We are told Thursday's debate show will go on: Ifill is planning to travel to Missouri for the big event.
Ifill is the only journalist of color to serve as moderator during this election cycle. She also moderated the 2004 vice presidential debate. You may recall her question about AIDS among American blacks stumped both Vice President Dick Cheney as well as his opponent at that time, former Sen. John Edwards.
Today Senator Barack Obama urged the U.S. Congress to pass the bailout plan rejected by the House of Representatives Monday afternoon. Without it, Obama said "...thousands of businesses could close. Millions of jobs could be lost. A long and painful recession could follow."
Sen. John McCain and President Bush reiterated these same sentiments. Trouble is, I just don't think they're being straight with us.
Housing prices have collapsed. joblessness is up, 401K plans hemorraging and retail sales down.
Now I know politicians and Wall Street don't like to utter the "R-word," but facts are facts.
More sensible heads at Bloomberg and Forbes say that any effort to rescue America's financial system will not avert a recession. The world's largest economy is in for very uncertain times, economists say. They just don't know how bad it will get.
Should we trust what the politicians are saying or the economists?
You tell me.
Reporters calling it a major shock!
House vote comes down 205 voting YES, 228 voting NO.
Will update as info comes in.
No surpriss here...
Who wins, who loses under proposed bailout plan?
Monday September 29, 2:58 am ET
By Tom Raum, Associated Press Writer
Wall Street and the banking industry are perhaps the biggest winners. Scores of banks and other financial institutions faced with going under stand to gain a lifeline that should allow them to start making loans again.
Under the plan that congressional aide sought to put into final form Sunday, the Treasury Department can start buying up troubled mortgage-related securities now held by these institutions.
These securities are clogging balance sheets, leaving banks without the required capital to make new loans and putting the banks dangerously close to insolvency.
Banks not only have slowed lending to individuals and businesses, they have stopped making loans to each other. The rescue plan should help restore confidence to financial markets.
There are other winners, too, if the bailout works as intended: anyone soon trying to borrow money -- for cars, student loans, even to open new credit card accounts.
Top executives at troubled financial institutions, on the other hand, are in the losing column because the proposal would limit their compensation and rules out "golden parachutes."
Of course, these executives may take solace in knowing their jobs still exist.
Investors, including the millions of people who hold stock in their 401(k) and pension plans, should benefit. Failure to reach a deal over the weekend could have sent stock markets around the world tumbling on Monday.
Homeowners faced with foreclosure or those who have lost their homes get little help from the agreement. Nor will it help people whose houses are worth less than what they owe get refinancing or take out equity loans.
It would do little to halt the slide in home values that are one of the root causes of the current economic slowdown.
"It doesn't deal with the fundamental problems that gave rise to the problem -- or alleviate the credit crisis," said Peter Morici, an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland.
Click below for more:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080929/rescue_winners_losers.html?.&.pf=banking-budgeting
Okay, it is not as big a deal as implying you're a foreign policy expert because you can look out of a window and see Russia. Nor is it on par of saying that you're an expert on Russia because Putin rears his head while flying into U.S. airspace over Alaska, but Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden's big mouth as of late is making him look, well... Palin-esque.
Take for example last week when he said leaders should take a lesson from the history books and follow fellow Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt’s response to a financial crisis.
“When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened,”‘ Biden told CBS News.
Cool, except Roosevelt wasn't the president during the Great Depression of the 1920s, and there was no such thing as television then.
Republican Herbert Hoover was in office when the stock market crashed in October 1929. There also was no television at the time; TV wasn’t introduced to the public until a decade later, at the 1939 World’s Fair.
Earth to Biden...
What the hell were you thinking?
After gritting my teeth throughout last night's debate, my first emotion was furor.
I was furious with Sen. Barack Obama for over-talking himself and getting mired in the details of his political plans. "Mister Senator, nobody gives a damn about details anymore, hit the highlights and keep it moving," I yelled at the television screen.
I was furious that Sen. John McCain kept using code-words to put-down Obama, and Obama just let it ride. While I understand the WHY behind Obama doing so, I felt he missed an opportunity to continually tie McCain to the failures of this current administration. "Remind people of high gas prices, declining wages, lop-sided tax policies, and job losses," I hurled, furious that Obama hadn't jabbed back.
