Sunday, August 17, 2008

The race card, what's not feminism, and more

Right con Rev. Valda Jean Combs wanted to inform last week, "Sisters, This Is an Election We Can't Sit Out" (WeNews) and the lies never stop coming when Valda's lips are moving. Right con, Rev. Combs, right con!



Con is all Valda is, a con artist posing as a 'feminist.' Actually as a "womanist" and let's start there.

We've been kind to the term in the past but the end-road was where many guessed: anti-woman. How true that was the intent always we'll leave for others to decide but we're seeing "womanists" (not all but some and they are high profile) repeatedly turning their backs on feminist beliefs. The feminist movement includes women (and, more and more, men) of all beliefs, races, ethnicities and backgrounds. There are ground rules in the feminist movement and a number who toss around the "womanist" label appear very willing to disrespect others (usually as they rush to prop up some man) and to think they can get away with it. They can't.

So let's get honest. "Womanist" is a term that a lot of Closeted Communists adopted (of all races including White) because "feminist" was just too, too much. The idea that women's liberation could be front and center scared the hell out of the Closeted Communists last century. It got so bad, you kept expecting Alice Walker to show up with a guitar singing, "Red Is A Color Too." Walker is infamously credited with being the one to popularize "womanist." Valda credits Walker herself in the dumb ass article.



"Womanist," for a large number, is just a way to be Closeted Communist who can get a little sympathy from women when the attacks dogs come snarling. They're not about women. They're not about supporting women. They never were because, like the Communist Party in the 20th Century, they never gave a damn about women's equality. They wanted their own and, in fact, when slammed as anti-male for something they wrote, they expect the feminist movement to come to their defense. They are not now and they never have been about feminism. That's Valda and, sadly, that becoming Alice Walker.



Why Communist Walker felt the need to inject herself into a Democratic Party primary is anyone's guess and we bit out tongues and bit 'em some more to avoid calling her out. But with Valda trying to hide behind Walker in her latest column it's time to call crap "crap." "Womanist" is not feminism. It was never feminism as invented by Alice Walker. Valda earlier offered ("Obama wins Sojourner Truth's vote" -- ah, Chicago politics at its best, votes from beyond the grave) that "womanism" is so much more than feminism and that "Implicit in that love is the embrace of church, family and women, but also our men. For women who experience oppression more intensely, we require a more intense liberation movement. " Valda, try learning about the term you're using. Alice invented it and Alice doesn't believe in religion (she does believe in spirituality). Valda's not only unaware of the realities of the term, she's adding new 'meanings' to it.



Closeted Communists require a way out from the struggle for women's liberation because women don't rank high on last century's CPUSA concerns. Nor do gays and lesbians and that's why we'll call out Alice Walker now. As a woman who's slept with men and women, it's a bit surprising to see Alice endorse homophobia.



That sentence should read, "It's a bit surprising to see Alice Walker endorse homophobia . . . again." While Alice may be 'liberated' in whom she chooses to share her bed with, she's making it very clear that gays and lesbians could be thrown under the bus or onto the fires when some political leader needed a little 'breathing room.' Which is why she shamelessly endorsed Fidel Castro's locking away of gay men. In 1995, she traveled to Cuba with a number of Closeted Communists (she wrote about it in Anything We Love Can Be Saved -- spelling must be unloved because Leslie Cagan's last name is spelled with a "K" by Alice and not a "C") and, as American Communists always are, she was spellbound by Fidel. So much so that she that she writes joyfully of visiting "concentration camps for gays with AIDS."



Oh, Alice.



Oh, Alice.



She found the 'joy' and 'miracle' in imprisoning people for being sick (with a disease, remember, that is not passed on via casual contact) and how great it was that the imprisoned (for no crime) could earn, after time, 'weekend passes' to see their families and friends.



Oh, the joy, oh, the liberation.



Oh, Alice.



She insists that she does not "wish to imitate Frida Kahlo, one of whose last paintings was of 'Uncle" Joe Stalin, whose attempts to improve the lives of Russians she respected and about whose gulags and genocidal policies she knew nothing." She's not imitating Frida. Frida, as Alice acknowledges, was unaware of the gulags. By contrast, Alice merrily visited the "gay concentration camps." Frida made a mistake (one many did), Alice turned a blind eye.

cloudssky

That little essay ("Hugging Fidel") harmed her not just in the publishing world but in the Bay Area and it had nothing to do with party politics (everyone already knew or assumed Alice was a Communist which isn't anything to hide or run from), it had to do with her embracing (hugging?) the imprisoning of the sick and, especially, the targeting of gay men.



Alice Walker's 'womanism' doesn't give a damn about the rights of gays and lesbians when there's some man for her to rally behind. We saw it with her embarrassing rah-rah on the "gay concentration camps" in order for her to shore up Fidel and she's refused to call out Barack's use of homophobia. While 'womanist' may not care, feminism does give a damn. That's a big difference. 'Womanist' Valma loves to pat herself on the back for her work with AIDs 'cases,' so maybe she should join Alice in answering how they never called out Barack's use of homophobia as a campaign strategy?



In November, Kevin Alexander Gray and Marshall Derks reported "Obama's Big Gay and Black Problem:"



The Illinois senator has to cut into Clinton's black support as well as establishing his own African American base.
If Obama doesn't win South Carolina with its large African American voter base the race may be over for him. His poll numbers in South Carolina have been up and down. Right now Clinton appears to have the overall lead in the state as well as with black voters. Clinton also has the edge with black women who regularly vote at a higher rate than black men.
Oddly, Obama threw a premature haymaker but it wasn't aimed at Clinton. The target was the GLBT community. Obama's wild swing involved having four of the most abrasively anti-gay gospel singers represent his campaign on his "Embrace the Courage" gospel music tour in South Carolina. The gay bashing headliners included Reverends Donnie McClurkin and Hezekiah Walker, Pentecostal pastor of Brooklyn mega-church, the Love Fellowship Tabernacle and Mary Mary (a sister act duo).
The Mary Mary sisters compare gays to murderers and prostitutes. In an interview with Vibe magazine, one of the singers said, "They [gays] have issues and need somebody to encourage them like everybody else - just like the murderer, just like the one full of pride, just like the prostitute."
McClurkin's previous political involvement was performing for George Bush at the Republican National Convention in 2004. Now he's singing for Obama. And, while stumping for the candidate McClurkin didn't just "get on stage, sing, and shut up" as some in the Obama campaign hoped he would do. He sermonized: "God delivered me from homosexuality" - as though one could simply "pray the gay away." The predominately black crowd inside the Township Auditorium in Columbia clapped their approval of McClurkin's message. Meanwhile a small, predominately white group of gay rights supporters picketed outside the venue.
Obama justifies his embrace of the evangelicals saying he's "reaching out to people he doesn't agree with." Responding to a controversy he should - or did - have anticipated, Obama mentioned the black community's "problem with homophobia." Yet after the tour when asked why the campaign would seemingly reject gay voters for far-right leaning blacks a campaign insider replied, "We got what we needed to get out of it."




Yeah, Barack got what he needed the same way Fidel did. And both could count on Alice Walker to stay silent. It's becoming a very huge problem for Alice in the Bay Area because, after her bulls**t of "Hugging Fidel," she repeatedly made statements of how she had no idea it would come off offensive and she had learned something. Her refusal to call out Barack on his use of homophobia and her unflagging support for him makes it an issue and makes the Fidel Babble an issue all over again.



South Carolina, the state Barack couldn't afford to lose. How nice for him that womanizer and homophobe John Edwards waited until four days after the South Carolina primary to announce he was out of the race. Without him joining in with attacks on Hillary, Barack's race card playing might have been noticed a lot sooner. They started immediately after Hillary won the New Hampshire primary as uber scum (so low he'd go on to attack his own father) Jesse Jackson Jr. took to the airwaves to imply Hillary was a racist and vain. (The last charge being especially laughable coming from a man who elected to have surgery to drop fifty pounds.)



The same race-card that Valma plays but let's stick with South Carolina for a bit more. Michelle was first out of the gate with the race card. Margaret Talev repoted in November ("Michelle Obama stumps to sway black women to husband's campaign," McClatchy Newspapers) on Michelle's tactics which were far and away from the post-racial the establishment press insists Barack is -- so naturally they largely ignored Michelle's South Carolina event where she told African-American women that if they supported Hillary they were racists ("racism has shaded their instincts") and, "I know folks talk in barbershops and beauty salons, and I've heard some folks say, 'That Barack, he seems like a nice guy, but I'm not sure America's ready for a black president." Barack is not Black, he is bi-racial.



Michelle continued, "We've heard those voices before, voices that say, 'Maybe you should wait' -- you know? -- 'You can't do it.' It's the bitter legacy of racism and discrimination and oppression in this country." She said that in 2007 about her husband who entered the US Senate in 2005. Suddenly, raising his lack of experience was "the bitter legacy of racism and discrimination and oppression." Funny, we just thought it was stating the obvious.



