" I Am A Man"

Memphis Sanitation Workers, 1968

Much thanks to Truthseeker for finding this video of Michelle Bernard on Election Night:

Miriam Makeba Has Passed On

Miriam Makeba 'Mama Africa' 1932-2008


Story from NPR

Report from the New York Times

Story from Voice of America

More From Studs Terkel

Hear a great Public radio segment on Studs Terkel from "This American Life". They re-air some of Terkel's old radio interviews. Listen to podcast here. (you can fast foward to the 5 minute mark)

Topics include race relations and life during the Great Depression.

Hear a Great Public Radio Program - Looking Back At the Past Week

On The Media takes a look at the past weeks events, focusing on the election, the future of the Republican Party, and how the media covered the stories.

Topics include: The Obama victory, Studs Terkel's work, Lee Atwater and the Southern Strategy...and how Karl Rove & The Republican Party carried on the Atwater tradition, The civil war in the Republican Party, and other interesting topics. I was going to post just one or two segments, but realized how much I liked the entire show this week. Listen to the program below.


Mp3 link

See all the topics from this week from the On the Media website.

Parting Thoughts On Palin - And Save Links From Sidebar While They're Still Up

If you want to save any of the sidebar postings of John McCain, Sarah Palin, or any of the links for the political sites.... including Dave Leip....then make note of them while you can. They will all be removed within a couple of days.

We did over 50 Sarah Palin posts, and dozens more that were Palin related. McCain should pay Bloggers and Journalists for the free vetting service that he got (*evil grin*). In a roundabout way... he asked for it (by not doing it himself), and he got what he asked for. Now he has to live with the result. In the end though, Palin and McCain did themselves in. Bloggers and Journalists by themselves don't have quite that much influence...I know bloggers don't. But by hiding Palin from the media, the McCain campaign allowed speculation to run wild (much of it true), and allowed the Press and the blogosphere to take command of Palin's image. Once they relinquished this control & responsibility, and once it was clear that their VP choice had not been vetted, the McCain campaign was never able to regain control of the situation, despite their sad & clumsy efforts at the end, stumbling to shape or reshape her image. Sorry.... it was too little, too late. In fact, the situation turned into quicksand for them at that point.... the more they panicked and tried to react... the worst it got for Palin...and by extension, the worst it got for McCain. In the end, the entire fiasco played a key role in dragging down the McCain campaign, although the Financial crisis would have decided the election anyway. However, I can't help but think -and I thought this the whole time- how much more competitive McCain might have been if he would have made a more sensible choice for his running mate. Even if he wanted to choose a woman, there were much better options than Palin. McCain/Lieberman, McCain/Hagel, McCain/Romney, McCain/Snowe, McCain/K. B. Hutchinson, or McCain and any moderate might have played out better.... or if he wanted to satisfy the Conservative base, McCain/Huckabee made a Hell of a lot more sense.

Now Conservatives are saying that Palin represents the future for the Republican Party? They really are lost in the wilderness. Although I still believe that the U.S. electorate is still largely Center-Right and lost, I don't think the Republicans will regain their political position with Sarah Palin.

Hopefully Palin will stay in Alaska where she belongs. I'm tired of hearing that horrible (fingernails on a chalkboard) voice, among other annoyances.

The Obamas Come To The White House

will.i.am - It's A New Day

Obama and the Gender Gap

This map illustrates the gender gap in the 2008 Presidential Election. The darker the blue the larger the advantage for Obama among female voters.

Analysis
In just two states, Nebraska and Arkansas, did Obama receive fewer votes from women than men. In Arizona and Utah, Obama received the same number of votes from women and men.

The gender gap, or the pro-Democratic nature of female voters, is so common that textbooks regular include a discussion of it in chapters on voting and political participation.



The real question is, why?
Women perceive the Democratic Party to be more concerned with domestic issues that regularly affect their lives (i.e. education and health care). This is contrasted with a Republican Party that cares more about inanities such as zero-based budgeting that just don't resonate with Joanne Six-Pack (Ha! that was an awful line - I promise not to use it again).

And, here's another reason. The truth of the matter is that a clear majority of women are pro-choice. As long as the GOP is a bunch of men telling women what to do with their bodies, the GOP will be on the wrong side of this gender gap.

Georgia Was Not An Innocent Victim Afterall - Faces War Crimes Allegations

It looks like I was right about the Georgia-Russia War, while John McCain, Joe Biden and Barack Obama got it wrong. I hope this doesn't represent the start of a pattern for Obama/Biden in terms of being on the wrong side of history.

Just as I suspected, reports are now providing confirmation and consensus for the fact that Georgia was the instigator in its war with Russia over the Summer. With the meddling of the U.S. (co-instigator), the Georgians felt emboldened enough to start a war with the Russians. Beyond foolish!

Investigations by the New York Times, Human Rights Watch and others are providing a completely different picture from the one painted by Georgian President Saakashvili, John McCain, and even Barack Obama. McCain and Obama portrayed Russia as the aggressor and vowed to stand by Georgia; even though most reports at the time suggested that Georgia, with the backing of the U.S., instigated the war. This is one of the problems I have with Barack Obama. He is far too quick to jump onto the pro-war bandwagon, in an effort to look like one of the good ole boys. It's no surprise that he is already screwing up as President-elect. I'm already regretting my vote, and it hasn't even been a full week since election day.

It now appears that Georgia lied about the events that led to the war and their eventual defeat.

Listen to a brief story from Public Radio International (PRI).

From The New York Times

TBILISI, Georgia — Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the longstanding Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression.

Georgia moved forces toward the border of the breakaway region of South Ossetia on Aug. 7, at the start of what it called a defensive war with separatists there and with Russian forces.

Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia’s inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.

See more from the Daily Kos and from the full New York Times article.

Meanwhile, the Georgian public has begun to turn on their President. We can only pray that they decide to remove Saakashvili from office before his government is able to start anymore wars with the Russians. Saakashvili tried his damnedest to deliberately drag the U.S. into a direct shooting war with Russia. He used the U.S. for what he thought would be his own political gain. Even more troubling than that, the Bush administration actually seemed willing to oblige him, up to a point. Unfortunately Obama supports the typical pro-war Republicrat view of this conflict and pretty much signed on to the Bush administrations Georgia policy...vowing to continue it once he takes the oath of office.

Barack Obama should put an end to the efforts to include Georgia in NATO and he should put an end to NATO expansion altogether. I don't expect him to do so because he is nothing but a puppet at the moment, taking direction from Clinton era advisers who were advocates for NATO enlargement. This was also the policy of the Bush administration. Obama has already indicated that he plans to continue most of the Bush administrations foreign policy initiatives, despite running on a platform (a questionable platform) of "change".

_______________________

See previous posts on Georgia