Barack Obama’s general election victory was a tremendous personal vindication. About two years ago when the relatively unknown junior senator from Illinois with the funny name and the big ears announced he was running for president, his colleagues and pundits didn’t give him a chance against the vaunted Clinton machine.

But armed with a healthy ego, indefatigable hope and a sense of destiny, Obama achieved his lofty goal against all odds. Obama didn’t let his race become a liability or a chip on his shoulder, his message of hope and change transcended race and struck a chord with Americans of every ethnic and cultural background.

Obama’s triumph was a milestone for African Americans that was decades in the making. Many African Americans are old enough to remember living under Jim Crow laws, but in January they will get to witness the miracle of a black president walking through the front door of the White House.

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Shortly after CNN called the election for Obama the network put up on the screen the reaction at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church. Witnessing the assembled throng of African Americans weeping, cheering and dancing inside the iconic symbol of the civil rights movement, was a powerful image of how much this historic moment means to them. I’m sure there were millions of Americans of all ethnicities weeping along with them as they followed the election results from their living rooms.

Now all people of color (Hispanics, Asian Americans, Arab Americans and Native Americans) know that they too can dream of becoming a lawyer, professor, scientist, senator, and yes even the President of the United States.

The Obama victory brought joy to millions worldwide, CNN had cameras in Europe, Japan and Africa, and it was thrilling to see how crowds in these countries were overjoyed at the results of the American presidential election.

As an ethnic minority it will take a few days and weeks for me to fully savor the reality of an African American president-elect. But when Obama is inaugurated in January, Americans of all races must celebrate the victory of an intelligent, eloquent and inspired statesman, who just happens to be black.

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American politics is tribal.

Not in the sense of Kikuyu and Luo and Kalenjin and Kamba and all our competing ethnic groups, but racial and ethnic components do account for the differences in this richly diverse country.

At the most basic level in the nation of 305.3 million people, it is Black and White. Obama Versus McCain.

Then there are the Hispanics, a sizebable group with about 14 per cent of the population compared to about 13.3 per cent that is black.

There are the Asians, who are a distinct minority at five per cent, and the largely forgotten and ignored Native Americans, who make up about 1.5 per cent of the population.

Among the whites, things get very complicated, depending on how people chose to classify themselves in the census.

There are the majority White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. There are Catholics. There are Hispanic whites.

There are religious or ethnic groups like the Jews; and there are the various white ethnicities – Italian, Greek, German, Dutch, Irish and many more that went into the original melting pot.

Within the white community, for instance, political pollsters look not just at the above distinctions but also at sub-genres like education, sexual orientation, region, occupation, rural or urban, farming or industrial, new industry (IT) or old industry (mining, motorplants) and so on.

These are the Tribes of America for whose votes Barack Obama and John McCain are competing to win one of the most compelling presidential campaigns in US history.

Democratic candidate Barack Obama was in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, the latest stop on a whirlwind tour between last Tuesday’s second presidential debate in Nashville, Tennessee and the final debate set for New York on Wednesday.

Before Philadelphia, Mr Obama made several stops in Ohio while his running mate Senator Joe Biden campaigned in Florida, another key state whose electoral vote could determine the outcome of the election.

Republican candidate John McCain and running mate Sarah Palin have been equally busy in the week or so between the two debates, covering, sometimes together and sometimes separately, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio and Winsconsin.

National opinion polls show Mr Obama increasing his lead over Mr McCain, reaching double-digit 11 percentage points — 52 percent to 41 per cent — according to the latest Gallup daily tracking poll at the end of the week.

The margin was mirrored in the latest Newsweek poll. But outside the major national events like the presidential debates, the campaign is being fought at the grassroots level, block by block, town by town and state by state.

   A pro-Obama campaign march in Nashville, Tennessee earlier this month

What matters in the American political system is not the national popular vote, but the state-by-state popular vote which determines the number of electoral votes through which the electoral college elects the president.

The outcome in some states can already be predicted — New York generally votes Democratic — so the candidates are concentrating their efforts on the so-called battleground states where the outcome is still uncertain.

