Showing posts with label WHITE HOUSE. Show all posts

Thursday, July 22, 2010

O'REILLY GIVES BACK HAND APOLOGY TO SHIRLEY SHERROD

So much for O'Reilly's apologies to Mrs. Sherrod. WEAK!!

"Though O’Reilly acknowledged that when he called for Sherrod’s resignation he hadn’t done his “homework,” he went on to make a case for why she’s still “ineligible to serve in the government.” His reasoning: She’s a “long-time liberal activist” who sued the Department of Agriculture and won $300,000, and her controversial speech shows “blatant partisanship.”

Well, excuse me. Just because Mrs. Sherrod is and has been a civil rights activist (a title that is admirable) fighting for those little guys who have had their civil rights violated, does not mean she is a racist ... And since when is it against the law to sue if you have a good case?

And let me see ... is Bill implying that only Independents should serve in government?

Shirley also called em like she saw em. Republicans have called for President Obama to fail. Thank you Shirley for rebuking the tactics and rhetoric of Republicans who seek to thwart her (and our) president's agenda (an agenda he was elected on).

Shirley Sherrod has a unique sensitivity and first hand experience dealing with the racism that exists within the Department of Agriculture. I imagine it was that sensitivity and experience that led to Mrs. Sherrod's appointment.

Mrs. Sherrod is loyal to a Democratic president (as she should be, and should make no apologies for). She was and is uniquely qualified to serve in that department.

Blatant partisanship? O'Reilly (I guess) doesn't have a problem with Republican or conservative anti-choicers who serve or served in government. He didn't and doesn't criticize them.

Give me a break Bill, your partisanship is showing ...

Shirley Sherrod SCANDAL: Democrats, Republicans Unite To Insist She Be Rehired (VIDEO)

Shirley Sherrod's full NAACP speech

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

RACHEL MADDOW CALLS OUT POLITICAL AND MEDIA RIGHT WING FEAR MONGERS

I was going to comment on the right wing smear campaign against Shirley Sherrod; however, Rachel Maddow was brilliant in summing up what this whole smear campaign is about.

Let's watch:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

VIEW ABOVE ["SHERROD STORY DEMONSTRATES 'SCARE WHITE PEOPLE' TACTIC] VIDEO AT: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#38353636
-
-

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about

VIEW ABOVE [ROBINSON ON LESSONS FOR THE WHITE HOUSE] VIDEO AT: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#38353691
-
-

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

VIEW ABOVE [FOX NEWS DISAVOWS RESPONSIBILITY ON SHERROD STORY] VIDEO AT: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#38353774
-
-
Ms. Sherrod's full speech at:

http://www.naacp.org/news/entry/video_sherrod/
-
-
CNN's Don Lemon returns home with Shirley Sherrod, the woman at the center of the USDA controvery. (see below)

-
-

Sunday, May 2, 2010

PRESIDENT OBAMA ROCKS THE WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT'S DINNER

-
The president rocks the house (White House - smile).
-

-
JAY LENO BOMBS AT WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT'S DINNER BY DAN ABRAMSON, MAY 2, 2010
-
-

Thursday, January 28, 2010

President Obama's State of the Union 2010 [Video]

FULL ADDRESS

Obama State Of The Union Speech: FULL DETAILS

VIDEO OF ENTIRE ADDRESS (CSPAN)

Alito Mouths 'NOT TRUE' At State Of The Union (VIDEO)

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

WHAT DOES THE WHITE HOUSE DO NEXT ON HEALTHCARE?

Okay, I plead guilty to going ballistic after hearing about the backroom deals that the White House took part in early on. It seems they decided to not really fix the broken healthcare system we have. They decided (or Rahm Emanuel decided) instead to go with a pro-health insurance industry, health insurance (so called reform) package and call it healthcare reform … eventually the healthcare reform label became health insurance reform.

Now that the jig is up and everyone knows about the deals cut by the White House, the White House is saying “you guys have this all wrong”. They claim what the Senate has done is true health (insurance) reform. At least they’re not calling it healthcare reform (or did you guys hear something else?).

The White House caused a firestorm when Gibbs crucified Dr. Dean (former Chairman of the DNC, and the voice of the progressives who has been fighting for real healthcare reform for quite some time); calling Dr. Dean’s criticisms of the Senate bill as insanity or something to that effect.

Then Senator Rockefeller chimed in and holy hell broke loose on the liberal blogosphere; and I was, and still am, extremely angry at the White House.

Where does that leave things today? Who knows. I’m sure the White House will try to “pull a rabbit out of a hat” and come up with something that they think will appease people who are angry at the White House and various members of Congress.

