Obamatopia

"My only confusion is over motive. Does Obama do this for (a) domestic political purposes: trashing Bush abroad*, coupled with fawning foreign crowds and photo-ops, remind Americans that someone made them liked abroad after someone else did not? (b) Is it more personal, as in messianic: he sees himself as a sort of Mandela/Gandhi figure, post-national, post-patriotic, post-American in whom the souls of 6 billion are invested for ‘hope and change’? (c) Is there a touch of Democratic savvy as well—the more these “breakthroughs” are associated with Obama, the more Hillary seems sidelined, and / or forced to implement his lead? Compared to the high Rice profile, her stature seems more and more dwarfish. (d) Does he really believe in conflict resolution theory that postulates escalating disagreements arise from miscommunication and misunderstanding rather than an aggressive party sensing that its putative opponent cannot or will not impede it—in other words faith in the UN rather than age-old balance of power, deterrence, and ‘quiet but carry a big stick’ preparedness? (e) Does Obama, whether being nourished on the mother milk of Wright, Ayers, Khalidi, etc, or from his university training and Chicago organizing, really see the U.S. as historically a uniquely oppressive society in terms of race, class, and gender, and hence perhaps have empathy for a Castro or Chavez, at least more than he does for Americans of the sort who go to tea parties and listen to Fox News? I’ll let readers decide, but so far his rhetoric has been harsher to those on Wall Street, his opponents in Congress, those who make over $250,000, and those who criticize him than it has to those who clearly don’t like us abroad.

"And the result will be soon, as Sarkozy presciently saw, a general sizing up of the Obama two-step. They will either believe that we are weak, and cannot stand in the way of their illiberal agendas, or believe that Obama is somewhat sympathetic to their anti-capitalist, anti-democratic scenarios, or believe that he is a true multiculturalist who believes in the 'Post-American world.'”

The ‘Right-Wing Extremism’ Report and Europeanization

"A search of government records turns up a similar paucity of the expression in official American political discourse. Here again, when the expression does appear, it is typically employed to refer to European and, above all, German political phenomena. (See here, for instance, in the entry on Germany in the State Department’s 2008 Human Rights Report.) Here again, when the expression is used to refer to American political phenomena, it is typically employed in an obviously politicized and hyperbolic manner to refer to mainstream Republicans — as, for instance, when Bernie Sanders, America’s only self-described 'socialist' senator, linked 'right-wing extremism' and the Bush administration. There is some scattered evidence of law enforcement officials occasionally using the term.

"If the expression 'right-wing extremism' is uncommon in American political discourse, however, its German equivalent — Rechtsextremismus — is a standard element of German political discourse. A search of the electronic archives of Germany’s paper of record, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), turns up over 2000 articles in which the term is used in just the last 16 years. A search of just the last year of the FAZ archives turns up 121 articles: more than twice the number found in the New York Times in the last twenty years. The German domestic intelligence service, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution [Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz], includes detailed information on “right-wing extremist” movements and detailed statistics on 'right-wing extremist' violence in each of its yearly reports. The section specifically devoted to the analysis of 'right-wing extremist' movements in the last available report (covering 2007) is over 80 pages long — this as compared to the scanty seven pages of would-be analysis in the DHS report. The Verfassungsschutz report also includes a section on 'left-wing extremism' [Linksextremismus] of about the same length."

Tea Party stands on priniciple and boo big government Republicans

"Tea Party protesters have little sympathy for big government Republicans who voted for the Bush/Obama banker bailouts or support the Obama 'stimulus' trillion dollar debt bill."

Obama is wrong

"Even after his first day as the president of USA, Obama looked bizarre and deceiving to me. After just one month, I realized why I felt like that. Obama lied during his campaign. I am going to give you a list and you'll be the judge. He has done the total opposite of what he said that he will do.

"1. He said that after he'd won the elections, he will bring home the troops in Iraq in 6 months. Now, the term is set at 26 months. There are already 5000 American soldiers dead and almost 1.000.000 Iraqis! Now ask yourself, why is he doing this?

