If you don't already bank with a small, local bank or a credit union, maybe this will break your proverbial camel's back.

Bank of America, the nation’s biggest bank, said on Thursday that it planned to start charging customers a $5 monthly fee when they used their debit cards for purchases. It was just one of several new charges expected to hit consumers as new regulations crimp banks’ profits.

Wells Fargo and Chase are testing $3 monthly debit card fees. Regions Financial, based in Birmingham, Ala., plans to start charging a $4 fee next month, while SunTrust, another regional powerhouse, is charging a $5 fee.

This is what the LA Times reported about the Obama Campaign effort to raising money in the article, Obama's former campaign funders on Wall Street turn against him:

The president's campaign struggled this week to sell out a fundraising dinner Friday at Manhattan's gilded Four Seasons restaurant despite its being hosted by America's No. 1 capitalist, Warren Buffett, according to people close to the campaign who were not authorized to speak publicly. The dinner for 100 was also a relative bargain at $10,000 a plate; recent fundraisers in Hollywood and New York have gone for $35,800 a pop.
The episode highlights a worrying trend for the Obama campaign. Wall Street, a key contributor to Obama in 2008, seems to be switching allegiances.
"His record has been one of reform and that has been an uncomfortable process for some of the major sources of political cash," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political fundraising.

Or as one big-ticket Wall Street fundraiser for Obama put it: "It's more difficult this time around."

I wonder why Wall Street or some people in Wall Street would be upset. I guess salvaging a crashing stock market that was heading south was not good enough. Oops, implementing one of the most sweeping change in the financial regulatory system since the Great Depression to make sure some idiots won't exploit America into the gutter ain't good enough. Oh well, may be because some detached greedy people don't have two or three luxurious jets or vacation homes, they are just pissed. Whatever the reason, them old days are gone while they are looking to revert to the comfortable life style of the rich and famous on the expense of the 98% of Americans struggling to make ends meet. Hey when you have a Republican Presidential Candidates lined up and catering to Wall Street and ignore the American People, it doesn't surprise me to read what the LA Times selectively writes.

Criminal InJustice^† is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Criminal InJustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm CST.

A Letter to My Son 
by princss6

Here is my testimony – a letter from an African American Mother to her only son. My job – is to protect you from any and all who would seek to harm you, demean you, treat you as less than any other child. Yep, that is my job and let me tell you son, why the world, this society, this state and city makes it so difficult. Bottom-line, black life isn’t worth much. It never has been in this country and I’m concerned that it never will be. So let me offer my apology first to you for knowing that the world I want for you, is not the world you will inherit. Let me apologize to you for pushing you so hard, because I know other children with your same make-up and profile but with different skin color will have life immeasurably easy because they won’t have to, day in and day out, continue to prove, they aren’t stupid, dumb, incompetent, criminal, lascivious and lazy. I’m sorry but I love you and you give my life meaning.

But let me tell you a history of your life and why it is so important that you understand the constraints you face.

The Republican debates have become zoo dungeons, but no more so than the Republican Congressional caucuses. An important Pew poll came out on Monday that showed something we have felt for a while now: Congress is dysfunctional and the President, while bruised by the dysfunctional Congress, is now seen clearly as the only adult in the room. The poll shows that the American people's confidence in the President in handling the federal deficit has essentially flatlined at a solid majority before, during and after the debt limit fight, while that of the Congressional leadership - both Democratic and Republican, but more Republican - have plummeted.

Have a look at the graph on the left. Only President Obama's confidence level has remained flat, while that of Congress has taken a nose dive. This aligns perfectly with the paid-staff-and-family-members-only approval rating of Congress. In the last nine months, the people's confidence in the president on the deficit has remained the same, and Republican Congressional leaders are now nearly 20 points behind the President. Interestingly, even Democratic leaders of Congress have lost 8 points since the May peak. Maybe this should tell the Democratic Congresscritters that the President is your best asset, get off our butts and get on board with him.

But this might also be an indication that the American people are finally paying attention, and they know where the blame for the dysfunction of the government lies: Congress, and specifically, the Republicans in Congress.

Just 35% say they have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in Republican leaders in Congress to do the right thing when it comes to dealing with the federal budget deficit, down from 47% in May. Fully 62% say they have little or no confidence in the Republican leaders on this issue.

The 2012 election is a test of whether Obama will be held to standards never before imposed on an incumbent. If he is, it may be possible to read that result as the triumph of a more subtle form of racism. - Melissa Harris-Perry

In her 2009 article, 'Unmasking 'racial micro aggressions' " Tori DeAngelis addresses subtle racism, the effects microaggressions have on the pysche and how those affected by these aggressions can turn them around for their benefit. I was prompted to revisit this article recently because of the blow-up caused by an article written by Melissa Harris-Perry in The Nation. Melissa Harris-Perry, is one of the most credible people when it comes to issues affecting African-Americans. Therefore, I took the words she wrote in her fact-based essay about the "double standard" that progressives allot to President Obama, quite seriously. Published in October 10th, 2011 edition of The Nation, the essay clearly laid out her case:

Is Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post stealing material off The People's View? I don't know. But he sure as hell sounded a lot like me last night on The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell.



Yes, this is the Washington Bureau Chief of the same establishment that went completely apeshit over the debt limit deal when it was announced back a couple of months ago. Apparently HuffPo has just discovered a few things about the debt limit deal: (a) the "automatic" cuts that the professional whiners were having a cow over don't go into effect till 2013, by which time a presidential election will have intervened, (b) at that same time the Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire (ahem, automatic revenue trigger), and (c) there is no such thing as "automatic" cuts and Congress can go back and stop those cuts any time they want. Like, for example, if the "supercommittee" gridlocks, then Congress can still go back and prevent cuts, changes in the tax code, etc. etc. Hmm, I wonder where you've heard this before.

Obama is bullying the hell out of his pulpit on his new jobs program. The messaging is consistent and strident, with ads and everything. He's reminded us that balancing the economy isn't class warfare; it's basic math. He's told Congress to pass the bill and pass it now. He's just been warming up; in recent stump stomps promoting the bill, he has really ramped up the challenges to Congress:

“It’s been two weeks since I sent it to Congress. And now I want it back. I want to sign this jobs bill so we can start putting people to work. I’ve got the pens all ready,” Obama said. “So my question to Congress is: What on Earth are we waiting for?” the president said at Abraham Lincoln High School.

Since he was most recently in Denver, Mark Udall weighed in on Obama's "investment in the American people":

It's kind of funny when you think about it, but silver-pen David Sirota thinks he's got a better grip on race than the founding director of the Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South at Tulane University, Melissa Harris-Perry. After Professor Harris-Perry's piece in The Nation chiding white Leftist electoral racism of double standards against a black president received acclaim and attention, Sirota, a renowned fantasy-land pretend-Leftist, has decided that he was going to take on Professor Harris Perry, by being too cute by half.

