Scary Black Man Stories: The New Black Panther Case

There is major gnashing of teeth over the New Black Panther Party and the decision by the DOJ not to prosecute some of its members on voter intimidation charges initially brought by the department and then inexplicably dropped. J. Christian Adams, a former trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division testified before the U.S. Civil Rights commission that top officials at the Justice Department killed the case and flatly declared that “The section doesn’t want to protect white voters.”

The DOJ filed its complaint under Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act.  Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act (42 U.S.C. 1973i(b) states that:

“No person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise, shall intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for voting or attempting to vote, or intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for urging or aiding any person to vote or attempt to vote, or intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for exercising any powers or duties under section 3(a), 6, 8, 9, 10, or 12(e).”

According to the Campaign Legal Center Blog, "the legislative history of this law makes clear that Congress wanted to expand the scope of voter protection by enacting a law that would bar voter intimidation.  In fact, Congress’s explanations of the purposes behind Section 11(b) support the view that neither proof of intent to intimidate nor proof of any actual effect of voter intimidation must be shown to establish a violation of Section 11(b).  Rather, as DOJ has read the statute, an interpretation I share, plaintiffs need only show that the conduct engaged in had a tendency to intimidate, threaten or coerce a reasonable voter.  Importantly, there is no requirement that to prevail under Section 11(b) that a plaintiff prove any purpose of subjective intent to intimidate."

Based on the CLC's reading of the statute and the legislative history behind it, on its face, the decision to drop the case doesn't seem to make much sense.  It would seem the case was very clear cut.  Further, since the defendants failed to appear in court to defend themselves, the government stood to win this one by default.  I'm betting the DOJ officials that made the bonehead call to dismiss the case are sure wishing they had gone the other way now.  Former DOJ attorneys like Robert Driscoll, a Deputy Assistant Attorney General from 2001-03,  are backing up Adam's charges that the Civil Rights enforcement division won't enforce voting rights laws in a race neutral manner. The DOJ had already won this case. All that was left was to show up for sentencing.  It was boneheaded not to go ahead and take the convictions which the Panthers handed to them.

On the other hand, As reported at the Adam Sewer Archive "the decision not to file a criminal case occurred before Obama was even in office. From the testimony of Thomas Perez, head of the Civil Rights Division, before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in May:

This means that the case was downgraded to a civil case 11 days before Obama was inaugurated, 26 days before Eric Holder became attorney general, and about nine months before Thomas Perez was confirmed as head of the Civil Rights Division.  Obama's DOJ inherited the dumbed down case.  If the Bush DOJ's decision not to pursue the case was not cause for outrage, why should the fact that Obama and Holder are black be so when they have done nothing more than maintain continuity with the prior administration's enforcement decision?

The answer is it shouldn't.   Call the effort to portray it as racially motivated bias against whites by a government apparatus under the control of a black president and black DOJ head what it is: Race Baiting: implying that there is an underlying race-based motive in the actions of others towards the group baited, where none in fact exists.

Rush, the GOP Race Baiter in Chief

Race Baiting: implying that there is an underlying race-based motive in the actions of others towards the group baited, where none in fact exists.

GOP messaging fails just go on and on and on.  Rush, the GOP's race baiter in chief is at it again.  Rush is no longer bothering to slyly couch his race baiting.  Now, he just issues an overt rhetorical attack on the President and since 90% + blacks supported Obama, by extension, he's talking about the rest of us too.  He's most recent race baiting goodness from the July 2nd show:

Why aren't we growing jobs in this country like we used to?  Why aren't we?  It's not hard to do.  There's all kinds of textbook evidence, real-life historical evidence of how to do it.  We're not doing it; we're not doing it on purpose.  It's payback time.  All the people who are unemployed? It's time for you to find out what it's like to be an American all these 200 years.  "Yeah, greatest country on earth, superpower? Right.  Well, might have been for some people, but you're going to find out what it's been like for 200 years for some of us to be an American.  It's payback time."  That's what's going on here. 

For his massive audience, he ascribes to the President of the United States a racial revenge motive.  He basically argues that the black president and the black DOJ head have it in for white people.  Its naked racebaiting....and no one in the GOP will object to it.

Letter to Lincoln: Stereotypes Disguised as Satire Reflect Real Views of Tea Party and GOP Rank & File

Mark Williams,  leader of the Tea Party Express, in response to the NAACP's resolution calling on the Tea Party to expel bigots from its ranks wrote a Letter to Lincoln.

