smear.” Even when he himself slipped up and referred to his “Muslim faith,” specualtion about the nature of the slip and what it might mean, was treated as being highly offensive and unfair to the “Christian” man. The “Christian” man who, as far as anyone knows, has never been baptized, (if anybody has any evidence showing he has, I’ll apologize) who could divorce himself from his church and “pastor who brought him to Jesus” when it became politically expedient to do so, and has used every one of his rare church visits in the last 2 years of campaigning and being elected to the presidency as a photo-op, skillfully talks the Christian talk without being expected to walk the Christian walk.
“Nowhere is the promise of organizing more apparent than in the traditional black churches. Possessing tremendous financial resources, membership and – most importantly – values and biblical traditions that call for empowerment and liberation, the black church is clearly a slumbering giant in the political and economic landscape of cities like Chicago. A fierce independence among black pastors and a preference for more traditional approaches to social involvement (supporting candidates for office, providing shelters for the homeless) have prevented the black church from bringing its full weight to bear on the political, social and economic arenas of the city.”
Poor President Black Obama. He keeps reaching out, sometimes all the way across the aisle, offering free rides on his pretty rainbow pony, Kumbayah, but alas, spiteful ingrates keep telling him what impossible anatomical places he can stuff his day passes to unity. First to reject the smarmy, “Hey, little girl, want a piece of candy?” approach of the scary man in the pretty car en masse, even though he drugged our big sister and made her stand next to him and smile, us bitter knitting PUMAs understand just where the Republicans were coming from today when they, in effect, told the Candyman to take his package and stimulate himself with it.
That the children might have learned their safety lessons so well must come as something of a shock to the man with the tasty treats and prancing pony. After all, he had lured them to his house with promises of playful puppies, they had promised to come to his home and inspect his pony, some probably planning on taking a couple of bite-sized PayDay bars with them when they left. How could they not want a ride?
Because your candy’s stale, Black. Your package may be shiny, bright and new, and your ad campaign cutting edge, but old candy sucks, and painting stripes on a donkey with a party hat on his head doesn’t make it a rainbow unicorn pony. From McClatchy:
After a sharply partisan debate on Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed an $819 billion economic stimulus package designed to create millions of jobs quickly and give consumers more money to spend.
The vote was 244 to 188. None of the House’s 178 Republican members voted yes.
Despite a fresh plea for cooperation from President Barack Obama , who insisted that “we don’t have a moment to spare,” Republicans spurned the Democratic bill.
The White House tried hard to soften the partisan edges. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel met privately on Tuesday night with a small group of GOP moderates, but the effort was futile.
Oh, well, maybe the Candyman should have seen the graffiti on the wall. Should be a fun party anyway.
Michelle Obama will soon join her husband, President Black Obama, in Washington D.C.’s Madame Toussaud’s Wax Museum, says the Associated Press:
Madame Tussauds wax museum is adding Michelle Obama to its collection of famous figures in Washington.
Museum officials released pictures of the design process Wednesday and said the full figure will be unveiled in March. Designers will have spent six months on the figure, studying photos and video of the first lady.
General Manager Janine DiGioacchino says having an image of Obama is an honor because “as our nation’s first African-American first lady, a proud working mom and budding style icon, Mrs. Obama is a role model to women around the corner and around the globe.”
The figure was designed at Merlin Studios in London and will be placed alongside President Barack Obama’s figure in a replica Oval Office.
The then Senator Obama was placed next to then Senator Hillary Clinton and her husband, former president Bill in February, 2008, with Obama placed at the desk in the Oval Office replica, flanked by the Clintons and JFK with his wife, Jackie.
Dee Dee Myers has written what has to be the most nonsensical article ever based on a grammatically unintelligible question; is Black Obama is “the most famous living person in the history of the world?” How could he be the most famous living person in history? Weren’t they all alive at one time? He can be the most famous living person of his time, he could be the most famous person in history, but, since he is living, is his fame being compared to that of people now dead when they were alive, or since death? Myers herself seems unsure:
I’m not trying to induce an acid flashback to John Lennon’s infamous 1966 comment, “The Beatles are more popular than Jesus.” But whether you measure fame in terms of saturation or sheer numbers, it seems indisputable to me that more people know at least something about the new American president than anyone alive, at this point—or any—in the planet’s existence.
Who else could it be? One friend suggest Muhammad Ali, another Princess Diana, and a third said Bill Clinton. Surely all are global brands with enormous reach and broad appeal. But all fall short of the man-meets-the-moment frenzy unleashed by Obama.
As many of the article’s commenters point out, Princess Diana can no longer be counted among the living; nor can Jesus, nor half of the Beatles, for that matter. So, is she saying that he is more famous than anyone who ever lived, or more people who ever lived know of him? More famous than they are now, or ever were? Is Myers implying that more people alive know more about Obama than Jesus or Mohammed or Abraham? Or just more than anybody knew of those people when they were alive? Or ever knew, combined? Why didn’t she just say “living or dead?” Does she even know what she meant?
The answer is obvious, and highlighted by Myers in the article’s opening in the way she completely contradicts herself. “The Beatles more popular than Jesus” was…what, wrong, acid-induced delusion, heresy? But” more people” know about Obama than “anyone alive” at this, or any other, time in the “planet’s existence” is…rational? It’s a stupid, unsupportable premise likely based upon nothing more than a pressing deadline. Even if we limit speculation to Jesus’ fame in his lifetime, or Muhammad Ali’s fame at his peak, Obama being “more famous” is an appallingly vacuous assertion, true or not. No other human being has ever mounted such a well-financed, aggressive public relations campaign designed to saturate the airwaves with his persona for the sake of personal gain.
Meyers continues in the same deluded vein, attributing some of the credit for Obamania to the internet, and it’s ability to transmit information almost instantaneously to vast numbers of the earth’s now record population. However, according to Dee Dee, the real reason for Obama’s fame is…well:
But technology and biology don’t totally explain the Obama phenomenon. There’s no denying that the world has been utterly captivated by the new American president with the international pedigree. His black African father, white American mother, Muslim middle name, and childhood spent partially in Asia make him more than the 21st-century embodiment of the classic American melting pot; his story makes him accessible to people the world over who might see in his life a few scenes from their own.
At no point does Myers list or even hint at a single Obama accomplishment that would justify him being considered in the same company as Jesus or the Beatles. He is famous because He Is, and that’s just super groovy. At no point does she properly compare the “Obama brand” to that of Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Pet Rocks, Joe Camel or Hula Hoops, she simply gushes on about her oxymoronic premise and how he is somehow going to Light The Way Of The World. Whether Obama is the most famous living person in history, whatever the hell that means, Dee Dee has conclusively proven she’s worthy of contention for the title of the biggest living suck-up hack ever.
If the purpose of the Illinois Senate’s introduction of wiretapped telephone conversations was to prove that Governor Rod Blagojevich was indeed under surveillance by the FBI, score one for the impeachers. If the intent was to show evidence of guilt, point goes to Blago. Though an FBI agent vouched that the voices on the tapes were the people they were supposed to be, nobody actually said much about nothin’. From the Associated Press:
Neither the governor nor the others on the call — the governor’s brother and chief fundraiser Robert Blagojevich and former chief of staff Lon Monk, officials say — specifically mentions money or any amounts.
The impeachment trial, ostensibly triggered by the governor’s December arrest on charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and solicitation of bribery, is inaccurately being depicted in the media as being related to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s allegations that Blagojevich tried to sell President Black Obama’s vacant Senate seat. However, only cherry-picked transcript evidence related to those charges, which Blagojevich is yet to be indicted for, and unrelated wiretapped evidence, is slated to be presented at the impeachment trial, under orders from the U.S. Attorney’s office. Got it?
The conversation highlighted above is said to indicate that Blagojevich wanted to pressure horse racing lobbyists for campaign donations in return for favorable legislation, with the catch being that the deal must be done before the end of the year in question when new ethics laws would go into effect.
The allegation at the center of the tapes played for senators is that Blagojevich pressured John Johnston, owner of two Chicago-area harness-racing tracks, to donate money by the end of 2008, when a new ethics law would restrict donations.
Prosecutors say Blagojevich threatened not to sign legislation giving tracks a portion of casino-generated revenue unless he got the donation.
It’s not clear whether Johnston ever made a donation; federal prosecutors have seized Blagojevich’s campaign records. Johnston has not been charged with any illegal activity.
When the Cabbage Patch Weeble goes on every talk show but Maury (is that still in production?) to protest his inability to call witnesses in his impeachment trial, he’s right. To a point. He can’t call witnesses related to the Senate seat sale, like David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel or Valerie Jarrett, but neither can the Illinois Senate. Blago is free as a bird to call any other witnesses he wants, but since those aren’t the witnesses that would help the case he’s really being prosecuted for, except not really, because the prosecution can, and has introduced the transcript evidence, all he can do is boycott the trial and go on TV threatening everybody involved that no matter what they do, when he is officially indicted (if he is) and goes to trial, everybody’s going down if he does.
Neither the prosecution nor the defense is allowed to summon any witnesses whose testimony might interfere with federal prosecutors’ criminal case against Blagojevich, although their public statements could be introduced as evidence. But Blagojevich has not asked to call witnesses or present any evidence at all, and said he does not plan to participate in any way.
The only unvarnished truth from either side in this farcical witch hunt is Illinois Senate President John Cullerton’s assertion that the impeachment process is not a trial, but a political process, even though he leaves out the part were the deck is likely to be stacked against Blagojevich. From NPR:
But Jeffrey Shaman, a constitutional law professor at DePaul University in Chicago, said impeachment trials are really more political procedures than fair trials and cannot be completely unbiased. Under the Illinois Constitution, senators only need to find cause to remove the governor from office, and they get to define what cause is.
The tapes and transcripts can be found here. Prosecutors also admit that the tapes are not all incriminating, in fact some show Blago in a favorable light:
Ellis outlined a few items from the federal case that he said “are probably favorable to the governor.” These include conversations in which the feds recorded Blagojevich in conversations denying to people he knows that he has engaged in any illegal activities.
It also included instances in which Blagojevich was talking about how to fill President Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat, and was indicating that the criterion he was focused on was “the candidates’ ability to benefit the state of Illinois.”
So, while the state of Illinois proceeds to impeach it’s governor now that they’ve succeeded in convicting him in the media, on charges he hasn’t been indicted on plus some other ones they’ve always wanted to get him on but never had enough evidence to go on, the governor goes to the media protesting that he’s being handcuffed in defending himself against charges he hasn’t been indicted on by political opponents who’ve always wanted to get him for stuff they could never prove.
John Coleman, an Ohio fireman marching in the inaugural parade, winked and waved at President Black Obama in violation of “da roolz,” and was subsequently suspended for six months. From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
“We had gone over and over time and again with everyone in the band that this was a military parade. Protocol and proper decorum had to be followed at all times,” said bandleader Pipe Major Mike Engle. “Unfortunately, John chose to ignore that.”
Coleman said he didn’t do anything grossly demonstrative: “I looked over, and he smiled and waved. I was just acknowledging the president, who was acknowledging our band.”
Engle, who said other pipe bands complained about Coleman’s gesture, said even sneaking a glimpse was out of bounds.
“He has to abide by the rules,” Engle said. “It had to be done.”
John Coleman resigned from the Cleveland Firefighters Memorial Pipes & Drums a week after the parade in Washington. Publicity about his suspension had gotten to be too much, he told CNN affiliate WEWS.
“It’s come to a point where I don’t want embarrassment anymore between the pipe band and myself,” Coleman, who is a firefighter, told WEWS on Tuesday.
Band manager, Ken Rybka,expressed shock and surprize at the resignation, and said he himself will take a leave of absense from the band:
The band has been inundated with phone calls, e-mails and messages on its Internet pages — almost all of them critical — since the story first broke on Monday, Rybka said.
“It is unfortunate that an internal band issue has raised so much discussion and ire from the general public,” Rybka said in the statement. “It has disheartened me more than you can imagine.”
Rybka said that he will be taking a leave of absence from the band because of the furor.
“The ‘afterglow’ of participating in the inaugural parade is gone,” he said.
The media is having a field day about the fact that the Governor Who Would Be Persecuted, Rod Blagojevich, aka Cabbage Patch Weeble, admitted during his “Screw Impeachment” media tour that he had kicked Oprah Winfrey’s name around as a replacement for President Black Obama’s vacant Senate seat. Everybody laughed and laughed at crazy ol’ Blago; even Oprah scoffed, “whatever would I do?” Scarlett O’Hara-like, when asked about the governor’s admission. But, she was a little more somber, and only slightly more reticent last month, when rumors were swirling about her moving to Washington to join Obama’s cabinet, kitchen or otherwise.
After the news broke that she was looking for an empty 50 million dollar mansion in the D.C. area, and that she was taking her show on the inaugural road, speculation ran rampant that the Big O was going to find some kind of place in the Obama administration; anything from Ambassador to vice-president to Secretary of State. Of course, most of these rumors could be dismissed as loony rantings by deranged crackpots (is there any other kind?) and gossip, but it is significant that such lunacy found traction.
Now, belly laughs abound at the Hair Bear’s expense, I mean, c’mon, the guy’s guilty as O.J., right? Why won’t he just quit, or at least show up and let them impeach him fairly at the show trial they’re conducting for just that purpose? What kind of lunatic protests about something righteous like that? Who wouldn’t leap at the opportunity to be prosecuted by a best-selling legal thriller writer? It’s not like the Obamessiah would ever let anybody convicted or accused of any kind of wrongdoing in his inner circleTonyRezkoTimGeithner. And, it’s certainly beyond the pale that any Serious Politician would ever consider giving a high-level position to a television personalitySanjayGuptaFranDrescher. Who would ever think such a thing? Isn’t that why nobody voted for Fred Thompson? AlFranken? And why Chris Matthews dropped out? Who do these people think they are, Arnold Schwartzenegger?
Not everybody can get into Big Time Politics with the depth of experience of a Black Obama or Caroline Kennedy.
America, gotta love her. While everybody dances to the Blagodrama circus music, the really surreal proliferates. President Black Obama, hellbent on pushing through his stimulus plan before anybody examines it too closely, in a manner reminiscent of the Bush run-up to the Iraq war, rushes even faster to get his just confirmed (60-34) tax cheat Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, sworn in before anybody wakes up and tries to stop him. From MSNBC’s update:
NBC’s Antoine Sanfuentes adds that President Obama is expected to attend Geithner’s swearing in at the Treasury Department between 7 p.m. and 7:15 p.m.
Meanwhile, John Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has issued a subpoena for Karl Rove, who has a history of ignoring them. From Fox News:
The subpoena Monday by Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers continues a long-running legal battle. Rove previously refused to appear before the panel, contending that former presidential advisers cannot be compelled to testify before Congress.
Nope. Though some folks would have you believe that, President Black Obama’s closest aides were not subpoenaed; the Cabbage Patch Weeble, impeached Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s records regarding any conversations, papers, etc., he had concerning the Dynamic Duo were, on December 8. The next day, Blags was arrested, according to the media for trying to sell the only clean politician in Illinois state’s history’s curiously vacated Senate seat, the one that home girl Valerie Jarrett didn’t want, anyway, no matter what newly appointed White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said. Then, Pope President proclaimed Blagojevich guilty and his buddies not, and passed sentence that Hot Rod should save the state time and money and take the “Frankie Five Angels” option and kill himself, politically speaking, and resign. Blago said, “Fuck you, and the unicorn you rode in on, Bozo Bitch.” Blaggy probably took that position because, even though a lot of his troubles arise from his relationship with Antonin Rezko, the slumlord never helped himbuy a house or housing project.
Back to the subpoenas. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who first pronounced judgment on Blagojevich in the press conference announcing his arrest, by matter-of-factly stating that he had Blags arrested to stop a criminal from committing worse crimes, obviously didn’t have enough to indict the obviously guilty Cabbage Patch Weeble, because he didn’t. He issued a 78 page complaint, arrested the guy, let him go on paltry bail, then asked for a 90 day extension to make his case, even with all the subpoenas, wiretapped conversations and new witnesses. However, once St. Pat got the hot little Axelfuck/Slumlady docs in his hand, and listened to the tapes, he hauled Jarrett, her buddy Rahm Emanuel, and her boss, Mr. Clean in for questioning, even though His Holiness had by now, officially cleared himself and annointed his staff with holy water.
By this point, the Axelrove Astroturfing was in full swing, with the press not only convicting Blago, but aiding and abetting the Illinois Congress in trying to kick him out of office on any number of grounds, most notably his demonstrable madness, caused by his Bob Big Boy hair growing inward as thickly as it does outwardly. Cabbage Patch said, “Suck my nuts, you ninnies, I ain’t going nowhere,” and appointed Roland Burris to Obuhbuh’s curiously vacated Senate seat to prove it. Once the Astroturf Army picked their jaws up off the floor, they used them to flap incessantly that Blag’s “audacity” proved his insanity as surely as Obuyme’s proved his divinity. It was on.
Since then, Blagojevich has prevailed, primarily because the political machinations of the media-enabled U.S. show government had no legal authority that would trump a sitting governor, so, we now move to the next phase, where the media-enabled political machinations of the Illinois show government rule. While CPW (Cabbage Patch Weeble) mounts his own media blitz protesting his kangaroo court “hanging” (he couldn’t use “lynching“, he’s white) the pissed off pols in the Land of Lincoln gleefully admit that they have the power to remove him from office based on unproven allegations against him because they’re not a court of law, but a Clinton impeachment-inspired political process (kangaroo court.)
But lawmakers quickly defended the process of a Democratic legislature ousting a two-term Democratic governor, noting Blagojevich’s complaints were an attempt to confuse the public by injecting criminal trial rights into an impeachment process that is purely political.
All the while, the ‘Turfers “report” the “important” facts against CPW, like the fact that his protestations “prove” his desperation, implying guilt, even though, any fool could see that anyone similarly ostracized and castigated, guilty or innocent, would likely run screaming, “Hey, listen to my side, you sanctimonious pricks!” to anybody who would listen. It’s not like lynch mobs are always right:
While Illinois history provides little guide to a Senate trial and conviction of a governor, the last impeachment in the nation’s history—the 1988 conviction and removal of controversial Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham—illustrates some things that could happen.
Mecham unsuccessfully fought to delay his impeachment trial until after his federal trial on corruption charges. Though he was removed from office, the Arizona Senate failed to muster the votes necessary to give Mecham the political death penalty and Mecham, who was acquitted of the corruption counts, lost races for governor in 1990 and U.S. senator two years later.
*UPDATE: According to the Chicago Tribune, Blagojevich had some intriguing things to say in his 2-part NBC interview with Amy Robach. While most news outlets are focusing on Blago’s statements regarding his reflections upon Ghandi, Dr. King, and Mandela, it seems the transcript reveals he made other statements worthy of note:
Maintaining his innocence in his interview with NBC, portions of which were aired Sunday and others to be aired Monday, Blagojevich said that upon his Dec. 9 arrest at his Northwest Side home, “I thought about Mandela, Dr. King, Gandhi and trying to put some perspective in all of this.”
At the same time, Blagojevich said “some national figures like Harry Reid,” the U.S. Senate majority leader from Nevada, “are frankly covering their own backside” by asking him to step down because of their discussions with him over the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama. Blagojevich is accused of trying to peddle the seat for an Obama administration post, a high-paying job or other favors.
“And for me to just quit because some cackling politicians want to get me out of the way because there’s a whole bunch of things they don’t want known about them and conversations they may have had with me ….. would be to disgrace my children when I know I’ve done nothing wrong,” Blagojevich said in a transcript of the interview.
UPDATE II: John Kass of the Chicago Tribune has more here about the real reason for Blago’s lawyer, Ed Genson’s bailing out, among other things.
President Black Obama came into office on a promise to “change the ways of Old Washington,” a promise which seemed to delight his deluded followers and hard-boiled cynics alike. The hopium-hooked contingent met every TelePrompTer read call and response exhortation of hopeful change with, “Yay, Hope!” “Yay, Change!” “Booooo, Old Washington!” while the politically cynical dismissed the whole thing as predictable, inconsequential, campaign rhetoric (drivel; meaningless babble designed to persuade the gullible.)
Well, ha ha on you. Seems Mr. Obama meant exactly what he said; he gon’ change Washington; in fact, he seems to be determined to remake the executive branch in his image. By appointing “czars” and “advisers” whose authority ostensibly supersedes that of cabinet appointees, Slick is apparently aggregating unprecedented executive power, which, when done by George Bush was universally condemned as a Bad Thing, but now seems to be a Very Good Thing. From Politico:
President Barack Obama is taking far-reaching steps to centralize decision-making inside the White House, surrounding himself with influential counselors, overseas envoys and policy “czars” that shift power from traditional Cabinet posts.
Not even a week has passed since he was sworn in, but already Obama is moving to create perhaps the most powerful staff in modern history – a sort of West Wing on steroids that places no less than a half-dozen of his top initiatives into the hands of advisers outside the Cabinet.
Who needs a “shadow government” when you can have a czar-filled uber one? Besides, if you’re going to “change” stuff, doncha just gotta “remake” it, too? Like, say, people who lobby Congress for a living have been screwing up the country all by themselves, okay? So, if you’re the new black president who’s been telling people at KoolAid rallies that very thing for a couple of years, the first thing you’d do is kick those black hat wearing bad guys straight to the curb, right? Right?! Answer me, dammit! (1…2…3…whoohwhooh whooooo…) Okay, I’m better. That kind of attitude rubs off, though. Anyway, Black Obama came into office swearing lobbyists would have no place at his table, uh-uh, oh, no, lobbyists couldn’t work for the executive branch and still lobby, no way, no how. No, sireee, Bobbo. He made that perfectly clear. Didn’t say anything about lobbying Congress, though. No matter, anyway, he took it right back. Just ask Jake Tapper:
Two days after introducing what he heralded as the most sweeping ethics rules in American history — ones that would “close the revolving door that lets lobbyists come into government freely” — President Barack Obama today waived those rules for his nominee for Deputy Secretary of Defense, William Lynn.
Until last fall, Lynn was a registered lobbyist for the defense contractor Raytheon.
“After consultation with counsel to the president,” said Director of the Office of Management of Budget Peter Orszag in a statement, “I hereby waive the requirements of Paragraphs 2 and 3 of the Ethics Pledge of Mr. William Lynn. I have determined that it is in the public interest to grant the waiver given Mr. Lynn’s qualifications for his position and the current national security situation. I understand that Mr. Lynn will otherwise comply with the remainder of the pledge and with all preexisting government ethics rules.”
Roolz?! Who needs “roolz” when they have POWER? Wanna know what you can do with your freakin’ “roolz?” That’s what the lobbyists say, according to AP:
President Barack Obama’s ban on earmarks in the $825 billion economic stimulus bill doesn’t mean interest groups, lobbyists and lawmakers won’t be able to funnel money to pet projects.
They’re just working around it — and perhaps inadvertently making the process more secretive.
edit
The result, as The Associated Press learned in interviews with more than a dozen lawmakers, lobbyists and state and local officials, is a shadowy lobbying effort that may make it difficult to discern how hundreds of billions in federal money will be parceled out.
Hey, that “slap the hand of those bad, bad lobbyists” stuff sounded good at the time. And, now we know just how strong Obie’s word is; when it comes to keeping promises about doing Bush-like stuff he snuck into the program, he means it. But, when it comes to stuff he told you he was going to do for sure, no kidding, buckaroo, well, he’s gonna do it, but…
The more things change, the more they stay the same, only different, Obie-style. Plus, you’ll be glad to know, about that bailout? We’re flush. Kinda makes you wonder why we need one.
It’s a good thing President Black Obama is…black on slow news days. Talk about a reliable “go-to” subject. I mean, now that it’s obvious that two-thirds of Americans polled are going to support him no matter what he does, reporting on what he does is, frankly boring. So, why not ask what his being black means to America if you’re a columnist up against a deadline? We never get tired of that.
