Black Lives Matter activists disrupt Sen. Bernie Sanders during a scheduled speech in Seattle.

Like thousands of people across the country, on July 29, 2015 I went to a Bernie Sanders  Meet up at Teamsters Local 728 here in Atlanta. (Note: Clearly I should be camera ready just in case I decide to get up and speak some place. I had been running around all day and didn’t get a chance to get pretty lol.)

I was pleasantly surprised to find this video today shared by a wonderful local activist I had the chance to chat with after the meet up. Just for a little context I began by giving a shout out to Brooklyn! I almost had a Voletta Wallace moment from the 1997 MTV movie awards and shouted “Big Ups to Brooklyn.” My dad, uncle, and grandfather are all Brooklyn boys forged in the heart of the jungle. I will take a NYC politician over a Chicago one any day of the week!!! As I got serious, I shifted into talking about why as a single mother, a woman, a black person etc. that I was motivated to vote for Bernie Sanders. Well to not only vote for him, but to volunteer and work with grassroots organization committed to effectuating change on a local and national level.

Is Bernie perfect? Nope.

Is he the Messiah? Not at all.

But for me Bernie is the person who has the vision and experience to address the various intersectionalities that make up my identity. So I decided to get involved and be the change I wanted to see. I opted to start building with people at the beginning stages of this movement than sitting around complaining about who wasn’t doing what when.  There will be no savior of blackness this election.  Wake up call folks…there has never been a savior of blackness. Not Lincoln, Johnson, Clinton, or Obama. No one president has “saved” us.   Anything and everything we have accomplished has been earned and paid for with our blood, sweat, and more blood.

I am completely aware of the criticism levied at his campaign on issues related to “people of color.”  However, like many people I am not a one issue voter. Education, Healthcare, Economy, and Social Security are all issues that ABSOLUTELY matter to me.  Yes we need a concerted effort to address issues of structural racism and lingering inequality affecting Black, Latino, and Native Americans.  But we also need to organize and unite locally and regionally to really start changing the tide.  50 years ago beautiful legislation was enacted at the Federal level, and the last several decades have proven how difficult it has been to enforce equality legislation on the state and local level. WE NEED PEOPLE TO ORGANIZE AND STAY ORGANIZED IN THEIR COMMUNITIES.

Instead of complaining about what the campaign IS NOT DOING…I’m involved with groups who are trying to help shape the future of the nation. Groups such as the Women for Bernie Sanders and People for Bernie Sanders are trying to engage and educate people, but are also open to dialogue and feedback.  Movement building (as many can attest) is not without bumps. We need to be able to provide constructive criticism/feedback while continuing to build forward moving, sustainable collaborative arrangements.  Furthermore, we need to strengthen our involvement at the local level. Sure we “Get Out the Vote” when it comes to big presidential elections, but we need to be as focused on our local level politics if not even more so. The backsliding and fiscal problems we have seen across the 50 states has to do with people not being engaged and showing up in midterm elections and special elections. It has to do with people not showing up at city council or school board meetings. Yes we are all very busy, but what is an hour? Pick a meeting, any meeting and just show up. Talk to your neighbors, children, checkout clerk at the supermarket.  We need to rebuild civic minded communities. Does your church or local community center have any information about local candidates? Know what policies are coming down the pipeline.  In some cases public comments are accepted online or by email!! A lot of meetings are being webcast or posted online for later viewing.

Just this week, we learned that one of the corporate monsters involved in the #WVChemleak #WVWaterCrisis is getting off very easy and gets to keep all his millions. I’m sick and tired of people gaming the system. It is time that we began to take back our country. To take back our communities. To stop allowing the powers that be run over and through us.  It is time we set both parties straight and let them know who they work for. Public servants are supposed to serve the public good and not their own.

You have to make a choice, are you gonna continue to warm the bench or are you going to get in the game?  Things do not have to continue as they “always have been.” Our history is full of great changes started by ordinary people!

