Former Republican Governor Backs Obama

I raise your failed Congressman, wannabe Governor, Uncle Tom dejour Artur Davis with

Former successful Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist!

Former Gov. Charlie Crist: Here’s why I’m backing Barack Obama

I’ve studied, admired and gotten to know a lot of leaders in my life. Across Florida, in Washington and around the country, I’ve watched the failure of those who favor extreme rhetoric over sensible compromise, and I’ve seen how those who never lose sight of solutions sow the greatest successes.

As America prepares to pick our president for the next four years — and as Florida prepares once again to play a decisive role — I’m confident that President Barack Obama is the right leader for our state and the nation. I applaud and share his vision of a future built by a strong and confident middle class in an economy that gives us the opportunity to reap prosperity through hard work and personal responsibility. It is a vision of the future proven right by our history.

We often remind ourselves to learn the lessons of the past, lest we risk repeating its mistakes. Yet nearly as often, our short-term memory fails us. Many have already forgotten how deep and daunting our shared crisis was in the winter of 2009, as President Obama was inaugurated. It was no ordinary challenge, and the president served as the nation’s calm through a historically turbulent storm.

The president’s response was swift, smart and farsighted. He kept his compass pointed due north and relentlessly focused on saving jobs, creating more and helping the many who felt trapped beneath the house of cards that had collapsed upon them.

He knew we had to get people back to work as quickly as possible — but he also knew that the value of a recovery lies in its durability. Short-term healing had to be paired with an economy that would stay healthy over the long run. And he knew that happens best by investing in the right places.

President Obama invested in our children’s schools because he believes a good education is a necessity, not a luxury, if we’re going to create an economy built to last. He supported more than 400,000 K-12 teachers’ jobs, and he is making college more affordable and making student loans, like the ones he took out, easier to pay back.

He invested in our runways, railways and roads. President Obama knows a reliable infrastructure that helps move people to work and helps businesses move goods to market is a foundation of growth.

And the president invested in our retirement security by strengthening Medicare. The $716 billion in savings his opponents decry today extended the life of the program by nearly a decade and are making sure taxpayer dollars aren’t wasted in excessive payments to insurance companies or fraud and abuse. His opponents would end the Medicare guarantee by creating a voucher that would raise seniors’ costs by thousands of dollars and bankrupt the program.

We have more work to do, more investments to make and more waste to cut. But only one candidate in this race has proven a willingness to navigate a realistic path to prosperity…(more)

More Zombies!

MORE Zombies! What is going on here? Another incident of cannibalism, this one at Morgan State University in Baltimore.

Miami “Zombie” Rudy Eugene (l), and his victim Ronald Poppo (r)

Baltimore Student: I Ate Housemate’s Heart, Brain

Alexander Kinyua Mug Shot

America’s gruesome zombie apocalypsemarches on. This time, a suburban Baltimore man lost his heart and part of his brain to his cannibal college-student roomie, according to police. Kenyan Alexander Kinyua, 21, told cops he stabbed 37-year-old Kujor Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie of Ghana, dismembered him, ate his body parts, then hid the rest of the head and hands in the basement laundry room. Investigators discovered the remains when Kinyua’s dad reported finding them in the home they all shared, reports AP. The rest of Kodie’s body was found in a trash bin outside a nearby church, said police. “I’ve been with the agency 40 years, and I would say this is the first time I can remember someone consumed the victim,” said sheriff Jesse Bane. “I’ve not encountered that in this county, and I hope we never encounter it again.”

Kinyua has been charged with first-degree murder. He was out on bail during the attack after he was charged earlier last month with savagely beating a fellow student, who survived. Kinyua was studying electrical engineering at Morgan State University in Baltimore, and was a one-time member of ROTC at the school. Fellow students told theBaltimore Sun that Kinyua appeared increasing agitated, and was odd to begin with. Police have not revealed a motive for the murder, and are consulting with behavioral experts from the FBI.

I mean – even politicians are getting in on the act! OK – he hasn’t eaten anyone (yet)… But he is showing all the signs of being brain dead!

