Tea Party Racism...the 4 minute US History lesson

On the Alyona Show again on Russian TV, so here's the word on the new face of wackos and coded racism, at least from St.Petersburg to Siberia (and D.C.)...

DC Snowmaggedon (as opposed to Snowpocalypse)

We haven't had a decent storm in the D-M-Va since 2004. Vengeance is mine, sayeth Mother Nature. And frankly, she's getting a little help as warmer seas in the Pacific are exacerbated by drought, dust, deforestation and pollutants in Asia, Australia...the seas drive waves of wet unstable air toward California...across the Rockies, dipping down toward the Gulf, sopping up even more moisture, races back up toward us, sitting fat and oblivious under a typical winter chill.

And what happens? 30 inches on top of the 6 that fell over a week ago. On top of the dirty, oily sooted, spotted patches of December's Snowpocalypse (almost dead from two days of 60 degree weather).

Government response? Well...hahaha

Enjoy the film--and this isn't even the worst of it.

Tea Partiers: Racism we've seen before...

It's Reconstruction's Klannish backlash, 150 years later.

Check it out here.

RIP J.D. Salinger & Howard Zinn

Holden Caufield's finally at peace. The nation isn't.

Stop the Overtime debate. The Vikings lost. Period.

Let's get one thing straight--I'm no Saints fan. They are vastly overrated. But...I wish folks would stop this endless debate over NFL sudden death overtime rules and coin tosses. One of my wingnut pals, who's blog you can access to the right, and who's GOP partisanship belies all of his libertarian, bootstrap let the chips fall jawboning, was quite upset. He wanted a rule change. An accommodation. Fairness. Well, here's what I said:

"

Look if you lose the coin toss, THEN PLAY SOME FRIGGIN'DEFENSE. Or how about just playing to win during regulation time! What--you want the game to last ten quarters? You sound like such a socialist "lets be fair/level the playing field at someone's expense Obama-ite whiner, Bwa hahahaha Please note I'm nowhere NEAR a Saints fan, but if anyone other than Brett Favre was on the losing end, no one would be having this silly debate."

Prediction: Coakley loses Kennedy seat--The NFL as political metaphor

Football analogy time. In this age of Game Change (see previous post), why not?

I'm predicting Martha Coakley will lose. I'm predicting Barack Obama will be a one term president. (More a George Bush Senior than a Jimmy Carter loss, but at this point does it matter?).

Why am I courting the wrath of true believers? Because the Democrats are like the Ravens, Cowboys, Chargers, Cardinals et al.

Both sets rely on big plays on O or D or both, and big personalities to win. If you get behind them, you're dead. Period. Yet if you trip them up, pierce their lack of a fundamental game plan, you win. Little discipline beneath the surface of either the Dems or these teams. The coaches/leaders aren't ruthless field generals. They are arrogant young guys or self-serving paycheck collectors or technocrats or avuncular types. I guess Norv Turner fits the latter two categories?

So where are the fundamentals that truly win games? Block, tackle, run, throw, catch, kick. That's it. The GOP does it well. In Massachusetts, it has. In Virginia and NJ as well. Don't blame it all on weak or sublimely flawed candidates (though that helped!). Fundamentals don't just mean physical or digital grassroots stuff (the latter, ironically, what Plouffe did for Obama with the template laid by Howard Dean...and where are they now?). Fundamentals also mean dirty tricks, soft money, lies, distortion, casting yourself as a victim or oppressed when you and your target demos clearly aren't, displacement of evil out-groups or straw villians (ACORN, illegals and other hobgoblins), recruitment (and eventual casting away...watch it folks) of stormtroopers (e.g. Tea Partiers). Couple that with your own PR arm--Fox News and Fox Business News--well, you have a machine where the players are interchangeable, not irreplaceable.