[Originally posted at Mama Justice]

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Americans did elect Republicans, but not just enough to barely give them control of Congress but in a huge wave, no wait, a tsunami, and it wasn’t just the House and the Senate but in Gubernatorial races as well. There will be a Republican governor in Illinois and Maryland!! Watching the coverage of the election returns I could only shake my head at the response from the millionaire pundits. They wanted to “dissect and analyze” the results. “What does this mean?” they questioned. “This is a total repudiation of Obama!” was of course the answer that right wing politicians and “strategists” gave. No wait….”This is just the way it goes for a President in the mid-term of his second term in office.” Just the way it goes.

The answer my loyal readers is obvious, simple. There is no need for hours, days, weeks, months of head scratching and “soul searching.” Americans are simply the dumbest creatures to roam the earth. That’s it. Am I disappointing you? Did you expect something more “high brow?” Andy Borowitz, the brilliant satirist for the New Yorker wrote one of his mock articles and the point was simply that Americans have the memory capacity of a gnat. But is this really the excuse? That they forgot that this was the party that caused the economic collapse that almost put in a depression? That this is the party of war that loved our time in Iraq and wanted more of it? That this is the party that tried and continues to try to take away health care from the millions that have acquired it through Obamacare? Did they really forget that this President has created jobs for over 60 straight months? That the stock market has doubled since he took office? That the deficit has been cut in more than half? That gas prices are lowest in ages, and the same goes for unemployment? That he got us out of two wars, killed Bin Laden, etc etc etc.??

People like the schizophrenic Chris Matthews thinks the people want to see jobs! You see to a guy like Matthews it’s all a game. A political game that has no real meaning in his life because he is rich and famous and will continue to be no matter what happens. Same goes for folks like Chuck Todd, and all of the morons on Fox News. It’s just a game. The real answers are ones they are not willing to give because they would lose their gigs if they did.

Americans are dumb yes, ignorant, yes, can’t remember what happened yesterday (which is I guess why they are dumb and ignorant.) But there is another element to this. Many people are just simply racist and evil. It doesn’t matter what the Republicans did to the country and it surely doesn’t matter what Obama has done to bring us back. This is the revenge of the racists. They knew that blacks (and I will get to you folks in a minute!) weren’t going to vote the way they did when Obama was heading the ticket so this was their chance. No way to negate their racist votes this time! Same goes to the young voters (got yours coming as well!). So they pounced. Seized the moment. They registered their disgust at a black President. Of course not one pundit came anywhere close to talking about this. Watching MSNBC, I knew that Al Sharpton was seething. You could see it on his face. He had every right. Not only had the racists won, but his own people had let him down.

His own people. There is NO WAY IN HELL if Chicago comes out to vote that a Republican is elected Governor there, same goes for Baltimore in Maryland. Both have heavily black populations. So you see, the racists were able to win almost everywhere they wanted. How does it feel? You guys love to talk about marching, and stand your ground, and Trayvon and Mike Brown, and FUCK YOU! And I can say all of this because I VOTED! I can talk down because I now have the right. If you didn’t vote you can just sit there and read this and take it. Same goes for the young voters who don’t think mid-terms are important enough to pull them away from their sexting. Up yours as well!

Then again maybe I’m being a bit harsh. I mean blacks shouldn’t be called upon to be the saviors of racist America time and again. They shouldn’t have to be. A guy like Obama shouldn’t have to rely on those votes to win. Same goes for the Democrats. Not in a normal country anyway. There was a poll that said it all..in the USA there are still 43 percent of the electorate that believes abortion should be illegal. 43 PERCENT! In the year 2014. This shows the evil and ignorance that slithers here. Go find another civilized nation and find out what that number is. If they even need to have such a poll in any normal country.

