Congressman Mark Foley, 52 the House Chairman of the Missing and Exploited Childrens Caucus, resigned from the U.S. House of Hypocrisy today for soliciting sex from a minor, a male teenage House page. The culture of corruption on capitol hill is nailing the coffin shut on GOP chances of retaining control of the House this fall. This was a safe seat that is now in jeopardy.
I have no doubt that Nancy Pelosi will be elected the first female Speaker of the House.
Our virtuous crusader, Senator Barack “Safe Negro” Obama, stood up for a principle this week. We at the “Safe Negro Report” hope this continues. The principle, Habeas Corpus, has been at the center of Anglo-American law for seven centuries, as explained by Senator Obama. In short, it allows terror suspects and other criminal defendants ” to effectively challenge their detention by our government.”
S. 3930 The Military Commissions act of 2006 allows our government to detain suspected terrorists indefinitely and without charge. The bill also provides for no mechanism through which detention can be challenged. On the basis of faulty intelligence and erroneous information, people have found themselves detained by our government with no recourse.
The bill is an insideous threat to international conventions which forbid torture because it allows for indefinite detention and in my mind, if passed, will help facilitate torture no matter what interrogation prohibitions happen to be written into law.
Our highest law enforcement official, Al Gonzales has proclaimed: The President has not authorized, ordered or directed in any way any activity that would transgress the standards of the torture conventions or the torture statute, or other applicable laws.
That is a boldfaced lie.
The Taguba report which examined the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq found “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses.” Among the abuses found were:
It should be of interest to all that children under twelve have been caught up and detained by the U.S. government and its coalition partners in the “War on Terra” and that they have been severely mistreated by the same in direct contravention of international law.
Former President Jimmy Carter in his book “Our Endangered Values” states that, “…the International Red Cross, Amnesty International, and the Pentagon have gathered substantial testimony of the torture of children, confirmed by soldiers who witnessed or participated in the abuse.”
Let that sink in. We have arrogated unto ourselves the right to detain someone’s child on the basis of unprovable suspicion and subject them to torture. No wonder the majority of the world believes our President is the Devil.
In my mind, a government that cannot substantiate in a court of law its right to detain someone based on provable evidence of terrorist activity is certainly incapable of ever treating them humanely under the provisions of the geneva conventions.
Senator Obama was correct to stand up for the principle of Habeas Corpus and support the Specter Amendement to this bill. It puts him in the same league with all of his collegues running for President on the democratic side of the aisle: Bayh, Biden, Clinton, Dodd, and Kerry.
Conversely, his Republican collegues who see a president when they look in the mirror: McCain, Frist, Brownback, Hagel, and Allen, voted the opposite way;proving their ultimate unfitness for the Oval Office.
George,
When I jokingly suggested yesterday that you hold a press conference with some black minstrels to address the explosive allegations surrounding your persistent use of the N-Word, I didn’t think that you’d actually do it.
You did, as the above picture attests. God is soooo Good! Everything I suggested you did, right down to the black preachers railing against same-sex marriage. Where did you find those Negroes? Did you call rent-a-negro?
If you didn’t call rent-a-negro, how did you “procure” their services? I’ve heard that some “men of the cloth” are for sale, I just didn’t think y’all could round up so many. I guess you’re so desperate to be pictured with friendly black faces that you’d say or do anything, pay anything to get them to “appear.”
Kidding aside, there is a serious matter I need to discuss with you. No, Felix, I don’t mean the N-Word thing and your obvious lying. It has to do with your homophobia and this B.S. event with the black preachers against same-sex marriage.
I’m afraid it just doesn’t look good for you to be defending yourself against charges of using racist epithets while engaging in a bigoted hatefest against the gay community. It kinda validates the charges of racial animus and bigotry.
As for the so-called “men of God” who participated in your mutual hatefest, I have this to say: Your ignorant musings about gay people are contrary to the biblical admonition to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” You are beneath contempt for allowing yourselves and your ministry to be used as one of George Allen’s weapons of mass distraction.
