Jack & Jill Politics

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE

(I know how to embed, but when I published the post, it came up automatically, and I can’t stand videos that start automatically. So, that’s why the link.)

Me?

I see a creative and positive way to reach these young men using the longstanding traditions of Black Greek organizations.

I hear principles of self-reliance, independence, reinforcing that they can use their minds to make it in this country. I hear the Old School Lessons.

But, maybe it’s just me.

But, I guess for some folks, the only way they’re comfortable with Young Black Men is with a ball in their hand, or in line getting ready for the prison bus.

The teacher behind this was suspended, by the way. Why do I suspect that if his plan for these young men had been playing basketball afterschool, nobody would be talking about suspending him?

Good morning.

We’re almost to the weekend. While you make it through your day, don’t forget JJP.

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

And always, have a peaceful day.

Hat tip: DailyKos

From the live feed:

October 09, 2008
Exclusive: Obama buys half-hour of network primetime
By James Hibberd and Paul J. Gough

Barack Obama has purchased a half-hour of primetime television on CBS and NBC, sources confirm.

The Obama campaign is producing a nationwide pitch to voters that will air on at least two broadcast networks. The ad will run Wednesday, Oct. 29, at 8 p.m. — less than a week before the general election.

The direct purchase of such a large block of national airtime right before an election used to be more commonplace before campaigns began to focus their endgame strategies exclusively on battleground states. Such a move is not without precedent in modern presidential politics, however — Ross Perot did a similar purchase in 1992.

The special is a smart move for the Obama campaign, said Larry Sabato, a political analyst and director of the Center of Politics at the University of Virginia.

“Obama’s theme is not just change but unity, so he’s appealing to the whole nation rather than a handful of tossup states,” Sabato said. “He wants to win the popular vote by a good margin, which will enable him to govern.”

Rest of article at link above.

Well, well, well.

If nothing else, the Obama Campaign thinks in bold colors.

Hi folks,

I’ve been invited and am honored to accept a position on the host committee of The Green Apple Fundraiser for the Obama Victory Fund at the Kalahari in Harlem next Tuesday night. Harlem4Obama is sponsoring the event and has a great lineup of speakers.

Given this blog’s focus on both black and, increasingly, green (energy, development, jobs), I’m inviting anyone in the NY area to attend and everyone else to give what you can to the campaign through this event.

If you donate, please put “BARATUNDE” in the note at the bottom of the donation page, so the Obama campaign can recognize my vast powers

The event is on Facebook too. make it viral.

more on the speakers after the jump

Read the rest of this entry »

From Craig Hickman:

Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Fight the Terrorist Smears

THERE’S A CONCERTED effort by the McCain campaign, with a huge assist from Chris Matthews on MSNBC and a scurrilous email smear effort, to paint Barack Obama as a sleeper-cell terrorist. I know speaking logic to fools is often a bridge to nowhere, but sometimes, we can get through to the other side. To anyone who receives these emails or who is challenged by someone person-to-person, please respond with something along these lines:

Do any of you really they think so little of our country’s intelligence agencies that they would be so inept as to allow a terrorist to run for any national office, much less the presidency, and secure the nomination of one of its major political parties? Especially after 9/11?

Imagine the laughing stock we would be in the world if our nation’s defense department was so ineffective.

What would our allies think about us?

If the Clintons, who have some of the best opposition research teams in the world, one of them was our president, after all, couldn’t get anything on Barack Obama, there’s nothing to get.

Barack Obama is not the enemy. Nor are other Americans with Semitic/Arabic names and brown skin. The kind of rhetoric going around can put the safety of people on the ground in jeopardy.

Times are tough. Folks are desperate. People are looking for scapegoats. They’ll do just about anything: rob a store, kill their own family in a murder-suicide, attack anyone who looks “exotic”, gas innocent children in a mosque, walk into a Unitarian church and open fire…

Vote for Obama or don’t vote for Obama, but to demonize him with all this terrorist innuendo in a post 9/11 climate is dangerous and wrong and it needs to stop.

Barack Obama is the father of two beautiful girls. They need him to be safe. We need to keep our citizenry safe.

Please do the right thing and don’t forward any emails and speak out against this dangerous smear campaign whenever you are confronted with it.

Posted by Craig Hickman at 11:56 PM

Craig’s right. We have to fight it whereever we see or hear it. You know that those SOB’s have no conscience whatsoever…so, we have to push back.

