Tag Archives: GOP

September 26, 2011 · 7:45 pm

Obama’s Preaching Doesn’t Reach

Interesting article from Anthea Butler at Religion Dispatches.

For the record, she is an Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Pennsylvania and an African-American woman.

While I continue to support President Obama, I have my concerns as well.

He’s been much friendlier to Wall Street than Main Street…

He doesn’t seem to “dance with the ones who brought him” too well.  Sometimes, it’s almost like he’s ashamed to be seen with us.  He had to be pushed and pushed to take action on Gay issues, but he did take action.

Now he’s pushing some buttons with another core constituency.

I hope he’s had a true realization- on the Road to Damascus, so to speak- and this isn’t just fear driven based on recent polls.

If he had pushed the agenda he was elected to pursue, instead of tilting at the windmills of compromise with the GOP, we wouldn’t be having this dialogue…

Here is an excerpt from Dr Butler’s column and a link to the full version:

Obama’s performance of black preaching may play well to church folks who love him no matter what, but to those critical of his policies that have placed African Americans at the highest unemployment rates, the president’s fake whooping rings hollow. Why is it that every time the president speaks to a predominately black audience, he goes into a preacher’s cadence, and starts to speak as though he were at a pulpit? Why is it that he never gets “righteously angry” with the white folks as often as he does at the black folks?

If you think I am harsh, consider a segment of the president’s 2010 CBC speech: “I need everybody here to go back to your neighborhoods to go back to your workplaces, to go to churches and go to the barbershops and go to the beauty shops, and tell them we’ve got more work to do.”

Damn. I think most black people I know do more than just work, go to church, and get their hair done.

Let me say it more bluntly. The president said at the end of his CBC speech: “[I] expect all of you to march with me and press on. Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on.”

That was the moment that the president turned into a jackleg preacher. A jackleg preacher is an untrained preacher who relies on tried and true tropes to get his audience to respond to preaching. If a jackleg is really good, he or she can get the money or whatever else they want by hitting the sweet spot, that emotional place where the congregation always responds well, because they recognize the feelings and emotions the jackleg preacher wants to evoke. Referring to taking off the slippers and putting on marching shoes is a tired racist trope, and besides, isn’t Snooki the person who wears her slippers in public? I don’t think she’s African American.

There is a history with Obama’s speeches to predominantly black audiences that either try to use respectability or shame to change steroetypical behavior. Obama’s 2008 speech excoriating absent black fathers at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago, and his comments on the campaign trail in 2008 in Beaumont, Texas urging black parents “not to feed their kids cold Popeye’s chicken for breakfast,” are just two examples of how Obama deploys this racially-coded rhetorical strategy. The president’s behavior since taking office towards the African American community has been either to tell black folks to get in line and get to work, or gee, I love ya’ll, but I need your vote. If only he would speak to Republicans and Tea Partiers in the same harsh manner.

MORE:   Obama’s Preaching Doesn’t Reach | Religion Dispatches.

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September 25, 2011 · 1:42 pm

Rick Perry Eviscerated By Fox News Sunday Panel: He ‘Really Did Throw Up All Over Himself In The Debate’

I hate to tell you “I told you so….”

But not really…..

I warned folks a few weeks ago the GOP Establishment and the Bushies would not tolerate Governor GoodHair.  He made it really easy for them to take him down and down he’s going…..

When you are a Republican and you’ve got Fox News turning on you like this, your days are numbered…..

 

WASHINGTON — After a weak debate performance and a loss in the Florida straw poll, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) is having his fitness as the GOP presidential frontrunner seriously questioned.

These doubts were on display during the roundtable on “Fox News Sunday.”

“Perry really did throw up all over himself in the debate, at a time when he needed to raise his game. He did worse, it seems to me, than in previous debates. … Perry is one-half a step away from almost total collapse as a candidate,” said Fox News commentator Brit Hume.

Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol wrote an editorial titled “Yikes” on Friday, writing of Thursday’s debate, “[N]one of the candidates really seemed up to the moment, either politically or substantively. In the midst of a crisis, we’re getting politics as usual — and a somewhat subpar version of politics as usual at that.”

The alternative, he wrote, is for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) to jump into the race.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Kristol said his editorial reflected what many Republicans are thinking, as evinced in Saturday’s straw poll in Florida, where Herman Cain won with 37 percent of the vote. The results were considered especially embarrassing for Perry, who came in second, since former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney did not officially compete. (He ended up coming in third.)

But Kristol said it was a repudiation of both the frontrunners.

via Rick Perry Eviscerated By Fox News Sunday Panel: He ‘Really Did Throw Up All Over Himself In The Debate’.

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September 21, 2011 · 9:55 pm

Ron Paul Says Aide Who Died With $400k Medical Bill Didn’t Need Government Help

How can people be so blind- and so cruel?

I guess it’s easy to be hard….