I've reproduced it below as Williams has removed it from his site, but you can find the text and and a screenshot here:

Dear Mr. Lincoln
We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!

In fact we held a big meeting and took a vote in Kansas City this week. We voted to condemn a political revival of that old abolitionist spirit called the ‘tea party movement’.  The tea party position to “end the bailouts” for example is just silly. Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn’t that what we want all Coloreds to strive for? What kind of racist would want to end big money welfare? What they need to do is start handing the bail outs directly to us coloreds! Of course, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the only responsible party that should be granted the right to disperse the funds.

And the ridiculous idea of “reduce[ing] the size and intrusiveness of government.” What kind of massa would ever not want to control my life? As Coloreds we must have somebody care for us otherwise we would be on our own, have to think for ourselves and make decisions!

The racist tea parties also demand that the government “stop the out of control spending.” Again, they directly target coloreds. That means we Coloreds would have to compete for jobs like everybody else and that is just not right. Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government “stop raising our taxes.” That is outrageous! How will we coloreds ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! The tea party expects coloreds to be productive members of society?

Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house. Please repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments and let us get back to where we belong.

Sincerely
Precious Ben Jealous, Tom’s Nephew NAACP Head Colored Person

 Mark Williams' letter played right into the hands of Tea Party opponents on the left.  Numerous commentators and the general public have labeled it a virulent screed that is so offensive on its face that it proves the NAACP's point. Reading this letter, my personal take on this guy is that he is really angry at black people, because he employs some nasty stereotyping and insulting language. Looking at his history, this isn't new.  A regularly intelligent commentator here, the Everlasting Phelps, once pointed out to me that white people are convinced that racism is evil and this explains why Tea Party denials of racism are often so vehement as to appear unhinged.  That's the charitable way to interpret the virulence of Mark Williams' response to the NAACP in terms of this letter and his public comments.

I don't feel particularly charitable however. I feel like talking some truth.  Here's one. The underlying stereotypes and background assumptions in Mark Williams Letter to Lincoln reflect what he and a majority of Tea Party members really feel about blacks as a political constituency, disguised as satire. Here's another.  Conservatives often use satire to respond to criticism from the black community because if they straightforwardly articulated their actual thoughts, the general public would find them repugnant. 


Let me clarify the meaning of what I said above just a bit. Specifically, I'm NOT declaring Williams to be a racist. If you read this blog even semi-regularly then you already know I consider the term "racist" to be almost devoid of utility in our public discourse due to its gratuitous misuse.  I am declaring that Williams does not consider blacks to be a political constituency necessary or essential to the Tea Party's aspirations for governance and is representative of the Tea Party rank and file he leads in that respect.  

I make this conclusion based on the way in which Williams draws on stereotypes and what I consider widely shared assumptions within the Tea Party in the writing of his letter. Lets examine them:


As Coloreds we must have somebody care for us otherwise we would be on our own, have to think for ourselves and make decisions!

Williams is expressing here in satire what I will argue to all comers is a dominant sentiment among Tea party members and quite frankly the GOP rank and file, namely that blacks are brainwashed thralls of the left and so incapable of independent thought that it is essentially not even worth the effort to engage them in political discourse. Its why the messaging of the GOP and the Tea Party is so consistently bad on the issue of race. Tea Party rank and file members don't believe blacks as political constituency engage in any thoughtful consideration of the merits of conservative positions, but  reflexively resist conservatives because they are told to. Its a perspective that has evolved to a species of contempt on the part of Tea Party and conservative GOP leadership and rank and file which prevents them from seeing or engaging blacks as rational political actors.

  Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn’t that what we want all Coloreds to strive for?
  How will we coloreds ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn?

These two comments flow from the idea that blacks are unwilling to work hard, preferring to benefit from the efforts of the white working class via welfare programs or other government largess paid for by the tax dollars of the white working class. I think Williams believes this to be essentially true, but since he won't say it straightforwardly, he can only thinly disguise it as satire to maintain plausible deniability to the charge that he is trafficking in stereotypes. 

 That means we Coloreds would have to compete for jobs like everybody else and that is just not right.

This line plays to the related idea that what jobs blacks have, we don't earn, but rather are given them through misguided affirmative action policies at the expense of hard working whites.  Again, I will argue this is what Williams feels about blacks as a political constituency but can't say in any way other than satire without repelling most people. I will further argue to all comers that this feeling is widely shared by the members of the Tea Party movement in general. 