My favorite talk show host is a fiery liberal, progressive named Ray Taliaferro at radio station KGO in San Francisco, and whenever Ray signed off the air, he would always end his show by telling his listeners that “the price of freedom is Eternal Vigilance.”

That has never been more magified than this election year.  The Republicans are in free fall and have been so used to being in, and abusing power - for so long, that we should expect any and everything to come out of their camp to elect Senator UnAble and Governor UnQualified to the White House.  We are witnessing the last throes of a dying, cornered animal, and we should expect kitchen-sink, scorched earth campaign tactics from now until Election Day.  And that includes the purging of legitimately registered voters from registration rolls right before Election Day.  However, someone in the Feds must be equally tired of eight years of facsist governance, because this little report is floating around, saying that the attempt to purge voter records in battleground states is found to be illegal.  Via the New York Times at Yahoo:

States have been trying to follow the Help America Vote Act of 2002 by removing the names of voters who should no longer be listed. But for every voter added to the rolls in the past two months in some states, election officials have removed two, a review of the records shows.

The newspaper said it identified apparent problems in Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina. It says some states are improperly using Social Security data to verify new voters’ registration applications, and others may have broken rules that govern removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election.

Democrats have been more aggressive at registering new voters this year, according to state election officials, so any closer screening of new applications may affect their party’s supporters disproportionately, the Times said.

The result is that on Election Day, voters who have been removed from the rolls could show up and be challenged by political party officials or election workers.

The six states seem to have violated federal law in two ways. Some are removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is not allowed except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote. (emphasis mine)

And some of the states are improperly using Social Security data to verify registration applications for new voters, the newspaper reported.

Whether you vote for McCain or Obama, what is most important is that you ensure that you have the right to vote and that you are registered to vote, and that you don’t get “surprised” on Election Day because you find out you’ve been purged from the registration rolls.  If you do nothing else, make sure you are registered to vote and then, exercise that authority that being registered gives you.  If you don’t you have no right to complain about the outcome, and you get the government you deserve.

So I did a show tonight with other political comics in NYC, and one of the conservative acts just got under my skin. After the show was over, I just lost it and screamed on dude. I can’t take arguments about McCain’s honor when he and Palin are sponsoring dangerous hate rallies, and Obama and his family are out there risking their lives every day, straining security forces and not complaining about it.

McCain, the tough guy who “knows how to win a war” complains about media coverage. Obama gets threatened daily, and doesn’t say a thing.

Anyway, I was still reverberating from my post-show tirade when a friend instant messaged me the following.

my father
a registered REPUBLICAN
who donated to McCain’s campaign earlier this year
and received a souvenir faux autographed portrait
and who has not voted for a Democrat since 1984
just told me
that he is voting
for…
wait for it…
BARACK OBAMA.

My rich white Republican executive father WHO JUST A COUPLE YEARS AGO DONATED TO RICK F***ING SANTORUM
(I am not kidding)
and who THIS VERY YEAR donated to Mr. John McCain
finally decided
this very week
that he’s going to vote for Obama.
It was Palin who pushed him over the edge.

Thank you. (see the video below the jump)

Read the rest of this entry »

These children are on a Field Trip. They are at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis. Their Field Trip? To see Senator Barack Obama.

Good morning.

Don’t forget JJP in between your regular daily business.

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

And always, have a peaceful day.

From PoliticalInaction.com:

October 8, 2008
“Surprised he wouldn’t say it to my face….”

Ouch. Obama on ABC News tonight after Gibson asked him about McCain’s new attack line on William Ayers. He basically challenges McCain’s manhood.

“I am surprised that, you know, we’ve been seeing some pretty over-the-top attacks coming out of the McCain campaign over the last several days, that he wasn’t willing to say it to my face. But I guess we’ve got one last debate. So presumably, if he ends up feeling that he needs to, he will raise it during the debate.”

MUG SHOT OF MAN THREATENING ELECTION OFFICIALS IF HE CAN’T GET HIS REGISTRATION TO KEEP OBAMA OUT OF OFFICE.  WTH?