Dangerous. Naive. Lacks Experience and Knowledge.
McCain kept repeating these condescending terms, sending subtle messages into the subconscious of his core audience out in TV Land. You know who I'm talking about-- those who live in "rural America," "mainstream America," or in the "heartland." Those "values voters," "soccer mom," and "hockey moms."
I kept hearing McCain utter the word "dangerous" over and over, a racist code-word if you ask me. The Republican-sponsored Willie Horton ad of the 1980s flashed across my mind. Remember it?
That made me more angry.
I went to bed thinking neither candidate had come out any better or worse than they had been before the off-again, on-again debate. But then I awoke this morning with these words still stuck in my head.
DANGEROUS
NAIVE
LACKS EXPERIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE
Warning! Warning! Warning!
McCain used the right words, he just directed them at the wrong person.
I know you all have been wondering about this all week and probably couldn't sleep last night.
So here you go:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican John McCain says he's going to be at the first presidential debate, even though Congress doesn't have a bailout deal. With less than 10 hours until the debate was scheduled to start, the McCain campaign announced that the Arizona senator would travel to the University of Mississippi. The campaign said after the forum he will fly back to Washington to continue working on the financial crisis.
I know you all have been wondering about this all week and probably couldn't sleep last night.
So here you go:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican John McCain says he's going to be at the first presidential debate, even though Congress doesn't have a bailout deal. With less than 10 hours until the debate was scheduled to start, the McCain campaign announced that the Arizona senator would travel to the University of Mississippi. The campaign said after the forum he will fly back to Washington to continue working on the financial crisis.
I know you all have been wondering about this all week and probably couldn't sleep last night.
So here you go:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican John McCain says he's going to be at the first presidential debate, even though Congress doesn't have a bailout deal. With less than 10 hours until the debate was scheduled to start, the McCain campaign announced that the Arizona senator would travel to the University of Mississippi. The campaign said after the forum he will fly back to Washington to continue working on the financial crisis.
Get your drink on Lusi!
Not a Good Day for the GOP and on top of all that, Washington Mutual Bank collapsed. Thank goodness I moved my money!
WASHINGTON - The chairman of the House Financial Services Committee declared Friday that an agreement on legislation to relieve a spreading financial crisis depends on House Republicans "dropping this revolt against President Bush."
Rep. Barney Frank said leading Democrats on Capitol Hill were shocked by the level of GOP divisiveness that surfaced at a White House meeting Thursday, not long after key congressional players declared they had the broad outlines of an agreement on a bill implementing the administration's proposed $750 billion bailout plan.
Frank said he did not think that Democrats were going to see a substantially different proposal from the $700 billion bailout plan that the administration has been trying to sell to lawmakers and which has been the focal point of closed-door talks for days.
Participants in a meeting late Thursday afternoon that Bush had at the White House with congressional leaders and presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama said it descended into arguments, principally among Republicans.
"I didn't think we were going to have to be the referee of an internal GOP ideological war," Frank, D-Mass., said on CBS's "The Early Show."
Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican who appeared on the same show, said many GOP lawmakers dislike the proposal that has been pushed on the administration's behalf principally by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
"Basically, I believe the Paulson proposal is badly structured," Shelby said. "It does nothing basically for the stressed mortgage payer. It does a lot for three or four or five banks . ... "
Oh, if you want to read the story that goes with it (warning, the story is very long) click here.
I am thinking since the Chinese are going to loan us $700 billion to bail out Wall Street so we can keep buying their cheap stuff at Walmart, we might as well ask for $1 trillion.
Why the hell not?
I awoke to news reports that Congress is close to making a deal on the bailout plan. A bailout for bullies, who typically enough, wrote much of the very legislation on which the U.S. Congress is about to vote.
What's next, will Hank Paulson hire these very same Wall Street bullies to administer the very plan they helped write? The same bullies fired from their cushy bank jobs for corporate malfeasance and mismanagement?
That's how Washington, DC works. No wonder we're losing our pants.
As I grabbed a cup of coffee, my thoughts lingered on the bullies. Not just the bullies on Wall Street, but perhaps one of the biggest bullies of them all, George W. Bush. You remember him, though many of you would perhaps rather forget. He's the guy notorious for saying "you're either with us or against us."
