sigh...
soooo....
this isn't gloating per se. this also isn't laughing at any of you who voted for him...not....quite. it's more like me backtracking and remembering that awful, scary, depressing period when amerikkkans were once more brought to heel bythe blackchurian candidate aka the god king aka obamarama, as they seem to be by every president. for fuckssake, even george the village idiot managed to get all of you in line and manipulate his way into better polls and the fiat of the nation...with a few well placed thermite explosives.
remembering obamarama just after he was hired by big money to do the dirty deed, just before he came into office...with clothless michelle's armpits in full view.
care to join me?
Thursday, November 20, 2008
It's not about Obama becoming a "man"...
thegayte-keeper has left a new comment on your post "You know things are bad when the white people are ...":you are so right...so do you think there is any chance for Barack to become 1/8 of the man Malcolm was?It's about him developing a politicized consciousness of what it means to be Black for every day Black people in amerikkka whose lives have not been changed one little bit by his impending entry into the white house through the front door to sit in the oval office.
This cannot happen because his success as a politician has been hinged on the avoidance and erasure of this fact.
His tenure in the white house as a president of all, meaning he upholds the illusion of objectivity when it comes to race, class and other forms of oppression which divide citizens who have unearned privileges from those who don't, will be completely predicated on him not even coming close to becoming who Malcolm X was.
Funny thing...
None of the white politician/presidents were ever objective.
They were always squarely for the interests of the white, middle-class, land owners , capitalists, for the heterosexual (history will prove him wrong? coward and traitor to at least some of his supporters. his flowery language just means he's fully waffliing and letting the queers who voted for him, know that he's not planning on supporting them the way they supported him).
By being objective about the "changes" he is bringing, he will support the maintainance of pre-existing power hierarchies in amerikkka. He will, because of his inability to bring radical change, be backing those who dominate.
Presidents in the past were always for those who held the balance of power. They were for those who dominated.
I know there is a liberal school of thought that says: Change will take time. What this means is that Obama will need to not freak out those with unearned privilege by radically shifting the balance of power.
And he has agreed to do this. This is why progressives who are those with white privilege, class privilege, patriarchal privilege, heterosexual privilege or any other kind of marketable privilege, love him.
They know he, like presidents in the past, will make sure to protect their rights which have always and will continue to come, at the expense of the dominated.
All this to say, Obama is no Malcolm X.
He has different moral fibre than Malcolm X. His grassroots organizing does not come out of the same rage against racism or against any other forms of oppressio for that matter. He is a civil servant. Civil servants minimize change, keep the peace and calm the populace so as to maintain the smooth running of governmental systems.
Obama is not Malcolm.
Malcolm would not be siding with the israelis against the Palestinian people.
He is not Malcolm.
Malcolm would not be making plans for further oil and domination related war against muslim warriors in other countries.
He is not Malcolm.
Malcolm would not be making a bail out plan for the fucking white dominated middle class while Hurricane Katrina victims...well, don't get me fucking started about that disgusting mess.
He is not Malcolm.
Malcolm would have been making plans for the release of Leonard Peltier who, as I type, has been a political prisoner wrongfully incarcerated in amerikkka for...11976 days, 8 hours, 53 minutes...and...counting...
Nah...Obama is not Malcolm.
Malcolm would have been able to proudly state that he was a Black man living in a racist country and because of this, Malcolm would not have been elected president. Malcolm would have been killed...oops...he was...
1/8 what Malcolm X was to the Black people (not negros) of amerikkka?
For that Obama would need a radical lobotomy and full cranial stem cell transplant.
He'd need to be a completely different kind of Black person. And then, he'd be scary and militant. He would not be up in the big fucking house shaking hands with a war criminal.
this one was good...
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
You know things are bad when the white people are putting Malcolm X on television and complaining about racist slurs levelled against a Black man...
...giggles...
Barack Obama, Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell are related.
They are all (white) house negros.
I know, I know...
Most people are just hoping that the shiny, new, non-ebonics-speaking, big house negro soon to be in charge aka The GodKing will be nicer than the white male massas who have been crushing the flesh and bones of the amerikkkan people into the dust for quite some time now.
