The Wake

Since George Carlin recently died, I figured it’d be best to post some clips of him discussing issues relevant to this blog. In the first clip he talks about the absurdity of the American Dream. In the second, he chimes about why he doesn’t vote. (”If you vote, you have no right to complain!”)

Monday night I flipped on CSPAN and saw Ohio Rep. and former Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich presenting a 35-count impeachment bill against President George W. Bush. As you can note from the various times Speaker Nancy Pelosi has to bring the House under order during Kucinch’s reading of his bill (Kucinich: “The House is not under order!” Pelosi: [grueling sigh followed by annoyed taps] “Please proceed”), the rest of the House doesn’t seem to give two shits about “the Gentleman from Ohio’s” plans.

So what’s the point of impeaching a President who has only half a year left in office?

Perhaps it’s because the Bush administration is in the process of committing the US military to Iraq for the next …

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The day’s finally come. Hillary’s out. Obama’s in. And he’s made Black History before Hillary could make Feminine History (actually Hillary’s made plenty of Feminine History with her campaign – but, truth be told, both have also made straight-up general history). The Democrats are officially unified, even if I’m reading New York Times stories that say some former Clinton supporters are now donating money to the McCain campaign. While pundits may argue that the Obama vs. Hillary fiasco officially came to a close Tuesday when the Illinois Senator finally got the magic number of delegate votes – 2,118 – to secure the Democratic nomination for President, the (for now) happy Democratic ending really came when Obama and Hillary privately met – alone – in California Senator …

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The damned, dirty Minnesota grouch Mike Hatch

They’ve done it again: MinnPost is raiding former Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch’s political image as a public servant for the down-trodden, or, to put it another way, reaffirming Hatch’s public reputation as a hot-tempered, hypocritical bastard.

Here are some excerpts from Eric Black’s old-fashioned investigative report that give us an idea of Hatch’s would-be DFL-minded personality:

Hatch took over an office that had been known, under his predecessors, as a national model among AG offices, for striking an appropriate balance between the political needs of the elected official and the obligation of public lawyers to do high-quality, non-partisan legal work, and turned it into an office driven by Hatch’s political ambitions.

Attorneys under Hatch …

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Here’s an entertaining video montage of news anchors (and Dan Marino) losing their cool. I jacked it from Steve Perry at Minnesota Monitor, and he jacked it from Gawker. I guess jacking shit is part of the online game.

[Note a young, sleazy Bill O’Reilly at the 1:00 minute mark]

The Good Ol’ Rev. Jeremiah Wright

It’s easy for any white person to call Jeremiah Wright’s recent actions egotistical. For whites, Wright is an easy Black target, as media coverage has proved this past week. Wednesday’s New York Times editorial claimed Wright’s recent statements were full of “racism” and “paranoia.” Both it and a Star Tribune editorial praised Sen. Obama’s moves to distance himself from his former pastor as much as he could. Steve Perry at Minnesota Monitor called Wright’s media tour a “selfish move.” In fact, I’ve only seen one positive commentary of Wright, which was published in Insight News, the Black community newspaper of the Twin Cities. Something’s not right with …

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Sure, I could write about tonight’s big Pennsylvania primary win for Hillary, but goddamn it, we all knew it was going to happen. Nothing has changed; Obama is still ahead in the delegate count and has most of the Democratic super delegates at his fingertips. Besides, there are tons of primaries still ahead and more pressing news to be told.

After a week of speculation, the rumors are true: according to the Star Tribune, the Minnesota Vikings have acquired defensive end and human wrecking ball Jared Allen. As this YouTube clip of the now-former Kansas City defender knocking the shit out of Jaguars QB David Gerrard illustrates, this sonofabitch Allen means business.

But the drunk-drivin’, mullet-sportin’, No. 69-wearin’ mammoth comes …

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Talking Points Memo just posted a new Hillary Clinton campaign ad, featuring flashes of Osama Bin Laden that are so brief it seems as if they are meant to be picked up by the viewer subconsciously. Is she attempting to dramatize the remaining bitter shreds of U.S. democracy? You be the judge.

