You Know What? I Think I'm with Pres. Obama on This One

I initially agreed with those who're upset with Pres. Obama for backing down. After watching the president's news conference, I changed my mind. The video below is a segment from MSNBC's Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell. Essentially, now I agree with Lawrence and Ezra Klein. Strategy and communication from the White House leave a world to be desired. But the policy, considering the circumstances, isn't all that bad.

And let's not forget several congressional Dems were moving over to the Republican side. Several Dems ran against the president in the recent midterm elections. Several Dems voted for the Bush tax cuts that got us in the mess in the first place. So lets not delude ourselves into believe that this whole mess is entirely Obama's fault. Constitutionally, the president doesn't write policy anyway. If congressional Dems wanna act all bad ass now, they're perfectly free to hold up legislation till they get what they want.

Cause I've Had It with Progressive Nihilists!

When a Picture's Worth 1000 Words . . .

It saves me a whole lot of time!!
(h/t profgeo)

PLEASE CHECK OUT THE LINK SO I HOPEFULLY WON'T BE SUDED USING THIS POLITICAL CARTOON!!

More Healthcare Now!

Here's a message I received from the president:

I'm writing to you on a great day for America.

This morning, I gathered with members of Congress, my administration, and hardworking volunteers from every part of the country to sign comprehensive health care reform into law. Thanks to the immeasurable efforts of so many, the dream of reform is now a reality.

Damn.: ACORN Finally Cracks For Good

I can hardly even enjoy the signing ceremony for the health care reform bill and the little boy wearing the tie that matches Obamas's tie. Now, Stephanie Menciner thinks once people actually experience the bill's provisions and Grandma doesn't die, the tea parties just might. (Well . . . Grandma probably will die, but it won't be by the hand of some government bureaucrats.) But not even that makes me feel better. The tea pots just rallied around hate and fear and failed conservative policies. ACORN actually helped people.

ACORN Finally Cracks For Good
A right wing target falls for good; "community organizing" is forever marked as un-American.
By Adam Weinstein | Mon Mar. 22, 2010 3:35 PM PDT

Congratulations, Andrew Breitbart and James O'Keefe. You killed ACORN. Who's next? The Salvation Army?

Nailed It!

See?

          Bob McDodo needs to give some explanation for the Republican response! It was like State of the Union-Lite!

Well, okay. I didn't flesh everything out. But I was pretty darn close, h/t Prometheus6:

The Symbolic Politics of the Republicans

State of the Union or Civil War?

By PAUL A. PASSAVANT

The significant symbolic politics of the Republican response to President Obama’s 2010 state of the union address (SOTU) escaped comment except by Stephen Colbert [And, me! ~ No1KState] who got it right.

Taste Some Real Tea (Updated and Improved)

That's not what I really wanted to say, but I do have a God to "serve and glorify."

I got this from an email for Organizing for America. Mitch Stewart is practically giddy. Like a little boy after his first kiss by his sweetheart (also links to video). So I took down the CNN video, though I'm leaving the link to the url. Here's a link to a 14min clip for the Ed Show of MSNBC and a clip from The Rachel Maddow Show of MSNBC. Also, there's a clip from this morning's The Today Show that demonstrates Republicans' recalcitrance.

Oh - Dama!: Updated

h/t racismreview

Since finding that the federal government is settling a longstanding case with American Indians, I'm back in the saddle!

Well . . . back to thinking the Obama administration would be slightly better than the Clinton administration.
_____________________________________
I'm officially disillusioned with the Obama administration. This demands intervention.

:sigh:

IRS Auctions Off Crow Creek Sioux Land for $2.5 Million
Leticia Miranda

Roughly 550 years later, Native peoples are still fighting to keep their own land because of broken treaties and erroneous information.

This week, the IRS auctioned off 7,100 acres of Crow Creek Sioux land in Central South Dakota to a Highmore, South Dakota resident by the name of Klein for $2,577,210.