"2. Immediately after the elections he sent 30000 soldiers to Afghanistan. Is this a man who wants a change? And he is going to do it, again, with guns?

"3. He said that he will close the Guantanamo prison. Now, there are reports that prisoners are taken into other foreign countries and tortured. Obama is making the dictatorial regime of secret arrest, secret prisons and detention without trial. Obama is not only endorsing Bush's crimes, but continuing them.

"4. Did you check out his staff? 90% are Wall-Street man. Those who made this crisis are now in the government! This is the first time when we don't have any engineer, social adviser in president's staff. Instead, we have doctors in economy who seems to have no clue about the real events around the world. Only lobbyist there!

"5. Obama said he was upset with the bailout. How, in God's name he could when the bailout was engineered by Rahm Emanuel, an American born in Israel, chief of his staff.

"6. Global warming. After feeling the president's chair underneath him, Obama issued over 100 new taxes for green purposes. But wait a minute, who said that man is the real cause of global warming? Gore has built a 'green money making machine'. Remember, it's not the global warming but the THEORY of it. There is nothing sure yet...

"7. Here is one sentence from a directive of the Ministry of Defence : 'Civilian Expeditionary force shall deploy in support of combat operations by the military.' He is building a separate army outside the government that will follow only Obama's orders. If you have over 18, you MUST make 3 month of military training.

"8. Forget about the Free Speech! There are going to be laws for controlling the news and Internet sites so that you won't be able to "plot" against Obama!

"9. The National Coordinator of Health is going to tell you what treatments are good for you or what medicines ar bad. Those who use alternative medicine, be aware, you'll going to be outlaws!

"10. Obama is encircling China, Iran and Russia. He is also setting bases in Africa, he is going to dominate Africa throw Africa Command. His cousin, Odinga, is a dictator in Kenya and has Obama's full support...

If Obama Doesn't Prosecute Bush's Torture Team, We'll Pay a Big Price Down the Road

"Obama isn't likely to pursue torture atrocities during the Bush era, but this is one problem you simply can't wish away."

Current TV reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee face jail in North Korea

"In a state 'guest house' on the outskirts of Pyongyang, Laura Ling and Euna Lee have been held for more than a month: valuable pawns in an growing international nuclear stand-off.

"Hanging over the heads of the American journalists is the possibility of a show trial and ten years in a notoriously harsh North Korean prison camp. The outside world knows little about how they are holding up — because North Korea is not saying and the United States, while trying to free them through diplomacy, has tried to impose a blanket of silence.

"The signs, though, are not good for the employees of Current TV, a web-based television channel founded by Al Gore, the former US Vice-President, because their future appears bound up in the widening rift between Pyongyang and much of the rest of the world over its recent missile launch. The reclusive regime of Kim Jong Il has halted all talks and expelled international experts monitoring its nuclear activities after the United Nations condemned its decision to fire a rocket over Japan. "

Will Obama let them rot in jail???

Romancing the Jihad

"Ask those on the Left what values they champion, and they will say equality, tolerance, women’s rights, gay rights, workers’ rights, and human rights. Militant Islamists oppose all that, not infrequently through the application of lethal force. So how does one explain the burgeoning Left-Islamist alliance?"

Loooooove Those Comments!

"Everything Obama has promised is slowly being pissed away......"

"Is anyone really surprised at his actions?"

"I'm disappointed and unsurprised. Politicians usually promise more than they can deliver, but it seemed that Obama could deliver reconciliation and honesty. Of course there are poltical pressures against revealing too much, but they are not national security concerns, except to the extent that CIA big shots could torpedo elements of US foreign policy. It just seemed to many of us that a President Obama would heal many more of the Bush era wounds, and now he is just deepening them and wasting his political capital. He erodes the support of his voters every time he backs a Bush era policy and he puts into doubt his own stated concerns for the Constitution, civil rights, habeas corpus, and much more. Sigh!"

"The more things 'Change' the more they stay the same."

"Just another day in the Bush administration... oh wait!"

