Gwaan choo barack

[mountaingal]

Re: Gwaan choo barack

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: R_C</div><div class="ubbcode-body">. And, I also find the use of Malcolm X by proxy for the purpose of calling black people who voted for him &quot;ignorant&quot; and so on, transparent and offensive. </div></div>

[Blackstar*]

Re: Gwaan choo barack

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: R_C</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><span style="font-style: italic">It's not about giving Obama a bly because of his color Dajah. He is a flawed individual, as we all are, and I certainly don't support everything that he does. As a matter of fact I happen to agree with jc on many of the issues that he raises. However, the level of vitriol that inevitably accompanies the raising of these issues is not something I share with him. And, I also find the use of Malcolm X by proxy for the purpose of calling black people who voted for him &quot;ignorant&quot; and so on, transparent and offensive.</span></div></div>Gwaan chroo, R_C. This post is 110% spot on.

[R_C]

Re: Gwaan choo barack

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Malcolm X at that time spoke plainly and truthfully when he said the black people who voted for a lesser-of-two-evils candidate were &quot;stupid and ignorant&quot; My point is that if Malcolm X thought it was true and could say it, I too can point out the obvious.</div></div>

jc, your appropriation of his words can be seen as an attempt to insulate yourself from any likelihood that you may be asked to defend <span style="font-weight: bold">your</span> use of these offensive terms to describe black people who have not voted the way you would like them to. I also find it interesting that someone who promotes the ideals of democracy would be so harsh when judging those who exercise the very right that democracy gives them. You seem to approve of the right of others to vote only as long as you approve of how they vote. (See 'Animal Farm' for further details of the contempt with which the lettered intelligentsia generally hold those they consider &quot;stupid&quot; and &quot;ignorant&quot.

You, do not have a basis for appropriating black culture for your own political ends. And even though black people excoriate each other every day, like Malcolm X did, over many issues, you, do not have a basis for using and appropriating their experiences for your ideological ends. You have no idea what it is to grow up in a British colony where, still, to this day, I have automatic second class status because of my genetic makeup. Where my parents were automatically excluded from certain jobs, schools and benefits because people who look like you didn’t like how they looked. Where people who look like me were not able to move freely in the country in which they were born solely because they were too dark. You have never been chased from hotel property in the country in which i was born, as I have been, by people who looked like me while people who look like you watched in amusement. You, jc, have not had the black immigrant experience in North America and Britain. You do not know what it is like to have to “prove” that you were not “stupid and ignorant” to white people who were demonstrably more “stupid and ignorant” than you were, simply to get ahead. You have not been a part of that..you have only read about it and been told about it. And you don’t get it. And in fairness to you, the fact is you can’t..not as a man who has privileges and status in this world given to him that I will never have, simply by an accident of birth. Black people still have to work for those privileges jc and we aren’t there yet, ……no doubt, if you are to be believed, because we are too stupid and ignorant.

And as a side note, your little “test” the other day which you triumphantly stated that none of us stupid and ignorant black people on boardlane were able to “pass” has much history behind it. You see jc, I grew up in a country (and now live in one), where white people were/are constantly “testing” us to see if we were “stupid and ignorant”. You do this kind of thing jc then misunderstand why you “have been called racist on several occasions”. You seem not to know the implication of your actions. One might even say, for want of a better term, that you were “ignorant” of the history behind them. Yes, you yourself may not have committed those acts I referred to above, but you carry the burden of your ancestors around with you, much as, we carry around the legacy of our ancestors who were slaves around with us. That, is the reality of the environment in which we operate today. That you don't understand the sensitivity of these matters is unfortunate but not uncommon amongst those who loudly and repeatedly proclaim themselves not to be racist.

In any event, I for one, have had quite enough of white people telling me that they already know what I am thinking or trying to tell me how I should be thinking.

