God I'm sick of this guy

"Monica's breats were this big!"
- Bill "Bubba" Clinton

Someone stop this man please? From an interview given to CNN:

"What happened there is a total myth and a mugging," Clinton told CNN's Sean Callebs in New Orleans, Louisiana, over the weekend.

"It's been pretty well established. Charlie Rangel ... the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in unequivocal terms in South Carolina that no one in our campaign played any race card, that we had some played against us, but we didn't play any."

...Bill Clinton adamantly denied he was playing racial politics. Hillary Clinton later offered regrets for her husband's remarks, saying, "If anyone was offended by anything that was said, whether it was meant or not, whether it was misinterpreted or not, then obviously I regret that."

Obama ended up winning South Carolina with a large majority of African-American voters, while most whites voted for Clinton or former Sen. John Edwards. South Carolina's Democratic primary was January 26.

Bill Clinton insisted his role his his wife's campaign has not changed since South Carolina. When asked if he was concerned that the contest was becoming more polarized, the ex-president said he expected it to happen...

...Clinton brushed aside notions African-Americans were casting an anti-Clinton vote in the primaries by voting for Obama.

"Once African-Americans understood that they had a candidate with a serious chance to win the nomination and perhaps the presidency, then it was going to be a question of somewhere between 80 percent and 90 percent were going to support him except in areas where she had particularly strong profile," he said.

"The fundamental fact is, most of the Democrats like both these candidates and they're trying to figure out who would be the best president, who's likely to do things or be what I need most in a president, and who's most likely to win," he added...

There are a couple of things going on here. This plus his wife's recent half-assed non-apology is the Clinton's said attempt at turning the national conversation away from their race-baiting (which hurts them with the kind of moderate white voters they have up to now not won) and regaining black support.

The fact that they have waited this long to really address this is a sign of that campaign's great incompetence. It was too late for this kind of reconciliation a month ago.

The other thing of course is to still denigrate Obama's efforts while playing the victim.

Obama is not winning the black vote because he's black. If that were the case then Jesse Jackson who the Clinton campaign can't stop incorrectly comparing Obama too would have done alot better than he did when he ran. If it were the case we would be talking about Governors Michael Steele, Lynn Swann and Ken Blackwell.

I don't deny that Bill is an asset but could Hillary stop the nonsense of having her man make stupid comments like this.

It hasn't worked before to sway voters and it won't work now.

Spare us. PLEASE!

Good men speak the truth

Wright is right

It's been a few days since the whole controversy surrounding Obama's pastor Dr. Jeremiah Wright blew up.

So far I've been treated to outraged condemnations of the man from the usual suspects but what I want to focus on is not the controversy but what the controversy tells us about this country.

At some point, certainly not very soon, we will have some dialogue about the Iraq War's beginnings.

There will be inevitable recounting of the lies told by Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Bush and Rice in the lead up but that still won't touch on why we've ended up spending so much blood and treasure in a failing effort in that country.

We are in Iraq because the majority of the people in this country have the mentality of children with regard to the consequences of our actions.

To many people seem to think that we can say what we want and do what we want, even if that means trampling on others freedom and killing people and we shouldn't face any penalty for those actions.

We are in Iraq because of our own hubris. The same way we ended up in Vietnam.

Normally we don't get to see the seething rage that is the product of such callousness.

We are thousands of miles away from the people that we abuse and what we do see is carefully sanitized by our idiotic media so that populace doesn't get upset.

At home, whites have forced the silence of African-Americans through intimidation.

Jeremiah Wright blasted through that wall of fear and ignorance and is now paying for it by having his name and his works smeared.

African-Americans have been the victims of domestic terrorism through enslavement and discrimination for more than 400 years.

Of course there is anger within us at this country and at the people who have benefitted and continue to benefit from the racism in our society.

But we are not supposed to talk about it let alone shout and rage about our continued abuse.

We can't express the ambivalent feelings that we all have towards being black in America.

But Jeremiah Wright spoke up and that is a crime.

Well Dr. Wright I salute you. For continuing the great black tradition of daring to speak the truth in a time when no one wanted to hear it.

Here's to you Dr. Wright.

Don't let the fools bring you down.

A compromising position

Yes she thinks Latinos are stupid (and racist as hell apparently)

Democrats' racial divide becoming ever more evident

By JAY ROOT

Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Democrats have long depended on a rainbow-like racial coalition to win races against Republicans, but the fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has revealed an increasingly common and sometimes bitter split between blacks and Hispanics.

