THE BORG QUEEN RENTS A NEGRO

THE BORG QUEEN AND HER RENTAL NEGRO

Y'all knew that the Borg Queen (aka Senator Hillary Clinton) wasn't going to take Sen. Barack Obama's stealth move in bringing out talk-show mogul Oprah Winfrey to campaign for him lying down.

I waited to see what she would do. At first, all it looked like she was going to do was throw down roundhouse punches at Obama's campaign, by digging up what the brotha wrote on his Kindergarten essay, then trying to play on American's fears by bringing up his full name, which his middle name is Hussein (y'all know where she tried to make that connection), and finally, enlisting the aid of Bill Shaheen, the husband of former New Hampshire governor Jeanne Shaheen, to start talking about Barack's youthful indiscretion (cocaine use), and allegeging he was probably a drug dealer.

Obama a drug dealer? You can't make this stuff up.

But, not to my surprise, the Borg Queen came back with a lil' stealth move of her own.

Magic Johnson. Yes, that Magic Johnson (how many did you think there were?). He joined the Borg Queen on her campaign in Iowa, and instantly went from hero to Handkerchief Head Negro with sly digs and comments about Hillary's "experience" and how we didn't need an inexperienced person getting the White House.

To which, I say, "Negro, please!" As in "Please shut your friggin' mouth; you don't know jack about politics."

Now, this is painful for me to write, because I've always been a Magic Johnson fan. Long after his HIV status forced him to retire from the game. I remember when he made the announcement about his status, thinking, "If anyone can beat this, it's Magic Johnson."

But, to turn into a Handkerchief Head is hard for me to swallow, because Magic Johnson is the last African-American I'd care to pin that label on. Campaigning for the Borg Queen, after her husband goes on Charlie Rose's show and literally dissed an African-American for even daring to consider any other candidate except his wife, frosted my cookies in a huge way that I won't be forgetting too soon.

If Obama's candidacy shows anything to politicos, it should be this: YOU CAN'T CONTINUE TO TAKE AFRICAN-AMERICANS VOTES FOR GRANTED AND NOT HAVE IT COME BACK TO BITE YOU IN THE ASS. We are not a monolithic group - and we don't like African-Americans like Magic Johnson trying to lecture us on who we should elect as POTUS. Especially when the brotha's only foray into politics was a worthy one - stepping up legislative efforts on HIV research, education and prevention.

At least he's done better than Michael Jordan - Mike wants you to "be like him" when he's collecting his checks. Political forays into issues like, say, CIVIL RIGHTS, are alien to him and problematic when it comes to getting that check. Magic eschewed that and remade himself into a remarkable businessman, purchasing and running Starbuck establishments and his Magic Johnson theaters, where going to see a movie can be a really fun experience (he even employs people to throw out those who would talk at the screen non-stop during a movie, and he has good eating going on in there, too). Magic's even gone on to make some forays into Civil Rights issues as well, so going over to what I consider "The Dark Syde" is making me toss my breakfast this morning.

Now, you're probably saying I'm being too hard on Magic, by tagging him a Handkerchief Head for spewing Hillary's talking points about Obama. Even if he didn't mention Obama by name, we all knew who he was talking about. I thought Lawn Jockey was too strong - he didn't go that far off...yet. He should be able to endorse anyone he wants - everyone African-American doesn't have to get on board with Obama. And, you're right, because at this point in the game, this African-American woman is not on board the good ship Obama, because his vagueness on his political platform reminds me of John Kerry - whenever someone asked Kerry for specifics on his campaign promises, he'd tell you to "go to www.JohnKerry.com" for more information, when it's just easier to tell us what you got planned.

A gospel tour with Donnie McClurkin damned near gave the LGBT community apoplexy - I thought John Aravosis at Americablog was going to do more than lynch Obama on his blog. And sending white campaign workers to black hair salons to ask sistas getting perms or their weaves hooked up, what they thought about Obama, showed an inherent unfamiliarity with the demographics of the very base of voters Obama was trying to reach.

My friend Skeptical Brotha, cynically referred to this period of the Obama campaign as "Amateur Hour", and I couldn't have agreed with him more.

Obama appears to have corrected that - just as the Borg Queen begins her own fumbling of her front-runner status.

Should the Borg Queen win - will there be a Cabinet position for loyalist Negroes like Magic? Create a government agency that provides oversight of professional sports, perhaps? I want to know what's in it for African-Americans like Magic Johnson, or, for that matter, half of the Congressional Black Caucus that have hitched your wagons to Hillary Clinton's campaign. You need to review just what the Clinton Administration did for people of ethnic background during the 1990s:

• Gave us trade agreements that took your jobs out of the country (NAFTA & CAFTA);
• Increased taxes on the working and middle-class;
• Opened the door for media consolidation and monopoly (and probably gave birth to Pravda networks like Fox Network);
• Dismantled any and all gains made by Civil Rights and Affirmative Action with that "Mend it, don't end it" shyt;
• Refused to stand up like Harry S. Truman and further integrate the Armed Forces by allowing gay and lesbians to be open about their sexual identity, instead of hiding it with that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" shyt;
• Pushed through all legislation that the ReThugs wanted that would screw over anyone else through cutbacks in social policies and programs;
• Slung people like Joycelyn Elders and Lani Guinier under the bus because Oren Hatch whined about their positions on masturbation and affirmative action like a lil' byotch.

So, I want to know what's in it for you that support the Clintons when it's well documented that everytime he had the opportunity to do some real Field Negro stuff, he always choked and put away that honorary Negro card Toni Morrison gave him. Because his wife is no better on her track record either. You can find continuous votes to fund the mess in Iraq among her atrocities, and her recent attacks on Obama should wake all of us the hell up.

I'm on record about Obama - he has not articulated his policy platform well enough for me to co-sign. But whenever I see a brotha being attacked, as if, by virtue of being Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton, Hillary thinks she's entitled to the White House because she hitched her ambition wagon to Bill and suffered the public humiliation of being cheated on because her husband got a blow job in the Oval Office; well, what qualification for the job is that?

Magic Johnson - you can add him to the list of Rent-A-Negroes. I'm wondering who's going to be next, because you know, John Edwards is going to have to trot out a rental Negro, too.

SAY WHAT?

The following is an exchange on one of my favorite blogs, Jack and Jill Politics:
The blog entry is entitled "What "Diana Ross and Mahogany can Teach Us about Oprah and Obama."

In case you weren't paying attention, the civil rights struggle migrated from politics to the board room sometime in the 1980s and 90s. An actual historian might be able to tell us why but perhaps it might have something to do with disillusionment and impatience that political power didn't translate as quickly into gains for ordinary African-Americans as climbing the corporate ladder as affirmative action began to open doors and fill wallets. The best and the brightest African-Americans seemed less interested in running for office or leading protests and more interested in leaping over loosened barriers to get Harvard MBAs and socially climb. Progressive meant sitting or speaking in all-white boardrooms and proving your intelligence and equality as many times as it took to get promoted.

To gain financial muscle, many leading African-Americans appeared to feel they had to cloak their political leanings behind a friendly, harmless smile. To appear as "safe Negroes", people like Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Al Roker and Jay-Z strove to show America that the most important color to them and other mercantile blacks was not black but green, baby. Whether you were conservative or liberal, white, black, brown, whatever -- you could love your favorite black celebrity/mogul without resentment or guilt. Even Queen Latifah and Whoopi Goldberg toned down their images to appear safer. The message was all about sameness and minimizing difference. At the same time, awed whites began to make jokes about how rich Oprah had become and blacks started worshiping at the alter of prosperity, reading books like "Girl, Get Your Money Straight!". Mercantile blacks had taken over.

That all started to change in reaction to the Bush Administration. It started in hip hop with Russell Simmons and the Hip Hop Political Summit and Sean "P.Diddy" Combs and his Vote or Die voter registration campaign. It was prima facie non-partisan but if your target audiences are young people and minorities, we all know the demographics are going to skew Democratic.

Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and Barack Obama of Illinois are a flashback to the optimism and determination of Billy Dee Williams. They represent the best and brightest that chose not to work for Merrill Lynch for example where they might make more money or become world-famous doctors like Ben Carson MD but take what many middle-class African-Americans would see as the riskier route of politics as their road to success.

