October 2011 Archives

I've been following the rapidly evolving, or rather rapidly devolving, stories about Cain and the allegations of sexual harassment. I have to admit that at first I was inclined to sympathize with him because we all knew that opposition research would turn up something. And what better to turn up on a Black man than sex charges. They're damaging enough for Whites but for African-Americans they're odious stereotypes with very bad histories. Black men used to get lynched for looking at a white woman in the "wrong" way. History demands that the media go an extra mile before unleashing these kinds of charges.

Whatever the truth of the matter may be, Cain could not have handled this much worse. He had the information for ten days. He stonewalled, then denied, then didn't know, then couldn't distinguish between a settlement and agreement. This was a slow-motion train wreck. I cannot, at this point, judge Cain's character, but his advisors are Minor Leaguers while trying to coach in a very Big League. He had a very bad day today and whatever happened ten years ago, his judgment in this crisis raises the question: Is Cain able to survive at this level?

©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Ugh oh. Herman Cain pulled a big no-no and it came back to bite him and his candidacy. He settled in a sexual harassment case. Now, I am no F. Lee Bailey or juris doctor or anything, but this truth I hold to be evident: settlements aren't made unless there is plenty of evidence on the plaintiff's side. It is the last step before going to court. Always.

Besides, if a candidate is going to show himself to be randy, it is best to do so after he is elected, a la Arnold and Bill Clinton, though it can be like holding a lit match to a stick of dynamite. The thing is that this has been going on since Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, maybe even before especially in merry Old England with guys like King Henry VIII, who was hard to please in the wife department. Had I been in line to marry someone like that, I would have thought about it two, maybe three or one-hundred times. Then, if I had no alternative, I would have run away from home or thrown myself into a moat.

(Woman in moat)

I know that we all have urges and desires. Otherwise, no one would be here and you wouldn't be reading this, but the best thing to do is not to mix them, as they can be like TNT and a lit match. On the positive side, it is happy news for our current president who must be salivating over the news. For now, the best thing for Herman Cain to do is to hire the same PR guns that other big wigs hire when they have similar ugh ohs, though after doing lots of 'splaining, it may not be enough, and he may wish he had taken several cold showers beforehand or gone swimming in a moat instead.

here @ wordpress.

G. Tz.

GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain's win in the Iowa straw poll is more disturbing proof that his candidacy may not be the flash in the pan that many think. Cain added to his string of straw polls wins by barely nudging out presumptive GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney in the Des Moines Register's Iowa Poll. The poll which has measured the GOP and Democratic Caucus candidate preferences of Iowa voters since the 1980s has proven credible and is carefully watched by political observers. It was the only poll to show that then Democratic presidential contender Obama had a substantial lead over party rivals Hillary Clinton and John Edwards.

But the far more intriguing thing about Cain's candidacy is the consistency of the poll numbers. He has been either at the top or near the top as a favorite among GOP voters for weeks. He has not been the proverbial flash in the pan that recent GOP presidential candidates have been. That is the candidates burst on the scene, announce their candidacy with much fanfare, get a blast of media attention, create a momentary public buzz, and then fade quickly into the sunset. That pattern has been plainly evident in the candidacies of Michelle Bachman and Rick Perry. They announced their candidacies with much fanfare, got a quick surge, and then when they make the inevitable gaffes, inanities, and goofball pronouncements, set against the intense glare of the media, they fade faster than the sun in an Arctic night.

But Cain hasn't. The reasons go beyond just the media and GOP voter fascination with the novelty of an African-American conservative tossing out pithy and in some case outrageously quotable sound bites. Cain is politically serviceable in several ways. He is the runaway pick of GOP ultra conservatives and Tea Party leaders and followers. This appears to refute the knock that they are nothing more than a pack of unreconstructed bigots that can't stomach the thought of a black man in the White House. He is an outsider. The maverick, politically unconnected, noble citizen politician always grabs media and public fascination. It's even more appealing at a time when much of the public loathes and abhors most politicians, and regards Congress somewhere between a used car salesman and a dentist. Cain has played hard on that loathing and disgust and never tires of reminding that he is not a politician, has held no office, and will manage government as if it was a corporation, and bring good business sense, management and efficiency to solve all problems. The notion of the man on the white horse riding into Washington, turning government on its head and chasing the army of corporate and fat cat lobbyists, flaks, and deal makers packing from the political temple in mad flight played well in 2008 with the Obama candidacy. It worked, and Cain took obvious note. Cain's adroit stoke of the basest of social conservative rage on immigration, abortion, religion, gun ownership, and most importantly primitive laissez faire shred of the safety net and barebones federal government has aroused their passions to a fever pitch.

Cain's added value is that he's the most effective among the pack of GOP presidential contenders in posing as the ABR (that's anybody but Romney) alternative. The Iowa poll reconfirmed that Romney has what's charitably called "serious vulnerabilities" meaning that ultra conservative don't like him and what they perceive he represents. These are the voters that are the most likely to vote in the official Iowa GOP Caucus in January and they say that they are three times more likely to back Cain over Romney. As a side note, with Perry fumbling and bumbling on the campaign trail and with his ultra-conservative credentials slightly frayed or at best suspect, Cain even has value as the anti-Perry Christian conservative surrogate.

GOP mainstream leaders, hard-nosed GOP political operatives, and the big gun financial donors have so far treated the Cain candidacy as a fun and games, amusing, sideshow act that will fade into the dust when it comes time for the serious voting. That may well prove to be the case. Cain certainly has shown very little interest in doing the hard politicking in the key early make or break primary states, has raised a relative bare pittance of campaign monies, and has no national organization to speak of. But at this stage of the political game that's less important than revving up a disjointed, disgruntled, and dismayed GOP party faithful. Cain is the right guy for that. And that alone guarantees him a lot more shelf life than people think or want to believe he has.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Hillary Clinton can say "no" to the pesky pleas for her to run for president in 2012 until she's blue in the face. It won't make any difference. There will be yet another poll that shows she's far more popular than President Obama as the Democratic presidential standard bearer. And that in a head to head race she'd shellac any one of the pack of GOP presidential contenders, and that includes the presumptive frontrunner, Mitt Romney. A Time Magazine poll is the latest to feed the Hillary clamor. A Clinton presidential run won't happen. But the persistent romantic pining away for it is and never has been about putting another Clinton in the White House. It's about the supposed shortcomings, risk, dislike, and betrayal of Obama. The alleged shortcomings have been stated so often that they've become a mantra. He's too weak, vacillating, and conciliatory to the GOP. He broke his campaign pledges for a swift Iraq war withdrawal, caved in to Wall Street, the banks, and major corporations, bungled the economy, and dithered on shutting down Guantanamo, and put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block. The risk is that he could lose with his approval rating continuing to slip into the danger zone for presidents in their reelection bid.

This is all based on gross negative exaggerations, distortions, and the deliberate downplay of Obama's record and positive accomplishments. It also ignores the recent history of presidential politics. In 1982 polls showed that a majority of voters said that Reagan should not run for re-election because of his supposed political failures. That included high unemployment, double digit inflation, and inexperience in dealing with these problems. His approval numbers at that point were even lower than Obama's. The sentiment against a Reagan rerun was off base. He won a smash reelection victory in 1984. Reagan was hardly the first to hear talk that they were damaged political goods and could not possibly win reelection, Truman and Clinton heard that said about them after popularity plunges, legislative reversals, or midterm party losses. They won reelection.

