[By: Dr. Boyce Watkins]
Herman Cain Plays the Race Card Against Barack Obama: It appears that Herman Cain, who is expected to be a black presidential candidate, has the race card locked and loaded for his sprint toward the White House.

Recently, Cain was asked about race during a New Hampshire campaign speech. When asked about this controversial topic, Cain had this to say:

“Now people are over this first black president thing,” he said. “But there are some people who will say, ‘I’m not going to vote for another black guy because this one didn’t work out. And my response is, ‘Well, what about those 43 white guys you put in there? How did they work out? Don’t condemn me because the first black one was bad.”

There was another interesting episode when Cain was asked on his radio show why he speaks so highly of the founding fathers, even though they owned slaves.

“They set the bar high when they said all men were created equal,” Cain said. “They could have set it where they were that day. They set it high so this nation could work up to that ideal.”

Herman Cain — A ‘Butt-Licking’ Uncle Tom

One thing that people can say about Herman Cain is that he was a successful businessman. As the CEO and part owner of Godfather’s Pizza, Cain has accumulated enough wealth and success to consider himself to be a serious candidate for the presidency. With that said, Cain also has a set of views that are reflective of the diversity of opinions within the African-American community, presenting an interesting contrast to those who want to put all black people into a nice, neat, little “liberal” box.

Let’s be clear, I don’t agree with Herman Cain. I have a difficult time appreciating any African American who panders for votes by effectively saying, “I stand with you in your disdain for the way black people behave. I assure you that I’m different from the rest of them.”

Such a divide-and-conquer political strategy has been used since we had the house negro/field negro divide during slavery (there is no faster route to the top of the political heap than by becoming a black Republican). Rather than using hatred toward President Obama as a weapon for his own political advancement, Cain might be more respectable if he simply stood on his own credentials (as his fellow conservative Colin Powell might do). Being a black conservative presidential candidate doesn’t mean you have to disrespect the first black president.

With that said, many of Cain’s views reflect a peculiar paradox within the black community: the fact that black people are actually incredibly conservative. When it comes to views on gay marriage, abortion, the separation of church and state, etc., African Americans have quite a few viewpoints that align more closely with the Republican right than with liberals who’ve come to “save us.” The problem for Republicans, however, is that they insist on advocating for programs that hurt the poor, which has a disproportionate impact on the African-American community. Their opposition to Affirmative Action and constant attacks on President Obama don’t help their cause very much either.

While the existence of men like Herman Cain represents a stomach-churning example of how the disease of racism continues to affect our society, the truth is that Cain also represents the very best of what America can possibly be. I won’t vote for Herman Cain, but I am glad that there are black politicians who allow African Americans to jump outside of predefined stereotypes given to us by the media and our political leaders. There’s no one way to be black, and both Herman Cain and President Obama reflect the diversity of the black experience in America.

House Negroes | Butt-Licking Uncle-Toms

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   Columnist – John Sammon
Okay I’ll confess. I have to admit I laughed, I’m delighted, and I feel a grim sense of amusement at the government’s horrified, ballistic-angry response to the leak of classified materials by Wikileaks. Government bureaucrats are threatening prosecution, screaming this and that. God only knows what they intend to do to get even with the perpetrators of the leaks.

Let’s be fair, okay?

How am I supposed to feel? Joe Average. That’s me. And proud of it.

I know they say it’s an attack on America, and that it endangers our security and operatives overseas, and I’m willing to listen to that. But it’s also time you listen to me, all you government hacks.

The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution that said “WE THE PEOPLE,” which logically excluded women, blacks, Indians, Mexican-Americans and even poor white men. It should have been “WE THE WELL-TO-DO WHITE MEN.”

Most of the Founders also kept slaves. We the People?

You lied to me about the Vietnam War with the Pentagon Papers.

Nixon lied to me he wasn’t a crook.

Reagan lied in the Iran-Contra scheme by testifying in court, “I can’t remember.”

Clinton lied about Monica.

Bush and Cheney lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Obama is breaking his word on withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.