What's different from the 60s and 70s is that their message is the hope of a brighter future not for African-Americans but for all Americans in their states no matter the color of their skin nor the size of their pocketbooks. They've taken the language of sameness pioneered by the mercantile blacks and have adopted it as a canny political strategy to cross socio-racial lines. They are the new Black Panthers, moving stealthily through the jungle of a new era.

What's different from the 70s is we may be on the verge of another alliance between mercantile blacks and political blacks. Oprah Winfrey has stepped out of the political shadows out of her neutral comfort zone to throw her voice and her money behind Barack Obama. She knows she may lose some of her audience and doesn't seem to care. She's willing to trade the The goals of mercantile blacks and political blacks are becoming re-aligned. In part out of desperation to push the people who have sent our relatives to maiming and death in Iraq out of office. This force -- last seen during the struggle for civil rights in the 1940s-60s -- is what drove incredible progress and prosperity in America and not only for African-Americans, dig. It introduced lasting change from which we continue to profit as a nation today.

I've been telling people not to sleep on the Oprah/Obama combination for almost a year now. We'll just have to see how powerful this force really is and what it might mean for the relationship between mercantile and political African-Americans in the new millennium.

What happens when the Black Crusaders meet the new Black Panthers -- watch out!

As part of the generation that was a child when Martin Luther King was killed, yet heard these Civil Rights war stories from my parents (who thought Jesse Jackson was nothing more than a hustler even back in the 60s), I saw the logic of Jill's arguments, but I've also dealt with the likes of Harold Ford, Jr., Artur Davis - those brothas on Capitol Hill who are 40 and under (in other words, my age or thereabouts) who should be able to both appreciate the Civil Rights vets, yet be savvy and respectful enough to not flat out diss their contributions by their willingness to collect a check from the corporat masters, hastily pick up their lanterns and take up their positions on the lawn, for their own personal gain.

So, before I decide if I'm going to comment or not, I find that my colleague, Bruce Dixon of Black Agenda Report, has his own ideas on the subject:

I would fundamentally disagree with the author's statement that “the struggle has “migrated” from the street to the board room,” though that's precisely the way some of the black faces in the board room like to tell it. More accurately, at the end of the sixties, the board room doors swung open for the few that were already prepared to enter. On their way in the door they turned around to the rest of us in the street. They assured us that this was the next phase of the struggle, that marching, boycotting, grassroots organizing, and nearly everything that violated the law was obsolete, to buy from Black businesses, and that they'd be back to tell us how to vote every year or two.

A second generation of conscienceless black politicos followed at their heels, folks like Greg Meeks of NY and Artur Davis of AL and of course Harold Ford of TN, whose crossover to the realm of shills for big business has been so thorough as to leave room for only the most cursory nod to the train that got them there, let alone the sacrifices of ordinary folks who laid the rails and what motivated them.

The ascendancy of Obama, Patrick and the rest is a kind of fork off that branch, a slicker and more privileged generation who seek to renew their legitimacy by cynically evoking the ghost of movements past to cloak the fact that they offer nothing of substance policy-wise that would line up with the goals of those movements. This generation of co-opted “black leadership” relies on a a compliant media and the absence of black radio news to keep its place in the front pew among black folks, at the same time it sends messages to whites assuring them that it has nothing to do with those loud black folks in the street who make them uncomfortable.

Thus Obama helped register a six figure number of Illinois voters in 1992, but as a senator would not stand up to oppose the disenfranchisement of Black voters in Ohio in 2005. Thus he is for “universal health care” but against single payer, which is the only practical way to achieve it. He is supposedly”the peace candidate”, but vows he will not bring home the troops till at least his second term in office, intends to add another 100,00 bodies to the military and has advocated bombing Iran and Pakistan to show how tough he is. Thus he campaigned against the Patriot Act when running for the US Senate, but voted for it once in office, and voted for so-called tort reform that keeps ordinary citizens from suing wealthy corporations.

The alliance with Oprah makes eminent good sense for Obama, whose career at this moment is now built on the endorsement of corporate media who sell for him the PR packaged personae --- the celebrity, the non-threatening Negro to some whites, the “Joshua generation” guy to some blacks. It's a marketing proposition that dovetails with the practice of a master marketer, like Oprah, and appeals to large parts of the same audience.

It must be said that the corporate mainstream media are not fools, and they do not boost the folks who work in OUR interest. They boost the candidates who work in THEIRS. If Barack has, in their pages and broadcasts, metamorphosed into their darling “rock star” he has indeed been anointed. Some baton has definitely been passed to him. And not by us.

Well, I have to say, since I've made my government career as a Civil Rights/EEO Specialist for the last 20 years, my sentiments are more with my colleague, but to Jill's credit, she made good points as well. Which is why I'm thanking both of you for writing my blog post today; you made it very easy.

The above discourse is proof that African-Americans are no longer a monolithic race and we should never have been approached in that way, be they Republicans or Democrats, because at this point, both parties are really two heads of the same snake, looking to strike for any thing that gives them the advantage. It's a mistake the Borg Queen (aka Hillary Clinton) is making at this very point in her campaign, when she had front-runner status before she even declared her candidacy.

If her campaign had only spent $3.00 to rent an old DVD of "Mahogany" instead of James Carville trying to bust his best KKKarl Rove impersonation, we'd still have respect for her, and we'd return to asking Obama to prove himself. The fact that no politician, not even John Edwards, has bothered to take their "Mahogany" class on how to approach African-Americans as a voting block, will all be to their detriment.

We have clout. It's way past time we acted like it, especially on the journey of political influcence.

A TRUE LOVE

Lurking about at Kos' place (again). But the diary I just read has me in tears. Tears for the diarist's loss. Tears of joy at what the diarist celebrated with his beloved Lauren. Tears of hope that I met a man who loves me the way the diarist loved his wife. I hope he won't mind me sharing excerpts of his diary here, and I hope you will head over to Kos' and show him some love.

Fifteen years ago, on an ordinary March night in an ordinary town, I opened the door to an ordinary pub and first laid eyes upon the extraordinary woman who would change my life forever. I’ll never, ever forget the first time I saw Lauren: those beautiful cornflower blue eyes and her long, curly auburn hair made my heart skip a beat, or maybe two, and a strange feeling came over me; a feeling that something important had just happened.

She happened to be sitting with some people I knew from school, so I sat down at the table, across from her, and it was then that I got to hear for the first time that lovely, lilting English accent. I felt smitten, and I proceeded to spend the next hour or two flirting shamelessly with her, trying to make her laugh, and sometimes even succeeding.

Over the next few months a deepening friendship developed between us. I noticed she had the gift of making others feel comfortable with themselves; she had an infectious and generous smile; she had a serenity about her. As the months passed and we drew closer, I found myself opening up to her more and more; I felt like I could tell her anything about myself, and she made me feel like whatever particularly unflattering detail I might reveal could never lower her opinion of me. Lauren had an innate understanding of the inevitability of imperfection and this allowed her to see past faults and to focus on the good side of people.

As that year drew to a close, Lauren neared the completion of her master’s degree, which meant that her student visa would soon expire and she’d have to return home to England. As her last couple of weeks here passed by, I felt sadness over her leaving, but the sadness puzzled me; I hadn’t yet realized I’d fallen in love with her.

Two nights before she was to head back home – Saturday, December 19th, 1992, for the record – in the deep, late night quiet of her living room, we finally both gave in and confessed our true feelings to each other.

So began a very long distance love affair, her in northern England and me in upstate New York. This was the early 90’s, remember; the days before email and cheap long distance. A couple of two to three hour phone calls every week, even if made during off-peak hours, could eat a big chunk out of your paycheck. So we’d write these long, long love letters to each other. Lauren would scent her letters with her perfumes, and oh, how my heart soared when I smelled the arrival of a new letter in the mail. I’d hold the letter up to my face to breathe in the perfume, and then I’d tear open the envelope and read the letter over and over and over again.

Four months into our affair, in April of 1993, she came out to see me for two weeks and those two weeks were, without a doubt, the best two weeks of my life to that point. And when those two weeks ended, I took her down to JFK to see her off, and after she walked away from me and through the doors marked passengers only, I sat down and cried my eyes out, because I knew, for certain, that I had found the one thing I truly wanted in life.