Good Lord.  From Americablog via The Smoking Gun (warning, get ahold of an alcoholic beverage before reading):

Angered by a delay in the receipt of his voter registration card, a Louisiana man today threatened to shoot election officials, claiming that he urgently needed to cast a ballot to “keep the nigger out of office,” according to police. Wade Williams, 75, was arrested this morning on a felony terrorizing charge after allegedly calling the Registrar of Voters and warning that he would come to the state office and empty his shotgun unless he got his registration card. Using profanity and racial slurs, Williams told a state official “about needing to vote to ‘keep the nigger out of office,” according to an Ouachita Parish Sheriff’s Office affidavit, a copy of which you’ll find here. Though the document does not name the candidate to which Williams is so violently opposed, it seems likely he was referring to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Guess ol’ Wade thought he was still in Jim Crow days.  This is just plain sick. And he’s too old for this shyt to be excused.

Folks, my mom was born and raised in Monroe, before my grandparents packed up and moved into Shreveport.  No wonder I haven’t bothered to visit Louisiana since 1991 - and I thought the plight of the Jena 6 was icing on the cake.  I grew up sensing shyt like this as a child who spent summers in Shreveport, and there was certain areas of the town Blacks, by tacit agreement, did not go into for fear of being jacked by the Klan.  Even in the 1970s.  If my parents were alive, my father would be oiling up that Winchester rifle my grandfather left him in safekeeping for my brother (all of the grandsons got the Winchester rifles when my grandfather died, and those under 21, their fathers got them for safekeeping.  My granddad had 10). And this is what my grandfather would have had ready for guys like ol’ Wade:

“Keep the N-gger Out of Office,” huh, Wade?  Well, if you get sent to Angola State Prison for your little stunt, you’ll get to know a whole lot of “N–ers”, up close and personal.

And it’s only October 8th….jeez

Michelle Obama on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart - tonight at 11 pmEST
Michelle Obama on Larry King. Catch the repeats at 12 amEST, or 3amEST.

This is for Craig Hickman, who was upset at what he thought was the call of the White Woman to incite.

From PoliticalInaction.com:

October 8, 2008
Cindy McCain attacks…..
Don’t be fooled by Cindy McCain’s over the top attacks on Barack Obama the last 2 days over his character, love for the country, love for the military, etc. The candidates said early on the spouses were off-limits, but this is an effort for Cindy McCain to make outrageous claims so we attack her for her drug use and wealth so the McCain campaign can attack Michelle Obama and her Americanness, blackness, radicalness and drive a wedge between her and white people. Don’t be fooled.

I understand you, Brother Craig. McCain’s Choice and the Pill Poppin’ Piece-On-The-Side are putting out calls that got the ancestors swung from trees. Just asking all of us to step back, because I know I was about to post something not-so-nice when I read this.

Hat tip: The Daily Dish

I’ve learned how to embed, but I couldn’t find the code for this one, so I’m going to send you to the website.

Donna Brazile brought it.

She brought it.

Amen, Donna. I’m not going back either.

UPDATE: thanks to the JJP reader who found the Youtube Clip.

Read the following and chime in with your comments.  For the last few days, John Aravosis over at Americablog, has been infering that’s the case, and what’s more, he’s brought in some doctors who gave their observations, but qualified those observations of the crotchety ol bastard not as a full fledged diagnosis of a medical problem, like former Senator Bill Frist did in medically evaluating Terri Schiavo by videotape.  Here’s a few of the observations:

No one really knows the extent of McCain’s melanoma problems. What I do know is that of the more common cancers, melanoma and pancreatic cancer are the two most frightening to have. I do not personally know of a single case of melanoma that has survived more than a few years that was not apparently localized at the time of excision. McCain has had “four” surgeries for his cancer, so it would seem that it has spread. Why else would he have had follow up surgery? AND WE HAVE NOT A CLUE AS TO WHAT OTHER TREATMENT MODALITIES HE HAS BEEN SUBJECTED TO.

I think it is quite possible that amongst other areas of spread, he could have brain metastases and this could account for the neurological events we have witnessed. If such be the case…

I can not be absolutely certain of his condition as, not only have I never met the man, I have never seen his medical records, but neither has anyone else.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re again joining the blogger roundtable on News & Notes.

Topics

1. The debate last night. I’m voting for That One `08. Sounds intriguing! Seems pretty clear to me, but more importantly, to undecided voters, that That One did better. The Other One was rude, cranky and generally dishonest.
2. The Bradley Effect. A big deal this year? Some thoughts from Nicholas Kristoff, FiveThirtyEight, Zogby and our own JJP fam on the subject.
3. O.J. Simpson. Yes, O.J. I’m not excited to talk about this at all, but we’ll see how the time goes.

If you have thoughts on these subjects, throw them in the comments, and I’ll try to repackage them as my own so I sound smart!