A few days ago Brother Mitt was back here in Michigan- or 'back home' as he likes to say when trolling for votes - and he said the cutest thing; he said that in Michigan the "trees are the right height". He also said that he loves lakes. And cars. And dogs, especially when strapped to the roof of..
OK no. He didn't say the part about the dogs. That was just mean.
But the rest? Yeah, well...he kinda did...
This is your brain. This is desperation. This is your brain on desperation.
This is President Franklin D. Roosevelt talking about the "promises" of the Republicans then to "keep Social Security" and "take care of the elderly and unemployed"...yeah, right. Sounds like he's talking about today's Republicans: same empty promises, same desire to gut Social Security and all of the other social safety nets. "Trust us"!
It really doesn't get any better than this for the Democrats.
Yesterday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) stirred up a hornet's nest of controversy when he wouldn't allow a woman to be placed as a witness for a committee hearing he was chairing about contraception. He laterdefended his decision by saying the woman's testimony would have been irrelevant because she "wasn't a member of the clergy" and therefore really wasn't qualified to be on the panel of imminently 'qualified' men. Men who were called to testify about contraception in a hearing called to 'examine' the Obama administration’s new regulation requiring employers and insurers to provide contraception coverage to their employees. Because only men are qualified to testify about this religious freedom issue (Issa's words) which actually has nothing to do with women but is strictly about "what would Jesus do?" or something like that.
Riiiiiight.
In truth, the only purpose of Issa's hearing is to put Obama's new policy on trial in an election year when the Republicans are running out of issues and are stuck with a pack of bad jokes in place of candidates. Sad, but in an entertaining sort of way.
“Where are the women?” the minority Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., asked early in the hearing.
She criticized the Republican committee chairman, Rep. Darrel Issa, for wanting to “roll back the fundamental rights of women to a time when the government thought what happens in the bedroom is their business.”
“We will not be forced back to that primitive era,” she said.
Issa bristled at the charge and said Democrats could not add their witness because she was not a member of the clergy, but a student at Georgetown. He also faulted Democrats for not submitting the name of the witness, Sandra Fluke, in time.
Among the witnesses invited by Issa to attend the hearing was a representative of the Catholic bishops, who oppose the Obama administration “accommodation” on birth-control coverage. Joining them are many other men of other religions. Not invited, complained Democrats, were representatives from the Catholic Health Association, which is run by a woman and actually runs the Catholic hospitals, nor Catholic Charities, both of which said Friday they supported the president’s plan.
Issa’s staff sent a letter to the Democrats, saying, “As the hearing is not about reproductive rights but instead about the administration’s actions as they relate to freedom of religion and conscience, he believes that Ms. Fluke is not an appropriate witness.”
Darrell Issa issa crazy.
At this point all I want is for the Republicans to keep handing the Democrats ammunition. They really are making this too easy.
I have to say that the issues raised by my JJP colleague Marcus Touissaint in his recent post about Michigan wannabe Senator So Bad Pete Hoekstra raised one hell of a good point, namely who is the woman who agreed to do this ad and why did she agree to do it?
Well, now we know a little bit more, although we still don't know the actual identity of the mystery woman in the ad. Still, this story is getting better. According to this recent piece in TPMLiveWire, the Asian American woman in Hoekstra's quite obviously racist political ad that he ran during the Superbowl as part of his campaign effort to bring down Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, has stirred up some serious anger from at least one Asian American Republican elected official in Michigan by the name of Alicia Ping. As it turns out, Ms. Ping is a Republican Washtenaw County Commissioner and had apparently been "leaning toward" supporting Hoekstra's until she saw that ad. Now she's so upset that not only is she withdrawing her support of Hoekstra but she's considering giving that support to some unknown challenger in the Republican primary who is given little chance of winning. And to be quite honest, I seriously doubt a racist Republican ad will hurt Hoekstra among Michigan Republicans, and Asians aren't exactly a majority in this state.
But once Hoekstra gets past the primary is where things are likely to change, especially going up against Stabenow, whom many Republicans have tried and failed to bring down before mistaking her for an easy mark.
