fighting for your political life

I know I write about Michael Steele a lot but he’s just so damn funny I can’t help it. It could also be that my black encrusted heart is thumping with glee over his monumental struggle to lead the RNC. If there was any example I could pull out of my hat to illustrate the unwavering cluelessness of the Republican Party, electing a self serving boob like Steele would always be my first choice.

This morning, Steele participated in a debate along with other wannabe candidates for the RNC chairmanship. His tenure is up and he’s holding on with tether hooks to his position. It was his time to lay it all on the line. It was his chance to defend the decisions he’s made and make nice with the upper echelon of the party so that he can keep his job. How did he do?

Well, after a lot of sucking up to the base, (reaffirming homophobia, anti-choice, and the right to stockpile a lot of guns without paying too much in taxes), he seemed to do fine. He reiterated the need for the Republican party to reach out and improve communications with the rank and file. He also pointed out the importance of expanding the tent by actively recruiting more minorities. He sounded far more reasonable than the members of the Hard Right Brigade sitting with him. That was until he decided to quote from one of his favorite books, “War and Peace”. Except, the quote was actually from Charles Dickens. Lawd Jesus.

It’s not just once gaffe that draws giggles and exasperation, it’s the entire collection of gaffes, miscues, off color comments, and general buffoonery that Steele has engaged in for the past two years. There’s no way he’s going to be re-elected because despite the fact that he has foot in the mouth disease, his real crime was financial mismanagement. In other words, he messed with other people’s money and that ain’t gonna fly. I guess I’m still wondering if the RNC expected Steele to be their own little right leaning version of Obama. Steele obviously thought he was in the same league as PBO, but those with sense knew he wasn’t.

Looks like the other side has seen it too.

dummy of the day

Poor Mark Williams. In his attempt to defend the Tea Party Movement against charges of racism from the NAACP, he writes what he claims is a satirical letter on his blog that is nothing short of racist. As a result, the Tea Party Federation expelled Williams today calling the letter, “offensive”.

Williams isn’t new to controversy. He once called President Obama a , “Muslim Welfare Thug”. He also called said that Muslims worship a , “Monkey God”. However, instead of embracing his inner racist, Williams would rationalize it and claim that his critics were overly sensitive or racists themselves.

Looks like Williams just rationalized himself out of a job now. The thing is, while Williams was the tone deaf and  culturally insensitive public face of the Tea Party, there are many more Mark Williams’ behind the scenes and in the ranks. We’ve seen the signs. We’ve heard the comments. We’ve seen the pictures. It says a lot about the organization that claimed it wasn’t racist by having this man speak on their behalf time and time again.

His ousting is just symbolic and way too late. Although it took the NAACP months to finally criticize the Tea Party, anyone who’s been paying attention to politics knew long before what exactly the Tea Party is all about. Better late than never? Not a chance.

Scary Black Men

I know I should be incredibly offended by the faux New Black Panther Party Scandal trumped-up by The Right and Fox News. I just can’t though. It’s so utterly ridiculous to think that videotape of a cuckoo-ball at a polling station wielding a club and screaming cuckoo-ball stuff was going to topple the Obama Presidency. As fas as I could see, no one seemed intimidated. They just avoided homeboy and gave him some serious side-eyes. If you are a regular Fox News watcher though, this guy was the Scary Black Man made of nightmares. The jack boot wearing, revolutionary spouting boogeyman whose mission in life was frighten the poo out of good ol’ Americans.

Gimme a break, will you? The New Black Panther Party is a joke. They get no love. In fact the only time anyone pays attention to them is when one of them goes on Fox News. But we’re supposed to believe they are in cahoots with the Obama Administration to suppress voting rights? I know this requires a bit of attention, but the NBPP doesn’t care for Obama too much either. Actually they don’t care for anyone who doesn’t adhere to their separatist ideology.  That pretty much includes about 99.9% of the Black population in this country. But to The Right, it doesn’t matter. They fit right nicely into the Scary Black Man meme. Unfortunately, folks were eating it up.

Until the facts came out. See, it was the Bush administration that chose not to pursue Voter intimidation and suppression charges against the NBPP. In fact, they banned them from appearing at polling places until 2012. They were quite satisfied with the response of the local authorities who escorted the members from the polling place and took away their big stick. No muss, no fuss. No need to worry about a big, black, beret wearing Negro jumping behind a voter and screaming, “Boo!” before the lever is pulled.