Sirota's argument, on the surface, is that the elite white Leftist class - who overlap with the Professional Left about 90% - is really mad at the president not out of some double standard they set for a black president, but on the basis of policy. Or as David calls it, policy betrayals. Clever. Because we have never seen the attempt to hide denial of race-privilege behind a thin veil of policy criticism ever before, right?

Today is the 17th anniversary of The Violence Against Women Act.

Vice President Joe Biden made an appearance on The View to talk about the Act's accomplishments over the years. He also addressed an issue that is prevalent in today's society, which is teen violence. The Vice President was very adamant about the importance of giving our young people tools that would help them to deal with issues of violence.



On September 13th, Vice President Biden released a statement from the White House in which he "called on high school and college students to share their ideas for how to prevent dating violence and sexual assault at their schools and on their college campuses. Over the next two weeks, young men and women are invited to join this important conversation by submitting their ideas via the new whitehouse.gov/1is2many page or by using the hashtag #1is2many on Twitter..."

The New York Times dropped a piece over the weekend titled "Small Donors Are Slow to Return to the Obama Fold," with the title being self-explanatory of the claim. So how does the Times' Nicholas Confessore justify his headline? Interviews. That's right. Not a scientific or a statistical analysis of the data donors or donation amounts to the president's re-election campaign but interviews. Interviews reinforcing professional Left talking points that 2008 supporters of the President are oh-so-disappointed and are not giving him any money.

But in recent months, the frustration and disillusionment that have dragged down Mr. Obama’s approval ratings have crept into the ranks of his vaunted small-donor army, underscoring the challenges he faces as he seeks to rekindle grass-roots enthusiasm for his re-election bid.

In interviews with dozens of low-dollar contributors in the past two weeks, some said they were unhappy with what they viewed as Mr. Obama’s overly conciliatory approach to Congressional Republicans. Others cited what they saw as a lack of passion in the president, or said the sour economy had drained both their enthusiasm and their pocketbooks.

He does this, even as he admits, making a satire of himself, that the president's re-election campaign, as of June, had amassed over 552,000 individual donors, 260,000 of them brand new to the Obama campaign, with an average donation of $88 and 98% of donors giving under $250. But hey, why look at the real numbers when you can base your headline on a few interviews and soundbites? This is, after all, the age of sensational, rather than evidence-based, journalism, isn't it?

Morgan Freeman had some choice words the other day:

In a sit-down on Friday's Piers Morgan Tonight, the Oscar-winning actor referred to the right-wing political movement as "a racist thing" for their efforts to boot President Barack Obama from office.

"Their stated policy, publicly stated, is to do whatever it takes to see to it that Obama only serves one term," Freeman said. "What underlines that? 'Screw the country. We're going to do whatever we can to get this black man outta here.'"

Time to put another nail in the coffin for the meme that Democrats are bad at messaging.



The ad begins by using nostalgia, patriotism and harkening back to the Industrial Age.

Black and White video:Ironworkers hoisting an American flag.
Voice: You know that saying?
Rosie the Riveter archival footage.
Voice: “When the going gets tough;

Last night the President gave a fire breathing speech before the Congressional Black Caucus during their Foundation’s annual Phoenix awards.  He had a special message for members of the CBC who have been for the last few weeks openly criticizing the President even going so far as Emmanuel Cleaver discussing that had the President been White there would have been protest marches organized against him.

The fact that for during the entire 8 years of the Bush administration and the horrors visited upon the community by him Mr. Cleaver popping off to the McClatchy newspapers seemed more than a betrayal, considering the most push back they were able to organize were angry letters, it seemed cheap and displayed a stunning lack of leadership and knowledge of where we are and have been as a people in these United States.  Well last night the President reminded them.

In 1940 the government started spending money like crazy creating jobs to make weapons but the jobs being created were not open to black Americans. FDR did not want to fight segregationist Southern congressmen and refused to act. A. Philip Randolph, the leader the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters began to organize a march on Washington to demand that the government forbid employment discrimination. Randolph credibly threatened to bring 150,000 demonstrators to the Capitol and eventually FDR gave in:

The President sent a message to a young lawyer on his staff, Joseph L. Rauh, Jr. "We need an Executive Order for Fair Employment Practices Commission and we need it in a few hours." It became the famous Executive Order 8802. As Rauh worked to meet his deadline he coined a phrase that was to become one of the most powerful and familiar in American life. "No discrimination on the grounds of race, color, creed or national origin." The march was cancelled. [from here]

The interaction of Roosevelt and Randolph is the absolute opposite of how today's "left" has interacted with President Obama. Not only was Randolph able to credibly threaten a major mobilization, thanks to decades of organizing work, but he was able to use the President's own ideals to popularize his demands.

Today we call on President Roosevelt, a great humanitarian and idealist, to . . . free American Negro citizens of the stigma, humiliation and insult of discrimination and Jim-Crowism in Government departments and national defense.

Randolph was an adult, playing hardball politics with an ally who was under intense pressure to do the wrong thing. Today, I guess, our "progressives" would have credibly threatened to bring a few hundred people to DC, called the President a whore and a coward, and sulked when things didn't work out as they wanted.

This past week has been an upper and a downer, buoyed by the final end of DADT a cause for celebration but tempered by the sadness of Troy Davis' execution. But without further ado, here is this week's pragprog links:

• Zander at the Angry Black Lady Chronicles has a telling piece covering the fact that at least some of the Left bashing of President Obama takes root in the double standard this country has long experienced on the basis of race.
• Smartypants points out that compared to recessions caused by financial crises across the world, the US economy and employment after the recent financial calamity are actually faring relatively well under President Obama's leadership. 
• Sepia at Pragmatic Obots Unite has the scoop on the CBC, glass houses and stones.
• Norbrook has some funnies, in pictures.
• The Human Rights Campaign tells us about a meeting HRC members and North Caroline residents had with Sen. Kay Hagan about the Employment Nondiscrimination Act. Sen. Hagan was receptive and particularly curious about transgender issues at the workplace.

And now, as usual, the floor is yours. What have you been reading all week?

Yes, President Obama did not wave a magic wand and made DADT go away immediately after taking office in 2009 but had promised saying that, “DADT will end on my watch”.

After taking many hits and abuse from the Professional Left and some Gay activists, after conveying on multiple venues that his commitment to ensure equality for the LGBTQ community was in fact unquestionable, uncompromisable and will be methodical, he was quickly second guessed as is the case in many other issues this days. He was called a homophobe, a bigot, a “Jim Crow” administration who is not in "our side" and many other condescending names. In fact, one so called activist who always wants to be the center of attention on LGBTQ issues called him unengaged in the repeal process at all and claimed DADT is Dead using gossip sources to create an artificial narrative as usual while the pathetic Dan Choi foamed at the mouth disowning the President for doing exactly what many Americans want to see happen.

