Lawrence had a busy night, which is why I'm pretty much giving you the first half of last night's show. And he engages in one of my favorite sports, Professional Left Bashing.
You'll note the part of the first segment where he reminds America that one of the first things then-President Bill Clinton did was cut Medicare Spending, and not one Liberal howled. (I seem to remember some howling, but Lawrence is right, it was nowhere near the cacophony it is today for President Obama's head-fake.):
Did you catch that part where Nancy Pelosi says that she too is in favor of the Four Trillion Package too? That should tell you right there, that the President's intentions on cutting Entitlements are a head-fake.
"The fall back position, the third option, and what I consider the least attractive option, is one in which we raise the debt ceiling without making any significant progress on reducing the deficit."
I can't wait to see what Lawrence has to say about that one, but my bet is, it continues to corner the Republicans. After bailing on the President's Four Trillion dollar plan to preserve tax cuts for the rich, their one major play remains, pass a clean Debt Ceiling Bill and blame the President for it.
It seems to me, at least following my logic, that the President is saying: "Hey, I don't want to do that either. I'm all for spending cuts. But, if this is all we can agree to, I guess we have to do it. Heavy sigh."
This morning, on “The Diane Rehm Show,” EPI’s Larry Mishel made a good point: The Republicans argue that increasing taxes by a dollar hurts the economy while cutting spending by a dollar helps the recovery, he said. That means they believe that taking a dollar out of a rich person’s pocket through taxes hurts demand while taking it out of a poor person’s pocket by cutting unemployment insurance doesn’t. He suggested there’s not a whole lot of evidence to support this claim.
But remember that Republicans also say that cutting tax expenditures counts as a tax increase. That implies that cutting a $1 billion subsidy for low-income housing will help the recovery while shaving $1 billion off of a tax break that subsidizes low-income housing purchases would impede the recovery. Can anyone defend that claim? Would anyone even like to try?
My bet is that we're going to go right up to the wire with this Kabuki Dance (Copyright, 2011, R.Johnson Ltd.), and at the end of the day, when there are neither votes to pass a "Grand Bargain" with Revenues, nor the maximalist, 100% spending cuts the Republicans want, and instead they pass a (mostly) clean bill with mostly Democratic votes, and the votes of Republicans who don't want to feel the wrath of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. At most, the GOP gets cuts that the President wanted to do anyway, and don't harm the overall Economy.
President Obama calls on both parties to come together to find a balanced approach to deficit reduction that lets us live within our means without hurting investments our economy needs to grow and create jobs.
This was also caught by Only Adult In The Room originally, and it's taken me a while to get to it. The best part is the opening thirty seconds, where the reporter reveals that she went to High School with Stanley Ann Dunham, and the President's reaction.
Other than that, it's the standard sit down over the Economy, the Debt Ceiling, etc.
Greg asked earlier, “Do House Democrats have any leverage in the debt talks?” Barack Obama’s quick statement today to reporters made it clear that: yes, they do.
By emphasizing that “Democrats and Republicans are going to be required in both chambers,” the president inched towards defining a standard under which any grand bargain will require majorities of both parties in both Houses of Congress.
In reality, Obama was basically acknowledging the mathematics and politics of the situation. We know that at least 50 of the 240 House Republicans, and probably a good deal more, are not going to vote for a debt limit increase no matter what. That means they’ll need at least about 30 Democrats, and probably a good deal more. If a deal is going to need close to half of House Democrats, then it almost certainly needs Nancy Pelosi.
The truly goofy thing about this whole mess is the outsized influence enjoyed by those 50 or so House Republicans that won’t be voting for any deal, no matter how much it might tilt towards conservative priorities. One would think that they’ve dealt themselves out. However, they — along with their slightly less rejectionist conservative collaborators — are the key restraint on John Boehner. As Jonathan Chait notes today, what their opposition does is make some of the deals that are mathematically possible into political poison for the Speaker. He isn’t going to endorse anything that won’t get the approval (in private at least — they may not vote that way) of a strong majority of the House Republican conference, because otherwise he risks a revolt.
For House Democrats, the best strategy (no surprise here) is unity. If they can maintain that, then they have quite a bit of leverage. If not, Boehner can start trying to pick off 25 or 30 or 35 Democrats, and perhaps he can make that work. My guess, however, is that ultimately nothing will pass unless it has genuine leadership support — and not just votes — from Democrats and Republicans in both chambers. Nancy Pelosi certainly knows that, and as the President himself said today, he’s very aware that he needs Democrats to get this done.
