Monroe Anderson

Chris and Rihanna show all's not fair in love that wars

Superstars Chris Brown and Rihanna are the poster children for domestic violence. You know the story. A lover's quarrel in 19-year-old Brown's car led to a beating so brutal that neither were able to make scheduled appearances at the Grammy Awards later that night.

Rihanna ended up with a badly bruised and swollen face, Brown with an arrest record and the two of them back together again. Apparently, Rihanna, 21,  and Brown's teenage fans are willing to forgive him for his behaving badly. 

Their spat gone violent might be worth all the attention it's received if it was not so common. As black nationalist H. Rap Brown observed four decades ago: Violence is as American as apple pie.

That's particularly true when it comes to home and to those who are intimately involved partners. There are nearly two million injuries in this nation each year resulting from domestic violence. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, victims of severe domestic violence--like Rihanna--annually miss 8 million days of paid work; that's the equivalent of 32,000 full-time jobs, and approximately 5.6 million days of household productivity.

And while I abhor the practice of a man beating his woman senseless--or slapping her around for that matter--I believe it's worst when a parent whips a child.

Although, like Rihanna, many abused women fail to dump their abusing lover, abused children rarely have that choice to make. In the name of love and discipline, a parent can beat a child day in and day out without rebuke as long as that child doesn't end up with welts and bruises--or in the ER. But that old school discipline that so many old school parents are so fast and proud to dish out is nothing but an act of violence.

If I pulled off my belt and decided to whip a complete stranger walking down the street, I'd go jail if not to the morgue. That reality and those rules don't apply to the most defenseless Americans--small children.

Citing "spare the rod, spoil the child," far too many Americans believe that when it comes to punishing children, that which doesn't kill them will make them stronger.

But, in reality, it's poor parenting, not spared rod, spoil the child. Our prisons are overcrowded with men who got their butts whipped as children at home AND on the streets. Rather than beating up your child because you're bigger and stronger, wouldn't it be better to teach them how to behave by reasoning with them and punishing through non-violent means? Time-outs work. So do revoked privileges. Teaching by example is tops. For example, when I was a child, my father told me any curse word I heard him use I could use. Since I never heard him use one, he never heard me use one. 

If you teach a child that violence is a means to get what you want, then violence becomes an early and easy option. The jails are filled with men--and boys--who got their asses whipped on regularly. Rather than learning reasoning and self-control, they learned that physical abuse is the way to control or address problems.

And, isn't it strange that parents feel free to beat up--whip--their children while they're little but stop as soon as they get big enough to make it a fair fight?

The same principle holds true for two lovers. Had Rihanna been bigger, stronger or a black belt, Chris Brown would have thought long and hard before he struck out.

btw, here's a YouTube video reenactment from the police reports of the what allegedly took place between the two pop stars. DoSomething.org, a teen organization, made the video as a public service announcement about teen dating. 

(This column is also posted on Huffingtonpost.com,  Newsvine.com and UK/EU Progressive.)

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.)

A holiday to memorialize the Confederacy? WTF?

In an era that some are trying to bill at post-racial, South Carolina state senator Robert Ford is seeking to take us way back to the post-Reconstruction epoch. Ford, who is of African American descent, is trying to get a bill passed that requires South Carolina to give workers a paid day off for Confederate Memorial Day.

This gives a whole new context to the term House Negro.

In a senate bill that won initial approval last week in a subcommittee, Ford wants to force South Carolina county and municipal governments to give workers a paid holiday off on May 10 to honor Confederate war dead. Mississippi and Alabama already celebrate a Confederate Memorial Day.

In a Rodney King-like "can't we all get along" spirit, years ago Ford pushed a bill that would make Dr. King's birthday and a dead Rebels day separate but equal holidays.

"Every municipality and every citizen of South Carolina, should be, well, forced to respect these two days and learn what they can about those two particular parts of our history," Ford said last week.

I already know way too much about the Confederacy part of that history. 

A little more than a year ago, I was in South Carolina covering Barack Obama's presidential election. The State House lobby features the Orders of Secession engraved in marble, portraits of Confederate generals look down on state legislators in their chambers and the Confederate flag still flies outside.

No one has convinced far too many of the state's white citizens that the Civil War was lost and that the descendants of freed slaves are now their equals. And I am anything but convinced that a holiday honoring the soldiers who died to keep the state's blacks enslaved will help old times be soon forgotten.

