I knew this was going to happen

All of my political instincts told me there was going to be huge black, I mean backlash when Barack Hussein Obama won the 2008 Presidential election.

I knew all the talk of a post racial America, and the Abraham Lincoln narrative was just media driven bullpoop.

I knew the red,republican, confederate,slave states weren't going to let President Obama govern.

I knew the democrats would be spineless.

Based on this country's rich southern heritage and history I just knew it was going to be bad news for African Americans, our LBGT sisters and brothers, immigrants, labor,public schools,women's reproductive rights, voting rights, and health care reform.

As Bill Maher said, democrat is the new republican.

Last week Bill Maher called out Obama for pussy-footing around in the face of an audacious onslaught from Corporate America. He made clear that the President needs to show a little audacity of his own if he hopes to beat the health care companies, the energy companies, and the legions of powerful lobbyists swarming Capitol Hill.

I tried to tell y'all how this was going to play out way back when President Obama was first elected with one of my first blogs at Left in Alabama

Here is a quick Civics lesson so the right wing media talking points can be refuted. Democrats make a big mistake believing most people know how our Government works.

Although Democrats are in the majority in Congress it is a small majority, therefore Democrats CAN NOT OVER RIDE A VETO. This means any BILLS passed by Congress a VETO by the President or NOT SIGNED does NOT become LAW.

Democrats do have enough votes in the Senate to stop a filibuster, which in fact will KILL legislation. Democrats DO NOT have enough votes to remove the President or Vice President after Impeachment. Congress needs an over riding majority to pass legislation the President does not want.

Well we know how that story ended, democrats pussy footed around and lost the filibuster proof majority.

Then came the stimulus bill despite the gop and the right wing media's efforts to derail it. republican'ts gambled (pun intended) on the stimulus bill failing because they believed the American people will be stupid enough to vote them into power again.Oh wait...the America people were stoopid enough to vote them into power again! How did that happen you ask? Republican governors controlled the stimulus spending and they made sure the funds went to the people who didn't need it and not to the people it was intended to help so they could yell out of control,big government, spending, and ask where are the jobs,instead of the fact the economic stimulus package included one of the largest tax cuts in American history -- $282 billion in tax cuts over two years.

Of course the stimulus bill could not pass without some capitulation,I mean compromise on the part of POTUS,which a lot of folks,including moi tried to tell y'all was not a good idea.

Congressional leaders scale down plan to about $789 billion, a smaller package than versions of bill passed earlier by either body. Translation; Less spending for the poor and the middle class more tax cuts for the rich.

How did the winners become the losers and the losers become the winners? Check out this answer from my inbox;

These cuts were the price the Senate Democrats had to pay to get the three republican votes to filibuster proof the senate bill.. Without these three votes(giving the majority Democrats 61 votes) the Republican minority would still be filibustering on the floor of the Senate. Now the "conference " of the house and senate is hammering out a bill that can be supported by a simple majority of both bodies. And we'll have a bill for the President to sign. How wonderful it would have been for the Democrats to have elected 60 senators, so they would not have had to compromise with Republicans. Now Obama and the House democrats had to give up education and state incentive stimulus to have a bill at all, while the Republicans got additional tax cuts for the rich. It may not be the best system, but it beats hands down any other option.

To be clear republicans voted against the jobs bill, unemployment extension, and raising the minimum wage then campaigned and won on a where are the jobs,and we are going to create jobs meme, and the majority of the American people fell for it. Of course the gop infused,media enabled Tea Party helped.

To be clear, this is what Sessions and Shelby in the Senate and Griffith, Bright, Aderholt, Bacchus and the entire Bama House delegation (sans Davis) voted against on behalf of the Alabama citizens;

Impact on Alabama

Creating or saving 55,000 jobs over the next two years.
Providing a making work pay tax cut of up to $1,000 for 1,770,000 workers and their families
Making 70,000 families eligible for a new American Opportunity Tax Credit to make college affordable.
Offering an addition $100 per month in unemployment insurance benefits to 247,000 workers in Alabama who have lost their jobs this recession.
Providing funding to modernize at least 156 schools in Alabama so our children have the labs, classrooms and libraries they need to compete in the 21st century economy.
President Obama has made it clear that his recovery package is just one component of what we need to to to get the economy moving again. He knows that we also need to make sure we have better financial regulation, and that we act swiftly to get credit flowing again. And of course, we going to have to engage with our partners around the world.

