Update 2: Richard "Dick" Shelby standing up to Obama everyday is proof no good deed goes unpunished #BlackHistoryMonth2016

This is a picture of President Obama touring the damage in Tuscaloosa, AL in the aftermath of the deadly storms that struck Alabama in 2011.

This is a picture of President Obama touring Birmingham, Al in the aftermath of the deadly storms that devastated Alabama in April, 2011.

The Storm is Passing Over

I hate to say it, but as an African American supporter of President Obama, his actions continue to disappoint me. Don't get me wrong, although it took a tornado to bring him to Alabama, I'm glad he came. But, Tuscaloosa was not the only area hit hard by the storms. Entire neighborhoods were devastated in nearby Birmingham also.
President Obama did not carry Tuscaloosa County, and he will never carry Tuscaloosa County. President Obama did carry Jefferson County, and he can count on carrying Jefferson County again. So why did he pander to the ones who will never vote for him at the expense of those who did, and will, vote for him?

Why indeed?  And who are these Obama Haters Richard Shelby panders to?  An Internet search of pictures of President Obama's visit to T-Town shows a lot of  people who are very happy to see and be seen the President and the First Lady.

Richard Shelby's Wag The Dog political ads are proof there is more than a whiff of hypocrisy in Sweet Home Alabama.

BTW:  Happy first day of  #BlackHistoryMonth2016

On this date, in 1965, the Selma Demonstration ended, with the arrest of 700 individuals, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. #History#BlackHistoryMonth

RedEye

Here is a picture of Sen. Richard "Dick" Shelby(r. Tuscaloosa) standing up to President Obama every day

Pres. Obama and Al. Gov. Robert Bentley tour tornado devastation (Larry Downing/Reuters)

Uh, about that standing up to President Obama every day Senator Shelby Sir.

Due to your age,  EYE can understand if you have some memory loss, but your aides should know better.  Either they are suffering from amnesia, or they think we are.  Perhaps you've forgotten the massive tornado that ripped through Sweet Home Alabama in April of 2011, when President Obama flew to Birmingham, AL,  motorcades to Tuscaloosa to assure Alabamans that every level of government was fully dedicated to doing everything possible to help the community recover from the devastation,

Even as Republicans have been kicking and screaming about the need to shrink government, even as they support a budget plan that would devastate government's ability to respond to disasters like this, when something like this happens they stand shoulder-to-shoulder with President Obama as government leaders eager to serve the people they represent. They aren't calling him a socialist, they aren't saying he was born in Kenya, they aren't accusing him of trying to kill grandma: they are just trying to do the right thing. It's just too bad it took a horrific storm to bring out that cooperative spirit.

EYE see you and the rest of the white, male, red republicans walking WITH President Obama, and the democrats walking BEHIND. 

Sidebar with a sigh
If you look closely at the photograph attached to this diary of a VIP group walking with President Obama, I count nine individuals....Two in the front row, three in the middle row and four in the back, one of whom is barely visible as a pair of grey-trousered legs and the corner of a face. Two of them -- counting the President -- are non-white, one more may be.
The proportion of non-white persons in Alabama's population is about 29%, so 22%, or better 33%, persons of color (2 or 3 out of 9) would not be far out of line with the state population.
According to the same source, the proportion of persons in the population of Alabama who happen to be female is almost 52%. Female persons in the VIP group including President Obama: precisely zero.

You may be suffering from memory loss but we the people will never forget. Link inserted for emphasis mine.

I'm glad the President and First Lady came to Alabama but, why didn't he visit Birmingham too? He went to the place that didn't vote for him, and ignored the place that did. And why wasn't Rep. Terri Sewell, the states top Democrat, the first person to greet President Obama instead of being 4th in line behind anti Socialist Bentley, "I haven't seen his birth certificate" Shelby, "I gave you the middle finger and sent the Azalea Trail Maids to your inauguration parade", Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, and "Birther Spencer Bacchus" all republicans?

You might want to reconsider your Wag the Dog political commercials because that dog won't hunt. 

To ‘Wag the Dog’ means to purposely divert attention from what would otherwise be of greater importance, to something else of lesser significance. By doing so, the lesser-significant event is catapulted into the limelight, drowning proper attention to what was originally the more important issue.
The expression comes from the saying that ‘a dog is smarter than its tail’, but if the tail were smarter, then the tail would ‘wag the dog.
In other words, Shelby’s commercial is nothing but an attempt to divert attention from the facts.