Thanks to the New York Times, we now know that “researchers” have shown that just having a black president makes black people test better. Which seems to bode well for new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s job:
Educators and policy makers, including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, have said in recent days that they hope President Obama’s example as a model student could inspire millions of American students, especially blacks, to higher academic performance.
Now researchers have documented what they call an Obama effect, showing that a performance gap between African-Americans and whites on a 20-question test administered before Mr. Obama’s nomination all but disappeared when the exam was administered after his acceptance speech and again after the presidential election.
Whew! I know I feel smarter! Andrew Sullivan claims news of the “Obama effect” blew his mind, and for some reason made him relate the heartwarming tale of his African American teacher neighbor’s concerns about her students’ use of the dreaded “n-word,” which they never use in reference to the new president. On second thought, maybe the “Obama Effect didn’t take with me, ‘cuz I don’t see what the flock one thing has to do with the other, but that could just be me. At least, now we know what happened to Andy’s mind, though.
Deroy Murdock sees a connection. Writing for RealClearPolitics, Murdock puts forth the theory that Obama’s “erudition” will eliminate the “ghetto culture” and cause young black men to pull their pants up and stop belittling people like him and his siblings for “acting white,” just because the Murdock kids got good grades. Some scars stick, I guess. Though, I never knew you couldn’t get good grades if your butt was cold. And, those kids who picked on the Murdock family probably call Obama the “n-word” all the time, being immune to the “Obama effect,” like they obviously are, since they must be about 35 -40 years old by now.
CNN informs us that some people think that America will demand that Obama be twice as good as a white president would have to be, while others do not. They also clue us in to the fact that “twice as good” as his predecessor ain’t saying much, making the whole premise moot. But, what the hell do I know, I’m one of those “Obama effect” immune “n-words” who used to pick on Republican kids.
In other “news,” did you know that the day before the inauguration, Matthew J. Clark put a statue of Barack Obama on a donkey and dragged it through the streets of Des Moines, Iowa all the way to the capitol building, while onlookers waved palm fronds and Secret Service-style SUV’s followed? Betcha didn’t. But, he did. The “performance art” exhibit is called, “Simulacrum of Hope: Simulation of the Triumphant Entry of the Christ.” Here’s Matthew on Matthew:
Matthew J. Clark is an unidisciplinary artist and sculptor who is neither living nor working in New York, New York. He hasn’t a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and knows absolutely nothing about painting. His technical proficiency at 3-dimensional art could speak for itself if he would let it. In a self-fulfilling exercise of ostracization and alienation, he works tirelessly designing, constructing, and re-designing and re-constructing concept-driven sculptures and installations that he understands most people misunderstand. His work examines emotional, mental, spiritual, physical, metaphysical, psychological, physiological, sociological, and societal realities, hyperrealities, and dream-like states of consciousness, along with semiotics. Matt insisted that he end this bio with the declaration, “Words have no meaning.” He can’t stop.
He is not represented by the Marian Goodman Gallery which has offices in New York and Paris. I think I have pneumonia.
Does the “Obama effect” apply to white people in reverse? Probably not, whatever’s troubling Matt is probably a pre-existing condition. And, speaking of lingering troubles, the Cabbage Patch Weeble, Rod Blagojevich, has hired a public relations firm to handle his upcoming “Screw Your Impeachment Trial” media blitz. In true Blago ham-fisted style, the firm he chose is notorious for its clientele, primarily, Drew Peterson, the latest Peterson to be accused of killing his inconvenient wife.
In case you just can’t get enough Obama, and I’d be shocked if you could, there’s always Pocket Obama. Yes, you too could have a pocket full o’ Obie quotes to consult anytime your hopium levels plunge. And, if that’s not enough, you can generate your own inaugural speech here, secure in the knowledge that you couldn’t possibly do worse.
And, the wheels are off the bus. The people under it say, “hi.”
Keith Olbermann, he of the perpetually twisted pantiesknickers panties, is up to his old tricks of demonizing George Bush in order to fellate the true object of his man love, Barack Obama, again. Not only does the thought sicken anyone old enough to understand the birds and bees, regardless of sexual orientation, in this case, Olbermann’s efforts could have real consequences.
Now let me start things off by saying, I have no love for George Bush. His “real Americans would want us to run out and find somebody to bomb the shit out of” rah-rah that lead us into a war he now wants credit for winning (suck my plastic weenie) makes him lower than whale shit in my book. But, he’s so yesterday, and today, there’s a new sheriff in town who bears watching with a keen eye. Unfortunately, Olbermann didn’t get the memo.
The memo Olbermann got, to lay the onus for warrantless spying completely at Bush’s feet, seemingly to insulate Obama, came most likely from the MS (Microsoft) part of MSNBC, given that Obama is the Silicon Valley, high-tech, Netroots poster boy whose combined efforts are largely responsible for his being elected, not only through their constant fluffing, but their considerable funding, and is all the more insidious because of it. The guy who came into office by collecting, manipulating and exploiting digital information, and who has incorporated his campaign machine into the federal government, and who voted to extend carte blanche to prying government eyes is the guy I want to watch now. It also makes me wonder if all that Netroots sound and fury re: FISA was part of some sort of Astroturfed misdirection choreography.
Olbermann’s latest ravings relate to allegations made by whistle-blower Russell Tice, who claims the Bush administration spied on everybody, not just bad guys, even the media. Wired tells us that Tice made back-to-back appearances on Countdown, Wednesday and Thursday, to pretty much repeat what he’s been saying all along. I’ll have to take them at their word, I can’t watch MSNBC or anything that features Olbermann, Matthews, Maddow, Shuster, etc., et al, their voices, likenesses, or hint of a shadow of their essence without risking an aneurysm.
NSA whistleblower Russell Tice was back on Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC program Thursday evening to expand on his Wednesday revelations that the National Security Agency spied on individual U.S. journalists, entire U.S. news agencies as well as “tens of thousands” of other Americans.
Today Tice said that the spy agency also combined information from phone wiretaps with data that was mined from credit card and other financial records. He said information of tens of thousands of U.S. citizens is now in digital databases warehoused at the NSA.
In another article, Wired claims that on Thursday, the Obama administration officially sided with Bush on warrantless wiretapping:
The Obama administration fell in line with the Bush administration Thursday when it urged a federal judge to set aside a ruling in a closely watched spy case weighing whether a U.S. president may bypass Congress and establish a program of eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.
Keith didn’t mention that. He also didn’t mention that Tice was fired from the National Security Agency in 2005, after a “psychological evaluation,” and has been making allegations since 2001. In January, 2006, CBS News did a profile based on an ABC News story:
President Bush has admitted that he gave orders that allowed the NSA to eavesdrop on a small number of Americans without the usual requisite warrants.
But [longtime National Security Agency insider Russell] Tice disagrees. He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used.
“That would mean for most Americans that if they conducted, or you know, placed an overseas communication, more than likely they were sucked into that vacuum,” Tice said.
More info on Tice and the NSA can be found here. Now, it’s far more than probable that the “psychological evaluation” that lead to Tice’s firing was retaliatory since Tice’s finger-pointing came long before the NSA’s brain-digging, but, that’s not the point. The point is, Olbermann’s brief Obama mention and brush-off of the fact that his office had no comment, seems telling, or is “warantless wiretapping” only wrong when Republicans do it? Shouldn’t the media be pressing Obama 2.0 to go on record when they’re siding with Bush? Why the sudden push to hold Bush’s feet to the fire on Obama’s watch? Especially when Obama has already shown he can’t be trusted and bears watching?
Two days after introducing what he heralded as the most sweeping ethics rules in American history — ones that would “close the revolving door that lets lobbyists come into government freely” — President Barack Obama today waived those rules for his nominee for Deputy Secretary of Defense, William Lynn.
This interview with ABC’s Brian Ross is most likely in conjunction with the above mentioned ABC story from 2006, however, it was uploaded to You Tube in September, 2008.
*Thanks to commenter Coupe de Groucho for the heads up.
There have been a number of recent signs that we are in for an administration where petty is politics, and it starts right at the very top. In a “private” (in a “transparent government” kind of way) bi-partisan meeting about his stimulus proposal, President Petulance basically told one of the members who made the meeting “bi-,” (partisan) Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) that he was going to get his way because he was president and he wanted to. From FOX News:
During his private meeting with congressional Democrats and Republicans on Friday, President Obama ended a philosophical debate over tax policy with the simple declaration that his opinion prevailed because “I won.”
On one of the issues, regarding whether the lowest individual tax rates should be cut from 15 percent to 10 percent and from 10 percent to 5 percent, Obama told Cantor that “on some of these issues we’re just going to have ideological differences.”
But Obama added, “I won. So I think on that one, I trump you.”
The Associated Press claims that the response was to Jon Kyl of Arizona:
At one point in Friday’s meeting in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, GOP Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona objected to a proposal to increase benefits for low-income workers who do not owe federal income taxes.
Obama replied in a friendly but firm way that an election had been held in November, “and I won. I will trump you on that,” according to several people briefed by participants who took notes.
So, not only can we look forward to snotty, schoolyard attitudes from the President, we can also expect continued levels of shoddy journalism. Not that Sir Nose In The Air cares. His “can’t I just eat my waffle, I already answered like 5 wasted questions from people I picked to talk to me in advance” peevishness was on full display yesterday when he dropped by the “worse than Middle East” White House press room to say “hi.” News Busters asked what took the media so long to get semi-pissed about it:
NOW they get worried that Obama is not too dedicated to freedom of the press? After Obama is fairly elected, NOW the Old Media is beginning to question The One on his treatment of them?
“Fairly elected?” Et tu, News Busters, with the KoolAid? Anyway, seems the media is just waking up to the stage-managed nature of all things Obama, too.
It’s not exactly Watergate but Barack Obama’s inauguration was back in the dock today after it emerged that the quartet of classical musicians who ushered him on to the steps of the Capitol were faking it.
In a report headlined “The Frigid Fingers Were Live, but the Music Wasn’t”, The New York Times said that the four, including the violinist Itzhak Perlman, had already recorded their contribution two days earlier and played along just for show.
Politico proves that the press can be a bit petty, themselves, by reporting the Earth-shattering “news” that nobody likes recently appointed Senator and Hillary Clinton cohort, Kirsten Gillibrand, anyway:
“Nobody really likes her,” sniped one New York City-area member, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“She’s smart and capable, but she’s rubbed people the wrong the way,” said another.
Then, talk about petty, there’s the media and Blago. His lawyers expect him to be removed from office, and one of them, Ed Genson, is quitting the team because Blags won’t listen and insists on mounting a public relations defense in the press instead of in the Illinois Senate, which only makes sense since that’s where he’s being tried and convicted first. On Monday, Blagojevich will make his case on ABC’s Good Morning America and The View.
Guilty in the press, Rod Blagojevich not only came out swinging at a press conference today, he was kicking ass and taking names, like Valerie Jarrett, Jesse Jackson, Jr., and Rahm Emanuel. Calling himself an already hanged cowboy like in a “B” Western movie, he claimed the newly adopted Illinois Senate impeachment rules were stacked against him, and refused to participate in the upcoming kangaroo court impeachment trial, as his lawyers did last week:
The legal team that has represented embattled Gov. Rod Blagojevich in impeachment proceedings in Springfield has stepped down in protest before the governor’s trial in the Illinois Senate, the Tribune has learned.
Blagojevich’s lawyers said the process has become “fundamentally unfair” because they have had too little time to prepare for the Senate trial and have been denied subpoena power to call their own witnesses.
Then, he called out the press, including the Chicago Tribune, whose editorial board members he is accused of trying to have fired, and basically demanded they stop ganging up on him and start editorializing for “fairness” on his behalf. The guy’s got cojones grande, you gotta give him that. The nerve to throw around phrases like, “due process ‘ and “presumption of innocence” like that! What chutzpah!
Another phrase fondly bandied about, “conspiracy theory,” reared it’s ugly head during the day’s proceeding, with the closed-minded “journalists” sneering, “So, you’re saying the entire Illinois political contingent is conspiring against you?” or words to that effect, as if such a thing not only doesn’t happen every day, has not happened very recently. While most “conspiracies” don’t rise to the level of a Dealey Plaza grassy knoll, or a Sirhan-Sirhan extra bullets theory, “let’s car pool and save gas,” is a conspiracy, and speculation about the vehicle occupants’ motivation would be a theory. But far more substantial conspiracies have been fixtures in the news even up until today, they just weren’t called what they are. Somebody conspired to get Caroline Kennedy considered for Hillary Clinton’s vacant Senate seat and colluded with the New York Times and other media outlets to push the failed idea; somebody conspired to try to get Al Franken seated in the Senate before Norm Coleman could possibly prevail at trial, likely colluding with the same media outlets involved in the Kennedy push; and the entire Democratic contingent of the United States Senate conspired to defy the law and prevent entry to its chambers by a duly appointed Senator, just because they felt like it. So, the possibility that the Democrats in Illinois, in collusion with the Republicans, have determined that ridding themselves of Rod Blagojevich is a good idea in their best interests is not that far-fetched; though various members of the conspiracy may well have vastly different motives. Some may find the criminal investigation into his activities as governor uncomfortable, some may feel his removal allows for an easier path for their ambition, some may wish to implement policies he opposes, some may, as he said, want to pump up the campaign issue. Hell, some just might not like the guy, or his hair. Whatever. Doesn’t mean that he’s wrong when he says they’ve all joined together to get him out of office.
The man hasn’t been formally charged with anything, no matter what the teeth-grindingly annoying Shepard Smith kept interjecting over the coverage until I had the good sense to change the freaking channel before I reached the “throw-something-at-the-TV-to-shut-him-up-cut-off-my-own-nose-to-spite-my-face” stage. It seems to me, impeaching a man based on allegations of things not yet even indictable, by conveniently adopted rules, is pretty unfair.
The Senate also approved rules for the trial, which is to begin Jan. 26. The rules govern issues such as issuing subpoenas. They also allow a majority of senators to override rulings by the judge.
Contrary to the news people who indignantly shouted that Blagojevich was not addressing the charges against him, by repeatedly calling out Barack Obama’s Three Stooges, Valerie, Rahm, and Jesse, as well as the Chicago Tribune, Hot Rod was making it very clear that he was not afraid to face them, or charges regarding them, in a court of law. In a move that is in many ways reminiscent of the “I appoint Roland Burris” big ballin’ “eff ewe,” this might be the biggest “eff ewe” of all.
NOTE I: “Adviser ‘B,’” referenced in the 78 page charging document filed by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald against Blago, has been recently identified as Frederick S. Yang, an executive with Peter D. Hart Research Group and Associated, the company where Geoff Garin, who took over Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign from Mark Penn, is a partner. From Fox News, Jan. 22:
In a Nov. 7 recorded conversation characterized by prosecutors, Yang told Blagojevich he “should leverage the President-elect’s desire to have ‘Senate Candidate 1′ (Jarrett) appointed to the Senate seat in order to get a head position” with a union organization called Change to Win.
The complaint alleges that Yang is on tape indicating that leveraging the Senate seat to Valerie Jarrett in return for the “Change to Win” position would insulate the President-elect. Further:
The union organization that figures in the complaint, Change to Win, is a 6 million-member coalition of unions that was started in 2005. Its members include the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters and the United Farm Workers of America. Tom Balanoff, an official at SEIU’s Local 1 in Chicago, has been identified as the SEIU official mentioned several times in the Blagojevich complaint, including being identified as “an emissary” for the appointment of Jarrett.
SEIU is listed as a client of Peter D. Hart Research, which has conducted surveys for Change to Win, according to a union news release.
The same story appears here and a breakdown of the participants is here.
SideNOTE: SEIU endorsed Obama immediately prior to the Nevada caucus. He lost, anyway.
NOTE II: In other recent Blago news, the Hair Bear was quietly re-fingerprinted on the 21st, and his brother, Robert, caught on tape “as many as 50″ times himself, is not fighting the tapes’ release. Yet.
Once upon a time there was a Pony. A big, beautiful, magnificent Pony that all the Children wanted to ride. The beautiful Pony, called Unity, was owned by everyone and no one; yet one, The Evil, desperately wanted to claim him for his very own. This infuriated everyone in the Land who knew of his plans, especially Queen of Good, who wanted all the children to ride at once, forever and ever, as far as the sky. But, The Evil was greedy, and unwise in the ways of the Land, for he was new to it. And, though born in a Bastion of Light, in The Place of the Sewers from which he chose to come, Pony rides were assigned only to the Wicked of Favors. This made the Queen of Good very sad.
So, it came to pass that The Evil pretended to be a Friend of the Good, and tricked the People of the Land. The People were Good, but Children, and as Children, believed in the Magic powers of the Pony. And, some of the Child People were Stupid indeed. The Child People of Good who believed in the trickery of The Evil turned their backs on their Queen, and served The Evil well and truly, as Stupid Children are wont to do. They flocked to hear him speak, and fainted in the heat as he read the words of the Jester of Cardboard Gropes, flickering across the Traveling Screen, and believed when The Evil claimed special fainting power. But the Evil had no power, only powdered Hopium slipped into the KoolAid. And the Children drank, and believed The Evil’s lies. The Stupid Good Child People gave of their plundered coffers more than was wise while The Evil took their pennies, though the Coffer Plunderers gave him aplenty, and he needeth their savings not. But, he was Evil, and the Children needed to hope for endless Magic Pony Rides to the sky. And The Evil renamed himself Barry the Good, Lord of the Land, and claimed to have the blessings of the Good Queen. Thus, the People forgot that those from the Place of the Sewer cannot escape the stench of Wicked Favors and proclaimed him King.
The Evil From the Place of the Sewers demanded allegiance from all, even those loyal to the Queen, who steadfastly refused. This made The Evil very mad, so he tried and tried to make the Queen and her Loyalists do his bidding. When they did not, the Evil King of Pretense of Good used his ultimate power, he looked down his nose. And, the Stupid Children of Good were mightily afraid by that, and took it out on the Children of the Queen, as The Evil knew they would. The Stupid Children Easily Tricked believed the Evil’s lies when he told them the Good Queen hated them and wanted to do them harm and deny them access to the Pony, so they forbade the Loyal Children of Good to ride the Magic Pony unless they professed fealty to The Evil, which the Good Children would not do, especially those of CatVille, a small subdivision of The Land.
While the Stupid Children fought those Loyal in the battle now known to history as The Good Fight, The Evil endeavored to manipulate the Ministers and Magistrates of the Land, as he had learned to do in the Place of the Sewers. Many, who yearned to earn lifetime Pony rides, assisted The Evil, for they knew the Good Queen was committed to allowing everyone a turn to ride. So, they turned their backs on Good and embraced The Evil. Yet, they were Stupid Children, and, though disLoyal, they were unwise in the Ways of the Sewer Place, and bungled The Evil’s plots to fill the House of Stewards with suck-ups. They knew not the significance of Astroturf Football, so, in King Barry of Pretense of Good’s backyard, the Stupid Children dropped the Ball of Blago only to pick it up and run backwards until it was scored a Safety.
However, Sir Blago of Cabbage Patch was neither Loyal, nor Good, so the Safety, though scored, counted for nothing. But in the Backyard of the Good Queen, the story now told far and wide, and taught in school, was very different. When The Evil attempted to place the Media-spiked Football upon the Astroturf of the Queen, a curious thing happened; the fake grass rejected it! Try and try as he might, the Ball simply would not stay in place. Even the Princess of Camelot could not hold it in her hands, it was as if they were, you know, greased, and as if the Ball had a life of its own. It was almost as if it was…Magic!
And so the Lady of the Hunt, chosen by the Queen, was dispatched to pick up the Football of Decision from the Dark Prince of Confound and walk it into the House of Stewards. And though The Evil knew he had been defeated, he continued to Pretend that the Pony of Unity was his, and that the Stupid Children would forever go along. He, blinded by his ambition, never guessed that the poison KoolAid of Control was being gradually diluted by the Queen of Good, or that she knew how to plant Astroturf, too. For, though she had served the Land for many years in The Light, far, far away from the Place of the Sewers, it was the place of her birth. So, while she was wise in the Wicked Ways, she knew that unless all the Children, even the Stupid Ones Easily Tricked, could all ride the Magic Pony, both the Magic and the Pony, as well as the People would eventually die.
The Queen of Good promised to serve The Evil well as long as he continued to pretend to be Good. For in her Wisdom, she knew that soon, either the Children would grow up or awaken, and that when that happened, The Evil could no longer prevail. She also knew that anyone, no matter how Evil, or from where, could eventually be influenced by the Good, if bathed in the Light long enough.
And, as long as The Evil and The Good agreed to work together for the Child People of the Land, the Magic Pony called Unity would continue to fly.
While everybody’s obsessing over The President of the Perpetual Press Conference’s Very Big Most Impressive First Day of sternly issuing orders for people to get around to doing stuff later right away, and do-overs, I’ve been watching developments concerning the sneaky Peetes that are flying under the radar to all our detriment, and one that’s flying crash bang into the radar, and the tower, and everything else in his way, like the big jet in “Airplane!” presumably just for the hell of it.
First, Barack the Magnificent (He Is) is getting journalistic high fives for announcing in one of his many press conference/availability/chance to be on camera and talk again, yay! thingies, that he, fer sher, was gonna tell those people to start looking right now into closing Guantanamo Bay sooner, rather than later because, they do bad stuff to good prisoners there and you can’t do bad stuff to good prisoners anywhere else ‘cuz waterboards are not portable, and besides if you could, and you did, you’d have to sell tickets and let us all watch. So, I guess now all they’ve gotta figure out is how to make it look like the people they’re holding because they feel like it are going to get a fair trial whenever they get to their new digs, ‘cuz that’s important to some people. We know they’re going to figure out what it is they should be most concerned with figuring out within a year, ‘cuz Obie said so on His Very Big Most Important First Day and he wasn’t smiling ear to ear, which is a long way for him.
Anyway, the TelePrompterReaderInChief also spouted proudly that the people who started working for him yesterday, would now get the salaries they had agreed to start with from now on. Again, the Propped Up President is getting major media style points for cutting the salaries of people who haven’t even started yet, which sends a “fart in the wind” belt-tightening message to Big Business, so, it must be as important as knowing that when he signs one of these executive order thingies we know he did it himself after talking to his lawyers.
Another thing he promised was that lobbyists can’t work for him as lobbyists, and people who work for him can’t lobby, which is the same thing, but different, and which I guess is a big deal for the few guys willing to give up their lucrative lobbying jobs to take a pay cut before they even start a crappy government job they never wanted anyway since Obie’s show order doesn’t stop lobbyists from…lobbying, and doesn’t say anything about the firms they work for, as far as I know, and, it’s limited to the executive branch, and they have to take another pay cut on Day One. But, like the pay cut thing, Barry’s Boyz knew it was coming which gave people who aren’t even lobbyists on his staff like David Axelrod, time to give up not being a lobbyist in advance. Whew!
But, while all this is going on, the more evil aspects of Obalization are going on right under our noses. Timothy Geithner, the Teflon Top Trainee’s staunchly defended choice for Secretary of the Treasury, and tax cheatWHOA! Did I just type that the President of the United States, though referred to derisively, seriously supports a tax cheat who only ‘fessed and paid up when he found out he was up for the job, for Secretary of the Fucking Treasury? Yup,uhdee-ud. ‘Cuz, he dee-ud. And the Finance Committee approved him after he blamed Turbo-fucking-Tax, and are now sending him to the fucking United States Senate for rubber stamp approval, and this makes sense? Obviously, the reason WeaselBoy has not backed down is he knows they can’t make him since he’s the only one who knows where the bailout money went ‘cuz he’s part of the reason one was needed. And, he’s not telling where the rest of the bailout money is going until they give him the fucking keys to the fucking vault. Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt. Since everybody is supposedly too busy basking in the afterglow of two, count ‘em, two administrations of the Official Oath of Office for the obscenely expensive price of one to pay any attention, the flufferMedia can obey orders and largely ignore it, or otherwise minimize it, too.