Which brings me to the sad,sorry state of the democratic party in the reddest state in the union. Democrats are jumping ship like rats off the Titanic and republicans now have a super majority in the state house and the state senate. They aren't even pretending anymore because they now have the power to do anything they want to do. And what is the Alabama democratic party doing about it? When they aren't bashing and smashing Joe Reed they are standing around with their hands in their pockets whistling Dixie. Everybody was hollering at state Senator Hank Sanders because he sounded the alarm instead of listening to him. Or maybe they did listen to him but didn't care...per DaleJackson;

"The African American vote is a powerful voting block. Both parties realize they can't win elections without the African American vote, so is their plan to neutralize it's block voting strength? Really, the GOP did pretty good without them last election. Fsct(sic): The 90+% Dem vote for blacks regardless of behavior has rendered that block feckless. You get lip-service and nothing more. The GOP won't get you and the Dems got ya.

Were we punk'd? You betcha. Are we in trouble yet? You betcha. How did we get here, and where do we go from here? God only knows.

Redeye tiptoeing away from the computer still waiting to exhale...

I won't exhale until our sons and daughters are bought home from Iraq. I won't exhale until torture is stopped. I won't exhale until Gitmo is closed. I won't exhale until the next Attorney General is named. I won't exhale until all Americans have access to quality healthcare. I won't exhale until all children have equal access to a quality education. I won't exhale until won't until we have peace and prosperity again. I won't exhale until we get our democracy back.

Standing for Truth, Justice and the American Way

I would like to extend a warm welcome to readers from GrannyStandingforTruth and The Legal Schnauzer. I am humbled and honored to be a member of your blog roll. Let us march on until victory is won.

It's time to be Bold.

the reality is that Democrats lost not because they went too far but because they haven't gone far enough. A big part of why Democrats lost Tuesday is that they haven't accomplished enough to energize and motivate all of the new voters that came out in massive numbers for them in 2008 -- groups like African Americans, Latinos and young people. While many of these groups still strongly support Democrats when polled, it's clear that they did not vote or volunteer for Democratic campaigns in the same numbers or with the same enthusiasm seen in 2008.

Here we go. They are already hoping to get rid of them daggum gerrymandered minority (black folks) voting districts.

But I am in favor of redistricting in Alabama. I hope that the redistricting will abolish long held minority majority voting blocks. Most of you are wondering "What the HECK?!?!?!" Here is why:

Propping up minority majority voting blocks or districts are enabling the continued subjugation of one party or another, based soley on RACE, not political preference. While this practice may benefit the scale of minority representation by ensuring a black candidates electability, it also serves to de-value the voting blocks power of prescence. It is no big secret, those "safe Dem districts" do not recieve party wide attention or power, as they are not seen as a potential threat of losing them. In simple terms, "Why give concessions or put emphasis to district 7 funding if it is going to be a safe Dem vote no matter what?"

The continuation of minority majority voting blocks also acts to dumb down the political integrity of the voters contained within. If all they (we) know is to vote how we are told to vote, then the individual candidates qualifications and relation to voter means nothing. In simple terms, voters in minority majority blocks were told, "Vote for Sparks, not Davis". I do not believe voters in the minority majority districts even questioned "why?", but went along with it just because it is the way it has been done forever. And most certainly, the better candidate for Governor might not have seen his chance at becoming elected.

Minority Majority blocks are not only taken for granted, but they are used and abused as a tool for marginalization. If the powers to be say, "we support gambling", then it is certain that the minority majority blocks will support gambling, "just because".

On top of that, I do not think that successful and qualified black candidates will have any problem at all gaining nomination nowadays. The old arguement for minority majority districts was that they were needed to ensure black represenation of interest. For a long time, it was necessarily practiced and gave a positive result. However, with the softening of racial factors in society and the advancement of professional class of African Americans, the practice of developing minority majority voting blocks is no longer needed and only provides to hinder the integrity of the African American vote.

This is an honest opinion, and one I hold to be very true.

Well it may be an honest opinion, but the rhetoric is very untrue. Let's go back to
WHY there are minority voting districts in the first place. It certainly was not tell them black dummy's how to vote.