From TPM Live Wire:
According to Ping, Hoekstra is about to be in a world of controversy thanks to his decision to stand by the ad, despite the widespread outrage. She told me that leaders from across the minority populations of Michigan will jointly condemn Hoekstra in an open letter tomorrow, guaranteeing that the negative press surrounding the ad — and his response to it — will be back on TV for another day at least.
It’s possible that Hoekstra, trying to avoid the embarrassing defeat he suffered in 2010’s gubernatorial primary, welcomes the attention on the assumption that cries of racial intolerance from the left will help him court conservative primary voters in the Senate race.
But Ping makes it clear that the ad’s negative effects cut across party lines. In our conversation, she outlined just how hurtful Hokestra’s ad — with its depiction of a Chinese woman speaking broken English — is to Americans of Asian descent.
“You know when we were growing up they used to have that show Sha Na Na,” Ping said. “On the show was a guy named Bowsewr and I remember they used to have these skits [depicting Asians] and I would say to my mother, ‘why do they do that?’ And she would say, ‘Well, it’s supposed to be funny because they’re making fun of the Asian-Americans.’ And I just looked at her and I didn’t understand it because my grandparents were working so hard to get their citizenship and learn the language. And it’s really hard to learn the English language, and it’s really hard to go the other way, too.”
“So when you lived through this, growing up in the American culture and have somebody so easily make fun of it, it’s just painful because these people are working really hard to try to achieve the American dream,” Ping continued. “And to so blatantly be able to cast it off isn’t acceptable.”
None of which quite offers a satisfactory answer to Brother Touissaint's question of why, exactly, did the Mystery Asian Ad lady agree to do this? Did she think that it was some sort of a gag? Was she not told that this was going to be for a political advertisement supporting a Republican candidate who obviously cares little or nothing about offending Asian people? Is it that she can't speak English so she didn't know what she was saying? But then just because she doesn't speak English (if that's the case) hardly equates to her being stupid, which she would have to be to agree to do a television ad in a language she doesn't understand endorsing someone she may hardly know.
But chances are she speaks English just fine. Matter of fact I'm gonna go out on a limb and say I bet she probably speaks better English than I do, especially when she went to the bank to deposit that check. And she certainly doesn't seem to mind lending her smiling face to Hoekstra's campaign website, debbiespenditnow.com. Yep, Hoekstra thinks racism is such a marketable commodity he has chosen to make it a selling point in his campaign. Racism, according to Hoekstra, is good for the Michigan economy. Others apparently disagree...
A chorus of ethnic, religious and cultural groups called on Hoekstra to pull the ad that's slated to run for two weeks in Michigan. Democrats (as well as some Republicans) blasted the GOP candidate for advancing stereotypes by using a Chinese-American actress speaking in broken English.
Politicos questioned how the GOP frontrunner would neutralize the spot some say "backfired."
"The message he wished to get out has gotten lost in the discussion," said Grand Valley State University political science professor Erika King. "I'm sure it's not what the campaign expected would happen."
King said it's too early in the campaign to know what kind of impact the ad will have politically. It depends, she said, on whether he can neutralize the fallout and how the opposition uses it.
There was one immediate effect. Washtenaw County Commissioner Alicia Ping on Monday was so offended by the ad she donated money to Hoekstra opponent Clark Durant's campaign.
"For him not to know that this is unacceptable, either he doesn't care or he doesn't get it," said the Saline Republican, who is Chinese-American.
On Monday, Hoekstra stood by the $144,000 statewide ad buy, blaming the "left" for bringing up racial concerns to divert the conversation from the real issue he was pushing of Democratic incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow's spending record.
Maybe Pete might want to consider renaming his really cool racist campaign site "PetieLoseItNow.com"
So...what do the Republicans do now?
This just in from the Washington Post:
In the most impressive surge for the job market since early last year, the United States added 243,000 jobs in January, far more than economists expected. The unemployment rate dropped to 8.3 percent, the lowest in three years.
Hiring accelerated across the economy and up and down the pay scale. The high-salary professional services industry added 70,000 jobs, the most in 10 months. Manufacturing added 50,000, the most in a year.