On another sour note, the Let ‘Em Eat Cake Crowd has been quietly preparing to stick it to the ever-increasing ranks of the poor for the benefit of the Pretender President’s vaunted “Middle Class.” (insert celestial Hallelujahs here) Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education and Shaun Donovan, HUD Secretary, can now go about the business of kicking under-performing kids out of inner city schools and tearing them down (the schools) while militarizing the wild, out of control kids without fathers so the test numbers look good once you get rid of the really stupid and bad ones, (the kids) and tearing down government subsidized housing and replacing it with mixed income housing with 33% available for about 5 % of the now homeless people you kicked out of the projects since gazillions of people live in the projects and only googobs of “mixed income housing” can go up at one time, respectively.
Who knows, maybe one day, one of those homeless militarized kids will become so good at surviving the warfare of the streets, or XBOX 360, that he, or she, will figure out a way to killzap all the bad guys humanely before you have to take them to GuantanamoPelican Green Bay or someplace and read ‘em Elizabeth Alexander poetry until they beg for waterboarding.
By now, everybody knows, that for some reason, President Press Conference decided getting the Oath of Office right was important enough to drag Chief Justice Fumblemouth to his office to re-administer it, even though everybody who’s anybody agrees it was unnecessary ceremonial window-dressing for him to even take the thing in the first place.
White House Counsel Greg Craig issued this statement:
“We believe that the oath of office was administered effectively and that the President was sworn in appropriately yesterday. But the oath appears in the Constitution itself. And out of an abundance of caution, because there was one word out of sequence, Chief Justice Roberts administered the oath a second time.”
However, the L.A. Times report about the brouhaha has this little nugget in it:
Yet it was clear the administration, having been dogged by false Internet rumors about Obama’s citizenship during the presidential campaign, wanted to take no chances about the legitimacy of his presidency.
WTF? Who said anything about citizenship lately? And, if there’s no basis for concern, why the “abundance of caution?”
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law, said the do-over “was just a matter of caution.”
“But I don’t think it mattered. No one would have standing to sue. Obama would still be president. But this would stop people from asking whether or he was legitimately president.”
Since all the birth certificate legitimacy lawsuits have been dismissed for lack of standing, it’s a safe bet Chemerinsky’s right. And, as a “Constitutional law professor,” (how many times have we heard that one?) why would a guy who knows better be so insistent about something that doesn’t matter? And, why no Bible this time? It seems to me, and Lord knows I’m no “Constitutional law professor,” if there’s a legal issue The Transparent TelePrompTer Reader wanted addressed, shouldn’t we know exactly what it is?
This guy says Condoleeza Rice was president from 12:00 to 12:01, and Joe Biden was president from 12:01 to 12:03 when Obama was sworn in, but, if Obie’s oath didn’t take, who was president all day Tuesday? Biden? If that’s true, how come nobody’s talking about that? MSNBObama says Baby Pres was legal since noon inauguration day. At any rate, legal technicality trivia aside, what do “false Internet rumors about Obama’s citizenship” have to do with anything? We all know the truth about the Pineapple President’s birth certificate issues by now, don’t we?
Caroline Kennedy, the entitled heiress nobody, besides herself and Al Sharpton, wanted to assume Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s now vacant Senate seat, has finally gotten the message and taken her name out of consideration. So says CBS News affilliate, KRGB, Albany:
Caroline Kennedy has bowed out of the race to replace Hillary Clinton in her New York Senate seat, CBS 6 News political analyst Fred Dicker is reporting.
Kennedy cited personal reasons, sources told the Post. According to the New York Times, it was Kennedy’s concerns about the deteriorating health of her uncle Sen. Ted Kennedy — who was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor last spring and suffered an apparent seizure during an inauguration luncheon yesterday — that prompted her decision to withdraw from Governor Paterson’s consideration for Clinton’s replacement in the Senate.
“Coping with the health issues of her uncle, with whom she enjoys an extraordinarily close bond, was her most important priority; a situation not conducive to starting a high profile public job,” the Times reports, citing sources.
I think it’s laudable that Princess Caroline wants to nurse her ill uncle. Hope she doesn’t break a nail.
Updates to come.
UPDATE: Okay, after a bunch of back and forth, Caroline made it official. Sounds to me like in-fighting. I’m not sure the Dems are all riding the same pony. I’m guessing Patterson’s a Hillbot, (no matter what he said about Fl. and Mi.) leaning toward a Clinton-friendly choice from the get go; that’s why the Omedia push for a Kennedy Obacrat. But, Princess doesn’t seem to have the stomach for down and dirty so, she bailed. People forget HRC is from Chicago, too.
CNN, among others, is reporting that Hillary Rodham Clinton has been confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 94-2. Congratulations, Madame President Secretary.
Let’s be honest, The TelePrompTer-Reader-In-Chief is a lousy speaker, who gives crappy speeches written by a hack of an adolescent cardboard groping speechwriter wannabe. He doesn’t say anything pretty well, or, he says nothing pretty good, but that’s a dubious skill shared by many forgettable people. He never connects with his audience, if he takes his eyes off the TelePrompTer screen for even a second, he loses his place and stats stuttering and sputtering like a teapot on a low boil. Why do so many people see what they want to see in him, and more incomprehensibly, why do so many want a man so lacking to succeed?
The hype and hoopla generated by his Astroturfing dream factory cannot obscure the fact that this is the same inexperienced, barely qualified guy he was when he threw his hat in the ring, which is pretty sad, since the only qualifications for being president are age and citizenship. And, now that he’s president, they’re really laying on the “he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread,” “he’s gonna Barack the world,” “Lord, ain’t we lucky we got him?’ horseshit in the media 24/7 to infinity and beyond. But all the pomp and circumstance in the galaxy can’t remove the truth from the record books, he barely squeaked by the primary process, even after gaming the system and pouring googobs of funny money around. So, why do people pretend he’s the the Second Coming of what the First Coming should have been? And more confoundingly, why do they get so mad when sighted people point and laugh?
The inaugural speech sucked; I couldn’t bring myself to watch it yesterday, so I watched it on You Tube this morning. In the interest of full disclosure, I watched most of it, far more than I would have forced myself to if I wasn’t blogging for other people. The “uh-oh, my ears are gonna start to bleed” moment came at exactly 19:07 of the 21:50 minute clip, and I just had to cut it off. Man, it was sad. And all those people standing out in the cold, pretending it was great, just waiting for something to cheer, was the saddest thing of all. You just kept waiting for somebody, anybody, to go screaming through the crowd, “It sucks! Okay? It’s the crappiest piece of shit to come out of anybody’s mouth since his last speech! Let’s get the hell out of here and get pizza!”
But, no, they stood there, listening to shitty word after shitty word, suffering politely through not only the Posturing Pretend President’s bilge, but the equally crappy “fauxetry” of Elizabeth Alexander, when they should have rushed the podium en masse demanding that she shush herself immediately. “Shut the hell up! What the fuck does anything you’re saying have to do with anything? Did you even read that crap, first?” would have been more than appropriate “call and response”s from the audience, all things considered, and, a lot more entertaining. Instead, according to the L.A. Times, the audience went the other way, and just turned around and left.
News source after news source after news source twisted themselves into contortions requiring chiropractic therapy trying to find synonyms for the words, “boring,” “crappy,” and “insipid,” and came up with “restraint,” “quiet,” and, my favorite, “less than thrilling in itself, perhaps by design.” This whole “you can’t criticize him, he’s black, you know” mentality has got to stop. It’s patronizing and offensive, and it demeans two whole races; white people for their condescension, and black people for their head-bowing acquiescence.
As black Americans join hands with other Americans of all races to boogey down in celebration of the “fact” that our nation has erased hundreds of years of discrimination by electing it’s first black president, I think it bears remembering that the only thing we’ve really proven is that a black man can become president if white people approve of him first. I believe, that when you think about it, you’ll realize, that’s always been the case.
Now, before y’all get your long johns in a twist and start going off on me, remember, many of you, black and white, in blog post after blog post, magazine and newspaper article after magazine and newspaper article, on TV and radio, have said the same thing, and went ahead and did it anyway. The story goes, that before Iowa, black people hadn’t awakened and gotten it yet, that white people would vote for a black man, so many of us were still blindly loyal to a white woman, who would go on to speak the truth about Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson and other racist stuff like that. But, once the “black man” we weren’t yet sure was “black enough” got the stamp of approval from the whitest state in the country, and we were made sure Hillary Clinton wasn’t even as black as her husband who was not the first black president, btw, I mean, look at him, he can’t even tell the difference between a real black man and Barack Obama, and besides, he can’t even dance, well then any fool could see that the black man the white folks picked to run in the first place was at least blacker than that.
Since I’m sure that there are those who might be outraged, livid, and just plain pissed off that I would allege, infer, or even suggest such things, I wouldn’t dare ask you to believe me just because I’ve been trying to tell you these things all over the internet all along, you can read what the white folks who selected, promoted and funded your Obamessiah had the people they pay at the L.A Times tell you he said and did almost one year ago to the day, Jan. 7, 2008:
Volunteers for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign fanned out into black neighborhoods over the weekend with new instructions: Tell undecided voters that Obama “proved the cynics wrong in the Iowa caucuses.”
The message about Obama’s decisive Iowa victory Thursday is familiar to those who have heard his theme of transcending old-style politics. But for many black voters, the warning against cynicism carries a special and somewhat different meaning: Let go of old fears that white America will never elect a black man to the presidency; Iowa has proven doubters in the black community wrong.
The fear that Americans will not accept a black president has loomed as a persistent obstacle to Obama’s chances in South Carolina, where blacks are expected to account for at least half of the voters in a crucial Jan. 26 Democratic primary, and in other states with large black populations.
In effect, they told you what your problem was, and how to fix it. It certainly wasn’t that you might be right about their candidate’s commitment to your issues. Nooooo, it was “old school politics,” which refers to back in the day when black people chose their own candidates to support because those candidates supported them. So, as you dance the night away in celebration of the fact that the WPS (White Power Structure, i.e., corporate America) has pulled off the biggest swindle since the Pilgrims bought Manhattan by having black America help them ensconce their preferred candidate in the Oval Office of a country where young black men can still be shot dead by the police on subway platforms without a word of protest from the “old school” Civil Rights leaders they got you to deem irrelevant in this post-racial Joshua generation, shout Hallelujah, praise Jesus, keep in mind that the next con might involve you boogeying your happy black asses right back to the plantation.
Parrrrtaaaayyyyyyyy!
Get down.
*Maybe more of us are awake and have gotten it than we’ve been lead to believe.
Suppose The View’s Elizabeth Hasselbeck announced that she was running for president in 2012? As a Democrat? Feminist? What if she hired a sharp, ruthless, barracuda of a campaign manager who stage-managed an almost flawless production, assembling bright, committed women and men willing to think outside the box in order to get the job done, using the mysteriously acquired unlimited funds at her disposal to get Elizabeth’s unique, yet poignant story to the masses? If Elizabeth, who has always claimed to be politically independent, dramatically recanted all previously uttered conservative statements as having been made under duress; unduly influenced and perpetually frightened as she has been because of years of abuse, would you buy it? How would you feel as you watched millions of people leap aboard her bandwagon, commiserating with her misery, applauding her for her courage in freeing herself from her oppressor, as all women must be made to feel free to do?
As her campaign grew, with Caroline Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi enthusiastically endorsing her, and female Democrats and Republicans of every race coming forward to embrace her and her story, and every male, Democrat and Republican, hurrying to align themselves with her, too, lest they be tarred with the chauvinistic, closet abuser brush her campaign cleverly wielded as a sword of implication hanging perilously over their heads, would you be cheered by the prospect of the seeming inevitability of finally putting a woman in the White House? Or, would you watch in horror, transfixed by the spectacle, with a permanent “what the fuck?!” expression etched upon your face, questioning her experience as your friends, family and co-workers questioned your sanity?
When prominent feminists appeared onstage with prominent celebrities and exhorted frenzied poor people to join hands in history as they supported the women they love as they finally take their rightful place in society, would you want to cry, pull your hair out, or join in? As “Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves” segued into “Respect” at rallies where men women and children waved “It’s Our Turn, Now” and “We Came The Long Way, Baby” signs would you scream at the TV, “yeah, but it’s fucking Elizabeth Hasselbeck, ya shits?!”
When Jeff Probst appeared on the news claiming that Hasselbeck’s experience on Survivor showed that she was indeed capable of enduring hardship, and people cheered so much that Elizabeth joined with Beyonce at fundraisers, even going so far as to sing along when girl group ditching Lady Jigglebooty performed her “Charlie’s Angels” theme song, would you feel like you’d entered an alternate universe? When Joy Behar guest-hosted the Larry King show and professed to the hour’s guest, Donna Brazile, that after 3 years of interacting with the diverse women on The View, Hasselbeck was uniquely equipped to handle the office of the presidency, a position Brazile heartily agreed with and expounded on, would you cry?
If Hasselbeck raised more money than anyone in the history of campaigning, supposedly from millions of women, young and old, sending in withheld portions of grocery, milk, lunch and tithe funds, supplemented by donations from Massengil, Playtex, Gardisil, Black and Decker and other companies eager to cash in on the “She Can Do Anything” theme of the campaign, would you wonder where the start-up money, not to mention rest of the gazillion, came from?
If the sale of blonde wigs went through the roof, with women of every color and stripe wearing them with their “Who’s Stupid, NOW?” tee shirts, in solidarity with their new shero, would you rush to renew your subscription to Ms. Magazine and all the other periodicals whose cover Hasselbeck graced? When Vanity Fair featured her on the cover, naked under a flag with make-up bruises and a black eye, in their “We’re Not Gonna Take It Anymore” issue, would you wonder where the real pictures were and why none of her male family members, let alone the never identified abuser had been interviewed, and how come there were no police reports, or would you keep your mouth shut lest you be accused of blaming the victim?
What if she had won caucuses she didn’t compete in, or just barely pulled out the nomination after her primary opponent was subjected to months of incessant media accusations of his unnecessarily bullying and trying to intimidate her? Could any male candidate, even one with an exemplary record of standing up for women’s rights, stand up himself under a well-coordinated media onslaught portraying him as an insensitive brute willing to beat up on a girl to achieve his goals like men always do?
When she gave tepid thanks to Hillary Clinton, before proclaiming a new way forward for today’s generation of women, encouraging them to move away from the strident voices and divisive tactics of the past, how would you feel? And, when she improbably rode the media generated wave of public sentiment to the highest office in the land, would you be proud? Or would the “what the fuck!?” expression you’d worn for moths now, become covered with tears, despite your best efforts to stop them?
No matter how strongly you believe that it’s time to have the woman president we need, would any woman really do, any way you could get her? For this black woman, Barack Obama might as well be the blonde on The View. They might both be swell, peachy people, but c’mon, president?
As we near the completion of the politically motivated, Madison Avenue designed, stage managed transition from the Civil Rights Era of Dr. Martin Luther King to the myth of reality that is “post-racial” America’s eager embrace of fantasy as political policy represented by the passage of a proverbial torch-of-the-day to the Man Who Would Be Whoever He Need Impersonate at the moment for approval, perhaps a bit of reflection is in order. As the mainstream media and internet bombard us with flowery, yet often illusory reportage of a nation united in celebration of triumph over its problems of its own making, having collectively overcome challenges only conquered through individual prevail, honest introspection might prove beneficial.
Rev. Martin Luther King was a man of unwavering principle. He did yield to expediency, he was not satisfied with the appearance of victory. He did not subscribe to the “by any means necessary” philosophy; he did not sacrifice his principles in his quest for equality through non-violent means, often under pressure to do so. In his “Remaining Awake Through A Great Revolution” speech at the Episcopal National Cathedral, Washington D.C. March 31, 1968, he spoke about the personal cost of his opposition to the Viet Nam war:
One day a newsman came to me and said, “Dr. King, don’t you think you’re going to have to stop, now, opposing the war and move more in line with the administration’s policy? As I understand it, it has hurt the budget of your organization, and people who once respected you have lost respect for you. Don’t you feel that you’ve really got to change your position?” I looked at him and I had to say, “Sir, I’m sorry you don’t know me. I’m not a consensus leader. I do not determine what is right and wrong by looking at the budget of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I’ve not taken a sort of Gallup Poll of the majority opinion.” Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.
On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right?
There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is a need for all people of goodwill to come with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “We ain’t goin’ study war no more.” This is the challenge facing modern man.
As Barack Obama prepares to inherit Dr. King’s legacy by popular demand, the question must be asked, by what criteria does he qualify to do so? Is a man who wants to end one war only to start another, who achieved his personal goal of the presidency through questionable practices, who has manipulated public opinion in order to justify his manipulation of the public, who pledges convenient allegiance to race and religion, really worthy of of Dr. King’s legacy? By what measure does he inherit “The Dream?” More compellingly, when did Dr. King express a desire to see a black president as evidence that his work had been done, his goals had been reached, his dream had been fulfilled?
Hey, pay no attention to the fact that the United States can’t raise enough money for an exhibit at the 2010 World’s Fair in Shanghai! So what if Pepsi invested so much money into their new “Refresh Everything” inauguration tie-in that they can’t contribute a dime to anything else? It’s not their fault that developers Nick Winslow and Ellen Eliasoph have only raised $500,000 of the 84 million needed, we done elected a black man! And, not just any black man, no sirree Bobby! We done elected a “celebritician!” He be cool. Everybody says so. It’s only natural that big companies would put their money in his inauguration in these tough economic times, it’s the only place left where just about anybody can expect a return on their investment.
Take Google, for instance. Like a lot of San Francisco based companies, Google execs have been positively philanthropic.
Mountain View’s Google is home to the biggest block of Bay Area donations. Six executives, including CEO Eric Schmidt, co-founder Larry Page and YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, made individual contributions of $25,000 each, for a total of $150,000.
Schmidt has been a particularly big Obama booster, serving as an adviser during the late stages of the campaign. Meanwhile, Google has been trying to be more of a political player in Washington to advance its interests against competitors like Microsoft and AT&T, which have had large Washington lobbying operations for years.
Okay, maybe not exactly philanthropic, but damned generous, huh? And when that “net neutrality” thingy comes up, they gon’ wanna be playas, fuh shizzle:
To welcome the new president, Google is going so far as to plan an invitation-only ball on Jan. 20 in Washington. The event is being hosted with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
But, don’t get it twisted; ain’t nobody trippin’ ’bout no free tickets that folks be get’in’ fuh donating big bank, or nut’in’ like that, word.
Chris Sacca, a former Google manager who is now an angel investor and who contributed $50,000 to Obama’s inauguration, said he is excited about attending the events. He said he made the donation because of his support for Obama, on whose campaign he served as a volunteer speaker, technology adviser and organizer in Nevada.
“I don’t get anything out of it,” Sacca said. “I invest with early stage companies that don’t have policy problems. I don’t have anything on my lobbying agenda.”
In addition to his donation, Sacca raised $300,000 from others, making him what’s known as a bundler. Getting people to write checks, he said, was easier than he imagined considering none of them are promised even a handshake from the president-elect or his wife.
Okay, enough with the Ebonics, something about the Bay Area always brings that out in me; even though, all things considered, that might not be a good idea. Anyway, the very most important thing of all, for all Americans, black, white, or in between, is that we have a cool, black “polebrity” president to save us, shout Hallelujah! And, knowing how important, and momentous, inspiring, and just plain groovy this whole superlicious thing is, it’s not surprising that so many greedy compassionate companies would be so willing to do so much to cash in on do everything imaginable to make this cool celebrity politician’s coming presidential term for life, a rip roaring, rousing success. Chris Matthews must be so proud. Oh, and the picture up top is from the Iowa caucuses.
You know, I’m not usually one for pissing on other people’s parades, but when they seem hellbent on pissing on mine, all bets are off. The arrogance of the assumption that every single “true blue,” and especially, “real” black, American is, or should be, quivering in anticipation of the formal installation of Barack Obama as Spokesmodel-In-Chief, just because he’s black, and it’s “time” for America to live up to it’s “promise,” so let’s dance and sing and call each other “brother,” is gallingly offensive.
So many people eagerly admit that the appeal of Obama is simply that he’s black and he’s not George Bush. That’s the “hope” and “change” thing in a nutshell. The obvious fact that millions of black men are not George Bush, and most of them shouldn’t be president either, is lost. “America elects a black man” validates the “wishes do come true” hopey part of the equation, and the fact that you can’t get much further away from the image of a reckless cowboy than a bright, clean, articulate “brotha” represents the “change.” Some even suggest that to challenge that logic is not only racist, but a just total un-American bummer. The hopium-laced KoolAid snorters, whose frame of reference is shaped by Play Station, American Idol and Lil Wayne, seem not to understand that there is an underlying agenda shaping their perceptions.
Frankly, I have nothing against the embrace of pop culture, growing up as I did in the Beatles/Motown era of James Bond and Matt Helm, Laugh-In, Shindig and Hulabaloo, not to mention American Bandstand, Lucy, Twister and Playboy After Dark. But I have always known that that popular culture played against the backdrop of the Cold War, Viet Nam, black power, Civil Rights and ERA. Though my memories of my youth are seamless, I’m very well aware that the reality was not.
“Checks and balances,” “separation of church and state,” “diversity,” and “freedom of the press” are fundamental principles of a country whose states are united, but whose people, their philosophies and experiences, are not. Nor, were they ever really expected to be. Equality is not a synonym for unity. Nor is “separate but equal” a practical possibility. Freedom ensures that disparate entities have equal opportunity to pursue life, liberty and happiness, it does not guarantee equal experiences for all. In fact, the notion of a nation of automatons marching in lockstep to their arbitrarily designated common fate is the stuff of nightmares. There is nothing patriotic about pledging allegiance to a mass marketed, faith-based, UniParty in control of the government and the media, in fact, shouldn’t that be the very definition of “anti-American?”
At today’s “We Are One” concert kicking off the already kicked off obscenely expensive inaugural “season,” a crowd of indeterminate size listened to celebrities praise the holy name of the “messianic” pitchman whose applied adjectives, other than “black,” are most often merely part of the pitch, not accurately descriptive. The size of the crowd was reported to be “vast” and of anticipated “estimates of 500,00” by the Obamedia, reluctant to diminish the “momentousness” of the moment by actually reporting more precise numbers. After initially reporting “tens of thousands” of attendees on page 1, The Washington Post, near the bottom of page 3 of their 4 page story gets a bit more specific:
With predictions that as many as 500,000 people could come to see the concert, dozens of buses had been dispatched to the vast parking lots around RFK Stadium east of the Capitol, ready to ferry people who drove to the stadium the rest of the way to the concert zone. But as of 11:20, the buses were idling and empty. They far outnumbered the parked cars in the lots.
Each “news” story also took pains to remind it’s readers that even “larger” crowds of “millions” were anticipated for the big event. But while “reporting” on all the hoopla attendant to the shameless promotion of illusion as misdirection, the Obamedia pays no mind to the truth that though “scores of thousands,” or even “millions” of Americans may be eager to stand in the cold holding hands and singing the Obama-approved version of “One Nation Under A Groove,” or watch on TV, millions more couldn’t be so bothered, millions of whom don’t even like their interpretation of the song, no matter how many big-name celebrities they could see for free. Nor is the fact that a significant number of the crowd in attendance was made up of people trying to provide goods and services to the other half portion for profit seen to be particularly newsworthy.
