Linebacker53's Blog

  

Congratulations! Just one week ago we asked you to launch a massive movement against pardons by signing a petition to your Representatives. Over 46,000 of you took action and Congress took notice.

On Friday, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) introduced H.Res. 1531  urging President Bush not to pardon senior administration officials for crimes the President authorized. It notes:

President George W. Bush may have committed crimes involving the mistreatment of detainees, the extraordinary rendition of individuals to countries known to engage in torture, illegal surveillance of United States citizens, unlawful leaks of classified information, obstruction of justice, political interference with the conduct of the Justice Department, and other illegal acts

and that

Bush has been urged to grant preemptive pardons to senior administration officials who might face criminal prosecution for actions taken in the course of their official duties

Nadler's resolution urges Congress to investigate those crimes and any pardons relating to them, and urges the Attorney General (current or future) to appoint an Independent Counsel to prosecute those crimes.

These are major steps towards holding George Bush, Dick Cheney, and other senior officials accountable for their crimes and thereby upholding the rule of law, rather than allowing Presidents to become dictators.

Rep. Nadler's leadership is crucial because he chairs the House Judiciary Committee's  Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties  and can use his credibility and clout to move the resolution forward either during the lame duck session in December or when the next Congress convenes on January 6.

So our next step is to persuade as many Representatives as possible to co-sponsor H.Res. 1531. Please sign our new petition:
http://www.democrats.com/nadler-pardons?cid=ZGVtczQ4ND
k2NWRlbXM=

We also encourage you to call your Representative at 202-224-3121 and speak with the Legislative Assistant who handles Judiciary matters.

If your Representative says (s)he will co-sponsor, please let us know by commenting on our resolution "whipping" page:
http://www.democrats.com/nadler-pardon-resolution

 

Thanks for all you do!

Excerpts from a 'Jack & Jill politics' newsletter:

...as hard as it is to accept a black president, it's even harder to accept a black first lady. First Lady has always held a beloved sentimental mother/wife of the nation symbolism. Conservatives are not ready to have to look at this very BLACK woman with her degrees and her fierceness and see her as the epitome of the American mother/wife.

This will be a first for white people. They do not want this black woman in the White House as their first lady. That New Yorker cartoon was [actually] about Michelle - she was its focal point...look closely... she is the leader, the one starting the 'revolution' they want you to imagine....

MSNBC's Chris Matthews said; in the course of covering the Obama candidacy, 'He(Barack Obama) brings none of the ' bad stuff, you know?'  By 'Bad Stuff', he meant the legacy of [whites] enslaving Africans in this country, keeping them as second-class citizens until 1965, a mere 11 years before this country celebrated its 200th anniversary. You know, 'the original sin', or ' the birth defect', as Condi Rice called it. Barack escapes this 'bad stuff' only because his mother was white and may have had ancestors involved in the slave trade; and also because Barack's father was not African American. He was full blooded African and therefore Barack had no ancestors enslaved by America - and so the white guilt factor is missing when they think of him. HOWEVER, NO SUCH LUCK WITH MICHELLE!

Michelle Obama is a direct threat and lightening bolt against White Superiority. Because, she's Black. VISIBLY BLACK. But it's important to note, she does not, in any way, shape, or form, contour to the acceptable Black Pathologies that enable White Supremacy to sigh with relief. [welfare mother, fatherless child, druggie, etc.] Michelle was raised in a neighborhood. In a home. With TWO parents. No child revolving in and out of jail.

Raised by a Black man who not only provided for his family, but did so, WITH A DISABILITY. Her mother had a working class job - secretary- but it was taken ONLY after she had seen her youngest child settled into HIGH SCHOOL.

Michelle Obama's poise, her confidence, her aura - that was created by that humble Black man, who by all accounts, adored her. He told her that she is worthy, and so, wh en you have that told to you by the first man who loves and protects you, you seek that validation of that in your choice of mate,  you'll settle for nothing less, and Michelle hasn't.

Michelle Obama, doesn't fit any of the acceptable Black pathologies.   And when you don't fit the acceptable Black pathologies, then you must be destroyed. Michelle Obama has become the face of the Black America whose existence is routinely denied by this country. Think about it.

In ONE generation, the face of this 'Invisible America' has gone from living on the top floor of a bungalow, to the possibility of living in The White House. And yet, Michelle Obama, refuses to say ' I'm special', in order to give white America its usual security blanket [that she is one of the exceptions rather than the rule], So what should be done?

Beat her down into submission?

Michelle Obama represents everything we black women want our daughters to be. When we stand up for her we stand up for ourselves. No other women in the world are more neglected and abused as African women period. Michelle looks like [our] daughters, her daughters look like us. We love the way Barack looks at her we adore the way he looks at his daughters.  The Obama’s represent the hope that we can be loved by our men and they will support us in whatever we do. Little African American girls need a vision and
dream of what it is like to be loved by a man who looks just like them.

Is America ready for a First Lady who looks like her? A regular black woman?  Not a passable biracial curly haired girl that they call black, but a regular black woman from the south side of Chicago ? With dark skin?

Is she going to be the face of The Woman on the largest pedestal in the country?  A self-confessed 'loud-mouth' black woman? If the Obama’s succeed, it turns white supremacy upside down. And not because a black man is in the White House; but, because a black woman will be there who didn't have to come in the back door to lie in bed with the president.

On a date that has been written down in history for the nation and for Barack Obama it has also been written down in the Shelby County Court House in Memphis, TN, but not for the winning election. The President-elect and future 44th President of The United States would likely have been ‘bench warranted’ for not appearing in court for an illegal placement of campaign advertisements by City of Memphis Public Works employee, Gene Soucy, who cited Barack Obama personally and not the local campaign office for the placement of campaign signs. According to Soucy, 512 campaigns signs were illegally placed on right-of-way land in the city which is an area that the City of Memphis prohibits. The bench warrant was actually intended to be placed for Barack Obama on the date of election, November 4th, the same day he was voted into office as President of the United States of America by millions of voters.

