Bloodthirsty Liberal

The nation rejoices with you!

Four years ago, Mitch Landrieu narrowly lost to Ray Nagin in a racially divisive election for mayor of Katrina-scarred New Orleans. This time, there was no doubt who frustrated voters wanted to take over.

Landrieu won the mayor’s office decisively Saturday, beating 10 opponents to become the first white mayor of the mostly black city since his father Moon left the post in 1979.

Don’t let the porch door hit you on the way out, Ray!

I don’t care about the color of the mayor, and I don’t trust political dynasties—I’m from Massachusetts, can you blame me?—but Nagin’s performance and behavior after Katrina should have earned him a one-way ticket out of office a long time ago.

Oh yeah, way to go Saints (I’m from Massachusetts, can you blame me?)!

This is not a joke.

Repeat: this is not a joke:

NBC served up a mountain of controversy Thursday after a cafeteria menu offered fried chicken, collard greens, black-eyed peas and cornbread in honor of Black History Month.

But the African-American chef who planned the menu said she had been trying to cook the menu for years in honor of the month and doesn’t understand why everyone was so upset.

“All I wanted to do was make a meal that everyone would enjoy, and that I eat myself,” chef Leslie Calhoun told the New York Post.
The fallout over the menu was prompted by a Tweet from Ahmir Thompson, aka ‘Questlove,’ the drummer for Jimmy Fallon’s house band the Roots. He posted a picture of the menu on Twitter next to the words, “Hmm HR?”

The picture sparked a flurry of anger and claims the menu was racist, which led to NBC nixing the cafeteria special.

“The sign in the NBCU cafeteria has been removed. We apologize for anyone who was offended by it,” tweeted NBC vice president of communications Kevin Goldman.

How about apologizing to all the people looking forward to some fine eating? I would stand in line to sample that menu every day for the entire month of February. Now, I’m hungry.

I wish I could shake this guy’s hand:

I’ve often said jokingly that Black History Month should more accurately be called “white people and America suck” month. Rather than focusing on all of black history, every February, the liberal media and most democrats gleefully bring up all of America’s past sins. Fine. I mean, after all, it is a part of history. But what is so wrong is that these race exploiters imply that current race relations in America have not come very far from the days of blacks being lynched. Thus, Black History Month in reality is the liberal democrats’ annual fundraiser and promo campaign for more entitlement programs.

They hold a Black History assembly at my kids’ school every year, and I can’t count the number of times I’ve sighed, cringed, rolled my eyes, and shaken my head (all imperceptibly, of course, to avoid persecution) at the celebration of victimization over accomplishment.

It’s all Rosa Parks, in other words, and no Billie Holiday.

Now, I know what you’ll say: Rosa Parks did accomplish something in her victimhood—something great. And Billie Holiday was a victim even while she accomplished something great, too. Points well made (if I do say so myself), and granted.

But why limit the definition of accomplishment only to standing up to oppression? Did Duke Ellington or Josh Gibson accomplish less because they plied their trades largely in segregated fields, through no fault of their own?

Rosa Parks is a hero, Medgar Evers is a hero. But so is Cool Papa Bell. So is Scott Joplin. So is Marian Anderson. So are the Tuskegee Airmen. So is Zora Neale Hurston. So are Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy and Aretha Franklin and Denzel Washington and Will Smith and Oprah Winfrey. One could go on.

I recognize that the history of black people in this country is largely defined by the history of their oppression. But not completely. And who would want to have their history, their identity, defined by what ignorant people thought of them?

So celebrate black history in Black History Month (the shortest month of the year, wonder why), but celebrate ALL of it, not just the part that reinforces unhealthy and outdated relationships.

Now that Massachusetts is the most racist state in the Union—its capital renamed Selma-on-Charles—I’m trying to come up with a slogan befitting our new status.