Artur Davis, Once a Key Obama Backer, Switches to Republican Party

Artur Davis Mug Shot

A Southern Democrat defecting to the GOP is not news. A black Southern Democrat defecting to the GOP is pretty big news. A black Southern Democrat who is a member of Congress and a vocal supporter of President Barack Obama warrants a screaming headline.

Don’t look for the screaming headlines, but former Alabama Congressman Artur Davis has announced he is leaving the Democratic Party, joining the Republican Party, and says he will likely vote for Mitt Romney in November.

Davis is black, but even in Congress he didn’t toe the Black Caucus line. He was an opponent of what has become known as Obamacare, and left his U.S. seat to run for governor of Alabama…

Davis is considering changing his voting registration to Virginia, a fact not lost on Virginia’s Republican governor, Robert McDonnell, who pointed out how powerful a Black Republican running for Congress could be in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. Getting on the ballot to run against Jim Moran (D-VA) of Alexandria, or the seat in wealthy exurbs of the 11th Congressional District (now held by Democrat Rep. Gerry Connolly) in 2014 or 2016 would not be a heavy lift.

Hey.. Wait a minute! THAT’S my District! Time to head down to Dick’s Sporting Goods and see if they got any “Zombie Repellent”!

Yeah, I know Artur isn’t technically a Zombie – he hasn’t eaten anyone (yet)…

But the term Bamafied Lawn Jockey…

Just seems so dated.

Go on back home Artur – we don’t want you Uncle Tom ass in Virginia.

President Obama – About that Dogcatcher Thing…

Uhhhh…Pres…

The primary results in West Virginia yesterday were not good. A convicted felon serving time in jail got 41% of the vote!

While it isn’t time yet to circle the wagons…

I do think it is (long) past time to start hanging some foot up Republican derriere.

You need to do 3 things to get the Moderate and Progressive Dems to turn out and vote:

1. Get the rhetorical Louisville Slugger out of the closet and apply it liberally to Republicans every time you speak from now until the election.
2. Turn Harry Reid loose to exercise the “Nuclear Option” on baseless filibustering by the Reprobates. Get those Judges appointed immediately.
3. Make it very clear to the electorate that simply electing you to office isn’t enough. They need to get behind their local Democrat politicians to throw the scumbags out – else watch their states suffer as Wisconsin has.

No matter how intransigent and crooked the Republicans are – YOU are the man in charge, and one seen as having the responsibility ultimately to make the system work. The General gets the blame for losing the war – not the moron soldiers who loaded cases of liquor instead of artillery shells in their trucks.

Harry Truman faced the same issue – as did FDR.

There are some folks in this world you just can’t reason with other than at the receiving end of a baseball bat.

Ouch! Obama loses 41 percent of W.Va. primary vote to federal inmate.

Inmate Keith Judd

In an embarrassment to President Obama, Federal Inmate No. 11593-051 – otherwise known as Keith Judd – won 10 counties and 41 percent of the vote in West Virginia’s Democratic presidential primary Tuesday.

Mr. Judd is incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Texarkana, Texas, where he is serving a 210-month sentence for extortion, according to TheCharleston Gazette. Judd had paid the $2,500 filing fee and submitted a notarized “certificate of announcement” to appear on the ballot.

He is even qualified to have a delegate at theDemocratic National Convention, because he won at least 15 percent of vote. However, no one has stepped forward to fill that role.

But those are just details. The Republicans are having a field day with this slap at the president. Mr. Obama is deeply unpopular in West Virginia and was already certain to lose the small mountainous state in November. But the fact that enough people bothered to turn out in an uncontested primary to register a protest against the incumbent is telling.

“Just how unpopular does someone have to be for this to happen?” says Joe Pounder, research director and deputy communications director at the Republican National Committee, in a statement.

He notes that Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia wouldn’t say whom he voted for in the primary. “Apparently, it’s a smarter political calculation to let people believe you may have voted for the guy in federal prison over the sitting president of your own party. Just saying,” Mr. Pounder writes.

West Virginia’s Democratic governor, Earl Ray Tomblin, has also not revealed his vote. Energy is a big issue in his state – America’s second-biggest producer of coal – and the Environmental Protection Agency’s handling of mining-related permits has angered the local industry, writes theAssociated Press.

