Why Conservatives Hate Barack Obama So Intensely (Reprise)

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Why Conservatives Hate Barack Obama So Intensely (Reprise)

 

.

Racists tend to be the mediocrity of White society, so they try to use the fact that they were born White to define themselves and to compensate for their lack of personal value. Their entire sense of self-esteem is based more upon group association than individual value and accomplishment, and their entire claim to personal significance is, "Well, at least I'm better than them."
.
That's what's driving radical conservatives so crazy about President Obama - he's walking, breathing, evidence that they cannot claim superiority by virtue of the color T-shirt they were born in, and that simple fact alone is causing them to suffer a severe attack of cognitive dissonance before the eyes of the entire world. That's also why they're so determined not to allow President Obama to be successful, even if it means destroying the country - and international corporatists are using the social division inherent in those sentiments to lower the standard of living of the American middle class.  
.
Thus, this entire nation, and the future of our children, is being threatened by the desperate attempt of a handful of insecure bigots to maintain their delusions of superiority, and as far as they’re concerned, if the country has to be sacrificed for that cause, so be it.
.

FELLOW AMERICANS, DON’T LET OUR IGNORANCE DESTROY US

.

The racist animosities that are running rampant among ALL segments of the American people are playing right into the hands of the those who are our most insidious enemy – the global corporatists. These people are intent upon enslaving us all. The only difference between literal slavery and what they have in mind for us is we'll have to provide our own housing.
.
These people are no longer Americans; they are now globalists, and America is just a virtual cotton field to them. And as long as they keep the poor and middle class fighting and hating one another, we’ll be powerless against their social and political manipulation. So "illegal aliens" and others are far from the biggest threat to the American way of life – the global corporatists are.
.
If Al Qaeda represents a rattlesnake in America's garden, the corporate/GOP alliance represents a python under our bed. Al Qaeda can only destroy buildings, but the corporate/GOP alliance wants to destroy our entire way of life and replace American democracy with a system of corporate feudalism, where corporations, literally, control the nation.  So it is essential that every man, woman, and child who is a part of the poor and middle class begin to recognize that fact, put our petty hatreds aside, and come together to fight our most insidious enemy - the global corporatist.
.
History is clear. Conservative Republicans don't mind spending money, they just don't want to spend it on those who need it - us. Remember, they're the party of Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of fiscal conservatism who believed that only those who owned property should even be allowed to vote - and based on the voter obstruction laws currently being passed in Republican controlled states, they're heading in that direction again. Hamilton said the following:

.

"All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people.... The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government." Debates of the Federalist Convention (May 14-September 17, 1787).

.
Hamilton's views were rejected by the founding fathers, mainly because many of them left Europe to escape the class system. But those who hold Hamilton's view are still among us. They simply have to remain discreet, and they must contrive various pretexts to camouflage their agenda in order to remain politically viable. But the agenda is clearly visible for anyone who takes the time to look. It's simply being disguised and hidden within the fabric of purposely instigated racism, sexism, xenophobia, and other forms of hatred and bigotry. The GOP specializes in using emotion to circumvent clear thinking.
.
While they have the poor and middle class distracted by hating and fighting one another, the GOP/Corporate alliance is steeped in the process of undermining us all. Clear evidence of that is any and all legislation that benefits poor and middle class Americans is labeled "socialist," and the GOP fights it tooth-and-nail as "un-American." But they had absolutely no problem in bailing out Wall Street, even though the source of Wall Street's repeated problems result from their repeated attempts to swindle the American people. But Americans have been conditioned to believe that protecting ourselves is "un-American"; the American way of doing things is handing our wealth over to the rich. The scam is clear for anyone to see, but again, the American people have been conditioned to blame one another.
.

The Republican Record of Economic Irresponsibility

.

During the George W. Bush administration wasn't the first time that the American people had to bailout Wall Street as a result of Reckless Republican policies. As I pointed in my article, "The GOP: A One Hundred Year Record of Swindling The American People,"  due to the continued freewheeling fiscal policies of conservative Republicans, between 1986 and 1989, spanning the presidencies of Reagan and Bush Sr., the FSLIC had to pay off all the depositors of 296 institutions with assets of over $125 billion.
.
The GOP's passion to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the middle and lower classes seems to know no bounds and transcend all logic. From the moment the New Deal safety net to protect the American people went into place, conservatives have been determined to dismantle it. There are two reasons for that. The first is, it sets money aside for the American people that they'd like to get their hands on. The second is, it insulates the American people from being so vulnerable to corporate manipulation. We'll discuss how that works below.
.
The closest the GOP has come to dismantling the New Deal started during the Reagan administration with Supply-Side Economics, or, "Reaganomics" - and the battle is currently raging in Washington D.C. as we speak.
.

Supply- Side Economics was a scheme hatch by U.S.C. economist Arthur Laffer and the Reagan crowd which was supposed to cut the deficit and balance the budget. The theory behind Reaganomics was ostensibly, if you cut taxes for business and people in the upper tax brackets, and then deregulated business of such nuisances as safety regulations and environmental safeguards, the beneficiaries would invest their savings into creating new jobs. In that way the money would eventually "trickle down" to the rest of us. The resulting broadened tax base would then not only help to bring down the deficit, but also subsidize the tremendously high defense budget. It's exactly the same plan the Republicans in congress are pushing today. But when the plan was first floated, even George Bush Sr., Reagan's vice president to be, called it "voodoo economics."
.
Reaganomics, for the most part, sought to undo many of the safeguards put into place during the Roosevelt era and create a business environment similar to that which was in place during the Coolidge Administration. What actually took place, however, was even more like the Coolidge era than planned.
.
Instead of taking the money and investing it into creating new jobs, the money was used in wild schemes and stock market speculation. One of these schemes, the leveraged buy-out, involved buying up large companies with borrowed funds secured by the company's assets, then paying off the loan by selling off the assets of the purchased company. This practice cost the citizens of this country its industrial base. In addition, the bottom fell out of the stock market. On Monday, October 19, 1987 the Dow-Jones Average fell 508.32 points. It was the greatest one-day decline since 1914 - 15 years before the Great Depression.
.
 And what about Ronald Reagan's promise to balance the budget and lower the deficit? By the time he left office he was not only the most prolific spender of any president, but he also added more to the deficit than all of the other presidents from George Washington to his own administration combined. And what does the Republican Party propose to do about that? One of the Republican proposals was their "contract with America," a capitol gains tax cut - for the rich.
.
Then in 1988 Silverado Savings and Loan collapsed, costing the taxpayers $1.3 billion. It was headed by Neil Bush, brother of George W. Bush.  The investigation alleged that he was guilty of "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." The issue was eventually settled out of court with Bush paying a mere $50,000 settlement.
.
Then there was the Lincoln Savings and loan scandal in 1987, involving John McCain. The scandal was very similar to the one that played out on Wall Street in 2008. McCain was one of a group of senators dubbed "The Keating Five" involved in a scandal by the same name.
.

