Jack & Jill Politics

"Obama to NAACP: POTUS marking group's centennial"
http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0609/ob...

President Obama will travel to New York City in July to participate in the centennial anniversary of the NAACP, Newsday reports.

Newsday: "The NAACP, which got its start in a New York City apartment in February 1909, celebrates its centennial next month from July 11 through July 16.

"The six-day conference in New York will feature Obama, who will make his first official visit to the city as the leader of the free world.

"'It's humbling to think of the progress made possible by ordinary folks who refused to settle for the world as it was and instead stood up and fought to remake the world as it should be,' Obama said in a statement."

Evening thread is up.

Last night's episode of The Colbert Report, Stephen interviewed Gen Odierno. President Obama made a cameo appearance:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report...
2009/obama-orders-stephen-s-haircut---ray-odierno


Also, Al Rodgers over at Dkos has another great photo diary.
Rikyrah, the pictures of the President with the DC Prep kids are great.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/6/9/740434/-...
da-House-(wDouble-Bonus-Treats)

You have to check this forum out.It will have you saying WTF!!!!!
Are showers the women's ride to Satan's arms?
Hello friends,
I noticed that you have a lot of threads about women and how they should act and be treated.
I discovered a situation that I have not yet found the answer to. You see, just the other day I walked in on my wife in the shower (I don't allow her to lock any doors in the house, unless I say otherwise) and I was led to believe that she was pleasuring herself. We have a retractable shower head, and when I walked in, it was near her devil's layer and she seemed unusually embarrassed.

Though I did punish her, I don't know what else to do beyond these lines.
I need advice on what the right thing to do would be.

Your Brother in Faith,
Dustin

http://www.landoverbaptist.net/showthread.php?t...

I started laughing as soon as I saw the link URL. Landover Baptist Church is a parody site of the fundamentalist churches, and more times than not they're dead on the mark.

Oohhhhhh......glad you pointed that out! LMAO!

Obama Girls' London Trip: Harry Potter, Fish 'n' Chips!
By Simon Perry
Michelle Obama with daughters Malia and Sasha

Photo by: Miguel Medina / AFP / Getty

An evening meal of fish and chips at a pub rounded off an eventful day in London for First Daughters Malia and Sasha Obama.

The youngsters – ages 10 and 8 – dined with mom Michelle Obama at The Audley on Mount Street in Mayfair on Monday evening in a move that caught bar managers by surprise.

The children chose the fish supper while their mother opted for sirloin steak, say the pub's owners, Punch Pub Company.

"We were all speechless when they walked in," said Cintia Pinto, 24, who served the first lady's table. "I couldn't believe it. But they were all very friendly, smiling and laughing."

"They made us feel calm. The girls were so sweet and polite. They thanked us every time we brought them something. It was a real honor," says Pinto.

The group dined in the pub's private dining room upstairs, managers say, and before long a crowd gathered outside, clamoring for a view of the special visitors.

"We've had other famous people coming in," manager John Gohery said, "but nothing on this scale."


Big Ben and Parliament
Earlier in the day, the girls also visited the set of the new Harry Potter movie at North London's Pinewood Studios and the Houses of Parliament, where they checked out the historic clock tower and its Big Ben bell, according to the BBC.

Mrs. Obama also met with Sarah Brown, the wife of Prime Minster Gordon Brown – someone she got to know well during her last visit to London back in April, when she accompanied her husband on a royal visit.


http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,2028402...

OK but why am I jealous they got to visit the set of the new Harry Potter film?

Check out the video -

http://btx3.wordpress.com/2009/06/07/other-othe...

This is some low don isht.

I like to watch Pastor Manning after having had a few drinks and it's yet too early to partake in his sermon for today.

I promise you--the POTUS would crack-up to know that a preacher is calling him a "long-legged mack daddy," and I got that from the first 20 seconds alone.

Props for posting it on your blog--some blogs too bougy for that type of comedy.

Manning is a regular comedy act at my joint - I call him Alan Keyes' lost Other-other brother-Brother...

Police GONE WILD....AGAIN....tasering a SEVENTY-TWO year old woman...over a traffic ticket stop..her screams are hard to listen to...!!

www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/09/police-taser-...

She looked like she was about to run out into the highway.

that they know they're on camera and don't care, tells a lot about them.

The Threat From Below
Will the next attack on the United States come from submarines?

When I asked that question seven years ago, the model I had in mind was the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist group infamous for naval suicide strikes. A Tiger supporter had recently been caught building a submersible vessel.

Last month, the Tigers were wiped out by the Sri Lankan military. But the technology they were developing, submersibles, has caught on. "U.S. law enforcement officials say that more than a third of the cocaine smuggled into the United States from Colombia travels in submersibles," the Washington Post reports. "U.S. officials and their Colombian counterparts have detected evidence of more than 115 submersible voyages since 2006," and "U.S. officials expect 70 or more to be launched this year."
Read More
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/humannature/ar...