Well here we go again.
Get your hand outta my pocket!
NEWBERG, Ore. (AP) _ Officials of a small Christian university say a life-size cardboard effigy of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was hung from a campus tree, suspended from a branch with fishing line around the neck.George Fox University President Robin Baker says a custodian discovered the effigy early Tuesday and removed it.
"We will not tolerate such displays and condemn it in the strongest terms," he said.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-09-24-ore-campus_N.htm?csp=34
By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer 5 minutes ago
NEW YORK - Republican John McCain says he's directing his staff to work with Barack Obama's campaign and the debate commission to delay Friday's debate because of the economic crisis.
In a statement, McCain says he will stop campaigning after addressing former President Bill Clinton's Global Initiative session on Thursday and return to Washington to focus on the nation's financial problems.
McCain also said he wants President Bush to convene a leadership meeting in Washington. Both he and Obama would attend the session.
The Republican Party is rapidly gaining popularity among American voters, the report says.
Among Independent voters, Republicans hold a 50-49 advantage in favorability ranking. In August, the Democrats were up by 18 points. Also, among overall registered voters, nearly half hold a favorable opinion of the GOP, their highest rating since 2005. These numbers suggest that the Republicans are back in business, just as many Americans are struggling or are on the cusp of going under.
Mind you, deregulation of the mortgage banking and other industries started under Republican darling Ronald Reagan, continued under George H.W. Bush, and was partially embraced by Democratic head honcho Bill Clinton. But much of the damage we see today squarely sits at the feet of the Republican Party and George W. Bush, not that a Democratic Congress did much to stop it.
So why then do you suppose half of all Americans like Republicans more than Democrats?
I was surfing the net this evening while watching Dancing with the Stars (no comments please) and came across this little tid-bit about Bishop Thomas Weeks III.
You remember him, the ex-Mr. Juanita Bynum who beat his wife in an Atlanta parking lot last year. Well, he wants to get married again and he's going online to find his next wife, according to this story.
Weeks pleaded guilty to assaulting his then-wife (in order to protect her from public scrutiny, he said). He is currently serving three years' probation and has already completed court ordered community service and anger management counseling.
The couple's divorce was finalized in June.
Bishop Weeks posted video excerpts on his church web site where he offers dating tips and talks about what he's looking for in his third wife.
In the video, Who Will Be the Next Mrs. Weeks, the Atlanta minister says his next wife should be at least 25 years old but "with special exemptions for 21 and up if they are classy." Weeks said she also must want to have children with him.
"This woman has to be very discerning, and very intimate, and very social and very sensual," Weeks says, laughing. "And on the ministry side she has to be very diverse. She can't be ugly."
Now, I'm not trying to diss anybody's pastor - Lord only knows I don't want to be bombarded with complaints from his church members - but does anyone besides me see anything wrong with the good bishop's list of requirements?
And why is Bishop Weeks taking his search to the Internet. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but with all those women who certainly attend his church, Weeks should have his pick.
Can I get a witness?
Given it is an election season, I posted this because gay marriage is bound to come up at some point.
I'm not trying to pass judgement, it's just that sometimes I think that Americans, like Weeks, might have their priorities mixed up.
For the Weeks' fans, here's one of his most popular web-casts, "Cussin in the Bedroom."
"I'll vote for a black dude over a bitch."This comment recently came from a white former boss of mine who said she was echoing the sentiments of her relatives. My former boss relayed the sentiment as if it were a joke and chuckled when she said it, but she wasn't bold enough to repeat the actual word, "nigger," so she clumsily used "black dude" instead.
She said her kin-folk in Kentucky plan to vote for Obama/Biden rather than McCain/Palin. Somehow I think her relatives will do something altogether different when they go inside the voting booth. In fact an Associated Press report suggests this very same sentiment.
You've probably already read or heard about the report so I won't spend a lot of time on it, what I want to talk about are bigots who don't know they are bigots.
The former boss I mention above is the same person who was shocked because I'm not like "other black people." She told a white colleague - a friend of mine - that I was "different." She said that Alicia (another black woman she hired, I am not using her real name because this is a true story) is really tough-acting, from the projects of New York where she lived with her single mother, and has a father and a brother who are both in prison for murder. Our boss wondered why I wasn't like Alicia.