Hello, everybody. I’m going to make a very brief statement.
I just completed a meeting with all the congressional leaders from both chambers, from both parties, and I have to say that I thought it was a very constructive meeting. People were frank. We discussed the various options available to us. Everybody reconfirmed the importance of completing our work and raising the debt limit ceiling so that the full faith and credit of the United States of America is not impaired.
What we decided was that staffs, as well as leadership, will be working during the weekend, and that I will reconvene congressional leaders here on Sunday with the expectation that, at that point, the parties will at least know where each other’s bottom lines are and will hopefully be in a position to then start engaging in the hard bargaining that’s necessary to get a deal done.
I want to emphasize that nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to. And the parties are still far apart on a wide range of issues. But, again, I thought that all the leaders here came in a spirit of compromise, in a spirit of wanting to solve problems on behalf of the American people. Everybody acknowledged that the issue of our debt and our deficit is something that needs to be tackled now. Everybody acknowledged that in order to do that, Democrats and Republicans are going to be required in each chamber. Everybody acknowledged that we have to get this done before the hard deadline of August 2nd to make sure that America does not default for the first time on its obligations. And everybody acknowledged that there’s going to be pain involved politically on all sides, but our biggest obligation is to make sure that we’re doing the right thing by the American people, creating an environment in which we can grow the economy and make sure that more and more people are being put back to work.
So I want to thank all the leaders. I thought it was a very constructive meeting. And I will be seeing them back here on Sunday. A lot of work will be done between now and then.
Basically, where we’re at is this. Talks on the Debt Ceiling have broken down. The GOP was originally invested in a Debt Ceiling deal that had an 85-15 split of spending cuts to tax increases, that number coming from a report from the Conservative American Enterprise Institute. This was a report highlighted in fact on Speaker Boehner’s website. (Bet you dollars to doughnuts that that report has been taken down).
The good news in all this is that the spending cut number (around 2.4 Trillion over ten years) has pretty much been agreed to. This would be the 85 number.
The best advice I’ve gotten for assessing the debt-ceiling negotiations was to “watch for the day when the White House goes public.” As long as the Obama administration was refusing to attack Republicans publicly, my source said, they believed they could cut a deal. And that held true. They were quiet when the negotiations were going on. They were restrained after Eric Cantor and Jon Kyl walked out last week. Press Secretary Jay Carney simply said, “We are confident that we can continue to seek common ground and that we will achieve a balanced approach to deficit reduction.” But today they went public.
Let me take a moment to answer one of Lawrence's questions. He asked, why didn't the Obama White House just use the Clinton model for deficit reduction?
Ummm, Lawrence. Have you met today's Republican party?
So what happens now?
Well, frankly…it depends on how batshit insane the Republicans are, and how pissed off the Chamber of Commerce actually gets.
If you’re a conservative, things look pretty simple. You’ve got a President in the White House you don’t like. You’ve got a stalled economy that stalled because of your policies and ideas, but you’re still committed to those same policies and ideas because even though they make the middle class miserable, they don't count in your world. All that does count are the people you really work for (Rich folks and Multinational corporations). If you cooperate with the sitting President (aka, doing your job) there’s a chance things will get better for the people. Can't have that, because that would mean the President would get re-elected. However, if you hold out for your most cherished, bat-shit insane policy ideas that you wouldn’t even let see the light of day under a Bush Administration, well, not only can you stall any economic momentum for a recovery (thereby damaging the President), but you can also appeal and excite your own base in the process. WIN-WIN!!!
I would first refer the Chamber of Commerce to the story of Pandora’s Box. You let these batshit insane Teabagger shitheads into the tent, this is what you get:
In case, you don't understand why I'm making this particular movie reference, or have (rightfully) forgotten Jurassic Park 2. The idiots (aka, the main characters) decided to "rescue" a baby T-Rex. That'd be Mama in the video, sniffing clothes that are soaked in the baby's blood. Think of them as tax breaks for Corporate Jet owners for the purposes of this argument. "Hilarity" ensues after that.
The more the Chamber stands by its threat to destroy any Republican who stands against a raise in the Debt Ceiling, the more likely there is to be a deal. Period.
My inclination the moment Keith brought it up was to dismiss it (after all, this is Keith we’re talking about). But then Lawrence brought it up as well.
