Redistricting and the Electoral College: Two Reasons Why Obama May Loose in 2012

Around the media world and blogosphere I incessantly see articles suggesting how Barack Obama has assured a victory in the 2012 Presidential election after his decision to go into Pakistan and kill Osama bin Laden. Words used to describe his eminent reelection included “sealed”, “slam dunk” and certain. This only demonstrated to me how little some black folk know about American government as if a bump from an assignation is all he needs.

Now I too, wrote a piece some weeks ago asserting six reasons why he had the inside road to winning in 2012. Although I stand by it, it was written before the raid on Osama bin Laden and more importantly, the actual redistricting of the GOP. Redistricting occurs once every ten years which just happens to be now.

Redistricting efforts will be very important in the 2012 Presidential elections since many states have become Republican dominated since the November 2010 elections which saw sweeping changes in legislations across the nation. The census shift that was documented last year will more than likely hurt Obama in 2012 since people have left traditional blue states for Red ones. Texas is one such case where it is expected to pick up three house seats and electoral college votes while Michigan, a traditional democratic state is expected to lose a house seat. In fact, census data indicate that states won by John McCain in 2009 are projected to gain six seats in congress, meaning states Obama won will lose six. New York and Ohio, also traditional democratic states are expected to lose congressional seats as well.

In North Carolina for example, the Republican-controlled state legislature looks to create new districts benefiting its party and are planning to try to re-draw the districts that would shift power to Republicans statewide by increasing GOP voting strength in non-Black regions. The reality is that November's elections put Republicans in control of dozens of state legislatures and governorships, just as states prepare to redraw their congressional and legislative district maps. Republicans now control the governor's offices and both legislative chambers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Indiana, Maine and Wisconsin. They are governors' in Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia and Iowa.

Those that assert his re-election is assured by the raid on the bin Laden compound are missing or lack the foresight to include the aforementioned and the electoral college on the selection of the Presidency. The Electoral College, administered by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), is a process that began as part of the original design of the U.S. Constitution. It was established to serve as a compromise between election of the president by Congress and election by popular vote. The political parties nominate electors at their State party conventions or by a vote of the party's central committee in each State and often recognize and are dedicated to their political party first.

Although Obama has a good chance of being re-elected, he may just as likely lose due to the census, gains in republican dominated states and the electoral college. He laso has on his side, a group of GOP hopefuls who for lack of a better word are comical to say the least. So if he doesn’t win and the projections of pundits based on one political/military event that he would, just remember their failure was due to a lack of knowledge of the constitution and middle school civics.

Bin Laden’s Legacy Will Always Live As Long As We Have TSA

Ding dong the witch is dead. Shot in the head and buried at sea so that he will not be enshrined in any living act or memorial. Some folks still have questions. Some folk say that we shot an unarmed man. My response to them is that no one on the planes or in the towers were armed either. Some folk say that we have removed him physically as well as his psychological presence. My response is that “we still have the TSA.

Yes, the way I see it, Bin Laden’s main legacy is a beast of our own creation, the establishment to of the TSA. You see, I remember not only a time when one could smoke on planes, but when you could take on toys, lighters, toothpaste, and was even served meals. Anything I could fit in my bags was acceptable and allowed on board as long as it was seen via X-ray. Plus I did not have to take off my shoes and no one was able to cop a free feel on my genitals under the false guise of “increased security;” as if my penis was going to come out and start smacking folks in the head, and choking them like one of Dr. Octopus’s robotic arms. I could even walk t9o the gate with my family.

In theory, the Secure Flight program operated by the Transportation Security Administration’s fulfills a key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission by assuming responsibility of watch list and providing aviation security. But I was never scared of emotions and this organization is the antithesis of respect and liberty.

The Transportation Security Administration uses full body scanner machines and also much more invasive pat-down searches. The say passengers have a right to opt out of the body scanners, but in some cases, TSA employees are not giving them this option. These machines use x-rays to create a naked outline of your body. If one does opt out, you may then be subjected to an invasive pat-down of your body at the hands of TSA screeners. These pat-downs are now much more invasive, allowing screeners to use the front of their hands and to touch areas around breasts and groins.

The TSA states that they are re-analyzing the radiation levels of X-ray body scanners installed in airports nationwide, after testing produced dramatically higher-than-expected results. The TSA, which has deployed at least 500 body scanners to at least 78 airports, originally said that these devices were safe. But new studies indicate that due to a prior “calculation error” in safety studies, results showed radiation levels 10 times higher than expected. Even Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society (ACS) expressed concern about radiation levels and refuses to enter the machines.