In 1976 Charles Keating moved to Arizona to run the American Continental Corporation. In 1984, shortly after the Reagan era push to deregulate the savings and loan community, Keating bought Lincoln Savings and Loan and began to engage in highly risky investments with the depositors' savings. In 1989 the parent company, which Keating headed, went bankrupt, and it resulted in over 21,000 investors losing their life savings. Most of the investors were elderly, and the loss amounted to about 285 million dollars.
.
After having received over a million dollars from Keating in illegal campaign contributions, gifts, free trips, and other gratuities, the Keating Five - Senators John Glenn, Don Riegle, Dennis DeConini, Alan Cranston, and Sen. John McCain - attempted to intervene in the investigation into Keating's activities by the regulators. Later, they were admonished to varying degrees by the senate for attempting to influence regulators on Keating's behalf. Charles Keating ended up being convicted for fraud, racketeering and conspiracy, for which he received 10 years by the state court, and a 12 year sentence in federal court. After spending four and a half years in prison, his convictions were overturned. But prior to being retried, he pled guilty to a number of felonies in return for a sentence of time served.
.
Then came the George W. Bush administration that caused close to a million people to die uselessly in an illegal war in Iraq, robbed the American people blind, whose fumbling ignited the longest war in American history in Afghanistan, and whose greed came very close to sending the nation into yet another depression.
.


Now, after all of their repeated efforts to deplete the national treasury, they're unanimously voting against every piece of legislation that the Democrats propose to repair the damage they created and bring relief to the American people. Then they have the audacity to claim that they're doing it because they're concerned about deficit spending.

.
They're against affordable health care for American families; they're against any kind of spending to put Americans back to work, and they're against extending unemployment insurance to relieve the burden of America's unemployed. What's particularly telling, however, is they're also against any kind of strong legislation to prevent the financial community (them) from being able to rob the American people in the future.
.
Also interesting, considering their deep "concern" over the national debt, is the estimated $4 trillion Bush tax cut for the rich. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "Considering  both the direct costs of the tax cuts and the associated increase in interest payments, the tax cuts would increase deficits by nearly $4 trillion between 2005 and 2014."
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1811
.

So the fact is, what they really wanted prior to the 2012 election was to maintain the status quo, and make sure that the American people remained miserable, hungry, and divided until the elections so they'd have a better chance to regain power and raid the treasury again. Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, was frustrated and reckless enough to say it out loud - "Our No. 1 priority is to make this president a one-term president" - not to save America, or to bring relief to the American people, but to make Barack Obama a one-term president. Flag pens in lapels and patriotic rhetoric notwithstanding, that says it all about the GOP's lack of concern for America, or the American people.
.
Now that they've lost the 2012 election, their agenda has shifted to making sure that President Obama is not successful, because if he is, and you combine that with the rapidly changing demographic and Hillary Clinton's popularity, that could spell doom for the future of the GOP - and it should, because they're grossly out of touch with reality, and, America's best interest. They're out to create a corporate feudalist society. The government shutdown alone, clearly demonstrates that they have absolutely no respect for democracy.
.

The Middle Class Slide Since the Reagan Administration

.
"In 1982, Forbes magazine began its now much-read annual list of America’s richest men and women. At the time of the first list, there were 12 billionaires in the country and fewer than 200,000 millionaires. By the year 2000, there were nearly 300 billionaires and about 5 million millionaires. Smith’s account of the rise of the rich and super-rich tells the story of five types of individuals: entrepreneurs, dealmakers, investors, tycoons (corporate executives, who are distinguished from
entrepreneurs), and entertainers."
http://www.beardbooks.com/beardbooks/the_rise_of_todays_rich_and_super_rich.html
.
"No matter how you slice it, when it comes to income and wealth in America the rich get most of the pie and the rest get the leftovers. The numbers are shocking. Today the top 1 percent of Americans control 43 percent of the financial wealth (see the pie chart below) while the bottom 80 percent control only 7 percent of the wealth. Incredibly, the wealthiest 400 Americans have the same combined wealth as the poorest half of Americans — over 150 million people.".
A recent Princeton study Shows that America is no longer a democracy. We are now an Oligarchy, controlled by the rich. So it is essential that we wake up. Racism is no longer the war; racism is now merely a TOOL of war. We are now knee-deep in a CLASS WAR, and the American people are losing badly - ALL of the American people.
.

Here’s the game that we're allowing the corporatists to run on us. They’ve convinced America that if we give the rich enough money, they’ll use that money to create jobs for the poor and middle class. Now, I don’t claim to be an intellectual giant, but it doesn’t take a great mind to understand that demand fuels supply, not the reverse.
.
If I made my living selling Gucci Bags, for example, I don’t care how much money you give me, I’m not going to hire anyone to produce any more Gucci Bags than I have in stock if I'm being forced to sell those bags in a homeless shelter. It wouldn’t make sense, because in a homeless shelter no one would have the money to purchase my product. The only way that you’re going to get me to hire people to produce Gucci Bags is if you gave that money to the people in the shelter so they’d have the money to buy my merchandise.
.

That's exactly what's happening in America today. Corporate profits are at record highs, and the information and charts above clearly show that corporations and corporate executives are currently making more money than they've ever dreamed of in the past. So there's no reason for high unemployment. The rich are not putting that money into creating jobs; that money is going into offshore accounts, and we never see it again. That's why the rich are getting so much richer, and the middle class so much poorer.
.
On the other hand, if the Republican congress would allow President Obama to create jobs to repair American's infrastructure - repair bridges, dams, and interstate highways and the like - that money would create jobs, just like it did when it brought us out of the Great Depression. Then, Americans would have money to spend on goods and services. They would go on vacations, so hotels and restaurants would have to hire people to accommodate them, and the food industry would have to hire people to process and serve their food. They would also buy bicycles and toys for their children, and that would create jobs, and they would buy more clothing, gas, and make needed repairs to their homes, and that would create jobs. And as a result of all those jobs being created, more revenue would come into the government in taxes, which would allow us to pay down the national debt.
.
Again, think about it - the business community is making more profits than they've ever made in their history, so there's no logical reason for unemployment in America to be so high. The reason that unemployment is so high is because it's being kept high on purpose.
.
Consider this. In the sixties, Howard Hughes was famous for being one of the richest men in the world.  He was considered so incredibly rich that they made movies about him. But compared to today's billionaires, he'd qualify for food stamps. Howard Hughes only had $4 billion, but today, Bill Gates has $79.1 billion, David Koch, of the infamous Koch brothers has $41.3 Billion, and even the young man, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, has $29.9 billion.  So there is absolutely no reason for the American people to be suffering so severely, and for unemployment to be so high - yet, they have us hating and pointing the finger at one another as the cause of our misery, when as pointed out above, the wealthiest 400 Americans have as much combined wealth as the 150 million poorest half of Americans.
.
So it doesn't take a brain surgeon to see where the wealth of middle-class America has gone. It hasn't gone to "illegal aliens," or people requiring food stamps. Corporate welfare is nearly double the cost of all social programs. About $59 billion is spent on traditional social welfare programs. $92 billion is spent on corporate subsidies. So, the government spent nearly 50% more on corporate welfare than it did on food stamps and housing assistance in 2006.  http://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/corporate-welfare/corporate-welfare-statistics-vs-social-welfare-statistics/
.

