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Daily Journal Politics

Presidential Perspective

Barack Hussein ObamaThere is so much more going on than just the issues. There are issues with the issues. There is an undercurrent of non-public issues flowing through the veins of every American in regard to our president, Barack Hussein Obama. Whether you admit to it or not, a Black president named Barack Hussein Obama, made it to office….Fricking amazing.

Just the fact that a Black man named Barack Hussein Obama was elected to the presidency should make all Americans proud, unless you’re a white supremiscist. Obviously that doesn’t work for you, but you’re so stupid, who cares?

You’re so stupid, it never occured to you that a Black Man could ever be considered for the presidency of the United States of America. And after it happened, it was too late. Stupid f***.

Common Sense takes a giant leap into the abyss.

Whether you want to admit it or not, it changed the racial landscape in the United States of America, if for no other reason than it empowered a segment of a segment. It built a bridge of hope and validated confidence in all of us, period. The monumental event of an African-American person being elected to the highest office in the United States of America, the most powerful country on earth, resonated with the entire world and opened minds (except those cemented shut by hate and ignorance).

And what did we learn? That no matter what , there are still nimrods and closed minded curmudgeons determined to realize their own self fulfilling prophecy of self-destruction, and drag as many down with them as they can. I don’t know why people mentally or ideologically shutdown and snuff out any glimmer of a new thought or idea, but it irritates the hell out of me.

But they’re insignificant anyway right? They’re not here to help, so let’s move on

 

Political Ideology

Politicians don’t care if you’re black, white, brown, red, yellow or plaid. They only care about how well you’re doing in the polls. From a racial perspective, that’s actually refreshing. Societally, it’s diasterous.

Career politicians, as a category, have a conflict of interest. As a career politician, your first allegiance is job security, which means you make decisions that benefit you before your constituency. That’s a problem.

Time to start taking steps to eliminate “Career Politicians”.

 

Real Deal

Everybody’s truth is different. Truth is not facts. I’m looking at it from this perspective; President Barack Hussein Obama is 14 days older than I am. If we went to school together, I’d have played ball with him. We both grew up in the USA and were influenced by many of the same things. Chronologically and emotionally we experienced many of the same things around the same time. Lot of the same shit was going on when shit was going on with us. There’s a common bond there. To deny that is short sighted and ignorant.

Here’s what I’m asking you to do; put aside your prejudice, pressumption and party affiliation. Own that you’re approximately the same age and grew up in the same time as the man who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, who runs your country and seriously contemplate what you would do in his place. If that doesn’t scare the shit out of you, you’re not being honest, are you?

You can click off this page, but you can’t click off your conscience ( and if you can, please unfriend me on facebook).

 

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Daily Journal

In Hate We Trust

The Recent Spate of Outbursts Shift Spotlight Onto America’s Dirty Little Secret.

In Hate We Trust

Iowa 1968

One Day, as a second grader at Lowell Elementary School in Waterloo, Iowa, a ruckus was brewing as the class was dismissed for recess.  Shouts relayed through the swath of snott-nosed, chest-high playground denizens with phrenitic excitement.

“They’re Coming!, They’re Coming!”

Half the playground stampeded to the front of school to witness it’s newest enrollees.  I made my way over after the initial rush, curious about the hubbub, and saw a black mom and her two black children enter the school office.  Was that it? Didn’t seem like a big deal to me, but like the newest members of our south-end of town population, I was in the minority.

African-Americans lived in Waterloo, but were segregated to the north-end of town. There hadn’t been a black family at Lowell, and the reaction to their presence was nothing short of educational.  That was my introduction to racism and prejudice.

Small clicks of kids made horrible scary statements I hadn’t heard before.  Our newest Lowell brethren were left alone at playtime, except for me.  I’d already been the object of ridicule, being literally the first kid to wear bell-bottoms at school (not my choice) and hanging out with my friend Kim who was taunted and teased daily.  Kim wasn’t a popular boy’s name in 1968 Iowa.  I hadn’t yet given in to peer pressure, hell, I didn’t even know what that was.  Besides, we moved around alot in the early days so I wasn’t beholden to any long-term friendships yet.

I played with my new found friends because I liked them.  Kids are cruel, but the playing field is pretty even in the second grade.  If you’re encouraged to think for yourself, you’re miles ahead of the pack.

