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The Democrats are STILL Punks!

The Democrats are PUNKS! I keep saying it over and over, but they still won’t man up.

They were elected in 2006 with a mandate from the American people: Stop the Iraqi occupation and bring our soldiers home. With Bush’s veto of the Iraq spending bill, their failure to override that veto, and then their immediate concession to Dubya’s demands that withdrawl timetables be removed from the bill, they have punked out once again.

That cowboy is riding this Democratic Congress as if it was jackass that is its symbol. I keep waiting for Ashton Kutcher to pop up on C-SPAN in the middle of a Senate debate.

I completely agree with Michael Rivero at WhatReallyHappened.com:

And I told you that this was EXACTLY what was going to happen. The Democrats would make a big noise about withdrawel, Bush would veto, and the Democrats would cave so that Bush has his endless war and the Democrats are able to go into the 2008 elections saying, “Well, we tried to stop the war."Well, trying is not good enough. We The People worked hard to put the Democrats into Congress in 2006 and the Democrats have officially blown their chance. They do not get another one as far as I am concerned.

I don;t care what Congress wants to do or tries to do, only what they actually do matters and in terms of the mandate they were sent to power with in 2006, they have failed utterly and completely. They will not stop the war. They have ignored Kucinich’s bill of impeachment against Dick Cheney.

Anyone have a good blueprint for a decent guillotine?

Trying to stop the war simply isn’t good enough. Yoda told us, "There is no try. Only do or do not.”

The Congress is supposed to have equal power with the president. Why are they allowing the carnage and the Bush administration’s crimes to continue?

Because they are PUNKS!

Mission Accomplished For Real

Originally posted by Nadir on LastChocolateCity.com

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, MR. PRESIDENT!

It’s May 1, the fourth anniversary of President George W. Bush’€™s triumphant “ÂœMission Accomplished"€ speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, where he announced that major combat operations in Iraq were over. The US military had successfully overthrown a sovereign government and taken the Iraqi nation hostage. Champange for everyone!

Because of the deteriorating security situation there, the widespread corruption, billions of dollars in cash missing and the fact that many of the projects Bush bragged about are now falling apart, the public believes things are going poorly in Iraq. Despite the grumbling and moaning that we hear, keen observers will clearly perceive, through the 20/20 vision that four years of hindsight allow, that the invasion and occupation of Iraq have been highly profitable ventures for Bush, Cheney, their families and the neoconservatives who led us to war.

The mission has been accomplished indeed. Continue reading

Israeli Leaders Admit Lebanon War Was a ‘Failure in Judgement’

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is under fire from Israeli leaders who have concluded he took them to war with Lebanon “hastily” and without a solid plan.

From the BBC:

Retired judge Eliahu Winograd presented the findings of the six-month investigation at a news conference.

He said the decision to launch the war without a well thought-out plan showed “a severe failure in judgment, responsibility and caution”.

The aims of the war – to crush Hezbollah and force it to hand back two Israeli troops captured in a deadly cross-border raid – were “overly ambitious and impossible to achieve”, Mr Winograd said.

Some 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, were killed in the 34-day conflict, while the two captured soldiers remain in captivity.

Israel was almost universally criticized for the invasion, though some right-wing observers still defend the action. US officials, like former UN ambassador John Bolton, rushed additional weapons to the Israeli army, blocked an attempted cease fire and prolonged the conflict. For their part, those US officials say they are “damned proud of what they did”.

By admitting that misconduct and failures in judgment occurred, the Israeli government takes a definitive first step toward correcting the errors of the attack on Lebanon.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the US learned something from Israel here?

Bill Clinton, Barry Sanders and the Future of the NAACP

Originally posted by Nadir at LastChocolateCity.com

Billed as the biggest sit down dinner in the world, the 52nd Annual NAACP Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner attracted 10,000 to Detroit’€™s Cobo Hall on April 29. Dinner itself was unremarkable. (Reports confirm that each entree – cajun beef, some unidentified fish or a mushroom pasta – was equally mediocre.)

What was most important about this dinner though was the guest list. The governor, both of Michigan’€™s US senators, several congress members, the mayor and other public officials, business and union leaders, entrepreneurs and preachers all joined grassroots activists to honor and support the nation’€™s oldest and largest civil rights organization.