"'... that releasing all the memos could help terrorists train to endure the most extreme interrogation techniques.' That line really pisses me off, what else could extreme interrogation techniques mean besides torture, and if we don't torture then why would it matter if they trained for it."

"Boy sure didn't see this coming. lol"

"Change you can believe in! I still can't believe so many on the left fell for a chant and actually voted for this guy. They actually believed that he was going to be different... sad, in a pathetic sort of way."

"These changes are making me thirsty."

"CHHAAAANNNGE!! 'yes we can... continue the failed policies of the past!!'" (My favorite)

"Hehehe....HAHAHehehehe.....he's just another Bush. When will you people wake up."

"the Damn Bush was so awful that 0bama must wiretap and torture. will the Bush MADNESS never end?"

"will you people make up your mind first you want Obama to go after the bad bad evil baby killer bush then when he says he is not then you say oh maybe it would not look good to go after bush in light of the mess we are in .I hope you paid att to the tea partys they are not going to get any smaller they are going to get bigger (this president has had the worst 90 days of any president ever) the tingly fellings in your legs are they still there? god help us"

Janeane Garofalo and me (AND I HOPE SHE READS THIS)

First click this link http://www.urbanconservative.com/2009/04/17/janeane-garofalo-calls-teabaggers-racist-rednecks-who-hate-black-people/#comment-21625

I sent a gentle email to Countdown at MSNBC because I want to contact Ms Garofalo:

"HELLO

"I have some questions for her. Please tell her she is wacked out on her statements of the Tea Parties.

"Racism? I'm black and from Chicago, the most segregated city in the North. When I was younger in the 60's, a large stone came through our house because we moved into a new neighborhood. (By the way, these were not the "racist Republicans." These were all white Democrats. Were not the white Democrats supposed to love black people?) I have experienced racism up close and personal many times in Chicago, all white Democrats, even on a daily basis at one time. I have even been "Heil Hitlered" by Neo-Nazis.

"When it comes to racism, I was out on the playing field getting knocked down for years. She was sitting in the nosebleed section of the bleachers just watching and eating hotdogs and going home unscathed. Her attempt to somehow sympathize with black people is very pathetic and very phony. She is only fooling herself with her rhetoric.

"Racism is only a nice spectator sport for her.

"If she really cared about black people, she would have been outraged about the four black students shot in New Jersey where she is from. Three of them died. But I did not hear a sound from her. As a matter of fact, here is what I found on Google: "Your search - 'Janeane Garofalo' 'black students shot' - did not match any documents." It was on the news everyplace. What is she doing to stop the deliberate destruction of the black community? Her actions speak so loud I cannot hear a word she says.

"I dare say, if she was offered a million dollars to change her skin color to my color, she would not do it. Please tell her that for me. She benefits from the same white privilege that she pretends she is against. How clever. I know blacks much better than her and we can see that through that phoniness, but she cannot. She is completely blind yet touts herself as an expert in racial relations.

"If you can give her my phone number I would appreciate it. It is XXX-XXX-XXXX. She needs to learn what racism is about from one who has experienced it and knows more about it than she would care to know."

Now if you happen to be a white Janeane Garofalo fan who agrees with her, you are going to take this and like it:

The same goes for you. Until you have walked 51 years in my shoes, you are completely clueless about racism. I experienced racism on a daily basis for 4 years when I was in high school in Chicago. When I wanted to visit a white friend in a fraternity at the University of Illinois, I was told by one of the frat brothers "We don't want any trouble here," and he turned me away. I had a racist boss in Ohio and that was not my choice. When I was walking a street in Texas, I heard from a car “Hey, you’re a nigger!” and “Hooray for niggers! Hooray for niggers!” I was even turned away from a motel in Canada because of my skin color. And I repeat, over 95% of racism I encountered was from WHITE DEMOCRATS and not Republicans. What does that say about you?