A year and three months after that painful goodbye at Kennedy, me and Lauren married, on July 23rd, 1994. A gorgeous and magical day on the shores on Lake Windermere – right out of a movie, my father always says – that set the tone for the next thirteen years. We honeymooned in the Lake District and then I had to come home and wait for Lauren to get her green card, and a long wait it was; nine months in fact, and she couldn’t travel here during that time, and I had just started a new job that I needed to keep to prove to the INS I could support her, so we did not see each other once during those nine months. When that wait finally ended, we treated ourselves to a second honeymoon, a week in Maine in April of 1995.

But truly, for me and Lauren, the honeymoon never ended. Our love for each other never stopped growing. During all the time we spent apart, we always used to say, in letters and over the phone, that ALL we wanted, ALL we cared about, was being together. And when the time came for us to be together, we savored it. We truly and deeply appreciated the gift of being present with each other.

WHY RATIONAL WOMEN WON'T VOTE FOR THE BORG QUEEN

Sometimes, there are bloggers who make my job easier.

I still lurk around at DailyKos. Occasionally, I post a comment or two - but I don't diary there anymore, because far from allowing for dissenting opinions and meaningful discussions, Kos' blog has turned more into Kool-aid drinkers who flame you for disagreering with Kos himself, and not backing down from that position until Kos does. (Sigh).

Oh, well, I didn't want to rant about Kos (that's for another post when I good and pissed off). What I wanted to post was a good diary I found at Kos' place that provided a rational, well-articulated, analytical post from a young woman about what she can't vote for Hillary Clinton (aka "The Borg Queen"). Read it and then, head over to Kos's to give Progress for America some love:

This is an appeal to rational women.

I’d like to talk to you about Hillary Clinton. Almost 15 years ago, I asked my mother why so many people hated the President’s wife. She didn’t have an answer that she was comfortable giving her 10 year old daughter. Even if the answer would have been appropriate, she would have withheld it. In my family, women did not assert their political (or otherwise) opinions fiercely. And support for either of the Clintons would have been in great opposition to my neoconservative father.

My mother’s father, my paw-paw (what we call our grandpas in Louisiana), was a lifelong democrat. I remember my paw-paw telling me about the Great Depression. He told me that he had to walk miles to sell a bucket of snap beans for 5 cents. He said at that time, the world was without a bright light at the end of the tunnel. He taught me the value of work. He taught me the value of integrity. And he taught me about Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

He told me that FDR saved not just the United States, but the entire world by exuding extreme courage and conviction, and challenging conventional thought. My paw-paw told me that when his country needed him, he proudly served. He did it without thinking twice. He did it because his country had not forgotten him when he was in need. He told me that America defeated fascism abroad and had sown the seeds for democracy in Europe. He told me why democracy was so important and why America was so great. He told me that the American people are the government. That a [man] who didn’t represent the people’s needs was a “traitor to democracy.” He said, “money and power can corrupt even the most noble [man]” and so “the people must hold the government accountable.” That’s tough language from a strong willed patriot.

He told me that my college money had been depleted by the neocon’s policy of deregulation throughout the 1980’s. He said Ronald Reagan hurt many small business owners like himself (he installed septic tanks for 30 years with his three sons). He said that things were starting to get better in 1992. He said it was because “...a democrat has been elected.”

I was pretty excited. My paw-paw got a breath of fresh air. But then my paw-paw got sick. After two open-heart surgeries (the second one partially due to poor care at the hospital facility), his savings were completely depleted. His surgeries added 5 years to his life, instead of 10-15 years which some recipients enjoy, due to the poor care. In those 5 years, he mostly talked to me about the influence of money in our political system. He probably didn’t fully understand Washington lobbyists, but he understood greed.

And then there was Hillary Clinton. She was a hero to me. Maybe because she was the first woman I had heard pushing to make a change for women and children. I was young, but she was what I wanted to be. Someone speaking for the voices of those who would otherwise fall through the cracks. She was smart. She was tough. She was a role model.

I am sorry to say that she is no longer that role model.

Sisters, I know that many of you see Mrs. Clinton as the living example of the progress that women have made in America. It is our birthright to be treated and valued as absolute equal, capable members of society. We will hold every office in this land. After 231 years, the country is finally ready for a Woman to lead the free world.

I know that you see Mrs. Clinton as ready to assume the highest leader position in the nation, the Presidency. There is no doubt that she is also ready to assume the role. She is ready, but is she right?

Her strongest points seem to be that she is experienced. She points to her prior years as an advocate for women and children. She points to her work in the Clinton administration (as the first First Lady to have an office in the West Wing!). She points to her work as a Senator serving the state of New York. She is ready to lead, “from the first day she’s in office.”

Point 1: Prior years as an advocate for children and women’s rights.

I applaud Mrs. Clinton on everything she has done for women and children. She has led an extraordinary life of service.

Point 2: Experience in the White House

Mrs. Clinton’s most prominent role in the Clinton administration was her health care plan in 1993. Unfortunately, it was defeated, not even receiving enough support from the House or Senate to get a vote on the floor, with Democrats in both houses. America would have been better if her bill had won, but it was defeated by lobbyists and cheap politics. The Democratic Senators and Congressmen did not support Mrs. Clinton’s health care plan because they were (and still are) taking money from Healthcare Industry lobbyists.

Mrs. Clinton now receives more money from those same special interests than the top three Republican candidates for President combined.

Point 3: Her work as a New York Senator

Mrs. Clinton has been a consistent Democratic vote in the U.S. Senate. No one would dispute that. However, the Democratic party has done a very poor job of representing the American people for at least the last 15 years. This is mostly due to the influence of big money and corporate interests in our government. This is not a difficult concept.

How has your life improved over the last 15 years? Is it easier now to care for your family? Has providing healthcare for you and your loved ones become easier or harder? Cheaper or more expensive? Have your wages (in real dollars) increased or decreased? What about child care? Are we providing more for our mothers in need or less? And although Democrats haven’t been in charge this whole time, they’ve proven to lack leadership in the face of great challenge.

Many would argue that the Clinton administration used the idea of the “welfare queen” to reduce the social programs that disproportionately benefit single, needy moms. This is not an attempt to discredit the economic prosperity that we experienced under his administration, rather to make the point that fighting Republicans is harder than saying you are fighting Republicans. Bill Clinton adopted the Republican talking point about welfare and using it as a political tool, made it central to his campaign. Today, we have more women living far below the poverty line trying to care for their children. They have five years, working thirty hours a week to “get back in line” then we exclude them from receiving benefits. This has worked against the ultimate goal of lifting our nation’s poor out of poverty. This system, instead, punishes those women and their children. What happened in the 1990’s with social programs in this country is a perfect example of corruption infiltrating the Democratic Party. If you take bribes from lobbyists, you are telling the American people that their needs are second to those of business. This is what Mrs. Clinton has done.

This party once stood for regular people.
This party once stood for the working class.
This party once stood with single mothers.
This party once swore to protect the rights and interests of the voiceless minorities.
This party once cared for our nation’s children.

We cannot be that party and be the party of big business. There is no room for compromise.

Many people ask me, “Do you think that Hillary Clinton is really that bad? You know about her early work with children.” The fact of the matter is that when you are evaluating a presidential candidate, you have to consider who they are now and what they will do in the future. As much as I respect Mrs. Clinton for her service, I must look to who she is now. I must recognize who she represents. And as a woman in America, whose right to vote has only been guaranteed for 87 years, I must make the decision that guarantees each woman after me a better life. That better life lies in economic equality. The next president will have to address the role that American business has played in women's struggles.

I have not disposed who I am voting for. It is each of our responsibilities’ to look at the candidates and their platforms. Look at where they stand on the issues and look at what they say. Do not become distracted by political language. We have a right to compare these people based on what they stand for and who they represent. If they appear frightened to use strong, clear language, you should be weary. We’ve been down that road. It’s time to change course.

Who will make the best candidate for women? The candidate who places poverty above all else.

This will take great courage and conviction. This will take challenging conventional thought. Our country needs us.