Mrs. Coretta Scott King, before her passing, made it clear what she thought about this question. Her eloquence is illuminating, she said “Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood…this sets the stage for further repression and violence that spread all too easily to victimize the next minority group.”
It should be clear to all those who are sentient that you are an unrepentant racist and homophobe that is undeserving of the honor of representing the commonwealth in the Senate. Your gay bashing, confederate nostalgia, and rank dishonesty regarding your malicious use of our nation’s most infammatory epithet consign you forever to the ashbin of history.
Memorandum
TO: George Felix Allen, Jr.
FR: Skeptical Brotha
RE: Your obvious and unapologetic racism
I’ve got a bright idea George. How about you hold a press conference to address the allegations of your obvious and unapologetic racism surrounded by colored folks? What do you say? I am sure there is a plethora of right-wing Negroes willing and able to prostitute themselves once again to benefit a racist of your presidential stature.
Whom should you invite, you say? Well, for starters, I think you should invite some of those crackheads that endorsed Michael Steele last week. You know, for authenticity. Then you could send out a desperate S.O.S. to some of the black fools who’ve worked for you: Kay Coles James and the President’s personal shoplifter, Claude Allen. Claude who, you say? You know, he was Bush’s domestic policy advisor and the homophobic wingnut you tried to appoint to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. I am sure they can vouch for you in the most unbelievable fashion possible.
We cannot forget to invite the homegrown fools: Hampton University President Dr. William R. Harvey and State Senator Bennie Lambert. They’ve already embarrassed themselves before God and man by endorsing you already. Speaking of embarrassing Negroes, we cannot forget to invite Dr. Walter Williams, the hateful black conservative Economics professor atGeorge Mason University. There is a treasure trove of self-loathing Negro academics out there to choose from. You can extend invitations to Affirmative Action opponents Thomas Sowell, former Ambassador Allen Keyes, Shelby Steele, and last but not least, John McWhorter.
We should probably add some of the black battering rams against Affirmative Action you’ve voted to give federal appointments to. People like those Bush appointed to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: Peter Kirsanow and Gerald Reynolds, and Ashley Taylor, They’ve done an excellent job of doing nothing. You should also invite Ralph Boyd, the former assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights who helped gut proper enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.
Oh, my Lord. I almost forgot the religious right. We cannot forget them. We must not forget to invite that detestable slave girl on Pat Robertson’s plantation. She is the perfect one to inject a note of false religiosity. Preachers, you say? Yes, absolutely. You can invite that malevolent handkerchief head, Bishop Harry Jackson. He’s the guy that is so worried about same-sex marriage to the exclusion of damn near everything else that ails the black community. To the mix, we cannot forget to add Dr. Martin Luther King’s confused niece, Alveda King. She’s been bastardizing the dream for some time now.
If any of these people won’t accept your invitation you can always threaten to get President Bush to declare them enemy combatants and lock them up at Guantanamo.
Venue, you say? I think one of those black colleges you’ve helped so damn much by voting to cut $12 billion in student loans funds. Another perfect venue would be a plantation, near the slave quarters. That would definitely set the right tone.
The press conference should begin with y’all marching smartly to the dias with the group dressed in period slave attire and wearing blackface. After an ungrammatical opening prayer by Pat Robertson’s slave girl and a Negro spiritual warbled by Kay Coles James, preferably “nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen”, you can announce the formation of “Minstrels for George Allen,” to be chaired by the President’s personal shoplifter, Claude Allen and co-chaired by your number one Democratic sycophant, State Senator Bennie Lambert.
After another negro spiritual, you can begin the testimonials of praise. The minstrels can then sing the praises of good ole’ “Mr. George” and how good you are to the nigras. After a buckdance by Walter Williams and John McWhorter, you can begin your prepared statement disavowing any harmful intent by using the N-Word.