But what really puts the aches in my back is how Hillary recently denounced the “activist base” of the Democratic Party at a closed-door (meaning uber-wealthy guests only) fundraiser right after Super Tuesday. She said, and I will quote:

“We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn’t even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, …

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U.S. Senate candidate Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer

While most Minnesotans have stuck comedian Al Franken in their minds as the next Minnesota DFL Senate candidate, St. Thomas peace studies professor Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer is still vying for the party’s upcoming June nomination. Despite barely being mentioned in the local media, Nelson-Pallmeyer surpassed Mike Ceresi in the race and is slowly but surely winning over the most liberal sectors of the DFL. After looking into his campaign, I found out that Nelson-Pallmeyer is a more progressive, less elite alternative to Franken. Although Franken often mentions the late Sen. Paul Wellstone as his role model, Nelson-Pallmeyer’s grassroots campaign, stances on the issues, and intellectual demeanor (he’s an educator) resemble Wellstone much more …

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The biggest key to winning an election is projecting a public image. It surpasses where candidates stand on the issues, how they work with others, what their personalities are like, and just about every other necessary factor needed to run a successful campaign. Remember when then-Minnesota Attorney General and 2006 DFL gubernatorial candidate Mike Hatch called a reporter a “Republican whore” one week before the election? Hatch’s loss to Gov. Pawlenty shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise to in retrospect. The sad thing is, Hatch made best election performance by a DFL gubernatorial candidate in decades, according to St. Olaf College political scientist Dan Hofrenning. Remember that this was 2006, when the Democrats swept the national elections.

To be fair, it’s quite an assumption …

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A few weeks ago I wrote a post about Barack Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and how his name and reputation in the Black Community was being undermined and exploited by a media circus centered on a few YouTube clips of him criticizing the U.S. government. Now that the circus is over and labeled as old news, it might be an opportune time to present Rev. Wright in his own words, words that were certainly suppressed in the coverage of his past sermons. What follows is a letter to the editor intended for, but never published in, the New York Times and a video of Wright making the case for his church on Hannity and Colmes a few weeks before he was all over the news.

In …

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For the few weeks before the looped YouTube videos of Rev. Jeremiah Wright shifted half of the Democratic Presidential coverage to racial matters (the other half of the coverage being focused on the sinking economy), the topic of the talk was the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The trade agreement, which was put into law by President Clinton in 1993, restricts obstacles that corporations used to face when they moved their goods between Mexico, the U.S. and Canada. It essentially made free trade easier, prompting many U.S. corporations like General Electric to relocate across the border and hire Mexicans at lower pay (starting pay for a Mexican engineer at GE is equal to one-third of a U.S. salary).

Upon NAFTA’s inception, major trade unions were immediately against it, arguing …

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It’s best to begin this post by noting that 81 percent of the United States believe this country is headed toward a bleak future. Only a third of people believe that the next generation will be better off than the current generation. Fewer than half of parents — 46 percent — expect their children to enjoy a better standard of living than they themselves do. The other day, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, whose job requires a basic sixth grade knowledge of stubbornness, finally acknowledged the possibility of a recession.

And it looks like some politicians in Washington are continuing to poorly execute what are otherwise decent ideas. Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to President Bush …

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Sen. John McCain

In a time when consumers’ views of the economy are gloomier than they’ve been in five years, the Presidential candidates are devoting more and more rhetoric to fixing our stalled economy. While the Democratic candidates announced government remedies to help heal the situation, Republican candidate John McCain got more specific about his solution to the pending recession than ever before: let the market figure it out. Here’s an excerpt from his Tuesday speech in front of Latino businessmen:

“I have always been committed to the principle that it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers.”

But last week, the Federal …

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In the past few days, news anchors, columnists and cable pundits have been rigorously masturbating over denouncing Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the apparent anti-American jihadist. Decades after Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X and Huey P. Newton, white pundits are still acting as surprised as ever when they see a black man speak out radically against this country.