These themes permeate the discourse and the unspoken and spoken views of the Tea Party Express membership. Thats absolutely true, because Mark Williams is the spokesperson and leader of that group. He articulates the feelings and viewpoints of his membership.  He is their leader and spokesperson because they believe he represents and articulates their views the best.


Its unfortunate. Mark Williams and the Tea Party movement writ large have a political point of view that many blacks would find appealing, and when he articulates that, he is in the zone.  Listen to him here on Anderson Cooper: 

 

If  the Tea Party stuck to that message, they'd do just fine with black folks.  

Williams has since appeared on Geraldo at Large along with Sharpton and Ben Jealous and some others and to hear Williams tell it, they all managed to sing Kumbaya by the time the program ended.  I'm reserving judgment on that score until I see the video after it airs. Perhaps a moderation of my view on Williams himself may be in order. We'll see. 


In any event, I have strong words on the Letter to Lincoln and strong assertions. I'm open to having those assertions disputed.  Give it your best shot.

Political Buffoon: Malik Zulu Shabazz

This man is a political buffoon. I weep for black youth influenced by this fool. Geraldo has really slipped in his craft. As interviews go, this was pathetic. Everybody is doing the same thing these days, tee up some gotcha video or audio and then try to castigate your guest instead of ask intelligent questions and let your audience hear and assess their answer.

DOJ Should Have Prosecuted New Black Panthers....For Criminal Stupidity

I don't know if this is the sum total of all the video evidence in the black panther voter intimidation case.  The video by itself  is interesting to me.  You've got this poll worker who is so "intimidated", but he's able to carry on a conversation with the Panther dimwit and film him with his cell phone camera.  You've also got white and black people coming in and out of the polling place and they don't seem to be paying much attention to the Panthers at all. As evidence of how the Panthers struck fear into the hearts of voters, it doesn't seem to hold up.

Full blown racial fear mongering mania has broken out on the left and right and it really concerns me. I'll have more to say on that shortly.  But I guess my biggest reaction here is to the so called New Black Panthers themselves. It would be much more constructive to prosecute them for being a bunch of lazy, stupid, loser black men.  Do I sound harsh? Not if you read what passes for the New Black Panther manifesto as laid out in their 10 Point Plan.  I threw up in my mouth a little as I read it.  AG Holder has allowed the Obama administration to become associated with a bunch of dimwits who advocate, with a straight face, some of the following:
 
We want full employment for our people and we demand the dignity to do for ourselves what we have begged the white man to do for us. We believe that since the white man has kept us deaf, dumb and blind, and used every dirty trick in the book to stand in the way of our freedom and independence, that we should be gainfully employed until such time we can employ and provide for ourselves

We believe our people should be exempt from ALL TAXATION as long as we are deprived of equal justice under the laws of the land and the overdue reparations debt remains unpaid. We will accept payment in fertile and mine rally rich land, precious metals, industry, commerce and currency.

We want all Black Men and Black Women to be exempt from military service.

 We [therefore] believe that all Black People should unite and form an African United Front and arm ourselves for self-defense.

We want freedom for all Black Men and Black Women held in international, military, federal, state, county, city jails and prisons. We believe that all Black People and people of color should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial. Released means released to the lawful authorities of the Black Nation.

We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And, as our political objective, we want NATIONAL LIBERATION in a separate state or territory of our own, here or elsewhere, a liberated zone (New Africa or Africa), and a plebiscite to be held throughout the BLACK NATION in which only we will be allowed to participate for the purposes of determining our will and DIVINE destiny as a people.

Nice going Eric.  Holy Mother of God, I'm not even going to bother to point out all of the horrific idiocy on display in the above.  This is an organization of losers led by losers.  Someone at DOJ should have brought charges of crimes against humanity's intelligence, not voter intimidation.  These guys are fringe losers so far out from the edge of the black mainstream they are hovering in mid air.  Before this case, I had never heard of these morons. Now, thanks to the DOJ and the hysterical racial fear mongering of the right, we'll probably be hearing from this embarrassment to righteous black men everywhere until we are nauseous.

King Samir Shabazz is the leader of the Philadelphia chapter of the NBP, starring in the video above and in full Negro stupidity mode below.  The national head of the NBP is a brother by the name of Malik Zulu Shabazz, I kid you not, thats the name this brother picked to replace his "slave name" of Paris Lewis.  Zulu? Really?  He's a graduate of Howard which just gives me more heartburn that such a fine institution has to be associated with this bunch of victimhood promoters. If they are smart, they will distance themselves from him quickly.