"It's certainly worth exploring," Schumer said. "I think it needs a little more exploration and study. It's probably not right to pursue at this point and you wouldn't want to go ahead and issue the debt and then have the courts reverse it."
I still see this as officially a push by the Democrats to get this idea out there.
The Senator from Wall Street is right. We don’t know what the economic consequences would be of a debt default, we also don’t know how markets would react to the President simply ignoring Congress and continuing to borrow money.
If you were interested in buying up U.S. Bonds, how would you react to the President taking the podium and saying, basically, screw Cantor and Boehner. We’re going ahead, business as usual. My guess is a Bond buyer might hesitate, and say “Should we be buying this stuff. Is it safe? What does it mean?”
Basically, what I see happening is this. The Democrats rattle the Nuclear Option theory. Republicans howl in protest. Jim DeMint says the Constitution didn’t mean what it says. Someone tries to change the Constitution on Wikipedia, and ultimately, the GOP quietly agrees to the 83-17 split a week before the deadline and declares victory.
Of course, that'd mean dealing with a sane GOP. And frankly there's no evidence that they're out there.
I mean, for pity’s sake, you watch the Teabagger shithead caucus, always crying for their love of the Constitution is going to attack the President for sticking to the letter and law of the Constitution. Watch it happen. There’s never an egg-timer around when you need it. (Hat tip, Randi Rhodes).
The President is going to have to carry through with his unspoken threat, and while dear ol' Doctor Dad would disagree, I think the dire nature of what could happen would force to President to do it. I mean, if the GOP won’t deal fairly. If any bill the Democrats propose gets filibustered in the Senate. If the Teabaggers bite the hand of their Chamber of Commerce masters, what option is Obama going to have left?
As ugly as the consequences might be, they’d be worse if he did. If DeMint won’t come back to reality, pick the Constitutional fight, and pull the Debt Ceiling trigger. What would we have to lose?
Growing increasingly pessimistic about the prospects for a deal that would raise the debt ceiling, Democratic senators are revisiting a solution to the crisis that rests on a simple proposition: The debt ceiling itself is unconstitutional.
"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law... shall not be questioned," reads the 14th Amendment.
"This is an issue that's been raised in some private debate between senators as to whether in fact we can default, or whether that provision of the Constitution can be held up as preventing default," Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), an attorney, told The Huffington Post Tuesday. "I don't think, as of a couple weeks ago, when this was first raised, it was seen as a pressing option. But I'll tell you that it's going to get a pretty strong second look as a way of saying, 'Is there some way to save us from ourselves?'"
By declaring the debt ceiling unconstitutional, the White House could continue to meet its financial obligations, leaving Tea Party-backed Republicans in the difficult position of arguing against the plain wording of the Constitution. Bipartisan negotiators are debating the size of the cuts, now in the trillions, that will come along with raising the debt ceiling.
The two principals in the debt-ceiling talks, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, began talking on Monday with the same deadline: August 2, when the federal government will default on its debt. But Obama’s clock is running slower. And that means his leverage may ultimately be greater if he waits for several weeks before making a deal.
Obama’s political apogee will be in late July, when, if there’s no deal, the bond market will begin to panic, leading interest rates to rise and the stock market to fall. That’s when the public will begin to understand what happens when the U.S. can’t make its payments to creditors. That’s when the president can use his bully pulpit to call for an adult conversation.
That’s why Republicans want the White House to focus on vote counts right now. What combination of policies will exceed the necessary threshold for passage in the House and the Senate? Boehner is willing to concede that a debt-ceiling deal based on Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan may not get 218 votes. And Republicans have already conceded that they’re willing to cut significantly from defense appropriations to get them.
What Boehner would like the White House to concede early is that its effort to, say, end oil-company subsidies, raise taxes on individuals making $500,000 and up, or curtail sugar and ethanol tax breaks, would also fall short. If the vote were tomorrow, he’d probably get a higher spending-cut to deficit-trigger ratio from Democrats, too. He’d get close to $2 trillion in real cuts over 10 years.
Boehner's bottom line: real spending cuts that exceed the amount by which the debt limit is raised looks reasonable today. Since a large minority of his conference does not believe that the August 2 date is real, Boehner's aides insist that it's foolhardy to think they are any more likely to accept revenue raisers (including getting rid of tax breaks) as the weeks go by.
But Obama knows that vote counts in the absence of the crucible of crisis will differ when Wall Street, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and other traditionally Republican interests begin to nervously walk lawmakers out of their partisan garrisons.