So the truth is Bin Laden will live forever via the TSA. So as long as they exist, six-year-old girls under TSA pat-downs will continue to be terrorized. As long as they remain, there will be more like the man from Detroit, who was humiliated and covered with his own urine after an enhanced pat-down by TSA officers recently happened at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

Yes Osama bin Laden may be dead but the TSA will continue to keep him alive in each and every airport in America.

Body Blow: How Obama killed the Bin Laden, the GOP and Neo-Cons with one Punch

Strange how things come full circle. Cartesian mathematics could not have had a better postulate for the circle than Obama’s terse maneuvers to take out the aging and dialysis requiring Osama Bin Laden. During the election, Obama made it clear that he was not opposed to all wars but rather Iraq was not a battle that targeted Al Qaeda. He made it clear that, if elected, he would focus on both Afghanistan and Pakistan. John McCain ridiculed him for adding Pakistan as his main focus.

Obama’s announcement that Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan, occurred just two years into his Presidency, successfully keeping his promise to capture and kill America’s public enemy number one.

Obama has always been underestimated by the GOP even when for 8 years, Bush falsely elevated terror alert levels to provide a fake penumbra the safety of America was priority number one. Especially when we consider that the Bush administration was warned by the CIA on Monday, August 6, 2001, that this attack by Al Qaeda was imminent and that he did nothing about it. The GOP incessantly suggest that Democrats are “soft” on terrorism, while the bloodiest attack on this country since Pearl Harbor happened on the GOP’s watch. Also recall how the Bush administration, swiftly flew members of the Bin Laden family out of the country before they could be questioned. Yes, how quick we are to remember that OBL was a member of the Saudi Royal family. I will not even introduce how Bush pulled our military out of Tora Bora when they were within an inch of capturing bin Laden.

Obama has even taken it from the left when he vowed to escalate the fight in Afghanistan – a tactic that placed more pressure on bin Laden. He alone directed Panetta to make it a priority to get Osama and personally authorized the hit.

Although a great week (he has put the birther movement to shame, visited the tornado ravaged south, and was a star at the Whitehouse comedy gala this past weekend). Yes he has been vindicated. The query now is if he will use this to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan and cut our military budget, and save Medicare and our economy?

I hope note, the first part that is and would like to see him use this model in Yemen to get American-born Anwar Al-Awlak. The president has demonstrated that actions speak louder than words. While Trump and the birthers were looking for birth certificate and threating to close own the federal government, Obama looked for and found bin Laden and kept it a secret with his stellar poker face.

Islamic Fundamentalism: Puritanism and Evangelicalism Revisited

They say that America was founded upon many tenants, of which the escape from religious persecution in Europe was one. As a result, where we live today has become the most religious diverse nation in the world. But insofar that this is historic truth, the query remains, is such our strength or weakness?

I make this assertion as a form of observation rooted both in historic accuracy and human action. The latter in many respects being feculent and absurd, in particular if what people display reflects what they actually think and feel. Especially as it regards the practice of Islam in modern America.

Personally, modern day Islam, or really I should state Islamic fundamentalism is equal too or the same as the Christianity that was presented that found and established this nation. This is why I am confused by protesting against an Islamic community center in NYC near or around ground zero, or anywhere in America to the proposed burning of books by zealots. This to me reaffirms the selfish edict, that we alone, are the chosen people of God – a lesson refuted via the practice of slavery and cemented via the blood of many before, and during the civil war.

The simple summary is that Islam is no more or less violent than Christianity. Just like some in Islam believe all outside of their belief are infidels, so was the view of the Spanish, who came to the new world, and forced with the Bible and threat of death the native Americans to accept Christianity (Catholicism) without question. But this lead to war and they eventually left New Mexico in 1680. This is one reason Pope Alexander VI in 1493, decreed that it was alright for Europeans to use non-whites in the name of God. Which was good for Bartolome de Las Casas, a Christian who came to the conclusion that African slaves were needed in Hispaniola after he had killed many of the indigenous people.