The evil and ignorance and racism was on full display on election night. The black man must be punished, he must be shown that it was a mistake for him to ever run for office in the first place. We’ll teach him. They were upset they couldn’t literally hang him anymore but hey second best was to figuratively hang him. Hang the Republicans around his neck instead of a rope.

That’s what happened pundits. It wasn’t about policies or politics. There was no “thought process” with the voters. No need to twist things into a hundred different shapes to try and come up with a reasoning. There was however another problem. This one is age old and will probably never change. Democrats are huge gaping pussies. They have zero backbone. They are weak and feckless and disgusting.

Instead of running on the great record of one of the most successful Presidents of all time, running on such little things as record job growth, record stock markets, lowest gas prices in years, lowest unemployment in years and of course that small accomplishment known as Obamacare which gave millions upon millions the option of actually seeing a doctor and going to the hospital without, you know..dying instead. No they not only didn’t even mention any of that stuff but they actually avoided Obama like the plague, like he was George W. Bush! Grimes, that lame ass woman who ran against the rooster head, wouldn’t even say that she had voted for Obama! I mean how feckless can you be?! By the way, most of the female Dem candidates were just as lame and as useless as the male candidates this time around. Hey I have a great idea. I know it’s groundbreaking and all but here it goes…how about we nominate the BEST candidates?! Hey!! What a fucking idea! How about we nominate people like Alan Grayson of Florida, who aren’t afraid to embrace Obama and his policies??

Guess what? He won! In Florida! Guess who also won? Pretty much anyone who didn’t run away from the President. Guess who lost? Everyone who did. Don’t worry though, all of those campaign advisers will still make millions, write books and be fine. Same goes for the candidates. Republicans never seem to have a problem with embracing their leaders and touting their policies but not Democrats. As Will Rogers once said, “I don’t belong to any organized political party, I’m a Democrat.”

What the Democratic candidates did was simple. They ran away from the black man. As though their lives were at stake. As though he had a shank. They were as racist as the ignorant voters. This is another reason why so many Dems stayed home, so many black voters.

So I say this… There is nothing to lose now. Nothing at all. This President needs to give the Republicans and the racist voters what they have been afraid of all along. The angry black man.

He needs to come out with a huge chain of bling around his neck. A huge chain with four letters spelled out as big as possible. V E T O.

Anything less and his great legacy will dissolve into a big puddle of nothingness.

The post Midterm Elections 2014, Weak Democrats, & Dimb Racist Americans appeared first on Madness & Reality.

I mean, he did choose to carefully use the words “Blah people.” Now, had he simply said, “niggers,” or “nigg…” well, maybe a red flag would go up in my head to suggest that he’s either overtly racist, or a racist cognizant of not hurting the feelings of “certain people” while speaking publicly. You know what they say: your thoughts control your actions – so a man thinketh, so turds speweth from mouth. No seriously, I think it’s in the Bible somewhere between Genesis and Revolutions.

An Etch-A-Sketch Won't Erase Racism

So the question still remains: is Rick Santorum racist? Well, we do know that unlike Ron Paul he never circulated racist screed within any newsletters bearing his name. That much we do know. We also know that he isn’t into giving white peoiple’s money to “Blah people,” in an attempt to make their lives any better. And, we also know that he isn’t very fond of a certain snobbish president who just so happens to be Black. But this week while speaking on the campaign trail in Janesville, Wisconsin. My boy Slick Rick kinda sorta let the cat out of the bag in one of his speeches.

Forget that whole Etch A Sketch thing, this is the mother-lode of political gaffes:

The post Rick Santorum Almost Calls Obama the N-Word in Campaign Speech: But, Did He Mean It? appeared first on Madness & Reality.

I’m sure the question is being asked, then, where am I going with this?
It’s really quite simple (and thank you for asking, by the way)… the “revolution” we need is not tied to any anarchist “chant down Babylon” or overthrow the government measures. Warren Buffett is quoted as saying

“I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.”

