Detroit Monster
Pamela Hilliard Owens
My first reaction when I saw the stories about the protesters doing their occupy Wall Street thing was to raise an eyebrow, sniff, then mutter to myself, "Really? Hmm. Interesting." Then move on to the next story. Because at the time this particular story didn't move me much, and there didn't seem to be much direction or focus to the whole campaign other than a whole lot of pissed off folks who were sick and tired of being sick and tired of corporate greed to the point of where they just couldn't take it anymore 'cause it made them wanna holla and... Wait a minute. I get it now. One of the occasional drawbacks of growing older (which too often is accompanied by having made too many compromises just to get from Point A to Point B that you swore you would never make when you were younger) is this regrettable tendency, unless heavily guarded against, to lose touch with that youthful no-compromise attitude. This is quite similar to the I-ain't-got-a-damn-thing-to-lose-anymore attitude one tends to develop when...well...when you just don't have a damned thing to lose anymore. Having lost my job two months ago, I am being swiftly reacquainted with the college-aged me who led Black Student Union protests down the street against the Klan and chastised fellow students to leave the lunchroom and that sorry-assed food they were hewing on and join us in protest. Anyway, when you lose touch with that (provided you ever had it), chances are you have forgotten that not all protests are meticulously planned in advance, complete with position papers, a speakers roster, PowerPoint presentations, and press releases. Most uprisings are ordinary folks rising up against a perceived injustice, and that's how it always begins. Over time some form of what is commonly recognized as an organization may take form - then again it might not - but the overall point of the uprising is to draw dramatic attention to an egregious wrong that must be corrected. Take the Tea Party for example. To say they make me sick would be quite an understatement, but one thing that cannot be denied is that this is most definitely an uprising and it has been outrageously successful to the point where it has scared the Republicans to death, crippled the Democrats, and single-handedly redirected the national agenda. Sure, word is out that they are receiving considerable funding from wealthy arch-conservatives, but this wouldn't be the first time that an uprising received funds from the more well-to-do. After ll, where is the money supposed to come from? Taxes? And where do you think the money came from for many of the activities engaged in by the civil rights movement? Just ask Harry Belafonte and he can easily tell you where a lot of that money came from since he was one of the principal fundraisers for the movement. Martin Luther King delivered a ton of speeches to raise money for the cause. So here's the thing to keep in mind whenever you hear critics saying that the Wall Street protesters just don't have it together and their demands are all over the place and they're too damned disorganized; revolutions/protests/uprisings are not known for their flawless organization. Especially not in the early stages. What they ARE known for is getting the fire started. Will they ultimately be successful in what they are trying to accomplish? Let's just say that laying waste to the American corporate culture of greed will require...damn...I don't even know all of what it will take to bring down that house. But I do believe that if there is even an inkling of a chance that any progress at all can be made toward this goal, then the Wall Street protests are the definite first step in the right direction. Because if the Tea Party can set fire to common sense and compassion as successfully as they have in such a short time, torching the middle class and the poor in the process, then certainly if enough of us raise our voices and begin to disrupt, somebody will have to listen to us too. Because as both the Tea Party and the Civil Rights Movement have made abundantly clear; you don't have to be in the majority to effect tremendous change, you just have to be pissed off and fearless enough not to take 'no' for an answer. This is being cross-posted at Black Liberal Boomer
The Black Liberal Boomer Blog
Fed up with Wall Street
The Tale of Two Labor Day Rallies
On Labor Day 2011, the New Hampshire Tea Party held a rally and declared that the tea party movement was "not dead" and that they would ensure that the tea party won the 2012 election. What if you gave a rally and almost nobody showed up?
On Labor Day 2011, the various unions in Detroit held a rally and declared that the union movement was "not dead" and that they would lead the effort to ensure that President Obama wins the 2012 election. What if you gave a rally and over 12,000 people showed up?
Where does Obama go from here?
In Pundit World, particularly TV Pundit World it seems, the common wisdom appears to be that if President Obama doesn't somehow manage to accomplish the near impossible task of reducing the level of unemployment from its current level of 9.1 percent down to somewhere in the 7 percent range, then his chances for re-election are seriously at risk because no president since Depression-era President Franklin Delano Roosevelt has ever won a second term with unemployment higher than 7.2 percent.
And in even semi-normal times I believe the persistence of stubbornly high unemployment rates creeping into the 2012 campaign season could very well be enough to cut short Obama's residency at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But these are hardly semi-normal times, as most of us are well aware. As an excellent article in the Washington Monthly points out, it is far too simplistic to assume that Obama's presidency is at risk simply on the basis of that statistic alone. Not that it is irrelevant, but context does matter:
From the June 2, 2011 'Political Animal' a regular Washington Monthly column by Steve Benen:
No president since FDR has won with a high unemployment rate because no president since FDR has had to govern at a time of a global economic crisis like the Great Depression or the Great Recession. The U.S. has seen plenty of downturns over the last eight decades, but financial collapses are fairly rare, produce far more severe conditions, and take much longer to recover from.