However, so much of the rhetoric never held back the President from continuing to pass legislation and executive orders that helped ensure that equality for LGBTQ community is achieved while step-by-step changing the minds and hearts of many Americans applifying the message that "out of many, we are one". He signed laws that extended benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees, instructed HHS to require any hospital receiving Medicare or Medicaid funds to allow LGBT visitation rights, banned job discrimination based on gender identity throughout the Federal government, signed the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act, extended the Family and Medical Leave Act to cover Gay employees taking unpaid leave to care for their children of same-sex partners, appointed the first ever transgender DNC member as well as the first ever open transgender appointees and extended domestic violence protections to LGBT victims and many more amongst the many accomplishments achieved under the current administration.

Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to exploring the myths of "crime", "criminals" and criminal justice and the intersection of race/ethnicity/class/gender/ sexuality/age/ disability in policing and punishment. Criminal Injustice is committed to furthering action towards reducing inequity in the US criminal justice system.

Go Directly To Jail: Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect the GI Bill By DaNang65 If this photo looks a lot like a mug shot, that's probably because it is. As the fine print says, it's an official photo taken by the Santa Clara County, CA, Department of Correction. The picture is of Sargent Binkley, Eagle Scout, graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, former Captain in the Army Rangers, drug addict, and armed robber. After young Lieutenant Binkley graduated from West Point, he was sent to Bosnia in 1999. There, he and his unit stood guard as the bodies of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys were dug up from their mass grave at Srebrenica, while stick wielding Serbs hurled bottles and bricks at the American soldiers. Which didn't sit well with the All-American boy officer.

"We had these half-drunk Serbians bragging about how they shoved the evil Muslims out of the area and they got what they deserved," Binkley said. "I just think it's disgusting. ... It wasn't a battle. These were kids. These were old men."

Just in case you were suffering a crisis of Ceiling Cat faith:

It is a rite of passage for any sufficiently advanced genetically modified animal: at some point scientists will insert a gene that makes you glow green. The latest addition to this ever-growing list – which includes fruit flies, mice, rabbits and pigs – is the domestic cat.

Scientists in Britain are conducting experiments using stem cells to cure blindness.

British surgeons are to take part in the first trial in patients of a human embryonic stem cell therapy to gain approval from regulators in Europe.
Surgeons at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London will inject cells into the eyes of 12 patients with an incurable eye disease called Stargardt's macular dystrophy, one of the main causes of blindness in young people.

This will make His Frothiness cry, since more people will now be able to read all about him on teh Google.

Rick Santorum has had a Google problem for years, but now the Republican presidential hopeful wants the company to fix it.
...The problem began in 2003. After the then-US senator from Pennsylvania said he was opposed to “homosexual acts,” a gay rights activist figured out how to drivhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gife top search results for the politician’s name to graphic, homosexual material.
Now, as the race for the GOP nomination heats up – with yet another debate Thuhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifrsday night – the former governor is renewing his appeal to Google to filter its search results.

And hey look! Someone I've never heard of just dropped out of the GOP presidential field. Maybe their debates will start making sense at some point.

Most Illogical Answer: Michele Bachmann said that "you should get to keep every dollar that you earn. That's your money; that's not the government's money." Then she adds, "Obviously, we have to give money back to the government so that we can run the government."

Naaaahhh...

I have been telling the political pundits for months that President Obama's strategy has been, since the Republican takeover of the House (thank you, Professional Left) to expose the Right wing insanity, back the Republicans into a corner and make them cry uncle. For this, the president first needed to be seen as - and actually be - the adult in the room who is willing to compromise for the good of the country and expose the Republicans as the burn-down-the-village-to-save-it party. During the budget negotiations and the debt limit negotiations, just as expected, Republicans acted like petulant children.

Substantively, the president had to take away the Republicans' hostages. He needed to take the threat of default off the table, and he needed to protect Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare benefits, programs for the poor and investments in students. That's what the compromises in the budget deal and the debt limit deal were about. The president went about very systematically to protect those things. And then, bam! He brought the hammer down and turned on the jobs message. Guess what is happening right now? The Republican leadership is now powerless to pass Republican bills without Democratic cooperation in their own house!

A meme ( /ˈmiːm/[1]) is "an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures

Wiki Link

Namaste friends!  Welcome to the second edition of MemeBusters Thursday.  Last week we took a look at 11 dimensional chess and other incarnations of the idea that the moves made by the President are so complicated as to escape understanding, like Kabuki etc.

This week we’re going to examine the propensity for people who have just been presented with a compelling argument for acts of the President with the rebuttal:  Is he your boyfriend, you worship him, get a room, get the picture?  Seen it before?  Let’s discuss what to do when you see it again.

Remember the rules.  MemeBusters are participants! We’ll need help uncovering alternate responses; we’ll need help figuring out what to do next week.  Sound like fun? Let's begin.

I don't really have any words for what happened in Georgia. So I'm only going to take a moment of silence, and ask that you do the same.

Remember how I told you last week that health reform has helped 500,000 additional young adults to get health insurance in 2010? Scratch that. Add another million to it. One million.

That's right. The report last week was based on Census data as of 2010. And now the CDC has released data that just in the first three months of 2011, one million more young adults 19-25 have joined the rolls of the insured (that's a full 3.5 percentage point drop in just three months, from 33.9% of young adults uninsured to 30.4%), thanks to the provision in the Affordable Care Act (also known as ObamaCare, heck to the yeah!) that allows young people up to age 26 to remain on their parents' insurance plan. This reduced the number of young adults without insurance from 10 million to about 9 million. In three months.

When President Obama used his "car in the ditch" speech in 2010 election to try to rally dems he was on to something but many failed to pay attention.

I am getting frustrated about how the RepubTeapartiers have been trying to rig the 2013 election so I was glad to see Rachel Maddow do a pretty concise piece about how they are going about rigging it. In her piece she shows how in every red state under a GOP Governor the RepubTeapartiers are setting up structural changes in how people vote. These changes are going to affect the elderly, young, African-Americans, Hispanics and all constituencies that do not vote Republican. How are Democrats going to deal with this she wonders?

I am wondering the same thing.

