Redeye's Week in Review

This is what freedom of speech looks like.

A Colorado artist says people may not like his latest work, but it's all about freedom of speech. Paul Snover says he was commissioned by a Grand Junction man to design the billboard at Melody Lane and I-70B.It depicts President Obama as a terrorist, homosexual, bandito and gangster.

Be sure and read the first comment.

What's that you say? Some are having a conniption about black bloggers? I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you! Not.

The inherent audacity in White Privilege is hidden behind the facade of your holier-than-thou condescension toward Black media. Thanks for pulling aside the facade of “fair and balanced” media to show the ugly face of racism.

The Obama DoJ ask judge to set aside DADT. Bummer.

As the administration continues to wage war against the Professional Left -- except for when they're begging for our money and our votes -- Conservadems fighting to save their splotchy hides continue to distance themselves as fast as their stumpy legs will carry them and as far as their spidery arms will reach.

The rule of law is alive and well, just not here.

The World Justice Project on Thursday published a "Rule of Law Index," and there's no easy way to say this. Let me put it this way: as when rankings on education, infant mortality, work hours, lifespan, retirement security, health, environmental impact, incarceration rates, violence, concentration of wealth, and other measures of quality of life come out, it is time once again for we Americans to shout "We're Number One!" more loudly than ever. Because, of course, we're not.

The Tea Party does not exist

Recent developments demonstrate that the Tea Party is not the powerful national force that it’s been made out to be. The organization’s meager levels of participation (documented in my and Paul Street’s past research) has finally come back to haunt the Tea Party in the run-up to the midterm elections, as it has been unable to organize outside of scattered local electioneering, largely in favor of Republican interests. In short, the Tea Party does not exist – at least not in the form depicted in the mass media and in political commentary.

Happy reading.

A Redeye Stroll Down Memory Lane~ 2nd Edition

Welcome to the second installment of the first anniversary blog stroll down memory lane. In reviewing the post for today I've tried to construct a timeline for the beginning of the end of my LiA front page privileges.

Let's start with A blog stroll from my heart on October 17, 2009 be sure and read the comments....

As someone who is a product of the south and it's rich southern heritage I know racism when I see, hear and/or feel it. I'm aware of the code words and subtleties racist and bigots hide behind. Racism today is covert and institutional. Sure blacks/browns/reds can use public facilities and have the right to vote etc. but they are still the victims of defacto segregation and institutional racism.

Three days later I wrote What you see is what you get which is relevant today in light of the recent Bingo indictments.

There is the misconception that I am stoopid enough to believe ALL prosecutions are politically/racially motivated. Let me be clear, anytime I've made the allegation of political/racial prosecutions it's been in response to a SPECIFIC case we've discussed on LiA. I can understand why our conservative friends don't believe the prosecutions have a political/racial motivation, but I don't understand why my fellow liberals/progressives don't share my concern that our justice system, strike that, the Bush justice system has compromised the integrity of the rule of law, especially here in Alabama.

Followed by No Poor Coloreds Allowed in South Huntsville, also relevant today in light of the upcoming Congressional and State Senate election.

I read about this in the dead tree edition
And was suitably shocked at the rhetoric because I know quite a few people who live south of Governor's Drive and they aren't selfish bigots as you might believe if you listen to the leaders of this organization. This is a deliberate political strategy to frighten voters in south Huntsville and rile them up in advance of the 2010 election. Just look at the people involved:

On Tuesday, the upstart group drew an influential crowd, including Republican Brooks, a former legislator; newly elected state Sen. Paul Sanford, R-Huntsville; state Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur; and Republican gubernatorial candidate Bradley Byrne.

Bradley Byrne? He's running for governor, not mayor. Arthur Orr is from Decatur. Paul Sanford wouldn't be a state senator today without the (dare I say racial?) outrage stirred up over the initial HHA purchase of apartments near Chaffee and he desperately needs that same outrage next November to hold onto his seat. And Mo Brooks? He's saying some of the most incendiary stuff and he happens to be running for Congress -- so he also needs to scare those south Huntsville voters so he can look like a savior in the next election.

