An Open Letter to Color of Change

 I'm a member of Color of Change.  I have participated in some of your campaigns, such as the current one on the KelleyWilliams-Bolar case, which I was gratified to see you take on.  I'm a conservative, so I do not always agree with your campaign priorities.  I have the following comments and I hope you'll take them to heart.

1.  Democratize campaign formation; enable member defined campaigns, not just those COC picks: Color of Change has a large number of members, but its very top down when it comes to selecting campaigns.  You solicit campaign suggestions from members, but the selection of those campaigns is done by COC leadership.  Those decisions are not democratic, transparent or accountable to your membership in any meaningful way that I can see.  I think that your advocacy model would be that much more powerful if you changed that.  I would recommend a model for public online submission by members of campaigns and a mechanism for members to vote for the implementation of submitted campaigns.  I also suggest not only broadening the types of campaigns your system can enable, but that you open up the system to support user defined and created campaigns in addition to COC's sponsored campaigns. 

I would borrow shamelessly from the approach used at the website The Point.  That site has mechanisms for fundraising around user defined campaign goals baked right into the site.  I think incorporating some of their site ideas into COC could help you create an even more powerful platform, especially if you empower members to initiate and lead user defined campaigns.  The tea party movement has created a powerful "starfish" organization by enabling grass roots to take the initiative. Its a leaderless movement.  Draw from that and enable an equally disruptive and effective movement from the black community. Stop dictating the advocacy efforts of membership with a totally top down decision making approach to campaign formation, and I predict you will help unleash an incredible wave of activism. My other critique in this area is that you focus your campaigns more centrally around policy issues which are fundamentally in the best permanent interests of black folks, not simply those which fall in step with the democratic parties interests.  The two don't naturally coincide. I don't really expect you to change your political stripes, but you ought to exercise more independence from the democratic agenda than you do.

2. You need to go deeper with campaigns.  While attacking issues which are topical can be effective in the short term, the reality is that many of the major challenges the black community faces are bound up in systems changes that need to take place.   Making progress on a host of issues we face requires the application of effort, resources and persistence over time to win important policy, political and financial battles.  You need to explore ways to connect your members advocacy to long term efforts that have major payoffs when you win the issue.

Taser deaths in the United States is a good example.  Hard headed, strategic and coordinated pushback is whats required to change the behavior of police departments when it comes to taser use.  The typical reaction is a march, maybe some outraged advocacy around a specific incident.  But that simply is not enough to get us to the result we want when it comes to Taser use.  A long term campaign of coordinated, strategic action involving national civil rights organizations teamed up with local groups, employing negotiations and targeted legal/political pressure to make examples of police departments in egregious cases, raise the cost of unbridled taser use by departments and thereby effect a moderation in the use of tasers by police departments is whats required.

Your approach to campaigns currently can't support such a long term approach.  You can do the short term stuff, move people when emotions run hot, but not beyond. I've often asked the question on this blog "is a march the only thing in our playbook?".  Don't let the electronic advocacy you've engaged in so far become the only play in your book.   So I urge you to think about how you can use your system to engage a million black folk in the kind of long term sustained pressure strategies necessary to address issues such as police misconduct, financial policies that operate to our detriment, and a whole host of problems that require more than a quick email campaign.  

Your platform has been able to accomplish some good things. But now its time for it to evolve, and frankly COC too.  Take it to the next level.

Related articles

• Accountability: Who Else Will Go the Way of Congressman Bobby Rush? (my.firedoglake.com)
• Broadband Summit: No Escape From Controversy (theroot.com)
• Rep. Bobby Rush: Make No Mistake, Color of Change Does Not Represent Black Interests (huffingtonpost.com)
• Color of Change Rips Bobby Rush's 'Baseless Attack' (wired.com)
• ColorOfChange.org is 5 years old! (ynative77.wordpress.com)

Joseph Cao: Proof of Concept That Blacks and the GOP Go Together?

Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA) may be about to demonstrate how its done for the GOP on how to politically engage with the black community. Cao, a naturalized citizen of Vietnamese descent, is a New Orleans lawyer and the current U.S. Representative from Louisiana's 2nd congressional district. He defeated nine-term Democratic U.S. Representative William Jefferson with 49.6 percent of the vote to Jefferson's 46.8 percent in the 2008 elections. His win was an obvious referendum on the clearly corrupt Jefferson, collector of frozen benjamins.

Cao's district is about 61% African American and he's got a November challenger in state Rep. Cedric Richmond (D), an African American.  Democrats think Cao is vulnerable against a black challenger and pretty much assume that racial identification plus Cao's republican affiliation spells defeat in November.  However, Cao currently sports a quite healthy poll lead over the less well known Richmond. by a 51%-26% margin, according to a survey conducted May 27-June 2 by LA pollster Verne Kennedy. Cao leads Richmond by a 67%-13% margin among white voters, and by a narrower 39%-36% margin among African American voters. 

The poll lead appears to reflect the stronger support among his districts white voters than black ones, but blacks are the majority of the district and there is no good reason to think so many of them will stay home that he can afford to be complacent about their vote.  In point of fact, Cao has a great opportunity here to show the rest of the GOP how to communicate conservative values and policy positions to an African American voting audience and translate those ideas into conservative solutions that benefit his constituents. The fact that he currently maintains a poll lead with blacks over his challenger demonstrates that for black voters, its about performance, not just whether the candidate looks like them. If Cao can make the case that the GOP approach in their district is better, he can close the deal and in the process, cut off at the knees any and all excuses by the GOP for not effectively engaging with the black community as a political constituency. 