The Baltimore Ravens kicked Rex Ryan to the curb in favor of Harbaugh. Barack ( or his people, and who are his people, his team, his sanctum? Growing up a loner, a la Tony Romo, doesn't help) punts Plouffe, distances himself from Dean. Brings in Rahm et al. Outsource's his leadership to Harry Reid and former Baltimore Colt-Memorial Stadium in her blue and white booties booster Nancy Pelosi. How's that been working out for the Ravens, the Jets, and the White House's agenda? Ryan was the Ravens' rock for fundamentals, for gritty football. Harbaugh may have just ridden that legacy this season.

Likewise, when I see the Dems in Massachusetts this week I see the Dallas Cowboys. Everyone knew Teddy Kennedy was sick for long time. Why wasn't an heir apparent trained, pimped, hyped and hustled? Well because they were hot, unstoppable, flashy, the boys. Now the Commonwealth will be stuck not with an Olympia Snowe type, but rather with some Rick Santorum clown for 6 years. Nice legacy for Ted. Though I predict Brown will be a one term senator...and none other than Derval "Barack with balls" Patrick will knock him off. I dare you to bet against me.

For Barack the implications are grim. Grim as the post Reconstruction extremism and dark ages of 1876-1898, revisited. As grim as Colts-Vikings Superbowl...

Then again, extreme pain and shame may be a good thing for the Dems, for Barack, for teams like the Ravens, the Cowboys, Kurt Warner's bunch, the Bolts & such. Extreme pain pushes out the conventional wisdom, the entrenched fools, the Kool Aid drinkers. It induces change. Real change, not bullshit. Pain becomes an inducement to fundamentals. Fundamentals win.

Pissed away: What a difference a year makes

You can see Tour of Echoes here, and read the article I did for The Root from which we created the multimedia piece, as a gift for the Inauguration of Barack Obama.

One year later I offered this Facebook status--picked up by the right wing Tigerhawk blog--out of utter dismay:

Christopher Alan Chambers marvels at how Barack Obama's managed to piss away more hope and goodwill in exactly 1 year than teen newlyweds or a bad football coach. Can't blame Tea Baggers, white people's cognitive dissonance/world view or inheriting a vast mess at home and abroad for everything, folks.

Thoughts?

The Best Word on Harry Reid

Game Change is a crazy book. I think Heilemann (whom I've spoken to personally) and Halperin are the Harriet Beecher Stowe of today's Civil War (the opposing forces seem to be the same--right down to the migration to the politics and culture of Reconstruction). Indeed I told Heilemann if he showed up at the White House, Obama would greet him the same way Abe Lincoln spoke to Stowe in 1861: "So you're the little [lady] who helped cause this big mess."

In case you were waiting on my comments on Harry Reid, I couldn't do it any more justice than Ta-Nehisi Coates, resident pundit for The Atlantic. I'm not so arrogant as to say great minds think alike. No, it's that this is a no brainer, and common sense dictates convergence...like coming to the conclusion simultaneously and independently that ketchup and maggots aren't good toppings for vanilla ice cream. So, here it is:

John Cornyn and Michael Steele [on Fox News, of course] think that Harry Reid's comments are the same as Trent Lott's

"In 2002, Democrats expressed outrage at Senator Lott and called on him to step
down as leader. That same standard should be applied to Senator Reid and his
embarrassing and racially insensitive statements; statements, I would add, that
Senator Reid still has yet to clarify," Cornyn said in a written
statement. As we await his explanation, Senator Reid should do the right
thing, follow the example that he himself set in 2002, and step down as majority
leader."

I think you can grant that, in this era, the term "Negro dialect" is racially insensitive and embarrassing. That said, the fair-mind listener understands the argument--Barack Obama's complexion and his ability to code-switch is an asset. You can quibble about the "light skin" part, but forget running for president, code-switching is the standard M.O. for any African American with middle class aspirations.

But there's no such defense for Trent Lott. Lott celebrated apartheid Mississippi's support of Strom Thurmond, and then said that had Thurmond won, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years.'' Strom Thurmond run for president, specifically because he opposed Harry Truman's efforts at integration. This is not mere conjecture--nearly half of Thurmond's platform was dedicated to preserving segregation. The Dixiecrat slogan was "Segregation Forever!" (Exclamation point, theirs.) Trent Lott's wasn't forced to resign because he said something "racially insensitive." He was forced to resign because he offered tacit endorsement of white supremacy--frequently.