You all sit with Ms. Garofalo in the nosebleed section of the bleachers while I played on field taking the blows. You think you are the experts in racism? You have the gall to talk about who is racist and who is not. You white Garofalo fans would not trade places with me, to go through what I have gone through and probably will go through. You white Garofalo fans criticize white Republicans and conservatives but just like Garofalo, you also benefit from white privilege and you would not give that up yourselves. I was born and raised in Chicago, a racist city, where I heard little boys on the street near White Sox Park say “White Power! White Power!” By the way, that was a 100% Democratic neighborhood.

I have the utmost authority to say who is racist and who is not. I can also tell who are the white phonies who claim they love black people but don't realize they don't fool me. I have lived through racism. You have no authority whatsoever to flippantly call people racist.

Sit down and shut up.

The Big Lie

"'You need us,' the Fourth Estate claims. 'Because we are professionals and we will tell you what is true.'

"Except when they don't. Except when what really happens does not fit into their predominantly east-coast understanding of what the people of this diverse country value and want. Except when reporting gets in the way of being opinion-shapers, vetters of presidential appointees, and those running for office. (For more on the media's extremely rude and virulent attacks on certain presidential candidates, see the film Media Malpractice). And this is, I believe, the main reason that many ordinary Americans find the so-called Fourth Estate increasingly irrelevant.

"Consider the stunningly incompetent reporting of CNN 'reporter' Susan Roesgen, who interrupted a man at the Chicago Tea Party who was discussing Lincoln, telling him (and her viewers) what to think: 'Do you know that the 'state of Lincoln' gets 50 billion dollars . . .' She did not let the man finish, and she ended her confrontation with Tea Party goers by saying that they were all anti-government and anti-CNN. At the end, you hear the crowd chanting at her: 'You are not a reporter.' And this is true. She moved from reporting to confronting, from telling viewers what was happening, to telling them what to think about it. She ended that particular discussion by becoming a salesperson for the 'stimulus' package.

(For a better, if not "professional" look at the Chicago Tea Party, see The Chicago Tea Party that Susan Roesgen Missed, by the guy who wants her job).

"It was clear that Ms. Roesgen went to Chicago with an agenda, and that agenda was not to report on what was actually happening (good, bad and ugly), but rather to obtain footage for a particular point of view: that the Tea Parties were 'anti-government and anti-CNN.' Whether this was her own agenda or that of her bosses, she is nevertheless responsible for her unethical behavior. She was not reporting on news, she was, rather, creating propaganda.

"This is incompetent reporting. It was also clear that Ms. Roesgen went to Chicago, the largest city in the 'Land of Lincoln' in complete ignorance of that great president's economic views. Any Illiniois school child could have educated her about this, since she failed to prepare herself for her day's work. This is stunningly incompetent.

"FYI Ms. Roesgen: The man you interviewed--the one whose child was 'already in debt'--was refering to this statement made by Abraham Lincoln:

"'Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable...is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.' Reply to New York Workingmen's Democratic Republican Association (March 21, 1864).

"It took this former Illiniois schoolgirl exactly 40 seconds to pull it up on the Internet. I simply googled the italicized phrase along with the word 'Lincoln.' Susan, the next time you go to Chicago, and you are dealing with real people--those who can both walk and chew gum at the same time (unlike the Pols) and who (unlike the Pols), do not tell you exactly what you want to hear--be sure to do your homework.

"I suppose one could argue that neither CNN nor Fox are real news outlets because they have to foment controversy in order to produce 24 hours of nonstop "news" every day. So, should we consider 'responsible' newspapers, like the Los Angeles Times? In an editorial in that paper, Marc Cooper had already labeled the Tea Parties this way: 'Anti-Obama Taxpayer Tea Parties steeped in insanity.' That was before the Tea Parties had even happened.

"And then there's my hometown paper, The Albuquerque Journal. I tend to be partial to it because it is independent and published right here. But they have gotten a new breed of reporters lately, ones who are so lazy that they go out to an event for 15 minutes, quote liberally from the AP, and believe they have a story. Thus they told us that 'a few thousand'attended the Albuquerque Tea Party, even though there were official numbers that could have been obtained with one phone call to the police. From the AP, they got the idea that all of these Tea Parties were anti-Obama rallies promoted by Dick Army. With a few phone calls and some additional leg work (there's that word again, the one that the lazy reporters avoid), the reporters could have interviewed the five housewives who organized the Tea Party here, and they could have found out that none of them had even talked to Senator Army, and that all funding was local and private, and all the work was done by volunteers.

