Obama: September 2009 Archives

President Obama could teach Tyra Banks a thing or two about posing for hours on end and still delivering a consistent smile.

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama hosted a reception at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last week. The White House put 135 photos up of the couple with foreign dignitaries on the official State Department’s Flickr account and Obama has exactly the same smile in every single shot, and there is video to prove it!

More amazing pictures after the jump.

It's all here: the 'race card card,' racial redbaiting, tokenism ('blackwashing'), health care as reparations, post-racial political kabuki -- even an admission that the Colbert Report has no Black writers and a reference to the Cracker Barrel.

Rikyrah at Jack & Jill Politics had this to say, concerning this video:

DAYUUUMMMMMMM

and I would agree.

And by the way, Glenn Beck is still terrible and has not been stopped.

Everyone has lost something this year - a job, income, medical coverage, a raise, a house - and by invoking the specter of the Soviet-style socialism every time the Left talks about healthcare, immigration, education, or the environment, the Right raises a primal fear that what little I have left will be taken away from me and given to people who haven't "earned" it.
 
It gets worse.  Because it's not just red-baiting taking place, it's race-baiting as we all know. Every Black and brown face in the United States has been successfully labeled "socialist" and in an underhanded way linked with the worst of the lazy, undeserving, free riding, lawbreaking racial stereotypes.  President Obama is either unable or unwilling to call out these racial attacks for what they are, and in the meantime the rest of the country goes about imagining that they're protecting what little they have left.  ACORN is the latest victim of these attacks - it is no coincidence that one of the largest voter registration and community organizing nonprofits in the country is being razed by dirty tricks and race baiting before the 2010 and certainly the 2012 elections.
 
But the fault lies not only with the Right, but with a complacent and disorganized Left, that I posit has also started to ask, "What's in it for me?" as the Progressive Obama we hoped we elected is replaced with the Democratic Centrist Obama we knew we elected.  We've lived through this before with the Clinton Administration, and we should know better.
 
What happened to the notion that none of us will really win anything if we don't win it together?  The Left fractures easily because too many of us have very little to hold on to - be it housing, immigration status, healthcare, civil rights, or safe and healthy communities.  This has been our perennial weakness when confronted with the kinds of illogical and reductive attacks we all are currently facing.  We're great at defending ourselves with facts and numbers, but we don't have an answer to the question, "What's in it for me?"  This is not a debate on rational terms anymore, and we can't expect the people we most want to reach, including ourselves, to respond rationally.
 
So here's what I propose: we answer the question. And fight fire with fire.

Last night David Letterman asked President Obama what he thought about Jimmy Carter's statements that perhaps a lot of the "poor and uneasy" signs and behavior seen at tea parties was rooted in racism.

"It's important to realize that I was actually black before the election," Obama pointed out. "That tells you a lot, I think, about where the country is at."

I think Barack Obama agrees with Jimmy Carter's statement, but can't say so because it would fuel even more animosity against him. If he were to say he agreed with Carter we'd probably see him forced to take his words back, just like he “could have calibrated” his words more carefully in the racially-charged controversy over the arrest of a Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates.

Although Obama's answer was pretty funny it was also kind of a diss to Jimmy Carter. What do you think?

Air America's blog has a good story on the increased hostility seen at recent political demonstrations against President Obama's reform proposals. In "Are republicans encouraging political violence" Dorsey Shaw writes about the response from Republican Senators after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi made her emotional plea to Republican leaders to help quell the "hateful and intentionally violent political rhetoric that the conservative base is currently relying on." The fear is that political rhetoric coming from some Republican policy makers may fall on "unbalanced ears" and lead to violence against President Obama.

Dorsey Shaw writes:

Minority Leader John Boehner, in an attempt to justify the vitriolic political environment, said that the American people are "scared to death that the country they grew up in is not going to be the same country their kids and grandkids get to grow up in." The fact is that, with a black family in the White House, America already seems like a different country in a bad way to too many people.

Perhaps the GOP leadership needs to take a minute and ponder our country's history of political violence and assassination and its underpinnings in hate speech not repudiated by political leaders. Should anything tragic happen, those politicians who sat back and allowed this anger boil over will be viewed as accomplices to any political violence.

You can read "Are Republicans Encouraging Political Violence" on the Air America blog.

