I'm going through the e-mails (private and public accounts) and looking at the big complaints about what's to be found online and ay-yi-yi, there's a whole lot of crazy going on.
Keesha nominates this garbage for Scariest Thought of the Year, it's someone explaining why he supported Barack:
One reason was that Obama is African-American, and the country needed to have a black president.
Keesha response, "So we're going to have to go through this again in 16 years? The country wrongly called Bill Clinton the first Black president. Then a bi-racial man runs in 2008 and he is also falsely called the first Black president. So in 2024, we may get another man -- and you know it will be a man -- because he's the first Black president? And I'm with Betty, my kids know Black. They look in the mirror and they see it. Continuing to call Barack Black is offensive. It's offensive enough when it comes from some in my own race but it's especially troubling coming from non-Blacks."
The idiot offering the garbage is Vincente Navarro ("Obama's Mistakes in Health Care Reform") and he also peers into Barack's soul and vouches for that as well. The idiot teaches at Johns Hopskins University and for those not in the know about the slaughter house, it was and remains refuge to War Cheerleaders who gave us the Iraq War. No surprise, it's in Maryland after all which gives it access to many assets and agents with the CIA. For fun sometime, go through PBS' The NewsHour archives for 2003 and 2004 and identify the feel-good War Hawk. In most cases, it will be someone from the Baltimore, Maryland slaughter house. When Little Vinnie Navarro wants to take on the slaughter house, he may have something worth saying. Until then he just wakes up with his penis yet again attached to the sheets and gasping: "Barack!"
Vincent's sexual fantasy needs a threat for Barry to rescue him from: The Emanuals!
Rahm and his brother Ezekiel Emanuel. (Disclosure, I know Rahm. I also like Rahm.) Poor Barry. The sexual fantasies his cult members need decree that he's cast in the dumb blond role. Barry bumbles through history. He's good but incapable of making decisions.
Is that how we're going to play the next four years?
Pretending a man-child occupies the White House?
Barack's a grown adult and he does what he wants to do. Quit making excuses, Vinnie, for the bruises on your face. Your man hit you because he wanted to hit you. And your desire to excuse it and justify it speaks to the fact that you need help.
Self-deceivers.
We've all been there. For example, I don't 'joke' about Sharon Tate's death. Many years ago, it was reported that someone I knew -- who needed my help then -- then throughout now -- had made an appalling statement about Sharon's death. When confronted, she denied it. Having no proof, I took her at her word. In 2008, as she and her man-wife skirted around the fringes of publicity (poor, foolish children, they thought January 2009 would be a publicity bonaza for them and another bad book), two present when the remark was uttered made a point to inform it was true. She was cut off immediately. And she needed a protective circle. It collapsed and now she's fallen to her natural social level -- somewhere below sedminentary.
We're all guilty of self-deception.
2008 was also the year I stopped staying on the fence about a man who'd been a friend for decades. That's when a friend told me how he beat her throughout their relationship. And that was all it took. I've never spoken to him again. I refuse his calls, letters, packages and he's turned away at the gate if he attempts to visit. I'd always heard the rumors but they didn't appear to be more than rumors.
In both cases, when confronted with reality, I stopped self-deceiving.
I'm going to be kind and not link to a self-deceiver. He's written an embarrassing third-grader's view of Ted Kennedy and, no, he's not still in grade school. The most laughable assertion is that Ted went for help while Mary Jo was at the bottom of the lake. Ted didn't go for help. He walked to a hotel, he checked in and he went to sleep. The police found the car the next morning. "Going for help" would be calling for help.
The Kennedy males of that generation regularly used and abused women. That shouldn't be a controversial statement for anyone on the left at this late date. But for those defending Teddy, his exploits in the 80s and 90s were documented in real time. Not in some right-wing rag but by outlets like GQ. "Good time Teddy" treated women like meat. (As I've stated before, I knew him and he was nice to me but I'm a big donor to the Democratic Party. Were that not the case, I'm under no illusion that I would've been treated any differently.)