The GOP's supposed concern for the national debt is only a pretext to block spending and keep unemployment high. They are purposely trying to turn America into a homeless shelter, because the GOP and its corporate cronies have a vested interest in keeping us angry, miserable, and divided.
.
The GOP's motive is political - by keeping unemployment high and the American people miserable, it makes Obama and the Democrats look bad, and they're hoping that the resulting anger and division in the country will help them to get elected in a demographic that's shrinking to the GOP's disadvantage. And the corporatist are trying to squeeze the middle class. They’re trying to lower the American middle class standard of living to a level that conforms to the other countries in the global economy, where in many countries people make less per week than some middle-class Americans spend on lunch per day. So they're trying to squeeze the middle class to the point that it lowers our expectations, and we'll feel grateful for less.
.
Their ultimate agenda is to turn America into a corporate feudalist state, where the American people are totally dependent on corporations for their survival. That will greatly enhance corporate profits, and essentially, allow them to control this nation. That's why the GOP is attacking unions, our educational system, and all social programs that prevent us from being totally reliant on the business community. They want to have complete control over our lives. Here's the philosophy behind it and how it works:
.
I pointed out the following in a previous article:

Everything You Don’t Know About the GOP Philosophy, Strategy, and True Agenda

. 

In 1929 during Republican, Herbert Hoover’s administration, the stock market crashed - much like under the Bush Administration - starting the Great Depression, but back then there was no Barack Obama to come to the rescue or mitigate the damage early on. So in spite of the fact that by 1933 the unemployment rate was at 33.3% with 16 million people out of work, the Republican, Herbert Hoover, just sat, thinking that the economy would eventually rejuvenate itself. Much like Republicans of today, Hoover and his Republican Party had absolutely no compassion for either the plight of the American people, or America’s veterans who had put their lives on the line for this country.

.

During Hoover's administration, 15,000 WWI veterans marched on Washington demanding that they be paid what they were owed by the government. Hoover responded by calling in federal troops to throw these ex-servicemen off government property.
.
The conditions were horrific. During the Great Depression there was no such thing as Social Security, so when a person became too old or weak to work they had no income, so they had to depend on their children for support. That meant instead of a husband and wife only having to support themselves and their children, which was tough enough during those times, they also had to support their parents. So three generations of a family could be living in one household - and in many cases, the parents of both the husband, and the wife lived with the family.
.
In addition, there was no such thing as Medicare or Medicaid, so when one of grandparents became ill the medical costs would devastate the entire family. These conditions kept lower and middle-class families in such dire need of funds that they had to accept whatever crumbs the business community chose to throw at them - and remember, at that time there was no Fair Labor Standards Act or unions to protect a worker’s rights, or a minimum wage, so businesses could treat the worker anyway they wanted, and pay them whatever they wanted.
.
They could work you 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no overtime, and no paid vacation. In addition, since there was no child labor laws, if your boss didn’t think you were being productive enough, he could insist that you bring your children in (as young as 9 years old) to assist you if you wanted to keep your job. Then if you protested, he could fire you on the spot, in which case, your entire family - sick grandparents and all - would be thrown out on the street, because there was no such thing as unemployment insurance.
.
As a result, in many cases the entire family, including the children, had to work long, hard hours under sweatshop-like conditions in coal minds and the like, which in many cases led to the death and/or maiming of young children. So in a very real sense, Great Depression era workers lived under a form of slavery - the one difference was, they had to go out and find their own housing.
.
Think back to the "Little Rascals" we use to watch as kids, and how ragged they were, or the cartoons we use to watch, where a landlord would come to the door (always portrayed in a black suit) and would tell a begging and crying mother that she had one more day to come up with the rent or she and her family would be thrown out in the snow. That was an accurate portrayal of the way people lived in those days, and those are the conditions that the conservative Republican agenda would restore in America today. Those are the conditions that they’re fighting to restore today.
.
Think about it - while the GOP comes up with various pretexts to explain their actions, they are oppose to the minimum wage, they would cut unemployment insurance, "modify" Social Security, they’re against Affordable healthcare, they’re leaving no stone unturned to abolish unions, they’re blocking every jobs bill that comes before them, and in spite of record corporate profits, their corporate cronies are sending jobs out of the country and keeping unemployment high until the American middle class caves in and accept a lower standard of living.
 .

IT'S NOT ENOUGH TO MERELY SALUTE OUR HEROES

Keeping unemployment high also serves another purpose - it provides an endless supply of young American men and women to use as canon fodder for neocon military adventurism. But what else do you expect them to do? We certainly can’t expect them to send their children over there to die for the country. Dying for your country is no longer for the "rich and wellborn," that’s for the "little people." Then, IF your children come back home maimed and broken from their service to the country, the GOP has absolutely no compassion for them. Just like with Herbert Hoover, they call them deadbeats and a burden on the nation for having to beg for food stamps, and then throw them off the premises. And that’s in spite of the fact that most of the GOP ran - like Dick ‘five-deferment’ Cheney - when they were called upon to serve the nation. The GOP only love our troops as long as they can carry a weapon.
.

I WOULD START THE SEARCH IN DICK CHENEY'S
OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS

The GOP/corporatist agenda also explains why they were so determined to send innocent American children to die in a senseless Iraqi war. The poor and middle class safety net put in place by the New Deal enjoys so much support among the American people that the GOP couldn't attack it head on. So they took us into Iraq to enrich their cronies and passed a tax cut for the rich that squandered trillions of dollars and ravaged our national treasury. That gave them a pretext to now claim, "We can no longer afford to fund the nation's safety net." But they could afford to build an embassy in Iraq that was so extravagant that it rivals the Vatican (U.S. Embassy Building will Rival the Vatican). And they could also afford to send so much unaccounted for CASH to Iraq that they could "MISPLACE" 6.6 BILLION dollars without a whimper from those who now want to count every penny that we spend on the poor and middle class.
.

So we're being played America, and if we don't put our petty hatreds and prejudices aside and come together to fight this "Domestic Enemy" of the United States, the Tea party, the Klan, the Black Guerrilla Army, and the Mexican Mafia are going to find themselves shoulder-to-shoulder picking virtual cotton on the very same plantation, singing, "We Shall Overcome."

 

A Letter to Bush and Cheney From a Dying Vet

.

OLD MARINES NEVER GIVE UP THE FIGHT FOR THIS COUNTRY

.

So how do we fight against their control of our political system?

. 

Vote against ANY politician whose money isn’t coming directly from the people. And ALWAYS vote against the issues and politicians whose campaigns are flooded with money.

.

LEARN THE ISSUES, ALWAYS VOTE FOR JUSTICE, AND NEVER, VOTE YOUR HATRED, OR IN RESPONSE TO MONEY. 