Something like, “Forget Larry Bird, We Love Robert Byrd” or “Birth of Red Sox Nation” or “If You Have Light Skin and an Optional Negro Dialect, We Still Won’t Vote for Your Sock Puppet”. Work in progress, obviously.

What’s that? You haven’t heard that the state that sends John Kerry, Barney Frank, (and others—exclusively Democrats—for decades) to Washington is now Bull Connorstan (better)?

I heard it on one of the “news” stations:

KEITH OLBERMANN: One last aspect, and this is not necessarily pretty. 1964, 1965 the greatest years of civil-rights change in this country since Emancipation and in the 1966 midterms the Republicans took 47 seats from the House from the Democrats, and most of those elections had clear racial undertones, man had overtones.

The Republicans and the Tea Partiers will tell you what happens with Scott Brown tonight whether he wins or comes close is a repudiation of Obama policies. And surely one of Obama’s policies from the viewpoint of his opponents is it’s OK to have this sea-change in American history–to have an African-American president. Is this vote to any degree just another euphemism, the way ’states rights’ was in the ’60s?

That’s right, we have a black (aka Negro) governor, an exclusively Democratic congressional delegation (as Olbermann spoke), an overwhelmingly Democratic state legislature (which just lost another Republican), we voted overwhelmingly for Oba—

Oh why bother?

We’re just guilty. Keith says we’re guilty, Chris Matthews says we’re guilty (”Boston? Boston?“), Janeane Garofalo says we’re guilty—we might as well own it. Gays took a derogatory epithet and came up with the advocacy group Queer Nation; a black music group looking to make a name for themselves (literally) called themselves Ni**az With Attitude (”A Bitch is a Bitch” is my favorite, followed closely by “She Swallowed It”).

So why can’t we be “Bigots With Big-Uns” or “Tea Pah-ty Pah-tisans”?

The Left circles its wagons (to employ a racist, genocidal metaphor) into ever smaller rings. The Massachusetts electorate, surely one of the most leftist in the country, is dead to them—even the left-most of the Massachusetts electorate feels this way!

We can’t merely disagree—we must be evil. We’re not moderate or independent, we’re the Klan.

And all the while, nobody mentions Harry Reid or Bill Clinton or Robert Byrd.

But you know what really made Keith Olbermann furious, what caused him to foam and sputter more than his usual sudsy self?

HOWARD FINEMAN: If you look at polling, all the new polls including the NBC poll and the CBS poll, Barack Obama is overwhelmingly liked personally by the American people. I think for most of the American people race is no respect a part of the equation. Maybe not in Massachusetts but maybe in some places there are codes, there are images, there are pick-up trucks. You can say there’s a racial aspect –

OLBERMANN: O-o-o-f. What were the Scott Brown ads, though? Every one of the Scott Brown ads had him in a pick-up truck.

That’s it! That’s our name: Pick-Uppity Red Necks! Thanks Keith.

French Leftists resorted to the guillotine to deal with their ideological opponents (even ideological supporters); Russian Lefties just shot (and starved) ‘em. The American Left puts them on MSNBC. It’s enough to make your blood run cold.

PS: What will Keith say when, as I’ve heard reported, Scott auctions his truck and donates the proceeds to Haitian relief? And that Scott’s daughter, Ayla, is donating proceeds from her CD sales to the Bush/Clinton Haitian relief fund? But there I go again, engaging a paranoid schizophrenic in discourse.

If Democrats can turn a funeral into a campaign rally, why shouldn’t Martha Coakley turn a tribute to the legacy of Martin Luther King into a get-out-the-vote stump appearance?

Martha Coakley spoke to the Boston Martin Luther King Day Breakfast this morning, making the case to a subdued crowd of dignitaries at the Hynes convention center that voting for her tomorrow will help carry on King’s legacy. …

“If you end me to the Senate, I will be guided by those values,” she said of President Obama and King to a packed ballroom that included her opponent, Scott Brown, who sat in the crowd; Coakley sat on the dais.

