"Barack, the Magic Negro" - a new song played on the Rush Limbaugh show

Dick Cheney's favorite racist played a little ditty last week about "Barack the Magic Negro." John Amato has the tape, it's hideous.

I'll be writing more about this tomorrow, and throughout the week. This is the guy Dick Cheney interviews with regularly. Coming just two weeks after Imus, Limbaugh knew exactly what he was doing - and he didn't care. Chris in Maine was kind enough to transcribe the song:

(sung by Al Sharpton I assume)

Barack the Magic Negro lives in D.C.
The L.A. Times they called him that
cause he's not authentic like me

Yeah the guy from the L.A. paper
said he made guilty whites feel good
they'll vote for him and not for me
cause hes not from da hood

see real black men like snoop dogg
or me or farrakhan
have talked the talk and walked the walk
not come and laid and won (not sure about this line)

Barack the Magic Negro lives in D.C.
The L.A. Times they called him that
cause he's not authentic like me
cause hes black but not authentically

Barack the Magic Negro lives in D.C.
The L.A. Times they called him that
cause he's not authentic like me
cause hes black but not authentically

some say barack's articulate
and bright and new and clean
the media sure love this guy
a white interloper's dream

but when you vote for president
watch out and dont be fooled
dont vote the magic negro in
cause...

(background singing the first 3 lines, while the singer is saying)

Cause I wont have nothing after all these years of sacrifice and I wont get justice this is about justice this is about justice, buffet, i dont have no buffet there wont be any church contributions there'll be no cash in the collection plate, no cash money, no walkin around money...

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Open Thread

Escorts and lying and wars, oh my! Read the rest of this post...

Condi's star fades as US policy disintegrates

The Sidney Morning Herald:

For all the razzle-dazzle of Rice's first year as Secretary of State, it is hard to think of any real and substantial achievements. Her "transformational diplomacy" in the Middle East has achieved virtually nothing. None of the region's leaders, it seems, takes her seriously. Bush's democracy project, which Rice embraced so enthusiastically, is virtually dead and buried.

And there are no good signs that any peace talks of any kind between Israel and the Palestinians are likely in the foreseeable future, despite Rice's frantic shuttle diplomacy in the region last month. Her decline mirrors the disintegration of the Bush Administration. Her biggest battle right now is to work out how she can defy a subpoena from a key congressional committee demanding she testify about how it was that the Administration, in the months before the invasion of Iraq, used a "fabricated claim that Iraq sought uranium from Niger".

Perhaps that's the real reason why she has remained silent as Bush has tried in vain to sell Americans on an Iraq policy that a majority of them are convinced cannot succeed.

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Open thread

Guh-orgeous out. Read the rest of this post...

Interior Department continues to look backwards for energy

Predictably, the Bush administration wants to drill for oil and gas offshore in the US. At the earliest this would not be possible until 2011 according to the Interior Department which then raises the question of why this and why not more emphasis on other energy sources? It's doubtful that natural gas along the American continental shelf can be drilled and sold for a profit, which again means massive taxpayer corporate welfare for energy companies.

If taxpayers are going to fund energy programs - and this subject should be debated - why should we throw hard earned money at energy sources that are the past instead of the future? Finding the energy sources for the future is understandable and to the benefit of an energy consuming country like the US. Same old, same old, will only benefit the existing players who have very little interest in new technologies and it will be the average American who will prop up these programs instead of spurring new growth and innovation. Our energy policy needs to climb out of the past. Read the rest of this post...

The declared rebuilding successes in Iraq are failures, too

Is there anything the Bush administration hasn't lied about when it comes to Iraq? Claims of success on rebuilding projects were lies:

In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.

The United States has previously admitted, sometimes under pressure from federal inspectors, that some of its reconstruction projects have been abandoned, delayed or poorly constructed. But this is the first time inspectors have found that projects officially declared a success in some cases, as little as six months before the latest inspections were no longer working properly.

The crazy thing is that they are lying about things that can be easily documented.

The Bush administration got away with so much because there was no oversight. Those days are so over. Read the rest of this post...

Sunday Talk Shows Open Thread

Condi Rice is making the rounds today. She's defying a Congressional subpoena, but she can make it to the Sunday shows. She's not under oath with the media. And, remember, "progress" isn't a talking point anymore for the Bush team.

McCain is on Fox, right where he belongs. He's become a caricature of himself.

Here's the lineup:

ABC's "This Week" -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Sens. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Sam Brownback, R-Kan.; actress Natalie Portman.

CBS' "Face the Nation" -- Rice; Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa.

NBC's "Meet the Press" -- Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., presidential candidate.

CNN's "Late Edition" -- Rice; Reps. Adam Putnam, R-Fla., and Jane Harman, D-Calif.; Hoshyar Zebari, Iraqi foreign minister; European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

"Fox News Sunday" -- Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and wife Cindy McCain.

Four years ago this week, Bush was gearing up for his big trip to the aircraft carrier to proclaim "Mission Accomplished"
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FDA raids tainted-pet food plants - 6 weeks after recall

Now that's prompt action! Whew! I think that everyone has learned a clear lesson with this experience, that if you sell tainted - and deadly - food, the FDA will eventually roll out of bed, have a cup of coffee, read the newspaper, think about the TV schedule for that night, take a serious nap, watch American Idol, go back to sleep and then wait a few weeks until there's a firestorm about the FDA being industry lapdogs and then - bam! - spring into action. How would we survive without the FDA? Oh that's right, we don't. People die because the FDA has been destroyed by the previous Republican congress.

Federal agents searched facilities of a dog and cat food manufacturer and one of its suppliers as part of an investigation into the widening recall of pet products, the companies disclosed Friday.

What makes this sorry excuse for action even worse is that these problems were known weeks before the actual recall, so the FDA was even slower to respond to this deadly problem that is now impacting the human food source. Read the rest of this post...

FDA change to chocolate definition hits a snag

Thanks to lots of online help and an overloaded comments registration system, the FDA has decided to extend the comments period for a few more weeks. It's obvious the factory chocolate makers will not be producing high quality but there still ought to be some minimum standards. The standard is already low, so if they want to diminish the good name of chocolate any more, let them create some new BS marketing name that tells consumers they are buying something that hints at chocolate but was produced with the finest chemical concoction science labs of the world could create. Mmmm, chemicals. Read the rest of this post...

Bush administration loses nearly $1 billion in Katrina aid

Absolutely sickening. More from the Washington Post. Read the rest of this post...