It was the most jobs added since and March and April of last year, when 246,000 and 251,000 jobs were created. Before that, the last month with stronger hiring, excluding months skewed by temporary census jobs, was March 2006.
The government said hiring was stronger in November and December by 60,000 jobs than first estimated. It was also stronger over the past two years than previously thought. The economy added 1.82 million jobs last year, nearly twice as many as in 2010.
The unemployment rate was down two notches from the 8.5 percent reading last month. It was also the fifth consecutive month the rate has fallen, the first time that has happened since late 1994.
Employers have added an average of 201,000 jobs a month in the past three months. That’s 50,000 more jobs per month than the economy averaged in each month last year.
Perhaps Mittens should brush up on his Al Green tunes...
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While the Republicans and especially the Republicans in Congress are whining, complaining, blaming and obstructing, President Barack Obama is getting the job done--literally!
PRINCETON, NJ -- Job market conditions improved in the United States in January as Gallup's U.S. Job Creation Index reached +16, its highest point since September 2008.
This morning the President spoke at the University of Michigan, which is why it made sense for him to hammer as hard as he did on the critical issue of student loan debt which, as he pointed out, is now surpassing credit card debt as the number one debt burden faced by middle class families. But another thing Obama said in the speech caught my attention just as much, namely that he and his wife, First Lady Michelle Obama, would never have accomplished all that they have without the assistance of a first-rate education. Never would have happened.
This is supremely important for struggling families of color, because the Obamas, similar to most African American families, hardly came from privilege. They are well-acquainted with struggle. Matter of fact, you might even say they are on a first-name basis with financial strain and struggle. But despite their challenges, Obama was able to attend Harvard, where he excelled. His wife - and her brother Craig - both attended Princeton where they excelled as well. Obviously this education made a massive difference in all their lives, just as a college education makes a significant difference in the lives of most who are able to attend. Matter of fact, as the President pointed out in his speech, the unemployment rate of college graduates is half the national average, so that tells you something right there.
But what also tells you something is that college tuition is swiftly escalating far beyond the affordability range of many families, and that's not just Harvard or Princeton but many state institutions as well. Matter of fact, according to Obama, 40 states cut their education budgets last year, forcing state institutions to make up the difference by significantly raising tuitions, thereby putting college out of reach for many. Others are now forced to choose whether it is worth it to get a college degree if it means paying back that loan for practically the rest of their lives.
If something is not done to address this issue, this country will become even more divided along race and class lines than it is already. So many of our children are already receiving grossly inferior education in public schools that have been practically abandoned by all except the poor non-white kids who have no choice but to attend. To slam yet another door in their faces is unacceptable. But the rates of college tuition are now so high that it is not just these kids who cannot attend, but kids from slightly better off middle class families who may have even attended private schools.
If you want a better idea of what we're looking at if we continue down this road, consider what this excellent article in The Nation had to say about discrimination in education:
How Educational Redlining Works
The racial and economic segregation that sets the stage for redlining is now firmly in place. One in four American children lives in poverty, nearly 60 percent more than in 1974, and the number of people living in severe poverty has reached a record high. A national study released in 2009 found that one in fifty children in America is homeless and living in a shelter, motel, car, shared housing, abandoned building, park or orphanage. The proportions in some school districts exceed one in ten, and the number is growing rapidly.
Furthermore, this poverty is concentrated in increasingly resegregated communities and schools. More than 70 percent of black and Latino students attend predominantly minority schools, and nearly 40 percent attend intensely segregated schools, where more than 90 percent of students are minority and most are poor.
Poverty rates make a huge difference in student achievement. Few people are aware, for example, that in 2009 US schools with fewer than 10 percent of students in poverty ranked first among all nations on the Programme for International Student Achievement tests in reading, while those serving more than 75 percent of students in poverty scored alongside nations like Serbia, ranking about fiftieth.
The schools identified as low-performing not only serve a growing underclass of impoverished families; they also typically do so with fewer state and local dollars per pupil than wealthier districts around them. Unlike high-achieving nations that fund their schools centrally and equally, most American states spend three times more on their wealthiest schools than they do on their poorest.
