There is a billboard on I-35 in Minnesota that is leaving people with quite a few questions all because it ask one simple question about former president George Bush:

My resounding answer:  Ummmm, hell to the naw!

Nobody seems to know who paid for the billboard or why they would pay for it.  Is it satire, is it a joke, or is somebody really serious about this?  I mean, obviously, they can’t possibly be serious about it, but you never know where people’s heads are at these days.

The questions this billboard raises for me are: Why would you even ask?  Do you miss being lied to ?  Do you miss mispronounced words and slightly incoherent sentences?  Do you miss nobody paying attention while Wall Street runs wild?  Do you miss randomly made up reasons for wars?  Do you miss enough funding to occupy Iraq, but not enough funding to provide emergency aid or to run FEMA?  Where were they going with that?  etc.

I hope this billboard doesn’t start popping up in other places.

In case you missed it and don’t feel like watching the whole thing, watch this 5 minute version from NYMag:

Yo, my man O-Brizzy is a straight comedian. He kept it so real. I appreciate that, and the American people did too; about 80% of the people who watched had a positive reaction to the presidents speech. I guess they “almost forgot he was black.” *blank stare*…ehh thanks Chris Matthews:

Michael Eric Dyson gets a big “C’mon Son!” for this comment.  Once again, can President Obama run the country?  He can deal with every race thing under the sun when he is caking from all of his book deals and university graduation speeches after he is done being president.  All y’all need to calm down.  You too, Michael Eric Dyson.  Great way to make a point about dealing with race in a positive and constructive way by using de-constructive stereotypes.

Sometimes I wonder if there will ever be a time when this president will be able to just do his job.  I seems like every couple of months President Obama has to accept an apology from somebody for some race related comment or he gets disrespected in a way that no other president would have, and ,although its not explicit, race is usually the reason.  It seems like the man can’t win.  For godsakes he is trying to run the country.  If you were on an airplane, would you do things to undermine the pilot because the way he looks makes you uncomfortable?  No, you would hope that he gets the plane safely on the ground and if he needed your help you would pitch in if possible.  Yet, we are all in this country together and we have people who are so stubborn they would sacrifice the good of everybody just to undermine the leader.

Its unfortunate that Senator Harry Reid, who is right now in the process of trying to forge a health care reform bill that will actually have a chance of being adopted, made the comments he did that have now been published in the book, Game Change.  In a private conversation Senator Reid stated that he believed that presedential candidate (at the time) Obama would have a chance of winning because he is “light-skinned” and doesn’t speak with a “Negro dialect, unless he wanted to.”  Reid is definitely in the wrong and reckless for his word choice. However, I have to wonder if he was speaking about the viability of an African-American candidate because, in that context, his comments make sense although they are insensitive.  Reid should have been a lot more choosy about his words, but we can’t say that he lied.

Now the Republicans are all over Reid’s comments, made over two years ago, and some in his state are calling for him to step down.  Ummm, excuse me, but none of you have asked Republicans to step down for making racists comments, and there have been more than a few.  Its atrocious how they keep forcing controversies and contentions to distract people from the real issues and many times  race has been the main distraction.  Reid has apologized.  Obama has had to take time out of his busy job as Commander-in-Chief & head policy maker to publicly accept the apology.  Let Reid’s constituents decide if they’re unhappy with him and let President Obama do his job.

The above title in not a joke. Rudy Giuliani really and truly did say the following this morning on Good Morning America:

“What he [Obama] should be doing is following the right things that Bush did – one of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama. Number two, he should correct the things that Bush didn’t do right. Sending people to Yemen was wrong, not getting this whole intelligence thing corrected.”

Ooook. Excuse me dumbass, but what about September 11, 2001? Or are we not considering that a domestic attack on our country anymore? WTF, is this the same Rudy Giuliani who based his WHOLE presidential campaign behind 9/11? And besides that… HELLO, were the anthrax scares or Richard Reid shoe bombing not considered “attacks” either??  Cmooonnnnn. No domestic attacks under Bush? Fuck outta here!

Obama is really all about diversity.  The President has appointed more people from diverse backgrounds than any other administration.  Add to the list of diversity a Transgender woman, Amanda Simpson.  Simpson has been appointed to the position of Senior Technical Advisor to the Commerce Department.

Of course, as has been the case with most of President Obama’s appointees whether they are of a diverse background or not, Simpson is well qualified.  Simpson has been a test pilot, has worked in the aerospace industry for over 30 years, ran for the Arizona House of Representatives (but lost.  I coulda told you that you would lose that one, honey.  Arizona is a red state), and was a Director in Advanced Technology Development for Raytheon.  When she started career she was a he and within the last few years she… umm… became a she.  Simpson says that she is “truly honored” about her appointment.

Two watchdog groups have been in the process of suing the George W. Bush White House for faulty e-mail record keeping.  By Federal law White House administrations are suppossed to keep records of all communications that are done for official business, including e-mails.  The Bush White House claimed that they had kept records of all e-mail communications during the 8 years of the Bush presidency, but ummm, that must not be the case because computer technicians have uncovered 22 million “lost” e-mails most of which were simply miscategorized.