FOR THE JUSTICE THAT YOU VOTE AGAINST, WILL INVARIABLY, BECOME YOUR OWN. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1S_Pxw2n-U

Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
.
Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

Sphere: Related Content

The "Black Prophetic" Mouth of Cornel West is At It Again - And As Usual, Just In Time To Sabotage Democrats In The Upcoming Election

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE
 

The "Black Prophetic" Mouth of Cornel West is At It Again - And As Usual, Just In Time To Sabotage Democrats In The Upcoming Election
.
Cornel West seems to be mad at President Obama for a myriad of reasons, most of which are petty, envious, and self-serving. But even West’s most legitimately political, and debatable reason, is arrogant and uninformed. In this area, essentially, West seems to be angry with Obama because the President’s style is not his style, and that the President has given priority to stabilizing the nation and bringing relief to the American people over engaging in a national spitball contest with the GOP.
.
But it’s hard to determine the true motivation behind West’s criticism, because it’s next to impossible to determine where West actually stands on the political spectrum. He mentioned on national television, and in a print interview, that he has "libertarian sensibilities." Admittedly, that can be taken many ways, but libertarian is also politi-speak for a very specific conservative point of view, and I’m sure that West is precise enough in his language to recognize that fact.
.
At any rate, West joined Ralph Nader to play an invaluable role in getting George Bush elected in the 2000 election - Bush won the election by winning Florida by a mere 537 votes, while the Nader/West coalition stripped away 97,488 votes - and then, Nader and West tried to do the same thing against Obama in the 2012 election, but that time the people didn’t buy it. So is Cornel West’s criticism of President Obama actually due to the President giving priority to national stabilization over engaging in a petty spitball fight with the GOP, or is West simply engaged in the role of Judas-goat for the GOP prior to the upcoming election? It’s hard to determine with any degree of certainty. You be the judge. This is my take on an excerpt from West’s latest book, "Black Prophetic Fire."

.

Salon.com has just released Cornel West’s latest rant in the form of an excerpt from his latest book, "Black Prophetic Fire." The book would have been more appropriately titled "The Book That I’m Releasing Just Before the Election, Because I’m Mad at Obama, the Democrats, Every Black Person Who Accepted A Job With A Major Network Without Me, And All Those Who Think I’ve Lost My Damn Mind - Or, Why I’m Helping The Republican Party, Again," because that’s exactly how the excerpt reads.
.
West, literally, sounds like a man who’s lost touch with reality, and only the most wild-eyed sycophant would even take him seriously. Not one word in the 1600 word excerpt is substantiated; and typical of Cornel West, it doesn’t contain one constructive suggestion on how the President can improve his current policies. It’s a typical convoluted Cornel West rant. By the time you get to the end of a sentence, you’ve forgotten what the subject was. And of course, it’s filled with allusions to "the Black prophetic tradition" - What is that, anyway?  
.
The first thing that jumped out at me, other than the pure cluelessness of his rant, is West’s poor scholarship. For a man who’s alleged to be a renowned, and world-class scholar, one would think that he would have, at the very least, taken a breath long enough to check his facts. He says, for example, "The bailout of Wall Street by the Obama administration, rather than the bailout of homeowners, hurt millions of working people."

Wall Street

.

It would have only taken about two minutes of Google research by the most inexperienced and pedestrian researcher to find that it was George W. Bush who bailed out Wall Street, not Barack Obama. Bush signed the $700 billion "Troubled Asset Relief Program" (TARP) only hours after it was passed by congress. Thereafter it was reported by Bloomberg that the Federal Reserve had committed $7.77 trillion to rescuing Wall Street - that was equal to one half of EVERYTHING produced in the United States that year .

.
The fact is, President Obama not only WASN’T responsible for bailing out Wall Street, but he aggressively held Wall Street’s feet to the fire to make sure that the American taxpayer was reimbursed in a timely manner - and with interest. He's made Wall Street pay all of the bailout money back to the American taxpayer, with interest (Bailout Payment Tracker), reimburse customers, admit guilt (which leaves them open to private lawsuits), made them pay billions of dollars over and above what they stole, in fines and penalties, and beyond that, he’s making them cooperate in their OWN criminal prosecution! At this point Wall Street’s debt to the American people is all but paid in full, and aggressive legal action is continuing against many banks that engaged in activities that led to the Wall Street debacle.

 

JPMORGAN AGREED TO PAY $13 BILLION, AND IN A FIRST, ADMIT GUILT

.

An example of just how aggressively President Obama has gone after Wall Street, let’s take a look at the action that’s been taken against just one Wall Street firm, JPMorgan. To sum up the pound of flesh that Obama is extracted from this one corporation (and one of his biggest supporters) for the abuses that it perpetrated against the American people, Obama has demanded the following:
.
1). Of the $13 billion, $9 billion is fines or penalties and $4 billion will go to consumer relief for struggling homeowners.
.
2). JPMorgan also agreed to provide cooperation in investigations against individuals within the company.
.
3). JPMorgan settled SEC charges in June 2011 by agreeing to pay $153.6 million and reached another such agreement for $296.9 million last November.
.
4). As part of the tentative agreement, JPMorgan dropped its demand for the Justice Department to take a "non-prosecution agreement" off the table, which means a criminal investigation of the bank's conduct being handled by federal prosecutors in Sacramento, Calif., continues.
.
"Mounting legal costs from government proceedings pushed JPMorgan to a rare loss in the third quarter, the first under Dimon's leadership. The bank reported Oct. 11 that it set aside $9.2 billion in the July-September quarter to cover a string of litigation stemming from the financial crisis and its "London Whale" trading debacle. JPMorgan said it has placed a total of $23 billion in reserve to cover potential legal costs."
.
And they’re not through paying yet, because in spite of this "settlement" the administration is STILL coming after them with MORE charges, including criminal. And again, in another first - the head of JPMorgan, James Dimon, was one of Obama's biggest supporters. So Obama has taken a "take no prisoners" approach - if you screwed the American people, you're going down, no matter who you are. That’s a new wrinkle in American politics (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57608321/jpmorgan-chase-justice-department-reach-tentative-$13-billion-deal-over-mortgage-backed-securities/).
.
The above facts seem to be completely lost on Cornel West. That’s a shocking level of ignorance for a person who professes to be a scholar and public intellectual. It also suggests that he paid little or no attention to the machinations of George W. Bush, yet, every time Barack Obama sneezes, West and/or his former cohort, Tavis Smiley, are running to hold a news conference, or going before the cameras to titillate the viewers of Fox news with the information. Why is that?
.
It is also curious that while West spews on to anyone who will listen about his deep love and compassion for the poor, all of his ire seems to be directed at Barack Obama and the liberal establishment. If we base our assessment on his public pronouncements, he doesn’t seem to have any problem at all with the GOP, in spite of the fact that they’ve morphed into the domestic enemy of the United States, and has been engaged in the very worst kind of assault on the very people that he professes to love most - the poor, and minorities.
.
Over the past six years the GOP has obstructed any and every effort by the Obama administration to assist the poor and middle class. They’ve obstructed legislation to create jobs, raise the minimum wage, extend unemployment insurance, provide affordable healthcare, and their even trying to obstruct the right of the poor and minorities to vote, yet, Cornel West, and his "Black prophetic voice" for the poor, has little or nothing to say about the Republican Party, AT ALL. In this current rant he mentions liberal, neoliberal, or Democrat over 15 times, and according to my count, mentions the Republicans only once, and then, in only the most benign fashion. There’s something about that, that just screams counterintuitive.

 Does Obama Care About the Poor and Middle Class? 

.

