Showing posts with label opinions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label opinions. Show all posts
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
Cynthia McKinney's Trip
Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney was the Green Party candidate for President in 2008. Ms. McKinney was aboard the boat “Dignity”, which tried to break the siege in Gaza. She tells iloubnan.info what she thinks about President Barack Obama’s promise of change.
***She garnered approximately 160,000 votes - simply amazing! ***
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“So far, what we’ve got is the silence of the lambs, but I thought we were voting for a lion” Cynthia McKinney
WE???? Did she vote for Obama?
related information
***She garnered approximately 160,000 votes - simply amazing! ***
border="0" alt="" />“So far, what we’ve got is the silence of the lambs, but I thought we were voting for a lion” Cynthia McKinney
WE???? Did she vote for Obama?
related information
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
The Obama presidency: Here comes socialism By Dick Morris
Sojourning Boston responds with a selected video commentary:
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Sunday, January 4, 2009
A show that Springer couldn't even conceive
by John Kass - Chicago Tribune
January 4, 2009
Roland "Tombstone" Burris goes to Washington this week as part of the Illinois political freak show, and many of us back home will watch it and feel like cringing, at least at the beginning.
Who among us could not wince at the prospect of Tombstone standing before news cameras, his head bobbing, smiling amiably, chattering nonsensically as is his way, insisting he feels no shame. All he wants is to become a United States senator, and he kissed a tainted hand to get there.
His fellow Democrats may be ready to bar his entrance to the Senate chambers, and politicians will be ready, even eager, to play the race card again. If this happens, the man who sent Tombstone to Washington, Gov. Rod Blagojevich will glory in his opportunity to speak directly to his future jury pool.
So I wouldn't bet against Gov. Dead Meat holding holding a news conference Wednesday, standing with a gospel choir, leading them in "We Shall Overcome," a single tear rolling down his cheek, a tear that will be referenced again and again by his lawyer Eddie Genson at Dead Meat's jury selection.
Such high emotions. Such low expectations. Such bad actors.
This has never happened to me, but watching Tombstone go to Washington must be like having all your future in-laws appear on "The Jerry Springer Show" without warning, and you're mortified and fascinated, but truly mortified, wondering if any of your colleagues are watching the antics and buffoonery as the complex rural love triangles are revealed.
But as this is the Senate of the United States, not Jerry Springer, it's much worse. And with so many bozos popping out of the clown car with the Illinois plates, as the Beltway begins to snicker and Illinois is called a laughingstock, let's just admit there is a natural cringe factor at work here.
There are those federal charges against Gov. Dead Meat for allegedly trying to sell the seat once held by President-elect Barack Obama, and Tombstone Burris' shameless grasping for the appointment by from the esteemed governor.
Tombstone wants to carve "U.S. Senator" into the side of his granite mausoleum, where he's carved his other accomplishments and minor offices so that his fame will endure forever and ever, the decorated crypt providing a worrisome glimpse into the man who would make federal law.
Given all this, it's likely that millions of folks in Illinois might be feeling as if we should hang our heads in shame at the prospect of further embarrassment.
That's natural, given what's happened, and what's going to happen in the next few days. Politicians will no doubt raise their hands and thrust their index fingers into the air and make grand speeches about the public disgrace. They want you to be embarrassed.
But please, don't be embarrassed.
Don't let the political class tell you that this is a terrible time for the people of Illinois. Don't let the Democrats tell you. National and Illinois Democrats, from Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on down, could have demanded a special election.
Illinois Democrats could have stripped the governor of his power to appoint a senator and held a special election so that everyone could vote. But they didn't want you to vote. The national Democrats, and the bosses here, wanted to hand-pick Obama's replacement the Chicago Way.
And don't let the Republicans tell you it's a terrible time. Illinois Republicans kept their mouths shut under the corrupt former Gov. George Ryan, and they let their party be run by Combine bosses like indicted Springfield insider William Cellini. You could fit their credibility into an olive.
So as the politicians shriek about how terrible this is, remember—this is not terrible.
Not for us.
But it is a terrible time for Illinois politicians, from the self-professed reformers to the Outfit stooges, because they've been exposed, and now the nation will see how this freak show runs.
Sunlight isn't all that bad. It dries up the mildew.
