By: DeWayne Wickham What should be clear to the whole world watching the debt-ceiling battle is that the Republicans are far more intent on taking the president’s scalp than balancing the nation’s books. They had ample opportunities to do the latter during the eight years of George W. Bush.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the minority leader with the greatest cunning and sharpest knife, signaled his party’s true purpose last year when he proclaimed: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” It was not to undo the health care legislation Obama signed into law, or to block another debt limit increase. Even then, two years out from the next presidential election, the Alabama-born senator said the top goal of GOP lawmakers to oust Obama.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., has been especially relentless in the debt-ceiling fight. He attacked this first African-American president with a palpable disrespect not only for Obama personally, but also for his esteemed office.
Following what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called Cantor’s “childish” display during a meeting with Obama, the House majority leader complained that the president had cut short the meeting and stormed out of the room. “He shoved back and said, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow’ and walked out,” Cantor snidely told reporters– as though the president needs his permission to end a White House gathering.
That encounter might have reminded Obama of the open letter Frederick Douglass, a runaway slave and abolitionist who became one of this nation’s first black diplomats, wrote to his slave master.
It would be “a privilege” to show you “how mankind ought to treat each other,” Douglass told the man who had badly mistreated him. “I am your fellow man, but not your slave.”
Douglass’ words might have prompted another reflection when, during a critical point in the debt negotiations, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, contemptuously waited more than half a day to return a call from the president.
Racism, if subtle
Or, Obama might have heard Douglass’ words ringing in his ears after acting House Speaker Steve LaTourette of Ohio had to warn his GOP colleagues during a heated debt-reduction debate on the House floor to stop making disparaging remarks about Obama.
This total lack of respect is downright contemptible — if not unpatriotic. Such contempt, I’m convinced, is rooted in something other than political differences. Today, you might not see the overt actions of racist southern governors like Ross Barnett or George Wallace in the 1960s. But the presence of Jim Crow, Jr. — a more subtle form of racism — is there.
Douglass viewed such behavior as “an outrage upon the soul.” In this present case it is the soul of our nation, which still struggles to get beyond the awful ripple effects of its haunting history of human bondage.
McConnell, Boehner and Cantor are the vanguard of a political force of a dying era — one that looks more like the nation’s past than its future.
Obama is the second president of this millennium, but the first chief executive of the America of new possibilities — a multiracial, multicultural nation whose emergence the old order is working mightily to forestall in its desperate attack on his presidency.
½ Governor, DingBat Sarah Palin Plays The Terror Card on Obama, Invokes Bill Ayers!
PLAYLIST: Republican | Tea-Party Racism
About The Author: DeWayne Wickham — is a columnist for USA TODAY and the Gannett News Service. His syndicated column is distributed to more than 130 daily newspapers in the United States. Wickham also serves as director of the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
During his journalism career, Wickham has covered the U.S. Capitol for U.S. News & World Report, one of the nation’s leading news magazines. He also worked as the Washington correspondent for Black Enterprise magazine and as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun and Baltimore Evening Sun newspapers. Wickham also has worked as an analyst for CBS News and as executive editor of BlackAmericaWeb.com.
Wickham was a Poynter Institute journalism ethics fellow in 2002. During his career, Wickham covered the Watergate cover-up trial that resulted in the convictions of several top aides to President Richard Nixon. He was a member of the traveling press corps that accompanied Nelson Mandela throughout the United States during his first visit to this country following his release from a South Africa prison in 1990.
On October 15, 1994, Wickham was one of a small group of journalists on the State Department plane that returned exiled Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide to his homeland. In February 1999, Wickham traveled to Cuba and had a 6-hour dinner meeting with Fidel Castro.
A former adjunct faculty member in the University of Maryland’s college of journalism, Wickham holds a Bachelor of Science degree in journalism from the University of Maryland – College Park; and a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Baltimore. Wickham is a cofounder of The Trotter Group, an organization of black columnists, and a founding member and former president of the National Association of Black Journalists. He is a member of the advisory board of the Newseum, the nation’s first interactive museum of news; and the board of visitors of the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
In May 1999, Wickham was one of the first two recipients of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights chairperson’s Award of Special Merit for his “commitment to principles of equality.” Wickham is the 2002 recipient of the National Association of Black Journalists’ Community Service Award and the organization’s 1986 award for outstanding commentary.
