They Said the Same Thing

Why was it necessary for Barack Obama to say that the United States does not torture when George Bush has already said the very same thing? And why is it that at least for now people are willing to trust what Obama says?

Duh!, Tell Me It Ain’t So

Even after 4 years it seems the Bush Administration has not been able to think themselves out of this most simple of conundrums.

A federal judge ordered the Bush administration Tuesday to immediately free 17 Chinese Muslims from Guantanamo Bay into the United States, rebuking the government in a landmark decision that could set the stage for the release of dozens other prisoners in Cuba.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said it would be wrong for the government to continue holding the detainees, known as Uighurs (WEE’-gurz), who have been jailed for nearly seven years, since they are no longer considered enemy combatants. Over the objections of government lawyers who called them a security risk, Urbina ordered their release in Washington D.C. by Friday.
“Because the Constitution prohibits indefinite detentions without cause, the continued detention is unlawful,” Urbina said in a ruling that brought cheers and applause from a standing-room only courtroom filled with dozens of Uighurs and human rights activists.

Bad to the Bone

If your day needs a lift here is a series of pictures that will do it for you:

The Impeachment Hearings

Most Americans probably are not aware the House Judiciary committee is holding fake impeachement hearings. If ever the House Democratic leadership had a bad idea this is it. They (we) are going to jawbone about all of the bad things the Bush administration has been and is doing but not do a damn thing about it. There will be no vote to impeach the President or anyone else. If ever there was an attempt to showcase the weakness of the majority party in Congress this is it. It is like going out and telling the world my dad ass rapes me every night and then at the end of the day going back home to sleep in the same house with the same old man you had before you made your announcement to the world only to be ass raped again. How pathetic! And this is the party that wants us to put them in the lead once more?

The Conciousness of Growing Up

Barack Obama’s speech this past week held my attention for all of its 37 minutes worth. It far transcended any defense of his association with Pastor White. I’d say in the not too distant future it will take its place among the greatest speeches in American history. For many of us white folks it provides an inkling of what it is to be non-white in America. But it does so much more.
The shocker that really drove the point home for me though was another story on NPR’s Morning Edition this past Friday. It moved me as no other story in the StoryCorps series has done. Click on this link to go to the NPR site where you can listen to this story. here is the transcript:

Mary Ellen Noone’s great-grandmother was a petite woman — probably 95 pounds wet — but she was very strong, Noone says.

Pinky Powell, who was born before the turn of the last century, used to say that she could pick 100 pounds of cotton by lunchtime, Noone adds.

“She never smiled, but I could tell when I looked in her eyes that she really loved me,” she says.

One night, Noone was painting her fingernails when her great-grandmother said, “You know, there was a time we couldn’t wear no fingernail polish.”

To explain, Powell told a story from when she was a girl. Around 1910, Powell lived on a plantation in Lowndes County, Ala., where “she would wash and iron for this white woman.”

“One day the lady had thrown away some of her old perfume and nail polish that had dried up. So [Powell] took it home and added some ingredients to the nail polish that made it pliable,” Noone says. “Well, when Sunday came, she got all dressed up and painted her nails and put on that perfume and went to church.

“On Monday, she went to the general store, and when she was ready to check out, the white owner asked her, ‘What are you doing with your nails painted up like a white woman?’ He proceeded to pick up a pair of pliers and he pulled out my grandmama’s nails out of its bed one by one.”

Noone, 65, says she often wondered as a child why her great-grandmother’s nails were so deformed.

“Every time I look at enamel red finger polish, I have a flashback, and I see red,” Noone says. “I still have that anger inside of me that someone would have that control over one person just because they wanted to feel like a woman.”

Noone recorded her interview as part of StoryCorps Griot, an initiative that collects the recollections of black Americans. This segment was produced for Morning Edition by Michael Garofalo with help from Vanara Taing.