One day later my anxiety was heightened when I found a blog post on PoliticsUSA about how the Republicans are using the Tea Party to push their agenda. The post lays the Republican's agenda bare. I have seen other articles about their nefarious plans but have to say this blog post is a keeper and needs to be linked to over and over again. (The Tea Party Is Just The Latest Patsy of The Corporatist Agenda)

The blog summed up what the Republicans are up to quite succinctly starting with the below quote:

President Obama's new-found populist voice has reinvigorated liberals across the country and across the blogosphere. This week, for example, you would hardly recognize the Daily Kos vaunted Recommended List. Former Obama-bashers are thrilled that the president is coming on strong, naming names and shaming the shameful in his fight to get his new jobs bill passed. Example after example of this New Obama are being praised and touted. Some of them are suddenly interested in donating to Democrats again.

Many of the liberal commentators in the mediasphere are claiming victory. "See?" they say. "All of our efforts are paying off. President Obama is finally listening to us. Our incessant cries and drumbeats that he is a corporatist shill for Big Banks, Big Oil, and Big Business have finally brought him to his senses."

Lost in this conversation is the reality that Barack Obama has stood for "the other 98%" for his entire adult life. Even a cursory review of his biography shows that he has been a champion for the poor, for unions, and for the middle class for as long as he has been in politics. But Barack Obama is also a pragmatist. He learned his community organizing from a group called the Gamaliel Foundation, and was hired by a man named Mike Kruglik. I have attended trainings by Kruglik and wrote a piece called "I Want POWER and I Will Be Ruthless" that describes it. Here's a snippet of that post:

Don't look up! It's raining satellite!

And don't look now, but Linda McMahon is back. What would WWF sensibilities do to the Senate? Discuss.

The GOP made a last-minute hail mary bid to stop the repeal of DADT. I wish we were surprised.

In other last-minute news of the non-WATB variety, Troy Davis' lawyers are filing a last-minute appeal. Even if they are not successful, we can take cold comfort in the fact that this has rekindled the debate nationwide, especially as the Supreme Court stays another execution in Texas.

I guess Craigslist didn't work out. So the Firebagging Left is going with their tried and true option to try to primary President Obama: Ralph Nader and Cornel West, who are looking to "recruit" a slate of candidates to primary the president. No one should be surprised, of course. Ralph Nader is a serial presidential hopeless with a racist edge against President Obama, and Cornel West is not yet done with his own racist, anti-semitic slander against President Obama. This is a joke. A bad joke.

In a quick update pointed out in the comments, Russ Feingold just kicked some sand in the Nader-West plan, and slammed down the idea of a primary.

At least thus far, Nader's spoiler heart had kept him away from the Democratic party. He ran as an independent, as a Green party candidate, but never really tried to recruit candidates in a Democratic primary, much less to challenge a sitting Democratic president. But after his 2000 rant about how Gore and Bush would be the same and after living through Bush, Democrats and liberals got smart and kicked him to the curb. So now, he's teamed up with Brother Dr. Professor [more titles?] West to get some more attention. Yippie.

This ad just came up on my iPhone Pandora app:



It was complete with the President's voice exhorting me to call Congress to urge them to pass his jobs bill. "Learn about it, fight for it!"

That's how you use social media/new media, kids. That's how you win the future. FTW.

(P.S., it's paid for by the Democratic National Committee. Just saw/heard it again.)

At midnight eastern time tonight (that is within a few hours from the time of this writing), the United States will finally relegate to the dustbin of history the Don't Ask, Don't Tell discriminatory policy against gay Americans being able to serve openly. It will never come back. And so, history will be made, marking another milestone in America's struggle for equal rights for all of our people: regardless of sexual orientation, color or race, national origin or religion, gender or gender identity. Beginning at midnight Eastern Time tonight, Americans who love their country enough to literally put their lives on the line will no longer be told that they are unfit to serve because they are gay.

On this occasion, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Fund put together a video highlighting the trial and triumph of this hard-earned victory:

"It is not about class warfare. It is about math," President Obama said in his speech on Jobs and the deficit this morning in the Rose Garden. He is right. However, right after his speech I tuned into MSNBC only to see a morning anchor asking a guest on his show why the President had to apologize in his speech. I threw my hands up in the air, turned off the television and walked away in frustration.

I skimmed through an article on The Daily Beast yesterday titled "The Scared President". I am not going to link to it because it just made me very angry and I will not give it undeserved traffic in my post. Basically, it was just a bunch of talking points thrown together, as far as I am concerned, based on what they have read from the new Ron Suskind book about 'behind the scenes" in the Obama White House.

Everywhere I look nowadays there seems to be this theme on how weak and scared the President is. There is no rest from this message anywhere I go whether on the internet, in newspapers, on blogs or on television. Sometimes I wonder if I am in a Twilight Zone episode because I just do not get it.

When on August 1, I wrote that the debt limit deal was an unvarnished win for the President and called out Paul Krugman for being a political rookie, TPV got acclaims good and ill - Stephanie Miller picked up and read the piece live on her radio show approvingly, Huff-and-Puff Post and Keith Olbermann were very upset at our establishment of the phrase "firebagger Lefty blogosphere" to describe the knee-jerk pretend-Leftists, and ABC News did a rather factual story about the controversy.

At that time, I told you that the president, by taking social security, programs for the poor and students, and Medicare and Medicaid benefits off the table, would force the 'supercommittee' to come up with revenue increases; with the threat of the Bush tax cuts expiring at the end of 2012. I told you at the time that the president would use his veto pen to force Congress' hands.

Well, guess what just happened...

President Obama called on Monday for Congress to adopt his “balanced” plan combining entitlement cuts, tax increases and war savings to reduce the federal deficit by more than $3 trillion over the next 10 years, and said he would veto any approach that relied solely on spending reductions to address the fiscal shortfall.

“I will not support any plan that puts all the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans,” he said. “And I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share.

My early childhood memories are quite a spotty blur. My dad was Army, so I was on school number three, at least, by third grade. But I remember one moment clear as a bell. It was in first grade and there was this one black boy in my class who always, always, always drank white milk instead of chocolate. And, I mean, what kid on Earth prefers white milk to chocolate, right? So one day, I asked him why he preferred white milk. You've already read his answer.

Think about that...this kid was in first !@#$%& grade and understood all about white privilege. And in that moment, I did too, though it would be years and years before I really grokked it.

This is just a quick post to reintroduce myself. I have been here at The People's View this week cooling my heels while I participate in the Daily Kos boycott organized by Robinswing last Sunday. I recognize some people here who have been regulars at Daily Kos and realize that most people I recognize here are people who tended to recommend my comments and diaries and vice versa.

About a year ago, Deaniac did me the honor of inviting me to post here at TPV, after I wrote a wreck-listed diary entitled "Obama's A Game." (The title was considered confusing by many; feel free to read it with a hyphen between "A" and "Game" or quotation marks around "A" if it makes it clearer for you.) After that, I cross-posted a couple of little-noticed Daily Kos diaries here and then went for several months without doing any blogging at all. When I resumed writing diaries at Daily Kos I did not cross-post them here (in large part, because I have been too lazy to do the extra couple of steps that it takes to cross-post).