There is no need, for instance, for Mr Obama to spend too much in California where he already commands nearly 54 per cent of the popular vote to Mr McCain’s 39 per cent.

The Republican candidate would not bother too much about the state’s 55 electoral votes because he has little chance of overturning Mr Obama’s majority.

The reverse holds true in another large state like Texas with its 34 electoral votes where Mr McCain holds an unassailable 51 per cent advantage over Mr Obama’s 38 per cent.

So the campaigns are almost over in California and Texas and in a large number of other states where solid red indicates support for the Republican candidate while solid blue shows support for the Democrat.

But then there are the states where the outcome is still too close to call; they are coloured light blue or pink depending which way they lean.

And there are some states where the candidates are virtually tied; they are marked with blue and red checks.

Almost all the polls now indicate that if the certain states for either candidate are counted, Mr Obama has a clear lead.

If he also captures the states leaning strongly towards him — those where he has more than a five per cent margin — then all the key pollsters including Reuters, Newsweek, Zogby, Gallup, give him an unassailable victory over Mr McCain in electoral votes.

Some estimates already give Mr Obama just over the 270 electoral votes needed to secure victory; most give him a clear margin of between 330 and 350 electoral votes compared to Mr McCain’s 190 to 210.

Mr Obama’s tremendous surge is being attributed to the way in which he has steadily eaten into the regional and demographic groups that have been supportive of McCain or of the Republican party in general.

States like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri and quite a few others were just weeks ago solidly for McCain. Now they are seen as leaning towards Mr Obama or are too close to call.

According to the conventional wisdom of electoral demographics, Mr Obama’s key support comes from non-white groups including blacks and Hispanics; the youthful 18-29 age group; those with postgraduate educations; women; the urban poor, mostly black; and groups that are ambivalent towards religion.

Mr McCain’s strengths have been among whites, other than Hispanic; senior citizens over 65 years; the traditional white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPS) and whites who attend church frequently or for whom religion is important.

On the demographic map, therefore, Mr McCain’s support base has been in the traditional Republican strongholds, the middle and central United States that are largely agricultural bastions of conservatism; while Mr Obama’s support has been in the big cities on the densely populated East and West coasts.

His support among whites has been limited, as described above, to young, modern, well-educated urbanites.

That is what has changed. I was at an Obama campaign march in Nashville, Tennessee, last Tuesday on the same day the two presidential candidates had their second debate.

Nashville is the home of country music.

Tennessee as a whole is a very white and conservative state; guns, church and ranching are the defining characteristics. It is a solid red state where the 11 electoral votes are all but assured for Mr McCain.

But observing the Obama march around Belmont University, one could hardly have believed it.

The participants were mostly white, as would be expected of Nashville. But they were not just the young, educated and modern white generation generally seen to side with Mr Obama.

The chanting crowd included middle-aged to elderly white men and women of the type that instinctively would be fearful of and hostile to the prospects of an Obama presidency.

That is the demographic that Obama is stealing from McCain in states around the country and the one that might secure him victory.

Article — Originally posted in The Daily Nation on 10/11/08

Popularity: 9% [?]

John Donald Imus, Jr. Has a Long Record of Incendiary Remarks.

The latest:

On Monday, WABC anchor Warner Wolf read a report about footballer Adam “Packman” Jones dropping his nickname, “Pacman.” Wolf also mentioned that Jones had been arrested six times since he was drafted in 2005.

Imus then asked, “What color is he?”

“He’s African-American,” Wolf said.

“Well, there you go,” Imus said. “Now we know.”

Imus said through a spokesperson that he was misunderstood.

“I meant that he was being picked on because he’s black,” Imus said.

“I find the inference of [Imus'] remark disturbing because it plays into stereotypes,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton of the National Action Network, which was part of protests that led to Imus’ firing last year.

“I’m truly upset about the comments,” Jones said. “Obviously Mr. Imus has problems with African-Americans. I’m upset, and I hope the station he works for handles it accordingly. I will pray for him.”

Imus was fired last year for making racial comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team.