In other words, Obama has a good excuse. Of course the unemployment rate won’t be below 7.2%. Under the circumstances and given the calamity Obama inherited, that’s impossible.
The more relevant question is what Americans are willing to put up with. In 1934, during FDR’s first midterms, the unemployment rate was about 22%. The public was thrilled — it had come down considerably from 1932. By 1936, when FDR was seeking a second term, the unemployment rate was about 17%. How can an incumbent president win re-election with a 17% unemployment rate? Because things were getting better, not worse.
Now add to that the current anemic field of Republican challengers and, well, I mean...
It's true, nothing is guaranteed, and politics is a crazy game where what appears to be certain one minute can be seriously in doubt the next. That's because there are so many variables, so many moving parts. So no, I'm still not willing to go out on a limb and say Obama is guaranteed re-election even if unemployment is 20 percent because, as much fun as that would be to toss that out there, it would pretty much be the type of cheap political theater that passes for commentary in some quarters. Not that I'm always above cheap political commentary, because it really can be a lot of fun, but now's not the time.
So here's the thing, as I see it; I find it both amazing and amusing that hardly any commentators on any of the usual shows ever reference the near historic weakness of the Republican challengers when discussing the dire prospects for Obama's re-election. It's all about how unless Obama gets those job numbers up, his days are done. But even when you factor in the disenfranchisement of the purist progressive branch of the Democrats, the possibility that there may be far fewer younger voters turning out this time around because the rock star veneer is now gone, the rabid Tea Party and their antics, etc., I must confess I'm still not quite feeling the jitters everyone keeps telling me I should feel just yet.
Let's start with Mitt Romney. Leading members of his own party, including John Boehner, are leading an effort to defeat him. His supporters make the term 'lukewarm' seem like a gross exaggeration. No passion nowhere. Lots of dough, but no fire to make that dough rise. And if the Tea Party are the new gate keepers, then it's a given that they will never accept the man who designed the model for Obama's health care plan because the debt ceiling so-called 'negotiations' make it plain that these folks don't compromise on not one damned thing. I hear ya knockin, but ya can't come in.
Then there's Michelle Bachmann. Sure she's the Tea Party mouthpiece, the Tea Party has the Republican organization by the throat, and I suspect there's a better than even chance she will win Iowa in the primaries. And if she goes on to win New Hampshire from there, which is essentially in Mitt's back yard, then Mitt's campaign may be in serious need of that health care he can't seem to recall having anything to do with. Because when you're on life support, that life support involves rather serious health care measures. But even if Bachmann plucks those two political plums from the campaign tree, or even if she rolls all the way into the nomination as Queen Victorious, her chances against Obama are slim at best. The Tea Party may have the House Republicans by the throat, but any number of polls have shown that the rest of America has pretty much grown sick and tired of them. True, Obama's numbers are struggling too, but he's the incumbent, not to mention the incumbent who just broke fundraising records last quarter. What happens next quarter will be very telling.
And then there's Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Herman Cain. Newt Gingrich, and some other guy. Not much to say there, and enuf said. Oh, and then there's the apparent possibility that Texas Gov. Rick Perry may decide to jump in the deep end, even though he sees no problem inviting lunatic preachers to join him on stage at a prayer rally for America. One of those lunatic preachers, Pastor John Hagee, believes Hitler and the Holocaust were God's way of bringing Jews back to Israel. Remember this, Rick; God don't like ugly, and he's not too fond of being mocked either. Look it up the next time you're skimming the Cliff Notes version of the bible.
The thing to remember is that just because folks are mad and broke doesn't mean they're stupid. Sure Obama has made his fair share of missteps, and he has for sure worn out his welcome with the adult in the room business, let alone his over-willingness to negotiate with folks who hate his guts. But in the end he is still so far ahead of every last one of the Republican challengers in his potential ability to manage this crisis that it's not even a fair fight. Now if there was a Ronald Reagan in the pack? Or even a George H.W. Bush? A Nixon? Someone of that ability and political savvy who was also in good with the Tea Party and knew how to manage them? Then I'd be scared to death because then Obama might need a handwritten letter from God accompanied by a few thunderbolts to get re-elected if he didn't manage to significantly turn things around by early next year. But with this current crop of midgets and anklebiters?
Maybe if somebody turned on the soundtrack to Jaws...
This is being cross-posted in Jack and Jill Politics and Detroit Life
Inmates running the asylum in the Republican party
By now it should be painfully obvious to most reasonable Republicans that they have allowed the inmates to run the insane asylum that has become the new headquarters for the Republican Party. And unless they take action yesterday to snatch back the reins of control from the rabid Tea Party crazies whose eyes roll around in their head like loose marbles (first clue that sanity no longer resides between their ears), then God only knows when the Republicans will have a cohesive, legitimate organization again. And I suspect even God may be scratching his head at how a group of people who reference His name so often you'd think they were on His staff could screw things up so badly.