In view of the boycott, I am not going to link to the diary that got me the invite, but the gist of it is that most pundits and many Democrats have very little faith in President Obama's political judgment, when, in fact, he has repeatedly demonstrated that he is a very canny politician (a political genius, I would argue). The diary focused on the 2008 primaries and general election as well as the passage of the Affordable Care Act as evidence for both the President's acumen and the persistent tendency of the media, his opponents and his allies to underestimate him.

Good things happened this week: the President continues to hammer his jobs agenda home, Congress continues to be stuck at near-single-digit approval ratings, and the Republican field of presidential candidates continue to prove themselves inept nutjobs. So without further ado, here is this week's pragprog goodness:

• Ametia at 3ChicsPolitico has the scoops from a David Axelrod memo exposing conservative media bias with regard to recent polls. Read it - Axelrod devastates the media meme.
• ABL at Angry Black Lady Chronicle covers Michael Moore on The View - what he said and what he should have said.
• Think Progress has the timeline on Solyndra, proving that Republicans are lying.
• Seeta at Critical Mass Progress has an urgent Troy Davis action alert.
• Pragmatic Obots Unite cover AttackWatch.com - the new effort by the president's campaign to fight the lies.
• BPI Campus has the scoop on the "pro-life" party that wants to let people die if they don't have health insurance.

That's all for today. Floor's yours.

Every Democratic President for the last 40 years has had to face the problem that a significant part of the actual Democratic Party base is, at best, conflicted, on the environment. The UAW and Democratic Senators from Michigan have fought to limit auto emission standards in the name of jobs. Democrats from Ohio have battled to save Ohio's dirty coal industry and the huge power plants that burn that coal. West Virginia's Democratic politicians fight for coal too, as do Colorado's and even Montana's. When the GOP was trying to extort huge cuts in social programs by holding up the 2011 budget continuation  and threatening to defund the government, Democratic Senators Debbie Stabenow and Sherrod Brown took advantage of the weak negotiating position of the Administration to propose budget riders that would have "delayed" EPA rules on coal burning for two years. Debbie Stabenow is a reliable liberal and Sherrod Brown is one of the most progressive Senators  - the one who is most aligned with labor unions. These people are all absolutely essential parts of any hope Democrats have of holding the White House and the Senate and the President held a hard line against them on that issue and on several others before giving in to their concerns by delaying Ozone standards. However, this well known reality conflicts with the simple story the "progressives" want to tell about how the Obama administration "caves" in to right wing pressure out of pure spinelessness.

For example, here's Grist's David Roberts having an argument with imaginary "political realists"

 But Obama's chief of staff bought the stupid logic that squashing it would help in swing states.
[...]
Political "realists" keep telling us that he's doing these things (complete with concessions to conservative rhetoric on "regulatory uncertainty") to avoid political attacks he can't afford. In reality itself, however, conservative attacks have not diminished one iota, and no amount of compromise or capitulation will change that. Right-wingers are going after other EPA rules just as hard, and their narrative about Obama's "regulatory overreach" has not shifted a bit. There is no attack that would have taken place that won't take place anyway.

Remember the Republican crocodile tears about health care reform "cutting" Medicare? Of course, what it was "cutting" was the extra subsidy taxpayers provided (to the tune of 14%) to private insurance companies above and beyond the cost of traditional Medicare.

The poutrage wouldn't be complete, of course, without the pretend-Left on a parallel track complaining that health care reform was really only health insurance reform, and it was all in vain because you cannot really regulate insurance companies to bring down rates or costs. Well, a report from the HHS proved both types of naysayers wrong:

On average, Medicare Advantage premiums will be 4 percent lower in 2012 than in 2011, and plans project enrollment to increase by 10 percent, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced today. Of people with Medicare, 99.7 percent continue to enjoy access to a Medicare Advantage plan, and benefits remain consistent with those offered in 2011. This follows an earlier announcement that average prescription drug plan premiums will remain virtually unchanged in 2012. [...]

CMS was able to use authority provided by the Affordable Care Act to protect beneficiaries from significant increases in costs or cuts in benefits in 2012, leading to average premium declines for the second year in a row: 2012 premiums are projected to be 11.5 percent below 2010 premiums.

Editor's Note: As you all know, the Criminal Injustice series has a new home: Critical Mass Progress. Soothsayer, the author of the series has graciously agreed to crosspost the series on The People's View. While the series will publish on CMP on Wednesday evenings at 6 pm Central Time (7 pm Eastern, 4 pm Pacific), we will crosspost it on Friday mornings on a regular basis. Please welcome soothsayer and this vitally important series.

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Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to exploring the myths of "crime", "criminals" and criminal justice and the intersection of race/ethnicity/class/gender/ sexuality/age/ disability in policing and punishment.
Criminal Injustice is committed to furthering action towards reducing inequity in the US criminal justice system.

By Nancy A. Heitzeg aka soothsayer99

Again, many thanks to Seeta Persaud for her vision in the creation of this blog and her incredible generosity in hosting the Criminal Injustice series. What follows is a reprint of the introduction to this series, initially published February 2011. It does, I hope, provide the larger context of mass incarceration that shapes the mission of CI, which is “Analysis and Indictment of the deep structural foundations of criminal justice in racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism, and towards the goal, ultimately, of Abolition.” The goal of this series has been to expose this failed system at the intersections, offer alternatives for transformational/restorative justice and opportunities for action.
Thank You for Joining Us.

The United States, which has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, has 25% of its prisoners. This is the highest incarceration rate in the world.

As President Obama goes on the offense with his jobs plan, he has now also begun to propose ideas to pay for it. The GOP has a charade they are trying to hide behind to try to block it: that the president's plan to pay for the jobs proposal, which will create 1.3 million jobs by 2012 (and another 800,000 by 2013), is a "tax increase on job creators":

"It would be fair to say this tax increase on job creators is the kind of proposal both parties have opposed in the past," [Boehner spokesman] Michael Steel said in a written statement.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor echoed that stance, telling reporters: "I sure hope that the president is not suggesting that we pay for his proposals with a massive tax increase at the end of 2012 on the job creators that we're actually counting on to reduce unemployment."

What are Eric Cantor and John Boehner talking about? This: the president has suggested paying for the jobs bill by limiting itemized tax deductions for the top 2% of American income earners, by treating hedge fund earnings as regular income rather than capital gains, and by eliminating tax loopholes for the oil companies to the tune of $40 billion. The Washington Post has a handy chart that explains this well:

A meme is "an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.

A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures...