What I find interesting about this whole insult "controversy" is that so many decades after his death, with his birthday not having been made a national celebration, the white fake news purveyors feel secure enough and justified enough to actually allow Malcolm X's name to be spoken on television for all to hear...in a very limited context.
Barack Obama is nothing like Malcolm X. The Al-Qaeda deputy, speaking so unapologetically, forthrightly and honestly, was at least right about that.
disclaimer:Please don't be simple. Nobody come busting down my door with a one way ticket to somewhere decorated with solitary confinement torture chambers. That's so last year.
I'm not planning on trading in my family for a hijab, a full body matching bomb set or even a rocket launcher. I don't believe in what Al-Qaeda is doing any more than what the amerikkkan government is doing. I was just struck by seeing Malcolm on the nightly news.
and this...this was difficult but much needed...
Friday, November 14, 2008
He's not the first Black (nominal) leader of a white dominated, capitalist state...
this is really rough...
Nelson Mandela ruled a Black majority, white minority dominated state that made sure to fundamentally alter the rules of the game before letting a Black man into the head office. All important money-related concerns were signed away...meaning, that the economy is still in the hands of the ones who colonized and raped South Africa while the Black majority continues to be dominated, only now, not many in the outside world pay attention or even believe it because the country now has Black leaders and there are "democratic" elections. Clearly, a darkening of the skin of that country's leadership and "truth" and "reconciliation" solved all apartheid related problems in South Africa.
Yes, it did...
For the white monied capitalist colonizing minority.
I'm sure that from the stand point of those who actually rule, the installation of Nelson Mandela was a fucking coup. After that "victory" it was clear that if you hired a white man to do the job, the people would eventually rebel, but if you gave them someone who looked like them, they would sit and take the nasty medicine, chew on a host of bitter pills and swallow. And in so doing they would not burn every last muthafuckin thing to the ground. They would invest. They would go along. They would hope. They would pray for "change".
But they would not burn everything to the ground.
The money, privilege and power of the white elite in South Africa would be safeguarded. There would be NO mass grassroots movement rallied to crush those who had caused so much suffering for so long.
sigh...
So, I'm looking at the various groups of dispossessed voters and non-voters who came on board the obamarama train.
gays and lesbians,
Black people,
People of colour,
artists,
union people,
feminists,
progressive lefties,
radical lefties,
grassroots activists from various movements,
environmentalists,
church groups...
these are the ones that immediately come to mind...please let me know who I've left off the list. Now, before anyone comes to bug me, of course I realize that these aren't hard and fast boundaries and that there was bleed across the lines. There could be churchy gays and lesbians or radical lefty Black feminists. :)
Nonetheless, in terms of community agendas and the issues they examined, these groups were often separate(d) due to differences in privilege and experiences of oppression, true.
But as georgie did his damndest to kill them all, they became equal in their disgust with that administration, equal in their feelings of disenfranchisement from the voting process which, as it had already been proven by what georgie done did in Florida, was a complete and utter scam.
So they were separate, but I think that they were starting to realize that they could be a powerful coalition of interests that could in fact bring the government to its knees.
Holy SHITE! Those in power behind the scenes must have realized they were sitting on a powder keg. They must have realized that they needed to solve this situation quick! People were talking about civil war for heaven's sake. That would never do.
They had to give the people something sweet, a sweet treat to eat. Something that would make them feel all better, more powerful, more involved again.
But what? Or more specifically WHO could they bring on the scene who could bring these groups of people together? Who could lie through their teeth about every single issue and be allowed to get away with it? Who could tell one story to Peter, rob Paul, placate James and still hold the trust, love and admiration of all these separate, yet coalescing groups of people?
They weren't sure. So they produced a reality show that riveted the attention of the world. Rockstar Super White House.
First there were the try outs which would lead to the first big round of contestant eliminations.
Candidates vying for leader of the two official government sanctioned parties competed in the best capitalist...unh...democratic style. They slung dirt and shit and innuendos and lies with passion and a suitable lack of ethics. They utilized the identities and stories of the working class and poor to manipulate the working class and poor.
After the cuts it became clear that not much was happening on the Republican team. But over on the Democratic team, Rockstar Super Whitehouse was heating up.