The dislike of Obama is even easier to pinpoint. It comes to down to a mix of race, unrealistic expectations and fear. The seed of that was planted not by the relentless subtle and not so subtle race tinged assault on Obama by some GOP and Tea Party leaders and followers, but in the Democratic primaries in 2008. Polls showed that a significant percentage of conservative, rural, and blue collar Democrats in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky flatly said that they would not vote for Obama, based on color. Clinton subsequently won primary victories in each of these states. The great fear was that the racial divide was not between the GOP and Democrats, but among Democrats and that would derail Obama's drive for the White House. It was a false fear. Obama won Pennsylvania and Ohio in the general election. And he won it with considerable white voter support.

The question for 2012 is whether the racial fears that could have imperiled Obama in 2008, but didn't could imperil his presidential reelection bid this go round. There's no hard and fast answer to that. Race is always a tricky commodity in any election contest between a black and white candidate. But the evidence is clear on one point, the economy trumps all. If voters perceive that the economy is improving, will continue to improve, and that the incumbent has a firm grasp on how to insure that that will be the case, then the odds are always good for his reelection. This will be the case in 2012 as in all other presidential elections.

The shout from some for Hillary to muscle out Obama ignores another hard political reality. The GOP's goal has never been solely to drive Obama from office. The war would have been waged against Hillary or any other Democrat that won the presidency, but especially Hillary with the same down and dirty vehemence that they have waged it against Obama. The GOP war is about regaining power, control, political dominance, protecting its corporate and financial interests, its strict construction definition and enforcement of the laws, and more broadly imposing its philosophical view of how government should be run. The presidency is the grand prize that pulls the political, economic and philosophical threads on how government and power will be exercised together for the GOP.
Hillary experienced that relentless down and dirty lust for power and dominance first hand during her years in the Clinton White House. She was just as much the prime target for the campaign of GOP slander, vilification and lies as Bill. The notion sprang from this that she is more savvy and tougher than Obama and would make much more formidable foe for the GOP as a candidate and as president. That's wishful thinking, and easy to indulge in since she holds no elected office, and has not had to battle with GOP legislators across the negotiating table on any of the major issues that Obama has.
None of this talk about Hillary as the Democratic candidate will go anywhere. Not just because she won't allow it to go anywhere, but because it's just another nasty way to slam Obama.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Warren Buffet

"I could end the debt in five minutes," Warren Buffet told CNBC. "You just pass a law that says anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for reelection. The 26th Amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) only took three months and eight days to be ratified. Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971 before computers, cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to pass, seven took one year or less to become the law of the land... all because of public pressure."

There is also the Congressional Act of 2011. The author is an anonymous but one lone blogger has added her ideas as well.

1. No Tenure. Congressmen collect salaries while in office and collect a small portion of their pay when they are out of office in accordance with Social Security guidelines.

2. Congress (past, present and future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional Retirement Fund move to Social Security immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.

3. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%, and they will receive the same pay as teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District. (That ought to fix their wagon.)

4. Congress must equally abide by the laws they impose on the American people.

5. They will not hold the American people hostage over debt ceilings and things like that.

6. They will not talk just to keep the heating bills down.

7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make these contracts with Congressmen. Congressmen made these contacts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their terms then go home and back to work.

Even though our psychologically delayed Congress would never pass this, there are always petitions and ballots and Obama Presidential vetoes with the backing of 99.999% of the American people. Abstainers would include Michelle Bachmann, the Koch brothers, Texas Governor, Rick Perry and soon-to-be ex Wisconsin Governor, Scott Walker, as he rides along the coattails of the Koch brothers during his last months in office. Aside from offing bin Laden, it would be the highlight of Obama's political career. And outside of his wife and kids, it could be one of the key points of his life.

Could Obama lose California? The answer to any political question is almost always, "Well, it's possible." Obama could lose California if the economy really tanks and we drop into a true depression. (Yes, I'm depressed already, but it's not the same) Yes, he could lose if we are attacked significantly by either Al Qaeda or Iranian terrorists. He could lose California if either a true left or even a credible centrist candidate draws votes away. The level of passion for Obama is almost completely gone and his support is based on fear of the eventual Republican candidate. This is a very different dynamic from four years ago.

Since the two major candidates will not generate a lot of positive passion, we can look forward to a hugely negative campaign from both parties. In the absence of love for the nominees, it will be all attack all the time. Of course, there is that possibility, however slim, of a third party in the center. That would change everything!

©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

At this point, predicting the next election is like predicting a coin toss; it could land one way or the other. If Obama wore nerd glasses and had adult acne and buckteeth and carried his pens and pencils in a little plastic protector in his shirt pocket, he never would have made it to city dogcatcher let alone to the highest office in the world.

The truth be told, he is one hell of a campaigner who has style, charm and good looks oozing from his every pore. But the proof is also in the pudding, and those things do not a good president make. He promised to change things, and lo and behold, we are in worse straits than before. He has increased the national debt by four trillion dollars, and the unemployment rate is hovering around nine percent. And he has alienated environmentalists and many Jewish voters by reversing allegiances mid-stream and siding with the wrong side.

Who will get those four coveted years for depends on whether the GOP and the ever- nutty Tea Party are able to put their differences aside and show leadership, foresight and brains, which is proving to be a long shot.

Some say that his problems are not only the residue of the Bush era and this may be partially true. They also say that Congress won't work with him, and this may partially be true as there are those members of Congress that would make a group of developmentally delayed five year-olds at a Halloween party look mature. But it could also be that some of his ideas were bound to boomerang to begin with. Though as a caveat to Congress, they need to remember that it is the people who put them in office, and it will be the people who will take them out of office unless they start behaving better than the aforementioned five year-olds.

In the end, a win for Obama also depends on how many talk show appearances he makes and how convincing he is. And let's face it; he was pretty convincing the first time around. But unless the GOP churns out one candidate that doesn't make Daffy Duck look intelligent, then Mr. Charm could easily charm himself into four more years. If that happens, let us pray that his learning curve will have kicked into high gear by then because we're sure going to need it.

The question "Can Obama Lose California" has been bandied about so much it screams for an answer. The short answer is no. It's a lock down Democratic state. Now the longer answer as to why the question is even posed. True, Democrats have a crushing numerical advantage over the GOP in terms of vote numbers and percentages. The state's two major cities, Los Angeles and San Francisco, are rock solid Democratic, labor, environmental, and minority voter friendly. San Diego, the other major city, is increasingly environmental and multi-ethnic friendly. No GOP presidential candidate has won California since George H.W. Bush did it in 1988.

However, there are short and long term perils for Obama in 2012 and for the Democrats beyond that election. A centrist friendly GOP presidential candidate, that is Mitt Romney, can appeal to independents and conservative Democrats. A continued souring economy, a lackluster turnout by Latino voters, and an equally lackluster get out the vote effort by Democrats in the state can appreciably narrow the vote margin that Obama will get.

