Jack & Jill Politics

Because, time after time, while the Grand Old Party can talk a good game about inclusion, their walking their talk is a whole ‘nother matter.  One of JJP’s readers, Belle, is to get the hat tip for posting this in the Daily Thread, but after reading the article, I thought it should be front-paged, with excerpts:

The GOP has proven to Blacks that it is a color-blind party. Every time I go to their offices I rarely see people of color. So they are either color-blind or just blind to people of color.

This colorblindness is so pervasive that when Blacks are pondering a run for office these same GOP committees recommend their White friends as their campaign managers, finance directors, media firms, etc. Why do they never recommend Blacks? The party is truly color blind.

And, here’s the Money Quote:

Most Black Republicans have no credibility within our community because they seem weak and afraid to challenge the party’s leaders. We are accused of saying whatever we think the party wants us to say.

The real deal is that the GOP want Black Activists to be nothing more than Slave-Catchers.  This article indicates that Blacks are not a monolithic group in either political party - that we’re more than capable of independent thinking and we don’t always possess a sheep-herd mentality.  Have you ever engaged in debate with a Black Republican?  Most of them argue party talking points, and not their own opinions.  And, then, when you hear their talking points as defense, if you’re like me, you ask the question “Do you know HOW LAME YOU SOUND?”

I put a beat-down on one of my ReThug friends back when Bush was busy stealing elections, and I didn’t say much to administer the beat down.  For every talking point, I kept asking, “Why do they think that?” and I asked that one question so many times, my friend said to me, “Leutisha, I’m not sure where they’re going with this, but I have to support it because I’m a Republican, and George Bush is a Christian. He’ll restore honor to the White House and bring Jesus into the Government.”

Yikes!  Haven’t seen or talked to my friend in a while because she doesn’t want to own up to voting for a man who has royally effed up the country.  She only voted for him because he was a “Christian”. Even when I’ve asked her about her vote, now she don’t want to talk about it.  I’m a Christian as well, but I fully support the separation of Church and State for the simple reason that I don’t want the government telling me how to worship, of if I should worship.  Our government is in the shythole it’s in because ReThugs tried to evangelize the operation of the government.

One of our readers, Webb, stated that it wasn’t the Blacks supporting McCain who should be held responsible; it is the 9% of Black fools that voted for Bush and helped to usher in all of this shyt, that should be held responsible for the rise of John McCain and the KKK campaign rallies. And I agree.

The Blacks in the GOP are all too willing to catch more slaves for the plantation, as opposed to helping them to their freedom, just because they are more into herd mentality than the rest of us.

Good morning.

As you’re enjoying time with family and friends, don’t forget JJP.

Drop those links. Engage in debate. Give us trivia and gossip too.

And always, have a peaceful day.

I’m ambivalent these days.

On one hand, Sarah Palin provides enough political fodder to write as many books as has been written about GeeShrubya.  On the other hand, this woman seems to have no limits and doesn’t allow us in the blogsphere to limit writing about her silly ass, either.  In the latest development of the ongoing drama that has became John McCain’s allegedly POTUS campaign, we find out that far from being humble and contrite about the state investigation that revealed Palin to have abused her authority as Alaska’s Governor, she’s downright defiant about it:

Vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin denied wrongdoing Saturday after a probe found she had abused voters’ trust as Alaska governor, in a new blow to John McCain’s trailing White House campaign.

Republican McCain was embroiled in turmoil of his own meanwhile, after he was booed late Friday by supporters and appeared to undercut his own campaign strategy by calling time on personal attacks on Barack Obama.

Alaska Governor Palin rejected the findings of a bipartisan legislative probe which found she violated ethics rules by letting husband Todd pressure top officials for the firing of her ex-brother-in-law, a state trooper.

Asked by a reporter in Pennsylvania if the charges were true, Palin replied: “No, and if you read the report you will see that there was nothing unlawful or unethical about it. You have to read the report.”

