This blog seeks to look at events thru the perspective of Black people. We seek the Nguzo Saba 365/7 on on our blog. Please be active as a villager by using the COMMENT OPTION on blog posts, Subscribe to our blog, introduce yourself or view our most popular posts!
Did any of you see the passionate comments by GOP candidate Rick Santorum towards the end of the debate last night? He was answering the question about what impact religion would have on his work as president if he were elected. He talked about the nation's founding fathers and the fact that "God-given rights" were at the heart of the Declaration of Independence.
Santorum noted that 'God-given rights' can't be given away by the government. As he was talking I kept thinking to myself about the Africans in America at the time of the Declaration of Independence. I wondered what Santorum would say about the "God-given rights" of those men and women who were enslaved by our Founding Fathers? Did they have any "God-given rights"?
Now, I learn that there are some in Santorum's Republican Party who no longer want to be troubled by the inconvenience of our nation's history of slavery. There are some GOP (aka, Tea Party) in Tennessee who want to re-write the history books being used in our public schools to give a positive spin on slavery. [SOURCE]
These Republican (or Tea Party) activists say that the way textbooks are worded now can portray out founding fathers in a negative light.
"Slavery is of course portrayed in the textbooks nowadays I'm sure as a totally negative thing. Had there not been slavery in the south, the economy would've fallen," said Tea Party Activist Brian Rieck.
I guess one person's dehumanizing atrocity is another person's economic stimulus agenda.
Country singer Hank Williams was on a morning television show the other day where he thought it was a good idea to compare President Obama to Adolph Hitler.
Fox Anchor Gretchen Carlson asked Williams who he liked in the GOP race, which he replied “Nobody.” A shocked Steve Doocy exclaimed, “Nobody!?”
This triggered Williams to bash Obama and Boehner’s golf game and compare the president to Hitler. All three Fox and Friends anchors sat nonplussed in utter bewilderment.
”Yeah, I don’t understand that analogy, actually,” responded a perplexed Brian Kilmeade.
“Well, I’m glad you don’t, brother, because a lot of people do,” Williams snapped. “You know, they’re the enemy. They’re the enemy.” Kilmeade was thrown for a loop. “Who’s the enemy?”
“Obama!” Williams thundered.
The Fox News anchor tried to step back from the comparison of the president to the Nazi leader. “I just want to say that we disavow any of those comments or analogies that he’s made, at least I’m going to say that, disavow the analogy between Hitler and the president.”
“Some of us have strong opinions and are often misunderstood. My analogy was extreme – but it was to make a point. I was simply trying to explain how stupid it seemed to me – how ludicrous that pairing was.
They’re polar opposites and it made no sense. They don’t see eye-to-eye and never will. I have always respected the office of the President.
Every time the media brings up the Tea Party it’s painted as racist and extremists – but there’s never a backlash – no outrage to those comparisons… Working class people are hurting – and it doesn’t seem like anybody cares. When both sides are high-fiving it on the ninth hole when everybody else is without a job – it makes a whole lot of us angry. Something has to change. The policies have to change.”
I find it interesting that Hank Williams tried to deflect responsibility for his own stupidity by (a) blaming the media and (b) using the race card. Williams brought this shyt-storm down on himself. There was no mention of race by anyone in the interview. The idea of race must have been rollin' around in his head. It seems that Williams and other Tea Party types are becoming bolder and bolder. They feel that they can say and do whatever is on their mind without consequence. Williams learned this week that there are consequences when you go too far!
The vote for the next chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) takes place in two months. The current GOP chairman, Michael Steele, indicates that he will be running for re-election. However, a significant bloc of Republican National Committee members wants embattled chairman Michael Steele to step aside, but the rank and file have failed to settle on a clear alternative. [SOURCE]
More than four dozen interviews with members of the 168-member central committee found fear that a badly damaged Steele could emerge from the wreckage of a knockdown, drag-out fight to head the party as it challenges President Barack Obama in 2012. While most agree that Steele’s time has been rough — and costly — the members also recognize that a leadership fight could overshadow gains that Republicans made in the midterm elections. [SOURCE]
“You can’t keep spending the kind of money they’re spending every month just to operate the RNC,” said committee member Ada Fisher of North Carolina. “I would hope he would step aside.”
“The question is who should be hired for the next two years, It’s not a matter of firing anybody,” said James Bopp, a committee member from Indiana who holds great sway among social conservatives on the panel. “I just don’t think Steele has performed at the level we need for the presidential cycle.”
Steele appears to have delivered for the Republican Party. Didn't they just win a historic landslide victory in the mid-term elections earlier this month? Shouldn't Steele get some credit for the fact that Republicans won at least 63 new seats in the House. Republicans picked up 10 governorships and added six Senate seats. The party also gained control of 19 state legislative chambers and now hold their highest level of state legislative seats since 1928.
I think that the Michael Steele served his ONLY PURPOSE for the Republican Party. He was an African American face for the GOP elected in January 2009 to serve as a counterbalance for the remarkable election of Barack Obama ... the first African American president in our nation's history.
Be honest. That is the ONLY reason that Michael Steele was elected GOP chairman in the first place. The Republicans couldn't afford to have another old white man as their 'talking head'. Michael Steele became the puppet.
Steele didn't mind. In fact, he enjoyed it. Steele did his 'Bojangles' best to entertain the media and the public when he first got elected.
But, it's not January 2009 any longer and the Republican Party is now powered by the Tea Party ... and the GOP doesn't see any need to pretend like they are a diverse political party. They are very comfortable being the party for white folks in America as evidenced by the prominent role that Senator McConnell (R-KY) and Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) and Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) have as party spokesperson.
Michael Steele served his role. The Republicans are now laying the groundwork to remove him in January 2011.