But I do suspect that Ford is trying to convince a bunch of the state's white citizens that he's a good Negro. Just last month, the senator pushed a bill that would outlaw dirty words in his state, making it a felony with a penalty of up to five years behind bars for using the F-word, among others. First Amendment be damned!

It was just a year ago, remember, when Democrat Ford backed Sen. Hillary Clinton, for the Democratic presidential nomination over Obama, because every "Democrat running on that ticket next year would lose because [Obama's] black and he's top of the ticket. We'd lose the House and the Senate and the governors and everything." 

Lawdy, Lawdy. Guess who just announced that he's running for governor of South Carolina? Do you think that in a post-racial era, President Barack Obama should endorse gubernatorial candidate Robert Ford--just because he's a fellow African American?

(This post has also been published on Huffingtonpost.com and Newsvine.)

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

Blagojevich's ploy reveals Obama's seat is black

A chance meeting between a dull kitchen knife and my left hand as I prepared Christmas dinner turned into blood at first sight. So, I'm just now healed enough to be able to type with both hands. In other words, this is a lame excuse on why I haven't posted in three weeks. 

But now, I'm back. Here's a column I wrote for Ebonyjet.com about Gov. Rod Blagojevich's appointment of Roland Burris to Barack Obama's vacated senate seat. The selection may be as much about jury selection as it is about good governance.

Here's what I had to say.

Mr. Burris Goes To Washington


The appointment of Roland Burris to Obama's Senate seat is anything but a simple plan


January 6, 2009 


By Monroe Anderson

I missed the exact moment when Barack Obama's vacant U.S. Senate post became a blacks only seat.  No one sent me an email declaring it was ours. Nor did anyone hit up my cell or Facebook page. I didn't even get a tweet.

But, apparently, the seat that once belonged to the president-elect now commands exclusive dibs from black pols in Illinois, period.  No whites need apply. Asians or Hispanics shouldn't bother either.Rep. Bobby Rush said as much. During Gov. Rod Blagojevich's news conference last week announcing the appointment of Roland Burris to Obama's vacated seat, the Illinois congressman from Chicago emerged from the press pool to commandeer the mike. "Let me remind you that there presently is no African American in the Senate," Rush said, talking through the media to address state and national Democrats. "I would ask you not to hang or lynch the appointee as you try to castigate the appointer."And while the appointer kept asserting during the news conference that it was all about the appointee, I didn't quite buy it.I believe that it's about Burris as the black appointee as much as it is about the red herring to be introduced at the governor's jury trial.  Blagojevich hasn't been indicted yet, but the big money is betting that he will be come spring.  Anticipating the inevitable, the governor has hired Ed Genson, the high-priced super lawyer who got R. Kelly off, as his defense attorney.When the trial begins, the Burris appointment—if it plays out badly with the Democrats over the next couple of days—may play well in Blagojevich's defense. Think O.J.  If the Senate Dems have a fit, denying the one seat vacated by an African American to be filled by another, then any blacks on the jury may be sympathetic enough to the governor to vote to acquit him—striking another symbolic blow against institutional American racism.I know it sounds a little far-fetched but so does the idea that a governor would try to sell the U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder.  But it also sounds far-fetched that in 21st-century America, blacks have no representation in the U.S. Senate, while there are 13 Jewish Americans, three Hispanics and two Asians.  It is also outlandish that in this time of change, Democratic leaders would ignore the law to play politics.Illinois State Democrats are in a mad rush to impeach their defiant governor and U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald is working overtime to indict him, but so far Blagojevich has not been proven guilty of anything but having a filthy mouth.  That means the governor is lawfully empowered to appoint Burris, who is untouched by any hint of corruption and unquestionably qualified to perform the duties of the post.Thirty years ago, Burris became state comptroller, the first black Democrat elected to statewide office in Illinois. After three terms in that office, he was elected the Illinois attorney general.  Since then, he's become a lovable loser. He has run three times for governor, and one time each for mayor and U.S. senator, each time coming up empty handed.That's why Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Dems are doing so much hand wringing.  Although he denies it, Reid has been reported as saying he did not want the seat to go to Representatives Jesse Jackson Jr., Danny Davis or state Senate President Emil Jones because he believes that none of the three black men could win the statewide election in 2010.If the Democrats insist on taking a bad situation and making it worse, it may be a moot point. Secretary of State Jesse White, the highest-ranking black official in Illinois right now, has refused to certify the Burris appointment.  The Democrats in the U.S. Senate insist that they won't seat Burris when he arrives at the chambers today.They may want to rethink that.  Rep. Rush, a former minister of the Black Panthers who is now a Baptist minister, Sunday night called the Senate "one of the last bastions of plantation and racial politics in America," then warned that the Senate Democrats who fight Burris' appointment are "going to ask for forgiveness" from the black American voter.Hmmmm. Come to think about it, that seat may need to be black after all.