Is she referring to her own investigative report?  She can’t be referring to the one issued by the State of Alaska, initiated by her own state’s REPUBLICAN PARTY.

Dang, TruthSeeker, I’m wearing out your quote - “Sarah Palin has enough shyt on her to fill in the gaps in the Grand Canyon.”

And the latest reports merely verify it.  But, most of us, if we were Sarah Palin; I think we’d try to tone down the rhetoric and get the spotlight off ourselves, which in this case, she’s too stupid to even DO THAT.  John McCain hiding behind her skirts to do the dirty work of being a “pit bull with lipstick” is giving him more than he bargained for, and too little, too late:

McCain told the man who said he was “scared” to bring his new baby into an America ruled by Obama that the Democrat was a “decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.”

McCain’s comments drew boos from some of his supporters and appeared to directly undercut the thrust of his aggressive negative ad campaign which has question whether Obama has a character befitting a president.

That last comment sounds a lil’ like acknowlegement from McCain that Obama has a character befitting a President.  However, after GeeShrubya, that’s not hard to have, given who has managed to make America a laughing stock on a global scale for the last eight years.

Too bad he didn’t decide to town shyt down until his own Party Leadership called him out on it.

You can’t make this shyt up and it basically writes itself. But, I’m not celebrating yet because I know what can happen in this country during election season.  An election can be stolen right out from under you, but unlike Al Gore or John Kerry, I don’t think Obama goes down without a fight.

Let the games begin.

Good morning.

As we go about our business this weekend, sharing it with family and friends, don’t forget that you can participate: donate, canvass, phonebank. It’s all needed.

And, don’t forget us here at JJP.

Drop those links. Engage in debate. Give us trivia and gossip too.

And always, have a peaceful day.

While she’s on the campaign trail, whipping up bigoted frenzies being described as “renewing” the GOP base, the Good people of the state of Alaska got busy putting their Governor in check.  Via the AP:

Sarah Palin unlawfully abused her power as governor by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, the chief investigator of an Alaska legislative panel concluded Friday. The politically charged inquiry imperiled her reputation as a reformer on John McCain’s Republican ticket.

Investigator Stephen Branchflower, in a report by a bipartisan panel that investigated the matter, found Palin in violation of a state ethics law that prohibits public officials from using their office for personal gain.

The inquiry looked into her dismissal of Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan, who said he lost his job because he resisted pressure to fire a state trooper involved in a bitter divorce with the governor’s sister. Palin says Monegan was fired as part of a legitimate budget dispute.

The report found that Palin let the family grudge influence her decision-making even if it was not the sole reason Monegan was dismissed. “I feel vindicated,” Monegan said. “It sounds like they’ve validated my belief and opinions. And that tells me I’m not totally out in left field.”

Branchflower said Palin violated a statute of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.

But, then, she tried to issue her own report, which, of course, would clear her.  WTH?  When can an elected official under suspicion of violating the ethics regulations she’s sworn to uphold, get to investigate themselves?

Then, I guess McCain has surrogates reading blogs like JJP, calling him out for not admonishing his bigoted supporters.  Too late, that horse has left the barn and it’s not coming back:

Both times, McCain’s campaign has issued statements disavowing the use of the Democrat’s full name.
A McCain aide said they tell individuals speaking before every event not to do so. “Sometimes people just do what they want,” explained the aide.

The raw emotions worry some in the party who believe the broader swath of swing voters are far more focused on their dwindling retirement accounts than on Obama’s background and associations and will be turned off by footage of the McCain events.

John Weaver, McCain’s former top strategist, said top Republicans have a responsibility to temper this behavior.

“People need to understand, for moral reasons and the protection of our civil society, the differences with Sen. Obama are ideological, based on clear differences on policy and a lack of experience compared to Sen. McCain,” Weaver said. “And from a purely practical political vantage point, please find me a swing voter, an undecided independent, or a torn female voter that finds an angry mob mentality attractive.”