A concerted effort by the GOP to get a coherent centrist, immigration friendly line, and an equally concerted effort on their part to appeal to Latino voters on the issues of patriotism, family values, small business support, and even religious values, and cultivate some young Latino and even black potential office holders, and put money behind their campaigns is a future possibility. This could pay some dividends if the GOP chooses to go that route. The point is for the GOP to be competitive again in the state it has to transform itself from a narrowly rigid, ultra conservative white guys party, into a party that preaches and practices diversity. If it can pull off this political magic hat trick it can be a force again in the state. This won't happen in 2012. But the possibilities are there for the future for the GOP. The ball then is in its court, but for now it will stay in Obama and the Democrat's court.

When the Founding Fathers were thinking about Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press, I doubt that they had Moammar Gadhafi's demise or any of those other gross things in mind.

I like my news, too. I like to know what's going on, so I do not sound like I am living in a cave or am in the Dark Ages, but the question is how graphic do we want to go? For some of our news coverage feels and sounds like a frienemy who barges in with too much information.

There is our friend at the window talking and yammering on about herself, her latest operation and the details of her divorce and/or colonoscopy. We quietly excuse ourselves for some coffee and maybe an Excedrin when she starts knocking on the back door. We can hear her voice all the way from the medicine cabinet.

We open the door and say we need to take one a nap, but she is relentless. We beg for mercy, just a little time in the meditation zone or one darned namaste. But being up there on the clueless spectrum, she does not stop. Finally, we think about those steak knives and contemplate murder. Maybe a little strangulation or a slip or fall or two, but we don't because we have dogs and kids to feed and a mortgage to pay. Besides, orange doesn't work on most people, and we don't want to wake up next to a Bubba or a Bubbette asking for special jailhouse favors. And so it goes.

That's what it's become like with the media. I understand their wanting to impart the news. I (sort of, provided it's not too gruesome) want to know what's going on, but do we really need pictures of Gadhafi and his son in their most current, unpresentable states when a nice general description would do? Something like: "Head Nut Offed Today" or "Head Nut's Son Met His Maker after one Last Sip of Water and One Last Drag off a Cig" followed by some terse description. That's it. I know that people were mad at him. I know he was asking for it; I just don't want to watch.

If I wanted gruesomeness, I would have become a mortician, though I nixed it because I like conversating with people and having them conversate back, or a detective, even though Sherlock Holmes was the last crime novel I read.

But enough is enough. I want to get the news like my eggs, easy up and without a description of the chicken that laid them, the cow that gave the milk for the butter and the life cycle of the strawberries that went into the jam because some of us are just minimalists.

President Obama's Iraq troop withdrawal should finally silence the naysayers. And there have been many of them. GOP leaders pound him relentlessly for being weak, ineffectual, and indecisive on military and foreign policy aims and goals. His handling of the Iraq war supposedly was the ultimate proof of that. Liberal Democrats and progressives screamed at him for allegedly betraying his much stated pledge as a US Senator and a presidential candidate to end the war, and end it quickly once in the White House. The critics did not take one glaring fact into consideration. Wars are always easy to start, but never easy to end, especially when they are inherited from another administration, an administration of the opposing party. That was the case first with Korea. President Eisenhower made the dramatic campaign pledge in 1952 to end the Korean War stalemate. He inherited the war from Democrat Harry Truman. It took more than a year after he took office, and thousands more US casualties, prolonged and complex negotiations, and a determined opposition from military generals and war hawks to pulverize Korea and even China with nuclear weapons to get a final war settlement.
President Nixon had the same difficulty in ending the Vietnam War, a war he inherited from Democrat Lyndon Johnson. It took six years of hard fighting, thousands more US casualties and the final crushing collapse of South Vietnam's U.S. backed puppet government nearly six years after Nixon said he had a secret plan to end the war, and won the White House in 1968 before the U.S. finally cashed in its chips.
President Obama faced the same dilemma as his predecessors who made promises to end their unpopular wars but given the vagaries of war, political and military opposition, and massive vested interests in perpetuating war found that extricating the country from Iraq was no simple matter. The eight year ground war with U.S. troops taking casualties, inflicting death and destruction on towns and villages, and heavy collateral damage, i.e. civilian deaths, stirred international, and regional hatred of the US, and reaffirmed the US image as the bully boy of the world. The war was a colossal domestic and international disaster, and the mountainous lies and deception that the Bush administration used to get and keep the US in Iraq will be a permanent mark of historical disgrace and shame on the Bush legacy.

The more important thing for Obama and the nation is the political consequence of the withdrawal. The Iraq war was never simply a military contest to get rid of a hated dictator, in a country that supposedly posed a massive threat to Israel and moderate Arab governments. It was a political war waged to assert American political dominance, control strategic oil resources, to bolster the military hawk credentials of the Bush administration and to boost Bush's tenuous and sagging personal image and popularity on the home front. Obama understood that as long as the bullets, American bullets, flew at Iraqi targets, the US would continue to suffer the deeply flawed and failed political consequences of its overt military involvement in the country.
Obama also learned another lesson, a negative one, from Bush's Iraq folly. In announcing that the troops would be home by Christmas, he did not declare "mission accomplished" with the withdrawal. The mission accomplished boast would be tantamount to declaring the war a US victory. To tout a war that should never have been fought and then fought for the wrong reasons, and in the wrong way, would be laughable and insulting, especially considering that there is no guarantee that the country will be the oasis of peace, democracy, and stability that supposedly was the goal of waging the war in the first place.
The Iraq war was an ugly and shameful page in US history. Obama early on recognized that, and recognized that millions of Americans were furious and frustrated by it, and the first chance he got to fulfill his pledge to end the war would be a solid plus for his administration and the country. GOP leaders and presidential candidates will wag ineffectual fingers at him for supposedly weakening US resolve in the region, and some on the other side will rail at him for not getting out of Iraq the first day he entered the White House. But all that really counts is he did what he said and finally ended the conflict. The naysayers can't take that away from him.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

President Obama's Iraq troop withdrawal should finally silence the naysayers. And there have been many of them. GOP leaders pound him relentlessly for being weak, ineffectual, and indecisive on military and foreign policy aims and goals. His handling of the Iraq war supposedly was the ultimate proof of that. Liberal Democrats and progressives screamed at him for allegedly betraying his much stated pledge as a US Senator and a presidential candidate to end the war, and end it quickly once in the White House. The critics did not take one glaring fact into consideration. Wars are always easy to start, but never easy to end, especially when they are inherited from another administration, an administration of the opposing party. That was the case first with Korea. President Eisenhower made the dramatic campaign pledge in 1952 to end the Korean War stalemate. He inherited the war from Democrat Harry Truman. It took more than a year after he took office, and thousands more US casualties, prolonged and complex negotiations, and a determined opposition from military generals and war hawks to pulverize Korea and even China with nuclear weapons to get a final war settlement.
President Nixon had the same difficulty in ending the Vietnam War, a war he inherited from Democrat Lyndon Johnson. It took nearly six years after Nixon said he had a secret plan to end the war, and won the White House in 1968. It took six years of hard fighting, thousands more US casualties and the final crushing collapse of South Vietnam's U.S. backed puppet government before the U.S. finally cashed in its chips.