Doubt it - simply from the cost and US based infrastructure aspect.

Cocaine dealers have had decades to build up a secure infrastructure in the US and worldwide. The coke dealers aren't interested in selling the technology because if some terrorist did attack the US with it - then this highly successful method of importing drugs would disappear due to concentrated enforcement by the US Navy and Coast Guard.

I understand what you are saying but,WTF!!!!For decades we have spent trillions of dollars in anti submarine warfare and coke dealers and maybe terrorist can hop in a sub and mosey on to any point on US coast.Forgive me but I want a refund.

Know what you are saying - but these aren't exactly "submarines", they are semi-submersibles which means they don't go all the way under the water. They are also typically made of fiberglass which is radar transparent. What they really do is to ride very low in the water with the decks awash.

More nit-picking stupidity from wingnuts. What else can they do? Time to address it.


http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/2009/06/potus-wit...

this is the best that they can do.

The ol' teleprompter argument = they got nothin'

From DailyKos:

The Ghost of Joe Bruno, Tom DeLay Redux, and Why NY Matters
by Jake McIntyre
Tue Jun 09, 2009 at 06:00:09 AM PDT


Yesterday, the Republican minority in the New York State Senate teamed up with the two worst Democrats in the Senate caucus (one recently indicted for felony battery of his girlfriend, the other a walking campaign finance disaster) in a hamhanded attempt to wrest control of the chamber from the Democratic majority elected last November. Although the status of the attempted coup is sure to be litigated, it appears clear that the Senate was adjourned at the time when the Republicans claim that their reorganization resolution was passed, and that consequently, the Democrats remain in control of the chamber. The Secretary and Sergeant at Arms of the Senate control access to the chamber, and as the Secretary was appointed by the current Majority Leader, Democrat Malcolm Smith, it's highly unlikely that the Senate will again convene until it is definitively established that yesterday's circus was null and void.

What will happen at that point is extremely hazy, and will depend on a number of parliamentary, legal, and political factors that are simply unknowable this morning. But what's clear as the waters of zebra mussel-purified Lake Erie is that the happenings in Albany are critical not just to the 19 million New Yorkers who just seven months ago voted to replace the corrupt, dysfunctional, Republican Senate majority, but to all Americans who demand progressive and transparent government.

For 13 years beginning in 1995, Joe Bruno, a Republican from Rensselaer, ruled the Senate as his own private fiefdom. He dispensed favors like a godfather, and expected favors in return. He had effective veto power over any state action, and abused that power with relish, exacting tribute from citizens, legislators, and governors alike. During Bruno's reign as Majority Leader, New York was saddled with one of the least transparent governments anywhere in the nation -- Albany was the place where "three men in a room" would make all decisions of note, and Joe Bruno made sure he got his as part of any deal. But as the state grew bluer and bluer, as the ire of New Yorkers grew at the sclerosis in the capital, and as Bruno finally came under criminal scrutiny, something had to give -- and last summer, Joe Bruno stepped down as Majority Leader. It was like Erich Honecker resigning as East German dictator -- you knew it wouldn't be long until his regime followed him into ignominy. And sure enough, in November, the Republican hold on the Senate was broken.

With the Democratic majority came real reform. Things weren't perfect, obviously -- Hiram Monserrate, the aforementioned alleged girlfriend-beater, and Pedro Espada, the aforementioned campaign finance scofflaw, were now in the majority -- but the years of a Senate that refused to be accountable to its owners were over. There was a lot of work to do:

Democrats took control of the State Senate last month after more than four decades of Republican rule, then set out to determine how the Senate's own budget of nearly $100 million and its attendant perks were being distributed.

They are still trying to figure it out.

They recently realized there are some 75 employees working at the Senate's own printing plant, a plain brick building on the outskirts of Albany. On Long Island, they found a small television studio, which had been set up — all with public money, with two press aides on hand to help operate it — for the exclusive use of Republican senators to record cable TV shows.

Democrats also came across what they are calling the "Brunomobile," a $50,000 specially outfitted GMC van, with six leather captain's chairs (some swiveling), a navigation system, rearview camera and meeting table. Joseph L. Bruno, the former Senate majority leader who was recently indicted on corruption charges, traveled in the van after his use of state helicopters sparked a feud with the Spitzer administration.

Then there are the parking spots, always at a premium near the Capitol. Democrats had been given roughly one spot per senator — there were 30 Democrats last year — and guessed there were perhaps double or even triple that controlled by the majority. Instead, they have learned, there are more than 800.

And Democratic leaders must determine what to do about 45 workers toiling away in a building close to the Capitol who appear to have been engaged in quasi-political research for the Republicans.