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Hat tip: JJP poster

This was originally poster over at The Field

Guest Post from a Field Hand: “I Cried My Last Tears Yesterday”
Posted by Al Giordano - October 10, 2008 at 3:27 pm By Al Giordano

Dear Al,

The words in the subject line are from a gospel song by Mary Mary:

I feel that way. I write to you because I think you know how I feel, where I am coming from, and the struggle that we have all been on for so long.

If it matters, I am an African American single mother-This election means more to me than I can find the words to describe. I love this country despite all of our history.

And yesterday, I cried my last tears, after I watch the venomous, vile, and vitriolic display at the McCain-Palin rally unfold over the last few days. I was raised in a Southern Baptist church, and I was taught as a young child when things look bleak and you are backed up against a wall you just let go and let God. We as AAs have been subjected to the system and have the philosophy ingrained that we have to accept the things that we can not change.

Well here and now damn it–I have cried my last tears yesterday. I am going to fight!

I love the principles that our country was founded on–and I hate what some people are resorting to. And we will fulfill the promise of a More Perfect Union.

This is the election that will either save or end my life as I know it–nonetheless I will be different. I am different.

Just as I find comfort in the sentiments of an old negro spiritual, I find comfort in the words on your blog. You express–in clear succinct terms what I am feeling, what I am going through, and how I can make it to the other side. I can’t cry any more.

This moment has ignited a new found sense of civic duty, civic pride, and civic virtue that I have never experienced before. I owe it all to the residual effects of being an organizer.

Al, keep on telling the people how important this is.

Keep telling them to push one step further.

Keep telling them my struggle is our struggle .

Tell em’ not to cry.

Cause I cried my last tears, yesterday.

Between this, and Donna Brazile, it’s like I’m going to church up in here.

Have a great weekend yall. This is gonna make some of you cry. Just warning!

Hilarious.

Obama nailed them.

Thank you, The Jed Report

From The New Yorker Magazine:

Comment
The Choice
October 13, 2008

Never in living memory has an election been more critical than the one fast approaching—that’s the quadrennial cliché, as expected as the balloons and the bombast. And yet when has it ever felt so urgently true? When have so many Americans had so clear a sense that a Presidency has—at the levels of competence, vision, and integrity—undermined the country and its ideals?

The incumbent Administration has distinguished itself for the ages. The Presidency of George W. Bush is the worst since Reconstruction, so there is no mystery about why the Republican Party—which has held dominion over the executive branch of the federal government for the past eight years and the legislative branch for most of that time—has little desire to defend its record, domestic or foreign. The only speaker at the Convention in St. Paul who uttered more than a sentence or two in support of the President was his wife, Laura. Meanwhile, the nominee, John McCain, played the part of a vaudeville illusionist, asking to be regarded as an apostle of change after years of embracing the essentials of the Bush agenda with ever-increasing ardor.

The Republican disaster begins at home. Even before taking into account whatever fantastically expensive plan eventually emerges to help rescue the financial system from Wall Street’s long-running pyramid schemes, the economic and fiscal picture is bleak. During the Bush Administration, the national debt, now approaching ten trillion dollars, has nearly doubled. Next year’s federal budget is projected to run a half-trillion-dollar deficit, a precipitous fall from the seven-hundred-billion-dollar surplus that was projected when Bill Clinton left office. Private-sector job creation has been a sixth of what it was under President Clinton. Five million people have fallen into poverty. The number of Americans without health insurance has grown by seven million, while average premiums have nearly doubled. Meanwhile, the principal domestic achievement of the Bush Administration has been to shift the relative burden of taxation from the rich to the rest. For the top one per cent of us, the Bush tax cuts are worth, on average, about a thousand dollars a week; for the bottom fifth, about a dollar and a half. The unfairness will only increase if the painful, yet necessary, effort to rescue the credit markets ends up preventing the rescue of our health-care system, our environment, and our physical, educational, and industrial infrastructure.

