"Hot sauce Hillary" and the politics of pandering.

    Man that Hillary is really working hard for the black and minority vote. First she sits down for a game of bones,  in Harlem, and then she tells some folks on urban radio that she always travels with some "hot sauce".

Bernie is pushing that poor woman so far left that she is going to claim to have a secret black lover before this is all over. But it's all good.  Hot sauce or no hot sauce, us black folks have seen enough of Hillary and her husband to know exactly what we are going to get with them.

Not to be outdone, Bernie was giving some serious dap to some young buck in South Carolina. Nice. It's no wonder the young black folks have so much love for Bernie. They don't sense  that he is a phony. Plus, I am sure that his message of making college free  for all doesn't hurt. No more student loans! Yeah! 

Call it pandering if you will, but at least the democratic candidates are trying to reach out to us and hear our concerns for the future of the country.

Contrast that to the guy leading the field on the republican side and you kind of get the picture. I mean they are selling confederate themed shirts at his rallies for crying out loud! (h/t Shaun King) 

 Donald Trump has 99 problems, and race is definitely one of them. 

And don't even get me started on Ted Cruz. When he made his infamous New York values comments I think we all knew exactly what (or who) he was talking about: Their values aren't like our values. They actually embrace diversity and shit.  They welcome foreigners and different people to their city.

I just wish that the republicans were coming to my city and not Cleveland this summer for their convention. We would roll out the red carpet for them and show them some brotherly love. We can do it. Did you see how nice we were to the Pope?

Anyway, we are going to have the democrats.

Sadly, though, I suspect that their convention is going to be a lot more boring.

 Unless, of course. Hillary all of a sudden loses her love for hot sauce.

  





   

Foxnewsgate

Most people in America still think of a foreign sports car when they hear the word Benghazi.
 

The right wingnuts are hoping that all of this will change as more information emerges about what transpired before and after the attack on a US outpost consulate  in Libya.

Over at FOX NEWS if I had a dollar for every time one of their hosts said Benghazi I could buy the state of Texas and solve world hunger. But sadly for them it is just not sticking right now. And, you have to ask yourself,  if it does stick, who will it stick to and for how long?

I am going to take a guess and say that it will not stick to either Hillary or the beige dude currently occupying the White House.

Although you have to believe that the people around Hillary are sweating a little these days. 2016 is four years away and a lot can happen between now and the next presidential election.

The good news for them is that their enemies belong to the republican party, and those folks have a way of overplaying their hand. They always find a way to snap defeat from the jaws of victory.

  

But the FOX News barrage against all things O seems to be having an effect on the White House. Today they tried to calm the Benghazi waters by reassuring the American people that there is nothing to see and we should move along to more important issues.

Most of us normal people can put it in its proper context and see it for the political witch hunt that it is. But the White House should listen to people like David Horn who wrote the following:

"The latest revelations about the Benghazi talking points—as opposed to what actually happened at the US diplomatic facility at Benghazi, where four Americans died—do not back up Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham's hyperbolic and absurd claim that the Benghazi controversy is Obama's Watergate. But neither are they nothing.

As ABC News reported on Friday morning, the most discussed talking points in US diplomatic history were revised multiple times before being passed to UN Ambassador Susan Rice prior to her appearances last September on Sunday talk shows. The revisions—which deleted several lines noting that the CIA months before the attack had produced intelligence reports on the threat of Al Qaeda-linked extremists in Benghazi—appear to have been driven by State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, who, it should be noted, is a career Foggy Bottomer who has served Republican and Democratic administrations, not a political appointee. Her motive seems obvious: fend off a CIA CYA move that could make the State Department look lousy. (The other major deletion concerned three sentences about a possible link between the attack and Ansar al-Sharia, an Al Qaeda-affiliated group; last November, David Petraeus, the former CIA chief, testified that this information was removed from the talking points in order to avoid tipping off the group.)/

But here's the problem for the White House: It was part of the interagency process in which State sought to downplay information that might have raised questions about its preattack performance. That's a minor sin (of omission). Yet there's more: On November 28, White House spokesman Jay Carney said, "Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC's best assessments of what they thought had happened. The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word 'consulate' to 'diplomatic facility because 'consulate' was inaccurate."
Assuming the talking points revisions released by ABC News are accurate—and the White House has not challenged them—Carney's statement was not correct. The State Department did far more than change one word, and it did so in a process involving White House aides. So, White House critics can argue, Carney put out bad information and did not acknowledge that State had massaged the talking points to protect itself from inconvenient questions.