Coakley received polite, seated applause, but her tepid reception at a stronghold of Democratic politics reflected the lack of excitement among Democrats for the race. Brown was also received warmly, shaking hands and taking pictures with well-wishers during pauses in the morning’s event.

…

“I thought it was inappropriate when she started asking for people’s votes when they’re trying to remember Martin Luther King, Jr.,” [Brown] said. “I didn’t know this was a rally for Martha.”

…

“Tomorrow we act on the dream and we make sure that we allow me to continue that work,” Coakley said. “We remember the dream tomorrow and we will act on the dream tomorrow.”

Psst, Martha: MLK’s day is today. Tomorrow is just election day. The day to remember the dream is today (and every day). But then African American are just voters to you. Voters you’ve already counted and taken for granted.

Let’s see how that works out for you.

PS: Look who’s come to see the virtue of campaigning out in the cold!

“Yoo-hoo, black person! Can you come over here and stand next to me, black person?”

Some of us are just lighter-skinned than others.

(And no one can hear yo’ di-lec when you typin’, homie.)

“I think if you look at the reports as I have, it was all in the context of saying positive things about Senator Obama,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine. “It definitely was in the context of recognizing in Senator Obama a great candidate and future president.”

Sen. Diane Feinstein of California said Mr. Reid should not resign, and defended his remark as just a “mistake.”

…

“So the president has accepted the apology, and it would seem to me that the matter should be closed.”

But who cares what some white bitch thinks (if I have the dialect right)?

Let’s find someone of a slightly darker persuasion:

Good point. And we are consistently implored to support the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, so if Negro is okay, presumably so is “colored people”.

Good luck with that.

Others are trying to take the sting out of the word. Let’s see how that goes:

Hmm. Well, if we’re all okay with Negro, I’ll just have to go along.

I’m just glad my mother is no longer alive to see this. If I had used Reid’s language, her hairbrush and my backside would have had a date that would have lived in infamy.

I assume we all remember when John Conyers said… well, how can I say it better than he did?:

“I’m getting tired of saving Obama’s can in the White House. I mean, he only won (health care reform) by five votes in the House, and this bill wasn’t anything to write home about. The public option is only available, which is the only way you manage cost and get some competition to 1,300 other health insurance companies, the only way he could have got that through is that progressives held their nose and voted for it anyway.

…

“You know, holding hands out and beer on Friday nights in the White House and bowing down to every nutty right-wing proposal about health care, and saying on occasion that public options aren’t all that important is doing a disservice to the Barack Obama that I first met who was an ardent single-payer enthusiast himself.

…

“That is essentially what Rahm Emanuel has said: Just give us anything and we will declare victory,” said Conyers. “Not only is it not a victory, but when it doesn’t work, guess who will come at him: the same guys that were saying let’s go along with anything… This is all my buddy Rahm Emanuel trying to get anything. But look the bill doesn’t go into effect for three years. Many of the people that we are trying to help will be dead by then.”

So what did President Obama do but hold hands and bow down to this nutty left-winger.

Let’s see where it got him:

White House officials declined to comment on an interview that Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., gave The Hill, in which he says the president “called me and told me that he heard that I was demeaning him and I had to explain to him that it wasn’t anything personal, it was an honest difference on the issues. And he said, ‘Well, let’s talk about it.’” Conyers says he told the president he wasn’t in the mood to “chat.”

And he’s not alone. The whole Congressional Black Caucus doesn’t seem to be in the chatting mood:

It seems that the Congressional Black Caucus has a bone to pick with President Barack Obama. The 43-member group recently agreed to boycott a vote on a financial overhaul measure as a sign of protest toward the Obama Administration. The bill easily passed, but Rep. Maxine Waters made it clear that the caucus could cause trouble for future Democratic bills by voting with the Republicans. The protest was in response to what the CBC considers to be a blatant disregard for African American issues by the Obama Administration.