In addition to being a convicted felon, Judd is also a serial presidential candidate. In the 2008Idaho Democratic primary, he finished third behind Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton with 1.7 percent of the vote, per The Charleston Gazette.

I Hope Your Dog Dies…

There are some sick freaks out there in the world – and this one is one of the sickest…

Dem Politico’s Cat Killed, ‘Liberal’ Scrawled on It

An Arkansas political campaign manager was shocked to discover his family pet with one side of its head bashed in — and the word “liberal” scribbled across the corpse in paint.

Jacob Burris has served as Ken Aden’s campaign manager since October 2011. Aden, a Democrat, is currently running for Arkansas’ 3rd Congressional District.

“To kill a child’s pet is just unconscionable,” Aden said in an official statement. “As a former combat soldier, I’ve seen the best of humanity and the worst of humanity. Whoever did this is definitely part of the worst of humanity.”

Burris told the Blue Arkansas Blog that one of his younger children found the pet, an adult, mixed-breed Siamese cat, on their front porch. He said the children are doing fine, but he is not taking the threat lightly.

“I’ve got a gun and I know how to use it,” Burris told Blue Arkansas. “If I have to protect my kids, I’ll do it without hesitation.”

The Associate Press confirmed with the Russellville Police Department that the campaign manager had filed a report, but they did not have any suspects at this time.

Although the campaign between Aden and incumbent Steve Womack has been tense, Aden’s group stated they do not think anyone in the opposing campaign to be responsible.

“We suspect this is the action of a rogue individual or group of individuals who are the type of folks that stoop to the lowest common denominator instead of engaging in civil political discourse,” Aden said in a statement. “It is unfortunate this has occurred, and we will await the results of the police and federal investigations.”

More Republican Heartburn – Obama Announces Iraq Exit

Fresh on the heels of a resounding victory for Prescient Obama’s foreign policy approach in the overthrow of Ghadaffi by his fellow Libyans yesterday…

Obama lives up to his promise to get us out of Bush’s unnecessary war in Iraq.

Just for those keeping score -

Democrats – $1 billion, less than 6 months, no American Casualties, Ghadaffi dead

Republicans – $3 trillion, 8 years, 5000 American killed, Saddam hung, a broken American economy, and still no WMDs

Obama announces end of Iraq war, troops to return home by year end

President Obama announced Friday that the United States will withdraw nearly all troops from Iraq by the end of the year, effectively bringing the long and polarizing war in Iraq to an end.

“After nearly 9 years, America’s war in Iraq will be over,” said Mr. Obama.

He said the last American troops will depart the country by January 1 “with their heads held high, proud of their success, and knowing that the American people stand united in our support for our troops.”

“The transition in Afghanistan is moving forward, and our troops are finally coming home,” he added, saying in the White House briefing room that U.S. troops “will definitely be home for the holidays.”

A bit of meorabilia from the “Great War”. James Cagney as George M. Cohen in the Movie “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, and the hit song  ”Over There”. Another time…

Juan Williams on Obama’s Foreign Policy

Plastic President Struts and Puffs

To hear most conservatives tell it, Obama’s foreign policy is a complete and utter failure…

The fly in the smelly, rotten conservative ointment is the fact that President Obama has managed to succeed, despite the conservatives own very best efforts – sometimes treasonous – to make him, and thus America fail.

• Obama has cut the number of troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq by half. From 180,000 when he took office to 90,000 today.
• Obama has an exit strategy for Iraq, and the US should be out by the first of next year.
• Obama succeeded where Bush failed for 8 years and brought the architect of the greatest terrorist attack in history on the soil of the US to Justice – Osama Bin Lauden.
• Obama has succeeded in killing more Al Quaeda terrorists in his first 3 years of office, than Bush did in 8 years with the help of 350,000 troops on the ground.
• Successful negotiation of a new START Treaty.
• Staying the hell out of Egypt, and not sending troops in to protect a dictator.
• Ghadaffi has met his end, and without a major force of American troops ever landing on Libyan Soil.

Even conservatives who aren’t blinded by their racism are beginning to figure it out. Had this been a conservative President, undoubtedly we would have been treated to the sight of an American President in tight, sock stuffed pants prancing around on the deck of a Carrier thumping his chest.