It is time to proudly serve.

As a clarification has been requested, I will not support Clinton in the primary. Until we have a candidate chosen, I will not reference who I will or will not vote for in the general election.

'Nuff Said.

DEALING WITH BUREAUCRACY- THE SIINGLES' DILEMMA

I could write about what a maroon Bush is, or how the Democrats never fail to engage in their own circular firing squad while the ReThugs have basically giftwrapped the POTUS as an early Christmas present if they could slow down long enough to stop shooting themselves.

I could. But I'm not going to. And here's why.

Yesterday, I had to deal with the IRS. Unless you're anticipating a tax refund, you don't want to think about the IRS until April, and if you're like me, April 15th, to be precise. When Bill Clinton, and now, George Bush, decided that more of the working class needed to make up for the taxes that the wealthy weren't paying, all I will say is that they weren't thinking about single people who make up the working class. Especially GeeShrubya. I remember that tax refund we all were supposed to get back in 2001 (the tax cut that got former Tresury Secretary Paul O'Neill fired for asking who was going to pay for it). Something about $300.00, right?

Well, since I owed the IRS about $250.00, they sent me a note, first telling me I was going to get the money; then a second note telling me they were going to keep the whole $300.00.

"So, where's the $50 you still owe me?" I whined on the phone.

"You're not getting it, even though you only owed $250.00" said the voice on the phone before I slammed it down in anger.

That, was but the beginning of my frustration with the IRS. I can't help it if I'm single, and I can't afford to own my own house yet. I can't help it if I don't have children. But, according to GeeShrubya (set into motion by Bill Clinton, I might add), if you're not married, don't own a home or other property, don't have kids - well, we're going to take 40% of what you earn out of your hide, or threaten you with jail if you don't pay up.

I remember watching a documentary where a couple had to actually get a divorce because the wife's deadbeat ex-husband had an IRS garnishment on his wages, and since they couldn't find the ex-husband, the IRS came after the ex-wife and her new husband (a doctor with a decent practice). How fair is that, since, by the IRS' admission, the husband incurred that tax liability after he'd divorced his wife?

It took girlfriend a literal act of Congress by Rep. Henry Waxman to clear that up. But if Waxman lets up, how much you want to bet the IRS will come after homegirl again? For taxes she doesn't owe, but her deadbeat ex-husband?

The IRS is but one glaring example of the lack of oversight on the part of Congress. It is an agency run amok. They harrass, snatch your bank accounts, garnish your wages, all without warning, and without proof that you actually owe them. If Congress does its job, there's real oversight and the head of the Agency would be having his ass fried on C-Span.

Now, the IRS are coming after me for tax years I've settled already, and the statute of limitations have run out. I sent in the paperwork to prove these facts.

After three hours on the phone calling everyone and their mother (besides breathing foul invectives under my breath) here's the "responsible goverment" we supposed to have:

Me: "So, that should clear things up, right? I proved I don't owe for those years."

IRS: "No, it means you need to agree to a payment arrangement until we can sort this out."

Me: "But, I've sent you the paperwork showing that I'm not responsible for those tax years. Why are you asking for a payment arrangement for tax years I've clearly proven I don't owe?"

IRS: "Until we get more documentation..."

Me: "What more documentation can I give you apart from what you requested from me?"

IRS: "We don't know yet. Just set up the payment plan or else we'll place a garnishment on your paycheck..."

Now, I'm pissed. So, we proceed to set up the payment plan, after they ask me how much do I make (gross, never mind that I take home 50% of that gross), what do I spend for groceries, rent, car payment, health insurance, property tax (yes, in the commonwealth of Virginia, even if you rent a damned apartment, you're paying property taxes if you live in Metro Northern Virginny). After demonstrating I'm pretty tapped out, I'm asked:

"Can you pay $1400 a month? Based on your gross, you can afford that?"

Me: (after hollering WTF at the top of my lungs) "If I had $1400 a month extra after paying my bills, I sure as hell wouldn't be on the phone to the IRS because I wouldn't owe shyt! Am I not supposed to do the normal things, like eating, on a payment plan?"

IRS: "Can't you borrow the money, or get a family member to co-sign a loan for you to pay off the debt?"

Me: "Let me get this straight - I'm supposed to incur more debt to pay off the IRS of a debt, by your own admission, you're not even sure I still owe? And you don't know me well enough to ask me if I have family members that will co-sign a loan to get me out of this. So, what happens if I'm right, and I don't owe this money - if I agree to a payment plan, and you find out you're wrong, do I get the money refunded to me?"

IRS: "Unfortunately, that might not be the case. So, I'll take that as a 'No.""

Me: (perverse female mode now) "You damned right, that's a "no"! And since you're insisting I go on this payment plan or get garnished, I offer to pay $200 a month. Not a penny more than that."

I need a drink at this point - I have developed a raging headache between my eyes, and I want to call out for my mother to make this boogey man go away.

Now, keep in mind, I pay a tax accountant out in California to look after shyt like this, right?

He's MIA. Not to mention FIRED, because he has me stuck like Chuck on this.

Now I know how it feels to be waterboarded, because I literally drowned in this bureaucratic red-tape, where they tell you to get out of debt by incurring more debt to pay it off. How sick is that shyt?

And, because of this problem, even in Bill Clinton's administration, I could still call on Congress to bail a sista out. Now, because we have a Congress with an 11% approval rating; with leaders who are more inclined to blow Bush as opposed to standing up to him and his bullying; and all the infighting going on, if Waxman were my Congressman, I would probably call him with this tale of woe with the IRS. Hell, I'd probably still call Waxman anyway, even though he's not my Rep. But he's at least going after bastards like the IRS. Even if I still lived in Oaktown, I could take this to Barbara Lee. And now, I have a glimmer of hope with Jim Moran (cause I'm in his district), but I've decided not to go to him until after Christmas (when I have to start paying on the arrangement, yes?) Cause I want Mr. Moran to demonstrate he has a smidgen of Henry Waxman's cojones in fighting for me, the tax-paying constituent strung up by the IRS.

For all of you facing similar troubles, let me hear from you. Even if you can rage, rage, rage about agencies like the IRS, I welcome you to comment. You're not alone in this.

Imagine, being punished by the Government because you're single. Jeez

OBAMA BATTLE FATIGUE THAT'S NOT MY OWN

I've been lagging a lot with my posts on my own blog (too busy posting comments on other's blogs, LOL).

But this South Carolina primary that Sen. Barack Obama is trying his damndest to lose, is really giving me a battle fatigue I'm not really used to experencing.

I've said in earlier posts on this very blog, that Obama was, at best, a triangulating twit, and got royally flamed for my trouble. My fellow bloggers, such as Skeptical Brotha, or the Field Negro, didn't take as many hits (well, the Field didn't, anyway, cause SB and I took major ones). We tried to warn everyone drinking Obama's kool-aid and treating him in rock star fashion worthy of Derek Jeter, that Obama wasn't who you thought he was.

Black Agenda Report, and Black Commentator (when Glen Ford was the Editor), was on Obama early and often.

He showed considerable amounts of disingeniousness when he denounced his membership in the DLC, yet he takes campaign contributions from them and continues to benefit from their largesse to this very day.

But, what is causing me this fatigue now, is continual reading of how he's managing to screw up his budding Presidential campaign in particularly craptacular fashion. Let's review, shall we?

He announced his candidacy on the same day as Tavis Smiley's "State of the Black Union" conference down in Hampton, Virginia. It was presumed to steal thunder from somewhere, because C-Span cut out on the SOBU and went directly to Springfield, Illinois, where Obama had also disinvited his pastor to the event. - CHECK.

His campaign took over, usurped, bogarded a fan's MySpace page that was set up exclusively for him and his campaign. Something about copyrights and ownership - CHECK.

His lack of action in confirming Supreme Court Nominees Alito and Roberts to the Bench - CHECK.

His campaign pledge not to pull troops out of Iraq until 2013 should he get the White House. - CHECK.

Sending campaign workers ignorant of the demographics where they are campaigning, and insulting the very voters they are courting - CHECK.

And now, his Gospel Tour featuring a "cured" ex-homosexual who's spouting anti-gay rhetoric, Donnie McClurkin - CHECK.