President Obama, Don't Leave Ms. Sherrod Under the Bus

Dear President Obama,

Secretary Vilsack's decision to fire Shirley Sherrod in response to Andrew Breitbart's fabricated racebaiting attack on her is unacceptable. That the White House has endorsed that action, given the facts that have come to light, is unconscionable.

It's one thing to rush to judgment. It's another to refuse to correct the error when it becomes clear that you were wrong.

On several occasions since you have been president, you have been willing to candidly admit when mistakes have been made. I applauded your candor in those moments and I urge you to be as straightforward and direct here.  You lose nothing by doing the right thing here, namely instructing Sec. Vilsack to reinstate Ms. Sherrod.  If you do not however, you co-sign a clear injustice and let stand a decision that the majority of the nation will be unable to respect. You gain the respect of the American people when your administration admits mistakes and rectifies them. That is what is called for here.

I therefore urge you in the strongest possible manner to reinstate Ms. Sherrod to her position, as the decision to force her to resign was made based on a lie.  Its the right thing to do.

NAACP Declares War on the Tea Party: Not A Good Look

 

Hat tip to Electronic Village for highlighting NAACP Chairman Roslyn Brock's speech at the NAACP 2010 convention July 11th in Kansas City.  Ms. Brock is part of the "new generation" of leadership that Julian Bond and the other old guard members of the NAACP leadership have passed the torch too.  Its too bad what she had to say sounds like the same old wine in new skins. I wanted to find something to be encouraged about in this speech, I really did, but color me totally unimpressed. Black folk catching hell and she's touting school snack programs? the opening of a few college chapters; so called curriculum reforms to teach civil rights history? Thats it? Thats the best you've got to tout as achievements? The speech has a constant focus on the wrongs done to us, not nearly enough of anything about problem solving in our communities. It was heavy on platitudes, way light on substance.

Here's the problem; the NAACP does not have a true strategic vision about what their purpose is. They are aligned with the democrats and with the White House and essentially have signed up to be a tool of the administration's policy aims. I heard a whole lot about healthcare but can someone tell me when the NAACP became healthcare experts and champions? The speech sounds like an organization doing little more than following the federal money trail and influence.  The NAACP is merely cosigning the administration's legislative objectives and pledging the NAACP to work on it. But they don't have an original thought going here. I didn't hear anything about what the NAACP thinks ought to happen on the issues, I just heard parroting of the administration's ideas. Black activist organizations and figures from Sharpton to the NAACP have been co-opted by Obama and politically lobotomized. There is at least a 50/50 chance that the Obama administration's policy goals will crash and burn. What is the NAACP going to do when they land on the wrong side of public opinion, especially when we experience the massive mid term election correction in control of the House and Senate come November? Or if they get thrown under the bus by Obama over the NBP debacle at DOJ?

The really bad news? This rudderless organization has signed up to be the shock troops of Obama and declared war on the Tea Party in what is really a transparent bid to be more political relevant, passing a resolution condemning bigotry within the Tea Party. Listen to Ben Jealous:

 Thats not a good look. Because I guarantee you there is enough foolishness, bad management, chicanery, nepotism, cronyism and worse to be found going on in and around the NAACP to quickly hoist them on their own petard. The NAACP had better be careful that they don't get ACORNED out of existence. The Tea Party are the right's shock troops and their special ops teams play real rough.

Interestingly enough (and disappointingly so) with the face off threatening to steal the thunder from yet another Holy Mother of God make it stop planned march for jobs and justice (HAH!)on Aug. 28th, usual suspects Jackson and Sharpton are putting distance between themselves and the comments.

I do like the "I'm an NAACP American"  campaign pledge though.  Sign the pledge.....I did. Hey Sarah, come sign it with me.

Somebody's Lying

Will Folks                     Nikki Haley

The South Carolina gubernatorial race with just two weeks to go has become a real soap opera. Republican candidate Nikki Haley is vehemently denying claims by conservative blogger Will Folks that the two of them had an inappropriate physical relationship.

Folks went public with the claim a few days ago and declared initially that he would speak no more of it. Now, the firestorm is raging and Folks says he will bring forth proof. As a downpayment on his side of the story, he printed on his blog a set of text messages between himself, Tom Pearson (Haley's campaign manager) and Wes Donehue, a republican political operative.

One of these two people is lying. Right now, I'm betting its Nikki Haley. The context of the text messages he's released so far and the way they have been reacted to by their respective authors says to me that there is smoke AND fire here. Folks apparently has a reputation for being erratic and maybe misogynist too , but considering the world of hurt that would be coming his way for publishing a smearing lie of this magnitude without being able to back it up, I find it hard to believe that he's just that dog food crazy, especially considering by all accounts, he supports Haley in the race.

I'm sticking with my prognostication here, but the main thing that causes me to doubt my current prediction? The very homely looking visage of Folks. Haley looks like a woman with better taste. Then again, the hubby ain't no George Clooney. Cute kids though.



Who's lying, Haley or Folks and why? Sound off in the comments.


Update I:  The story has not advanced much further, but the media are of course all over it, and reporters managed to catch up with Folks and Donehue to ask some questions:



I think the guy has the goods.  His play is suicidal if he does not.  I'm not sure Haley recovers from the lie.  The coverup is worse than the affair, politically.