No matter how many millions of Americans “approve” of the job they think he’s going to do, or how many times memories of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King are deceptively evoked, the truth is, hype about “hope” and “history” is just another Astroturfing tool of promotion of the rather frightening agenda the UniParty Spokesmodel-In-Chief is paid to pitch.
Like it’s been some big, huge secret up to now, the press is starting to admit just how much they’re being pimped by the perpetual campaign machine of the soon-to-be-inaugurated-get-it-over-with-already as the Very Most Historically Historic First Black President Ever, Barack (the Obamessiah) Obama. They’ve even coined a couple of words for the new phenomenon, “polebrity” and “celebritician.” Oh, yeah, we be big pimped.
Claiming that the Obamessiah tires of the adulation, (like anybody’s seen any evidence of that) the Telegraph, reporting from Washington, D.C., puts the onus for the “new” media management strategy on those anonymous information leakers, “Democratic strategists.” Guess these British guys never heard of David Axelrove and “Astro(turfrat)fucking:”
But Democratic strategists say his aides have seen an opportunity in the insatiable appetite of the public for information on the new first family.
They plan to use Mr Obama’s status as the world’s leading “Celebritician” or “Polebrity”, offering pictures of the Obama family and soft focus interviews with glossy magazines to maintain his popularity and help sell his political plans directly to middle America, starting with his plans for a trillion dollar stimulus plan to kickstart the economy.
Using his celebrity to appeal to the public over the heads of his opponents in Congress is just one way Mr Obama hopes to change politics in Washington. He is also planning to mobilise his vast network of supporters, and the database of 13 million email addresses he gathered during the campaign, to build pressure on Senators and Congressmen to push through his ambitious agenda.
Now the “news” that the president-elect got to be the president-elect by pimping the “news” media is being pimped by the president-elect in the “news” media. Gotta love it. The story goes on to tell us that after Obama’s Secret Service detail helped set up the Buff Barack Beefcake pictures in Hawaii, the jig was up, the cat was out the bag, the flimsy cover was blown:
After pictures of Mr Obama shirtless on a Hawaiian beach over Christmas made headlines around the world, paparazzi firms set up shop in Washington. They predict that a photograph of Mr Obama smoking (a habit he has vowed to quit) would fetch up to $100,000.
Gary Morgan, a British journalist who runs Los Angeles-based Splash News, one of the largest paparazzi agencies in the world, says Mr Obama’s Secret Service men assisted his photographers in getting pictures of the President-Elect on the beach.
He said: “Obama is the paparazzi president. The Secret Service was very cool with us. They knew what we wanted to do. They told us if we stuck to certain areas, we would be fine. They got to know who we were and it was very pleasurable working with them.”
Mr Morgan said Mr Obama has a “canny media team” who are “going to take full advantage of using people like us as well to get the message out.
Yeah, that “canny media team” has gotten him elected in every campaign he’s run since 2004. A scorched earth, “by any means necessary,” news manipulating, fake support manufacturing dream factory without scruples will do that for just about any “celebritician” willing to pimp any bitch lacking the self-esteem to resist giving him the profits from selling herself cheap. Why should the mainstream media tabloid paparazzi press be any different?
The American public isn’t, a fact the Axelfucking Obama campaign/transition/administration team is banking on and currently pushing in every former- and current-ly major news outlet from the Washington Post to You Tube. In fact, President You Tube is the feature photo in the Chris Cizilla’s WaPo article bending over for the Holy Black One:
President-elect Barack Obama announced the formation of a new group known as “Organizing for America” that aims to continue the grassroots advocacy that the former Illinois Senator began in his presidential campaign.
“As President, I will need the help of all Americans to meet the challenges that lie ahead,” Obama said in a video message e-mailed to supporters (and reporters) this morning. “That’s why I’m asking people like you who fought for change during the campaign to continue fighting for change in your communities.”
The new group will be the flagship of “Obama 2.0″ as many people have taken to calling the transformation of the political organization created during the 2008 campaign.
The new group will work within the Democratic National Committee — led by Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine — to advance the Obama agenda. “President-elect Obama has laid the foundation to meet the great challenges facing our nation, but we can succeed only if we build grassroots support for the administration’s agenda,” said Kaine in a release announcing the formation of Organizing for America.
That WaPo would see no possible problem or conflict in this unholy alliance is not surprising, since Brother Love dropped by their pad to grease them up as they dropped to their conveniently padded knees before he sent them out to trick on his behalf. If you’re the priest doing the altar boy, you probably don’t see much wrong with the Scout leader picking him up for a long weekend. The New York Times, who didn’t get kissed by Big Daddy, has a round-up of slightly less favorable, but not really contentious, reports. You never know, IceBark Slim might decide to show them some love after all.
And don’t expect the full-court press pimping to lessen any time soon. In fact, I can almost guarantee it will soon intensify to unfathomable degree, with David Axelrove not only moving into the White House to sleep between his puppet and his mate, but giving up his day job to do it. According to Marc Ambinder:
First, David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, will give up an equity stake in his consulting firm, AKPD, Inc., (The K stands for John Kupper, the P stands for David Plouffe, the D stands for John Del Cecato.) Plouffe will be a senior adviser to the firm. And Larry Grisolano, a.k.a “Gris,” a long-time Democratic consultant and an early Obama aide, will join the firm as a partner. Grisolano managed the campaign’s targeting efforts and paid media expenditures; Del Cecato wrote, directed and produced many of its ads. I forget what Plouffe did, exactly, but his name sounds familiar.
Ha, ha, Marc. You know as well as I do who David Plouffe is. I believe his official title is “fluffer.”
Okay, looks like my blog brother Shtuey (Mom always liked him best) has involved me in something called “Meme Tag,” an internet game with apparently few rules and less purpose and reason. From what I can gather, I’m supposed to reveal six random things about myself and then choose six other bloggers to call out to do the same thing. And so on, and so on… But, in the manner of put-upon older siblings since time immemorial, I will dutifully indulge him because…well…he’s my brother.
First of all, I’m tall, a little under six feet.
Okay, 2-3 inches under, but, still tall, and my heftstature Amazonian statuesque-ness makes me seem taller than I actually am. Some people are intimidated by that. Good.
Next, I’m black. Well, more caramel-ly, but you get my drift. Some people find that even more intimidating, but that’s their problem. See above.
Moving on, I can type with one hand (finger) like I’m doing now, with the other hand on my hip, (turned to the back) my head cocked and a “oh, no, he di’nt” expression on my face, because my blog brother Shtuey tagged me to do this post. See one and two.
What are we up to, four? Lessee, I like smart, sassy, women with short, dark hair. Attitude a must. Call me crazy, but Lord help me, there it is.
Five, I think I’m smarter than most college grads I meet, many of whom seem to have wasted a lot of time and money taking up space in institutions of higher learning that could have been put to better use growing hydroponic plants or storing books and supplies for smarter, more deserving students. So, I’ve got an inflated sense of my own value and importance; deal with it, and again, refer to one and two.
Finally, I’d like to teach the world to sing. No shit. That’s not snark, that’s the God’s honest truth. Even though I’m not much of a singer myself, and have absolutely no musical training whatsoever, the thought of the whole world joined together in song just gets to me. No Coca-Cola themed jingle-turned pop classic for me though. The song I’d like globally performed is by Parliament/Funkadelic and entitled “Mr. Wiggles.” I can totally imagine people from every corner of the Earth singing:
I got a string on my thing
When you pull my string
I can do my thing
Un-der-wa-terrrr
I got a string attached to my thing
When you pull my string
I can do my thing
Like I ought-taaaaa
Go wiggle!
I dunno, something about the idea of hearing little kids and non-English speaking people belting out lyrics they don’t understand, along with giggling teenagers and smirking adults, all grooving and singing with all their hearts, just makes my heart cockles warm and fuzzy. Truly. Since it’s unlikely that that particular dream will ever come true however, I’ll settle for trying to teach the world to point and laugh at the ridiculous with my blog.
Whew, that’s six, and not a moment too soon. If I keep going you guys might really get to know me, and I can’t have that, can I?
Now, who shall I “tag?” So many choices it’s hard to narrow it down. But, okay, here goes:
Okay, they’re either going to kill me or ignore me, huh? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Oh, and since there’s no You Tube video for “Mr. Wiggles,” I provided another from the Parliament/Funkadelic conglomerate, just to give you a sense of where I’m coming from.
Since many of us would rather pull our lips up over our heads and secure them in place with vice grips than watch a minute of the travesty of the overlong, overblown, overindulgent, overpriced installation of the Mass Marketed Messiah as president of our country, I’ve decided to offer some fun alternative activities to fill the next few interminable days (or, put another way, the next excruciatingly long, infinitely numbered seconds, minutes and hours) without access to television or any other normal news sources. All are welcome to share their own suggestions with a sure-to-be grateful PUMAsphere.
First, many PUMAs, especially those of us who are of a particular age, could benefit from a good wax. Shaving, depilitating, arching, and/or plucking unwanted stray hairs from every surface of one’s body where the unruly bastards insist upon growing (especially that one where the gray ones you can only see with a mirror and get to by contorting yourself into positions younger cheerleaders would envy are) can provide hours of distraction, with the added benefit of a smooth, hairless body ready for love when you’re done. Win-win.
Next, along the same lines, clip the toenails of every living being in your household. Not only will you be kept busy, wood floors will subsequently go unscuffed, family members’ socks will last much longer, and spouses and lovers will be slightly more tolerable bedmates when they place their cold, scruffy feet where they’re not appreciated. Additionally, think of all the extra calories you’ll be able to consume guilt-free after chasing small children and pets for hours.
The next suggestion will be met with skepticism by some, but bear with me. Clean. I know, I hate housework, too, but look at it this way, when will there ever be another time when scrubbing toilets is a preferable alternative to anything? See, makes sense, huh? I’m sure there are closets that need organizing, floors that need scrubbing, windows that need washing, and hundreds, if not thousands of little crevices that would benefit from the application of a little elbow grease with a toothbrush, even in the cleanest abodes. And, for people who have fussy-clean houses like that, give the help the day off and do something yourself. That should make time fly for you.
Alphabetize your internet files. I have no idea what possible good that will do, but at least while you’re doing it, you’re not doing anything else, which is the point. You could also measure your head, as well as the heads of all your friends and family members, sew up the legs of all the underwear in the house, microscopically examine things that come out of your face, make random lists, and read back copies of old magazines cover-to-cover. Make up silly songs and corresponding dances, then attempt to teach them to strangers at random bus stops and Starbucks locations. Wander aimlessly. Drink.
Those of you who like to cook could create new inauguration-inspired recipes from ingredients past their freshness dates and forgotten leftovers. Read the phone book. Teach yourself whatever language they speak in Uzbekistan. Do all your laundry by hand. Eat. Learn to use all the tools and appliances received as gifts over the years and stored in dark places in the back of other unused stuff, even the Flow-Bee and the BeDazzler. Watch your CrockPot cook. Grind coffee beans one at a time in a mortar and pestle. Sleep. Make those “special brownies” you haven’t made since college and won’t go to jail for now, eat them and giggle.
Have a bad ’60’s movie marathon, followed by listening to any old LP’s and 8tracks you still have the ability to play. Figure out your neighbor’s taxes. Window shop. Give yourself an online physical. Scour the house looking for pencils to sharpen. Study ancient art history. Teach a stray dog new tricks. Fly paper airplanes. Doodle. Play board games. Smell every surface in your home. Take something apart and see if you can reassemble it. (Note: only do this with disposable things you can do without, not your new Lexus.) Write a letter to somebody you fell out with years ago and tell them why. Whether you send it or not, you’ll feel better and be amazed how long it took to remember the details. Read the Bible. Backwards. Take photos in very low light from weird angles with somebody else’s phone.
I’m sure if you think about it, you can come up with hundreds of innovative ways to get yourself and the rest of us suffering PUMAs through the next few days without losing too many of us to a lifetime of blank staring, mindless babbling and drooling through our tears.
Government of the people by popular demand. Tough decision facing the country? Take a poll, do a focus group, flip a coin, make a committee-written, TelePrompTer-read speech. That’s just the way things work today. What does the public want? What do the people need? Who cares? Decide what you’re going to give them, then send out your bright, buff spokesmodel with the pretty teeth to visit the press and sit on their laps and wiggle while he whispers your sweet nothings in their ears. He gets paid, the media gets laid and the people get screwed. We are a reality show, and we voted for the Survivor spokesmodel who “outwitted,” “outplayed,” and “outlasted”. Just the way the UniParty who hired him wants it.
Barack Obama seems determined to Obama-fy the Democratic party, a fact which seems to confound those on the left who seem surprised by it, and delight those on the right relieved that he seems to be committed to his campaign promises of it.
At his rallies, Obama tells a joke he’s been telling since before Iowa, about voters who whisper to them that they are Republicans but they support him.
“Thank you,” he whispers back. “Why are we whispering?”
How much of this irrational, illogical headlong, head-first smash through the looking glass is due to the media manipulation of the Astroturf King, David Axelrod is hard to say. We can be sure that just about anything we read in the mainstream media, especially the Chicago Tribune, besides John Kass, or see on cable, especially MSNBC, is Astroturf, and though it would be difficult to prove in a court of law, that Axelrod has undue influence in the blogosphere is beyond reasonable doubt. Whether he simply employs bloggers to infiltrate and sock-puppet websites resistant to the charms of his puppet president to death with straw man arguments and Xeroxed talking points; creates faux sites promoting the Obamessiah’s mythical messianic qualities; or pays off the Blogger Boyz whose biz depends on boastful, swaggering pretense to political prowess and power, Axelrod is a formidable string-pulling shadow force, combining the “best” of his patented Astrotufing techniques with Republican “ratfucking” to Astro- or Assle-fuck the internet into submission to his will. And there’s no reason to assume that his activities are limited to Democratic venues.
The result is unprecedented media manipulation, with entire news networks, venerable newspapers, and upstart Netroots, having myriad, and often conflicting agendas, working together to worship at the feet, suck at the teat, lick on the boots, and plant lips upon the ass of a man whose greatest talent is reading in public and smiling for the camera.
A spokesmodel.
As we head to the biggest, baddest, bashiest of inaugural bashes ever in the history of the known world, 5 x more expensive than the entire Democratic party has cash on hand, the least experienced, most ill-equipped and -prepared man to ever take the country’s reins embarks on a marketing and media blitz that puts Beyonce and J-Lo to shame. He makes no secret of his intentions, either, and nobody cares one whit. He’s a symbol, like Prince. But, unlike Prince, who claimed to be a symbol of slavery to a record company, Obama is a symbol of America’s celebration of it’s reluctant release of it’s slaves. Having released it’s symbolic grip on the symbolic throats, and it’s symbolic boots from the symbolic asses of it’s real African American citizens, Barack Obama represents all the “change” America could “hope” for in the fulfillment of Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream. How considerate of Dr. King to struggle and triumph over oppression before giving his life, so that we may all celebrate his birth the day before his dream’s heir takes his rightful official place as his successor.
In 1967, at Stanford University, Dr. King made a speech about the “other America,” a poorer, forgotten nation in stark contrast to the image of the privileged, preferred, yet limited reality, suffering in it’s shadow, comprised not only of blacks. From the Black Agenda Report:
Many people of various backgrounds live in this other America. Some are Mexican-Americans, some are Puerto Ricans, some are Indians, some happen to be from other groups. Millions of them are Appalachian whites. But probably the largest group in this other America in proportion to its size in the population is the American Negro.
Dr. King’s point in this speech seems to me to have been that though it’s relatively easy to slap a pretty BandAid on a festering wound, the result of doing so without properly treating it first can be devastating, if not deadly. Dr. King’s prescience has not gone unheeded, it has been exploited and corrupted. For, while our soon-to-be President Obama actively promotes a “one America” concept, it is not that of an America that incorporates Dr. King’s “other” America, but subsumes it by ignoring it’s existence. To celebrate Barack Obama’s election as though the wound has been healed is to celebrate illusion as accomplishment.
The man who smiles for the camera as he insists America is 90% of the way to racial equality while he opens the door to privatizing “entitlements” and advocates on behalf of a tax cheat, does so as the front person of a political party neither fish nor fowl. As he said during his 2004 Democratic National Convention coming out speech:
Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America — there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
First of all, let me say, I hate poetry. All of it. I don’t get it. What’s the point, you got a story to tell, tell it, and be done with it. Reading or hearing a bunch of silly, pseudo-romantic, self-important, rambling examples of verbal masturbation about nothing; sheer pointless twaddle strung together, but going nowhere, pisses me off. I will admit to an affinity for Dr. Seuss; no wasted words, there. Lyricists, rappers, and even jingle writers know how to tell a freakin’ tale and get it over with. And, though some people say Shakespeare was a poet, I think of him as a playwright, a story-teller, not an aimless word-spinning thought wanderer. To tell you the truth, when I am confronted with the
“Oh, though a man be a duck
The shitting bird screeches
Teach water of the sun
Still my gums from violet”
crowd, my eyes start to bleed. That being said…
Didja know the Associated Press held an “Ode to Obama” inaugural poem contest, and that a man from Gilbert Arizona, Ted Newman, won one of ten finalist spots? Betcha didn’t. You can find the entries here. Don’t know why you would want to, but there it is. Obama’s choice, a former fellow University of Chicago faculty member, Elizabeth Alexander, who declined AP’s contest invitation, will read her original, official inaugural poem Tuesday. The Venus Hottentot, one of Alexander’s most famous poems, about a South African woman, Saartjie Baartman, put on public display in life and death for European amusement, follows:
First he takes them to dinner, then, he drops by for a visit. Then, it’ll be time for his “bitches” to pay. In the midst of his pre-inauguration David Axelrod designed, Astroturf manure-spreading press push, President-elect Barack Obama made nice with the gushing, quivering, sycophantic pseudo-journalists of the Washington Post, who have already publicly admitted their unprofessional love. According to reports, legs were appropriately set a-tingling, considering their integrity-deficient kinship with their inordinately helpful brother in shlock. Anyway, the unseemly hoopla was duly recorded by the diligent WaPo “journalists,” like Chris Cizilla:
President-elect Barack Obama has arrived at the Washington Post for an interview with the editorial board and White House team — including The Fix!
After three and a half hours at his transition office, PEOTUS obama took another 6 minute ride through washington, arriving at 157 pm at the nondescript soviet-style building at 15th and L street that houses the washington post.
Around 100 people–Post reporters perhaps?–awaited PEOTUS’s arrival, cheering and bobbing their coffee cups.
Pool is holding in a van outside, while Mr obama does his washington post interview, and will exercise enormous restraint by ending report before saying what really thinks about this turn of events.
Helene Cooper
The New York Times
Calderone speculates that Cooper’s snarkiness is a result of the Times’ petulance at not yet getting a traditional pre-inaugural interview. WaPo’s David Nakamura also relates the euphoria attendant to the Obamessiah’s descent among the unworthy:
Staff writers, photographers, editors and employees from other departments lined the hallway after word spread that the President-elect would be walking through the newroom.
At about 3:15 p.m., Obama entered through a back hallway and began shaking hands, as professional newsmen and women reached over to shake his hand and take pictures. Obama was trailed by advisor David Axelrod, assistant Reggie Love, Post Chairman Donald Graham, Publisher Katharine Weymouth and Editor Marcus Brauchli.
Calderone further chronicles the resultant media hysteria, and the expressions of mock outrage issued by indignant WaPo staffers disputing the “cheering loonies” (my take) characterization…
“There’s no reason to think there were any reporters cheering,” said a Washington Post spokesperson, adding that there are “a lot of people who work in the Post building who don’t work in the Post newsroom.” Of course, those cheering could also have been bystanders gathered outside.
…but Ed Driscoll’s site provides a quote from the same WaPo broken link to a Howard Kurtz article Politico and the Post provided:
Camera phones flashed as Obama, trailed by Post Co. chief executive Donald Graham, began his stroll around the fifth-floor newsroom’s perimeter, shaking hands and greeting nearly 200 staffers.
Inside, as Obama finally came full circle around the warren of offices and cubicles, he declared: “All right, back to work!” And he had correctly analyzed the situation: All work in The Post newsroom had stopped.
Driscoll also left us a reminder of another example of Obama Porn (obscenely obsessive ObamaLove) from the primaries, featured in the following video. When will somebody tell this guy there’s more to being president than spokesmodeling? Then again, maybe there isn’t.
This video can be found on the Pepis “Refresh Everything” site, here. Pepsi, one of Obam’s largest sponsors, whose CEO, Indra Nooyi, was part of his finance committee, and whose already Obama-reminiscent logo has been redesigned to be even moreso, is launching a new ad campaign with an inaugural tie in. From CNSNews:
Pepsi is running a new advertising campaign that keys into the upcoming inauguration – one that features a re-designed corporate logo that mimics the distinctive Obama “O” campaign logo, and refers to the president-elect as “the man who is about to refresh our nation.”
Pepsi is also partnering with Spike Lee and Howard University to hold a “Refresh the World” symposium on Martin Luther King day, featuring, Lee, Sean Combs, Arianna Huffington, Queen Latifah, Michelle Rhee, Rev. Al Sharpton and Dr. Cornel West among others. From PRNewswire:
Pepsi is partnering with Spike Lee and Howard University for the “Refresh the World” Symposium to address issues ranging from the economy to Black America and more. Leading experts on education, economy, gender, hip hop and Black America will help mark the start of the new Presidency by raising their voices to “Refresh the World.”
Limited free tickets are available for D.C. area university students (e.g., Georgetown, GW, American, Gallaudet, Catholic), and on a first-come, first-serve basis at the Howard University box office.
Pepsi’s support of this event is part of its brand re-launch around the ideas of hope, positive change and active participation, through forums, out-of-home communications, television and digital communications. Please let us know if you would like additional details about the event.
Actually, Obama’s logo looks like a cross between Pepsi’s and AT&T’s, one of the companies Obama’s ventriloquist, David Axelrod “lobbies” for.
NOTE: There was a series of “Dear Mr. Obama” videos issued during the general election by weneedmccain, but I’m guessing they’re not related to the Pepsi ones.
If the story first reported by the National Review’s Byron York is true, that President-elect Obama’s choice for Secretary of Treasury, Timothy Geithner, not only neglected to pay his taxes but was reimbursed for the taxes he didn’t pay, it seems hard to justify anybody’s continued support for his confirmation.
The IMF did not withhold state and federal income taxes or self-employment taxes — Social Security and Medicare — from its employees’ paychecks. But the IMF took great care to explain to those employees, in detail and frequently, what their tax responsibilities were. First, each employee was given the IMF Employee Tax Manual. Then, employees were given quarterly wage statements for the specific purpose of calculating taxes. Then, they were given year-end wage statements. And then, each IMF employee was required to file what was known as an Annual Tax Allowance Request. Geithner received all those documents.
The tax allowance has turned out to be a key part of the Geithner situation. This is how it worked. IMF employees were expected to pay their taxes out of their own money. But the IMF then gave them an extra allowance, known as a “gross-up,” to cover those tax payments. This was done in the Annual Tax Allowance Request, in which the employee filled out some basic information — marital status, dependent children, etc. — and the IMF then estimated the amount of taxes the employee would owe and gave the employee a corresponding allowance.
At the end of the tax allowance form were the words, “I hereby certify that all the information contained herein is true to the best of my knowledge and belief and that I will pay the taxes for which I have received tax allowance payments from the Fund.” Geithner signed the form. He accepted the allowance payment. He didn’t pay the tax. For several years in a row.
