Independence Day

Have you gotten the news?

An independent bid by Gov. Charlie Crist for the U.S. Senate looks imminent. One of his regional chairs and finance committee members, Rep. Tom Grady of Naples, just released this letter to the governor: "This evening, as I reviewed your updated campaign website, I noticed a disheartening fact. Your website has eliminated all references to our Republican Party, or as you frequently refer to it, the party of Lincoln."

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

So at this point I gotta ask, are there REALLY Floridians who would vote for a dude who was too much of a coward to stay and fight in his party's primary when you KNOW, hell he has SAID, that he would vote with the Republican Confederate Party if voted into office? I put nothing past anybody but I certainly hope nobody is that damned gullible.

If you want a Democrat, vote for the one in the race, Kendrick Meek! He is a strong progressive voice and he is running a grass roots campaign taking his message to the people. If you want a Republican you might as well go all the way with the scandal riddled Marco Rubio and be real about what you stand for. The choice here is simple. Progress or obstruction.

I will be voting with progress...

Charles Blow's EPIC FAIL

I have been very annoyed over the past few months because of a phenomenon I have noticed in black intellectual circles. It seems that all of the "high brow" black folks hate Tyler Perry because his movies show a side of the way black people live that doesn't comport with what they contend is their reality. What's most annoying about this is that these "high brow" black folks tend to conflate Tyler Perry with the characters he plays in his movies. They talk about him as if he walks around in his day to day as his wildly popular character "Madea". Wildly popular that is to just run of the mill black folks who aren't teaching at Harvard or don't have their own column in the New York Times. Its funny to me because I recognize people from many of his movies that I know in real life. Its also pathetic in the sense that characters like Madea are obviously supposed to be over the top caricatures but they insist on treating them as if Tyler Perry is proclaiming that everybody has a grandma EXACTLY like "Madea".

Well Charles Blow decided that he would take his shots today in his op ed column . What followed is in my opinion PURE COMEDY.

First lets start with the title of the column,

Tyler Perry’s Crack Mothers

Now I have seen all of Perry's plays and most of his movies and I could only remember distinctly one character who was a mother and a crack head so I decided to read the column to see where this was going. Here is his dramatic opening to his piece.

Mo’Nique is a favorite to win an Oscar next Sunday for her powerful and disturbing portrayal of an abusive mother in the movie “Precious.”

If she wins, I may grit my teeth at the depraved depiction, but at least her character is merely juxtaposed with the crack scourge and isn't in fact an addict. That's heartening since the crack-addicted black mother has recently made a curious comeback.

There was a time when this character was more relevant: in the 1980s and 1990s when the crack epidemic plunged whole communities into violence, fear and chaos. (To be fair, “Precious” is set in the 1980s.) But this character now feels like a refugee of time — and discordant with the facts on the ground.

Oh my, Charles Blow might grit his teeth if Mo'nique wins an Oscar for her role in the movie "Precious". Hmmmm I guess. I mean I know some people loved the movie and some folks hated it and to that I say to each their own. But why open a piece about Perry's "Crack Mothers" with three grafs that have nothing to do with a "crack mother" in one of Perry's movies. Ahhh there is a correction at the bottom to explain this.

Correction: An earlier version of this column incorrectly described Mo'Nique's character in the movie "Precious." She was not a crack addict.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

So in a column meant to hit Tyler Perry for supposedly stocking his movies with crack mother characters, Blow doesn't even know or realize that Mo'Nique didn't play a crack head in "Precious". I guess he ALSO didn't know or realize that while Tyler Perry did "present" the movie "Precious" it wasn't literally one of his movies. He didn't write it nor direct it and the book it is based on had literary acclaim in its own right before the movie ever came along.

But Blow and other "high brow" black folks can't be concerned with such facts can they? As a matter of fact in a column which Blow tries to intimate that Tyler Perry has single handedly brought back the notion of "crack mothers" which in his mind is now a sort of fantasy, he can only come up with two instances (which he doesn't explain) when such a character has been in any of Tyler Perry's movies. And I can tell you that in at least the movie that I saw where there was a "crack mother" the story line revolved around her being an addict for years, not some kind of recent development.