HilBama were the two remaining contestants and the public was heated and polarized over whether the show's title and the party leadership should be given to an affluent treacherous white woman who was already tied to one president's administration by her contractually purchased and owned genitals or whether the whole pot should be given to a middle class presenting, conservative, christian, biracial darkie family man who seemed like a cross between the Black reverend who turned the other cheek until he died and a militant Black red head who converted to Islam in prison.
No one at the top could call it. They'd been placing their bets, a billion here, two or three zillion there. They had been placing large amounts behind whichever pawn they supported and inviting their affluent friends in other countries to also do the same.
As conversation about who was nicer and more representative raged among the poor, working class and middle classes of all races and genders, the members of the powerful families at the top debated who could best contain, control and generally keep a lid on the powder keg also known as amerikkka.
Only time would tell.
And it did.
Eventually, all the numbers were in, down below, but more importantly up above, they had their man. His name was Obama. Pesky Hil tried to keep the game running so as to show them that she could still be of use, that they shouldn't completely count her out of their massive domination game. They nodded and told her that if that was true and she could do something special for them, they would keep her in mind and keep her resume on file.
Then they summoned Obama to court and explained what he would have to do if he wanted to win. He shuddered but remembered that the shit was going to hit the fan very soon and that his wife and children needed to be protected. How better to safeguard his oh so special Black family than to sign up, sign on the dotted line and become their pawn, their boy?
So shaken and daunted by what he would have to do, by the massive whoppers he would have to tell to millions of people who would willingly buy his bull, he slit his own wrist and made his X as the ones who had drafted the documents looked on and chortled with glee and relief.
Now they had A Respectable Black Amerikkkan Man, Husband and Father!
No one would be able to challenge him or ask him a single question without looking like a racist.
No one would be able to openly resist him without looking anti-amerikkkan.
No one would be able to do anything but smile and clap unless they wanted to be labelled divisive hater who had no hope.
Anyone who didn't like his bull would just end up looking mean and stupid.
Because of the country's history of racism and white domination which their ancestors had benefited from and continued to benefit from to this very day, those in power knew that Obama would serve as Nelson had....please, nobody come trying to bite me about this...just take a look at what's happened in South Africa.
Obama could stop the masses from setting Rome on fire.
He would smile and the public would smile. He would kiss his wife and hold her close and the formerly enraged public would coo and get giggly. He would plan to buy a hugely expensive puppy for his two chemical haired (nappy hair in the white house? wouldn't want to take the fun too far) young daughters and the public stages a nation wide search for the perfect pooch.
And so, the people's candidate, the candidate supported by the grassroots almost completely across the board was actually the candidate of those who would crush the people. He would ensure that their power, privilege, money and pathetic little lives would be safe.
Georgie consolidated their funds and moved massive amounts out of the hands of the poor, the working class and the middle class.
Now Obama would keep the public in hysterical, mass denial, all completely ecstatically happy with very, very little. Obama would keep these people so sorely in need of real hope, parroting the empty words spin doctors had taught him to repeat over and over again so as to better hypnotize them. The singers and actors bankrolled by his campaign, hired to make commercials and videos and songs with catchy chorus lines would make sure that those who responded emotionally would have something to tingle and go all goose pimply over. The ones who would have led the revolution, those had been dealt with. He would molify their rage and keep them interested in the kangaroo court known as electoral politics and in so doing, further divide a left that had threatened to finally coalesce, that would have coalesced under some other leader, not hired by the few powerful families.
The public had not just received a single punch from georgie, they had in fact, sustained two and were right now, still partying in the streets.
The multiple sites of internal bleeding, broken bones, fractures and ruptured organs had not yet begun to show...
Hope you enjoyed my alternate electoral story. :)
it was pretty damned scary out there for a good long while. i was having multiple overlapping i am legend moments...
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
My name is darkdaughta...I am broadcasting on all frequencies...
I know I can't be the sole cognizant survivor of last week's hyped happening. There must be other resilient minds capable of engaging with the strategic significance of the melanin pigmented godking/figurehead without becoming infected with the zombie virus.
If you are receiving my transmission you may also be immune to the big money funded, spin doctor invented, media transmitted, highly successful electoral interest renewal "hope" and "change" meme.