President Obama faced the same dilemma as his predecessors who made promises to end their unpopular wars but given the vagaries of war, political and military opposition, and massive vested interests in perpetuating war. Extricating the country from Iraq was no simple matter. The eight year ground war with U.S. troops taking casualties, inflicting death and destruction on towns and villages, and heavy collateral damage, i.e. civilian deaths, stirred international, and regional hatred of the US, and reaffirmed the US image as the bully boy of the world. The war was a colossal domestic and international disaster, and the mountainous lies and deception that the Bush administration used to get and keep the US in Iraq will be a permanent mark of historical disgrace and shame on the Bush legacy.

The more important thing for Obama and the nation is the political consequence of the withdrawal. The Iraq war was never simply a military contest to get rid of a hated dictator, in a country that supposedly posed a massive threat to Israel and moderate Arab governments. It was a political war waged to assert American political dominance, control strategic oil resources, to bolster the military hawk credentials of the Bush administration and to boost Bush's tenuous and sagging personal image and popularity on the home front. Obama understood that as long as the bullets, American bullets, flew at Iraqi targets, the US would continue to suffer the deeply flawed and failed political consequences of its overt military involvement in the country.

Obama also learned another lesson, a negative one, from Bush's Iraq folly. In announcing that the troops would be home by Christmas, he did not declare "mission accomplished" with the withdrawal. The mission accomplished boast would be tantamount to declaring the war a US victory. To tout a war that should never have been fought and then fought for the wrong reasons, and in the wrong way, would be laughable and insulting, especially considering that there is no guarantee that the country will be the oasis of peace, democracy, and stability that supposedly was the goal of waging the war in the first place.

The Iraq war was an ugly and shameful page in US history. Obama early on recognized that, and recognized that millions of Americans were furious and frustrated by it, and the first chance he got to fulfill his pledge to end the war would be a solid plus for his administration and the country. GOP leaders and presidential candidates will wag ineffectual fingers at him for supposedly weakening US resolve in the region, and some on the other side will rail at him for not getting out of Iraq the first day he entered the White House. But all that really counts is he did what he said and finally ended the conflict. The naysayers can't take that away from him.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

The cheers that GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain got from the GOP faithful at the Las Vegas GOP presidential debate for his full throated defense of Wall Street and his trash of the unemployed for being unemployed was no surprise. The mantra of the GOP crowd since the Ronald Reagan era has been that Democratic rule equals big government equals big spending equals stifling private enterprise job creation. This supposedly equals millions of unemployed whose job skills, initiative, and willingness to find work are sharply eroded. The conclusion is that if you're unemployed, and poverty stricken don't blame business, blame failed Democratic government policies, but most all they should blame themselves. It's textbook blame the victim bashing and the GOP does it best. Cain just sniffed the political tea leaves on that line and knew that it would strike a comfortable nerve with the party faithful.

But the painful truth is that the cheers that Cain got for his poor bashing are no aberration. Political and public references to poverty and the plight of the unemployed virtually disappeared from the nation's vocabulary by the end of the 1960s. Such talk flew squarely in the face of the embedded laissez faire notion that if one lost a job, or never sought one, and remained on the unemployment rolls for prolonged periods of time, it wasn't because of any failing of the system, but because of their personal failings, slough, or unwillingness to get training education and skills to make themselves job or career ready. The notion that the unemployed are to blame for their plight became even more irresistible in the 1990s. This was a time of renewed job growth and economic expansion. The unemployment levels had sunk to low single digit numbers and jobs appeared to be plentiful for anyone who wanted one.

By the first year of the Bush administration in 2001, a decisive majority of Americans were more convinced than ever that poverty and unemployment were the fault of those that were poor and unemployed. In a national poll, that year conducted by National Public Radio (NPR), the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University's Kennedy School, a majority of Americans repeatedly tossed out the terms "unmotivated," "lacked aspirations to get ahead," and "didn't work hard enough" to describe the downtrodden. A majority believed America was a place where with hard work and determination anyone could succeed. In other words, the loud message was that if you're poor and unemployed, don't blame society, and don't look to government to provide the tonic.
This line repeatedly cropped up again and again during the fight President Obama waged over opposition from Senate Republicans to extend unemployment benefits earlier this year. GOP opponents trotted out studies and cited the opinions of conservative economists that alleged that doling out unemployment checks for a lengthy period only made the unemployed hopelessly dependant on a government check, tarnished their job skills, and encouraged disinterest and indolence in getting back in the labor market. The same argument is ruthlessly cited again now that Democrats again propose to stretch out the time frame for unemployment benefits. GOP opponents of the unemployment benefits extension proposal in President Obama's Jobs Bill latched onto the quip from Alan B. Krueger, picked to head Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, that increasing unemployment benefits prolong unemployment. Even a significant number of those unemployed agree with that. In a Rutgers University survey in September, more than one in four respondents opposed renewing the current extended unemployment benefits.

The massive corporate layoffs, downsizing, restructuring, and the sharp plunge in public employment by local and state governments that have dumped tens of thousands of hard working, educated, and diligent workers onto the unemployment rolls through no fault of their own, don't count for much with conservatives. Nor does the Census Bureau report in September that says that unemployment benefits lifted more than three million people out of poverty in 2010 sway Cain and the GOP.

The widespread view that government should play a role in assisting the unemployed during times of economic crisis when the job market has shrunk or disappeared in many sectors will continue to be under assault. This suits major corporations and the financial industry to a tee at a time when they've racked up record profits, a record hoarding of cash, and are scrooge like in spending on job creation and making loans to small and medium sized businesses to jumpstart production and hiring. It lets them off the hook for their abominable economic failures and leaves the unemployed twisting and dangling on it. The applause that Cain got from his cheerleaders and the deeply embedded misguided notion from millions of Americans of why the unemployed are unemployed sadly isn't likely to change.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

I was living next door to Libya, in Tunisia, when Gadhafi took power. No one thought that his coup would turn out well either for Libya or the region. But neither did anyone imagine how far his paranoid and evil impulses would go in bringing suffering and death to the wider world.

I hate to rain on the happy parade celebrating the end of Gadhafi's reign of terror, but with all the potential in the world for a good outcome, that potential is very unlikely to be realized. Now it should be up to the Libyans to build their own future. However, with so much oil and so few people, various outside groups will compete for the spoils. Gadhafi is gone and that is a good thing. Tragically, it is the only good thing.

©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

If I see one more picture of Steve Jobs, the patron saint of technology, I'm going to throw a dart at it. Given that the man was a genius. No one is arguing that, but, let's face it. He was no saint, either.

The two things that knocked him down from the canonization process were one that he had an illegitimate daughter he never acknowledged and a father he never acknowledged, although he recently tried to contact him.

Maybe there is more than meets the eye here. Maybe, as some have speculated, his father would have asked him for money and the billionaire knew it. While I don't think that anyone should use anyone else, what would it have been to float him a small loan or buy him a small island. It's not like he was hurting for the money.

I also don't understand why he didn't acknowledge his illegitimate daughter. No one asks to be here. We just sort of show up to make the best of things, so to avoid her over something she had no say so in isn't very helpful. He was also illegitimate himself, so he knows what it's like, though maybe he never quite got over it.

With all his money, he wasn't the most charitable sort, either. He did set up one eponymous foundation and hired Mark Vermilion, who worked for the charity Humanitas International, a charity founded by Joan Baez, who Jobs briefly dated, to run it, but the foundation shut down after he founded NeXT. When Apple began donating computers to nonprofits, it was Vermilion's idea and not his. Generous he wasn't.