She then headed to the second point of the campaign: Love Barack, worship Saint Barack. She declared, "I know it's also about love. I know people care about Barack and our family." Has any spouse of a candidate ever made such a crackpot statement? Seriously. You're campaigning for your husband and talking about how the people love him? The United States of Argentina?





In South Carolina, Michelle was also fond of lying and claiming to have met a young girl (the age changed in several speeches -- but no one was supposed to notice) who was rooting for Barack but, as the mythical child begins to cry, informs Michelle that racists won't let Barack win. The mythical child then disappears -- vanishing as easily as she was invented. What didn't vanish was the playing of the race card. As Sean Wilentz explained in "Race Man: How Barack Obama played the race card and blamed Hillary" (New Republic):



First came the Martin Luther King-Lyndon B. Johnson controversy. Responding to early questions that he was only offering vague words of hope instead of policy substance, Obama had given a speech in New Hampshire referring to Martin Luther King, Jr. "standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial" during his "I have a dream" speech. (This rhetorical formulation was reminiscent of a campaign speech delivered in 2006 by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, another client of David Axelrod, Obama's message and media guru; in a later speech, Obama would repeat Patrick's rhetoric word for word.) When asked about it, Clinton replied that while, indeed, King had courageously inspired and led the civil rights movement, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act into law. "Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act," she said, adding that "it took a president to get it done." The statement was, historically, non-controversial; the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, among others, later said that Clinton "was absolutely right." The political implication was plainly that Clinton was claiming to have more of the experience and skills required of a president than Obama did--not that King should be denigrated. But the Obama campaign and its supporters chose to pounce on the remark as the latest example of the Clinton campaign's race baiting. Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, a black congressman--neutral in the race, but pressured by the Obama campaign arousing his constituency--felt compelled to repeat the charge that Clinton had disparaged King, and told the New York Times that "we have to be very, very careful about how we speak about that era in American politics." Several of the Times's op-ed columnists, including Bob Herbert and Maureen Dowd as well as Rich, rushed to amplify how Hillary was playing dirty, as did the newspaper's editorial page, which disgracefully twisted her remarks into an implication that "a black man needed the help of a white man to effect change."
Clinton complained that her opponent's backers were deliberately distorting her remarks; and Obama smoothly tried to appear above the fray, as if he knew that the race-baiting charge was untrue and didn't want to level it directly, but didn't exactly want to discourage the idea either. "Senator Clinton made an unfortunate remark, an ill-advised remark, about King and
Lyndon Johnson. I didn't make the statement," Obama said in a conference call with reporters. "I haven't remarked on it. And she, I think, offended some folks who felt that somehow diminished King's role in bringing about the Civil Rights Act. She is free to explain that. But the notion that somehow this is our doing is ludicrous."
Meanwhile, below the radar, the Obama campaign pushed the race-baiting angle hard, rehearsing and sometimes inventing instances of alleged Clintonian racial insensitivity. A
memo prepared by the South Carolina campaign and circulated to supporters rehashed the King-Johnson matter, while it also spliced together statements of Bill Clinton's to make it seem as if he had given a speech that "implied Hillary Clinton is stronger than Nelson Mandela." (The case, with its snippets and ellipses, was absurd on its face.) The memo also claimed, in a charge soon widely repeated, that he had demeaned Obama as "a kid" because he had called Obama's account of his opposition to the war in Iraq a fanciful "fairy tale."And a few reporters, while pushing the Obama campaign's line that black voters had credible concerns about the Clintons' remarks, had begun to notice that the Obama campaign was doing its utmost to fuel the racial flames. "There's no question that there's politics here at work too," said Jonathan Martin of Politico. "It helps [Obama's] campaign to... push these issues into the fore in a place like South Carolina."
When asked about the race-baiting charges, Obama campaign spokeswoman Candice Tolliver roiled the waters: "Folks are beginning to wonder: Is this really an isolated situation or is there
something bigger behind all of this?" Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., the Obama co-chair, as before, was more direct and inflammatory, claiming that the "cynics" of the Clinton campaign had "resorted to distasteful and condescending language that appeals to our fears rather than our hopes. I sincerely hope that they'll turn away from such reactionary, disparaging rhetoric." The race-baiting card was now fully in play.
Among those dismayed by Obama's tactics and his supporters' was Bill Moyers. In a
special segment on his weekly PBS broadcast in mid-January, Moyers, who as a young man had been an aide to President Johnson, demolished the charge that Clinton had warped history in order to race-bait Obama. "There was nothing in [Clinton's] quote about race," he observed. "It was an historical fact, an affirmation of the obvious." Moyers rehashed what every reputable historian knows about how King and Johnson effectively divided the labor, between King the agitator and Johnson the president, in order to secure the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Moyers said was happy to see that, by the time he went on the air, the furor appeared to be dying down and that everyone seemed to be returning to their senses and apologizing--"except," he pointedly noted, "the New York Times." But this upbeat part of his assessment proved overly optimistic.



Please note, Bill Moyers was only defending LBJ. He is, and always was, a huge supporter of Barack Obama and his show has been nothing but pimping Barack for the whole damn year. But Barack's campaign had to play the race card. They had nothing else.



He has no experience, his work ethic is a joke (the man's over forty and has a thread-bare resume). His claims and counter-claims are always in contrast to the actual record. The only way to win was to play the race card over and over. In May, it was time for the campaign to try and win Indiana. Time to play that race card. So suddenly a clip of the documentary The War Room (about Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign) surfaces where Mikey Kantor is using the n-word. How could everyone who saw the documentary all those years ago have not noticed what a blatant racist Kantor was? Because Mikey Kantor isn't a racist. The Obama campaign doctored the clip, added the n-word and knowing that the press rarely checks anything out, sat back as it entered the news cycle. Jake Tapper (ABC News) wondered "who did the fake clip with Kantor saying the N word?! It's the definition of a dirty trick -- and from what I can tell all the YouTube links have disappeared."



It's one of those things we're supposed to all forget and never question. Apparently Hillary winning Indiana meant no one was ever supposed to question that fraudulent Obama campaign stunt? If they had they might have thought back to the March lie -- carried by many liars including LeftTurn in its latest issue -- that the Clinton campaign (or maybe Hillary herself!) doctored images of Barack to make him look 'darker' than the rest of the ad! That lie was long ago disproven. But for people paying attention, a thread emerges. It was in February that the Obama campaign began airing ads in Texas (the 'my mother died from cancer' ad) which featured a very darkened photo of Stalnley Dunham holding a young Barack. When you start from there (the campaign darkening a photo of his mother for its own ad), then proceed to the false accusations that the Clinton campaign was trying to darken Barack in the way news weeklies did O.J. Simpson, to finally the hubris of thinking they can doctor the sound of a clip from an award winning documentary and impose the n-word to make someone sound like a racist, you see a campaign desperate to repeatedly play the race card and, getting away with it, pushing the card even more. The doctoring of Mikey Kantor, or rather the discovery that the clip was doctored, was when the campaign first began to sweat and fear that they'd overplayed the race card.



But it's all they have left which is why Barack was predicting in July (echoing Michelle Obama's November words) that John McCain would play the race card. The Obama campaign has nothing else, they have never had anything but the lie that he's "Black." (He's bi-racial. We refuse to play along with the Katrina vanden Heuvels and spit on the bi- and multi-racial movement.) They play it as 'good' (progress!) and they play it up as 'bad' (he's going to be attacked!). They play it over and over and no one's ever supposed to notice. But people began to notice as the Democratic primaries wound down. They noticed that voters choosing Hillary over Barack had to be spun as racism. The reality is that Hillary's always had more experience and offered more than airy dinner toasts. That's all Barack has. He is Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" ("I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it"). And the 'movement,' the Cult, is nothing but a circle jerk with Barack as the object of desire.



That's reality. And that's how we come back to Valda.



As the primaries wound down, Valda played the race card like it was her only one as well. (Maybe it is?) In "Obama wins Sojourner Truth's vote," Valda took it upon herself to speak for the dead for centuries Sojourner, to distort the realities of Sojourner Truth (and play the false Everyone-Is-Racist! card) and to accuse the Clintons of racism:



This contrasts with Bill and Hillary Clinton. Both have marginalized Obama at different times with statements such as: "He gives good speeches," "he's not electable," "he's another Jesse Jackson" and most recently "hard working whites support me." It's an encoded drumbeat that spreads the message that Obama is "not like us."



Valda likes to note that she's "an ordained Baptist minister and licensed attorney." As an attorney, she should be aware that when she uses parenthesis she is implying that she's quoting. Find us those quotes, Valda. "He's another Jesse Jackson"? Neither Hillary nor Bill said that. That was a talking point on Barack's campaign site (and you can find it there over and over). Hillary did not say "hard working whites support me."