The people who lit the fuse on the Shirley Sherrod absurdity, the propaganda pornographers at Fox, are still pretending nothing happened and/or are still mired in the fantasy of reverse racism.
Why?
In the early Seventies, president Richard Nixon seized on an initiative popularized by a Mr. Kevin Phillips called the “Southern Strategy.” Phillips noted that in the wake of Democratic sponsorship of the Civil Rights revolution, the Republican Party’s historic base of the southern black voters would vanish. Blacks were obligated to switch their loyalty to the Democratic party.
Republicans had to re-group or die, …..and, Phillips noted that whites, especially those from the south had to be given reason to desert the Democratic party.
After the 60′s re-alignment of political allegiances, Republicans have since effectively used FEAR — to capture the racist southern vote. The Southern strategy, with opposition to the Voting Rights Act (Civil Rights Act) as the centerpiece, has been a crucial tool in “keeping the racist south” for decades.
Ever since, the only way for Republicans to get votes is to cause irrational fear, smothered in a swamp of racism, hypocrisy and hyperbole.
Like the Clinton years, no matter how much Obama tries to appease Republicans, he will remain under attack and be held responsible for bizarre crimes and conspiracies because the right has nothing to gain from compromise. In fact, Republican opposition has devolved from the philosophical to the tactical.
The right-wing noise machine frames Obama and the Democrats as the source of all evil, making compromise virtually impossible. Republicans now assail Obama policies they used to champion from the market-friendly health care law and huge tax cuts in the stimulus bill to the bipartisan deficit commission and pay-as you-go budget rules. The right has well-thought-out ideologies, a specific agenda, clearly defined enemies, and ruthlessly pursues power to achieve its goals. And it’s fighting a Democratic White House and Party that stand for nothing, which is why being the “Party of No” will continue to be a winning strategy for Republicans.
The right’s need for enemies is coded in its political DNA. Without enemies to defeat, vanquish and even destroy, the right would suffer an existential crisis. For Goldwater it was the Communist menace; for Wallace, integrationists and intellectuals; for Nixon, liberals, antiwar activists and black radicals; for Reagan, labor, welfare queens and the Evil Empire; for Gingrich and his cohorts it was gays, feminists, welfare mothers and the Democrats; during the Bush years, it was Islam, immigrants, gays and abortionists; For the Tea Party, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, it’s all of the above.
[ By: Arun Gupta ] As much as they may grumble, there is a legitimate reason why the Republicans have been labeled the “Party of No.” For decades, the party’s kneejerk stance has been to oppose any legislation or policy involving social, economic or political progress. You name it, the right has opposed it: civil rights, school desegregation, women’s rights, labor organizing, the minimum wage, social security, LGBT rights, welfare, immigrant rights, public education, reproductive rights, Medicare, Medicaid.
And, through the years the right invoked hysterical rhetoric in opposition, predicting that implementing any such policies would result in the end-of-family-free-enterprise-God-America on the one hand, and the imposition of atheism-socialism-Nazism on the other.
Republicans are obstructionist for one simple reason: it’s a winning strategy.
Opposing progressive policies allows the right to actualize the ideals that both motivate and define their base. Rightist ideologies are not without sophistication, but right-wing politicians and media figures boil them down to a crude Manichean dualism to mobilize supporters based on group difference: good versus evil, us versus them. By demonizing and scapegoating politically marginal groups, the right is able to define “real Americans,” who are good, versus those defined as parasites, illegitimate and internal threats, who are evil.
There is a critical paradox at work. The Republicans have deftly turned being the “Party of No” into a positive stance: They signal to their base they are working to defeat an alien ideology while defending real Americans and traditional values and institutions.