Update II: Nikki Haley is going to be the next governor of South Carolina at the rate this is going.  Its been a week + since Will Folks rolled out his charge that he had "a inappropriate physical relationship" with Haley.  He promised proof and then dripped dripped some info that seemed significant but doesn't prove his case.  He hasn't dropped the bomb he's led people to expect he had, so at this point, we conclude that it is actually Will Folks who is the liar here. Big time.  How this political scum bag shows his face anywhere in SC after this mess, I don't know.  And if Nikki becomes Governor, well, payback is a you know what and Folks will have it coming in spades.  He won't be the only one on the waitlist to receive his can of political whoop ass either. Another moron, lobbyist Larry Merchant, has now come forward to openly claim that he had sex with Haley.Of course, he can't prove his claim either. His connection with Haley's primary opponent, Andre Bauer only makes it stink worse, as Merchant worked as a consultant to Bauer's campaign up until the day before he dropped this massive lie. Bauer is the current Lt. Governor of South Carolina and right about now, the people of SC have got to be thinking they have a massive political scum bag in the job.

South Carolina politics is an open sewer.  On what planet does this kind of free range political malarkey become okay? Political payback is to be expected at this point, but right now, I'm actually looking for Mr. Haley to pay a personal visit to somebody and break off his Timberlands in their back country.  The blatant (and inept) sexism and political cynicism these smear tactics evidence is a damning commentary on what passes for politics in South Carolina.  At this point, if I'm Haley, I think I want some more idiots to come out of the woodwork with bogus claims of affairs because it seems to be doing great things for her gubernatorial chances. If Merchant and Folks are not both steaming piles of political roadkill after this, there is no hope for SC politics.

Update III: Oh, lets add racist BS to the mix too! SC Senator Jake Knots gets in on the Haley pile on by calling Haley and President Obama ragheads in comments to a talk show audience. He's walking it back claiming he was being humorous and was taken out of context. The SC GOP chair has repudiated his comments and the SC Democrats are calling for his resignation.  I actually think its perfectly fair to force him out of office if it comes to that, not so much for the comment as for the insulting excuse that he was not understood correctly by his audience.  That's cowardly.  Be a man and own your BS.

This is the candidate for Agriculture Commissioner.......?

Who's running for Governor in Alabama.....The Hulk?  Hat tip Booker Rising

Dale Peterson scores points for breaking through the clutter. Only misstep in the ad is the end.  He needed a more dramatic exit.  Its an attention getter though.

Health Care: The Post Mortem Begins

David Frum on MSNBC:

   Those of us who said there was a deal to be done, that there are a lot of parts of this bill that look familiar, that look like Mitt Romney’s plan, that look like plans Republicans proposed in 1993 and 1994, they look like things that were drafted at the Heritage foundation in 1990 and 1991, we can work with this, there are things we don’t like, [but] President Obama will pay a lot maybe for 20 or 30 Republican votes, let’s deal — that was shut down, we went the radical way, looking for Waterloo, and it looks like we arrived at Waterloo.

   ...Some of the Republican leadership like Jim DeMint, I think did play a very hard-line role. Some of our leaders were trapped. They were trapped by voices in the media that revved the Republican base into a frenzy that made dealing impossible. I mean, you can’t negotiate with Adolf Hitler, and if the President is Adolf Hitler, then obviously you can’t negotiate with him. So some of the blame has has got to go to those who said, who got the psychology of the party to a point where a lot of good people, reasonable people were trapped.

   ...We are encouraging a mood of radicalism in the party that is not just uncivil, that’s not the problem, the problem is it makes you stupid. It makes you make bad decisions, it leads you to think that President Obama with 53% of the vote is as beatable in 2009 as President Clinton with 42% of the vote in 1993, and that’s obviously not true.

 Frum makes the essential point that reform was inevitable and instead of going for the all or nothing path to derail it, the GOP should have negotiated their way to getting something good out of it. Now, in the search for Obama's Waterloo, they have created their own because I'm not sure there is any other way to spin it other than Obama won this political battle, despite vigorous and unified GOP opposition. The GOP will get a lot of mileage running on their opposition to the bill in November, but Democrats may be able to make some hay out of passing it despite the opposition of the party of No.

Frum's other point here is the one I think I really co-sign, namely that the GOP in encouraging a sort of ravening and unmitigated anger at the White House and casting Obama as a Marxist monster, has really limited its own options.  If Obama is a monster, then you have to oppose anything he does (even if it makes sense) and this is the trick bag I think republicans have gotten themselves into somewhat.  With the passage of healthcare reform, the President will now have imposed his socialist, Marxist, communist and evil will upon the country, destroying all our freedoms and the future of our children. How can you work with someone like that? But thats the view of him that the GOP encourages and enhances at every opportunity.  I don't think it is serving the party's interests well, nor more importantly, the interests of the American people. Lastly, his exit point is that politics is about getting things done, or it ought to be.  By going for and failing to get, the political win, the GOP have now suffered a permanent policy loss.

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.

Black Republicans Call Steele to Account

Hat Tip Booker Rising

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga professor and head of the National Republican African American Caucus, Dr. Howard Hill, responds to RNC chairman Michael Steele's statement calling for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to resign over his comments about President Obama: “If RNC Chair, Michael Steele is truly concerned with racism, then perhaps he needs to first begin within our own party. There are certainly enough issues with race for him to have his hands full in dealing with this right here within the Republican Party. There also are a few within the GOP leadership, he also may wish to ask to step down.”