You'll also be seeing more and more members of Congress talking about what a great Senate bill they have, and how wonderful it will be for so many people.

The president has said (according to Gibbs) that next year, the president plans to pay less attention to criticism of his handling of things. … okay …

You can read my previous post for links to some informative articles regarding the healthcare debate and backroom deals by the White House.

If I don’t post before Christmas, have a fantastic holiday.

PS: Guys I wrote this post this morning, this afternoon I read a post from Drew Westen. I thought I was the only one who felt this way about the president. You ask ... which way? ...

Must Read: Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values, and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator

Saturday, December 19, 2009

THE WHITE HOUSE, THE REPUBLICANS, AND A WHOLE BUNCH OF CORPORATE DEMOCRATS AND BLUE DOGS ARE MAKING ME SICK

Ben Nelson, the mouth-piece for the sex-scandal ridden Catholic Church has decided (after getting what he wanted) to vote for the (currently) seriously compromised Senate healthcare bill (which is a gift to the publicly traded health insurance industry), while nobody knows what Senator Webb will do.

In the meantime, the tea partiers and the progressives are mad as hell at their own parties; and they are in full fighting mode, trying to decide who they will get to run against the traitors in their party come 2010 and 2012.

Let's face it, the majority of the Republicans and all but 30 or so Democrats in the Senate are bought and paid for by corporate interests (that includes the Catholic Church).

The House Democrats want to keep their majority; however, those representatives better get their act together, cause their progressive base is foaming at the mouth.

Truly both the tea partiers and the progressives are fed up with most politicians who appear to be more concerned about their own welfare.

One out of 6 Americans live in poverty. The Middle Class is disappearing; 1% of the population control 90% to 95% of the wealth in this country, and that 90-95% group does not include tea partiers or most progressives.

The tea partiers blame immigrants, moderate Republicans and the government for their misfortune; while progressives see the banks, corporate executives and lobbyists as the true culprits.

One thing is clear, neither group is happy, and both think it's time to clean both houses of Congress.

Update November 10, 2010
How the Wealthy Organized to Rip Everyone Else off -- And What You Can Do to Stop It | | AlterNet by Maria Armoudian

Bill Moyers Journal - Matt Taibbi, Robert Kuttner

The Senate Health Care Bill: Leave No Special Interest Behind Arianna Huffington 12/21/2009

What the Media and Obama Never Understood About the Public Option C. Uygur

America Without a Middle Class - Elizabeth Warren

Nelson supports health bill after tough bargaining

Conservatives grab for tea party cash (Gee, I hope the tea partiers don't mind being used by the very people they supposedly hate)

MoveOn.Org Comes Out Against Senate Health Care Bill

The Bishops’ Billion-Dollar Business Bonanza - November 14, 2009

Sunday, July 26, 2009

CLEVELAND SECRET CLUB MEMBERS AND FRIENDS - IT'S DECISION TIME

Hey Members and Dear Friends,

Our friends and members are growing nationwide and we are even being recognized on a more global scale.

We've come to a crossroad and you're going to have to make a decision.

For the past year we have been focused on making our African American communities, and the larger community, healthier, safer and prosperous. We changed the balance of power in Congress, the Senate and the White House. We now need to keep pressuring Congress/Senate and the White House to do what is best for the African American community and the larger community.

What we will not do, is sacrifice the health and safety of our communities for monetary greed and corruption. That is why we have fully embraced a commitment to a "GREEN" economy, health care reform, and to financial reform (so we never again have a total economic melt-down).

Now there are special interest groups and lobbyists that are sending huge amounts of money to Congress and the Senate to stop reform legislation or to negatively influence legislation that would make quality, affordable, comprehensive health care available to every American.

There are outright lies being disseminated. For instance: Lie: If Congress passes this healthcare bill, it will get rid of Medicare and old people will lose their insurance.

Think Progress reports that lies about health care reform are not going to go away anytime soon.

In an interview with The New York Times, conservative pollster Frank Luntz admitted that he would continue raising the false specter of a ”Washington takeover” of health care—whether or not that was Obama’s actual proposal. “I’m not a policy person. I’m a language person,” Luntz said.

Click here for a detailed look at the blueprint for the propaganda campaign against health care reform.

Read: Here Come the Big Lies About Health Care Reform

We will boycott and we urge you to stop doing business with any business or individual or group that is trying to negatively influence or stop us from moving forward with quality, affordable, comprehensive health care for every American, and a "GREEN" economy.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
-------------

Our next project will focus on increasing the number of African American women (and women of color) in media.

