I Can't Wait To See Chiraq, But I Can Wait To See Chiraq

I've long been a fan of Spike Lee movies. Now, in that time, I've seen some of Spike's movies that are great (Malcolm X and Do The Right Thing) and some ones that, to me, were not so good (Red Hook Summer). I've also watched some underrated films, by Spike (Get on the Bus and School Daze).

That all being said, I look forward to seeing the movie Chiraq. Obviously, the title is provocative. But, I look forward to absorbing the actual messages within the film that many of Spike's movies feature.

As I was taking advantage of my Amazon Prime account, the movie popped up as a pay film. Apparently, I will be able to watch it as part of my subscription next month. I am willing to wait a month, but I look forward to seeing it.

Movies with this level of controversy make me even more interested -- especially when it comes to Spike Lee movies. A lightning rod for controversy throughout his career, Spike knows how to generate some hype -- intentionally or unintentionally -- for his projects.

Player Hatin' On Michelle Obama's Trip To Spain

When I think of all the haters coming out to take shots at first lady Michelle Obama for her trip to Spain it makes me laugh.

First off, I could care less where she goes on her vacation. It's her right to go on a vacation and, if she so chooses to go to Spain, then more power to her.

If the haters don't like it then they should get off their asses and do something so they can make such a trip ... and quit hatin' on the first lady. Rush Limbaugh, of course, wasted little time as he took his customary racial shot at Michelle Obama. Leave it to Limbaugh to turn someone taking a vacation into something that gives him a green light to introduce slavery, reparations, yadda, yadda, yadda...

It's a manufactured controversy.

They've accused him of going on apology tours.

They're crying these days about an Obama trip to Spain.

They cried over his trip to Germany.

They cried when the Obamas went to New York.

They cried when Obama went to Hawaii to visit his sick and dying grandmother.

Basically, they want him to stay in the White House and maybe go to Chicago once in a while.

So, get used to it Obamas.

This is the kind of haterism that exists these days.

It all got me to thinking about a blast from the past.

This whole nontroversy reminds me of the opening from the 2Pac rap, "Holla at Me." (Parental guidance suggested):

Niggas out there jelous cuz we be bailin' with Death Row
They try to playa hate
but they can't fade us tho'
We be mobbin' through tha neigborhood
Yeah
with that funky sound (so funky)
we be throwin' down)

That's right Michelle ... keep throwin' down. Let the haters hate and let the players play.

Rep. Steve King Smears President Obama, Bashes Great City Of Chicago

Rep. Steve King, who is one of the darlings of the far right who hails from the state of Iowa, is on the attack again using all of the old and tired clichés about President Obama, Chicago, the Chicago Machine, gangsters, Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers … yadda, yadda, yadda.

Apparently, Rep. King has no new materials and instead resorts to the same tired and weak attacks against President Obama.

KING: Valerie Jarrett is a product of Chicago politics. This is power politics through Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama, son and daughter of Saul Alinsky, linked up with Mayor Daley, the one that actually hired Michelle Obama and put her into that link, which may have well been the link that put Barack Obama into that machine. The Chicago Machine, we know what it is. Someone called it gangster government. In Chicago, you have gangster government and Valerie Jarrett’s been in the middle of that. She’s been brokering power for a long time. And the link she has with William Ayers, and other nefarious characters in Chicago tells us what we’ve got in the White House itself. I mean she’s there. There are a number of links directly to Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett, and they go back to Chicago.

This guy is a nut, who is attacking Chicago to score political points with the far right (which he should already have in his back pocket if this talk is indicative of anything).

If President Obama, Valerie Jarrett, Rahm Emanuel, Michelle Obama and others are a product of Chicago politics then does that make Steve King truly representative of Iowa politics?

I certainly hope not, but there are some Iowans who continue to vote for this clown to represent them in front of the citizens of the United States of America.