Rather than become embarrassed, think of the next few days as theater, the actors being the crazy uncles who escaped from the locked basement and began wandering among strangers before deciding to put on a show.
Or, you could pretend you're an anthropologist from another galaxy far away, fascinated by the amazing creatures before you. Study their antics. Appreciate their use of language, what they say, and pay particular attention to those who don't say anything.
The leader of the speak-no-evils is the boss of Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley. Blagojevich's chief of staff, John Harris, was also charged in the federal case. Harris worked closely for Daley, at the airports and at the Police Department, and Harris has one chance: to sing.
There are other events this week that bear watching. In federal court in Chicago on Monday, the U.S. attorney's office will ask permission to release portions of Blagojevich wiretaps to the Illinois legislature's impeachment committee.
And that committee will also meet, and rush to rid itself of the accursed Dead Meat, so Democrats can have some leverage over the Senate seat, and not have to run for re-election in a couple years with Dead Meat's senator leading their ticket.
They're the ones who elected this governor.
They're the ones who should be cringing, not us.
jskass@tribune.com
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Republicans vs. the auto union - The Week
News & Opinion
Friday, December 12, 2008
Republicans vs. the auto union
“Craven” Senate Republicans killed a bipartisan deal to save GM and Chrysler, said John Judis in The New Republic online, because the United Auto Workers, “desperate for the deal,” agreed only to phased-in, not immediate, cuts in wages and benefits, to the level non-union Japanese auto plants pay in key GOP senators’ home states. It’s “despicable” to let Japanese automakers, who pay union wages in Japan, dictate what U.S. firms pay American workers.
“I’m with the Republicans” on this one, said Maura Kelly in Britain’s The Guardian. The Japanese carmakers are just better. Yes, the U.S. will bleed jobs and money if its auto industry collapses, but it’s “silly” to “temporarily bolster” automakers that have been making bad business and environmental decisions, and even worse cars, for so long.
Republicans aren’t blaming the auto executives, though, said Todd Spangler and Justin Hyde in the Detroit Free Press. They’re blaming the UAW, which over the last decade has spent "more than $10 million to elect Democrats and defeat Republicans”—including several GOP senators now “being asked to save the domestic auto industry from ruination before giving up their seats.”
Yes, but the automakers themselves have long supported the GOP over Democrats, “sometimes by more than a 3-to-1 ratio,” said Ken Bensinger in the Los Angeles Times. Now they’ve “discovered just how little loyalty that investment strategy had bought them.”
From “a cynical, purely political” standpoint, the GOP should have supported this bailout, said Dan Riehl in Riehl World View. Because it didn’t, the party is “now known as the only reason the American auto industry went down the tubes”—and “all for a measly $15 billion.” It would have been better to hold fire until January, when GM asks for lots more money and Democrats overreach.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Republicans vs. the auto union
“Craven” Senate Republicans killed a bipartisan deal to save GM and Chrysler, said John Judis in The New Republic online, because the United Auto Workers, “desperate for the deal,” agreed only to phased-in, not immediate, cuts in wages and benefits, to the level non-union Japanese auto plants pay in key GOP senators’ home states. It’s “despicable” to let Japanese automakers, who pay union wages in Japan, dictate what U.S. firms pay American workers.
“I’m with the Republicans” on this one, said Maura Kelly in Britain’s The Guardian. The Japanese carmakers are just better. Yes, the U.S. will bleed jobs and money if its auto industry collapses, but it’s “silly” to “temporarily bolster” automakers that have been making bad business and environmental decisions, and even worse cars, for so long.
Republicans aren’t blaming the auto executives, though, said Todd Spangler and Justin Hyde in the Detroit Free Press. They’re blaming the UAW, which over the last decade has spent "more than $10 million to elect Democrats and defeat Republicans”—including several GOP senators now “being asked to save the domestic auto industry from ruination before giving up their seats.”
Yes, but the automakers themselves have long supported the GOP over Democrats, “sometimes by more than a 3-to-1 ratio,” said Ken Bensinger in the Los Angeles Times. Now they’ve “discovered just how little loyalty that investment strategy had bought them.”
From “a cynical, purely political” standpoint, the GOP should have supported this bailout, said Dan Riehl in Riehl World View. Because it didn’t, the party is “now known as the only reason the American auto industry went down the tubes”—and “all for a measly $15 billion.” It would have been better to hold fire until January, when GM asks for lots more money and Democrats overreach.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
For sale: one Senate seat - Russia Today
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Are We Entitled to All Our 'Opinions'?
