Monroe Anderson

The Senate's sorry, just in time for the 144th Juneteeth Day

On this Juneteenth Day, all of America ought to be celebrating like it's 1999. Yesterday, after 144 years of emancipation commemorations by African Americans in Texas, and progressively over time, many other states, the United States Senate finally got around to--Tweet this--apologizing for slavery and racial segregation. The formal sorry say was voted on by the Senate yesterday.

Talk about too little, too late. 

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued on September 22, 1862. And although it went into effect on January 1, 1883, more than 618,000 Americans had to die in the Civil War before the slaves were freed. 

Back then, good news traveled slow, so it wasn't until June 19, 1865 that word got around to the state of Texas that slavery had been abolished. And even after everyone knew that slavery was the great American evil, there were those in the South who chose not to know. Slavery By Another Name, a book published last year, revealed that the enslavement of African Americans continued in the deep South until the dawn of World War II. This nation's free black labor habit finally ended eight decades after Emancipation when President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered that it stop immediately. FDR was fearful that the Japanese propaganda machine would put the fact that neoslavery was still going on in the U.S. to great use against America's war effort.

Up until then, it was the practice below the Mason-Dixon line for sheriffs to arrest black men on trumped up charges, jail them, then sell them to plantations, mines, railroads, mills, lumber camps and factories in the deep South. In other cases, southern blacks were kidnapped by southern landowners and  forced into involuntary labor. This happened to thousands of African Americans from one generation to the next to the one after that.

And I won't even mention the thousands who were murdered by lynchings.

But to quote Shakespeare, "All's well that ends well." The senate has apologized for slavery and segregation. The U.S. House is expected to follow suit. There's a black family living in White House.

African American no longer have to worry about forced labor. Unfortunately, black unemployment rates, at 11.5, are higher than those of any of group in the nation. About a third of the descendants of America's enslaved still live below the poverty line.

It doesn't matter. The Senate is sorry. I wonder if any of them are sorry that we never got our 40 acres and a mule. It's not too late to make it up. Congress could declare reparations a stimulus program and pass it just in time for next year's Juneteeth Day.

Now that would be a cause for celebration.

(This post was also published on Newsvine.)

GOP's stingy stance is not a cure-all at all for swine flu

In the movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, as far as the father of the bride was concerned, Windex was the miracle cure for anything from "psoriasis to poison ivy."

In real life, among the dwindling membership of the Party of No, lower taxes is their Windex. 

No matter what political, economic or social challenge confronting our nation, the GOP mantra calls for lowering taxes, cutting taxes or flatlining taxes. As individual American citizens, the Republicans tell us, we can spend our money much better than the bureaucrats in Washington. 

So, right now, right here, we have a threatening crisis that could further cripple our sick economy and, btw, who knows kill how many of us along the way: the swine flu outbreak.

At this moment, more than 100 have died in Mexico from the influenza virus, but so far there has been no fatalities in the United State. Should this public health emergency take a turn for the worst by developing into a pandemic that leaves tens of thousands or millions of Americans dead in its wake, the only measure that will outpace finger-pointing will be vaccination shots.

Hopefully, we'll only need vaccination shots in limited regions throughout the states. In the meantime, allow me to be one of the first to point a finger: The Know-Nothing party thwarted one preventative measure, fearing it might lead to more taxes.

In a post entitled, GOP Know-Nothings Fought Pandemic Preparedness on the website of The Nation, John Nichols reports:

When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year's emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.

Obey and other advocates for the spending argued, correctly, that a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse -- with workers ordered to remain in their homes, workplaces shuttered to avoid the spread of disease, transportation systems grinding to a halt and demand for emergency services and public health interventions skyrocketing. Indeed, they suggested, pandemic preparation was essential to any responsible plan for renewing the U.S. economy.

But former White House political czar Karl Rove and key congressional Republicans -- led by Maine Senator Susan Collins -- aggressively attacked the notion that there was a connection between pandemic preparation and economic recovery.

We don't know where this swine flu outbreak is going or how soon it will end. But the World Health Organization has been extremely concerned and vigilant since the outbreak has already crossed international borders.