Ron Paul told TPM on Wednesday that even if there’s a “case or two” that makes Americans uncomfortable, the government should stay out of the health care business. Even if one of the cases in question is his former campaign manager, Kent Snyder, who died with $400,000 in unpaid medical bills after being unable to secure health insurance due to a pre-existing condition.

via Ron Paul Says Aide Who Died With $400k Medical Bill Didn’t Need Government Help | Election 2012.

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September 19, 2011 · 10:20 pm

John Fleming, GOP Congressman, Blasts Obama Over Buffett Rule: I Can’t Afford A Tax Hike

Poor baby….

Just scraping by on $400k a year….

After deductions, I’m sure….

 

Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) appeared on MSNBC Monday morning to express opposition to President Barack Obama’s deficit reduction plan, which includes a proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy.

Fleming charged that the plan is a terrible idea which kills jobs provided by wealthy “job creators” who pay personal income taxes. When asked about his business ventures — including his role in a number of Subway restaurants and UPS stores — from which he earned $6.3 million last year, Fleming told MSNBC host Chris Jansing that his business expenses left him with little to tax “by the time I feed my family.”

Fleming told Jansing that the $6.3 million is “before you pay 500 employees, you pay rent, you pay equipment and food.”

“The actual net income of that was a mere fraction of that amount.”

“By the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over,” Fleming said.

via John Fleming, GOP Congressman, Blasts Obama Over Buffett Rule: I Can’t Afford A Tax Hike.

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September 19, 2011 · 8:54 pm

Tea Party: Talking About a Revolution

Just in case anyone doesn’t know it yet, these Tea Party Conservatives are scary people….

They don’t really care about representative Democracy.  They want to use force and intimidation to get their way.  They don’t respect anyone who disagrees with them and are willing to use any method to get their way and drive their agenda.

Their goal is to suppress votes and, if that doesn’t work, they keep talking about driving their agenda by force.

And remember, they are not the majority, no matter how many times they claim to be so….

That’s not exactly the American Way….

That is unless you believe D.H. Lawrence when he said: “”The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer.”

That’s not the open and generous American Soul I know, but it sure seems to be an accurate statement about the soul of the Tea Party and these hard right conservatives.

 

From Raw Story.com.  Emphasis is mine….

 

Speaking to a Massachusetts tea party group recently, conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart made some comments that are raising eyebrows online this week, telling the small gathering of Republicans that he sometimes wants to “fire the first shot.”

“I’m under attack all the time,” he said. “The call me gay. There are death threats… There are times when I’m not thinking as clearly as I should, and in those unclear moments, I always think to myself, ‘Fire the first shot. Bring it on.’ Because I know who’s on our side.

“They can only win a rhetorical and propaganda war. They cannot win. We outnumber them in this country and we have the guns… I’m not kidding. They talk a mean game, but they will not cross that line because they know what they’re dealing with. ”

Breitbart added that “major named people in the military” will sometimes “grab” him and say, “Thank you for what you’re doing, we’ve got your back.”

via Breitbart: Conservatives ‘outnumber’ liberals, ‘and we have the guns’ | Raw Replay.

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September 17, 2011 · 11:54 am

Would a Perry v. Obama Contest Be a Confederacy v. Union Rematch?

Interesting article from Alternet…

I’ve always said the Republicans look backwards with fear while the Democrats look forward with hope.

Should Perry be the GOP nominee, it would definitely set up an interesting group of dynamics.  Rich vs the Poor and Middle Class.  Past vs Future.  Corporate Power vs The People.  Ignorance vs Science and Knowledge.  And yes, many, many more….including North vs South.

It would be one nasty, scary battle as Perry fights in the gutter.  I just hope he’s done himself in with his comments about ending Social Security, Secession, and many, many more totally stupid comments….

However, America elected George W Bush, at least once, so I never under-estimate the power of ignorance and venality to triumph in this country….

 

Should Perry win the GOP presidential nomination, an obvious subtext of the presidential contest will be “Confederacy v. Union — The Rematch.” And, at the visual level, the theme will be conveniently reinforced by each man’s respective race.

Earlier this week, Perry delivered a speech from the stage of the 10,000-seat amphitheater at Liberty University, the evangelical institution founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, one of the early leaders of the religious right and an opponent of school desegregation. “When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line,” Falwell told his flock in 1958,  according to a report by Sarah Posner for AlterNet.

In introducing Perry to the Liberty U audience this week, Falwell’s son, Jerry Jr., lauded the Texas governor “for having the guts to say things that weren’t exactly politically correct, like when Gov. Perry said Texas might secede one day from the union.”

Indeed, Perry made such intimations more than once during the rancorous debate over the president’s health-care reform legislation. At the time, Tea Party leaders were vociferously talking up the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which reserves to the states all powers not enumerated within the document, as the means for challenging the health-care bill’s mandate for individual purchase of health insurance. The impetus for all the 10th Amendment love comes from states’ rights advocates, often known as Tenthers, many of whom view the Civil War as the result of unlawful usurpation of power from the states by the federal government.

via Would a Perry v. Obama Contest Be a Confederacy v. Union Rematch? | | AlterNet.