Follow that up with in trying to balance out the shyt storm he's stirred up, Obama invited an openly gay pastor to open up the event. Two problems with that, though. The guy is WHITE, and the event is being held in SOUTH CAROLINA. Are you still with me at this point?

If you're trying to appeal for tolerance between African-Americans (who have a long history of being homophobic), gays and religion, what Obama has done is definitely NOT THE WAY TO GO. Especially since it's looking like you couldn't find any gay Black people to speak to a Black audience about Gays, and therefore, further confirm the myth that being gay is a white man's problem.

I don't know if being gay is genetic, biological, or learned, so, even though I'm a Christian, I can't buy off on treating them as perverts, pedophiles or anything else, and what's more, I don't want to. It's like being born African-American - I didn't have a choice, and I can't cover it up, or live in a closet, either. When you see me, you see I'm African-American (although some Latinos have tried to claim me, LOL) but it is what it is.

What the good Senator from Illinois has done is create a campaign atmosphere where no one is going to take him seriously anymore. The ever-growing list of gaffes, faux-pas and flat out crapping up, have prospective voters thinking "If he can't handle his campaign, how the hell is he going to handle the problems that go with being POTUS?"

Everyone's sobering up off the rock-star kool-aid, Senator. They're seeing you for what you really are - A TRIANGULATING TWIT, who's trying to be all things to all people. What's really pissing people off is your ego maniacal refusal to scrap shyt and admit when you've blown it; not to mention your tendency to sweep things under a rug, and your timidity in taking firm stands on anything - always, you have to put your finger up into the winds of political climate to determine which road you'll take. Hell, you didn't even offer to back Sen. Christopher Dodd on filibustering FISA until Sen. Russ Feingold got in the boat first.

And it's always to upstage and distinguish yourself from your closest rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton. Not out of motivation for it being the right thing to do.

Senator, I'm tired of seeing you shoot your campaign in the foot, and be the real test of whether or not America is ready for an African-American president. Judging by the millions of votes Jesse Jackson got in 1984 and 1988 was more than enough evidence that America was at least willing to entertain the idea of an African-American president, so all you really had to do was get in it to win it.

Additionally, John Aravosis at Americablog is foaming at the mouth and calling for Obama's head (read his posts for most of this week), Pam Spaulding at Pam's House Blend (and yes, she's steaming), not to mention my friend, Jasmyne Cannick on her blog as well. John, being the gentleman he is, posted a blog entry well worth reading:

And for the record, Jasymine, Pam and Keith Boykin are three African-American gay activists who make better friends than enemies, as Obama, in his constant triangulation, is finding out.

Face it, Senator; I'm tired of labeling you as a "TRIANGULATING TWIT", but lately, you've left me no other options.

MEMO TO CONGRESS....YOU SUCK

Although I have my issues with Daily Kos, sometimes, their diarists posts diaries of sheer prosaic genius. They make my job as a blogger easy, because I can cross-post their diaries here.

Ladies and gentlemen, the latest from BondDad:

To Congress: You Suck

by bonddad

Tue Oct 02, 2007 at 04:19:50 AM PDT

I use to have respect for Senators and Representatives. They use to actually do something -- as in accomplish something good for the country. Unfortunately, that time has past at least for now. So, to everyone in Congress: you suck.

I first expressed my dissatisfaction with the new Democratic majority in this article on June 20 where I wrote:

But the Democratic victory in 2006 has left me feeling extremely hollow. More than anything I simply wanted someone to stand-up to the spoiled drunken frat boy currently inhabiting the While House. But the Dems blinked on war funding. While I understand the reasons for their backing down (not having a veto proof majority), I wanted someone at long last to say, "no". And the Dems didn't. So my disappointment grew.

The Dems have continued to disappoint. They have issued toothless subpoenas, failed to expose the extreme mismanagement of "War on Terror" fundinig and have now thrown in the towel in their opposition to Mr. 29%. For some reason, Democrats are afraid of standing up for what a majority of Americans want.

But the Republicans have done no better. They act in classic passive/aggressive manner. In one breath they are the oppressed minority, taken advantage of by the "liberal media" (save for Fox, and Rush, and Hannity, and Prager, and Medved....you get the idea). Yet with their next breath they use the same standard attack of personal destruction while acting as if they don't.

The final straw for me is the dueling resolutions about Moveon.org and Rush Limbaugh. To the Republicans, I would remind you of this funny little document called the Constitution, specifically the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

If you don't like the ad, fine. But you can't stop someone from printing it. It's that simple. And considering some of the ads you guys have run, well, see the above paragraph on passive/aggressive behavior.

And now the Democrats are offering a resolution condemning Rush Limbaugh, only to have the Republicans offer a resolution praising Rush Limbaugh.

To the Democrats, I would like you to please re-read the First Amendment.

I give up.

This is beyond madness.

This is beyond stupidity.

Do you guys wonder why no one likes politicians? Anybody?

This country has serious issues.

We have a war that a majority of Americans oppose, yet we continue to fight.

(crickets chirping)

We have a mountain of debt that we have to pay-off sometime.

(crickets chirping)

We have millions of Americans who have no health insurance.

(crickets chirping)

We have an ever-increasing gap between rich and poor.

(crickets chirping)

We have students leaving college with debt levels so high that they can't climb the socio-economic ladder.

(crickets chirping)

So, to Congress...please, take this very personally.

You suck.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Oops, that's right, it's the reason why I copied it here, LOL.

THE RUDE PUNDIT SEZ....

Ten Other Things That Surprise Bill O'Reilly About Black People:
Thus spake O'Reilly: "I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship. It was the same, and that's really what this society's all about now here in the U.S.A. There's no difference." So, in honor of Bill O'Reilly's approval that black people act like white people:

1. Black women also don't like when their bosses call in the middle of the night to tell them how nice it'd be to rub their big boobs with a falafel.

2. When you berate them on national radio or television, black men also get upset.

3. Black mothers also don't like it when their children are killed in useless wars.

4. When you throw your whiskey glass at the black help at the Hamptons, they cry in pain just like the Hispanics.

5. Black crackheads in Harlem will knife you for the change in your pockets just like the white crackheads on the Upper East Side.

6. Black people also died on 9/11 and are susceptible to the inflammatory rumblings of a rabid blowhard.

7. While you're beating black whores to death in your uncontrollable priapic rage before fucking their corpses, they also plead for their lives.

8. And the blood they bleed is red, too.

9. When they're enjoying fried chicken and ribs with a side of watermelon, black people are known to use napkins.

10. Black people don't need to say "motherfucker" to know who is one.

(By the way, the Rude Pundit's been to a lot of restaurants in the skeeviest neighborhoods in black, white, yellow, and brown sections of town and, unless someone spoke it in another language, no one's ever said, "Motherfucker, I want more iced tea." Iced tea generally doesn't evoke such passion, unless you're Joe Pesci in about 1992.)

Yeah, just when you think the Falafel Man can't open his already big mouth to shove his foot further down in it, he comes along and surprises you with how much of his foot he can eat.

JENA

This town is getting the same notoriety that its' neighbor over in Jasper, Texas, got seven years ago (James Byrd being dragged down the road behind a pickup truck for sport until he was decaptitated). And if it serves to embarass people into the 21st Century on issues of racism, I'm all for something good coming out of this mess.

The town's residents don't want to be known as a town full of bigots. Thanks to some high school students who were taught that bigotry, by residents of that town, well, Jena, you got the scarlett letter on your back now. 25, 000 African-Americans crowding your town to demand justice for six young African-Americans who are facing prison sentences meant for hard-core crimes (you know, like rape, murder, industrial-strength drug dealing, lying this country into a war) for getting into a school fight, earned you that Scarlett Letter of Bigoty.

Why don't bigots want to be publicly known as bigots? Saves people like me a lot of trouble and time trying to ID your behinds. Why do you need to hide behind a hood, robe and burning cross? Could it be, that maybe, just maybe, you know deep down in your hearts that you're supporting something morally wrong (like hating people because they don't look like YOU, perhaps?)

My father used to always say if he was given the chance of fighting a water mocassin and a rattlesnake, he'd take on the rattler every time, because the rattler lets you know he's going to fight back by rattling his tail. He used this analogy when talking about bigots, people.

