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NATEPERKINS.TV: Georgia's Jennifer Brook and Friends Celebrated ...By NATEPERKINS.TV (blog-tv)(NATEPERKINS.TV (blog-tv)) Video thumbnail. Click to play Click to Play. Dear NATE -- Join a Georgia Unite for Change Team I'm excited to announce that today, the Campaign for Change in Georgia is launching our Unite for Change Team program in every county and ...Queen Of Late Night Talk Show... - http://bevsmithatlanta.blogspot.com/
Wow.That's about all I can say. In a heated exchange at tonight's S.D. Democratic Executive Board meeting in Oacoma, Hillary Clinton delegate Malcolm Chapman said--and State Chair Jack Billion confirmed--that the Clinton campaign offered a major fundraiser to the state party in exchange for two superdelegate votes.Chapman noted that he had almost "cut the deal" with the Clinton campaign. Billion said the price was "too high." He also said non-office holding superdelegates like him had to give a lot of consideration to Sen. Tom Daschle's, Sen. Tim Johnson's, and Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin's position on the race as they are major financial benefactors to the local party.I'll post more as I learn more.
(Originally posted on SD Watch at http://www.southdakotawatch.net)
Technorati Tags: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Malcolm Chapman, Jack Billion, superdelegates, South Dakota
As an aside, I forgot to post this, but my state has the lamest superdelegates. Hillary got 2 yesterday, where were they from? Louisiana. A state Barack won by almost 20%. Someone needs to vote them out of office.
Obama '08!
I've been watching CNN and MSNBC. Flipping between one news station to another and over the last five minutes Obama went from 40 needed to clinch the nomination to 35. Let the stampede begin!
YES WE CAN!!!!!
Obama 08
To say that the reaction of HRC being channeled through Harold Ickes at the May 31 Rules meeting was mind-boggling to me is an understatement. He looked like a two-year old who had been told that he can't have ice cream for breakfast. The problem is that he's not two. Mrs. C's image in the eyes of the remaining uncommited superdelegates, IMHO, was not helped by that display of pique. Hillary Clinton is pitching a fit about FOUR Michigan delegates being, as Harold put it, "taken" from her and "given" to Senator Obama!!!! OH PLEASE!
That said, I am seriously praying for a massive turnout and voter support today of Barack in South Dakota (which last year tried unsucessfully to pass a law to oppose Roe v. Wade), and I am confident of a fantastic victory in Montana. GO South D.!!! You GO MONTANA!!! MUCH LOVE TO ALL OF YA!!!
Barack Obama only needs 65 delegates to win the nomination for President. His new delegate total is 2,053.Nevada superdelegate Yvonne Gates endorsed Obama yesterday. She said she was waiting until the Rules committee made its decision. "I have been admiring, just from afar, looking at the way they run the campaign. I have been pretty impressed with this operation," she said.
Gates, a member of the DNC Rules Committee, supports the DNC decision on seating Michigan and Florida made yesterday. Gates was appointed to the DNC by former DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe, now Clinton's campaign chair. Gates doesn't view supporting Obama as disloyal; she said, "My goal is to win the election against the Republican in the general election. I've been waiting for this for eight years."Gates resigned from the Las Vegas county commission last year, under allegations that she misuesed campaign contributions, but has not been charged with a crime. Nevada still has four uncommitted superdelegates, including Sen. Harry Reid. (AP story here)Carole
Don't let the pundits get you down. Mark Mellman, in the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times, reports today that Obama is doing better with the "working class" electorate than either Al Gore or John Kerry was at this same point in those elections.
Read this, and take it to the superdelegates.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/opinion/29mellman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin
Barack Obama got support from 3 more superdelegates: 1 Chair of the Colorado Democratic Party Pat Waak 2 Chair of the Oregon Democratic Party Meredith Wood Smith 3 Guam Senator and DNC member Ben C. Pangelinan Their reasons? Waak: * 60% of votes at the Colorado State Democratic Convention * "visionary, uplifting leadership shown during this long campaign." * he will defeat John McCain in November Wood Smith: * majority of the votes in the Oregon * As a 65-year-old woman, I have a visceral understanding of the fight for gender equality. Pangelinan: "Trust in Senator Obama's commitment to turning the promises on the issues that are important to the people of Guam, into progress for the people of Guam." A call to other superdelegates: "The time has come to step forward." Waak "All of us should come together to elect Sen. Barack Obama" Wood Smith "The best candidate to deliver on the promise that is America, for all of America." Pangelinan 320.5 Number of superdelegates endorsing Obama for President 46 Number of delegates needed for Obama to secure the nomination Carole
Sun May 25, 7:06 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said on Sunday he expects Democratic superdelegates to reveal their choice for presidential nominee soon after the final primary in June and that Hillary Clinton will then have to quit the race.