Ideologues and opinion-makers spin any redistributive policy as a zero sum game; progressive policies give to undeserving groups by taking wealth from or denying rights to deserving Americans and institutions. Since Obama took office, the rise of the Tea Party has made the Republicans even more strident in their opposition. The GOP fights against every Democratic policy — including the stimulus bill, jobs programs, aid to local governments, court appointees, more labor rights, health care, financial regulation, net neutrality unemployment benefits, expanding access to food stamps and Head Start, action on global warming and immigrant rights — because it claims some sort of theft of money or rights is involved.
Sara Diamond neatly summarizes the politics behind the right’s obstructionism in her book, Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States. She writes, “To be right-wing means to support the state in its capacity as enforcer of order and to oppose the state as distributor of wealth and power downward and more equitably in society.” (emphasis in original) These principles, in turn, flow from four interrelated political philosophies that animate the modern right: militarism, neoliberalism, traditionalism and white supremacism.
Bill Press: Conservative radio poisons the airwaves by”telling lie after lie after lie with nobody there to challenge them”
The heart of the right’s agenda is neoliberalism, which is the rule of the “free market” above all else. It demands that everything be a commodity, all actions be judged according to cost-benefit analysis, every realm be opened to capital’s predations, all human needs subjugated to those of finance. If neoliberalism is left unchecked, argues David Harvey in A Brief History of Neoliberalism, it would result in market anarchy and the dissolution of social solidarities. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously summed it up in her view, “There is no such thing as society but only individuals.”
Faced with market nihilism, “some degree of coercion appears necessary to restore order,” writes Harvey. Enter the neoconservatives, who play a crucial role resolving the contradictions between neoliberalism and traditionalism through militarism. Harvey explains that they “emphasize militarization as an antidote to the chaos of individual interests. For this reason, they are far more likely to highlight threats, real or imagined, both at home and abroad, to the integrity and stability of the nation.”
Militarism is just the means, however. To mobilize support for repressive methods the right stokes the passions and fears of its base by posing traditional values as under attack: the family, God, marriage, America, private property, law and order, and freedom itself. These values are often linked to neoliberalism and contrasted in opposition to “collectivism,” which is presented as a looming danger to both property and God. This also bridges the ideological gap between the religious right and the free-market right.
For example, the Christian Right is stridently anti-union. While the Bible can easily be read as a socialist document, the central role of money-driven ministries and televangelism has oriented Evangelicals toward free-market ideology that is expressed in its “prosperity theology” — “the belief that God rewards signs of faith with wealth, health and happiness.” As many Evangelicals are actual or would-be entrepreneurs, this doctrine is readily accepted. It’s a small step to convince them that unions promote secular collectivism that threatens private religious values, thus creating a theological rationale for neoliberal policies.
I use “the right” instead of “Republican” or even “conservative” to describe the movement and its ideas. Until recent years, there was a breed of socially liberal, fiscally conservative Republican that retained a foothold in the GOP. These Republicans provided critical support for civil rights and other progressive legislation. This segment, which tended to concentrate in the North, has largely shifted to the Democratic Party (with the result of pushing the Democrats further to the right). So while the right may now overlap significantly with the Republican Party, it wasn’t always so. More important, as shown by the Christian Right in years past and the Tea Party today, the right will try to purge those Republicans deemed not sufficiently orthodox, making the party more and more extreme.
The Tea Party is the latest chapter in the history of the Republicans as the “Party of No.” Its existence depends on continuous promotion from FOX News, organizing by Republican consultants, front groups such as Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, and the GOP itself. Much of the Tea Party’s funding comes from right-wing foundations through the front groups, and its politics are anti-government, anti-labor, pro-corporate and often socially conservative, which is the same agenda the right has been pushing for more than 30 years.