The IRS claims that the Crow Creek Sioux, one of the poorest tribes in the US, failed to pay about 3.1 million dollars in federal employment taxes since 2003. But the tribe says they received false information from the Bureau of Indian Affairs who said they are not required to pay any federal taxes, regardless of any enterprise entities they own, because they are a federally recognized tribe.

Indian Country Today reports:

“The tribe has attempted since then to pay the arrearages and subsequent amounts as they come due, but has been unable to bring the employment taxes current because over this same amount of time the Internal Revenue Services have levied and garnished various accounts of the tribe making it impossible for the tribe to bring the taxes current,” according to the lawsuit.

This marks the second time that the Crow Creek Sioux have lost their land to the US government. The land was originally theirs and was federally recognized as belonging to them through the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. But through the Dawes Act, which was enacted to force Native people to assimilate into white American society, the Crow Creek Sioux lost their land again only to finally buy it back in 1998 through the Crow Creek Sioux Tribal Farms, Inc.

But when the Crow Creek Sioux finally did buy it back the Bureau of Indian Affairs failed to put the land into trust, making the land vulnerable to seizures by the US feds.

The tribe and its lawyers have filed an action lawsuit that will hold the land claim in the Sioux’s name until the case is heard in court before the redemption period ends in June of 2010.

The land not only holds the sacred remains of the Crow Creek Sioux’s ancestors and recently passed tribal members, but has high wind energy. The tribe was planning on creating a wind-powered farm to sustain itself.

Just a Few Tears

Well, no analysis. You got CNN and MSNBC for all that. PBS.

Just feel like sharing. Not feeling this at all. Not because I disagree with the policy, but I'm just not okay with war. I'm a just war advocate, so I'm not against all wars just because they're wars.

I just feel like crying. For the time parents will miss with their kids. The lives that will be flipped upside-down because of a stray bomb or because Al Qaeda or the Taliban is using a village of innocent people as a buffer. Or, maybe even because the war has just gotten to our own soldiers so they wil' out on innocent people, whether there or over here.

So excuse me please and pass some tissue. War is hell and our shared humanity demands that we sympathize with our military families, including but not limited to my cousin and her husband, and the Afghans alike.

Let's Just Bring Everybody Home

h/t SNCC listserve ~

via enduswars.org. We've had enough.
You can add your name by writing to sign@enduswars.org

Open Letter from the Peace Movement to President Obama on His Upcoming Decision Regarding the Afghan War

Dear Mr. President:

According to press reports, you intend to decide sometime in November whether or not to send tens of thousands of American soldiers to Afghanistan. We are writing in advance of that decision to add our voice to those of Sen. Feingold, many House Democrats, and of a clear majority of Americans in urging you not to escalate this war, but rather to announce an immediate cease-fire followed by a withdrawal of all US troops in the fastest way consistent with the safety of our forces. We urge you to end the policy of using Predator drones to assassinate Pakistani civilians on the territory of their own country, in defiance of all concepts of international law. We also call upon you to cease all covert CIA and Pentagon operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran.
(Click here for rest of post.)

Good News for NOLA

Apparently, the government is going to appeal, but I should hope Pres Obama will do the right thing.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Now That You Mention It . . .

Courtesy Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post ~

A World of Change in 287 Days
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, November 3, 2009

It's been a year since a healthy majority of American voters elected Barack Obama to change the world. Which is precisely what he's doing.

Like many people who desperately want to see the country take a more progressive course, I quibble and quarrel with some of President Obama's actions. I wish he'd been tougher on Wall Street, quicker to close Guantanamo, more willing to investigate Bush-era excesses, bolder in seeking truly universal health care. I wish he could summon more of the rhetorical magic that spoke so compellingly to the better angels of our nature.