"I think not. But of course she has the perfect right to do so," he said while attending a literary festival in Britain.
"I'm a superdelegate ... I think a lot of the superdelegates will make a decision quite, announced quite rapidly, after the final primary on June 3," he told Sky News.
"I have not yet announced publicly, but I think at that point it will be time for her to give it up," Carter said.
Here's the link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080525/pl_nm/usa_politics_carter_dc;_ylt=AgMIQkUTDzEKNkbaMp6hPTBsnwcF
YES WE CAN!!
Keith Olbermann of MSNBC had a stinging rebuke for Hillary Clinton the other day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdbgELgiBQM
It looks like Barack is less than 56 delegates away from claiming the nomination outright. I hope that we can bring the party together in time to defeat John McCain. Who do you think would be the best choice of VP for Barack? I'm thinking someone from the Appalachian region.
Puerto Rico is June 1, followed by the end of the primary season June 3 with Montana and South Dakota. Even more important, though, is May 31, when the Rules & Bylaws Committee meets to consider Florida/Michigan.
The Huffington Post has a listing of uncommitted superdelegates whom you can contact. Let's try to get as many of these as possible. The sooner we get their endorsements the sooner we can take on the Republicans full force.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/stop-yelling-at-hillary-t_b_103135.html
Yes We Can! Si Se Puede!
Original Post Link: http://sentimentsofkornbread.blogspot.com/2008/05/links-of-week-25-may-2008.html
Top FiveIn no particular orderYoung Filmmakers Explore America's Cultural Identity: http://www.baystatebanner.com/issues/2008/05/15/arts/arts05150841.htmBritain's Got Talent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FquMEmrm4FkSomething light to make you smile and dance.Republicans and Our Enemies: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121150000249615875.htmlAn Op-Ed by Joe Biden, Jr. the Senior Senator for Delaware.Giant 'telescope' links London, New York: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/05/22/scope.project/index.html Someone dug a hole to the other side of the world. I still remember when I tried to dig to China when I was little.Cindy McCain in Vogue: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2008/05/22/am.cindy.mccain.vogue.cnnI have said before and I will say again I like Cindy McCain and I support her decision not to release her tax returns, though it looks like she has released her 2006 returns.PoliticsObama: Don't fund independent groups: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10315.htmlSuperdelegates Turned Down $1 Million from Clinton Donor: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/19/superdelegates-turned-dow_n_102450.html Obama Draws Record Crowd in Oregon: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/obama-draws-record-crowd-in-oregon/index.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss Obama's oldest daughter is getting tall.Talking Points Memo - Hillary's Concession Speech Planned...Early Draft Leaked: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/05/hillarys-concession-speech-pla.php This post is a call for Democratic Party Unity. Convention Do's and Don'ts House Ethics Committee Outlines Limits on Freebies: http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000002881273Supporter Says Clinton Getting Desperate: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/ Democrats and Our Enemies: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121132806884008847.html?mod=Commentary-USAn Op-Ed by Joe Lieberman, Senator from Connecticut.InternationalMyanmar to Grant Entry to Medical Teams from Asian Group: http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=214900036 Business/EconomySUVs plunge toward 'endangered' list: http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/05/23/dumping.suvs/index.html
I was expecting that the remaining Colorado Superdelgates would come out on one side or the other after the results of the state convention came out.
What are they waiting for? The state has spoken en-mass, now it is time for them to step up!