"Instead the Journal has piled on to the Big Lie: The Tea Parties were partisan, about taxes, and poorly attended. And therefore not very important. In fact, they were so unimportant that the President of the United States had a press release put out saying that he didn't know about them. (Consider the logic of that!) Because according to Janet Napolitano of DHS, Tea Party goers are all insane nutjobs that are a threat to the United States. Right up there with war veterans and those of us who understand that the Constitution limits the powers of the Federal government in the 9th and 10th amendments.

"This is the strategy of the Big Lie. It is a propaganda technique first defined in Nazi Germany, but it has been in use since Pericles. It means to keep repeating an untruth over and over again, baldly, and without evidence, until it is believed by most people."

Where were my fellow blacks?

"The crowd was exuberant with shouts of no taxation without representation. All around me were people who were fed up with big government. This was our moment to corporately express our dissatisfaction with a runaway big spending and overtaxing government. Americans from all walks of life joined together in one great voice … I wish!

"Missing from this crowd was my fellow black Americans along with Hispanic Americans. In a crowd of a thousand or more, I could only count 10 or less black and brown people … WHY?

"This tea party was not about the current president, any political party, or ethnic group. It was about the right of all Americans to be taxed fairly and governed justly under the Constitution of our Founding Fathers. A call for sanity; a call for our representatives in Washington to hear the voice of the people and stop the madness, stop the spending!

"Where were our fellow Americans of color? Surely you feel the same sting of Big Government that the Anglo-Americans feel. This is not about color! We are all Americans and must stand shoulder to shoulder against the insanity of the past administration and this present administration – or we shall all fall.

"I missed you today. How I would have loved to stand in a sea of diverse Americans with one purpose: save this country from socialism, fascism and a one-world government. God will judge us by our loyalty to Him, not by our loyalty to color. God is no respecter of man. We must stand together as fellow Americans or face the chaos of division.

"One Nation under God. United we stand, divided we fall!"

Rev. Lucian L. Thompson

Rev. Thompson, I will tell you why. Many blacks have been bamboozled into thinking that your tea party was tantamount to a KKK rally. They thought the tea parties were opportunities for "white folks" to bash the "black president." They thought the tea parties were Obama "hate fests." Media is mainly to blame on casting dispersions on those events. I heard a black caller on Michael Savage calling the the attendees of the tea parties "idiots." He was happy to see the white people angry because they had a black president. Dimwit.

Another Obama sham event

"Now comes this report about Obama's recent surprise foray into Iraq:

"According to an e-mail from a sergeant in Iraq:

We were pre-screened, asked by officials "Who voted for Obama?", and then those who raised their hands were shuffled to the front of the receiving line. They even handed out digital cameras and asked them to hold them up.

Take a look at the picture at AP and notice all the cameras are the same models. Coincidence? I think not.

"Though in the blogosphere this contrivance has received the attention and outraged criticism it deserves, Obama's media claque has portrayed the sham as though it were an authentic display of respect and enthusiasm from the front lines. To me, however, the fake enthusiasm is in reality far less repugnant than the open abuse of our troops – officially asking that they declare their political allegiance and giving preferential treatment to those who declare their support for Obama. Whatever the complexities of life at the higher echelons where politics and personal relations must inevitably play their role, inviting and exploiting open displays of political loyalty in the ranks, and even worse at the front lines, shows reprehensible disrespect for a tradition important not only to the integrity of our troops but of our military and our nation as a whole. Whatever show Obama's people wanted to put on, what their reported actions show beyond doubt is their ruthless disregard for the honorable tradition of non-partisan service that has helped America to avoid the shabby fate of so-called 'banana republics' whose constitutions proved as susceptible to rot as the fruit for which they are named."