In a special report to the GlobalPost, Christine Gorman writes: 

Although no fatalities have been reported in the U.S., the latest reports from Mexico suggest that more than 100 people have died and at least 1,400 may have been infected with the never-before-seen flu.

 

On Sunday, Canadian health officials confirmed six cases of human swine flu — four in Nova Scotia  and two in British Columbia — while public health officials in New Zealand, Israel, France and Spain began testing several patients with flu-like illnesses who had recently traveled to Mexico to determine whether or not they also had swine flu.

 

Part of what concerns health officials is that most of the fatalities in Mexico have involved adults under the age of 60, which does not fit the usual profile of a seasonal flu outbreak. That pattern is, however, reminiscent of the flu pandemic of 1918-1919, in which the very young and the very old tended to be spared while most of the fatalities occurred in adults in their 20s to 50s.

We've got to hope for the best here; hope that this flu virus does not mutate into something as virulent, Infectious and deadly as the 1918 flu pandemic, which resulted in more than 100 million dead worldwide, before it is over. But we've also got to hope that the mantra of the Johnny-one-note conservatives continue to ring false for more and more Americans.         

I, like most of the rest of us, don't like paying taxes. But, besides paying for wars of aggression that I personally oppose, taxes pay for police and firemen, roads and bridges, and they help fund safety nets for those who may not be as fortunate as we are.        

And, from time-to-time, money that we send to Washington comes back to us in a preventive measure that may be life saving for millions and therefore worth its weight in gold.

(This post was also published on the AgoraVox website.)

AIG: Insuring that the rich get richer

Everybody's angry about AIG. The people are seething. The politicians are demanding a payback. Even Edward Liddy, AIG's chairman and CEO, says the bonuses are "distasteful."

Well, while you and me and most of the rest of America are mad as hell and not wanting to give it anymore, the bonusees are scowling all the way to the bank, proving once again that if you want to rob somebody the pen is mightier than the sword--or the gun for that matter. Bernie Madoff didn't even say "stick 'em up" as he hauled off a cool $50 billion. Nor did the AIG muckety mucks wield any weapons as they stuck us up for 173 billion in bail out bucks before slipping $165 million of our money to their executives for a job disastrously done.

This is a classic example of how the rich get richer and the rest of us get screwed.

Let's roll away from Wall Street and head to Motown. A tenth of the bailout money AIG got went to the folks that actually make something. In return for the $17 billion GM and Chrysler got, the auto worker's union and its members are being strong-armed into chucking their contractual agreements with the Big Two while chinning and grinning to show their gratitude that they will still had lower paying jobs.

Mind you, the UAW and its members had done nothing wrong. They built the cars that the car corporations designed. The GM and Chrysler CEO's, who had been stuck on stupid when they first came to the nation's capitol in their private jets, wised up, making commercial airlines their transportation of choice and choosing to pay themselves a buck a year. 

Meanwhile at AIG, there was the $440,000 conference last October at the St. Regis resort at Monarch Beach. That little extravagance turned out to be a pittance compared to the latest revelation that at least 73 employees from AIG's London-based Financial Products unit--the division that sold the derivatives that are responsible for the insurance giant's threatening collapse--got bonuses of $1 million or better each. Eleven of those London employees were received the so-called retention bonuses have already flown the coop.

Big time pay for a big time F-up. How would you like to have a job like that?

As the argument goes, we have to pay the bonuses because they have a contract and there's this magical, mysterious obligation to honor that legal agreement. Why there was no reason to honor the United Auto Workers contract remains a greater mystery--or maybe not.

We know how it works: white collar crime pays. Blue collar labor gets paid not so much.

(This post was also published on my cyber column at Newsvine.com, UK/EU Progressive and Agoravox.)

What President Obama represents for Dr. King's legacy

For nearly half of my life, Black History Month was Black History Week. In 1976, after Carter G. Woodson's initiative had been celebrated during the second week in February for 50 years, it became a month-long observance.  