Why should I care that you’re angry about the American people finding out what you’ve been up to and doing in their name? You want a secret government, and you want to call it Democracy, and you want me to support it.

We had a military operation in Iraq called “Iraqi Freedom.” Freedom imposed at the point of a gun, installing a government the people there did not select. Even if we agree with the outcome, even if you like the war, can you with a straight face call that truly “freedom?”

Freedom, for who? In other words, when I want your opinion I’ll give it to ya.’

The myth likes to say that your vote on election day is very important. To a degree it is. You can vote for a bond issue for a library, for a local mayor’s race, even for governor or senator. But a large proportion of what goes on in this country is not influenced by your vote. At all.

For example, foreign policy is dictated by people you’ve never heard of, in secret. When they misbehave, you have no way of knowing it, but they get really angry if by some quirk you find out about it. Then they run to the courts and plead their case in the name of patriotism.

The World Bank meets in secret. Lobbyists and cartels and corporate technocrats and big banks and oil companies and all the rest continue to call the shots without the oversight of public scrutiny. The Lincoln Savings and Loan fiasco is another example. How ironic the bank was named after Abraham Lincoln, a man history has lauded for his honesty.

Government is like the tip of a figurative iceberg. Most of it is under the water and out of sight. Secretive people wouldn’t meet in secret if they didn’t have something to hide.

Since you guys like to be secretive, and get so angry when by some quirk the shoe is on the other foot, I’ll let you in on a little secret of my own. I’m secretly delighted by the leaks.

If somebody gets hurt because of information going out, I’m sorry. But in fairness, we’re all hurt from secret government at one time or another.

I have never been afraid of the truth. I don’t feel safer not knowing it.

All you government paper-shuffling secretive hacks out there in your windowless underground bunkers, you at least can appreciate honesty. You know what that is, right?

America is not really a Democracy. Or even a true Republic.

That’s no secret.

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Editorial Book Review: “The beauty of Boiling Mad is that it’s room-temperature calm. With fresh and surprising reporting, Kate Zernike cuts through the hype on both sides to show the Tea Party as it really is, not as partisans depict it.

It’s a complete, balanced, incisive and important account of a reactionary movement that’s changing the country.”–Jonathan Alter, author of The Promise: President Obama, Year One.

Product Description: A surprising and revealing look inside the Tea Party movement–where it came from, what it stands for, and what it means for the future of American politics

They burst on the scene at the height of the Great Recession–angry voters gathering by the thousands to rail against bailouts and big government. Evoking the Founding Fathers, they called themselves the Tea Party. Within the year, they had changed the terms of debate in Washington, emboldening Republicans and confounding a new administration’s ability to get things done.

Boiling Mad is Kate Zernike’s eye-opening look inside the Tea Party, introducing us to a cast of unlikely activists and the philosophy that animates them. She shows how the Tea Party movement emerged from an unusual alliance of young Internet-savvy conservatives and older people alarmed at a country they no longer recognize. The movement is the latest manifestation of a long history of conservative discontent in America, breeding on a distrust of government that is older than the nation itself. But the Tea Partiers’ grievances are rooted in the present, a response to the election of the nation’s first black president and to the far-reaching government intervention that followed the economic crisis of 2008-2009. Though they are better educated and better off than most other Americans, they remain deeply pessimistic about the economy and the direction of the country.

Zernike introduces us to the first Tea Partier, a nose-pierced young teacher who lives in Seattle with her fiancé, an Obama supporter. We listen in on what Tea Partiers learn about the Constitution, which they embrace as the backbone of their political philosophy. We see how young conservatives, who model their organization on the Grateful Dead, mobilize a new set of activists several decades their elder. And we watch as suburban mothers, who draw their inspiration from MoveOn and other icons of the Left, plot to upend the Republican Party in a swing district outside Philadelphia.

The Tea Party movement has energized a lot of voters, but it has polarized the electorate, too. Agree or disagree, we must understand this movement to understand American politics in 2010 and beyond.