Michelle Malkin has a follow-up which seems to corroborate York’s interpretation, and the story has also been picked up by AOL. A Wall Street Journal opinion piece questions the wisdom of allowing a man so incompetent with his own taxes to oversee everybody else’s. While some may dismiss these allegations as mere partisan griping, the questions, in my mind, seem fair. The New York Times‘ assertion that Geithner’s “skill” may trump concerns because if he were a bank he would be considered “too big to fail,” just sounds silly:
In better economic times, Mr. Geithner’s confirmation to be President-elect Barack Obama’s Treasury secretary might be in danger after the disclosure this week that he had paid more than $48,000 in delinquent taxes and interest. But with the economy so fragile, many senators are loath to rattle financial markets by rejecting someone with Mr. Geithner’s qualifications and international respect. By late Wednesday, Republicans as well as Democrats were predicting he would survive the controversy and be confirmed next week.
So, with the economy in the tank, what we really need is a tax cheat in charge of the government’s money? The 350 million bailout dollars Obama is fighting tooth and nail for should be turned over to this guy to spend? U.S. News and World Report’s Michael Barrone, who had dinner with the Obamessiah, (who promised to Astroturf Geithner through) seems to think so, even though he admits that he can understand why some Senators might be a little miffed:
If I were a senator, I’d be inclined to vote for the nomination of Timothy Geithner to be treasury secretary, for reasons suggested by Nina Easton. By all accounts, he’s very able and knowledgeable, and he’s already been part of the nation’s lead economic team as chairman of the New York Fed. And it’s very important to have a treasury secretary in place these days. But I have to say that his failure to pay self-employment tax is troubling and could certainly provide a reasonable basis for a senator to vote no. I have income from which no taxes are deducted and I make sure to pay my taxes on it (today, by the way, is the deadline for filing your quarterly returns). I can’t imagine what he was thinking when he didn’t pay.
CQ Politics claims that the Senate’s wussy response to charges, some of the sort that caused immediate outrage derailing other appointees in the past, is due to the overall wussiness of the current Congress and the Obama transition teams’ tap dancing ability. And, according to a David Brooks/Gail Collins New York Times article, the Astroturfing of the MSM to promote the president-elect’s Obamacanacracy philosophy is working way beyond anybody’s wildest expectations. From David Brooks:
As for me, My O-Meter is in the ascendant. I was very high on him about a year ago, then I soured a bit last summer, but now we’re peaking again. Not because he was thoughtful enough to have dinner with some of us right-leaners this week, but rather because his transition has surpassed all my expectations.
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It’s true, I did break bread with Obama. It was amazing. He was carried into the house by cherubs, Bruce Springsteen and Oprah Winfrey spread rose pedals on the carpet where he was about to walk and he very considerately asked me what vintage of wine I wanted my water turned into.
It’s not as clear that the last quote was as snarky as you would expect a right-winger’s comments to be, since Brooks basically waxes poetic about how impressed and comfortable he is with Obama. While Obama’s smartest pick, Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, rightfully sails through the confirmation process, and Tom Daschle’s appointment is quietly being held up in committee, look for the handiwork of Obama’s brain, political ventriloquist and Astro-gardener, David Asselfuck’s handiwork in smoothing the way for Geithner and Attorney General wannabe, Eric Holder, as well as in the media response to Obama’s stimulus plan and TARP request. Roland Burris will likely esacape any further Asslefuck media influence manipulation, now that he’s been sworn in, but the man who appointed him to the Senate, Rod Blagojevich, will continue to be Asslefucked into perdition.
In a recent post over at The Confluence by SM77, the sheer silliness of the overabundance of Obama product pimping, of everything from plates and coins to action figures and pajamas, was highlighted and duly mocked as Obama Porn, or the obscenely excessive display of ObamaLove. But that was before this, from PRWeb:
Joseph Enterprises Inc., the makers and distributors of several famous household gifts and functional products announce an addition to their Chia Pet line of products, the Chia Obama, to honor our 44th US President.
This Special Edition CHIA OBAMA is a handmade decorative figurine in the likeness of President Barack Obama.
Like its other American Icon, the Chia Pet, the Chia Obama is easy to do and fun to grow. Chia Obama will be available online at www.chiaobama.com. It comes with a Chia Seed packet, enough for three plantings. This is a great gift idea for friends and family.
Joseph Enterprises also manufactures and/or distributes other exciting products, including Licensed Chia Pet products such as Chia Scooby-Doo, Chia Garfield, Chia Shrek and Chia Simpsons. It also markets the Chia Herb Garden, Chia Cat Grass, The Clapper, The ‘Ove’ Glove, the Creosote Sweeping Log and the Classic Pen Set. Most items are sold through retail chains across the USA and Canada, during the Christmas Holiday season.
Now, I thought America jumped the shark with the Obama/Spiderman team-up, and I have even called President Pet Rock a Chia Pet and a Clapper before, but, I was being derisive and dismissive. Not so, these pimps people, they’re dead serious about cashing in on the Obafad. However, nothing takes the cake, like this. (Click at your own risk, must be 18 or older and in reasonably good health. I’m not kidding, proceed at your own risk.) An alternate site carries the product cheaper. This is apparently not a joke, but a novelty.
Why would Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich beseech the legislative body determined to remove him from office based on allegations of wrongdoing to “find the truth and sort things out, to put the business of the people first?” Presiding over a “tense swearing in of the state Senate,” comprised of lawmakers who have made no secret that they’ve already made up their minds that he’s not only guilty of any and everything he has ever been accused of in his life, he’s beneath contempt, why doesn’t he just play along and act guilty? Is he crazy, or does he know something the rest of us can only guess at? From CBS News:
Impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich presided Wednesday over a tense swearing-in of the state Senate that must ultimately decide whether to oust him, telling the lawmakers he hopes they will “find the truth and sort things out.”
The Democratic governor was greeted by silence as he entered the Senate chamber through a back entrance, took the podium without introduction and banged a gavel to call the session to order. He mostly stuck to the formalities of overseeing the ceremony during the hour or so he presided over the chamber.
Meanwhile, lawyers for Blagojevich received a summons for his impeachment trial from the state Senate. Spokeswoman Kelley Quinn said the governor’s legal team accepted the summons from the Illinois Senate’s sergeant-at-arms.
The Senate also approved rules for the trial, which is to begin Jan. 26. The rules govern issues such as issuing subpoenas. They also allow a majority of senators to override rulings by the judge.
So, basically, the Senators can do whatever the heck they feel like doing as they fast track this done deal. Why the rush? If he is slime, he’s been slime for years. So, is it an attempt at face-saving revenge for his out-maneuvering the Democrats on the state and federal level by appointing Roland Burris as a replacement for Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat that they had no choice but to accept that motivates them now? Are they angered that his arrest and allegations of his long-term corruption reflects badly on all of them now that the election as president of one of their own puts them in the national spotlight? Or, is there more to it than that?
The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that the investigation that resulted in Blagojevich’s Dec. 9th arrest is more extensive than previously thought. More phones were tapped, and comings and goings into his campaign headquarters were being videotaped, and possibly still are.
Federal authorities used a video camera as part of their cache of tools to investigate Gov. Blagojevich in the final weeks of 2008 before his arrest, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
The camera, which likely was remote-controlled, was trained on the Friends of Blagojevich offices, 4147 N. Ravenswood, to help FBI agents identify individuals entering and leaving the campaign offices — and to identify who was talking on bugs agents covertly planted inside.
In addition, more phone lines and cell phones were tapped in the investigation than the government previously disclosed — including the cell phones of at least three members of the governor’s inner circle and two phones inside the campaign office — capturing dozens of individuals in the days when the governor was pondering a U.S. Senate pick and when horsetrading for the seat was rampant, sources said. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is likely among the numerous individuals recorded because he called Blagojevich’s campaign office Dec. 3 to discuss his preferences for the seat.
Poor Rod. He’s being run out of town on a rail by frightened villagers convinced he’s a threat to all that’s holy and decent. Standing before the angry mob of the Senate, fulfilling his constitutional obligations in pretty much presiding over his own impeachment, had to feel like he was being forced to load all the guns they were arming themselves with to point at his head and make him go. Makes you wonder why he’s not quite freaking out about it. After all, he could just quit.
There’s something charming about the gleefully delusional. Wide-eyed innocence can be a wonder to behold. But, the current spectacle of masses of supposedly sophisticated Americans delightedly slapping metaphorical “kick me” signs on their own backs as they happy-dance the jester’s jig to their place in line for the ramp that rolls them to their assigned place under the speeding Obabus to Hell, is an event unwitnessed and unrivaled since Aaron smelted all the gold and made a calf. Where’s the Hand of a vengeful God when you need it?
Now, the Wily Wizard of Words, David Asslefuck, and his favorite black man puppet, have both endeavored to stick their hands up the butts of the Merlins of the Main(and Minor)Stream Media and manipulate them into fertilizing their Astroturf (fake grassroots support) by spreading their “Geithner is Good” mantra to the maniacal minions. To hide the fact that smearing Astroturf with a different brand of fertilizer to cover the stench of the original layer won’t make it grow, Asslefuck and Co. have patented the Massengill “Dewy Fresh” scented ObaGrow.
Timothy Geithner, a man who cannot do his own taxes, has been tapped by the largely inept-when-left-to-their-own-devices Obanauts, to be Secretary of the Treasury, a body that oversees the Internal Revenue Service. He has also admitted to employing an illegal immigrant at the height of Lou Dobbs-esque “illegal aliens are killing the economy” mania. His only offered excuse being incompetence; he didn’t know; it was an “honest mistake,” and he paid up once the transition team brought it to his attention. From Politico:
Democratic and Republican senators say a full-court press by Barack Obama’s transition team is likely to keep ethical questions from sinking the nomination of Treasury Secretary-designee Timothy Geithner.
As Obama pressed senators on his economic recovery plan Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Geithner had failed to pay $42,000 in taxes and had employed a housekeeper whose work permit had expired.
But minutes after the news broke, the Obama transition team pushed back with talking points — distributed to Capitol Hill, K Street and congressional reporters — in which it portrayed the problems as simple mistakes or oversights.
No, the mistake was picking him as the guy to handle billions in bailouts and all the rest of America’s money to begin with. Hard to argue that a guy who can’t proof the work of H&R Block should be in charge of anything tax related. Never mind that similar charges have derailed other nominees, and they weren’t even in line for jobs handling the nation’s money. And, as far as Asslefraud’s current fake-assed “The Oba-Mess-iah needs this guy” media push is concerned, America’s most successfully mass-marketed president and his public relations oriented staff are just up to their old tricks, on familiar territory, trying to “manage” perceptions about yet another nerve grating “Blagojevich, Warren, Richardson, FISA, Lieberman, Rezko, above his pay grade” fiasco of the “No Drama Obama” illusion factory. Though the Magical Mystery PR Machine has a history of successfully “manging the media” and “massaging the message,” somebody should tell the poor man’s Jeff Dunham he needs a new act.
The Obamessiah’s bullshit ain’t nothin’ but chewed up Astroturf.
In other, non-related news of the delusional, Elizabeth, New Jersey funeral home owner and Obagroupie wannabe, Kim Nesbitt-Good, has a life-sized cardboard cut-out of the president-elect in the lobby of her establishment that people clamor to take pictures with.
Obama’s biggest fan is having a ball. There is a life-size cardboard cutout of Barack Obama in the foyer of the Nesbitt Funeral Home in Elizabeth.
The president-elect looks out at Madison Street through double-glass doors. People stop, ring the funeral home bell and ask to take pictures with the cardboard Barack. So do mourners and friends and family of the deceased, either before or after they’ve paid their respects.
What is it with Obafolks and cardboard? Lastly, the photo up top is the brand new official Obaportrait. It’s the first digital presidential portrait ev-er. I guess digital photographers don’t use make-up or PhotoShop, ‘cuz Obie needs a shave, a chin, and a haircut. Old-fashioned airbrushing has it’s place.
*UPDATE: FOX News, among others is reporting that Barack Obama has met with certain members of the press, off the record. Look for positive stories about the Geithner appointment from these sources in the near future.
Notable guests at Will’s home included the National Review’s Rich Lowry, columnist Charles Krauthammer, The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, U.S. News & World Report’s Michael Barone, The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan and Paul Gigot, The New York Times’ David Brooks and columnist Larry Kudlow. Several of the guests are frequent FOX News guests and contributors.
An Obama transition aide said the president-elect plans to attend “similar gatherings” in the months ahead.
Indeed, Obama met with a group of liberal columnists and commentators Wednesday morning, Politico.com reported. They included The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
If the most significant thing about Barack Obama being elected president is simply the fact that he’s black, we, as a nation, have absolutely nothing to be excited about, or proud of. I am sick to death of people pimping my blackness just so they can break their arms patting themselves on the back for being better than the nation’s history might suggest they have a right to claim to be. The nation’s present day reality still suggests that.
Obama is black, he’s president, and that’s never been done before. We get it. But, what kind of president will he be? Is he qualified? What happens to the nation, to the image of black Americans, if he sucks? How many “brothers and sisters” will lose their jobs, and/or their homes, in an Obama administration? Will the ratio of black to whites in that situation still be as disproportionate as it has always been? Will college admissions for “minorities” go up? Will less black men be arrested, will those who are receive competent legal representation, will the drug-flow into our “inner cities” dry up, will their trials be fair? Will schools be equally funded so that they may become less prison-like and actually begin to teach? Will African Americans suddenly get access to quality health care, maybe even in their own communities? Will merchants invest in our neighborhoods so that elderly people won’t have to take a cab to buy a tomato as was depicted in CNN’s special, “Black In America?” Or, is it enough to know that the problems faced by African Americans contribute to the disproportionate number of single-parent families, then, focus on the problems that result from that; the ones that Bill Cosby and Barack Obama get so much mileage out of telling white people they don’t like?
Barack Obama’s election does not invalidate the Civil Rights Movement, in any way, as the media seems so hellbent upon proving, nor does it automatically make it obsolete. Bullshit statements like this one, printed in a Politico article, are just infuriating:
Like the entertainers and athletes who preceded them as crossover pioneers, Obama and a new generation of smart, well-educated black professionals have unlocked the secret to political success by offering a broad-based, non-threatening agenda to whites while retaining their racial integrity with black voters.
Has the need for the “white power structure” to feel a little threatened really been eliminated when the success of a black politician is still being depicted as a result of the ability of black men and women to sing and dance and dribble a ball? How much of one’s identity does one have to sacrifice to prevail in “white” society? And, if all that’s left that relates to other people in one’s ethnic group when one does so is a commonality of skin color, can the resulting racial identification really be classified as “integrity?” Is “symbolism” or the appearance of progress enough?
We had a word for people who engaged in such behavior when I was coming up during the height of the “Movement.”
We called them “sellouts.”
My question is, was Barack Obama elected to be President of the United States, or was he cast to market what is acceptably “black?”
Hillary Clinton, designated Lightning Rod Du Obacracy, was supposed to provide cover for all the other Obacrats having confirmation hearings this week by deflecting the wrath of the Mean Ol’ Republicans and any random remaining Democratic contrarians who might be looking for a way to tarnish the Obamessiah by seriously questioning their credentials. By all reports, Clinton held up her end of the bargain admirably, though her fellow Senate members, by and large, showed her the love she’s due. Sure, there were some “tough” questions about the Clinton Foundation for show, but no really tense moments; nothing she couldn’t handle. But, the dogs did find a scent to sniff, coming from a guy whose confirmation hearings are two days away. According to Politico, Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary-designate, has some issues about his personal taxes to ’splain:
Senators gathered Tuesday in an emergency meeting discussing the fate of Treasury nominee Timothy Geithner, who is under fire after a report that he neglected to pay payroll taxes for himself and employed a housekeeper whose immigration status had expired
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) raised questions today about the immigration status of the housekeeper, and is also questioning why Geithner did not pay Social Security and Medicare taxes when he worked at the International Monetary Fund, The Wall Street Journal first reported this afternoon.
The Senate Finance Committee has known about Geithner’s tax problems since Dec. 5, but the details are just being made public now, Senate aides said. Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus says Geithner made a “serious mistake” but adds that the allegations are not enough to “disqualify” Geithner from consideration.
Since the Finance Committee has known about these problems for over a month, the obvious question is, why was the information withheld until now? The equally obvious answer, of course, is that with the controversy surrounding Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, and the brewing scandal swirling around New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson’s own “pay-to-play” allegations, it just never seemed like a good time. Then again, to be fair, it’s not like a Treasury Secretary who doesn’t pay his own taxes is any more of a big deal than, oh, say, a Secretary of State who likes to fight, or an Education Secretary whose kids couldn’t read, or a homeless Housing and Urban Development guy would be, right? Besides, it’s not like getting out in front of a controversy is ever really a smart thing to do, is it? After all, little problems with domestic help have never bothered anybody before. A candidate for Attorney General who has legal issues might have a lot more ’splainin’ to do.
Obacrats are going to be choking on that one every time they have to utter the word, “Senator” in front of the name “Roland Burris,” which is going to be a lot, since he is the junior senator from Illinois. Now that the last petulantly and arbitrarily enforced roadblock has been inevitably removed, the always done deal is all but…done. Since anybody whose brainwave shows more activity on an EEG than a flat line could figure out that it was the Obacrats in Illinois who figured that removing the non-Obacrat governor, Rod Blagojevich, from office so that an Obacrat could be installed, who would then appoint one of their number in the head Obacrat’s (the Obamessiah, himself) seat on their way to 60, would be a good idea, I say, no better for them. Knowing that the beleaguered governor was perpetually under investigation by the Feds, dangling the “juicy plum” of Obama’s Senate seat in font of his face had to seem like a nifty way to get him on tape doing something stupid enough to get him arrested and maneuvered out of office under threat of impeachment, hopefully before the inauguration. Otherwise, why resign the seat as soon as Obama did, earlier than anybody in history? Too bad they didn’t think it through.
Chicago Tribune columnist, Eric Zorn, sees a parallel between Burris and soon-to-be-confirmed Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton:
From day one, the effort to prevent Burris from being seated looked like a sore-loser attempt to re-write the rules after the fact–kind of like Hillary Clinton’s campaign last spring to have the Florida and Michigan primaries count.
Not quite, Eric. The Obacrats, in this instance, underestimated Blagojevich’s testicular fortitude, and overestimated their own. Believing that they could once again manipulate public opinion enough to nullify an opponent and the law was a big gamble that this time, didn’t pay off. Even the backing of the Big Brotherhood in Washington wasn’t enough for them to prevail, as it had been in May with the similar media/rule manipulation of the Florida and Michigan situation. Then, “da roolz” could be enforced to Obama’s advantage, subject to only the cherry picked interpretation of the Obacratic Party, now, “da roolz” were superseded by the laws of the land. Besides, Clinton, with her hands tied as they were, what with her desiring a future in what remains of the Democratic wing of the Obacratic party, didn’t have the luxury of being able to engage in the kind of bare knuckle, knockdown-drag out political street fighting that the desperate, back-to-the-wall on-his-way-out-the-door Blagojevich was similarly cornered into.
In the end, both Clinton and Blagojevich ultimately got far more out of the “go for bad” baby gangster Obacrats than the “pretender-playa,” tough guy “Chicago Way” wannabees were prepared to give. Makes you wonder what the future holds for conflict resolution in the coming Obama administration, doesn’t it?
I’m beginning to think that the art of politics (if there is such a thing) is the ability to get strangers to pretend to understand when you talk nonsense out of both sides of your mouth. Unfortunately, that is also today’s definition of journalism. That makes looking for turds of political wisdom among the media bullshit as much fun as a scavenger hunt in a sewer. And just as obvious.
Politico is reporting that there are landmines ahead for ever-prepared policy wonk, Hillary Clinton, in her upcoming Senate confirmation hearings because she’s married to Bill and she ran against the man who appointed her, while at the same time (same article) reporting that her confirmation hearings are scheduled for only one day and everybody thinks she’ll be confirmed “speedily.”
Rasmussen Reports tells us that “lots” of people, 75% in fact, plan to watch at least “some” of the first black president-elect’s upcoming inauguration, with 28% planning to watch it “all,” while you couldn’t pay 21% to watch “any” of it. They don’t tell us how many people plan to watch “for sure,” but 61% of black people will watch “all” the festivities, because he’s black, too, while only 22% of whites feel the same way, because they’re not. Since the stupid networks show every indication of airing every aspect of the stupid inauguration festivities over and over until we “all” puke, I think it’s significant that 21% obviously won’t be turning on their televisions, reading a paper or surfing the net in the foreseeable near future.
California Senator Dianne Feinstein’s recent support of Rod Blagojevich’s appointee for Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat, Roland Burris, should score her some major points with black voters and colleagues who pretty much liked her anyway, according to CQ Politics. Fienstein’s support registered well with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, though her reasoning had nothing to do with his skin color; rather, she cited a quaint little concept known as “the law.”
Feinstein’s bold stance on a no-brainer issue nonetheless puts her at odds with her Senate colleagues intent upon prolonging what amounts to a pissing contest during a circle jerk. Those opposing Burris’ seating because he was appointed by a guy they consider to be a slimeball, (presumably not because he was involved in shady pay-to-play scams, but because he got caught; nobody’s calling for Bill Richardson’s head or for his duties to be suspended; probably because he doesn’t have a Senate seat to sell like Blago and barely Governor Patterson) are suddenly trying to figure out how to zip up their wet pants and look presentable without washing their hands now that they realize that the curtain’s open and people are watching.
What do you do when you pick the guy you like to give the invocation at your inauguration, in order to make nice with the people who didn’t vote for you, if the people who did vote for you hate him? Why, you find somebody the people who like you will like, too, and invite him to speak at another event, call it an “inauguration…something” and, sell it on EBaythe internet.
No, what has sent the country into a Happy Days-inspired leap from reality is the recent propensity of popular culture icons to embrace the ridiculous as it relates to Barack Obama. You’d think they’d never seen a black president before, or something. First Ms. Magazine, in a move that makes “The View” and “Playgirl” seem radical by comparison, boasted an improbable cover touting Obama’s non-existent feminist creds, going so far as to depict him as the women’s movement’s very own super hero, a giant leap up, in the wrong direction, from Prince Charming or Barbie’s Ken.
But the “fridge was nuked” waaaay over the rainbow shark when Marvel Comics equally (more) improbably paired Obama with a real-as-it-gets superhero, Spiderman, in it’s latest edition, because the future Geek-In-Chief was once a collector. I shit kid you not.
The Barack Obama rage has now taken the comic world by storm. Reportedly the president will feature along with the superhero ‘Spiderman’. The fact that the US-president elect was a Spidey collector as a kid, has inspired the Marvel Comics to feature the ‘icon’ for the children’s book.
“When we read that we thought, ‘Oh my God the future Commander-in-chief is actually the future nerd-in-chief,’ the New York Daily News quoted Joe Quesada, Marvel’s top editor, as saying. “With a geek in the White House , we just had to give him a shout back. It’s just the coolest thing ever,” Quesada added.
Unlike Ms., at least they didn’t give the Obamessiah undeserved super powers. Maybe by this time next week, or more likely, the week after, since “lots” of us will be eating nachos and watching the Super Bowl of Politics on cable next week, (I wonder if they’ll have cool new commercials?) we’ll find out that the wheels on the Obabus are actually jet-propelled wings or something. I’m sure a rocket fueled, Acme Co. E-ject-O driver’s seat is too much to ask for.
Uh-oh. The Obacrats, with their shaky grasp on the law, coupled with their pre-school level truculence are going down on the Roland Burris appointment. Burris, who seems to be a mild-mannered, harmless enough sort, nonetheless, also seems to have the ramrod backbone of any narcissist personally challenged. None of this matters one whit, however, the bottom line is, Roland Burris is the duly appointed, by the sitting governor, replacement for Barack Obama’s Senate seat. Period. And, there’s nothing in the law that says the Obacrats have to like it.