Mind you, this from the very woman who hired me.
"How could she be so different," our boss asked my friend, making reference to me. "Because they are two different people," my friend responded.
My friend was astonished at such ignorance; I wasn't.
See my former boss is a bigot, only she doesn't know it. That's because she, and others like her, are blinded by something called white privilege.
Tim Wise wrote about it recently. White privilege differs from racism and prejudice in that the person benefiting from white privilege may not necessarily hold racist beliefs or prejudices themselves. Often, the person benefiting is unaware of his or her supposed privilege, or so says Cornel West and other scholars who subscribe to this school of thought.
Problem is, because these people are so unaware of their bigotry, stupid things often come out of their mouths.
Most don't realize they act or sound like bigots. What's worse, they in fact look down their noses at racists like David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. And still others will keep a straight face and tell you they aren't racist, but then will turn around and vote for someone like David Duke (remember he was elected to the state legislature in Louisiana as well as campaigned for that state's governor and President of the United States).
Or they make dumb jokes like "If Obama wins, will we still call it the White House?"
Wait, don't think me a bigot, but that one is so stupid that it is actually kinda funny.
For more on white privilege, watch this video:
I can't even fathom a trillion bucks, can you?
So after the Mother of All Bubbles comes the Mother of All Bailouts. Main Street saves Wall Street. It now looks like Uncle Sam will create a new entity to take hundreds of billions of bad debt off the books of America's major financial companies. (Look for this to get done before Election Day, if not early next month.) "This is a gigantic step forward, the only way to fix the crisis," writes Ian Shepherdson, economist at High Frequency Economics. "Economy still a mess, but systematic risk way down."
Details are still forthcoming, but one possibility would be an $800 billion fund to purchase toxic bank assets. But whatever forms it takes, Congress will provide something close to a blank check to solve the American banking crisis. Already the Treasury Department has come up with a one-year, $50 billion guarantee of money market funds. You have questions. Here are some answers.
President Bush is throwing millions of dollars in corporate welfare to companies like Bear Stearns and AIG, the latest giant to fall. Again, this is yet another example of what is being done in our names, but not necessarily with our consent.
At the same time we give Wall Street millions in bailout money, they give millions to the presidential candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. I'm not saying who is giving what to whom, you can see that for yourself below. And if you want to learn more, click here.
TOP CONTRIBUTORS
This table lists the top donors to this candidate in the 2008 election cycle (click on names of companies to view past contributions). The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organization's PAC, its individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families.
John McCain (R)
| Merrill Lynch | $298,413 |
| Citigroup Inc | $269,251 |
| Morgan Stanley | $233,272 |
| Goldman Sachs | $208,395 |
| JPMorgan Chase & Co | $179,975 |
| AT&T Inc | $174,487 |
| Blank Rome LLP | $150,426 |
| Credit Suisse Group | $150,025 |
| Greenberg Traurig LLP | $146,787 |
| UBS AG | $140,165 |
| PricewaterhouseCoopers | $140,120 |
| US Government | $137,617 |
| Bank of America | $129,475 |
| Wachovia Corp | $122,846 |
| Lehman Brothers | $117,500 |
| FedEx Corp | $113,453 |
| Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher | $104,250 |
| US Army | $103,613 |
| Bear Stearns | $99,300 |
| Pinnacle West Capital | $97,700 |
| Goldman Sachs | $691,930 |
| University of California | $611,207 |
| Citigroup Inc | $448,599 |
| JPMorgan Chase & Co | $442,919 |
| Harvard University | $435,769 |
| Google Inc | $420,174 |
| UBS AG | $404,750 |
| National Amusements Inc | $389,140 |
| Microsoft Corp | $377,235 |
| Lehman Brothers | $370,524 |
| Sidley Austin LLP | $350,302 |
| Moveon.org | $347,463 |
| Skadden, Arps et al | $340,264 |
| Time Warner | $338,527 |
| Wilmerhale Llp | $335,398 |
| Morgan Stanley | $318,070 |
| Latham & Watkins | $297,400 |
| Jones Day | $289,476 |
| University of Chicago | $278,885 |
| Stanford University | $276,038 |
Just thought you all would want to know. I hope they make sure this wasn't underway in other states.
http://www.mlive.com/grpress/news/index.ssf/2008/09/obama_campaign_sues_to_protect.html
Glamour Magazine's October issue asks whether you have friends of other races and ethnicities.
