The rest of the world is beginning to see that not all Americans were suckered by hope and change, and the backlash has begun.

Barack Obama’s election as President of the United States was portrayed as a new beginning for a country embattled by the financial crisis and war on terror.

But within some parts of America the disquiet has grown, as he tries to tackle the crises he inherited and push through his controversial healthcare reforms.

With his visit to Australia imminent, video journalist Aaron Lewis reports for Dateline on both sides of Obama’s problems, and meets some of those in previously staunch Democrat states who are finding it all a bitter pill to swallow.

Will his popularity recover when the US economy does, or could he be a one-term wonder?

14 March 10

I was talking about Obama and health care and I used the analogy of selling watermelons by the side of the road. It’s an expression that stretches to my boyhood roots in Southeast Texas, when country highways were lined with stands manned by sellers of all races. Now of course watermelons have become a stereotype for African Americans and so my analogy entered a charged environment. I’m sorry people took offense.
— Dan Rather, 3/10/10, Huffington Post

So, he’s sorry (after 1,251 words of clarification and justification) WE didn’t understand where HE was coming from. For those of you who expected an apology, I hope you didn’t bet the house.

Liberals constantly whine that Dixiecrats are now Republicans and real Democrats got their minds right. But who’s made the majority of racist statements over the last few years, and what are the chances a Democrat will issue the next one?

That bet I will take.

But Hollywood liberals would NEVER pander to black folk….

It was not.

On Sunday, March 7th, Dan Rather said the following about the president…

Listen he’s a nice person, he’s very articulate…

When Rather got to “articulate”, I knew we had trouble brewing.

… this is what’s been used against him, but he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.

It’s also clear that Chris Matthews knew this would end bloody when he attempted to cut Rather off and stave off any further damage. I initially thought Matthews’ failure to post the segment (including what could be considered a racial slur against the President of the United States) an oversight, until I remembered that Chris Matthews forgot Barack Obama was black.

Read the rest on NewsBusters

Listen he’s a nice person, he’s very articulate. This is what’s been used against him. But he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.
— Dan Rather, Chris Matthews Show, 1/7/10, on Obama’s inability to get health care passed

This video was sanitized quicker than the Katie Couric library card video.

Van Jones is an American treasure.

Van Jones also may be the most misunderstood man in America.

He resigned from the White House last year after some sought to discredit him for missteps, such as political statements made years ago. However, we can never afford to forget that a defining trait of our country is our collective capacity to practice forgiveness and celebrate redemption. This is a nation built on second chances.
— Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, on his choice to award Jones the NAACP President’s Award for the 41st Image Awards

“… collective capacity to practice forgiveness and celebrate redemption. This is a nation built on second chances.”

Yeah, sure. Tell that to Clarence Thomas, George W. Bush, and every Republican that continues to be vilified by the forgiving, redemptive, and second chance-giving left, including Mr. Jealous who just last month, erroneously compared Senate Republicans with Dixiecrats, while forgiving the many newly-revealed racist statements by Democrats.

BTW — It’s a good thing Van Jones isn’t a Republican…

Washington, DC:

“It doesn’t take much for liberals to call black conservatives ’self-hating,’” noted Parks, “but what is it called when someone decides that blacks deemed inappropriate should be wholly removed from history?  What kind of egos are we talking about here?”

The Root is operated by The Washington Post.  Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. serves as The Root’s editor-in-chief.

In a recent posting, “Black Folks We’d Like to Remove From Black History” by Jada Smith, 21 blacks are singled out for being “embarrassing.”  Smith wrote: “[W]hile we love our own, we sure do dream of erasing a few of them.”

“It’s not enough that progressives intentionally distort and rewrite black history to their political advantage, but now The Root, the Post and Professor Gates are showing additional contempt for black people by allowing open suggestions about who should be excluded from that rewritten history,” Parks pointed out.

Of the 21 blacks selected by Smith to purge from black memory, there are five American political figures, five infamous foreign dictators, two criminals and nine celebrities.  The two liberal politicos — current D.C. councilman and former mayor Marion Barry and former Baltimore mayor Sheila Dixon — earned their shame by being convicted of breaking the law.

The three black conservatives are demeaned solely for their politics.  Republican Party chairman Michael Steele is the “Bozo of politics.”  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas allegedly lacks “standing” among blacks because “he looks to the Constitution as ‘colorblind.’”  Former presidential candidate Alan Keyes, whose activism extols the values of the Declaration of Independence and the rights of the unborn, has “never managed to make a lick of sense.”

Project 21’s Parks added: “The Root meticulously nominated five political figures among narcissistic celebrities and murderous dictators.  The two liberals broke written laws, while the others were convicted of the crime of being black and conservative.  It’s ironic that the hyper-sensitive Professor Gates presided over this fantasy of removing certain onerous blacks from our history.  Now that he’s got me riled up, I wonder if he and his bosses at the Washington Post will have me over for a beer to talk about their writer acting stupidly.”