A surprise special guest, Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy can be brought to the podium to explain how inoffensive and common place the N-word really is. Then comes the real business at hand, the game of distraction. Alan Keyes, Harry Jackson, and Thomas Sewell can all give rambling discourses on the evils of same-sex marriage and the black family. They can reiterate your persistent opposition to the gay agenda and end their rambling talk with another word of ungrammatical prayer for you, “the man of God.”
The press conference can close with an upbeat musical number “carry me back to old virginny.”
Carry me back to old Virginny,
There’s where the cotton and the corn and tatoes grow,
There’s where the birds warble sweet in the springtime,
There’s where the old darke’ys heart am long’d to go,
There’s where I labored so hard for old massa,
Day after day in the field of yellow corn,
No place on earth do I love more sincerely
Than old Virginny, the state where I was born.
Whatever you do, for God sake, don’t take any questions from the assembled media.
After holding back for 30 years, three former Allen associates from his UVA football days, took some time out this week from their busy schedules watching Allen’s nascent Presidential campaign to kill his ambitions in the crib. How nice. Isn’t it wonderful that these people knowingly allowed an unapologetic racist and confederate enthusiast the freedom to climb the political ladder holding four different offices: state legislator, congressman, governor, and U.S. Senator while they held back politically damaging information about his poorly concealed racial animus against African Americans.
It does my heart good to know that for over a quarter century, a racist had free reign to make decisions on behalf of all Virginians in the general assembly and as Governor, and all Americans as a member of both houses of Congress.
These people allowed a racist the latitude to end parole in the commonwealth of Virginia.
These people allowed a racist the latitude to make non-revocable decisions on restoring the voting rights of African Americans felons.
These people allowed a racist the latitude to make clemency decisions on death penalty cases involving black inmates. The damage is done and Michael Satcher and Ronald Bennett are dead.
I can think of no better example to illustrate the need for Affirmative Action. Do you hear me James Webb? Do you get it?
“Affirmative action, which originally sought to repair the state-induced damage to blacks from slavery and its aftermath, has within one generation brought about a permeating state-sponsored racism that is as odious as the Jim Crow laws it sought to countermand.”
–Jim Webb in the Wall Street Journal
“The original intent of affirmative action expanded, and a lot of different ethnic groups who never suffered state-sponsored discrimination at all came under the rubric of affirmative action,”…the assumption that everyone who was white had a benefit and anyone who was not white didn’t have a benefit, it was not a fair assumption.” –Jim Webb in the Wash Post
“I think it’s time to either open this thing up to poor white groups or just go back to a level playing field–while keeping an eye on African Americans.” …”I’m a strong supporter of affirmative action in its original intent, which is to help African Americans.” -Jim Webb in the Wash Post
“I’m not sure where the real Jim Webb is, …”Why doesn’t he just do the manly thing and retract his statement, admit he was wrong, rather than trying to come up with these bizarre explainations?”
-VA State Senator Henry Marsh in the Wash Post
“He’s essentially articulated a positon on affirmative action that almost no one articulates today.”
-Prof Robert D. Holsworth, Virginia Commonwealth University in the Wash Post
The on again, off again nature of Jim Webb’s statements regarding affirmative action have caused a restlessness in the black community. Seven members of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus endorsed Webb’s opponent in the Democratic primary. I have come to share some of the black members publicly articulated concerns regarding Webb’s conflicting positions on affirmative action.
Stephen Steinberg , a professor of Urban Studies at Queens College, has a stunningly apt analysis of so-called class-based affirmative action, the kind Jim Webb sees as being more fair.
Steinberg relates,…”the idea of class-based affirmative action is the brainchild of armchair theorists and political pundits with no political leverage or constituency. Worse still, the suggestion that affirmative action should be class-based rather than race-based was advanced, not for its own sake, but as a second line of defense against the right-wing crusade to gut affirmative action. It provided a rejoinder to the contention that it was unfair to give preference to the child of a black doctor over the child of a white miner or garbage collector. Class-based affirmative action never had a chance of being enacted as policy, but served only as a rhetorical foil in the affirmative action debate.”