She continues her statement: "As a 30-year veteran African American Republican and as the head of the National Republican African American Caucus, I find it offensive to see and hear this kind of meaningless rhetoric. It is simply another way of posturing and playing to partisan unrest..... Many of us (African American Republicans) have tried to sit back and look the other way, but when this kind of silly and meaningless rhetoric is espoused with such callousness and lack of sincerity, you can’t be silent. I don’t like having to speak out against my own party or its leadership. But if we do not, this continues, and it makes it appear that all African American Republicans are a part of this foolishness. Because of this, many of us have bowed out of the GOP political mix.  It also makes it hard to recruit other African Americans into the Republican Party, at a time when the Party needs to attract us.”
 
....So Chairman Steele, we invite you to be fervent in the same commitment you have to challenge Democrats, to also call for a change within the GOP; where what you do actually can have an impact in changing the racial climate in America.”

I don't think I could have said it much better myself.  This is really serious indictment of Steele's lack of leadership when it comes to doing something effective to grow the GOP's relationship with blacks as a political constituency. While he's busy jumping on the latest political bandwagon in calling for Reid to step down, he is totally silent on Rush's asinine Haiti comments, or any of his other race baiting rhetoric for that matter.  The guy is forever opening his mouth to gaffe in one way or another, but he can't seem to wrap his lips around a word or two of pushback when it comes to the party's funky rhetoric and messaging towards blacks, an issue he knows to be real.  Now, the Reid flap has become the proverbial straw and even black republicans deep within the party are finding this nonsense hard to stomach.

Drive By Opinion: On Palin

The Tea Party contingent is populist and vocal, but their numbers are not sufficient to elect Palin. She polls badly with independents and many republicans don't have confidence in her either. She has yet to do anything that indicates to me she has a level of political savvy on the same level as displayed by Obama in the crafting of his successful run.  Taking on this talking head gig only solidifies her as a non serious candidate in my mind. I would not consider any of the paid blowhards of the left or right as potential leaders of the free world. Just not what I think of as Presidential resume builder. She left office to make the money and cash in. I'm okay with that, since her cynical selection by McCain brought her a lot of grief, which although she willingly signed up for, was not entirely deserved. I don't begrudge her salvaging a career and some wealth from that mess, which is why I encourage you to follow the link below and pick up her best seller at Amazon.

Harry Reid's Comments: There Is No Double Standard

Blacks weigh in on Harry Reid's racial comments / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

So Washington is abuzz with the latest piece of red meat for politicians and associated operators to gnaw at, the simultaneously awkwardly phrased, stereotypical yet oddly insightful comments by Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada. In their new book, "Game Change," journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann expose remarks Mr. Reid made in an interview about Barack Obama during the presidential campaign. Mr. Reid is quoted as saying that he believed the nation was ready to elect a "light-skinned" black man "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

Race hustler Ward Connerly is one of the voices of outrage from conservatives. "it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the spirit of forgiveness is universal—except when it comes to conservatives."

Conservatives charge there is a double standard, case in point, the experience of former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who made remarks praising Strom Thurmond in 2002. Mr. Lott said of the segregationist: "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we [Mississippians] voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either." Lott was forced to step down in the aftermath.

I'm sorry to break it to you guys, but there is no double standard here at all. In fact, quite to the contrary, I would argue that the condemnation conservatives get for verbal malfunctions like this, at least from the black community, is entirely logical and consistent.  Furthermore, its not complicated and when conservatives behave as though they don't understand it, it annoys me.

Let me break it down for you.  Why is it that Harry Reid can make a comment like that and largely get a pass from black folks while conservatives get branded with the "Raaciisst" label for similar verbal vomit? Simple:  

Harry Reid belongs to a party that behaves like it gives a damn about black voters!

I wish conservatives would stop behaving as though this is incomprehensible rocket science. I've said numerous times before:  the GOP does not consider blacks to be a political constituency necessary or essential to its aspirations for governance and the party, from rank and file to its leadership, behaves accordingly.  I've repeated that many times here at the Season, but maybe I'm falling into that pesky "Negro dialect" thing Reid was talking about and its making me hard to understand.  Why don't I let our illustrious chairman Michael Steele explain it to you:

Q: Why do you think so few nonwhite Americans support the Republican Party right now?
A: "Cause we have offered them nothing! And the impression we’ve created is that we don’t give a damn about them or we just outright don’t like them. And that’s not a healthy thing for a political party. I think the way we’ve talked about immigration, the way we’ve talked about some of the issues that are important to African-Americans, like affirmative action… I mean, you know, having an absolute holier-than-thou attitude about something that’s important to a particular community doesn’t engender confidence in your leadership by that community—or consideration of you for office or other things—because you’ve already given off the vibe that you don’t care." -GQ Magazine March 2009

So the next time a conservative makes a racial verbal bellyflop and gets tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail while your neighborhood liberal democrat gets a playful slap on the wrist and a pass and you don't understand, just return here and let our chairman explain it to you.