Wiki link

Namaste Friends! This will be the beginning of a continuing series I’ll conduct on Thursdays. The goal of the series will be to examine and learn to deconstruct ideas being used against the President and Democratic Party.

This is going to be an exercise where I’m going to ask for participation from the audience. I’m going to request assistance uncovering the next idea, and I’m going to request analytical help from TPV in assessing whether the counters and explanations presented will be effective.

Sound like fun? Let’s begin!

NOTE: My apologies for breaking my boycott pledge to all the participants of the boycott. However, it would have been impossible for me to write this article without doing so since providing links of evidence is important when making a lot of factual statements so that the content won't be just a hearsay. Further, I want this to be clear that my view here is not a sweep at all the community of Dailykos but only those who know who and what they are based on past encounters.

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In the last few days, there has been a lot of talk about racism and/or silencing of the voices of black people, brown people and white people standing for racial justice at at the Dailykos. The "progressive" blog site that was ones popular and praised by the NY Times magazine writer Matt Bai who said about Dailykos - "the single most successful entrepreneur of the progressive movement", will be disappoint today if he knew what came out of Dailykos. Personally, I would call Dailykos, “the single most successful entrepreneur for giving sanctuary to some vicious racist puritans” while silencing the voices of many persons of color.

Case in point, a long time respected member of the Dailykos community who is white and vocal in denouncing all of the -isms writes about the discriminatory practices of what is currently taking place at Dailykos questioning the action of the owner, Markos Moulitsas' "purge" operation. The narrative was whether the so called "purge" practice taking place currently is truly an effort to ban trolls who have infested the blog or it's an effort to silence the most powerful voices of the Black Kos community. Specifically the 30% African American voices that have just been silenced from the 3% of the African American Dailykos population. Blogger blue jersey mom writes about a community that is dear to her heart and how devastated she has become about the latest injustice in moderation:

I am also a long-time member of the Black Kos community. The BK diaries are part of what I came to Daily Kos for in the first place. I am looking for stories and information that I cannot find in the traditional corporate media. When I went into Black Kos this afternoon, I was stunned to find out that some of the most powerful voices in the BK community had had their ratings privileges removed. Both editors of the Criminal Injustice Kos series have lost their ratings privileges, along with a number of other powerful African-American posters. I was particularly saddened to see the number of women who had lost ratings privileges. snip The Democratic coalition tends to be younger, more female, and includes many more people of color. DK does not look like the Democratic party It worries me greatly when powerful African-American voices are silenced on this blog. African-Americans are the most loyal members of the Democratic coalition. I want to take back the house in 2012. I do not want to be saying hello to President Perry. I would ask you, Kos, to rethink the withdrawal of rating privileges and silencing of so many members of the Black Kos community.

You know the jobs bill President Obama has been exhorting Congress to pass "right away"? The "American Jobs Act"?

Congressman Louie Gohmert introduced a two-page bill before any Democrat had introduced the President's job bill and titled it "The American Jobs Act of 2011".

I'm not shitting you. This childish piece of Republican excrement took the name that President Obama had already titled his bill and used it for his own bill. All his bill does is repeal the federal corporate income tax (which is obviously going NOWHERE.)

It's stunning. This man is a U.S. Congressman and he's is literally acting like a child. A petulant, mischievous child who can only fight by cheating because he's not bright enough to compete using his intellect.

The level of disrespect that this represents is on par with Joe Wilson's "You lie!" moment and John Boehner's unprecedented refusal to honor President Obama's request to convene a joint session of Congress for his jobs speech. No president in the history of this country has ever, EVER experienced this level of disrespect, much less having to deal with it repeatedly.

This is racism, pure and simple and needs to be called that publicly by every single Democrat in this country.

I. Am. Disgusted.

H/T Angry Black Lady.

But we already knew that, didn't we? Here's the first salvo in their latest crusade against rationality, in the form of the following statement from Boehner's office, circa formation of the debt panel committee:

Deficit reduction will spur job creation and, therefore, the supercommittee does not need to take on an additional mission. “As every economist and every rating agency has made clear, getting our deficit under control is the first step to help get our economy growing again and to create jobs."

Stopped laughing yet? Okay.

It hardly seems necessary to point out how time after time, it has been determined that, no, tax cuts don't quite create jobs like the GOP wishes they would, but I kinda can't resist this:

"Congressman Cantor (R-VA) either failed English class or failed logic class or failed history class because these tax cuts for the rich that Bush did twice, in '01 and '03, resulted in very little economic growth. We saw only one million jobs created in the Bush years, 22 million created in the Clinton years when we reached a balanced budget with a fairer tax system," Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said on MSNBC.

Obama caves! It suuuucks that he didn't nominate Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau! We're sooo disappointed! Some of us said that well, other than the fact that her nomination would only set up a huge brawl in DC without actually any chance of confirmation or any chance of exposing the Republicans' real obstruction agenda, the White House has a hand behind pushing her to run for the Senate in the Bay State. Well, don't look now but Elizabeth Warren is in. She's just formally announced her run for Senate in Massachusetts.

Here comes the Republicans' worst nightmare about ObamaCare: it works! Every single provision of the Affordable Care Act that has gone into effect thus far has worked. First, it lowered premiums of "Medicare Advantage" plans by 1% despite having the government stop subsidizing it to the tune of 14% extra over traditional Medicare. Medicare changes were one of the first to go into effect. As insurance regulations, like beginning this plan year, insurers have to spend 80-85% of premiums on actually providing care, started to kick in, heads exploded and in some market, private insurance premiums headed south. President Obama massively expanded coverage for children through SCHIP before the big health care reform, and since then by stopping health insurer discrimination based on pre-existign conditions against children first.

And? And, beginning September 23 of last year, insurance companies have been required to insure adult children under 26 under their parents' insurance plans. So? So, in a survey just released by HHS, there was only one age group that increased their health insurance coverage. Wanna take a guess which one?

18-24 year olds were the only age group to experience a significant increase in the percentage with health insurance over the past year, from 70.7% in 2009 to 72.8% in 2010. This is a two percentage point increase in the share of adults 18-24 with coverage and represents 500,000 more young adults with health insurance.

Sweetie gets angry with me at the times I’d decide to still go into work. We just had an earthquake the bridges are down, and I’m going in. The hills are on fire and the sound isn’t music and I’m going in, but that’s how I rocked it at the time.  I was what I called a Mark I Corporate Issue Sales Rep.  I was a few years in and a rising star at the payroll processor Paychex.  Locked and loaded with a territory to protect and clients who valued both our names.

The strands of serendipity are numerous in this world Rodney King and I are from the same town in Southern California, Pasadena heck he and I even went to the same high school and although we were there at the same time I don’t remember him.  Good ole John Muir for every Sirhan Sirhan we turned loose on the world we had a Jackie Robinson, but poor Rodney.