Although it's not official, not even announced, the Black History Month has quietly become Black History Season. It starts the day after Christmas, with Kwanzaa and runs through the end of February.

Dr. Martin Luther King's national holiday serves as the midway point for this season of recognizing Black History. So, it's befitting that Barack Obama would be sworn in as POTUS this year the day after MLK Day. 

To mark that historical occurrence in these historical times, I was the keynote speaker at the King Day celebration a week ago today in Chicago Heights, thanks to an invitation from Mayor Anthony DeLuca and City Clerk Ethel Taylor invited to speak to their theme, "A Dream Achieved," which tied in Dr. King's dream to the Obama reality.

I don't believe we're quite there on the achievement piece, so here's the text to the speech I gave to to audience at Chicago Miracle Temple Church in Chicago Heights, Illinois:

The Dream Achieved

It was just a few months ago, when one of those opinion poll crews was canvassing Western Pennsylvania—you know, that area between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh that may as well be Alabama?
Anyway, one of the pollsters knocked on the front door of one of those western Pennsylvania homes. A woman came to the door. The pollster asked her if she was voting for John McCain or Barack Obama. The woman turned around and yelled, “Honey, who are we gonna vote for?” A male voice yelled out from the back of the house, “We’re votin for the nigger. The woman calmly turned and repeated to the pollster, “we’re voting for the nigger.”
When I first told my wife, Joyce, this story, she thought that I was joking. I wasn’t. It happened. It was reported in newspapers. It was posted on the Internet.
And, in a backhanded true-life sort of way, it lets us know that what Dr. King was addressing two score and six years ago is actually a dream half done.  

The Pennsylvania couple may not have gotten past the color of Obama’s skin but they were able to see the content of his character.
       Speaking of seeing, I see puzzled looks on some of your faces. Wasn’t this supposed to be a speech about The Dream Achieved?  Where’s this man going with this?  Stay with me, okay?
The original title of Dr. King’s 1963 speech was “Normalcy—Never Again.” That wasn’t exactly a title that would flow off anybody’s tongue or stir anyone’s soul.  So, it didn’t take long or much imagination for Dr. King’s wonderful words to become the “I have a Dream” speech.  Nor did it take long for his speech to get white washed by the mainstream media.
         In his speech, which was delivered at the March on Washington for jobs and freedom, Dr. King talked a little about his dream but a lot more about the American nightmare.  He spoke less about what he hoped our nation would do and much more about what our nation had not done. That’s the part of the speech that gets little play on TV or radio.  So, I’m going to read a key part of what Dr. King had to say.  Before I say what Dr. King said, let me caution you: I’m going to say it without the wonderful flow or rhythm you’re used to hearing in Dr. King’s speech. I want you to hear the words stripped of the passion and flavor.
"In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes, black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'"
When Obama takes his oath of office tomorrow I want you to think of it as earnest money…not that we’ve been paid in full. There are still some matters that need to be cleared from the books.
Right now, there are one million black men unemployed.  That’s what Dr. King was talking about.
Right now, half our children drop out city high schools before they graduate. That’s what Dr. King was talking about.
Right now, there are a million black men locked up behind bars. That’s what Dr. King was talking about.
And here’s something he said in his Dream speech that could have been a sound bite from him after Oscar Grant was murdered by an Oakland transit cop two weeks ago: “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.”
I’m hoping that President Obama will be hearing Dr. King.
Since he launched his presidential campaign, Barack Obama has been talking Lincoln but I suspect, that he was thinking King.  

Yesterday, when Obama spoke in Washington, he stood in front of the Lincoln Monument but it was at the very spot Dr. King spoke 46 years ago. When I was on the Obama press bus last winter covering his campaign in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, I heard him quote from the Dream speech.  At every campaign stop, Sen. Obama would explain to his overflow crowds that he was running for office because of what Dr. King called “the fierce urgency of now.”
       Well, come tomorrow, the time will be now, for President Obama to cash and carry some of that urgency.
       When he swears in tomorrow, the time will be now for President Obama to also pay some old dues to those African American giants that shed blood, sweat and tears to make his presidential dream come true.  