This is not much of cover-up. There is no evidence the White House is hiding the truth about what occurred in Benghazi. My colleague Kevin Drum dismisses this recent Benghazi news ("on a scale of 1 to 10, this is about a 1.5"). But the White House has indeed been caught not telling the full story. Despite Carney's statement, there was politically minded handling of the talking points. Yet in today's hyperpartisan environment, such a matter cannot be evaluated with a sense of proportion. Obama antagonists decry it as a deed most foul, and White House defenders denounce the the critics. The talking points dispute is not a scandal; it's a mess—a small mess—"

Yes, but even a "small mess" has to be cleaned up.

You have to start somewhere.

I saw Mr. Morton on the Edmund Pettus Bridge today, and it felt so strange to see a republican candidate for President of these divided states, campaigning in cotton picking country out in rural West Alabama. Talk about surreal. But there was Mr. Morton, praising the marchers on the bridge and giving an honest to god olive branch to my peeps.

Now I must give it to Mr. Morton's people, I think it's a brilliant political strategy to reach out to African Americans while he has the republican nomination already locked up. Let's face it, none of the folks who vote for Mr. Morton are going to vote for Hillary or the "O" man in the general, so his base is in tact. The best thing that Mr. Morton can do now is to hold down the voter turnout among the dumbocratic base. If Hillary wins, for instance, can you imagine the angst it will create among black folks? Many of you will stay home, and some of you will even cross over and vote for Mr. Morton. So why not reach out to your fickle asses now? Just to let you know that it's cool to go to the dark side, and vote for the republican candidate. It's smart, and it just might work. Mr. Morton has been around more black folks lately than Jerry Springer, and it might not translate into more votes for him, but it sure could translate into black folks staying home if Hillary were to win the dumbocratic nomination.

Now let me put this out there right now; and I know that this is going to piss off a bunch of you Obamaholics, because I have heard quite a few of you say that you will never vote for Hillary. But if she (Hillary) happens to beat the "O" man, I am voting for her ass, period. I am not ready to join that rethugliklan tent just yet. I have some serious issues with claustrophobia and somehow I don't think that tent is as big as they say it is.

"Oh but field Hillary is too divisive, we need someone that can bring the country together" My answer to that would be why? Why the fuck would I want to come together with my political enemies? See, it's like this, I came from a place where we shot at our political enemies, so excuse me if I am not feeling the whole Kumbaya thing. I don't want to reach across the isle like the "O" man, because I happen to be a creature of my convictions. And what I believe ain't what those red state folks believe; no matter what they tell you, and no matter how many civil rights sites Mr. Morton visits. My interests are different than their interests, and just because we have to share a country together doesn't mean we have to agree on shit. For instance, I believe in a woman's right to choose, yet I am against the death penalty. I believe that two people of the same sex should have the right to marry each other, and adopt as many kids as they would like. I believe in implementing some serious gun control measures in urban areas, and I believe that felons should be given the right to vote after they serve their time to society. I believe that health care should be free to every citizen..scratch that, every human being-- citizen or not-- who happens to live in these divided states of A-merry-ca. And speaking of citizens, I believe that illegal immigrants who are here now should be allowed to stay if they can proof that they have a full time job. I believe that billionaires like Warren Buffet should pay the same amount of taxes percentage wise as Joe Sixpack. I believe that the minimum wage should be raised to $8 an hour, and I believe that there should be a cap on certain CEO compensation packets. I believe that the environment is seriously fucked up and we should do something about it. I believe that we should spend as much money in education as we do on defense. And I believe that we should get the fuck out of Iraq yesterday. But I seriously digress.

So yes folks, if Hillary wins the nomination, I will be voting for her in spite of what goes down in these primaries, and in spite of how much Mr. Morton is trying to schmooze my peeps. Sorry, after the last "compassionate conservative" who occupied the White House, excuse me if I am not buying what Mr. Morton is selling. I have seen their kind of compassion before, and if you don't mind I will take my chances with one of the dumbocrats again this year.

So thanks for the nice gesture Mr. Morton, I am glad you have a sense of history, and that you acknowledged the civil rights struggle, and field Negroes like John Lewis. Your party has come a long way from when that fake ass cowboy from California took his sorry ass to Philadelphia Mississippi to piss on us. But unfortunately for you I have a long memory, and it will take more than a trip to Selma to make me forget all that shit, or to make me rethink my stance on any of my positions. Especially since I know that you disagree with damn near everyone of them.

"I am aware the African American vote has been very small in favor of the Republican Party. I am aware of the challenges, and I am aware of the fact that there will be many people who will not vote for me, but I'm going to be the president of all the people."

Sorry Mr. Morton, but I am one of those people who won't be voting for you, but nice try.