As I understand it, Congress themselves would have a hand in making this into law, and in such will NEVER cut their own heads off when many of them are treating this as an entitled lifetime job, thanks to nepotism, partisan politics and dumb luck. Hell, a perfunctory Google search of “Congressmen by age” tells me that 38 of them are beyond the normal US retirement age of 67 already. That suggests to me that you would either have to drag them from their positions kicking and screaming, being them out in a coffin or simply elect someone else into their place.
Wait, you mean to tell me that these are elected positions and these incompetent lummoxes are in their positions after enough people made the subjective decision to allow them to remain there? I will not go into what that does to my opinion of the voting public, except to say “shit, we all make mistakes sometimes,” but we can SURELY do something to fix it.

Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, & Eric Cantor: A Portrait of Obstructionism

If any of us came in to work on Monday morning and did as SHITTY a job as Congress does, then we could expect to be fired by Tuesday. When one factors in the fact that some members of Congress go out of their way to dig in their heels and PURPOSELY not do some things that make sense simply because of WHO presented said ideas would be akin to insubordination and should also be met with a firing.
Since the only way to get a Senator or House Rep “fired” is for them to break a law, the people should take these things into their own hands and fire them ourselves.

“How?” You ask? Every other year for the House and every 6 years for the Senate, the incumbents are up for re-election. If the sitting members have presided over a skid as many in place have between the end of the Clinton administration, then on through the Bush and now Obama years, then they too should be fired by simply not being re-elected.

Never mind party affiliation, never mind who is Liberal, Conservative, Moderate or what the hell ever. If a sitting Congress oversees a continuing quagmire as we’re currently in, the only sensible decision is to simply vote for whoever opposes the incumbent. No, don’t stop and consider friends or party members when doing so, no one should recognize anyone who remains on the other side of this. Considering that all but 12 were born in 1960 or before, we could call this an “early retirement” at best, and most effectively a “firing.” Either way you slice it, the voting public showing up en masse to show their Congresspersons that they WILL show up and get rid of the dead weight politicians who claim to love America out of one side of their mouth, but show with their actions something wholly different, that they must go and if the next group coming in cannot get their act together, then they too will be removed.

On the whole, this would put an end to career politicians who have made their lives dangling the proverbial carrot in front of their constituents as a means of preserving their own pensions when none of the people who put them in that position will be so lucky. It would also show sitting members of congress that the voters are no longer interested in taking any shit. If you want to remain in your position, then the onus is wholly on you as a group to HONESTLY reach across the aisle for solutions beneficial to the American public, lest you will soon BECOME a member of the general American public.

If the fear of an accelerated tumble from grace doesn’t scare them into getting it together, then I am out of ideas.
Ladies and gentlemen, FIRE YOUR CONGRESSMAN!!!

-Phlip
Callmephlip.blogspot.com
@CallMePhlip

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My wife isn’t very fond of Roland S. Martin. All through the presidential campaign back in 2008 she would let it be known as she watched CNN. Me? I have no problem with the brotha; hell, I even overlook the fact that he’s blocked me on Twitter (yes, him and Andrew Breitbart have both blocked me so I must be doing something right); and, I’ve even went as far as to suggest that he be allowed to have his own prime time network show in mainstream media.

Of course I don’t always agree with Roland; and no, I’m not a fan of the Ascot; but, I do admire his tenacity with which he often defends his position publicly whether he’s right or wrong. Speaking of which, he’s 100% correct in the following video. The following video is the latest in TV One’s “The Back Room” installment. And in it, he discusses the subject of black folks choosing to be passive and press president Obama on issues that directly affect us directly, and indirectly, which overall has a negative impact on society at large.

The idea for some, is that “we” should wait until POTUS has secured a second term in office to start making demands. A stance or position that is justified by the notion that president Obama can’t be perceived to be “helping black folk,” because to do so would alienate white voters, who in turn would refuse to vote for him. Of course you guys know that I think this idea is foolish and dare I say akin to the slave-like mentality some of us are afflicted with. However, it was good to see Roland express the same concern with Kelli Goff, Contributing Editor of TheLoop21.com, and for that, he gets major props from me..

