Archive for February, 2009
Hillary Clinton Heads to China!
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton landed in China today, after concluding her meetings and events in South Korea. Here are photos of the remainder of her day in Seoul, and her arrival in Beijing Friday morning (Chicago time, 10pm Beijing time):
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, shown in a giant screen, delivers a speech during a meeting with students at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Feb. 20, 2009. Clinton named a special envoy for North Korea on Friday but warned the communist nation that ties with the United States will not improve unless it stops threatening South Korea
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, center, poses for photos with students and officials after a meeting with them at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Feb. 20, 2009.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, right, shakes hands with Han Duck-soo, South Koran ambassador to the United States, before leaving for China at Seoul military airport in Seongnam, South Korea, Friday, Feb. 20, 2009.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (L) shakes hands with Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Liu Jieyi upon her arrival at Beijing aiport February 20, 2009. Clinton is on a three-day visit in the Chinese capital.
Does Obama's Trillion Dollars in Spending effectively roll back the last 13 years of welfare reform?
The welfare rolls were cut by 80% after the Welfare Reforms of the mid-90s and the number of black children, in particular, living in poverty dropped DRAMATICALLY as a result of the reforms. Instead of states receiving more money for new welfare cases every year, states received a flat rate each year, encouraging them to limit and not expand the welfare rolls.
It appears the Trillion Dollar Spending bill Obama rammed through Congress goes back to the old days, rewarding states for adding more and more welfare cases to the rolls as fast as they can.
Is this the change we’re supposed to believe in…or the welfare socialism we warned you was coming?
This is interesting to note if you haven’t been following the story.
Facebook is probably the most inept organization/company/entity we’ve ever heard of, and we say that having a good friend who works for them, who we think is crazy to think he’s got a real future at something we don’t believe will be around in another 5 years — mainly because of management decisions.
Years ago, Friendster was the place to be online to connect with friends. Then, people started going to paid services like Reunion.com or Classmates.com. Then, all the kids discovered Myspace, and created profiles and pages so chock full of animations, flashing lights, loud music, videos, and nonsense that all day marathons of blinding Japanese anime cartoons seemed preferable to spending any time at all on Myspace.
And then, all of a sudden, everyone we know seemed to be on Facebook, and we began to enjoy the magical experience of reconnecting with people we haven’t seen since high school, or in some cases since grade school, right up until Facebook started doing really creepy things.
First, there was the “Beacon” program, where Facebook would connect into your other online activities and tell all your Facebook friends what you bought on Amazon.com, what you were looking for on Google, and what you generally spent your day doing. Just imagine the hilarity that ensued with that. “Honey, why did you order “Divorce for Dummies”. Facebook told me you did. Is there something I should know?”. Awkward.
And then Facebook tipped its hand and revealed it was collecting data from all the things you added or looked at on your Facebook profile, to sell to marketers in an attempt to generate revenue for a company dependent completely on investment. Keeping track of everything we do to write complete consumer-based psychological profiles of us as individuals? Creepy.
Most recently, Facebook made a change to its terms of service meant, we believe, to further facilitate that sale of personal data to marketers and rightfully enraged everyone who (still) has a profile up on Facebook. As much as we enjoyed seeing what the kid who ate all our crayons back in kindergarten’s been up to for the last 28 years, we deleted our Facebook presence back with the “Beacon” launch.
And we firmly believe Facebook can’t make any more mistakes like this, because it’s only a matter of time before someone evolves a new, more secure, noninvasive platform to replace Facebook (whose user profile is already skewing in the post-30s, which is bad news for a company based on perpetually drawing in new users, especially the attractive 18-30 disposable income and easily influenced demographic). Friendster begat Classmates. Classmates begat Myspace. Myspace begat Facebook. And Facebook will begat something.
It’s the natural order of things like this, speeded up by the unnatural stupidity of Facebook’s management. We realize we’re all living in the creepy, Orwellian Golden Age of Obama, but with our daily allotment of creep and Kool-Aid already delivered enthusiastcally by the news media, do we really need our social networking site spying on us and telling everyone we know about those Guys Gone Wild dvds we, like, totally ordered for someone else, as a total gag gift, and definitely did not keep for ourselves What. So. Ever.
Adios, Facebook!