West also seems to be clueless in his assertion that Obama gave priority to bailing out Wall Street over bailing out homeowners, which he claims hurt the poor. West is obviously so desperate to find chinks in Obama’s armor that he hasn’t heard of the "Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP)." Jackie Calmes of the New York Times reports:
.
"Under HAMP, the federal government gives financial incentives to mortgage providers to modify the loans of eligible borrowers so the homeowners’ monthly payments do not exceed 31 percent of their monthly income. Beneficiaries have included homeowners with negative equity where property values plummeted and those who lost jobs . . .
.
"According to the Treasury Department, about 1.3 million homeowners received direct assistance from the Making Home Affordable initiatives. Another 300,000 have received other relief, like forbearance in mortgage payments for homeowners who suddenly lost their jobs.
.
"As of March 2013, Treasury said, more than 1.1 million homeowners had moved from trial modifications to permanent modifications of their mortgages, for median savings of $546 a month, an amount that exceeds the median relief resulting from private sector modifications."
This writer has benefitted from the program. One day my mortgage company called me out of the blue and informed me that I qualified to have the interest rate on my mortgage lowered from 6% to 2%.
.
"Mr. Wattree, my name is Ashley. We’ve been looking over your loan and we’ve noticed that you’re eligible for a loan modification. It looks like we’ll be able to lower your interest rate from your current 6% to 2%. We’ll send you the paperwork tomorrow. Just fill them out and either fax or email them back to us."
.
While it may have been Ashley who called, it was Barack Obama on the other end of the line, with unprecedented relief for over a million Americans. But curiously, I haven’t heard a word regarding any kind of assistance from the "Black prophetic voice" of Cornel West.

The Wells Fargo "Ghetto Loan" Scam

.

But that wasn’t the only time that the "prophetic voice" of Cornel West fell Silent. He was also uncharacteristically silent when in January of 2013 I asked both he and his then, closest associate, Tavis Smiley, the following question:
.
Mr. Smiley, do you intend to return the Millions of dollars to the people who lost their homes and life savings that you reportedly made from herding poor Black people and Hispanics into the Wells Fargo "Ghetto Loan" Scam? And Dr. West, in your learned opinion, what is the appropriate course of action for your friend and associate to take, in accordance with the "prophetic tradition," of course?
.
A discrimination lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice, and several articles, including one seeded on Newsvine entitle, "Tavis Smiley - "Ghetto Loan" Peddler for Wells Fargo," closely associates PBS talk show host, Tavis Smiley, with the Wells Fargo Bank scam targeting poor and middle-class Black and Hispanic borrowers. The article quotes Kelvin Boston, host of "Moneywise, and Keith Corbett, of the Center for Responsible Lending, as calling Tavis Smiley "the big draw" of the Wells Fargo scam. Specifically, the article states the following:
.
"Smiley was the keynote speaker, and the big draw, according to Boston [host of "Moneywise"] and Keith Corbett, executive vice president of the Center for Responsible Lending, who attended two of the seminars. Smiley would charge up the audience — and rattle the Wells Fargo executives in attendance — by launching into a story about how he hated banks, and how they used to refuse to lend him money for his real estate projects in Compton, Calif., and elsewhere... But what appeared on the surface as a way to help black borrowers build wealth was actually just the opposite, according to a little-noticed explanation of the "Wealth Building" seminar strategy, contained in a lawsuit recently filed by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.
.
"Wells' plan for the seminars all along was to target black borrowers for higher-cost subprime mortgages, not for wealth-building, the suit charged. And the seminars were a part of the bank's overall illegal and discriminatory practice of steering black and Hispanic borrowers into riskier and more expensive loans, the suit said."
.
On July 12, 2012 Charlie Savage reported in the New York Times that Wells Fargo Bank agreed to pay $175 million to settle the discrimination suit which, according to the Department of Justice, targeted over 30,000 Black and Hispanic borrowers for subprime loans with a higher interest rate than for similarly situated White borrowers between 2004 and 2009.
.
The settlement includes Wells Fargo paying the Black and Hispanic victims of discrimination $125 million in compensation, and an additional $50 million in down-payment assistance to borrowers in the affected communities.
.
In a statement by Wells Fargo put out after the bank agreed to a settlement of $175 Million, they said that while not admitting to any wrong doing, Wells Fargo agreed to a settlement of the law suit because the bank felt that it was the right thing to do.
.
So the question that remains is, if Wells Fargo Bank feels that paying compensating to the poor and middle-class victims of this scam is the right thing to do, shouldn’t Tavis Smiley, the most strident advocate of "accountability" and fervent crusader for the interest of the poor, feel obliged to do the same? Certainly, benefitting from the misery of the poor and minority community would run counter to Mr. Smiley's zeal for the need of the powerful to maintain accountability.
.
We’d also like to put that question to Smiley’s friend and associate, Dr. Cornel West. What do you think your good friend and associate should do, Dr. West? What does the "prophetic tradition" dictate is the proper course of action? We’ll be anxiously awaiting your response.
.
In response to that question West’s "Black prophetic voice" for the poor and downtrodden must have been drowned out by the sound of crickets.

The Black Prophetic Voice of Cornel West Was Also Silent in the Demonstrations Against Walmart

.

During the "Black Friday" demonstrations against Walmart, the most hostile and abusive corporation in the country toward the working poor, in spite of the fact that Tavis Smiley and Cornel West claimed to be so concerned for the poor - BEFORE the election and when they had books to sell - that they rode all across the country on a bus, I called them out prior to the demonstrations against Walmart, and predicted that they weren’t going to show up - and one of the demonstrations was taking place right down the street from Tavis Smiley’s office. I knew they weren’t going to show up because the ALEC -connected Walmart (ALEC are the people who are trying to obstruct the poor and minority right to vote) has Tavis Smiley in their pocket. They helped to finance the Tavis Smiley show, which he has to pay for to stay on the air - Oh, you didn’t think Tavis Smiley has been on the air all these years because he’s such a great television personality, did you? Oh no. He has to BUY his television time, and  Walmart helps him to pay for that time, which gives him a high profile, that he turns around and uses to influence the Black community on Walmart’s behalf (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-tavis-smiley-pbs-20131212-story.html#axzz2ndUlDFtL&page=1). 
.
So here’s the challenge that I leveled at Tavis Smiley and Cornel West just days before the demonstrations against Walmart:
.
TAVIS SMILEY, CORNEL WEST, HERE’S YOUR CHANCE TO REALLY STRIKE A BLOW AGAINST POVERTY. COME TAKE A STAND WITH THE PEOPLE AGAINST YOUR BUDDIES AT WALMART.  GET OUT FRONT AND TELL THOSE SUCKAS OFF.
PRETEND THEY’RE OBAMA!
.
THIS BLACK FRIDAY - STAND WITH SO. CAL. WALMART EMPLOYEES!
November 29, 2013• 11:30 AM
CRENSHAW WALMART• 4101 Crenshaw Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90008
https://www.facebook.com/thelastword/posts/633485613366120
.
But of course, they failed to show up - and there was no excuse for them to miss these demonstrations, because not only was the demonstration above taking place down the street from Tavis’ office, but they were also taking place all across the country. Now, ask yourself, when was the last time that Cornel West’s "Black prophetic voice of the poor" missed an opportunity to flap his lips in front television cameras? I bet you can’t think of one other instance, can you? So I guess there’s a limit to Smiley and West’s "love" for the poor.