It’s not like they weren’t warned. Blagojevich made it clear that he was the governor, exercising his duty in making a appointment. Rep. Bobby Rush helpfully pointed out, that contrary to the misguided wishes of the clueless political allies of Barack Obama, black doesn’t cancel black, whenever you have black people involved, you have a racial element to consider. And deal with. Now, Roland Burris is channeling his inner Malcolm X. In an appearance on Face the Nation, Burris, a relatively savvy politician, had a lot to say, and let it be known that with the inauguration coming up, the president-elect doesn’t need this sort of “distraction,” that contrary to the Obacrats’ earlier stated position, things were now indeed about him, and he planned to be seated. One of the more interesting statements was the invocation of the spirit of the man whose memory still causes sphincters to clinch and spines to tingle in certain segments of American society:
“Well, don’t you feel you’re being used by someone who is just trying to save his political skin?” Schieffer asked.
“Whatever means necessary,” Burris said, paraphrasing the 1960s radical Malcolm X. “I have nothing to do with the governor’s motives. What we needed was something to be done for the people of Illinois. That was his constitutional duty. That was his responsibility. The Illinois Constitution does not say the governor ‘may’ or the governor ‘might’ or the governor ’should.’ Bob, it says the governor ’shall’ appoint a person to fill the vacancy. That’s what happened.”
Now, the Obacrats who refused to act to nullify the powers invested in re-elected Governor Rod Blagojevich upon the event of his arrest, presumably because an accusation of criminal activity is not enough to empower them to do so, are desperately trying to erase the line in the sand they insisted upon drawing and trying to hide behind.
It didn’t have to be this way, President-elect Barack Obama could have held on to his Senate seat like Vice President-elect Jo(k)e Biden, and Secretary of State-designate, Hillary Clinton held on to theirs. PUMA sites, among others, including this one, have questioned this particular move since Day One. Why the rush to distance himself from his own Senate seat? Are we supposed to believe the Smartest President In the Room didn’t know that the governor of his state was under investigation? Everybody else did. Why give him yet another, irresistable opportunity to implicate himself? Or, was that the point? And if so, to what end? Is Obama so high above the kind of “pay-to-play” corruption seemingly so rampant in his home city and state that he need fear no blowback from any possible investigation, or, might he be motivated by a desire to deflect attention from himself by shining the brightest light imaginable on an inconvenient rival? Had Obama not relinquished the seat, there’s no guarantee Blagojevich would have been arrested before the inauguration, (andU.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s traditional replacement) if at all, since he had already been under investigation for 5 years without indictment.
Despite all their combined years of political experience, the Obacrats, under their rookie leader, seem to have forgotten one of the basic tenets of politics and life; when you play with fire, you’re gonna get burnt. Yet, that is precisely what the Obacrats tried to do with the Blagojevich situation, fan the flames ignited by a random spark from their deliberately dropped match, then attempt to juggle the embers. Too bad the fact that it is a fire of their own making does not render it any more safe.
That something so obviously a no-brainer is being seriously debated by lawmakers is so beyond the pale as to be unfathomable. If the Obacrats already had power to nullify Blagojevich in any way, why would they be so adamant about him resigning? Besides, what on earth about a Blagojevich resignation now would invalidate Roland Burris’ appointment? And, more importantly, does anybody really want to open the door to allowing the Senate to legally deny Americans employment simply because the person who lawfully hired them has been convicted only in the court of public opinion, without benefit of indictment or trial?
You can’t surf the news sites without reading a superfluity of stupidity as it regards our first black president-elect. Like this nugget from America’s TV Dad, Bill Cosby, who believes that because Barack and Michelle Obama are the personification of the values his television family projected, as opposed to the real family he came from and doesn’t talk about, they are, in his opinion, the standard the rest of us dysfunctional black families miserably fail to meet. Which of course, means he’s been right all along when he calls us shiftless, irresponsible bad examples. From Politico:
“Who is Barack Obama and what did he tell us, when he talked about his mother? What was it he was saying when he said his mother woke up, 4:30 in the morning…to correct his homework, to get it done?” Cosby asked rhetorically. “Let’s listen to Michelle Obama who talks about her father with a disease, but he doesn’t call in work and say, let me call in later. He gets up an hour earlier.”
“Her father with a disease?“ Does she have another, disease-free, one? Presumably, he would have been able to get up early and let the sick one sleep in, relieving some of the burden, but I digress. And, didn’t Obama say his mother would wake him up to “take correspondence courses,” so, what does it say? White people in Indonesia stay up late just to torment their children? But, like I said, I digress.
While reading another article, this one about the Man Taking The Huxtable Torch of Camelot’s (when Caroline’s not using it) upcoming inaugural presidential trip to Canada, I was reminded of last month’s news that he wanted to make a Really Big Important Speech on Islam in a Muslim capital as soon as he was sworn in.
Barack Obama says his presidency is an opportunity for the U.S. to renovate its relations with the Muslim world, starting the day of his inauguration and continuing with a speech he plans to deliver in an Islamic capital.
And when he takes the oath of office Jan. 20, he plans to be sworn in like every other president, using his full name: Barack Hussein Obama.
Naturally, a couple things jumped out at me. First, I don’t think any other presidents were sworn in using the name Barack Hussein Obama, but I could be mistaken. Second, I thought his middle name was Steve. I also wondered just how many Muslims live in Canada and just when it became a hot bed of Islamic activity. Turns out, it’s not, not with Muslims making up only 2% of the population. So, I guess the Canada thing is just the first stop on an upcoming Official Rock Star Presidential Winter World Tour Avoiding The Troops, and a good chance to make up for that NAFTA-gate thing in the primaries. All that’s left to be decided is which Muslim capital will let him talk without starting shit global conflict.
Now, I know being president is hard, the last guy who effectively proved that the country could pretty much run itself into the ground without one told us that. A lot. So, I understand why a president-elect would practice multi-tasking, like having a photo-op at a legendary local soul food (black owned) eatery on a weekend to try to divert attention from the previous week’s bad news while grabbing a bite at the same time. It just seems strange that one would chose to add to one’s indigestion with a quarter pound beef and pork sausage with chili sauce and a side of cheese (not Velveeta) fries. Unless of course, bumping up one’s street cred was an essential element of said multi-tasking photo-op:
After Obama’s motorcade wandered through the U street district, passing the African-American Civil War Memorial and a flee market selling shirts that bear his face, he and Fenty surprised the restaurant around lunchtime. Patrons shrieked with delight and surprise as they saw his face. A mother blushed as Obama held her baby in his arms. The president-elect and the mayor moved slowly through the restaurant’s crowded rooms, shaking hands and getting pictures taken with patrons.
Still, they came there to eat. “Where the food at?” he finally asked the counter staff, drawing laughs from them and nearby patrons.
“Where the food at?“ I hope Cliff Cosby wasn’t listening, he’s got a thing about Ebonics. Besides, Obama doesn’t have to pander to the brotherhood, he’s good no matter how close he gets to Cosby. No, the black thing Obama should be worrying about, the one that’s giving him indigestion and threatening to blow his gig is that Roland Burris has let it be known he’s about to act ugly. While it might be all too true that keeping people busy looking into Rod Blagojevich’s business has the added (primary?) benefit of keeping noses out of Obama’s, pissing off Burris doesn’t seem to be a good way to do it, no matter what Big Dick Durbin says Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn can do:
Burris and his advisers, armed with both the Blagojevich appointment and White’s certification, are refusing to back down in their dispute with the Senate leadership, and they now want to increase the pressure on Reid and Durbin to accept him as the newest senator from Illinois.
“We are frustrated after doing everything we could to cooperate and to help diffuse this unfortunate situation,” said the Burris adviser. “We made a genuine effort to be respectful and to minimize our level of confrontation. But Reid and Durbin have forced our hands and have called into question their own credibility to be trusted as honest negotiators. They’re now nearly guaranteeing that there will be a direct confrontation on the week of inaugural.”
The adviser also said that having Quinn appoint an Obama successor is illegal and that Blagojevich’s appointment must stand.
“The option to have Quinn make a Senate appointment is not legal,” the adviser said. “The governor’s appointment can’t be retroactively revoked. Illinois already has two senators.”
Stop the presses! Hold the phone! Batten the hatches! Hold that line! Tote that barge! Lift that b…Okay, I get carried away, sometimes, but this is news! Barack Obama, the man who raised begging to a fine art, and cleverly figured out how hundreds of big donors could give him Googles googols of dollars by pretending to be some of the “millions of little donors” he hit up electronically every five minutes, has actually (I think for the very first time, ever!) sent out an e-mail asking not for money, but…wait for it…love. (insert celestial Hallelujah choir here) Well, not exactly love as you and I know it, but love in the political sense; and not love for him, per se; he wants you to fuck love his buddy, but that’s not the point! The point is, well, he’s not just a clueless political whore…okay, maybe that’s going too far. He is asking regular people for advice on how to do the job they elected (and paid for?) him to do, after all. So says the L.A. Times:
Word has just been received at The Ticket that President-elect Barack Obama sent out an actual e-mail today without asking for more money from tired donors. No, really.
Andrew Malcolm, who wrote the piece, goes on to point out how even some of Obi-WanNaBeKing’s staunchest KoolAid drunk, hopium high thumb suckers are “way over this thing” and that Bill Clinton just asked for money to throw his former buck-dancing shoe shine boy (let Obie and the Obatocrats tell it) the Best Inaugural Wingding For A Black Guy In A Recession Ever. Then, he gets to the juicy part:
Now comes word, via the Swamp, that Obama actually dispatched an electronic missive earlier today praising as “an ideal leader” Virginia’s Gov. Tim Kaine, Obama’s newly named part-time chair of the Democratic National Committee. “Gov. Kaine has seen the power of the 50-state strategy firsthand,” says the president-elect’s message. “And under his leadership, Democrats will continue to organize and compete in every corner of our country”
Then, Obama asks for — wait for it! – not money, but questions from grass-roots Democrats that Tim will answer in a video on the DNC’s website. Amazing!
Did you catch that? The email takes a shot at Howard Dean for no apparent reason. What’s up with that? Is that the biggest “eff ewe” since Blago picked Burris, or what? Talk about a political whore who even stole for a pimp and doesn’t even get a tip on the nightstand… or, however that works…I’m not exactly sure…ahem…anyway, (coughing and moving on)…They admit in the email that Kaine is going to just Bogart Howie’s strategy and kick him straight to the curb and under the bus, and that Timmy is so clueless that he needs advice from cloud-headed, sticky-fingered, one-hand typists.
Freakin’ amazin’.
But, you know, the Love Buddies just might be lookin’ for it in all the wrong places.
The Washington Times has a transcript of the full Dean-dissing email text from the DNC which promises to build on the strategy of He Who Is Barely Mentioned while remaking the party in the Obamacan mold. They also point out that there is a donate button at the bottom, but I guess since it excludes the blinking arrows and flashing lights pointing to it that most Oba-missves have, it qualifies as non-solicitation. Anyway, how long can this guy go on asking for money? Didn’t he already get elected, or did I just dream that? Could it be, dare I say it…is there hope? Nah. But before he asks people for money again, maybe he could get somebody to watch a couple of episodes of My House Is Worth What? before they compose the email. Won’t get him anymore money, but it might make some of the emails he gets back easier to read.
Wheeeee! Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved to spin. Shoulda been a journalist. Or an Obatician, but nah, that sounds like a doctor who only delivers little Baracks. I shudder to think. Even though, it would be kinda cool to be a Mainstream Media Barackaspinner, (talk about redundant) I could make stuff up about him and pretend like it was true and nobody would say anything. Anyway, a love of spinning would come in handy for just about anybody, since the drivel the professional spinners spin is almost comprehensible only when you’re already dizzy.
Where to begin? Well, I could start with this obsession pseudo-journalists with unnatural attractions to Barack Obama seem to have. Maybe it’s their natural response to his feminine side, recently discovered by Ms. Magazine, but, whatever the reason, they just seem to feel compelled to pledge their assistance to the President-In-Distress. Whether he falters or not. First, there was He of the Wet and Tingly Leg, who not only soars to on-air orgasmic heights at the mere sound of the object of his affections’ voice, but was moved to declare his need to prostrate (prostate?) himself at his true love’s feet, if ever necessary. It’s his job, after all.
Maybe it’s not about Barack(a) Obama, maybe Joe Scarborough spikes his guest’s coffee with truth serum or scotch or something that makes them confess their darkest fantasies, but not to be outdone, and to prove that Obama man-love is post-racial, Tavis Smiley also declared his undying love on Morning Joe; and he seemed to be highly insulted that anyone would dare question such a thing:
Of course, how could anyone, male or female, not love a (wo)man who wears his misogynist-stomping SuperUniform under his(her) daily business attire? Sexxxxaaaayyy.
In other news on this side of the looking glass, the Obacrats just can’t help doing everything they can to make even their staunchest supporters scratch their heads and go, “Huh? Who the fuck elected these guys?” While the God-fearing Obamessiah, who has only been to church once since he kicked his former pastor under the bus, and that was to diss all the black men white people write about now who are inspired by, but too lazy and irresponsible to be like him, scampers above the turbulent waters of corruption that sustain his hometown, his acolytes continue to stumble and bump into each other like blind men in broad daylight.
Democrats angry over the botched handling of the Roland Burris imbroglio are putting the blame on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin and President-electBarack Obama — even as new legal developments in Illinois throw the issue back to the Senate again.
Democratic sources say that Reid and Durbin underestimated the storm that would be caused by their attempt to deny a seat to a 71-year-old African-American.
“Reid operates in this tight, little circle with Durbin and [Sen. Charles] Schumer and [Sen. Patty] Murray,” complained one veteran Democratic senator, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “He needs to talk to more people, and maybe these kinds of situations won’t occur again.”
Other Democratic insiders put some of the blame on Obama, complaining that he kept his distance from the Burris controversy then jumped in at the end to claim the mantle of peacemaker — much as he did in the flap over Sen. Joe Lieberman’s support of Republican John McCain’s presidential bid.
“A lot of people were pissed” with how the Burris situation was handled, said a Democratic source involved in the discussions.
Doesn’t seem likely that anybody’s going to get un-pissed any time soon either. Even though the fact that Blago’s pick should be seated is a no-brainer since he’s still the governor and even if he is impeached it doesn’t invalidate anything he did before he’s inevitably convicted, and nobody in their right mind would even want to come close to suggesting such a thing, Dick Durbin seems confused enough to…suggest such a thing. Hanging his hat on a technicality already invalidated by the Illinois Supreme Court, namely that it matters not whether petulant Ill. Sec. of State Jesse White signs Burris’ hall pass, Durbin insists on standing behind his line in the sand. From AP-Yahoo News:
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin said Friday that Roland Burris should not be seated in the U.S. Senate because he has failed to get the secretary of state’s signature on his appointment to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the chamber.
edit
Durbin noted that if Blagojevich is convicted at his state Senate impeachment trial, he will no longer be the governor and Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn will take over.
“I think it’s best to suspend activities in the filling of that vacancy until that impeachment trial in the Illinois Senate is concluded,” Durbin said. He said Quinn could “then have the authority to make this appointment in a clean, legal way and make his recommendation and his appointment known to the United States Senate.”
Gee, I’m not a lawyer, but, I wonder which law allows the Senate to suspend a sitting Governor’s powers?
In a classic case of a herd isolating a wounded pack member to be sacrificed to a hungry predator in order to save the majority, the Illinois legislature is determined to impeach their governor, Rod Blagojevich, for crimes he has not even been officially indicted for, much less convicted of. Motivated by either their intense dislike of the man they consider to be crazy, and his foul mouth and poofy hair; or by their morally unassailable position against the man they know to be the only corrupt politician in the state called a contender for the title of “most corrupt” in the United States by an FBI agent at the press conference announcing his arrest, based on years of allegations, gossip and innuendo; or, more likely, their natural, self-preservation-based fear that should the wolf be allowed to hunt the one they deem tasty on their turf, he might find the scent of their flesh equally compelling; whatever, from the herd’s point of view, Blags has got to go.
Doesn’t mean he’ll go quietly, however. In fact, in a press conference today, he made it very clear that rather than be hung out to dry, he’s going to hang around and fight. Of course, that has naturally caused the herd, and the crows in the media they’ve convinced to make like vultures and circle around his undead carcass in order to point the predators his way, much consternation. Just search Google News for “Blagojevich press conference” and read the more than 5,000 articles that come up ridiculing the man if you don’t believe me. Let’s face it, without the crows, the herd couldn’t make a case against him that violates the normal rules of due process. He’s been convicted by the press without benefit of trial or indictment, been criticized by herd leaders for not testifying in his defense, and is being impeached because of it.
Since witches can be hunted, and crooks can be scapegoated, the question is, is Blago holding things up, or is he simply holding the bag?
He is the only corrupt politician in the most corrupt state in the country, isn’t he? Even though, when you consider that the “Chicago Way,” based as it is upon the political embrace of mob tactics, (or “the Outfit” as it’s known in the city) Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn’s entry in the “poem war” he chose to wage with Blago, again invokes images of a much desired Frank Pentangeli solution to the herd’s (not the hunted’s) problem.
The Illinois committee’s report points out that Blagojevich does not need to be found guilty of a crime for the House to impeach him.
”It would, in fact, be unreasonable to limit impeachable offenses to criminal conduct,” the report says. ”An impeachment inquiry is not a criminal proceeding and its purpose is not punitive. Rather, impeachment is a remedial proceeding to protect the public from an officer who has abused his position of trust.”
Proof? We don’t need no stinkin’ proof. Somebody said, a U.S. Attorney, no less, on TV, for Goodness sakes, that the guy was on a crime spree, because, he said, he heard somebody say to somebody else on the phone that he was gonna, and, then he said the governor said if they didn’t do what he wanted, bleep ‘em. What kind of way is that for a Governor to talk, huh? Mother bleeper? We never liked him, anyway. He tried to get flu vaccines delivered to Illinois during a shortage. What kind of slimy, lowdown crook would do something like that? And the casinos he ripped off for the horse race guys are taking bets on jail time. Are you kidding me? He must be guilty, I saw it on TV. He shoulda had the decency to resign. He knows Rezko, you know?
“Don’t let the door hitcha where the good Lord splitcha!” Barack Obama, who thinks he’s already president, (a step down, in my opinion, from his current position, Grand Poohbah of All He Surveys) didn’t even have the decency to say that much publicly to PUMA nemesis Howard Dean’s face. At one of his innumerable mandatory demands for media attention, this time announcing what the world already knew, (like he always does) Tim Kaine as new Democratic National Committee Chair, Camp ObamaWorship made sure former Chair, and architect of the 50 State Strategy Obama stole and molded to his will, was thousands of miles away being…DNC Chair. From Politico:
The conspicuous absence of Howard Dean from Thursday’s press conference announcing Tim Kaine’s appointment as Democratic National Committee chair was no accident, according to Dean loyalists.
Rather, they say, it was a reflection of the lack of respect accorded to the outgoing party chairman by the Obama team.
Despite leading the party in consecutive triumphant election cycles – as well as through off-year races like when Kaine was elected Virginia governor in 2005 – Dean has become all but invisible since Election Day, passed over for the Cabinet position he coveted and apparently not in line for another administration post.
Indeed, when President-elect Barack Obama introduced Kaine at party headquarters Thursday afternoon, Dean was 7,023 miles and seven time zones away, closer to French Polynesia than Washington, doing party grunt work in American Samoa.
In the article largely critical of Obama’s snub, until they get to the contractually obligated part where they have to find somebody to offer an opinion that justifies Obie’s actions, Politico chronicles just how pissed off Dean and his allies are. One of the people they found to make nice was Dean himself, (well, not actually Dean, but a tape of Dean) who, in an MSNBC Hardball interview with the Leg Tingler Who Will Not Run, conducted before Dean was banished to the other side of the world, said he was happy with the job he’d done, Obama was “da bomb,” no hard feelings, blah, blah, blah. But, because it’s hard for even psuedo- compromised journalists (especially a right leaning one writing about the left) to sacrifice every shred of their integrity and dignity under their own byline, Jonathan Martin couldn’t help himself from including this juicy morsel from Dean about Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s defiant appointment of Roland Burris at the very end:
“You gotta hand it to Blagojevich,” said Dean of the embattled Illinois governor’s brazen appointment of Roland Burris to succeed Obama in the Senate. “What a maneuver! What a maneuver! When his back was against the wall he outsmarted a lot of people.”
Et tu, Howie? Looks like more and more Dems are going to sleep at night with visions of hidden knives dancing in their heads.
“What’s that you say Boopie? You feel like the bigots your friends colleagues in the Good Ol’ Boys Club you front for are starting to show their true colors? Starting to turn their backs on you? Trying to keep you “in your place?” (Insert peppy Dixie music here) Well, tough toenails, Toots! They are!”
Harry Reid’s “he’s not the boss of me” comments are a sure sign all is not well in ObaLand. Dianne Feinstein’s “who does he think he is, he fucked up” sentiments are another. But, the clearest signal that Obama’s on his own if he thinks he’s really in charge of anything came today, with the dissent expressed by certain Senators, like Kent Conrad, John Kerry, and Ron Wyden willing to go on record that they’re not on board with the Teflon TelePrompTer Reader’s stimulus plan. From the Associated Press:
President-elect Barack Obama’s proposed tax cuts ran into opposition Thursday from senators in his own party who said they wouldn’t do much to stimulate the economy or create jobs. Senators from both parties agreed that Congress should do something to stimulate the economy. But Democratic senators emerging from a private meeting of the Senate Finance Committee criticized business and individual tax cuts in Obama’s stimulus plan.
Reid’s “caught on tape” comments about Blagojevich’s potential picks for replacements to Barack Obama’s Senate seat reflect either his bigotry or stupidity; maybe both since he doesn’t seem to have sense enough to be quiet. Claiming concern for “electability” Reid sought assurances from Blags that he would reject 3 black politicians in favor of his approved list of acceptable ones. In lieu of evidence of some other rationale, one would have to conclude that race was Reid’s deciding factor. The stupid part is, Illinois is the only state in the Union with a recent history of electing black Senators. Given that the racial component inherent in his “standing in the Senate door” to block Burris’ appointment was getting played up by more entities in more places than race-baiting Bobby Rush at Blago’s press conference, Reid publicly involved Burris in his attempt at absolution. From Salon:
Majority Leader Harry Reid and his deputy, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, met with Burris Wednesday morning. In a press availability that followed, Reid repeatedly complimented Burris personally, and addressed the racial issues that have bubbled up throughout the controversy, saying, “One of the first things he said to us, hey, this is nothing that’s racial, I understand that. So a lot of people tried to make this a racial issue, but Roland Burris has not and will not.”
When they go out of their way to tell you what something isn’t, it usually gives you a good idea just exactly what it is. At any rate, cracks are showing in the Democrats’ united front, some of which involve black people, and there’s a black guy supposedly in charge. How they play these realities says a lot about…well…a lot of things. Especially about the guy in charge. The truth is, as long as the facts are what they are, some people will exploit them to their advantage, while others will be victimized by them, just like they were in the primaries and general election.
Let’s face it, Obie, the Unity Pony is on life support. So, either get on your knees and start blowing in it’s mouth, or kick the training wheels off the shiny new President bike you got for Christmas and drive the bad guys off into the sunset. Strap it up Cowboy, we’ve seen this movie before.
Oh, and be careful with this Blagojevich impeachment thing. If you don’t have enough ammo to finish him off, you might be better off leaving him alone. Cornered wounded animals can get a bit testy.
As anybody in the PUMAsphere could have told them, and did, the Keystone Kops of the coming Obacratic administration have been forced to begin furiously backpedaling from their ridiculous perch on their improbably high horse and do what everyone with a modicum of common sense knew they were going to have to do all along, seat Governor Rod Blagojevich’s pick to replace Barack Obama in the Senate, Roland Burris. This was a no-brainer for even the Sesame Street set. Even the pre-toilet training crowd knows you can’t take your ball and go home just because you don’t like somebody.