As noted in the May 8th "Iraq snapshot:"



Hillary told USA Today, "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on" and cites an AP poll "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me." Her comments reflect the press analysis at all major outlets. It's not an insult to anyone, it is reflective of the categories the press has set up for this election cycle. Turning it into an issue -- have at it, it will backfire -- is what the Obama Pigs have done all along. Like Betsy Reed and all the other LIARS. There ought to be a law about falsely calling "racism" in a crowded room. If there were, a lot of White people would be in jail right now.



So would Valda who must be a lousy attorney if her lousy writing is any indication. That was Valda then, spewing lies and hate. But we're interested in Valda's latest incarnation that she sported last week in "Sisters, This Is an Election We Can't Sit Out." Valda's lying again.



This time she's trying to make women support Barack. So Valda shares . . . about herself because only Barack fascinates her more than herself. She had back pain. She got some steroids to take care of it. And when it treated the back pain, she realized she had shoulder pain! She explains that sometimes one pain can be so intense, you don't even notice another one. (An equally plausible explanation is that some people always need something to whine about, hence the prevalence of hypochondria.) She likens that to herself. See, during the primaries, she could only see racism and never noticed the sexism. But, sisters, she has AWAKENED!



So she says. She offers no indication of that. Awakening would mean she'd have to offer examples of sexism. Here is Valda in full on the sexism during the primaries: "However, it was not until Clinton's supporters began to express their grief and anger that I heard some of the egregious things both said and done." What things? Valda never says. She has more to say about her "chronic pain" than she does about sexism.



In other words, it's sop tossed out to make it appear that she's now calling out sexism. She's doing no such thing. Norman Solomon and Laura Flanders have already pulled the same stunt and Michelle Obama famously thought a brief sentence would wipe away her own sins as well. It hasn't wiped away anything for any of them. Norman used sexism, Laura used sexism ("cackle" alone is the best example of just what a sexist pig Laura Flanders was during the primaries) and (as documented in this article) so did Michelle. None confess to their own sins. None even want to explore the sexism of others. They just want to toss it out there like a buzz word in the hopes that they'll lure you over to Barack.



That's all liar Valda's doing. Supposedly she's shocked at herself ("I'm still working that out") for not noticing the sexism (the sexism she can still write about!) but she's back to playing the race card. Women are supposed to support Barack, according to Valda's own article, because, as a child, Valda was called the n-word. And, goodness, experienced racism in her adult life: " On more than one occasion I have walked into a courtroom in rural counties only to have the bailiff yell at me to get behind the rail, apparently unaware that lawyers look like me." Or, as Betty's fictional character Betinna suggests, "Well maybe they just refused to believe that a professional attorney would show up in court dressed like a washer woman?" (To really enjoy that joke, you'll have to go to Women's eNews and pull up Valda's article in order to see what strikes Valda as how to dress for a professional photo.) "I recount," Valda swears, "these experiences not because I dwell on them, but because they shaped me." Yeah, right.



Valda's playing the race card and doing so (endlessly) in an article where she claims to have 'awakend' to sexism. In other words (as Ava and C.I. have pointed out so often), it's just another liar who doesn't think sexism is a real subject. If Valda really awakened to sexism, that's what her article would be about. She's tossing out a single sentence bit of sop and then prattling on endlessly about racism. Valda doesn't think sexism matters; at best, she sees it as a secondary issue. (Like the CPUSA in the 20th century who always saw it as an issue to get to someday when all the other issues had been resolved.) It's all hogwash from huckster trying to steal your vote for Barack.



Valda wants you to vote for Obama because "of elderly women whose pension and Social Security checks can't stretch enough to cover food, medication and rising utility bills." Valda, sell you s**t somewhere else. We're damn well aware that Team Barack is composed of those who argue for the privatization of Social Security and we're damn well aware that since 2007 Barack's been saying Social Security is a crisis (a lie that, in 2007, he was called out on but his minions today stay silent).



Valda wants you to vote for Obama because "of youngsters like my 16-year-old daughter and her friends who, with the hubris of youth, fall in and nout of love and make poor life choices." Huh? Barack's now the love guru? No, that's Valda's way of 'talking about' abortion as she makes clear in her next cowardly sentence: "Supreme Court justices nominated by McCain will certainly overturn Roe v. Wade." Funny, we don't remember Valda listing "psychic" on her resume.



Valda doesn't know what McCain would do as president or what he won't do. But we all knew Hillary stood for reproductive rights (and continues to, while Barack remains silent on the attack on contraceptives). And we all knew Barack voted "present" when he could have supported reproductive rights. And, since the primaries ended, we all know where Barack really stands on abortion. Unlike the apparently under-educated Valda, we can read. From Marie Cocco's "Obama's Abortion Stance When 'Feeling Blue'" (Washington Post Writers Group):



Obama says that these women should not be able to obtain a late-term abortion, because just "feeling blue" isn't the same as suffering "serious clinical mental health diseases." True enough. And totally infuriating.

During the recent Obama pander tour -- the one in which he spent about a week trying to win over conservative religious voters -- the presumptive Democratic nominee unnecessarily endorsed President Bush's faith-based initiative, a sort of patronage program that rewards religious activists for their political support with public grants. Then in a St. Louis speech, Obama declared that "I let Jesus Christ into my life." That's fine, but we already have a president who believes this was a qualification for the Oval Office, and look where that's gotten us.

Obama's verbal meanderings on the issue of late-term abortion go further. He has muddied his position. Whether this is a mistake or deliberate triangulation, only Obama knows for sure.

One thing is certain: Obama has backhandedly given credibility to the right-wing narrative that women who have abortions -- even those who go through the physically and mentally wrenching experience of a late-term abortion -- are frivolous and selfish creatures who might perhaps undergo this ordeal because they are "feeling blue."



Why don't you address what we know sure for, Valda, instead of trying to predict what a Pesident McCain would or wouldn't do? Because fear mongering is all that liars have to cling to. We're damn sick of it.



We're sick of the race card being played by a bi-racial politician who not only can't tell the truth about his own racial status but also won't conduct a serious conversation on race. Or is scapegoating African-American fathers supposed to pass for the height of racial discourse?



When you strip away Valda's false claim to have finally noticed sexism (if she had, that would be the thrust of her article) and her lies of reasons why women should support Barack, you're left with nothing but the race card.



It's not going to work because Valda's appealing to a group that saw the race card played over and over. They saw people falsely smeared as racists over and over. There is a very real backlash to that and Valda, if you want to help your Dream Boy, stop playing the damn race card. Oh, boo-hoo, you were called a name. Everyone of us writing this feature has been called some names at some point in time. And if we showed up in public in your comical outfits, we doubt we'd be mistaken as laywers either.



Women's eNews attaches this note to Valda's commentary: "The following is a commentary. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily the views of Women's eNews." Along with noting that the opinions expressed were only Valda's, WeNews should have noted that the 'facts' offered are only 'facts' in Valda's mind.

Catching on to the Peace Resister

Poor Katty-van-van. It's never a good time to be a Peace Resister, undemocratic, bad writer posing as a journalist.

kvh


So The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel has been coming under increasingly public criticism. Here's a comment left at Common Dreams:






  1. coyoteteacher August 13th, 2008 1:36 pm


    As Katrina and the her Democratic Handlers trumpet their election year boldface lie-that they offer sustainable solutions for our Earth Mother=while paying lip service to those solutions and offering instead pay backs for corporate investments on from the Bio fuel, nuclear, and coal industries, thus ignoring the looming disaster with lives hanging in the balance.


    I’ve worked in the environmental movement for over twenty years and Katrina is void of any understanding of the issues - nor apparently - of the fact that Obama has been in bed with the coal industry since he entered politics. His presidential campaign has taken over half a million bucks. Obama voted for a bill augment liquid coal which produces almost three time the carbon pollution as does fossil fuels.


    My advice to Katrina is get your head out of your rectum!



Sorry, we think that would require surgery. (Katty getting her head out of her ass.) But the
love's still growing, as Carly Simon once sang. Back to Common Dreams:






  1. Huck August 13th, 2008 4:48 pm


    Katrina ought to get off her elevated perch long enough to tell the truth about Obama’s anti environmental record. But such is the nature of her LIES and OBFUSCATION in parroting the Dem company line as the soak up corporate cash and engage in GREEN WAHING! This women has absolutely no right to be posting on this site. The Nation is nothing more than an arm of the DLC apologetic so common in this moment to obscure the TRUTH about the anti environmental activities of Democrats. Wake Up people.








