Jack & Jill Politics

Alaska has a population of around 25,000 African-Americans, with a total population of around 700,000. Therefore, African-Americans make up around 4% of the overall population of Alaska, with higher percentages in the larger cities like Anchorage.

We should familiarize ourselves to the history of African-Americans in Alaska:

http://www.akhistorycourse.org/articles/article...

For example, African-Americans who built the highway to Alaska stayed to live after it was completed. Taking the position that the people who continue to play a significant role in the building of the infrastructure of Alaska should not be represented on the staff of Gov. Palin is preposterous.

Gov. Palin's attitude toward Alaska's black population indicates what her feelings might be toward all African-Americans as vice-president and possibly president of the United States. Like Sen. McCain, Gov. Palin shows little or no respect for the observance of Juneteenth Independence Day in America. Juneteenth is an official state holiday observance in Alaska which requires the Governor to issue an annual proclamation. Despite the statute, Gov. Palin did not issue a Juneteenth Proclamation in 2007.

Gov. Palin still refuses to meet with African-American leaders of the Ministers Alliance to discuss job opportunities for African-Americans during the building of the Alaskan pipeline. Again, in my opinion, if elected to the White House, most likely her actions toward African-Americans will not change. Let African-American leaders in Alaska tell their own story about Gov. Palin. I have spoken to several of them and remain quite concerned about what I am hearing.

Juneteenth is America’s 2nd Independence Day celebration. 29 states and the District of Columbia recognize Juneteenth as a state holiday or state holiday observance, as well as the Congress of the United States.

Together we will see Juneteenth become a national holiday in America!

“DOC”
Rev. Ronald V. Myers, Sr., M.D.
Chairman
National Juneteenth Holiday Campaign
National Juneteenth Observance Foundation (NJOF)
National Juneteenth Christian Leadership Council (NJCLC)
www.Juneteenth.us
www.19thofJune.com
www.njclc.com
www.JuneteenthJazz.com

rikyrah: picked up this video of Mr. Obama speaking at a high school on 9/10/08!!! Yaaaa!! :>) :>)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poEaUMnCIDI&NR=1

Barack Obama Visits Granby High School, Norfolk, Virginia

OBAMA-BIDEN '08!!!! :>) :>)

i've recently found out to my surprise that my immediate family members are all strongly ANTI-obama. they won't vote for mccain but they are not going to vote for obama. they either are going to write someone in or vote for a third party candidate. here's what i learned in a nutshell:

dad: an admitted clintonite (Bill, mostly) HATES obama and has been closely following him for the last 18 months of the campaign and has actually read the audacity of hope. dad feels that obama is inexperienced, has no substance and lacks character, morals and values. he also says, according to my sister, that obama is "evil." in the same way that bush is evil. dad also believes that obama is criminal because of the rezko thing and that he'll be indicted if he loses the election. dad also thinks that obama was behind jesse jackson jr's blistering response to his dad's "cut his nuts off" tirade. *PLEASE NOTE*... i got this from my sister who says that my dad gave a lot more detail about his views on obama during a discussion they had before i got into town. i didn't have the strength to have this conversation with my dad because we're dealing with a lot of family issues this weekend.

mom (and dad): barack has done everything to distance himself from black people i.e. not going to memphis for the 40th anniversary of dr king's assassination (this bugged me too), not mentioning king by name in his acceptance speech (this struck me as odd as well), not attending certain events and she mentioned something about legal immigrants that i didn't quite understand. mom also says that barack wouldn't be as popular as he is if he wasn't half white and that black people are only voting for him because he's black.

aunt: according to my mom, one of my aunts was turned off by the "groupie behaviour" displayed by barack's white supporters and says there's something not right about him.

sister: sister says that barack is too nonchalant (and perhaps arrogant) and that bill clinton did a better job of articulating obama's vision than he did at the dnc. she also says that obama says stupid stuff sometimes and contradicts himself. she's also starting to believe what my dad says about obama having no morals, character or values.

like i said it was a surprise and gave me pause. i didn't feel like arguing with any of them but it did give me food for thought, particularly on the race issue. i know obama can't be seen as the "black" candidate and there's a method/strategy in how he deals with black people and what event he chooses to participate in. however, is anyone else wondering what an obama cabinet would look like given that his top people and inner circle are predominantly white? will obama speak out about issues that impact african-americans the hardest like HIV in the black community when elected? sometimes i wonder if he really is keeping black people at arm's length. other times i think people are just being haters. i don't know. i's confused :) are my family members crazy or do they have valid points?