All right, let's get this over with.

Yes, this is the first Black President of the United States calling a black musician a 'jackass' for his stunt at the VMAs.

No, this will not 'alienate Obama's base,' and yes, this should screw up your favorite talk radio host's 'Black people stick together' narrative.

Yes, there absolutely is a bad track record on addressing mental illness in our Black celebrities, but no, it's not clear that that's what's happening with Kanye.

And yes, we at RaceWire are tired of Kanye always interrupting our blog posts while claiming that he'll let us finish.

Ta-Nehisi Coates has said some stuff I really dug about the fallacy of approaching racism as though it's a solely interpersonal problem that's solvable overnight. That said, I think he's not addressing the whole picture when he says:

I think a lot of us see a racial angle in a white South Carolina congressman yelling at the President and interrupting his speech to the nation. I'm not prepared to go there. Knowing this country, it's history, and some of South Carolina's particular history, I have my suspicions. But I hate these arguments in which we try to go back and forth over a contention, that's basically unprovable.

What would have happened if Obama was white? The truth is, I don't know.

I agree with every bit of that. But, Wilson's unfortunate track record aside, the conversation about racist interpersonal frames is a cheap distraction from the real live racism at play here.

A few weeks ago, my 82-year-old grandma expressed her dismay at Glenn Beck's racist attacks against the President and asked me 'What's happening to this country?'

Since then we've watched in horror as Beck went on a crusade against Van Jones and a new book reports that death threats against Obama are four times greater than any other President in the history of the United States and up a staggering 400 percent from former President Bush.

I can't help but think the constant attacks from white political pundits on cable news are contributing to this exponential rise in danger. And while the threat is greater than ever, funding cutbacks have left the first Black president vulnerable.

Congress returns from recess tomorrow and Obama might have a major healthcare reform announcement to make and it may have a little something to do with the public option. If you don't understand what the public option is, here is one more video explaining what the showdown is all about.

Reich also has a good write up on his own personal blog that looks at the history of health care reform. Below is a snippet from "The Lessons from History on Health Care Reform"

Universal health care has bedeviled, eluded or defeated every president for the last 75 years. Franklin Roosevelt left it out of Social Security because he was afraid it would be too complicated and attract fierce resistance. Harry Truman fought like hell for it but ultimately lost. Dwight Eisenhower reshaped the public debate over it. John Kennedy was passionate about it. Lyndon Johnson scored the first and last major victory on the road toward achieving it. Richard Nixon devised the essential elements of all future designs for it. Jimmy Carter tried in vain to re-engineer it. The first George Bush toyed with it. Bill Clinton lost it and then never mentioned it again. George W. expanded it significantly, but only for retirees.

Written by Victor Goode

In the last few weeks, some of the right wing criticism of President Obama has reached a virtual crescendo. To be sure, some of his policies raise questions, and reasoned critiques have come from both right and left. But outside of this more sane debate, a new phenomenon has taken shape. It started with the “tea parties,” and then rapidly spread to the town hall meetings on health care. It has received a steady drumbeat of support from right wing talk radio, and has gotten undeserved airtime from many television news programs.

This phenomenon is the slanderous demonization of the man, rather than critique of the message. Obama is (take your pick) a Muslim, not to be trusted; a foreigner, illegally holding the office of President; a stealth leader of world domination by the UN; and simultaneously a Fascist and a Communist. More recently, as this attack shifted from health policy to his speech on education, it seems that the word chosen as the common denominator for all his evil intent, including environmental policy, is “socialist.”

But could it be that lurking slightly beneath these charges by the crazies is the issue of race? While President Clinton was assailed for his proposals on health care, he was declared to simply be wrong. Obama can’t just be wrong; he must also be the embodiment of all that is evil.

Van Jones, special adviser on green jobs to President Obama, has resigned.

The text of his statement follows:

I am resigning my post at the Council on Environmental Quality, effective today.

On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.

I have been inundated with calls - from across the political spectrum - urging me to "stay and fight."

But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future.

It has been a great honor to serve my country and my President in this capacity. I thank everyone who has offered support and encouragement. I am proud to have been able to make a contribution to the clean energy future. I will continue to do so, in the months and years ahead.

What do you think about how this went down?