My parents were Jazz musicians.  Mom sang with Benny Goodman on a tour that included Ella Fitzgerald, Lionel Hampton and Hank Jones, along with many equally talented white musicians.  Frequent rehearsals at the house brought people of all sizes, colors and temperament into my consciousness, but differentiation was never based on race, it was solely on the content of their personality.

Being white growing up in the sixties with no attitudinal predisposition towards race proved to be enlightening and infuriating.  Because of my parents, I had the good fortune to decide for myself about this issue in particular, because my parents treated everyone like people.  Crazy, right?  Presumptive predication based on race, religion or politics was absent from my formative years allowing me the freedom to decide for myself.

As a white person growing up in America in the 60’s and 70’s you were exposed to n-word jokes, period.  Sometimes in hushed tones when people of color were in earshot, other times loud and clear as if it were a challenge, but always derogatory with the malodorous stench of underlying hate.

Presidential Election 2008

I may not be an expert in human psychology, but after decades in the hospitality industry, managing behavior on a larger scale, I’ve come to learn how to read a face and translate one’s vocabulary and inflection.  Couple that with my experience as a fundamentally unbiased anonymous observer in the American white culture, I know how to recognize racism, and the bad news is that this country is rife with hate-filled ignorance and intolerance.  It’s getting better, but it’s still present.

For years, the issue had been relatively buried, unless you regularly visited the Southern Poverty Law Center website, where they track hate groups. But the 2008 Presidential Election changed all that.  I think racists were caught with their pants down, because they never in a million years would believe a black man could be elected president of the United States of America.  To illustrate, check this stat from Compete.com on Stormfront.org:

Stormfront.org traffic surge

Stormfront is a white supremacist website.  Members of Stormfront would correct me here and describe themselves as white nationalists, but c’mon.  Semantics aside, all you need do is browse through the site.  As you can see, the traffic spiked in November, 08′ when Barack Obama won the White House and has slowly increased, reaching near November (2008) levels this August (2009).  My guess is September will surpass last November (I’ll try to remember to update). Similar traffic spikes were recorded on kkk.com, kkk.bz, kkklan.com, etcetera, etcetera.

Clearly the November 2008 election hit a nerve.

Unfortunate Update-

As predicted, web traffic increased substantially in September for stormfront.org in the month of September:

Stormfront Web Traffic - September

Bubbling to the Surface in 2009

In high school I dated a girl who originally hailed from Mississippi.  She told me she was afraid of black people. “What are you afraid of?”, I’d ask.  “That they’ll take over”, she answered.  “Take over what?”, I inquired.  “Take over the country”.

To the feeble minded, that’s what this is about.  Reading through the mangled, incomplete and frighteningly evil thought processes displayed by some of the posters on stormfront, it becomes very apparent that a streak of disbelief, hate and paranoia has grappled the short and curlies of these confederate sympathizers.

As of this writing, President Barack Obama has been in office for a little over 8 months.  His appointees are multi-cultural.  Mr. Obama won the popular vote of the citizens of this great country, in addition to an overwhelming advantage in the electoral college.  Republicans and former Bush appointees serve on his cabinet.  President Obama has repeatedly sought bi-partisan support and central to his victorious campaign was the idea that we as a nation could achieve our mutually beneficial objective through cooperation and intelligent discussion.

Unfortunately for us, there are biggots who have enough money to sabotage the progress we’re making.

One need only google Rush Limbaugh racist quotes, and 462k results appear.  Mr. Limbaugh has made  millions of dollars defiling his fellow man.  But Rushbo is an entertainer, a clown, the motive behind anything he says is advertiser dollars.

A more complicated case is Rep. Joe Wilson. Joe has apologized to the  President, and has been politically backpedaling since his disrespectful outburst on Sept. 9th, 2009.  But he’s a politician.  He’ll say whatever.  Joe is a member of the “Sons of Confederate Veterans”.  Joe was one of only 7 state representatives in the state of South Carolina to defend the confederate flag.

The confederate flag is the defining symbol of the confederacy.  The core belief of the confederacy, the motivation behind secession of the states involved and the civil war was the right to keep indentured servants.  To own human beings as a commodity.  To treat human beings as a possession, like a cell phone.   How much effort do you expend when you lose your cell phone? As much as your child? As much as a close friend?

Defending the confederate flag is like flipping off Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and human decency. There’s simply no place for it in intelligent society.