I don't know...is anyone out there? CAN ANYONE HEAR ME? IS THERE ANYONE LEFT?
just a hair's breadth left of center, progressive left, liberal left can't be the only game in town...on the left...is it? Somebody say it isn't so.
Anti-authoritarian lefty signing off
Monday, November 10, 2008
I asked this question a while back but Cornel is more famous...
i liked this one, too...
Monday, November 10, 2008
You do realize that by defending him or any single candidate however "perfect"...
You are defending n outmoded, ineffectual, nonrepresentational system of government that rose to prominence during times when there were far fewer people on the planet?
None of our governmental systems are actually equipped to deal with the reality of over 6 billion people on this planet, many of whom have interests that can't possibly be represented by nationalistic, zenophobic, hierarchical, elitist governments run by powerful cabals headed by figureheads so distanced from the true needs of the people that all they can do is craft lying, manipulative, surface speeches that present them as able to deal effectively with the needs of the many, when in actuality all they are capable of doing in controlling the masses by telling them that voting this charlatan candidate or that charlatan candidate into power will make them happy or sad, bring back the good ole times or stave off the reality of an unavoidable future.
I don't believe in Obama. If you don't like it then fuck off.
Obviously I didn't believe in McCain. If you don't like that fact well fuck you, too. :)
I don't believe in Layton or May or Dion or Harper. Fuck all of them.
Although I will put signs on my front lawn in order to utilize party advertisments to at least try to nonverbally communicate to my neighbours just how far left of them I locate politically...
I don't believe in any of the parties or their leaders because I don't believe in the system they represent.
I don't believe in the electoral games any of them play. I don't believe in their speeches. I don't believe in their party platforms. I don't believe in voting for this team or that team.
This is not the fucking superbowl. This is not an opportunity to finally be part of the winning fucking team. This is not your big chance to finally get to shake hands with the coolest kid in the neighbourhood.
These are our lives. This is our planet and no matter who is in power most of us are never going to get off it.
Pretending that one team winning or another will make a goddamn difference about where things are headed is delusional.
I don't think a better future lies with any of those idiots.
I believe in representative councils where people who actually come from the people, not from those who laugh at us, spit on us, live off the sweat of our brows and manipulate us. When people who were born of the people get together to have long conversations not governed by Robert's Rules of fucked engagement and make the choice to stop believing in heads of state, things will change. When votes of these representatives cannot be bought or intimidated, things will change. When lobbyists and interest groups who represent the powerful, monied and few are ignored, things will change. When corporations are made to pay dearly for poisoning the earth, for exploiting everyday people, for supporting rampant consumerism and other heinous abuses because the council is made up of every day people who will not take shit, as opposed to being made up of the relatives and golfing buddies of the ceos...
Things will change.
He doesn't herald this kind of change. He comes to build dykes around our pain to contain y/our suffering, feelings of disenfranchisement and voter alienation. He comes to contain the suffering so that everyday people will continue to play the electoral game.
As for me?
Well, I grew up not being able to stand the popular kids. No matter how "nice" they were, there was always some point at which they would turn. I never got the hang of watching them carefully. Not until I grew up and entered community. Then all the popularity games and how these are linked to power and domination clicked. Better late than never, I guess. :)
So I can't really play the popularity games easily. I want real change. I want more change.
I think it's well past time for us to call for the abolition of the old governmental systems.
Why?
Well, when you have to lie to yourself and hope on a wing and a prayer that the person you elect won't be too crazy and won't fuck you to deeply or repeatedly, when you have to make up polished popstar generated indoctrination videos to lull yourselves and others to sleep, it really is time to call it a day and create something that works better for us all, rather than for the powerful families who rule us.
No Socialism. No Communism. No Democracy. No Euro lead and defined Anarchy, either. No royalty. No people treated like gods and given the best of the best while children live and die in tent cities. No wealthy privileged bullies of any pigmentation in suits protected by the CIA.
No powerful and privileged few dominating the screaming, crying, bleeding, starving, dying, disenfranchised many.
I believe there are more options than those identified by people whose agendas are predicated on us believing in our limitations rather than in the ways we can co-create.
I believe...in interconnectedness.
