Can anybody tell me what the point is of having a black president when we see troops deployed against black protesters and destroying black neighborhoods with stun grenades and tear gas?
Can’t Obama order them to stop? Isn’t he like the Commander-in-Chief or whatever?
People Who Don’t Think Race Matters In Ferguson Think Obama’s Remarks Are Racist
In the last week, right-wing blog WND published a column by Larry Klayman arguing that the president was the “Racist in chief” for siding with his “black brothers” against “‘whitey.’” Fox News’ Todd Starnes wondered why the president offered condolences to Michael Brown’s family, but didn’t offer his condolences to the cop who shot him. Daniel Greenfield at FrontPage magazine wrote that the president “tends to avoid explicitly racist rhetoric. Instead he empowers those who do.”
This is the reaction to him urging calm in Ferguson and expressing his condolences tat the death of a black teen. I’m not sure he has the political capital to actually DO something about it.
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Sick fucks.
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Could it be that identity politics — representative politics and upward mobility for certain identities — is not deeply meaningful?
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I’ll tell a joke because laughing is better than crying:
Barack Obama is a black man who spends his entire day surrounded by heavily armed cops. He’s probably absolutely terrified!
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🙂 🙂
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Like I said before, he’s an Osama is an Uncle Tom.
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Corrected: Like I said before, Osama is an Uncle Tom.
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Question: Why does Ferguson with a 70% Afro-American population have local governance which acts like the old Jim Crow South with a white, Republican mayor, white city council and an almost all (50 of 53) white police force?
Answer:
1) Missouri has felon and prior felon disenfranchisement law. If Ferguson follows the usual percentages of black incarceration rates for the US then 30% of male Afro-American potential voters can’t vote.
2) In 2013, only 6 (six!) percent of eligible Afro-American voters in Ferguson actually voted (from NYT).
Nobody seems to be mentioning it but this is the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War. Although there has been a lot of historical revisionism lately about whether it was fought about “states rights” rather than slavery, I could probably assume that most of your readers would agree with the latter reason.
Quote by Abraham Lincoln, white American President:
“What I do say is, that no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle – the sheet anchor of American republicanism.”
Quote by Barak Obama, black American President (on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, Aug. 18, 2014):
“We’ve got to make sure that we are able to distinguish between peaceful protesters who may have some legitimate grievances and maybe long-standing grievances, and those who are using this tragic death as an excuse to engage in criminal behavior,”
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NG, I have no problem with your comments. You are citing items that certainly contribute. However, if you can find it (I posted the link on another thread on this that Clarissa has), Business Week has an excellent article on Ferguson and suburban St. Louis that explains the core reason for the black population and white racist officials and police. The county is divided into 91 municipalities (one with only 13 residents) which differ on wealth and ethnicity — in other words, segregated by race and social class. Apparently, “blockl busting” is still practiced there. That’s the illegal real estate practice of, once a black family moves into a white neighborhood, scaring the neighbors so that they dump their homes and leave. Current Ferguson politicians were elected by people who no longer live there.
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Post I told you about yesterday:
http://lowercasecapital.com/2014/08/18/a-few-thoughts-on-race-america-and-our-president/
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Nice article. Same idea, though. He can’t make any statement about anything, really, without creating a massive backlash.
http://www.vox.com/2014/8/18/6031197/obama-ferguson-race-speech
“The problem is the White House no longer believes Obama can bridge divides. They believe — with good reason — that he widens them. They learned this early in his presidency, when Obama said that the police had “acted stupidly” when they arrested Harvard University professor Skip Gates on the porch of his own home. The backlash was fierce. To defuse it, Obama ended up inviting both Gates and his arresting officer for a “beer summit” at the White House.”
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There was never any hope that Obama would “bridge divides.” There is nobody capable of bridging them, and that’s a good thing. The adversarial nature of the American political system is inscribed into the constitution. People who keep saying they venerate the constitution yet blame Obama or whomever for not being bipartisan are complete idiots.
At this point, Obama is not running for reelection. Racists will hate him no matter what he says. So why not just be honest for a change?
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Oh, I totally agree. There’s nothing more self-fulfilling than ‘I can do nothing so I will do nothing’.
Hope and change my fucking ass.
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I especially dig the “it’s time to heal” speeches. Don’t tell grieving and traumatized people when its time to do anything. Especially when the trauma and grief haven’t even been recognized publicly as legitimate and important.
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Given that your second, more lucrative career starts right after you leave office, I don’t see him being honest on matters like these. Who’s going to pay $400 million dollars for an Obama Foundation, Obama Presidential Library, and the speaking fees. Being completely non-threatening to the establishment is what got him so far. He isn’t going to abandon that strategy all of a sudden.
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At this point, Obama is not running for reelection. Racists will hate him no matter what he says. So why not just be honest for a change?
Because he’s assassin bait once he leaves office. When he started running for office, presidents elected after 1997 only got Secret Service protection 10 years after leaving office.He was the first candidate in the 2008 race to pick up Secret Service protection by over a year before John McCain. He signed a law reinstating lifetime protection for ex-presidents and their current spouses. Under current law, children of presidents lose their secret service protection when they turn 16. Sasha Obama loses secret service protection in 2017. Malia is already 16.
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I’m sorry for his plight but nobody forced him to take the job. And since he freely chose to take it, I don’t think it’s too much to expect him to do it and not work only on an exit strategy.
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Clarissa, to answer your original comment
(1) There is no mention of political parties in the Constitution. In fact, Washington’s retirement speach (“Farewell Address”) talked about the dangers that political parties would create. The current Republican party dates from 1856; the formation date for the current Democratic party is arguable.
(2) The President has no control over local or state police. If you look at desegregation actions in the early 1960s, when the governor and local officials refused to enforce the Brown v. Board decision and Federal law, then President Kennedy had to activate the local National Guard, which put it under Federal control, and use it and Federal marshals to enforce the law.
Norman Rockwell did a remarkable painting of a young black girl being escorted into a white school by US marshals.
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Haver never thought this was possible in today’s USA:
there are still whites-only proms in many small towns in the American South. Yes, in 2009, the year a black man became president.
My mother heard about this shooting and was pessimistic. Said that just like antisemitism, racism isn’t going anywhere. Do you believe Xenophobia, racism, antisemitism will disappear in the new mobile multi-cultural market states? Btw, would be interested to get more explanation of what “market state” means in general. IF EU is an attempt to turn Europe into a structure somewhat like USA and its states, why need a new concept for it?
This blog also said what you did in “Empty Shells”:
Narcissism – having no true sense of self-worth they put up a false front to persuade the world, and most of all themselves, that they do have worth. They mainly do this through money, but also by putting down others to make themselves look better. Deep down they know the whole thing is a lie, which makes them all the more desperate to uphold the front.
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I promise I wasn’t plagiarizing. 🙂
“Do you believe Xenophobia, racism, antisemitism will disappear in the new mobile multi-cultural market states? Btw, would be interested to get more explanation of what “market state” means in general. ”
– I believe that the market state is our only hope to leave sexism and racism behind us for good. Capital doesn’t care about gender, race, ethnicity, religion. And we have seen the results of that already. Capital has no use for slavery or for the oppression of women, so it gets rid of both these institutions. It gradually levels down everything that doesn’t bring an immediate and massive return.
Of course, there is a downside to everything. Market state brings enormous social and economic divisions with it.
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Oi, he even says about blacks and whites: “This is why whites need to give reparations more than blacks need to receive it.”
Many things he expresses can be applied (with a few changes) to Jewish history, f.e. “I have a Jewish friend and he hates Israel”. Guess it’s how every kind of prejudice / oppression works.
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Martin Luther King said he looked forward to the day when little black children and little white children would no longer be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. And what applies to little children also applies to big presidents. There is no point, no point at all, in having a black president or a white president, because what matters is not the colour of his skin but the content of his character.
There’s a great deal of fuss being made about Ferguson, but there is something far, far more chilling than Ferguson: this Georgia officials refuse to pay medical bills of toddler hurt in SWAT raid.
That makes America the worst kind of police state. Move over, Hitler. Move over, Stalin. Obama is coming to join you on the podium.
They say it is “illegal” to pay compensation. Any country that has such laws cannot claim to be the leader of the “free” word. Any countrty that has such a culture of immunity and impunity among its police is a police state, And that such a country thinks it is qualified to act as the world’s policeman is very, very scary.
The US is trying to spread that contagion around the world, and it is far scarier than ebola.
And don’t come with bullshit about that being a state and not a federal matter. If that is allowed to happen in a country, the government of the country is responsible, If Georgia does not remove the law that makes that “illegal” from its statute book, then it should be told to toe the line or be expelled from the federation.
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– All true. As we have seen in recent year and will continue seeing more and more, the US’s project of legitimating its foreign policy as bringing democracy to other areas of the world has been put under enormous doubt. OK, this doesn’t sound English at all but I’m fresh out of many hours of speaking only Spanish. You know what I’m trying to say. So. The US will not have to reorient its foreign policy and its role in the world. We can already see this happening. And it’s not a very heartening thing because the aspiring successors are really shitty.
I deeply apologize for my sucky English today.
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Obama has nothing to do (and no authority over) with the Georgia law. Recourse is through the court system.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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