Media Matters For America: Conservative media revive “nuclear option” falsehood to accuse Democrats of reconciliation hypocrisy – Conservative media are pushing the falsehood that “the nuclear option” refers to the budget reconciliation process in order to accuse Democrats of hypocrisy for previously criticizing the nuclear option and now considering using reconciliation to pass health care reform. But Democratic criticism of a 2005 Republican proposal to change filibuster rules is in no way inconsistent with passing health care reform through reconciliation — a process that has repeatedly been used to pass legislation, including major health care reform. [ READ MORE ]
AmeriGasm: Barack Obama’s teleprompter rhetoric is no match for Sarah Palin’s hand-scribbled buzzwords. LOL!
Comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert slam Republican Cartoon Combatant Sarah Palin. “Sarah Palin Is A Fucking Retard,” …says Colbert.
The rabidly racist minority (Whites Who Just Can’t Help Being Racist) in America, is hoping that Ding-Bat Sarah — The Mother of Alaska, will lead them back to the promised land — “NOOSE Land!”
Last Thursday, the rabidly anti-immigrant and racist Tom Tancredo, a former Colorado Congressman, delivered the opening remarks at the national “Tea Party” convention. Like a deranged, gun-totting border-patrolling Minuteman, Tancredo declared: “…..First, we should have a ‘civics literacy test‘ before people are allowed to vote. Second, ‘People who could not even spell the word vote or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House whose name is Barack Hussein Obama.’”
Notes: A literacy test, in the context of United States political history, refers to the government practice of testing the literacy of potential citizens at the federal level, and potential voters at the state level. The federal government first employed literacy tests as part of the immigration process in 1917. Southern state legislatures employed literacy tests as part of the voter registration process as early as the late nineteenth century.
As used by the states, the literacy test gained infamy as a means for denying suffrage to African-Americans. Adopted by a number of southern states, the literacy test was applied in a patently unfair manner, as it was used to disfranchise many literate blacks while allowing many illiterate whites to vote.
The literacy test, combined with other discriminatory requirements, effectively disfranchised the vast majority of African-Americans in the South from the 1890s until the 1960s. Southern states abandoned the literacy test only when forced to do so by federal legislation in the 1960s.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 provided that literacy tests used as a qualification for voting in federal elections be administered wholly in writing and only to persons who had not completed six years of formal education.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 suspended the use of literacy tests in all states or political subdivisions in which less than 50 percent of voting-age residents were registered as of 1 November 1964 or had voted in the 1964 presidential election.
In a series of cases, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the legislation and restricted the use of literacy tests for non-English-speaking citizens. Since the passage of this legislation, black registration in the South has increased dramatically.
President Barack Obama is a trained constitutional lawyer. Sarah Palin went through four colleges before fluking a degree in communication and Journalism. (Note:Some of these small colleges in America produce completely useless graduates). Obama is a Harvard graduate — and has clearly demonstrated his keen intellect — in the 2008 campaign leading to several grueling debates with Hillary Clinton and old-man McCain. On the other hand, Cartoon Combatant, Sarah Palin, has demonstrated, thoroughly well — that she is nothing but a two-bit opportunist — feasting on the extremist-racist emotions of one third of this country — who are still drowning in the hot “hyena” juices of White Supremacist Militancy
Obama uses a teleprompter as a productivity tool,…heck — one of the greatest teleprompter users was Ronald Reagan — who without the venerable machine, was frequently lost and wobbly. As age and alzheimer’s disease ate away his mind, Reagan could not operate without a teleprompter or cue cards.
The teleprompter was invented in the 1950’s Fred Barton, Jr., Hubert J. (Hub) Schlafly, and Irving Berlin Kahn. Barton was an actor who suggested the concept of the teleprompter as a means of assisting television performers who had to memorize large amounts of material in a short time. The first “teleprompters” were simply mechanical devices located near the camera. The script was printed on a paper scroll, which was advanced as the performer read. Later, computers took over. Here is a picture of President Lyndon Johnson using a teleprompter while announcing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Here is a list all the presidents who have used teleprompters.
• George W. Bush
• Bill Clinton
• George H.W. Bush
• Ronald Reagan
• Jimmy Carter
• Gerald Ford (his teleprompter frequently contained cues telling him what physical actions to use along with the words!)
• Lyndon B. Johnson
• John F. Kennedy
• Dwight D. Eisenhower
• Harry S. Truman
In fact, every single President since the invention of the teleprompter, including Republican heroes like Reagan…except for Richard Nixon, who used notecards and memorization, but he also was not a natural extemporaneous speaker, and prepared painstakingly for every event.
So, unless Republican idiots like Sarah Palin, want to say every President since Truman (except Nixon) was some sort of cheater for not memorizing every word they said, there’s absolutely no merit in calling out Obama for using a highly useful tool for public speakers.