The roots of right-wing obstruction are represented by three pivotal historical figures: William F. Buckley, Jr., Barry Goldwater and George Wallace. “The father of modern conservatism,” Buckley proclaimed his intention to stand “athwart history, yelling Stop!’” in founding National Review in 1955. He knit together traditionalism, free market ideology and anti-Communism, and his politics were a textbook case of opposing distribution of power and wealth and for imposing social order. In the 1950s, he dismissed civil rights legislation because Southern whites were “the advanced race.” This wasn’t a passing fancy; he defended this position as “absolutely correct” in 1989 on NPR. He inveighed against the 1965 Voting Rights Act as threatening “chaos” and “mobcratic rule.” While opposing basic freedoms for all people because it threatened the traditional order, he was for using force to impose gulag-like policies such as quarantining drug addicts, tattooing people with AIDS on their buttocks and suggested “relocating chronic welfare cases” to “rehabilitation centers.”
Buckley was not alone in believing progressive policies eroded traditional mores and institutions. Barry Goldwater, who was trounced as the Republican presidential nominee in 1964, voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, calling it “unconstitutional.” He fought school desegregation, and the desegregation of public accommodations, claiming it “tampers with the rights of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of property.” He railed against federal aid to schools, the minimum wage, Medicare and the entire welfare state because “socialism can be achieved through welfarism.” He opposed the progressive income tax because it artificially “enforce[ed] equality among unequal men.” One of Goldwater’s informal advisers in 1964 was economist Milton Friedman, who saw nothing wrong with racial discrimination in employment because it was a matter of “taste.” Many campaign volunteers came from the conspiratorial John Birch Society, which labeled integration a communist plot. Within Goldwater’s campaign one can see how various segments of the right united in opposing racial equality, but each for different reasons.
Mr. Conservative: Barry Goldwater’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964
In contrast to Buckley, Goldwater was no religious traditionalist, but he did combine libertarianism and anti-Communism. He hewed to a secular traditionalism forged from patriotism, the Constitution and frontier mythology, and was far more open-minded on social issues. His wife Peggy helped found the Arizona chapter of Planned Parenthood, and he made clear his contempt for and opposition to the Christian Right when it began to take over the Republican Party in the 1980s.
A contemporary of Goldwater was the unapologetic racist, former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who swept the Deep South in the 1968 presidential election running on a segregationist platform. He represented yet another form of traditionalism, one that stoked fears that “blacks were moving beyond their safely encapsulated ghettos into ‘our’ streets, ‘our’ schools, ‘our’ neighborhoods,” according to Dan Carter, author of From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994.
Wallace pioneered the race-based appeals that still excite the populist right today. But he was also a deft cultural warrior who, writes Carter, “knew that a substantial percentage of the American electorate despised the civil rights agitators and antiwar demonstrators as symptoms of a fundamental decline in the traditional cultural compass of God, family, and country, a decline reflected in rising crime rates, the legalization of abortion, the rise in out-of-wedlock pregnancies, the increase in divorce rates, and the proliferation of ‘obscene’ literature and films.” Add gay marriage, Islamophobia and immigration, and you pretty much have the right’s culture war agenda of today.
The right’s need for enemies is coded in its political DNA. Without enemies to defeat, vanquish and even destroy, the right would suffer an existential crisis. For Goldwater it was the Communist menace; for Wallace, integrationists and intellectuals; for Nixon, liberals, antiwar activists and black radicals; for Reagan, labor, welfare queens and the Evil Empire; for Gingrich and his cohorts it was gays, feminists, welfare mothers and the Democrats; during the Bush years, it was Islam, immigrants, gays and abortionists; For the Tea Party, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, it’s all of the above.
There is one final step in how the right mobilizes grassroots support behind an obstructionist agenda. Few people mull over philosophical concepts when making political decisions. That’s why mobilizing group resentment and solidarity simultaneously is so effective. It gives people a way to see both enemies and allies in their daily lives. In the case of immigrants, the narrative is about “illegals” stealing jobs and social services from taxpayers. In the case of the Obama administration, the story is that taxes are being stolen from hard-working Americans to support parasites ranging from welfare recipients to Wall Street bankers.
Chip Berlet, a scholar at Political Research Associates, describes this as “producerism.” He defines it as “a world view in which people in the middle class feel they are being squeezed from above by crippling taxes, government bureaucracies and financial elites while simultaneously being pushed around, robbed, and shoved aside by an underclass of ‘lazy, sinful, and subversive freeloaders.’ The idea is that unproductive parasites above and below are bleeding the productive middle class dry.”