DAMN! This is the federal government!  It makes me feel a little uncomfortable that they didn’t do something as simple as set up e-mail rules for categorizing and archiving messages and didn’t buy some really big hard drives.  I mean, I’m no computer technician or anything, but I just feel like this a problem that can be fixed once its discovered.  In 2003 the White House actually tried to bring in Microsoft to find some of the lost e-mails.  However, the issues weren’t brought up publicly until the 2006 investigation over the outing of a CIA operative.  So I guess in the meantime they just sorta kept losing e-mails?  Anyways, the found e-mails will undergo an archiving process and the ones deemed okay for the public will be made public by 2014.

Aware of the issues, the Obama administration is making great strides to address saving e-mail communication.  President Obama, please setup your auto-archive up so that you don’t find yourself dealing with this ish a full year after you’re out of office.

As President Obama goes to Copenhagen to meet with other national leaders at the international conference on climate change the EPA released a statement saying that there is major and compelling scientific evidence that emissions of greenhouse gases from cars and factories are greatly endangering our health.

The EPA’s statement clears the way for Obama to go to Copenhagen and promise to the other world leaders that the United States will actively come up with a plan to limit pollution and help him to ask the other leaders to do the same.  Also, the statement might encourage Congress to take quicker action on regulations before the Obama administration makes the first moves towards new laws and limits on greenhouse emissions.  Both the administration and Congress have a lot of concerns to take into consideration, like the economic costs new regulations would probably impose upon companies and consumers, but according to the new EPA statement, not making moves on regulations will impose greater costs and risks to health.

It might be a little premature to put out a reminder, but honestly I am anticipating the premier of The People Speak on the History Channel like a 14 year old girl waiting to see Twilight New Moon (Team Eddie, Team Jacob… Team Get-the-ef-out-of-my-face-with-that-BS).  The People Speak is the highly acclaimed film based upon A People’s History of the United States and Voices of a People’s History, two books by Howard Zinn, who also narrates the film.  The buzz on The People Speak has been building since the summer of 2008.  Since then it has been drawing major props at a number of film festivals and college tours.

The People Speak is a series of performers (actors, poets, musicians) performing narratives and speeches straight out of some of the United States’ most pivotal moments in history, times when people lent their voices to efforts for change and justice.  The film highlights that although the U.S. has had some pretty tough times, there have been tough, passionate, and courageous people there to rise to the occasion.

Another great thing about this film is that the performers aren’t just random, nameless performers or just a bunch of anthropologists (no offense, anthropologists.  I’m just saying you guys are in those documentaries sometimes looking like you’re kinda from another planet).  The performers are legit some of the best of our times.  Performers include Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Marisa Tomei, Lupe Fiasco, Sean Penn, Rosario Dawson, Benjamin Bratt, Don Cheadle, Morgan Freeman (of course)… and so many more.  The list of people in The People Speak reads like a list of red carpet celebs at the Oscars or Emmys.  Sooo… needless to say I’m pretty excited about this.  Get Fresh U.S. History 101 first assignment: Watch The People Speak on December 13th at 8pm on the History Channel.  Extra credit if you tweet a little bit about it.  Watch the below trailer.  I promise you’ll get chills.

Unless you don’t watch TV and don’t have informed Twitter friends, you know that Obama addressed the military and the U.S. about his strategies and plans for troops in the Iraq and Afghanistan from West Point Military Academy.  Of course, the speech was well thought out and strong (we now expect nothing less from Obama).

However, the news is bittersweet.  For Iraq Obama plans to remove all troops by the end of 2011, saying that the removal is a “testament to the character of the men and women in uniform.”  He then outlined the numerous (and scary) challenges that are being faced in Afghanistan.  The country is still facing control by the Taliban, (by the way… gotta love the way Obama says Taliban.  Cracks me up everytime) the extremist Afghan government that completely controlled Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks and protected Al Qaeda.  Through review of the situation in Afghanistan, Obama and his advisors believe that in its current state Afghanistan would not be able to stand on its own.  As a result of the challenges Obama said, addressing the military, “as your Commander in Chief I owe you a mission that is clearly defined.”  The mission calls for 30,000 more troops to go to Afghanistan with the goal of leaving after 18 months.

Obama’s major point throughout the speech was to reinforce that he wants to set up Afghanistan for transition to stable independence.  He even took a moment to address the people of Afghanistan.  Looking directly at the camera he stated, “we have no interest in occupying your country.”

Additionally, Obama turned around and put the price of occupation in context, noting that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost more than $1 trillion, which has basically been debilitating to domestic programs in the wake of the recession.  For this reason, Obama does not want to leave military presence in Afghanistan open ended.  ”The nation that I am most interested in building is our own,” he said.