The lesson learned was that we cannot use political machinery to force our beliefs on others. A lesson the puritans would learn, albeit in theory it is purported that they left Europe to save Christianity from the politics of the European Church. Another reason for them as now. I can not discern any difference between Christianity during the founding of America for a group of people who saw themselves as the chosen people of God, or the fervor that arose out of the protestant reformation or evangelicals, or fundamentalist Islam and its predilection for Shari law.
Yep, the actions of John Winthrop are just like those of Osama Bin Laden. They both say the same thing: that if we are good by our God, that God will bless us. Just Like Billy Graham, for it was the Reverend Billy Graham and other white ministers who told Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights bus boycott that his actions were “not Christian and ungodly.”

The aforementioned examples tell me that all, regardless of religious affiliation are off base – for intolerance and absolute conformity is never good or godly. Unfortunately, this is what defines both Islam and Christianity historically globally. Yes the intolerance of Islam by American Christians and fundamentalist Muslims hatred of the West are the same. Just as slavery showed that whites perceived themselves selfishly as the chosen people of God, I see the same today. How the perspicacity of scripture is used to suggest how some selected few, if different is less than others. Unfortunately regardless of what men say, no God would assert such a premise. The bottom line is that truth fears no light and no man can love God yet orate hate for his brother at the same time, for it is written that he that lives by the sword, shall die by the sword, and both Christianity and Islam should take note.

will we ever learn

Ok, if I am not mistaken, we have just passed the eight year mark of being in Afghanistan. Yet our idiot politicians and media dumb fcks seem to not understand or know what is being done and worse, what should be done. They are so caught up on this us versus them mentality among themselves, that they, like a wine sauce, have been reduced to bickering and pointing fingers among each other.

But such is the nature of supremacist, who tend to take the Alexander Pope purview of the world as being the center of the Universe. As a former Western power attempting to reclaim our global throne, we don’t get it and miss the picture completely. Albeit we talk a good game regarding a geopolitical strategy that includes Pakistan when we speak of Afghanistan, our policy and actions state otherwise and we have no firm objective for we have not or cannot learn from the lessons of history or geography.

To begin, Pakistan was formed in 1947, after India gained independence from Great Britain. as a homeland for India's Muslim population. I even remember when it was divided into East and West Pakistan. What we call Pakistan today is really West Pakistan since in the early 1970s, East Pakistan succeeded after war to become what is now Bangladesh. A similar history can be said with respect to its neighbor Afghanistan. What is consistent about both nations is their history of colonial interference and the impact of imperialism, as well as the presence of Muslim Nationalism. Add to that a history of incessant marginalized citizenship by the west and the problem begins.

First, in both countries, the majority ethnic group is the Pashtun (Muslims) and Pakistan was founded on the equation Pakistani=Muslim. This is our problem for what we see is not seen by the folks who live in both countries for they cannot visualize, and rightly so, the Taliban being terrorists in their own land. Not to mention we have yet to put any substantive efforts to get the figure head of Kabul, Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari together on the same page.

What we as imperial and colonialist nations of the past fail to integrate into present problem solving regarding the region is that both Afghanistan and Pakistan’s political mode of operandi has never been accountable, especially with respect to international and geopolitical measures for the central dogma for both is based on radical Islamic doctrine. We never speak in terms of politics and solutions just in aggression and ego. Pakistan’s largest mainstream religious political parties, the Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamaat-e-Ulema-Islami, freely support the Taliban openly, even against the country's own military. And we cannot complain for we in addition to the Saudi’s started this with our anti-Soviet mujahedeen movement in Afghanistan some 25 to 30 years ago.

America really aint concerned about winning the war as it is on the image of winning. Which shows me we learned nothing from Russia’s adventure for not only was its image damaged by getting it’s ass whupped but also for wasting billions of dollars it spent during the war. In fact it could be suggested the ferocity and venom the US and NATO faces there currently is a consequence of the hatred that developed for richer western nations. Strange aint it: we gave the Afghan guns and anti-aircraft missiles that shoot and kill our troops today. Just like the Russians who went into Afghanistan in 1979, we too want to influence the region politically.

Truth be told Hamid Karzai aint jack and only has power and control, if that, in the capitol. The rest of the country is under the Taliban and tribal Klan leaders. I just wonder if 200 to 300 thousand soviet and Afghan troops, funded by heroin loot ,could not defeat the Pashtuns in ten years, what can we and NATO forces do?

We will never get it, in math we have least common denominators, not in American politics for all politicians, especially if they are Republican or Democrats are the same. Truth is that the Pashtun will always support their own, which are the Taliban as history has shown us. Alexander the Great conquered Afghanistan but had to leave as did the colonialist East India Company after an unprofitable occupation. And I won’t even mention the Persians (Iranians) or the Mongols. Again, we seem not to know history or even worse learn from history. We look for Osama bin Laden like the British did searching the Fakir of Ippi for more than 20-years - who was never caught and died in 1960.

