America's first half-White president

[H2O boy]

Also the law states that all citizens over 18 are allowed to vote except criminals in some cases. Why are you hating on America's system?

to prove my objectivity, i give credit where its due. you correctly stated that they are allowed to vote, not that they have the right to vote. big difference. glad to see someone else recognizes it

 

[spike]

and as has been proven ad nauseum, most people are idiots. they have to be, even by your own standard. most people voted for boooooosh too, didnt they?

Bush won the popular vote in one election. Also most people by far don't approve of him now. I'm not sure where you were going with this.

cant have it both ways. pick a side on which you choose to be offended and stay with it. leave the flipflopping to the professionals

Could you point out where I was offended or where i flip flopped on this issue? It seems like another case where you just make up crap and then start from that crap false premise.

 

[Gonz]

you know, the stuff about the blacks just waiting for their checks. cuz that's what they do... take government handouts.

right, archie?

Come to my neighborhood, meathead. BTW, it's not just blacks...

The 'magic negro' is a honkey construct, Cerise...to alleviate their un-pc thinking.

No sir....
The original story
Photo of the author

 

[H2O boy]

Bush won the popular vote in one election. Also most people by far don't approve of him now. I'm not sure where you were going with this.



Could you point out where I was offended or where i flip flopped on this issue? It seems like another case where you just make up crap and then start from that crap false premise.

man for someone as smart and refined as you are, you sure have trouble figuring things out

im sorry. from now on i will make an effort to use smaller words so you can keep up. no child left behind you know

 

[Cerise]

"Said he makes guilty whites feel good

They'll vote for him, and not for me

'Cause he's not from the hood"

 

[Cerise]

...

I think I am going to be sick

Lightweight. It's a big, bad world out there.

 

[jimpeel]

But that has nothing to do with being black, and everything to do with being a greedy human. Sorry Jim. You're wrong on this one, across the board. Beign black has nothing to do with being an ignorant tyrant. Whites, chinese, indians, arabs .... you can find a similar list for every race.

Perception vs reality. I spoke of the perception. You speak of the reality. Perception will win over reality every time. Just plain ol' human nature.

 

[jimpeel]

I'm afraid the same could be said if Hilary had won. She's a WOMAN!

A wonderful point; and one that was brought to the fore by one of my customers today.

Obama's ethnicity shouldn't be an issue, but it is...because he's a 'first'. A first that couldn't even be invisioned 40 years ago. I personally couldn't care less what colour he is, or gender, or religion, or sexual orientation for that matter. He is an intelligent human being with charisma coming out the ying-yang. Both will help with the politics and foreigh relations aspect of his job. Hopefully, his counsellors will help with the rest.

The problem is that he is a "first" and that is all that is being touted. Other than his race, the fact that he is a flaming liberal leftist, and that he makes bad choices in friends, no one knows anything about him.

Welcome to day 1 of the first 100 days. I'm sure that we'll all have more to say in 99 days, eh.

Gitmo already on hold and all trials are off. Not exactly what he said he'd do. Now the window for closing it is one year. I wonder what it will be one year from today.

 

[jimpeel]

Unemployment insurance is tax money redistibuted to people not working. These other things that you say aren't welfare do indeed have different names, they also have something in common.

Also the law states that all citizens over 18 are allowed to vote except criminals in some cases. Why are you hating on America's system?

Unemployment insurance money is paid by the employer into an impound account from which former employees draw. This is done as a tax on the employer, not the employees. Overages of that money in that fund are returned to the employer after a set period of time. Why do you think that employers challenge benefits and attend hearings to prevent those funds from being distributed to those who do not deserve them?

The funds paid into the fund would go to the employee if the employer didn't have to pay it to the state.

 

[jimpeel]

It seems that I am not the only one who is concerned about the Black image if Obama's presidency tanks like Carter's did.

This from Black Liberal columnist and Fox News contributor Juan Williams.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123249791178500439.html#printMode

Judge Obama on Performance Alone
Let's not celebrate more ordinary speeches.

By JUAN WILLIAMS

With the noon sun high over the U.S. Capitol, Barack Obama yesterday took the oath of office to become president of the United States. On one level, it was a simple matter of political process -- the symbolic transfer of power. Yet words alone cannot convey its meaning.

The calloused hands of slaves, the voices of abolitionists, the hearts of generations who trusted in the naïve promise that any child can become president, will find some reward in a moment that was hard to imagine last year, much less 50 years ago. Our history, so marred by the sin of slavery, has come to the day when a man that an old segregationist would have described as "tea-colored" -- the child of a white woman and an African immigrant, who identifies as a member of the long oppressed and despised black minority -- was chosen by a mostly white nation as the personification of America's best sense of self as a nation of power and virtue.