RedEye 

Meet the new #Segregationist, same as the old #Segregationist, now they are the #media

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly (Credit: Reuters/Micah Walter/AP/Douglas C. Pizac)

New Rules:  Instead of standing in the school house door, the new Segregationist sit in front of cameras and microphones while using the public airways to enable media driven racial stereotypes.

It is not simply that Black people are victims of a numbers game. Rather, there has been a wholesale P.R. campaign on the part of those on the right to associate all public goods and services, from public schools to public assistance, with the bodies of undeserving people of color, particularly Blacks and Latinos.

Yep, the white, male dominated, media enables elected officials , and others in position of power and influence, to drive a false narrative.

Any discussion of welfare or public assistance in this country is rife with dog whistles from the right toward the lower elements of their base, who in Pavlovian fashion, respond to code words about welfare and public assistance by conjuring images of the undeserving Black and Brown poor.

Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever, from sea to shining sea.

In his new book “How Propaganda Works,” Yale philosopher Jason Stanley argues that while a “liberal democratic culture… does not tolerate explicit degradation of its citizens,” there are “apparently innocent words that have the feature of slurs, namely that whenever the words occur in a sentence, they convey the problematic content. The word welfare …conveys a problematic social meaning.” I am suggesting that the word “public” in our political discourse is becoming just such a tool of political propaganda as well.

Who needs George Wallace when we have the media?

 Despite bright spots in the mainstream media for representing race and gender diversity, like Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC, the output of the industry largely still appears white and male. Almost 40 percent of the U.S. identifies as nonwhite and women make up more than half of the population, yet popular media outlets largely remain homogenous. Missing diverse perspectives from the media landscape can have wide-ranging detrimental effects.

Ya Think?

60 years after 'Brown v. Board of Education' it looks as if 'Brown v. Board of Education" never happened

In Tuscaloosa today, nearly one in three black students attends a school that looks as if Brown v. Board of Education never happened.

According to a new report just released by the Civil Rights Project called "Brown at 60," "Black and Latino students tend to be in schools with a substantial majority of poor children, but white and Asian students are typically in middle-class schools."
This double segregation doesn't just condemn these precious children to an often inferior education, it also strips them of their humanity and their dignity. Race and poverty shouldn't matter more than shared humanity.

 Today, however, the very states whose segregated schools, poll taxes, and Jim Crow laws necessitated federal intervention in Brown are once again limiting the educational opportunities for people of color. Rather than explicitly refusing to admit students of color into school, these states have found new, more clandestine ways to marginalize people of color. In this new segregated system, states disadvantage students of color by providing fewer resources to schools serving the highest concentrations of students who need them the most. By perpetuating this inequitable system and rejecting powerful and effective education reforms such as the Common Core State Standards, these states effectively reclaim their legacy of systematic racial discrimination.

 This residential isolation of the most disadvantaged children – a product of migration patterns and economic trends that have occurred since Brown -- points to one set of strategies that’s been given little attention over the last 60 years. What if we made a more concerted effort to integrate schools by integrating neighborhoods? What if we tried to improve the educational prospects of low-income minority students by breaking down barriers to affordable housing in the communities where good schools exist? What if we wielded zoning laws and housing vouchers as levers of education policy?

A new secessionist movement, anchored in the South, provides yet another reminder that “separate” still means “unequal” when it comes to the racial dynamics of the nation’s public schools.
The small middle-class town of Gardendale, Alabama, outside Birmingham, voted on November 12 to secede from the Jefferson County school district and then to raise taxes on themselves to finance the solo venture. Then, in March, Gardendale’s 14,000 residents finally got their own Board of Education. Soon after his appointment, one new board member, Clayton “Dick” Lee III, a banker and father of two, said he aspires to build a “best in class” school system “which exceeds the capabilities of the system which we are exiting.”

 Freed from court oversight, Tuscaloosa’s schools have seemed to move backwards in time. The citywide integrated high school is gone, replaced by three smaller schools. Central retains the name of the old powerhouse, but nothing more. A struggling school serving the city’s poorest part of town, it is 99 percent black. D’Leisha, an honors student since middle school, has only marginal college prospects. Predominantly white neighborhoods adjacent to Central have been gerrymandered into the attendance zones of other, whiter schools.

 “We know that today in America, too many folks are still stopped on the street because of the color of their skin, or they’re made to feel unwelcome because of where they’re from, or they’re bullied because of who they love,” she said. “So graduates, the truth is that Brown vs. Board of Education isn’t just about our history, it’s about our future.”