"is anyone else wondering what an obama cabinet would look like given that his top people and inner circle are predominantly white"

This statement gave you away - goodbye.

Obama will have Black folks, but it won't be the usual suspects.

I'm not buying the morals, character or values. WTF is that?

I mean that.

He's been married to the same woman for 16 years. If he had been fooling around on her - it WOULD be publicized. He loves his children. What the hell are they talking about morals?

Character - the man has been under THREAT OF DEATH since the moment he announced for the Presidency. He has basically had NOBODY on his side, except for MICHELLE - you think a man of weak character could have made it this far?


Values?

what kind of values? the kind of values that has you go work with poor folk. or marry a woman and then have children with her. and try and break the cycle since you grew up without a father - THOSE kinds of values?

IFFF Barack Obama had compared himself to MLK....OMG.....you think the calls of arrogant had been loud...they would have been booming.

Tavis Smiley is that you?
Your family would rather vote for a woman, because of who he husband and who used southern strategy (racial tactics) to get in the White House? A woman who made an agreement (speculation on my part) with her husband to stay if he got her in the White House? A woman when elected to the Senate, started to be as republicanlike as possible, so that she would have a centrist record to run on as a presidential candidate?

Your family has a problem with a Black man who is married to a STRONG Black woman who grow up on welfare and the only thing he had going for himself was intelligence? He used that intelligence to excelled and graduate from Ivy League schools and went into improvished neighbors to help rebuild them when he could have been like MOST Black (and White) people and went for the big paychecks?

The trolls definitely come out at night.

angee: Hey! :>) Trolls definitely come out at night.

And they comment in all sections of this site!! :>) :>) BORING!!!!

I used the Rate Down Arrow 2! :>) :>)

Oh! Thank you Sooo much for that information from Alaska!! Good get!!! :>) :>)

Thank you, again!! :>) :>)

They sure do. What is funny the poster's attempt was so sophmoric. You gotta come better than that.

Honey01: Hey! :>) :>) ABSOLUTELY!! :>) :>)

Obama Camp Steps Up Attack On McCain's Honor

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/12/obama-...

Obama Implies McCain Puts Other Countries First

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09...

I think Obama and Biden have great chemistry and look really comfortable when shown together. What a team they will be in the whitehouse. They will unite people and make this country better.

I also know that Obama will have a cabinet representative of women. I pleasant it will be to have a man with a worldview running this country.

I was hoping for some coverage and analysis of the Service Forum. I thought Senator Obama looked right at home and comfortably and forcefully gave a clear vision of his ideas and policies he would promote. I thought he was phenomenal.

This is an excellent commentary and many posters have expressed the same thing on this site (Craig, 99 in particular).

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/12/174...

So many great speeches and rallys by both Obama and Biden have flown under my radar. Its my own fault....so I'm going back to look at what I missed since I was looking at the cheap shiny new toy that will be broken before Xmas day is over.

Thanks for the acknowledgement, Miranda. I guess because we don't get a lot of traffic on our blogs, and don't have famous names, our posts exhorting people to stop denigrating our candidates, stop concentrating on the opposition party's candidates, accentuate the positive, and use our PCs, laptops and telephones to go after the oppostion ourselves mostly go unnoticed on JJP.