Here is one of the comments in response to the article:

Equalness4all wrote:

What concerns me is the lack of civility we have in discourse, political and otherwise. I believe that it is healthy to disagree, and argument is a good thing, but hate speech seems to be the rule rather than the exeception. Don’t like someone, call them a name, assassinate their character, spread viscious gossip about them. These things can always be attributed to having heard it from someone else. It is so much easier to protray everybody else as the bad guy than to stand up and offer something for the good of the cause. Mr. King’s double speak is also fascinating, unfortunately he is not alone in doing this. Just look at the quote above. “There are a number of links to Chicago…and they go back to Chicago.” Huh? Really intelligent banter. People in Iowa deserve better, people in the country deserve better.

The people of Iowa may deserve better, but apparently Steve King represents them well enough that they support him and his divisive talk.

Some In The U.S. Ignore, Don’t Understand, Or Don’t Care About Olympic Spirit … Unless Their Party Has Presidency

None of these conservatives would have been cheering if the United States of America had lost a chance to host the 2016 Olympics … if John McCain had won the presidency. I suspect there might have been some politics from a few on the left, but I don’t see any way that people on the left would have been cheerleading as our nation, the United States of America, lost an opportunity to host the Olympic Games of 2016. The official U.S. bid, which would have hosted the game in Chicago, failed … much to the stunning joy of so many on the right wing of the political spectrum.

Roland Martin, a popular CNN contributor, wrote a column about the events surrounding the U.S. losing the chance to host the Olympic Games.

Wrote Martin:

I can recall crying along with millions of Americans when our hockey team beat the Russians and won the hockey gold in 1980. Where were those games? Lake Placid, New York. Euphoria spread all across the nation, not only because we beat the mighty Russians, but also because it took place on American soil.

When Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton dominated the 1984 Olympic Games, we all beamed with pride because they represented the United States on American soil in Los Angeles, California.
And when Michael Johnson stormed around the track to obliterate the world record in the 200-meter dash (since broken by Jamaica’s Usain Bolt), we relished the win as he took a victory lap around the stadium in Atlanta, Georgia.

Americans love home field advantage, and we always desire to show the rest of the world what we are made of.

Many of these hate-driven conservatives cheering the defeat of the U.S., have disgraced an Olympic spirit they could not possibly understand or know – unless one of their own is president.

It has been much easier for them to cheer against the country, bash our president and trash the great city of Chicago.

CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/03/martin.olympics.defeat/index.html

Those Opposed To The United States’ Bid To Host Olympics Used Strategy

Those who were anti-United States of America, and the country’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics, cheered as our nation lost its bid to host the Games. To try and hide their anti-U.S. sentiment, the conservative forces of opposition have tried to make President Barack Obama the face of the bid and to make Chicago the face of the bid. Mr. Obama is our president and Chicago is not a foreign country … it is in the U.S. and this was our nation’s official bid to host the Games. Those who opposed the Olympics (the ones who cheered) seem to be anti-U.S. It’s one thing not to want the Games, but to cheer at our nation’s failure speaks lowly of some of these hate-driven individuals.

Here is another example from Media Matters for America:http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200910020043

More Hate-Driven Republican Reaction Over U.S. Losing The Olympics

Here is a “Republican strategist” named Rich Galen making fun of the United States of American failing to win the right to host the 2016 Olympics.

“Other than people who like to cheer, ‘We’re No. 4! We’re No. 4!’ I don’t know how this is anything but really embarrassing,” Republican strategist Rich Galen said, adding that Obama’s failed pitch will probably be the joke on Capitol Hill for weeks to come.

“Given the last two months starting with the August recess and all of the issues that surrounded that, I think that the White House staff, the senior staff needs to get together somewhere and figure out how they are going to fix this, because they are in a deep slump,” he said.

Here is House Minority Leader John Boehner (to Politico) taking a cheap shot at President Obama who was trying to bring the Olympics to the United States of America.