“this explains why the idea of class-based affirmative action has been embraced by the very conservatives who spearheaded the crusade against affirmative action: Clint Bolick, Dinesh D’Souza, Clarence Thomas, Charles Murray, Richard Herrnstein, and Newt Gingrich. Essentially they have used the “class card” to trump the “race card.” They feign compassion for the working classes only to provide ideological cover for their assault on affirmative action.”
Advocates for class-based affirmative action conjure up, in Steinberg’s analysis, “the hackneyed argument that it is unfair to give preference to “the son of a black doctor over the son of a white garbage collector.” …”But that son of a black doctor is likely to find himself in competition with, not the sons of the white garbage collectors, but the sons of white doctors, who have not had to cope with the psychological liabilities and material disadvantages of being black in a white society. This is the rationale for giving a leg up even to the son of a black doctor.”
Steinberg continues, “Now let us think about that son of a white garbage collector. Granted, he has many liabilites to cope with in a society highly stratified by class. On the other hand, as a white man in a racially stratified society, he has access to coveted jobs in the blue-collar world that historically were the exclusive domain of white men. Indeed, in cities where garbage collectors were protected by union contracts, blacks could not even get hired as garbage collectors, much less as policemen or plumbers or assembly workers.”
Steinberg concludes, “In short, affirmative action is designed to address inequities of caste, not class. It gives recognition to the fact, as an oppressed minority, blacks have had to deal with the impediments of race in addition to those of class. This is not to deny that there is a dire need to address the inequities of class as well as those of race.”
Webb’s positions, if taken as a whole, would dramatically weaken the benevolent effects of contemporary affirmative action programs and place them in the politically perilous position of benefiting blacks only, which is a good way to get affirmative action killed.
In my mind, this issue is a bone of contention that has not been removed by Barack Obama’s recent visit. Which, in and of itself is a kind of affirmative action program for white democratic candidates with foot-in-mouth disease on matters of race and class.
I, for one, ain’t satisfied.
Today, I saw the most outrageously biased, demagogic and jingoistic newscast I’ve seen to date on the seemingly state sponsored news network for the Republican Junta in charge of the country.
Their target: Hugo Chavez at a Harlem event to give away free heating oil vouchers to needy New Yorkers.
Major Garrett, Gretchen Carlson, and Rick Leventhal were in rare form today. Major and Gretchen were almost frothing at the mouth with seething pronouncements like, “what will he say?” and “what rhetoric will he spew”
They harped on Chavez’s pronouncement of Dubya as the devil again and again and called his remarks toward the ignorant patrician”blasphemous.”
Both Garret and Gretchen called into question American support for the U.N. over and over. Gretchen, the former beauty queen turned ignorant anchor, interviewed South Dakota Senator John Thune, another blow-dried idiot and asked, “We’ve listened to the dictator ream the U.S., is it(supporting the U.N.) worth it?”
They compared Chavez to Iranian President Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier, in an over-the-top attempt to smear Chavez with the taint of Anti-Semitism. They even tried and convicted Chavez in their kangaroo court as someone guilty of “spewing more hate” than Ahmadinejad.
Flashing ominously on the bottom of the screen were ludicrous captions like, “How Dare Hugo Chavez Blast the United States”, or, “Hugo’s Cheap Oil: A Cheap trick on the U.S. !” and “Should We Stop Buying Chavez’ Citgo Gas?”
They’ve outdone themselves today with this broadcast. It was a true masterpiece of unconscionable Kafkaesque propaganda that should be studied for years to come.
As promised, The “Safe Negro Report” is on the case, monitoring the exploits of Senator Barack Obama as he continues his trek to seek the validation of white folks from sea to shining sea.
This week, Senator Obama, as if clad in a holy garment of virtue, came to rescue Jim Webb’s flagging campaign for the United States Senate against America’s most ignorant confederate, Senator George-No-matter-what-Mama-said,-I-ain’t-Jewish-Allen.