As Hispanics have grown in numbers, the tension has increased, and it's produced a racial minefield for the Democratic presidential candidates. Both camps publicly downplay the divide, but it has occasionally spilled out into the open, and it could be a significant factor in the March 4 Texas primaries.

Raw feelings were evident in a recent complaint from Jesse Diaz, president of the Dallas-area League of United Latin American Citizens. Diaz, identifying himself as a Clinton supporter, said in a letter posted on the CNN Web site that Hispanics in Dallas are not about to "jump on the Obama Express."

"When Senator Obama's campaign rolls into Dallas, the 'Dallas Phenomenon' will reflect the racist and biased distaste Dallas' black leadership has shown towards Dallas' Hispanic community for decades," Diaz wrote.

Diaz' chief complaint is that black leaders show favoritism to African-Americans in government jobs and leadership posts. He stood by his comments in an interview, saying that "what Anglos did to African-Americans, African-Americans are now doing to Hispanics."

The rest of this bullshit report can be read here.

I don't know who Jay Root is. After reading his report I really don't care because his report is pure crap. What concerns me about this story is that it is a prime example of the unsavory relationship between campaigns and reporters.

I know campaigns leak stories and the media plays favorites but this is something different.

We've already gone through the news cycle where the Clintons tried to play the "Latinos hate blacks card".

And we've already seen that idea debunked not only at the ballot box but also in writing
Here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Never mind the real divide is generational as it goes with how Latinos are voting in the Democratic primary or that even if they don't vote for Obama it doesn't necessarily have to come down to racist reasons.

So why are we seeing this resurface now? There are two reasons.

First, the new SurveyUSA poll which shows Obama up by four points in Texas.

Second, is the fact that she has run out of any real ideas of how to attack him (and the previous ones she's used have not worked) and now is chucking any negative attack she can at him.

This report is part of that line of attack.

So what does that say about Jay Root, that he is a willing vessel for some racist smear that is thoroughly debunked by a desperate and dying political campaign? It says that the man doesn't deserve to write for the local Pennysaver, let alone a newspaper.

And it also says that as readers we all must look beyond the story and realize that understanding the motivations of the people behind the scenes of the stories of the day are as important as the stories themselves.

Michelle Obama and the war

Michelle Obama made what for some was a controversial statement at a Wisconsin campaign rally yesterday by saying:

“Hope is making a comeback and, let me tell you, for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change. I have seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic common issues and it has made me proud."

Now the media and many in the blogosphere have done their part in truncating the quote, editing out anything after the first sentence, making her seem like all she doing was America bashing. But even shortened the remark is, no pun intended, unremarkable. That is to say, given the last eight years, let alone the 26 years that have passed since Mrs. Obama was 18, there is more than plenty not to excite many folks into spontaneous ecstatic waving of Old Glory.

This is the richest country in the world that can't keep it's people out of poverty, educate it's children properly, has a dysfunctional healthcare system that makes people fiscally ill while it makes them physically well and seems obsessed with war even if it means making us less safe and jeopardizing our already fragile economic safety net.

There can be no doubt that there are many good things about the United States but the country's wholesale failure to provide for it's people is a tragedy.

Michelle Obama knows this, as many African-Americans do, having grown up in poverty in the south side of Chicago and should be thanked for telling a bit of truth about where we are as a people and how people are finally beginning to understand what needs to happen for us to live in the country we should.

The angry response to her remark is another disturbing example of the willful blindness that people in this country exhibit to the issues facing us.

It's this kind of stupidity that explains why we are in Iraq today. There are too many people in this country who lack even the basic sense of self-preservation and common sense that God gave a dung beetle to recognize what really is happening around them.

This should give everyone pause because no matter how many people now believe the Iraq War was a mistake the same idiocy that got us there in the first place is still there ready to be fearfully brought forth again.

Barack Obama talks about changing the mindset that got us into war. I wish him luck because the terrible truth of the matter is he can count every single fool who is criticizing the veracity of his wife's statement now as a future deterrent to any social, economic or foreign policy programs he wants to implement. Not because they will have reasoned arguments against them but because it is far more comfortable to to be a kneejerk reactionary than to act with reason.

Remember the first thing we can do out of the womb is scream and holler. It takes alot more time to learn how to talk.