Project 21, established in 1992, is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research, a non-profit foundation established in 1982 and funded primarily from the gifts of over 100,000 recent individual donors.

- 30 –

While talking about politicians with little or no experience,

We’re such a media frenzy, 24/7 world that almost anybody that’s been around too long, there’s so much “no” attached to it, that you almost need that blank piece of paper. That’s the new model. Like, you know, this coconut Rubio down in Florida. You know —
— Donny Deutsch, MSNBC and CNBC contributor on HLN’s Joy Behar Show

For those of you who don’t use racial slurs on a daily basis like our friends on the left, the term “coconut” is defined in the Urban Dictionary as, “a person who is tan on the outside (mexican, indian, philipino) and white on the inside”.

Again, don’t look for apologies, and if one is issued it won’t be sincere. As usual, the left will just want the opposition to just shut up.

Enjoy your stay at NBC, Donny. There’s nowhere else for someone like you to go.

h/t Scott W

h/t NewsBusters

I’m hoping to interview producer Thembisa Mshaka soon.

Walter Williams’ 1985 PBS documentary Good Intentions based on his book, The State Against Blacks (1982). The documentary was very controversial at the time it was released and led to many animosities and even threats of murder. In Good Intentions, Dr. Williams examines the failure of the war on poverty and the devastating effect of well meaning government policies on blacks asserting that the State harms people in the U.S. more than it helps them.

h/t Dan. Good catch

Does anyone out there have Keith Olbermann’s email address? I’d like to send him a link.

BTW — Yo Keith, segregation, “Jim Crow” and the Ku Klux Klan were Democrat creations (as were cultural literacy tests and poll taxes), civil rights legislation of the 60’s (and all before) was passed by Republicans despite persistent Democrat opposition, and Alabama governor George Wallace was a Democrat. But you knew that….

h/t Palmetto and Nick

Civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer made famous the phrase, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

For me, I’m sick and tired of Democrats having power and being unwilling to use it. I’ve always respected Republicans when they had power because they were willing to use it and maybe apologize later.

Obama’s critics keep blasting him for Chicago-style politics. So, fine. Channel your inner Al Capone and go gangsta against your foes. Let ‘em know that if they aren’t with you, they are against you, and will pay the price.

I would like to think Roland S. Martin, CNN Political Analyst, has been paying attention.

Despite Democrats having control of both houses, President Obama was unable to have some of his signature initiatives enacted, not because of powerless, obstructionist Republicans, but because of Dems who paid attention to town meetings and losses in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

And as far as paying the price, I think we already are.

Someone asked me the other day, ‘What does it feel like now to have a hood pass?’

And by the way, it’s sort of a contradiction in terms, because if you really had a hood pass, you could call it a nigger pass. Why are you pulling a punch and calling it a hood pass if you really have a hood pass? But I said, ‘I can’t have a hood pass. I’ve never walked into a restaurant, asked for a table and been told, ‘We’re full.’

And when asked if sistas throw themselves at him…

My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fuckin’ David Duke cock. I’m going to start dating separately from my dick.

Mayer will do his public mea culpas, will be forgiven, and all this because he’s a liberal.

And people wonder why race relations continue to be stalled in America.

NAACP President Benjamin Jealous compared Senate Republicans with the Dixiecrats who 40 years ago blocked civil rights legislation. “If the Senate Republicans want to kind of keep on using tactics … from the last century that were used against black people in this century, against working people, then we’re going to hold them to account,” he said.

Benjamin Todd Jealous (who is barely black himself) is below the most despicable kind of human being.

His intentional revision of history (just to keep his kiss ass relationship with Democrats and job relevant) is one reason why black people will remain the only people in this country who will never know their history, and that is happening for the worst of partisan, self-enriching reasons.

This is what happens when you get a lot of people and big-headed wannabe possible leader-types in the same room. Stupid shit gets said.

The opening speaker at the first National Tea Party Convention called President Obama a “committed Socialist ideologue” who was elected because “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote.”

“People who could not even spell the word ‘vote’ or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House.”
— former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.)

The hypersensitive assume Tancredo longs for the old days of poll taxes and literacy tests imposed to keep blacks from voting.

We all know what Tom meant but it’s getting real tiring, having to serpentine the mines they way too often leave in their wake.

NBC-owned TheGrio.com (an “African American Breaking News and Opinion” site), has a response from the chef who came up with the meal and made the sign. In part:

It’s not trying to offend anybody and it’s not trying to suggest that that’s all that African-Americans eat. It’s just a good meal.

I’ll eat the hell out of some Popeye’s any day and am not offended, but those who live by political correctness…?

therrendunham said in response to my vent about the “The TurboTax/MetaBank Hustle”

Wow, neocons crying about not getting something free. Go figure.

You are paying for the convenience of electronically filing through their service. You can always print and mail the returns out your damn self, if you don’t mind waiting about a good month and a half.

Pay the damn 60 bucks, you cheapskates. Or be smart enough to limit your deductions so Uncle Sugar won’t get a free loan with your hard-earned money all year.

therrendunham is in the Army (PC1). While his service is applauded, he is also living off me and everyone who reads B&R, so for that reason I think we deserve some fucking respect.