At the end of the 1965 march calling for passage of the Voting Rights Act, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said politics held the potential to reflect the brilliance of the American creed of justice for all, and a "society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience." Years of hard work lay ahead to shift racist attitudes born of political power being limited to white Americans, he said, then added that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. How long? Not long. Because mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!"

It is neither overweening emotion nor partisanship to see King's moral universe bending toward justice in the act of the first non-white man taking the oath of the presidency. But now that this moment has arrived, there is a question: How shall we judge our new leader?

If his presidency is to represent the full power of the idea that black Americans are just like everyone else -- fully human and fully capable of intellect, courage and patriotism -- then Barack Obama has to be subject to the same rough and tumble of political criticism experienced by his predecessors. To treat the first black president as if he is a fragile flower is certain to hobble him. It is also to waste a tremendous opportunity for improving race relations by doing away with stereotypes and seeing the potential in all Americans.

Yet there is fear, especially among black people, that criticism of him or any of his failures might be twisted into evidence that people of color cannot effectively lead. That amounts to wasting time and energy reacting to hateful stereotypes. It also leads to treating all criticism of Mr. Obama, whether legitimate, wrong-headed or even mean-spirited, as racist.

This is patronizing. Worse, it carries an implicit presumption of inferiority. Every American president must be held to the highest standard. No president of any color should be given a free pass for screw-ups, lies or failure to keep a promise.

During the Democrats' primaries and caucuses, candidate Obama often got affectionate if not fawning treatment from the American media. Editors, news anchors, columnists and commentators, both white and black but especially those on the political left, too often acted as if they were in a hurry to claim their role in history as supporters of the first black president.

For example, Mr. Obama was forced to give a speech on race as a result of revelations that he'd long attended a church led by a demagogue. It was an ordinary speech. At best it was successful at minimizing a political problem. Yet some in the media equated it to the Gettysburg Address.

The importance of a proud, adversarial press speaking truth about a powerful politician and offering impartial accounts of his actions was frequently and embarrassingly lost. When Mr. Obama's opponents, such as the Clintons, challenged his lack of experience, or pointed out that he was not in the U.S. Senate when he expressed early opposition to the war in Iraq, they were depicted as petty.

Bill Clinton got hit hard when he called Mr. Obama's claims to be a long-standing opponent of the Iraq war "the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen." The former president accurately said that there was no difference in actual Senate votes on the war between his wife and Mr. Obama. But his comments were not treated by the press as legitimate, hard-ball political fighting. They were cast as possibly racist.

This led to Saturday Night Live's mocking skit -- where the debate moderator was busy hammering the other Democratic nominees with tough questions while inquiring if Mr. Obama was comfortable and needed more water.

When fellow Democrats contending for the nomination rightly pointed to Mr. Obama's thin proposals for dealing with terrorism and extricating the U.S. from Iraq, they were drowned out by loud if often vacuous shouts for change. Yet in the general election campaign and during the transition period, Mr. Obama steadily moved to his former opponents' positions. In fact, he approached Bush-Cheney stands on immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperate in warrantless surveillance.

There is a dangerous trap being set here. The same media people invested in boosting a black man to the White House as a matter of history have set very high expectations for him. When he disappoints, as presidents and other human beings inevitably do, the backlash may be extreme.

Several seasons ago, when Philadelphia Eagle's black quarterback Donovan McNabb was struggling, radio commentator Rush Limbaugh said the media wanted a black quarterback to do well and gave Mr. McNabb "a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve." Mr. Limbaugh's sin was saying out loud what others had said privately.

There is a lot more at stake now, and to allow criticism of Mr. Obama only behind closed doors does no honor to the dreams and prayers of generations past: that race be put aside, and all people be judged honestly, openly, and on the basis of their performance.

President Obama deserves no less.

Mr. Williams, a political analyst for National Public Radio and Fox News, is the author of several books, including "Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965" (Penguin, 1988), and "Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America -- and What We Can Do About It" (Crown, 2006).

 

[spike]

man for someone as smart and refined as you are, you sure have trouble figuring things out

im sorry. from now on i will make an effort to use smaller words so you can keep up. no child left behind you know

So in other words you had no point. Just trolling some more. You really can't seeem to stop acting liek a little kid.

 

[spike]

Perception vs reality. I spoke of the perception. You speak of the reality. Perception will win over reality every time. Just plain ol' human nature.