US Embassy in China Prepares for Hillary Clinton's Arrival
Here’s an interesting look at preparations under way for the arrival of Hillary Clinton in China tomorrow for the last leg of her phenomenally successful tour of Asia.
About the Author: Dan Piccuta serves as the Charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, China.<!–Related Entry: “Preparing for Secretary Clinton’s Visit: From the Advance Team to Wheels-Up” by Deputy Political Chief at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing Ben Moeling.–>
Arriving at work the other day I could not help but notice ahead a foreigner merrily pedaling his local Chinese bicycle (Flying Pigeon brand) into the U.S. Embassy compound just ahead of me. I laugh as I realize the foreigner arriving on the “bike of the masses” is our American SecState visit’s Overall Control Officer, Ben Moeling.
For those not familiar with how high level visits are organized, beneath the Chief of Mission (me) and his Deputy, the one person most responsible for every aspect of a visit’s planning and preparation is the Overall Control Officer. And, this being Secretary Clinton’s first trip as Secretary, and first visit in that capacity to China, we are approaching every site and event with fresh eyes — meaning more preparation, more details, and more effort. Ben probably has over 100 American and Chinese employees working on preparations of every aspect of the visit from the airport arrival to the tour of a highly-efficient natural gas-fired power plant.
So my first reaction is amusement as I consider the irony of the American officer (of 350 assigned here) with the biggest role and the most to do that day calmly pedaling his bike a few kilometers to work. And then another thought comes to me: how appropriate that for a trip on which we hope climate cooperation, energy efficiency and the environment will be key themes, the American officer charged to prepare the visit is doing his part with a “green” morning commute by bike.
NOTE: It’s interesting Hillary Clinton will be visiting a natural gas fired power plant in China. If we only knew she was so interested in natural gas, we’d have suggested she spend more time around Oprah years ago (just not on chili day at the Harpo commissary…nobody on Earth’s interested enough in natural gas to suffer through THAT. And we rode an elevator with Oprah once in 2006, so please know that comes from personal experience (and olfactory abilities still unrecovered)).
It’s also always so strange for us to listen to anyone who works in the State Department, Peace Corps, or other like-minded, internationally-focused branches of government or government-sponsored organizations because they all seem drawn from a handful of very liberal Liberal Arts schools that indoctrinate certain PC dogma and “green” newspeak into all who pass through those ivy-covered walls.
We will always believe riding around outside on a bicycle is ridiculous, no matter how much people in China are told to love doing that by their authoritarian government. People here in Chicago who ride the Lakefront paths are truly a breed apart — a crazed, pathological, dangerous breed (most of whom wear spandex superhero getups while racing at dangerous speed on the bike paths, shouting LEFT! LEFT! LEFT! as they try to zip past tourists who have no idea LEFT! means get out of the way, and not, “Hey, Anastasia, you left something behind, so stand still in the middle of the path and wait for me to bring it to you at dangerously high speed in my spandex supersuit”).
So, riding around on bikes is overrated (like most of what we were programmed to love and support at a liberal arts school). Taking the train or bus instead of driving a car is realistic and wonderful, and as far as we will reasonably go to ever “help the environment” and “go green”. Considering the fact that we’ve never owned a car, drink only tap water and never buy plastic bottles of anything, eat steak about twice a year and other meats twice a week, and rarely waste much of anything, we just can’t deign to listen to anyone in our government advocate riding around on bicycles all day, no matter how much the Chinese, or Americans working with the Chinese, claim to love it. We have to draw a line somewhere, and that’s it, folks. No bikes for us!
A billion Chinese people are wrong about all sorts of things, and bicycles are one of them.
Discussion Question of the Day: Do you think the black community will see a backlash because of Sharpton, Clyburn, and Holder at some point?
Here’s something we’d like your opinion on, because we don’t think we know the answer to whether or not this will ever happen or not.
But, do you think the black community will ever see a backlash in this country from the false accusations of RACISM! RACISM RAAAAAAACISM! tossed around so casually by the likes of professional clown Al Sharpton, embarrassment to himself and others James Clyburn, and race-baiter Eric Holder?
What black men like this, who cry and wail about RAAAAAAACISM! to either get what they want, complain about not getting what they want, or desperately clamor for attention, remind us of are bullies and twisted heels who beat their wives or kids.
People like this do the only thing they seem to know, whalloping their favorite targets with impunity because they believe they can get away with it, for as long as the people around them let them get away with it.