After the original court date of November 4th was missed, a bench warrant in General Sessions Div 14 was about to be ordered by a judge who was sitting in for Judge Potter who was absent from his bench that day.

However, the date was reset after attorney Javier Bailey a Democratic State party member was notified.

Currently, under the booking number 08725976, the name Barack Obama is listed under a Class C action for Illegal Posting/Advertising Signs with now a court date of December 8, 2008 at 1:30 PM

Simply Beautiful



Eugene Allen, 89, a retired White House butler, tries on his old tuxedo for a photo. Allen, who served eight presidents during a period when America 's racial history was being rewritten, is marveling at the election of Barack Obama.

Now retired, he started when blacks were in the kitchen.
By Wil Haygood
November 7, 2008

Reporting from Washington -- For more than three decades, Eugene Allen worked in the White House, a black man unknown to the headlines. During some of those years, harsh segregation laws lay upon the land. He trekked home every night to his wife, Helene, who kept him out of her kitchen. At the White House, he worked closer to the dirty dishes than to the Oval Office. Helene didn't care; she just beamed with pride.

President Truman called him Gene. President Ford liked to talk golf with him. He saw eight presidential administrations come and go, often working six days a week. "I never missed a day of work," Allen said. He was there while racial history was made: Brown vs. Board of Education, the Little Rock school crisis, the 1963 March on Washington , the cities burning, the civil rights bills, the assassinations. When he started at the White House in 1952, he couldn't even use the public restrooms when he ventured back to his native Virginia . "We had never had anything," Allen, 89, recalled of black America at the time. "I was always hoping things would get better." In its long history, the White House -- note the name -- has had a complex and vexing relationship with black Americans.

"The history is not so uneven at the lower level, in the kitchen," said Ted Sorensen, who served as counselor to President Kennedy. "In the kitchen, the folks have always been black. Even the folks at the door -- black." Before Gene Allen landed his White House job, he worked as a waiter at a resort in Hot Springs , Va. , and then at a country club in Washington . He and wife Helene, 86, were sitting in the living room of their Washington home. Her voice was musical, in a Lena Horne kind of way. She called him "Honey." They met at a birthday party in 1942. He was too shy to ask for her number, so she tracked his down. They married a year later.

In 1952, a lady told him of a job opening in the White House. "I wasn't even looking for a job," he said. "I was happy where I was working, but she told me to go on over there and meet with a guy by the name of Alonzo Fields." Fields was a maitre d', and he immediately liked Allen. Allen was offered a job as a "pantry man." He washed dishes, stocked cabinets and shined silverware. He started at $2,400 a year. There was, in time, a promotion to butler. "Shook the hand of all the presidents I ever worked for," he said. "I was there, honey," Helene said. "In the back maybe. But I shook their hands too." She was referring to White House holiday parties, Easter egg hunts. They have one son, Charles, who works as an investigator with the State Department..

"President Ford's birthday and my birthday were on the same day," he said. "He'd have a birthday party at the White House. Everybody would be there. And Mrs. Ford would say, 'It's Gene's birthday too!” And, so they'd sing a little ditty to the butler. And the butler, who wore a tuxedo to work every day, would blush.
"Jack Kennedy was very nice," he went on. "And so was Mrs. Kennedy." He was in the White House kitchen the day Kennedy was slain. He got an invitation to the funeral. But he volunteered for other duty: "Somebody had to be at the White House to serve everyone after they came from the funeral."
The whole family of President Carter made Helene chuckle: "They were country. And I'm talking Lillian and Rosalynn both." It came out as the highest compliment.

First Lady Nancy Reagan came looking for him in the kitchen one day. She wanted to remind him about the upcoming state dinner for German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. She told him he would not be working that night. "She said, 'You and Helene are coming to the state dinner as guests of President Reagan and myself.' I'm telling you! I believe I'm the only butler to get invited to a state dinner."

Husbands and wives don't sit together at these events, and Helene was nervous about trying to make small talk with world leaders. "And my son said, 'Momma, just talk about your high school. They won't know the difference.'" The senators were all talking about the colleges and universities that they went to," she said. "I was doing as much talking as they were. "Had champagne that night," she said, looking over at her husband. He just grinned: He was the man who stacked the champagne at the White House.

Colin L. Powell would become the highest ranking black of any White House to that point when he was named Reagan's national security advisor in 1987. Condoleezza Rice would have that position under President George W. Bush. Gene Allen was promoted to maitre d' in 1980. He left the White House in 1986, after 34 years. President Reagan wrote him a sweet note. Nancy Reagan hugged him tight.

Interviewed at their home last week, Gene and Helene speculated about what it would mean if a black man were elected president. "Just imagine," she said. "It'd be really something," he said. "We're pretty much past the going-out stage," she said. "But you never know. If he gets in there, it'd sure be nice to go over there again." They talked about praying to help Barack Obama get to the White House. They'd go vote together. She'd lean on her cane with one hand, and him with the other, while walking down to the precinct. And she'd get supper going afterward. They went over their Election Day plans more than once. "Imagine," she said. "That's right," he said.

On Monday, Helene had a doctor's appointment. Gene woke and nudged her once, then again.. He shuffled around to her side of the bed. He nudged Helene again. He was all alone. "I woke up and my wife didn't," he said later. Some friends and family members rushed over. He wanted to make coffee. They had to shoo the butler out of the kitchen. The lady he married 65 years ago will be buried today. The butler cast his vote for Obama on Tuesday. He so missed telling his Helene about the black man bound for the Oval Office.

Haygood writes for the Washington Post.