"Every time we nail something down, we uncover another rock and there's another 30 people there — it's all over the state," said Angelo J. Aponte, who as the new secretary of the Senate is the top aide to Malcolm A. Smith, the Queens Democrat who became majority leader last month.

But as Citizen Bruno was busy getting indicted on massive federal corruption charges, the new majority was taking bold steps to fix the basic way that New York works -- reforming the state's notorious Rockefeller drug laws, seeking to limit outside pay for legislators, and -- perhaps most impressively, from our perspective in the netroots -- introducing unprecedented transparency via a new website streaming all Senate business and providing novel opportunities for citizens to get involved in the Senate's business.

This, of course, would not do. A state Republican Party used to treating the Senate as a piggy bank and patronage ATM was not going to let the arriviste Democrats just dismantle everything they'd built. Moreover, the GOP recognized that Democratic control of the Senate meant that the upcoming, post-census federal redistricting process would actually be conducted in a fair and responsive manner, instead of in a way guaranteed to preserve the gerrymandered seats of the three remaining Republicans in the state's House delegation. And billionaire Rochester plutocrat Tom Golisano, who thrice failed to buy the governor's mansion in "independent" bids, and who spent millions to try and bolster the dying GOP's hold on the Senate last year, was appalled that the new Senate wouldn't cut his taxes -- so appalled that he moved into Florida tax exile.

The answer was simple: a coup. A coup which would thwart transparency and reform, restore GOP perks and pork, follow Tom DeLay's playbook for undemocratic redistricting shenanigans, and cut Tom Golisano's taxes. The needs of the many for responsive government would be sacrificed for the needs of a very, very, select few.

And so Tom Golisano, who claimed to be the tribune of clean government, helped broker a deal to give Espada -- a man who spat on basic campaign finance laws -- the president pro tem's seat in the Senate. And the Republicans crowed that they had taken back the majority, and undoubtedly began wondering how long it would take them to reopen their private TV studio and print shop. And somewhere in Texas, Tom DeLay smiled, proud that state legislative hijinks could still result in more House Republicans.

Now, New York Democrats are going to fight this coup. And they're going to need our help, and I'm confident that they'll be asking for it in specific ways in the hours and days that lie ahead. But even if you live 3000 miles from Albany, and even if there's no real way that you can help the Empire State, take heed of what's happening in Albany. Because it's something that could happen in any state capital where Democrats hold a narrow majority, and where powerful interests seek to thwart democracy to get their way. Make no mistake -- this isn't just a New York story.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/6/8/212518/5...

Who says Terrorism doesn't work? Who says it can't make people cower, run and hide?
"Tiller's Kansas Abortion Clinic Will Not Reopen"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ar...

Same story in NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/us/10abortion...

Looks like the abortion terrorists have won. How soon before it happens again?

"Abortion Doctor's" Clinic Will Be Closed Permanently!!!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/us/10abortion...

This breaks my heart to read this news. It is my hope that somewhere else in the country someone will pick up the torch and continue Dr. Tillers work.

Prince needs hip replacements Damn.

oh no....this breaks my heart...I gotta pour a lil out for the man who gave us " Soft and Wet"....how can this be?

He's spent the past 20+ years diving into splits and walking in stilettos. I'm surprised this didn't happen sooner.

RAOTFLMAO you know you wrong. lololol

That's definitely one for my "you know you're getting old when..." files.

From Ta-Nehisi Coates:

Something To Consider
09 Jun 2009 01:00 pm

I've been thinking a lot lately about why I'm not a conservative, mostly because I've been thinking so much about slavery and Reconstruction. It seems, to my mind, to be an authentic conservative in the 1850s is to perhaps recognize slavery as evil, but oppose doing anything about it that might upset the planters. It seems, to my mind, to be an authentic conservative in the 1960s would be to recognize that segregation was also evil, but resolve to nothing about it which might upset its supporters.

This is not a view to be dismissed out of hand--more people died at Antietam that on any other day in American military history. I think about the terror that fell upon black communities in the South, after the Civil War, and I wonder whether it could have all been averted by a more a gradualist approach. Sadly, I don't think so. And yet you see Lincoln (a conservative at heart, no?), a reluctant reformer, doing whatever he can to avoid war, to avoid making the war about slavery (initially), trying to save the Union at all cost.

He isn't wrong. But if you are the slave, that essentially conservative approach will always privilege your master over you. Conservatism, with its belief in institutions, traditions, and the past, will seemingly always privilege (perhaps inadvertently) the powerful over the powerless. Institutions, traditions and the past belong to those with power. Privileging them, privileges their agents.