But, one day, the kids they’ve been slapping around fight back.
One day, wives stand up and put an end to the abuse.
And a lot of these guys either receive doses of their own medicine, or are put of commission by society in one way or the other.
But, there’s always a point where they go too far, and unconscionably bad behavior FINALLY becomes unacceptable, and these bullies and abusers are either marginalized or banished forever.
The liberal media is so fond of holding America hostage to threats of RACISM! that we don’t know if the abuse routinely heaped collectively on all of us by the likes of Sharpton, Clyburn, or Holder will ever end. It should end, because Race Cards all officially expired on January 20th, 2009 at precisely 12noon, when America had its first part-black President. No amount of hue and cry that America’s such a terribly racist nation can reconcile with the simple fact that a member of a 12% minority is now the leader of a nation of 300 million. How on Earth did that happen if America was really, indeed, the place Sharpton, Clyburn, and Holder claim it is? Nowhere else on the planet that we can think of would ever allow a member of a small ethnic minority to assume control over the ethnic majority. In fact, the only example we can think of where this has happened before is South Africa, and that nation was ostracized by the global community for its minority-rule only policies.
So, Sharpton, Clyburn, and Holder have nothing to cry about.
But, these men are abusers of the system, and they’ve seemingly spent their entire lives wallowing in perpetual victimhood. So, they aren’t about to stop crying RACISM! just because RACISM! no longer exists anymore, and became extinct at 12noon on January 20th, 2009.
When, if ever, will the public collectively shout enough is enough, already?
Do you think Obama, and the black community at large, will ever suffer a backlash because of the stale, obsolete antics of race-baiters Sharpton, Clyburn, and Holder?
We feel trapped in a bad relationship with the three of them and see no end in sight, no matter how ridiculous these clowns behave, simply because the media loves handing clowns like this platforms to call people RACIST!, and is thrilled to show black people crying and shouting in the streets demanding things for all of their many imagined grievances.
We just don’t see that ever changing without some sort of external intervention — such as, for instance, a truly post-racial President, which we don’t currently have, who would get on the TV each and every time a clown like Sharpton, Clyburn, or Holder cried RAAAAAAAACISM! without cause.
Obama’s silence on these matters is defeaning. He used race as a weapon in the elections, and counted on race-voting by the black community to propel him to victory. So, this is one favorite hue and cry he’ll never dismantle, as he’s personally been served well by it in the past.
But, if he really was all about Hope! and Change! and A New Kind of Politics! and a Post-Racial America!, then part of that change should be retiring the Sharptons, Clyburns, and Holders of the world to the scrap heap of history, along with the David Dukes, Strom Thurmonds, and George Wallaces.
Is Obama true enough to his word to serve up some tough love to those who propelled him to the top? We think we know the answer to that one.
But, we’re really and truly stumped as to whether or not Americans will ever get sick enough of the black community’s race-baiting garbage to call them out for it.
What do you think? Will that ever happen?
What's Hillary Clinton Doing Today?
Today, Hillary Clinton’s in South Korea, being amazing and saving the world, as usual.
Because of the time difference, most of her adventures today will have concluded before any of us stateside even hear about them (which has made following her Asian trip challenging, but exhilarating and interesting nonetheless).
Here are some photos of what she’s been up to in Asia, so many time zones away:
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton adjusts earphone during a news conference with South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan at the foreign ministry's main office in Seoul February 20, 2009
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, right, is greeted by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak during their meeting at the presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Feb. 20, 2009. Clinton said Friday that North Korea can expect no change in its relationship with Washington if the regime continues to insult, provoke and shut out dialogue with South Korea.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton smiles as she waits for SKorean President Lee Myung-bak at the presidential Blue House in Seoul, on February 20. The top US and South Korean diplomats urged NKorea to stop provocative acts and stressed that Pyongyang's possession of atomic weapons can never be tolerated, according to Seoul's foreign ministry.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks as South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan listens during a news conference at the foreign ministry main office in Seoul February 20, 2009.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (C) smiles after signing a guest book beside General Walter Sharp (R), Commander of U.S. Forces Korea and Lee Sung-chool (L), deputy commander of the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command, during her visit to Yongsan Garrison in Seoul February 20, 2009
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (R) talks with Commander of U.S. Forces Korea General Walter Sharp upon her arrival at Yongsan Garrison in Seoul February 20, 2009
We. Love. This. Woman.