Former Reagan Navy Secretary Jim Webb, you’ll recall, is the former conservative Republican turned Democrat that has had a difficult time attacking George Allen over the manna from heaven “Macaca” incident because of his own issues.
Anyhoo, Jim Webb reached out to touch the hem of Barack’s garment yesterday because of a certain Negro state senator who lost his damn mind and endorsed the ignorant confederate.
Lambert’s switch was indicative of the black political class being restless and what not. Probably had somethin’ to do with his repeatedly calling Affirmative Action “state sponsored racism” and the triflin little in outreach done in black communities. In short, the political Negroes weren’t feeling him.
Now, with Barack’s magnanimous blessing, a private anointing and admonition to “go and sin no more”, that’s over and done with. The Negroes can cease and desist their grumblin’ and Barack, the safe Negro, can go back to his quest to seek the validation of white folks.
Who woulda thunk that a black man could be brought in to absolve a white man he doesn’t even know of all his sins?
Let us pray that after his magnificent healing and blessing, Jim Webb can keep his damn foot out of his mouth regarding Affirmative Action.
ARLINGTON, VA – U.S. Senator George Allen should have released the following statement yesterday afternoon:“Yesterday, I found it especially reprehensible that a reporter would impugn the attitudes of my mother, as Ms. Peggy Fox did in her first question at the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce Senate debate. My mother and father both taught me to abhor looking like a stupid bigot, and Ms. Fox’s suggestion to the contrary was deeply offensive.
“The notion peddled by the Webb campaign that I am somehow embarrassed by my heritage is equally offensive, but also true.
“I was raised as a Christian and my mother was raised as a Christian. And I embrace and take great pride in every aspect of my diverse white heritage, except my Lumbroso family line’s Jewish heritage, which I learned about from a recent magazine article and my mother confirmed.
“On several occasions through the years, I have mentioned publicly that my mother’s father was incarcerated by the Nazis. I have never known whether he was persecuted by the Nazis because of his nationality, his religious faith, his role as a community leader, or his part in the anti-Nazi resistance.“What I do know is that my grandfather’s imprisonment by the Nazis had a profound impact on my mother.
It was a subject she found painful to discuss and so we almost never discussed it.“Some may find it odd that I have not probed deeply into the details of my family history, but it’s a fact.
Instead, I made up a contrived, redneck cowboy confederate persona. We in the Allen household were simply taught that what matters is whether or not a person is white. And so whenever we would ask my mother through the years about our family background on her side, the answer always was, ‘Who cares about that?’
“My mother has lived a long and full life, and I hope and pray she will enjoy many more years. She deserves respect and she also deserves privacy, especially where painful memories of Jewish heritage are concerned. I sincerely hope that simple decency will be respected.”
Partial transcript of today’s U.N. Address of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias:
“Yesterday, the devil came here. Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of.Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world. I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday’s statement made by the president of the United States.
As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world. An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: “The Devil’s Recipe.”
As Chomsky says here, clearly and in depth, the American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its system of domination. And we cannot allow them to do that. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated.
The world parent’s statement — cynical, hypocritical, full of this imperial hypocrisy from the need they have to control everything.They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that’s their democratic model. It’s the false democracy of elites, and, I would say, a very original democracy that’s imposed by weapons and bombs and firing weapons.What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize it or others who are at the root of democracy.
What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs? The president of the United States, yesterday, said to us, right here, in this room, and I’m quoting, “Anywhere you look, you hear extremists telling you can escape from poverty and recover your dignity through violence, terror and martyrdom.”Wherever he looks, he sees extremists. And you, my brother — he looks at your color, and he says, oh, there’s an extremist. Evo Morales, the worthy president of Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him.
The imperialists see extremists everywhere. It’s not that we are extremists. It’s that the world is waking up. It’s waking up all over. And people are standing up.
I have the feeling, dear world dictator, that you are going to live the rest of your days as a nightmare because the rest of us are standing up, all those who are rising up against American imperialism, who are shouting for equality, for respect, for the sovereignty of nations.