The state I entered can only be described as a trance that was reminiscent of the day the apostle Peter sat on the rooftop of Cornelius’ home, awaiting the evening meal. A cloak opened up to him, filled with non-kosher animals of all kind. God told Peter to take his pick, kill and eat any of them. He refused, even after being made this offer three times. Finally, the Lord said to him, Peter, do not call what I have called clean, unclean. The end. Or was it the beginning?
I stared out the window, fully believing it was all just a dream—but it wasn’t the first time I had entered such a trance-like state while fully awakened. No, I was not under hypnosis; no one else was in the room, but there I stood in the middle of my children’s bedroom floor only a couple of hours after I had gotten them off to school.
I was sweeping and mopping and dusting, part of my usual daily ritual, when I looked out the window and could have sworn I saw a piece of the sky outside the window roll back, like a theater curtain when the play is about to start. For a brief moment in my life, I glanced, literally, at eternity and into a place where God’s love was innumerable, incalculable, and not able to be measured. That’s when I heard the words, “Do not place limits on me.” It would be only a few weeks later that Sis Blanchard, wife of the then-president of CB&T Bancshares and Total Systems, would come to my home and speak a word of prophecy to me.
“Thus saith the Lord that the gift love you carry inside is a gift from Him. It has no limitations and no borders on it. Yea, it is as endless as the surface of the sea, where the tide rolls in and rolls out, and just as the water carries millions of tiny granules of sand into the ocean and reshapes its surface, so is the love of God that abides in your heart. It will not be an overnight healing, but a gradual one…little by little, the love of God will show itself forth in you, and yea not in you only, but in everything and everyone you touch. For His love is not just for you, but for the whole world and all that is within it.”
That was more than 20 years ago. The manifestation thereof remains a mystery to me to this day. What I’ve beheld instead is a discomforting sour note, and mourning and weeping like never before—as if things that were supposed to go forward from there have done nothing more than go backward. Everything I set my hand to turned to dust.
Every door I opened swung back shut in my face, and every door I could peek through to see what was there had nothing on the other side that I was the least bit interested in. It was a struggle just to remember that at one point, as my life was on the verge of being sucked out of my very soul, Psalm 91 was the Word of God in which I took refuge.
It was a Psalm that not only spoke of dwelling and abiding, but of shelters, shadows, refuges, fortresses, and about trusting in God. I found trust a hard thing to do, but then I recalled that it wasn’t my own faithfulness on which I relied, it was His.
His faithfulness is the feathers (pinions) lining the nest, the wings hovering over, and the shield and bulwark behind which we all stand. If we have ever had a nagging notion that nothing we do is ever good enough, it’s because it isn’t. All have sinned and fallen short, no one has a cause or a justification for bragging rights. No one.
What is the answer, we continue to ask. What do we do? What is our purpose in life? How do we make the world a better place than the one in which we have lived? Where do we go from here?
The late great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself asked that question about 40-plus years ago. Where indeed? Chaos? Community? It was one of the last of things that he would have to say about the war on Vietnam, as well as many other issues that were America’s mistakes, and here we are in the New Millennium, having learned nothing. from his words and nothing from the experience. We are taught, and it has become manifest, that those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. It is not only black Americans who see the resurfacing devaluation of black people repeated from days long ago that should have been dead, but America itself has come around to a complete revolution and back to the undisputable 1960s and 1970s all over again.
God promised the Hebrews after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness that they would not enter a place of rest due to unfaithfulness, and right here in America, its African-American, black, and colored citizens, 40 years after the death of Dr. King, have yet to enter and abide in that place of rest. W.E.B. Du Bois talked about the Color Line of 150 years ago, and that Color Line, though moved up and redrawn, has not been thoroughly disintegrated or demolished.
Not long ago, a saying was passed around, “Black folk are the only people in this nation without a place to call home. We aren’t from Africa, and we aren’t fully Americans either.” Yes, the Constitution does say that anyone born in the United States of America is considered a full-fledged American with all the rights and privileges accorded hereof, but how much of that is truth and how much of that is just on paper depends on who’s talking and what kind of mood they are in on any given day.
Black folk have always lived like two-fisted drinkers drink. One drink for this hand, and another drink for the other hand. It is one of the most animate hypocrisies of all time to live in two worlds, one where we know the truth, and two where we can’t always tell it.