Associated Press/AP Online

MILWAUKEE - The head of the Wisconsin firefighters union resigned Tuesday over a racist comment he made the day after Barack Obama became the first African-American elected president.

Rick Gale, who had worked on Obama's Wisconsin campaign, apologized to the union and the public in his resignation letter.

The Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin said Gale's comment was "offensive, inappropriate and racially insensitive and does not reflect the views of our union."

Gale, who headed the union for eight years, admitted in his letter that he used the "single racially charged word" during a private, casual conversation while having drinks with several board members Nov. 5.

"The word has no business in my vocabulary and I should not have used it - not even in private," he wrote.

"In doing so I let myself, the PFFW Executive Board and the entire membership down," he added. "I am sorry. I have asked the PFFW and the public to accept my deepest and sincerest apology."

Gale, a lieutenant with the West Allis Fire Department, said he was also resigning from all the governmental and public boards on which he served.

Those posts include membership on the State of Wisconsin Retirement Board as an appointee of Gov. Jim Doyle, an ardent supporter of Obama throughout the presidential race.

Obama was endorsed for president by the International Association of Fire Fighters, whose general president Harold Schaitberger issued a memo to its Wisconsin affiliates commenting on the resignation by saying Gale's comments were "inexcusable."

"However, this is also an opportunity to restate clearly my fundamental goal of building a union that is free from all forms of bigotry and bias," Schaitberger said.

Gale did not return phone messages left Tuesday at his home and office by The Associated Press seeking comment.

Iraq's approval of the security pact shows that Obama's diplomatic approach is already paying dividends. Now, he must talk to Iran.

Nov. 18, 2008 | Barack Obama isn't even president yet, but he has already helped bring the Iraq war closer to an end.

On Sunday, the Iraqi cabinet voted overwhelmingly to approve a security agreement calling for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces by the end of 2011. The agreement, which the U.S. has been negotiating with Iraq for almost a year, could still be rejected by the Iraqi parliament, but it has a good chance of passing.

This is a momentous event. If the pact is approved, it would set in motion the end of America's long and calamitous Iraq adventure. And it also clearly demonstrates why Obama's diplomatic, realistic approach to the Middle East is infinitely more effective than the Bush administration's hard-line, ideological one.

One of the major stumbling blocks to the agreement has been Iran. Iran wields great influence with Iraq's Shiite-dominated government. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's ISCI party, formed in Iran by exiled Shiite Iraqis, maintains close ties to Iran. As long as Iran thought that the U.S. would continue its threatening, militaristic stance toward it, it was determined to undermine any agreement. This made perfect sense: Why would Iran encourage a U.S.-Iraq rapprochement if it left the U.S. in a position to use Iraq as a base to attack it?

Bush's hard-line Iran policy thus directly contradicted his Iraq policy. By threatening Iran, he gave it every reason to make trouble in Iraq. His hawkish stance toward Iran simply ignored the unpleasant reality that Iran has both enormous influence over Iraq's government and legitimate security concerns over what happens in its neighboring state. It also ignored the fact that Iran and the U.S. actually have a shared interest in a stable Iraq. And by refusing to engage in diplomacy with the charter member of the "Axis of Evil," he prevented the U.S. from trying to work out an agreement with Tehran that would maximize Iraq's stability while U.S. forces leave.

The Sunday security pact represents a humiliation for the once-triumphalist Bush administration, which has always denounced timetables for withdrawal as tantamount to surrender. The administration that dreamed of using Iraq as a launching pad to invade Iran was forced to include language in the pact stipulating that U.S. forces will not be allowed to launch attacks on Iraq's neighbors from its territory.

But despite these concessions, if John McCain had won the election, Tehran, fearing it would be attacked anyway, would probably have pressured Maliki to scupper the agreement. But Obama won -- and Iran signed off on it.

Obama, unlike Bush, has suggested that he will talk to Iran. It is far less likely that he will attack it. Moreover, he has called for a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq in 16 months, not the 36 called for in the security pact. These factors made it possible for Iran to accept a security pact that it would otherwise have rejected. As Karim Sadjadpour, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the New York Times, "If George Bush's presidency were going to continue through 2012, I think people would be a lot more concerned. Having this administration really lightens the blow for the Iranians."

Ironically, one of the few tangible achievements that Bush may be able to point to in Iraq was thus made possible by the election of someone who rejects Bush's entire approach to foreign policy.

This episode holds lessons that go beyond the security pact. It demonstrates that, contrary to the Bush doctrine, the U.S. cannot simply impose its will by using force or the threat of force --  indeed, that the threat of force can undermine our national interests. It shows that moralistically dividing the world into good guys and bad guys, while emotionally satisfying, is reductive and self-defeating. In the real world, states are driven by a complex mixture of self-interest and ideological conviction. By ignoring the self-interest of problematic states like Iran, the Bush administration succeeded only in acting against its own self-interest in Iraq. Painful reality forced it to grudgingly recognize this only at the end of its disastrous tenure.

Obama has a chance to start his administration far ahead of where Bush's ended. As the Mideast analyst Robert Dreyfuss noted, Tehran's acceptance of the security pact sends a message that it is open to negotiating with Obama. He must seize this opportunity. Iran plays a key role in the region, from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A diplomatic breakthrough with Iran would make it easier to achieve all of America's goals in the Middle East.

Talking with Tehran would represent a 180-degree turn from Bush's demonizing approach. And much of the foreign policy establishment continues to support that hawkish strategy -- including Dennis Ross, a senior Middle East advisor to the Obama campaign. Citing Iran's alleged pursuit of a nuclear weapon, these figures -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- insist that the new president must maintain the same all-stick, no-carrot approach toward Iran maintained by Bush. Obama, who himself used bellicose rhetoric about Iran during the campaign, will thus be under considerable pressure to toe the conventional line on Iran.