  1. coyoteteacher August 13th, 2008 8:56 pm


    Anan - thanks for the correction. I admit to trying to do 10 things at once when I rushed the post. The point, I was making is that Katrina tends to be the apologetic arm of the Dem Party. While she correctly critiques the Republicans and McCain, she always ignores, skips over, and avoids any negative critique of the Dems and Obama despite the fact that both are inimical to environmental sustainability. Besides Obama accepting corporate cash from the coal industry his web site policy issues assert the value of nuclear and Bio fuel. Both very bad ideas. I will assume as an educated voter that you have investigated these issues in detail, and can identify their harmful effects for yourself without some one like me holding your hand for you and leading you and Katrina through it step by painful step. Another aspect of Katrina’s agenda that you might not be familiar is her support of Pelosi and efforts to smash the candidacy of Cindy Sheehan. To you final point, I don’t see it in terms of lesser evilism, as both McCain and Obama will harm the Earth community of beings irreparably. Nor do I ascribe to the none sense puppeted ad nausea that the Party can be moved in a progressive fashion under some grand schema of infiltration. If this were true Obama would have kept his word on undermining FISA instead of voting for it; he would have attempted filibusters of extreme Supreme Court nominees Alito and Roberts; he would have taken a principled stand against Habeus Corpus and Torture; he would have voted to cut off funding of the Iraq war; instead of vote for a minimum wage Bill he would have advanced a Living Wage Bill; nor - and perhaps from a social perspective, the most egregious - he supports an insider Health care system run by the insurance industry rather than a Single Payer system predicated on socialist values like Canada, England, and France. I will be voting for Nader or McKinney whichever gets on my ballot. If you reward scum like Obama and McCain you are doomed for MORE OF THE SAME! Is that clear, tadpole?



Poor Katty-van-van. Her ears must be burning these days. John Walsh (Dissident Voice) name checked her last week as well:



What is awfully irritating is that Katrina Vanden Heuval and the rest of the "liberal" elite criticize supporters of McKinney/Clemente and Nader/Gonzalez for "wishful thinking." Compared to the sentiments and views of the supplicants' letter, supporters of third party candidates are hard core realists. And it is very sad to see some of the signatories of this letter who in better times would have been men and women who put principle over "lesser evil" politics. Read the letter carefully. Look at the signatories. It may bring tears.

Sometimes it's hard to be a Peace Resister, giving all your love to one War Hawk Man. But, bet your bottom dollar (which Katty-van-van will try to snag), she will Stand By Her Bambi. Dragging The Nation down with her.

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Illustration is Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Peace Resister"

Roundtable

Jim: Roundtable time. And the e-mails are very clear that you don't feel your questions are getting answered so we're focusing on the e-mails. Participating are The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Ty, Jess, and me Jim, Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man, Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills), Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,Mike of Mikey Likes It!, Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz, Ruth of Ruth's Report, Wally of The Daily Jot, and Marcia SICKOFITRDLZ.
This is more than a rush transcript, it will be a very rough one and you might have already caught on to that. Where are The Third Estate Sunday Review's Ava and C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review? They're working on their TV commentary. They usually take the notes so, again, rush and rough transcript it what you'll be reading. If there's an illustration, it was done by Betty's oldest son. Since Ava and C.I. aren't participating, we we thought we'd include some e-mails about Ava and C.I. in this. Ty?

roundtable

Ty: Nikki wonders why the bi- and multi-racial community is "so important to Ava and C.I."?



Betty: Let me grab that one. Because those two communities are being tossed under the bus. Because no one else is willing to speak up for those communities. Because those communities already had to go up agains 'Black leaders' in the 90s and it was a hard battle but they won recognition and along comes Barack who could do so much to advance awareness but instead the half-White and half-Black Barack chooses to bill himself as "Black" and no one's supposed to question that. It's offensive. And when no one else will speak up, I think we all know Ava and C.I. will.



Rebecca: If I could just add to that, Elaine and I went to college with C.I. If there's a community being slighted, C.I.'s always been willing to speak out. I don't remember if it was student life or student association, but C.I. found out that one of them, C.I. was on both, was booking White speakers and acts --



Elaine: Student life.



Rebecca: Thanks. And this was even when it was a music genre that African-Americans had ownership of and excellence in. C.I. stood up and knew doing so was not going to go over well. It didn't go over well but the all White slate planned was cancelled. C.I. could care less if someone calls a mean or nasty name. In that instance, something needed to change and C.I. made it happen.



Elaine: Two things. First, Rebecca's not being too specific here and I won't either but I will note that supposed 'progressives' were happy to book all Whites and when C.I. challenged them it wasn't pretty. But as is usually the case, C.I. won. Second, C.I. would want it noted quote "I did not run for Student Association." C.I. didn't run. There was a write-in campaign that C.I. attempted to stop but wasn't able to. C.I. does not run for elected office. Ever. Student Association was an appointment. And C.I. made a point to be very clear that there would be no running for re-election for Student Association. That's why C.I. was more than willing to use everything to get the acts booked integrated. And I do mean everything. For example, calls home by Student Association members made from the campus office which were paid for by the student service fees all students had to pay. That's only one example. But C.I. never enters a fight without being fully prepared. Dona, you were Ava's roommate, why don't you answer in terms of her?



Dona: Ava experienced very real racism in New York. And it was a surprise to her. I'm just the wide-eyed woman from the Mid-West. I had no idea what New York would be like or wouldn't be like. We'd been rooming together -- this is before we got our apartment -- for about three weeks when I said something like, "I don't want to bring up a sore spot, but it seems to me like there's a lot of racism being hurled at you." Ava hugged me and thanked me for noticing. You don't expect that from New York. Ava's a Latina and she has no roots to Mexico but it was constantly, "You must be Mexican." Or, "You're from California, you must be Mexican." And on the latter, Ava wouldn't just say no, she'd point out that if she were, she'd be Mexican-American. Elaine mentioned the racism of the progressive community and I'll say that, years later, that's where it was again coming from. We're out here in the Bay Area now and that's Ava's stomping grounds and it's just such a huge shift. And I can see how what happened would be very hurtful. And it happened over and over. So Ava hated it in New York and we were surprised she took so long to announce she was leaving. Like Rebecca and Elaine, I'm going to keep the cards close to the chest because I don't want to be telling Ava's business but I was shocked by what I saw at the time and, having now lived out here for some time, I'm even more shocked. It's such a world of difference and New York's supposed to be such a melting pot but that wasn't what Ava experienced.



Ty: I agree with what Dona said and Ava would talk to me repeatedly about not taking the homophobia which was also rampant. I was out before college and I certainly didn't expect that going to college in a 'cosmopolitan' area would be any problem. But Ava noticed when it was and, we all know Ava, if someone she loves is trashed, stand back because she's not taking it.



Dona: And that's a trait that Ava and C.I. share. They'll let it slide when they're trashed but if anyone comes after someone they love, they are ready to draw blood.



Mike: I'll note one more trait they share, they are both extremely private. When I interviewed Ava -- Dallas, don't look for a link -- it was like pulling teeth. The same when I interviewed C.I. They would laugh and offer some stuff worth me typing up but there are certain things they will not talk about.



Marcia: Like here with the John Edwards thing. I'm just noting that. I know Rebecca and Elaine also excused themselves from last week's feature so I'm not trying to bring that topic up in the roundtable. But in terms of what goes up here or up somewhere else, they can be very private. I also noticed something with both of them which is if you want to know something personal do not ask a direct question, they close up.



Rebecca: I just spewed my diet Dr. Pepper. Marcia nailed it on the head with that one. That's partly, for both of them, modesty and thinking there are more important topics to talk about then yourself and it's also true that they can get suspicious. It's the immediate response. You can see them both think, "Why is this person asking me that question?"



Jess: And they both will answer a question they don't want to answer by giving you a question. I can say that much. Maybe not more.



Jim: Jess is laughing. And for drive-bys who didn't get why Jess is more circumspect on that topic, he and Ava are a couple.



Ty: This is a C.I. question, or a question on C.I., from Cecil who writes that he "was disbelieving the talk about Talabani's heart troubles until the heart surgery broke this week." He's referring to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and since 2007 C.I. has written repeatedly about Talabani's heart problems.



Cedric: Ruth and I haven't spoken yet and Dona said for us to monitor ourselves so if Ruth wants to tackle that one, I'll wait for something else.



Ruth: Hmm. Okay. Well, we all know a number of things from C.I. and from Ava. And Elaine and Rebecca have their own working networks as well. I do not know that Cecil ever wrote in one of those "You're lying!" e-mails but that is why a lot more does not get shared. C.I.'s got friends in the State Department and I know where the news on that came from -- or the confirmation. They had heard about it from a student -- Ava and C.I. -- at a group they were speaking to on a Thursday. They were at my place Friday morning and C.I. was hunting down that news and I was diapering my grandson while C.I. was doing call after call. But take the 'action' going on in Diyala Province so far. It was a friend at the State Department that told C.I. it was a for-show action to make Nouri al-Maliki, the puppet known as prime minister, come off looking strong. C.I. confirmed that with friends stationed in Iraq.



Kat: I'll jump in because there's another perfect example. C.I. called out the myth of the great return. That broke over a weekend and C.I. wasn't paying much attention to it, the initial story. That's because we're all working on these editions and they take forever. So C.I. saw something on it Sunday and called a friend at a network about it. Then, on Monday, the puppet government was inflating the figures hugely from Saturday. So C.I. started calling friends with the UN and the Red Cross to find out what was happening. And what was happening was that lies were being passed off as truth. Which is why C.I. called it out in early November when it was first being hailed as a wonderful and amazing thing. It was weeks before anyone started questioning that -- in the media or online at sites. And there were these hideoous e-mails from pro-war people that screamed C.I. wouldn't admit any good news on Iraq.



