Category Archives: Obama

Kansas Speech

Posted on December 7, 2011 | Leave a comment

And Osawatomie, Kansas, where President Obama spoke yesterday is associated with . . . ?

Watching Rep. King from Iowa and some other jerk congressman smirking as they taunt Obama about the debt issue and call him a flat-out liar. This is so outside of politics. It’s just race-baiting and setting up the black guy while calling him ignorant and inept.

Obama has more than a few flaws, but those are primarily issues between him and the disappointed left, myself included at times, but our differences, however strong, don’t bring about a failure of common decency.

This constant attempt at humiliation simply would never happen with a white President no matter how strongly partisan the opposition. The frustration of watching it brings me close to tears. Well… “Get up, stand up.”

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Posted in Obama

We Shall Overcomb

Posted on April 28, 2011 | 2 comments

<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>

Media Advisory by FAIR

Ignoring Trump’s Record of Racism

5/6/11

Donald Trump’s efforts to delegitimize Barack Obama by suggesting he’s not a native-born citizen, and questioning his qualifications for admissions to Columbia University and Harvard Law School, have drawn fire from prominent media figures like MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell (FAIR Blog, 4/29/11), CBS News anchor Bob Schieffer (CBS Evening News, 4/27/11) and even David Letterman (Late Show, 4/28/11), who have pointed out the racism implicit in Trump’s smears.

But few corporate journalists have so far put Trump’s anti-Obama efforts in the context of earlier racist episodes in the real estate developer’s career–a history that sheds light on the potential presidential candidate’s recent hamfisted claim: “I have a great relationship with the blacks. I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.” (As Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson–4/19/11–observed regarding Trump’s awkward boast: “Yes, he said ‘the blacks.’ Twice.”)

Salon’s Justin Elliot (4/28/11) traced Trump’s racism back to the 1970s, when the Justice Department repeatedly alleged racial discrimination by Trump Management Company, where Trump served as president. According to a New York Times report (10/16/73) about the federal case:

The government contended that Trump Management had refused to rent or negotiate rentals “because of race and color.” It also charged that the company had required different rental terms and conditions because of race and that it had misrepresented to blacks that apartments were not available.

After Trump agreed in a 1975 deal to integrate Trump properties, in 1978 the Justice Department charged Trump Management with failing to live up to the agreement. As Elliott reports, “in 1983, a fair-housing activist cited statistics that two Trump Village developments had white majorities of at least 95 percent.” (See New York Times, 10/16/83.)

In his 1991 book Trumped!, the former president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, John R. O’Donnell, recalled Trump declaring that “laziness is a trait in blacks,” and exclaiming: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.” Trump acknowledged in a Playboy interview (5/97; cited Huffington Post, 4/29/11), “The stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true.”

Trump injected himself into a racial controversy in 1989 when, after a white female jogger was raped in Central Park, he took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the executions of the five people arrested–all minors aged 14 to 16 years old, four of them African-American and one Latino. All five were later exonerated after being convicted on the basis of what turned out to be false confessions, the crime actually having been committed by a lone serial rapist (New York Times, 12/8/02, 12/9/03).

Trump has never taken out similar ads in regard to other prominent and even more serious crimes, including serial murders, in the New York area, and failed to apologize following the exonerations. The story recently received local coverage on New York City cable news station NY1 (4/28/11) when one of the people targeted in the Trump ads asked the presidential hopeful for an apology–but national media have avoided the story.

When Barack Obama held a press conference (4/27/11) announcing he would release additional evidence to document his already-established U.S. birth, the spectacle recalled the days of Jim Crow, when black citizens were required to produce extra documentation, pay poll taxes and take “literacy tests” in a system designed to disenfranchise them. Trump followed in these footsteps by demanding that Obama provide evidence never required of any white politician–a parallel heightened when, during a press conference boasting of his role in forcing Obama to release a new version of his birth certificate, he made a new bid to delegitimize Obama by demanding that he release his school records as well.

The failure to cover Trump’s record of racism is troubling, but perhaps not surprising given the evident glee with which corporate media have greeted his potential candidacy. Trump attended the April 20 White House Correspondents Dinner as a guest of the Washington Post, about which the Post’s Dan Zak (4/20/11) reported, “Trump elicited boos from gawkers and protesters while entering the Washington Hilton, but once inside it was all flashbulbs and glad-handing and laughs.”

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Posted in blog, Obama

Part of a FaceBook Discussion

Posted on April 9, 2011 | Leave a comment

Ok, I’ll say what I’m thinking: Millions of left-leaning, good, decent white people help vote the brilliant, charismatic black guy into office and we’re all walking around in amazement, bursting into tears, and recognizing a spectacularly historical moment.

What we did not anticipate was how deeply ingrained in the 47+% who voted against him is the deeply (white) American conviction – – not always conscious or formulated, but there — that no white man can take orders from a black man and still call himself a man. Hence the vomiting out of all that Nazi, Communist, fascist name calling, the busy birthers – – Trump, of all people, and the millions who still tell pollsters they believe Obama is a Muslim. To say “Obama should step down, like Lyndon Johnson, admit he’s been a failure and let someone else run on the dem ticket,” is right out of the Tea Party playbook, isn’t it?

Obama doesn’t walk on water, he hasn’t brought about world peace in record time and we don’t yet have a chicken in every pot. So throw the bum out, he has let us down, we had no idea he was a politician. But don’t just vote him out – – ask him to step down in disgrace. WTF.

The man is a Chicago POLITICIAN. Can’t we get past the tantrums? Do you really want the right to win? And who among the Dems would be dumb enough to run against him? My argument is not an endorsement, just a slim hope that in a second term, without the need to campaign, etc. he might get it together to swing for the fence. I, too, feel deeply disappointed about dozens of issues. I can hardly wait for the book he writes once he is out of office, and can only hope it is honest and revealing. Just now though, abandonment seems unproductive. Complain, protest, demonstrate — hold his feet to the fire.

The Left got Obama in office and it is our job to call him out loud and clear on his wrongheaded positions, to support him with equal fervor when he gets it right, and to keep in mind the talk of bringing about his Waterloo and failure that started the moment he took office. We should take him to task, but we should also hang in and not cave to the grand old liberal tendency to fall into squabbling factions and fight each other harder than we fight our enemies.

The Tea Party is a new phenom. and we need to be mindful of the steady rise of the fascist mentality it promotes. All they need is a couple of charismatic leaders… and the bar is damned low considering that Beck almost pulled that off and Fox is going strong. Any Dem. Pres. would be up against it, but race is a significant dimension.