Ted's behavior throughout the nineties was sexual harassment. Any wait staff who encountered him could expect to be pinched, groped and propositioned. It was not the conduct one expected from a first term senator, let alone one who'd been in the Senate forever.
In the course of reinventing history (which includes proferring that Mary Jo knew details about JFK's assassination and that's why Ted couldn't get help when the car sank in the lake), the self-deceiver feels the need to assert The Nation is among the mags that has repeatedly trashed the Kennedys.
That is why so many people are losing respect for sites they once read. Get your facts right or don't be surprised when people stop **reading.**
Alexander Cockburn is not "The Nation." He is one voice. He has always held the Kennedy feet to the fire. The Nation itself? You will not find a more pro-Kennedy outlet -- to the point that they tell themselves fairy tales. (Such as JFK would have ended the war on Vietnam!!! Really? Before or after ordering the assassination of another of its leaders?) The Nation is a gate keeper on the issue of the Kennedys. They uphold the official position repeatedly. If someone writes a book or article or gives a speech -- even a pro-JFK speech -- that questions the Warren Report, it's time for agency-linked Nation magazine to immediately go into overtime as they pump out one attack on the person after another. (The author Joan Mellen was the most recent example of that. Silly Professor Mellen, thinking that, in a democracy, you could explore a death from over forty years ago. Silly Professor Mellen for believing that she was living in a free country. Immediately The Nation went into overtime attacking her, attempting to discredit her. It was not pretty. And The Nation does that every time anyone strays from the official Kennedy narrative.) [I am not mocking Joan Mellen. She wrote a book worth reading, a strong book, Farewell To Justice. We defended her in real time when The Nation was attacking her.] The Nation is the chief outlet today responsible for the creation of a cardboard, children's story JFK as opposed to a life and blood, relatable John Kennedy.
I believe that leaves us with the loons and the crazies. Ezekiel Emanuel pops up in many articles members and guests are noting. He's attacked repeatedly or he's dismissed. I don't know Ezekiel (I do know Rahm's other brother Ari) but his field is bioethics. And at some point, people are going to have get honest about that field. I'm not slamming it. I am saying that it's a field that those in the middle to the bottom financially are not really aware of. Nat Hentoff is not an idiot. He's been raked over the coals by some on the left for an article he wrote. He wrote an honest article. Anyone familiar with the field of bioethics is aware of that. The right-wing has certainly told some whoppers about the 'plans' for health insurance reform. But the left 'voices' include some highly uneducated people who have no idea about the field of bioethics or the hiearchy of choices at the heart of it. I'm not slamming bioethics. On a day-to-day level, every American practices it. If you're struggling to pay the bills, for example, and you need to visit the dentist, you make a decision on whether the dentist visit is worth it? You may decide "yes" and you may decide "no." That's bioethics on a micro level. On a macro level?
There's no honesty in the discussion. That reality is most appalling when it comes from Bill Moyers who has repeatedly explored bioethics on air in the past but refuses to do so today.
Barack's not proposing government run health care (despite hopeful lies from the left) so bioethics is a topic we can wait on exploring but those slamming Sarah Palin for "death panels" or attacking Nat Hentoff (I know Nat from many years ago, back when he was a music journalist -- we do not agree on abortion, I'm firmly pro-choice, he's firmly anti-choice, I believe he's also now with Cato which puts him in the libertarian field) are the loons and the crazies who would do well to educate themselves about a field that's rarely covered (which is why Bill Moyers -- in the past -- made a point to cover it) but one that impacts all of our lives.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com. This entry is to acknowledge the big topic in e-mails and also to buy time while I look at the news breaking to see whether or not an Iraq snapshot is necessary today. And Kat's working on the conclusion to her music review it will be up this afternoon. (She says sooner if I don't do a snapshot.)
joan mellen
kats korner
thomas friedman is a great man