I hope...for collectives to replace governments.
Yes we CAN. :)
We can co-create shared free food supplies, shared health cares, shared education, shared housing available to everyone, shared wealth hoarded by no one, shared power, shared attention, shared access. Shared everything.
Each according to their need.
Each according to their need.
Now, I have to go eat lunch and breastfeed the baby. If anything else comes, you'll be the first to know.
painted performative pretties hold the attention of so many...
Monday, November 10, 2008
Too fucking fascinated with pre packaged, performed, palatable prettiness...
Yeah, when the package looks and sounds good...when the package is well dressed and coiffed...when the package has pretty teeth and knows how to pose well and play the game...when there really is no choice but to believe...it's game over...
reLOADing...Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Butoh Blackness...
I've had really tense conversations with other Black people from time to time about manifestations of Black culture, arts...music, visual art, dance, writing...starting off as powerful manifestations of the collective and of the SELF, charting our experiences through time emotionally with the aid of language, colour, sound, movement...
Soon being "discovered" by other people not us and from there morphing into capitalist, surface seeming, popularity accruing, consumable exploit...no longer ours, almost completely not associated with us.
This has happened in kkkanada where hip hop, break dancing and associated clothing are now called "urban" culture. White supremacist popular culture creation machines absorbed expressions of resistance linking Black folks here to diaspora, craved the colourful, vibrance and intensity, remade it, renamed it and is now in the process of selling us the "new" product back to us and others as something divorced from who we are. Sweet.
I went through this really intense period in my early twenties where I was obsessed with everything Black. I only wanted to hear music by Black people, read books written by Black academics and novelists, go to movies where Black people figured prominently, go to social events where Black people were in the majority, go to plays about Black people...At some point this started to shift. I think my first exit point was created for me courtesy of the homophobia and lesbophobia I started to acknowledge encountering in community. It was polite oppression, cuz we're in kkkanada, now. People didn't say "don't come near us". They just made sure that spaces were oppressively heterocentric. They didn't say "don't speak about who you are". They just made certain that whatever could be said that might serve as a critique of their obsession with towing particular lines of compulsory heterosexuality was given precious little space.
From a distance I started to see other fault lines, other places where interacting was extremely problematic. People didn't/don't have...well, let's not talk in the negative...people have the sexual critiques of their parents...which is to say that even among twenty somethings, people considerably younger than I am, christian conservative sexual conservatism is rampant.
What's even more disturbing for me, what I understand to be evidence of white supremacist colonization, evidence of Black people's obsession with seeming perfect and therefore worthy of the name "human" is the obsession with tidy, clean, overly polished/produced/practiced images, music, dance, photography...poetry. Pop culture, consumable culture, easily taken in and understood because any of the gristle, any of the bone, any of the burnt and crusty bits have been sliced away leaving only a pablum like paste no one has to chew too hard to consume.I think this is why I like the idea of Butoh dance so much.
It's thinking dance...
It's feeling dance...
It's traumatized dance...
It's ugly dance...
It is a confused howl of complete horror....
It's muddied, gory dance...
A by product of a nation's experience...after world war two...after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This is not the dance of people who give a fuck who's watching.
This is not the dance of people who wonder whether their performance will garner applause and good reviews.
This is not the dance of people who worry about buying some more bling.
This is not the dance of people who worry about whether the cameras are getting their good side.I want Black, Diasporic, lost fucking cousins Butoh.
I want rage at never being able to truly "return" "home" Middle Passage Butoh.
I want confused, coloured and colonized settler Butoh.
I want a furious spastic, a-rhythmic dance that doens't transport me bumpin and grindin down that Egyptian river aka De-Nile.
I want a ketch she and rape she, miscegenated, worst of both worlds, pappy/minstrel show gone horribly wrong dance that doesn't offer me fantasy space away from the knowledge of who I am.
I want trauma dance...
Angry survivor guilt dance that will wo'k it out fer real not made amusing or lighter by anybody's foot being hol' up, anybody's wais' winin'.
I want a Butoh dance that rocks me right on through the Middle and out the other side fer real.
