THE SAUDA VOICE

How Barack Obama is Paving the Way for a Palin Presidency

 

If this comes true, it's the end of days y'all!

---

(by John Jeter | The Root) - It does not take a pollster, partisan or psychic to see a harbinger of things to come in Massachusetts voters’ choice of a Republican to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. If Barack Obama’s next three years in the White House are anything like his first, he will surely be a one-term president.

And for black America, that’s the good news.

Because if history is any guide, the truly awful news is that the smart money is on Sarah Palin to replace Obama in the White House.

Foreshadowing a Palin presidency is a perfect, gathering storm of economics, politics and tribalism, which is not to suggest that Obama is an innocent bystander in his reversal of fortune. It is certainly true that he inherited a capsized economy. But his administration has done little to right the ship. And no president can survive double-digit unemployment and 30,000 foreclosures a month for long.

“But what about Ronald Reagan,” the skeptics are no doubt asking now, “who was saddled with a deep recession in his first term, yet bounced back to win reelection in a landslide?” The difference is epic: Reagan’s poor-performing economy was stalled; Obama’s is broken, and despite all the sanguine media talk of a recovery, the crisis shows no signs of abating anytime soon.

CONTINUE READING

Obama Criticized on Airline Incident When Bush Wasn't

---

(via The Seattle Times) - Eight years ago, a terrorist bomber's attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic airliner was thwarted by passengers and revealed gaping holes in airline security only months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

But President George W. Bush, then on vacation, made no public remarks for six days about the so-called shoe bomber, Richard Reid, and there were virtually no complaints from the media or Democrats that Bush's response was sluggish or inadequate.

That stands in sharp contrast to the Republicans' withering criticism of President Obama — and some in the media — for his reaction to the Christmas Day incident on a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight.

Obama commented publicly on Monday and ordered a full investigation of the incident.

Democrats are making the disparity a centerpiece of their efforts to counter GOP attacks on the White House. "This hypocrisy demonstrates Republicans are playing politics with issues of national security and terrorism," Democratic National Committee (DNC) spokesman Hari Sevugan said. "That they would use this incident as an opportunity to fan partisan flames ... tells you all you need to know about how far the Republican Party has fallen and how out of step with the American people they have become."

The Democrats' counterattack is aimed largely at two Republican congressmen who have been particularly critical of Obama: Reps. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., and Peter King, R-N.Y. Sevugan also criticized Hoekstra for sending out a fundraising e-mail that invoked the Christmas Day bombing attempt. "Raising money off it is beyond the pale," Sevugan said.

Neither congressman concedes applying a double standard to Obama, but the similarities between the 2001 and 2009 bombing attempts are striking.

This year's attack came on Christmas. The 2001 attempt took place Dec. 22. Obama was on vacation in Hawaii when the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, allegedly used plastic explosives in his bid to blow up the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight. Bush was at Camp David when Reid used similar explosives to try to blow up a Paris-to-Miami flight, which diverted to Boston.

Like the Obama White House, the Bush White House said the president had been briefed and was following the incident closely. While the Obama White House issued a background statement calling the incident an "attempted terrorist attack" on the same day it took place, early official statements from Bush aides did not make the same explicit statement.

Bush did not address reporters about the Reid episode until Dec. 28, after he had traveled from Camp David to his ranch in Texas.

CONTINUE READING

STUCK ON STUPID ALERT: Christian Conservatives Praying for God to Kill Obama

---

(via Gawker) - There's a hilarious new meme in the wingnut sectors of the internet: someone's coined a bumper sticker slogan encouraging people to pray for Barack Obama. But here's the funny part: it's really a secret Christian code for "Kill the President!'

Posters to various message boards tell stories of seeing bumper stickers with the message "Pray for Obama—Psalm 109:8" on the highway, only to look up the verse and find, "Let his days be few; and let another take his office." People — like the commenter "Panama" on INGunOwners.com, to pick one guy completely at random — think this is "too funny." The next verse in Psalms is, "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow."

Anyway, now it's a real thing: CafePress is selling T-shirts and bumper stickers, the Christian Science Monitor is wondering whether it's "funny or sinister" to pray for Obama's death, and Rachel Maddow referenced it last night on her show.

UPDATE: CafePress appears to have halted sales of all the Psalm 109:8-related merchandise.

Psalm 109 is known as "A Cry for Vengeance," which is one of the foundational values of Christianity, along with small-business tax cuts. It's actually quite a little psalm, as psalms go, and the opening lines sound really familiar:

"Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise; for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me:they have spoken against me with a lying tongue. They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause."

Then it gets into the part where you pray for God to smite Barack Obama and condemn Malia and Sasha to poverty for the rest of their lives, a fate they deserve because they sprang from the loins of the sinful:

"Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places."

CONTINUE READING

In Our Lifetime

---

(by Henry Louis Gates Jr. | The Root) - A new dawn of American leadership is at hand. President-elect Barack Obama.