You know the names all too well. Frederick Douglass. W.E.B. DuBois. Booker T. Washington. Thurgood Marshall. Malcolm X. Rev. Jesse Jackson. Harold Washington. Colin Powell.  And then there are the strong black women whose contributions were critical.  Harriet Tubman. Sojourner Truth.  Rosa Parks. Fannie Lou Hammer. Shirley Chisholm. Barbara Jordan. And even, let me see if I can get this out my mouth, Condoleezza Rice.
If these men and women hadn’t done what they did, Barack Obama wouldn’t have been able to do what he has done—or what he will have to start doing beginning tomorrow.
       Thanks to his predecessor, Obama has a lot of doing—and undoing--to do.  

After all the galas and parties are over and the celebrating has ended, we will still have some difficult days ahead. George W. Bush has left us in one big mess. 

There are two wars waging. There’s the deep recession.  There are tens of thousands of Americans losing their homes. There are nearly 50 million of us without health insurance. And nobody knows where the money is coming from or going to.
       And there’s a lot more that we can’t expect a President Obama to take on.  Some of it is on us. Before the Dream can really be achieved, we’ve got to take care of our own business.
       Right now, only 25 percent of black children have a father in the house. That wasn’t Dr. King’s dream.
       Right now, our youth are killing our youth in record numbers. That wasn’t Dr. King’s dream.
       Right now, our senior citizens are afraid to leave their homes at night; afraid they’ll be mugged or murdered. That was not Dr. King’s dream.
       So, right now, I say that when President Obama is sworn in, that we flip the script.  

In our public schools, rather than having the thugs in the in crowd and the brainiacs isolated and ignored, let’s make it hip to be smart.  

Let’s see if our daughters can just say no to knuckleheads who want to see how many babies they can father but not bother to raise.  

Let’s see if we can’t take Dr. King’s wise words and President Obama’s string of accomplishments and make them the new dream for the new generation and the generations to come.
       Let me remind you of the prophetic words in Dr. King’s Memphis speech, he spoke these words the night before he was murdered.
       “I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain top. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the Promised Land.”
       Obama, obviously, is there. A lot of us are there with him. But there’s still some dreaming to do and work that must be done. None of us can afford to forget about those we’ve left behind. We owe it to Dr. King’s vision.
       Thanks and God bless.

While we're at it, here's the full length version of Dr. King's 1963 speech in Washington.

Martin Luther King - I Have A Dream @ Yahoo! Video

For GOP, scary is as scary does

 
    Pity the poor right. The party faithful's fear and smear machine that has worked in the past--quicker than you could say Swift boating or Willie Horton--just doesn’t possess that same old white magic.
    Right wing-imagined Bogey men Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers ain’t scarin’ ‘em this Halloween season. Nor are those old, tried but untrue Republican boos about higher taxes and big government. Bald-faced lying doesn’t even work—Did you hear the ones about the Michelle Obama tape where she speaks ill of whitey or that Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. was born in a village in Kenya, not the good ol’ USA?
    It must be frustrating. For the longest the Right has had a bulging bag of dirty tricks and a mountain of mud it summoned at will to muck things up.
    This time, it’s not working.

  "All of a sudden, the economy was on life-support and the Republicans were still prescribing that we take two aspirins and a tax cut for the rich."

    Obama just isn't as scary as they believe he should be.
    The Democrat is cleaning McPalin’s clock in Red states that should readily be in the taken-for-granted column.  In Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, the Democrat enjoys a commanding lead in the polls. In Florida and North Carolina, he and John McCain are tied. Even bloody red Indiana is in play.
    This time, real-world fears got in the way of the Right’s manufactured ones: The housing crisis, the credit collapse and the plunging stock market.
    All of a sudden, the economy was on life-support and the Republicans were still prescribing that we take two aspirins and a tax cut for the rich. Why worry about what might be, when you’re trying to survive what is?
    Spooky tales about Obama raising your capitol gains tax just aren’t the same when you’re staring at your portfolio and seeing equities that have lost all their gains.  Screaming “welfare” sounds dumb when you’re worried about how well you and your family are faring. Crying wolf has no bite once you realized that it’s the foxes in the hen house who have ruined the day. Or that George W. Bush is our national gremlin. 
    That’s why the Republicans are running scared. Paper-tiger warnings and scary tales of yore sound like off-key whistling in the graveyard while the Repo man and the sheriff with an eviction notice are both banging on your door.  And then there’s Sarah Palin—the thought of her sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office is the most frightening thing of all.