On the other hand, Sarah Palin has demonstrated over and over, that she is blithering idiot…a shallow, conniving STUNT-WOMAN, who makes George W. Bush look like a Nobel Prize winning Physicist.
Yet, throngs of rabidly racist right-wing NUT-BAGS still look-up to this goofball as their savior. Palin is no intellectual match to Obama, and has neither the capacity(brain power) nor the authority(credentials) to demean the president Obama’s intelligence!
Stupid Palin’s antics and the die-hard approval she gets from right-wing nut-jobs, totally justifies John Stuart Mill’s quote: “Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.”
Palin’s followers are nothing but twisted idiots intoxicated with excruciating racism and bigotry, …and who will never change.
Palin’s tea party speech full of false and misleading national security claims
MediaMatters: During her address before the National Tea Party Convention, Fox News contributor Sarah Palin made numerous false and misleading claims about national security and foreign policy, including suggesting that the Obama administration doesn’t use the word “war,” that interrogators didn’t ask alleged Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab about his training and future al Qaeda plots, and that Abdulmutallab has not provided information since he “lawyered up and invoked our U.S. constitutional right to remain silent.” [ READ MORE ]
Elsewhere, during an interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, Fox News contributor Sarah Palin falsely claimed that “20 percent of the US domestic supply of energy” comes from Alaska. In fact, according to the most recent data available from the Energy Information Administration, Alaska accounts for no more than 2.9 percent of total domestic energy production. [ READ MORE ]
Palin repeats falsehood that Alaska produces “20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy“
Republican Psychopaths Defend Sarah Palin | Rush Limbaugh Orders Republicans
MediaMatters: Right-wing media jump to defend Palin after “crib note” criticism — Right-wing media figures have rushed to defend Sarah Palin from criticism that she apparently wrote “crib notes” on her hand during her Tea Party Convention appearances by claiming, among other things, that it’s a “non-issue” and that having notes on her hand was “folksy,” “down to earth,” and “just like busy moms.” [ READ MORE ]
The “Fox and Friends” IDIOTS Defend Palin — LOL!
Hannity, Morris join other right-wing media in defending Palin’s use of “crib notes” on her hand
“Starbursts“: Lowry says Palin can overcome lack of “substance” because “it’s not rocket science“
A very wise TV executive once told me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen. It’s one of the keys to the success of, say, a Bill O’Reilly, who comes through the screen and grabs you by the throat. Palin too projects through the screen like crazy. I’m sure I’m not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, “Hey, I think she just winked at me.” And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can’t be learned; it’s either something you have or you don’t, and man, she’s got it.
2.Did We Just Witness the Beginning of Sarah Palin’s Presidential Campaign? — Palin is now moving front and center as a potential challenger to Obama. That may scare Republicans who worry about their party’s prospects in 2012.
3.Sarah Palin Aims to Bust Up the Republican Party — And the Tea Party Movement — Palin’s speech was her boilerplate of non sequiturs and cognitive disconnections, but in the interview that followed, she revealed her hand in a game for the presidency.
The point is not so much public gaffes as it is the creation, support, and maintenance of systemic and structural inequalities. This is why Trent Lott’s wistfulness about a Strom Thurmond presidency is in a different class than Reid’s comments. Lott was longing for a bygone era when structural barriers and entrenched inequality were the norm. Reid was enthusiastic that the same barriers were lessening and that America was ready, albeit with caveats, for a new racial reality.
[ By: Melissa Harris-Lacewell ] Joe Biden once remarked that Barack Obama was “clean” and “articulate.” He is now Vice President. During the Democratic primaries Hillary Clinton invoked Robert Kennedy in a way that implied Barack Obama’s assassination was imminent. She is now the Secretary of State. It is foolish to suggest Senator Harry Reid should step down as Senate majority leader because of his 2008 assessment that Barack Obama’s election was more likely because he is “light-skinned” and free from “Negro dialect.”
If President Obama has demonstrated anything at all, it is that he unperturbed by the racially awkward outbursts of his fellow Democrats.
Republicans hope that reports of Reid’s old gaffe might derail his leadership of the health care reform package. But watching Michael Steele go after Reid is more bizarre than convincing. Steele seems to pride himself on the liberal use of black discursive patterns. It’s hard to take seriously the moral outrage of a self-professed “hip-hop Republican” who explains his tenure as GOP chairman saying “brother still here.”
President Obama may be unconcerned and the GOP may be transparently race baiting, but Reid’s comments did create a legitimate queasiness among many Americans that is worth exploring.
President Obama is a forgiving, beer summit kind of leader, but I am less likely to give Democrats a free pass on issues of racial bias. As I wrote a few months ago here on The Notion, any implication that racism is the sole purview of the Right obscures the continuing and troubling realities of racism within the Democratic Party and progressive political movements.