Go, Hillary, Go!
Something new for Al Sharpton and James Clyburn to fudge their adult diapers about
Old Silence Dogood couldn’t have done better than this.
Hillary Clinton and Sheila Jackson Lee team up to honor Sojourner Truth
How great is it that two of our favorite people of the present, Hillary Clinton and Sheila Jackson Lee, have teamed up to honor one of our favorite people from the past, SOJOURNER TRUTH?
We remember back in Catholic school, one of the nuns we had in 2nd or 3rd grade LOVED Sojourner Truth, and always told us stories about her and assigned reading assignments about her work. We even did a portrait of her in art class once, for either her birthday or the anniversary of her death. And we were THRILLED when we went to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum for the first time in Springfield, Illinois and saw they had a Sojourner Truth statue you could pose for a photo with (that confused tourists called either Harriett Beecher Stowe, or Harriett Tubbs Jones, or Harriett Tubman, depending on the bredth and scope of their individual confusions).
S0 we are absolutely DELIGHTED Hillary Clinton and Sheila Jackson Lee joined forces to create legislation for a statue of Sojourner Truth to be commissioned and installed in the US Capitol — the first black woman to be immortalized in this way (but not the last if we have anything to say about it, because Stephanie Tubbs Jones will be honored with statues of her own, both in Cleveland and in Washington, if we have anything to say about it — and y’all know what big mouths we have).
Sojourner Truth was an extraordinary American hero, and thanks to the work of Hillary Clinton in the Senate and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee in the House, Sojourner will finally be recognized with a statue in the Capitol — the first African American woman to be so honored!
Born into slavery as one of the youngest of thirteen children of James and Elizabeth in Ulster County, New York, in 1797, Sojourner Truth’s given name was Isabella Baumfree. As almost all of her brothers and sisters had been sold to other slave owners, some of her earliest memories were of her parents’ stories of the cruel loss of their other children.
In 1817, the New York State Legislature passed a Gradual Emancipation Act, which granted freedom to those enslaved who were born before July 4, 1799. Unfortunately, however, this law declared that many men, women and children could not be freed until July 4, 1827, ten years later. While still enslaved and at the demand of her then owner, John Dumont, Isabella married a man named Thomas, who was also enslaved and with whom she had five children.
As the expected date of her release approached, Isabella learned that Dumont was planning to keep her enslaved, even after the Emancipation Act went into effect. In 1826, she left the Dumont plantation with her infant child Sophia, leaving behind her husband and other children, who were not legally free until they had served as bound servants into their twenties. She discovered that a member of the Dumont family had sold her youngest son Peter, then only five years old, to a plantation owner in Alabama. Isabella believed the sale of her son Peter was illegal under New York law. As one of her many courageous actions, Isabella went court to file suit and won his return.
In 1843, she changed her name to Sojourner Truth – her name for a traveling preacher, one who speaks the truth – and left New York. She traveled throughout New England, where she met and worked with abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison, and Frederick Douglass. Her life story, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave, written with the help of friend Olive Gilbert, was published in 1850.
While traveling and speaking in states across the country, Sojourner Truth met many women abolitionists and noticed that although women could be part of the leadership in the abolitionist movement, they could neither vote nor hold public office. It was this realization that led Sojourner to become an outspoken supporter of women’s rights.
In 1851, she addressed the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, delivering her famous speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” The applause she received that day has been described as “deafening.” From that time on, she became known as a leading advocate for the rights of women. She became one of the nineteenth century’s most eloquent voices for the cause of anti-slavery and women’s rights.
By the mid-1850s, Truth had earned enough money from sales of her popular autobiography to buy her own home. After the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 was issued, she worked in Washington as a counselor and educator through the National Freedman’s Relief Association and the Freedmen’s Hospital for those who had been enslaved. During the 1872 Presidential election, she attempted to vote, but was turned away at the polling place. Despite these and other challenges, until her death in 1883, Sojourner Truth continued to fight for justice for women and African Americans.Introducing the Sojourner Truth legislation, Hillary said: “I am proud that finally a memorial to Sojourner Truth will take its rightful and permanent place in the heart of our representative government, the United States Capitol. For generations to come, visitors to our nation’s capitol will learn about her courage, perseverance and historic contribution in the face of incredible hardship. This is a fitting and long overdue tribute to a woman who deserves to be honored as a true American hero.”