Cedric: I'll jump in because that's what I was thinking of when Ty read Cecil's e-mail. C.I. ended up putting up at The Common Ills during that something like, "Look if I didn't want to promote good news, I'd just ignore it. This isn't good news, it's lies and if Iraqi refugees start believing it, it's a death sentence for them if they return." But between C.I., Ava, Elaine and Rebecca, we all know a lot more than we ever write about.



Ty: Michele e-mails that we have distanced ourselves from Larry Johnson of No Quarter just because "there are no tapes of Michelle Obama. And you make jokes about him all the time." "You" is C.I. Anybody?



Ruth: Susan UnPC e-mailed me what I wrongly assumed was a sincere e-mail. When I replied in kind and never heard a response, I first showed my e-mail to Marcia and Rebecca to see if I had written something offensive inadvertantly. She blogs at No Quarter. When it was obvious that my e-mail had been very nice, I was left with the obvious fact that she had been on a fishing expedition and left hoping I had not said anything revealing on anyone. That is when C.I. stopped highlighting No Quarter. That only continued after a community's members comments were deleted.



Wally: Deleted not for anything controversial but for linking to C.I. on something that, hours after she left her comments, No Quarter finally discovered. Marcia's covered this at her site.



Jim: I'll jump in on jokes. There are two 'jokes' about Larry Johnson at The Common Ills and I know that because I was present for both. In one, I typed it up. I might have typed up both but I think on the other I was just watching over C.I.'s shoulder. In one, C.I. had revealed something and this nasty e-mail came in saying, "Liar!" or something. The morning C.I. was writing, I saw that e-mail -- this is the one I added to -- and I told C.I. about that. That same morning the topic C.I. had revealed two or three days before was now in the news. But I believe I threw out the fact that the e-mail compared C.I. to Larry Johnson. It wasn't a slam at Larry Johnson and C.I. has always gone out of the way not to slam him. There was a chuckle in the second piece, where you can tell C.I.'s chuckling. The point there is not "Liar Larry Johnson!" In terms of the tape of Michelle, we don't think Larry Johnson lied. Whether the tape exists or not, Republicans have claimed it does. That's what Larry Johnson broke. He never said he had seen the tape. We knew about the tape. Back at the start of February, "Judge" -- community member who is a Republican and a judge -- wrote about it in his column for the gina & krista round-robin, how there were whispers that such a tape existed. Rebecca heard about it from her contacts, Ava and C.I. heard about it from their's. We have never called Larry Johnson a liar at any site. And we wouldn't call him a liar for the video tape ever. He never said he'd seen it, he said he had heard about it. And Judge was writing about it long before Johnson was.



Rebecca: Whether the tape exists or not, no one knows. Like Ava and C.I., I heard that Rudy G is the one who secured it. My first husband is very big in the RNC and that's who I heard it from. I have no idea which people told Ava and C.I. Rudy G was the one who secured the tape but I know they were told that as well. The story goes that Rudy G thought he was the inevitable nominee and spent his monies on opposition research for the general election. I have no idea whether that's true or not. I just know that's who it has been connected to. Or, his campaign, I should probably say. So Rudy G's campaign was shoring up for the general election and digging around for dirt on Barack, Hillary and John Edwards. Does the tape exist? I don't know. I'll tell you my first husband believes in it. I can tell when he's lying. I couldn't when we got married but I can now. Pain is a great teacher. I shouldn't say that. He's a nice enough man. We were incompatible for a number of reasons including the fact that he was gay but not ready to admit it then. We're on good terms now and have been since we divorced years ago. But, what was the person who wrote that e-mail?



Ty: Michele.



Rebecca: Michele's dead wrong. C.I. has never called Larry a liar. There'd be no reason to because we neither know that the tape exists or it doesn't. C.I.'s known Judge for years and the one reason they are so close is because they don't lie to each other about politics. If they talk after a debate, there's none of that "I'm going to spin it for my side." If the Dem lost, C.I. will certainly say so and Judge will say it if the GOP lost. My point there is if Judge, as connected as he is, knew about it by February, if I'd heard about it from my first husband, if Ava and C.I. heard about it from multiple sources, then it was being talked about. And since Judge was writing about it, I don't think anyone was trying to 'burn' Larry. I mean I don't think anyone told him that, fed it to him, so he'd take it public and they could then laugh about the rumor they got him to put out. Republican leadership firmly believes that tape exists. I don't know if Ava and C.I. have a source who's seen the tape, but I will state clearly my first husband has not seen it, he has only heard talk of it. As I remember the way Larry presented it, it was, "This is something Republicans say they have." If that's how he presented it, then he was correct. That's how I understand he presented it and that's how C.I. understands he presented it so C.I. would have no reason to call Larry a liar. Furthermore, Elaine and C.I. went out of their way, regarding the Weather Underground, to be respectful of all viewpoints -- including Larry's -- and not just say, "We know Bernardine and Bill! Back off!"



Ty: Marco wants to know, and this is for us here, I assume. I mean Dona, Jim, Kat, Jess. Wally and myself. Marco wants to know who cooks on the weekend and how we divy that up?



Jim: C.I. gives everyone the weekend off staff wise. If there's a party or event, it's catered. And if that happens, there's enough food left over that no one needs to cook. Saturdays, Ava, Kat, Wally and C.I. are usually not home, they fly in Saturday afternoon. I think we all fend for ourselves on Saturday mornings. We're more organized on Sunday mornings and rotate that out. In terms of meals on Saturday evening, we generally prepare something light and I say "we" because we're usually all in the kitchen catching up with Ava, C.I. and Wally. Kat as well if she's not dropped off at her place on the way back from the airport. But this Saturday night we chowed down. Wally?



Wally: Ava mentioned on the plane ride home that summer was almost over and she hadn't had ribs or brisket or any food associated with summer cook outs. Kat and I started talking about ribs. On the way back from the airport, we stopped and got a ton of ribs. C.I. cooked those. Jess is vegetarian so he'll have to take my word for it, they were wonderful. And I was watching in disbelief as C.I. was adding all the stuff -- onions, dry soup mix, a glass of soda, etc. -- before cooking them. They were perfect. The meat was so tender. And Dona and Jess made red potato salad. Also incredible. I did a three bean salad which is really all I know how to 'cook.' Jim and Ty were over the corn on the cobb and the baked beans. We're still chowing down on all of that. And Ava ended up fixing something for tomorrow night as did C.I. so I think that's taken care of. I don't know what they fixed though. But they were popping stuff into the oven.



Jess: And Ava made cole slaw for tonight as well.



Wally: Oh yeah. Sorry, not slighting her cole slaw. Or Kat's fudge! Which she fixed at her place and brought over. But the ribs were my favorite and I couldn't believe how good they turned out. I was more than a little suspicious of C.I.'s homemade sauce before I tasted them. Especially when C.I. poured a glass of soda on every set of ribs. A lot of Sundays we go out to eat dinner. Or order in. We're usually wiped out on Sunday. And Kat and I get off when everyone else does. Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I. are up until everything's posted. Still editing, still adding things.



Kat: If it's going to be less than an hour, Wally or I will generally volunteer to start breakfast. If it's going to be longer than that -- or thought to be -- we'll go ahead and sack out. If we're already sacked out, one of them will make breakfast and we'll be awakened to see if we want to eat or just continue sleeping.



Ty: Okay, this is a question for Mike and Elaine, Jim and Dona, and Jess and Ava but Ava's not here. Samantha wants to know if it's easier to work on stuff together if you're involved -- a couple -- or if it's harder? Also, "if any couple broke up before the site went dark, would anyone bow out?"



Elaine: If Mike and I broke up, I would gladly take that as an excuse to no longer participate. This is time consuming. It can be a lot of fun; however, it is time consuming.



Mike: I'll let Elaine's comment stand for our total answer because she doesn't like to talk personally online.



Jess: Not unlike Ava. If Ava and I broke up before the site went dark would one of us leave? No. Ava can't leave. If she left, C.I. would have the full responsiblity of doing their TV commentaries and Ava wouldn't allow that to happen. The most she might do is just reduce her involvement to co-writing the TV pieces with C.I. In terms of me, I was here at the start and don't plan on going on anywhere. I don't know if Mike and Elaine talked about this or not at any point but Ava and I did and it was one of the potential problems that could come up if we started a relationship. We discussed it and both agreed that we would be adult about it and not talk about our personal problems when we were supposed to working on an edition.