Im sorry but this is the classic definition of the crab in a barrel mentality that most "high brow" black folks tend to decry. For whatever faults Tyler Perry has, he also has many many good attributes. He has used his position to help other black folks get roles in his movies. He gives quite a bit of money and time to various charities including building homes for Katrina victims and giving $1 million dollars through his foundation to the Haiti relief fund. But you won't hear those "high brow" black folks ever even out their criticisms about him. No they just want to blame all of the ills of the black community on Tyler Perry.

Give me a fucking break.

We have seven year olds stealing cars because they want to do "hood rat stuff" and these folks are more concerned with tearing down a self made black man than addressing real problems. Im sick and tired of it, and honestly its making me lose a lot of respect for folks who I thought were better than that.

Truly.

Game Recognize Game

Back when the public option collapsed in the Senate last fall after President LIEberman declared he wouldn't vote for any hcr bill that contained a public option, I noted how supposed progressive champions of the public option were unwilling to pledge to vote against a bill without one. In short it was all kabuki theater meant to shield those supposed progressives from backlash for the failure to include a public option.

Well now the clearest indication that I was right has come in the form of one of those supposed progressive heros, Jay Rockerfeller, coming out against passing a public option through reconcilliation.

We've been punked folks, it was never going to happen.

Can't Get Right

Ezra Klein agrees with me that the "win" over the holds on President Obama's nominees wasn't really a win at all and was yet another case of them hurting their own efforts.

Working backward, why not make recess appointments this recess? The administration remains terribly understaffed. Senate Republicans have slapped a historic number of holds on Obama's nominees, and Richard Shelby's effort to hold all of Obama's pending nominees as part of a multibillion-dollar shakedown made Nelson's Medicaid deal look like petty theft. What was the danger, then, of making recess appointments? That it would lead to a fight over Republican obstruction that the administration might actually win?

Worse, why explain the recess appointment as some sort of emergency measure? At what point does the administration accept that its success is dependent on finding ways to avoid being filibustered? Reconciliation can't be considered a nuclear option and recess appointments can't be saved for special cases. George W. Bush understood this and used reconciliation and recess appointments routinely in his first year. That meant it was no story when he used the processes for his next seven years. Obama is making the very consideration of these measures a story, which means any decision to actually use them will be a big deal and will make the president look like a bare-knuckle partisan.

This time the media and public opinion was on the administration's side on recess appointments, especially after Senator Shelby had put that blanket hold on all of the nominees just to try to get an earmark pushed through. But you wait and see the outcry if President Obama should ever try to do some recess appointments in the future. And guess what, it will all be their own fault.

This is getting to be quite disheartening.

A Sign Of Weakness

Remember President Obama And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid threatening to use recess appointments to overcome holds on over 60 of Obama's nominees earlier this week? Yeah, that's not going to happen. And its not because they lifted all of the holds either. Its because they lifted less than half of them.

President Obama's statement:

Today, the United States Senate confirmed 27 of my high-level nominees, many of whom had been awaiting a vote for months.

At the beginning of the week, a staggering 63 nominees had been stalled in the Senate because one or more senators placed a hold on their nomination. In most cases, these holds have had nothing to do with the nominee’s qualifications or even political views, and these nominees have already received broad, bipartisan support in the committee process.

Instead, many holds were motivated by a desire to leverage projects for a Senator’s state or simply to frustrate progress. It is precisely these kinds of tactics that enrage the American people.

And so on Tuesday, I told Senator McConnell that if Republican senators did not release these holds, I would exercise my authority to fill critically-needed positions in the federal government temporarily through the use of recess appointments. This is a rare but not unprecedented step that many other presidents have taken. Since that meeting, I am gratified that Republican senators have responded by releasing many of these holds and allowing 29 nominees to receive a vote in the Senate.

While this is a good first step, there are still dozens of nominees on hold who deserve a similar vote, and I will be looking for action from the Senate when it returns from recess. If they do not act, I reserve the right to use my recess appointment authority in the future.