“Listen, I think it’s a great idea to promote Chicago, but he’s the president of the United States, not the mayor of Chicago. And the problems we have here at home affect all Americans, and that’s where his attention ought to be.”

Where is the pride in America from these Republicans and why the hate for Chicago all of a sudden?

Minority Leader Boehner should know that Chicago is not a foreign country. It is in the United States of America. President Obama is president of the United States of America.

We know there are plenty of problems here … maybe Republicans should have worked harder during the last eight years to take care of them when they had the White House and maybe the GOP should cooperate a little to finally get health care taken care of.

This president has enough energy to take on a lot of tasks.

President Obama was a great ambassador for this country (fighting to rebuild bridges destroyed during the cowboy-diplomacy era) and all of us should have been behind him.

Some of us were not and you have to wonder what the real reason for that truly is.

Fox Forum Blogger Noel Sheppard Continues To Flog A Dead Horse

Noel Sheppard is concerned about the so-called liberal bias in the media (while writing for Fox which is perhaps the most blatantly biased name in the major media).

Here is how Sheppard’s blog started:

“The greatest threat to America is not necessarily a recession, or another terrorist attack. The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias.”

So said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) last week as he announced the creation of a new Media Fairness Caucus, telling NewsMax, “If the American people can’t get good information, can’t get the facts, and can’t make good decisions, then we simply don’t have a viable democracy.”

Although folks in the liberal blogosphere predictably ridiculed Smith’s comments, any honest assessment supports his concerns about the continually declining journalistic standards employed by today’s news media.

Anyone affiliated with Fox News should look inward before looking outward to discuss “declining journalistic standards.” It’s laughable or Fox to criticize anyone for “declining journalistic standards.” Fox News conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly recently was caught lying about CNN’s coverage of the murder of Pvt. William Long. He waged a war of hate and demonization against Dr. George Tiller that has barely skipped a beat since Dr. Tiller was assassinated by a crazed anti-abortion nut. That is just one example. The first part of that statement is too idiotic and nutty to even warrant a response. Also, the American people are smart enough to get their news from sources they trust (even if one of those sources happens to be right-wing-leaning Fox News).

Sheppard, as you might expect, continued:

Before casting this aside as so much conservative posturing, ask yourself whether Barack Obama would be president today if the press had fully vetted him back in 2007 when he first announced his candidacy.

More to the point, would a junior senator from Illinois have beaten Hillary Clinton if the news media prior to the first primaries and caucuses had fully exposed his:

• Connections to domestic terrorists William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn
• Connections to the Trinity Church and Reverend Jeremiah Wright
• Connections to corrupt real estate developer Tony Rezko
• Totally unimpressive tenure as an Illinois state senator and U.S. senator?

If the answer is “No,” the press elected Barack Obama — NOT the American people, which is indeed a far greater undermining of our democracy than any attack that has ever been made against this country as well as any economic calamity that’s befallen it.

More of the same old tired stuff that Republicans tried to shove down our throats during the election. No matter how much all of the aforementioned issues were touched on (by all corners of the media) conservatives continue to cry that it was not enough. The American people rejected the ridiculous notion of guilt-by-association politics. Bitter Republicans continue to cling to their failed tactics of the their failed bid for the White House in 2008.

The press did not elect President Obama. The people of this nation overwhelmingly elected President Obama with a huge mandate. The whiners on the left are mad because their efforts to paint Barack Obama as some angry black radical who is a hater of America and a friend of a terrorist failed miserably.

The American people wanted ideas rather than demonization.

The Republicans, and bitter people like Noel Sheppard who reach back into the past to chase ghosts (while laughably assisting the Bush-Cheney “Save-Our-Legacy Tour and apologizing for all the previous administration’s numerous missteps and shortcomings), didn’t get it then and still don’t get it now.

Fox Forum:
http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/06/09/noel-sheppard-is-liberal-media-bias-a-greater-threat-than-terrorism-or-recession/