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Sister Sarah She Ain't

By Mary C. Curtis | TheRoot.com

Why Sarah Palin is getting no love from black women.

Oct. 29, 2008--An evening at the Urban League of Central Carolinas was advertised as a discussion of the black women's agenda with a multigenerational panel. And it followed the program, until the topic turned to Sarah Palin.

That's when it got really interesting.

You think Barack Obama exposed a racial divide this election season? Bring up the Republican vice presidential nominee and stand back. While some white women admire the self-styled "hockey mom," and believe that, "she's just like me," you will not get that reaction from many black women.

Of course, my poll isn't scientific and no group is monolithic. But please, trust me. This reaction is from a usually calm person who nonetheless suppresses the urge to scream whenever Palin appears onscreen. Even Tina Fey's Saturday Night Live impression makes me skittish.

I wouldn't call it "Palin derangement syndrome," but I still find myself wondering, "What gives?"

One woman on the panel, a multilingual business analyst, who is a wife and mom, drew nods when she said of Palin: "I don't see her as a qualified person to run the country." "She's not a Republican Hillary," she said.

Then she went a step further, using Palin as Exhibit A to explain why black feminists and white feminists haven't seen eye to eye for a while.

Many black women who have had to work extra hours to be seen as barely competent by less-qualified peers grit their teeth when a short-term Alaska governor, thrown into the spotlight, retains her luster after blown TV interviews and winks to the camera. She brags about her lack of travel and experience and gets away with it. She is praised for not falling down during her debate with Joe Biden, even after she pretty much announced that she won't be answering the moderator's questions.

Even The New York Times published an article on Palin and the dudes who love her.

It's just another reminder of how black women, even those who have done everything we're supposed to, are rendered invisible. What do we have to do to be considered a role model? Shoot a moose?

Obama Infomercial with Complete Text (Video)

Palin faces ethics complaint over kids' travel

New complaint charges VP hopeful of charging state for kids' travel

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A new ethics complaint has been filed against Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, accusing the Alaska governor of abusing her power by charging the state when her children traveled with her.

The complaint alleges that the Republican vice presidential nominee used her official position as governor for personal gain. It follows a report by The Associated Press last week that Palin charged the state more than $21,000 for her three daughters' commercial flights, including events where they weren't invited, and later ordered their expense forms amended to specify official state business.

In some cases, Palin also has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls.

The complaint released Wednesday says Palin charged the travel costs for events her children were not invited to and where they served in no legitimate state purpose or business.

"Governor Palin intentionally secured unwarranted benefits for family members, improperly used state property to benefit her personal and financial interests, and illegally altered documents that were the subject of a Public Records request," the complaint states.

Earlier this month, a legislative report found Palin violated state ethics laws when she fired her public safety commissioner.

The latest complaint was filed by Frank Gwartney, an Anchorage Democrat who supports Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama. Gwartney said he is fed up with "all the corruption" among Alaska's elected officials, including Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who was convicted this week on federal corruption charges.

"Sarah ran on this very self righteous campaign on ethics and anti-corruption," Gwartney told the AP. "She is no different from the others.

Palin's attorney, Thomas Van Flein, said he was not aware of the complaint and could not comment.

Messages left with the attorney general's and Palins offices were not immediately returned.

Responding to the travel issue, Palin told Fox News last week that every Alaska governor has traveled with family when it's a first family function.

"And it's always been charged to the state," she said. "That's part of the job."

The state already is reviewing nearly $17,000 in per diem payments to Palin for 312 nights she slept at her home in Wasilla, about an hour's drive from her satellite office in Anchorage.

The ethics complaint was first reported by CBS News.

What Thurgood Marshall would think of Obama

Yvonne R. Davis | 

A crowd of more than 1,000 of African America's most successful packed inside the Big Apple's Sheraton Tower Hotel ballroom this week. They buzzed with excitement at the annual Thurgood Marshall College Fund's 21st Anniversary Awards Dinner. Despite a tough economy, the College Fund achieved a financial milestone with attracting over $10-million dollars in donations helping students attend public Historically Black Colleges and Universities on scholarship.

Thurgood Marshall, the man who bears the name of the scholarship fund, was the first African American to be named to the U.S. Supreme Court Bench in 1967. If Justice Marshall were alive today what would he think? 

Sitting at the head table between the gala's emcee actor Mekhi Phifer and college fund CEO and President Dwayne Ashley, Marshall delights to see the lovely autumn colored actress Nia Long present.  He nods his head acknowledging Jim Clifton, chairman and CEO of Gallup who said when his organization polled white Americans 40 years ago and asked if they would vote for an African American for President over 60 percent said no, and now today only 4 percent would not. Justice Marshall is pleased to hear Clifton announce his family is donating $500,000. With total appreciation, a big grin spreads across his face when Bill Gates' Microsoft pitches in an additional $6 million.