We have all heard stories about those few magical transformative moments in African-American history, extraordinary ritual occasions through which the geographically and socially diverse black community—a nation within a nation, really—molds itself into one united body, determined to achieve one great social purpose and to bear witness to the process by which this grand achievement occurs.

The first time was New Year's Day in 1863, when tens of thousands of black people huddled together all over the North waiting to see if Abraham Lincoln would sign the Emancipation Proclamation. The second was the night of June 22, 1938, the storied rematch between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, when black families and friends crowded around radios to listen and cheer as the Brown Bomber knocked out Schmeling in the first round. The third, of course, was Aug. 28, 1963, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed to the world that he had a dream, in the shadow of a brooding Lincoln, peering down on the assembled throng, while those of us who couldn't be with him in Washington sat around our black-and-white television sets, bound together by King's melodious voice through our tears and with quickened-flesh.

But we have never seen anything like this. Nothing could have prepared any of us for the eruption (and, yes, that is the word) of spontaneous celebration that manifested itself in black homes, gathering places and the streets of our communities when Sen. Barack Obama was declared President-elect Obama. From Harlem to Harvard, from Maine to Hawaii—and even Alaska—from "the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire … [to] Stone Mountain of Georgia," as Dr. King put it, each of us will always remember this moment, as will our children, whom we woke up to watch history being made.

My colleagues and I laughed and shouted, whooped and hollered, hugged each other and cried. My father waited 95 years to see this day happen, and when he called as results came in, I silently thanked God for allowing him to live long enough to cast his vote for the first black man to become president. And even he still can't quite believe it!

CONTINUE READING

Young Voters Who Helped Elect Obama Stayed Home

---

RICHMOND (AP) - Last year, 23-year-old Rashida Hill watched the presidential debates, visited the college political party meetings and put a Barack Obama bumper sticker on her townhouse door. She voted for Obama because she felt like the election was about "being a part of something."

But on Tuesday, the Virginia Commonwealth University student didn't bother voting in the governor's race because, she said, the candidates didn't give her anything to get excited about.

"The simple fact is, unless you put it in front of somebody, they're really not going to seek it out," Hill said.

Many of the young, first-time voters who propelled Obama to the presidency stayed home this year, a glaring absence that helped Republicans win governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey. More than 3 million voters who cast ballots in the 2008 presidential election — many of them minorities — failed to show up at the polls in either state.

Obama carried Virginia with 52 percent of the vote last year, but only 43 percent of voters surveyed in Associated Press exit polls Tuesday said they had voted for him.

Another group that solidified Obama's victory — independents — turned their backs on Democrats this year.

CONTINUE READING

President Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

---

OSLO (AP)– The announcement drew gasps of surprise and cries of too much, too soon. Yet President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday because the judges found his promise of disarmament and diplomacy too good to ignore.

The five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee — four of whom spoke to The Associated Press, said awarding Obama the peace prize could be seen as an early vote of confidence intended to build global support for the policies of his young administration.

They lauded the change in global mood wrought by Obama's calls for peace and cooperation, and praised his pledges to reduce the world stock of nuclear arms, ease U.S. conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthen its role in combating climate change.

"Some people say — and I understand it — 'Isn't it premature? Too early?' Well, I'd say then that it could be too late to respond three years from now," Thorbjoern Jagland, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told the AP. "It is now that we have the opportunity to respond — all of us."

Jagland said the committee whittled down a record pool of 205 nominations and had "several candidates until the last minute," but it became more obvious that "we couldn't get around these deep changes that are taking place" under Obama.

Obama said he was surprised and deeply humbled by the honor, and planned to travel to Oslo in December to accept the prize.

"Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations," he said at the White House. "To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize."

Obama will donate the $1.4 million cash award that comes with the prize to charity.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who won the prize in 1984, said the decision showed that great things are expected from Obama and "wonderful recognition" of his effort to reach out to the Arab world after years of hostility.

"It is an award that speaks to the promise of President Obama's message of hope," Tutu said.

CONTINUE READING

Of course, the rabid far right has been up in arms since the news.

(Because anything Obama requires instant hate and/or disagreement, right?)

President's Opinion of Kanye West Dead On, But Causes Media Controversy

For the record, Sauda Voice agrees with the President's assessment of Kanye West.  

110%

---

NEW YORK (AP) – President Barack Obama's candid thoughts about Kanye West are provoking a debate over standards of journalism in the Twitter age.

ABC News says it was wrong for its employees to tweet that Obama had called West a "jackass" for the rapper's treatment of country singer Taylor Swift. The network said some of its employees had overheard a conversation between the president and CNBC's John Harwood and didn't realize it was considered off the record.

The network apologized to the White House and CNBC.

Harwood had sat down with the president to tape an interview following his appearance on Wall Street on Monday. Although they are competitors, CNBC and ABC share a fiber optic line to save money, and this enabled some ABC employees to listen in on the interview as it was being taped for later use.