Still, I remain entirely uninterested in a racial McCarthyism that plays “gotcha politics” with elected officials public utterances. Yes, public officials should be particularly careful when talking about race to media (on or off the record). The opportunities for misunderstanding, divisiveness and assumption of ill intent are heightened in this area of political discussion.
But let’s be honest, if we weeded out every public official guilty of racial insensitivity, the halls of Congress would echo with utter emptiness. The point is not so much public gaffes as it is the creation, support, and maintenance of systemic and structural inequalities. This is why Trent Lott’s wistfulness about a Strom Thurmond presidency is in a different class than Reid’s comments. Lott was longing for a bygone era when structural barriers and entrenched inequality were the norm. Reid was enthusiastic that the same barriers were lessening and that America was ready, albeit with caveats, for a new racial reality.
Rather than being worked up about Reid’s awkward assessment of these barriers, we should be asking whether these structural biases actually make academic and political accomplishments easier for light-skinned African Americans. NC State University historian Blair LM Kelley makes this argument in her piece on Salon.com. She points out skin color bias in the 21st century should alarm us. It shouldn’t be a matter of breezy acceptance, as many Sunday morning pundits seemed to suggest. “Accepting this as a matter of course degrades the quality of our democracy.”
Reid’s assertions about “Negro dialect” also should raise structural justice questions far more important than his offensive use of an antiquated term for black Americans. Because of generations of lower class status and legal barriers to quality education, black children are far more likely than their white counterparts to be raised by parents with inadequate literacy skills. But rather than acting as a leveling ground, many public schools only reinforce these disadvantages. These are the same children relegated to schools with fewer expert teachers, larger classroom sizes, fewer educational resources, and fewer literacy support tools.
This is the racism that should worry us: millions of black American children attend and graduate from public schools that leave them utterly unqualified for public office for their entire lives. As adults these children will always be second-class citizens, unable to participate as rule makers rather than simply rule followers in their own country. Not only does this deprive whole group from full participation in government, it also deprives our country of the skills, talents, and ideas that these citizens might have offered, had we not initially deprived them of the capacity to communicate their ideas effectively in the public realm.
Political theorist Nancy Fraser’s describes imagines justice as “a difference-friendly world, where assimilation to majority or dominant cultural norms is no longer the price for equal respect.” Creating that world is an important task for combating racism.
About The Author: Melissa Harris-Lacewell — is Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton University. She is the author of the award-winning book, Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought, (Princeton 2004). And she is currently at work on a new book: Sister Citizen: A Text For Colored Girls Who’ve Considered Politics When Being Strong Wasn’t Enough. (Forthcoming Yale University Press)
Her academic research is inspired by a desire to investigate the challenges facing contemporary black Americans and to better understand the multiple, creative ways that African Americans respond to these challenges. Her work is published in scholarly journals and edited volumes and her interests include the study of African American political thought, black religious ideas and practice, and social and clinical psychology.
Professor Harris-Lacewell’s creative and dynamic teaching is also motivated by the practical political and racial issues of our time. For example, her course entitled Disaster, Race and American Politics explored the multiple political meanings of Hurricane Katrina. Professor Harris-Lacewell has taught students from grade school to graduate school and has been recognized for her commitment to the classroom as a site of democratic deliberation on race.
Professor Harris-Lacewell appears regularly on MSNBC. She regularly provides expert commentary on U.S. elections, racial issues, religious questions and gender concerns for both The Rachel Maddow Show and Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Professor Harris-Lacewell is also a regular guest on other television and radio. Her writings have appeared in newspapers throughout the country and she is a regular contributor at TheNation.com.
She travels extensively speaking to colleges, organizations and businesses in the United States and abroad. In 2009 Professor Harris-Lacewell became the youngest scholar to deliver the W.E.B. Du Bois Lectures at Harvard University. Also in 2009 she delivered the prestigious Ware Lecture, becoming the youngest woman to ever do so.
Professor Harris-Lacewell received her B.A. in English from Wake Forest University , her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and an honorary doctorate from Meadville Lombard Theological School. She is currently a student at Union Theological Seminary in New York.
She lives part-time in New Orleans. Her partner, James Perry, is a candidate for mayor of the city of New Orleans in 2010.
She is also the mother of a terrific daughter, Parker Lacewell.
Joe Biden once remarked that Barack Obama was “clean” and “articulate.” He is now Vice President. During the Democratic primaries Hillary Clinton invoked Robert Kennedy in a way that implied Barack Obama’s assassination was imminent. She is now the Secretary of State. It is foolish to suggest Senator Harry Reid should step down as Senate majority leader because of his 2008 assessment that Barack Obama’s election was more likely because he is “light-skinned” and free from “Negro dialect.”