At the dinner table and at every event where black folks reign these days, Justice Marshall's table talk turns to the 2008 election. Listening to the chatter, Marshall recalls his time as a young lawyer who argued and won the landmark civil rights Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954. Suddenly he is overwhelmed with emotion. His eyes fill to the brim with tears that gently stream down his aged and worn face. A cathartic moment for him, Marshall recognizes perhaps for the first time, the toil for justice and fight for equality was not in vain.

Proud as a papa, Justice Marshall knows he paved the way for another young lawyer to follow him to become not just a U.S. Senator, but be on the brink of world history as the first African American President of the United States of America. With great sentiment and barely able to speak, he opens his mouth. For a moment, it seems the room is hushed waiting for him to say something about Barack Obama. He sighs, pauses and barely whispers something he has said before, "Sometimes history takes things into its own hands." With tears flowing by everyone they agree. R&B singer Tony Rich says, "Justice Marshall now is the time."

With days away to the election, this is perhaps the most important moment for the entire African Diaspora. Black folks in America are on the greatest emotional roller coaster ride of their entire lives. They won't be able to do what Terry McMillan wrote "Exhale," until the day after the election. A moment Dr. King dreamed of, the adrenalin builds.

Emotions are high and tolerance is very low in the black community for any ignorance over a few who say they are not voting. Some give excuses such as, "I ain't voting because something might happen to Barack." According to the New York Times, there is a little fear that some black voters feel Obama would be blamed by whites for the financial mess which might get worse under his watch.

Acceptance is even lower for African American Republicans, not because they support John McCain, but because those who support McCain have not decried the overt racist tactics by the Republican National Committee and state party organizations around the country. African Americans in Republican leadership sit quietly making excuses and self-righteous proclamations about Obama's "relationships."

Black leaders in the Republican Party, such as Michael Steele and former Pittsburgh Steelers Super Bowl Champ Lynn Swan both putting their political clout on the line will hopefully be appreciated with more than a pat on the back. After the election, will they be tapped along with Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana to be a part of rebuilding a new Republican leadership that is inclusive, respectful and civil? The truth is, the party has rolled back more than a quarter of a century. There will be a free-for-all fight for who should take charge. No black man or woman will be throwin' any punches.

Despite this sidebar, the focus now for black people in America is to show the power they truly have at the polls making this the greatest voter turnout in black history.  Thurgood Marshall once asked, "What is the quality of your intent?" The answer is by voting on November 4.

Yvonne R. Davis is a former national co-chair for African Americans for Bush and a former appointee in the Bush Administration.

What Obama really said in 2001

Written by Joan Walsh of Salon, Inc.

John McCain hit a new low Monday with his claim about a suddenly "revealed" interview with Barack Obama from 2001 proving that Obama favors "redistributive change" and that Obama is a "redistributor" (sorry, but that's not going to make it onto a bumper sticker). Did McCain or anyone in his campaign listen to the interview? Did Matt Drudge before linking to it? Open Salon's Kris Broughton broke it down in all its complexity earlier today, and Tom Schaller had it here.

Obama's interview with Chicago's WBEZ was specifically about the civil rights movement, and the best ways to remedy the conditions of black people after slavery and Jim Crow. When Obama talks about "redistributive change," it's in the context of what needed to be done for Americans who were slaves, who owned nothing; in fact, they were owned. Anyone who's honest knows that the legacy of African-American family poverty can be traced back to slavery and Jim Crow. Obama is not ranting wildly about income distribution in the interview; he's talking calmly and thoughtfully about the array of strategies needed to erase that legacy.

The greatest irony is that Obama sounds conservative themes in the interview. He says the civil rights movement relied too much on the courts, and not enough on legislation, community organizing and political will. This is exactly what conservatives have said about the movements of the 1960s -- that they relied too much on judges, rather than the legislative system. But what's really remarkable about the interview is listening to Obama talk with nuance and insight and compassion about issues that have moral, legal and political ramifications. Listen to it, and imagine having a president who talks this way. I can't wait for next Tuesday.

Devastating New Ad Hits McCain on Bush Economics

By Ari Melber

The only thing more damaging to John McCain than Keating Economics is Bush Economics.

That's the idea behind a devastating new attack ad that the DNC launched Sunday. To kick off the last full week before the election, Democrats are stressing McCain's firm support for Bush's economic policies with a web ad featuring a fleet of senior McCain surrogates. Some took to the TV studios to tout McCain's Bush-like approach to taxes and growth, while others are shown, cornered and empty-handed, when asked to name a single economic issue on which McCain disagrees with the President. "McCain's own surrogates have repeatedly said that John McCain would continue President Bush's economic policies," explains the DNC, so the video just brought all the documentary footage together in one spot.