Segments of the right use producerism differently, explains Berlet. “Economic libertarians blast the government for high taxes and too much regulation of business. Anti-immigrant xenophobes blast the government for letting ‘illegals’ steal their jobs and increase their taxes. Christian fundamentalists blast the government for allowing the lazy, sinful, and subversive elements to ruin society.” In recent history, Wallace and Nixon used producerist rhetoric to mobilize white working-class resentment against blacks.
Producerism is premised on other techniques. First, argues Berlet, a group of people are dehumanized so they are seen as objects and then they are demonized as evil. Next, the group is scapegoated irrationally for specific problems. Lou Dobbs mastered this process in defining undocumented immigrants as “illegal,” then spouting dubious claims about immigrants being responsible for crime waves and disease outbreaks, and finally blaming them for stealing jobs and social services. Another example is FOX News and its hit job on ACORN. The group was caricatured as so nefarious and omnipotent, a poll last year by Public Policy Polling found that 52 percent of Republicans believed ACORN had stolen the 2008 election for Obama.
The Tea Party movement — which the Republicans have helped create and exploit to oppose the entirety of the Obama administration — is the latest political variant of the right’s themes. Much of the right’s anger is directed at immigrants, African Americans and social welfare and equality in general. Among Tea Partiers, 73 percent think “Blacks would be as well off as whites if they just tried harder”; 73 percent believe “providing government benefits to poor people encourages them to remain poor”; 60 percent believe “We have gone too far in pushing equal rights in this country”; 56 percent think “Immigrants take jobs from Americans”; 92 percent want a smaller government with “fewer services”; 92 percent think Obama’s policies are moving the country toward socialism; only 7 percent approve of Obama’s performance as president; and a combined 5 percent identify themselves as black, Asian or of Hispanic origin.
One survey found that identifying as a conservative or a Tea Party supporter was an accurate predictor of racial resentment. Additionally, only one-third were opposed to the government tapping people’s telephones and racial or religious profiling, and barely half opposed indefinite detention without trial. This is a movement that thrives on opposing the distribution of power and wealth more equitably in society and for imposing a repressive social order.
With nearly 60 percent of Tea Partiers believing Obama is foreign born or saying they are not sure, it becomes clear why so many on the right have adopted violent and revolutionary rhetoric. The thinking is he’s a foreigner or a Muslim or stole the election, so he is alien and illegitimate. As such, it makes sense he is pushing an alien idea like socialism that may be part of some grand conspiracy like the New World Order, the North American Union, the Bilderberg Group or Satan. (In a poll last September of New Jersey residents, not known for being prone to right-wing radicalism, 29 percent of Republicans thought Obama was the Anti-Christ or were unsure.)
However irrational this position may be, the logical consequences are not: anything Obama and the Democrats do must be opposed because it is a life-and-death struggle. In opposing the health care plan, the right is not just trying to deny services to the undeserving, it is affirming and protecting free choice, family, the sanctity of life, the market, God, country, the Constitution — all arguments trotted out in the last year.
Like the Clinton years, no matter how much Obama tries to appease Republicans, he will remain under attack and be held responsible for bizarre crimes and conspiracies because the right has nothing to gain from compromise. In fact, Republican opposition has devolved from the philosophical to the tactical. The right-wing noise machine frames Obama and the Democrats as the source of all evil, making compromise virtually impossible. Republicans now assail Obama policies they used to champion from the market-friendly health care law and huge tax cuts in the stimulus bill to the bipartisan deficit commission and pay-as you-go budget rules.
At the same time, the Obama administration has stoked support for the Tea Party by providing aid and comfort to Wall Street rather than Main Street. The Republicans have exploited legitimate anxieties over high unemployment, a shrinking economy and onerous taxes by scapegoating the weak and marginal for policies that are structural and historical in nature.