But that would be a disastrous mistake. In an important new policy recommendation, a group of leading Middle East experts including Gary Sick, Thomas Pickering, James Dobbins, Juan Cole, Trita Parsi and Stephen Kinzer called for the U.S. to reject threats of force and sanctions and engage in a robust diplomatic engagement with Iran. Saying threats and sanctions "have not solved any major problem in U.S.-Iranian relations, and have made most of them worse," the American Foreign Policy Project paper argues that "Paradoxical as it may seem amid all the heated media rhetoric, sustained engagement is far more likely to strengthen United States national security at this stage than either escalation to war or continued efforts to threaten, intimidate or coerce Iran." And they point out that the best way to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions -- which are murky in any case -- is within the context of a larger U.S.-Iranian dialogue.

If Obama continues the U.S.'s hard line toward Iran, he will be applauded by many in the foreign policy establishment as sober and sensible. But he will be strengthening the hand of Iranian rejectionists, and threatening U.S. interests throughout the region -- including our troops in Iraq. He is about to inherit Bush's Iraq mess. The last thing he needs to do is make it even harder to clean up.

Credit: Gary Kamiya

In this modern day, one would think racism is a chapter in a history book. however it is alive and well in rural Georgia. I see it every day in the grocery store where I work ten (10)hours a day.

Obama has campaigned on hope and change. This is what I hope: that the white ladies will stop holding up my checkout line by counting their change twice in case tha' black gal shorted them.  Thats my hope and change.   Just last year, an elderly white lady was about to pay for her items, pulled out a credit card, then suddenly whipped it out of my hands declaring she wanted to pay cash...on her way out I overheard her tell her husband; "them coloreds might take our credit card number and buy stuff with it."

Please let Obama straigthen this nation out for all of us so, my daughter doesn't have to work in a grocery store.  Maybe she can get a good government or union job.

When  Obama was voted in, my Mother, Auntie, and I held hands and cried. That's the night the Whites went out in Georgia...   was our joke.

Note:  For those of you who read this, this is not a blog I generated but one generated by a young lady (proudmoonbat) in Georgia

So, what ever happened to Linda Tripp? She's the woman made famous for taping her “friend“; Monica Lewinsky's confessions about adult activities with then-President Clinton. Well, someone managed to track her down. The Web site Wowowow found out that Tripp now owns a store in Middleburg, Va., with her husband. The store's called the “Christmas Sleigh” which specializes in handmade and handcrafted traditional holiday wares. Tripp answered an email from the Wowowow staff, asking for her impressions about President-elect Obama.

She emailed back: “I am so very proud that as a nation we might finally be getting it right. I believe Sen. McCain is an American hero and a deeply honorable public servant, something one seldom sees in Washington. I also believe he could have been a strong president. That said, I believe President-elect Obama possesses an instantly recognizable purity of soul that, coupled with his brilliance, and, of course, his eloquence, brought quite unimaginable and long-awaited magic to the country, transforming red and blue states, quite literally, into 'The Color Purple.' I believe the entire country will stand behind him.”

Remember before the election, all those conservatives said crime would be rampant if Obama was elected? Turns out they were right, and they’re the ones causing it.

From California to Maine, police have documented a range of crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to attacks. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders. This includes cross burnings, schoolchildren chanting “Assassinate Obama,” black figures hung from nooses, and racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.

Crime committed by McCain supporters is on the rise, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.

There are thousands of examples of racial crime going up, Mark Potok highlights several.

Four North Carolina State University students wrote anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free speech expression, including one that said: “Let’s shoot that BLEEP in the head.”

At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: “Osama Obama Shotgun Pool.” Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. “Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count,” the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written “Let’s hope someone wins.”

Racist graffiti was found in many places, including New York’s Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and “Go Back To Africa” were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.

Madison County, Idaho was once dubbed “the reddest place in America”, but that didn’t make it any less shocking when second-graders were chanting “assassinate Obama” on the school bus.

University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur. “It seems the election brought the racist rats out of the woodwork,” Houston said.

Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported. The president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas said a rope found hanging from a campus tree was apparently an abandoned swing and not a noose.

Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.

A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted ‘Obama.’

In the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying “now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house.”

And of course we can’t forget Ashley Todd, who beat herself up and claimed that a black person had done it.

So when conservatives said crime would rise with Obama, they were right. But I’m not sure if it is fair to credit them with this prediction, since they’re the ones causing the new crime.

It’s easy to scoff at the title, but we have every reason to be alarmed: This Obama guy is big trouble. All those right-wing Conservatives warned us about him. And yet many of us were just too damn smitten by the Obama rhetoric to listen to reason. Silly us. What price will we pay for our failure to heed their warnings? A tragic and terrible price, of course.

We were warned about Obama’s rabid nutso America-hating mongrel-loving minions and their socialistic agendas. An agenda which includes policies like restoring diplomacy and regulating fraud and striving for energy independence and…well, the list goes on and on. If their agenda comes to pass, America will never again be the same. Imagine the repercussions. Foreigners might like us. Corporations might be coerced into doing the right thing every once in a while. We might even have to reconsider our love affair with Exxon’s ever-present voluptuous BLEEP. Who knows how bad it might get? We could find ourselves living in a country where pap smears are affordable and water-board dealers are unemployed. This could get bad, folks. Really bad.

Let’s face it. Obama supporters are a religious cult. And not just your ordinary run-of-the-mill cult. No, sir. This is a bad bunch. We haven’t seen anything this sinister since Tom Cruise pounced on Oprah’s couch. If you thought the Spanish Inquisition was bad, just wait till Obama Nation takes over. These people aren’t just your average garden variety whackadoos who speak in tongues and join militias and blow up mailboxes and terrorize chickens. These people ride mountain bikes and eat organic tomatoes and watch nature shows on PBS. They’ve been totally indoctrinated in socialist theology. After years of attending secular Madrassas (trendy coffee shops) in places like Berkeley and Boulder and Greenwich Village, their brainwashing is complete. Don’t bother attempting interventions with these people. Trying to deprogram Obama’s slobbering minions is like trying to inspire toughness in French people. It’s futile.