Is Cornel West Partially Responsible for Your Current Economic Misery?

The Answer Is An Unequivocal Yes

.

Cornel West is quoted as saying, "The state of Black America in the age of Obama has been one of desperation, confusion and capitulation," but let’s take a look at who’s more responsible for the Black community’s current state of economic misery, Barack Obama, or Cornel West.
.
It cannot be denied that not only the Black community, but all of America, is suffering from this great recession, and yes, Barack Obama is President. But this situation needs to be placed in perspective. The reason that the nation is suffering has absolutely nothing to do with Barack Obama. We’re suffering due to the policies of the Bush administration, and the current obstructionism of the Republican congress, who sees it as being in their best interest to keep America hungry, miserable, and angry.
.
But IN SPITE of Republican obstructionism, President Obama has added 4.54 million jobs. When he entered office, George W. Bush was LOSING 800,000 jobs PER MONTH. So while there are people still suffering under President Obama, we’re not suffering anywhere near the way we could be suffering if it weren't for him, because President Obama saved the world from going into a second Great Depression. Forbes Magazine ran the following article:

Forbes Magazine: "It’s Official: President Obama Is The Best Economic President In Modern Times"

 [AND THIS IS IN SPITE OF A RACIST AND OBSTRUCTIONIST CONGRESS!!!]

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/09/06/its-official-president-obama-is-the-best-economic-president-in-modern-times/

.
Thus, all but the most rabid conservative partisans acknowledge that we slipped into the "Great Recession" as a direct result of the policies of the Bush administration, but how did Bush get into office in the first place? Those of us who are students of political history remember only too well.
.

Cornel West Helps Put George W. Bush Over the Top 

.

After Ralph Nader was rejected for the 2000 presidential nomination by the Democratic voters, instead of acknowledging his rejection and falling into line to help defeat the Republicans, Nader went into a petulant snit and ran as a third party candidate. It was clear that he purposely ran as a third party candidate with the mean-spirited intent of sabotaging the Democratic effort, because third parties never win; the only purpose that third parties ever serve is to help elect the people that you like least, because they divide the vote of like-minded people.

.
Cornel West joined Nader in this foolish (or treacherous; you make the determination) campaign, and as a result, George W. Bush won the election over Al Gore by winning Florida by a mere 537 votes. The Nader/West coalition peeled off 97,488 votes from Gore in Florida alone. So when I say that Cornel West is more than a little responsible for George W. Bush becoming President of the United States, and thus, the current economic distress of the Black community, don’t take my word for it – you do the math.
.
So when West claims that "The state of Black America in the age of Obama has been one of desperation, confusion and capitulation," I say, West has a lot of nerve. The above statement by Cornel West is the exact equivalent of a man walking into a restaurant, crapping on the floor, and then calling the Health Department because the proprietor didn’t get it up fast enough. And with respect to his claim to love poor people, in light of his close association with Tavis "Ghetto Scam" Smiley, he’s like a guy on the street ranting about fascism, after just having lunch with Mussolini. Thus, Cornel West has absolutely no credibility, and anyone who even stops to listen to him has to be either completely out of touch with reality, or grossly uninformed - and that's not just an opinion.
.
Think about it. First, Cornel helped Bush get elected, which led to Black misery - at least, additional Black misery - and then he scurried back into his ivory tower to command $30,000 a speech to discuss Black misery. Then, later, he rode all across the country on a bus professing to love poor minorities, while sitting next to a man (Tavis Smiley) who was involved in a scam that caused 30,000 poor minorities to lose their homes and life savings, and that the Justice Department says was the second largest housing discrimination case in the history of this country. Now, he’s telling us that Black misery is Obama's fault!!!?  A person would have to be a fool to believe that, but obviously, there's plenty of them out there.
.
West also said that he didn’t vote in 2012. Is he serious!!!? Doesn’t he realize how many people died for our right to vote? Yet, he claims to love the poor but would rather not vote than to vote against the people who would rather shutdown the government than to provide jobs, affordable healthcare, extended unemployment insurance, and food stamps for the poor? And he claims to hate killing and war, yet, would rather not vote than to vote against the people who lied to go to war, and then killed over a million people in Iraq? Such a position strains the limits of credulity.
.
Doesn’t he have the intelligence to realize that there is no such thing as not voting, and that failing to vote for one side is a vote for the other? There are two ways for the bad guys to win an election, by either getting more bad guys to vote, or getting more good guys not to vote. So that was a very irresponsible message to drop into our dire political environment.
.
Thus, one of two things have to be at work here - either West knows exactly what he’s doing and is scamming the people, or he’s the dumbest so-called intellectual that the Black community has ever produced. But either way, he’s not a person that anyone with sense would want to listen to.

Regarding Cornel West and Drones

.

When Tavis Smiley and Cornel West began to lose the confidence of the Black community, they tried to broaden their constituency by refocusing their criticism of President Obama from poverty to the war in Afghanistan. Time.com reported West as saying in 2012 that he didn’t vote. "I couldn’t vote for a war criminal," he said, calling Obama’s administration a "drone presidency."
.
While I don't like killing machines either, I've had to take into account the fact that Obama is charged with the responsibility of seeing to it that Al Qaeda, or any other terrorist group, don’t manage to get their hands on Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. And let us not forget that they located Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan living comfortably, and casually, within the shadow of that arsenal. So while West would have us believe that Obama is in Afghanistan just killing people for the hell of it, or for the oil companies, that’s a myth. He’s trying to make sure that YOUR family is not blown up by angry religious fanatics who think that God will bless them if they blow up the United States.
.
So while war, and killing, is an ugly business, it is very much a reality in the world we live in. So as I see it, if we have to lob missiles into an area filled with innocent people - since hiding behind human shields seems to be the terrorists' preferred mode of defense - the drone is a far better alternative than simply firing missiles and such blindly.
.

Consider this. If you were an Afghan and lived next door to a terrorist, would want to have someone blindly firing missiles in your direction, possibly taking out your home and family, or maybe even the entire town just to get one man, or would you rather they sent in drones with television cameras where they can specifically target the person they’re after? One drone pilot said that they even wait for the target’s family to leave the house before they fire a missile to take out the target. So the fact is, if you have to go to war, drones often SAVE lives.
.
So what is West jumping up and down about? This is one of the reasons that I often question the popular belief that West has such a powerful intellect. It’s one thing to have the ability to remember and regurgitate the words of dead White men, and yet another to be able to think for yourself and connect the dots. So on this issue, West is either grossly uninformed, has an inability to connect the dots, or he’s purposely trying to mislead the people  (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/us/drone-pilots-waiting-for-a-kill-shot-7000-miles-away.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&).

West: Obama Supporters Think That the President is Above Criticism

.