His supporters say that he gave in other ways with life-changing inventions. Yet in my humble opinion, 8.3 billion dollars is a lot to leave around when there are sicknesses to cure, hungry mouths to feed, and animals to rescue.

Vermilion claims that jobs would have been more generous had he lived longer. "There are only so many hours in a week," he said, "and he created so many incredible products. He really contributed to culture and society." Still, it would have been better had he contributed to those who could not afford to buy retail let alone wholesale.

Of course Jobs' genius changed the world to streamline communication, thought the Apple computer, the iPad and the iPhone, to name a few. Even though he didn't have an engineering degree, his name is on 200 patents. Still, there is something to be said for giving to those who can't afford electronic gadgets let alone a gallon of milk at the grocery store.

is here on wordpress.

Thanks for reading.

G. Tz.

There's only two real questions that the Occupy which ever city protestors are being asked and must answer. And that's can the protests last? And what will be gained that are going to change Wall St. and people's lives? If the answer to both questions is as I suspect the protests will soon be just a distant memory, and when discussed after the last protestor departs as a minor curiosity item then what was really gained?

The big banks and financial houses will continue to lie, cheat, connive, manipulate, and gouge. They will continue to pay grotesque bonuses and payouts to their CEOs while pontificating and then defending the need to gouge even more and ladle out bunches of pink slips to their bare minimum wage clerks, tellers, and office workers.

They will continue to thumb their noses at a tepid, horribly compromised financial reform law. And pour a king's ransom into lobbyists, and PR flaks to whine to Congress and the Obama Administration, the press and the public about how even the relatively toothless regulations if enforced fully will put them out on the street pushing shopping carts filled with tin cans.
The pity is that the Wall Street and other city occupiers had the potential to do so much. But to do it they needed a real plan, real organization, and real committed leadership. History may well judge the Occupy movement as a movement like so many others that aimed at making power to the people a reality, but continued to make it just another catchy slogan.

A month ago it was unthinkable. That is a head to head match-up between GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain and President Obama. It's still unlikely, but Cain's quick rise to the top of the GOP presidential candidate heap makes Cain versus Obama now at least thinkable. Cain certainly talks like he believes he can snatch the nomination from the presumptive GOP presidential frontrunner Mitch Romney. With the merciful sink to political non-entity and media darling status of Palin and Michelle Bachman, he's got a media starved for a new flavor of the month infatuated with him and headlining any and every utterance by him. He's got the Tea Party and conservative evangelical zealots cheering him on and pumping up his numbers in straw polls. He'll probably fatten his coffers with some deeper pocket conservative dollars.
If Cain can convince that his candidacy is not simply hype and bombast to sell his book and get a gig on Fox News, and that his tax plan won't soak the middle class and poor at the expense of the rich, his GOP presidential candidacy would be intriguing on several counts. GOP leaders would crow that it proves savage and relentless pounding of the GOP as a party of bigots is a falsehood. It would give voters the sharpest contrast in living political memory of contrasts in style and political philosophy between two presidential candidates. One is a flamboyant, outspoken, ultra-conservative, Christian fundamentalist, cut government, cutting, and unshakably pro-big business advocate. The other is a cerebral, moderate, pro labor, and expansive government advocate. The ultimate intrigue is that both are black. A Cain-Obama match up would be a textbook showdown on which direction Americans want government to go in the coming years. The debates between the two over this question would be fierce and would tightly draw the economic and ideological battle lines.

A Cain presidential candidacy would also pose two other challenges. It would test whether as he fondly boasts that he could pry a significant number of blacks away from backing Obama and into backing him. He told Fox News that in a hypothetical general election match-up against Obama he'd secure at least one-third of the black vote. He didn't stop there.

He told an ABC Interviewer that blacks won't vote for him because of his color but because of his ideas. If Cain is right and he can dent by even a few percentage points the solid wall of support Obama gets from black voters that proved pivotal in his breakthrough election wins in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania and locked up the White House for him, then it would indeed be a monumental fete for him and the GOP. Then presuming that his support among the GOP base holds up, the election could be a real horse race.

But Cain saying that a number of blacks will vote for him doesn't make it so. Polls show that despite some grumblings, talk of disappointment, and even a concerted campaign by some left-leaning blacks to hector Obama, African-Americans still overwhelmingly approve his performance. And even those who raise some eyebrows that he's not doing enough or could do more on black unemployment and poverty still stoutly defend him and blame GOP racists and obstructionists for sabotaging every initiative he puts forth and for creating massive political misery for his administration. They will not break ranks with him in 2012.

Cain will have to get massive doses of Super Pac and GOP National Committee fund raising dollars to stay close to Obama. But he will also have to get white votes, a clear majority of their votes. Polls show that he's within striking distance. But those are early season polls, based more on name identification, fad, and frustration, than any indication of deep voter sentiment. At first glance, Cain seems to show that GOP conservatives, the Tea Party flock, and maybe even conservative independents will punch the Cain ticket. They've been the biggest reason for his poll surge to the top. But if he's there in November will they really be there for him? A Yale study in 2006 found that a significant number of white Republicans and white independents did not support a black GOP candidate in past congressional races. But in the November 2010 mid-term elections Black GOP congressional candidates Allen West in Florida and Tim Scott in South Carolina got a majority of white votes and easily beat their Democratic opponents. But West and Scott won in lockdown GOP districts, and against weak, underfunded, Democratic opponents. Their wins were regional wins with absolutely no national implications.
Cain and Obama would be playing for the highest political stakes in the race to or back to the White House. This will take money, top endorsements, experience, a solid organization and most importantly the ability to instill confidence in a majority of voters that the winner can handle the towering problem of governance. An ideologically driven, ordained Baptist minister and businessman with no political office experience, as Cain is, against a sitting president, defies all political odds. But for now anyway an Obama-Cain match-up is not an unthinkable possibility.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Well Gail-Tziporrah, I fundamentally disagree that protests don't accomplish much. While I think you're right on how sick, tired and disgusted many people are with our government that does not serve us, I disagree that our only remedy is the vote.

Do not underestimate the power of the people or the great American tradition of populism. If we can bridge the gap and find the center, we will be heard. About 1% of our population is fighting our wars. The top 1% of our population controls 42% of our wealth. We, the 98%, can have a voice, must have a voice, will have a voice. And we will be heard!

Howard Beale's phrase from "Network," "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore" should be the moniker of the Occupy Wall Street protestors. Can anyone blame them? After all, those of us who are old enough to work and hold down a mortgage remember a different America, one where every man, woman and teen who wanted to work could, one where we weren't plagued by gangs and inner-city crime, one where people were held accountable for their actions.

But the bewitching hour has passed, the coach has turned back into a pumpkin, and Cinderella is scrambling for a way back home. We now know that we were living on air, in an illusion. The protestors aren't asking for much, only that we return to some kind of semblance of order again. They want to put an end to corporate greed and graft and corruption and to earn their keep without one door after another being slammed in his face. It shouldn't be too much to ask. It wasn't at one time.