But he's a president, not a Hollywood action hero. Most of my frustration is really with the process of getting anything done in Washington, which is not something Obama can unilaterally change, nimbly circumvent or blithely ignore. One thing the new administration clearly did not anticipate was that Republicans in Congress would be so consistently and unanimously obstructionist -- or that Democrats would have to be introduced to the alien concept of party discipline. It took the White House too long to realize that bipartisanship is a tango and that there's no point in dancing alone.

Step back for a moment, though, and look at Obama's record. His biggest accomplishment has been keeping the worst financial and economic crisis in decades from turning into another Great Depression. Yes, the $787 billion stimulus package has been messy, but most economists believe it was absolutely necessary -- and some believe it should have been even bigger. Yes, Obama continued the Bush-era policy of showering irresponsible financial institutions with billions in public funds. Yes, the administration bailed out the auto industry -- and we actually heard the president of the United States reassure Americans that General Motors warranties would be honored.

But these and other actions convinced the financial markets that the White House would do anything to avoid a complete meltdown. The economy grew at a rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter and, while unemployment may not yet have peaked, the odds of a strong and fairly swift recovery have greatly improved.

Responding to the crisis required creating an enormous fiscal deficit that Obama will spend years trying to reduce. But not even the most conservative economists recommend attacking the deficit before the economy is stabilized on a path of growth. Only Republican demagogues think that's a good idea.

On national security, Obama moved at once to categorically renounce torture -- a big step toward removing the ugly stain that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney left on our national honor. It looks as if Obama will miss his self-imposed one-year deadline for closing the Guantanamo prison, but a delay of a few weeks or months will be worth it if the administration succeeds in developing a comprehensive legal framework -- consistent with our ideals and traditions -- for bringing terrorism suspects to justice.

Obama should have supported a full-blown investigation into apparent Bush-era violations of national and international law. And, at a minimum, he should allow the limited torture probe ordered by Attorney General Eric Holder to follow the evidence wherever it might lead.

But at least the administration is on schedule in withdrawing combat troops from Iraq. I don't think Obama knows the right answer on Afghanistan; I'm not sure anybody does.

Obama's months in office have been so action-packed that it's easy to forget some of the historic steps he has taken: nominating Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court. Going to Egypt and speaking directly to the Muslim world about cooperation rather than conflict. Embracing multilateralism as the template for U.S. foreign policy in the new century. Accepting the scientific consensus on climate change. Investing in "green" jobs and education reform as key engines of economic development.

And then there's health-care reform. I've been impatient with Obama's strategy of letting Congress take the lead on writing legislation, but he's brought us to the brink of truly meaningful reform much faster than anyone could have imagined a year ago. We still have some fighting to do over two words -- "public" and "option" -- but it looks like the principle that everyone is entitled to health insurance, a Democratic Party goal for at least six decades, is about to become law.

Quite a record for 287 days: All that, and a Nobel Peace Prize, too.

Just Nine Months

Sorry I haven't really posted in a while. Life called. I've kept up with current events, though. The negativity coming from both the right and left has bothered me. I mean, you got the conservative haters saying Obama is destroying the country. Liberal haters are saying he's not kept up to his promise of change. Well, they both can't be true. Sorry. And while I wish we were farther along in the agenda, I realize it hasn't been a year. Most of the promises Obama made during the campaign had a year-long deadline. Fix healthcare during his first year; close Gitmo in his first year; meet with foreign leaders we don't like in his first year.

It hasn't been a year yet. Just nine months. I think we're doing pretty good. If a woman became pregnant the day Obama was inaugurated, she'd just right about now be having the baby. And guess what?

It would still be just a baby.

