Category: Race

Georgia’s not on my mind

Time says…not a whole bunch…but a whole lot…

Some political observers think Tuesday’s Senate runoff in Georgia is a big deal, because a victory by underdog Jim Martin over incumbent Republican Saxby Chambliss would keep alive the Democratic Party’s dreams of a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority to move its agenda successfully through the Senate. Other experts see the race as a big deal for the opposite reason; Democrats with a filibuster-proof 60-seat Senate majority as well as control of the House and White House could overreach, leading to a conservative backlash in 2010.

But really, there’s no such thing as a “filibuster-proof 60-seat majority,” even if Martin pulls off an upset and Al Franken wins his recount against Republican Norm Coleman in Minnesota and Joe Lieberman still counts as a Democrat. Senators don’t always vote in partisan lockstep; President Obama could succeed in recruiting Republicans on some issues with a 58-seat Democratic majority, and he could find himself stymied by defections on some issues with a 62-seat Democratic majority. In the Senate, even one determined naysayer is capable of grinding the institution to a halt.

And that’s why the Martin-Chambliss race actually is a big deal: Chambliss is a textbook Bush-Cheney Republican — and every vote counts. Sixty seats would be better for the Democrats than 59, which would be better for the Democrats than 58. Six years is also a long time. In fact, Georgia is still an extremely conservative state, so if Chambliss can win at a time when the Republican Party is at its lowest ebb, he can probably hold his seat as long as he wants — which would be good news for Bush-style Republicans and bad news for Obama-style Democrats, no matter who is in power.

They shoulda quit while they were ahead.

Ain’t a whole lotta difference between 57 and 59.

If the mojo is workin…the 60 will come. There aren’t enough wack jobs left to really hold up progress (although Chambliss is pretty much King of the wack jobs on the senate side)

There just aren’t enough Black folk in GA to turn it blue…or is it that there are too many? Black folk?

THIS is why Obama didnt do much more than spit a lukewarm 16…while everyone except Barry Goldwater is on the stump for Chambliss.

They cannot afford to lose, while Obama doesnt NEED it…and can do without the negative momentum that would come with a big effort followed by a Martin loss.

Your thoughts?

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Dont Judge a Cover Story by its Cover.

tny 11.17.08 cvr.inddGreat Cover.

Great Journalist writing the cover story.

But the article?  Yawn.

Barack Obama could not run his campaign for the Presidency based on political accomplishment or on the heroic service of his youth. His record was too slight. His Democratic and Republican opponents were right: he ran largely on language, on the expression of a country’s potential and the self-expression of a complicated man who could reflect and lead that country. And a powerful thematic undercurrent of his oratory and prose was race. Not race as invoked by his predecessors in electoral politics or in the civil-rights movement, not race as an insistence on tribe or on redress; rather, Obama made his biracial ancestry a metaphor for his ambition to create a broad coalition of support, to rally Americans behind a narrative of moral and political progress. He was not its hero, but he just might be its culmination.

No.

No. No. No.

This is not the end of the damn journey.

No, it isn’t the beginning, but it damn sure ain’t the end.

It better not be, because I got about 6 or seven more stops to ride before I get where I wanna go.

Getting back to business: Prop 8 and Black Folk

OK.  my vacation is over.

 

 

It is time to get down to business.

 

WRITE TNC (who I have been reading since he profiled a coworker and friend of mine in the Washington City Paper 14 yrs ago) has been all over the scapegoating of Black folk for the passing of Prop 8 in CA

Also…make sure to peep his comments.  His comments>> some folks whole blog existence.

 

The link inside that post are from an EXHAUSTIVE dailykos diary post that is a MUST read for anyone who is bothered by what happened on Tuesday and the resulting beef that seems to have sprung up.

 

I am currently getting my 38 yo freshman on so I had to print it up for my own reading.  I look forward to addressing this this after I get off of work

The not-so-soft Bigotry of white colloquialisms

I still haven’t seen more than a smattering of seconds of last night’s debate.

What little I did see in between the Absolut Mandarin and sodas and Al’s Favorite Cosmos that i was slinging around irritated the Piss out of me.

So…I can have a woman running for vice-president get all folksy on me talking about a heckuva lotta this and heckuva lotta that…

BUT…

Let a sista get up there and suck her teeth and say Uh-Uh and folk want to hand her the keys to a Cadillac with one hand and an EBT card in the other?

This woman is EXACTLY what people who deplore Affirmative Action have always complained about and what people who support Affirmative Action live in constant fear of.

If the stakes weren’t so high, the irony would be delicious.

The more I watch the more I realize none of the “experts” know what the hell they are talking about…and the more expert they are, the LESS they actually know.

Fools, all of them.

This woman is not fooling a soul who doesn’t want to be fooled into thinking that she is worthy of the position she currently occupies.

She is positively cringe-worthy.

 

And I haven’t even SEEN the debate.

 

I bet Gwen Ifill was just ITCHING to belt out ONE follow up question.

 

Just one.

More Change we can Believe in.

Remember all that fuss about Obama’s Father’s Day speech?

No, probably not.  It was foolishness anyway, so let’s move on.

 

In this article by the American Prospect, you can find a good idea of the kind of weight that Obama wants to put behind the rhetoric.

 

Whatever the cultural or political reasons for Obama’s high-profile Father’s Day speech, behind the rhetoric is a new way of thinking about fatherhood. Obama is advocating for a specific agenda designed to remove barriers that discourage fathers from paying child support, eliminate policies that punish married couples who are working to get off public assistance, and grant public funding to proven nonprofit organizations that help men transition into better jobs, including those re-entering society from incarceration.

I read articles like this ne and I get almost apopleptic (yes, literally) about the overall discourse that exists in ths campaign.

I don’t need 24 blog posts about how YT don’t like me and my cousin.

I NEED folk to REALLY cut through the foolishness and get into the TRUE substance of it all.

It is out there, I promise you.  Let’s get after it, people.

Double-You.Tea.Eff.

Word?

Seriously?

This is a level of hate I am personally uncomfortable with.

While I am quick to label the garden variety “small-h hate” that has fueled the rapid expansion of the internet, I am not nearly as quick to toss around the “capital H hate” that usually ends in slow singing and flower bringing (Wallace, 1994).

The above Picture, brought to my attention by the aptly named skeptical brotha, seems to tread the line between the hates very poorly.

It is truly ironic that all this resurfaces on the heels of the Barack Oblonda commercial.

at first blush, I arrived at the overall conclusion that these folk are just blinded by their own sense of entitlement and are therefore projecting said entitlement upon Obama.  The perception of the notion of a lack of gravitas and a shallowness of policy usually comes from the presumption that Obama can’t possibly have it all together.

But then i cannot shake the idea that perhaps all this animus has a deeper root.

Could it be that losing to some random first term senator is bad, but losing to an uppity Negro is just plain unacceptable?

There just seems to be too much smoke for there not to be any fire anywhere.