And, now that Blagojevich has played the acolytes of the Teflon TeleprompTer Reader with the virtuosity of Itzhak Perlman on his prized Stradivarius, the world now knows something else PUMAs have been saying all along, Obama is playable. It’s worth remembering however, it’s easy to kick somebody’s butt who’s fond of bending over and showing their ass. But, you’ve gotta wonder, if the guys now in charge are so gullible as to fall for the okey-doke and cave to the game of the first poofy haired crook who comes along, what’s to make anybody think they would fare any better in a real crisis? Pointless, impotent saber rattling in a pissing contest only ensures you’re gonna get wet. Butching up after the Golden Shower, as the Illinois Obacrats are trying to do with their impeachment chest beating, doesn’t make you look, smell, or feel much better, either.
While Blago’s chess move, beautifully executed, effectively put the Obacrats in check, it wasn’t particularly innovative, and shouldn’t have been unexpected. He basically castled, or switched places with his rook, giving himself cover. The Obacrats, trying to play political chess the “Chicago Way,” i.e., like a game of X-treme football on steroids, predictably proved to be way out of their league. With their rookie quarterback, combined with their own lack of experience and questionable testosterone levels, they were toast from the coin toss. And, they’d barely even lined up for the kick-off before they fumbled.
With the world of hurt we inhabit getting more painful by the second, the Rookie Quarterback Who Would Be King is giving interviews on the sidelines, reading stock answers to new questions from his portable, soon-to-be-patented TelePrompTerToGo. But when even his favorite cheeleaders like Dana Milbank and Howard Fineman start pointing and laughing in his face, can a blindside tackle from the sidelines be far behind? One thing we can be sure of, though, when the going gets tough, the Puff will probably punt the pawn.
I am a PUMA today for the exact same reason I went looking to become something that didn’t yet exist on May 31, 2008; I object to the manner in which Barack Obama became my president. And nothing I’ve seen before or since has mitigated that essential truth in the slightest, in fact, the more I see of the way he operates, the more upset I get. Barack Obama offends my sense of fair play. From what I’ve been able to determine through my research of him, he has pushed the against “da roolz” envelope in every contested election he’s won. Though he cannot be accused of outright cheating, he has built his entire pseudo-impressive career out of finding obscure loopholes to screw to his orgasm, thereby raping the process to his pleasure and advantage.
As has been extensively chronicled, in 1996, Obama won his first election to the Illinois Senate by contesting the voting petition signatures gathered for all of his challengers, getting them all disqualified, and running unopposed. Before he could complete his second term of office, after winning re-election in 1998 over African American Republican Yesse Yehudah (whose name later emerged in Obama bribery allegations) he mounted a disastrous 2000 campaign for sitting Congressman Bobby Rush’s seat, who beat the pants off him like he was a red-headed stepchild, by playing his “my black card on the table trumps the Uppity Magic Negro card up your sleeve.” It worked, and Obama never let that happen again.
Every Senate district elects its members to serve two four-year terms and one two-year term per decade.
…and Obama’s predilection for reticence, the details regarding his Illinois Senate runs are rather sketchy. However, considering that his opponent in 1998, Yehuda, won approx. 10% of the vote, and that in 2002 he ran unopposed, its safe to assume that, for some reason, Obama’s re-elections were basically a rubber-stamp formality. Curiously, Wikipedia mentions that Obama was re-elected to the Illinois senate in 2002, presumably in November, yet numerous sources report that he had already begun preparing for a run at the U.S. Senate by June of that year. From the Boston Globe:
In mid-2002, Obama began to focus on the upcoming US Senate race. The incumbent, Republican Peter Fitzgerald, seemed beatable, and it was not clear Carol Moseley Braun, who had held the seat before Fitzgerald, would try to reclaim it. Obama and his wife made a deal: This would be, as his wife puts it now, “the last hurrah.”
Democratic State Senator and University Law School Senior Lecturer Barack Obama has begun assessing his chances in the 2004 US senate race. Obama has commissioned a statewide poll by the Colorado firm Harstad Strategic Research, and he has filed for federal permission to begin fundraising. Obama will have to win the democratic primary in order to face incumbent Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald in ‘04.
Note the article from 2002 refers to Obama as a “Senior Lecturer” not “professor,” as he has claimed to be; a claim which was backed up, but “nuanced” (their word, not mine) by Fact Check.org via the University of Chicago. Another example of Obama’s fondness for “nuance”regards his now, much bally-hooed, then, largely ignored, unfilmed, 2002 Iraq war speech:
“My objections to the war in Iraq were not simply a speech,” Obama said. “I was in the midst of a U.S. Senate campaign. It was a high-stakes campaign. I was one of the most vocal opponents of the war.” (Obama delivered the speech in October 2002; he did not officially declare his candidacy for the U.S. Senate until January).
Even in this era of YouTube and camera phones, a recording of Obama’s speech is all but impossible to find. The Obama campaign has gone so far as to re-create portions of the speech for a television ad, with the candidate re-reading the text, with audience sound effects.
So, according to the above article from NPR, this cornerstone and centerpiece of Obama’s presidential campaign was actually an insignificant speech delivered to about 1,000 people by a little known guy running unopposed for the state Senate, at somebody else’s (Jesse Jackson) rally. Even Obama’s campaign manager, David Axelrod, has admitted as much. Quoted in the New York Times Caucus blog lamenting the lack of recorded Iraq war speech material:
“I would kill for that,” he was quoted as saying. “No one realized at the time that it would be a historic thing.”
Similar “nuance” marks the man’s entire biography, yet he has somehow managed to create the illusion of transparency. When David Axelrod joined (became) Obama’s team in 2004, the elements of Obama’s new, “I am, too, black enough, but not too black, just short of under-handed envelope pushing” political philosophy began to successfully knit themselves together. On his AKP&D Message and Media website, “the Axe” takes his full share of credit:
In 2004, Axelrod helped State Senator Barack Obama score a landslide win in his U.S. Senate campaign, developing a message and media strategy that enabled Obama to defeat six opponents in the Democratic primary with an astounding 53% of the vote. He is currently serving as media advisor to Obama’s presidential campaign.
Barack Obama was elected to the United States Senate as the second African American to do so from Illinois, amid scandal. In fact, from the scandal surrounding Congressman Mel Reynolds in his first state Senate bid, to his predecessor Carol Mosely Braun’s legal troubles, to the fortuitous (for him) scandal and gossip swirling around two of his opponents in his U.S. Senate race that caused them to drop out, to the current Blagojevich brouhaha, somebody in Illinois is always getting into trouble for something that often ultimately benefits Obama, that he’s miraculously never really otherwise affected by.
The divorce records of Obama’s leading primary opponent in 2004, Blair Hull, as well as those of his Republican opponent Jack Ryan were not-so-mysteriously leaked to the Chicago Tribune, (given David Axelrod’s previous association with the newspaper) sinking their chances. Obama/Axelrod could then employ their newly developed “blacker than thou” techniques against last minute, carpetbagging replacement Republican candidate, Alan Keyes, sweeping to victory.
In the presidential primaries, Camp Obama again pushed “da roolz” envelope to their advantage. From the exploitation of delegate appropriation in the caucuses, to the active solicitation of “anybody but Hillary” Republican and Independent temporary crossover voting, to the deliberate, yet unnecessary, removal of his name in the Michigan primary, something he was forbidden to do in Florida, Obama consistently pimped the process. With the complicity of the DNC, the mainstream media and the faux progressive blogosphere, who rewarded, celebrated, and championed his every questionable move, he barely squeaked by enough to be ceremoniously handed the nomination, “fair and square.” Those of us in his party who questioned his experience, qualifications, and tactics were belittled, bullied, and ridiculed when we couldn’t be ignored, as the Obama campaign and the DNC turned their heads and allowed his minions in the media and blogosphere to engage in misogynistic race baiting on his behalf. None of which dampened our outrage in the slightest, in fact, as most any fool besides these would expect, the opposite is true.
Wickedly delightful, completely non-politically correct author Christopher Moore has brilliantly analyzed and explained the concept of “Beta Male” in much of his work. While I recommend you read his books for yourself, and cannot presume to speak for him, the basic point, as I perceive it, is that the world is populated by far more Beta Males than Alpha, yet they tend to fade into the background of life because they’re…well…Beta. Moore hilariously champions their cause. Yet, as a female, I have a couple of observations about the concept of my own. One, Alpha Male is not all it’s cracked up to be. Basically, it just means “first guy through the door.” While a man’s looks, wealth, education, whatever, might contribute to his cockiness, the bottom line is, it’s the cocksure confidence he exhibits that women and Beta Males respond to, often to their detriment. Because, there’s no guarantee that the Alpha Male is the smartest, or best qualified guy in any group, he’s just compelled to go first. This is not always a good thing for him, or the group, after all, the first bull off the cliff in a buffalo jump was probably an Alpha Male, too.
Secondly, not all Alpha Males are created equal. Primarily because, not all male tribal affiliations, teams, clubs, cliques, squads, etc., are. True, there are Alpha Males in Alpha Male societies, but even Beta, Gamma, Delta, Theta and Omega groups have Alpha Males, too. And while those lesser Alphas might not fare well in clubs higher up on the food chain, in their little domains, they rock.
Barack Obama is not an Alpha Male, even in a Tau society. He is an actor, adept at adopting the persona of an Alpha, (when he stays on script) but even then, only as top dog of a Gamma society, at best. Therefore, his campaign, comprised of refugees from Revenge of the Nerds, had to be equally adept at crafting a message designed to dumb down the masses, get them to accept and embrace their Gamma society identity, so that they could then embrace their Gamma society Alpha Male leader. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” conjures images of clueless hordes standing around idly, with their fingers in their noses and their thumbs up their asses, waiting for somebody smart to come along and tell them where to go and what to do. Barack Obama is that somebody, for those people.
I don’t want a nerdy fake-Alpha Male president of a Gamma society. America is better than that. I don’t want a president who gleefully resorts to racially guilt tripping a largely innocent society into voting for him so that they might avoid the undeserved lash of the stigma of racism, while the minority of the majority who are real racists, escape unscathed. I want a level playing field. I want the best man to not only have a shot, I want him to win, even if the best man is a woman. I don’t care if state houses and government buildings have to add stalls to the ladies’ rooms to accommodate an arbitrarily mandated quota any more than I want any old black guy to be appointed or elected just because he’s black. If the best government of the people ends up being comprised of an unusually large percentage of third world immigrants, Munchkins, and Buddhist transvestites, so be it. I want to work for a world where those things don’t matter, not live in a country where we agree to pretend they don’t against any and all evidence to the contrary.
I don’t want to have to be political about being political, to activate and agitate society for my right to participate in it. Why should I still be burning my bra and raising my fist, even in this era of “historic accomplishment?” Why should I co-sign the tactics of a group of “win at all costs, by any means necessary” rulebook waving, loophole screwing, process rapists, hellbent on blackmailing the country into validating their Beta Male in a Gamma society twerpitude? What’s wonderful enough to celebrate about the election of a black Alpha Male of a society that has to tacitly agree to Gamma-fy itself in order to elect him? Especially when there was an imminently qualified, female Alpha Male in the race, one who actually had to fight her way out of the shadows of a bona fide Alpha?
I thought leveling the playing field, championing the cause of the little guy, real dedication to fair play, and social responsibility in a color blind, gender neutral country was what being a Democrat was all about.
I found out through this election that I was wrong.
That’s why I am no longer affiliated with any political party.
As the wheels on the Barack Obama “Obus” seem to be improbably blowing out simultaneously, all over the ever-increasing hordes of former sycophants he’s so fond of tossing under it, there’s evidence that a new driver just might be reporting for duty who can get it rolling again. The Associated Press is reporting that Dianne Feinstein is disappointed enough with the way things have been going to take the wheel and do something about it. In a rare show of leadership by anybody in the budding Obama administration, Feinstein, reacting to the Obacrat’s indefensibly juvenile actions and positions regarding the appointment of Roland Burris by emabattled Governor Rod Blagojevich to replace President-elect Obama in the Senate, showed she’s got eggs:
The chairman of the Senate Rules Committee has parted with many of her Democratic colleagues and says that the Senate should seat former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California said Tuesday that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, however tainted by corruption charges, has the right to appoint someone to President-elect Barack Obama’s former seat. The Rules Committee decides whether Burris is qualified to serve.
Feinstein said that blocking Burris would have ramifications for other governors’ appointments.
Burris was blocked from assuming his legally appointed seat on ticky-tack procedural issues he plans to fight, by Obacrats miffed about Blagojevich’s legal troubles. That those troubles have the potential to reach out and bite a number of them in the ass, including the President-elect, has absolutely nothing, nothing, ya hear me? to do with anything! Harry Reid, the most cluelessly disingenuous buffoon in the bunch, is reportedly captured on one of the same tapes that snagged Blagojevich, dictating to the Governor that 3 black contenders for Obama’s vacant seat not be considered. The illogical non-logic put forth by Sir Miss A-Lot is that such candidates would have difficulty being elected. Since the most obvious thing they have in common is race, it seems that Reid is concerned that the people of the only state to send 2 black Senators to Congress are…what, racially tapped out? Rahm Emanuel, who himself had called Blagojevich before being appointed White House Chief of staff to put forth a candidate, Valerie Jarrett, over Blagojevich’s own reported pick, rival Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, supposedly advanced Reid’s call. From the Chicago Sun-Times:
Days before Gov. Blagojevich was charged with trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder, top Senate Democrat Harry Reid made it clear who he didn’t want in the post: Jesse Jackson, Jr., Danny Davis or Emil Jones.
Rather, Reid called Blagojevich to argue he appoint either state Veterans Affairs chief Tammy Duckworth or Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, sources told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Sources say the Senate majority leader pushed against Jackson and Davis — both democratic congressmen from Illinois — and against Jones — the Illinois Senate president who is the political godfather of President-elect Barack Obama — because he did not believe the three men were electable. He feared losing the seat to a Republican in a future election.
Emanuel, Jarrett and Obama have all lawyered up and been interviewed in connection with the pay-to-play scandal, possibly due to information gleaned from wiretapped Blagojevich conversations, one of which was played for Emanuel by authorities desirous of jogging his spotty memory. But the impending clouds of doom hang only over the poofy-haired head of Blagojevich.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Feinstein has also been critical of Obama and the Obacrats in regards to the president-elect’s choice for CIA Director, Leon Panetta…
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who this week begins her tenure as the first female head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she was not consulted on the choice and indicated she might oppose it.
“I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director,” Feinstein said. “My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.”
…a media-reported unofficial pick Obama is now seeming to be laying the groundwork for backing away from. The New York Times transcript of today’s “media availability” (doncha love it?) contains this exchange after a reporter asked him about Panetta:
Obama: Well, as you noted, I haven’t made – haven’t made a formal announcement about my intelligence team.
(cell phone rings)
Obama: That may be him calling now… finding out where it’s at.
Obama: I have the utmost respect for Leon Panetta. I think that he is one of the finest public servants that we have. He brings extraordinary management skills, great political savvy, an impeccable record of integrity.
As chief of staff, he is somebody who – to the president – he’s somebody who obviously was fully versed in international affairs, crisis management, and had to evaluate intelligence consistently on a day-to-day basis.
Having said all that, I have not made an announcement. When we make the announcement, I think what people will see is, is that we are putting together a top-notch intelligence team that is not only going to assure that I get the best possible intelligence unvarnished, that the intelligence community is no longer geared towards telling the president what they think the president wants to hear, but instead are going to be delivering the information that the president needs to make critical decisions to keep the American people safe.
And, thoroughly in keeping with the tendencies of a WestWing-inspired leader of the Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight, who brings a gun to a knife fight to prove that though skinny, he’s tough, and who preens and postures for the sheer adolescent pleasure of being a blowhard playing dress-up, Obama is said to be close to appointing CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon General, for no apparent good reason, which of course, the obviously soon-to-be-renamed Obama News Network is thrilled to talk up:
The Obama transition team approached Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, about becoming U.S. surgeon general, according to sources inside the transition and at CNN.
Gupta was in Chicago, Illinois, in November to meet with President-elect Barack Obama on the matter, sources said.
Gupta has declined comment.
The transition team is impressed with the combination of Gupta’s past government experience, as a White House fellow in 1997 and a special adviser to then-first lady Hillary Clinton, along with his medical career as a neurosurgeon and his communication skills, the transition source said.
Gupta is a member of the staff and faculty of the Department of Neurosurgery at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. He regularly performs surgery at Emory University Hospital and at Grady Memorial Hospital, where he serves as associate chief of neurosurgery.
What, Dr. Phil was busy? Anyway, given that the loony Obacrats face months of litigation surrounding the contested Senate seatings of Al Franken, as well as Burris, and that they find themselves suddenly short a Commerce Secretary appointee, here’s hoping that Big Mama Feinstein can convince the unruly children she works with to shape up and let her or another grownup try driving the bus for once, instead of taking turns joyriding over their friends.
Let’s face it, the Democrats don’t like Governor Rod Blagojevich. Especially those Democrats loyal (if such a thing as political loyalty indeed exists) to President-elect Barack Obama, the Obacrats, which is all the suck-ups in the party. Which is the overwhelming majority.
Supposedly, Blagojevich is hated because he’s accused of being a crook. He is accused of attempting to sell the Senate seat he was obligated to fill once Barack Obama vacated it to people who don’t seem to exist. Everyone in a position to have bought said seat claims not to have ever even spoken to the Governor about the matter. The U.S. Attorney who arrested Governor Blagojevich before he could find a taker, did so to prevent him from doing just that, according to him.
Yet, Blagojevich was not arrested for trying to sell a Senate seat. He was not indicted for anything, he was arrested on a complaint charging him with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and solicitation of bribery. From the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Dec. 12, 2008:
If you believe everything you read in the papers, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was indicted this week.
But that wasn’t true. The governor has not been indicted. Reporting that he had been was an error made by many journalists.
The press made the mistake even after U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald had this to say at his press conference:
“First of all, there’s not an indictment, realize. It’s a complaint. So I don’t want people to understand it’s an indictment. We filed a criminal complaint.”
So what exactly is a criminal complaint and why did so many members of the press get it wrong?
“The criminal complaint is a charging document that is supported by the affidavit of a law enforcement agent that is intended to set forth and establish probable cause and that probable cause can be tested in a preliminary hearing,” said Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Fitzgerald’s office.
edit
In this case, an FBI agent outlined the evidence against Blagojevich in a 76-page document. So far, no one outside the U.S. attorney’s office has seen or heard this evidence, which means that until they bring it to a grand jury there can be no indictment and no trial. (Emphasis mine)
In his recent petition to the court for a 90 day extension to bring charges against Blagojevich, Fitzgerald stated in the opening line that the investigation began in 2003 and includes multiple potential defendants:
This investigation was initiated in approximately 2003, and involves multiple
potential defendants. Two individuals, defendants Rod R. Blagojevich and John Harris, were
charged by way of a criminal complaint on December 9, 2008, with: (a) conspiring to defraud
the citizens of Illinois of their right to his honest services, as well as conspiring to obtain
money and property by fraud, in violation of the mail and wire fraud statutes, 18 U.S.C. §§
1341, 1343, 1346, and 1349; and (b) corruptly soliciting and demanding the firing of Chicago
Tribune editorial board members who had been critical of Blagojevich, in exchange for the
awarding of millions of dollars in financial assistance from the State of Illinois, 18 U.S.C.
§ 666(a)(1)(B) and § 2.
In other words, Rod Blagojevich has been convicted in the court of public opinion for crimes he has not been formally charged with, or formally accused of. Yet, it is because of this conviction that the Obacrats have deemed him unsuitable to fulfill his duties. Or might it be the specter of those “multiple potential defendants” motivating the Senate actions? Nothing Blagojevich is accused of is as heinous, in my opinion, as the actions of a group made up primarily of lawyers thumbing their noses at one of the basic tenets of American law, “innocent, until proven guilty.” No taint on the very likely guilty Blagojevich stinks quite as much as that.
For the Senate Democrats to engage in such public grade school level maneuvers, refusing to sign and certify the paperwork of Blagojevich’s perfectly legal appointment of Roland Burris in order to be able to reject said credentials at the door, as they did, is more shameful than anything Blagojevich has been seen on tape doing. From CNN:
Nancy Erickson, the secretary of the Senate, rejected Burris’ appointment on Monday because Burris’ certificate of appointment was missing the signature of Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, an aide to the secretary said.
Rule 2 of the Standing Rules of the Senate states that the secretary of state must sign the certificate of election along with the governor.
White has declined to sign the certificate, siding with some Senate Democrats who say Burris should not be seated because of the cloud over Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
Senate Democrats have said they would not seat Burris because he was appointed by Blagojevich, who is accused of scheming to sell the Senate seat.
Why is CNN erroneously reporting Blagojevich’s charges? Why was he so publicly arrested without indictment when he was? And, why are so many Americans, especially Senators, so adamant about convicting this embattled governor with the poofy hair without benefit of a trial?
A principle that requires the government to prove the guilt of a criminal defendant and relieves the defendant of any burden to prove his or her innocence. The Free Dictionary
Whoever thought maneuvering Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich into a position that allowed U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to officially criminalize machine politics-as-usual for political advantage has got to be the biggest neophyte yahoo rube to come down the pike since…Barack Obama. Let’s review. Barack Obama, the only African American in the Senate for two years, mysteriously generates enough money and clout to mount a successful run for the presidency out of a political environment so corrupt that “Lincoln would roll over in his grave,” how? By being an all-around, all-American, above-board, swell, good guy, of course. Sure.
Surrounded by his personal band of proselytizing disciples; Rahmbo the Emanuel, Valerie Magdalene, King David of the Astroturf, Antonin of Houses, and Jon, the Groper of Graven Images, to name a few, the Obamessiah scampered above the sewer waters of Illinois corruption as if they were a North Side private gymnasium treadmill. As a fisher of men, He was often unfortunately touched, but not tainted by, the activities of the unworthy among those He assembled and attempted to make pure, as has been dutifully chronicled by the mainstream media Keepers of the Holy Book of the Obamessiah. However, Barack remains the Reformer, bathed in the Light.
Clean, bright and articulate by resume, the recent machinations by the Combine Machine of the Obacrats are threatening to reveal enough cracks in the Obamirror of Righteousness to expose His Holy Stupid-as-a-Stumpness in a nationally broadcast Naivete Scene. Did it never occur to the No Drama Obama crew that manipulating a fellow player not of their clique into a corner carried risks?
When one of their number, Antonin of Houses, stumbled and fell by the wayside, the Obasciples simply stepped gingerly, single-file around him, leaving him where he lay, disavowing him three times as they boarded the Obabus he rolled under when they continued confidently on their preordained journey to the Promised Land. The Obamessiah did not lay hands upon him, nor did He absolve him of his sin; He simply denied knowledge of him as He brushed His Holy shoulders and allowed Himself to be driven on. This was a Holy boo-boo.
For Antonin of Houses had special knowledge of Valerie Magdalene and the Obamessiah, and Antonin was pisseth.
Fast forward to the twenty-first century post-election ensconcement of the Obamessiah as President-In-Training Wheels. Having written and disseminated his own Holy backstory to the Chroniclers, and having consumed their regurgitated praise to his overfill, the Obamesiah, drunk with his own Obamessiah-ness by proxy, allowed Himself to believe He, Jr. Father, Knew Best. Thus began the chess match, whereby playing unopposed, the Obamessiah cleverly checkmated Himownself.
Seeing a way to eliminate his only real threat to absolute power in His own backyard, Barack of Hyde Park decided to continue to attempt to appear to levitate above the machinations of His betrayed Obasciple of the Houses, and the locust-and-honey-eating way clearer, the crude Rod the Blagojevich, while shining His Holy Light upon their common evangelical activities, forgetting He too, was bathed in His Own Light. Thus, He Screweth Himself.