It’s not just the educated hippies who have joined the Obama cult. His minions are recruiting members from all demographic groups. For starters, he has incredibly strong support in the African-American community, many of whom are rumored to be black. These people are particularly sinister, often demanding handouts like good jobs and decent schools. Hispanics have joined the Obama ranks, too. They claimed that the “Si Se Puede” chant was nothing more than a slogan of support for Obama, but we know what they were really saying--“Let's Go Run Over the Gringos With Our Low Riders.” Even some poor white people allegedly joined the Obama cult. This is particularly disconcerting. Apparently they haven’t been informed that America’s real enemies are polar bears and gay people.

As dangerous as the Obama minions are, however, they pale in comparison to the nefarious nature of the man himself. This guy is so diabolical that he doesn’t even have to take office to wreak havoc. It’s not even two weeks since the election and it’s already happening. Consider the demise of the stock markets. Obama managed to destroy American capitalism without even lifting a finger. All that nonsense about the markets failing because of long-term economic problems and greedy corporations and lack of oversight was mere propaganda. Obama did it. We know this because the great intellectual minds of our time (conservative talk radio hosts) have told us so. Shaun Hannity and Rush Limbaugh (world renowned economists, both) have categorically placed the blame for the failing economy at the feet of Obama. Not that he’s actually done anything just yet. He doesn’t even need to. That’s just more evidence of how powerful he is.

The Conservative brain trust (Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter, Palin) is feverishly trying to formulate a plan to save America from the rest of us nincompoops. Step one is purging their ranks of the few remaining moderates and intellectuals among them--let them crawl off to the Obama camp where they belong. Step two is…

Wait a minute…why even bother?

It’s over. We all know it. The American dream is doomed. As heroic and selfless as the conservative pundits are, they are no match for Obama. He’s already made the stock market collapse. He’s ruined the housing industry, the auto industry, and the banking industry. He’s invited our enemies to attack us at their leisure. And that’s just for starters. He hasn’t even warmed up yet. Just imagine how much damage he and his minions will do after inauguration day.

This much is clear. The age of pedigreed purebreds being in charge of America is over. The Era of the Mutt has begun. My advice? Simple. Put the poodles down real slow, back away nice and gentle like, then flee for your damn lives.

Credit:  Ian Walter Authentic Brawling Centrism November 15, 2008

Disquisitions about public intellectuals usually conclude that they ain't what they used to be. Subtitles from recent books on the topic include A Study of Decline and An Endangered Species? Indeed, the major point of debate is dating the precise start of the decline and fall. For some critics, Götterdämmerung started in the 1950s; for others, the 1930s. More-curmudgeonly writers place the date earlier, stretching back to the heyday of John Stuart Mill or even the death of Socrates.

The pessimism about public intellectuals is reflected in attitudes about how the rise of the Internet in general, and blogs in particular, affects intellectual output. Alan Wolfe claims that "the way we argue now has been shaped by cable news and Weblogs; it's all 'gotcha' commentary and attributions of bad faith. No emotion can be too angry and no exaggeration too incredible." David Frum complains that "the blogosphere takes on the scale and reality of an alternative world whose controversies and feuds are ... absorbing." David Brooks laments, "People in the 1950s used to earnestly debate the role of the intellectual in modern politics. But the Lionel Trilling authority figure has been displaced by the mass class of blog-writing culture producers."

But these critics fail to recognize how the growth of blogs and other forms of online writing has partially reversed a trend that many cultural critics have decried — what Russell Jacoby called the "professionalization and academization" of public intellectuals. In fact, the growth of the blogosphere breaks down — or at least erodes — the barriers erected by a professionalized academy.

Most of the obituaries for the public intellectual suffer from the cognitive bias and conceptual fuzziness that come from comparing the annals of history to the present day. Over time, as lesser intellectual lights tend to fade from view, only the canon remains. Even when glancing back at the intellectual giants of the past, current public commentators are more likely to gloss over past intellectual errors and instead focus on their greatest moments. Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man might look wrong in retrospect, but it is not more wrong than Daniel Bell's The End of Ideology.

Jacoby repeatedly challenges critics of his 1987 polemic, The Last Intellectuals, to name public intellectuals born after 1940 in order to compare them with past generations. But that is not a very difficult task. At magazines and periodicals, full-time authors and contributing editors who write serious-but-accessible essays on ideas, culture, and society include Anne Applebaum, Barbara Ehrenreich, Malcolm Gladwell, Christopher Hitchens, and Fareed Zakaria. Despite the thinning of their ranks, public intellectuals unaffiliated with universities, like Paul Berman, Debra Dickerson, Rick Perlstein, David Rieff, and Robert Wright, still remain. The explosion of think tanks in the past 30 years has provided sinecures for the intellectual likes of William A. Galston, Robert Kagan, Brink Lindsey, and Walter Russell Mead. The American academy houses many intellectuals uninterested in engaging the public, but it also houses Eric Alterman, Michael Bérubé, Joshua Cohen, Tyler Cowen, Jared Diamond, Stanley Fish, Francis Fukuyama, Jacob Hacker, George Lakoff, Mark Lilla, Patricia Nelson Limerick, Louis Menand, Martha Nussbaum, Steven Pinker, Robert Putnam, Eric Rauchway, Robert Reich, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Lawrence H. Summers, and Cass R. Sunstein. Readers may easily quibble with any of the names listed above, but most cultural commentators would agree that most of the names belong on that list. Furthermore, those names only scratch the surface.