Imus called the Rutgers University women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos,” and for good measure the show’s executive producer, Bernard McGuirk, called the team “hard-core hos.” Later, former Imus sports announcer Sid Rosenberg, who was filling in for sportscaster Chris Carlin, said: “The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the [National Basketball Association's] Toronto Raptors.”

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Over the years Imus has made numerous racist slurs on TV and Radio — The long string of racial slurs and inflammatory comments is well documented by Media Matters …..[MORE]

He has also been accused of making offensive remarks off the air. Here are some examples:

Don Imus is just but a speck in a huge crop of right wing extremists in America’s media — THUGS hiding behind TV and Radio, screaming and snorting their “Hate Rhetoric” like Hyenas in “extreme sexual heat,” fueling anti-immigrant xenophobia and the baseless hate of “Foreigners” and non-whites in America — Blacks, Latinos, Immigrants…you name it.

Media Matters for America has extensively documented, bigotry and hate speech targeting, among other characteristics, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and ethnicity continue to permeate the airwaves through personalities such as Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, Michael Smerconish, John Gibson, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, ….[MORE]

…and these bonehead “airwave” morons are not always white. Here is “The Honorable” Pastor James David Manning outlining the seven winners of the “National Bigot Award.” Message originally preached on 28 May 2008.

LOL!

Sick Moron!

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What is the “Witch” of Chappaqua up to?

Despite being hopelessly behind in pledged delegates, and with practically no chance of winning this contest legally, Mrs. Clinton is still running around, drunk with “Voodoo” delegate permutations, claiming that she has won the Democratic primary.

It has also been reported that she has sent “uncommitted super delegates” a letter with polling data showing how and why she could be more competitive than Obama against John “McBOMB” McCain in the fall. In the letter she points to her wins in states like Ohio and West Virginia along with her strong showings among older women, Hispanics, rural voters and die hard “Reagan Bigots.”

She is also adamant that ALL the delegates from Michigan and Florida be seated at the August Democratic convention — falsely claiming that she “WON” the two contests, regardless of the FACT that both states (together with Clinton and Obama) agreed to a set rules before the beginning of the contest, and then went ahead and broke them. Furthermore, Florida and Michigan had ample time to fix what they messed up, but failed to do so.

A desperate Clinton, who has already inflicted so much damage, is still intent on shifting goal posts like a drunk ice hockey player, using baseless threats, lies, convoluted math and inflammatory allegations of Sexism, causing further damage to a fractured party.

Meanwhile, I have never heard Obama whine about the “Blatant Racism” and the “Death Wish” the Clintons have unleashed on him during this process — the race-baiting by Bill Clinton in South Carolina and by Hillary’s “hard-working whites” of West Virginia and Kentucky.

The list is long — See video below.

The new GOLD standard of the Democratic party has been a controlled gentleman all through.

Ma. Clinton — you deserve no sympathy!

Obama just plainly outsmarted you and the “Clinton Machine,” comprised of Bill, mayors, governors and scores of powerful political operatives who owe you an assortment of favors.

Even right-wing THUGS like Bill “O’Wino” O’Reilly, Sean “Cobra” Hannity, Rush “Fat-Drug-Addict” Limbaugh and the FOX News’s army of “MORONS IN HEAT” have chipped in abundantly, in your favor.

It’s time to give up Hillary — YOU HAVE LOST!

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VIDEO:

LAST SUNDAY: Father Michael Pfleger, a fiery liberal social activist and a white reverend at an African-American church — St. Sabina’s Catholic Church on the South Side of Chicago, and Obama ally, mocked Clinton’s tears from Trinity United Church of Christ’s Pulpit. Pfleger said: “Hillary cried because White Supremacy failed….. because she thought as a white person and wife of a former president she was entitled to the presidency,” said the priest. Watch Below:

NOTES: Father Michael Pfleger has set off Right-Wing ReTHUGlicans into another “Wright Frenzy,”…the Fox News Maggots are in FULL ATTACK mode — like wild dogs viciously celebrating an un-expected “Bonus Mating Season.“

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