The ad's ending is priceless, as Gov. Mark Sanford flails and fails to offer a single contrast between McCain and Bush on the economy. Briefly and meekly, he floats NAFTA, but then concedes that example is more about "consistency." You almost feel for him, unless you recall that he only looks bad because he is awkwardly, consciously dissembling without a scrap of evidence. Just like his candidate.

Palin's 'going rogue,' McCain aide says

From Dana Bash, Peter Hamby and John King CNN

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (CNN) -- With 10 days until Election Day, long-brewing tensions between GOP vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin and key aides to Sen. John McCain have become so intense, they are spilling out in public, sources say.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin speaks at a rally in Sioux City, Iowa, on Saturday.

Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN that they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin "going rogue."

A Palin associate, however, said the candidate is simply trying to "bust free" of what she believes was a damaging and mismanaged roll-out.

McCain sources say Palin has gone off-message several times, and they privately wonder whether the incidents were deliberate. They cited an instance in which she labeled robocalls -- recorded messages often used to attack a candidate's opponent -- "irritating" even as the campaign defended their use. Also, they pointed to her telling reporters she disagreed with the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan.

A second McCain source says she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.

"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," said this McCain adviser. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.

"Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."

A Palin associate defended her, saying that she is "not good at process questions" and that her comments on Michigan and the robocalls were answers to process questions.

McCain Communications Director Gave Reporters Incendiary Version Of "Carved B" Story Before Facts Were Known

 

By Greg Sargent of Talking Points Memo

John McCain's Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established -- and even told reporters outright that the "B" carved into the victim's cheek stood for "Barack," according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson."

Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the "B" stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax.

The KDKA reporter had called McCain's campaign office for details after seeing the story -- sans details -- teased on Drudge.

The McCain spokesperson's claims -- which came in the midst of extraordinary and heated conversations late yesterday between the McCain campaign, local TV stations, and the Obama camp, as the early version of the story rocketed around the political world -- is significant because it reveals a McCain official pushing a version of the story that was far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time.

The claims to KDKA from the McCain campaign were included in an early story that ran late yesterday on KDKA's Web site. The paragraphs containing these assertions were quickly removed from the story after the Obama campaign privately complained that KDKA was letting the McCain campaign spin a racially-charged version of the story before the facts had been established, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

The story with the removed grafs is still right here. We preserved the three missing grafs from yesterday:

A source familiar with what happened yesterday confirmed that the unnamed spokesperson was communications director Peter Feldman. Feldman was also quoted yesterday making virtually identical assertions on the Web site of another local TV station, WPXI. But those quotes, which we also preserved here, are also no longer available on WPXI's site, for reasons that are unclear.

This is problematic because the McCain campaign doesn't want to have been perceived as pushing an incendiary story that not only turned out to be a hoax but which police officials said today risked blowing up into a "national incident" and has local police preparing to file charges against the hoaxster.

There's no evidence that anyone from McCain national headquarters put out a version of events like this.

After the story appeared on KDKA's site and this and other pieces in the local press started flying around the political world, an Obama spokesperson in the state angrily insisted to KDKA that it was irresponsible for the station to air the McCain spokesperson's incendiary version of events before the facts were fully known, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

After that, KDKA went back to McCain's Pennsylvania spokesperson, Feldman, and asked if he stood by the story as he'd earlier told it, but he started backing off the story, a source familiar with the talks says. That prompted KDKA to remove the grafs.

Feldman couldn't immediately be reached, and a McCain HQ spokesperson declined to comment.

'Mad Men' of the GOP

By Chris Deis | TheRoot.com

What Republicans have in common with 1960s pitchmen.

Actor Jon Hamm as the cool and triumpant Donald Draper on AMC's "Mad Men."

Oct. 24, 2008--Obama supporters are fond of threatening to move to Canada if their candidate loses. Republicans looking for a similar retreat, if things don't go their way, can find a fitting escape in Mad Men.

The brilliant AMC cable series, whose season finale airs Sunday, portrays a fantasy world, a Leave it to Beaver, Norman Rockwell-inspired vision of a trusting, safe, lily-white, sophisticated and highly stylized Mayberry. It conjures up a 1950s-era America where yards were always manicured, wives and children were obedient and where everyone knew their place.

It is a place where straight white men, the corporate middle and upper class, are at the center of all things.