We have, for the first time, an African American First Lady (Michelle Obama). We thought there would an immediate change in broadcast media, and that we would be seeing more African American women (and women of color) and especially attractive African American women in positive roles. It hasn't happened. For instance, if you watch the cable channel USA, you will notice that there are hardly any African American women, none in leading roles. In terms of featured or leading television roles in broadcast media, with the exception of Jada Pinkett Smith in "Hawthorne" (on TNT), and a few black sitcoms, there are very few African American women.

HOLLYWOOD CHICKS

-
BLACK ACTRESSES IN FILM AND TV

-
BLACK WOMEN IN SERIES TV

-
WHAT IF NURSE HAWTHORNE WERE WHITE AND NURSE JACKIE BLACK
BLACK AMERICANS IN LOVE
-
With the exceptions of broadcast media founded by Ted Turner (CNN, TBS, TNT), African American women are under-represented or absent altogether. The following scenario is what is prevalent: white female, white male or white male, white female, black male. These are the Hollywood formulas/models.

We want to change that formula; therefore, we will join with groups who want to change that model to include African American women and women of color. We will single out every network and every business that is advertising on a network or television show where there are no women of color or where women of color are under-represented.

We need you to get the word out and be critiquing to see what networks or television shows are under-representing women of color, and who the advertisers are. Ask your friends and family to critique these networks and television shows. In order to change the formula, we need to seriously stop the flow of money to these television networks. Money talks.

Once these networks, television shows and advertisers are identified, we will focus on boycotting these entities. You, of course, don't have to wait. You can do it on your own. Simply refuse to watch the television show or channel or refuse to buy the advertiser's product.

So you've got to make a decision.

1. If you want things to remain the same with rising health care costs, rising health insurance premiums, unequal access to health care and denial of health care, do nothing.

2. If you want to keep on seeing the same old Hollywood formula where women of color are under-represented or absent altogether, do nothing.

3. If you want things to change, then you have to change your behavior. Refuse to do business with a company who puts their interests (profits) first above your health and safety ... refuse to buy their product or use their service ... refuse to watch a television program or television station that has no positive roles for African American women or no positive leading roles for attractive African American women ... support movies and television shows that depict African American women in positive roles ... email or call your representative and voice your opinion on legislation ... use your vote to elect people who will do what you want (esp. on major legislation) ... don't vote for them again if they fail to do what they said they would do (the reason why you voted for them)

Thanks guys. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Clevelands Secret Club

new website:
Clevelands Place of Dreams (and Truth)
http://clevelands-place-of-dreams.org/

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

GAP WIDENS BETWEEN THE HAVES AND HAVE NOTS

"72,000,000+ Americans (over half) earn $25,000 or less a year. Another 34,000,000+ earn between $25,000 and $45,000. The notion that everyone is feeling the pain of this recession equally is completely deceptive. Working and middle class Americans are feeling the brunt of this recession. You would think that after the worst crisis since the Great Depression things would be different today in Q1 of 2011. Yet nothing has changed and in fact, we have invigorated the too big to fail with our current government policies. This is a government built by Wall Street banks and for Wall Street banks. Don’t be surprised when the next crisis hits because nothing has changed."

From MyBudget360 :Source "Social Security" -

What "Free Trade" Has Cost The World | OurFuture.org, by Dave Johnson, March 14, 2011

- -

Excerpt: "Income VS Wealth

There are a few people who make hundreds of millions of income in a single year. Some people make more than $1 billion in a year But that is in a single year. If you make vast sums every year, after a while it starts to add up. (And then there is the story of inherited wealth, passed down and growing for generation after generation...)

Top 1% owns more than 90% of us combined. "In 2007, the latest year for which figures are available from the Federal Reserve Board, the richest 1% of U.S. households owned 33.8% of the nation’s private wealth. That’s more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent." (Also from the Working Group on Extreme Inequality)

400 people have as much wealth as half of our population. The combined net worth of the Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans in 2007: $1.5 trillion. The combined net worth of the poorest 50% of American households: $1.6 trillion."

9 Pictures That Expose This Country's Obscene Division of Wealth | Economy | AlterNet by Dave Johnson, February 13, 2011

- -

More GRITtv

Our Country Is Lost Believing in What It Sees on Screens, and We Are Going to Pay a Nasty Price for It

by Chris Hedges (article appeared on TruthDig "We do not shake ourselves awake quickly from our electronic hallucinations and defy the elites who are ruining the country and trashing the planet. -

October 8, 2010 -

Nemesis was the Greek goddess of retribution. She exacted divine punishment on arrogant mortals who believed they could defy the gods, turn themselves into objects of worship and build ruthless systems of power to control the world around them. The price of such hubris was almost always death.