The post Roland S. Martin Speaks Truth, But Y’all Black Folks Ain’t Hearing Him Though appeared first on Madness & Reality.

And they voted in a Democrat…

Paul Ryan by DonkeyHotey

Sure, you say that it’s just one measly district, but I believe this is a bad omen for the knuckle-dragging twats on the right. For one, they poured enormous amounts of money and resources into this election — in what should’ve been a cakewalk. The right wing parade of national batshittery passed by the district to lend their name recognition and support. They poured millions and made what should’ve been an inconsequential election in Armpit, USA into a do-or-die for the Ryan plan…

And they lost.

They lost because this was a referendum on right wing fiscal policies — mostly rehashed dismal failures of past decades: rob from the poor to give to the rich. Otherwise known as Reaganomics, supply-side, trickle down bullshit. Bush I had it right: it’s magical thinking dressed as economic policy, or better put: Voodoo Economics.

Public Policy Polling shows why this election is very important moving on:

Congressional Republicans are extremely unpopular and voters think they’re doing an even worse job than the Democrats they put out of office six months ago. That was true in NY-26 and that’s true nationally. Last month we found nationally that 43% of voters thought House Republicans were doing a worse job than the Democrats did while in the majority to only 36% who felt they were an improvement. Even in NY-26, which voted 13 points more Republican than the country as a whole in 2008, 38% of voters think the Republicans are doing a worse job than the Democrats to only 34% who think they’re an improvement. You can talk about Jack Davis all you want but the reality is that if voters thought House Republicans were bringing the improvement they hoped for when they went to vote last November Jane Corwin would have won tonight…
And believe me, the take-away here — the chum in the water — is that House Democratic candidates will run against John Boehner and the Ryan plan next year. Again, Public Policy Polling lays out the cruel numbers:

Boehner’s approval rating nationally is a 25/42 spread and even in this traditionally Republican district it’s a 28/45 spread. Barack Obama’s not popular in this district either, don’t get me wrong- his approval is a 42/51 breakdown. But it’s remarkable that his net approval is 8 points better than Boehner’s in a district that John McCain won by 6 points in 2008. Again you can talk about Jack Davis all day but if John Boehner was more popular than Barack Obama in this district, as you would certainly have expected the case to be, then Jane Corwin would have won tonight.Interesting times indeed…

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Update #1 (h/t Steve Benen)
Last night’s was a huge upset — a body blow against the conservative agenda, but it’s also the latest in a spate of recent victories for democrats…
New Hampshire: Last week, there was a special election in a state House district where Republicans have dominated for years. The Democratic candidate won in a landslide, even after a local town clerk illegally required photo IDs to vote.Florida: Also last week, Jacksonville was home to a high-profile mayoral race, and the state GOP touted the election as the first warning shot of the 2012 cycle. Instead, voters elected Democrat Alvin Brown — Jacksonville’s first African-American mayor — stunning the Republican establishment statewide.Wisconsin: Three weeks ago, there was a special election in a Wisconsin state Assembly district that has been represented by a Republican for 16 years. In this case, the Democrat won by eight points.Maine: Two weeks ago, there was a special election to fill a vacancy in the state Senate, in a district that has been very competitive in the recent past. In this case, the Democrat won by a crushing 2-to-1 margin. This is not to say that Dems have recovered from a brutal 2010. Dems withstood a smackdown after doing well in 2009 special elections, for example. In addition, Let me be clear: last night’s winner is at best a Blue Dog democrat, hardly something progressives should celebrate. Still…
Conservatives began the year with the help of a passive corporate-run media with all the national momentum going for them. However, after a series of losses in races Republicans should have won easily, it is clear (except to conservatives, apparently) that the American public isn’t buying what the GOP is selling.

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