Enter the Year 2008 and our first viable black presidential candidate is finally running for office and all some blacks have to say is “he isn’t black enough.” Black enough for what?
If we’re waiting on a black president-elect who will turn things around and make it all right for black folk in America, we’d best not hold our collective breath. We will turn white waiting.
Truth told, Barack Obama, like so many black folk who have gone on before him, don’t owe today’s African Americans anything. He owes a debt of pride in his legacy and his righteous inheritance to his parents, grandparents, and to those unrelated who paved the way before him, but his obligations and duties end there.
The black and colored citizens of the Americas who have hailed from some root of connection to the Diaspora are no longer blood-born citizens of Africa and are only annexed onto the Constitution of the United States by a couple of bills and a hand full of amendments that can be overridden and re-amended. There’s proof enough of that in every state in the union, where there seem to be a set of written laws for whites and a set of unwritten laws for blacks, and where the written laws only apply to blacks when whites are the victims of their various animosities.
How did we ever come from that place to this one? By lack of knowledge and insolence.
The greater collective black folk, though miseducated and mostly misunderstood, had no place and made no room in their hearts for re-education, and had little to no respect for those who knew the truth. When we don’t know, don’t care to know, and have nothing but loathing and disrespect for those who do know, we soon learn that roosting chickens have more than one place to come home to and hatch.
Others amongst us have made a mighty effort to fill our swept-out societal pariahs with new knowledge to replace the old. Once we come to the place of recognition that what once was no longer exists, we must either choose to dwell with what is familiar and comfortable, or choose to move forward and embrace what is unfamiliar but will become familiar as time possesses it and doles it out in unequal proportions amongst us.
Once upon a time, when we had not many choices set before us at the conference table of life, we acted as others expected us to act. Sometimes we did this to appease, other times we did it to appeal, many times we did it to rebel, and more often than not, we did it because we knew that even those who can only sneak a peek from hell can still visualize the horizon of heaven looming just beyond their reach.
At some point along the way, the black collective understood that a people incomplete and with hope deferred tend to make unwise choices and end up living with the consequences. I often found within myself a certain double-mindedness that “made me” do wrong even when I knew what was right.
On the one side of my inner conscious, I looked at a certain set of black folk and shook my head in despair, saying that surely Dr. King’s life, and the lives of the hundreds of thousands of others lost in the Civil Rights Movement, and the time before that during the radical reconstruction, was a huge waste of time. Dr. King, I thought, could have lived out his life in peace, an old black preacher man from the south that his children and his wife could have seen off, not by the blow of a bullet, but by the deliverance of a eulogy in the church in which he delivered his first sermon. However, the other side of my inner conscious tells me that those who took no wooden nickels and made it all count for joy are the ones of which he, and all the others who sacrificed their lives and put their heads on the chopping block, would be proud; barring all others to their own detriment.
As we meander down the road, waiting for the sounds of joyous cries from the black community across the land, the joyous cries that are not walled behind stained glass or mirrored reflections of financial prosperity that will never apply to all, the evolutionist pundits will tell us that we’re supposed to have better sense than to have “faith” in anything. Everything in life, per the critical ‘they’, is coldly and methodically calculated, easily guessed or figured out, and our formerly peanut-sized brains have so developed and expanded over time, that if there were a “god” of some kind to behold, we would still be smarter than he, she, or it. Problem is, without faith, black folk would still be living under Jim Crow law in America.
Marches were planned, and plans were devised, and devices were put in place, but we all know the real truth behind the matter of changing fundamental and operational founding government laws: They can never change what is in a person’s heart.
The only thing that opens and unfolds cloaks filled with unkosher food that we’ve called unclean when God calls it clean, and pulls back blinds and blinders alike, so that we can see from the finite to the unfathomable, is a guiding and divine spirit that moves amongst all. When the truth starts to tear our hearts into pieces, the living sunshine of God’s love pours in like ice cold lemonade on a burning hot day.
Sooner or later, there is no more denial.