And he’s betting that Republicans, having learned that his team is on nimble feet when it plays close to the edge of the cliff, will concede more up front than they did in December, when only the threat of a government shutdown (darn it, the Smithsonian would be closed!) loomed as the existential sword of Damocles. The longer Obama waits, the more Republicans will privately panic, knowing that their leverage decreases steadily as the weeks go by -- and exponentially at the turn of August.
After taking most of the month off to prepare for, then enjoy a vacation, I'm diving back into Ft. McHenry with (hopefully) renewed vigor.
Thus, I present the President's weekly address.
Speaking from Carnegie Mellon University, President Obama discusses the vital role advanced manufacturing will have in strengthening our economy and creating good, middle-class jobs.
The President outlines how the government is partnering with the private sector to ensure workers have the skills they need to be competitive and grow the economy.
Speaking from a Chrysler plant in Toledo, Ohio, the President commends the work of America's dedicated autoworkers, who have helped reinvigorate the domestic auto industry.
Alabama State Rep. Daniel Boman, who entered the legislature as a Republican in November, is switching parties to become a Democrat after he says the GOP went too far in attacking teachers in the state.
On the heels of last night’s Senate defeat of the Republicans’ Medicare-ending budget, presidential contender Herman Cain went on Fox News to defend the plan. Cain has recently pulled ahead of former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) in the polls, and used his new credibility to admonish the rest of the GOP field for backing away from the plan authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).
As national backlash to Ryan’s Medicare privatization plan has grown, Republicans have become increasingly divided about how to sell something so deeply unpopular. Many, including Ryan himself, have cynically tried to deny that it’s a voucher scheme at all, but rather the much more appealingly-named “premium support” plan. Speaking with Fox and Friends host Gretchen Carlson, Cain crtiticized this hedging and urged his fellow candidates to call the Ryan plan what it is — a voucher system.
I know, we're not back all the way. But 4000 jobs means 4000 consumers. That means 4000 Consumers who can go to the Grocery Store, where the employees at the Grocery Store can make some money. Where the inventory of that Grocery Store is emptied, but refilled by even more workers. Truck Drivers moving the inventory. Bakers and Famers making the inventory. And hopefully, through it all, all these people have enough money to get themselves a new car...hopefully made at the same plant that started it all.
I know it's not going like we want...but it's going.
Apologies. I was waiting for the White House to put the Dublin Speech from College Green up, but at this point all I can think is, it must've been considered a Political Speech (even though I remember seeing the Presidential Seal as he spoke). The speech is available on YouTube, but for some reason the poster has declined to be it be embedded. You can see that speech here.
Today's speech before Parliament, has been uploaded by the White House:
In any other world, a person like Mitt Romney would like to have this one back. Instead, in today's Republican party, he's going to double-down on the notion.
First off, I'm glad the White House kept Sec. Clinton's introduction in the video. I heard it live and it was pretty good and, more to the point, illuminating.
Having just given the commencement address at Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis, which has made inspiring progress in recent years, the President says Congress must replace No Child Left Behind to help all our schools thrive.
In his first major television interview of his likely presidential campaign rollout this morning, former Utah Gov. and Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman avoided his own Newt Gingrich moment. The House Republican plan to privatize Medicare? Count Huntsman in.
"I would've voted for it," he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos Friday morning. "Including the Medicare provisions."
Nice knowing ya, Jon. Not only are you toast for 2012 (we knew that anyway), but any hope you had to run and win in 2016 (which even I believed), just went up in smoke.
When will these people learn?? (And by "these people, I mean Richard Lugar, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, John McCain, Claire McCaskill) A Tiger not only cannot, but should not change his or her stripes. The people elected you for a reason, and these last minute personality reconfigurations to please a narrow constituency are a consistently losing strategy.
Chuck Grassley, never one of America's brighest Senators (or people for that matter) decides to help out!
"Sometimes I hear Mitch Daniels and I thought, maybe I oughta back him because it would be an opportunity to show that people who don't have charisma could be elected president," Grassley joked in a conference call with reporters today.
Grassley, who was asked about the importance of personal magnetism as opposed to policy in a presidential race, later made a point of saying his comments were "tongue in cheek."
Only Lawrence O'Donnell goes there. Fort McHenry is a little seen, seldom-used blog, so I can say things like "One of the biggest problems with America, is the American people"...meaning the mistakes the American people keep making...