So I while I do agree we need to keep progressive pressure on both the president and Congress, I think it's premature to declare "Mission Failure." And this article pretty much gets at the point better than I just did.
"Doom and Gloom" on the Left

by Randy Shaw

Beyond Chron - posted Oct. 27, 2009
San Francisco's Alternative Online Daily

http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=7483#more

As reports emerge of the Senate's increasing support
for a public option, it's a tossup whether Republicans
or some progressives are more distraught. After all, an
article in the October 19 edition of The Nation states
that the progressive agenda "has stalled," and "key
aspects of healthcare reform, like a public option,
appear dead." The writer even claims that corporate
interests face "little outright opposition" in the
legislative process, a remarkable statement in the face
of the massive organizing and outreach efforts of labor
unions and other progressive groups. (Click here to finish reading. And let me know what you think of the jump-break.)

Nobel Obama (with Added Thoughts)

And another thing!: If Pres Obama doesn't deserve such accolades, he doesn't deserve the condemnation we've seen since his first day in office, either.

On second thought: Pres Obama is the first person of color to become president in the Western world. And for that, there's gotta be something higher than the Nobel Peace Prize for that! Cause Lord knows I didn't think I'd see one before my 40s or 50s, and I'm still in my 20s!

President Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. I'm a bit surprised. It's kinda quick.

The Nobel committee sited his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

Now a lot of people criticize Pres Obama for being a celebrity. Well, a lot of conservatives and idiots and haters. And well, the committee itself says, "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future."

Then of course are those who got bent-out-of-shape when Pres Obama said he was a citizen of the world. And well, the committee itself says, "His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

And there're those who decry his diplomatic style and "apologizing" for the US to the world. And well, "Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. . . .Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened."

I don't know. I just find it interesting that the things some condemn you for, others will praise you for.

Gotta go now. Other things to work on. Life calls.

President Barack Obama Is . . . Black?

It's kinda funny, actually. Now that Pres. Obama has characterized the policeman who arrested Henry Lois Gates as having acted "stupidly," all of a sudden mainstream media is confused. They wonder what happened to the post-racial Obama. Well, he was just a figment of white American imagination. An imagination that could lead news coverage to completely ignore his outlining of present day discrimination in a recent speech to the NAACP.

As a black person, I find the propensity of white Americans to narrowly focus on "exceptional" blacks quite vexing. Understand, I'm an "exceptional" black myself. Once in high school, a friend and I were pulled out of class for an interview with a local news channel on being high achieving black students. I can't remember everything that was said. I do remember talking about how instead of being "exceptions" to the rule, my friend and I were the rule; we were representative of a legacy of black love of learning.

After the interview, my friend and I talked about how exciting it would be to be on TV. We wondered if they would actually even show the interview. We wondered how it would be edited. Then we realized: it was possible to edit the piece as though we were chastising our black classmates! We panicked! We went back and talked to our principal about our concerns.

Cause Shelby Steele aside, most high achieving blacks don't wanna be portrayed as apart from our community. Shear statistics are that despite racism, you will have blacks who come to great success apart from athletics and entertainment. That doesn't mean that racism doesn't exist. It should only serve as a gauge of what black folks might accomplish if it didn't.

. . . Perhaps that's the cause for the mainstream misperception. And so, read this NY Times op-ed piece by Brent Staples:

July 24, 2009
Editorial Observer
President Obama, Professor Gates and the Cambridge Police
By BRENT STAPLES

The American obsession with people who are said to transcend race began long before Barack Obama moved into the White House — long before he even thought about running for president. Affluent, well-educated black people were being appropriated as symbols of racial progress — and held up as proof that racism no longer mattered — back when Mr. Obama was still a youth in short pants.

White Americans have little experience with this brand of appropriation. In general, their personal and professional triumphs are viewed as the product of individual fortitude and evidence that the founding ideals of the nation are alive and well.

Successful African-Americans — whether they are sports stars, entertainers or politicians — are often accorded a more tortured significance. In addition to being held up as proof that racism has been extinguished, they are often employed as weapons in the age-old campaign to discredit, and even demean, the disadvantaged.

“Don’t talk to us about discrimination,” the argument typically goes. “You made it. If the others got off their behinds and tried, they would, too.” In this rhetoric of race, there is no such thing as social disadvantage, only hard-working, morally upright people who succeed, and lazy, morally defective people who do not.