I want a copper smelly, sticky, dirty, settler made really bad choices, hands stained with Native blood dance not decorated with multicoloured feathers and sequins that makes space for completely unrehearsed, unmodulated shrieks of disgust, terror and horror combined.I want a tumbing, jumbled, troubled space of self articulation beyond already diseased products Sony or Disney or BET or Mirvish Productions can purchase, gut even further(...is it possible to gut something that was lifeless to begin with?), market and sell back to me.
Dear Goddess! Dear Goddess! Dear Goddess!
Just once, just once, just once!
I invoke thee. I invoke thee! I INVOKE THEE!
This is me shrieking an early 40th birthday wish!
Smash the over proof soaked dark cake and smear sticky, stinking icing on the walls!
Feed vermin the split peas and rice, curry goat, blood pudding and souse!
Break forty candles and light the master's buffet and table on fyah!
Kick the honoured courteous guests in the head and send them screeeeeeaaaaaming clothing ripped to tatters out into the streets to spread the word!
Jump for melancholy, twisted, hurting, burning, fuk'd in the head joy!
Black Diasporic African BUTOH, Black Diasporic African BUTOH, Black Diasporic African BUTOH!
hmmm...
maybe I've found a new calling -
Darkdaughta,
Artistic Director
The Diasporic African Anti-Christ's Completely Spastic and Dingy Dancers From Hell (opening a chapter on a block near you...be afraid, be very afraid)
Yeah, I like the sound of that. :)
hahahaha...
Saturday, November 8, 2008
ohhhhhBAAAAAMMMaaaaaaaa...he's already eaten their brains...now they want to eat yours...
this just moved me to tears...of hysterical laughter...
Saturday, November 8, 2008
I'm also really happy that poo filled Colon...unh...Colin Powell is really happy about Obama winning, too...
eeeww...she is so...icky...
Saturday, November 8, 2008
If one of the most dangerous Black wimmin on the planet is happy and inspired about his victory...
Big Black conscious, anti-racist, academic theoretician she is...
If Condi believes that the cause of making "race" a "non-issue" is furthered by Obama's winning of the election...
Well, that does it!
Obviously I should be happy, too.
HIP! HIP! hooRAY!
I'm so glad that even when you're dealing with the minions of mass murdering war criminals there's always a way to find common ground.
and i'll leave the retrospew here for now...
Friday, November 7, 2008
In kkkanadian terms his political views and stances mark him as close kin to our ruling right wing wackos...the Tories...
Sorry, still don't have it in me to actually debate the obamarama obsessive pod people shite with any of you. I haven't felt this alone and isolated in quite some time.
On the good side, my dating career seems to be picking up. Thank you Obama, Michelle, family and the soon to be purchased fucking puppy. I've got more amerikkkan men on my "dance" card than I know what to do with. :)
My only problem now, I told Papi yesterday morning, is that when I meet a good candidate, especially if he's white and understands himself as progressive or liberal, I will always be wondering if he's performing cunnilingus on me?
Or on Obama?
And when he's banging away at my inside parts and making me howl, will it be my voice he hears?
Or the first lady's?
With all the wierdo shite floating around in the air, with the liberal responses that abound, you know say humanity's core shite, just as tied up in sex and sexuality as it is with race, is gonna be radically re...unh.,,,tooled and...unh...impacted...aHEM...deeply. :)
In the meantime...
Papi told me about an article he saw that put Obama in a kkkanadian political context for a moment. For anyone who cares to look...yes, I know no one does...it locates him and his policies as kindred to our ruling bigots the Tories.
But yes, I know...
darkdaughta he's Black and we're obsessed with and embarrassed about our centuries old system of white domination and...He's BLACK...and we can now wipe ourselves clean and absolve ourselves of participating in white domination...and HE'S BLACK!...and that changes everything...
Like it did for Clarence Thomas?
Yup.
Like it did for Clarence Thomas.
Before you get your underwear in a hitch over the simply AWFUL comparison I'm attempting to draw between the anti-christ of harassment and the archangel of electoral politics, I'm just trying to point out that being Black isn't fucking enough. He would have to embody a particular shift in ideology.
And I don't know about what the rest of y'all are thinking...
But a christian, conservative, heterosexual, monogamous, patriarch in a suit is just really evidence of a change if people are so racist that a Black man who is articulate, educated and well dressed blows their fucking minds.