Chopping down the tree where this fight got started doesn't eliminate that the local D.A., Reed Walters, went after those kids, now known as the Jena 6, for the wrong reasons, and that reason was race.

Some might compare this incident to the rape allegations against the Duke LaCrosse team made by an African-American stripper. I didn't think race should have played a role then - to me, it was a matter of a woman alleging she'd been gang raped by a bunch of athletes. Now, when you got the story, that racial epithets were hurled at the woman, that fact turned the incident racial, and rather than D.A. Mike Nifong looking for factual evidence he could take to build up an actual case against the Duke players, he used the racial aspect to ensure African-Americans re-elected him in droves, with the promise of continuing to vigorously prosecute this case.

Well, it worked. For a hot minute anyway. Wasn't long before his antics caught up with him, plus the fact that the Duke boys' parents had fat bank accounts to hire them serious legal representation. But, anyway...

Funny, how he (Nifong) used race to get re-elected, but the facts got him kicked out of office, out of a job, and out of his license to practice law elsewhere. But, the Jena 6 is different because race has been a direct factor from the outset. And while Reed Walters denies that fact, what's more important to note is that he's not doing anything to quiet down speculation about it being about nothing else than RACE.

Jena, Louisiana highlights, as did Jasper, Texas, that there are Americans who advanced to the 1960s and are still stuck there. It highlights that racism and bigotry is a taught science, and is passed down from generation to generation. Those of us born during the turbulent 60s are the generation who should have learned from mistakes made before we were born, and our parents taught us the determination not to repeat them. However, some were perfectly okay with training their children to be the next generation of Klansmen (ever see those film clips with babies in KKK hoods and robes? That should have been enough to scare you; those kids are in their late 30s and early 40s now, with spawn of their own)

Somewhere along the way, those lessons didn't get taught to a few white kids in Jena. But the lessons of bigotry did stick with them. That was where they got their motivation to hang a noose on that tree, after African-American kids decided to peacefull protest by sitting under that tree. Kinda like the kids did back in the 1960s at those lunch room counters at Woolworth's. And the Black kids got a noose to greet them for their trouble to protest bigotry.

The white kids thought hanging a damned noose is nothing more than a prank. Their parents probablly told them that. Tell that shyt to African-Americans who lived with those threats every damned day of their lives; despite laws being passed to outlaw such terrorism.

But you know what's worse than what's going on in Jena? The refusal of the so-called, "progressive" bloggers to give any time and space on their blogs to such a salient issue for African-Americans, for Latino Americans, for Asian Americans, for women, for the LGBT community, because just substitute "African-American" for any of the groups I've named here, and you have the same problem, if not worse. You have bigotry on a massive scale.

Pam Spaulding of Pam's House Blend called out her fellow progressive bloggers on their dereliction of duty in being the aspects of journalists we have been longing for, for the last 10 years. At best, DailyKos' MissLaura did a full post on Jena, today, but FireDogLake is mailing in the "Dog Ate My Homework" on their dereliction. HuffPo has been eerily silent as well.

My take on this - until "progressives" get their collective heads out of their asses on this one, you need to stop calling on us African-American bloggers to carry your water when it suits you to include us at the table. Until our issues are synonymous with your issues, (which means you don't get to pooh-pooh issues like the Jena 6, but we're expected to demonstrate outrage when Bill O'Reilly attacks you) you need to get that beam out of your eye before you tell me I have one in mine. Your silence tells me that my issues don't matter to you, so don't get upset if you come knocking on the door of Black Bloggers and we're not home.

BEING IN THE POSITION TO DO NOTHING

There has to be a reason why the Democratic Party won't stand up for basic civil liberties, freedoms and rights. There has to be a reason that they won't stand up to a President whose approval ratings are 25% (or less, depending on who you ask), with a VP whose ratings are so low they don't even register in polling.

When you see this Democratic Majority:

1. cave in to Bush on funding the Iraq quagmire
2. cave in on this wiretapping legislation that is so horrendous, Alberto Gonzales couldn't get then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to sign off on it because it violated the Constitution;
3. Threaten vetoes for legislation designed to help the working masses of people in America and have no back up plan
4. Get Pelosi and Reid to announce "Impeachement is off the table" and watch how this Administration continues to lie, cheat, steal and piss on the Constitution without impunity;

Then I think we have to look at other reasons why the Democrats are giving us, who elected them in 2006, the "finger".

If you're like me, you got pissed when Harry Reid said to the press on the Iraq authorization that "Americans had too high an expectation of the Democratic Majority" after hearing from constituents all over the United States about his piss-poor performance in "keeping his powder" dry.

Dammit, I'm choking on all that dry powder; how about you?

When there was a ReThug majority in both Houses of Congress, the Democrats had a ready-made excuse for doing nothing. Now that they're in charge, it is no different than when the ReThugs were running things; as a matter of fact, there is no difference between the ReThugs and the current Democratic Leadership.

When you want change, you go about effecting change. You create strategies for change, and you become responsive to the demand by the masses for change. I did not give up my hard-earned money, wear out shoe leather, monitor voting places for fraudulent turning away of voters, drive old people to polling places to vote, and everything else an activist citizen does, to get Democrats elected so they could piss on me and reprimand me for expecting them to do their jobs by challenging Bush on his BS legislation and running of this country. The fact that this current crop of Democrats are "all hat, no cattle" is pissing me off to heights of pissivity I've never imagined before now.

In pondering my frustration, it began to occur to me to ask what do certain Democrats gain by maintaining status quo? We see what it's getting faux-Democrat Joe Lieberman; a platform upon which to blackmail his Democratic colleagues in the Senate if he doesn't get what he wants. He always threatens to vote with the ReThugs - Reid pacifies him, and Holy Joe votes with the ReThugs, anyway.

So much for maintaining that majority. But when you see the obvious, and you have made your demand of those who you elected to public office, and they literally ignore your demand, for me, there is only one conclusion, and it's not about Reid and Pelosi being cowards.

I'm talking about liking the status quo and being unwilling to change it.

Most of you know that I've got this research project on accountability going with the Congressional Black Caucus because many African-Americans felt that for achieving the goal of getting 10% of Congressional Representation by African-Americans, we should have some bang for our buck. We couldn't figure out why we suddenly had a faction of that caucus voting directly in conflict with the long-held ideas and consensus of most African-Americans.

You know, stuff like quality education for our children, a safe and livable environment, jobs paying a living wage, universal healthcare.....STUFF LIKE THAT.

STUFF that is not unique to African-Americans, but is the desire of all Americans.

We wanted to know why there was a faction of that caucus that voted for Iraq war authorizations, knowing that money could have gone to fund all those things I listed in the above paragraphs; why they would vote for a bankruptcy bill that would worsen an already tanking economy; why they would vote to eviscerate our basic civil liberties and freedoms- many of which our ancestors fought and died for.

So, we began a project to start holding them accountable. While it's working, I find in my observations of Congress, that there may be an even bigger problem than demanding accountability on the part of our lawmakers. I think the Democratic Leadership actually likes being in this position of do-nothing. I think someone's benefitting from ReThug largesse, and to actually have to respond to the demand of the American people, would actually upset that largesse. What other explanation can there be of a Congress who still caves into a President that has no clothes on and the entire world knows it?

It is not about cowardice, or lack of spine or backbone. Plain and simple, there are some Democrats who actually like being in this position, because they have ready-made excuses for not listening to our demands, or for not representing our interests. Now the question is, who are they, and how do we go about getting rid of them?

You are not going to accept my vote and then piss on me and tell me it's raining. Those days are over - if they ever really got started. If you like being in this position, and you believe your constituents will understand, then dammit, switch parties. I would rather have a number of Democrats who walk their talk and who mean what they say, rather than a bunch of undercover ReThugs posing as Democrats, who spit on us every chance they get and tell us they're not spitting on us, despite evidence to the contrary.

If they like this status quo, let them "status" their "quo" somewhere else. They can enable the Bush Administration on their own dime and their own time, while someone else gets the actual job of legislating done.

AIDES GONE WILD...ELIOT SPITZER EDITION

This is a good leader, clear of mind and sound thinking:

Albany

WE made mistakes.