 (If the photo-shopped pix of Obama as a tattooed gang member didn't scare you enough, perhaps this viral YouTube video of Obama as Hitler will. BOO!)

(This post, minus the YouTube video, is also on Huffingtonpost.com.)

McPalin's Ayn Rand economics

            As usual, John McCain and Sarah Palin are attempting to take a good thing and turn it inside out. This time it’s Barack Obama’s tax plan, which would increase income taxes for anyone making a quarter of a million a year and cut income taxes for the other 95 percent of us.
      In explaining his proposal, Obama, the McPalins point out, had the audacity to say that he wanted to “spread the wealth.” 
     McCain labeled that generous notion welfare and socialistic. The Republican wants to make sure that the ubber-rich get ubber richer. Rather than having Big Government take a little of the fat cat money to help the homeless, McCain would rather see swells like him have enough money to assure that their seven, or eight or nine homes are all well maintained and lavishly furnished. Many conservatives are quick to make the pitch that the top one percent of America's richest pay almost 35 percent of the nation's taxes, but they fail to mention that the same richest of the rich own nearly 35 percent of the nation's net worth or that the top 10 percent own 71 percent of the nation's wealth.
      That doesn't count to the GOP. For the last few days, McCain and his trusty Pitbull, Palin, have been on the stump, scolding Obama for being some kind of Robin Hood.
     I suggest that anyone tempted to buy into McPalin’s Ayn Rand economics--The Virtue of Selfishness--read an article about a United Nations report that’s just been posted by the Guardian, a publication out of England. The headline and the first few paragraphs explain exactly why the filthy rich ought to be willing to share the wealth more.
     Check it out.

Wealth gap creating a social time bomb

• By John Vidal, environment editor
• The Guardian,
• Thursday October 23 2008

Growing inequality in US cities could lead to widespread social unrest and increased mortality, says a new United Nations report on the urban environment.

In a survey of 120 major cities, New York was found to be the ninth most unequal in the world and Atlanta, New Orleans, Washington, and Miami had similar inequality levels to those of Nairobi, Kenya Abidjan and Ivory Coast. Many were above an internationally recognised acceptable "alert" line used to warn governments.

"High levels of inequality can lead to negative social, economic and political consequences that have a destabilising effect on societies," said the report. "[They] create social and political fractures that can develop into social unrest and insecurity."

According to the annual State of the World's cities report from UN-Habitat, race is one of the most important factors determining levels of inequality in the US and Canada.

"In western New York state nearly 40% of the black, Hispanic and mixed-race households earned less than $15,000 compared with 15% of white households. The life expectancy of African-Americans in the US is about the same as that of people living in China and some states of India, despite the fact that the US is far richer than the other two countries," it said.

Disparities of wealth were measured on the "Gini co-efficient", an internationally recognised measure usually only applied to the wealth of countries. The higher the level, the more wealth is concentrated in the hands of fewer people.

"It is clear that social tension comes from inequality. The trickle down theory [that wealth starts with the rich] has not delivered. Inequality is not good for anybody," said Anna Tibaijuka, head of UN-Habitat, in London yesterday. 

To read the rest of the Guardian article, click here.

Of course, the McPalins, the Bushites and other wingnuts may not be the least bit concerned because, according to some of my more paranoid friends, they already have contingency plans to control the teeming, angry masses. The solution, brought to you by FEMA, the Federal government organization that failed New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit, is--concentration camps.

Here's a viral video claiming that FEMA has set up concentration camps. My friend, Bob Tutman sent me this video that's been making for rounds for two years now.