Steele, for the Love of God, Stop Signifying

I've blogged before about the racial chip that seems to exist on the shoulders of Michael Steele. You know, the one that manifests itself in the repeated use of "in da hood" slang in what I used to think was a half witted attempt to simultaneously keep it real with blacks and reassure whites that his election to RNC chair makes them hip and with it, but what I now believe is a manifestation of Steele's anger at the way the GOP dismisses blacks as an unnecessary political constituency for engagement.

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 Indiana for the Young Republican election and encouraged minorities "ya'll come. I got the fried chicken".

You've heard me on this before: why in God's name is a sixty something year old grown black man with a law degree from Georgetown finding it so hard to use the Queen's English on the regular? I'd like to say Steele has eased off this really annoying bad habit, but alas, I cannot.

Steele and company at the RNC just rolled out the new GOP. com website, complete with video of a miniature talking Michael Steele welcoming you in. Among other things, the new site sports a blog written by Steele himself. What does he title it: WHAT UP. Yes, I kid you not.

This frosts my cookies on two fronts: #1. I can't understand why he feels the need to remind people that he is black in this specific way, i.e., the use of slang and vernacular. It doesn't contribute to him being better understood or to putting people at ease or anything like that in my view. I've concluded that he continues to do this for the psychic benefit of thumbing his blackness in the party's eye, because he is angry (as he should be) at the way the GOP ignores blacks as a political constituency. This is the sort of passive aggressive way that he expresses that, since I guess he is simply not going to press his party to grow in this area. To be fair, he really can't.

Its worth noting (and to his credit) that even a stalwart, solid conservative commentator like Ed Morrisey at Hot Air acknowledges this reality, even if he doesn't acknowledge the scope of the fail. "the GOP has not put out much effort in talking sense to black voters and explaining conservative principles in the context of their lives. They should be focused on effective outreach, not slang-titled blogs that sound more patronizing than welcoming."

#2. It makes my head want to explode because in addition to using annoying slang like this, its like half the slang. If you gonna title the blog this way, then you need to go all the way and call it "Was Up", not "What Up". I mean it sounds like a preppie nerd from an uppercrust private boarding school trying to emulate gangster behavior to say it like that. Just annoying, especially out of the mouth of an over 60, balding black man with a law degree from Georgetown.

After a mountain of justly deserved ridicule, Steele and company have renamed the blog "Change the Game". Thats better

If you have not learned this lesson yet, learn it now. Cut the signifying Steele. Engage your party on the issue thats bugging you and stop this passive aggressive behavior. If you're not going to make the party grapple with it and confront it, then just accept it and move on.

Steele "Outreach" = EPIC Fail

Michael Steele was on hand here in Indianapolis for the auspicious election of Audra Shay to the presidency of the young republicans. Besides the funky optics of Audra Shay's election, after she co-signed the racially inflammatory remarks of Eric Piker, I didn't think there was anything else particularly remarkable that occurred at the event. I was mistaken.

Michael Steele had the opportunity to speak with bloggers during his visit and was asked a question about achieving greater diversity in the GOP. Watch below for his answer:



This is an EPIC FAIL moment for Steele personally and the GOP as a party in terms of messaging to blacks and minorities in general. Steele has repeatedly been described as an articulate man, and I have no doubt that he has a command of the English language and that is why this is EPIC FAIL material. "Y'all Come"? "I've got the fried chicken and potato salad?".

For the love of God, why does Steele trade in this stereotypical language? If anybody ought to be paying attention to the language they use as they try to create a better relationship between blacks and the GOP, its the RNC Chairman. However, Steele, because he is black, clearly believes he gets a pass to play with these types of stereotypes. Didn't we just get get treated to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor getting lectured by Cong. Grassely about how his career would be over if he had made a comment akin to her "wise Latina" statement? How is this any different? A white RNC chair would be excoriated for a comment like that, but Steele gets a pass because he's black? Steele clearly thinks so, because he uses this kind of language frequently.

The other EPIC FAIL here is that there is no plan on diversifying the party. Steele goes into this geriatric spiel about how republicans opposed slavery and if you believe in markets, freedom, blah, blah, blah, the GOP wants you and we don't care about how you want to live. All of that is really just an elaborate dodge of the question. He articulated no plan and that's because there isn't one. All there is is the same old tired rhetoric about how the GOP is really the party that supports black people and minorities in general, doled out with a generous helping of the same old stereotypes straight from the mouth of the RNC Chairman himself. I can hardly blame GOP rank and file folks like Eric Piker, or leadership such as Audry Shay or Councilman Fraggo in California for co-signing and passing on racially inflammatory material; they take their cues from Chairman Steele himself.

GOP: Your "Witness" is Weak

On a sadly periodic and almost predictably routine basis, the GOP give me reason to question why I bother to call myself a republican, albeit a reluctant one. Perhaps its simply my way of being contrarian, to provoke a conversation in my one man crusade to talk sense to black folk.

I think conservative principles are better as an underlying ideology for policy making. The GOP however are a sorry set of representatives for those principles. Especially when it comes to the party's messaging to blacks. Party leadership and rank and file often posit the problem as one of communication, that the GOP message is just not getting properly received. I'm sorry, its more fundamental than that. The GOP , from rank and file to its leadership, seems increasingly, almost inexorably, drawn to political appeals crafted in a ways that are covertly and overtly hostile to blacks and other minorities.