Black Americans who find this line of argument appealing, along with the celebrity it brings them, typically end up trumpeting exceptionalism, playing down the significance of discrimination, and lecturing black people (nearly always in front of white audiences) to stop whining about racism and get on with it.

Mr. Obama has refused to play this role, even though people have tried to thrust it upon him. He has made clear all along that the election of the first African-American president, while noteworthy in a nation built on the backs of slaves, did not signal a sudden, magical end to discrimination.

He underscored this point again this week when he commented on the arrest in Cambridge, Mass., of the Harvard African-American scholar (and my longtime friend) Henry Louis Gates Jr. and about the tendency of police officers to target blacks and Hispanics for traffic stops.

These remarks could change how the news media sees the president’s views on race. Up to now, he has been consistently and wrongly portrayed as a stern black exceptionalist who takes Negroes to task for not meeting his standard.

He is not happy with this characterization. That was clear in a recent Oval Office interview with the columnist Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post. Mr. Obama complained about the press coverage of his speeches and seemed especially miffed about the portrayal of the one he delivered before the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People this month.

He suggested that the news media had overemphasized his remarks about “personal responsibility” — a venerable theme in the African-American church — while disregarding “the whole other half of the speech,” which included a classic exercise in civil-rights oratory.

The president described disproportionate rates of unemployment, imprisonment and lack of health insurance in minority communities as barriers of the moment. He contrasted them with the clubs and police dogs that black marchers faced in the 1960s and said that solving present-day problems would require comparable determination.

And “make no mistake,” he continued, “the pain of discrimination is still felt in America. By African-American women paid less for doing the same work as colleagues of a different color and a different gender.”

This was no exceptionalist rant. Speaking to Mr. Robinson, the president used the first-person plural revealingly when he said: “I do think it is important for the African-American community, in its diversity, to stay true to one core aspect of the African-American experience, which is we know what it’s like to be on the outside.”

During the campaign, Mr. Obama tended to avoid direct engagement with racial issues until circumstances (a tempest over his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright) made further evasion impossible.

He reached a similar moment when he was asked to comment on Mr. Gates’s arrest at a White House news conference on Wednesday.

In a remark that became instantly famous, he responded that the police acted “stupidly” in arresting Mr. Gates when no crime had been committed and the professor was standing in his own home. Mr. Obama further noted that disproportionate attention from the police was an unwelcome fact of black life in America.

People who have heretofore viewed Mr. Obama as a “postracial” abstraction were no doubt surprised by these remarks. This could be because they were hearing him fully for the first time.

I'm Joining In

I really haven't studied up on Judge Sotomayor, so there's nothing I can tell you that you can't find somewhere else. Which is why I'm sharing this NY Times link: "Obama Chooses Sotomayor for Supreme Court Nominee."

What I will say is that I like this pick. I like the added diversity of enthnicity, background, and perspective. I also like what I've read about the decisions she's made on the circuit court. The conservative poo-poo by Wendy E Long in the article is just ridiculous and nonsensical; hense, why I'm calling it poo-poo.

Gotta Give Wanda Sykes Her Due!

She is hilarious! But she know good'n'well she ain't got no kids!






The president wasn't so bad, either.

Obama Supports a Union!

This is good news for those of us who care about economic justice. People should be pay the true value of their work; not the value of other people's concern for what they do. ~ No1KState

Here, via Huffington Post -

Obama Vs. Schwarzenegger: White House Threatens To Rescind Stimulus Funds

Rachel Wiener, 5/8/09

Arnold Schwarzenegger has been one of the prominent Republican defenders of President Obama's stimulus plan. He's called the California governor "one of the great innovators of state government" and "an outstanding partner with our administration." But their relationship has hit a rough patch.