Monroe Anderson is an award-winning journalist who penned op-ed columns for both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. Check out his blog at monroeanderson.typepad.com  

Obama's no joke to Al Qaida, KKK and other haters

 

         A little more than a year ago, I went to The Second City Theatre to enjoy its side-splitting hit revue at the time, "Between Barack and a Hard Place." The famed improv comedy ensemble, which is the comedic mother of Saturday Night Live, had put together a show that was all about Barack Obama, his candidacy and his political appeal.
    I was reminded of the series of satirical skits today when Al Qaida's mouthpiece for Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, released an audiotape calling our President-elect a House Negro.
    "You were born to a Muslim father, but you chose to stand in the ranks of the enemies of the Muslims, and pray the prayer of the Jews, although you claim to be Christian, in order to climb the rungs of leadership in America," observed bin Laden's sidekick in the recording.
    Has The Second City gone international with its satire? Is Al Qaida giving up on being a bunch of murderous religious zealots for stand-up comedy? What is going on here? And, where the hell is Osama bin Laden? Is he dead or simply too chicken to play straight man his deputy-villain's new routine?

    As it turns out, Obama's historic election as the first black leader of the free world has haters all over the planet in a bind. Right after the election, Thomas Robb, a grand poo-pa-pa in the Ku Klux Klan attributed Obama's success to his being only half black. Apparently Obama's Kansas mother's white, superior blood contributed to all the positive qualities that got him where he is going.
    And before our homegrown, historical terrorist group could finish explaining this inexplicable phenomenon, that terrorist group abroad figured it had some 'plaining to do as well.
    If America was as evil, racist and anti-Muslim as Al Qaida would have its followers believe, then what was the rationale behind Barack HUSSEIN Obama's popular, un-Saddam-like landslide election victory?
    Hmmm. Maybe the K.K.K. was on to something, sort of.
    The Al-Qaida tape definitely had a racial edge to it. Obama isn't a black man or anything the world's majority population--colored people--should relate to. He's a tool of the white man. The House Negro that Brother Malcolm tongue-lashed. Al-Zawahiri's audiotape features snippets from Malcolm X's 1965 speech in Selma, Alabama where he compared the "house negro," who Uncle Tommed for favors from the slave master to the "field negro," who picked cotton and would rather see the plantation owner dead. Malcolm X, the spokesman for the Nation of Islam who later became a convert to a more orthodox Muslim faith.
    Federal surveillance of both Al Qaida and the K.K.K. made it too difficult for note comparison so the Muslim haters left out the white mother part that the Christian haters promoted so prominently.
    Apparently, hiding in the cave lands of Pakistan is not the best place to keep abreast of current events or the latest trends in humanity. If bin Laden is still alive, then al-Zawahiri might want to slip him into Chicago to check out Second City's latest show so the two terrorists, like their counterparts in America the Klan and the neo-Nazis, can work on updating their hateful passions and pronouncements.
    Their work is cut out for them. Two weeks before the November 4 election, an Al Qaida website backed John McCain, not understanding that America was in the process of changing.
    The Second City, on the other hand, was right on it. The comedy theatre's current hit revue is "No Country for Old White Men." I don't hear the haters laughing.

           (This post is also on Huffingtonpost.com.)

Except for the voting and the celebration, it's all over

     

     This is the historical day we've been anxiously awaiting. If you haven't voted yet, read my post then go do it. I'd suggest that you vote early and often but, apparently, that's only legal in Chicago. 

     Here's my ebonyjet.com commentary and have I got a prognostication for you. It was posted on the website this morning.

A Simple Prediction
a bold proclamation on Election Day 
November 4, 2008 

By Monroe Anderson

At the risk of ending up with egg on my face and having to eat crow come tomorrow morning, allow me to go out on a limb and make this prediction: This time, it won't be close.  Barack Obama's margin of victory is going to be so wide that the GOP won't be able to steal the election.

To make myself perfectly clear, can you spell l-a-n-d-s-l-i-d-e?

That's what I see coming and that's what the Republicans no less deserve.

In one national opinion poll after the next, from last week to last night, Obama has enjoyed somewhere between a double-digit to a high single-digit lead over John McCain. The O-Man also had an edge in six of the eight battleground states.