As an aside, what is with the popularity of Shabazz as a slave name replacement with this crowd anyway? Has Malcom X  popularized the name so much that all these militant pretenders keep copying it?  No originality. These guys are a complete embarrassment.  Militants? Activists? Nope.  More like cheesy entertainment, the kind you're embarrassed to tell people you even watch.  The politics of the deeply stupid.

Imagine if the Tea Party was Black

Staying with the White Privilege topice for a minute (Phelps, my comments are broken, I cant respond to your comment from yesterday, I'll get it fixed), this seems like a very thought provoking piece. The following was written by Tim Wise.  I don't think all of his examples work equally well, but quite a few of them are on the money.  Read it for yourself and then tell me in the comments if he has a point or not.

----------------------------------

Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we’ll conjure - the ones who are driving the action - we’ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins.

So let’s begin.

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama.

Imagine that a prominent mainstream black political commentator had long employed an overt bigot as Executive Director of his organization, and that this bigot regularly participated in black separatist conferences, and once assaulted a white person while calling them by a racial slur. When that prominent black commentator and his sister — who also works for the organization — defended the bigot as a good guy who was misunderstood and “going through a tough time in his life” would anyone accept their excuse-making? Would that commentator still have a place on a mainstream network? Because that’s what happened in the real world, when Pat Buchanan employed as Executive Director of his group, America’s Cause, a blatant racist who did all these things, or at least their white equivalents: attending white separatist conferences and attacking a black woman while calling her the n-word.

Imagine that a black radio host were to suggest that the only way to get promoted in the administration of a white president is by “hating black people,” or that a prominent white person had only endorsed a white presidential candidate as an act of racial bonding, or blamed a white president for a fight on a school bus in which a black kid was jumped by two white kids, or said that he wouldn’t want to kill all conservatives, but rather, would like to leave just enough—“living fossils” as he called them—“so we will never forget what these people stood for.” After all, these are things that Rush Limbaugh has said, about Barack Obama’s administration, Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama, a fight on a school bus in Belleville, Illinois in which two black kids beat up a white kid, and about liberals, generally.

Imagine that a black pastor, formerly a member of the U.S. military, were to declare, as part of his opposition to a white president’s policies, that he was ready to “suit up, get my gun, go to Washington, and do what they trained me to do.” This is, after all, what Pastor Stan Craig said recently at a Tea Party rally in Greenville, South Carolina.

Imagine a black radio talk show host gleefully predicting a revolution by people of color if the government continues to be dominated by the rich white men who have been “destroying” the country, or if said radio personality were to call Christians or Jews non-humans, or say that when it came to conservatives, the best solution would be to “hang ‘em high.” And what would happen to any congressional representative who praised that commentator for “speaking common sense” and likened his hate talk to “American values?” After all, those are among the things said by radio host and best-selling author Michael Savage, predicting white revolution in the face of multiculturalism, or said by Savage about Muslims and liberals, respectively. And it was Congressman Culbertson, from Texas, who praised Savage in that way, despite his hateful rhetoric.

Imagine a black political commentator suggesting that the only thing the guy who flew his plane into the Austin, Texas IRS building did wrong was not blowing up Fox News instead. This is, after all, what Anne Coulter said about Tim McVeigh, when she noted that his only mistake was not blowing up the New York Times.

Imagine that a popular black liberal website posted comments about the daughter of a white president, calling her “typical redneck trash,” or a “whore” whose mother entertains her by “making monkey sounds.” After all that’s comparable to what conservatives posted about Malia Obama on freerepublic.com last year, when they referred to her as “ghetto trash.”

Imagine that black protesters at a large political rally were walking around with signs calling for the lynching of their congressional enemies. Because that’s what white conservatives did last year, in reference to Democratic party leaders in Congress.

In other words, imagine that even one-third of the anger and vitriol currently being hurled at President Obama, by folks who are almost exclusively white, were being aimed, instead, at a white president, by people of color. How many whites viewing the anger, the hatred, the contempt for that white president would then wax eloquent about free speech, and the glories of democracy? And how many would be calling for further crackdowns on thuggish behavior, and investigations into the radical agendas of those same people of color?

To ask any of these questions is to answer them. Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark “other” does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and “American-ness” of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.

And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.

Game Over.