I believe Pigskin and Politics at Legion Field was the "beginning of the end"

I spent the weekend tailgating with friends and family at Legion Field attending what is affectionately called the Coal Bowl (aka The Magic City Classic). For readers who don't live in Sweet Home Alabama the Iron Bowl is the much anticipated annual interstate rivalry between Auburn University and The University of Alabama, the 'white schools". The Coal Bowl is the much anticipated annual interstate rivalry between Alabama A&M University and Alabama State University, the "black schools". The vestiges of segregation continue but it's all good.

But this is the straw that broke the Camel's back.

Weaall what do you know! Alabama Congressman and gubernatorial candidate Artur Davis is the House Negro of the Day! I'm sure that will make him more viable to white conservatives. Way to go Artur! Make Alabama proud! *Snicker*

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Here we are a year later talking about the same people and the same issues. Are we ever going to have change we can believe in or is it just a mirage?
Time will tell the truth.

They hate us because we're "Pure Democrats"

It used to make my flesh crawl when Bush said "they hate our freedom" in response to the 911 attack. He never identified who "they" were or what "freedom" they hated. But I can honestly say "they" are right wing/conservative/republicans who hate us because we're Democrats. Strike that, they hate us for the core values and principles PURE Democrats stand for.

Pure democrats fight for the right of all Americans to have access to quality, affordable, health care. Pure democrats are the majority of Americans on this issue, if they weren't, President Obama wouldn't have been elected on November 4, 2008.

Pure democrats believe all women have the right to choose to have a safe, legal abortion and complete control over her reproductive system.

Pure democrats believe LBGT citizens have the same rights as heterosexual citizens.

Pure democrats believe all children should have equal access to a quality public education.

Pure democrats believe in the right for workers to organize.

Pure democrats believe in protecting our environment.

What we all have to consider is what it would mean for the future of our country those that hate us this passionately actually accrue power in Washington.

Just because candidates/elected officials have a D behind their name doesn't mean they are democrat.

My definition of Blue Dog/Conservative/Democrats are candidates and elected officials whom identify themselves as "Democrats" to garner the African American vote, and "Conservative" to garner the White votes. In reality they are social conservatives, also known as Republicans.

Bobby Bright is the prime example of a Blue Dog peeing where they sleep.

Desperate freshmen like Bobby Bright, who haven't earned their bones-- or enough bones-- with Big Business yet are the only ones freaking out. You saw his despicable ad last week, bragging that he's voted with Boehner 80% of the time; this week he has a new one (up top) indicating he won't be voting for Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker if he's reelected. Bright says he's heard his constituents and they want a conservative running the House. Is that so? No Democrat could possibly win in AL-2 without landslide wins in Lowndes, Bullock, Barbour and Butler counties where Blue America will be making sure voters are part of the conversation as well as Bright's allies in the elite country club set of suburban Montgomery.

Pure democrats in Bright's district are darned if vote for Bright, darned if they don't vote for Bright.

Democrats can't even fully attack the U.S. Chamber for financing the Republican Party with foreign money because some of that Chinese and Russian and Arab dough is going to Blue Dogs as well as Republicans. The Chamber has endorsed aisle-crossing Blue Dogs Frank Kratovil (MD), Glenn Nye (VA), Travis Childers (MS), Jim Marshall (GA) and Bobby Bright (AL) and they're as guilty of treason-- allowing foreign money to finance our elections-- as are Boehner and the rest of the GOP. But, after all, isn't that one of the primary functions of Blue Dogs... muddying the water?

I want to know why we pure democrats enable them to muddy the waters? Do we have a chronic case of the Stockholm syndrome?