Last best chance ends with McLoss

           John McCain is not George W. Bush. We know that because he told us so.
          “I am not George Bush.” McCain said last night in the last of the presidential debates. “If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.”
         And Barack Obama is not John Kerry.
         We know that because this year’s Democratic presidential nominee fired back with just the right retort at just the right moment: “If I occasionally mistaken your policies for George Bush’s policies, it’s because on the core economic policies that matter to the American people, on tax policy, on energy policy, on spending priorities, you have been a vigorous supporter of President Bush.”

          "Although the Arizona senator had promised to “whip Obama’s ass” in last night’s debate, he failed to deliver. By the time the 90-minutes were over, it was obvious that McCain was suffering from a bad case of whupped ass."

        And that’s pretty much how it went for much of the presidential smackdown at Hofstra University with an angry, aggressive McCain attacking and a cool, calm and collected Obama deflecting his rabbit punches.
      Although the Arizona senator had promised to “whip Obama’s ass” in last night’s debate, he failed to deliver. By the time the 90-minutes were over, it was obvious that McCain was suffering from a bad case of whupped ass.
      A CNN snap poll reported that among undecided likely voters, Obama won by 58 to 31 percent.
     That was despite McCain’s desperate attempt to turn his last best chance to his advantage by questioning the content of Obama’s character.
     The 72-year-old presidential candidate weaved back and forth between scowling and smiling as he faithfully repeated the tired old right-wing bromides that have played well for Republicans in election after election past.
      We know them when we hear them if not by heart: Obama is planning on raising taxes and that would cripple the economy. Obama is a tax and spend liberal who is waging class warfare with his health insurance plan because he wants “to spread the wealth around.” 
      And Obama was hit with that predictable Republican ruse of guilt by association with McCain trotting out the right-wing’s trumped up claims that Obama and 1960s anti-war radical Bill Ayers were in the habit of hanging out together.
      Looking presidential, while carefully protecting his double-digit lead in the national opinion polls by not saying the anything that would make today’s headlines, Obama counterpunched McCain’s charges: As president, he would only raise taxes on those Americans who make $250,000 a year or more. If McCain becomes president, for the first time ever Americans would have to pay taxes on their insurance benefits. "Mr. Ayers is not involved in my campaign, he has never been involved in this campaign, and he will not advise me in the White House,” Obama explained before listing the brand name, highly respected Americans would advise him.
     Obama’s presidential performance was not an easy thing for McCain to take. You could hear the Arizona senator grunting off camera as the Democrat laid out his program cuts. You could see the former war hero fighting to control his temper as Obama confidently explained his health insurance plan in detail. And, you could see—as McCain finally looked at Obama in the final debate—steely eyes shooting nothing but contempt.
     So while he told us he wasn’t George Bush early in the debate, McCain never got around to explaining how his financial policies would be different.
     And that, for all of us who don’t make a quarter mil a year or more, was the greatest guilt by association of all.

(You can watch the final presidential debate on the C-Span video below.)

McCain-Palin appealing to ugly Americans

      Sarah Palin and John McCain are trash talkin and rummagin through the trash bin of the American electorate.

     To provide the Values Voters  with an excuse beyond "he's black," the two Republicans are painting their Democratic opponent as unAmerican and unpatriotic--someone who may be an uncover agent for the Holy Jihad.

      In McCain and Palin's desperate drive to brake their free fall to defeat, they're appealing to the lowest, ugliest elements of our nation's underbelly: what Chris Matthews calls "the low information voters" and  what I call the losers, bigots and haters. On the day the Dow Jones fell another 678 points, McCain and Palin were sticking to their back story about Obama "palling around" with '60s radical Bill Ayers.

     The Arizona senator and Alaska governor's lure is surfacing at their political rallies where their supporters have been overheard yelling "kill him," "off with his head" and "terrorist" when Barack Hussein Obama's name was mentioned.

    Their so-called culture pitch is resonating. Take a look at this video shot at a McCain-Palin political rally in Strongsville, Ohio by Tim, a citizen journalist, on Blogger Interrupted. (Hat tip to Alimum.)