Which leads me to:

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Of course you don't like what Malcolm X said. You think Obama will do just fine as do most people who vote for lesser-of-two evil candidates.</div></div>

Rubbish. You have absolutely no idea what I think of what Malcolm X said or whether I think Obama will do fine.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">As to the &quot;vitriol&quot; well it's just one of my shortcomings my not liking a man with all the power in the world and who uses it to go overseas and kill people for their money. Again, if you accept Obama, the lesser of two evils you accept the atrocity-filled foreign policy that he pursues EXACTLY LIKE ALL HIS WHITE PREDECESSORS. And you cannot speak badly of President Hopey Changey so you have to accept that he is ACTIVELY pursuing policies that slaughter innocent men, women and children.</div></div>

You have interpreted my reluctance, and apparently that of others, to jump to attention every time you seek a broadside against US foreign policy, that this somehow proves we are in agreement with everything that the US government does. Well jc, not everyone feels an obligation to prove anything to you. That you wish to draw any other conclusion is your problem.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">And it is as simple as Obama doing what he's already doing by waging war in violation of the law, just come out and say 'We're pulling out of Guantanamo immediately.&quot; .....Obama does not WANT to do it.He never did </div></div>


I usually don't respond to the specifics of your context free rants because I find them tiresome and not worth the effort. But let me choose this one for the moment, just for the purpose of illustrating to others on boardlane what I mean by context free.

First of all, are you genuinely unaware of the facts or are you deliberately trying to misstate them.? Do you plan, for example, to admit that Obama did in fact sign an order in January of 2009, <span style="font-style: italic">2 days after his inauguration as president</span> instructing the Secretary of Defense to halt the proceedings of the Guantanamo military commission and then <span style="text-decoration: underline">an executive order</span> to shut down the facility by the end of the year? Or acknowledge that he in fact had already identified a facility in his home state of Illinois when he did so to which the prisoners were to be relocated ? And that the Senate voted to block funding for the transfer in May of that year? And that he then issued <span style="text-decoration: underline">another order</span> for the closure of Guantanamo in December of 2009 and that in January of 2010 the Guantanamo Review Task Force agreed with him and recommended transfer of the prisoners either back to their homeland or to Illinois ? And that it was a Republican controlled Congress that effectively nullified Obama’s plans by including provisions in the Defense Authorization Bill (that funds the ongoing operations of the Defense Department) that blocked transfer of prisoners from Guantanamo ?

But what do I know jc. I’m just another ignorant black man.

[Blackstar*]

Re: Gwaan choo barack

R_C, you're my new hero.
It's a pity your well-written and thought-out posts will have no effect whatsoever.

[Gen]

Re: Gwaan choo barack

Yes RC gwaan choo bredrin bruk it down fi him line by line

everytime mi see him call people on here ignorant mi buss out a laff

[mountaingal]

Re: Gwaan choo barack

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: BlackStar</div><div class="ubbcode-body">R_C, you're my new hero.
</div></div>

u first me.

RC

[queenb]

Re: Gwaan choo barack

[Wahalla]

Re: Gwaan choo barack

unno think white yanki can stand a smart black man ?.. unno think it is only ithe right see im less dan a man ? or the left is not as guilty of rasicsm Xenopphobia and as myopic as the right ?

Waht the left and right see is only a man that does not conform to their stero types.

The metropole right may see melanin people as only lazy, social wellfare spongers and at best cheap labour... but the left see them as cannon fodder for their cause, templates to try their idealism, they want trhem to have freedom, so they can support them as blind followers.. as berift of inteligence, as three fifths human at best..(do u think it was the liberals or the conservative equvalent who put that in the US consitution?)


I think the Irish man Barry O'bama has done a good steward ship of the post of POTUS... He has begun to run down troop deployments in Afpac, Iraq, he has put in place a heath service, he has tried to stabilise an overspending economy while trying not to cut the balls off the poor... The president of the US is limited to what he can do by the instruments of constitution, legislature and the judicary... He is probalby by far the smartest president that the US has had since Wilson... (yeah wilsion was a racist, but he was very smart!)

What do I know I am stupid, non yanki thus my opnion of a yanki is unimportant.

[remo]

Re: Gwaan choo barack

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">.
I am a white man who has been called racist on several occasions and while I regard those charges as ludicrous I am aware that because I am white the race card will be used against me when those whom I oppose run out of factual arguments .
. </div></div>

Once again..Yuh full a sh!!!..........I and others have called you a racist not because you are white and you bloddy well know this..........If it looks like a duck quaks like a duck then maybe it's a freeking duck.....

[RichD]

Re: Gwaan choo barack

[johnnycakes]

Re: Gwaan choo barack

Remo,
R_C,
All others who are pulling the race card:

Save your breath.
Deal with the issues instead of avoiding them by attacking me.

If I am a racist then you're in a lot more trouble than you think.

I was reading Malcolm and other liberation writers before many of you were born.
Try and find any racist writings in the wooks of Noam Chomsky or Edward Herman or any of the writers and philosophers whomI follow.
Find anything racist in any of Fidel's speeches or writings.
Find anything racist in the words of Christopher Hitchens or Ray Kurzweil all of whom I follow, strive to emulate.

I criticize Obama because he leads and follows the atrocity-ridden U.S foreign policy and the war on world socialism. I criticize those who don't.

And forget that cutesy &quot; Oh he's not perfect but he's better than xxxxxxxxx&quot;
Well pardon me but that is BS of the first order. Today the Afghanis reported that a bombing raid killed a family of men, women and children, all non-combatants (as if it matters). The president is the commander-in-chief and bears the responsibility for those deaths as he does all the deaths in places were he is sending troops.

&quot;He's not perfect&quot;

Think about just how stupid that statement is.

Not PERFECT?

If that were your family that got a bomb dropped on them because the president of the United States doesn't like how you, as a people, think, would he be just &quot;not perfect&quot; ?

And the notion that the president could not get out of his numerous wars because congress wouldn't approve? REAL stupid.

The presidents go to war without feeling the need for Congressional approval. They can also stop the wars without Congressional approval.

Stop making excuses for the black guy.

Stop pretending you don't know that he was given to us to vote for by the bigwigs in the Democrat Party because he has the necessary amorality and lack of principles needed to run the American Empire.

Nice guys don't go blowing up families for their/our oil.


Lastly, it is the rare exception amongst the people who have the widest disagreements with me to ever read what I post or recommend to back up what I claim is true.

People on the far right politically and surprisingly the middle-of-the-roaders (liberals) do not want their presupposed truths to be challenged.
Those who are both deeply religious fundamentalists and far right politically are just about untouchable by logical arguments. Their thinking processes shut down when confronted by obvious truths that run counter to what they already believe.

Those who still unabashedly and openly support Obama are in a somewhat similar category : a lesser form of denial.

WE on the left specialize in the criticism and analysis of the news that most people watch and are disinformed by. We know what you know. We read what you read, watch and listen to. WE have both sides of the story; you have half.

You, on the other hand, do not read and know what we know: that a preponderance of what you get for info is unreliable at best.

You can go on all day and call me a racist for saying that people do still support Obama because of his skin color but you'd be better off reading ZNET to get the picture and story the networks and cable will not give you and deal with facts instead of the fiction you choose to believe.

Again, the very rare exception amongst my opponents will bother with fact-checking and for the very obvious reason.

Then there's this killer video that no believer can watch in its entirety:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo82sgrSAYg

[Wendy]

Re: Gwaan choo barack

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: remo</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">.
I am a white man who has been called racist on several occasions and while I regard those charges as ludicrous I am aware that because I am white the race card will be used against me when those whom I oppose run out of factual arguments .
. </div></div>

Once again..Yuh full a sh!!!..........I and others have called you a racist not because you are white and you bloddy well know this..........If it looks like a duck quaks like a duck then maybe it's a freeking duck..... </div></div>

Talk di ting straight remo


R_C.... .if I wore hats I would tip them all to you, But here's somting fi yuh ===&gt;&gt;
But let me be the first to admit that I have longed stopped reading JC posts. However, I find that your rebuttal arguments echo a lot of sentiments most people have regarding his approach to those in opposition of his view point.

[johnnycakes]

Re: Gwaan choo barack

Thank you WeNdY,

There's almost nothing better than having ones theories and beliefs confirmed

&quot;But let me be the first to admit that I have longed stopped reading JC posts.&quot;

I have said that willful ignorance is a common character trait of those with a little knowledge.

You cannot read my posts. You never have read any of the articles that I have linked have you?

You will only accept what you already think you know and will not allow anything else past the closed doors to your mind.

Try reading everything you can on a subject, even when you don't like how the story is turning out.


Here's one of the least critical articles I have ever read on Obama at ZNET.
Your cognitive dissonance will only be tickled here.

His Home is Not My Home
By Carl Bloice

Source: The Black CommentatorMonday, May 30, 2011
Change Text Size a- | A+
Carl Bloice's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace


Maybe it depends on where home is. It's not where I am. I'm to the left of Obama. Quite a bit. When Obama refers to &quot;my friends on the left&quot; he's telling us two things: he has some and that's not where he's at. I knew it all along and that still didn't stop me from welling up when he made that first speech to his party's convention. I was reminded of the source of that emotion the other night watching the PBS documentary on the Freedom Riders when Robert Kennedy said someday there would be a black president. None of us thought it would happen so soon. When it did most of us were pleased and proud of the brother, in a way that I think a lot of white people have trouble relating to.

Home? The place we should be talking about, I think, is the place he himself described in the campaign, the place he said he wanted to take the country when he asked for our votes and our money. He promised &quot;change&quot; and we crossed our fingers. He said he would end the foreign wars and we pulled the lever by his name. He said he would attack poverty and bring relief from some of the burdens working people increasingly have to bear and we thought: we’ll hold you to it.

Now I'm not saying he hasn't accomplished anything. Some positive things have happened since he moved into the White House. And I do think he is trying to find a way out of Afghanistan. And, yes he's been stymied at every turn by members of the opposition party that shape their policies around making him fail, and some members of his own party that lend them a helping hand. And they are egged on by the legions of the reactionary and racist right. And these people are a real danger.

Yet we are very disappointed.

As others have said, most of us ardent about to add to the undermining of the Obama presidency and most likely we are going to pull that same lever again. But I think there is something at work here that is very fundamental and it relates to the Administration's response to our everyday lives and the future of the country.

On June 3, 2004, over two years before the economic crisis erupted and two years before Obama was elected, Bill Moyers had this to say:

There's no question about it: The corporate conservatives and their allies in the political and religious right are achieving a vast transformation of American life that only they understand because they are its advocates, its architects, and its beneficiaries. In creating the greatest economic inequality in the advanced world, they have saddled our nation, our states, and our cities and counties with structural deficits that will last until our children's children are ready for retirement, and they are systematically stripping government of all its functions except rewarding the rich and waging war.

And, he went on:

Let's face the reality: If ripping off the public trust; if distributing tax breaks to the wealthy at the expense of the poor; if driving the country into deficits deliberately to starve social benefits; if requiring states to balance their budgets on the backs of the poor; if squeezing the wages of workers until the labor force resembles a nation of serfs - if this isn't class war, what is?

The attack on public worker unions, the drive to eviscerate or destroy Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, the attack on teachers and the defunding of public education, the slashing of social welfare programs, the home foreclosure crisis, are not merely interconnected, they are part of one project.

Right now the lives of millions of people are being rendered increasingly precarious. All working people are feeling it and African Americans are being hit extra hard. On top of historic racism - and largely because of it - we have to put up to with a catastrophic rate of joblessness, especially for our young people, and a disproportionate share of home foreclosures. The schools that are crumbling the fastest and facing unacceptable teacher layoffs are in our neighborhoods.

I never expected the President to choose liberal and progressive economists to try and rescue the economy when the crisis hit full force. He chose some of the movers and shakers of the finance industry and their academic fellow travelers (some of the same people that helped get us into this mess). It wasn't just because the hedge fund people contributed so much to his campaign; they are competent and besides they know where the bodies are buried.

The problem is that the President is now ignoring the wise counsel of those who are saying clearly and forcefully that this &quot;deficit reduction&quot; business is a shuck. This is the &quot;Shock Doctrine&quot; that Naomi Klein spelled out in her book. The aim of the austerity drive in this country and in most of the advanced capitalist world - think of Greece, Ireland, Portugal - is to emerge from the present economic crisis with the system intact and the assets of the rich and powerful secure. Right now these shape the policies of both of the two major political parties, the bulk of the major mass media and business groups.

It's reported that President Obama got no applause the other night when he told the audience at a Washington's Capital Hilton Hotel fundraiser: &quot;Let me tell you, we as Democrats, we as progressives, need to be just as concerned about the debt as anybody else. Because that's how we will be able to move our vision forward - investing in education, investing in infrastructure, investing in clean energy, if we've got a government that lives within its means. So we've got to be concerned about that.&quot;

Though the reports are still murky, it seems the President said pretty much the same thing when he met with members of the Congressional Black Caucus earlier this month and he scarcely got any amens there either.

These days when I hear anyone in official Washington say something about investing in education, infrastructure or clean energy, I reach for my computer. They aren't talking about investing in anything. They're too busy arguing about how much less to spend, how much to sock it to working people and poor while the banks are raking it in and paying out obscene bonuses big time. The tragedy here is that the Obama administration has effectively ruled out any more overt economic stimulus. What talk there is about spending on infrastructure offers no specific targets or budget allocations. The result is that there is no long-term employment program or meaningful steps to deal with the plight of the jobless today.

And whatever happened to green jobs?

&quot;Successful job creation is the key to deficit reduction over the medium term,&quot; AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said recently. &quot;We must commit to the sizeable and sustained level of public investment needed to rebuild our crumbling roads, bridges and schools and prepare our country for the next generation. From technology to education, investments today will make responsible fiscal balance achievable and - most important - create good jobs for America's workers and help us win the future.&quot; Obama used to talk that way but no more; now the cart has been moved to front of the horse.

&quot;Today's budget debate is being framed as if the President's proposal is the `left' and the Republican proposal is the `right,' Richard Eskow, a senior fellow with The Campaign for America's Future wrote the other day. &quot;Actually, the President's offering a center-right plan and the GOP's offering a radical-right plan. The budget plan that most closely reflects public opinion is the one offered by the House Progressive Caucus, and that's being dismissed as coming from the 'loony left' - even though polls show it represents the real 'center' of public opinion.&quot;

What should progressives do now? Seems to me we have little choice but to draw a line in the sand of our own. The budget proposals of the Black Congressional Caucus and the Progressive Congressional Caucus's &quot;People's Budget&quot; should become our rallying point. We should resist with all the creative energy we can muster, and quite independently, any attempts to undermine Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, insist on an end the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, and for a turn away from the &quot;deficit reduction&quot; mania toward real action to create jobs and aid the unemployed.

And I agree with what Congressmember Barbara Lee said last November: &quot;We're going to have to develop our own ways of communicating the truth to the America people that means grassroots organizing, town halls, and using social media networks. We're going to have to be 21st Century communicators to turn it around and to hit each and every front simultaneously. Because the fact is that money now rules in campaigns and those with money can distort the facts, tell lies, and it's hard to get a consistent platform to refute them.&quot;

One of the lessons of the Freedom Rider story is that administrations can change (not in the &quot;make me do it&quot; sense. Obama's no FDR.). The Kennedys were not happy about the activity of the young riders; they tried to get the project called off. But in the end the dedication and tenacity of the protestors won out. Segregation in interstate travel was banned. If, like them, we refuse to roll over or be quiet, if we insist that the needs and aspirations of Main Street, the ghetto and the barrio get through to the corridors of power, maybe, just maybe, the President will come back home. That is to the place he said he was when change was promised and the saga began.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union. He is one of the moderators of Portside.

Comment On This ZNet Article See All Comments (1)


Dreaming
By Shepherd, Lester at May 31, 2011 01:33 AM

Young man. Your photo says you are way behind me in age but I must tell you that you are dreaming. Obama is going to do nothing to help the under privileged. Cynthia McKinney has called it correctly and you should follow. So should John Lewis, Bill Fletcher, Hutchison Oprah and all the black elites.
Reply this comment

[RichD]

Re: Gwaan choo barack

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Try reading everything you can on a subject, even when you don't like how the story is turning out.
</div></div>

do you?

and then discount everything that doesn't agree with your view.

[RichD]

Re: Gwaan choo barack

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Thank you WeNdY,

There's almost nothing better than having ones theories and beliefs confirmed

&quot;But let me be the first to admit that I have longed stopped reading JC posts.&quot;

I have said that willful ignorance is a common character trait of those with a little knowledge.

You cannot read my posts. You never have read any of the articles that I have linked have you?

You will only accept what you already think you know and will not allow anything else past the closed doors to your mind.

Try reading everything you can on a subject, even when you don't like how the story is turning out.


Here's one of the least critical articles I have ever read on Obama at ZNET.
Your cognitive dissonance will only be tickled here.

His Home is Not My Home
By Carl Bloice

Source: The Black CommentatorMonday, May 30, 2011
Change Text Size a- | A+
Carl Bloice's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace


Maybe it depends on where home is. It's not where I am. I'm to the left of Obama. Quite a bit. When Obama refers to &quot;my friends on the left&quot; he's telling us two things: he has some and that's not where he's at. I knew it all along and that still didn't stop me from welling up when he made that first speech to his party's convention. I was reminded of the source of that emotion the other night watching the PBS documentary on the Freedom Riders when Robert Kennedy said someday there would be a black president. None of us thought it would happen so soon. When it did most of us were pleased and proud of the brother, in a way that I think a lot of white people have trouble relating to.

Home? The place we should be talking about, I think, is the place he himself described in the campaign, the place he said he wanted to take the country when he asked for our votes and our money. He promised &quot;change&quot; and we crossed our fingers. He said he would end the foreign wars and we pulled the lever by his name. He said he would attack poverty and bring relief from some of the burdens working people increasingly have to bear and we thought: we’ll hold you to it.

Now I'm not saying he hasn't accomplished anything. Some positive things have happened since he moved into the White House. And I do think he is trying to find a way out of Afghanistan. And, yes he's been stymied at every turn by members of the opposition party that shape their policies around making him fail, and some members of his own party that lend them a helping hand. And they are egged on by the legions of the reactionary and racist right. And these people are a real danger.

Yet we are very disappointed.

As others have said, most of us ardent about to add to the undermining of the Obama presidency and most likely we are going to pull that same lever again. But I think there is something at work here that is very fundamental and it relates to the Administration's response to our everyday lives and the future of the country.

On June 3, 2004, over two years before the economic crisis erupted and two years before Obama was elected, Bill Moyers had this to say:

There's no question about it: The corporate conservatives and their allies in the political and religious right are achieving a vast transformation of American life that only they understand because they are its advocates, its architects, and its beneficiaries. In creating the greatest economic inequality in the advanced world, they have saddled our nation, our states, and our cities and counties with structural deficits that will last until our children's children are ready for retirement, and they are systematically stripping government of all its functions except rewarding the rich and waging war.

And, he went on:

Let's face the reality: If ripping off the public trust; if distributing tax breaks to the wealthy at the expense of the poor; if driving the country into deficits deliberately to starve social benefits; if requiring states to balance their budgets on the backs of the poor; if squeezing the wages of workers until the labor force resembles a nation of serfs - if this isn't class war, what is?

The attack on public worker unions, the drive to eviscerate or destroy Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, the attack on teachers and the defunding of public education, the slashing of social welfare programs, the home foreclosure crisis, are not merely interconnected, they are part of one project.

Right now the lives of millions of people are being rendered increasingly precarious. All working people are feeling it and African Americans are being hit extra hard. On top of historic racism - and largely because of it - we have to put up to with a catastrophic rate of joblessness, especially for our young people, and a disproportionate share of home foreclosures. The schools that are crumbling the fastest and facing unacceptable teacher layoffs are in our neighborhoods.

I never expected the President to choose liberal and progressive economists to try and rescue the economy when the crisis hit full force. He chose some of the movers and shakers of the finance industry and their academic fellow travelers (some of the same people that helped get us into this mess). It wasn't just because the hedge fund people contributed so much to his campaign; they are competent and besides they know where the bodies are buried.

The problem is that the President is now ignoring the wise counsel of those who are saying clearly and forcefully that this &quot;deficit reduction&quot; business is a shuck. This is the &quot;Shock Doctrine&quot; that Naomi Klein spelled out in her book. The aim of the austerity drive in this country and in most of the advanced capitalist world - think of Greece, Ireland, Portugal - is to emerge from the present economic crisis with the system intact and the assets of the rich and powerful secure. Right now these shape the policies of both of the two major political parties, the bulk of the major mass media and business groups.

It's reported that President Obama got no applause the other night when he told the audience at a Washington's Capital Hilton Hotel fundraiser: &quot;Let me tell you, we as Democrats, we as progressives, need to be just as concerned about the debt as anybody else. Because that's how we will be able to move our vision forward - investing in education, investing in infrastructure, investing in clean energy, if we've got a government that lives within its means. So we've got to be concerned about that.&quot;

Though the reports are still murky, it seems the President said pretty much the same thing when he met with members of the Congressional Black Caucus earlier this month and he scarcely got any amens there either.

These days when I hear anyone in official Washington say something about investing in education, infrastructure or clean energy, I reach for my computer. They aren't talking about investing in anything. They're too busy arguing about how much less to spend, how much to sock it to working people and poor while the banks are raking it in and paying out obscene bonuses big time. The tragedy here is that the Obama administration has effectively ruled out any more overt economic stimulus. What talk there is about spending on infrastructure offers no specific targets or budget allocations. The result is that there is no long-term employment program or meaningful steps to deal with the plight of the jobless today.

And whatever happened to green jobs?

&quot;Successful job creation is the key to deficit reduction over the medium term,&quot; AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said recently. &quot;We must commit to the sizeable and sustained level of public investment needed to rebuild our crumbling roads, bridges and schools and prepare our country for the next generation. From technology to education, investments today will make responsible fiscal balance achievable and - most important - create good jobs for America's workers and help us win the future.&quot; Obama used to talk that way but no more; now the cart has been moved to front of the horse.

&quot;Today's budget debate is being framed as if the President's proposal is the `left' and the Republican proposal is the `right,' Richard Eskow, a senior fellow with The Campaign for America's Future wrote the other day. &quot;Actually, the President's offering a center-right plan and the GOP's offering a radical-right plan. The budget plan that most closely reflects public opinion is the one offered by the House Progressive Caucus, and that's being dismissed as coming from the 'loony left' - even though polls show it represents the real 'center' of public opinion.&quot;

What should progressives do now? Seems to me we have little choice but to draw a line in the sand of our own. The budget proposals of the Black Congressional Caucus and the Progressive Congressional Caucus's &quot;People's Budget&quot; should become our rallying point. We should resist with all the creative energy we can muster, and quite independently, any attempts to undermine Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, insist on an end the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, and for a turn away from the &quot;deficit reduction&quot; mania toward real action to create jobs and aid the unemployed.

And I agree with what Congressmember Barbara Lee said last November: &quot;We're going to have to develop our own ways of communicating the truth to the America people that means grassroots organizing, town halls, and using social media networks. We're going to have to be 21st Century communicators to turn it around and to hit each and every front simultaneously. Because the fact is that money now rules in campaigns and those with money can distort the facts, tell lies, and it's hard to get a consistent platform to refute them.&quot;

One of the lessons of the Freedom Rider story is that administrations can change (not in the &quot;make me do it&quot; sense. Obama's no FDR.). The Kennedys were not happy about the activity of the young riders; they tried to get the project called off. But in the end the dedication and tenacity of the protestors won out. Segregation in interstate travel was banned. If, like them, we refuse to roll over or be quiet, if we insist that the needs and aspirations of Main Street, the ghetto and the barrio get through to the corridors of power, maybe, just maybe, the President will come back home. That is to the place he said he was when change was promised and the saga began.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union. He is one of the moderators of Portside.

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Dreaming
By Shepherd, Lester at May 31, 2011 01:33 AM

Young man. Your photo says you are way behind me in age but I must tell you that you are dreaming. Obama is going to do nothing to help the under privileged. Cynthia McKinney has called it correctly and you should follow. So should John Lewis, Bill Fletcher, Hutchison Oprah and all the black elites.
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simplistic analysis