For example, earlier today I transcribed and posted a great portion of Obama's most excellent response at the Service Forum in one of the other threads; don't remember which one, but few if any folk read it, let alone went to youtube and watched/re-watched the video. Also, Democratic Underground is very good at keeping positive focus on Obama/Biden.

Speaking of Joe Biden, he has been out on the stump nearly every day this week kicking the feces out of McCaint and his running mate, yet there are many posts on this site that say that Joe isn't doing anything to hit back. Now I understand that this may be because corporate media isn't covering it, but that's no excuse when you have the web.

Over on Daily Kos, there are diaries posted with videos of both Obama and Biden's most excellent speeches in which they shred the opposition party candidates on the issues, yet people here and on Dkos still post that Obama is weak or that the campaign needs to do this or do that if they want to win.

There was a link I posted here on JJP from Daily Kos that talked about how the campaign is now framing the issues in a single three-word slogan - Solve Real Problems, but it went virtually unnoticed here because people were more into running down the repug VP pick and harping on the 'uppity' label as if that's the first time white folk have called black folk derogatory names. We've got it backwards - this is the first time we've EVER had a great chance of having a black man as president and we're blowing it, not him.

All that noise from the other side are distractions, not issues-driven and harping on and on about how affronted we are at the tactics of racist white folk we've been dealing with all our lives isn't going to help Obama and Biden win on November 4. Acting all brand new only brings Obama's numbers down.

We're as detached from the campaign as corporate media seem to be, and that ain't right - we ought to be very engaged because our very lives and livelihoods depend on changing the way Washington looks on November 4.

We're supposed to have Obama and Biden's backs, but we don't; we're so easily caught up in the bullfeathers, we're so easily distracted. The opposition party knows this and they use it to their great advantage, just as they use the corporate media to great advantage. What do we do in return? Whine about it and kick each other around and whine about the Obama campaign instead of turning it around on corporate media and flooding their phones and their email inboxes with notes on our displeasure.

Yet, we wonder why the race is so close, when it's our fault for having such short attention spans and for being so easily distracted by the minutiae.

It's winning time and we need to come together.

As it happens and in line with <b?rikyrah's diary, I've made a new post on my blog based on my comment to someone else's comment on Daily Kos - "But it's not looking as easy as it once did!"

99% Sure: "Virtual dap"!! :>) :>) "virtual hug!!" :>) :>) "virtual flowers!!":>)

Your admonishments were ever-so-wise!! And they DID influence posters' behaviors!! :>) :>) Don't you forget that!! :>) :>)

What is YOUR site?? :>) :>) You know that I like taking "FIELD TRIPS!!" :>)

Much appreciation!!! :>) God Bless you!! :>)

Obama-Biden '08!!!

Thank you and God Bless you.

please post the link for the public service transcript. I'd like to post it.

Was the toy made in China?

LOL!! YES! And its broken AND I probably have been exposed to mercury poison too!

"We deserve to see what we are getting, without disguise." As painful as it is sometimes, we need to see it to fight it.

As far as I am concerned everyone involved (oppositionally) has been his shadow; his day to their night; his morality to their immorality; his truth to their folly; his quiet calm to their feigned outrage and shrieking nothingness.

This is it. Sarah Palin is Barack Obama's shadow.

This is IT.

I remember Truth talking about the world calling forth Barack Obama. And I took that to heart. But I wondered when we would get his shadow to let folks SEE that he was really the only choice on the ticket for global change. Not just change in America. Along comes Sarah. It's no coincidence that she's backwater. Has no interest in the world. Belongs to a party that wants to secede from the United Sates. How opposite Barack. She's also from the second youngest state in the nation. She even attended college in Hawaii, the youngest state where Barack was born. And she was born in Idaho. If you recall, Idaho was the state where Barack beat Hillary by the largest margin.

These two are connected. Sarah is Barack's shadow. (Look at those names!!!)

What will we choose? The real thing or the shadow?

I wrote something at dailykos last night. Something about this discussion reminds me of it.