Too bad the Faux pundits got their knickers all in a twist about it. Poor Megyn Kelly blew a gasket at the mere mention that all this was much ado about nothing. “It’s not about race!”, she cried. “It’s about the law!”. Uh, okay. I don’t remember her being that upset when the Bush led Department of Justice sought to destroy ACORN and purged members from the department when they didn’t cooperate. I know, they weren’t Scary and Black though.

Good thing that all the baiting will probably lead to nothing. Fox News will have to find another Scary Negro to prop up in front of its viewers because Scary Negro Number 1, President Obama just isn’t doing the trick anymore.

Stay tuned.

a not so fresh pick

President Barack Obama announced his SCOTUS pick (24 hours after it had been leaked by the media) in a press conference this morning. After weeks of accurate speculation, Solicitor General Elena Kagan was introduced. Like clockwork, those on the Left tried to find something right with it, while those on the Right tried to find something wrong with it. Those in middle were relegated to quibbling about her Beltway ties and her sexual orientation. All very tedious but expected.

Whatever hopes had about Kagan being in lockstep with Justice Stevens were misplaced. The days of a Liberal majority in the Supreme Court are long gone. The Middle and The Right have yet to get over the sweeping social and economic changes of the ’60′s and ’70′s, and the members of those camps have made it their life’s work to make sure they don’t happen again. Liberal is a dirty word that no one wants to be called. Liberals don’t even like to be called Liberals. The term is “Progressive” now-and don’t you frigging forget it. Thanks to a major propaganda campaign, Liberal is synonymous with Socialism, government hand-outs, and a hatred of freedom.

It’s utterly ridiculous but incredibly effective. The President knows this. He’s no Liberal. He also doesn’t want a huge fight with the Republicans, so he chose a candidate who isn’t a Liberal. This is something that Liberals Progressives will have to deal with. There’s no way in hell that a vengeful Republican party is going to allow the Supreme Court to veer to the Dark-Liberally-Side. They aren’t even interested in participating in a smooth nomination process. The stakes are too high and there’s still a lot of work to do to erase the memory of Roe vs. Wade & etc from the annals of judicial history.

I don’t know that much about Kagan right now and I refuse to watch any coverage. I’ll wait until the hearings start. Unlike others, I prefer to hear from Kagan herself about what kind of Justice she will be. What I do know already is that she will be prepared to stay right in the middle of any issue presented to her.

As expected.

hopey mcchange >>>dopey mcsame

If you haven’t heard, the ex-governor of Alaska spoke to Tea Party masses at their 1st ever convention. For $100,000 they were given standard GOP talking points with a lil’ dash of Libertarianism on the side. I guess the pressure was a bit too much for her because she was caught cribbing notes during the Q&A session after the speech.

Huh, making fun of the President for using a teleprompter while putting a black Sharpie to good use on your hand is pretty stupid. But then again, this is Palin we’re talking about here. A politician who will never be in life associated with intellect. But who am I to quibble? If the  Right Wing of the GOP  Tea Party folks like it, I love it.

Give me more of that Hopey McChange. They can keep Dopey McSame and her crib notes.

picture via HuffingtonPost

the worst…

Political ad in the history of creation made its debut to universal derision. Carly Fiorina, the former head and destroyer of Hewlitt-Packard is running for Senate in California. Last year, her campaign website sought to rename the state ”CARLYFIORNA”  which made the world chuckle and mock her in the midst of the recession. Now she’s paid for an attack ad in which a dude crawls around in a sheep costume trying to make her opponent look like..well, no one actually knows.

It is, I repeat: THE WORST POLITICAL AD EVER. Of course this means it has become THE twitter trend topic of the day. And those in the political know are including “demonsheep” in their water cooler discussions. It’s so bad, that her Republican opponent has set up his own website in order to raise money to help thwart the spread of demon sheep.

How can anyone take Fiorina seriously when she’s responsible for such appalling foolishness? Of course this is good news for Barbara Boxer,unless she decides to make an ad featuring angelic Chihuahuas.

The ad:

I’m still scratching my head, and checking the lawn for demon sheep.

righteous and real anger

We had been warned beforehand.  Representative Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota had hit the button on the siren and called the Tea Party Folks to descend upon Capitol Hill to confront her fellow Congressmen and women. They were to declare that they didn’t want their health care taken away. They didn’t want Nancy Pelosi and Co. to spend all of their hard earned taxes. They didn’t want any part of Socialism! Come they did, about 4,000 in number. Some were arrested but most were content to work themselves in a lather on the steps of the Capitol building, spurned on by Bachmann, Boehner, Cantor, Foxx, and a few other fools responsible for the spread of the blatant misinformation about health care reform.