But we are not like other countries where protests can oust leaders and change and uproot a whole political system. We are not a third world country like Egypt or Syria. The protestors may be heard, but not really listened to. The best way to bring about change is to hold politicians accountable, to impeach the rotten ones and to make sure that Cinderella at least has money for a cab ride home when Plan A fails.

So the report from the state said that LAUSD isn't properly servicing their black and English language learners. They obviously haven't stepped foot on a campus since "Leave it to Beaver" aired on television. For here, my friends, is what happens on the average campus in that beleaguered district, and probably most others, too, I'd be willing to bet.

Thirty seconds to the bell, the kids are still standing outside the room and are herded to classes that they don't want to go to. Arriving with only the basics, they show up with the clothes on their backs, an iPod or cellphone and a wallet. The girls carry enough cosmetics to open a counter at Sacks. Any pencils books, papers and supplies are MIA and absent. And heaven help the teacher who suggests that the little darlings bring them, because this is part of their "free and appropriate public education." Fearing being branded as a racist, the teacher hands out the supplies and asks the kids to start the lesson on the board. The kids continue to talk, a few girls apply lipstick and mascara and otherwise primp, a spitball flies across the room, and the kids pull out their cell phones and start texting like crazy. And that is on one of the better days, too.

When report cards come out, many teachers who have the utter nerve, audacity and gall to give failing grades will promptly be dealt with by the administration or parents who show up at school beating their breasts and claiming that the teacher failed their little dumpling because she does not like him, which by that point, may be true. And that is at the end of the average semester.

The missing link in all this is that the same opportunities, classes and homework assignments are open to all, but the kids (including the black kids and the English language learners) know that they don't have to do anything aside from waiting for those in charge to cater to their whims while learning to be culturally sensitive. We all have culture. I had my culture, too, but if I ever would have had the utter nerve, audacity and gall to behave like many of these kids do, I would have been crowned at home so thoroughly I would have been sipping my lunch through a straw for the next five years.

They Bailed Out Wall Street and Sold Out Main Street...slogan of Occupy Wall Street

All over the world there is a growing discontent. It isn't right wing or left wing, exclusively Muslim or Jewish, Hindu or fundamentalist Christian. It's human and it's populist. Around the world, and across all the barriers that we set up to divide us, people are angry. They share the common perception that the game is rigged, and we are being cheated out of our futures.

©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Herman Cain knew two things were certain to happen when he blathered that racism doesn't hold anybody back (though he added a tiny caveat "in a big way.") One it would get the media tongues wagging furiously. The second is that it would increase the rapture of ultra conservatives for him. He was right. But Herm also knows that a black president reinforces the delusion that racism is still just a minor blip on the nation's chart, and millions can take comfort that as Cain implies if blacks fail to duplicate Cain's fete and be the boss of a major corporation then they have nothing and nobody to blame but themselves.
It's easy to peddle that line when millions believe that decades of civil rights laws, court decisions and affirmative action programs have pretty much wiped the last vestiges of legal racial discrimination off the nation's map. The line seems even more plausible when millions see blacks heading the nation's top corporations and financial houses. They turn on the TV and they see packs of white news anchors, correspondents and commentators on all the major networks and cable stations. They see blacks at the top of the heap of the richest and most recognizable names in sports and entertainment. They see blacks living in every suburban neighborhood, sending their children to chic, pricey and trendy private schools. They live in cities that are run by black mayors, where blacks hold power and sway on city councils, boards of education and often hold the top police and city department posts. They live in districts that are represented by a black state senator or congressional representative.

This progress is not an illusion. Some blacks like Cain have gotten a small piece of the economic pie, and have markedly increased their political reach and standing. This makes it even easier to buy Cain's line and to get mad at those that don't and accuse them of screaming racism whenever anything goes wrong. However, Cain knows but would never dare publicly admit the tormenting facts that countless studies, surveys, reports, and investigations, lawsuits, and court challenges, and the mountains of EEOC complaints have irrefutably documented.

Blacks are still two and three times more likely to be unemployed than whites, trapped in segregated neighborhoods, and that their kids will attend disgracefully failing, mostly segregated public schools. Young Black males and females are far more likely to be murdered, suffer HIV/AIDS affliction, to be racially-profiled by police, imprisoned, placed on probation or parole, permanently barred in many states from voting because of felony convictions, much more likely to receive the death penalty especially if their victims are white, and more likely to be victims of racially motivated violence than whites. Research studies that show that whites with a felony record are more likely to be hired in some places than college educated blacks.

Cain would never purse his lips to acknowledge the stark fact that middle-class blacks such as himself that reaped the biggest gains from the civil rights struggles often find the new suburban neighborhoods they move to are re-segregated and soon look like the old neighborhoods they fled. They are ignored by cab drivers, followed by clerks in stores, left fuming at restaurants because of poor or no service, find that more and more of their sons and daughters are cut out of scholarships and student support programs at universities because of the demolition of affirmative action, and denied bank loans for their businesses and homes. Cain could easily find himself being by passed by a fearful cab driver while on his way to an important business meeting who didn't watch Fox News and know who Cain was. In fact just a week before Cain cavalierly blew off blowing off the corrosive and shackling bars of racism that still shackle millions of blacks as no big deal Cain huffed at the revelation his GOP presidential rival Rick Perry's "Niggerhead" rock. Cain quickly corrected his memory lapse and got back on script and shrugged it off as much ado about nothing.
The fierce battles over affirmative action, police violence, the segregation laws still on the books in some Southern states, the nightmarish scenes of thousands of poor Blacks fleeing for their lives from the Katrina floodwaters in New Orleans, and the big fight over what if anything should be done about the plight of the Black poor are further bitter reminders of the gaping economic and racial chasm in America. And they are hardly things of a by-gone, forgotten past. Cain's record of achievement-- corporate head, head of the prestigious National Restaurant Assn., a stalwart military career, radio talk show host, syndicated columnist, and now GOP presidential candidate is the storybook dream and envy of millions and is commendable, and many other blacks can tell similar stories of personal triumphs. But their triumphs don't cancel out the naked fact that the very barriers they overcame are still rigidly in place for millions, and in the wrong place at the wrong time for them too. He and they rudely find that racism is anything but dead.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

is here @ wordpress.

G. Tz.

The Wall Street occupiers withering knock at corporate and financial greed, manipulation and corruption is much deserved. Their knock at former President Bush and Congress for giving Wall Street financial houses the taxpayers open checkbook to bail them out with virtually no requirement that they in turn bail out distressed homeowners and struggling businesses is much deserved. Their knock at government regulators for not imposing new tough regulatory rules on Wall Street to end obscene CEO payouts and their manipulative, casino type investments and speculation and profiteering is much deserved.

Their knock at President Obama for somehow being complicit in Wall Street's greed, recklessness and insensitivity is not deserved. Yet there were the shouts that Obama is Bush and the signs assailing him sprinkled throughout the throng that are battering Wall Street. The case against Obama for aiding and abetting Wall Street mostly hinges on the cast of administration officials surrounding him that have deep ties to Wall Street, his failure to push for a financial reform law with the sharpest teeth, and that he did not make like FDR and launch a massive reconstruction program to save homes and put millions of Americans back to work.