When one is WORKING, you see all the money the government takes (I use the word “takes” intentionally). After offering a service which is advertised as “free” and then an additional charge is levied later, it’s not something I can whine for someone else to pay. (I am rightly or wrongly assuming therrendunham is a punk). Add this up over the course of a lifetime, and yes, it damn well does piss me off. Had this charge been on TurboTax’s front page with an asterisk next to the word “free”, that would be honest. Charging AFTER the deal is near done is not. It has nothing to do with being cheap, but then again, one doesn’t have to worry about when you’re sponging off taxpayers (and I say that as a Navy veteran who would NEVER insult citizens while on active duty).

Then, in response to the 2006 “Black History Month” video, therrendunham wrote,

Here’s some novel issues you might wish to consider:

Stop exalting the GOP as if they’ve always had black folks’ interests at heart.  THEY DIDN’T, and they still don’t.  Better yet, how about a little CONTEXT when you bring up the laws they passed and the Dems didn’t?  Most reasonable person knows that the modern GOP is not the same party of Lincoln that you stubbornly hold on to.  In fact, one can argue that the democrats and Republican effectively switched platforms at various times in history.  Thus, NEITHER party has the monopoly on civil rights, and neither party has the collective interests of black Americans in mind. Get over the ideology.

Personally, I’m getting real tired of thin-skinned liberals (who love to call anyone and everyone not like them racists, etc.), lecture me about Democrats now not being like Democrats were.

That argument could have some merit except for two little paragraphs.

On my piece “The Democrat Race Lie“, I cite two paragraphs from the Democrats.org website that to this day reads,

Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That’s why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws, and every law that protects workers. Most recently, Democrats stood together to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act.

On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight. We support vigorous enforcement of existing laws, and remain committed to protecting fundamental civil rights in America.

If you read the subsequent history of the Democrat Party, you’ll clearly see that was not the case. Democrats opposed EVERY civil rights law, including the Voting Rights Act that Al Gore Sr. and J. William Fulbright (Bill Clinton’s mentor) voted against.

The point is that Democrats assume black people are too stupid to know their own historical experience in America, that is, a history whitewashed by liberal academia. For the Democrat.org website, thus the Democrat Party to take credit for “every civil rights issue” is a bold-faced lie, so if they are willing to lie about their history, that tells me they want it hidden.

To say that it’s not the same party, we’ll then, don’t lie about your history. Don’t lie to black people. Admit your past and show how you’ve changed, but to falsely take credit for civil rights gains while denying Klan roots is an insult to every American, and I especially feel a teensy bit of pity for the duped parrots.

I’m not going to take the time to answer the rest of the bloated comment aside from repeating what I say whenever I’m asked what Republicans have done for black people.

I usually respond with what Democrats have done TO black people. (For B&R regulars, this is review)

Blacks vote 90-95% for Democrats.

With that, the black community is represented by black Democrat mayors, black Democrat city councilmembers, black Democrat school superintendents, black Democrat police chiefs, black Democrat state legislators, black Democrat congresspersons, etc. With that, if you take into account how wonderful the Democrat Party has always been, the black community should have been a goddamn utopia decades ago, but we all know the black community is a place where few public officials go without armed escort.

The same problems blacks have been bitching about (poor employment opportunities, sub-standard public schools, high crime, etc.) for 50-plus years, they’re still bitching about today.

Democrats have no reason to fix anything in the black community, because once they do and people start to work and make good money, guess what normally happens? They see how much of their hard-earned dollars go to leeches and, in some cases, they become Republican.

Other perks that come with being a Republican include little things like not being associated with arrogant, rude punk ass kids (who are taught in schools that fraudulently promote themselves as welcoming the free expression of ideas, while chickenshit professors encourage their students to shout down anyone of whom they disagree).

If this Army punk wishes to live his life based on lies and hypocrisy, fine, but he will not go unchallenged, especially here.

Time To Move On
Besides the election of a radical leftist black president, not much has changed since I recorded this in 2006….

I think the votes want to be there in the Senate — I think the House is fairly solid — I think the votes want to be there, but you have this growing ‘teabagger’ movement that is going to be pushing very hard from the other side.

It’s going to be a battle of wills — I think — between Republicans who realize the danger in losing the Latino vote for a generation or longer and the danger that poses in places like Arizona, New Mexico and Florida — places that are battleground states that could be torn away from them because of demographic shifts — and those Republicans who demand ideological purity and hate brown people and really kowtow to the Tom Tancredos of this country.
— Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, Democratic strategist and founder of the “The Daily Kos”, on “comprehensive immigration reform”

Some people, even so-called political elites, are so into their petty little insults that they don’t realize that the use of the ‘teabagger’ slur really pumped up those who oppose the liberal lurch. The results… New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts.

Mouli, keep up the “teabagging” and branding opposition racists. Many of us look forward to reading Kossack whiner comments when your asses get kicked in November.