“He’s a wonderful man. He’s done a good job,” said Cindy Costa, a committee member from South Carolina. “But it would be better for him — and I want the best for him — to step down knowing he gave an honest shot and did a good job this election cycle.”
More Tea Party nonsense ... this time it's the 7th congressional district in Georgia. John Lindner (R-GA) is retiring after about 18 years in office.
An empty congressional seat is like a magnet for nuts in the 2010 election year. There are eight candidates in the July 20th Republican primary election. U.S. Rep. John Linder’s chief of staff is running for the seat. So is a state legislator. A syndicated talk show host is also among the group along with a prosecutor, a flight attendant, a state government retiree, a CPA and a human resources executive.
I'm surprised that the Tea Party didn't go for Jody Hice, the syndicated talk show host. Jody is spending money to put up several billboards around Atlanta calling out President Barack Obama's so-called "socialist" policies.
Is there never any end to the nonsense from the GOP wingnuts?
I see that Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele turned down request from his Democratic Party counterpart, Tim Kaine, to issue a joint statement against the recent violent acts against lawmakers who voted in favor of health care reform. It is another indication that the GOP is intentionally stoking the base emotions of the Tea Party folks.
Here are examples of what the GOP leadership is saying:
Rep. Michele Bachmann: "I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous ... having a revolution every now and then is a good thing."
Rep. John Boehner: "Take [Democratic Congressman] Steve Driehaus, for example. He may be a dead man. He can't go home to the west side of Cincinnati."
Rep. Steve King: "Let's beat that other side to a pulp! Let's take them out. Let's chase them down."
It is time for us to end the right-wing violence brought to us by the GOP.
I think that we need to squash this nonsense right away. It could be dangerous if it goes on through April 19th.
Villagers will recall that April 19, 1993 was the end of the 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian building outside of Waco TX. 81 people died.
April 19, 1995 was the day that Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people with his bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
We had eight years of Bush and Cheney, but now you get mad?
You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.
You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.
You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.
You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.
You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.
You didn't get mad when we spent $1 trillion on said illegal war.
You didn't get mad when over $10 billion dollars (in hard cash) just “disappeared" in Iraq.
You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.
You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.
You didn't get mad when they didn't catch Bin Laden.
You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed hospital.
You didn't get mad when they let a major US city drown.
You didn't get mad when they gave a $1.6 trillion in tax breaks to the rich.
You didn’t get mad when, using reconciliation; a trillion dollars of our tax dollars were redirected to insurance companies for Medicare Advantage -- which cost more than 20% more for the same services that Medicare provides.
You didn't get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark, and our debt hit the thirteen trillion dollar mark.
No, but you did get mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you, but helping other Americans... oh hell no!
Last weekend, Tea Party Patriots gathered in the Capitol and showered racist and homophobic abuse on Democratic Congress Members supporting healthcare reform. As I watched the images on my television I was reminded of another time in our history ... Reconstruction. That was a time when Black leaders were taking on leadership roles in Congress. White folks got upset and begin to yell racist insults at the Black leaders. Today, we have a Black man making historic changes in the White House ... and racist insults and threats are being hurled at him and other Black congressional leaders.
One Tea Party protester called the former civil rights leader and current Atlanta Congressman John Lewis the "n-word". John Lewis was spat on and called the n-word when he marched on that bridge in Selma, AL over 50 years ago. Now as a respected member of Congress he has to endure it again.
Another spat on Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, also an African American.
The more things change ... the more they stay the same.
Republican leaders publicly denounced Sunday's ugly scene, but they failed to acknowledge that this is only the latest incident in a pattern of violent rhetoric, racially charged imagery, and paranoid conspiracy theories at Tea Party rallies. Many Tea Partiers aren't simply about dissent -- they use fear and hatred to assault the very legitimacy of our elected leaders. It's the worst America has to offer.
All things rise and fall with leadership. Watch the following video and tell me which leader you want to follow?
John Boehner and his GOP cronies know that this past weekend wasn't an isolated incident.
Villagers remember the rallies held to protest tax day last year, Tea Partiers carried signs that announced "Obama's Plan: White Slavery," "The American Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama's Oven," and "Guns Tomorrow!"
The Republican National Committee had endorsed the rallies, and RNC Chairman Michael Steele encouraged Tea Partiers to send a "virtual tea bag" to President Obama and Democratic Congressional leadership. After reports of the fear-mongering signs surfaced, Steele did nothing to distance his party from the lunatic fringe. He has even gone so far as to say that if he didn't have his current position, he'd be "out there with the tea partiers." Some Republican governors even planned a "Tea Party 2.0" for the following month in an effort to build on the rallies' momentum.
The Tea Party's venomous rhetoric picked up steam over the summer, when angry mobs flooded town hall meetings legislators had organized as sites for rational, civil debate on health care reform. After one meeting in Atlanta, a swastika was painted on the office of Congressman David Scott (D-GA), who had also received a flier addressed to "nigga David Scott." Some protesters showed up at town hall meetings carrying guns, including at least one man who was armed at an event where the President was speaking. Again, Republicans responded to these tactics with silence, doing nothing to denounce them.
Similarly, there was no public outcry from Republican leadership when Mark Williams, a leader of the Tea Party movement, was exposed for having described the President as "an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief" on his blog.
Instead, we see members of the GOP continued to show up to and endorse Tea Party rallies. And as recently as Sunday -- the day that the historic health care bill passed the House -- Republican members of the House riled up the same Tea Party crowd that had earlier harassed their fellow members with hate and bigotry.
It is time to put a stop to the hate. I encourage all villagers to sign the petition recently created by ColorOfChange.org. Do it now!