Can’t Argue With American Policy Now, Qaddafi’s Dead and the Results Speak for Themselves

Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi is dead. The news from the Middle East is vindication of the Obama administration’s policy in Libya. A man who was an enemy of the American people, someone who killed Americans aboard Pan Am 103, someone who was taking out Americans and acting against our interests in the Middle East for decades has finally been eliminated from the scene.

And all this talk about “leading from behind” needs to be put in context. First of all, President Obama never said anything about “leading from behind.” What the president said was he didn’t want to put additional American troops in the Middle East in the middle of a Muslim country.

We are already fighting not only in Iraq but in Afghanistan. We have tremendous troubles in Pakistan. President Obama allowed the multi-national force to be in a position where they could act with tremendous American support.

The American public would never have supported pouring additional troops into Libya. By building an international coalition, the president managed, nonetheless, to make Americans part of the fight and oust Qaddafi. Critics on the right have flip-flopped on this issues from the beginning on whether or not America should have played a role, any role, in supporting the anti-Qaddafi forces. Today’s events are another reminder of how pure political concerns can blind people to America’s best.

Essentially America has been at war in Libya. And tonight or today, this morning, what we’ve seen is that that policy has led to the ouster and also the death of Muammar Qaddafi.

That’s good news for America. I don’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat. This is good news.

For President Obama, after the death of Bin Laden, Al-Awlaki and now, indirectly, Qaddafi, he’s left with a terrific narrative in terms of making the case that Democrats aren’t weak on national security and that he has pursued a number of President Bush’s policies in terms of being aggressive. This has been in service to America’s national interest and the best outcomes for every American.If you look at the president’s use of drones, for example, he decision to keep using Guantanamo Bay to house detainees, these are things that have absolutely antagonized the left in this country.

But if you’re looking at results, you can’t argue with the results. A man who was America’s enemy, who was a destabilizing force in the Middle East and a supporter of anti-American forces has been removed from the stage.

Keith Ellison Exposes Another Conservative Lie

Keith Ellison exposes one of the right wing’s favorite lies – that regulations always stymie business growth.

The reason that isn’t true is that many business regulations in the US spawn R&D and new businesses. The second reason that isn’t true has to do with the economic impact of not having safety or environmental regulations is far greater than having those regulations in place. Ergo, deregulation results in taxpayer subsidy to recover from the massive damages caused by environmentally unsound business practices. That corporate welfare thing … Again.

Trying to Explain Business 101 to Conservative Idiotlogues

Spearing Sacred Cows

Earlier this week, I was on MSNBC’s Up With Chris Hayes about jobs, the Occupy Wall Street movement and other issues. During the show I said I’m a fan of health and safety — not regulations. I said that some regulations have created jobs, since the industries being watched have to comply with the rules. For example, technological requirements can spur engineering improvement, which means employing engineers.

Well, the right wing went crazy. People who aren’t even from my congressional district called my office and blasted me over email and the Twitterverse. I had gored one of their sacred cows — deregulation — and they howled loudly.

So who’s right? Have health and environmental rules cost America jobs, or not? I said no. Here’s what I’m talking about:

Environmental Protection

Environmental spending creates jobs in engineering, manufacturing, construction, materials, operations and maintenance. Vehicle emissions standards directly sparked the development and application of a wide range of automotive technologies that are now found throughout the global automobile market. The vehicle emissions control industryemploys approximately 65,000 Americans with domestic annual sales of $26 billion. The worldwide market for environmental goods and services is worth over $700 billion, a size comparable to the aerospace and pharmaceutical industries.

If you want to know more about the wrongheaded jobs versus environmental protections argument check out the report, “Regulatory Uncertainty: A Phony Explanation for our Jobs Problem” by EPI’s Larry Mishel.

You know the situation: roughly 14 million Americans are out of work and 46.2 million live in poverty. The Republicans have held the House for almost 300 days but they’ve introduced no jobs bills. In fact, they shot down President Obama’s jobs bill like skeet. What have Republicans done? They’ve pushed for even more de-regulation in the name of “creating jobs.”

One last point:

Moody’s economist Mark Zandi, an advisor to John McCain’s presidential campaign, estimates the $61 billion in spending cuts proposed by the House Republicans will cost the economy 700,000 jobs by 2012. Wrongheaded policies.