With its "regular Joes" from "Main Street" and its focus on "real America," the GOP has channeled nostalgia and a yearning for "the good old days" into a modern-day Mad Men narrative that serves as the driving force of its campaign. Even Sarah Palin, the party's supposed icon of advancement, is a living anachronism with her performance of a type of rural blackface, replete with affected folksy eye winks and exaggerated "you betchas." For the Republican base, Sarah Palin is a conservative feminist cast as a role model par excellence for the culture wars.

The pitchmen of Mad Men's Manhattan-based advertising agency  sell the good life. In turn, they are struggling to live it. The central characters massage the truth, manufacture desires and color how the American consumer perceives reality.

The show's protagonist, Donald Draper, is a junior partner and rising star in the firm. Draper and his cohorts live as princes: afternoon martinis, doting secretaries and mistresses, and dutiful and loyal wives. African Americans are nearly invisible and mostly silent in their roles as elevator operators, maintenance workers, house cleaners, nannies or waiters.

Steal Back Your Vote!

By John Amato Wednesday Oct 22, 2008 6:30am                    

         

Greg Palast's book: Armed Madhouse is a good read.

Intimidation is a big part of Republican strategy to keep turn out low. Latinos should band together and show up to vote in groups of at least four so that they won't be intimidated when someone tries to deny them the right to legally vote. Republicans are deathly afraid of the Latino influence in elections ever since Sennsenbrenner tried to call them all felons and the radical right shot down any attempt to get an immigration deal. Why do you think Rove and Bush tried to pass that legislation?

Greg and Robert Kennedy, Jr. have a new article out in Rolling Stone called: Block The Vote:

This November, what happened to Maez will happen to hundreds of thousands of voters across the country. In state after state, Republican operatives — the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics — are wielding new federal legislation to systematically disenfranchise Democrats. If this year's race is as close as the past two elections, the GOP's nationwide campaign could be large enough to determine the presidency in November. "I don't think the Democrats get it," says John Boyd, a voting-rights attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for impeding access to the ballot. "All these new rules and games are turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states."

These 7 steps come from the website: Steal Back Your Vote. You can watch it too...

STEP 1: DON'T DON'T DON'T mail in your ballot!! Absentee ballots are often not counted for the weakest of reasons. Furthermore, there are new rules in many states that you must photocopy your ID and send it with the ballot. However, they often don't even tell you that. So HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of absentee votes will not be counted for this reason.

STEP 2: VOTE EARLY ...VERY EARLY! Many states are already allowing you to vote. Do it NOW. That way if you're not listed on the voter roles, you have plenty of time to get your complaint heard.

STEP 3: REGISTER AND THEN REGISTER AND THEN REGISTER! There is a TON of purging of voter rolls going on. It's not enough to think you're registered. Double check twelve times. You can check online at www.votersunite.org/info/RegInfo.asp .  Once you're done with that, go register. ...Then go register.

STEP 4: DO NOT FILL OUT A PROVISIONAL BALLOT if your vote is challenged!! In 2004 the Republicans challenged a ridiculous number of voters. The voters were then told by a sweet little lady at a table that their "provisional ballot" would be counted, BUT IT WON'T. Don't listen to the little old lady!! DEMAND that poll judges make the judgement ON THE SPOT. Demand a call to the supervisor of elections. If you have to, go home and come back with a better form of ID.
If you need help, call ELECTION PROTECTION at 1-866-OUR-VOTE . And help those around you when you're at the polling place. Look for people having trouble. Call the number for them. Tell them not to fill out a provisional ballot!

STEP 5:STEP AWAY FROM YOUR COMPUTER! Walk out your front door and get active!! Volunteer to help with the campaign. Or ignore the campaign and do something on your own. It's as simple as printing out these ELECTION PROTECTION steps and leaving them at people's doors. Hell, you could hand then out outside the polling places. Don't sit still or this election WILL be stolen. And go to a swing state if at all possible.

STEP 6: FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS VOTE WITHOUT FRIENDS! Don't go to vote alone. Bring friends!! Lots of them or only one of them. Make it a date. Arrange to have lunch with everyone after you vote. Whatever it takes. And have your election protection phone number WITH YOU (1-866-OUR-VOTE).

STEP 7: IT AIN'T OVER 'TILL IT'S OVER! If the election is indeed stolen, don't throw in the towel! The day after is CRUCIAL! Three words need to be chanted over and over again: COUNT EVERY VOTE. For example, in 2000 Al Gore lost because of a Supreme Court decision that was 5-4 against him. Imagine if he had won that court decision. But if half of America had not chanted COUNT EVERY VOTE after election day, we would never have gotten to the Supreme Court. Half of America could've thrown in the towel on election night, but thanks to people in the streets, it was fought to the end.