During the three and a half hour event, Lifetime Achievement awards were given to Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, attorney and politician Joel Ferguson and former NAACP head Ernest Lofton. But the main attraction was the keynote address from the man described by several of the night’€™s speakers as “€œour president”€, William Jefferson Clinton. Continue reading

Bush, Gonzales Attorney Firings Suppressed the Black Vote

Originally posted by Nadir at LastChocolateCity.com

Embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refuses to step down over the politically motivated firing of eight US attorneys. His boss, President George W. Bush, continues to support Gonzo despite bipartisan calls for his ouster. However, new information about the attorney firings may take on greater relevance in a post-Don Imus world.

Reports have surfaced that at least two attorneys in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division were fired because they failed to file charges that would have helped disenfranchise Black voters. Continue reading

Kucinich Introduces Impeachment Articles Against Cheney

Cynthia McKinney introduced articles of impeachment against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice before she left Congress. No member of the House of Representatives picked up the baton in the new session. Until now…

Answering those critics who say, “If you impeach Bush, we’ll end up with President Cheney”, presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) introduced articles of impeachment against Cheney first. Now it’s up to us to pressure our congress members to support Cheney’s impeachment. Maybe we can dismantle this embarrassing and destructive regime one brick at a time.

Here is the transcript of Kucinich’s press conference courtesy of the Washington Post: Continue reading

Pistons Give Magic Bitter Pill

Originally Posted by Nadir at LastChocolateCity.com

Former Detroit Pistons Grant Hill and Darko Milicic sound a little bitter.

Both Orlando Magic players recalled bad memories of Detroit upon their return for the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs. Going back to Florida down two games to none certainly won’€™t help their dispositions.

Hill was a superstar in his six seasons with the Pistons, but seems to place some blame on the team, its medical staff and Piston fans for aggravating the ankle injury that has hobbled his career since the 2000 playoffs. As the Detroit News reports the forward was tired of being called “€œsoft” so he played on a bad ankle.

Hill had grown weary of people in Detroit perceiving him as a silver-spoon softie. He had grown weary of not getting his team out of the first round of the playoffs. He was determined to play. Continue reading

The Berlinization of Baghdad

Well, this certainly didn’t work the first time it was tried in Berlin, Germany during the cold war… but then the Bush administration’s failed Iraqi invasion has often ignored the lessons of history, the advice of the military and public opinion in the occupied country and here at home.

How in the world could constructing a wall around the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya in Baghdad do anything but increase polarization and violence in the city? It shuts workers off from their jobs, separates family-members, and becomes a living symbol of imperialist dominance of an occupied nation.

The BBC quotes a Baghdad resident:

“The Americans will provoke more trouble with this,” one resident, Arkan Saeed, told the BBC. “They’re telling us the wall is to protect us from the Shia militia and they’re telling the Shia they’re protecting them from us.

"But it’s the Americans who started all the sectarian violence in the first place.” Continue reading

Blame the Corporate Media

Less than one week after Don Imus was fired, only days after Oprah’s round table with hip hop, and days after a gunman killed 33 people in Virginia, nothing has changed in the world.

I was listening to commercial radio in Detroit for the first time in months. I’m giving a songwriting workshop at a high school next week, and I wanted to hear what the kids are listening to so I don’t seem “out of touch”.

I heard the word “ho” bleeped or edited out more than I heard any real lyrics or original ideas. Let’s not even talk about how bad the songs are as “songs”. Let’s just talk about the language and the subject matter. It’s ridiculous.

But alas, I know that this is the state of the music industry. As an independent artist, I can’t get a song on commercial radio without literally paying THOUSANDS of dollars, but these knuckleheads with NO real lyrical content and NO real musical content get played over and over in Clear Channel’s 14 song playlist.

Do I sound bitter? Continue reading

And Now a Message from My Sell Phone?

Originally posted by Nadir at LastChocolateCity.com

I don’t use my mobile phone to access the Internet, so that may be why I haven’t become inundated with mobile ads yet.

But according to Business Week, if you are surfing on your cellular, you may begin seeing more commercials on your phone. Advertisers are gearing up to use targeted mobile ads in a big way.

Let’€™s face it. Your phone knows a lot about you – your name, your location, who your friends are. And if you use the web on your phone, it knows even more.

Advertising is about to get very personal. Marketers are taking tools that they already use to track your Internet surfing and are preparing to combine that information with cell-phone customer data that include not just the area where you live but also the street you’re standing on. The aim is to target the exact person who is most likely to buy a product at the precise moment they’€™re most likely to buy it. It’s the ad industry’€™s dream come true: a perfect personalized pitch. For privacy advocates, though, this combination of behavioral and geographic targeting is an Orwellian nightmare.

So don’€™t be surprised if your cell phone pops up with an ad for a carmel machiato right when you walk past a Starbucks.

Business Week

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© Nadir Omowale