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle Review
Pastor James Manning is a Harlem-based preacher (born and raised in North Carolina) who has become something of a youtube phenomonen this election season. Clips from his controversial sermons describing Barack Obama as “evil” and calling him “a long-legged Mack Daddy” who simply “pimps white women and black women” have gone viral this year, turning him into something of a media sensation. He even got a chance to do the national talk-show circuit, including an extended segment on Fox News that actually found right-winger Sean Hannity genuinely mortified by Manning’s demonizations of Obama (and his dismissals of Obama’s mother and father as “whoring trash”).
As someone who has conducted ethnographic research in Harlem, New York, I can say that Manning is quite recognizable to me as part of a vibrantly counter-cultural “Black Public Sphere” that often uses spiritual and religious narratives to make socio-political arguments about contemporary American life.
I’ve already written about some of his interlocutors on those New York City streets. They constitute an eclectic culture of street-corner debate that includes members of the Nation of Islam, the Five Percent Nation, various versions of Black Hebrewism (Manning’s church also worships on Saturdays), and more Gnostic/obscure forms of socio-spiritual collectivity such as the Nuwaubian Nation of Moors and the Egyptian Church of Karast/Christ. A lot of those groups have curbside vending operations, tabletops where they sell books about their beliefs, CD’s, DVD’s, artwork, and various health-related items.
I only bring Manning up because I had listened to his homiletic rants during the months leading up to the election, but I only recently got a chance to hear him respond to Obama’s victory. Manning gave an interview on Howard Stern’s radio show this week where he defended his claim that Obama is profoundly “evil” and only pretending to be a Christian. He argued that Obama and Oprah represent the “two beasts” prophesied in the Bible, dismissing Oprah as a “Babylonian Whore.”
When challenged on these contentions, Manning maintained that he really believes what he’s saying in his heart of hearts (which I’m sure he does), and that all people are entitled to their beliefs — except, evidently, Obama, Oprah, and Jeremiah Wright, the latter also being dismissed as little more than a liar and faux-Christian.
What an interview — and on so many levels. I am trying to move beyond the desire to simply chalk up all of Manning’s rants to sour grapes and “playa hating.” This isn’t just about someone with a civil-rights era sensibility trying to beat back a young turk, at least one that the Civil Rights veterans didn’t have the power to vet themselves. Ask Newark Mayor Cory Booker about what that looks and feels like.
Ironically, Manning and Jeremiah Wright also share some of the very same religious mentors, including one of the fathers of black liberation theology, James Cone. This could be a “familiarity breeds contempt” issue. Indeed, the aforementioned spiritual groups on Harlem’s sidewalk spaces share some foundational presuppositions, but they usually seem most adamant about loudly highlighting the aspects of their cosmologies and world views that separate them from everyone else out there.
But what was most troubling about Manning’s post-election position was that he wanted to offer up his Obama “beliefs” as similar to any other opinions people might disagree on. The problem is that his evidence is so non-falsifiable. Manning is most concerned with the fact that African-Americans seem to think about Obama as a kind of messianic figure, and he likens Obama to Hitler. But the Harlem preacher seems to ignore the fact that Hitler’s ideology was explicit and clear. Listen to his Nazi speeches and you hear the hate that Hitler turned into social policy. Manning has to read between the lines to find Obama’s evil. He has to claim that the President-Elect is lying—that you can’t actually trust what he’s saying as an indication of what he really believes and represents.
But what do we do with political beliefs that are so unwaveringly anti-empirical. Manning’s evidence is Biblical, and he reads Obama as an instantiation of prophesy. Of course, he isn’t the first person to make that move. But just because you can characterize the defamation of someone else’s character as your “opinion” doesn’t mean that it is as reasonable as other positions we’d label personal opinions. Some things are actually “opinions” (and can be open to dispute). A non-falsifiable theory about another person’s intrinsic (even genetic and pre-ordained) evil and demonic nature is something else entirely, no? Doesn’t it stretch the definition of opinion beyond all usefulness.
About the Author
John L. Jackson Jr. is an associate professor of communication and anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness (2008), Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity (2005), and Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America (2001). He will be writing about racial politics, religion, and contemporary popular culture.