The advantage to Team Obama doesn't stop there.  More than 153 million Americans, a record, have registered to vote with about 10 percent being newbies most anxious for a change. You've seen, maybe even waited in, those long lines of early voters in state after state, night after night, as seen on TV. Nearly a third of the Americans registered to vote have already been there and done that, giving Obama a 20 percent advantage even before the polls opened this morning.

But McCain and the gang would like to have you believe that all the polls are wrong; that the Mavericks have better than a chance of drawing an inside straight for ending up with the winning hand. "They may not know it, but the Mac is back," McCain has taken to boasting in his final-hour rallies.

Believe not what they say, but what they don't do.  The Republicans have not been campaigning in Obama country because they've been working overtime in defending their own turf. Since the credit crisis hit and the stock market did a belly flop, McCain and Sarah Palin have been forced to campaign in the states that George Bush owned in 2000 and 2004.

But eight years of Bush have proven to be eight years too many.  After lying about the weapons of mass destruction, mishandling the New Orleans rescue after Hurricane Katrina and driving America to the poor house, the president has thoroughly ruined the Republican brand.

There are scores of other reasons why any politician with an R at the front of his party's name is wearing a scarlet letter.  But, I'll just tick off three color-coded terror alerts for McPalin and the rest of the GOP.

*Black pride. The enthusiasm among African American voters alone may help turn some red states blue. In North Carolina, for instance, half of the state's registered African American voters have already cast their ballots.

*Brown anger. The incessant rants against illegal immigration by the rabid right's pet radio hosts, Rush Limbaugh, Lara Inghram et al have infuriated Americans of Mexican descent—seventy-five percent of their votes will be cast for the black man.

*White fear. The hockey mom from nowhere may have ginned up McCain's presidential prospects in early September, but by late October Gov. Palin was a total drag on the ticket. Once she'd been exposed as the pitbull who was all bark with no intellectual bite, true blue white American patriots shuddered at the thought of her possibly having her hand on the nuclear trigger.

That's why I'm predicting an Obama blowout--with one not-so-minor caveat: For those of you who haven't voted yet, it's up to you. If you don't go out to vote and encourage all your family members and friends to do the same, by Wednesday you'll find me plunging off the end of a broken limb, gagging on a nasty breakfast of raw egg and cold crow.

Monroe Anderson is an award-winning journalist who penned op-ed columns for both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. 

     And, before you go, take a look at this hilarious YouTube video, Hockey Moms Against Sarah Palin, which is just one more bit of evidence as to why the Republicans won't rule this day. (h/t to An Average American Patriot)

Sarah Palin gets punked, not ready to be POTUS

With the exception of those who believe that Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster really exist, all the rest of us fully understand that John McCain and Sarah Palin are professional misspeakers or, to put it more bluntly, liars.

Whether you talking about Palin saying "no" to the Bridge to Nowhere or McCain charging that Barack Obama's tax cut is like welfare, the Mavericks have been playing fast and loose with the truth from the St. Paul convention to their last stump speech. 

McCainpeida.org, a project of the Democratic Party, places the number of McPalin lies at 175 and counting.

I knew there was a whole lot of lying going on, but I couldn't put a number on it. But there is one lie, repeated too many times to count, that is heads and shoulders above the rest: Gov. Palin is ready to be the POTUS.

Well, the hockey mom just got punked and the Big Lie about her being ready to assume the office just got exposed for what it is. 

Canadian comedian Marc-Antoine Audette pulled a Borat on Gov. Palin during a prank call where he pretended to be French president Nicolas Sarkozy. During the fake interview, Palin unwittingly admitted that she may be a good American president in eight years.

The funny thing with that confession is that we don't know if she was deferring to McCain, for a change (did you see the Palin Country sign with McCain's name missing at today's rally) and allowing him the post for the next two terms or if she was caught in a moment of candor.


 

I'd like to believe a bit of honesty slipped out of her mouth.

Here's some of what Washingtonpost.com reported on Palin's Sacha Baron Cohen-like moment:

Sarah Palin Pranked by Sarkozy Impersonator

Two well-known Canadian pranksters tricked Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin into thinking she was on the phone today with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The conversation, captured on a Montreal radio program, was, in a word, embarrassing. (Politico's Ben Smith was among the first to pick up on reports fromThe Canadian Press.)