Prior to the Civil War, African Americans were almost totally disenfranchised throughout the states. Latino voters faced similar barriers to voting in Texas and other parts of the Southwest., as did Native American and Asian American voters in the West. Even after enactment of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, in 1870, which gave all men, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude the right to vote, many states continued to use various methods to prevent people of color from voting, including literacy tests, poll taxes, the disenfranchisement of former inmates, intimidation, threats, and even violence. Also, until 1965, federal laws did not challenge the authority of states and localities to establish and administer their own voting requirements.

The VRA
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to address these issues. It prohibits discrimination based on race, and requires certain jurisdictions to provide bilingual assistance to language minority voters. Section 2 of the Act, which bars the use of voting practices or procedures that discriminate against minority voters, has been used successfully to attack discrimination in voting including restrictive voter registration requirements, districting plans that dilute minority voting strength, discriminatory annexations, and the location of polling places at sites inaccessible to minority voters.

Section 5 of the Act requires federal "preclearance" before covered jurisdictions (i.e., specified jurisdictions with a history of practices that restrict minority voting rights) may make changes in existing voting practices or procedures. The Act also provides the Department of Justice with the authority to appoint federal observers and examiners to monitor elections to ensure that they are conducted fairly. Initial enforcement efforts targeted, among other things, literacy tests, poll taxes, and discriminatory registration practices.

In 1975, the Voting Rights Act was amended to address the voting rights of language minority groups. Sections 4 and 203 of the Act apply in jurisdictions with significant numbers of voters with limited or no English proficiency and require such jurisdictions to provide voting materials and assistance in relevant languages in addition to English.

You said; On top of that, I do not think that successful and qualified black candidates will have any problem at all gaining nomination nowadays.

Translation; I do not think that a successful and qualifed black candidate will have any problem at all gaining nomination nowadays as long as he's acceptable to the white majority. White privilege and power on display.

It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers specialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored the Negro except in crime and ridicule.

You know that gridlock thingy worked well for the gop, so let's pray for gridlock.

Let us pray (figuratively or literally) for gridlock, because all else is disaster. The best outcome that could result from Tuesday’s Democratic debacle is that the Republicans overreach and, in their white nationalist triumphalism, make it impossible for President Obama and congressional Democrats to reach an accommodation with rampaging reaction and racism.

The phony racial narrative of 2008 has been undone with the abrupt termination of the Age of Obama. After two short years, the illusion of a post-racial society has gone the way of all mirages – poof! – and we are forced to behold the United States as it actually exists.

Redeye tiptoeing away from the computer to go pray....

So much hypocrisy, so little time.

The War on Terra Continues. A NATO airstrike mistakenly killed 28-30 people today. I'm with StevenD, How much longer is this madness going to continue? When will enough killing and bombing be enough? Bring our troops home. Bring them home now.

So why are we repeating the same mistakes made by other "super powers" of the past? In a time of extraordinary economic decline for most Americans we continue to pour precious resources into a conflict that we cannot "win" whatever "metric" one uses to measure "winning."

Congress should immediately reinstate funds to ACORN. This knee-jerk action by Congress was a travesty. It's been proven the whole Pimp story was a right wing funded set up and lie. ACORNS only crime was being a community organizing group. They need to go after the real Pimps, but of course they won't. That would be to much like right(pun intended).

O'Keefe got big accolades from a lot of the CPAC speakers and of course ACORN got ripped up one side and down the other.

Sometimes I think some of the elected people in DC never read anything and instead rely on each other regarding what to think. They jumped all over ACORN without really looking into the whole case.

I thought I read somewhere that a judge had said the govt. had to give ACORN the money they had already been promised.

Instead of going after ACORN they need to go after stuff like THIS.

Voters trying to cast ballots in Lower Oxford Township East stood in lines for so long that TV crews showed up to capture the scene. Some of those waiting ordered out for pizza. Sympathetic neighbors brought water and coffee. When the last vote was cast shortly before 11 p.m., polls were officially closing on the West Coast and Barack Obama had already been declared the winner.