The Chronicle Review
Pastor James Manning is a Harlem-based preacher (born and raised in North Carolina) who has become something of a youtube phenomonen this election season. Clips from his controversial sermons describing Barack Obama as “evil” and calling him “a long-legged Mack Daddy” who simply “pimps white women and black women” have gone viral this year, turning him into something of a media sensation. He even got a chance to do the national talk-show circuit, including an extended segment on Fox News that actually found right-winger Sean Hannity genuinely mortified by Manning’s demonizations of Obama (and his dismissals of Obama’s mother and father as “whoring trash”).
As someone who has conducted ethnographic research in Harlem, New York, I can say that Manning is quite recognizable to me as part of a vibrantly counter-cultural “Black Public Sphere” that often uses spiritual and religious narratives to make socio-political arguments about contemporary American life.
I’ve already written about some of his interlocutors on those New York City streets. They constitute an eclectic culture of street-corner debate that includes members of the Nation of Islam, the Five Percent Nation, various versions of Black Hebrewism (Manning’s church also worships on Saturdays), and more Gnostic/obscure forms of socio-spiritual collectivity such as the Nuwaubian Nation of Moors and the Egyptian Church of Karast/Christ. A lot of those groups have curbside vending operations, tabletops where they sell books about their beliefs, CD’s, DVD’s, artwork, and various health-related items.
I only bring Manning up because I had listened to his homiletic rants during the months leading up to the election, but I only recently got a chance to hear him respond to Obama’s victory. Manning gave an interview on Howard Stern’s radio show this week where he defended his claim that Obama is profoundly “evil” and only pretending to be a Christian. He argued that Obama and Oprah represent the “two beasts” prophesied in the Bible, dismissing Oprah as a “Babylonian Whore.”
When challenged on these contentions, Manning maintained that he really believes what he’s saying in his heart of hearts (which I’m sure he does), and that all people are entitled to their beliefs — except, evidently, Obama, Oprah, and Jeremiah Wright, the latter also being dismissed as little more than a liar and faux-Christian.
What an interview — and on so many levels. I am trying to move beyond the desire to simply chalk up all of Manning’s rants to sour grapes and “playa hating.” This isn’t just about someone with a civil-rights era sensibility trying to beat back a young turk, at least one that the Civil Rights veterans didn’t have the power to vet themselves. Ask Newark Mayor Cory Booker about what that looks and feels like.
Ironically, Manning and Jeremiah Wright also share some of the very same religious mentors, including one of the fathers of black liberation theology, James Cone. This could be a “familiarity breeds contempt” issue. Indeed, the aforementioned spiritual groups on Harlem’s sidewalk spaces share some foundational presuppositions, but they usually seem most adamant about loudly highlighting the aspects of their cosmologies and world views that separate them from everyone else out there.
But what was most troubling about Manning’s post-election position was that he wanted to offer up his Obama “beliefs” as similar to any other opinions people might disagree on. The problem is that his evidence is so non-falsifiable. Manning is most concerned with the fact that African-Americans seem to think about Obama as a kind of messianic figure, and he likens Obama to Hitler. But the Harlem preacher seems to ignore the fact that Hitler’s ideology was explicit and clear. Listen to his Nazi speeches and you hear the hate that Hitler turned into social policy. Manning has to read between the lines to find Obama’s evil. He has to claim that the President-Elect is lying—that you can’t actually trust what he’s saying as an indication of what he really believes and represents.
But what do we do with political beliefs that are so unwaveringly anti-empirical. Manning’s evidence is Biblical, and he reads Obama as an instantiation of prophesy. Of course, he isn’t the first person to make that move. But just because you can characterize the defamation of someone else’s character as your “opinion” doesn’t mean that it is as reasonable as other positions we’d label personal opinions. Some things are actually “opinions” (and can be open to dispute). A non-falsifiable theory about another person’s intrinsic (even genetic and pre-ordained) evil and demonic nature is something else entirely, no? Doesn’t it stretch the definition of opinion beyond all usefulness.
About the Author
John L. Jackson Jr. is an associate professor of communication and anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness (2008), Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity (2005), and Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America (2001). He will be writing about racial politics, religion, and contemporary popular culture.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Friday, October 10, 2008
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