Stockholm syndrome is a term used to describe a paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express adulation and have positive feelings towards their captors that appear irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, essentially mistaking a lack of abuse from their captors as an act of kindness.[1

History will show pure democrats have been on the right (pun intended) side of every social and political issue

Throughout our history, Republicans have fought against social reform and Democrats have fought for it. Looking back on history, who was right? Where would Americans be today without Social Security, Medicare and programs such as the Children’s Health Insurance Program?

Defeat Hate, Vote for Hope. Vote for democrats.

To para quote Dubya,you're either with the pure democrats or you are against the pure democrats. You can't have it both ways. Let the new democrats form their own party.

IMHO, our Democratic Party does not need re-inventing, neither our core issues nor our beliefs need prioritizing, I do agree that changes need to be made, but not in these areas.

Because of all that has happened in the past ten years, we are facing challenges that we have never faced before. We need good, intelligent leaders, not just one good leader, but many. The sad fact is that in the history of man, there have been many years when good leaders have been direly needed and none could be found.

I am perfectly happy with our core beliefs, and with the issues we have identified as being the ones to address at this time in history. I do not believe we need to change or modify anything.

How could we change or modify our belief in the need to address Climate Change and the need to do it quickly? How could we change or modify our belief that health care is a right, not a privilege? How could we change or modify our belief that democratic governance demands that our civil laws include civil rights for everyone? How could we change or modify our belief that unions have a role to play in the economics of our nation? How could we change or modify our belief in separation of church and state?

No, we need good leaders, intelligent and articulate, to figure out how to write and pass the laws, rules and regulations and create policy that will get us from here to there. And we "little people" need to gather some intelligence unto ourselves.

I am also perfectly happy with our brand of Democratic, liberal and progressive. It is Republicans that have tried to re-brand us with odious names.

They hate us for our core beliefs.

Update~Redeye's DADT Blogstroll

We can all live in Alabama

The Republican Party has a proposal for you. With your hope and change frustrated by their obstruction, they would like you to blame the president, stay depressed instead of volunteering, and forget to vote on November 2nd.

In return, they'll make the entire country into Alabama. Remember the scene in Demolition Man where Sylvester Stallone finds out that in the future, all restaurants are Taco Bells? It will be just like that, and exhibit A is California. Really, I'm not kidding. If you want to see what America will look like should tea party Republicans take Congress, come pay "the Heart of Dixie" a visit.

Breaking News! Radio Boy, aka Dale Jackson "went before a jury of his peers" for his role in Voter Suppression with the State Seal of Approval. According to him the jury said it wasn't wrong to use the State Seal of the Secretary of State of Alabama if you weren't the Secretary of State of Alabama. Who knew? Funny how he was one of the main ones pushing the so called New Black Panther Voter Intimidation meme.

BUT Dale, What is voter intimidation?

Voter intimidation involves putting undue pressure on a voter or group of voters so that they will vote a particular way, or not at all. Absentee and other remote voting can be more open to some forms of intimidation as the voter does not have the protection and privacy of the polling location. Intimidation can take a range of forms.

Uh, why reinvent the democratic party and turn it into the new democratic party? What's wrong with the old democratic party? You know, the one that stands for civil rights, women's rights, labor, public education, the middle class, the disenfranchised, human rights, jobs, and protecting the environment? We don't need to reinvent the democratic party, we just need to kick the infiltrators out.

Re-inventing the Dem Party?
1. Stop singing from the Republican Party hymnal!

2. Stop taking money from corporations and fatcats and become "the party of the working man" again. As we've seen in recent years, all those small donor $10, $20, and $50 contributions can turn into hundreds of millions of dollars.

Move towards a completely grassroots party and start a concerted national movement to end corporate control of government through campaign donations. Let the American people know that your candidates are "non-Wall Street owned".

3. Do this before the American middle class is completely extinct, due to more "brilliant" conservative theories like NAFTA, CAFTA and mass de-regulation.