West and his supporters often claim that Black people, and many other Obama supporters, think that the President is above criticism. But notice how West’s "criticism" isn’t a discussion on policy at all. What West is calling "criticism," is actually grade-school slander. So he’s right. Serious-minded people don’t like that. He sounds like a 10-year-old. It’s silly, undignified, and disrespectful of the President of the United States, and through extension, the Black community, and, the American people.
.
One would think that anyone with just a little bit of intelligence would recognize that fact - and I think West, indeed, does understand that fact very clearly, his level of intelligence notwithstanding. In response to comedian Steve Harvey callingWest and Tavis Smiley "Uncle Toms," West said, "When you are trying to talk about issues that affect the people, name calling gets in the way," said Cornel. "Name calling is nothing but another weapon of mass distraction." Hmmmm. Then why is name-calling such a prominent part of his campaign against President Obama - and everyone else who disagrees with him? Why is it only a distraction when it’s directed at him (http://www.eurweb.com/2011/08/steve-harvey-ain%e2%80%99t-sorry-about-what-he-said-except-the-uncle-tom-thing/#eIRaiVcexmt73zug.99)?
.
Yet, West claims that there’s a "neoliberal" conspiracy to shutout the "Black prophetic Voice," and to subject those of the "Black prophetic tradition" to character assassination - I assume he’s referring to his own voice. If he is, I don’t see where he’s being shutout at all. In fact, it seems that every time I turn on the television I’m forced to watch him gesticulating and flappin’ his lips. And as for character assassination, his character didn’t have to be assassinated. When Obama failed to roll out the red carpet to the White House for him, he went into such a hissy fit that whatever character he might of had crawled out through his mouth and committed suicide.

.                                                           

What West actually sees is Black outrage over his indulging in the crabs-in-a-barrel tradition that was inbred in us as slaves. Black people recognize that many of President Obama’s Black critics, including Cornel West, aren’t really interested in policy; they’re just using public policy as a pretext for attacking the President himself, and they’re so steeped in their Willie Lynch mentality that they either don’t realize, or don’t care that they’re doing a grave disservice not only to the African-American community, but to Black people all over the world.

.
Because the fact is, many of Obama’s White conservative critics aren’t really interested in policy either. Like Obama’s Black critics, they have an ulterior motive as well, but their motive has nothing to do with crabs-in-a-barrel. Their primary motive is defending their claim of White superiority, and President Obama, in his soft-spoken, laid-back way, is dragging that claim through the mud. That’s why racists and conservatives hate him so.
.
Conservatives recognize, as we all should - and especially Black people - that President Obama is not just another president. President Obama is the most high-profile symbol of Black competence in the world. In addition, what he has accomplished is the perfect equivalent of a conquered slave rising to become the emperor of Rome - and, one of its greatest. So Barack Obama is going to be remembered by posterity as one of the greatest men in ALL of human history, and his story will be inspiring Black children a thousand years from now. 
.
Racists and conservatives recognize that fact, so naturally, they’re desperate to tear down Barack
Obama’s image, and build up the image of criminals like Ronald Wilson Reagan, and there is no excuse for Black idiots like Tavis Smiley, Cornel West, and Boyce Watkins not to recognize that fact. That’s what makes them so detestable. Instead of trying to help racists tear down this Black icon, they should be offering RESPECTFUL suggestions in an attempt to ensure that Barack Obama is remembered as one of the greatest presidents that this nation has ever had, even if they have to drag him up Mt. Rushmore kicking and screaming. But instead, they’re allowing themselves to be pointed to by racists who are claiming, "See, even Black people know he doesn’t live up to the standard of White presidents.
.

Thus, people like West are giving their own egos, self-service, and their Willie Lynch-inspired need to tear-down a Black historic icon priority over Black history, and the role that history is going to play in helping to raise the self-concept of the Black culture. In short, they’re trying to sabotage the self-esteem of Black children who are yet unborn. The mere thought of that kind of ignorant selfishness is absolutely disgusting - and especially when clothed in faux scholarship.
.

Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman: Obama among the most ‘successful presidents in American history’

.

Initially an Obama critic, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman now says,
.
"For much of the country, consequential presidencies are defined by a handful of landmark events. Years from now, when someone utters the name "Barack Obama," the thumb-nail sketch may very well be a president who rescued the nation from the Great Recession, overhauled a broken health care system and brought coverage to tens of millions of people, brought some accountability to Wall Street, and started the country on a path towards climate sanity, among other accomplishments.
.
It may seem odd to think about Obama now as a historical giant, but Krugman probably won’t be the last to see him as among the most "successful presidents in American history"  (http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/krugman-obama-among-the-most-successful-presidents-american-history).
   

Respectful Criticism of Obama’s Policies

.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with criticizing the policies of ANY president, including Barack Obama. But Cornel West is not interested in debating policy; he wants to play the "Dozens" against the first Black President of the United States, and that’s highly inappropriate. But for the past six years, that’s exactly what he’s been doing. He’s been behaving in a manner that’s been very unscholarly, irresponsible, and immature.
.
I’ve written articles criticizing some of President Obama’s policies myself. But when I do, I make absolutely sure that my criticisms are respectful, issue-specific, include suggestions on how the policies can be improved, and the reasoning behind my suggestions. I also send a copy to the President. In my article,"Could Obama Fall Victim to a Change We Can't Believe in?" (http://wattree.blogspot.com/2009/11/could-obama-fall-victim-to-change-we.html), I said the following:
.
"The President needs to recognize that there is nothing he can do that's going to make him acceptable to the GOP - that is, unless he agrees to appoint a Republican vice president, then resign. By now it should be clear that even while he's asleep, the GOP is trying to hatch plans to destroy him. So by spending more time thinking about them than he is his base, he's playing right into their hands.
.
"I mentioned power as one of the reasons that Cheney's trying to rush the president into Afghanistan. I wonder if the president has considered the fact that Cheney just might be trying to get him to make the same kind of mistake in Afghanistan that the Bush Administration made in Iraq in order to take the Iraq issue off the table for the 2012 election? If during the 2012 campaign America is bogged down in Afghanistan with the useless death of thousands of U.S. troops, all of a sudden, Bush, Cheney, and the GOP won't look all that bad. The President should think about that possibility, since the machinations of Dick Cheney makes Machiavelli look like a trainee.
.
"On the other hand, if the president would have the CIA go after Osama Bin Laden (through the use of intelligence, instead of blindly shooting at rocks), then pull out of Afghanistan, and make an agreement with the government of Pakistan to help them protect their nuclear arsenal, he'll be looking pretty good in 2012, and he won't have the deaths of thousands of U.S. troops to have to justify."
.
Now, I’m not making the claim that Obama followed my advice. That might have been his game plan from the beginning, but if he did, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, because he constantly solicits input from the public, and he probably got the very same advice from thousands of people - because if there’s one thing I’ve learned through the internet, it’s that there’s no thought that’s unique to one individual. And President Obama is a very smart man, so I’m sure that he recognizes that he and his staff don’t corner the market on ideas about public policy. But obviously people like Tavis Smiley and Cornel West think that they’re so brilliant that they believe what they think should be given top priority. They’re clearly a couple of wannabes who are absolutely outraged that the nation doesn’t share their high opinion of themselves.

CORNEL WEST - THE LIBERACE OF FAUX INTELLECTUALISM

.