Nemesis, related to the Greek word némein, means “to give what is due.” Our nemesis fast approaches. We will get what we are due. The staggering myopia of our corrupt political and economic elite, which plunder the nation’s wealth for financial speculation and endless war, the mass retreat of citizens into virtual hallucinations, the collapsing edifices around us, which include the ecosystem that sustains life, are ignored for a giddy self-worship. We stare into electronic screens just as Narcissus, besotted with his own reflection, stared into a pool of water until he wasted away and died.

We believe that because we have the capacity to wage war we have the right to wage war. We believe that money, rather than manufactured products and goods, is real. We believe in the myth of inevitable human moral and material progress. We believe that no matter how much damage we do to the Earth or our society, science and technology will save us. And as temperatures on the planet steadily rise, as droughts devastate cropland, as the bleaching of coral reefs threatens to wipe out 25 percent of all marine species, as countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh succumb to severe flooding, as we poison our food, air and water, as we refuse to confront our addiction to fossil fuels and coal, as we dismantle our manufacturing base and plunge tens of millions of Americans into a permanent and desperate underclass, we flick on a screen and are entranced.

We confuse the electronic image, a reflection back to us of ourselves, with the divine. We gawk at “reality” television, which of course is contrived reality, reveling in being the viewer and the viewed. True reality is obliterated from our consciousness. It is the electronic image that informs and defines us. It is the image that gives us our identity. It is the image that tells us what is attainable in the vast cult of the self, what we should desire, what we should seek to become and who we are. It is the image that tricks us into thinking we have become powerful—as the popularity of video games built around the themes of violence and war illustrates—while we have become enslaved and impoverished by the corporate state. The electronic image leads us back to the worship of ourselves. It is idolatry. Reality is replaced with electronic mechanisms for preening self-presentation—the core of social networking sites such as Facebook—and the illusion of self-fulfillment and self-empowerment. And in a world unmoored from the real, from human limitations and human potential, we inevitably embrace superstition and magic. This is what the worship of images is about. We retreat into a dark and irrational fear born out of a cavernous ignorance of the real. We enter an age of technological barbarism.

To those entranced by images, the world is a vast stage on which they are called to enact their dreams. It is a world of constant action, stimulation and personal advancement. It is a world of thrills and momentary ecstasy. It is a world of ceaseless movement. It makes a fetish of competition. It is a world where commercial products and electronic images serve as a pseudo-therapy that caters to feelings of alienation, inadequacy and powerlessness. We may be locked in dead-end jobs, have no meaningful relationships and be confused about our identities, but we can blast our way to power holding a little control panel while looking for hours at a screen. We can ridicule the poor, the ignorant and the weak all day long on trash-talk shows and reality television shows. We are skillfully made to feel that we have a personal relationship, a false communion, with the famous—look at the outpouring of grief at the death of Princess Diana or Michael Jackson. We have never met those we adore. We know only their manufactured image. They appear to us on screens. They are not, at least to us, real people. And yet we worship and seek to emulate them.

In this state of cultural illusion any description of actual reality, because it does not consist of the happy talk that pollutes the airwaves from National Public Radio to Oprah, is dismissed as “negative” or “pessimistic.” The beleaguered Jeremiahs who momentarily stumble into our consciousness and in a desperate frenzy seek to warn us of our impending self-destruction are derided because they do not lay out easy formulas that permit us to drift back into fantasy. We tell ourselves they are overreacting. If reality is a bummer, and if there are no easy solutions, we don’t want to hear about it. The facts of economic and environmental collapse, now incontrovertible, cannot be discussed unless they are turned into joking banter or come accompanied with a neat, pleasing solution, the kind we are fed at the conclusion of the movies, electronic games, talk shows and sitcoms, the kind that dulls our minds into passive and empty receptacles. We have been conditioned by electronic hallucinations to expect happy talk. We demand it.

We confuse this happy talk with hope. But hope is not about a belief in progress. Hope is about protecting simple human decency and demanding justice. Hope is the belief, not necessarily grounded in the tangible, that those whose greed, stupidity and complacency have allowed us to be driven over a cliff shall one day be brought down. Hope is about existing in a perpetual state of rebellion, a constant antagonism to all centers of power. The great moral voices, George Orwell and Albert Camus being perhaps two of the finest examples, describe in moving detail the human suffering we ignore or excuse. They understand that the greatest instrument for moral good is the imagination. The ability to perceive the pain and suffering of another, to feel, as King Lear says, what wretches feel, is a more powerful social corrective than the shelves of turgid religious and philosophical treatises on human will. Those who change the world for the better, who offer us hope, have the capacity to make us step outside of ourselves and feel empathy.