West may have had principled, even prophetic reasons, for choosing this outsider position relative to Obama, but it is dishonest to later frame that choice as a betrayal on the part of the President. After what I had written about Senator Clinton during the campaign I wasn't expecting an offer from the State Department.
Furthermore, West’s sense of betrayal is clearly more personal than ideological. In Hedges's article West claims that a true progressive would always put love of the people above concern with the elite and privileged. Then he complains, “I couldn’t get a ticket [to the inauguration] with my mother and my brother. I said this is very strange. We drive into the hotel and the guy who picks up my bags from the hotel has a ticket to the inauguration... We had to watch the thing in the hotel.” Let me get this straight—the tenured, Princeton professor who collects five figures for public lectures was relegated to a hotel television while an anonymous hotel worker got tickets to the inauguration! What kind of crazy, mixed up class politics are these? Wait a minute…
What exactly is so irritating to West about inaugural ticket-gate? It can't be a claim that the black, progressive intellectual community was unrepresented. Yale's Elizabeth Alexander was the poet that cold morning. It can't be that the "common man" was shut out because the Neighborhood Ball was reserved for the ordinary women and and men who worked to make Obama '08 possible. It must be a simple matter of jealous indignation. While I appreciate the humanness in such a reaction, it hardly counts as a prophetic critique.
Since the inaugural snub, Professor West has made his personal animosity and political criticism of the president his main public talking point. There was that hilariously bad documentary with Tavis Smiley and the rest of the Soul Patrol in 2009. There is the tiresome repetitiveness with which West invokes the name of his erstwhile Harvard nemesis Lawrence Summers as indicative of President Obama’s failed economic vision. And just a few weeks ago there was the eminently watchable screaming match on MSNBC where love-the-peoplc West called Rev. Al Sharpton a “mascot” for the Obama administration. Add to this three year screed the current Hedges article and it looks more like a pissing match than prophesy.
The progressive icon eviscerated his former colleagues in an e-mail for his advocacy group Progressive United on Tuesday, accusing two prominent Democrats of enabling "corruption" by opposing new transparency measures on political donations.
"This culture of corporate influence and corruption is precisely what we as Progressives United want to change," he wrote. "So we've decided to take on those legislators who are unwilling to stand up to corporate power, and we're naming names."
The names included House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO). In addition, the email targeted Sens. Mitch McConnell, (R-KY), Rob Portman (R-OH), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and Rep. Darrell Issa, (R-CA).
Feingold accused the group of backing "corporate interests in Congress" by opposing an executive order under discussion in the White House that would require government contractors to reveal their political donations.
Let's be honest. He's right. He usually is, but he has a habit of being insufferable about it. (And this is a prime example of that).
Feingold's never been in love with the sound of his own voice (as most Senators are), but he is in love with his personal self-righteousness, and has no problem rubbing people's noses in it.
Yeah, I was born and raised in Steny Hoyer's District. Know all about him. Claire McCaskill is doing her level best to self-destruct in the Missouri Senate Race (and I could care less if she wins).
Still, do us all a favor Russ...don't write the Republican's Campaign Ads FOR THEM!!!
Look, at the end of the day, Russ is going to want his fellow Senators out there campaigning for him, sending out Emails raising money for him. Sniping at one's colleagues doesn't seem to be a good way to get that done.
At the moment, the case against the law in the hands of the appellate courts. Three sets of cases are pending, each one before a different Circuit Court. Last week judges from the Fourth Circuit, which sits in Virginia, heard the first of these cases. Early next month, judges from the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, are supposed to hear the next one.
The Fourth Circuit judges, all of them Democratic appointees, seemed openly skeptical of arguments that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. But the Sixth Circuit panel will include two judges appointed by Republicans and just one appointed by a Democrat. Most experts figure they will be more sympathetic to the lawsuit challenging the law's constitutionality or, at least, to the parties bringing it.
And maybe they will be. But, on Thursday, the judges sent a letter to lawyers from both parties. In it, they asked the lawyers to write briefs on three procedural questions. Two of them are about "standing" and "ripeness." (Or at least what I understand those concepts to be.)
The first question asks whether the plaintiffs can show they have suffered an injury or face an "imminent injury," even though the law doesn't take effect until 2014. The other asks for details on the penalties for violating the individual mandate and the extent to which they would actually cause "injury and hardship." As legal expert Timothy Jost and journalist Timothy Noah have pointed out, the law specifically prohibits the federal government from using criminal penalties to enforce the insurance requirement.
