GOP: Stay the Course - Damn the Mood of the Electorate

It's always heartwarming when you see a political party learn from it's mistakes and make an honest attempt to mend it's ways. Take the GOP, for example. Their candidate of choice for RNC Chair is a white, male southerner who just resigned a longtime membership in a whites-only country club:

Katon Dawson, the South Carolina GOP chairman, announced his candidacy for RNC chair yesterday.

And guess what: Back in September, when Dawson was first quietly laying the groundwork for his RNC run, The State newspaper reported that he resigned his membership in the nearly 80-year-old Forest Lake Club. Members told the newspaper at the time that the club's deed has a whites-only restriction and has no black members.

Dawson claimed to the paper that he'd actually been working since August to change the club's admission practices after reading about them in the press. Nonetheless, his membership could become an issue in the RNC chair race.

After all, the paper says he was a member for 12 years, so it seems like a pretty fair question to ask whether he started working to change the club's rules this summer, and then resigned, in preparation for his RNC chair candidacy.

That seems like a particularly relevant question when you recall that the case some GOPers made against Obama over his ties to Reverend Wright was that his supposed silence in the face of Wright's rantings should raise questions about Obama's patriotism.

So, despite a landslide victory by a black American who's been described as "the most liberal Senator in America", the GOP is choosing to stick to it's white southern strategy. Good luck with that, and thanks for playing!

Union Prez Hits it out of the Park

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka offers up a moving defense of Obama against racial attacks. Watch his impassioned conviction in tackling an issue that many still try to avoid - racism:

McCain put Obama on $100 bill in JUNE

John McCain protested Barack Obama's statement "I don't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills", calling it the race card. Well. . .I wwonder why he played that exact same card in a June 27, 2008 attack ad:



Jed Lewison points out:

(Side note: As you can see, the video's still image is of Obama on currency. Note that the image doesn't occur until about three-quarters of the way through the video. The way YouTube works, the default image occurs at the midpoint. In other words, McCain's campaign affirmatively choose this image.)

I'm not a racist; are you?

My reaction time is a tad slow, but I don't seem to see things in "black and white".

Well, that's what a University Of Chicago online psychological test tells me.

Click here to take the test yourself and tell me how you score.

My ResultsProfiled recently in The New York Times, the online pop psych test presents you with images of 100 Black and white men. Some are armed, while others are carrying nothing more dangerous than a wallet or a cell phone. Unfortunately, if you're a Black man in New York, you're fully aware of the danger of carrying seemingly harmless objects.. From Amadou Diallo, who died after being shot at 41 times by police as he reached for his wallet, to the case of Sean Bell who, though unarmed, was gunned down by NYPD officers in a confrontation after a bachelor party, New York is ripe with examples of how deadly being a Black man in the wrong place at the wrong time can be.

With that in mind, I took the online exam. I was presented with these images and prompted to either shoot or holster my weapon depending on my split-second determination of whether the target was carrying a weapon or not. You lose points for being too slow and deliberate. The point of the exam is to gauge your instinctive belief of whether the target will be armed based on skin color.

My results were … "slow and deliberate". Definitely not racist; in fact I was quicker to shoot the white man with a gun. My overall score was 210, low compared to scores I observed on the site where I found this referenced. In all fairness to myself, the keys used to fire and holster, / and Z respectively seemed unfamiliar. I was probably 30 shots into the test before I became comfortable with them. My mindset was to focus immediately on the hand and it's contents as it appeared. Everything else became secondary.

The score is determined by getting points for a "good" shot -- shooting a target that is armed -- and losing points for either getting shot or shooting an unarmed target. In short, this exercise comes down to fractions of seconds. Fractions of seconds? Yes, but that's what real armed police officers who make these life and death decisions in real life situations as they encounter possible perps are faced with.

Let me know what your results look like!

**Update: I just tried the test again and, with more familiarity of the controls, my ratios didn't change appreciably but my score increased to 435.

Clinton Racism Continues

From AmericaBlog:


(click image to see larger version)

DailyKos has the original scoop. I went and got the original footage from the Clinton ad, and then compared it to 3 different video clips of the same debate from 3 different sources. I did this so as to take into account any editing, or quality issues, that might have accounted for Obama having darker skin in any particular video. None of the 3 video sources I found showed Obama nearly as black as the Hillary ad does. Click the image above to see a larger version. Look at his lips. Look at his eyebrows. Look at how the red MSNBC background has turned more purple. Clearly the image was darkened. The question is "why."

It just keeps happening again and again and again. The Clintons keeps doing things, saying things, that sound awfully racist. And we're to believe that this, the - what? 8th, 10th time? - this has happened is again just a coincidence. The first half a dozen times you launch seemingly racist attacks on your black opponent, maybe - maybe - we can write it off as "boy you're really dumb not to get it." But having a seemingly-racist attack from the Clinton folks on Obama every single week, after a while, you don't get to play the "I had no idea!" card anymore. After that many times, you're race-baiting. You're using racism to win. And you're destroying your legacy and your husband's. Enough already.

Southern Man -vs- Sweet Home Alabama

Over the last couple of weeks, I've had the misfortune to hear "Sweet Home Alabama" way too many times. . .I even had to suffer through the movie of the same name on a charter bus. Okay, the movie wasn't all that bad. . .for a chick-flick, but that song. . .it just annoys me to no end.

"Now, Watergate, it doesn't bother me. . .does your conscience bother you, now tell me true"

Watergate certainly DID bother most of America. A president who lied, cheated, and stealed and then had the nerve to say "it's NOT illegal if the president does it".WOW - deja vu. . .

"Da-dant, da da da-dant da da da-dant. . .turn it OFF. . ."

But the line that REALLY pisses me off is the jab at Neil Young and CSNY: "I hope Neil Young will remember, southern man don't need him around anyhow".

You see, Neil penned a nice little song about racism and the good-old-boy system of doing things that prevailed in the south for far too long. And, instead of moving forward like most of their southern brethren, these asshats instead defended the very things that Neil (and the rest of America) was protesting by saying "phht! We don't need you and we'll defend a lifestyle that the rest of the country has atoned for and moved on".

When I see people rally around this song at taverns, wedding receptions, etc. . .it turns my stomach. I realize that the vast majority of people have no clue as to the true meaning of the song, and are merely reacting to the infectious guitar riffs and rallying cry. I have no problems at all with regional pride; but please pay attention to the lyrics that you are mouthing. You might be unpleasantly surprised by the sentiments behind a seemingly innocent and innocuous song. . .

"Southern Man"


Here's a video with clearer audio and a MUCH clearer representation of Neil Young's message:


Much like the very state of our democracy itself, successful results rely upon an informed populace. Whether in politics or music, look beyond the feel-good banners and Orwellian presentations and peer into the real message that's being imprinted into your brain. You know, in your heart, what is correct. What is fair. What matters. . .how you would want to be treated!

FOX attacks: Black America