To take a page from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., this is why we can't wait.
So now Newt Gingrich's scorned second wife, Marianne, has stepped forward to say that Newt wanted an open marriage? Oh man, this is just entirely too much fun.
Newt's marital escapades have been fodder for late night comics for quite some time, but this little twist reveals something about the former Speaker of the House that I never would have guessed of someone who so closely resembles the Pillsbury Doughboy; Newt Gingrich is a pimp.
You think I'm lyin'? Check this out from the Washington Post:
In the four weeks after Gingrich asked for a divorce, the couple saw a counselor, and he seemed to vacillate, Marianne Gingrich said. She had learned the name of his paramour, Callista Bisek — now his wife — although Newt Gingrich never talked about her by name. Callista had worked in the House for a GOP representative from Wisconsin, her home state, and then as clerk of the House Agriculture Committee.
After one counseling session, Newt Gingrich asked Marianne for an “open marriage” — though not in exactly those words — so that he could see other women, she said.
Marianne, who had attended services in a Baptist church with her husband, refused.
“He said the problem with me was I wanted him all to myself,” she said. “I said, ‘That’s what marriage is.’ He said [of Callista], ‘She doesn’t care what I do.’ ”
Marianne said, “He was asking me for an open marriage, and I wouldn’t do it.”
Later, Marianne said, her husband told her, “In a few years I’m going to run for president. She’s going to help me become president.”
Pimpin' ass Newt. Go 'head, boy! Iceberg Slim ain't got nothin' on you. Ice-T neither. Matter of fact, they just pretenders to the throne, man. You got the crown fo' sho'. I mean, you didn't just call up your wife and ask for a divorce after sleeping around, which is hardly worthy of a raised eyebrow in these times. No, you asked your wife for a divorce, but then you did some swift pimp calculus and figured it was better (mo pimplike) to go for the gold and keep her in the stable while you roped in Callista so you could throw a saddle on her back and ride that helmet head of hair all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Da-dada-DAAAA!
You need your own theme music, Newt. Seriously. Is 2Live Crew still on the scene?
This is being cross-posted at Black Liberal Boomer
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January 18
1949: Congresman William Dawson is elected Chairman of the House Expentiture Committe, becoming the first African-American to head a standing committee of Congress.
1966: Robert Weaver takes the oath of office as Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson and becoming the first African-American to serve in the official Cabinet of a U.S. President.
1990: Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Berry is arrested in a hotel room on a charge of purchasing and using cocaine; he was tried and convicted on the highly contested misdemeanor charge.
I'm sure most of us have heard much of this before, but during the week of the Dr. Martin Luther King Holiday, and as we ease on down the road of the 2012 campaign season, the bitter subject of mass black incarceration needs to be raised at full volume once again. Many props to one of my favorite shows, Democracy Now!, for airing this recent episode focusing on this topic, featuring longtime activist Randall Robinson and Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow.
A few things to note in the following excerpt of the interview, which should really be heard in full, and the number one thing to note is that half of all young black men in America (or at least half in major urban areas which is where most of them are) have been incarcerated or are on parole. As Robinson points out, this not only affects their ability to vote, it has the potential to wreck the rest of their lives. If we still cherish the oft-stated belief that our children are our future then we're either looking forward to a swirling storm or a blank canvas, depending on how your glasses operate.
From Democracy Now!
AMY GOODMAN: And let’s talk about what happens when you have a person going to prison, how that affects the rest of their life. First of all, just the astounding figures. It’s something like half the young black men in this country have been incarcerated or on parole, probation. Half?
MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Yes. Well, you know, in large urban areas, half or more than half of working-age African-American men now have criminal records and are the subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. In some cities like Chicago, it’s been estimated that nearly 80 percent of working-age African-American men have criminal records and are now part of this undercaste, a group of people, defined largely by race, that are relegated to a permanent second-class status by law.
Discrimination is bad enough, but when it becomes legalized then it borders on government-sanctioned terrorism.
Detroit Monster
Pamela Hilliard Owens