Tag: African Americans

     There is a fine art to making a powerful point without making that point. Usually, the way to do this is by saying something and then immediately follow by saying “That is not why I’m saying”.

   With that in mind, I give you Congressmen Alan Grayson (Kick Ass-FL), who, in an interview with Anderson Cooper last night, made the point ( without making it ) that to turn away Obama voters from your doctors office is pretty much the same thing as hanging a sign that says “No Blacks Allowed”

GRAYSON:     Well, in fact, where he lives, in Mount Dora, which is in my district, many, many of the Democrats who live in Mount Dora happen to be African-Americans.

    So, by saying that he will not treat somebody who supported Obama, he’s saying that he’s not going to treat a large number of African-Americans in the community

crooksandliars.com

Bold text added by the diarist

    A short transcript and more below the fold

While we were all shopping and arguing over whether or not fruitcake is fit for human consumption, Obama decided to go to bat and fight for someone.   Who was he fighting for?   The torturers of the Bush administration, that’s who.   Oh, and anyone else in the United States government who wants to torture and violate the human rights of others.

As Chris Floyd reports, The United States is now legally free to torture whomever it wants, thanks to the Supreme Court of the land, and the political power weilded by Barrack Hussein Obama.

It happened earlier this week, in a discreet ruling that attracted almost no notice and took little time. In fact, our most august defenders of the Constitution did not have to exert themselves in the slightest to eviscerate not merely 220 years of Constitutional jurisprudence but also centuries of agonizing effort to lift civilization a few inches out of the blood-soaked mire that is our common human legacy. They just had to write a single sentence.

Here’s how the bad deal went down. After hearing passionate arguments from the Obama Administration, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the president’s fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a “suspected enemy combatant” by the president or his designated minions is no longer a “person.”  They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever — save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials.

And people wonder what this “hatred” is towards Obama.   “I didn’t get my pony?” they ask?   Ha.  They have no idea.   I hate Obama for the same reasons I hate Bush.  Why?  Because Obama IS Bush.   His administration is one and the same as the Bush administration, and I mean that quite literally when it comes to justice, human rights, and the wars.    ALL THE SAME PEOPLE are running the show, and we know that Bush’s Justice Department is a bunch of corrupt, human rights-violating  flunkies recruited from the ranks of the “religious right”.    And they are still in office, fighting for their hatreds

Now Obama is not just passively letting these people continue the Bush/Cheney yearas, he is going out of his way to enable  them.  

He is putting his name to the most egregious violations of human rights in this nation’s history.  

What’s really pathological is that he is shitting on the very system that freed African American people, of which he is a gene-carrying member.  

More from antiwar.com:

US: Guantanamo Prisoners Not ‘Persons’

by William Fisher,

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal Monday to review a lower court’s dismissal of a case brought by four British former Guantanamo prisoners against former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the detainees’ lawyers charged Tuesday that the country’s highest court evidently believes that “torture and religious humiliation are permissible tools for a government to use.”

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., had ruled that government officials were immune from suit because at that time it was unclear whether abusing prisoners at Guantanamo was illegal.

Channeling their predecessors in the George W. Bush administration, Obama Justice Department lawyers argued in this case that there is no constitutional right not to be tortured or otherwise abused in a U.S. prison abroad.

Ironically, the first African American president is promoting a policy frighteningly familiar to the Dred Scott decision of yesteryear:

“Another set of claims are dismissed because Guantanamo detainees are not ‘persons’ within the scope of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – an argument that was too close to Dred Scott v. Sanford for one of the judges on the court of appeals to swallow,” he added.

The Dred Scott case was a decision by the United States Supreme Court in 1857. It ruled that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants – whether or not they were slaves – were not protected by the Constitution and could never be citizens of the United States.

Thanks, Obama.   Next time someone calls you an “Uncle Tom” I simply won’t cringe.  I might even nod.   I might even say “hell yeah.”

courtesy Rahim on the Docks

Newark mayor Cory Booker couldn’t wait a week. NJ Governor Jon Corzine was just voted out in an widely-reported odd-year race that was more about suburban control of the state than about taxes, Wall Street, corruption, or any of the issues that Republican challenger “Krispy Kreme” Christy pushed.