I watched like the rest of America when the video came out.  From my perspective it was an orgy of violence feedback loop, an ass kicking that that brother was going to take.  Lay down Rodney don’t move man, but he was definitely knocked unthinking if he was thinking at all from the beginning.  They beat him like a sack of potatoes, but this time it’s on tape.  No way can the police get out of this one.

So you ask how President Obama is doing? Well, I got news for all the relentlessness smack down this President gets from the Professional Left and Teabagging Right, while the real Democratic "base" and moderate independents are with him and know who the right person is for the job of the Presidency.

Just found this Blog Post where a woman says she cannot leave her house because of "the gays":

"The same people who say I shouldn't impose my morality on them, are imposing immorality on me and my children to the point that I literally have a hard time even leaving my home anymore to do something as simple as visit the park. And this is freedom?"

Blog Post:Can't Even Go to the Park.* (Editor's note: see end if you must click on this link)

This woman is serious. She is not playing. She truly thinks she and her children are being damaged by the mere existence of 'the gays'. This is no different to how people treated blacks in this country when they tried to swim in swimming pools or marry out of their race or, for heavens sake even tried to exist.

I was not surprised and this saddens me. Why? because I have now fully come to accept that hate like this in this country is endemic. This has been the ugly secret that was hidden under a thin veneer for many decades but now it is clear to see. Minorities, especially African-Americans, have known this forever and basically have come to terms with it. However, there are many who seem genuinely surprised that a black President did not bring about the racial harmony that they thought he could magically bring about just by his election. So many have been and are still in denial about the hate that runs through the very fabric of this country.

It's definitely full of all kinds of goodness, but above all else:

The President’s plan calls for legislation that would make it unlawful to refuse to hire applicants solely because they are unemployed or to include in a job posting a provision that unemployed persons will not be considered.

Yesterday, President Obama, surrounded by teachers, construction workers, firefighters, small business owners, veterans and police officers announced in a Rose Garden appearance holding a copy of his $447 billion American Jobs Act bill he introduced during the join session last week, called on Congress to pass this important urgent legislation "immediately" while seeking the public to put pressure on lawmakers.

Please call your SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVE today and tell them to PASS THE AMERICAN JOBS ACT BILL!

There's an interesting article in The New York Times today, that might just point to not-very-good-news for Internet "news" sites attempting to become behemoths by simply aggregating information found elsewhere.

Apart from the specific business issues feeding those travails — sinking traffic and profits at both — they provided yet another lesson of the Internet age: as news surges on the Web, giant ocean liners like AOL and Yahoo are being outmaneuvered by the speedboats zipping around them, relatively small sites that have passionate audiences and sharply focused information.

Does it sound to you like some places you have been to? Like some blogs? Oceanliners ("we tell you everything you need to know tomorrow, today") and speedboats ("we offer you our specialized perspective and encourage you to go out and inform yourself more")? AOL is being outmaneuvered for being a giant oceanliner huh? Hmm, I wonder what that means for the AOL Huffington Post Media Group...

Anyway, back to what I'm trying to say here. The Times article finds some pretty good reasons why this is happening, and it can all be summed up in one idea: the users of the web are changing. People are no longer looking for one big website that gives them every kind of information possible - especially for the well established news sites that mostly do original reporting. There's really no way to replace that. Other than that, when people are looking at the web as an interactive, live exchange of information, one-size-fit-all is not working.

In the middle of everything else going on today, let me drop in a little bit of good news about health care reform. Health care reform is literally working: the Department of HHS has just released an additional $700 million in grants for community health centers to expand and hire. This comes on the heels of other significant investments in the community health centers from Obamacare (yes!), as we noted them previously. From the September 9 press release:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today announced the availability of approximately $700 million to help build, expand and improve community health centers across the U.S. to provide needed care to low-income Americans. The funds, authorized by the Affordable Care Act, will support renovation and construction projects, boosting centers’ ability to care for additional patients and creating jobs in those communities.

Of the $700 million, $600 million is for long term renovations and expansions, and $100 million for fixes that are needed right away. The $700 million is, of course, part of the $11 billion authorized for CHCs in the ACA. HHS also reports that since the beginning of the president's term, community health centers have added some 18,600 full time jobs in the most distressed communities across the country. That's just health center staff. Since the passage of health reform, they have been creating additional work from funds to expand and fix up health centers, i.e. construction jobs, just like with this grant.

Yes; that does include His Holiness, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu as well, even though the letter was published by the Nobel Women's Initiative. NWI was formed by six of the only 12 women to ever receive the Nobel and these laureates are definitely not content to sit on their laurels.

Note: Yesterday, Robinswing of the Dailykos wrote an article calling for a boycott of Daily Kos for one week. CIK has taken a more tougher stand and has discontinued participating at Dailykos. I don't think I can speak about the recent injustice (The Purge) by the Owner of Dailykos that has affected many people of color and those who stand for justice and equality like soothsayer99 and RadioGirl of dailykos have spoken. Acknowledging the contribution of this community, they have asked to share this piece to be republished here. Much gratitude to two of my most favorite people for their relentlessness, grace and passion to educating and always fighting the good fight with class and dignity to reducing inequality in the US criminal justice system. I have had the luxury of working with both of them as the original three founders of the Criminal Injustice Kos (CIK) and here is the LAST WORD from CIK. ~ TiMT (aka ThisIsMyTime) ==================================================================

Originally posted at Dailykos

[quote]Criminal InJustice Kos is a weekly series devoted to exploring the myths of "crime", "criminals", and criminal justice and the intersection of race/ethnicity/class/gender/sexuality/ age/disability in policing and punishment.

Criminal Injustice Kos is committed to furthering action towards reducing inequity in the US criminal justice system.[/quote]

Since the other threads were getting too long, I wanted to just start an open thread for the evening. Sorry I haven't got much of a chance to participate in the threads, but I just finished my 100 mile bike ride!

Reading the comments, I can see the hurt and the outrage from the Daily Kos purge hammer coming down disproportionately on African Americans and women. I fully sympathize with and share the sentiments, and TPV's doors will always be open to those for whom respect for the first African American president of the United States is not a four letter word. TPV is a community that knows and has confronted racism on the Left, and we have never been shy about pointing it out. Continue the conversation here in this thread.

With that, again, the floor is yours, and I wanted to share a couple of videos from today with you all. The first one is the president's address at the Kennedy Center noting the resilience of the American people in the past 10 years.

Editor's note: Hi everyone, please welcome Adept2u, the newest addition to our fantastic contributor team. For many of you who came here from Daily Kos, adept2u is not a stranger. After the recent punishing and banning spree that Markos, the owner of Daily Kos went on that from everything I heard disproportionately affected people of color, women and President Obama's supporters, adept2u reached out to me and decided to make his new blog home here. - Deaniac83

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HELLO, THE PEOPLES VIEW. I AM ADEPT2U.