The fake Sarkozy buttered Palin up by telling her he hoped she would president some day. "Haha, maybe in eight years," Palin replied. Then the conversation turned to helicopter hunting, with a mention of Vice President Dick Cheney's infamous bad shot.

"One of my favorite activities is to hunt, too," the fake Sarkozy said. "Oh, very good, we should go hunting together," Palin replied, adding, "I think we could have a lot of fun together as we're getting work done. We could kill two birds with one stone that way."

"I just love killing those animals! Taking away life, that is so fun," the Sarkozy impersonator said.

Palin laughed.

"As long as we don't bring Vice President Cheney," the jokester said. "I'll be a very careful shot, don't worry," Palin said, laughing.

You can hear the entire prank call here. 

To read the rest of the Washingtonpost.com report, click here. 

        And while you chuckling to yourself, consider this: Why would the would-be vice president engage in a talk with the president of France without preconditions?

Hey, Blue States, why don't we secede from the Union?

       We're got an old wound that Sarah Palin and her running buddy, John McCain, have ripped off the scab and torn open and exposed for all the world to see: The Divided States of America.
    Although George W. Bush contributed mightily to the whole Red State/Blue State development and, before him, Ronald Reagan launched the Southern Strategy, until recently we sorta, kinda thought of ourselves as the United States of America.
    No more. Thanks to McPalin, we've now come to realize there are real Americans and the rest of us. We now know there are pro-American parts of America and then there are those other parts in our nation.
   Channeling Joseph McCarthy, Michele Bachmann, a Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, even pointed out that Barack and Michelle Obama are anti-American and called for the MSM to do a congressional investigation to discover which of her Democratic colleagues were anti-American.
    This may sound like a bunch of nonsense to many of you, but I suggest we think about it. If the McCain, Palin, Bachmann crowd really don’t think we’re one of them—then maybe we shouldn’t be.
   I’m startin to believe that the First Dude, Todd Palin, was on to somethin when he was pallin around with members of the Alaska Independence Party and lookin into the movement to have his and Sarah's state secede from the Lower 48.  I’m now believin that he was right in spirit, but wrong in who ought to be leavin who.
   I'm figurin that those of us in the Blue States should let all those true Americans in the Red States keep it real. And I just received a viral email from my Jewish, suspected socialist-sympathizing friend, Chuck Halevi, spelling out just what we should do and what we'll get in the process and what we'll be leavin to the not anti-Americans.

   Read it and smile:

Dear Red States:
We've decided we're leaving.  We intend to form our
own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with
us.  In case you aren't aware, that includes California , Hawaii ,
Oregon , Washington , Minnesota , Wisconsin , Michigan ,
Illinois and the entire Northeast.
We believe this split will be beneficial to the
nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New
California

To sum up briefly:
You get Texas , Oklahoma and all the slave states.  We
get stem cell research and the best beaches.
We get the Statue of Liberty.  You get Dollywood.
We get Intel and Microsoft.  You get WorldCom.
We get Harvard.  You get Ole' Miss.
We get 85 percent of America 's venture capital and
entrepreneurs. You get Alabama .
We get two-thirds of the tax revenue; you get to make
the red states pay their fair share.
Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower
than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy
families. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be
pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back
from Iraq at once.
If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals.
They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for
  no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their
 children's caskets coming home.
 We do wish you success in Iraq , and hope that the WMDs
  turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's
Quagmire.
  With the Blue States in hand, we will have:
 firm control of 80 percent of the country's fresh
 water more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce
92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit
95 percent of America 's quality wines (you can serve
 French wines at state dinners)
90 percent of all cheese
90 percent of the high tech industry - most of the
  U.S. low-sulfur coal all living redwoods, sequoias and condors all the
Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus ... - Stanford , Cal
Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have
 to cope with:
   -  88 percent of all obese  Americans (and their
 projected health care costs)
   -  92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes,
   -  nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes,
  -  90 percent of the hurricanes,
  -  virtually 100 percent of all televangelists and
their buddies like Rush Limbaugh, as well as Bob Jones University ,
Clemson College and the Univ. of Georgia.
We get Hollywood and Yosemite , thank you very much.
Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states
believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe
 life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws,
44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that
Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you nincompoops believe
you are people with higher morals then we lefties.
 
 
Finally, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have the Mexican stuff when they knock your wall down.

 
Peace out, 

     Oh, and one last thing. Keeping in the spirit of who gets the short end of the stick, y'all can have Mavericks John McCain and Sarah Palin. We get Vice-President Joe Biden and, the Leader of the Really Free World, President Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.

 

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.)