They came with offensive signs, they screamed, and they yelled. They had John Voight drive another spike into their fear filled hearts (Angie, come get your Daddy, please). They were led in a bungled recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. They were given a mucked up civics lesson by John Boehner. One of these days he’ll actually read something, maybe like the Constitution, or the Republican health care bill. They rallied as if they were part of some kind of new revolution. A Republican red, 99% white, and blue collar revolution.

Well, wave a flag and shed a tear folks. As for me, I’m completely nonplussed at the situational patriotism that was displayed. Had it been the other side protesting, they would have been called traitors or even worse. Only middle American, Obama hating, native-born people can love this country. Yeah, I get it. Now get on your buses paid for by Insurance lobbyist funded Astroturf organizations and go on home. We’ve been through this righteous anger all summer. The shit is tired.

We were warned but we weren’t ready for a horrific display of real anger that was shown today. It didn’t happen in the rotunda in Washington, but on an army base in Texas. Shortly after 1:00, an Army major and two or possibly three accomplices shot and killed 12 people and wounded 30 more. While the bobbleheads on The Right were dealing in manufactured fear on the Hill, the residents of Ft. Hood were facing the real thing. Fellow soldiers who stood alongside them and took the oath to protect the country from enemies, turned their guns on them and cut them down ruthlessly. Details are sketchy right now. A name and picture was released and stories are floating out that one of the men was to be deployed to Iraq at the end of this month. Surely within in the next few days a clearer picture will be drawn of the men and the circumstances that caused so much terror and death. But like I said, we were warned. Our military men and women have been stretched to the breaking point with the weight of two wars and a lack of mental health services available. Soldiers who have seen the worst acts of human nature imaginable abroad are being sent on tour after tour with no time to decompress or heal. Suicide rates were skyrocketing. The divorce rate of military service people have shot through the roof. The break was coming. We were warned.

So let’s all direct our prayers to the victims and their friends and family at Ft. Hood. Let’s give our sympathy and attention to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice; not to those with an entitled sense of anger and only want to further spread hate.

polls and purges

It’s been awhile but I had to deal with some things in the real world.  They haven’t been completely dealt with but, here I am. Writing supposedly heals the soul. I’m about to do some healing right now. 

Well last night was election night.  A year and almost a day before, one of the most historic elections in our country’s history took place. Barack Obama was elected as the 44th President and the world rejoiced. This year after tirelessly campaigning against Obama, the opposition sought to wrest seats and the conscience of the electorate from him. After the results came in late last night, The Right were celebrating gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey. They were well within their rights to. Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell ran smart campaigns that focused on the issues of their respective states. Moderates and Independents flocked to the polls while the Democrats stayed away. The massive Obama ground game was non-existent and even an appearance by the man himself didn’t help. So, these wins were a referendum on Obama and the Democratic controlled Senate right?

Not so fast. State elections in an off-presidential year have had little effect historically. Meaning, gains in one election cycle don’t necessarily mean the same gains in the next one. Also, let’s be real. John Corzine and Craig Deeds weren’t the best candidates. Corzine’s popularity numbers were in the low 30′s. Deeds-Crikey! This dolt actually thought he could win being an anti-Obama Democrat. He was trounced and rightly so. That just goes to show that a campaign is only as good as the campaigner. You can’t make a rose out of a weed. These guys did not appeal to young voters, minorities, and left leaning Independents-the core coalitions of the Democratic Party. They did very little to inspire the base so no wonder why the stayed away in droves. If anything, Obama upped the bar significantly for modern politics. You have to be an outstanding candidate with command of the issues, you have to rally the base, you have to appeal to those outside your party, and you must have a top notch campaign staff. Neither Democratic had any of these things and as a result, the Republicans won.

But those races weren’t the most significant ones of the night. The race that everyone’s attention was focused on was a special election Congressional race in the 23rd District in New York State. Republican DeeDee Scozzafava was hand-picked by the GOP bigwigs in the district to run for the seat. Initially, they saw no problems. NY-23 was solidly Republican and Scozzafava was a fiscally conservative/socially moderate candidate who fight right in with the East Coast Republican establishment. That is until The Right of the right set their sights on the seat. Soon, the nationwide Republican Purge hit and Scozzafava was labeled a liberal and a radical and was displaced in favor of a handpicked Conservative by the name of Doug Hoffman. Armed with a cache of out of district money, the blessings of Dick Amrey, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Tea Party talking points, Hoffman positioned himself as the main contender to battle Democrat Bill Owens. Scozzafava saw the writing on the wall and bowed out of the race.