Have you ever noticed that nearly every public pronouncement that spews from the mouth of Cornel West is literally dripping with racial innuendo? An example of that is his racist slander that MSNBC is the ‘Rent a Negro’ network - but of course, he wouldn't have said a word if they had rented him, because he's on there every chance he gets.
.
Cornel West spews more racist rhetoric than any Republican in America. The reason for that is, he’s essentially an entertainer who specializes in shock and race-baiting as his one and only routine. Clear evidence of that is he's over the top in everything that defines him - he's over the top in his personal image, in his overly gesticulative presentation, and his rhetoric is invariably inflammatory. Everything about him is a contrivance that’s specifically designed to bring attention to himself. The actual issues are meaningless to him. They're nothing more than a platform to launch his performance. In short, Cornel West is the Liberace of faux intellectualism.

CORNEL WEST ROUTINELY USES A FALSE "LOVE OF BLACK PEOPLE" TO SLANDER BLACK PEOPLE WHO OVERSHADOW HIM

.

West routinely uses policy differences as a pretext for making unsubstantiated and slanderous assertions about the character of the President and every other high-profile Black person who overshadows him:

1). President Obama is "a war criminal."
2). President Obama is "a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs . . ."
3). President Obama is "a black puppet of corporate plutocrats."
4). President Obama is "a Rockefeller Republican in Blackface."
5). President Obama "has a certain rootlessness, a deracination."
6). President Obama Is "Afraid Of Free Black Men."
7). President Obama is "a global George Zimmerman."
8). Dr. Harris-Perry is "a fake and a fraud"
9). Dr. Michael Eric Dyson "is a sellout."
10). Al Sharpton "is a sellout."
11). MSNBC is the "Rent a Negro Network."
.
Yet, when comedian Steve Harvey called him an Uncle Tom, he said, "When you are trying to talk about issues that affect the people, name calling gets in the way. Name-calling is nothing but another weapon of mass distraction."
.
In other words, the only time that name-calling is objectionable is when it's directed at Cornel West. Such unmitigated hypocrisy is mind boggling - but for once, he’s right. Not one of the above assertions is a disciplined, constructive, or scholarly assessment of the facts. On the contrary, they're the reckless and intellectually undisciplined rants of a bitter, self-serving, and severely discredited academic fraud.
.
For Cornel West there’s something ‘racially defective’ about every Black person who has the audacity to preempt Cornel West from the limelight. West has a propensity to try to denigrate the character of people whose been in the trenches for years, while West himself has done absolutely nothing beyond running his mouth. In order to gain clear evidence of that fact one simply has to ask oneself, what efforts have West made to try to improve the plight of the Black community?
.
1). Is he in the community teaching 3^rd grade to help ensure a better education for our children, or teaching at an Historically Black College or University to help "enlighten" young Black students?
.
No. He’s never taught at a school that more than 1% of Black students can even afford to have lunch in throughout his entire career. He'd rather gather the perks and props of teaching the children of the economic elites - the children of the very people who he CLAMS is the enemy, whenever he MANAGES  to do a "drive-by" in the hood to sell a few books.
.
2). Is he in the community teaching our young men to cherish, honor, and respect our Black women - the very womb of our culture?
.
No. He’s out trying to sell books filled with inane and misleading information, doing $30,000 an hour speeches, and trying to become a hip hop star.
.
3). Is he advising his good friend and business partner, Tavis Smiley, to be consistent with his sermons by being "accountable" to the community, and returning the money that he made on the Wells Fargo "Ghetto Scam" loans that he helped to herd over 30,000 poor minorities into?
.
Nope, not a peep.

About the Rise And Fall of Cornel West

I used to be a big fan of Cornel West. I’ll never forget how during the Clarence Thomas confirmation Cornel West’s remarks to some old condescending senator who started talking down to him and he said something to the effect of, "Wait a minute, senator. I have more education than you do." I loved that, because at the time I thought it was simply a Black man being assertive, and "standing his ground," as it were. But only later did I begin to recognize that the senator had played right into West’s hands, and what I took for assertiveness was merely an introduction to the Cornel West show. But before I became aware of his "shtick," he immediately became my main man.
.
But later on, after West started making reckless and questionable remarks, I began to research him, and it became increasingly clear that his reputation, and his entire persona, was all smoke and mirrors. Now, upon reflection and the insight derived from 20/20 hindsight, it’s become perfectly clear to me how West rose to prominence.
.
Cornel West came up during the time when their was a raging debate going on over the racist claim that due to the "artificial boost" that Black professionals were getting from affirmative action, they weren’t as competent as their White counterparts. And during that same time there was a debate going on over the claim by some White scholars that Black people were innately intellectually inferior to White people and the rest of the population.
.
As a result of those debates, and the fact that West had an association with White Ivy League universities, the Black community embraced him as the poster child for Black intellectual competence without taking the time to vet him like we should have. It was that mistake that has led to the flawed intellectual monster - and the total embarrassment to many in the Black community - that we have today.
.
Again, Cornel West has been before the public eye for over 35 years. Yet, can ANYBODY tell me even ONE universally recognizable pronouncement, quotation, or profound assessment of reality that the public would recognize as associated with Cornel West? Not even one. He’s made several valiant efforts to come up with memorable quotations, but they’ve ALL fallen on their face, because they were ALWAYS trite, simplistic, and even simple-minded - "The Santa Clausification of Nelson Mandela!!!?" Come on! He must have stayed up all night trying to come up with that inane contrivance.
.
The only reason we even listen to Cornel West is because the White establishment told us to. They hailed him as brilliant, but back when West was coming up, many White folks considered a Black man brilliant if he could read without moving his lips. A pseudo-intellectual is one who relates common knowledge as though he’s telling you something new. That’s Cornel West to a Tee. "Race Matters?" You’re kidding! It’s lucky West came along, because I never would have known that.
.
Here’s what one of his former students had to say about him in a letter to the Daily Princetonian:
.
May 12, 2003
.
"I know you've gotten lots of response on this, but, as a student who's taken Prof. West's class, I thought I might chime in. Here is a letter I sent to the Daily Princetonian.
.
"I took Prof. West's large lecture course, Philosophic, Religious, and Literary Dimensions of DuBois, Baldwin and Morrison, this semester hoping to experience first-hand the teaching of the man behind the hype. While I found the class entertaining, I did not find Prof. West to be particularly informative or critical in his approach whatsoever. Most lectures boiled down to animated though repetitive paeans to the authors, rather than a critical appraisal or contextualization of the material.
.
"Despite students' obvious appreciation of Prof. West's charismatic personality and gesticulating style, his acclaim stems from the histrionics he provides "on stage" in lecture, rather than the depth of scholarship displayed therein. If Princeton was looking to garner the publicity born of employing a fascinating personality, the "steal" of Prof. West was truly a coup. If it was hoping to improve the quality of the teaching faculty, I believe Harvard [that got rid of him] was the real winner in the exchange."
.
Jessica Manley '03
Princeton University
.
I'd say, that just about says it all.

*

A List of Obama Accomplishments

http://pleasecutthecrap.com/obama-accomplishments/

 
Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse
.
Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

Sphere: Related Content