To be sure, some important differences exist between the current generation of public intellectuals and the Partisan Review generation extolled by so many. In the current era, many more public intellectuals possess social-science rather than humanities backgrounds. In Richard Posner's infamous list of top public intellectuals, there are twice as many social scientists as humanities professors. In a recent ranking published by Foreign Policy magazine, economists and political scientists outnumber artists and novelists by a ratio of four to one. Economics has supplanted literary criticism as the "universal methodology" of most public intellectuals.

That fact in particular might explain the strong belief in literary circles that the public intellectual is dead or dying. Barry Gewen, an editor at The New York Times Book Review, for example, recently argued that one had to look to the New York Intellectuals as the standard for thinking about the current crop: "Broadly, they viewed the public intellectual as someone deeply committed to the life of the mind and to its impact on the society at large. ... That is, public intellectuals were free-floating and unattached generalists speaking out on every topic that came their way (though most important for the New York Intellectuals was the intersection of literature and politics)."

What made the New York Intellectuals stand out, however, was that they started in literary criticism and migrated to social analyses. When social scientists like Tyler Cowen or Richard Posner return the favor, they are viewed as either arrivistes or methodological imperialists. The problem here might not be in our public intellectuals but in ourselves — even a modest level of innumeracy can make the public writings of economists look arcane and mysterious.

The only thing worse than a social scientist, apparently, is a social scientist who blogs. As Brooks, Frum, and Wolfe have argued, blogs are an outlet for vitriol and pettiness. Jacoby is simultaneously concerned with the content and volume of this outlet: "Blogs may be more like private journals with megaphones than reasoned contributions to public life. ... Ortega y Gasset's fear almost a century ago of the 'revolt of the masses' needs an update. We face a revolt of the writers. Today everyone is a blogger, but where are the readers?"

That is not a terribly persuasive critique — indeed, it manifests some of the same flaws of the larger decline meme. The concern about vitriolic blogs confuses form with content. All media forms generate distasteful, disposable, or demented material — indeed, as a general rule, whenever a new media is invented, pornography soon follows. Bad content, however, does not impeach the form through which the content is produced. This would be like arguing that Hustler discredits Harper's as an appropriate venue for publication.

Similarly, Jacoby's concern about the mix of erudition and trivia within blogs also seems off base. If celebrity profiles do not compromise Christopher Hitchens's essays in Vanity Fair, there is no reason to believe that snarky blog posts undercut more serious posts. Jacoby recognized this fact back in 2000 when he wrote, "It should be possible for thinkers and writers to be both serious and accessible — not always at the same time, but over time."

Jacoby's original concern was that independent public intellectuals were disappearing from view, and academic intellectuals were increasingly professionalized and hidebound. The proliferation of blogs reverses those trends in several ways. Blogs have facilitated the rise of a new class of nonacademic intellectuals. Writing a successful blog has provided a launching pad for aspiring writers to obtain jobs from general-interest magazines. The premier general-interest magazines and journals in the country either sponsor individual bloggers or have developed their own in-house blogs.

For academics aspiring to be public intellectuals, blogs allow networks to develop that cross the disciplinary and hierarchical strictures of academe. Provided one can write jargon-free prose, a blog can attract readers from all walks of life — including, most importantly, people beyond the ivory tower. (The distribution of traffic and links in the blogosphere is highly skewed, and academics and magazine writers make up a fair number of the most popular bloggers.) Indeed, because of the informal and accessible nature of the blog format, citizens will tend to view academic bloggers that they encounter online as more accessible than would be the case in a face-to-face interaction, increasing the likelihood of a fruitful exchange of views about culture, criticism, and politics with individuals whom academics might not otherwise meet. Furthermore, as a longtime blogger, I can attest that such interactions permit one to play with ideas in a way that is ill suited for more-academic publishing venues. A blog functions like an intellectual fishing net, catching and preserving the embryonic ideas that merit further time and effort.

Perhaps the most-useful function of bloggers, however, is when they engage in the quality control of other public intellectuals. Posner believes that public intellectuals are in decline because there is no market discipline for poor quality. Even if public intellectuals royally screw up, he argues, the mass public is sufficiently uninterested and disengaged for it not to matter. Bloggers are changing that dynamic, however. If Michael Ignatieff, Paul Krugman, or William Kristol pen substandard essays, blogs have and will provide a wide spectrum of critical feedback.

There are, of course, limits to the ways in which blogs aid public intellectuals. It is not clear how many academics will choose to embrace the technology. The academic politics of blogging can also be problematic, particularly for younger scholars focused on tenure. Another emerging problem is that professionalization is creeping into the blogosphere. Popular bloggers are also increasingly paid bloggers — and the emergence of what Irving Howe called a "phalanx of solidarity" among prominent bloggers might retard public debate.

Despite such limitations, Götterdämmerung will have to wait a while longer. In his essay "The Social Role of the Intellectual," C. Wright Mills lamented that, "Between the intellectual and his potential public stand technical, economic, and social structures which are owned and operated by others." The blogosphere does not eliminate those structures, but it does provide an intriguing substitute. As Siva Vaidhyanathan recently concluded, "There has never been a better time to be a public intellectual, and the Web is the big reason why."

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. The paperback edition of his book, All Politics Is Global (Princeton University Press), was published in September.

