It is a quick, sweet victory for the new president, and potentially a historic one. The question now is whether the $789 billion economic stimulus plan agreed to by Congressional leaders on Wednesday is the opening act for a more ambitious domestic agenda from President Obama or a harbinger of reduced expectations.
President Obama and Gov. Tim Kaine on Wednesday at a parkway project in Springfield, Va., that could get stimulus money.Both the substance of his first big legislative accomplishment and the way he achieved it underscored the scale of the challenges facing the nation and how different a political climate this is from the early stages of recent administrations.
While it hammered home the reality of bigger, more activist government, the economic package was not the culmination of a hard-fought ideological drive, like Lyndon B. Johnson’s civil rights and Great Society programs, orRonald Reagan’s tax cuts, but rather a necessary and hastily patched-together response to an immediate and increasingly dire situation. On the domestic issues Mr. Obama ran and won on — health care, education, climate change, rebalancing the distribution of wealth — the legislation does little more than promise there will be more to come.
In cobbling together a plan that could get through both the House and the Senate, Mr. Obama prevailed, but not in the way he had hoped. His inability to win over more than a handful of Republicans amounted to a loss of innocence, a reminder that his high-minded calls for change in the practice of governance had been ground up in a matter of weeks by entrenched forces of partisanship and deep, principled differences between left and right.
In the end, Congress did not come together to address what Mr. Obama has regularly suggested is a crisis that could rival the Great Depression. What consensus has been forged so far is likely to be tested in the months to come as he faces scrutiny over the effectiveness of the stimulus package and the likelihood that he will have to ask Congress for substantially more money to heal the fractures in the financial system.
So this was hardly a moment for cigars.
If this is the 21st-century version of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 100 Days, Mr. Obama seems to be pursuing it more as an urgent but imposed necessity than as a self-selected mission.
While he has deployed his political capital freely to win approval of the package and to begin pushing his version of a financial-system rescue, he has left little doubt that he is eager to move on to the rest of his domestic agenda. At his news conference on Monday night, Mr. Obama said with a hint of exasperation that a costly economic rescue package “wasn’t how I envisioned my presidency beginning.” Regardless of the government’s budgetary straits, Mr. Obama has signaled that he sees his other signature initiatives not just as salvageable but as more urgent than ever.
A lot of media outlets made a big deal out of the mostly white White House press corps covering the first black president, and those stories were worth pursuing.
All of us in the business know full well that those are considered plum jobs and are steppingstones to greater things. But while we hold the media accountable for the need to diversify their ranks, it’s quite telling to see the lack of diversity in the White House’s press office.
I got an e-mail Tuesday listing all of the various press folks and contact information, and hardly any African-Americans or Hispanics were listed. Granted, the deputy press secretary is African-American, and the director of broadcast media is Hispanic. But that’s not sufficient.
Unfortunately, this shouldn’t come as a shock because the campaign press staff of then-Sen. Barack Obama was just as weak on diversity.
Just because there is a black president doesn’t mean that diversity should be cast aside. President Obama should be held to the same standard when it comes to this issue as any other occupier of that office. I am a former national board member of the National Association of Black Journalists, and my support for diversity never wavers, no matter who is running the show.
One of the reasons this is important is ��” just like in the media, where there are bigger and better things awaiting White House correspondents ��” a position in the White House press office positions someone for the next level.
TNT's "Gifted Hands" is one of those longform projects that has Emmy written all over it.
It boasts near-flawless direction from Thomas Carter, a vivid teleplay adaptation by John Pielmeier and uniformly magnificent performances, particularly from star Cuba Gooding Jr., who puts himself back onto the Hollywood map here in a way he hasn't since his Oscar-winning turn in 1996's "Jerry Maguire."
Gooding portrays the real-life world-renowned brain surgeon Benjamin Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children's Center and author of a best-selling 1990 autobiography.
It's taken nearly two decades to get Carson's inspiring story to the screen, but Gooding does him more than proud with a portrayal at once sensitively wrought and quietly moving.
In lesser hands (if you'll pardon the pun), this biopic could easily have drifted off into maudlin sap, but Gooding keeps the character of Carson centered and human and the film honoring him wise and surprisingly graphic. (The surgical procedures are showcased in all of their bloody glory, but not so much as to cross the line to gratuitousness.)
Shame on John Lewis... for Backing down: Black Leadership in Peril
By: Tolu Olorunda
Staff Writer - YourBlackWorld.com
Why would a seasoned boxer back down from a fight he’s most familiar with? And why would a Civil Rights Icon apologize for condemning unarmed bigotry: INTIMIDATION! Late last week, Georgia Congressman, Rep. John Lewis, attacked the McCain camp for its unabashed authorization of the pejorative rants at McCain/Palin rallies against Democratic rival, Sen. Obama. Rep. Lewis was unfettered in characterizing the McCain campaign’s response to its supporters’ rants as, “shocking and beyond the pale.” Brief reminder: The McCain/Palin rallies had contained crowd-screams of “treason,” “terrorist,” “off with his head,” “bomb Obama,” “kill him,” “traitor,” etc. In reaction to the toxic level of racial hostility being stoked, Rep. Lewis spoke out candidly about the eerie similarity between McCain/Palin rallies and the racial atmosphere of the Jim-Crow Sixties:
“George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights.” Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.”