We Shall Overcome One Day.

What I'm reading today

Are Black Public Officials More Likely Than Whites to be Prosecuted in the Deep South? Uh, is an elephant heavy?

Are white liberal Democrats more likely than white conservative republicans to be Prosecuted by the Obama/Holder DOJ? Uh, let me think about that for a minute. Snark

The Ghost of Elbridge Gerry Haunts Montgomery The gop has no morals and the democrats have no guts. Lord help us.

What's next for the gop?

What is the next Republican super-idea?
A tax on sunshine?
An oxygen meter for all breathers?
A ban on sex (except for elected officials)?
Privatized Armed Forces (oh wait we already have
Blackwater)
A repeal of the Civil Rights Act?

If I were allowed to post on Left in Alabama I would vote for all of the above.

Superintendents Search Huntsville City Schools. H/T Reactionary

There can be only one, and I recommend Dr. Casey Wardynski for our next Superintendent.

If I were allowed to post on Flashpoint I would ask Reactionary why? If it's good news for Reactionary and David Blair it's bad news for North Huntsville.
Psst! Reactionary! Thanks for the insight I still choose none of the above. :)

What you're reading on RedEyes Front Page today;

The Storm is Passing Over. Evidently some are *ahem* upset with Representative John Rodgers (D) for daring complain about President Obama ignoring Birmingham in favor of T Town and people like me stirring the proverbial shit pot of politics, have tarnished what this (use to be great)Nation stands for.

PS It was only a matter of time...

"The Storm is Passing Over"

During a recent episode of The Good Wife, the main character was asked if she was happy. She replied;

"Are we happy when the storm passes over or are we relieved?"

I am relieved to report me and mine are fine. We had relatively minor property damage, however many friends lost everything, some for the second time, due to a tornado. The death count is rising daily, damages continue to be assessed, power is gradually being restored.

As a life long resident of Tornado Ally, I have to ask, is it a coincidence the red, republican, Confederate Slave states are being bombarded with tornadoes, floods, and fires? Will the latest frightful day in Alabama put a stop to the human meaness?

But what about human meanness? Are we capable of coming to grips with that, limiting the havoc it wreaks? I'm not optimistic about that one. This blog chronicles the actions of numerous judges, lawyers, and individuals who have acted corruptly in our justice system, heaping major damage on their fellow human travelers. Like Mrs. Schnauzer and me, quite a few of these bad actors probably were fortunate to escape major damage in yesterday's storms. Did that cause any of them to stop for a moment, count their blessings, and vow to change their ways? I doubt it. Were many of them right back to their underhanded ways this morning? Probably so.

Probably so indeed. Which brings me to the politicization of President Obama's post storm visit to Alabama.

Even as Republicans have been kicking and screaming about the need to shrink government, even as they support a budget plan that would devastate government's ability to respond to disasters like this, when something like this happens they stand shoulder-to-shoulder with President Obama as government leaders eager to serve the people they represent. They aren't calling him a socialist, they aren't saying he was born in Kenya, they aren't accusing him of trying to kill grandma: they are just trying to do the right thing. It's just too bad it took a horrific storm to bring out that cooperative spirit.

I hate to say it, but as an African American supporter of President Obama, his actions continue to disappoint me. Don't get me wrong, although it took a tornado to bring him to Alabama, I'm glad he came. But, Tuscaloosa was not the only area hit hard by the storms. Entire neighborhoods were devastated in nearby Birmingham also.

President Obama did not carry Tuscaloosa County, and he will never carry Tuscaloosa County. President Obama did carry Jefferson County, and he can count on carrying Jefferson County again. So why did he pander to the ones who will never vote for him at the expense of those who will, and did, vote for him?

It made me sick to my stomach to watch the President and First Lady arrive in Tuscaloosa and as femaledog notes;

I'm glad the President and First Lady came to Alabama but, why didn't he visit Birmingham too? He went to the place that didn't vote for him and ignored the place that did. And why wasn't Rep. Terri Sewell, the states top Democrat the first person to greet President Obama instead of being 4th in line behind anti Socialist Bentley, I haven't seen his birth certificate Shelby, I gave you the middle finger and sent the Azalea Trail Maids to your inauguration parade, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, and Birther Spencer Bacchus all republicans?

Representative Terri Sewell (D.Birmingham) and Mayor William Bell (D.Birmingham) should have been the first people to greet President Obama when he stepped off Air Force One. And speaking of Air Force One,  it should have landed in Birmingham FIRST, Obama should have spent time there FIRST, then motorcade on down the road to T-Town.