Hey, no cutting! Take a number and wait in line like the gays, the elderly, women, independents, Arabs, Jews, doves, Wall Streeters, and all the other special interest groups who’ve known nothing but disappointment since Inauguration Day.

Martin Luther King never lived to see the day when a man would be judged not on the color of his skin, but on the content of his character. Will we?

What’s the matter, BTL? How come you’re not crowing about the drubbing President Obama took in the elections yesterday? Republican governors winning in Virginia and… wait for it… New Jersey.

Where’s the victory dance?

No victory dance here. More like a funeral march. Not just because our clown of a mayor won his fifth term (a likable clown, I admit), but because a corrupt city councilor, caught on film accepting a bribe, won reelection with 60% of the vote:

Councilor Chuck Turner has said for months that voters would look past his federal indictment and grant him another term, and last night the five-term Roxbury councilor got his vindication: a 20-point blowout over challenger Carlos “Tony’’ Henriquez.

“It’s significant that I was reelected, but the real significance is that our community did not fall for the hype,’’ Turner, standing on a chair, told a crowd of about 50 campaign supporters who gathered at his district office in Dudley Square and chanted “Chuck! Chuck! Chuck!’’

He then ticked off a series of news media endorsements for Henriquez - from the Globe, the Herald, the Phoenix, and the South End News - as he proclaimed, to broad applause, “The people of Roxbury said, ‘The hell with you!’ ’’

…

Turner, 69, was indicted last year on charges that he accepted $1,000 in cash in exchange for helping a nightclub win a liquor license. Turner has strongly denied the charges, pointing to his beat-up Mazda and his modest home as evidence that he does not live a high-end lifestyle.

…

A dozen voters interviewed yesterday afternoon at the Orchard Gardens Community Center in Roxbury were almost evenly divided between Turner and Henriquez. Those who supported Turner either did not believe the charges against him, did not care about them, or thought they should be overlooked.

…

In his speech at his district office, Turner cited the victories of other City Council candidates of color as an indication of a new direction in Boston. “Martin [Luther King Jr.] said I’m not going to be there with you, but I know you’re going to get to the mountaintop,’’ he said. “I don’t think this is arrogant, but I think we’re on the mountaintop.’’

Why, because there’s a pot of gold there?

Is there anything sicker and sadder than a corrupt, slimy, opportunist wrapping himself in the mantle of a hero? Has the legacy of MLK really been so degraded that a crooked hack can celebrate a meaningless election by exploiting the historic and resonant words King spoke prophesying his own death?

Enjoy, citizens of Virginia and New Jersey, you have much to celebrate. Me, I’m going to drape my house with black bunting.

I can say that, can’t I? Surely, no one at NBC will come after me:

One’s a slutty-looking bit of fluff with an obsession over Obama’s “nuts”; the other’s a news anchor!

“Joining me now to talk about this and the nation’s real problem of joblessness, the Rev. Al Sharpton…”

“I’m Rev. Jesse Jackson.”

“Right. I’m so sorry,” said Brewer. “The script in front of me said Rev. Al Sharpton. I’m looking at your face. I know who you are, Rev. Jackson, we all do. I’m sorry.”

We sure do.

Now, which one referred to New York as Hymietown and said “Zionism is a kind of poisonous weed that is choking Judaism. Or that he was “sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust.” Or that traditional Democratic support for Israel is because of “the Jewish element in the party … a kind of glorified form of bribery.”

And which one incited the mob at Freddie’s Fashion Mart? I can never remember.

And what about the guy with the bow tie who called Judaism a gutter religion? So many haters, so little time.

So says DemocracyCorps

These base Republican voters dislike Barack Obama to be sure – which is not very surprising as base Democrats had few positive things to say about George Bush – but these voters identify themselves as part of a ‘mocked’ minority with a set of shared beliefs and knowledge, and commitment to oppose Obama that sets them apart from the majority in the country. They believe Obama is ruthlessly advancing a ‘secret agenda’ to bankrupt the United States and dramatically expand government control to an extent nothing short of socialism. While these voters are disdainful of a Republican Party they view to have failed in its mission, they overwhelmingly view a successful Obama presidency as the destruction of this country’s founding principles and are committed to seeing the president fail.