Some of the 1,440 who voted there that day waited for seven to eight hours in the rain, queuing up close enough to working railroad tracks to reach out and touch passing freight cars. The tiny community center they waited to enter could accommodate only seven booths and one optical scanner. The adjacent parking lot was big enough for a dozen cars.

This wasn't a mistake. It was deliberate. It was the clearest example you could hope to find of partisan politics trumping common sense and civic duty.

Listen up Democrats! Bipartisanshop=Appeasement. When are you going to learn that appeasement doesn't work? It's not wise to appease republicans. It's how they turn the winners into the losers and the losers into the winners.

The theory is that if Democrats make a show out of reaching out to Republicans, but Republicans slap Democrats down every time and obstruct for the sake of obstructing, then Democrats will gain politically.

The reality is that Republicans gain in the polls if Democrats fail to pass legislation that improves people's lives, no matter the political theater of obstruction.

Thanks to the democratically controlled Congress, President Obama is afraid to lead. Seriously. They've made him afraid of the far left liberals, who have been right about everything from the war to the deficity in favor of the so called moderates and independents. The President's Healthcare Bill and What is Missing is proof.

There’s no public option in the Prez’s proposal which is a shame since polls show that the majority of Americans want a public option (such a dumb phrase), as good as say… Medicare or VA health benefits or even the government-sponsored program in which Sarah Palin’s son Tripp is hypocritically enrolled. The audacity of that woman — what’s good enough for her son is evidently not good enough for other Americans, it would seem.

Sarah Palin is the Hypocrit of the Decade.

As we all know, Sarah's suffering for her family is boundless, but this must be the worst of all. What is difficult to understand is why she doesn't use this most personal example of the horrors of government run health care in her public cries to prevent Obamacare. She normally isn't one to suffer in silence; maybe someone in the media will ask her to share the nightmare that her daughter must endure knowing, all day every day, that her son will receive health care regardless of her ability to afford it. Or maybe not.

Tiger Yoo? While the MSM was breathlessly parsing every word of Tiger Woods apology they totally ignored the story about John Woo and the Massacre Memo

In John Yoo's vision of executive power, the president can legally order a village of civilians "massacred," according to the internal Justice Department report released Friday.

The MSM calls Glenn Becks wild eyed rant *cough cough* Brave Criticism of the GOP. Give me a break.

Take a look at these headlines.

WaPo: “At CPAC, Glenn Beck scolds the Republican Party.“
MSNBC: “Beck criticizes Obama and the GOP.“
The Atlantic: “Beck Thumps GOP, Puzzling Conservatives.”
L.A. Times: “Glenn Beck to Republican Party: Repent.“
And on and on. If you only skimmed those headlines, you’d think that Beck went boldly into the belly of the beast, and had some kind of Sister Souljah moment.

Except Beck didn’t do that. He blew smoke up the CPAC audience’s white asses by simply reciting, verbatim, exactly the same tired spiel Republican leaders have been parroting nonstop since they lost control of Congress in 2006.

Are we in trouble yet?

Bipartisan My Donkey!

Democratic 5th Congressional District candidate Steve Raby says"A congressman's job is to work in a bipartisan way to make the federal government work for the Tennessee Valley," Which prompted this response from a member of Pam's listserv;

Well, good luck with that, Raby, and please let us know how that "Bipartisan" thing works out for you. It sure hasn't worked with health care reform, or much of anything else, but who am I to tell you not to continue to shoot yourself, the Alabama Democratic Party and the DNC right in the head. I thought "A Congressman's job" was to work for the interest of the people of his District...but then, I'm not a "Washington Insider" like you. I'm just a plain old, Registered Democratic Party, Alabama Granny.

Which prompted another member to ask what does bipartisan mean?

Psst! I'll tell you what it means. It means democrats are going to vote with republicans.

You don't hear of republican candidates saying they are going to Washington to work with democrats for the good of the country. You don't see republicans reaching across the aisle and voting with democrats. Quite the opposite. Republicans tell their supporters up front they are going to Washington to stop the liberal agenda. They don't even try and pretend they are going to be anything but what they are, obstructionist.

I don't want my representative working in a bipartisan manner if it means throwing democratic principles and values under the bus. If I wanted my representative to be a republican I would vote republican. Bipartisan is a two way street not a one way street. What part of that don't democrats understand?