The lesson for Obama and Democrats is not that they went too far to the “left,” it’s that they went too far to the right. Obama had the political capital and the leverage over the banking and auto industries to push for a “Green New Deal” that could have restructured the transportation and energy sectors and created millions of new jobs. Slashing the bloated military budget while fighting for some type of single-payer health care — instead of a plan that uses public money to subsidize the for-profit healthcare industry — budget deficits could have been constrained while reducing the financial burden of medical bills for most American households. Implementing such an agenda could have created a mass constituency that would fight for a progressive vision and against the right’s repressive politics.
The right has well-thought-out ideologies, a specific agenda, clearly defined enemies, and ruthlessly pursues power to achieve its goals. And it’s fighting a Democratic White House and Party that stand for nothing, which is why being the “Party of No” will continue to be a winning strategy for Republicans.
Arun Gupta has written extensively on the Iraq War for various publications and at his blog about the Iraq War. He has been a writer and editor for the Independent since 2000 and was the International News Editor for the Guardian Newsweekly from 1989-1992. Gupta has also written for Z Magazine, Left Turn, Common Dreams, and has been a frequent guest on “Democracy Now!” He is currently working on a book about the history of war. His most recent writings focus on the economy, especially commodity prices and their connection to U.S. involvement in Iraq.
Barack Obama serves up a “Facial” on McCain. The “Republican bigot world” is stunned, as a black man, “THE ONE,” is set to lead them out of the “Dark Ages.” The extremists — The “American Religious ‘Taliban’,” “Fox News’ Maniacs,” Right-Wing Bigot Radio, the KKK, Neo-Nazis and misc. FILTH, are shell-shocked as the Obama train rolls into the White House.
Barack Hussein Obama: “It’s been a long time coming, but change has come to America”
At the beginning of this campaign, I had faith — faith that finally a black man would lead this great nation. Even though my faith was shaky at first, in Barack Hussein Obama, I saw a brilliant “tribesman,” an intelligent and capable man, a “superb brain” like his troubled father was. I saw an exceptional human being with outstanding qualities. I saw a great American story and a great prospect for the ultimate prize in politics — The Presidency of The United States.
Exactly two years ago, I wrote: “The six year cesspool of a mess presided over by the Bush administration might not be in vain after all. It has made America hungry for a messenger with a message of hope.”
My faith in Barack Obama has been richly rewarded.
On the other side of things, the rotting corpse of the Republican Party is stinking up the United States from top to bottom. The people of America have “atrophied” the GOP into nothing more than “a very is a sick joke.” McCain, Palin and the GOP totally underestimated the fact that America has changed, and continues to do so.
In 1963, after being elected governor of Alabama, the epicenter of segregation, DixieCrat George Wallace declared: ‘I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation for ever.’
Since then, America has waddled through racism slowly but surely. While George Wallace’s Democrats did a one hundred and eighty degree turn in the ’60s, and embraced the Civil Rights movement, the Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln(who introduced measures that resulted in the abolition of slavery, by issuing hisEmancipation Proclamationin 1863), slid into the so-called Southern Strategy, a racist scheme in which Republican candidates ignored black voters and exploited racial tensions of the white majority, in order to win elections.
To a large extent, John McCain implemented this strategy, and it fell flat on its face!
The “big-ticket” Republican “scare-issues” like outlawing abortion, gay marriage, “we can clobber the whole world” — have largely fallen into deaf ears, except into those of idiots like Joe The Plumber.
Also, the cruel xenophobic campaign by Republicans to rid the “homeland” of immigrants, last year, turned toxic for the GOP. Hispanics and other minorities eligible to vote cast their votes for Obama in droves. Young whites devoid of their parents’ prejudices flocked to Obama in swarms.
The nativist zeal in political rhetoric, with which the Tancredo led Republicans approached this sensitive issue, has proven costly, and to John McCain, who abandoned his previous reasoned approach in favor of the “Lou Dobbs Fear & Loathing,” “get them all outta here” anti-immigrant hate-mongering, it must be extra painful — for I am sure the Hispanic vote was decisive. Sixty six percent of Hispanic voters (12 million eligible) cast their votes for Obama.