Claiming that Harry Reid's comments are the same, is like claiming that referring to Jews as "Hebrews" is the same as endorsing Nazism. Whereas a reputable portion of black people still use the term Negro without a hint of irony, no black person thinks the guy yelling "Segregation Forever!" would have cured us of "all these problems."

Leaving aside political cynicism, this entire affair proves that the GOP is not simply still infected with the vestiges of white supremacy and racism, but is neither aware of the infection, nor understands the disease. Listening to Liz Cheney explain why Harry Reid's comments were racist, was like listening to me give lessons on the finer points of the comma splice. This a party, rightly or wrongly, regarded by significant portions of the country as a haven for racists. They aren't simply having a hard time re-branding, they don't actually understand how and why they got the tag.

These guys are lost. But Michael Steele's "off the hook" strategy will, presumably, point the way back. Not for nothing, I offer the wise and venerable words of my people: Negro, please.

How we can defeat al Qaida

First medical marijuana, now Snoop Dog parachutes into Yemen and No. Pakistan. We start them young. They will be mellow, horny and hungry by the time they're angry young men...

The Nimrod Tree

See the annual Infamous Christmas blogpost below to peep a photo of Nat's tree (and Mrs Nat doing her thing on the laptop). Time to take it down sadly. But it had a great run, through three parties and numerous visits, stop-bys, jostling by adults and kids alike...

...but then I hear from a few bammas about how they don't put up Christmas trees. OK in DC the lovely Frazier fur goes for $50-$75 [at a reputable place for a 6ft tree]. OK, some negroes are cheap as hell and $50 for a tree is insane. Yet this goes to something a lot more grounded in ignorance, rather than wallets...sort of like telling people not to get a vaccine--just don't eat lean porkchops else you get swine flu [which is one reason they now call it H1N1 so as not to give credence to this nonsense].

So here's what the black Muslims have to say about Christmas trees (FYI in that's evile white-Jew Santa depicted above to set the mood):

Christmas was set up as a memorial to Nimrod. The Christmas tree is an "Evergreen tree", this means that it is green or has life, all year round and does not die out like other trees.
1. Evergreen tree is used at Christmas as a symbol to represent everlasting life for the white race.
2. It sits in a box held in place by a cross which represents the division of the four brothers; Black, Brown, Red and Yellow, which support the white race.
3. The trinkets and ornaments represents the riches, wealth and knowledge of the Blackman which was stolen by Nimrod and brought back to the white race in Europe.
4. The star on top of the tree represents the superior brain power of the white race to remain on top.
5. Santa Claus represents Nimrod bringing the riches of the Blackman back to Europe. (They do not explain where Santa Claus gets the presents from do they).


Okey-dokey. Now, I always thought Nimrod was just another old Testament douchebag, and other than seeing his character in John Huston's "The Bible" (Tower Babel sequence, Stephen Boyd plays Nimrod) who cares? Well I guess my elitist Princeton bourgie ass was plain mistaken:

Two key figures in the origin of Christmas are Nimrod, a great grandson of Noah, and his mother and wife, Semiramis, also known as Ishtar and Isis. Nimrod, known in Egypt as Osiris, was the founder of the first world empire at Babel, later known as Babylon (Genesis 10:8-12; 11:1-9). From ancient sources such as the "Epic of Gilgamesh" and records unearthed by archeologists from long-ruined Mesopotamian and Egyptian cities, we can reconstruct subsequent events.
After Nimrod's death (c. 2167 BC), Semiramis promoted the belief that he was a god. She claimed that she saw a full-grown evergreen tree spring out of the roots of a dead tree stump, symbolizing the springing forth of new life for Nimrod. On the anniversary of his birth, she said, Nimrod would visit the evergreen tree and leave gifts under it. His birthday fell on the winter solstice at the end of December.
A few years later, Semiramis bore a son, Horus or Gilgamesh. She declared that she had been visited by the spirit of Nimrod, who left her pregnant with the boy. Horus, she maintained, was Nimrod reincarnated. With a father, mother, and son deified, a deceptive, perverted trinity was formed.