Funny how things just seem to right themselves (don’t pardon the pun, it was bad). Hoffman seemed to have everything in hand. He was the right wing’s blessed child running in a solid red district. Forget the fact that he didn’t actually LIVE in the district. Forget the fact that he was completely disinterested in local issues. Forget the fact that he pissed off the local press by skirting questions and bringing everyone’s favorite Astro-turfer Dick Armrey to a sit down interview. Forget the fact that Scozzafava had one more card up her sleeve. Two days before the election, she endorsed OWENS. She even made a round of robo calls stating that Owens would be the best choice. Hell hath no fury and all that. Fox News, Michael Steele, and the others who had endorsed Hoffman over her were left with egg all on their mugs. Credit to them for recovering quickly and predicting a Hoffman victory. Too bad they underestimated the voters of NY-23 like they underestimated Scozzafava.

They just never seem to get things right, those folks. By Wednesday morning,  Bill Owens was declared the winner of a house seat that hadn’t had a Democratic butt sit in it in about a century. The folks of NY-23 weren’t fooled by the fly by night Conservative. They weren’t swayed by Sarah Palin’s Facebook encouragement. They weren’t turned on by Rush’s invective. Good for them. Good for the rest of us. The purge didn’t work this time, and if they keep making the same mistakes, it will never work. This was the race that was supposed to be the real test of the resurgent Republican Party. It was supposed to be a statement against President Obama.

See how well that turned out….

Rushed and Rammed

It seems that Big Rush Limbaugh isn’t satisfied with spreading his bile over the airwaves on a daily basis. Now he wants to become a NFL owner. It’s been reported that Limbaugh is interested in purchasing the woeful St. Louis Rams franchise and my goodness has the poo been flying. There are some that say he should be able to buy a team. I mean, it’s capitalism as it is at work; those that have money should buy what they want. There are others who say that Limbaugh has no business getting involved with professional sports, specifically a sport were 70% of the athletes are black based on his past statements.

I am on the side of those who are like, ” No way, no how”.  There’s something about Limbaugh being in a position to buy and trade black flesh that makes me sick to my stomach. He may see it as a purely money making venture, but I can’t help but think he could use his position to create some sick social experiment. Besides, I don’t know any African American player with even a smidgen of pride who would play for him, regardless of what Stephen A. Smith says.

And let’s talk about Mr. Smith for a minute. Oh, this dude is so making  HBCUs look bad right now. Mr. Smith is convinced that those black athletes who are vowing not to play under a Limbaugh regime are on some bullshit because he feels anyone with a lot of melanin and who plays pro football can be bought. Great, just what people need: A fresh dose of cynicism to muddle the debate over what’s truly right and what’s truly wrong. Hacks like Smith are the reason why I can barely tolerate sports journalism now. It’s nothing more than an exercise in projection. These so called commentators foolishly wax poetic about the glory days of the sport all the while barely disgusting their contempt for the athletes who play it. Their smugness and the obsession for getting the “controversy behind the story”, makes for interesting by lines and not much else.  So, Smith hoeing himself out to anyone who will listen because he’s guaranteed to say something controversial provides little insight into this issue.

This issue simply is this: Limbaugh is an asshole. There are NFL owners who are assholes. However, Limbaugh’s assholery isn’t limited to the world of sports. He’s has managed to offend nearly every living person representing nearly every group on this planet. The question is does the dominant sports franchise in the United States need Limbaugh in the mix? With all the problems within the NFL? Do they DESERVE Limbaugh? My answer is no. Didn’t we learn anything from Marge Schott?

The Laureates of WTF?

Harvard Law Graduate, best selling author, United States Senator, President, Nobel Laureate for Peace. Barack Obama has accomplished more in his 48 years than many. Why is it so damn hard for some folks to acknowledge those accomplishments? The amount of hate is sickening. He is the 3rd African American and the first American sitting President since Woodrow Wilson to win the Nobel Prize. Where’s the pride? Seriously.

The Republican’s response included trotting out Chairman Michael Steele who declared that Obama didn’t deserve the award. The Right’s reaction sank to even lower levels with various pundits and internet warriors stating that they agreed with the Taliban and that Obama should give the award back. The most egregious statement was that Obama’s win was the result of an affirmative action quota. This, from the people who claim to love America so much?

My God, what is wrong with these people? Once again, folks from other countries are showing more love towards our President than people living right here. Even those on The Left were sniping. I’m just so done. If it matters, I’m proud and happy. Even though I have disagreed with some of PBO’s policies, I think his winning the Nobel Prize is freakin’ awesome. I’m encouraged to follow the President’s call for action for peace. Lord knows we need it–especially right here in the good ol’ U.S.A.