Dona: Jim's pointing to me. No. Like Jess and Ava, we'd go on. We all have our place at this site -- that's true of everyone who helps out, by the way, and anyone would be missed -- and we've defined our role. I think a breakup would be more likely to threaten the site itself -- for Jim or me -- than it would threaten one of us dropping out. And if you want full honesty, if Jim and I broke up and it wasn't a mutal decision, the other would keep working for that reason. We'd be convinced that if we were only around each other, we could fix it -- whatever it was.



Jim: I'll agree with Dona 100% on that, especially the hang around thinking we'd get back together. In terms of Dona, Jess, Ava and myself, we were here before we were couples and we'd still be here if we each broke up. We have carved out our place. We wouldn't cede it. In terms of what Elaine said, I want to just note Elaine is the hostage blogger. Rebecca got her to fill in for her during the summer of 2005 by telling her at the last minute and Rebecca was hoping Elaine would want to do her own site. Elaine didn't want that. Mike launched a campaign with community members to persuade her to do a site. That's why Elaine has a site now. In terms of here, we brought Elaine in and had tried to before she was guest blogging for Rebecca. I don't think we ever interviewed Elaine, by the way. I think she repeatedly turned us down and one thing we always did was interview community members for a feature when they started their own site or newsletter. But we guilted Elaine into participating here and while we can survive any weekend she needs time off, it's also true that she adds much more than you're ever going to guess from any transcript piece. In these pieces, she tends to clam up unless she's angry about something. She contributes much more in the articles than many may be aware of.



Ty: Brandon wants to know -- Susan will be happy -- what we're listening to this edition.



Cedric: Let me start with that. Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava, C.I., Kat and Wally are all together in California. I'm at my place and Betty's at her place. Rebecca, Mike, Ruth, Elaine and Marcia are at Mike's. So since we're on conference call, it would be very annoying if we all had something different playing in the background. What we do is generally rotate out who's playing music though in the last year and a half, we've left Mike's crowd out of the rotation due to Rebecca's baby and Mike's infant niece being at Mike's. Betty can spin some great tunes.



Betty: And my kids can sleep through music. But I've generally got Barry White, Sade, Joni Mitchell, etc. on. I'm not blasting out George Clinton or something like that.



Ty: I'm being pointed to. So this week, dee jay responsibilities are here. We've mainly listened, so far, to Dashboard Confessional's A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar. Mike wrote about Dashboard Confessional's new CD and that led to us all wanting to pull out the older CD. We've played it all the way through three times. In addition to that, Dona wanted to hear Aimee Mann's One More Drifter in the Snow which is a Christmas album. And we've also listened twice to Richie Havens Sings Beatles and Dylan.



Dallas: I want to jump in.



Jim: Go for it.



Dallas: It is 2:09 Sunday morning here in Texas and I've got the Olympics playing in the background. Barack's big ad buy during the Olympics? They just aired a commercial. All I caught was, "I'm Barack Obama and I approved this ad." I thought that was interesting and a not smart purchase.



Jim: Agreed. Dallas participates by phone from Texas. And rarely speaks. C.I. and Wally can get him to speak, the rest of us have no luck. And he's never wanted to jump in before. He can anytime he wants. What's the event, Dallas?



Dallas: Right now it's men's track, the 100 Meter.



Jim: Have you seen Barack throughout?



Dallas: That's honestly the first commercial of his I've caught. I'm watching it on our local NBC station. I've had it on since ten p.m.



Jim: Any John McCain?



Dallas: I haven't seen any tonight.



Marcia: Dallas, I want to comment but I'm not crowding in before you're done, am I?



Dallas: No, I'm done.



Marcia: Okay, Barack lost Texas. Forget the caucus, the general election's not going to be a caucus. It's going to be voting. Barack lost Texas voting to Hillary. And as I remember it from Wally and Cedric's reporting -- they were in Texas for something like six weeks, Barack repeatedly aired commercials during late night hours. Am I remembering that right?



Cedric: Yeah. We were always shocked. Right, Wally?



Wally: Yeah. We'd get back to the hotel around ten o'clock, and we were in various areas, we'd turn on the TV and maybe catch a little news but generally put it on a syndicated show, sometimes a cartoon, sometimes a sitcom. And there would be Barack. Especially during Family Guy. But he advertised during The Simpsons and Family Guy during the day as well.



Marcia: So, let me repeat, he lost Texas. And one of his strategies was this late night advertising.



Cedric: And early morning. I'd usually turn on the TV after I showered and get dressed and Wally would come knock on my door when he was up and ready. It would be five in the morning and the pre-news news would be on and you'd see him over and over.



Marcia: So he lost Texas and he's using the same 'strategy' in his Olympic buys in Texas that he used for the primary. My point here is that we have another John Kerry who can't learn from mistakes. I think that needs to be pointed out.



Betty: That's how it was in Atlanta, by the way. I'd have the kids to bed and be going around the house picking stuff up and going room to room, I'd get to the living room and turn off the TV and it seemed like I was always seeing his face on TV then.



Wally: I think Marcia's making a good point. How many people are watching the Olympics at this hour? I mean, after the opening ceremonies, the ratings cratered. Now here's Barack advertising early morning there and who's going to see it? Dallas saw it because he's up working with us. Is anyone else going to see it in large numbers? I agree with Marcia's point. The lesson from Texas is that Barack didn't work. It was him or Hillary, everyone else was out of the race. If he couldn't carry Texas in the Democratic primary, he can't carry it in the general election. I stand by that observation. I was there for six weeks. Dallas, am I wrong?



Dallas: No. And his support has cratered in Texas because it was generally the people who identified themselves as extremely liberal. FISA was a big deal down here, when he broke his pledge. He's lost a number people, attorneys especially, and he's not going to get them back. Cedric and I have talked about Texas and we both believe Hillary had a chance of carrying it in the general election. Ava and C.I. believe that as well.



Cedric: Yeah. That was based on the fact that Texas women will set party i.d. aside for other women. That's why they have one senator now that's a woman. Those votes didn't just come from Republicans. Ann Richards was a governor of the state, she lost her re-election to Bully Boy and Texas has had and has many mayors who are women. There's a real sense of pride in strong women in Texas. Add in that, I'm African-American so brothers and sisters were willing to talk "Black to Black" with me. A lot of them were feeling pressure to vote for Barack. There was a sense, and this is before the votes were counted, that they wouldn't turn out in the general. Barack had been to Texas, all over in fact, I know Reunion Arena was a big crowd for him. And that pumped up turnout for him. However, I heard over and over, especially from older African-American males, that if he wasn't doing personal appeareances a month before the election, he could forget Texas because his primary voters were not going to have the same mania. It was going to be more of a "I did my part" attitude. And true in Texas and true outside, a number of people who went to the polls for him in the primary were surprised to learn it wasn't the presidential eleciton. Sad but true. When Wally and I were checking out the day after the Texas primary, the clerk -- and she was African-American -- was sad because she'd voted him "for the president" and he lost. She had no idea, until we explained it, that she'd voted in a primary. That was the first primary she ever voted in. Barack's campaign is going to need to do a lot of voter education and not just with people showing up to support him in the coming weeks but also with people who supported him in the primary.



Marcia: That's a good observation and one that Betty and I have discussed on the phone because we've both seen it in our areas as well.



Ruth: Marcia was talking to me about polling this week and I think she has an interesting story there as well.



Marcia: I've talked about this here before and at my own site, but my mother's always polled. It's one of the newspaper and network's polls, I won't say which one. But my mother, who does not support Barack, always says she'll be voting for Barack. And, as I've said before, when I ask her about that, she explains she feels like the pollster will think she's a racist if she says no.



Rebecca: And Marcia's mother African-American!



Marcia: I probably should have noted that. Yes, I am African-American. But with the Barack campaign playing the race card repeatedly, I think the polls are off and we'll see that after the election. I doubt my mother is the only one not supporting Barack, she loathes Barack, who is answering pollster's question falsely out of fear of being considered some sort of racist or self-hater. Now maybe my mother's alone on that. But she's generally in step on other things.



Betty: I think it's very common and I think the Barack campaign has created that. There was a New York Times poll last week about, "Would you vote for Barack" that had a higher turnout than "Do you think most people would?" So what does that answer mean? It could mean any number of things. It could be evidenced of how Barack supporters think that they, like their Christ-child, walks on water and are so far evolved from the rest of us. It could mean that some saying they'll vote for him, really won't and don't want to say that. We don't know. But I do think it is very likely that, on election day, a lot of Barack's 'support' is not going to be there. Especially in the Black community because Dallas mentioned FISA but that attack on Black fathers, the most recent one, is not going away and has undermined him.



Jim: Is anyone else participating in any poll?

Mike: I'm polled by Zogby in e-mails but I haven't even opened one of those in forever.



Jim: I think Betty's right that the poll by The Times could be interpretered any number of ways and we just don't know.