The plain and simple truth is that he did what he could within the tight constraints of the system, political reality and the times. The mild and admittedly compromised financial reform law was hectored, nitpicked, and watered down by the usual suspects, Wall Street lobbyists, paid flaks, conservative columnists, bloggers and talk radio hosts, GOP congressional leaders, and key Democrats. The votes and the sentiment within the power center of Congress for the type of hard-nosed financial reforms that are desperately needed, were initially proposed and fought for by Obama, weren't there. The choice was get the best deal possible which included a first ever consumer watchdog agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or come away empty handed. This would have slammed the door tight on a renewed push for stronger reforms down the line. Despite its glaring shortcomings, the Dodd-Frank financial reform law at least opened the door for the future. Nothing remotely close to that would have been forthcoming without Obama's handprint on it.

Expecting Obama to be the second coming of FDR ignores both the times and the forces arrayed against him. FDR was not relentlessly baited by a wide segment of Americans as a closet socialist and his economic policies lambasted as hamstringing and wrecking the private sector BEFORE he took office. Obama was pilloried, assailed, and harangued with that scare tactic and scare labels from the moment he declared that he was a presidential candidate. The hysteria that he got and still gets from GOP leaders, officials, voters and a significant number of conservative and even moderate independents would have been tame stuff compared to what he would have gotten if he vigorously pushed for a massive government spending program on jobs, small business loans and aid to distressed homeowners.

FDR took the reins when one out three Americans was unemployed, the stock market, the banks and major industry had collapsed. The GOP was ridiculed and discredited. The labor movement was on the ascendancy, the until then small and totally marginalized Communist Party was getting a hearing from many down and out unemployed workers. The major financiers and industrialists genuinely feared social upheaval, even revolution. The horror of creating deficits by government spending and a drumbeat media echo chamber to turn the airwaves, (there were no TV networks), into a electronic bully pulpit to badger, hector, harangue and pillory FDR at every turn for spending too much didn't exist. There was an actual government surplus then, and no major debt. FDR in effect had a public and congressional mandate to take drastic action. Obama never had that luxury and all of the liabilities that FDR did not have.

The crisis of Wall Street greed and manipulation is a product of the rush to deregulate fine tuned and expanded by Republican and Democratic presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and of course George W. Bush, the lax to non-existent enforcement of the regulations on the book punishing fraud, manipulation and profiteering by the alphabet government regulatory agencies, a congress that received huge chunks of money from Wall Street and became a passionate watchdog protecting its interests, a media that routinely ignored, covered up, and apologized for the worst Wall Street abuses, and a complacent public that dozed while Wall Street took it to the cleaners.

To dump blame on Obama for not rising above the sordid history of Wall Street greed and abuse aided and abetted by successive presidents and Congress ignores, confuses, and disparages what Obama tried to do, what he was able to do, and what was impossible to do. Obama doesn't deserve that.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Let's face it. Sarah Palin does not inspire mediocre feelings; people either love or hate the woman. She may be a flake, as in "I can see Russia from my house," but she is no political dummy, and that's why she dropped out of the race. She doesn't want Obama to win again. But unless the GOP puts up someone normal who can string a few coherent sentences together, that's exactly what's going to come down the line.

Former President Bill Clinton predicted that Obama will have an easier time with Congress in the near future. It's not such a far-fetched prediction because it couldn't get much worse. But this is what happens when someone with little to no experience gets a job where at least some a year or two of experience is required. Even Reagan was a governor before he waltzed into the White House with Nancy.

In all fairness Obama inherited some of the mess from George W., who inherited some of the deregulation mess from Bill Clinton, but some of it he brought on himself. Not is unemployment unusually high, but he has increased the debt by four trillion dollars and made enemies among his former cronies for his views on offshore drilling and the environment. I don't know who were going to get to come charging through on a roan-colored steed to fix things, but someone had better appear and soon. Now that Texas Governor Rick Perry is no longer the favor of the month, it looks like the answer may be Florida Straw Poll winner Herman Cain.

Sarah Palin is neither gone nor can she be forgotten. She will continue to be the mixed blessing to Republicans and the clear gift to Democrats. She was never a serious potential candidate but using her talent, both to attract cameras and on camera, she sucked the oxygen out of the room when Romney announced and adumbrated the others at the Iowa Straw Poll.

While I cannot imagine her heartily endorsing Romney, whom she clearly dislikes and doesn't trust, I doubt that she'll lead a Tea Party Rebellion and back a hard right independent. But the threat of doing so, which would cost Romney any hope of winning, is a constant threat, a big lever and a large chunk of power. All of which, she clearly loves--along with the cameras!

©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Sarah Palin got it part right in her statement bowing out as a potential GOP presidential contender when she said that if she ran as an independent it would insure President Obama's reelection. She could have added that she would have insured his reelection if she had grabbed the GOP presidential nomination. But that possibility was never in the cards and Palin had sense enough to know that even if a fawning, Palin manufactured news starved media and a few delusional Tea Party true believers didn't. Palin hands down was the most polarizing Republican since Lincoln. And he had a defiant, secessionist, war mongering slaveholding South to deal with. Palin just had a storehouse full of gaffes, malapropisms, and brain numbing political inanities that made her a long running political and public joke. Polls consistently showed her approval ratings were dreadful, and the overwhelming majority of poll respondents just as consistently said that she was not fit to be president. That, of course, only made her even more bizarrely appealing, and a lot richer too courtesy of big payday book deals and ring orchestrated speaking gigs.

If Palin had ever been serious about a presidential run, the GOP pragmatists who control the money, media spin and party apparatus would have done everything they could to maneuver and massage the primaries and convention to ensure that the noise and mischief outsider Palin made would die a quick political death. The two clues to that was the mute silence from any of the GOP candidates about Palin and what if any role she would play in the election. They were totally mum on what impact if any she'd have if she barged into the race at the last minute. The other clue was how much was made of the much hoped for, and much implored by GOP political pundits candidacies of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and after he said a firm no, the even more hoped for candidacy of New Jersey governor Chris Christy. They were taken seriously as a real threat to Obama, something that Palin never was in the calculation of GOP leaders.
But in a screwy sort of way Palin for a time was the perfect every person's anti-candidate. GOP presidential contender John McCain certainly knew that. He gambled that her homespun, matronly stump style, and Bible spouting, gun toting appeal would be tonic for his sagging campaign with the religious conservatives. But those were the exact qualities that sent chills up the spines of the GOP mainstream politicians and made her in their eyes not just hopelessly unelectable but just as hopelessly unfit to be even considered for the GOP presidential nomination.

Palin on the loose in 2012 even if not as a stated candidate would have sent doubtful and even wavering progressives, liberal and moderate Democrats scurrying to the polls to vote for Obama. In fact, the mere mention of her as a possible candidate during the months when she coyly kept the media guessing about her plans was enough to terrorize disgusted Democrats out of their Obama inertia. The real damage that she would have done would have been to confuse, rile up, and split Republicans. Her support in the party might have translated out into legions of disgruntled, frustrated voters who would be sorely tempted to push, prod and hector the GOP to give Palin her due. Many would be just as sorely tempted to vote for Palin as a maverick candidate, or with her name not on any ballot, stay at home. That would be tantamount to a vote for Obama.