According to this stuff adopted by a few idiots, the Christmas tree is really a "Nimrod tree," representing Nimrod's evil...Nimrod's erect phallus, etc. etc. Mix that with the usual Elijah Muhammad crap and you get black folks' number one Christmas myth. Dumb? Yes. But it helps buttress the artifice you need when you aren't going buy a Christmas gift for your kids, yet jack a nice PS3 or new North Face parka for yourself.

Hope you had a Merry Christmas. Now let me curse Nimrod for all these damn pine needles I got to vaccum up!

Pop Shrink analysis of Obama?

Pop Shrink on Obama & Racism
by ChrisAlanC

The Infamous Christmas Post: A 97-year old disses Facebook

...or Facebook as metaphor for what's messed up about us all? Yesterday, Nat spoke to his 97 year old grandmother. She's slightly older than the state of Arizona; she's seen, heard, experienced just about anything a person, an African American, a woman, a mother, a wife could in this fatally beautiful American epoch. Somehow the conversation moved to Facebook.

Her take: "Chris, I just don't understand these computers. The computer tells you who your 'friends are?"

Nat: "Well, sort of."

Grandmother: [chuckling] "But it says you are friends with people who want to tell you all about themselves or their people, but don't care truly about you or what your family is doing?"

Nat: "Um...sometimes"

Grandmother: "It will give you friends who just want to sell you something, or boast about things. If they aren't courteous and caring about people all the way, then they will be so on the computer. I don't understand why people want to be friendly at first if they couldn't be bothered or only think of themselves, especially at Christmas, dear."

Nat: "I guess. But they care about their kids, their families and we usually post that."

Grandmother: "Well, Christmas is about caring about more than your own people, and that is what being a friendis , too."

Well, at that point, I didn't want to explain what "un-friending" was. And she was fading out; it'd been a long day for her up in NYC and Westchester. We talked about Oprah at the White House w/the Obamas, we talked about how much we both missed my mother. It dawned then that my gradmother, if she were more sentient, more one of these "tech-savvy geriatrics" younger people smirk over, she still wouldn't be on Facebook. Not because of our need for both detachment and self-promotion, insouciance and faux-warmth. Naw. Because maybe the technology would tempt her to have 2,000 "Friends," and she'd need 26 hours in a day to share & care & at least try to find common ground, as she feels friends should. And that's regardless of whether anyone answers her back, or cares, or shares, or attacks rather than reconciles. Look, she knows the good ole days weren't that great. But there're some things about now that aren't so glorious. This is one of them.

So Happy Holidays. It's about sharing, caring. Umprompted. With nothing expected in return.

Nat Turner

My Cryptic Take on Barack Obama. Be gentle with me...

Nat played hookie from Natly duties to watch Kevin Costner’s not half bad history-drama “Thirteen Days.” It wasn’t as wacky as Kevin playing Jim Garrison in “JFK,” but nor was is utterly contrived as in Danny Devito’s directorial debut in “Hoffa.” (ironic, Kennedy-Hoffa, eh?) And then, in Busboys & Poets on 14th Street, Nat sat at the bar with a relative of one of JFK’s principal aides. Wolf Blitzer was growling on the tube above about politics. This relative, which I shall NOT name, is very close to JFK White House special counsel and speechwriter Ted Sorensen. Sorensen was among the first old head Democrats to endorse Barack Obama.

You know Nat loves historical parallels. Barbara Tuchman, you are missed. This is an age of celebrated ignorance (I should show you the emails and texts…not to mention the essays, they’d only make you cry I get from 18 to twentysomething students…even Georgetown students. Credibility has come to mean with you mindlessly agree and who you hate. It used to mean critical thinking, preparing a researched position that is supported with logical appeals, emotion, evidence, and the ethical treatment of other points of view. It was about dignity of accomplishment, rather than splatter. It embodied a time where even Huey Long was somehow more palatable, credible, than Sarah Palin.