The media-hungry mayor hastened to disassociate himself from the fellow Democrat that he had supposedly been supporting–and also to throw his own hat into the ring for the next gubernatorial race. This is pretty clear evidence that he’s going to spend the next four years running instead of governing.

Cory “Hollywood” Booker has a lot of incentive to run for state-wide office. Not least is the fact that he’s reduced nearly all his bridges in Newark to smoking wrecks. He lies–repeatedly and blatantly–at every public appearance.

At this year’s Labor Day March in Newark, he represented himself as a “friend of labor” at the rally to the very unions he’s attempted to bust (while trying to upstage US Congressman Donald Payne–an actual “friend of labor”–who was the parade’s Grand Marshall). His most repeated claim is to be pro-education as he destroys city public schools in favor of charter schools owned by political contributors. He professes to support citizens against greedy and corrupt businesses, while turning off tenants’ water because their landlords had unpaid water-bills and taxes (see The Community Fights “Hollywood” Booker Over Right to Water… Newark Wins!).

And all the while, Cory Booker maintains that, as mayor, he has reduced street-crime.

This is, perhaps, the biggest lie of them all. Anyone who actually lives in Newark has witnessed the ever-increasing levels of street-violence. Booker has allowed his Giuliani-esque police force to run amok in the neighborhoods. The sharpest single example of the anti-community policies carried out by Police Director Gary McCarthy, an NYC transplant, is the police murder this past May of Bashire Farrell. Farrell was beaten to death by Newark police while in handcuffs.

Defenders of McCarthy’s police policies insist that neighborhood residents who’d witnessed the beat-down “had to be lying” because they claimed that the cops used tasers. “Stun guns are not standard issue in Newark.” As though they are not for sale to anyone with a badge at cop shops down on Williams Street or anywhere in the state.

Last Saturday saw a rain-soaked march to the 5th Precinct on Bigelow Street, called by Mr. Farrell’s aunt, Sharonda Smalls. It was far broader than simply a demand for justice for her nephew. Ms. Smalls reached out to families of other victims of police brutality, as well as the People’s Organization for Progress (of which she is a member) and other community-based groups.

“We’re all family,” Ms. Smalls said. “The moment you hear the horrifying news about a loved one, you become a member of my family.” She went on to talk about the many neighborhood residents who’ve suffered at the hand of the local police. But Smalls also broadened the issue beyond the precinct and even Newark, when she expanded the battle by talking about Amar McLean who was handcuffed and then “shot in the back, execution-style” by deputies of the Essex County Sheriff’s Department.

“The 5th Precinct has a reputation for arrested suspects never making it to the station house,” Lawrence Hamm, POP’s chairman said. “This has got to stop! This is Newark, 2009 — not Montgomery in the 1950s.”

“We need to hold elected officials accountable for what happens on their watch,” New Black Panther Party spokesman Zayid Muhammad said. “And if Cory Booker can be reelected after this, the shame is on us!”

The broader lesson is very clear. Cory “Hollywood” Booker is interested in Newark as a stepping-stone to state-wide or even national office, and that’s all. His “tough love” policies are designed to polish his image at the expense of Newark residents. Because he’s young, photogenic and well-spoken, folks like Oprah Winfrey have taken to him and are promoting him as a kind of “America’s Mayor,” Rudy Giulani-style.

And we can’t forget the other thing besides name recognition that campaign for high office in this country requires. Money. Lots of money. And Cory Booker has the closest thing you can get to a public money-laundering scheme without winding up in jail. Here’s how it works: well-meaning out-of-towners, following Oprah’s example, donate money to help provide better schools for Newark. Booker takes their money and directs it to privately-owned, for-profit charter schools owned by campaign contributors. These folks turn around and make fat contributions to Booker’s electoral war-chest.

It is our responsibility in Newark to stop Cory “Hollywood” Booker’s climb to power–on our backs–right here and now. We have to expose his money-laundering schemes and the policies he promotes because they look good to well-meaning NJ suburbanites. And we have to fight for our own needs and interests, because he sure won’t be doing it.



Crossposted from Fire on the Mountain, where there are some nifty pix of POP in action.