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http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 55, Issue 12, Page B5

*Note:  These are not my words but words of 1_Irritated_Mother from another blog site

I am not a special interest group.  Neither are the millions of other Americans that gave Barack Obama their hard earned money to run that freight train of a campaign right through John McCain’s House of Whacks.  I have to say;  I was surprised to hear McCain and Palin, every one of their surrogates, the Fox News robots, and others (especially, sanctimonious Joe Scarborough who seems to honestly believe that Floridians are stupid) whine about public/private financing and the unfairly enormous ad campaign of Barack Obama and how he broke his word to the American people and to John McCain.  First of all, who gives a damn … not me.  The tired nonsense about Obama “lying” to the American people and John McCain and the outrageous “typical Chicago politician” line are still being mumbled in the background … it’s just a matter of time before Sarah Palin pulls it out of her bedside table and tries to drive it home again.  She’s already resurrected Tito the Builder and Joe the Plumber. 

  ((sidenote:  if anyone from her “camp” is reading this … GET HER SOME NEW LINES AND TELL HER NOT TO DO THAT GROWLY, LOW, TEETH-CLENCHED THING WITH HER VOICE WHEN SHE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT SHE’S TALKING ABOUT … WE ALL KNOW THAT TELL … so with that in mind ~ don’t get her a guest spot on any of those celebrity poker shows either … although … I would love to see her in a remake of “Rounders” … she would be as natural as a “Worm” … she lies all the time; she already has a relationship with Matt Damon … but, the truth is, I just want to see her get her BLEEP beat by the Russians (because I guess they can see her from over there, too) and be left broken and alone in a church gymnasium … still scheming.  This could really be a break-out role for her … plus getting her to Hollywood early will make it easier for Oliver Stone to get busy on his next project.))

 

OK ~ back to what I was saying before …

 

Now, I hear the pundits talking about who is expecting favors from the new President Elect.  “Who” got him elected and what “they” will be expecting in return … what??? … you’ve got to be joking, right??? 

 

       

(1)    Hispanics ~ voted for Obama in record numbers over Amnesty Man, John McCain …

(2)    African Americans ~ voted for Obama in record numbers over Whitey (seriously man ... get some bronzer), John McCain

(3)    Hillary Supporters ~ voted for Obama because Hillary told them to … except for the duchess or princess or whoever

(4)    Pennsylvanians (taking time out from clinging to guns & religion) ~ voted blue, as usual, for Obama, even though John McCain pimped Sarah Palin out to them for two whole months

(5)    Jews and other old people ~ gave the nod to Obama instead of their fellow AARP member

(6)    Gays and Lesbians ~ voted overwhelmingly for Obama even though he opposes gay marriage … (that topic is discussed enough … I’ll just leave that there)

Educated white people, Duke fans, Teachers, Nurses, Middle class, middle income families, Catholics, Grandmothers … this list could go on and on …

Here’s my point ~ None of us are “special interest”.  Contributing to a campaign and casting your vote is not like buying a hooker … there is no twenty dollar special. We don't lobby our vote to whatever “category” exit polls force us into and we don't reject our democratic principles in exchange for presidential favors ... we are Americans. 
We choose for ourselves when that curtain closes.  So, I don’t care who you are or what group you belong to or don’t belong to … You’re Not Special and Barack Obama Doesn’t Owe YOU Anything.

Dear Democrats,

Congratulations on the fabulous and historic election of President Barack Obama!!!

As we celebrate our new President-elect and all the changes he will bring to our nation, we must not turn a blind eye to the final actions of George Bush.

Incredibly, Washington is already buzzing with Bush's plans to block all investigations of his crimes  and even to pardon everyone involved  - including Cheney and himself. Chris Matthews is even counting down the days .

Does Bush have the power to pardon everyone in his administration? Yes.

Will he abuse that power to stay out of jail? Only if we let him.

We must create a groundswell of opposition to any pardons by George Bush, so he understands that he will be impeached and prosecuted for issuing corrupt pardons.

Please help us launch a massive movement against pardons by signing our petition to Congress and telling your friends:
http://democrats.com/pardon

We will announce additional plans to stop Bush's pardons in the coming days. Read more about our efforts and join our discussion here:
http://democrats.com/bush-pardons

Thanks for your inputs and all you do!

Clinton, the former first lady who pushed Obama hard for the Democratic presidential nomination, was rumored to be a contender for the job last week, but the talk died down as party activists questioned whether she was best-suited to be the nation's top diplomat in an Obama administration.

The talk resumed in Washington and elsewhere Thursday, a day after Obama named several former aides to President Bill Clinton to help run his transition effort.

The two Democratic officials who spoke Thursday did so on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering Obama and his staff. Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines referred questions to the Obama transition team, which said it had no comment.

Other people frequently mentioned for the State Department job are Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and New Mexico's Democratic governor, Bill Richardson.

© 2008 The Associated Press

Banks are responding to the troubled economy by jacking up fees on their checking accounts to record amounts.

Last week, Citigroup Inc.'s Citibank started charging some customers a new $10 "overdraft protection transfer fee" to transfer money from a savings account or line of credit to cover a checking-account shortfall. Citibank had already raised foreign-exchange transaction fees on its debit cards and added minimum opening deposit requirements for its checking accounts. Over the past year, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.'s Chase, Bank of America Corp., and Wells Fargo & Co. have boosted the fees they charge noncustomers who use their automated teller machines to as much as $3 per transaction.

Getting a Handle on Bank Fees

To avoid getting nickel-and-dimed, it's important to keep close tabs on how much money is in your account and to understand your bank's fee policies. Read The Wallet.

With all these changes, the average costs of checking-account fees, including ATM surcharges, bounced-check fees and monthly service fees have hit record highs, according to a new study by research firm Bankrate Inc.

Depositors are also paying more for extra services. In July, for example, Comerica Inc.'s Comerica Bank raised fees in Michigan for customers who want to stop payments or get a cashier's check. Last year, PNC Financial Services Group Inc.'s PNC Bank introduced a processing charge of $3 for customers who use their debit card to get a cash advance at a teller window.