Yes, you can call us extremists, but we are rising up against the empire, against the model of domination.”
Barack Obama has done an excellent job positioning himself for a White House bid. He took the world by storm two years ago and he is still riding the wave. The proof is in the pudding of his being asked to campaign for Jim Webb in Virginia. Jim Webb’s hapless behind could use the help with the African American electorate, given his penchant for calling Affirmative Action “state sponsored racism.”
Why would a conservative former republican want Obama? It’s because he has perfected the “safe negro two-step.” For every step forward, the brotha takes two steps back. Obama opposes the war, but supports the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice and campaigns for the Lieberwhore in Connecticut.
Don’t get a brotha wrong. I will happily support any ticket this cat can get on. It could be worse, we could end up with Harold-I-made-up-a-story-that-my-grandmama-was-white-Ford,jr.
This post inaugurates the “Safe Negro Report”, which will attempt to cover the exploits of Senator Obama in his quest for white people’s ultimate validation, a seat in the Oval Office.
Deval Patrick, a former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Clinton Administration, has won the democratic nomination for Governor in the commonwealth of massachusetts. A traditional progressive, Patrick ran a strong, concilliatory campaign that spoke of a social contract for all that is both forward thinking and ground breaking.
With 49% of the precincts counted, Patrick leads with 48% and 227,348 votes. His nearest gubernatorial challenger, Chris Gabrelli received 29% and 136,505 votes. He faces Lt. Gov Kerry Healey, a republican and Independent Christy Mihos in the fall. After four years of wedge issue politics and crass political positioning by Mitt Romney, it is time for a change in Massachusetts.
The long knives of the GOP are already gunning for Patrick. Right-wing Boston Herald columnist Virginia Buckingham has already written a column thanking primary voters for, “selecting as Kerry Healey’s opponent a guy who not only wants to give tuition breaks to illegal immigrants, but whose plan to licence illegal immigrant drivers may just ease the path for a terrorist cell to cloak themselves legitimacy as they plot and plan.”
The republicans will stop at nothing, and will use any tool to do their swiftboating: xenophobia, homophobia, or racism. Massachusetts general election voters beware.
I saw Bill Clinton on the Daily Show today, he was suave and self deprecating. Jon, never missing an opportunity to make news, asked him directly if Hillary was running. He told Jon he didn’t know but that if she did, and won, she would make a great President. That is for history to judge. As for the question of whether or not she’s running, consider this: she employs 36 in her senate office and 37 political operatives in her senate campaign and Pac. In addition, she has raised over $35 million to run against nonentities and she still has $22 million left in her coffers. She’s running. Ain’t no doubt about it.
It takes a big man to admit his mistakes. Florida Congressman Jim Davis, the democratic nominee for governor of Florida did so last week. In 1989, then State Senator Jim Davis refused to vote for compensating two black death row inmates wrongfully convicted of murder. Convicted by an all-white-jury of crimes someone else later confessed to, the case had all the hallmarks of a Hollywood film.
Subsequently freed and pardoned by former governor Rueben Askew, Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee’s case almost became the political undoing of Congressman Davis. His opponent used the Davis vote like a sledgehammer in the black community piling up endorsements and large pluralities of black votes.
Without making peace with the black community and its leadership, Jim Davis realized that he would be wasting his time and effort in a race he would surely lose. An epiphany struck and he found the healing power of apology. He held a press conference with the two former death row inmates and apologized to both men. He even sounded like he meant it.
He followed that up the next day by choosing an African American, former State Senator Daryl Jones, to be his running mate for Lieutenant Governor.
That is the way to apologize. Martin O’Malley apparently understood that as well when he chose Delegate Anthony Brown to be his running mate this year in Maryland.
It is a lesson that former Navy Secretary Jim Webb should take to heart because of his tone deaf comments regarding Affirmative Action and his ineffectual efforts in Virginia’s black community. Having Barack Obama campaign for him is a start, but it is still and incomplete gesture.