Okay, enough of the Obamessiah allegory; it’s not only making me nauseous, I’m not nearly as good at it as John, South of Melrose over on Liberal Rapture or Gerald Baker; plus I need to be free to call bullshit without all this pseudo-Christian baggage. So, let’s get back to brass tacks, shall we?
The fact remains that Obama screwed the pooch when he tried to play innocent while pointing the finger at Blagojevich. Everybody in Illinois knew Blags was under investigation, he even hinted at the worst kept secret in politics the day before he was arrested. Everybody also knew that even with Rezko’s making like a canary, Fitzgerald didn’t have enough to indict. He still doesn’t. But when the president-elect bats his exaggeratedly wide-open eyes and tilts his head in your direction when somebody else calls you a crook, people sit up and take notice.
Obama and company knew that if they dangled the vacant Senate seat plum just right while they dropped unsubtle hints that Fitzgerald was sure to pick up, the investigation against Blags was sure to intensify. However, methinks they underestimated the existing intensity of the ongoing investigation. Thinking that the tentacles would subsequently stretch out in all directions, they never considered that they already did, that it wasn’t just one Blagojevich phone that was tapped, and that more of their pre-cleanup involvement was already caught on tape.
Now, the smartest president in the room and his gang have been interviewed in a pay-to-play scam and have proclaimed their innocence, just like Blagojevich, just like Bill Richardson. Though Blago has been arrested, before his alleged crime could criminally implicate anybody else, he hasn’t been indicted, he was released on a paltry bond, and he remains free to exercise his duties as governor. And, now that he has done just that, the Obacrats, who for their own nefarious reasons, swept Obama to power, are desperate to get Blags to nullify himself, since they know they have no legal, or moral, authority to do so. They also know now that Blagojevich knows it, too; by making the appointment, the Obacrats are not only rendered impotent, they’ve handcuffed and prevented themselves from exercising any power they might once have wielded. For, even if they impeach Blago, or he now resigns, there’s nothing that would make Roland Burris’ appointment to the Senate retroactively invalid. From Politico:
The Democrats’ preferred solution to the Burris problem is for the Illinois Legislature to impeach Blagojevich, paving the way for Democratic Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn to take his place and appoint someone other than Burris to Obama’s vacant seat. But even that could create a legal headache, legal observers say, since the Burris appointment would still be pending.
“Even if Blagojevich is impeached, that doesn’t undo all the actions he has taken as governor,” said Andrew Raucci, a former chief justice for the Illinois Court of Claims and now a Chicago-based attorney.
Democrats say that if Burris hasn’t been seated by the time Quinn takes over, he could name someone else to the seat by rescinding Burris’ certification papers.
Burris was having none of it. At a news conference at Chicago’s Midway Airport, the former Illinois attorney general testily said to reporters, “Why don’t you all understand that what has been done here is legal? I am the junior senator from Illinois, and I wish my colleagues in the press would recognize that. All the drama — I guess it keeps you all in a job.”
And, to make bad matters worse, not only is Burris adamant that he is the junior senator from Illinois no matter what ticky-tack maneuvers the Obacrats try to pull, the criminalization of day to day political manipulation makes every satellite in the Oba-universe vulnerable. Just ask Bill Richardson.
First, it was black people ranting and raving to anybody who would listen that now was the time that it was absolutely, positively, super-duper imperative that we elect a black man, any old black man, over some chick, because of the nation’s shameful treatment of African Americans in the past, as opposed to the chivalrous consideration traditionally afforded women. Not only was it a “chicken and egg” kind of good thing that any old black man just happened to be running, it was serendipitous that the pent up longings of an entire ethnic group (unfortunately, not minus the half disparaged in the latter portion of the following phrase) could be so succinctly expressed: “Bro’s before ‘ho’s.” If that ain’t poetry, I’m not a one-legged, screaming tree duck.
In a stunning display of man-lovin’-man solidarity, the “bro” indeed beat the “‘ho” as well as the “cunt.” A two-fer! American has sure come a long way, baby.
Once the Brother-in-Chief had dispatched the pesky breeders, it was time for other brothers in Congress to flex their pecs and demand that their numbers not decrease with the ascension of the Big, Black Cock of the Walk to the Big White House, no matter what. “Yeah, bruh,” said they,”we feel you on the ‘Governor played your ass’ thing, but that sounds like a personal problem, so man, you got to suck it up and let his equal opportunistically appointed knife in your back stand, or we gon’ have to pull a “Rev. Wright” and come after your ass. Either that or a “Jesse Jackson,” your call.”
And, lo and behold, (I’ve always wanted to use that in something) before the Black Moses of the Joshua Generation (okay, so it’s not Biblically accurate, it rolls) could cry, “Et tu, Bay-bay?” there was a new disadvantaged, historically disenfranchised group of disgruntled males to deal with (all females had been eliminated from the equation once the “elect the sister-’ho, Cunt” non-resistance had essentially allowed itself to be effectively put down.) From Politico:
National Latino leaders vowed Sunday to press President-electBarack Obama to nominate another Hispanic to the Cabinet post vacated by New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a leading light in the Latino community who caused “great disappointment” with his decision to withdraw from consideration.
Within hours of Richardson pulling his name for secretary of commerce, the head of the League of United Latin American Citizens had compiled a list of 10 Latino elected officials and corporate CEOs that would be offered to the Obama transition team. The list included Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), who turned down the U.S. trade representative post, Albuquerque Mayor Marty Chavez and Miami Mayor Manny Diaz.
I hear gay Eskimo American men and teetotaling Native American guys are starting not to feel the Obalove, either, and are thinking of forming an intra-state wheelchair ice basketball tournament and clambake in protest. Okay, they’re not; I made that up, but, with the way things are going could such a thing be far off?
Oh, and that “brother” the Guv’nuh and the Blackacrats are using as a human political football against the Obamassah’s Plantation team? They done “sent da dogs” after his ass:
Capitol Fax reports on the ongoing Springfield sideshow: ” The [House impeachment committee] has also issued a subpoena that was served Saturday on Roland Burris, the governor’s controversial choice to fill Illinois’ vacant U.S. Senate seat. The order compels Burris to testify Wednesday.”
Burris may not make it that day, as he’s expected to be in D.C., and last night gave a combative talk in which he said, among other things, “They can’t deny what the Lord has ordained.”
“I gets weary, and sick of tryin’…” Anybody know that song in Spanish? Maybe by a girl group? Wasn’t it written by a white guy?
Never mind, I’m just a girl, what the hell do I know?
*NOTE:In January, I wrote this post, in large part to try to make sense of the senseless, especially in the face of the tragedy being faced by fellow PUMA, Betty Jean Kling, and her daughters, (pictured above) Denise Richardson, then sufferring with ovarian cancer, and Louisa Richardson-Rodas, who had been shot in the face with a shotgun by her former brother-in-law. On March 7, 2009, Denise Richardson lost her valiant battle. Please take a moment to visit Betty Jean in her time of need, here.
I am not a feminist. For one thing, I’ve never really known exactly what the term means. Thankfully, Murphy at PUMA Pac provided me with a clue by posting this quote:
“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” – Rebecca West
While that’s nice to know, I’ve been more inclined to accept the “me, a name I call myself” type labels ever since I first learned the song that line comes from. Which brings me to another point, if feminist means celebrating the “feminine” that lets me out right there. I’ve never been, nor wanted to be, “feminine.” While I’m perfectly comfortable embracing the “female,” “feminine” has always seemed to me to be the definition of female as “less than,” and I can’t go for that. The “just a girl” attitude I’ve always perceived to be associated with the word “feminine” has always pissed me off.
Some might say that’s because I was born gay, but I’m not buying that either. While I was born gay, I didn’t really recognize that about myself until my mid-twenties, believe it or not, and didn’t really accept it until even later than that. “Gay” was just not talked about in my house, or anywhere else I was exposed to growing up in the late fifties, early sixties; there were girls, boys and tomboys. I was a tomboy. But even once I embraced my lesbianism, activism was never an option I considered; nobody I cared about, gay or straight, discriminated against me, and that was all that ever mattered to me.
I feel the same way about my blackness; I’m not militant about it; like being a gay woman, it is simply who I am, who I was born to be. I’ve always known I was black, everybody in my house was too, even though none of us really have the same hue. The first time I was aware of it was probably about the same time I realized girls were just as good as boys, about the same time I first heard “doe, a deer…” Seeing people on TV who were just like everybody else I knew, only a different color, made me ask my mother what was up with that one day around the time I started school. The nature of society as it was reflected on the news probably had something to do with my racial awakening, but even with all the unrest roiling around the country, to me my blackness was no big deal. Some people didn’t like girls and tomboys either, but that was their problem. Politicizing my “me-ness” has always seemed to me to be accepting of other people’s definition of who they think I should be, in fact, in my mind, to be radical about one’s inherent physical qualities requires that one define oneself on others’ terms.
I am a black gay woman.
Deal with it.
But, first and foremost, I am a human being. On that level, I’ve always been pissed off that some people think they’re better than other people, no matter what the reason. So what if you’re rich, or white, or smart, or tall, or go to a different church, or pee standing up? That’s who you are, we either like each other or we don’t; life goes on.
Maybe that’s why I’ve never been able to abide anybody abusing anybody else. Who do you think you are? What gives you the right to try to impose your will on somebody else? What makes you think you can hit, or hurt, or be mean to another person just because you’re mad about who they are? Because that’s what just about all conflict comes down to. We get mad at our lovers, spouses, friends, children, enemies because they’re not who we want them to be at that moment. The same is true for religion; you don’t worship the way I think you should so I hate you, you’re not the right kind of believer. You don’t drive the way I think people should drive so screw you, you’re not the driver I want you to be. You’re gay, you’re white, you’re stupid, you’re wrong. For some reason, too many of us think some aspect, any aspect, of other people’s reality is subject to our approval.
So people around the world blow other people up because they exist in places they don’t want them to be, people dedicate their lives to trying to force other people to behave according to the standards of their “one God who loves everybody the way they are,” people shoot other people because they own things they want and don’t want other people to have, people invent ways to hurt other people for being who they are. And nobody ever stops to consider how silly it all is.
A man wants a woman to behave the way he wants her to; he wants what he wants, when she won’t allow it, he shoots her in the face with a shotgun. That is the way he is. He has done things like that before, if not stopped, he will do it again. But, how do you stop him without becoming like him? If you do, when will the cycle stop? Because he hurts the woman, the people who love her will want him to be hurt the same way, that’s human nature. But, no matter how unreasonable he is and always has been, somebody loves him, too. And, even if they don’t love him, if he is hurt in return, some who identify with him will take up his cause and hurt people on his behalf. Which will of course require further retaliation; and so on, and so on…Ongoing wars that began millenia ago have been started in much the same way, many feuds, fights, turf wars, etc., have been started for less.
And, that is not the way we should be. But, what to do? No one should bear the pain of losing a family member, let alone two, to someone else’s ego-driven rage of insecurity. We can never, ever expect anyone to accept that kind of injustice. Their anguished howls of outrage and pain are outrageous and painful to all who hear them, and if they are unbearable for those of us not directly affected, and they are, we can only imagine the depths of the despair they feel, which anguishes us even more. Never would I suggest that anyone in that situation simply “take it” in the name of “getting along,” or “stopping the cycle.” But my outrage, pain and anguish is not because I empathise with another woman, but because she’s a human being.
As am I.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, as long as we, as a global society, a human family, approach our attempts at conflict resolution as feminists, blacks, gays, Christians, Jews, Muslims, whites, Democrats, Republicans, or any other kind of “-ists” “-isms” “-ians,” or “-ites,” we’re doomed to perpetual warfare, personally, nationally, politically, and ethnically. Until we see ourselves and others as what we are, human beings, there’s no hope for any of us.
My thoughts and prayers go out to fellow PUMA Betty Jean Kling and her daughters, Denise Richardson and Louisa Richardson-Rodas. May God bless them and show them mercy. I support her in all her endeavors to seek justice for her family and all who have ever, or might ever, find themselves in a similar situation, which is, unfortunately, all of us.
This angry, black, lesbian, Baptist human being reaches out with open arms to another human being suffering a fate no one should ever have to even contemplate, and offers her and her family love.
What comes from the heart, goes to the heart.
Though we have never met, Betty Jean, this post goes from my heart to yours.
If I have trivialized, misrepresented, sensationalized, or offended you in any way, please accept my humble apologies.
No lobbyists! Change Washington! The old ways must go! Blah, blah, blah. The Spokesmodel-In-Chief, Black Obama, has used, and, continues to use, these and other similar rah-rah phrases as his stock-in-trade bamboozle shtick, reading variations of them from cards and TelePrompTers, ad nauseum, throughout his national career, riding them to the White House like a gangster rapper in a pimped out Escalade,(or a good old boy in a cherry F-350, or a bailed out executive in a fully appointed private jet, or…you get the idea). And, to paraphrase Steely Dan, the poor people keep sleeping with the shade on the light; dreaming they’re awake, participating, and even (giggle) making a difference.
Organizing For America
The party Howard Doody Dean called “
Now that the Illinois State Senate has done its duty and 
I just watched a virtuoso performance by a master manipulator. Who cares if he’s guilty or not? The Illinois legislature never did, that much has been obvious from the beginning. But what artistry it took to engineer the opportunity to present an argument equally biased without rebuttal. Bravo!
Barack Obama has been pimping faith, any faith, for political power since the beginning of his professional career as a community organizer. Early on he made a conscious, callous decision to use the pulpit, any pulpit, to attempt to mobilize people into action. This is not a secret, it has been documented repeatedly, yet it has been marketed as most things Obama have been, it is what it is, but it means anything you want it to.
Poor President Black Obama. He keeps reaching out, sometimes all the way across the aisle, offering free rides on his pretty rainbow pony, Kumbayah, but alas, spiteful ingrates keep telling him what impossible anatomical places he can stuff his day passes to unity. First to reject the smarmy, “Hey, little girl, want a piece of candy?” approach of the scary man in the pretty car en masse, even though he drugged our big sister and made her stand 
Michelle Obama will soon join her husband, President Black Obama, in Washington D.C.’s Madame Toussaud’s Wax Museum, says the 
If the purpose of the Illinois Senate’s 
John Coleman, an Ohio fireman marching in the inaugural parade, winked and waved at President Black Obama in violation of “da roolz,” and was subsequently suspended for six months. From the 
The media is having a field day about the fact that the Governor Who Would Be Persecuted, Rod Blagojevich, aka 
America, gotta love her. While everybody dances to the 
Nope. Though 
President Black Obama came into office on a promise to “
It’s a good thing President Black Obama is…black on slow news days. Talk about a reliable “go-to” subject. I mean, now that it’s obvious that 
There have been a number of recent signs that we are in for an administration where petty is politics, and it starts right at the very top. In a “private” (in a “transparent government” kind of way) bi-partisan meeting about his stimulus proposal, President Petulance basically told one of the members who made the meeting “bi-,” (partisan) Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) that he was going to get his way because he was president and he wanted to. From 
Guilty in the press, Rod Blagojevich not only came out swinging at a press conference today, he was 
Once upon a time there was a Pony. A big, beautiful, magnificent Pony that all the Children wanted to ride. The beautiful Pony, called Unity, was owned by everyone and no one; yet one, The Evil, desperately wanted to claim him for his very own. This infuriated everyone in the Land who knew of his plans, especially Queen of Good, who wanted all the children to ride at once, forever and ever, as far as the sky. But, The Evil was greedy, and unwise in the ways of the Land, for he was new to it. And, though born in a Bastion of Light, in The Place of the Sewers from which he chose to come, Pony rides were assigned only to the Wicked of Favors. This made the Queen of Good very sad.
While everybody’s obsessing over The President of the Perpetual Press Conference’s Very Big Most Impressive First Day of sternly issuing orders for people to get around to doing stuff later right away, and 
By now, everybody knows, that for some reason, President Press Conference decided getting the Oath of Office right was important enough to drag Chief Justice Fumblemouth to his office to re-administer it, even though 
Caroline Kennedy, the entitled heiress nobody, besides herself and Al Sharpton, wanted to assume Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s now vacant Senate seat, has finally gotten the message and taken her name out of consideration. So says CBS News affilliate, 
Let’s be honest, The TelePrompTer-Reader-In-Chief is a lousy speaker, who gives crappy speeches written by a hack of an adolescent cardboard groping speechwriter wannabe. He doesn’t say anything pretty well, or, he says nothing pretty good, but that’s a dubious skill shared by many forgettable people. He never connects with his audience, if he takes his eyes off the TelePrompTer screen for even a second, he loses his place and stats stuttering and sputtering like a teapot on a low boil. Why do so many people see what they want to see in him, and more incomprehensibly, why do so many want a man so lacking to succeed?
As black Americans 
Suppose The View’s Elizabeth Hasselbeck announced that she was running for president in 2012? As a Democrat? Feminist? What if she hired a sharp, ruthless, barracuda of a campaign manager who stage-managed an almost flawless production, assembling bright, committed women and men willing to think outside the box in order to get the job done, using the mysteriously acquired unlimited funds at her disposal to get Elizabeth’s unique, yet poignant story to the masses? If Elizabeth, who has always claimed to be politically independent, dramatically recanted all previously uttered conservative statements as having been made under duress; unduly influenced and perpetually frightened as she has been because of years of abuse, would you buy it? How would you feel as you watched millions of people leap aboard her bandwagon, commiserating with her misery, applauding her for her courage in freeing herself from her oppressor, as all women must be made to feel free to do?
As we near the completion of the politically motivated, Madison Avenue designed, stage managed transition from the Civil Rights Era of Dr. Martin Luther King to the myth of reality that is “post-racial” America’s eager embrace of fantasy as political policy represented by the passage of a proverbial torch-of-the-day to the Man Who Would Be Whoever He Need Impersonate at the moment for approval, perhaps a bit of reflection is in order. As the mainstream media and internet bombard us with flowery, yet often illusory reportage of a nation united in celebration of triumph over its problems of its own making, having collectively overcome challenges only conquered through individual prevail, honest introspection might prove beneficial.
Obama
Hey, pay no attention to the fact that the United States 
You know, I’m not usually one for pissing on other people’s parades, but when they seem hellbent on pissing on mine, all bets are off. The arrogance of the assumption that every single “true blue,” and especially, “real” black, American is, or should be, quivering in anticipation of the formal installation of Barack Obama as Spokesmodel-In-Chief, just because he’s black, and it’s “time” for America to live up to it’s “promise,” so let’s dance and sing and call each other “brother,” is gallingly offensive.
Like it’s been some big, huge secret up to now, the press is starting to admit just how much they’re being 
Okay, looks like my blog brother 
Since many of us would rather pull our lips up over our heads and secure them in place with vice grips than watch a minute of the travesty of the overlong, overblown, overindulgent, overpriced installation of the Mass Marketed Messiah as president of our country, I’ve decided to offer some fun alternative activities to fill the next few interminable days (or, put another way, the next excruciatingly long, infinitely numbered seconds, minutes and hours) without access to television or any other normal news sources. All are welcome to share their own suggestions with a sure-to-be grateful PUMAsphere.
Government of the people by popular demand. Tough decision facing the country? Take a poll, do a focus group, flip a coin, make a committee-written, TelePrompTer-read speech. That’s just the way things work today. What does the public want? What do the people need? Who cares? Decide what you’re going to give them, then send out your bright, buff spokesmodel with the pretty teeth to visit the press and sit on their laps and wiggle while he whispers your sweet nothings in their ears. He gets paid, the media gets laid and the people get screwed. We are a reality show, and we voted for the Survivor spokesmodel who “outwitted,” “outplayed,” and “outlasted”. Just the way the UniParty who hired him wants it.
First he takes them to 
If the story first reported by the 
In a recent post over at 
Why would Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich beseech the legislative body determined to remove him from office based on allegations of wrongdoing to “find the truth and sort things out, to put the business of the people first?” Presiding over a “tense swearing in of the state Senate,” comprised of lawmakers who have made no secret that they’ve already made up their minds that he’s not only guilty of any and everything he has ever been accused of in his life, he’s beneath contempt, why doesn’t he just play along and act guilty? Is he crazy, or does he know something the rest of us can only guess at? From 
There’s something charming about the gleefully delusional. Wide-eyed innocence can be a wonder to behold. But, the current spectacle of masses of supposedly sophisticated Americans delightedly slapping metaphorical “kick me” signs on their own backs as they happy-dance the jester’s jig to their place in line for the ramp that rolls them to their assigned place under the speeding Obabus to Hell, is an event unwitnessed and unrivaled since 
If the most 
Hillary Clinton
Senator Roland Burris.
I’m beginning to think that the art of politics (if there is such a thing) is the ability to get strangers to pretend to understand when you talk nonsense out of both sides of your mouth. Unfortunately, that is also today’s definition of journalism. That makes looking for turds of political wisdom among the media bullshit as much fun as a scavenger hunt in a sewer. And just as obvious.
“The View” and “Playgirl” seem radical by comparison, boasted an improbable cover touting Obama’s non-existent feminist creds, going so far as to depict him as the women’s movement’s very own super hero, a giant leap up, in the wrong direction, from Prince Charming or Barbie’s Ken.
Uh-oh. The Obacrats, with their shaky 
You can’t surf the news sites without reading a superfluity of stupidity as it regards our first black president-elect. Like this nugget from 
Stop the presses! Hold the phone! Batten the hatches! Hold that line! Tote that barge! Lift that b…Okay, I get carried away, sometimes, but this is news! Barack Obama, the man who raised begging to a fine art, and cleverly figured out how hundreds of big donors could give him 
Wheeeee! Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved to spin. Shoulda been a journalist. Or an Obatician, but nah, that sounds like a doctor who only delivers little Baracks. I shudder to think. Even though, it would be kinda cool to be a Mainstream Media Barackaspinner, (talk about redundant) I could make stuff up about him and pretend like it was true and nobody would say anything. Anyway, a love of spinning would come in handy for just about anybody, since the drivel the professional spinners spin is almost comprehensible only when you’re already dizzy.
In a classic case of a herd isolating a wounded pack member to be sacrificed to a hungry predator in order to save the majority, the Illinois legislature is determined to 
“Don’t let the door hitcha where the good Lord splitcha!” Barack Obama, who 
As anybody in the PUMAsphere could have told them, 
I am a PUMA today for the exact same reason I went looking to become something that didn’t yet exist on May 31, 2008; I object to the manner in which Barack Obama became my president. And nothing I’ve seen before or since has mitigated that essential truth in the slightest, in fact, the more I see of the way he operates, the more upset I get. Barack Obama offends my sense of fair play. From what I’ve been able to determine through my research of him, he has pushed the against “
As the wheels on the Barack Obama “Obus” seem to be improbably blowing out simultaneously, all over the ever-increasing hordes of former sycophants he’s so fond of tossing under it, there’s evidence that a new driver just might be reporting for duty who can get it rolling again. The 
Let’s face it, the Democrats don’t like Governor Rod Blagojevich. Especially those Democrats loyal (if such a thing as political loyalty indeed exists) to President-elect Barack Obama, the Obacrats, which is all the suck-ups in the party. Which is the overwhelming majority.
Whoever thought maneuvering Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich into a position that allowed U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to officially criminalize machine politics-as-usual for political advantage has got to be the biggest neophyte yahoo rube to come down the pike since…Barack Obama. Let’s review. Barack Obama, the only African American in the Senate for two years, mysteriously generates enough money and clout to mount a successful run for the presidency out of a political environment so corrupt that “Lincoln would roll over in his grave,” how? By being an all-around, all-American, above-board, swell, good guy, of course. Sure.
First, it was black people ranting and raving to anybody who would listen that now was the time that it was absolutely, positively, super-duper imperative that we elect a black man, any old black man, over 