Tim Wise is a prominent anti-racist writer and activist.  His latest book is called Between Barack and a Hard Place.

Steele: No Longer Relevant

RNC Chairman Michael Steele

I've been critical of Michael Steele from the day he assumed the office of RNC chair. It began on the very day of his election, when asked what message he had for the president and he replied "how do you like me now?" It continued through a disappointing early Esquire magazine interview laced with profanity and reached a new low when he came to Indianapolis, my homebase, for the Young Republican election and encouraged minorities "ya'll come. I got the fried chicken".  It only got worse with nonsensical explanations that it was all strategic.  I certainly wanted him to be successful, but from the very opening bell of his chairmanship, he sounded one false note after another.

Now,  it looks like all of the accumulated, self inflicted damage may be approaching a tipping point.  Steele appears to be merely a figurehead, a political dead man walking. His latest embarrassment is the booty shaking party the RNC recently footed the bill for at a topless bar.  The RNC fired the staffer who approved the expenditure and now comes word that the RNC chief of staff has stepped down.  As aptly observed by Hot Air  "So the chairman with the allegedly slim margin of error is still there but the underling with the wiiiiiide margin of error isn’t?"

Steele indicated near the beginning of his term that his tenure would be judged by elections won and money raised. While the GOP can certainly point to election wins, on the money front,  the GOP's big money donors, worried about spendthrift ways and repeated gaffes, are not only withholding their support from the RNC, but have actually created a shadow RNC operation which has already raised $30 million bucks. Compare that to the Republican National Committee which had only $8.4 million in the bank  in January, compared with the $22.8 million it had on had a year earlier when Steele was elected chairman.

With this development, it seems to me that Steele has become a marginalized and impotent figurehead at the top of the RNC operation.  In the current political climate, its hard to see how the RNC can't  raise the cash to compete in the fall elections.  Although this shadow operation probably has been in the works for some time, Steele's gaffes are the biggest reason the big money donors are walking away from the RNC to alternatives for their money.  When they start raising the money around you, thats a statement that you're not relevant AT ALL.

Steele can't be fired by the party's big money donors since he was elected by a different constituency, the state party chairs. A majority vote of that group is necessary to bounce him out of the job and that seems unlikely on the record before us since they are mostly busy with primaries and state level work, not inside the beltway games.  But when the party elite create fundraising mechanisms that work to funnel millions of dollars around the RNC, effectively cutting Steele out of the serious decision making loop, doesn't this make him the worst sort of token?  The gaffes, the burn rate, the general mismanagement of the GOP message, these are reason enough to permit the creation of a shadow RNC, but not to vote Steele out of office?  The party elite can't fire him and the state chairs don't consider him important enough to pay attention to.  If that's not the definition of irrelevant, I don't know what it is.  The situation leaves room for the interpretation that the GOP doesn't respect the chair enough to look him in the eye and tell him "the job you're doing isn't up to par and we're gonna make a change" in order to avoid the optics of firing a black man.

That's probably too strong. There are good, practical and political reasons not to dump Steele now; with just months to go to November elections and his term ending in January anyway, it would create disarray and havoc on   fundraising and organization in this runup period. The optics would be spun by lamestream media for the racial angle, helped along by Steele's own comments on ABC's "Good Morning America. It would be an enormous distraction and a gift to the Democrats.

Political Season's prediction: Steele will serve out his term and then a new chair will be named to helm the RNC ship.  Steele has said he won't step down under the pressure from party elites.  He's making it clear that he's not their guy.  The 168 state party chairs who's votes are required to bounce him don't appear interested in working up the energy to muster a 2/3 vote to oust him, which suggests that despite the complaints of the party elite and Steele's gaffes, their basic needs are being met by the RNC. 

What do you think? Is there any merit to Steele's claim that his "margin for error" is slimmer than a white chairman's would be? Am I wrong in my analysis to conclude that Steele has now become irrelevant to the shaping of the national political discussion and agenda? Is it an unfair assessment to say that Steele is now more punch line than politico?

Tea Party Protests Unfairly Characterized

Hat tip to Cobb:

If you needed some visual proof that the criticism of Bush from the left during his term was every bit as rabid and unhinged as that directed at Obama now, here's some for you. Those of you on the left that scream the Tea Party movement is made entirely of racially motivated Obama Derangement Syndrome zombies, look at this.  Look at it and OWN IT.  If the signs and the language and the Hitler, fascism, socialism, dictator, freedom destroying comparisons are the measure of irrationality, then you were every bit as unhinged as the Tea Party members you criticize now. 