[ READ MORE REVIEWS: BOILING MAD: INSIDE TEA PARTY AMERICA ]

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   [ By: Margaret Kimberley ]
After all is said and done, what much of the so-called Tea Party wants is a return to America as a White Man’s Country. There are a few obstacles in their way, including the U.S. Constitution, but that’s not insurmountable. “On a daily basis pundits and politicians rear their ugly heads to say that the children born of undocumented persons should no longer be given American citizenship.”

The founding fathers made one thing perfectly clear when they ratified the constitution in 1787. Full citizenship rights were meant only for white men of property. Over a period of nearly 200 years, people’s movements guaranteed that those rights were extended to everyone regardless of race or gender, but the fact that the struggle literally took centuries should not be forgotten. It is tempting to snicker at the sight of today’s Tea Party members, grown men wearing knee breeches and three-cornered hats. Yet their costumes tell an important tale. They evoke an era still seen as the high water mark of American society, the days of the enslavement of one race and the extermination of another. This movement has captured the Republican Party outright and leaves even some Democratic politicians and pundits in a state of fear and/or awe.

The pull of that early history is ever present for many white Americans. No matter the degree of progress made, the adherence to the evils of America’s early days are never far from the surface. Simply put, there are too many brown faces for the liking of a majority of white people. Even the president has a brown face. His very presence has been a shock to the country’s system and to the mythology which says that only white people are truly American.

For decades, the presence of undocumented foreign nationals has been an accepted fact in the United States. Estimates of their presence run as high as 11 million. In the very recent past that presence was considered positive, a proof of America’s attractiveness to the rest of the world and a boon to industries dependent upon their labor.

Under the guise of concern for integrity of our borders, and stemming illegal activities, that presence is now being called a threat and a danger to the nation. Republicans like former presidential candidate John McCain have bowed to pressure from the Tea Party wing and moved from advocating a path to citizenship to producing nonsensical campaign videos to “build the dang fence” and prevent Mexicans willing to pick fruit and bus tables from entering the country.

The guarantor of citizenship since 1868 has been the 14th Amendment to the Constitution which grants automatic citizenship to anyone born in the United States. That amendment and its guarantees are now under direct threat. On a daily basis pundits and politicians rear their ugly heads to say that the children born of undocumented persons should no longer be given American citizenship.

Arizona legislators, the go-to group for turning white supremacy into law, have proposed denying birth certificates to anyone who can’t prove legal residence. Flush with the nationwide popularity of SB1070, which turns Arizona into the “show me your papers” police state, they are now drunk with the possibility of keeping the dark skinned people in check and away from what they hope to make an oasis of whiteness.

All of these proposals are masks for a simple proposition. Citizenship rights should only be extended to white people, just as in the barbaric days of the golden age of whiteness. All but the most unrepentant racists will deny this intent. Instead we hear lunatic tales of beheadings in the Arizona desert, non-existent kidnappings and birth tourism terror plots to make sleeper cell American citizen babies.

Black Americans should be the first to denounce these bizarre schemes to undo constitutional protections. The 14th Amendment was a means of protecting the rights of the newly freed population and of over turning the infamous Dred Scott decision which nullified the very concept of black citizenship.

“We want our country back” is not just an anti-Obama call to action. It is a call to revive an idea which ought to have been firmly discredited by now, that America should belong only to white people and that they alone should have a voice in how it is run. It would be a terrible mistake to see these citizenship proposals only as anti-Latino based bigotry. They are surely that but they are also a means of keeping the non-white population under control and depriving them of any rights which a white person need respect.

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Fox News’ Glenn Beck claims that parents will have to start homeschooling their children because of the “insidious” progressive movement. Ironically, Fox News’ chief NAZI has also said that progressives “don’t even really know the Founding Fathers,” just Communism and Nazism.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Beck Confusion: Who is a Patriot and Who is Not?; Fear of the Tea-Party

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Beck: Progressives “don’t even really know the Founding Fathers,” just communism and Nazism

An Uncle-Tom Defends His Republican Party

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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