Once the denial stops, a hard life becomes a soft one with a firm undercurrent, an impure vegetative thought that once festered like a rotten potato becomes a pure one, a rock and a hard place become a bed and breakfast inn, and the gaping bleeding wound that someone thought could be fixed with a band-aid miraculously begins to heal on its own. The cancer of racism that someone tried to cure with Epsom Salts goes into remission; and the stroke of demonstrable bigotry that someone tried to heal with a pat on the back and the words “good luck” subsides and covers itself over with healthy blood vessels and tissue that doesn’t scar.
No weapon formed against us shall prosper, and every tongue that rises against us in judgment shall be condemned by us. For this is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and our righteousness does not come from us, but from Him.
In times past, we have lived in a disaster area in our hearts, souls, minds, and spirits. Corporately and collectively, the American black person whose substance was once rooted in Africa dangled dangerously on the edge of negativity and passivity.
One of Michelle Obama’s opening speeches on the road to the White House spoke of not being afraid; of being tired of being afraid, of being sick and tired of being sick and tired, and it was obvious that some of the words of The Preacher had taken root in her heart.
She had not learned to despise America, as I once had. She simply learned, as I did, that better than complaining is doing. Better than griping is action. Better than denying what is, is formulating an opinion on what can be, and how to change it.
Then came her husband’s speech, “Yes we can,” and the power couple of Illinois that we tuned in and out on, was on the move to being the supernova couple. Though the supernova won’t stay forever, and will never be bigger than the sun, for a brief moment in time it is brighter than the sun because the sun itself, which has control over all things, has mandated it.
The Obamas transcended much in their complete willingness to be transparent and show forth honesty in a time when dishonesty is in power and when asking for righteousness is like asking for trouble. Even if they never sit in the Oval Office and make the kinds of decisions that will change America, and change the world, and even if they can never tell their generations to come “your pop-pop was once the President of the United States…” they did so much to de-polarize a very racially-charged and polarized nation in such a short amount of time that they were a walking, living, breathing Civil Rights memorial unto themselves. It is in them and in others like them that I see Dr. King’s living was not in vain, nor was his death. As Rafiki once told Simba, if God told Barack Obama “it is time,” there’s nothing that any naysayer of any political ilk or trapping will be able to do to stop it.
The world at-large has overwhelmingly, in a 10-1 vote, asked, requested, and required that Barack Obama be president of the United States. It means that he is the only one that they will care to listen to as the next four years roll on. They don’t want to hear anything else America has to say, and this nation could stand to be humble and learn a thing or two from the world it claims to lead. For once, we hope that this nation will do the right thing instead of the white thing.
Right now, internationalism is everything, and it will make or break America in the sense of how the rest of the world sees and beholds us: As a light in the tunnel of darkness, or as a self-destructing global heaping mass conglomeration of confusion and ever-brewing nothingness.
In order to set the world upright again, in order to set this nation back on the right path for everyone and not just a select few, the grassroots folk will, once again, have to change “what is” into what can be. It is not impossible, it is an exercise in resilient and upstanding faith, the kind of faith that finds a second set of footprints in the sand when it seems that only one person is doing the walking.
I do not claim to know the future, or to have premonitions or precognitions about what the future holds, but it doesn’t take a brainiac to figure out that as long as we keep doing what we are doing, we will continue getting what we got. This isn’t just for America, but also for black America, which has to learn to take care of itself, Obama or no Obama. He isn’t The Answer or The Way, he is simply the right leader called at the right time. There is only one way to transform the world, and that one way is to believe in the power of love of all humanity in spite of those who strike out against it in their own self-interests.
We’ve seen the forces of evil at work over many centuries, and they tried and tried hard to destroy the harmonious songs that were barely heard over the sound of crash-boom-bam ugly. They failed.
This is the hour of trading ashes for beauty, dusty mirages for clear cold water, and bitter untruths for the timeless and solid principles of mutual reverence and respect for others amongst God’s holy creation. Maybe we’ll never see another pre-911 America, but nevermore will we make the mistake of voting for and supporting a lie just because we can.
Love is not difficult to figure out, it’s difficult to carry out. Once the bloodletting is shunted and the process of healing begins, nothing in this world, or in our personal lives, will ever be the same again.
Everything we need to know about life and love, we learned in Sunday School: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep,” “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,” and “Yes, Jesus loves me.”
For the Bible tells us so.
O-Bama, O-Eight: African American Spiritual Writers for Obama.