Pres. Obama and Al. Gov. Robert Bentley tour tornado devastation (Larry Downing/Reuters)

Sidebar with a sigh

If you look closely at the photograph attached to this diary of a VIP group walking with President Obama, I count nine individuals....Two in the front row, three in the middle row and four in the back, one of whom is barely visible as a pair of grey-trousered legs and the corner of a face. Two of them -- counting the President -- are non-white, one more may be.
The proportion of non-white persons in Alabama's population is about 29%, so 22%, or better 33%, persons of color (2 or 3 out of 9) would not be far out of line with the state population.
According to the same source, the proportion of persons in the population of Alabama who happen to be female is almost 52%. Female persons in the VIP group including President Obama: precisely zero.

How I wish the mainstream media would ask Spencer Bacchus, Dick Shelby, Jeff Sessions, and other republicans from devastated areas if they still back Paul Ryan's budget that guts FEMA and the National Weather Service?

How I wish the mainstream media would focus on the pain and suffering in Pratt City Alabama to the same extent they focus on Tuscaloosa and the Royal Wedding.

How I wish the mainstream media would ask the red republicans how they feel about public service workers and the Unions who represent them now.

How I wish President Obama had bought relief to the people who voted for him instead of the people who didn't. 

EXCUSE NUMBER 10: “You can't expect him to address issues like black unemployment, which has been double the white rate forever. He's not the president of Black America, and you can't expect him to act like it. He's the president of the United States of America...”
QUICK ANSWER: Obama wasn't drafted, he volunteered for the job, he campaigned for it, said he was “Joshua” to Dr. King's Moses, and lectured us on the Fierce Urgency of Now. He campaigned like a “civil rights leader.” His web site said “Join the Movement!” If the black president can't or won't address black mass incarceration, black unemployment, HIV-AIDS, the foreclosure crisis and other matters that disproportionately affect our communities, then why do we have any kind of collective racial obligation to support him?

If the person we elect runs like a democrat then governs like a republican, for republicans, by the republicans, why do we have any kind of collective racial obligation to support him? What choice do we have?

The Storm is Passing Over for some, but not for all.  I am not relieved.

Redeye's Sunday Morning Roundup and Recap

Who says the stimulus isn't working in Alabama?

One of the problems President Barack Obama’s administration is having in convincing the nation — particularly the Republicans and those in the so-called Tea Party movement — that his economic policies are sound is that it is difficult to prove a negative.

Little know Alabama black history fact h/t Ashley Boyd, staff writer for the Tuscaloosa Times.

It's been 60 years since the death of Tuscaloosa's first — and Alabama's second — formally educated black architect, and only a few remember his name.

Baptist minister Allen Durough was first introduced to Wallace Rayfield after he cut his leg on one of Rayfield's old printing plates while cleaning out his barn in McCalla in 1993.

Durough, who had purchased the property from an antiques dealer, found several hundred of Rayfield's drawings, floor plans, business advertisements, portraits and graphic art pieces that were housed in the barn. He did some research and discovered Rayfield's range of accomplishments.

“Wallace Rayfield is arguably one of the most important architects in Alabama,” said Amber Baker, a University of Alabama graduate assistant who helped write the introduction to Durough's book “The Rayfield Architectural Legacy.”

In honor of Howard Zinn, who died this past week, please read Dissent as Democracy.

The indefatigable Zinn maintained a prolific activist and academic jab fueled by his political and social activism nurtured during The Civil Rights Movement. The esteemed historian and controversial rabble rouser's seminal work, "The People's History of the United States," endures as a popular and beloved history book giving voice to the often marginalized, oppressed and downtrodden members of our society conveniently edited out of the textbooks. Despite his advanced age, he was still touring, giving lectures, and showed no signs of stopping.

Nance Gregg has compiled and excellent week in review Just THIS about THAT.

My favorite;

While Obama continues to play chess, the GOP continues to demonstrate that tiddly-winks are beyond their skill set – and besides, nonny-nonny, they ain’t playing at all. And if there was any doubt about the matter, the American public was educated, in no uncertain terms, by the Smartest Guy in the Room (and surrounding environs, including the universe as we know it) on Wednesday night. Smirkless and heh-heh-less, President Smackdown was generous with handing out the rope – lest the Republicans not already have enough to hang themselves.

There's lots more good stuff!

Peace Out.