I’m thinking of doing a long essay on how 2008-10 is really 1867-1876 (Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction), in a snow globe, at light speed. Hey, 50% of the treatise would be dismissing the redneck myths about that time when America was truly made. Here’s a little warm-up, and little discourse for shits and gigs, with another parallel as model. Remember my Busboys & Poets encounter, above…

When Obama ran, when Obama was elected, some supporters and detractors spoke of him as a newfangled JFK. Sorensen’s analysis and analogies where thoughtful though a tad rose-colored. Most of the statements entailed ill-informed second “Camelots” or Michelle as a 21st century Jackie, or “empty suit” talk; some comments were paeans to vigor (“viggah” in Kennedy-ese) and a new age, some were truly loony “ACORN as Joe Kennedy and the Mafia stuff.”

The parallel cures and solidifies when you look at their presidencies with a historian’s eyes, both one year in. Huge promise, yet huge divisions and mistrust. Enemies of all stripes thinking neither deserved to be in the Oval Office. Big missteps, small victories. Bold ideas, small and sickly conventional follow-through. Two men in charge who were/are products of their upbringing in the most pinpoint sense of that admittedly hackneyed term. You lay the outlines side by side and say…whoa.

So here’s my cryptic measure of Barack Obama’s first year: What would the Obama White House—this supposed “Change” movement—be like if Barack had true counterparts to P. Kenneth O’Donnell by his side. And a Robert Francis Kennedy. If Joe Biden was more Lyndon Johnson and less, well, Joe Biden? Hell, if Glenn Beck et al were less clowns, and more like James Reston or Walter Lippman? If Al Sharpton was more Roy Wilkens, and Hillary Clinton a younger Eleanor Roosevelt in her? Beyonce was Eartha Kitt. Blake Lively was young Helen Gurley Brown? Or if Joe Lieberman was less a tool, and little more like Everett Dirksen?

Would this nation, the world, be a better, safer, more just place? Probably not. Would there be Tea Partiers? Likely more so. Look at what was happening in the South then. Made the “Don’t tread on me” nonsense look like a Victoria’s Secret show.

But I’d feel a lot more comfortable about things. I was an infant when Sorensen and this person’s famous granddad were in there where Barack, Rahm and Eric, Susan and Hillary were in 1962. Now I am middle age. I wish I were a baby again, yet with adult ears and eyes.
I hope for the best in 2010. That word hope hasn’t been cheapened. Not yet...

Snowball Fight on 14th Street...and a Black Cop

Mrs Nat and I live in this general neighborhood cluster of Columbia Heights, U-Street/Shaw. It is amusing that a bunch of yuppies would take time off from cross-country skiing or shovelling their sidewalks to pelt each other with snowballs. It's not so funny when folks paste passing cars...cars driven by folk who are already agitated by dangerous conditions (I don't care if you are from Rochester or Chicago--24 inches of snow in less than 24 hours is still a bitch! So stop grousing, Mr. President & Mrs. First Lady!!!).

And it would have been quite another thing, my children, had these people been black or Latino teenagers, pelting cars as well as each other. Yeah, Nat went there. He likes going there. Feel like grumbling yet, or agreeing? Read on...

African American cops I know in this sub-district--and you gotta know the cops when you live in the cit-tee--suck their teeth and shake their heads when I ask them about this incident. The detective was pissed off and dead-ass wrong they say. What was going through his head, they ask? He often does undercover work in a city that's still resembles Mordor despite gentrification. But, Lord how these same yuppies would have demanded MPD guns at a snowball fight had the shoe been on a "local" teenage foot they say. Nat agrees.

Indeed, what's interesting is that while the footage was all over our local news and displayed on national outlets...it downright hemorrhaged from right wing outlets like Fox, Reason TV et al. More evidence of evil black Obama ciphers oppressing good and true whitefolk. Even my mole at the...[edited] [Group/Foundation/Network] hahaha confirmed this. A Reason TV young Republican was on hand at the snowball event to record. [Oh don't worry, my man/woman is in deep cover, Donnie Brasco style. Now if I can only get someone into Fox. Maybe put a microchip in Juan Williams' head and a minicamera in his eyeball?]