Case in point, the recent election of Audra Shay as the head of the Young Republicans of America (which took place here in Indianapolis). Ms. Shay found her candidacy for the post embroiled in controversy after co-signing the racist comments of her face book friend Eric Piker, who referred to blacks in general as "coons". When some other folks in her FB circle called out Piker for the reference and her for co-signing it, she banished them from her friends list, but kept Piker and his racial epithets in her circle. Hours later, after booting the people who criticized the racist talk, Piker was still a friend and making comments on her wall about how he was a southern boy and if you were black, the sun better not set on you in a southern town.

A lot of folks are calling Shay a racist. I've argued many times that the term has become useless for political discourse as its been so carelessly overused. I'm prepared to eschew tagging Shay with the racist label. In fact, its more instructive if we don't. Because then the issue becomes more interesting to me, namely that I want to understand Ms. Shay's behavior. Lets take her explanation at face value, that she was responding to his earlier comment, not the coon thing. At some point though, she saw it. Why did it take other people pointing it out before she said anything? Why did she boot the people who called it out instead of the author? In short, if no one had said anything, she would have been cool with that conversation. Why is that? What made any of it okay? Thats what I want an explanation about. Thats the explanation I want to hear from a person who is now leadership for the young republicans nationwide. Why are GOP rank and file so oblivious and tone deaf to this sort of thing? This incident was not subtle nor nuanced and Shay could not manage the right response.

The other case in point that to me is indicative of the attitude towards blacks within a significant portion of the GOP's vocal and ascendant far right rank and file is the hot mess of despicable and derogatory commentary aimed at Malia Obama by posters at the blog Free Republic because she wore a shirt with a peace symbol on it during the trip to Russia. My fellow blogger in arms, Shay of Booker Rising took them to task "for calling the 11-year-old things like "a typical street whore" and "ghetto street trash" after she wore a peace sign T-shirt in Italy (they also said U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama was doing "monkey chants" when she had a fun moment with Malia)"

The Freepers are decrying the criticism as planted comments from liberals, but thats a joke and its really pathetic of them to make the claim. Free Republic, like Redstate, also practices banning people who don't share their point of view, a practice that would be defensible to the charge of cowardice but for the fact that both sites will ban you for the mildest of divergence from their particular brand of conservative orthodoxy as evidenced by the continuing string of Redstate refugees washing up on our shores here.

Another sign of the times in this regard is simply the quite casual way in which rank and file conservatives on the right will engage in commentary that is clearly rich with racially inflammatory language and feel as though its perfectly okay and justified I guess by the First Amendment and their general anger over the Obama administration's outrages. Here's an example from blogger and Twitter user Conservative Gal:

ConservativeGal
I received my stimulus package yesterday. It contained watermelon seeds, cornbread mix, & 10 coupons 2 KFC. The directions were in Spanish.
2 days ago from web

I responded to her about this tweet and said I thought it was foul and did not communicate goodwill and that got me hit with some name calling and plain old hostility, which is okay, this is the internet. But this sort of thing is again indicative of my broader point, that the GOP from rank and file on up, has not made a decision that blacks are a political constituency it is actually interested in having be a part of its coalition (or latinos for that matter). Conservative Gal's response to me when I said this was foul was hostility. She didn't stop and think about what she had said, whether or not it was cool, whether or not it would be considered racially offensive or inflammatory. Think of it in terms of the concept of Christian witness. If you're a Christian, you are expected to witness Christ with your life and behavior, such that people who observe you will be drawn to Christ because they see Christ's principles at work in your life. Well, likewise the GOP needs to consider its political witness. Would a person observing this behavior and rhetoric be drawn to your cause? This comment is a bad witness and worse, it was retweeted like mad all over the place.

Members of the GOP like Conservative Gal would do well to keep this idea of witness in mind. When leadership and rank and file GOP members use or cosign this kind of rhetoric so casually and attack people who call them on it, it communicates nothing but hostility and worse to blacks. I'm NOT saying Conservative Gal is a racist. She may have black friends (hell, even family), she may have nothing but wonderful interactions with blacks that she comes in contact with personally, I don't know. But this kind of comment she made is not funny. Its not helpful to the cause of political dialogue except among those who think this is funny. It does not help in winning the hearts and minds of blacks and latinos to the GOP and a comment like that causes blacks and latinos to wonder if the members of the GOP care if they come at all (much dap to her on her 8,000+ Twitter followers though, she rocks there).

The GOP's "witness" to blacks and latinos is consistently really poor (my examples above case in point), enough so that one can reasonably question whether or not they have any true interest in minorities as political constituencies at all.

UPDATE I: Routine and predictable, I swear. Weak GOP political witness in action. Republicans figure the way to win hearts and minds is to talk about the President's momma? To talk about a Supreme Court Justice's momma?



There is also a crappy little racial subtext assumption here that poor black women are just waiting for a government program that will finance killing their babies. Can we pick a stereotype for pete's sake. Either we are sexually promiscuous irresponsible baby killers, or welfare mother baby making economic leeches. This kind of stuff is simply continuing proof that the GOP has no real interest in blacks as a political constituency. Dollars to donuts, you won't hear a mumbling word from Michael Steele.

UPDATE II: Hat tip Electronic Village. Another conservative official has been busted sending racist e-mails. This time, the culprit is Atwater, CA Councilman Gary Frago, who sent at least half-a-dozen racist, anti-Obama e-mails to Atwater staff and community members:

Some compared Obama to O.J. Simpson while others suggested that “n[*****] rigs” should now be called “presidential solutions.”