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From The Record:

Choice is clear: Obama for president
September 28, 2008 6:00 AM
Barack Obama is our choice for president of the United States.

He has demonstrated time and again he can think on his feet. More importantly, he has demonstrated he will think things through, seek advice and actually listen to it.

Obama is a gifted speaker. But in addition to his smarts and energy, possibly his greatest gift is his ability to inspire.

For eight years, American politics has been marked by smears, fears and greed. For too long, we’ve practiced partisanship in Washington, not politics. The result is a cynicism every bit as deep as that which infected the nation when Richard Nixon was shamed from office and when Bill Clinton brought shame to the office.

This must end, but John McCain can’t do it. He can’t inspire, nor can he really break from a past that is breaking this nation.

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They endorsed Senator Barack Obama.

The Endorsement:

October 10, 2008, 9:06 AM

Esquire Endorses Barack Obama for President
We thought this election would be a serious fight over the future of this country, but only one candidate showed up.
By The Editors

It was a day in February and the sun was little more than a gaudy accessory. The man stood on a bridge along Eleventh Street in Milwaukee. He was holding a sign. His breath rose in clouds. There was ice on his eyebrows. Beneath him, along Interstate 43, the traffic ran north and south in a great rattle. The cold made everything seem fragile, as though the cars would shatter if they collided. It was ten o’clock in the morning and it was 8 degrees, and the man held his sign while the ice formed on the edges of his face, trying to get the cars below him to honk their horns in support of Barack Obama.

He had been a classmate, long ago, before he’d gone into the Navy the way his family had wanted him to, a fellow student at a high school in Hawaii, where they had no mornings like this one. He had traveled the world and he had come to this bridge with the ice on his face because he was looking for something and he thought he’d found it. Hardly anyone looked up. Hardly anyone saw his sign. Hardly anyone honked their horn. But he stood there, holding his sign and waving at the drivers below as the sun rose vainly higher in the sky and nobody looked up toward it to see the sign and honk their horns.

“I’m working for him,” the man said, “because a lot of what I believed, I don’t believe anymore, and I want to again. Not in him, necessarily, but in those things.”

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this is incredible.

Support MC Yogi, and check out his latest album

He signed off on transition papers.  Via the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) — A piece of paper that President Bush signed Thursday helps ease his way out of the White House when his term ends and clears the way for his successor.

For seven years and nearly nine months has signed virtually every memo or order or piece of legislation imaginable. He even vetoed a few bills, but the directive he put his name on Thursday was one that few talk very much about. Basically, it’s the executive order that turns the keys to the White House over to whomever is elected president on Nov. 4.

A little publicized truth is that Washington can’t wait until inauguration day next Jan. 20 to figure out the details of a transition to a new presidency. Both Barack Obama and John McCain already have designated officials to oversee such a transition once the outcome of the election is known. The transition team of the winning candidate will set up procedures for selecting key personnel and making policy decisions in the 11 weeks between the new president takes office.

Although it’s an Executive Order, and not an actual piece of irrefutable legislation, nonetheless, the eight-year nightmare that has been the Bush Administration indicates coming to a much-awaited end.  Yet, I can’t help but mention that just like every other failed business venture that Bush has put his hands on, he’s leaving it in craptacular fashion and a God-awful mess for someone else to clean up.  That has been his M.O. for most of his adult life.  Why should that change NOW?

Besides, what other President can you name that when you do a “Google” Search, the following came up?

Par for the course, I’d say.  But for those who were fearing that this President would invoke martial law, you have to read “Bush on the Couch” by Dr. Justin Frank.  The book’s insights would let you know that far from trying to be a long term “dictator”, Bush has the attention span of a seven year old, and the way he hollered in the 2004 Town Hall Debate about how being President was “hard work”, should indicated that he couldn’t wait to get the Hell out of Dodge.

Speeches like this.

Yeah, Joe, in my neighborhood too - you got something to say, say it to the person’s face.