This post is a shout out to my girl, Vivian Paige.
Girrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrl, what is wrong with your boy, James Webb?
I saw that “debate” twice last night. I saw it once before I went to bed and it came on again and woke me up, girl. All I could do is shake my head.
I know you feel me because I read between the lines of your blog last night. It’s times like this that I can really appreciate Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton would have rubbed Allen’s nose in the Macaca like the B.S. that it is, girl.
George Allen told what the old folks used to call a
“boldfaced lie.” Only in America can a white politician claim to make up a well-known racial slur, claim ignorance, and get away with it. Then, the Klansman brings up Bennie Lambert’s name in defense as if to say, “see, I have Negro support.”
“Father, I stretch my hands to thee. No other help I know. I thy withdraw thyself from me, wither shall I go?”
Your boy, James Webb, let the bastard lie his way through the question.
Then, to add insult to injury, he attacks Affirmative Action as “state sponsored racism.”
“Father God, In the name of Jesus!!!!!!!!!!”
Does he not know the facts of life, girl? You can no more run against Israel in New York and expect to win then you can run against Affirmative Action in Virginia. The numbers simply ain’t there. His potential victory rests on a three-legged stool of moderate white voters, democratic women, and black folk. Webb did a pretty passable job of sawing off two legs.
“Fix it, Jesus. Fix it.”
We don’t need to explain a damn thing about Affirmative Action. All the explaining was done on the Edmund Pettus bridge, in Montgomery, in Birmingham in the blood of four innocent little girls, in Memphis on the balcony of the Lorraine motel, in Jackson on Medgar Evers blood stained porch, on the trail of tears from Florida to Oklahoma, in the Japanese internment camps in the southwest, in the career of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a Stanford University law grad who graduated in the top of her class but the only job anybody would offer her was one as a legal secretary.
“The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved” –Jeremiah 8:20
He don’t get it, Vivian. Why doesn’t he get it? He is damn near sixty. I thought we grew up in the same damn country. Help me understand, girl.
Webb has got me calling on the Lord and quoting my favorite scripture, girl.
I read something by Charles Lawrence. He said “ Racism in America is much more complex than either the conscious conspiracy of a power elite or the simple delusion of a few ignorant bigots. It is part of our common historical experience and, therefore, a part of our culture. It arises from the assumptions we have learned to make about the world, ourselves, and others as well as from the patterns of our fundamental social activities.” Or, as Derrick Bell put it, “Racism is more than a pejorative hurled in powerless frustration at an omnipotent evil.”
It is about a pattern and practice of conduct designed to retard, frustrate, and prevent equal opportunity. Why the hell doesn’t he understand that Affirmative Action was designed to remedy this in part?
Jesus!
Is it any wonder that someone who chooses Ronald Reagan to sing his praises in his first statewide ad provokes an incredulous response in democrats, in black folk. I went along with it because I saw it as a necessary redneck inoculation to appeal to moderate conservatives disenchanted with Bush. But, in concert with his tone-deaf comments yesterday, I am just at a loss.
“Oh Lord, Our Lord, How excellent is thy name…”
What do we have to do, girl? Get some of the mothers in the church and lay hands on him? Anoint him with oil? This is the seat that will decide control of the Senate, if you ask me. Allen needs to go, if for no other reason than to keep his arse off the national ticket. If Ann Richards had been re-elected governor in 1990, Crawford, Texas wouldn’t have had to give up its village idiot. We might be in the sixth year of a McCain or Gore presidency.
Webb’s consultants Mudcat Saunders and Steve Jarding have made careers out of appealing to white voters economic interests and getting them to forgo the racial distractions the republicans wave before their eyes in every election. I don’t have a problem with that, but what about us? Where do we fit in? Right now, I don’t know who the bigger fool is: Bennie Lambert for endorsing Allen, Donald McEachin for endorsing Webb, or me.
Can you help a brotha out, Vivian?
Skeptical Brotha 