This is what I was dreading with our new president. I was tired of the whole "black" President stuff before the election was over and I've been dreading the whole racism retort used to blast any type of criticism of his policy after he was elected. Don't get me wrong, due to our country's unfortunate history, finally breaking the "old white men" trend is great and all. But, I certainly hope people voted based on the candidates and their ideas and not their skin color.
Barack Obama is THE President of the United States of America, not the "black" President. Any attack on him or his policies should be devoid of reference to the melamine content of his skin and any defense used against those attacks should be build on more solid of a foundation than a house of racism cards.If some narrow-minded pin-head gets one arm free from his spiffy white jacket that ties in the back long enough to grab a crayon and draw a quick portrait of THE President in black face, clan robes and dancing a barefoot jig with fried chicken in one hand and watermelon in the other; I don't need somebody to point out that it's racist. I can make that mental leap myself, thanks.
Being politically conservative, I am anticipating railing against some future policy decisions of this administration. I just want to warn everybody now, anybody planning on calling me a racist should fill out the aggravated assault paperwork now. It will save the police time later.
I'll also come clean and say I didn't vote in the last election. I waited too long to update my absentee overseas ballot stuff after moving to Perth. Do you know who I would have voted for? I don't. I was never a big McCain fan, but I also don't know if I would have crossed the isle and voted for President Obama. I think the whole reason I hadn't made up my mind about either candidate is that I am weary of anybody who the media is excited about during the election. Remember McCain was the media darling in the 2000 Republican primaries.
P.S. There are still way more cartoon chimps lampooning President Bush, and I'm pretty sure they aren't racist either.
P.P.S. Personally, I am for the Jon Stewart economic plan: (watch the video)
1. Create a stimulus package that will bail the working class out of debt.
2. The money will go to the financial industry via workers paying off their debt.
3. This will increase the liquidity of the banks.
4. People, free from their debt, will have more money to invest in the economy.
5 comments:
Agreed. Every single President since I've been here (12 years and counting, has been roasted by the President. Okay, so in that time it's only been two Presidents, but it seems to me it's a time honored tradition of Late Night hosts to roast the President for his most recent blunder, and if he hasn't done anything stupid, just pick on him for something.
Now it seems like Obama will be exempt from any public roasting simply because he's black, so any criticism of him, any joke made at his expense, any mention of him in an otherwise stellar light will be declared racist?
Give me a break! He's the POTUS! Late Night Roastings come with the job.
Step 4 implies taking on more debt; people don't normally invest based on their wealth, they invest through borrowed money. Debt's not bad, it just depends on the use it's put to.
Also, the majority of individual's debts who are stressed at the moment is tied up in unproductive / toxic assets (TVs and low-value, non-returning real estate). Giving them money to pay off those assets and eliminate their debts doesn't improve the economy, it's just another way of the government taking toxic assets away from the banks. Better to cut out the middleman and just go straight to the banks, purchase the assets at minimal cost (such for 1 penny), reduce the market cap of the banks in the process, and let people deal with their investment decisions as they should.
The banking system remains solvent, the government doesn't bail people out because they borrowed more than they should have, the taxpayer doesn't foot the bill for other people's bad decisions, and the money doesn't get turned into corporate bonuses.
That 4 step plan will see a significant amount of that money flow into corporate bonuses, as you're paying the banks book value for toxic assets, not market value.
Evan, the economy is tanking because people are in fear of loosing their jobs and are not buying things. As one congressmen said many years ago, "There's not a lot of consuming going on!"
The trigger for all this was the bad loans made by the banks. But that isn't the point now. Now people aren't spending, so companies aren't selling, not selling equals no profit, no profit means cutting cost, cutting cost means letting people go, which means people have no job and no income so they stop spending, spiral down to doom.
The goal of any stimulus package is to raise employment levels and increase consumer spending. And once again I'll point out, those are our tax dollars, our money.
Giving that money to the banks and other corporations who screwed up in the first place won't change consumer spending or do much for employment levels. Besides why should we reward their bad behavior?
The NY Post gave a partial appology
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090220/ap_on_re_us/ny_post_cartoon
But in reading the above piece I am a little surprised, the unelected and appointed polictics of victimization spokesmen, Rev. Al Sharpton, is claiming something about the cartoon never even occurred to me.
He is claiming that the cartoon depicts / is calling for the shooting of President Obama. I never thought the chimp represented President Obama. I thought the chimp wrote the stimulus bill for the administration. I know President Obama didn't write the bill, it's his policy, he signed it, but if The West Wing has taught me anything, it's that the President has other people who actually sit at the keyboard doing the typing.
Look at the wording, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill." They, the President and his administration, will have to find somebody else to write the next bill; because the monkey who wrote this one is no longer around.
Is it me? Is the cartoon calling for the shooting of the President? I really don't see it.
If it is calling for the shooting of the President, it's doing so in a very subtle way. Then again, one way to insult Black Americans is to refer to them as monkeys, so it could be argued that the monkey does represent the President, and in a very derogatory manner, but I doubt it does.
Like you said, the caption reads "They will have to find someone else..." The monkey really should have been a goat.
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