Now, this might sound like a silly question to you but the magazine is doing it in response to a little dust-up they had about a year ago when editors there criticized black women in the workplace for wearing their hair in natural styles like afros (I blogged about it here).
I got to thinking about the story earlier today after a reporter called and asked if she could interview me about race and the election. She's from a Swiss television network and said people there are really interested in how prominent the topic of race is in this country and about the role it is playing in national politics.
She asked if Americans will really vote for or against Sen. Barack Obama based on his skin color, or is that a false impression given off by the American media.
The Swiss hardly ever discuss race. It is something they never think about, she said.
Hmmm... my immediate thought, though I didn't say it to her, was that the reason they don't talk about it is because there are no black people in Switzerland. I know that is an exaggeration, but you know there aren't that many of us there so don't even front. A Swiss person can probably yodel from one end of the country to the other without ever having a black person be within earshot.
Back on topic, a recent poll found that 86 percent of Americans say they have friends of different races, but another poll shows that only about 15 percent say they have a close friend of another race.
You have to ask, in this day and age why is that?
Do you have friends of other races? I'm not talking about folks you work with that you might occasionally do lunch with every now and then. I'm talking about true friends.
People with whom you tell your deepest secrets, talk with on a regular basis. You go to their house and chill and vice versa. Someone you can talk to about anything and everything. You know, that someone of the opposite race who is down for you whenever and however, and vice versa.
A real genuine friend dammit, you know what I mean.
If you do, what are some of the challenges to interracial friendship? What are some of the rewards? If you don’t have friends of other races, why not?
The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County, Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day. “We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.
State election rules allow parties to assign “election challengers” to polls to monitor the election. In addition to observing the poll workers, these volunteers can challenge the eligibility of any voter provided they “have a good reason to believe” that the person is not eligible to vote. One allowable reason is that the person is not a “true resident of the city or township.”
The Michigan Republicans’ planned use of foreclosure lists is apparently an attempt to challenge ineligible voters as not being “true residents.”
One expert questioned the legality of the tactic.
“You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,” said J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based public-interest law firm. “I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.”
As for the practice of challenging the right to vote of foreclosed property owners, Hebert called it, “mean-spirited.”
Read the rest here.
MAKE SURE YOUR VOTE COUNTS
What if neither of them are right?
The Washington Post published a story earlier this week that supports scientific views that today's voters are more uninformed than ever. Today's voters, the article states, don't follow politics and they don't know how their government works either. According to an August 2006 Zogby poll, only two in five Americans know that we have three branches of government and can name them. A 2006 National Georgraphic poll showed that six in ten young people (aged 18 to 24) could not find Iraq on a map.
Worse, they found that only 49 percent of Americans know that the only country ever to use a nuclear weapon in a war is their own.
True, voters can tell you the name of Sarah Palin's daughter and that she's pregnant or that Barack Obama's father was black and his mother was white. But most of what they know about the candidates' positions on the issues -- and remember, our candidates are running to make policy, not talk about their family members -- comes from television.
Some say that if you just give Americans the facts, they'll be able to draw the right conclusions.
Wrong.
"Many social scientists have long tried to downplay the ignorance of voters, arguing that the mental "short cuts" voters use to make up for their lack of information work pretty well," the Post reported. "But the evidence from the past few years proves that a majority can easily be bamboozled."
Despite being more educated than our parents and grandparents, studies find that our generation is less politically savvy than our forefathers and mothers. In 1940, six in ten Americans hadn't made it past the eighth grade.
Education levels are far higher today, but as the Post reports, schooling does not equal better educated voters.
In the 1950s, only 10 percent of voters were incapable of citing any ways in which the two major parties differed, according to Thomas E. Patterson of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, who leads the Pew-backed Vanishing Voter Project. By the 1970s, that number had jumped to nearly 30 percent.