Along with the tough economy and higher credit costs, another factor prompting banks to cut costs and raise fees and loan rates is a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. proposal to increase the rates banks pay for deposit insurance starting next year in order to help replenish its reserves. If that rule change is approved, experts say, banks will probably pass on more of those higher costs to consumers by raising fees and boosting the minimum balances required to avoid fees.

Consumers are likely to see the most pain from bounced-check and overdraft fees. "By the end of 2009, you will start to see fairly substantial increases in overdraft fees" for the big banks, potentially to as high as $40 per occurrence from a current range of $32 to $35, says Mike Moebs, chief executive of Moebs $ervices Inc., an economic research firm in Chicago.

Such fees are key contributors to banks' bottom lines. About 90% of banks' consumer-fee income comes from overdraft and insufficient-funds charges, which are expected to increase to $42 billion this year from $20.7 billion in 1999, says Mr. Moebs.

Though the government has helped banks with cash infusions, "banks don't want the government to be shareholders forever, so they're looking to generate earnings to recapitalize and pay the government back," says Sherief Meleis, managing director at Novantas LLC, a bank consulting firm.

Tiered-Rate Structures

Already, Bank of America, Citibank and Washington Mutual Inc. have raised their overdraft fees this year, while Wells Fargo raised its insufficient-funds fee in certain markets in July. Many banks are also adopting tiered-rate structures that assess a lower penalty for first-time occurrences but quickly ramp up the costs for repeat offenders.

Nickel and Dimed

With profits under pressure, banks are turning to other ways to raise revenue:

• Many banks have jacked up ATM, overdraft and bounced-check fees.
• Banks are likely to boost minimum account balance requirements.
• More mergers could result in higher fees for some customers.

In August, for example, Fifth Third Bancorp moved from a flat fee of $33 per item to $25 for the first overdraft, $33 for the second through the fourth, and $37 for the fifth occurrence and beyond. The bank also raised its returned-deposit-item fee to $15 from $10 earlier this year.

One thing consumers can do is sign up for services that will automatically tap a savings account or a line of credit in case there is an overdraft in the checking account, though they may pay a fee on this service as well. WaMu, which is being bought by J.P. Morgan Chase, recently raised its overdraft transfer service fees to $12 from $10 and increased the maximum number of overdraft/insufficient-funds fees that can be charged per day to seven from five.

Mergers and Higher Fees

Industry consolidation is also likely to result in higher fees. Banks with more than $20 billion in assets charged an average of $33.43 per overdraft, compared with $24.28 for financial institutions with less than $100 million in assets, according to a recent study by Moebs $ervices.

Next week, some checking-account customers at TD Bank Financial Group's TD Banknorth -- which acquired Commerce Bancorp Inc. earlier this year -- could see higher fees as the combined entity, TD Bank, adopts and rolls out Commerce's fee structure. Although some fees will disappear -- such as charges to use another bank's ATM -- some legacy TD Banknorth customers will face higher overdraft fees as the bank adopts a flat fee of $35 per overdraft instead of the previous fee structure, which ranged from $25 to $35.

"Clearly, this is a very different operating environment for banks, and all banks have to be looking for ways to meet the requirements of shareholders," says Thomas Dyck, executive vice president at TD Bank. "That naturally has them looking for alternative sources of revenue." From the bank's perspective, he says, adopting Commerce's products and pricing structure "positions us to compete aggressively for new customers as our primary way to grow revenues."

No changes have been made to WaMu's checking account, which does not charge ATM fees, boasts free checks for life and has no monthly service charges, says Chase spokeswoman Christine Holevas, who notes that it's still too early. Chase, for its part, will change the name of its Chase Free Checking account to Chase Checking starting next week. "It is a more-accurate description of the account" because of its direct-deposit requirement, she says, and is not related to any changes in fees.

In the midst of all these fee changes, it's even more important for consumers to keep close tabs on how much money is in their accounts and to regularly check their accounts online. Many banks offer free phone and email alerts to notify customers when their account balances drop below specified levels.

PNC's new "Virtual Wallet" checking account -- which combines checking, savings and high-yield-savings accounts -- automatically calculates "Danger Days" that warn customers when their balances will dip into negative territory based on their schedule of online bill payments and upcoming paydays.

What to Avoid

It's a good idea to avoid interest-bearing checking accounts that require big balances in order to avoid monthly fees and invest the money elsewhere, says Greg McBride, a senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com. "Regardless of how high fees go, they're completely avoidable," he says. For example, consumers can sign up for overdraft protection linked to their savings accounts or use a debit card to get cash back at the point of sale to avoid ATM fees, he suggests.

Another option: Shop around. Both Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab Corp. offer interest-bearing checking accounts with ATM-fee reimbursements and no minimum-balance requirements. With ING Groep NV's ING Direct's Orange checking account, which pays between 1.5% and 3.5% on deposits, customers get a debit card instead of a paper checkbook, although the bank will send paper checks for free on request.

Some community banks offer so-called reward checking accounts that pay high yields if you make a certain number of debit-card transactions and direct deposits, and agree to get your statements online.

Alternatives to Banks

Bhaskar Sarkar, a software engineer in Flower Mound, Texas, has stopped using banks altogether. Instead, he parks his cash in a brokerage account at Fidelity, where he is using a municipal money-market mutual fund as his core account. While most brokerage accounts have cash-management features, such as check writing and bill paying, Fidelity's checking-account equivalent, dubbed "mySmart Cash," also offers ATM-fee reimbursements and a no-fee overdraft policy.

By linking the two accounts, Mr. Sarkar is able to withdraw cash from any ATM and have the money pulled from his brokerage account -- all without fees. He aims to keep all of his cash in the money-market fund, where he's earning more interest, and a zero balance in his mySmart Cash account.

Compared to a traditional bank checking account, says the 38-year-old Mr. Sarkar, this arrangement is "more like a no-strings-attached account where I could keep as little or as much as I wanted in it."