The L.A. Times reports that the Obama administration is threatening to rescind stimulus billions of dollars in federal stimulus funds if wage cuts to unionized home healthcare workers are not restored.

Schwarzenegger's office was advised this week by federal health officials that the wage reduction, which will save California $74 million, violates provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Failure to revoke the scheduled wage cut before it takes effect July 1 could cost California $6.8 billion in stimulus money, according to state officials.
The Service Employees International Union, which represents the workers, requested the opinion from Obama's Department of Health and Human Services.

"The Obama Administration has made it clear that the State cannot cut the homecare workers' wages. Now we need our counties to follow suit and take all the cuts off the table," said SEIU Executive Vice President and SEIU UHW Trustee, Eliseo Medina.

"I am glad that President Obama stood up for us," said Greg Price, a homecare worker and SEIU UHW member in Fresno County. "Now it is up to the County to stand up for workers like me."

Schwarzenegger, however, has said the state doesn't have the money.

"Neither the Legislature nor I make decisions to reduce wages or benefits lightly, but only as a last resort in response to an unprecedented fiscal crisis," Schwarzenegger wrote in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. He urged the administration to reconsider.

Senator Hatch Claims Obama Speaking 'Code' On Supreme Court Nominee

From Real Clear Politics:

ABC News: Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the longest serving Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on "This Week" Sunday that President Barack Obama used "code" for an activist judge this week when describing his ideal nominee to replace retiring Justice David Souter.

"It's a matter of great concern, if he's saying that he wants to pick people who will take sides. He's also said that a judge has to be a person of empathy -- what does that mean? Usually that's a code word for an activist judge," Hatch said on "This Week."

"But he also said that, that, he's going to select judges on the basis of their personal politics, their personal feelings, their personal preferences," Hatch said, "Now, you know those are all code words for an activist judge who's going to be partisan on the bench."

When did Pres. Obama say anything about personal politics, personal feelings, or personal preferences? Get at me!

U-N-C! Go, 'Heels, Go!!

It's no secret how Pres. Obama and I feel about my 'Heels! ~ No1KState

Tarheel Nation
No. 2 North Carolina 55, No. 8 Michigan St. 34

Associated Press

DETROIT -- There was a team of destiny out there, all right. It's the North Carolina Tar Heels, and the final chapter of their story was about as heartwarming as a demolition derby.


Tyler Hansbrough, Ty Lawson and North Carolina won a national championship a season or more in the making, stomping out Michigan State's inspirational run Monday night with a 89-72 blowout that wasn't even that close.

Hansbrough scored 18 points, Wayne Ellington had 19 and Ty Lawson led all scorers with 21 and also had a record seven steals by halftime -- and now they and Danny Green can all head to the NBA feeling good about their decision to return to school to bring Carolina's fifth championship back home.

All those upperclassmen, save Hansbrough, came back in part because their draft prospects didn't look so good. They also didn't want their college careers to end on last year's embarrassing loss to Kansas in the Final Four. That was a dud of a game in which they trailed 40-12 in the first half and Billy Packer was telling CBS viewers it was over.

This time, North Carolina led 36-13 around the time "Dancing With The Stars" was starting on another network. At least nobody knew how that one was going to end.

Michigan State (31-7) simply never got any momentum. From the start, it was clear there was no way Carolina was losing control of this one, no chance for the Spartans to serve up that definitive ray of sunshine and warm-and-fuzzy smile for a state that's been battered by the ailing economy.

The Tar Heels (34-4) were up 55-34 at halftime, breaking a 42-year-old title-game record for biggest lead at the break and setting the mark for most points at the half.

This collection of NBA talent was too, too much from wire to wire, from the start of the tournament, to the very end.

Carolina won every game by double digits, something that hasn't happened since Duke did it in 2001.

Lots of basketball fans saw this coming, including America's No. 1 Hoopster-in-Chief.

Yes, President Barack Obama picked the Tar Heels to take it all in his much-publicized bracket.