One of the biggest myths today, the article says, is that young voters are paying a lot of attention to the news, and thus will make intelligent choices in the voting booth.
Wrong again.
Despite all the hoopla about young voters -- the great hope of the future! -- only one news story in 2001 drew the attention of a majority of them: 9/11. Some 60 percent of young voters told Pew researchers that they were following news about the attack closely. (Er -- 40 percent weren't?)
Another Pew survey measured public knowledge of current events and found that the young (aged 18 to 29) "know the least." A majority of young respondents scored in the "low knowledge" category -- the only demographic group to do so.
And some other statistics are even more alarming. How many young people read newspapers? Just 20 percent. (Worse, studies consistently show that people who do not pick up the newspaper-reading habit in their 20s rarely do so later.) But surely today's youth are getting their news from the Internet? Sorry. Only 11 percent of the young report that they regularly surf the Internet for news.
Well, not really, but she is probably thinking it.
A group of Republican women are boycotting billionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey because she refuses to put Vice Presidential Nominee Sarah Palin on her television show.
"Women in Florida helped build Oprah into the icon she is today," said Linda Ivell, President of the Florida Federation of Republican Women, the group leading the boycott.
"With our Republican sisters across the nation, we have collectively enjoyed her entertaining, informative and female-driven programming as we raised our families and became more empowered as women. We are deeply disappointed in Ms. Winfrey's decision to sit out the greatest political moment in the history of women since suffrage," said Ms. Ivell in a press release issued on Friday.
Winfrey, who endorsed Sen. Barack Obama and had him on her show before he formally announced his run for the White House, said at the beginning of the presidential campaign that she would not allow her show to be used as a platform by any political campaign.
Winfrey agreed Palin would be a "fantastic interview," but wouldn't invite her on until after the November elections.
Ms. Ivell said her 58 year old group, the largest political organization in Florida, is also encouraging women to join the grassroots national movement to cancel their subscriptions to O Magazine.
"We find it to be an abuse of her power –gained on the backs of our patronage of her advertising empire - to use her program to so blatantly support Obama in the face of this historic moment. So, we are tuning out and cancelling our subscriptions to O Magazine and encourage other women to do the same. Maybe not forever, but at least until 'after the election'," said Ms. Ivell in a direct reference to Oprah's refusal not to host Governor Palin until 'after the election'.
Ms. Ivell stated that her members respect Ms. Winfrey's personal endorsement of the Democratic ticket as every American is entitled to their personal opinion and vote. The boycott is a part of the FFRW's new truth in the media and fair reporting watch dog committee organized in direct response to what Ivell termed as "the unfair and misleading reporting regarding the selection of Sarah Palin as running mate on the Republican ticket."
Yes, it is Oprah's show and she can do with it what she wants, but nobody should be surprised that the Republicans are making an issue of her decision not to invite Palin on.
Oprah put herself in this position by coming out so publicly for Obama and then bringing him on the show so close to when he officially announced his plans for the presidency. If the Fairness Doctrine were still in place, Ms. Winfrey might have found herself in a much stickier situation. But thanks to the Republicans, the doctrine is no more and they have their heralded Ronald Reagan to thank for that.
The knife cuts both ways.
What would you tell these women if you were Oprah?
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts, absolutely
The only real differences between these two people are their skin color and political affiliation. Oh, and while the white Republican Abramoff raked in multiple millions of dollars for his transgressions, the black Democrat Kilpatrick lost it all over a piece of ass. 
Sarah Palin's pastor says whoever criticizes President George W. Bush will go to hell.
Did he include Sen. John McCain, the man who wants to succeed Mr. Bush?
I started not to blog tonight because the Republican convention bored me so badly. But then I came across this story about Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin's pastor.
According to the piece, published in The Huffington Post, Palin's preacher chastised those who criticized President Bush following the federal government's failure during Hurricane Katrina. "I hate criticisms towards the President," said Ed Kalnins, the senior pastor of Wasilla Assembly of God, "because it's like criticisms towards the pastor -- it's almost like, it's not going to get you anywhere, you know, except for hell. That's what it'll get you."
Well, McCain has criticized President Bush on the war, spending as well as to his slow response to Hurricane Katrina. Does that mean McCain is going to hell?