A neighbor who's co-worker and co-worker's boyfriend were present broke it down this way: "She[the cowroker] admitted then when they started throwing snowballs at cars and a couple of pedestrians who weren't part if the 'event' [ah those young folk and their Twitter] , that was noot good. I could then see maybe one cop showing up to break the thing up and everyone goes home for hot toddies or coco. But this guy [the 25 year veteran undercover dick] created a potentially deadly situation."

Now that's pretty straightforward.

MPD Chief Kathy Lanier, ever eager to please a vengeful public in areas of high voter turnout, quickly put a foot in the gun-brandishers butt. We won't really know the extent of the disciplinary action; you never do when it comes to cops. But quite a few folk want this kept quietly in the family. No harm, no foul, I suppose? Concurrently, however, no one seems to want to ask why it's okay to have a melee, no matter how good spirited or organized via Gen Y social networking media rather than urban pay as you go cell phones...on a public street...a busy intersection in the middle of a snow emergency in a city that doesn't do snow? Had it been young Pookie with braids and droopy jeans, or callow Esteban with his hand-me- down Redskins jacket just wanting to have a some winter fun, we'd have gotten a definite answer...

Stay tuned for the infamous Christmas post.

Missing Pakistanis: maybe Howard U and other HBCUs should enroll African Americans?

Read the MSNBC story here about the DC-area Muslim young men--all fitting the profile of middle-class, educated rather than goat farmers--arrested in Pakistan after bolting the country in pursuit of Jihad glory. Of course these guys were rebuffed as amateurs once they naively showed up, but what motivates young men with everything to lose? Look at US Army Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan--a trained MD and shrink. What is this inner voice that says I am somehow unworthy of my accomplishments in this world...this alien world that has given them so much? Why do they think it's robbed them of their souls as Muslims?

The mosque in Virginia where many were members has been outspoken in their opposition to radicalization, and is largely a congregation of families. Regular people. But the refrain's the same: "He/they were cool people, never giving an indication they would disappear, run to Pakistan, try to join al Qaida or other radical groups, or assist the Taliban in Afghanistan." So how well do they really know these fellows? There is a similar refrain in when folks are asked Did you know he was in a gang...a drug dealer...selling her body for meth/crack...did you know he was a serial killer? Sometimes it's not a lie or covering up. It's denial, disbelief. Willful blindness.

Then we come to Howard and other HBCUs. One of the Pakistani 5, Ramy Zamzam, is an honor student at Howard Dental School (I can see the campus from my window as I type this). At one time, the best and brightest of black America went to places like Howard and the suberb graduate/professional schools attached thereto. But in the last 20 years things have morphed from a brain drain to the UN. Medical school, law school, dental, school of pharmacy studies, engineering and even liberal arts/humanities related gread programs are full of well...Ramy Zamzam. Yes, white Americans have discovered these schools as lower cost, high profile, but the unstated truth is that they are filled with Iranians, Iraqis, Nigerians, Congolese, Syrians, Russians, Ukrainians, Albanians, Chinese, Indonesians, Pakistanis, Indians, Saudis, billionaire kiddies from that mega Disney fanstasy called Dubai, Tanzanians, South Africans etc etc. Many can pay in cash or cut a check that won't bounce, or that mom/dad didn't have take out a second mortgage to cover. Uncle Sam isn't going to sweat them for financial aid...Uncle Sam actually likes having them as much as the colleges' comptrollers do. Well, some parts of the government aren't as happy. Like the State Department, Homeland Security, etc. The African Americans there? Well, they are trying to carry the flag as minorities in an HBCU. Irony? Oxymoron? Nope. And most of these are females. Young men like Zamzam are welcomed with open arms (and deposit slips); young African American men? Ummm...

So what are you thoughts, fanboys & girls?