That's sad. Real sad. :)
It says a lot about how low the bar is set.
Anyhoo...
I know that the US has a history of sucking up to really conservative Black men. They have a veritable love affair with them. Now that love affair with those who can be seen as completely harmless, in that they choose to lovingly embrace the way of things rather than demand terrifyingly indepth, fundamental changes, has now been consummated.
There's blood on the sheets and most of the family is happy.
Papi brought me a cigarette a few days ago. Think I'll go smoke it.
Was it good for you?
Stupid question.
Of course.
I, myself did not cum. :)
The Toronto Star
Nov 07, 2008 04:30 AM
Rosie DiManno
CHICAGO—He supports the death penalty for heinous crimes, while acknowledging that capital punishment is likely not a deterrent.
He is opposed to same-sex marriage, though noting that time may prove he's on the wrong side of history on this issue.
He wants more combat troops in Afghanistan, while vowing to take American soldiers out of Iraq within 16 months of assuming office.
He had himself baptized as a Christian in adulthood.
Barack Obama is not the Canadian version of a liberal politician, even while occupying the far left – as a United States senator – of the political spectrum. In Canadian terms, he'd barely qualify as a Red Tory.
This may all underscore how far to the right America has listed in recent years, or how vast the chasm between what much of the world considers progressive and how that term is defined in this country.
An overwhelming majority of Canadians adore Obama, would have swept him into the Oval Office with a record-setting trouncing of the Republican party. Indeed, it often seemed as if Canadians were resentful of the fact they couldn't vote in another nation's election; as if they should be able to impact another's political topography.
Of course, Obama-mania is an extraordinary phenomenon 'round the globe, which augurs well for the U.S. reclaiming moral stature internationally. Comparatively, the president-incoming is the flip side of the president-outgoing, George W. Bush, and all the neo-conservative ideology embodied by this White House.
But, on the testimony as Obama has provided it – in his own words, in two memoirs – he simply is not as perceived by many in his thrall. The fault isn't that he's misrepresented himself; Obama has been quite candid about his beliefs, values and objectives. Yet many seem not to have been listening, or perhaps just tuning out the bits that rankle, parts that don't fit into their idealized characterization of Obama as antidote to what came before.
"I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own values," he once said.
While rejecting all stereotypes of race, Obama has been equally dismissive of pro forma liberalism, or what he wryly called the "latte-sipping Lakefront liberals," to put a local Chicago flavour on a type we all recognize.
In The Audacity of Hope, the then-junior senator from Illinois wrote about the failure of liberal governments in the U.S., an elitist disconnect from the lives of ordinary Americans that was so effectively exploited by Ronald Reagan.
Reagan exaggerated the sins of the welfare state but he tapped into a middle-America, middle-class exhaustion; a disenchantment with highbrow Democrats who derided their values. "A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities," Obama wrote.
Obama has values. You just might not like them. What he has promised, however, is that he won't be held hostage to his own certainties either. That way lies same-old partisanship and polarized governance.
The difference Obama draws between values and ideology: "Values are faithfully applied to the facts before us, while ideology overrides whatever facts call theory into question."
It is America's business where it decides to go under an Obama administration, no doubt to be influenced by the judges he nominates for the Supreme Court. But Canadians weary of losses in Kandahar might be in for a rude awakening when, as commander-in-chief, this president does exactly as promised: Muscles up the U.S. war against terrorism in Afghanistan, asking for more – not less – from its NATO allies. Obama has been even more hawkish than McCain about running Al Qaeda and Taliban belligerents to ground in their Pakistan sanctuaries.
He has so many promises to keep. Not all will be so sweetly received as getting a puppy for his daughters in the White House.
Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
okay, i lied...one more...this one was rich...
Friday, November 7, 2008
Fucking blank eyed settlers...this is not y/our FUCKING (north) amerikkka...zombie people r us...they mde a video...how sweet...
I felt tears well up when I saw this. But I killed them off in favour of a good old fashion scream of horror.
i don't know what else to write or say besides...
if you all wanted a confident, assertive, intelligent, photogenic and articulate darkie in the white house you should have elected moi. :)
if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.