The white supremacists, separatists, nationalists or whatever want segregation.  Good luck. Segregation from what?  We all inhabit the same shrinking planet.  We all depend on the same resources and all have the same needs.  Go ahead and create your own putrid colony, but you’ll eventually have needs that supersede your resources.  Then what?

I don’t understand it.  When I break it down to it’s lowest common denominator, where’s the benefit in that position?

What would be the logical progression of secession or racial segregation?  Which state in the union is completely self-sufficient?  How long after splitting our gloriously diversified and interdependent nation into multiple individual nations  would war erupt?  How many wars would there be, and who gets the tanks?

It’s a ridiculous proposition.

And let’s face facts, if you found yourself in a life threatening situation, and at that precise moment if there were only one person in the world who could save your life, would it matter what color they were?

peace.

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Daily Journal

Palin Pallin Pall

What a comfy skin
What a comfy skin

Americans are obviously stupid.  A character attack from Gov. Palin?  Shards of fallen glass from what was once your roof surround you.

Excerpt from Branchflower Report: (Oct. 11th, 2008)

Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired. She had the authority and power to require Mr. Palin to cease contacting subordinates, but she failed to act.

Such impermissible and repeated contacts create conflicts of interests for subordinate employees who must choose to either please a superior or run the risk of facing that superioor run the risk of facing that superior’s displeasure and the possible consequences of such displeasure. This was one of the very reasons the Ethics Act was promulgated by the Legislature.

***

Governor Palin has stated publicly that she and her family feared Trooper Wooten. Yet the evidence presented has been inconsistent with such claims of fear. The testimony from Trooper Wheeler, who was part of her security detail from the start, was that shortly after elected to office, she ordered a substantial reduction in manpower in her personal protection detail … an act that is inconsistent with a desire to avoid harm from Trooper Wooten or others.

…It is noteworthy that in almost every contact with the subordinate employees, Mr. Palin’s comments were couched in terms of his desire to see Trooper Wooten fired for reasons that had nothing to do with fear. His comments were always couched in terms that he was a bad Trooper, that he was not a good recruiting image for the AST, that his discipline amounted to nothing more than a slap on the wrist, that nothing had happened to him following the administrative investigation, and so forth…

I conclude that such claims of fear were not bona fide and were offered to provide cover for the Palins’ real motivation: to get Trooper Wooten fired for personal family related reasons.

~~~~~

IFILL: Governor, please if you want to respond to what he said about Senator McCain’s comments about health care?

PALIN: I would like to respond about the tax increases.

~~~~~

IFILL: Would you like to have an opportunity to answer that before we move on?

PALIN: I’m still on the tax thing … I may not answer the questions the way that either the moderator or you want to hear…

~~~~~

Of course this is ridiculous. I hope he has had many conversations with Bill Ayers. Prof Ayers is a leader in school improvement. Read his bio. He is a distinguished professor at a major University and has contributed a lot to the field of education. The Woods Fund is a foundation that supports grassroots change efforts. Its an admirable foundation. This and the plagarism charge demonstrate who is acting like politics as usual. Can it get anymore stupid? I am afraid so.

~~~~~

Yet Chryson maintains that his party remains committed to full independence. “The Alaskan Independence Party has got links to almost every independence-minded movement in the world,” Chryson exclaimed. “And Alaska is not the only place that’s about separation. There’s at least 30 different states that are talking about some type of separation from the United States.”

~~~~~

According to Governor Sarah Palin’s former staff member Larry Persily, the Governor thought it was a good idea and planned to make an appearance on G.Gordon Liddy’s program. When suggested that a Watergate operative may not be a smart choice, Arctic Power co-chair, Mike Navarre, suggested most people didn’t know of Liddy’s background and his role in President Nixon’s administration and demise.

~~~~~

Sarah Palin attacking Barack Obama’s relationship with William Ayers is ironic. She’s playing a pit bull, but it’s not the Palin we know. The Palin we know wouldn’t have known who William Ayers was.

~~~~~

Todd:

Hey, honey…

Sarah:

Yuh (from the kitchen)

Todd:

Get me a beer?

Sarah:

You betcha

Oops, you missed two.
Oops, you missed two.
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Daily Journal

Obama vs McCain on the economy

This poignant video sums up the political approach by each candidate.

[flashvideo filename=http://www.flatheadenterprises.com/streams/ContrastObamaMcCain.flv width=”450″ height=”366″ /]

This youTube clip was found on the Jed Report