I just have to shake my head at this. Why take recess appointments off the table because Republicans gave less than half of his nominees, some of whom have been waiting for over half a year, an up and down vote?

I swear I just don't understand this administration. Not. At. All.

THAT'S Why I Said President Obama Had To Speak On It

On the left a lot of people were excited last week after Senator Shelby put a "blanket hold" on over 70 nominees of the Obama administration over an earmark he wanted. For some reason, even after all we have seen over the last year where Republicans are caught red handed lying, cheating and in some cases committing crimes and having suffered no political blowback, people really believed that NOW the Republicans would get their come uppance. I on the other hand knew that unless this issue was pressed hard and explained to the American people by no less than President Obama, it would all gets swept under the rug.

Well after countless blog posts, Robert Gibbs calling Shelby out, and a post by Dan Pfeiffer on the White House blog but no mention of it by President Obama, guess what the Sunday shows did on the issue?

Why they ignored it of course.

Out of 5 Sunday "news" shows, only one even made mention of it. And guess what happened when they did? Dana Bash on CNN went with the false equivalence excuse. You know, cuz Democrats "did the exact same thing".

Except they didn't, and she either does or should know that.

At some point folks on the left are going to realize that winning arguments at this point is bullshit. Democrats are the party in power. Nobody gives a fuck about winning arguments. What they want to see is results, not excuses. Just over a week or so ago President Obama put on a masterful performance at the GOP retreat in pushing back on all their talking points. And it was TELEVISED. You know what he got for his wonderful job? His approval rating after spiking a few points is now back around 49 %

Yeah, that'll show em.

Its the same reason why this health care reform "summit" is going to turn out to be some bullshit that blows up in our face too. Republicans aren't going to all of a sudden add anything new to the conversation. But they haven't for months and has anybody paid a price for it? But you know what they WILL do while Obama is having summits and shit? They will get back to their all important work of demonizing health care reform. And you know what? People are going to buy that shit again. But let me give you an alternate scenario.

Lets say the Republicans DO come up with something to be included in the bill. Well guess what that means. It means the bill has to be changed and if its changed it has to be passed again by BOTH Houses of Congress. Do you really think the Republicans are going to vote for this bill even if something they want is included?

Uhmmm shit they have asked for for years is ALREADY in the bill.

So they can play the game, and then once again filibuster the bill and we are right back where we started but now its going to be closer to mid term elections and no Conserva Dem is going to want to touch it.

And on that note, even IF President Obama is able to show up the Republicans at his "summit", is that really going to vote the Liebermans, Landrieus, and Nelsons to now vote for it?

Playa please.

Im still a Democrat, and I still support this administration, but I will be soooooooo happy when they realize they are doing it wrong.

Seriously.

No More Money For The DNC

Tim Kaine is obviously in over his head and or wants to try to transform the Democratic Party into his personal image. There can be no other excuse for why he would hand over $500,000 to anti health care, anti choice advocate Ben Nelson to run ads where he BRAGS about basically killing health care when he isn't up for reelection for 3 more years.

If you still give money to the DNC after this, you are basically working AGAINST the Democratic platform.

SCOTUS Bends To The Corporations

The Supreme Court today ruled that corporations are not distinguishable from individuals when it comes to free speech in elections. What that means is that they have opened the door for some of the richest businesses in America to basically hand pick the Congress and the President. Its a ruling so bad that I can't help but believe some new legislation will be quickly forth coming to effectively overrule it. Still, the overjoyed reaction of GOP leaders to this ruling should put to bed any thoughts of them actually being all about the people and riding a wave of populism. They will ALWAYS side with their financial benefactors to the detriment of the regular folks in order to get in power and stay in power. Anybody who can't see that at this point is just a fool.

Words Of Wisdom

"If the Democrats run for cover, if we become pale carbon copies of the opposition, we will lose--and deserve to lose," he said. "The last thing this country needs is two Republican parties."

-Ted Kennedy

At some point either Democrats are going to wake up to the reality that people over the last two election cycle voted them in because we want DEMOCRATS running the country, or they will continue to try to look "centrist" and they will get their asses handed to them in November. Martha Coakley was a shitty candidate but even a shitty candidate wins that race yesterday if the legislation from last year, ie the stimulus bill and a health care bill, were more progressive.

Its really as black and white as you can get.

What Kinda Fuckery Is This?

Before you ask, yes this is a real commercial.

I have to say that if you are dumb enough to let these fools handle your taxes than you deserve to get robbed and then audited a few years down the road.

REAL TALK

Its About Damn Time

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, consider your ass put on notice!

"If Harry Reid does not have the leadership skills to get 60 votes for cloture and give a Democratic president an up-or-down vote on health care, progressives will help defeat him in 2010, even if that means Republicans take that seat," said the head of one progressive organization, who's still working out the detail of the campaign. "There is no use for Reid's vote if 60 Democratic votes means nothing on cloture, and no use for Reid's leadership if his leadership is so blatantly ineffective."

That might not be such a troubling threat if Reid, who's up for re-election in 2010, wasn't suffering at the polls.

I FULLY endorse this move by Liberal and Progressive organizations. If we can't get Democratic legislation through with a super majority then its obvious that we can do just as well with 51 votes as we can with 60. It is time Reid was told what the consequences are for being a milque toast and selling out the base. If he wasn't up for the job he never should have taken it.

George Stephanopolous Clowns Himself

George Stephanopolous is once again having John McCain on his show this weekend to criticize President Obama's Afghanistan policy. He has been getting his ass kicked all over the blogosphere and twitter for having that crotchety old bastart on again after he lost last year. In a response to Greg Sargent he said among other things that:

McCain is the leading GOP voice on Afghanistan.

One of the people who has taken shots at Stephanopolous, Steve Benen, gets at how bogus that is of an argument.

But there's no reason to assume that McCain is the "leading GOP voice on Afghanistan." Not only are there plenty of other Republicans who approach the issue with the same perspective, but McCain has never demonstrated any particular expertise on Afghanistan -- on the contrary, he has a record of confusion on the war. During the presidential campaign, for example, McCain was both for and against sending additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan. His most noteworthy contribution to the debate was arguing in 2003 that "we may muddle through in Afghanistan," whatever that means.

If McCain is a "leading" voice on the conflict, it's only because the media keeps calling on him to talk about it. It's entirely self-fulfilling -- the media gives McCain the stage, and justifies the decision by pointing to how often he's on the stage.

But you see, Stephanopolous will never have to address his faulty logic behind inviting McCain on again. People will just assume that because McCain was a prisoner of war that he actually speaks for the Republicans on any military issue. The truth is there are some Republicans (probably for shady reasons) who are against sending more troops which McCain is decidedly for. And McCain was a leading voice on getting us into the war in Iraq. How he maintains any credibility on military issues says a lot about pundits like Stephanopolous.

Will The Media Ever Notice That Kent Conrad Is Lying?

Senator Kent Conrad appeared on "Face The Nation" this morning to peddle his lame co-op alternative to a public option in health care reform. Now I get that he is a ConservaDem and that he supposedly want to be seen as a big time deficit cutter so he has some ideological objections to health care reform. I have already explained yesterday where I thought he could shove those concerns when it comes to voting for cloture. However there is one thing he said today that he has said several times that nobody has called him out on. Here goes:

CONRAD: Well, I would say this. It is very clear that in the United States Senate, the public option does not have the votes. If we have to get to 60 votes, you cannot get there with public option. That’s why I was asked to come up with an alternative, and the alternative I came up with was this cooperative approach that, as Senator Grassley correctly describes, is not government run or government controlled, it’s controlled by its membership. But it does provide not-for-profit competition to insurance companies, so it has appeal on both sides. It’s the only proposal that has bipartisan support and if we’re going to get 60 votes we’re going to need bipartisan support

.

According to Conrad there is bipartisan support for co-ops but that is simply a lie. So far at best a handful Republicans have said that they would "look into" his proposal for co-ops but many of them have already come out and slammed it as just a public option by another name. The RNC fits into that category and Senator John Kyl the Minority Whip has said that no Republicans would vote for a health care reform bill anyway. So where does Conrad get this notion that he has bipartisan support fo co-ops?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Of course if just one journalist would dare ask him WHO in the Republican Party endorses co-ops we might just get the answer to that question. But our mainstream media does not seem to be in the questioning business anymore.

Claire McCaskill's Weaksauce

I am generally a fan of Claire McCaskill. She did a great job advocating for then candidate Barack Obama last year and her voting record, while conservative, had been pretty decent on the major issues. But now she is really starting to tick me off.

Its not just that she seems to be losing her spine, something Democrats are historically known for, its also that she seems to think liberals and progressives, ie traditional Democrats, are fools. Not only are her votes starting become an issue, so is some of her pandering rhetoric. Pandering not to the Democratic base, but to right wing conservatives.

Two recent issues stick out like a sore thumb. The first being the issue of these townhall disruptions. It has been well established at this point that these protestors are straight up teabagging astroturf thugs egged on by the GOP and special interests. And finally we have the Democratic Party standing up and calling them out for what they are, but here is Claire McCaskill totally undercutting the message in two different tweets.

Yesterday she said:

I disagree that the people showing concern over some healthcare proposals are "manufactured" Real folks, strong opinions.

Talk about stepping on the message. She basically legitimizes the teabaggers and their outbursts shutting down debate.

But she wasn't finished.

She went further today and basically sounded like was tweeting from an RNC press release.

Real grassroots on both sides of the healthcare issue, both sides organizing. Yay to both, yay for democracy,hope both are civil and polite.

I read that and had to wonder what fucking planet is this woman on? Is she smoking something? Nothing about these teabag disruptions has been either civil nor polite. And its not like she doesn't know this, hell they shouted her down just last week. And yet here she is legitimizing these assholes like they are working in good faith.

Sounds to me like somebody needs to see how much money health insurance companies are shoving her way.

But wait, im not done.

Yesterday Senator McCaskill was one of only 4 Democrats in the Senate to vote against Cash 4 Clunkers.

Here is how she explained it on tumblr

Of course the cash for clunkers program is popular, we’re giving away money. My concerns are first, that we are just moving demand around, and that the sales in this program are robbing sales from 2, 3, or 12 months from now when we are going to still need sustained growth in our economy. Remember, around 60,000 to 70,000 people are trading their cars in for new ones every month without this program. Second, I haven’t yet gotten clear answers on how many deals are currently in the pipeline and how they will wind this program down in a way that will give certainty to buyers and dealers. Third, I’m worried that an extension right now will penalize the two companies that we just made huge taxpayer invesments in. I’m trying to verify, but I believe, based on my conversations with dealers and other research, that Chrylser and GM both have inventory issues with the cars that qualify for this program. Seems weird we would invest billions of taxpayer dollars in two American companies in an effort to save them, and then extend a program that could penalize them. I realize all car sales, both foreign and domestic, are good for the economy, but I hate the idea that there may not be a level playing field for the next few weeks because of inventory issues.

This is a tough call, but at least wanted to let eveyone know that I’m studying all of it and trying to make a decision that is not rushed, but thoughtful.

Nothing in that whole diatribe makes any fucking sense. GM and Chrysler are one of the two major beneficiaries of Cash 4 Clunkers. Notice that even the Republicans from car industry heavy places like Michigan voted to extend the program. Hell union busting asshat Bob Corker even voted for it. And when you have lost Bob Corker...

Here is what is particularly stressing. Missouri has already turned blue. They already have 50% of the voting population that self identifies as Democrats. So its not like Senator McCaskill is voting her constituency, so what, exactly, is her motivation?

I can tell you this much, if she keeps this kind of shit up we need to be looking for a progressive option in Missouri to primary her ass when she goes up for reelection. At this point in history there should be no such thing as a centrist Democrat running unopposed in a primary. Its time we made these people earn their seat and truly represent their constituency by showing them the consequences if the don't.

It is what it is.

Rule Of Law Is For Suckers

CIA Director Leon Panetta takes to the Washinton Post to write an op-ed in pursuit of the Peggy Noonan view of Congressional oversight, when they see something illegal "just need to keep on walking". It would be funny if it wasn't so nauseating. We didn't vote in a new administration just to have them cover up the crimes of the previous adminstration. The political price they pay for not investigating may end up being a lot bigger than the price they would pay for holding people accountable. President Obama and the rest of the people around him seem to be missing the fact that in their quest to grab some of the middle they may lose all of the base. It is what it is.

Even Harry Reid Admits That Harry Reid Is Weaksauce

Reid says he expects the tactic of gentle persuasion to work best, given the size of his Senate Democratic flock and the political divergences within it. “I don’t dictate how people vote,” he said in an interview this month. “If it’s an important vote, I try to tell them how important it is to the Senate, the country, the president ... But I’m not very good at twisting arms. I try to be more verbal and non-threatening. So there are going to be — I’m sure — a number of opportunities for people who have different opinions not to vote the way that I think they should. But that’s the way it is. I hold no grudges.”

When your Majority Leader makes these kinds of assessments about himself, it tells me two things.

1. He has a knack for self reflection and

2. Its time to get a new Majority Leader.


(h/t Greg Sargent via TPM )

I Am Fresh Out Of Passes

After delaying the release of the CIA's Inspector General's report on torture several times, now the Obama administration is looking to push it back yet again until August 31st. Now I don't know about you, but I have pretty much run out of plausible excuses for why they continue to kick this down the road. Right about now it seems to me that what makes most sense is that they are pushing it back so that the issue falls off of the radar and doesn't impede other parts of their agenda.

Well I am calling BULLSHIT on that. If President Obama is going to be using that "nation of laws" verbiage then he for damn sure needs to start living up to it. This is much too serious to keep playing games with it. And if accountability is going to continue to be a buzz word with his administration then at some point we are going to need to actually see some. This is weaksauce plain and simple.

Jive Turkeys

The other day I watched this youtube video of Michael Eric Dyson and got more pissed off than I have been in a while at a pundit. It was frustrating as hell to see this guy tossing around 3 dollar words to try to make himself seem credible when really he was talking a whole bunch of nothing. Ta Nehisi Coates eviscerated that fool yesterday in a much more eloquent way than I could muster. And today Melissa Harris-Lacewell went all in on Dyson, Tavis Smiley, Cornel West and Dick Gregory who put out some quasi documentary called "Stand". Once again if it was me I would have probably just called them a bunch of race hustlers trying to get rich on the backs of black folks doing little to nothing to actually help them in their every day lives. But Ms Harris-Lacewell put it in much better terms and stuck the dagger in hard.

But this appropriation misrepresents rather than preserves King's legacy. King was a powerful questioner and, at times, ally of President Johnson because he was at the helm of a massive social movement of men and women who were shut out of the ordinary political process. It was not King's intellectual capacity or verbal dexterity that made him an effective advocate for racial issues; it was his own accountability to that movement.

This is not true of Smiley and his "soul patrol," who are mostly public personalities and tenured professors largely unaccountable to the black constituency. King's meager income, though supplemented by the lecture circuit, was grounded in the voluntary contributions of black churchgoers.

Smiley is backed by powerful corporations, like Wal-Mart and Nationwide, that have troubled relationships with these communities. The college profs on the bus are comfortably supported by well-endowed universities. This does not invalidate their views on race, but it does make the analogy with King a poor fit.

Further, Smiley and his "soul patrol" seemed to have missed the intervening 40 years between the era of King and the election of Obama. African-Americans are no longer fully disfranchised subjects of an oppressive state.

African-Americans are now citizens capable of running for office, holding officials accountable through democratic elections, publicly expressing divergent political preferences and, most importantly, engaging the full spectrum of American political issues, not only narrowly racial ones. The era of racial brokerage politics, when the voices of a few men stood in for the entire race, is now over. And thank goodness it is over. Black politics is growing up.

The men of "Stand" yearned for an imagined racial past. By their accounting, this racial past had better music, more charismatic leaders and a more-involved black church.

Their romanticism ignores the cultural contributions of contemporary black youth, forgets the dangerous limitations of charismatic leadership and revises the fraught, complicated relationship of black churches to struggles for racial equality. And these men ignored the democratizing effect of new media forms, which revolutionized the 2008 election.