According to Palin's pastor, yes.
Palin was baptized and attended the church well into adulthood, The Huffington Post report says, and she continues to contribute to the church in a myriad of ways.
Media reports say that Pastor Kalnins preached that critics of President Bush will be banished to hell; questioned whether people who voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 would be accepted to heaven; charged that the 9/11 terrorist attacks and war in Iraq were part of a war "contending for your faith;" and said that Jesus "operated from that position of war mode."
Kalnins has preached that the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Iraq were part of a "world war" over the Christian faith, one in which Jesus Christ had called upon believers to be willing to sacrifice their lives.
Kalnins also asserted that Palin's election as governor was the result of a "prophetic call" by another pastor at the church who prayed for her victory.
You can read the full article for yourself. But in fairness, I should say Kalnins and his church have a variety of different ministries that help the poor and children.
But so did Jeremiah Wright and Trinity United Methodist Church, where Sen. Barack Obama attended until recently. Having community service ministries didn't help Trinity or Wright.
Do you think we'll get back-to-back news reports about Palin and her pastor the same way we were bombarded with flack from the Obama-Wright debacle? Somehow I doubt it.
For Palin's part, we already know that her religion leads her to believe that life begins with conception, to be against abortion as well as against the teaching comprehensive sex education in schools.
But did you also know Palin believes the U.S. invasion of Iraq was God's will? And that her energy policy also reflects personal religious beliefs?
For example, Palin asked for prayers in getting a $30 billion national gas pipeline project that she wanted built in the state of Alaska. "I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that," she said.
Two days before McCain picked her for the Republican Vice Presidential slot, Palin signed a bill clearing the way for the pipeline.
Divine intervention or just more politics?
If I were McCain, I might watch my back and/or do some praying of my own.
Mean, aggressive, abrasive and even nasty.
Palin, who won Miss Congeniality as a beauty pageant contestant, was sarcastic and launched a verbal assault, rightfully or wrongly, against Sen. Barack Obama at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night.
"In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers," she said in a bullet fired directly at Obama. "And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change."
Direct hit.
Basically, she's calling Obama an opportunist and I can't say I totally disagree with her. But dang, did she have to come out the pocket that hard?
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was a sweet, innocent lamb compared to this woman. Clinton didn't come close to being this insulting, yet she was painted as being shrill and harsh.
Well if Hillary's a bitch, what will folks say about Palin after this speech?
Palin was preceded by former Republican presidential contenders Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee. They too mocked Obama. But it was Palin who went after him in the ugliest of ways.
Obama was so nice to the Republicans last week at his convention, what's a Democrat to do?
Oh well, hope he learns how to fight, and soon. Problem is, how can a black man fight a pretty, white mother of five without looking, well... like a black man fighting a pretty, white mother of five?
For those who missed it, here are a few highlights from Palin's speech:
"What's the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom?" asked Palin who describes herself as the former. "Lipstick."
I'm not so sure about that after tonight.
Don't look at me, I didn't say Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican, that dude in the video below did.
While watching some of the Republican Convention tonight, I happened upon a video on hiphoprepublican.com, where I found the video. Funny, the views this guy tosses about are the same impressions Republicans put on display on their first "real" convention night: that somehow they have a lock on loving God and country.
The guy in the video says he's a Conservative Republican because he believes that war, genocide and slavery all suck. He says he's a Conservative Republican because he is proud of his country, believes in God and believes that marriage is between a man and a woman.
Excuse me, but even after watching the video four or five times, I still can't figure out why he's a Conservative Republican.
Maybe I can't figure it out because I'm not one to buy into labels. Many people, especially African Americans, feel the same way this guy does, regardless of whether they are Democrat, Republican Liberal, Conservative, Independent or otherwise.
The Republican Party doesn't have exclusive claim to any of the issues raised in this video; yet many Conservative Republicans, including this guy, act as if they do.
Question: Can you tell me what makes this guy a Conservative Republican other than the fact that he says he is. And secondly, why do some Conservative Republicans, including this dude, condescendingly think that they have moral issues and patriotism on lock?
Lawd, now there are reports that Sarah Palin once belonged to a fringe group a decage ago that wanted Alaska to secede from the nation. 