We call our mission "anti-terrorist" and the people in the aforementioned countries see it as anti-Pashtun. They see it as another Anglo-Afghan War like that in 1880. The Russians did not plan or prepare adequately for their mission in Afghanistan nor did they study or learn from history. And like the Russians, we still cant connect history or its lessons with the influential role of Islam in the Afghan and Pakistan social order. We, the US fail to see or connect that our concerns in both nations, especially Pakistan is associated with the aforementioned. The recent increase in attacks, like the car bomb last week outside the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan's capital demonstrates the resolve of the people connected to the area; not the Taliban. In 1989, Soviet forces left Afghanistan. Billions of dollars had been spent annually in Afghanistan and at one point there were at least 200,000 troops there yet they were not able to defeat the mujahidin we train and funded.

Currently, we and NATO side with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who will get a second term when we know it was full of fraud. This is why Obama's Afghanistan is even more tumultuous. He supports the ineptness of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who in order to have won, besides cheating, had to deal with corrupt politicians and "warlords" to win the recent elections. This means that Pashtuns, who we know hate the Taliban, will deal with their brothers and family any way even if the disagree politically about the future vision of both countries because the have even more disdain for ANY Army backed by foreign nations, even the US.

Yet we make it all worse by giving the Pakistani government loot and arm twisting, to wage battle against their own kind, the Pashtun people. We the same country that funded and supplied the Taliban and Pashtun to overthrow an Afghan government buttressed by Russia. In fact the Clinton White House encouraged Pakistan to help put the Taliban in Kabul. All we really care about are natural resources and to make Afghanistan and Pakistan lever arms of our geo-political goals.

Again, I don’t blame Obama, but I note his ineptness and ignorance. Now true he is not as ignorant as the former president, but ignorant none the less. Afghanistan has never been colonized and in their eyes they see, the Pashtuns, no difference in the borders of the two nations western colonial and imperial powers created. We just don’t see or get it.

im with dumb f**k

I hope that none of us forget that we got folk over seas battling on two fronts: Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems sometimes as if we do, myself included. Being more concerned with Nick Cannon marrying some singer or Bow Wow turning drinking age, or even a trivial personal problem or a night out at the club with our folks or a woman acting out on a train because she has not taken her medication. But too, there is nothing wrong with that for different things hold the interest of different folk.

I just want to remind folks that aint nothing has changed, except we are myopic, and maybe more interested in folks in suites (Hillary included) running for political office than the fact that folks are still returning home in plastic bags or maybe even alive, with their leg or arm lost some where on a road in a place called Kirkuk or Kabuoom or Mosul or Tikrit. I would even speculate that most of us couldn’t name five cities out side of the capitals of both countries le alone tell which of the aforementioned is not in Iraq. But our self-induced ignorance is a divagation I will save for another day.

Maybe our nescience is why we don’t notice or hear about Osama bin Muhammad bin 'Awad bin Laden anymore. The way they talked him up, you would have though Jones was the New Dillinger or Baby Face Nelson – public Enemy number one. I don’t even see his picture up in Post Offices. Once upon a time I did.

I just wonder why? I wonder if he is even mentioned in the back rooms of the Pentagon or White House any more. All I know is that we have not found him but boasted we will. This is not a slap in the face of our military personnel. Nope we have some of the bravest, smartest and efficient service men and women in the world and will forever have such. They carry out their task with expert precision and do it with out one complaint. Yes, they are true professionals, more so that I. However, I do wish they had some help on the behalf of military intelligence. Makes me think that the combination of both words is an oxymoron.

I know some folks say all black folk look a like, maybe the same is true for Arabs and Muslims, maybe this is why they have yet to locate Osama. Then we know that Osama Jones is hiding in a remote region of Afghanistan, maybe even Pakistan. Both of which are places where we have goo-gobs of military personnel and the assistance of folk who supposed to be our allies.

Maybe I am wrong. But I don’t think so. Like I said, the folk we have fighting on our behalf are smart, very smart. But military intelligence, the question is still up for grabs to me. I mean it did take them about 5 years to find Eric Rudolph and we knew where he was plus he was state side. It also took them 11 years to find the Uni bomber. Maybe I just think too much and just need to stop and have me a shot of Tequila with hot sauce.