During Black History Month, Women’s History Month, and throughout the year, I hope each of us will carry a little bit of Sojourner Truth in our hearts and souls as she was clearly a woman who embodied the belief that there are no limits to what is possible.
NoLimits.org is the organization Ann Lewis and other lifelong Hillary Clinton supporters established to keep Hillary’s Army in contact with one another, maintaining the strong friendships forged in trenches across the country during the primary campaign. Here in Chicago, we have monthly Team Hillary get-togethers and “reunions” in that same spirit: with all of us developing our political and organizational skills and always expanding our circles, with no short-term goal at hand other than staying in touch and maintaining those networks…for now. But, in the future, who knows. Let’s just say that whenever Hillary Clinton or any of her friends need anything, there will always be those that come running.
Count us forever in that group.
Hillary's Rainbow
Here’s a fun new project someone suggested we start that maybe you could help with as well. We’re going to start collecting photos of Hillary Clinton wearing all her different color shades — like the Rainbow of Pantsuits Glamour Magazine ran a spread on. What we’re going to do is build an ongoing collection of them, that will be linked awkwardly to this new RAINBOW page will keep locked up at the very top of the screen. Each color for HRC will have its own section, built off a link on the Rainbow page.
We hope it will be a useful resource for you whenever you are creating Hillary art — or really, really need a great shot of her wearing navy, gold, or emerald green.
This is also an example of why we want to move to our own server and build a site of our own: we get ideas for all kinds of fun stuff to do, but are limited by both our own technological skills and the inate boundaries WordPress itself has in terms of what it can and can’t do, and how everything is structured. We want to become a premier destination for all things Hillary Clinton, Grade-A political snark, foreign policy and current events, and advocacy of ALL qualified, talented, inspiring women (of BOTH parties, thank you very much, we say, winking at the Governor of Alaska).
That’s our goal, and why we’re saving up not only to move to a better platform, but also to acquire the skills we need to really bring all of our dreams into reality. We’d been wanting to build an easy to use library of Hillary photos for a while, but never knew how to properly start one, so we’ll just go with this for now — and let it evolve over time as our skills and capabilities evolve.
We know some pretty fantastic art could develop from this — and hope to play a part in it.
RACIST! RACIST RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACIST!
James Clyburn's theme song
Here we go again.
One of the most vile people in Congress, Rep. James Clyburn, is at it again. Like Al Sharpton, he’s woefully unaware their beloved and often-used race card officially expired at 12noon on January 20th, 2009.
Here’s Clyburn’s latest round of race-baiting lunacy, claiming Republican governors who call Obama’s Trillion Dollar Spending Spree out for the wasteful, ill-conceived and irresponsible mess that it is are just RACISTS! RACISTS! RAAAAAAAAAAAACIST! All because they dare to point out the “stimulus” is nothing but a pork-laden waste of American time and treasure.
Representative James Clyburn held a roundtable meeting to discuss how the newly-signed stimulus package will affect South Carolina.
He said not only would it create jobs, but also repair roads and bridges around the state.
Clyburn also had some strong comments for Gov. Mark Sanford on why he thinks he opposed the stimulus.
“The governor of Louisiana expressed opposition. Has the highest African-American population in the country. Governor of Mississippi expressed opposition. The governor of Texas, and the governor of South Carolina. These four governor’s represent states that are in the black belt. I was insulted by that,” Clyburn said. “All of this was a slap in the face of African-Americans. It had nothing to do with Governor Sanford.”
All we can say about this is to point out that Rep. James Clyburn is a rampant, unapologetic, willful HOMOPHOBE.
That’s right. Because Clyburn wants to dump a TRILLION DOLLARS in tax money down the toilet, in projects that will not create the jobs or economic stimulus Obama promises, and because Clyburn attacks anyone who dares stand up to all this waste, we believe Clyburn is a HOMOPHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOBE!
What? That doesn’t make any sense?
Well, it makes about as much sense as black people crying RAAAAAAAAAAACISM! all the time.
We want in on this lunacy too, because black people sure make it seem like so much fun, crying and wailing and carrying on like spoiled children. We want in on this too. Ain’t nobody who can carry on like spoiled children better than a bunch of guys in BOYSTOWN.
Read the rest of this entry »