4. Define what you are as a party and don't ever forget it again!

Score one for the Teachers Union! Black Chicago Teachers Win Discrimination Lawsuit against Arne Duncan's Mass Firings. Could this be why the right doesn't like Teachers Unions?

Back in June of 2009, BAR told the story of activist teachers who sued the Chicago Public Schools to reverse the firings of hundreds of committed, experienced, mostly black and female teachers in dozens of schools and their replacement with less experienced, younger, whiter teachers at lower salaries. This pattern of discriminatory firings and school closings has since been replicated across the country, and is a core element the Obama administration’s education policy. Since then, some of those same teachers have won the leadership of Chicago's 30,000 strong teachers union. Earlier this week, a US District Court judge ruled in their favor.

What's that you say? Politico Uses News Stories to Push It's Deficit Agenda? I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you! Not.

Politico wrongly told readers that: "voters tells pollsters they’re worried about all the red ink in the federal budget, and Democratic centrists have grown more urgent in telling Obama it’s time to rein in federal spending." This is not true.

A recent NYT-CBS poll found that just 9 percent of respondents said that the deficit was something that they were angry about. It is also inaccurate to identify Democrats who raise concerns about the deficit as "centrist." They can more accurately be identified as Democrats with close ties to corporate interests. Their financing base is a far more obvious way to distinguish their ideological leanings

The New Black Panther Party sends Poll Monitors to largely African American Neighborhoods in Chicago. Oops! I mean Mark Kirk (r.) sends Poll Monitors in largely African American Neighborhoods in Chicago to make sure those darkies aren't up to no good.

In a private phone conversation that was secretly recorded, Mark Kirk, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Illinois, told state Republican leaders last week about his plan to send "voter integrity" squads to four predominately African American neighborhoods of Chicago "where the other side might be tempted to jigger the numbers somewhat."

Gasp! South Carolina republican Senatorial Candidate Jim DeMint, one of the Senate's most conservative members, is using campaign finance laws to legally get around traditional limits on how much individual politicians spend supporting other candidates.

In a sharp departure from typical campaign practice, South Carolina GOP Sen. Jim DeMint has used a leadership political action committee to spend $1.5 million dollars on behalf of 15 conservative Senate candidates in this year's midterm elections.

Dress rehearsal for Halloween or how they will govern if elected?

Apparently Eric Cantor is doing his best to distance his party from Rich Iott. What an interesting and colorful character. It seems the republicans are full of interesting and colorful characters running this November. Maybe that's why they are slated to pick up so many seats. A-merry-ca loves interesting and colorful characters. Compared to the republicans democrats are so boring. I mean witches; fake hillbillies; hitmen; headless corpses in the desert; illegal housekeepers. Hollywood cant touch these folks for excitement. The poor boring dumbocrats don't stand a chance.

Now run tell THAT homeboy!

Ever since Antoine Dodson's TV news interview from Huntsville, Ala., when he sounded off about an intruder who broke into his sister's apartment and allegedly attempted to rape her, he has become a media spectacle, if not a celebrity. His televised rant has been remixed and Auto-Tuned in music videos viewed millions of times online. On Oct. 2, Dodson performed at the BET Hip Hop Awards show, which airs Oct. 12 at 8 p.m. on BET.

I hope Homeboy is being paid for THIS.

Just watch and wait for it so you too can see what they did there. Also, what the hell? How are you going to work in references to Antoine Dodson's viral video about his sister's near sexual assault in a POLITICAL ATTACK AD!?!?!?! What's next? Ads for bug spray? ("They're climbing in your windows, spreading Lyme Disease, trying to kill you so you better spray the yard! Spray the house! Spray the yard! Spray the house! And use some OFF too because they biting everybody out there!") I give up. I give up on everything.

Don't give up, get up! This is is why we must get off our Donkey's and VOTE for HOPE and CHANGE we can believe in.