Perhaps the most overboard e-mail was sent on Jan. 15. It read: “Breaking News Playboy just offered Sarah Palin $1 million to pose nude in the January issue. Michelle Obama got the same offer from National Geographic.”

Frago admitted sending the e-mails, but showed no regret. “If they’re from me, then I sent them,” he said. “I have no disrespect for the president or anybody, they weren’t meant in any bad way or harm.”

When given an opportunity to explain himself, Frago somehow managed to dig himself a deeper hole by saying: “I don’t see where there’s a story, I’m not the only one that does it. … I didn’t originate them, they came to me and I just passed them on.”

White Guilt, Political Correctness - What Is This Really About?

A recurring theme out there in the political atmosphere about Barack Obama becoming president is the idea that we live in a PC, guilt addled culture that was willing to elect an unqualified affirmative action candidate for its attendant history making feel good effect.

This meme never fails to tick me off. Every time I hear it or see it expressed in writing in one form or another, I think to myself "Dear God, please stop with the whining". Its enough (almost) to make one yearn for the days of open and unabashed hostility between white and black as a more open and honest time. 2040 has not arrived yet, there are still way more of you than us. If affirmative action is such an anathema, just outlaw it or better yet, simply stop doing it. I resent the resentment about such things, though if I'm being fair I have to admit black people had a hand in creating it. We share some of the blame, as race hustlers like Sharpton and Jackson have created small, self serving industries out of exploiting white guilt and defensiveness about race. We've been willing accomplices often enough.

If I get analytical about it, then I have to ask, if we are a guilt ridden PC culture, what is it that white America is guilty about? What is the guilt that Sharpton and Jackson exploit for money again and again? They keep drawing from this well and each time I see it happen, I'm wondering what underground source are they tapping?

What is it that makes the city of New Haven deny white firefighters promotion because a few black test takers didn't make the cut? The test subject matter was known beforehand. I presume that the same books the white fire fighters studied were available to the black firefighters. In the absence of some relevant information that I'm missing, at first blush, it just does not make sense that the city of New Haven would behave so completely unreasonably merely because black firefighters complained, legal catch 22 or no.

You can't put it all on us. What is it at work in the psyche of white America in 2009 that makes the New Haven case possible? Obama is easy to understand (white guilt did not elect him, simple as that), but the New Haven case, that makes much less sense. Can you explain it? I can't.

One to Watch

Hat tip Hip Hop Republican

Ryan Frazier's got the oratorical gift no doubt. He's looking to claim a senate seat in Colorado. Definitely one to keep an eye on.

Sotomayor: Impartial Enough

Newt Gingrich today backs away from his intemperate and foolish branding of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as a racist. I have often made the point that in American discourse we have thrown the word "racist" around so indiscriminately for so long that it is now almost useless as terminology for purposes of reasoned discussion. We have no clarity as to what the heck we mean when we say it. Black people brought this about by near reflexive application of the term to circumstances which did not warrant it and now it is injudiciously thrown around by everybody, including people like Newt who certainly should know better. But that's a subject for a different post. Back to the issue at hand.

Newt's underlying assumption and assertion in this opinion piece is that judges carry out their duties from the bench with impartiality, entirely unaffected by their life experience or their identity. I disagree with this underlying premise. The exercise of judgment by those on the appellate bench is NOT completely impartial and unaffected by their life experience and identity, no more so than was the writing of the law which they interpret. That is a fiction.

The issue is whether Sotomayor will be influenced in the exercise of her judgment by these factors to some extent greater than is the case with the typical judge on the federal bench. In other words, every judge is influenced by their identity and life experience. We expect that influence to be mediated by their fidelity to a fair application of the law and there is a band of judicial behavior on the bench within which we expect judges to constrain the influence of their identity and life experience. The issue is whether or not Sotomayor in her career on the bench routinely operates outside of these norms in a manner that makes her unsuitable to serve on the Supreme Court. The answer to that question is clearly no.

Newt admits as much when he says..

"In fairness to the judge, many of her rulings as a court of appeals judge do not match the radicalism of her speeches and statements. She has shown more caution and moderation in her rulings than in her words."

In fairness to the judge indeed. We have a multitude of opinions from the bench upon which to assess whether Sotomayor applies the law with impartiality. We don't have to guess or speculate. Review the opinions. There is no reason to believe that the Judge Sotomayor seen on the appellate bench in nearly 400 opinions will be any different than the Justice Sotomayor who will appear at the High Court. Even her critics admit, as Newt does here, that her appellate judicial record gives every indication that she interprets the law in a reasoned and impartial manner. She is clearly qualified. Confirm her.

Limbaugh's Race Baiting: GOP Funky Messaging to Blacks Continues

On some days, it is hard to find counter arguments to the idea that the GOP is destined to become a regional party largely the province of a core of white conservatives espousing a far right ideology. I've often made the point that the GOP's lousy relationship with blacks is due to the fact that the party has not made a decision that blacks are a political constituency necessary or essential to the GOP's aspirations for governance. In practice, this means they pay little to no attention to the affect of their messaging on blacks or indeed operate without regard to it. Why bother to be careful about how you communicate to this particular group since you are not interested in their votes?

The party's ideological commander in chief Rush Limbaugh, has once again brought home this point with stunning clarity with comments on his show earlier this week.