Though two independent investigations proved that no illegal activity occurred on my watch, it is crystal clear that what members of my administration did was wrong — no ifs, ands or buts.

I have apologized to Joe Bruno, the Senate majority leader, and now I want to apologize to all New Yorkers.

This is an excerpt from the New York Times; a public apology, written by the Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer.

No passing of the buck, no scapegoating, no seeking to escape responsibility, even if it wasn't Eliot Spitzer himself.

Which is more than I can say for the President of the United States.

NO REASON NOT TO IMPEACH

Okay, fine - I know Bush was exercising his constitutional privilage when he chose to commute Scooter Libby's sentence and make the man pay a fine. That just basically laid the groundwork for the full pardon he will grant Libby on January 20, 2009.

Funny how Bush remembers his privilages under the Constitution when he's not crapping on it.

Anyhow, Bush's latest flipping of the bird to the judiciary system, just compounds the continually piling on of offenses he's brought to the Presidency. This, after promising to restore dignity and honor to the White House, a "dignity and honor" that was supposedly trashed because Bill Clinton was getting his groove on in the Oval Office. At least, Clinton didn't go out and start wars because he wanted to, nor did he turn the White House into La Cosa Nostra and politicize the Justice Department, where the incompetent Alberto Gonzales still wears the job title of Attorney General, despite breaking the laws he swore to uphold.

That politicizing of the Justice Department also extended to a Supreme Court who has their collective foot on the gas to return this country to "those good ol' days" where Reamus shined shoes, Bessie cooked and cleaned someone else's house in order to support her family, and every person of color was spat upon, shat upon, beaten to the back of the bus that Black Men couldn't even get a job driving. Clarence Thomas actually believes that segregation and discrimination would have eventually been resolved ala Booker T. Washington.

W.E.B DuBois had other ideas about that. But, I'm digressing here. You want to know about why there's no reason not to impeach Bush and Cheney. Considering that Reagan's former NSA Chief, William Odom, is not only saying there's reason to impeach, he feels it's imperative, to the point, he's laid out a plan for impeachment, if the wimpy, spineless Democrats would only use it.

From DailyKos, via the Angry Rakkastan:

Retired three-star Army General William Odom threw Commander Guy under the bus today. And Odom is no ordinary three-star. From 1985-1988 he served as chief of the NSA under Ronald Reagan.

So take a deep breath, Red America: It’s going to be hard to spin this one.

Writing for Harvard University’s Nieman Watchdog, Odom called for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Now, he’s done this before, so that’s not where the news is. Rather, the good stuff came at the end of Odom’s piece—when he delivered a three-step plan by which Congress can force the President to give in. Here’s a summation of what Odom said:

1. Redefine what "supporting the troops" means.

2. Flatly refuse to appropriate war funds "for anything but withdrawal operations with a clear deadline for completion."

3. If that doesn’t work, Congress should impeach the President for "the ‘high crime’ of squandering the lives of soldiers and Marines for his own personal interest."

Well, well, now. Even the Reaganites have had it with GeeShrubya. But, GeeShrubya has never, really been all of the problem. We've had a predatory overlord running this country under the guise of being a Vice-President. A VP who shot his friend in the face...and made him apologize for shooting him in the face.

A Vice-President who just claimed he's not a member of the Executive Branch of government, when asked (subpeoned) to turn over his records regarding who visited him regarding the development of energy policy, and anything else that smelled of Eau De Criminale, with a touch of Fred Thompson's stale cigar and English Leather, Hai Karate or Brut.

A Vice President who told the now Senate Chair of the Judiciary, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, to go "F---" himself, and didn't draw a peep of a censure from the Senate for dissing one of its own members.

A Vice-President, who has a lesbian daughter that just made him a grandfather, and yet, he's in a government that's so homophobic, her partner, Heather Poe, has no rights as a human being because she's gay, and no parental rights to little Sam Cheney; how do you explain that?

It's bad enough that six children in this world has Richard Bruce Cheney for a grandfather. If my grandfathers were one soupcon of the evil that is Dick Cheney, I would shoot them both with those Winchester rifles they owned, and get off for justifiable homicide.

A Vice-President who's dared us to challenge him on anything pertaining to being constitutional, while he controls our "Decider Guy" like Edgar Bergen controlled Charlie McCarthy for the last seven years.

Well, in all honesty, I'd be a little intimidated, too, seeing as he shot his friend, Carl Worthington, in the face, and the guy came out of the hospital apologizing for all the trouble he caused Cheney by getting shot. WTH?

Read that DKos post. Then try to tell me there's no reason to impeach Bush and Cheney, when the evidence clearly shows there's no reason NOT to impeach. We will be forever derelict in our duties as American citizens if we do not.

CAN A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE BE IMPEACHED?

Ever since Roberts and Alito got confirmed to the bench, and ever since all of those 5-4 decisions with House Negro Clarence Thomas acting as the swing guy on all of them, I've been wondering, because Roberts and Alito were questioned about their ideologies and would they allow them to influence how they rule on the Court.

They said their personal ideologies would have no influence.

They've been influencing their opinions ever since convening of their session last Fall.

So, in other words, they lied, and they lied under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Isn't lying under oath to Congress is not only an impeachable defense, but one for which a person can be sent to jail?

And the Rude Pundit agrees with me:

As long as we're all talking about impeaching people, shit, let's gear up for a post-2008 impeachment of Roberts and Alito for lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee by saying, without any hint of hedging, that they believed in the principle of stare decisis, or respecting precedent. Shit, the tortured way in which Roberts attempts to wedge a respect for precedent into the integration case is a genius turn of Rovean rhetoric: "If I just say I'm upholding Brown, then no one can accuse me of not upholding it." Or, in other words, they won't say they're overturning precedent - they'll just make it impossible to enforce the precedent.

Well, I don't know about impeachment of anybody in this corrupt administration, since Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table...

BYPASS CONGRESS? HMMM....

Here's some food for thought. From Joel Hirschhorn, writing for OpEd News:

Are Americans Unready to Boil?

By Joel S. Hirschhorn

The frog-in-boiling water model helps us understand political upheavals: how citizens wake up early enough (or too late) to respond to social and economic oppression. Sometimes the greed and arrogance of Ruling Classes makes them careless and social waters heat too quickly. Sensing doom, alert citizen-frogs escape or revolt. Or they stay complacent and boil. The Bush Administration has turned the heat up on us, explaining why nearly 75 percent of Americans believe their country is on the wrong track and 70 percent think the economy is worsening.

Mexico is the richest Latin American country but has extreme economic inequality, which measures social temperature. Mexicans are jumping out of oppressive waters en masse, right into the U.S., exacerbating our rising inequality. The Chinese have learned to offset oppressive communist forces with materialistic capitalism – like our affordable materialism keeps Americans distracted and docile (with help from Chinese imports). In colonial America the greedy British motivated our Revolutionary War, but with oppression now coming from within, will Americans wait too long?

Some Americans keep warning us – people like Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Aaron Russo, Dennis Kucinich, Lou Dobbs, Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, Bill Moyers, Jon Stewart, and Keith Olbermann. They entertain complacent “frogs” and preach to the choir of alert “frogs” that also know the temperature is rising dangerously. Many of the former keep hoping that putting better Democrats or Republicans in office will get us back on the right track. Many of the latter are ready to jump to what our Constitution offers us: an Article V convention.

And once you know that plutocratic elites from both major parties have for decades opposed the Article V convention to propose constitutional amendments, YOU should favor what THEY oppose.

We frequently see a knee-jerk fear reaction to an Article V convention. Such fear is misplaced and baseless. Only the rich and powerful elites running and ruining our nation should fear a convention.

It is fatalistic to fear that a convention could make things worse by removing valued parts of the Constitution or adding terrible things. Naturally, no one knows with certainty what a convention might propose. But we do know with certainty that whatever a convention proposes must satisfy the Constitution’s rigorous ratification requirement. That two step process is part of the genius of the Constitution. Recall that a convention is the alternative to Congress proposing amendments. And what do Americans think of Congress?