    With 26 days left before we go to the poll booth and with the Gallup tracking poll reporting that Obama is leading 52 to 41 percent, the freshly-minted Mavericks are going to get as ugly as the Americans they're out to attract.

That One won the town hall debate

        

(New York Times photo by Stephen Crowley)

 

     So I’m looking at my savaged, decimated stock portfolio, fearing that I might have to come out of my early semi-retirement to find a job at the very moment when they’re being out-sourced or disappeared before my very eyes, as I hear the McCain campaign tell us that Barack Obama once hung out with Bill Ayers and worshiped with Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
      Uh huh. That and $65 will fill up the gas tank in my seven-year old Honda Accord.
     Rather than old, unrelated news, I want to hear specific, concrete plans on how my financial ship will be steered back on course to Treasure Island. 

     I know Obama has a clue. I doubt that John McCain does.
    That’s why I couldn’t wait to watch the second round of the presidential debates. I wanted to see to if McCain was man enough to step to Obama with some in-your-face mud slinging or would he wimp out and pretend that he cared more about Main Street than Wall Street.
    I saw enough at the town hall meeting.
    For one shining moment, the Maverick showed up in Nashville. Right off the bat, he announced that as president he’d have his secretary of state “buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America” and have the banks renegotiate their jacked up rates.

    Once he got that off his chest, McCain rested on the tattered and tired conservative  clichés he’s been spouting ever since he steered the Straight Talk Express off the information highway to bounce along the bumpy back roads in Bush Country.
     McCain insisted on keeping taxes low, particularly for the fat cats. McCain evoked the right-wing idol,  Ronald Reagan’s name--as if that were some sort of white magic that would get us out of the mess eight years of W. misrule have put us in. McCain got stuck on spieling about how he supported the Surge and Obama had not. The Arizona senator also threw out the flag-waving slogans his peeps love to hear but refuse to give any serious thought.
     Never mind that the stock market has plunged 5,000 points this year, “Our best days are ahead of us.” And, never mind that we invaded Iraq—which had no Weapons of Mass Destruction and nothing to do with 9/11—leaving tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens dead and the nation in ruin.  “America is the greatest force for good in the history of the World.”
       And, my friends, McCain knows how to nail Osama bin Laden, lead us back to the promised land of good and plenty, win the occupation in Iraq and the Bush-botched war in Afghanistan—he’s just keeping it a secret until he’s sworn in as POTUS.
     The Republican candidate also knows what to do about making sure Americans have health coverage. Unfortunately for both us and him, his explanation of his insurance plan sounded like Palin's explanation of her readiness to move into the Oval Office—confused, bemused, befuddled, muddled.
      Meanwhile, Obama spoke to middle class frustration and anger with plain talk while sounding and looking presidential, which bottom-lined in “that one”--as McCain chose to condescendingly call him--winning the debate hands down.
    But tomorrow is another day for the right to play.
    With the polls giving Obama the win in both presidential debates and an ever-increasing lead in the national opinion polls, can we count on the McCain campaign to ignore our financial pain and return to the politics of personal destruction, pumped out by the right-wing fear and smear machine?
    You betcha!

You can find this one and others I've posted on EbonyJet.com. Also, you can watch the entire town hall presidential debate on the MSNBC video below.

In Search of Intelligence in the Multiverse--Not on Cavuto on Fox

      

        The worst financial crisis in America since the Great Depression was not caused by government deregulation or corporate greed or Republican governmental incompetence as Fox Cable News' Neil Cavuto understands it.

         Apparently, it's the fault of minorities.

        "Loaning to minorities and other risky folks was a disaster," in Cavuto's narrow little mind in his limited, little universe.

         Of course, I've got to wonder which "minorities" did he have in mind. Oprah? Billionaire Bob Johnson, the BET sell-out? Tiger Woods? Michael Jordan? You get the picture.

       In case you don't, Cavuto has footage of Barack Obama on screen while he grills a Democratic congressman.

       Here's a mind-expanding report and explanation by theyoungturks.com on YouTube.com: