This weeks What I Don’t Like Monday, maybe a little unconventional. Those who are easily offended should just watch videos of cute kittens.
Otherwise:
Below it is broken down on how exactly I don’t like it and why.
SPIEGEL: When was the last time you spoke to President Barack Obama?
Jackson:It has been a while.
SPIEGEL: But you were one of his early mentors in Chicago and the picture of your public tears in Chicago’s Grant Park after his election victory in 2008 went around the globe. How would you describe your current feelings about his presidency?
Jackson: At that moment in Grant Park, we were finally winning, but I was reflecting on the long journey, the many years of struggle for civil rights. Obama ran the last lap of a 60-year campaign. I thought of all the bruises we endured during this campaign and I thought of Dr. Martin Luther King and wished he had been there just for 20 seconds to see how 60 years of struggle suddenly paid off. Sure, some layer of the excitement of that night is gone.
Quite honestly, I don’t believe that the good Dr. Martin Luther King would have been excited to see Mr. Obama become president. First off, if I had been fighting tooth and nail for 60 years for my civil rights someone half black wouldn’t cut it for one. Second, I would want someone on par with George Washington to be elected, to put to shame the last 220 years of presidents (roughly).
SPIEGEL: Is it true that even among African-Americans Obama’s standing has suffered?
Jackson: We blacks (so wait, do you want to be called blacks or African Americans. Get it straight so you don’t give me shit for it later) were the first people embracing Obama, long before the people at expensive fundraisers were supporting him. We gave him his first love, 96 percent of blacks voted for him in 2008. Yet today we are the number one in unemployment, with 16 percent of American blacks out of work. We are number one in foreclosure, number one in short life expectancy, in loan default. Big banks steered their toxic products toward minorities and Congress did not oversee them properly because it is basically corrupted by all the money it is raising on Wall Street. So there is a lot of pain here in our community and this pain must be addressed.
The “black” unemployment rate as of July 2011 = 15.9%. The “white” unemployment rate as of July 2011 = 8.1%. (Thank you Big Brother). Percentage of total arrests of “blacks” = 28.3% and 69.1% is “whites” (again data courtesy of Big Brother), just fyi these numbers are not adjusted to accommodate for the % of the population that “blacks” and “whites” take up… as it should be, these are cold hard totals.
Life expectancy for those born in 2007 were: “Blacks” = 73.6 “Whites” = 78.4 (Here it is if you don’t believe me)
4.8 years (0.065% using the life expectancy of “blacks”) seems like a negligible difference to me, but far be it from me to be the judge on this. Although the fact that Mr. Jackson has himself said that minorities lack self control could be the source of this 4.8 year difference.
I have highlighted something above that I believe deserves a little attention. So, Mr. Jackson does this statement mean that you are admitting that minorities have no self control, and that we should draft policies to ensure that minorities are delivered separate ad campaigns? That separate products should be created just for minorities? I don’t know about you, but this sounds like you are looking for some segregation, for the government to make sure that the big bad capitalists carter different products and adds to different races.
SPIEGEL: And you don’t feel the President is doing that?
Jackson: Obama used to be a community organizer. He knows how to build communities. In Afghanistan, there is a plan to build democracy; hundreds of thousands of troops are protecting it (Wait wait wait… we are talking about THIS president right?). There is a plan to rebuild and reconstruct there. But many thousands of Americans die from violence and poverty every year and we don’t have a plan for reconstruction at home.
This, Mr. Jackson I agree. Fuck the world, lets fix our own problems first.
SPIEGEL: Critics say that the Obama government is simply too close to the financial community. Princeton professor Cornel West called President Obama a ‘mascot of Wall Street.’
Jackson: I would not use that kind of language. But we have some incredibly powerful forces for Wall Street in Congress. The laws are stacked for the wealthy.
Only 46.9% (Data is from 2009, but the number is roughly the same) of Americans payed no taxes… nothing, nada, goose egg. ” The top 1% of taxpayers—those with salaries, dividends and capital gains roughly above about $380,000—paid 38% of taxes.” With half the country not paying taxes and the top 1% of taxpayers paying almost 40% of taxes, aren’t they paying for their voice to be heard more then the freeloaders? No longer is it taxation without representation it is representation without taxation meaning, you don’t have to put any chips into the pot to win. That Mr. Jackson is pure insanity.
SPIEGEL: In Obama’s White House too?
Jackson: Just as he has an economics advisor, I wish there was a labor leader to balance that too. The poor and unemployed currently have no voice in Washington.
If the poor and unemployed pay no taxes they get no voice! You have to pay to play the game Mr. Jackson, please find me one casino where I can win the jackpot without spending a single dollar and I will apologize whole heatedly.