Black people were not duped by some slick, media-generated candidate. African-Americans were co-authors of the Obama campaign. Through social networks, YouTube videos, political blogs and new-media echo chambers, black people were equal partners in shaping the candidate and his campaign. There was no need for the entrenched pundit class to tell black voters what to think or how to behave; they figured it out for themselves.

Still, there is plenty to criticize in the young Obama administration: the refusal to prosecute those implicated in the torture memos, civilian casualties caused by drone attacks, bank bailouts and inadequate defense of gay rights to name a few. But black communities are already engaged in these critiques and many others. Black local organizers, elected officials, bloggers, pundits and columnists have taken substantive, specific positions on a broad range of issues.

In black communities, nonprofit organizations continue to work for justice, and charities still try to fill the gap during tough economic times. African-Americans are engaged as mature citizens ought to be: in both discourse and action.

This political maturity is precisely the source of the black public intellectual crisis: What do Smiley and the Soul Patrol add to this process? Their bus never stopped at a Habitat for Humanity site to build a home or at a soup kitchen to serve the hungry. Their dialogue centered more on the relative merits of Aretha vs. Beyonce than on meaningful political issues.

Though they spoke with elders, their self-congratulatory revelry never paused to engage any elected officials, issues specialists or local activists. And while they talked a great deal about women, they never spoke to a woman.

"Stand" was sad because I still believe in a role for black public intellectuals. Scholars and journalists often have a particular capacity for curiosity, questioning and issue synthesis that has real value in public discourse. It was painfully clear that this particular accountability crusade is not informed by any of those skills. Instead, it seems determined to stand in the way of the maturation of African-American politics in order to maintain personal power.

My hope is that some day soon we can push these carnival barkers from the stage as "voices of the black community". We need new and better advocates for us who care about more than book sales and speakers fees. Who is ready to step up to the plate?

More Weaksauce From Senate Democrats On GITMO

Greg Sargent talked to the aides for some Democratic Senators about closing GITMO and here is what they had to say.

The aides provide an interesting perspective on the fluidity of the situation, hinting at the extent of the breach that has opened up between the White House and Congressional Dems on this issue — and the extent of the work that will be required to repair that breach.

“Dems really want to work with him on this, but felt as though their flank was exposed,” is how one senior Democratic leadership aide put it. This aide said that the speech yesterday won’t do much to get Dems on board in the short term, barring “a detailed plan” from the White House on what to do with the detainees that will give cover to members of Congress to reconsider their opposition.

This aide predicts that a Department of Defense authorization bill coming up this summer is the most likely place where the issue will be revisited.

Another Democratic aide said that the burden is on Obama to move public opinion on the issue if he wants members of Congress on board. Members are relieved that the president is finally “out there with his bully pulpit,” this aide says. But she added: “Members will follow public opinion on this.”

First of all what public opinion polls are these idiots looking at? Every single one I have seen has a plurality that wants GITMO closed. But besides that what kind of cowards have we elected that they are going to follow public opinion rather than lead on this issue?! Hell I guess its a good thing Harry Reid and his minions weren't in the Senate back in 1964 when the Civil Rights Act was up for a vote. If they were I would probably still be having to eat in the "black" section of restaurants. I don't know who is behind this coward ass bullshit but I do know that Harry Reid is the ring leader and its going to be my mission in life to get that idiot out of the Senate if they don't remove him as Majority Leader. There is no excuse to have the kinds of advantages we have now in Congress and hold the White House and still run around scared of our own shadow on National Security issues. If the Democrats in the Senate are too afraid of Republicans to close GITMO and house some detainees in SuperMax prisons then its high time we got some better damned Democrats elected in their place!

The Love Them Some Liz

Steve Benen asked the folks at MediaMatters to tally up just how many times Liz Cheney had been on Tee Vee lately. You would probably not be surprised to know that it was 12 times over nine and a half days. Thats 12 times for her to defend her daddy's torture program without having any direct knowledge of what happened. What a fucking joke our media is.