A print-based culture, as writer Neil Postman pointed out, demands rationality. The sequential, propositional character of the written word fosters what Walter Ong calls the “analytic management of knowledge.” But our brave new world of images dispenses with these attributes because the images do not require them to be understood. Communication in the image-based culture is not about knowledge. It is about the corporate manipulation of emotions, something logic, order, nuance and context protect us against. Thinking, in short, is forbidden. Entertainment and spectacle have become the aim of all human endeavors, including politics, which is how Stephen Colbert, playing his television character, can be permitted to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. Campaigns are built around the manufactured personal narratives of candidates, who function as political celebrities, rather than policies or ideas. News reports have become soap operas and mini-dramas revolving around the latest celebrity scandal.

Colleges and universities, which view students as customers and suck obscene tuition payments and loans out of them with the tantalizing promise of high-paying corporate jobs, have transformed themselves into resorts and theme parks. In this new system of education almost no one fails. Students become “brothers” or “sisters” in the atavistic, tribal embrace of eating clubs, fraternities or sororities. School spirit and school branding is paramount. Campus security keeps these isolated enclaves of privilege secure. And 90,000-seat football stadiums, along with their millionaire coaches, dominate the campus. It is moral leprosy.

The role of knowledge and art, as the ancient Greeks understood, is to create ekstasis, which means standing outside one’s self to give our individual life and struggle meaning and perspective. The role of art and scholarship is to transform us as individuals, not entertain us as a group. It is to nurture this capacity for understanding and empathy. Art and scholarship allow us to see the underlying structures and assumptions used to manipulate and control us. And this is why art, like intellectual endeavor, is feared by the corporate elite as subversive. This is why corporations have used their money to deform universities into vocational schools that spit out blinkered and illiterate systems managers. This is why the humanities are withering away.

The vast stage of entertainment that envelops our culture is intended to impart the opposite of ekstasis. Mass entertainment plays to the basest and crudest instincts of the crowd. It conditions us to have the same aspirations and desires. It forces us to speak in the same dead clichés and slogans. It homogenizes human experience. It wallows in a cloying nostalgia and sentimentalism that foster historical amnesia. It turns the Other into a cartoon or a stereotype. It prohibits empathy because it prohibits understanding. It denies human singularity and uniqueness. It assures us that we all have within us the ability, talent or luck to become famous and rich. It forms us into a lowing and compliant herd. We have been conditioned to believe—defying all the great moral and philosophical writers from Socrates to Orwell—that the aim of life is not to understand but to be entertained. If we do not shake ourselves awake from our electronic hallucinations and defy the elites who are ruining the country and trashing the planet we will experience the awful and deadly retribution of the gods."

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, is a senior fellow at the Nation Institute. He writes a regular column for TruthDig every Monday. His latest book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Sunday, July 26, 2009

SB

9/2012 VIDEO TAKES 30 SECONDS TO LOAD AFTER CLICKING ON THE PLAY ARROW - ALSO SEEN ON VIDEO SITE

BILL CLINTON AT DNC 2012

-

Blog Archive

AC

Subscribe via email

-

-

-

TD

-

BCPNJ

-

-

VJ

-

Bill Moyers and Thomas Frank - Dark Money in Politics -wait 20 seconds after clicking play arrow

-

CH

-

TED NUGENT EXPOSED! DID EVERYTHING HE COULD NOT TO SERVE IN THE MILITARY

-

GOP WAR ON WOMEN

-

BOYCOTT

-

GLENN GREENWALD LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR SOME

-

EI

-

TD

-

PART TWO

-

PE

-

-

-

BP

-

JOE SCARBOROUGH - RE: TAVIS SMILEY'S POVERTY TOUR SERIES -OCTOBER 10, 2011

-

Pages

CWC

-

CCER

THE CAPITOL - WASHINGTON, DC

-

-

CSCPARTII

-

BAILED OUT AND SOLD OUT

-

US ECONOMY BOUGHT - CAMPAIGNS

CPD

DN

-

TWEET

PAY ATTENTION

OF INTEREST

-

A BIG THANK YOU TO MIKE AND LAWRENCE

OHIO'S NUCLEAR PROBLEM

-

HANDING THE ENVIRONMENTAL HEN HOUSE TO THE FOXES

-

OUR BLOG LIST

-

-

IS NPR CURSED?

-

U.S. MEDIA FAILING TO REPORT REAL NEWS