Occupy America – Has Lightning Escaped the Bottle?

 

It’s beginning to feel like 1967…

All over again.

The “Occupy” protests are popping up all over America, as thousands, perhaps soon –  millions take to the streets.

Like the Tea Party, the “Occupy” demonstrators are folks deeply concerned that things have seriously gone off the rails in America.

Unlike the Tea Party – there are no corporate sponsors. there is no Faux News complete with air-headed effervescent blonde bimbos spouting breathlessly over the movement’s significance (indeed the MSM seems determined to ignore the whole movement)…

And there are no Koch Brothers sitting behind the scenes pumping in money, and buying influence from corrupt politicians and Supreme Court Justices.

The other thing is, Occupy is largely apolitical. I think the most prevalent feeling about the American Political Parties – is “a pox on both their houses”.  There has been a growing belief that neither political party is capable, or willing to operate in the best interests of anyone, except their financial benefactors for a long time.

Not being bought and paid for by the Koch Brothers or any of the other conservative “7 Sisters” who fund the conservative “movement” in America, though – is a scary thing for conservatives. As such, it’s no surprise the conservative media “long knives” have come out over the last week or so, with House Whip Eric Cantor calling them a “mob“, Mitt Romney (“It’s dangerous, this class warfare”), Herman Cain (“If you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself!”) or in French Revolution speak “Let them eat cake”, and this piece by Deneen Borelli essentially calling the Occupy protesters peasant trash (where’s a damn Guillotine when you need it?)… And if you wonder just how much of a joke and conservative shill the Wall Street Journal has become there’s this hit piece written in the prosaic style of your average 12 year old. When the leading financial paper in the country blogs articles written in all the style and content of a Marvel Comic Book…

No wonder we are in trouble.

So… Despite humble beginnings, the Occupy movement is headed left, if in no other place than fecund conservative imaginations.

Body Language Specialist – Obama Would Clock Perry in a Debate

Don’t think this is any surprise – Obama would wipe the floor with Rick Perry, and put a serious whuppin’ on any of the Republican candidates…

His pick as the best matchup? Neut Gingrich!

Body Language Expert Says Obama Would Clock Perry

Just a little more than a year from the 2012 election, President Obama’s strapped with a wrecked economy, an uncooperative Congress and plenty of competition from the GOP. But when it comes to good old campaigning, communication expert Peter Meyers says Obama still has the golden touch.

“We can focus on the message all we want, the election doesn’t go to the candidate who’s the smartest or even the most experienced,” said Meyers, who has advised world leaders and politicians on how to use body language to influence their message. “It goes to the best communicator. Right now, in the White House, we’ve got a world class communicator. He is going to have to draw upon all of his skills, but he’d clock Rick Perry in a race.”

Meyers compares Obama to former Presidents Clinton and Reagan as speakers, both of whom won re-election after a stumbling start.

He’s not the only political adviser to suggest Obama’s got it in the bag. Whispers recently reported that Allan Lichtman, the American University professor whose election formula has correctly called every president since Reagan’s 1984 re-election, has Obama taking a second term.

Meyers doesn’t totally discount the other candidates, but doesn’t believe they have what it takes.

He admires Perry’s presidential look, his ability to deliver memorable zingers like “Ponzi scheme” and his clear, simple answers to tough questions. Meyers even finds his deep voice appealing. Yet, he admonishes Perry’s fashion sense and lack of poise when forced to speak off the cuff.

“He meanders mid-sentence and loses his way when someone kicks him off his talking points,” Meyers says. “His collars are way to high on his neck; he looks like Catholic school boy, whose mother dressed him for church.”

[See a collection of political cartoons about the GOP contenders.]

Mitt Romney doesn’t fare much better. “He can obviously stay on point and hold his own with Rick Perry, but his voice gets stuck in his throat instead of coming from his chest, and he tends to sound like a 1970s game show host; it’s inauthentic,” says Meyers.

Meyers also points to Romney’s stammer and rushed cadence as evidence of why he’d likely get trampled in a race against Obama. “He’s a fair fighter, and he is polished, but he’s almost like a community theater actor. When he makes a good point, you can see in his face that he’s very pleased with himself.”