A measly 23 percent view Congress positively. Expecting Congress to enact really good laws, spend our taxes wisely, and keep the president and executive branch agencies from abusing us is like a joke on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It is laugh-at-loud funny to put trust and faith in Congress. It matters not whether Democrats or Republicans control Congress. Nearly all members are under the thrall of moneyed interests. Congress is a national embarrassment. Our misrepresentatives are partners in corruption, dishonesty and oppression. Over decades they have allowed the presidency to accumulate imperial powers. Do you really believe they are worth $165,200 a year, with generous health and pension benefits?

Still, we live in a great nation. But great nations rise and fall.

America is no longer close to what it should be – or once was. It no longer fairly serves and protects all Americans. Too many Americans are working poor, hungry, homeless, poorly educated, imprisoned, debt-ridden, crime victims, facing economic insecurity, nonvoters, and lacking health care.

What we have is a plutocracy run by and for the Upper Class that sucks up a huge fraction of the nation’s wealth. Lobbyists ensure that public policy increases economic inequality and rewards corporate interests, even if it requires preemptive wars like the Iraq fiasco, sanctions massive illegal immigration, and sends good jobs overseas. That so many people escaping other nations (with hot or boiling water) want to come to the USA should not blind us to the creeping decline of our democracy and the heating of our social waters.

How much worse does American democracy have to get before public outrage demands what the Constitution’s Framers gave us in case citizens lost confidence in the federal government?

Maybe we need to seriously quite relying on Congress to act on the things that matter. I'm just not sure anymore, cause it's hard to make a complacent Congress listen to you, and then get in your face and tell you it's your fault for having high expectations of them to do the jobs for which they got hired.

ON BULLSHIT, PART II - LEGACIES

leg·a·cy (lěg'ə-sē) Pronunciation Key
n. pl. leg·a·cies

1. Money or property bequeathed to another by will.
2. Something handed down from an ancestor or a predecessor or from the past: a legacy of religious freedom.

I said I would continue this discussion on bullshit. Since I began discussing Pumpkinhead's pimping of his own father for financial gain while shytting on everything his father taught him, that led me to thinking about the legacies our parents or our leaders leave us, and our responsibility to do those legacies proud. So, I write with the second definition of legacy in mind.

It is bothersome when those who had fathers or mothers in positions of power believe they are entitled to succeed them when they retire or die out of their position because they are biologically related; for some strange reason, as a means to distinguish themselves from their parent, the child inheriting his parent's legacy means that he/she has a license to ill and shit on what their parent stood for.

You may want some examples. Look no further than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s children. Out of the four of them, ironicially the oldest, Yolanda, was the only one who seemed to have full understanding of the legacy her father left with his activism, and fully embraced that. She spent her life living out his legacy, and never displayed a need to crap on it like used newspaper. Her baby sister, Bernice, on the other hand, plays at the legacy, but compromises it when it's convenient for her to do so (i. e. lead protest marches against civil unions, while her mother is leading protest marches in support of civil unions because that's what Martin would have wanted.) Martin III has tried to embrace his father's legacy, but it appears that Dexter has all but run away from it. But at least they haven't attempted to crap on it as Bernice has, especially under the unction and mentoring of snake-oil Bishop Eddie Long out of the ATL. They uninvited Harry Belafonte from Coretta's funeral, because Shrub was attending and Harry had already gotten into his grill.

Belafonte paid for their father's funeral back in 1968 and supported them until Coretta got things together to support her family and her husband's legacy. But Bernice crapped on her father's legacy when she dissed Belafonte, one of her father's closest friends and still, at 80, a stauch fighter in the battle for civil and human rights.

Get the picture? Maybe not, so I'll give you a few more.

Let's take the Man-Who-Wanted-To-Be-Senator, but he wasn't "white" enough for the "devils" in East Memphis. I took the liberty to peruse the voting legacy of Senior while first doing research for CBC Monitor's report cards. The difference between him and his son were such that one wonders if Junior wasn't just found on Senior's doorstep, having been left there by wolves. Again, he shat on his father's legacy as a congressman, because he was so ashamed of his father, and the family who gave him that name he consistently cashed in on when convenient, he tried to check out of the African-American race and voted the straight ReThug ticket in a way that made GeeShrubya proud.

All for personal gain. No wonder he's still referred to in DC as the "Ho".

Which leads me to GeeShrubya. While Poppy can brag he was President and Chief Spook in the CIA back in the 1960s, Shrubya can brag that he literally sent this country to hell in a handbasket and is still going at it. I won't go into all of his craptacular screw-ups, but he can at least brag he had the job four years longer than Dear Old Dad, and really established the Bush legacy as that of being spectacularly f-wads.

Some Congresscritters are in Congress as parts of legacies, too. Except, when you point to Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), at least he's not crapping on the legacy left by his uncles and now, his father. So, if he could get it right on the legacy thing, what happened to the others like Rep. Lacy Clay (D-MO), or Kendrick Meek (D-FL), whose parents were progressives during their terms in office, only to hand it over to their sons who consistently flirt with the DLC, and engage in bullshit like this?

If a Congresscritter's kid gets the job after his parent has stepped down, maybe we won't be so disappointed to expect the kid to be like the parent, and honor the legacy they left, when they get caught up in the "bling"of being an elected official and foolishly determine they should not be like their parents, even if their parents were right in their decisions and performance as elected officials. Their attempts to distinguish themselves from their parents indicates they're ashamed of what their parent stood for, and they intend to play with triangulation, circular firing squads, getting paid and selling out for personal gain while screwing over the people who elected them, in an attempt to not be like their parent, but their own person.

Some of them need to emulate their parent, because being their own person has them so full of bullshit that they feed to us and tell us it's filet mignon.

Bush is worrying about his legacy as President right now. Needless to say, I wish someone would spare him the suspense and tell him that not only he gets rated as Worst.President.Ever., but also, Worst-American-Whoever-Lived-in-This-Country status.

And you see the legacies of Mike Wallace get shat on by his weasel of a son schilling for Fox Noise, not to mention the legacies of Cronkite, Rather, Brinkley and maybe Brokaw get trashed by those more fond of their Beltway Cocktail Weenies and parties, than dedicated to do their jobs and report actual news. You don't have to be biologically related to those who created the legacies. But if you're going to follow in their footsteps, you damn well have an obligation to do no harm to the legacy and/or profession they left behind. The willingness to demonstrate partisan postering in media reporting rather than be objective journalists is a warning to us all that not only facism will come wrapped in the American flag and carrying a cross, but will use the media to advance an agenda all of us didn't sign on for. I remember when Cronkite and Rather reported the news; it didn't matter what political affiliation they had. Many journalists didn't even register to vote for fear of impacting their objectiveness in their professions; they were that dedicated to the ethics of journalism and the public's right to know what the hell is going on and being done in their name.

Timmeh, Hannity and O'Reilly missed that class in J-school, I guess.

Finally, there's the legacy that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi inherited. The seat she holds in San Francisco came from a rich history of progressive politics, first being held by the late Phillip Burton, and upon his death, his widow, Sala Burton held the seat until her death in 1986. Pelosi was part of the circle that got both of them elected, and they set the foundation for her to get that seat in the '86 election upon Sala's death. Until Nancy got those leadership positions, she led the way on progressivism and progressive issues. Now that she's House Speaker, she negotiated the compromise that stripped out the timeframes for pullout in Iraq, and then insults us by saying she's not going to vote for a bill that she helped negotiate.

The whole Democratic Caucus basically told us to go Cheney ourselves - well, maybe we need to think about giving Pelosi, Rahm Emmanuel, Steiny Hoyer and Chuck Schumer timelines for doing what we elected them to do or else they get deployed elsewhere.

Like off Capitol Hill and sent home in 2008.

Pelosi's disingeniousness reminds me of Lieberman voting for cloture on Sam Alito's confirmation to the Bench, but not voting to confirm Alito to the Supreme Court. The real issue was voting on the procedure that would have kept Alito from coming up for a confirmation vote; just like the real issue with Pelosi was to keep sending Bush that Iraq funding bill as it was, without any changes and let him keep vetoing it - not to vote against the bill, itself.

Ah, legacies. Maybe those who leave them, need to consider who they are entrusting them with, because rather than uphold them, they allow them to disintergrate into bullshit.