LIMBAUGH: As the economy performs worse than expected, the deficit for the 2010 budget year beginning in October will worsen by $87 billion to $1.3 trillion. The deterioration reflects lower tax revenues and higher costs for bank failures, unemployment benefits and food stamps. But in the Oval Office of the White House none of this is a problem. This is the objective. The objective is unemployment. The objective is more food stamp benefits. The objective is more unemployment benefits. The objective is an expanding welfare state. And the objective is to take the nation’s wealth and return to it to the nation’s quote, “rightful owners.” Think reparations. Think forced reparations here if you want to understand what actually is going on.

Its race baiting. Its intentional and deliberate pitting of a white political base against blacks to advance a political point. From the rank and file up to leadership, few will even bother to distance themselves from a comment like this. This kind of commentary is threatening both because its being put forward in political speech in this way and because its being eagerly lapped up by its audience. Will Michael Steele even have the guts to repudiate a comment like this? Just recently, he's gutsy enough to call Obama an affirmative action President, but is he willing to call out Rush on crap messaging like this to blacks, a political constituency he claims he wants the GOP to do a better job with? Probably not. The funky messaging continues.

The Torture Memos: Why Did Obama Release Them?

The Obama administration released four memos from the Bush Justice Department that provided the legal basis for the CIA’s use of torture on captured terrorists. That move prompted harsh criticism from a number of quarters, charging that the administration has harmed the security of the United States and made the job of our security agencies more difficult by giving our enemies an advance look at our techniques.

The administration answered those criticisms in the President's statement on the release;

"First, the interrogation techniques described in these memos have already been widely reported. Second, the previous administration publicly acknowledged portions of the program and some of the practices associated with these memos. Third, I have already ended the techniques described in the memos through an executive order."

But when you think about it a little further, none of that really seems to stand as very strong rationales for releasing the details outlined in the memos. This was my primary question of the administration. Why release this? The answer to that question is in the President's statement as well;

".....withholding these memos would only serve to deny facts that have been in the public domain for some time. This could contribute to an inaccurate accounting of the past, and fuel erroneous and inflammatory assumptions about actions taken by the United States."

Its politics. Obama, with the release of these memos, is tarring the GOP as the party of torture. These memos make abundantly clear the manner in which torture was authorized and applied and by whom and on what authority. Republican operatives, spokespersons and luminaries vociferously castigated the President through the weekend, charging that he's made America less safe and in most cases, defending the use of torture, though sometimes trying to dance around using the word torture with the euphemism enhanced interrogation techniques (EIT) as former CIA Director Michael Hayden did on Fox this past weekend.

Obama has maneuvered the GOP into making a vocal and hearty defense of using torture. I'm sorry, but thats not a good look. Why? Because the average American is a decent human being and doesn't like the idea of their government engaging in the routine brutalization of human beings. Don't get me wrong. We expect the Jack Bauer's of the world to be out there, extracting information from the bad guys to prevent the release of that nasty biological or nuclear WMD in an American city and if some fingers gotta get broke to make it happen, so be it. BUT; we don't want to see it or know about it AND we give some leeway in an emergency. People seem to forget that those scenarios we love to watch on 24 Monday nights are events playing out over the course of 24 hours. Thats what we imagine happens in an emergency and we're a practical people. You gotta do what you gotta do.

But what Americans are not down for is the bureaucratization of torture. We're not down for the routine imposition of pain and suffering on people, even terrorist suspects, as our default methodology for getting information. And what the GOP defenders of the use of torture don't really seem to get is that the average American thinks thats what they are for. Hayden in his critique of Obama on Fox didn't qualify the use of torture at all. He just kept arguing for or it to be retained as a technique. Didn't say in the event of emergency or under proper circumstances. He just argued that we should be allowed to torture. Their in lies the evil genius behind Obama's release of the memos. He's got the GOP screaming at the top of their lungs, "we want to torture people, and Obama won't let us".

Redstate Is Mostly An Empty Snarkfest

I still follow RedState in my reader these days, but ever since they kicked me out for talking about the GOP's lousy political practice where blacks are concerned, I have to say I read their headlines with a more juandiced eye. I've come to the conclusion that about 75% or more of all their posts are simply snark.

They put a lot of time and energy into crafting sarcastic, biting, cutting, insulting and name calling posts to make their point that anyone who doesn't agree with them is pretty much the unpatriotic devil. Case in point; their post about Obama's gift to Queen Elizabeth of an Ipod. They take pains to paint the entire deal as a deadly insult to the Brits, and they don't note that he also gave her a signed songbook by the composer Richard Rodgers. So they are happy to tell their stories in the way that slants in the direction they want to point it and they will leave out facts to get the impression they want. More to the point, does anyone honestly give a crap what the heck Obama gives to the Queen, who lacks for nothing? Do the folks at Redstate really think that people living out here in the heartland and just trying to make it give a flying flip about that? Do they really expect us to believe that in the great game of geopolitics between nations, that our relationship with the United Kingdom turns on what stupid gift the Queen gets when the President comes calling?

I think most of their posts are lightweight just like this one. Now, Redstate has a big following and by any measure is a far more successful blog than my own modest effort, so they are not losing any sleep over my opinion and can live their day justifiably smug that they are on the right track. But a blog that excludes dissenting voices because they only want to hear those who agree with them is lame. APS may not be the daily traffic stop for thousands of conservatives, but I won't kick you out because we don't agree and I can't take the heat of debate.

And yeah, I'm still cheesed off about being banned.