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September 17, 2011 · 10:46 am

The Truth About Social Security

This is the best summation of the truth about Social Security and the Deficit that I’ve seen:

 

 

Hat Tip:  MoveOn.org

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September 16, 2011 · 9:09 pm

Poll: Just 12% happy with Congress

I want to know what’s wrong with the 12% who are “happy” with Congress!  There aren’t that many rich people….

It will be interesting to see how this plays out by the time the elections roll around next year.  Either people are going to throw up their hands and stay home- thinking it doesn’t matter if they vote- which is what the GOP wants or people are going to throw the bums out…

Who knows which way it will break?

From CBS:

In the midst of a bleak economic landscape and after a bruising battle over the federal budget deficit, approval of Congress now matches its all-time low, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll.

Just 12 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing – the same as the lowest percentage recorded in this poll, reached in October 2008, right before the November elections.

Dissatisfaction with Congress cuts across party lines. Republicans, Democrats, and independents all overwhelmingly disapprove of the job Congress is doing.

Though most Americans disapprove of both parties in Congress, they disapprove of Republicans more. Seventy-two percent of Americans disapprove of the job Republicans in Congress are doing, compared to 63 percent who disapprove of the Democrats in Congress.

Among Democrats, more approve than disapprove of the job Democrats in Congress are doing. That is reversed for Republicans – more of them disapprove than approve of the job members of their own party are doing in Congress. Independents disapprove of both parties in Congress.

In keeping with Congress’ dismal review, just 6 percent of registered voters think most members deserve re-election – the lowest percentage ever in CBS News Polls during the past 20 years, and a lower percentage than the 9 percent who thought so right before the 2010 midterms.

(Credit: CBS News/NYT Poll) Americans are usually more positive when assessing their own representative in Congress.

That’s true now, too – 33 percent say their representative deserves re election – but nearly six in 10 registered voters don’t think their own representative deserves re-election. That percentage is close to the highest found in CBS News Polls.

via Poll: Just 12% happy with Congress – Political Hotsheet – CBS News.

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September 14, 2011 · 11:15 pm

Libertarian Legacy? Ron Paul’s Campaign Manager, 49, Dies Uninsured Leaving Family $400,000 Debt

You have to wonder if these Ivory Tower Libertarians and Conservatives ever really contemplate the real-world implications of their policies….

Sadly, this poor guy found out the hard way:

The Wall Street journal reports that Kent, more than anyone else, persuaded Ron Paul to run for president. And Kent, according to the WSJ, developed what “ultimately became a $35 million operation with 250 employees that helped deliver more than one million votes for the Texas congressman’s bid in the Republican nominating contest.”-

Ron Paul posted this message about Snyder on his website: “”Like so many in our movement, Kent sacrificed much for the cause of liberty, Kent poured every ounce of his being into our fight for freedom. He will always hold a place in my heart and in the hearts of my family.”

Sadly, the Libertarian heart apparently does not include health care. The poor guy raised tens of millions of dollars and couldn’t afford the $300-$600 a month that COBRA medical insurance would have cost.

Paul has some good ideas– get out of Iraq, get the US out of a lot of other countries. But his opposition to government, to universal health care– these ideas just don’t work– and his campaign manager’s death makes a tragic example of it.

via OpEdNews – Article: Libertarian Legacy? Ron Paul’s Campaign Manager, 49, Dies Uninsured, Of Pneumonia, Leaving family $400,000 Debt.

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September 8, 2011 · 9:27 am

Rick Perry Campaign Refuses To Rule Out Ending Social Security

This proves:

a) Governor GoodHair is just as stupid as has been reported

b) He thinks the Dems are too stupid to play this position up in the General Election

c) He knows this is now the official GOP Platform plank and he’s too stupid to hide it like the rest of them

d) He spends so much time with Rich People and egghead Conservative theorists, he thinks this is a popular, winning position.

e) All of the Above

Make no mistake about it: Rick Perry is running against Social Security. Last night in the debate, Perry stood by his oft-repeated claims that the popular government retirement program is a Ponzi Scheme and a “failure.”

And after the debate, Team Perry refused to rule out ending the program all together under a Perry presidency.

From the Huffington Post’s Jon Ward:

A top Perry aide refused, under repeated questions from The Huffington Post, to rule out the idea that Perry would favor dissolving altogether the 76-year-old program that pays out benefits to seniors.

“I’m not going to parse his words,” Perry aide Ray Sullivan told Ward after the debate when asked “why he would not just say that Perry does not want to end the program.”

via Rick Perry Campaign Refuses To Rule Out Ending Social Security | Election 2012.

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