The way Obama has played - and continues to play - the Republican leadership like a well-tuned violin is exposing how incompetence, stupidity and, frankly, racism, has been placed under the hood in place of an engine that might actually work. For months leading up to this precipice of the debt ceiling negotiations, the Republicans bragged and thumped their chests, claiming that they were going to bring POTUS in line and force him to swallow whatever they chose to shove down his throat. But now, all of the sudden, they're the ones choking on their own vomit and searching desperately for a cure to an ailment that they themselves created. I might say the same thing for certain progressive groups who continue to work hand-in-hand with the Tea Party to discredit and dismiss POTUS despite his increasingly apparent ability to out think and outmaneuver them at every turn.
You may have already seen the recent fundraising numbers detailed in an earlier JJP post by rikyrah which shows that Obama and the Democratic Party is raising so much money so fast from so many sources (average individual supporter donation of $69 adding up to a last quarter haul of $86 million, including more than 200,000 new contributors who didn't donate in 2008) that POTUS has already broken his previously monumental fundraising record. This, of course, brings into question the oft-heard refrain that Obama is losing his base of supporters because we have all, apparently, completely lost faith in the man and have no trust whatsoever in where he is leading us.
Really?
So if that's the case then where is all this loot coming from? The Tea Party? The same report indicates that 98% of all the money raised came from donations of $250 or less, which means it is not coming from some deep pocket fat cat with a checklist of what he expects in return. Do you have any idea how many $250 donations it takes to reach $86 million? It's 344,000. Any idea how many $69 donations it takes to reach $86 million? It's 1,246,376.8, so let's call it 1,246, 377 since I've never met a .8 person before.
So the total number of grassroots donors is somewhere between 1.2 million and 344,000, and likely closer to the 1.2 million mark. That is one hell of a lot of individual donors for just one quarter, especially to support a man who is supposedly so wrong for America.
Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, you've got this going on:
From the July 12, 2011 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Six fake Democratic candidates put up by the Republican Party to buy time for Republican state senators subject to recalls accomplished that job Tuesday, but none of them did the unexpected and knocked off a real Democrat.
Candidates backed by the Democratic Party won all six Senate primary elections, all but one of them by substantial amounts. They'll all go on to face the Republican incumbents on Aug. 9, in an attempt by Democrats to regain control of the state Senate and put the brakes on Gov. Scott Walker's agenda.
I bring this up only as the most potent example of the prairie fire that I believe is going on across the country in areas that had been seized by the Republicans just eight months ago in November 2010. Republicans not only overplayed their hand, they misread the hand they had been dealt. To compound matters, those Republicans on the Hill who actually had some concept of what the real score was chose to seal their own lips with masking tape and let the inmates run the asylum, I guess crossing their fingers and hoping that maybe crazy might get mistaken for lucky.
Not this time.
Special "Countdown" Comment by Keith Olbermann
On Wednesday October 27 2010, Keith Olbermann of MSNBC, showed everyone why it is imperative that we keep as many of the Teabaggers OUT OF the United States government as possible. Here is the video of his "Countdown" special comment:
This is America? Driving While Muslim...
Continuing with the new far-right meme that everyone who is Muslim is a dangerous terrorist, America now has people who commit attempted murder of cab drivers who just happen to be Muslim. On Tuesday, August 24 2010, Ahmed H. Sharif, aged 43 and a resident of Queens, New York, picked up a fare. Mr. Sharif is a driver for Yellow Cab Company. His passenger, 21-year-old Michael Enright, a resident of the New York suburb of Brewster, asked Mr. Sharif if he was a Muslim and was he fasting for Ramadan. When Sharif said yes, Enright attacked him and slashed his neck with a folding hand tool.
THIS is the America the far-right, Faux News followers, and Palin supporters want? Who is next in their sights as they encourage their supporters to "reload" and stay "armed and dangerous" and "take America back"?
Muslims as responsible for 911 as Christians were for slavery
I've never been much of a supporter of the reparations argument, the one that says black folks are owed some serious back pay for what this country did to our ancestors during slavery days (and beyond, if we're being honest about this). It's not that I don't think the United States doesn't have a debt to pay, because I do. It's just that I know this is a losing argument and a losing strategy in a country run by assorted folks and powers that will never allow this to happen, so let's move on to something that can actually make a difference. And that has a chance of actually occurring before Jesus comes back.
So what does this have to do with Ground Zero? With Muslims wanting to build a mosque on the supposedly hallowed ground of where the 911 attack took place? Well, here's the thing; one of the favorite arguments I've heard put forward by whites who oppose reparations and who don't believe that white folks of today should bear any responsibility for the white folks of yesteryear is that today's white folks aren't the white folks of yesteryear, so why punish them?
And at least on the face of it, they have somewhat of a point. I believe it does get more complicated than that, but let's just stick to the basics for now. And the basics of this argument couldn't be any more clear: why punish me for something I didn't do? I may be white, but hey, it wasn't me, pal. I don't even own any rope, let alone a bullwhip.
Or something like that.