Their attention was drawn to chatter about West, who was widely criticized for interrupting Swift as she accepted an award at Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards to say that Beyonce deserved it.

During what sounds like informal banter before the interview begins, Obama is asked whether his daughters were annoyed by West's hijacking of Swift's acceptance statement, according to an audio copy that was posted on TMZ.com.

"I thought that was really inappropriate," Obama says. "What are you butting in (for)? ... The young lady seems like a perfectly nice person. She's getting her award. What's he doing up there?"

A questioner chimes in, "Why would he do it?"

"He's a jackass," Obama replies, which is met with laughter from several people.

CONTINUE READING

America's President is Black, Get Over it Already!

---

(via New York Times | Maureen Dowd) - The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind.

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

The outburst was unexpected from a milquetoast Republican backbencher from South Carolina who had attracted little media attention. Now it has made him an overnight right-wing hero, inspiring “You lie!” bumper stickers and T-shirts.

The congressman, we learned, belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol and denounced as a “smear” the true claim of a black woman that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, the ’48 segregationist candidate for president. Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.

I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race.

CONTINUE READING

Race, Fearmongering and Obama's Speech to Schoolchildren

---

(via The Root) - “I don’t want our schools turned over to some socialist movement,” Brett Curtis, a parent in Texas told the New York Times last week. He said he would keep his three children home from school rather than have them listen to President Barack Obama’s speech to the nation’s school children.

Jim Greer, the Republican Party chairman in Florida, said he “was appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology,” according to the Times. And a political commentator on the Rush Limbaugh show compared President Obama to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il, the communist North Korean leader.

For the past few days as news outlets have reported on school districts and principals around the country being inundated with calls and e-mails from angry parents demanding that President Obama’s speech today not be broadcasted to their children, the story line has been that partisan politics was driving the controversy. What has not been as widely discussed, however, is how much the president’s race has also factored in the debate as the underlying force driving the parents’ outrage. It may be subtle, but the message is clear to any thinking person listening to the angry parents. Not only do they oppose a supposed socialist lecturing their children, they also don’t want a black man doing it, even if he is their president.

What’s most irksome about this fake controversy is the level of hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty being exhibited by the parents protesting President Obama’s alleged attempts to indoctrinate their children using subliminal messages cloaked in socialist ideology.

And this: "What you're learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future."

Surely such scandalous socialist propaganda cannot be tolerated. Never mind that the suggested lesson plan that was to accompany the speech and was at the heart of the socialist conspiracy was just that, a suggestion. School administrators did not risk losing their jobs or face a trip to the gulag if they decided to use their own lesson plans.

One can’t help but wonder, if it’s socialism these parents are worried about then why are they taking marching orders from General Rush Limbaugh and the other conservative commanders of the far right who have laced much of their criticisms of the president in race-based language and called the president himself a racist? These demigods have exploited the racial fears of irrational, uniformed people and made them captive to group think that posits that white people are losing more and more control over their lives every day because the black man in office is hell-bent on denying them the white privilege that, until his election, was their birthright.

CONTINUE READING

President Obama Says Goodbye to Senator Ted Kennedy

---

(via BarackObama.com) Michelle and I were heartbroken to learn this morning of the death of our dear friend, Senator Ted Kennedy.

For nearly five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health and economic well-being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts. His ideas and ideals are stamped on scores of laws and reflected in millions of lives -- in seniors who know new dignity; in families that know new opportunity; in children who know education's promise; and in all who can pursue their dream in an America that is more equal and more just, including me.

In the United States Senate, I can think of no one who engendered greater respect or affection from members of both sides of the aisle. His seriousness of purpose was perpetually matched by humility, warmth and good cheer. He battled passionately on the Senate floor for the causes that he held dear, and yet still maintained warm friendships across party lines. And that's one reason he became not only one of the greatest senators of our time, but one of the most accomplished Americans ever to serve our democracy.

I personally valued his wise counsel in the Senate, where, regardless of the swirl of events, he always had time for a new colleague. I cherished his confidence and momentous support in my race for the Presidency. And even as he waged a valiant struggle with a mortal illness, I've benefited as President from his encouragement and wisdom. His fight gave us the opportunity we were denied when his brothers John and Robert were taken from us: the blessing of time to say thank you and goodbye.

The outpouring of love, gratitude and fond memories to which we've all borne witness is a testament to the way this singular figure in American history touched so many lives. For America, he was a defender of a dream. For his family, he was a guardian. Our hearts and prayers go out to them today -- to his wonderful wife, Vicki, his children Ted Jr., Patrick and Kara, his grandchildren and his extended family.

Today, our country mourns. We say goodbye to a friend and a true leader who challenged us all to live out our noblest values. And we give thanks for his memory, which inspires us still.

Sincerely,

President Barack Obama

I couldn't have said it more elegantly than the President himself which is why I have chosen to post his words here instead of mine.  Rest in Peace Senator Kennedy.