Obama brilliantly co-opted the Republican theme — “Cutting Taxes” into his economic strategy. At a time when the American economy is suffering, it fit so nicely that John McCain could only fumble and stumble on the issue. The “moderate maverick” was forced to campaign like a right-wing nut-bag, with an agenda of fear — Bush-Style. Little did he know that the majority of Americans, after eight years of “murderous rule“, by George Bush the GOON, didn’t want any more of that crap.
Barack Obama’s win validates the work of civil rights activists in the last century. It is also proof that America is “evolving… trying to reach for the best part of itself,” a former activist says. Even a segregationist’s daughter chimed in: “I think Obama will be one of the best presidents.” … [READ MORE HERE]
I strongly agree!
A new era in American politics has just been ushered in, and with proper management, Obama and the Democratic majority in both houses can ensure that the right-wing fringe bigots of the Republican party remain in their “southern holes” for a long time to come.
Full Results
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Barack Obama’s Victory Speech in Chicago
Civil-Rights Icon Jesse Jackson Breaks Down
A Kenyan Savors Obama’s Victory
Martin Luther King JR.’s — “I have a dream” Speech
In Kogelo, Kenya — Villagers lined up to cast a mock ballot next to a poster of Barack Obama in Kogelo, the town in Kenya where Obama’s ancestors are from.
Also, Blood flowed as Election Day dawned in Barack Obama’s ancestral village in western Kenya.
The presidential candidate’s half-brother Malik tied a bull to a tree, then hobbled it. The beast’s head was then held to the ground as he drew a machete across its jugular.
“Hold this guy down now,” said Malik, 50, eyeing the animal’s horns as blood poured from its throat like an open tap.
“He could kill me now.”
After five minutes, the blood flow began to slow, and the fight went out of the animal, which stopped kicking and lay still, breathing heavily. “O.K., it’s over,” said Malik. “Fine animal too.” — [MORE]
Full text: Obama’s victory speech
Democrat Barack Obama has become the first African-American to win the White House. Here are his remarks as prepared for delivery to a huge crowd in his home city of Chicago:
CHANGE HAS COME
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.
It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.
It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled – Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.
It’s the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.
It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.
PARTNERS IN THE JOURNEY
I just received a very gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and he’s fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader.
I congratulate him and Governor Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nation’s promise in the months ahead.
I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the Vice-President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.
I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nation’s next First Lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the White House.
And while she’s no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure.
To my campaign manager David Plouffe, my chief strategist David Axelrod, and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics – you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you’ve sacrificed to get it done.
VICTORY FOR THE PEOPLE
But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to – it belongs to you.
I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn’t start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington – it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.
It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to this cause.
It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organised, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth.
This is your victory.
THE TASK AHEAD
I know you didn’t do this just to win an election and I know you didn’t do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime – two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.
Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.
There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how they’ll make the mortgage, or pay their doctor’s bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.
REMAKING THE NATION
The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America – I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you – we as a people will get there.
There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as president, and we know that government can’t solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree.
And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years – block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.
ONE NATION, ONE PEOPLE
What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek – it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.
So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers – in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.
Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House – a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity.
Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours: “We are not enemies, but friends? though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.”
And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn – I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president too.
AMERICA IN THE WORLD
And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world – our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.
To those who would tear this world down – we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security – we support you.
And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright – tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.
For that is the true genius of America – that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
A HISTORY OF STRUGGLE
This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing – Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.
She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons – because she was a woman and because of the colour of her skin.
And tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America – the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.
At a time when women’s voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.
When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.
When the bombs fell on our harbour and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.
She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that “We Shall Overcome”. Yes we can.
A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.
THIS IS OUR MOMENT
America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves – if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?
This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.
This is our time – to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth – that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes We Can.
Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.
3.McCain Loses as Bush Legacy Is Rejected — Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States, as the country chose him as its first black chief executive.
4.The Next President — Barack Obama won the election because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens.
8.A Case for Barack Hussein — An Obama presidency would change the way the Middle East sees America, argues the editor of a Moroccan newsmagazine.