Two quotes made me think about this today. Here's David Brooks:


Sonia Sotomayor had bad timing. If she'd entered college in the late-1950s or early-1960s, she would have been surrounded by an ethos that encouraged smart young ethnic kids to assimilate. If she'd entered Princeton and Yale in the 1980s, her ethnicity and gender would have been mildly interesting traits among the many she might possibly possess.

But she happened to attend Princeton and then Yale Law School in the 1970s. These were the days when what we now call multiculturalism was just coming into its own. These were the days when the whole race, class and gender academic-industrial complex seemed fresh, exciting and just.


Here's Andrew:


It isn't the judicial rulings that trouble me so much as her non-judicial opinions and mindset. The constant, oppressive consciousness of her identity - racial and gender - and the harping on it so aggressively so often does strike me as a classic mode of victimology deeply entrenched in her generation. I don't think it's disqualifying and I don't see any crude racialism in her rulings, but I do think it shows that for Obama, this kind of racial/ethnic view of the world is so endemic it's invisible to him. And it's off-message for his candidacy and life.

Both of these quotes extend a tremendous amount of charity to the agents of power. Brooks assumes that these agents at Princeton and Yale, in the 50s and 60s, would have welcomed the Puerto-Rican Sotomayor with open arms. He presumes that they would have wanted her to be one of them. Andrew presumes that that identity politics, what he calls "a classic mode of victimology," with its "racial/ethnic view" of the world, and its focus on gender, is particular only to Sotomayor and her ilk.

A critique of liberal identity politics is not wrong on its face, but it almost always is unconcerned with the identity politics of power. Thus Sotomayor's focus on her identity as a "wise Latina" pose is seen as the disturbing result of multiculturalism run amok, not having been raised in a country where the tangible mechanisms of white supremacy were in full effect.

It isn't, for instance, the fact that Sotomayor was raised in an era where government-backed redlining was still legal, it's the fact that some students at Yale demanded a Chicano history course that's the issue. Likewise, it isn't the oppressive identity politics practiced by conservatives for the past 30 years that's disturbing, but Sotomayor's response to it. To be a true conservative is to be more disturbed by victimology, than actual victimizing. It is to claim to abhor evil--but to abhor the response to evil even more. It's like in the NFL--it's the second who throws the punch who draws the flag.

Still thinking this through. More later.

http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives...

WTF ? Brooks & Sullivan can kiss my blue-black ass.

Sotomayor aint no "Seven of Nine" from the "BORG.'

White privildeged dude, give it up; RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!

I wonder if Brooks and Sullivan will talk about "male entitlement" anytime soon?

It seems, to my mind, to be an authentic conservative in the 1960s would be to recognize that segregation was also evil, but resolve to nothing about it which might upset its supporters.

STOP.RIGHT.THERE. That's punk ass bitch behavior. PERIOD.

My reply to Coates:

I'll say it again:

Brooks and Andrew Sullivan are still quoting SHELBY STEELE as someone people ought to listen to.

So, what the hell do they know about multi-culturalism.

Multi-culturalism means to me that I had 2 roommates from freshman year in college; women I'm still friends with to this day.

One is child of Greek Immigrants. She is a Republican. She worked high up for a GOP Senator. We don't agree on politics, but when my father died, she held my hand. When my sister was undergoing breast cancer treatment, she called her doctor cousins and made sure that I knew every possible new treatment that was available, and was even the one who suggested the name of my sister's ultimate surgeon. When my mother died, she not only called, but flew and stayed with me for a few days after the funeral, leaving her own husband and children. Yes, she voted for Bush twice, but never in the years that we've known one another has she ever let me down.

The other one is a daughter of Colombian Immigrants, via Syria- An Arab Christian.

Yet, we have celebrated the ups and downs of one another's lives since the moment we met that freshman week.

My other three oldest friends in the world are a Sistafriend, a Jew (I attended her Bat-Mitzvah) and a daughter of Vietnamese Buddhists.

Each of these women have personal characteristics that are similar, yet, I respect their cultures and traditions.

THAT is what multi-culturalism means. It means that the community that nutured and supported you is worth something. That it has meaning. That it is valid. That the Black neighborhood I grew up in, whose vaules and traditions cradled me until I left to go to the Ivy League, is as valid as anyone else's.

Brooks and Sullivan would prefer their Non-Whites to be of the Shelby Steele, Unca Clarence mold. And, Sotomayor says, ' No Thanks' to that.

TNC is such weak sauce you had to rip him 3x and he still doesn't get it.
ROTFLMBAO

Sullivan is opposed to the whole concept that other cultures and customs have value - which Shelby laps up like a starving dog confronted with it's first meal in a week.

Preach it!

You are too kind to Andrew Sullivan.

Each of these women have personal characteristics that are similar, yet, I respect their cultures and traditions.

EXACTLY, rikyrah! Folks like those Brooks and Sullivan aren't really talking about multi-culturalism, but rather assimilation.