Instead of focusing on these intense ideological divisions, the press and elites continue to look for a racial element that drives these voters’ beliefs – but they need to get over it. Conducted on the heels of Joe Wilson’s incendiary comments at the president’s joint session address, we gave these groups of older, white Republican base voters in Georgia full opportunity to bring race into their discussion – but it did not ever become a central element, and indeed, was almost beside the point.

Now, who does that sound like?

My hope, and please understand me when I say this. I disagree fervently with the people on our side of the aisle who have caved and who say, “Well, I hope he succeeds. We’ve got to give him a chance.” Why? They didn’t give Bush a chance in 2000. Before he was inaugurated the search-and-destroy mission had begun. I’m not talking about search-and-destroy, but I’ve been listening to Barack Obama for a year-and-a-half. I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don’t want them to succeed.

…

Look, what he’s talking about is the absorption of as much of the private sector by the US government as possible, from the banking business, to the mortgage industry, the automobile business, to health care. I do not want the government in charge of all of these things. I don’t want this to work. So I’m thinking of replying to the guy, “Okay, I’ll send you a response, but I don’t need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails.”

…

Why is it any different, what’s new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what’s gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it? I don’t care what the Drive-By story is. I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: “Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails.”

It’s awfully big of James Carville to excuse conservatives (Rush most of all) from charges of racism—but he’s not done with them, not by a long shot:

The Republican base voters are not part of the continuum leading to the center of the electorate: they truly stand apart. For additional perspective, Democracy Corps conducted a parallel set of groups in suburban Cleveland. These groups, comprised of older, white, non-college independents and weak partisans, represent some of the most conservative swing voters in the electorate, and they demonstrated a wholly different worldview from Republican base voters by dismissing the fear of “socialism” and evaluating Obama in very different terms.

Oh, really?

Among independents, who provided Obama’s margin of victory last fall, 64 percent have severe doubts about his plans. The polls are averaging nearly 50 percent opposition.

Oh really?

The reason is Obama’s sinking numbers, particularly with independent voters. With all voters, Obama’s favorable ratings have slid 22 points since he was inaugurated in January. He still has a firm majority. However, a new Marist poll shows he has a small net negative with independent voters. Among independents, 45 percent approve and 47 percent disapprove. His disapproval rating is up 10 percentage points since August among independents.

Independent voters don’t matter much in New York, but they do in swing states that Obama won like Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin and Ohio. And their congressional Democrats are watching.

Oh really?

Forty-three percent now of Americans, only 43 percent, would vote for him for president today.

You look at his approval ratings, he slipped back into the 40s, but more interestingly, independents, he’s losing, 46-41. And on health care, he’s losing independents, 53-36.

Oh really?

The approval ratings of the president by Democrats and Republicans are as one would expect with 77% of Democrats giving President Obama positive ratings compared to 14% of Republicans. Independents, however, are more down on the president as 60% give him negative ratings while 40% give him positive marks on his overall job performance.

Oh really?

A slim 43 percent plurality of Americans now disapproves of the job Barack Obama is doing on Afghanistan, an increase from the 32 percent who disapproved last month. Only Democrats, at 63 percent, assign positive marks to the president on Afghanistan, compared with 20 percent of Republicans and 38 percent of independents.

Oh really?

As health care legislation moves out of the Senate Finance Committee, a majority of Americans says they oppose the reforms being considered. A Fox News poll released Thursday finds that by 54 percent to 35 percent, Americans oppose the reforms.

…

Predictably, a 65 percent majority of Democrats favors the legislation, while 86 percent of Republicans oppose it. Independents oppose the reforms by 62 percent to 23 percent.

You get the point. Independents are trending Republican, and the Democrats are soiling their shorts.