Maybe it's this -- I have observed that Senator Obama's presence and actions raise into visibility the ugly that might otherwise be at least partly hidden. I saw this in the primaries and am seeing it now, again. Seems related, somehow, to this comment from you, Craig: I remember Truth talking about the world calling forth Barack Obama. And I took that to heart. But I wondered when we would get his shadow to let folks SEE that he was really the only choice on the ticket for global change. Not just change in America ... What will we choose? The real thing or the shadow?

Here's what I wrote last night:

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

Lies and Truth

Electoral politics has generally left me cold. Too much bullshit, too much posing, to much messaging and not anywhere near enough truth.

See, truth is my thing. Lies actually physically hurt me. This is my single issue if I have one.

But you know, anyone can rhetorically claim to have The Truth ... so even the words mean nothing here.

And yet. This election, I am paying attention. More than that. I am supporting a candidate. I have contributed money. Multiple times.

To Senator Obama's campaign.

He speaks by doing. I am paying attention. I have been for some time now.

In the primaries, he defeated someone who built a campaign on lies and deception. I was paying attention then.

And I am paying attention now.

Now, it again emerges that this is a fight about lies and truth. A choice for a society that is literally and otherwise built on lies. (does that hurt to hear?)

So now, "America" -- what will it be?

What. Will. It. Be?

Show what is and isn't possible. Show to all who are watching now. Speak with doing. Speak your choice. Speak with doing.

What will it be?

Be assured: this choice goes far beyond your individual interests and desires.

It is a statement of what is and is not possible.

This is about truth and lies. It has been along.

What will it be?

What will we, this collective, choose?

Tell it in action.

What will it be?

REAL THING

REAL THING

Again, this is a great read.

Miss Sarah don't like Black people.

I found this on another blog that I visited and wanted to post it here. Here is the link
http://straighttalkexpresswatch.wordpress.com/2...

The post follows below.

The following is a statement from one of our Juneteenth Directors in Alaska:

By Gwendolyn Alexander, President

“As for Governor Sarah Palin’s involvement in the African American community, the Governor’s office hasn’t participated in any of our Alaska Juneteenth Events. All previous Alaskan Governor’s have traditionally attended and participated in our annual Juneteenth Celebration. Gov. Palin was the first governor not to send out a congratulatory letter or assist us in any way with our Juneteenth activities.

I didn’t have the courtesy of receiving a reply when I asked for a representative from the Governor’s office to come and speak at our Juneteenth Celebration if Governor Palin was unable to attend. I never even heard of Gov. Palin until she was elected Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, in Mat-Su Valley.

Governor Palin is a very energetic and spontaneous woman. With some of the things being said and going around this state right now, I’m surprised none of the national media have bothered to come here and get the words directly from the mouths of the people who have lived with her all of these years instead of ’surfing the net!’

My other opinion is why would an individual who, to my knowledge, has not hired any African-Americans on her gubernatorial staff, insist so passionately on being on a television show owned and operated by an African American, Oprah Winfrey?

While meeting with black leaders concerning the absence of any African-Americans on her staff, Gov. Palin responded that she doesn’t have to hire any blacks and was not intending to hire any. What kind of attitude is this toward African-American for who may be the first Vice-President of the United States?

I understand Oprah did have Senator Obama on her show a few times and was the main person raising funds for him “before” the presidency race was in full swing. However, the key point here is that it is Oprah’s prerogative not be used as a pawn to tilt the vote one way or another. Oprah has stated repeatedly that she wasn’t going to have one side or the other on her show by choice. I thought that was what the Civil Rights Movement was all about, a persons right to make their own choices. I guess this isn’t a Democracy at all anymore.”

Gwendolyn Alexander, President
African American Historical Society of Alaska, Inc.
Alaska Juneteenth Celebration
P. O. Box 143105
Anchorage AK 99514
907 884-6860 email: aahsa@gci.net
www.juneteenthalaska.com www.entertainmealaska.com/aahsa

http://straighttalkexpresswatch.wordpress.com/2......