Who does Meyers thinks might be able to knock Obama from his oratory pedestal?

“Newt Gingrich comes across as the best communicator the Republicans have got,” he says, “It’s a shame he doesn’t get mentioned more. When Gingrich speaks you can hear the tone of both his intellect and his heart; it’s like listening to a sleigh ride — very pleasant.”

Why Republicans Are Afraid of Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren was brought in by the Obama Administration to develop the Consumer Protection Agency. Once it was set up – Republicans went to war to keep her from running it.

They were scared…Here’s why -

An Angry Black Man as President

Giant Negro Alert! An Angry Black Man – an image President Obama has tried desperately to escape by “Milquetoasting” himself into near electoral and Presidential oblivion…

Has finally peeked through.

John McWhorter made his chops by criticizing the black community and black students as anti-education. He was instantly lauded as a darling of the right, quoted in virtually every right-wing publication in the country. Probably one of the most “literate” writers in America, his writing can vary from the sublime to the utterly literally obtuse. McWhorter isn’t exactly a card carrying member of the Project 21 Lawn Jockey Squad – he’s a guy akin to Juan Williams who is, somewhere in what was, before our politics became so polarized – that middle to moderate. Which means to this Blogger – sometimes he’ll piss you off, and sometimes he’ll say something that you feel is dead right. It’s what our political spectrum used to be about before Karl Rove.

The great lie in this country is that “politics has become polarized” as both sides have moved to the extremes. It is a lie because the Left really hasn’t gone anywhere. The right in this country has made a leap out into the world of the tin foil hats – which just makes traditional left positions seem further away. What can you say of a group which has so polarized itself that any Republican wandering from the orthodoxy is labelled as a RINO and targeted for electoral elimination by his own party – and even staunch Republicans like Lamar Alexander are willing to leave their Senate Leadership positions because of the polarization his party forces upon him?

The Tea Party in this country is a rabid dog. Proof of that? Here and here and here. The only solution to dealing with a proverbial “rabid dog”…

Is the proverbial “2 x 4 between the eyes”. To paraphrase a quote by Ben Franklin – “No amount of reason can get a person out a position reason didn’t get them in in the first place.”

One of those times McWhorter gets it right.

It’s Time We Had an Angry Black President

The president has been talking some new talk. He should keep it up, and even step it up.

Obama rode in on his vaunted oratorical abilities, but the kind of ability we fell in love with him for is no longer of any use. The calls for unity, the echoes of Martin Luther King Jr., the rising above it all — it was great then, and maybe there will be a time for more of it in some years. But only after some new things have happened. And if they’re going to, Obama needs to retool his oratorical chops for a new style. I highly suspect that he’s up to it.

The present-day Republican establishment, with its know-nothing ideology and blithe absence of concern for most American human beings, has become tragically similar to the famously inert, heartless Senate of the Gilded Age, which for decades killed almost all progressive legislation even when it had been carefully hammered out in the House. The problem continued into the 1960s, before which the Senate was run by old-style Southern Democrat committee chairmen who for generations resisted, among other things, serious race-based legislation.

The president had no way of knowing that he would be up against as hollow-hearted and anti-intellectual a contingent as the Tea Partiers. But as of the debt-ceiling negotiations, it has become clear to all of us — Obama included — that we’re not going to be rising above much of anything anytime soon.

It’s time for the president to fight fire with fire, and he can accomplish much of it with a new way of talking. Obama needs to take a cue from the way even top-level politicians communicate in Parliament debates in the United Kingdom: a feisty, often almost heckling style of debate and address in which words and phraseology are wielded as weapons.

We saw hints in his jobs speech two weeks ago that the president is finally understanding this. “I know that some of you have sworn oaths to never raise any taxes on anyone for as long as you live,” he addressed to a particular stripe of Republican, with a quiet smirk.

Good line. Many of them must have felt a touch silly having that fact pinned overtly upon them. Many people going along to get along would be shocked to have someone follow them all day for a week with a mirror so that they could watch themselves acting as they do.

Students working in a classroom with a large mirror on the wall have been shown to perform better. This kind of rhetoric can help change people, change minds and thus foster change.