But Palin's official departure from the GOP presidential candidate scene doesn't mean that she will disappear totally from the political scene. She will be actively courted by which ever candidate emerges on top from the GOP presidential pack. And she will remain eminently quotable. The task for the GOP leadership is to find a spot for her that minimizes the damage from her loose cannon quips while at the same maximizing her value as a catalyst to rev up and motivate the formidable fringe wing of the GOP base who still are smitten by Palin and delight in her mindless broadsides against Obama. This may not be a hard task. They can have it both ways. Palin will remain a name GOP figure. But when she speaks it will be understood that she is speaking as her own person and in her own unscripted voice.

Palin, then, was the GOP's textbook Catch-22: if they had ever seriously considered her as a presidential candidate, Obama almost certainly would have sailed back into the White House. It would have blown to smithereens the GOP's one and only goal from the moment that Obama took the oath of office and that's to make him a one term president. They can now breathe a final sigh of relief at Palin's anti-climatic announcement she won't run. She is no longer the GOP's worst nightmare, and Obama's best dream.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

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G, Tz,

We are in a Manichean struggle against real enemies who not only pray for our destruction but also plan it. Radical elements in the Muslim World, both Sunni (Al Qaeda) and Shiite (Hezbollah) want to kill our people, destroy our properties overseas and attack our homeland. This is true and not paranoid. They are also working on seducing Americans as part of their plots and enabling "lone wolves" to commit acts of violent terror.

The process could certainly be abbreviated and appeals limited to a very short time. But some public process would serve to protect us from, however well motivated, a Star Chamber procedure conducted by the executive branch. I offer trial in absentia not to protect the Al-Awlakis of the world but to protect each of us and our system of law and justice. As the character of Sir Thomas More said in A Man for All Seasons, "Yes, I'd give the devil the protection of the law for mine own safety's sake."

©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

As a caveat, be careful with banks, be careful when crossing the street, be careful with anyone and everyone. I speak from jaded experience. My tale of woe could happen to anyone. And it is also a lesson about not being too responsible because it can backfire.

My tale of started when I approached a bank that shall be nameless except to say that it isn't one of the major ones Bank of America, Wells Fargo or CitiBank.

I came upon the mistake after signing up for a quarterly report from a credit card company. The credit score was humming along nicely until I one day deemed a credit score of zero, zero, and with all my debt...

So I called Experian, they said they were sorry for the boo-boo, corrected it and sent me my credit report as sort of a conciliation prize. Leafing through it and seeing all that green for clear, I spied one lone orange box from the bank that shall not be mentioned unless they fix the problem, showing that I paid my mortgage late several years ago. 'Fie,' says I to myself, 'this cannot be right.'

So I called the bank, and they still haven't fixed it. Not to outdo themselves, they then started calling and saying my mortgage was late, too.

If they aren't sending letters, they are calling. Maybe I unwittingly did it to myself. In a stab to be a model credit risk, I unwittingly paid my mortgage early. Being model boneheads, they processed it the wrong way and marked it as a principal only payment and stamped it as late.

This, in turn, spurred the mortgage phone calls.

"When was the last time you paid your mortgage?" a young and probably acne-ridden ridden neophyte asks.

"I paid on 19th."

"Ah, yes, but that was the late payment for the last month."

"Allo there. That was for the upcoming month."

I called the boss man of the mortgage department again, and he said everything was fine, wonderful, hunky-dory even, and I doubt he was talking about himself, his own darned mortgage and house or his personal life.

"Thank you," I say.

"Of course. I wouldn't like it either.

A few days later, the phone starts ringing again. It is them. They're back.

"But I already paid my mortgage," I say.

"And when was that?"

"Look in your records. It should be there."

"Just give us a date.

But by then I know it is futile, useless, really, and I would have an easier time dealing with a Hell's Angel. But I have come out the other side with a valuable lesson in life. Never pay your mortgage early. They just don't get it.

GOP Presidential candidate Rick Perry sweated bullets in issuing statement after statement claiming that he got rid of the offensive named "Niggerhead" rock on his family owned West Texas hunting lodge years ago. Though some say the name stayed on the rock for years after Perry frequented the lodge, Perry continued to insist that the racial epithet on the rock was blotted out years ago at his request and that he would not have personally condoned the vile word on any landmark on his property. But the "Niggerhead" rock revelation did two things. It loaded him up with another bag in the steadily growing locker room full of baggage Perry is lugging around about his past, his actions, , and even his fitness for the presidency.

The revelation about the pejorative scrawled rock also cast another ugly glare on America's long and shameful penchant for slapping the N word on streets, places and things in all parts of the country. More than a half century ago, the NAACP campaigned hard to get a spot in Southern California that was branded "Nigger Grade" renamed.

It got the change but as it turned out that was only the tip of the racially defaming iceberg. More than a decade later, the United States Board on Geographic Names scoured the country and found nearly 150 places with "Nigger" in the name. It changed them to "Negro." The Board was undoubtedly well-intentioned in trying to purge the word from everything or locale that carried it. But it didn't seem to quite get the fact that simply trading the harsh "nigger" for the gentler Negro was still race coding. In this case, the coding still pinpointed blacks. There was no record of any wholesale coding of locales and things as "Caucasian" or "cracker" to demean whites. But the damage had been done. In 2004, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education found that more than 600 locales and geographical features were tagged with "Negro" in their names. Despite the federal government's profuse assurance that no place in the country carries the "N word" in its name, the term still has a pesky way of repeatedly cropping up There was "N Pond" in Pennsylvania that after some protests a few years ago was changed to "Negro Pond." There was "Nigger Jim Hammock Bridge" in Hendry County, Florida. It took a bill by state Senator Steven A. Geller last year that mandated the elimination of all racially offensive names from locales and structures in the state. The legislature unanimously passed the bill. Yet the nagging question was what took the state so long t act and how many legions of Florida residents and tourists tooled across the racist named bridge in the decades that it carried the epithet.

Then there is the road, a stream and lake in upstate New York that a regional environmental researcher discovered and told authorities about in 2009 that carried the "N word" slur. Despite the "revelation," state officials didn't take immediate action. The Department of Environmental Conservation finally scrubbed the word from its website. The agency said there was no public outrage over the slurs. But it blithely attributed that to public ignorance of the slurs on the road, stream and lake. This requires belief that few, if any persons, ever drove, crossed, or paddled around the lake the road, stream, and lake. The DEC can't rename the entities. That's strictly a local matter. This in effect means that the racist name of the entities still officially remains their name. There's also the suspicion that the New York case is hardly an isolated case where racial slurs remain on landmarks. There may well be more roads, streams, rivers, lakes, and ridges, and hills in out of the way places that have the "N word" in their title or are privately referred to it with the term by the locales.

A case can be made that as vile and despicable as slapping the "N word" on anything that's tied down is simply part of the nation's past, though horrid and shameful, is still just that a part of the historic past. And like other shameful things in a nation's history, shouldn't be totally altered but rather learned from. However, that rule doesn't apply to a would be presidential candidate. What Perry did or didn't do when he saw the offensive named rock on family property is immaterial. The fact that it was even there and stayed there that long with no apparent objection from those in the region; a region that Perry delights in claiming as the region where his roots are, and a region that has a long and checkered history of racial segregation, exclusion, and naked bigotry, makes one wonder just how much of that bigotry Perry imbibed.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
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