This sobering caution by the Civil Rights Icon was meant to temper the rising heights of vitriol being spewed at Sen. McCain’s Klan rallies. Unfortunately, Rep. Lewis would, soon after, demonstrate why most self-appointed Black leaders have a deficit of – what The Hon. Min. Louis Farrakhan once called – “testicular fortitude.”
John McCain’s camp was swift to feign shock at the words of a man Sen. McCain once praised as a “wise man.” Calling Lewis’s remarks “outrageous” and “divisive,” McCain expressed regret that Rep. Lewis had launched a
“character attack against Governor Sarah Palin and me that is shocking and beyond the pale. The notion that legitimate criticism of Senator Obama’s record and positions could be compared to Governor George Wallace, his segregationist policies and the violence he provoked is unacceptable and has no place in this campaign. I am saddened that John Lewis, a man I’ve always admired, would make such a brazen and baseless attack on my character and the character of the thousands of hardworking Americans who come to our events to cheer for the kind of reform that will put America on the right track.”
Before long, Rep. John Lewis would renege on his initial statements and suggest that,
“A careful review of my earlier statement would reveal that I did not compare Sen. John McCain or Gov. Sarah Palin to George Wallace. It was not my intention or desire to do so.”
While Rep. Lewis was in the process of making amends to his ole’ buddy, a McCain rally speaker was invoking Prophet Elijah, warning that God’s
“reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god - whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah - that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and [E]lection [D]ay.”
At the final Presidential political farce – otherwise known as a “debate” – John McCain, a former naval officer, defended his Klan rallies at all costs:
”Let me just say categorically I’m proud of the people that come to our rallies. Whenever you get a large rally of 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 people, you’re going to have some fringe peoples. You know that. And I’ve - and we’ve always said that that’s not appropriate.
But to somehow say that group of young women who said “Military wives for McCain” are somehow saying anything derogatory about you, but anything - and those veterans that wear those hats that say “World War II, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq,” I’m not going to stand for people saying that the people that come to my rallies are anything but the most dedicated, patriotic men and women that are in this nation and they’re great citizens.
And I’m not going to stand for somebody saying that because someone yelled something at a rally.”
The “dedicated,” “patriotic” men and women Sen. McCain spoke of, are those who unashamedly claim to be scared “of an Obama presidency,” because they refuse to “bring a child up in a country where... someone that cohorts with domestic terrorists such as Ayers,” would be the Commander In Chief. McCain who “rose” to Obama’s defense, calling him “decent,” was booed immediately by his mob-like audience, who would not tolerate any apologies for the Communist – otherwise known as Sen. Obama. Coming on the heels of Gov. Palin’s comments that Sen. Obama would diminish “the Prestige of the United States Presidency,” one can certainly see how enabled McCain/Palin supporters are in claiming that Sen. Obama is an “Arab” – with the backdrop that Arabs (not just Muslims) are the spawn of the Devil. Rep. Lewis’s lack of candor is a slap in the face to those who died so that a Black Man/Woman can run for the presidency without having his/her reputation dying the death of a thousand qualifications.
What Rep. John Lewis did, of course, is not an isolated item in the boutique of Civil Right heroes who have timidly abdicated their responsibility and cracked under political pressure. Earlier this year, Rev. Jesse Jackson castigated Barack Obama for “talking down to Black people.” For a man who has vilified poor Black single mothers for feeding their kids a “bag of potato chips for lunch, or Popeyes for breakfast,” and censured Black men for sitting “in the house” and watching “‘SportsCenter’ all weekend long” – while admitting to watching “a lot of SportsCenter” – “talking down” appears a tad bit mild and contained. Hypocritically condescending seems more apt. Following outrage from within the Obama camp and the Black Community, Rev. Jackson backed away from his comments, and promptly apologized to Sen. Obama. Rev. Jackson noted that his last desire was for no “harm or hurt to come to this [Obama’s] campaign,” and that his caught-on-mic comments in no way reflect “any disparagement on my part for the historic event in which we are involved or my pride in Senator Barack Obama.” In an unmistakable tone, Sen. Obama would subsequently deny Rev. Jackson the prestigious record of speaking at every DNC since 1984. Jesse Jackson Jr., whose willingness to throw his father under the bus defies the very nature of Solidarity, was skillfully placed as a substitution.
The actions of Reverend Jackson and Rep. Lewis remind us of the urgent need for unfiltered Black leadership. The Black Community is rapidly deteriorating into a dying breed, and the gift of courage is the only remedy for our perilous state. Barack Obama has often explained himself to be neither a leader, nor a statesman – especially in matters concerning Black folks and people of culture/color worldwide. Who will step up to the plate and turn this sh-- around???!!!!!