Mr. President, along these lines, please start calling some names. This week’s callout to Speaker of the House John Boehner was a good start, when you proclaimed about his intransigence: “That’s not smart. It’s not right.” The Republicans have had no compunction about lobbing dirt at you; at this point you must do some of the same to avoid seeming — and thus, in many ways, being — weak.. (Catch the rest over at The Root)

Meet Mayor Johnny DuPree, of Mississippi – Now Running For Governor

Governor candidate makes history in Mississippi

Mayor Johnny DuPree of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, won the Democratic runoff for governor on Tuesday (August 23), setting the stage for a fall general election against Phil Bryant, Mississippi’s Republican lieutenant governor. DuPree becomes the first African-American in state history to clinch the gubernatorial nomination for either party, The Hattiesburg American reports.

DuPree defeated Clarksdale, Mississippi, businessman Bill Luckett, gathering 55 percent of the vote. The three-term mayor enjoyed the support of “some of the state’s political heavy hitters,” including two of his former Democratic primary opponents and U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson, The American reports.

But DuPree faces a big challenge in November. Bryant has consolidated his support among Mississippi Republicans, and the lieutenant governor has a major fundraising advantage. He has already spent $3.1 million to introduce himself to voters, more than twice the amount spent by DuPree and Luckett combined.

DuPree also has tough demographic trends to overcome. The Associated Press notes that Mississippi’s population is 37 percent African-American, and that the state has more black elected officials than any other. But the wire service also notes that the trend does not extend to statewide office: Mississippi has not elected a black statewide representative since Reconstruction.

Elijah Cummings Adds Voice Urging Obama to Move

Black folks have about had t with Obama’s “Cowardly Lion” trick with Republicans…

Elijah Cummings: Obama Needs To ‘Fight Harder,’ African-Americans ‘Totally Frustrated’

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), responding to the high unemployment rates in the black community, said that African-Americans feel President Barack Obama “needs to fight, and fight harder.”

“We are totally frustrated, and people need to know that the president feels their pain,” Cummings, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, toldCNN’s Candy Crowley on “State of the Union” Sunday.

“Almost every African-American person I spoke to said he needs to fight, and fight harder,” Cummings said.

Last week, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) blasted Obama for ignoring the black community during his bus tour through the midwest.

Maxine Waters on President Obama – “We’re Gettin’ Tired Y’all”

I think Maxine is speaking to a fast growing segment of the black community who are tired of a black President who can’t stand up, and won’t address the issues…

Time to Clean House, and Senate

Repeat After Me - Tax Cuts Make You Fly!

In what has already become the most disastrous failure of the American political system in history, political extremism in this country may well have killed the fatted calf of the American economy. The only question I have at this point is WTF were those folks in Wisconsin thinking – who only threw ot 2 of the 6 nutjobs bent on converting the state to a simulacrum of Nazi Germany,

Politicians depend on the American public to have a short memory. So unless thanger felt by the electorate in this poll converts into some sort of action in the streets…

It’s likelythat the same old failures will be in the same old jobs come 2012.

CNN Poll: Time to clean house in Congress?

Need more evidence that Americans are extremely angry at Congress?

Well, here you go: According to a new national survey, for the first time ever most Americans don’t believe their own member of Congress deserves re-election.

Read full results (pdf).

And the CNN/ORC International Poll released Tuesday also indicates that while Republicans may have had the upper hand in the recent battle over raising the debt ceiling, they appear to have lost a lot of ground with the public and the party’s unfavorable rating is now at an all time high.

Only 41 percent of people questioned say the lawmaker in their district in the U.S. House of Representatives deserves to be re-elected – the first time ever in CNN polling that that figure has dropped below 50 percent. Forty-nine percent say their representative doesn’t deserve to be re-elected in 2012. And with ten percent unsure, it’s the first time that a majority has indicated that they would boot their representative out of office if they had the chance today.

“That 41 percent, in the polling world, is an amazing figure. Throughout the past two decades, in good times and bad, Americans have always liked their own member of Congress despite abysmal ratings for Congress in general,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Now anti-incumbent sentiment is so strong that most Americans are no longer willing to give their own representative the benefit of the doubt.  If that holds up, it could be an early warning of an electorate that is angrier than any time in living memory.”