President Obama made the mistake of saying he wanted to work with republicans, which they took to mean, it's our way or no way. I'm with Roland Martin on this one;

Civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer made famous the phrase, "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."

For me, I'm sick and tired of Democrats having power and being unwilling to use it. I've always respected Republicans when they had power because they were willing to use it and maybe apologize later.

You can't be bipartisan with republicans. They take kindness for weakness. They don't have it in them to work with democrats. I mean, how can you work with people whose sole sources of information are Faux News and right wing talk radio?

On almost every issue, Southern Republicans are far to the right of their national GOP brethren. In fact, GOP Southerners appear to be the driving base for some of the most extreme views circulating in the Republican Party today.

Faux News and right wing talk radio aren't the only ones to blame, the MSM we have enables the republicans by pretending not to notice their *ahem* transgressions.

If you don't think there's a media double standard that favors Republicans over Democrats, then let's play a game of what-if.

What if, in 2006, at Yearly Kos, the first annual convention of liberal bloggers and their readers, organizers shelled out $100,000 for former Vice President Al Gore to address attendees? And what if the same organizers booked as an opening-night speaker a fringe, radical-left conspiracy theorist who'd spent the previous year pushing the thoroughly debunked claim that some Bush White administration insiders played a role in, and even planned, the 9-11 attacks. What if the speaker (also proudly anti-Semitic) received a standing ovation from the liberal Yearly Kos crowd?

republicans have no ideas, no agenda, no plan. Which is why I can't understand why some democrats run across the aisle to work with them.

Topping the list is Artur Davis of Alabama, who comes from a D+18 district but yet has voted against his party on health care, detainees, cap-and-trade and Stupak. Fortunately, Democrats won't have to primary him -- he's quitting the Congress to run for governor -- but he's doing a fair amount of damage in the meantime. Following Davis is John Barrow of Georgia, who has been the subject of a primary challenge before. Then there's our good friend Parker Griffith, who voted against the Democrats on all ten bills -- fellow Alabaman Bobby Bright (who I'd give 60/40 odds of also joining the Republicans) was the only other Democrat to have done so.

If bipartisan means it's the republican way or the highway, I say forget it. I don't want a blue dog Congress Critter. I want a proud, liberal, progressive Congressman/woman who is willing to stand and fight for democratic principles and values. John Amato expalins why it matters;

There's an impulse to say screw it all and not show up anymore because "they're all the same," but I can't do that. For the most part, politicians will let us down because they are...well, politicians, but they aren't all the same. There have been plenty of books written about Florida in 2000. If ballots had been properly labeled so that voters who wanted Gore instead of Pat Buchanan could have done so, we might have had a more fair election. And then the Supreme Court would have been left to watch election night like the rest of us and Bush wouldn't have entered the White House in 2000.

Think of what that would have meant for the country:

The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy would never have been a reality.
I doubt we would have had the attacks of 9/11 because President Clinton warned that the greatest threat America would face was terrorism and Gore would have not ignored him like Bush did. But if we did get attacked, then you can bet that Gore would have handled it as an adult. He wouldn't sought "revenge" against Saddam Hussein and prioritized control of all that oil. Gore wouldn't have let Osama Bin Laden get away and the world would still be sympathetic to us.
Our efforts to put Afghanistan back together would be finished by now, assuming we even would have tried nation-building there.
More troops and people would be alive and we would have exited the Middle East with our heads held high.
America would never have invaded and occupied Iraq and over 4,000 troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians (if not millions) would be alive today.
Abu Ghraib would never have happened.
Terrorist recruitment would have stalled.
Torture would not be part of the American lexicon and the likes of Dick Cheney and John Yoo would never have descended upon the offices of the VP and OLC.
John Roberts and Sam Alito would not be on the Supreme Court and the makeup would probably be 6-3 against the radical Scalia-conservative agenda. A ruling on Citizens United is coming soon. Would the court ever have accepted that case? Not a chance and soon corporations will have a stranglehold on our election system much more than they have now.
George Bush would have been back home in Texas leading the state into secession along with his pal Alberto Gonzalez.
Nobody would have ever heard of Terry Schiavo.
A much swifter and more effective response to Hurricane Katrina would have been implemented.

Bipartisan My Donkey!

Peace Out.