You know it had been my intention to not really discuss the place I learned to love to blog: The Daily Kos. It is no secret I was part of the great 2011 purge of Black contributors there that also caught up my fellow blogger and really good friend at The People’s View ThisisMyTime. The last I heard over 30% of the Black participants of the Daily Kos were either disciplined or banned outright. I’m a salesperson by trade and I know that one doesn’t routinely talk about organizations you consider your competition. However over the last few days something that was so easy for me I could produce as many as 3 recommended posts a day for Mr. Moulitsas has become difficult, my muse is pissed. She and I have a very nice relationship normally. I don’t try and constrict her and she flows, so as the words are flowing pretty easily I have to apologize acknowledge her and let her out.

I suppose I might have also been actually concerned about the ability to return to that place. However, I’ve been told in order to do that, and I have been invited, I would have to request hat in hand re-instatement from Markos, so going back is not really an option because before I'd do that I would first lie in the gutter and suck off goats for a quarter.

I found this article I wrote in 2003 on my computer today and thought I would share with the community. Reading it again really helps me to reflect about what happened on that fateful day and how far we still have to go. Today across this country Fire Fighters, Police Officers and other workers who give back to our country are being dismissed in more ways than one. I did not think I would see the day when this would happen in America, especially after what happened after 9/11. Hope you enjoy this article of in memory of the first responders.

Published in Epiphany online magazine January 2003

The truth sometimes turns up in unexpected places.

...With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world? Desiderada by Max Ehrmann...

Halos of fine white dust filled with particles of the dead and plain old concrete from the once majestic structures, which were once the World Trade Towers of New York City, crown the heads of courageous men and women who have not paused since that fatal day Sept 11, 2001. These are the city’s bravest, the Fire and Police departments of New York City: America’s Angels in Black, women and men standing tall amidst carnage and sorrow pledging to bring everyone home. Once, not so long ago, my image of an Angel had always been of a white, blonde male or female dressed immaculately in a white diaphanous gown flowing out and around them in peaceful soft folds. Their heads illuminated by a golden-white light in a circle a few inches above their heads hands clasped in front of them or held out in supplication. Of course, this image was drilled into my psyche from younger days when I first began to see clearly and identify images shown to me by my mother in my favorite Bible stories. Later the images were further imprinted into my maturing psyche through the media, school and the church. But as I found the courage to step away from my childhood and the images steeped in it my vision changed.

The President has began taking his Jobs Now plan to all over America. Americans are demanding Congress Act. And a solemn anniversary of 9/11 is coming up tomorrow. In the middle of all of this, there is a lot going on, and our friends at the Pragprog blogosphere cover it all:

• If you read nothing else today, read the column in USA Today calling on Americans to reclaim the post 9/11 unity by the President of the United States.
• Dennis G at Baloon Juice examines the Rick Perry candidacy... for the second president of the Confederate States of America.
• Tea Party Republican members of Congress don't want to hear from their constituents about jobs, reports Eclectablog.
• BPI Campus has their latest in the series on sustainable jobs. Give it a read.
• Emily Hauser at the Angry Black Lady Chronicles talks about Americans and the death penalty in the wake of last week's Republican debate's big applause line of Texas' execution of 234 people.
• The Fierce Advocate talks about why the tactics of the Petulant Left aren't working: they have adopted the anti-Vietnam war tactics rather than the tactics of the civil rights movement.
• PlanetPOV's choicelady has a fantastic post on dominionism America: God, guns and greed.

And now, the floor is yours.

The president's vision on Thursday night was bold, his plan specific, his dialog brilliant and directly with the American people. A plan and an address that earned accolades even from fierce critics on the Left like Paul Krugman, got this dickish response from Adam Green of the "Progressive Change Campaign Committee" (although, given their history of race-baiting, they might as well be renamed the Pathetic Concerned Citizens Council):

Tonight, President Obama proposed corporate tax cuts paid for with cuts to Medicare benefits. Forcing Americans to choose between jobs and Medicare is unthinkable, especially for a Democratic president. America needs a massive government investment in jobs – not Medicare benefit cuts, not corporate tax giveaways, and not telling the unemployed to work for big corporations for free.

Adam Green is a pathetic liar in the mold of the Right wing. Not that anyone should be surprised. After all, just this July Adam Green's cohort and co-founder for the PCCC, Aaron Swartz, was indicted for wire fraud, computer fraud and data theft. Apparently, you can tell a lot about a man by his friends. Birds of a feather and all.

But I digress. Let's go to the fun part and take apart Green's intellectually challenged, lying rank dickishness, point by point.

"Yes, we are rugged individualists. Yes, we are strong and self-reliant. And it has been the drive and initiative of our workers and entrepreneurs that has made this economy the engine and envy of the world.

But there has always been another thread running throughout our history -- a belief that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation...

Ask yourselves -- where would we be right now if the people who sat here before us decided not to build our highways, not to build our bridges, our dams, our airports? What would this country be like if we had chosen not to spend money on public high schools, or research universities, or community colleges? Millions of returning heroes, including my grandfather, had the opportunity to go to school because of the GI Bill. Where would we be if they hadn't had that chance?

No single individual built America on their own. We built it together. We have been, and always will be, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all; a nation with responsibilities to ourselves and with responsibilities to one another. Members of Congress, it is time for us to meet our responsibilities...."

In How Obama Got It Right writers George Lakoff and Glenn W. Smith used this quote to demonstrate how President Obama used his speech last night to call the country to action. In his opening paragraph he tells us why progressives always have a hard time winning policy arguments. He notes that they never learned the trick, which is that "morality drives policy". Progressives nowadays have got it backwards and they keep falling short of their goals.

PASS THIS JOBS BILL said President Obama 17 times during his address to congress last night in his 32 minutes speech that outlined his plans to help millions of Americans left jobless by laying out a jobs package worth $447billion and calling on congress to fulfill their responsibility expected from them by the American People.

If you have not heard the speech in its entirety, please do so but I will highlight the details of what is in this jobs bill right below the video:

Full Transcript: The president's speech was flawless, forceful, precise and detailed it included the following:

Right away. Pass this American Jobs Act right away. That was President Obama's recurring message to Congress tonight. While politicians and the political media are trying to take the political temperature of the President's jobs proposal, the President - the truly American president, reminded us of something tonight: 14 months (the time till election day) is a luxury most Americans don't have. That was the message that rang through his rhetoric. The complementary message that rang through his proposals? Demand side economics.

If you haven't yet, watch the President's speech first (transcript here):