PAC Hypocrisy Edition

What's that you say? Republicans are a bunch of two faced, hypocrites? I'm shocked. Shocked I tell you! Not.

Republicans use PACs. And they run them, too.
Here in Alabama, Republican officeholders even run PACs while holding very high public office:
Governor Bob Riley chairs GOV PAC
House Minority Leader Mike Hubbard is Treasurer of Network Political Action PAC, which his wife chairs
Up until 3 weeks ago Senate candidate Gerald Dial (R) chaired the TIF (Trust Integrity and Fairness) PAC
J.T. Waggoner (I believe that would be Senate Minority Leader "Jabo" Waggoner) chairs the New Alabama Leadership PAC.

Right wing republicans don't have a plan so they create Weapons of Mass Distractions like labeling PAC to PAC transfers as the root of all evil, claiming corrupt democrats are responsible and benefiting from legal bribery/money laundering. Well, real, unashamed, brave, bold, big D Democrat Representative Randy Hinshaw called their bluff and told them to PTFU or STFU. Now that's what I'm talking about!

The Governor needs to call a special session Monday to take up one bill: Jeff Mclaughlins bill to ban PAC to PAC transfers. Will he GOP?

Hell NO Governor Riley will not call a special session Monday to take up the bill to ban PAC to PAC transfers. I wonder why? *Snark*

Of course the righty's response is to attack Randy Hinshaw and demand he return all his PAC donations. Now why would he do something stupid like that? The logic, for lack of a better word, of the right wing defies me.

I've said before, and I will say it again. I don't have a problem with PACs or PAC to PAC transfers. Political Action Committees is the name commonly given to a private group, regardless of size, organized to elect political candidates or to advance the outcome of a political issue or legislation.[1] Legally, what constitutes a "PAC" for purposes of regulation is a matter of state and federal law. Under the Federal Election Campaign Act, an organization becomes a "political committee" by receiving contributions or making expenditures in excess of $1,000 for the purpose of influencing a federal election.District 5 Democratic Congressional nominee Steve Raby said it best, Political Actions Committees are a reality of politics.

I'm a member of several PAC's. I am not a large corporation with millions of dollars to contribute or to hire lobbyist, being a member of a PAC which pools resources is the only way I can compete with the big guys and gals. Without Political Action Committees the little guys and gals wouldn't have a voice. For example,the Confederate Heritage PAC transfers some money to the South Huntsville Civic Association PAC to give to the Mo Brooks/Paul Sanford Campaign.

Everyone knows that PAC-to-PAC money launderers do what are are told.

According to the righty's there are good PACs (gop) and bad PACs (Democratic). fundmaker at leaning LiA compiled a list of PACs primarily servicing Democrats vs. Republicans and identified the sources who contribute to those PACs. It's very e very enlightening. And they say there is no transparency? *Snicker*

Now what everyone needs to focus on is The Chamber is spending 75 million dollars to try to help the Republicans retake Congress The Chamber of Commerce/foreign money disease in America is not limited to or enabled by any one party. They all do it. We all need it to stop.

Obama's attempt to ACORN the Chamber of Commerce is a breach of etiquette for the New Dems and Blue Dogs, some of whom have actually won the Chamber's endorsement. Most of these fools were going to lose their seats anyway, mainly because they watered down the president's agenda which made his policies less popular. And then they failed to defend the unpopular policies that they helped to make unpopular. On top of that, in an election cycle where conservatives are highly motivated, these corporate Dems eschewed the one thing that could save them: criticizing the Republicans' plutocratic agenda by taking on the Big Banks, Big Oil Spillers, Big Insurers, and the Fat Cats asking for tax relief.
They're not too different from Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) who famously told us to stop being mean to BP during the catastrophe in the Gulf.

Taking on the Chamber is a no-brainer, unless you plan on doing their bidding and winning their support.

There is more than a whiff of hypocrisy.