If you call yourself a member of the Tea Party movement or a conservative and are among the group of people who are quick to point out that the left was crazy in their protests, you can rightly feel vindicated, but you shouldn't feel particularly superior.  Essentially, the standard of political behavior coming out of the GOP right isn't any better. We keep saying "they did it too".   It seems to me we are setting the standard for the quality of political discourse way too low.

Black People, Stop Calling the C-SPAN Republican line

This is just really funny to me. I could not help but chuckle when I listened to it.  I can't even get mad at the caller. He wasn't raving and I don't think you can read his comments as anti-black necessarily with the exception of that "blackspan" bit (still kinda funny).  That was a little on the edge of being racially nasty.  But basically, he was mad because black people are calling in on the GOP and independent line, crowding out the white folks, when 90% of black folks support Obama, which he accurately points out with the Jesus reference. So this guy calls in to appeal to the C-SPAN moderators to fix this problem of these black folks calling in on the wrong lines, so he can get a word in edgewise. Fair is fair black people.
Stop frontin on the wrong lines. Don't call in on the GOP and independent lines if you ain't one, so your fellow GOP citizens can have their say too.

Idiot

Chris Matthews is a most excellent media cretin. I wish we could forget his career.

Oratory Is Not Enough

President Obama will give his first State of the Union speech tonight at 9 pm Eastern.  I'll watch, but my expectations are extremely low.  No matter how stirring the oratory is tonight, there is nothing Obama can say this evening that will erase the fact that he has now demonstrated that he is unequal to this moment in history. In fairness, perhaps no one could have been. Two wars, an economy in shambles, a body politic divided, a terrorist enemy at the gates; if ever there was a presidency that would be forged in the crucible of events, this is one, as was that of Obama's predecessor, George Bush.

Obama has not been equal to his promises. No one in their right mind expected him to do all that he promised in exactly the way that he promised.  But what I think people did expect and had some right to expect was that he would be true to the spirit of his hope and change mantra. Sure, we knew there would be compromises, some deviation and we frankly expected some dissapointment because we expected the pragmatist to straightforwardly tell us "hey, this isn't doable and here's why" straightup.

But, as Mort Zuckerman bitterly and very accurately observed, Obama has revealed himself to be more ideological than pragmatic.  What we have learned is that Obama practices small "p" pragmatism.  That his political heart and center are not big enough to fill the space created by his oratory.  He has fallen very short of the heights he called not only us to, but himself.  No amount of inspired oratory tonight or any other night can or will close the gap between the stirring heights of his rhetoric and the prosaic plateau of his deeds.

That gap can only be closed by deeds and decisions more informed, wise and courageous than most that have preceded this moment. Hope and change indeed.  Let us hope that Obama can change.

Corporate "Speech" is Inferior to Human "Speech"

More of my reaction to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission,

I've no problem with corporations being granted rights. Rule sets are necessary for the proper operation of these constructs. However, I have a distinct and visceral negative reaction to the idea that a corporation should have equality of stature to humans under the Constitution in frankly any dimension. I think the Court overreaches when it elevates these entities to the same level of humans under the Constitution. Its a slippery slope to say that corporations are "persons" with rights equal to human beings under the Constitution, and I want to know where does it end. If their "speech" is equal to mine, the vote is political "speech". If they are persons, why not just give them the franchise? All of the rights of individual, flesh and blood human beings under our constitution flow from the fact that we are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights. This cannot be said of corporations. How do we get to conferring these rights onto an artificial, legal construct made by humans? Consider the ways in which corporations are entirely different from humans:

1. A corporation does not understand what is right or wrong.
2. The vast majority of corporations are for purposes of commerce and have only one motive: to make it's stockholders/owners money.
3. A corporation can not be imprisoned and understands no sense of punishment.
4. A corporation has no lifespan.

I have a problem with a ruling that elevates the "speech' of such an entity under the constitution to a level equal to that of a human being. The ruling itself references the fact that corporations are derivative constructs, created products of human activity, and cites this fact as a rationale for why their speech should not be restricted, but this is precisely the reason why their "speech" should not be accorded the same merit as that of an individual under the constitution. The rights of humans under the Constitution flow from the fact that we have certain inalienable rights granted by our Creator to us as living souls. Corporations do not qualify on this metric and their "speech' should not be accorded an equal status to individuals under the constitution.