Jim your perception does not win over reality.

 

[spike]

Unemployment insurance money is paid by the employer into an impound account from which former employees draw. This is done as a tax on the employer, not the employees. Overages of that money in that fund are returned to the employer after a set period of time.

I'm not sure if you thought you were contradicting me but you aren't.

The funds paid into the fund would go to the employee if the employer didn't have to pay it to the state.

Not necessarily true but if it was it would kinda make it a tax on the employee instead of the employer.

 

[randomJACKASS]

I love how, on the subject of handouts, nobody seems to have even noticed my last post on the matter and y'all are still arguing on trivialities!

It's also funny how Jim thinks it's so awful that people might think of race if Obama fails, yet fellow conservative Gonz has this to say:

AMAZING!!!!

The only ones that mention race are those that "don't care about it".

The rest of us have repeatedly offered substanative issues on which to disagree with the President-elect. Race, nor religion, has ever been among of them.

If he fails, I will think he's a failed president who happened to be part black, along with the rest of the sane people of America. I have no doubt you guys would be likely to vote for a black republican if he fails?!? Colin Powell anyone? (Good man, and not as conservative as some wish to believe.)

Much ado about nothing, and even on this board, partisan politics as usual....

 

[spike]

It seems that I am not the only one who is concerned about the Black image if Obama's presidency tanks like Carter's did.

Yes, there are probably other silly people too.

Why would you say "like Carter's did" when you have the most recent Bush presidency that tanked much worse than Carter's?

 

[spike]

I love how, on the subject of handouts, nobody seems to have even noticed my last post on the matter

The article was certainly interesting.

"The two largest welfare programs for the poor, AFDC and food stamps, each take up only 1 percent of the combined government budgets. Attempts to expand the definition of "welfare" to make this figure larger will inevitably include popular middle class programs like Medicaid and student loans."

 

[randomJACKASS]

Well don't get me wrong spike, because while I lean democratic, I dislike them almost as much as the republicans. Still it is a distinctively republican trait to point at anything but the real issue. You see it in every ad campaign they run is more about smearing the other guy than qualifying themselves. You see them whine about handouts that don't amount to diddly squat while they ignore bloated wasteful and downright corrupt parts of the defense budget. Hell I think if we cut the fat on defense spending we could be quite a bit better armed, for less money than we currently spend!

All of these things are done by both sides to some extent, but it's the bread and butter of the republican party! Sad thing is it used to be an honorable and noble party, but those days are long gone! Democrats have a whole other set of failings that I find nearly as disgusting though, and that party too has a much more distinguished history than it shows at present.

 

[MrBishop]

Come to my neighborhood, meathead. BTW, it's not just blacks...



No sir....
The original story
Photo of the author

The original story is not by that writer, hell..Spike Lee mentioned the term before. Bill Cosby was called such.

 

[MrBishop]

A wonderful point; and one that was brought to the fore by one of my customers today.

Ditto, if Palin had won, eh. From the humble beginnings of the fight for Women's Suffrage to 2009.

The problem is that he is a "first" and that is all that is being touted. Other than his race, the fact that he is a flaming liberal leftist, and that he makes bad choices in friends, no one knows anything about him.

It's an immediacy-thing. I just happened...that glow will fade and the real work of the Presidency will fall on his shoulders and we'll start seeing what he can and can't do.

You guys don't know Liberal from a hole in the wall. He's a 'democrat' with some liberal ideology as well as some conservative ideology. Our conservatives are more liberal that your liberals

As for nobody knowing anything about him... they just havn't looked. Where he voted during his time as a Senator is public-domain, there are articles about his time as a 'community leader', a book etc etc...

Gitmo already on hold and all trials are off. Not exactly what he said he'd do. Now the window for closing it is one year. I wonder what it will be one year from today.

He's still a politician. Nobody can snap their fingers and 'close Gitmo', or 'pull troops from Iraq' - they're all time-consuming. Ask Gato how long troops movements and equipment packing, shipping etc...is likely to take once it begins. He's probably able to give you a timeline.

 

[Gonz]

I have no doubt you guys would be likely to vote for a black republican if he fails?!? Colin Powell anyone? (Good man, and not as conservative as some wish to believe.)....

Conservative? Hell, he's as far left as GW, if not further.

Hell I think if we cut the fat on defense spending we could be quite a bit better armed, for less money than we currently spend!

Is there some particular in which you're referring? Since the miltary budget is Constitutionally mandated & the civilian side has gained so much by the failures and successes of the miltary spending, I'm just curious what spurred this allegation.