SPIEGEL: During the recent negotiations on the debt ceiling Obama agreed to billion dollar cuts in public spending and received no tax increases in return from the Republicans. Is he too willing to compromise?
Jackson: I think he sometimes underestimates the force of the other side, how tenacious they are in their ideology. A few weeks ago, during the debt ceiling negotiations, Obama went golfing with John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House. Afterwards, they said their differences are not ideological, not philosophical. Really? If Republicans say they want to cut public spending drastically, they want to cut social security and Medicare and the social safety net for poor and working families (you mean the families who aren’t paying taxes? Or the top 50% incomes who pay ~90% of the taxes? No, none of them have families, all they would like to do is pay for 47% of the people to go on fucking vacation.) , and cater to the wealthiest Americans (once again, all together folks. The people who pay all the taxes!) , then that is a different philosophy. If the Tea Party is determined to kill the New Deal and Great Society programs we won in the past, that is a different ideology. And if the right wing of the Republican party is determined to shield themselves from tax obligations (unlike the multiple cronies of Mr. Obama who never filed their taxes?) or to fight the Civil War again by pushing voter suppression legislation to take away minority voting rights across the country, that is also a very different ideology.
Mr. Jackson… you really seem to like the communist free ride idea… once again. If you don’t pay, you don’t play. If you disagree with this I’d love to play poker with you sometime! What do you say, 5 grand a hand? Oh I forgot to tell you, I won’t pay but I’ll take your money.
SPIEGEL: So Obama needs go get tougher?
Jackson: He underestimates how ideological the other side is, and how determined they are to destroy him (because he hasn’t destroyed himself?) , even when their actions harm the nation’s economy and millions of people. I think reconciliation is Obama’s goal — but the fight with the Republicans is like a fight with pit bulls, they never let go. Even worse, now the Republicans feel they can keep pushing and he will keep giving. They have not seen a stiff resistance on his part. The American people on the ground need a clearer, stronger, Lyndon B. Johnson-type voice from their president. Obama has that voice. It has to be used. For instance, I hear he will be taking a bus tour around the country now. I think that should have happened before the debt ceiling negotiations, so that people in every state know what they have to lose if the federal budget is cut even further.
Unlike what people have to lose if the debt begins to exceed GDP? Also, the reason he did it is very simple, he wants to be reelected so that he can break even more precedents.
SPIEGEL: Do you think Obama is more reluctant to address such issues because he does not want to be stereotyped as a ‘black president?’
Jackson:In some way… Bill Clinton had certain freedoms to address blacks and their issues because he was a white president. Obama, to the contrary, has to endure insults like no other previous president. Look at the coded language the Right is using against President Barack Obama. Openly calling him a liar in Congress, saying he is ‘not a Christian, he was not born here, he is not one of us.’ That makes addressing such issues trickier for the first (half) African-American in the White House.
Mr. Jackson, a lie is a lie. I don’t care if you’re black, brown, blue, green, purple, short, tall, gay, straight, women man, hermaphrodite, yellow, rainbow, gold, silver, copper, dead, alive a lie is a lie. And Mr. Jackson, he says he is Muslim… so he is not Christian… it is a simple obvious statement. If I said a Jew, Hindu, Pagan isn’t Christian is this “coded language”.
Him not being born here? Well it would be much more believable if he had shown his birth certificate earlier, or better yet not a photo copy.
SPIEGEL: You yourself had doubts about Obama’s take on race relations, though. During the 2008 campaign, you said he was ‘talking down’ to black people.
Jackson: I regret a statement I made on tape that was insulting (why the fuck are you back peddling?). But Obama’s focus on talking about black responsibility gave the impression that our problems are based primarily on a lack of responsibility and less on a lack of resources. It gives the impression that somehow we are unemployed because we are not working as hard. And there is no evidence of that. The gap between black and white has widened in America. There is a growing health gap, a housing gap, an income gap. But this gap is not an effort gap, it is structural and institutional – the continued legacy of centuries of slavery and legal segregation. And don’t forget: The black community was essential for Obama’s victory. He must nurture that base if he wants to be re-elected.
“We blacks were the first people embracing Obama, long before the people at expensive fundraisers were supporting him. We gave him his first love, 96 percent of blacks voted for him in 2008. Yet today we are the number one in unemployment, with 16 percent of American blacks out of work. We are number one in foreclosure, number one in short life expectancy, in loan default. Big banks steered their toxic products toward minorities and Congress did not oversee them properly because it is basically corrupted by all the money it is raising on Wall Street. So there is a lot of pain here in our community and this pain must be addressed.” – Jesse Jackson
See my comments earlier… this is just fucking ridiculous.
And this dear reader, is what I don’t like this Monday.