Ty: And that's his fault for playing the race card over and over. If he hadn't done that, the question wouldn't be out there to the degree it is. Working class Whites were called "racists" for supporting Hillary, remember? So were Latinos. It's not a minor point. And it wouldn't be at all surprising if, after all of that, people felt they had to give false responses. If that is happening, it's very bad news for Barack who does not have a healthy lead over McCain and that's with what you could call the American vote. By that I mean, it includes hugely populated states. So the numbers really don't matter. There's no reason to pull all fifty states together in one poll. We don't elect presidents, we elect electors to the electoral college. What needs to be focused on is state polls. If X million in state A are spilling over into the national totals, it doesn't matter.



Dona: Ava has noted John McCain has real support among Latinos and I believe she's noted her two friends who are polled and say "Obama" but are in fact supporting McCain. They're not just going to vote for him, they're donating to his campaign. But what Ty's talking about is very valid. The popular vote across the nation doesn't matter. I believe the Supreme Court made clear in 2000 just how little the popular vote mattered. The issue is can he carry enough states that will award enough delegates to the electoral college? Let's say Michigan has 8 million people, I have no idea how many people that state has. But let's say it's going for Barack -- I'm not following the polls and have no idea if it will or not, I just scheduled Ava, C.I., Kat and Wally there to speak about Iraq, so it's on my mind. But let's say it will go for Barack and that it has 8 million voters and that 8 million voters makes it the third most populated state in the country. If Florida -- I'm looking at Wally who is from Florida -- has 6 million voters and only 1 million are supporting him, a national poll is lumping in the overage in Michigan and making it appear that Barack's stronger than he is because with only 1 million in Florida, he's not going to carry that state.



Jim: And that was one of the arguments for making Hillary the nominee. She carried the big states and "big" didn't mean most acres, it meant most populated. More people in the state means more delegates to the electoral college because they're assigned based on population. Hillary's campaign, her 18 million votes, demonstrated she could play the board. Barack's trying to reinvent the map and, no, he's not going to carry Texas. I'm basing that on Texas community members and their roundtable in the gina & krista round-robin last week. They talk about how they're writing in Ralph -- Ralph Nader -- and about how Barack supporters are drifting in their support and how Hillary supporters are not strong supporters of Barack. So forget Texas. Can he carry Florida? It's doubtful. That's based on Wally's mother, Wally's grandfather, Gina, Krista and Wally who all live in the state -- though Wally's living here now. But there is so much ill will towards him in Florida over his stunts and the fact that it has still not been decided that Florida will be seated. The 'Rules' Committee refuses to rule. And people in Florida are not idiots, they know Barack moved the DNC to Chicago. They know if he can do that, he can force the 'Rules' Committee to rule if he wants to. Now add in California which Hillary also won. She won Texas, Florida and California. Those are big states. I've gone with Liang to talk up Ralph's campaign in the Asian-American community. My piece on that is in Polly's Brew out today. Barack lost the Asian-American vote and the Latino vote here. Asian-Americans are very receptive to Ralph and also saying they might vote for McCain or not vote. It's very much like what Ava and Jess are seeing in the Latino community here. And not only does McCain have popularity with California Latinos, so does, believe it or not, Ahnuld and everyone knows the governor is going to get involved in getting out the vote. Maria Shriver, his wife, plays well as wife supporting her husband but Maria and Oprah combined couldn't fill UCLA when they did that campaign stop. Maria does not have Ahnuld's popularity. So although she'll work to turn out the vote, it won't have much impact and it didn't in the primary.



Dallas: Interrupting again. It's now 3:00 in Texas and another Barack Obama commercial just came in. It says that it's, "leadership for our time" and that he'll "create 5 million jobs." Michael Phelps is stretching but he's ntot competing in the swim race which they just went to commercial on, in the midst of the race. And people wonder why the ratings are down? The race is ongoing and they're breaking to show a commercial for Christian Slater's new TV show and now for a bank.



Jim: The race wasn't over and they went to commercial.



Dallas: Yeah. They were talking about Hackett and they were on like lap four or something and still racing when they went to commercial. Could you imagine them getting away with doing that in the middle of a football game?



Jim: Okay, we're going to wait a second to see what happens when the commercial break is over.



Dallas: It's Coca Cola right now. They're back and the race is still going on. The announcers are saying it's between Canada and Australia and they're painting Hackett as a hypochondriac who won't touch rails in China for fear of germs. And it's still going on and they're going to commercial again. It's a commercial for ExxonMobil.



Jim: And the race is still ongoing, the same swiming competition, and they've now taken two commercial breaks during it?



Dallas: Correct. And there's an MSNBC ad that features David Gregory, Chris Matthews, Dumb Ass Olbermann and when they show the faces -- it's for their election coverage, there are four men and Andrea Mitchell.



Jim: No wonder people aren't watching NBC's coverage. And they shouldn't be watching MSNBC. On that note, we'll end. This was a rush transcript and a rough one. I took notes when I wasn't speaking and so Jess did the same. Everyone kindly spoke much slower than they normally would.

Highlights

This piece is written by Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix, Kat of Kat's Korner, Betty of Thomas Friedman is a Great Man, Mike of Mikey Likes It!, Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz, Ruth of Ruth's Report, Marcia of SICKOFITRADLZ and Wally of The Daily Jot. Unless otherwise noted, we picked all highlights.



"I Hate The War" -- The most requested highlight, C.I.'s Thursday night entry, read it and see why.



"Split Pea Soup in the Kitchen" -- Those of us who have read Trina's latest love it. Mike hasn't read it, at his mother's request. (She's writing about him.)



"Betsy and Valda come calling" -- Betinna's troubles never end with the Cult of Barack. Two more rejects come calling this chapter.





"Fat ass, fat head" & " THIS JUST IN! JENNY CRAIG'S BILL RICHARDSON!" -- Cedric and Wally on Bill Richardson's latest public embarrassment.



"nader's campaigning in all 50 states" -- Ralph Nader, as Rebecca points out, is planning something revolutionary: Campaiging in all 50 states.





"Revisionary historian Valda Combs," "Quick post," and "Rev. Valda Jean Combs Is A Racist Idiot" -- Ruth, Kat and Marcia take on the right-con Valda Jean.



"E-mails, peace movement" -- Elaine weighing in on the state of the peace 'movement' (RIP) and more.



Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Vacationing Barack" -- Isaiah's highly popular comic from last Sunday.





"Jeremy Hinzman, Ralph Nader, Michael Moore" -- Mike addresses the idiot Moore.



"Ruth Conniff is an idiot"-- Could someone please explain to the increasingly trashy Ruth Conniff that when someone is murdered, you don't 'honor' that person by writing a column trashing his friends? Ruth Conniff has no tact, no taste and no brains. Street trash, plain and simple as Kat points out.



"breakfast club," "Betrayed," "Pretty in Pink and Reckless," "Outrageous Fortune," "Broadway Danny Rose" and "Die Hard and Baby Boom" -- Rebecca, Ruth, Kat, Marcia, Elaine and Mike blog on 80s movies.



"The battered syndrome is what Bambi works" & "THIS JUST IN! BARACK SPITS ON WOMEN AGAIN!" -- Cedric and Wally note the latest insult to women from Barack.



"Reply to Heather McRobie and others" -- Guardian of London's Heather McRobie writes Elaine and Elaine responds to the media whore.


"Ralph Nader, Dashboard Confessional" -- Mike covers Dashboard Confessional's most recent CD.



"Barack's green eyes" & "THIS JUST IN! BARACK LOSES IT OVER EDWARDS!" -- Barack takes the news of John Edwards' cheating ways.

Where it stands

Jim and Dona doing this note.

We will be publishing today but we started early and we're all tired. Wally and Cedric put off their joint-post yesterday to work on this. They still haven't done it.

What do we have?

We have a roundtable, we have Ava and C.I.'s TV commentary, an article on feminist voters, an article on the use of racism in 2008, a Katty-van-van piece. And highlights.

We have the editorial but it needs to be edited (all the above are already typed and edited). We will do an article in some form on Jeremy Hinzman and we're doing one on the debates.

Also someone gets called out that Ava and C.I. want to sleep on. No, not Norman Solomon, they call him out in their TV commentary. This is a woman who has now twice chosen to embrace homophobia and wants to be seen as part of the women's liberation movement. It doesn't work that way. We've avoided calling her out repeatedly but an idiot playing the race card tries to shore up her own bad thinking by citing that woman. So the plan is a short nap (which may run long) and to post this afternoon (PST) or this evening. We're eating breakfast and going to bed.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Truest statement of the week

In other words, Blacks have no special gripe, as far as Barack Obama is concerned - which is the source of his attraction to unprecedented numbers of white voters seeking, if not absolution for past crimes, at least a muting of Black complaints. That's the kind of "change" they're anticipating, race-wise.



Glen Ford, "Obama Won't Address Specific Black Concerns" (Black Agenda Report).

A note to our readers

Hey --
Sunday night and finally getting around to doing the note.

Along with Dallas who is our soundboard and link locator and much more, the following worked on this edition:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
and Marcia SICKOFITRDLZ.

