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Monday, June 7, 2010

The Week In Review Edited

I'm back! Did you miss me? Seriously I took a few days off for some well deserved R&R, fun in the sun but I'm back now fired up and ready to go! I spent the morning getting caught up on what's happening in the real world to learn the following; veteran White House Correspondent Helen Thomas is under fire for exercising the first, (welcome to the club Helen!), conservative, white democrats and republicans from coast to coast are still trying to figure out why Artur Davis was trounced (Seriously?), the righty's are still trying to turn BP's Gulf oil spill in President Obama's Katrina, thousands of barrels of O-I-L are stilling flowing(more on this later), republicans are trying to make a federal case out of Joe Sestak (sigh), and locally, the Huntsville City School Superintendent Ann Roy Moore is under attack (Oh my!).

Veteran White House Correspondent Helen Thomas is forced to resign after her "anti semitic" comments. That's what the news reader just announced on MSNBC. Call me clueless, but would someone please explain what anti semitism is because I honestly don't know yet I see the charge thrown around a lot and it usually results in somebody either being forced to resign or fired. In any event I'm really sad Helen Thomas will no longer be around to ask the tough questions. Not these guys and gals, that's fer sure. I bid a fond but sad farewell to the real Watchdog of Democracy.
Thomas, who has been covering Washington for more than 60 years, is displeased with the way in which the government tries to manipulate the news as never before; the press, diminished and monopolized by big business kowtowing to advertisers is "supine"; and dishonesty is everywhere. Thomas believes in a healthy adversarial challenge between government and press, but her explanation of her stance sometimes veers off track. She characterizes the nine presidents (beginning with Kennedy) she has covered, each of whom tried to spin the news his own way (Nixon, for a while, resorted to total blackout). Thomas dates the ever widening "credibility gap" back to the Vietnam War under Johnson. By this time, message management had reached the point of "outright propaganda." Readers will be entertained by her definition of the terms "background" and "off the record" and the difference between a "leak" and a "plant." But Thomas sees a bright side: she applauds trenchant political cartoonists and believes that the active public interest expressed in Internet blogs may help create transparency.


Did the Voting Rights Act Doom Artur Davis? Four words, HELL TO THE NO! I was offended by the title and the content of this post. How dare you blame the hard fought for right for African Americans to vote for Artur Davis's repudiation. Do you realize how condescending and racist y'all are beginning to sound? Let me offer you a Redeye translation for your consideration and review; That's what we get for letting that there uppity N word Joe Reed getting them there uppity N words the right to vote they won't let us decide who the head N word in charge should be. Everybody knows they are too stoopid to know what's good for them and need us to tell them what to do and to take care of them.

Artur Davis doomed Artur Davis by, pandering to the right and throwing his base under the bus. Black folks never have and never will vote against their self interest, in other words we don't vote for candidates based on the color of their skin. Psst, President Obama, you got that? Stop screwing your base and screw the right wing conservative, moderates, they are not your friends and to quote James Carville, "they will take you down". Ask your Harvard bud Artur Davis.

What Booman
said all the damn way!
But it's just sad to see a guy like Artur Davis, who has such a stellar resume, feel compelled to turn his back on the biggest Democratic project in three generations just to pander to a sliver of the white vote in Alabama. According to the exit polls, Barack Obama received just 10% of the white vote in Alabama. Davis certainly has to do considerably better than that to have any chance of being elected governor. But Davis, who was "the recipient of the Best Oralist Award in the esteemed Ames Moot Court Competition at Harvard Law School," ought to use his rhetorical skills to explain how health care reform will help rural white Alabamans more than any legislation passed in most of their lifetimes. Instead, he chooses to go the predictable route which, even if it worked, would likely leave him with a prize not worth having. After all, why run for office if you can't implement your principles?


Why indeed? That is the question. Another good question is why do black candidates have to throw black folks under the bus to get white folks to vote for them? The voting rights act doomed Artur Davis my Donkey!

To be continued.

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