These questions are critical because, if the plaintiffs can't demonstrate that the Affordable Care Act has caused or will "imminently" cause them hardship, then they arguably have no right to challenge the law. And the Sixth Circuit judges don't seem to be the only ones pondering these issues. The Fourth Circuit judges, in Richmond, made a big deal about this in last week's oral arguments.
KEYES: Over the weekend, presidential contender Newt Gingrich came out and said he’d like to see some sort of poll test, throwing out the idea that maybe voters ought to have a certain standard knowledge of American history in order to be able to vote. What are your thoughts on that?
WEST: That’s going back to some times that my parents had to contend with. [...] I think that we need to do a better job educating our young men and women in school, but we don’t need to have a litmus test, no.
I know. I'm amazed too. A moment of clarity and sanity. But don't worry, Rep. West will soon say something else that will disgrace the country and the institution in which he serves.
The White House is threatening to hold up final passage of three coveted free trade agreements unless lawmakers agree to expand retraining assistance for American workers who lose their jobs because of foreign competition.
The move comes as administration officials begin talks on Capitol Hill to finalize the agreements the White House reached to expand trade with South Korea, Panama and Colombia. President Barack Obama has said the deals are an integral part of his economic agenda, and the pacts have broad Republican support.
While administration officials have long said they supported expanding the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program, or TAA, Monday's announcement was the first time aides said they would be willing to delay the deals without it.
"We will not submit the FTAs without an agreement on an enhanced TAA," said Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council. "But we also believe we can work on congressional leadership to get that accomplished."
Anyone who's been following the Militia movement has heard of these guys. Nevertheless, I'm glad 60 Minutes took some time to shine a spotlight on them in yesterday's broadcast:
(CBS News video can't get it's act together. The video that is coming through their "Embed this clip" button is of some magnetic kid from Croatia, and not the story I'm talking about. Hence, if you want to see the video, click here.)
It is interesting that this movement has a lot of clear ties to some very racist organizations in the past, yet there is Wesley Snipes, apparently (according to the piece) using Sovereign language in legal filings about his Tax Case.
Personally, I think that says more about Wesley Snipes than it does this movement.
As part of his long-term plan to reduce our reliance on foreign oil, President Obama lays out his strategy to continue expanding safe and responsible domestic oil production.
Let me say that I'm a bit of a rarity among black people. I'm a black man who doesn't listen to a lot of Hip-Hop (I'm more of an R&B man). Despite that, I was offended by this crap coming out of Fox News yesterday. I was particularly offended by Hannity and Rove. Common is about the most positive of Rappers out here. (Hell, I don't listen to Hip-Hop, and I knew that!) Dr. Harris-Perry's made a particularly sharp point in the Last Word: How is it that Teabaggers coming to Presidential appearances armed with automatic weapons is just fine and dandy as far as political speech goes, yet a Rapper rapping about automatic weapons is out of bounds.
Conservatives would say its all about the sanctity of the White House, but it's really about race, and appealing to the lizard brains of the Obama-is-never-legitmate portion of the Republican electorate.
You know, normally something this stupid wouldn't bother me, but this story really gets under my skin. If they can try to paint Common as a 'dangerous black man,' what black man is immune? If they think Common is vile, then I know they have no use for my black ass. Common is beyond the pale, Michelle Obama hates whitey, Eric Holder is protecting the New Black Panther Party, Shirley Sherrod is discriminating against white farmers, Barack Obama is giving reparations to black people? Conservatives, do you realize how stupid this sounds to black people? (and I know that black people aren't the audience for that kind of talk, there's no need to point that out to me.) Seriously, you can't find less-threatening black people.
And fundamentally, I doubt if they even think Common's that bad. He's a convenient target for a bit of demagoguing, which is even more repugnant. At least when Lee Atwater used the "Let's dredge up the 'dangerous black man' feelings for a cheap political hit" ploy, he'd choose an actually dangerous black man.
I mean, look, politically, I'm pretty liberal, so it's not like I'd ever be a regular Republican voter anyway. But shit like this is what prevents me from even getting to the point where I'd give their policies a fair hearing. And I know there are some Republicans and conservatives here, and I say that you have no chance of getting any kind of support from black voters as long as the leaders of your party are pulling these kinds of stunts.
So once again, Conservatives, keep in mind that a lot of what you're saying is being talked about in the Black Community, and we will remember.