9. “The election of Mr. Obama amounted to a national catharsis — a repudiation of a historically unpopular Republican president and his economic and foreign policies, and an embrace of Mr. Obama’s call for a change in the direction and the tone of the country. But it was just as much a strikingly symbolic moment in the evolution of the nation’s fraught racial history, a breakthrough that would have seemed unthinkable just two years ago.” — ADAM NAGOURNEY, New York Times
12.Tuesday’s Second Biggest Winner: Democracy — Let’s start with Hispanics, who accounted for the most dramatic swing. In 2004, Kerry outperformed Bush with Hispanic voters 59 percent to 40 percent. In 2008, the Hispanic vote went 67 percent for Obama, and only 31 percent for McCain — a net improvement of 17 points.
Product Description: I hate the gooks, said John McCain, I will hate them as long as I live. Senator McCain said these words when asked about his continued use of the racial slur, “gook.”.
John McCain has told us who he is.
• John McCain supported the rescinding of Martin Luther King Day.
• John McCain keeps on his payroll white supremacists, race-baiting swiftboaters and lobbyists for dictators and terrorists.
• John McCain endorsed George Wallace, Jr., a favorite speaker among white supremacists.
• He fought to keep the Confederate battle flag flying over South Carolina.
He seems to subscribe to a brand of religion-inspired bellicosity that calls for the U.S. to wage war for the sake of imparting our values upon humanity. McCain promised to immediately start wars in North Korea, Libya, and Iraq during his first presidential campaign, and in 2008 he has promised new wars to come. He sent his own money to the contra guerillas, and even visited their illegal war camp.
War is the way of John McCain, and racial bias makes it easy to execute those wars. Long before George W. Bush became president, McCain planned an invasion of Iraq. He lobbied for an Iraq invasion just days after 9/11, and when it came time to convince the American people, he insisted that the Iraq War would be easily won.
The combination of racism and warmongering are perfectly encapsulated in gook, a racist term formed during numerous U.S. wars, from the invasion of the Philippines (1898-1902) to the occupation of Haiti in 1920, to the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
John McCain used this anti-Asian slur freely with the media until he was forced to stop for fear of sabotaging his own presidential ambitions. The portrait of John McCain painted in Gook is far more disturbing than any racial epithet. A central thesis of Gook: war fertilizes racism, and racism justifies wars and the killing of civilians. This dynamic thrives within the most dangerous leaders of the world.
A native of East Texas, Tang has had personal experiences struggling against the terroristic acts of the white supremacy groups he writes about in Gook: John McCain’s Racism and Why It Matters.
What should be clear to the whole world watching the debt-ceiling battle is that the Republicans are far more intent on taking the president’s scalp than balancing the nation’s books. They had ample opportunities to do the latter during the eight years of George W. Bush.
,” (Crown Publishers, Inc., 1996), Wickham is the author of “
,” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995), and Fire At Will, (USA Today Books, 1989) and “
” (Ballantine Books, 2002). Visit his blog at: 
As much as they may grumble, there is a legitimate reason why the Republicans have been labeled the “Party of No.” For decades, the party’s kneejerk stance has been to oppose any legislation or policy involving social, economic or political progress. You name it, the right has opposed it: civil rights, school desegregation, women’s rights, labor organizing, the minimum wage, social security, LGBT rights, welfare, immigrant rights, public education, reproductive rights, Medicare, Medicaid.
There is a critical paradox at work. The Republicans have deftly turned being the “Party of No” into a positive stance: They signal to their base they are working to defeat an alien ideology while defending real Americans and traditional values and institutions.
. She writes, “To be right-wing means to support the state in its capacity as enforcer of order and to oppose the state as distributor of wealth and power downward and more equitably in society.” (emphasis in original) These principles, in turn, flow from four interrelated political philosophies that animate the modern right: militarism, neoliberalism, traditionalism and white supremacism.
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poster of Barack Obama in Kogelo, the town in Kenya where Obama’s ancestors are from.
He is the co-author of 