We thank everyone. We also thank Isaiah for the use of his comics and we thank Betty's eldest son for his drawings.

What did we come up with?

Truest statement of the week -- Glen Ford grabbed this one easily. There really wasn't any debate which is why we offer only one "truest" this week.

Editorial: NPR aka Home of the Unqualified -- Ava and C.I. received non-stop complaints from NPR friends about this today. Apparently the editorial (which all worked on) hit a nerve. We think it's pretty sorry that NPR's allowing someone to post 'judgments' at the ombudsperson's page and to 'explain' journalism in e-mails to listener when she's never practicied journalism, never studied journalism and just 'graduated' from intern to assistant (after just graduating college with her English lit major). Tough crap, NPR, try maintaining some standards.

TV: The stench of 'public affairs' programming -- Ava and C.I.'s latest and I've got a number of things to cover here. First, a sentence in it is now deleted. They added it right before posting when I (Jim) said we'd come back and do the note tonight. Knowing how emotional Dave Zirin can be, they included a warning in the commentary since he Googles his own name constantly. Here's the warning. When Zirin went after Mike, Ava and C.I. were 'not happy' to put it mildly. They have not forgotten. They immediately began compiling their file -- 150 pages of text plus photo copies and photos -- as they worked their contacts. Get on their s**t list and they put together a file. Mike put it behind him (Wally has not, Ava notes, and will never again mention Zirin) so Ava and C.I. wait and the file goes tick-tick-tick. That warning is included in the note and has been pulled from the commentary. Second, and I meant to do this as a stand-alone, last week I linked to two or three of Ava and C.I.'s older commentaries from the earliest days and began receiving e-mails about one which noted, "It's not a soap opera and they're using 'bitch' repeatedly." It's in their commentary, they aren't using it. Ava and C.I.'s stuff was the thing everyone responded to in the first month of TV stuff here. Their observations, their one liners. I didn't get what they were doing (as I've admitted many times) back then but I did get that they were the force behind the TV articles. We turned TV over to them in Feb. 2005. We offered them a byline but this site was created for group writing and they refused. At some point, the praise was so intense that the rest of us were embarrassed to be getting credit for their writing so we began noting that they do the TV commentaries. That's all first year stuff. In a roundtable in 2005, there was a major clash when Ty brought in an e-mail about Ava and C.I.'s writing that noted a change in one of their article. Ava and C.I. denied making any such change. They didn't. That's where I 'fessed up that I'd been going in and fixing typos and (sad but true) sometimes altering a word here and there because I thought it would be even funnier. When that came out in the roundtable, Ava and C.I. made clear that (a) their typos are not always typos (sometimes they're inside jokes for friends) and (b) if they are known for writing it, no one should be editing or altering it without their permission and it being known. I put in "bitch" in the review everyone's e-mailing about. Had that come out during the roundtable, it would have been explosive. I don't remember what I was caught doing but it wasn't that. Ava and C.I.'s original review of The Simple Life used the word "brat." They didn't remember but, as e-mails poured in last week, I dug around through some boxes from our big NY move and found the original longhand version of it. "Bitch" will stand in their review because, Ava, "That things been up for years now. Readers who have been around since 2005 are familiar with the roundtable and know that story. C.I. and I found the turmoil over last week's e-mails funny because we know what we write and what we don't write. Jim took this much more seriously than we did. At the time, we made clear that it needed to stop right away and we also made clear that we weren't going to read over the commentaries to try to figure out what was changed. We don't read over stuff after it goes up. We don't go back and read it. We don't have the time and, though we're glad that some enjoy them, we're just trying to finish them and be done." C.I. points out that when the roundtable revelations took place it was noted that only Ty could go into the TV commentaries from now on. Ty does not change anything without checking to make sure a typo is a typo and he doesn't 'edit' them either. They both know (a) it's a dead issue at this point, (b) they're living in 2008 and (c) The Simple Life piece continues to result in e-mails so obviously "Jim's word substitution was not 'harmful' and people enjoyed it. We wouldn't have used the term in that review but we're focused on 2008, not 2005." What they're focused on right now is doing Eli Stone next week. Unless there's another major TV embarrassment this week, they intend to write a ("brief" says Ava) TV commentary next week. They remind Eli Stone airs currently on Saturday nights, on ABC, during the last hour of primetime.

Stop-Loss -- Dona just said, "Keep the rest short." (C.I.'s still got to post at The Common Ills.) This article is about stop-loss and reminding that Matthis Chiroux needs your support.

'Friends' and Bigots -- When Ava and C.I. went off to write their TV commentary, we still didn't know what we were doing this edition other than the editorial (and highlights). And on the editorial, Jess reminds that several paragraphs (word for word) were dictated in Friday's snapshot by C.I. The snapshot was too big and C.I. pulled that section and slid it over to us to use if we wanted. We did and turned it into an editorial. So while Ava and C.I. were working on the TV article, the rest of us were trying to figure out what to do this edition. Betty wanted race to be addressed. She made a strong case that should have been an article (and hopefully will be next week) that had us all saying, "YEAH!" Marcia, who was on board immediately, said right after, that what Betty was talking about was an article much longer than we probably had time for this week. So she, Betty, Cedric and Wally worked on coming up with two smaller units. They narrowed the focus down and we wrote this article.

You can learn a lot from a movie -- When Marcia said it needed to be in smaller units, Betty asked, "Did everyone read C.I. this morning?" (It was still Saturday when we started.) Betty brought up the lyrics quoted from Grace of My Heart. Ty and Jess zoomed in on what an ass Eric Stoltz' character was. So we had our 'unit' for this article which also addresses race. Barring any big news this week, we hope to pick up the larger scope Betty wanted. We also hope to do a piece Ava and C.I. advocated for but we didn't have time for this week.

Nader and Gonzalez speak to the people -- Here we wanted to note the Nader-Gonzalez campaign but also to be sure Bonnie Faulkner got her well deserved credit. Her program the week before was nominated by a reader for "truest." He wrote about a statement but didn't include the statement and Ty saw the e-mail Sunday. It was too late for us to listen to the program and we felt bad because she does go her own way and not try to be part of the circle-jerk so many in Panhandle Media are. So we really wanted to be sure she got her credit this week.

War resistance then -- A carry over from last week when time ran out.

The sorry John Edwards spectacle -- Ava and C.I. had a very good idea for an article and Elaine was the strongest supporter of it. But there was also this topic. At one point, there was a chance that the topic would make the TV commentary. Ava and C.I. included it on their bullet list of ten items to cover in their commentary. But it didn't fit. They could break the flow and force it in but we told them not to even try. We were glad that they were willing to consider it. To be clear, Ava and C.I. are not interested in sex scandals. They've avoided this topic and it would never be addressed at The Common Ills. When John Edwards announced he was going to be on Nightline, they were willing to set aside their own personal tastes because it did fall under their beat. They watched and made notes (some of which may have made it into this piece because we had read their notes). They were willing to cover it if they could fit in. It didn't fit. That's fine. But we wanted the topic covered. Males participating in this writing edition especially had leaned towards Edwards at various points in the primaries. By January, it was really just Wally and Mike still holding out hope that Edwards might show some strength. He never did. Ava and C.I. were told the affair was true in August which is another reason they didn't participate in this feature. Elaine is closed mouth but she learned around the same time and not from Ava or C.I. Rebecca learned from a friend that the story was being shopped to the tabloids. All four chose not to work on this and Rebecca kindly warned us that we should not make any end-of-story statements because the full story is not out there. For those of us who majored in journalism especially, it is offensive that politicians (not just Edwards) think they can give a media confession and then no one must ask any questions. Your confession (belated in this case) does not end the story. There's also the issue that Edwards was on a high-horse in his opposition to same-sex marriage and pointing to the Bible on that. We like the way this turned out. We put a byline in brackets when I decided we'd wait on the note. That was to be clear who wrote and who chose not to participate (Ava, C.I., Elaine and Rebecca). Dona says our conclusion comes from a note in Ava and C.I.'s shorthand on the Nightline interview where they wrote in big letters: "WHAT ABOUT RIELLE!!! WHAT ABOUT HER FEELINGS!!!!" and underlined that repeatedly. We took those two exclamations and turned it into our conclusion. If we had more time, we would have gone even longer on that. "Our privacy" the Edwards insist. Rielle's privacy? She hasn't spoken to the press about her relationship. She didn't go on Nightline or blog at The Daily Toilet Scrubber. And she has a child. It really is cute how the Edwards slam the door shut and glorify the newfound sanctity of their marriage when their message has the implication that it's all Rielle Hunter's fault. The 'evil temptress' who led John astray. That's bulls**t. [Dona says to add those shouting comments to include on this topic in the note did not include Ava and C.I.]

Highlights -- Mike, Elaine, Rebecca, Betty, Marcia, Ruth, Cedric, Kat and Wally wrote this and picked out highlights. We thank them for it.

-- Jim, Dona, Jess, Ava and C.I.
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