As always political corruption seems to be a non-stop issue, but surprisingly there aren’t very many concrete laws on the books to address political corruption and how it may be prosecuted.  The ban on honest services fraud is the one law that is most utilized for getting these politicians that try to sale political seats, take bribes from friends and use unfair influence is very general and generic, which actually kinda works if you think about it because you never know where politicians are heading with their corruption.  However, laws that are very broad and general aren’t really Constitutional.

The thing is, one of the people bringing this law to question is former Enron executive Jeff Skilling who claims that he wasn’t trying to cheat customers, he was just trying to save his company (riiight, save his company by cheating customers?).  Another person who could benefit if the vague honest services law is struck down in Blagojevich.  If the court were to strike down the law it will definitely have to ask congress to come up with more and more specific laws to make sure that these corrupt politicians and business men do not find anymore loopholes.

A University of Chicago research study might have uncovered something interesting and a little disturbing.  Researcher Eugene Caruso led a study in which some pictures of President (then candidate) Obama were darkened and some were lightened, while some were kept as is.  The photos, 16 in all, were shown to students and they were asked which ones were most representative of Obama.

Turns out that liberal participants liked their Obama light and conservative participants liked their Obama dark.  Additionally, thinking that the light Obama was most representative of the real Obama was a good indicator of if they were going to vote for Obama in the presidential elections, which were soon after the study.  The researchers even controlled for race and political party of the participants.  Which means 1.) Didn’t matter if you were black or white.  Light Obama is probably still your favorite if you like Obama and if you don’t like Obama then you think he’s dark. 2.) Are conservatives still afraid of darker skinned people or is this one of those “what came first…?” things?  3.) Any person who might remotely remember anything from a stat class (and I barely remember anything) knows that correlation does not equal causation, so you should probably take the results of this study with a grain of salt.

Interestingly, the researchers did the same study with photos of John McCain and found no correlation between skin tone perception and political leaning.  Turns out its not “light so its got to be right”… its left seems to like the light.  To test this further the researchers would like to do the same study with a bi-racial conservative to see if conservatives will think their politician is light because they agree with him.

Hip-Hop activist Erica Ford, CEO and founder of Life Camp Inc., has partnered with the Rev. Al Sharpton to lead “National Day of Outrage,” a nationwide protest against violence on Nov. 23.

Sharpton will lead a rally in Atlanta while other gatherings are scheduled to take place in Houston; Cleveland; Philadelphia; Boston; Syracuse; Savannah; Eunice Louisiana; Greensboro, North Carolina and Los Angeles.

The day was organized by Sharpton’s National Action Network and will include families of victims of gun violence, activists, elected officials and concern citizens.

“We must be just as vigilant against the shootings that are random, gang related or intentional because we are in a crisis state and too many lives are being forsaken. We’ve got to come together across all lines to fight this battle,” Sharpton said in a statement.

Ford – who runs the “Bury Da Beef” program in New York and has worked with rappers like Tupac Shakur, Ja Rule and KRS-One – says of the event, “It takes a village to save a child. The strength that breathes inside of us beats the madness of society. We achieve great success when we don’t accept all the habits as normal behavior. Love your life.”

All events start at 2 p.m. ET. For information and rally details in your local area, visit www.nationalactionnetwork.net. EURWEB

I think this is a great gesture, however Sharpton is showing his age on this one. It is 2009 and I think it’s gonna take a little more than a march and some press to stop the violence. This is a good way to start the conversation however, and I do commend him for the national scope of the activities. Get it together people.

Jon Stewart does an excellent Glenn Beck impression while discussing Glenn Becks appendicitis.

This is gonna be great…It airs tonight on HBO at 9pm. Check out this deleted scene too:

It might not be a presidential election year, but there is still a lot of good stuff going on the week before this election… and somehow Palin is managing to be all up in it.  In upstate New York there was a Republican woman running for the 23rd Congressional District, Dede Scozzafava, but apparently she was too left of far right for Sarah Palin.  Palin posted on her facebook page that she did not support Scozzafava, but supported the more conservative independent candidate, Doug Hoffman.  Palin’s post not only made Scozzafava drop out of the race, but she also straight up switched sides and decided to support the Democrat candidate.  Nice job alienating the moderate conservatives, Palin.  Maybe she forgot that conservatives are in the minority in both houses.

My recommendation to the GOP: find a way to disable Palin’s Facebook page.  I know, I know… free speech, but you guys saw her this time last year.  She went “renegade.” You don’t know where she’s going with this.  By the way… Rush Limbaugh had been supporting Scozzafava.  Hmm… interesting.

Last week a Facebook user who called himself “Gee Dub” posted some crazy CRAZY racist photos with nauseating captions to the Republican National Committee’s Facebook photo page.  The pictures were first noticed on Monday and stayed posted on the page for 5 days.

“Gee Dub” commented on the photo of Obama saying “Racism is necessary in our capitalistic society.  To expose ourselves to the socialist idea of equality will surely destroy the American way of life.”  ”Gee Dub” also claims to be black in his comment… ummm… yeah right!  I can’t really tell if this is a person who is actually a racist or a person who was making a really poor attempt at satire of the Republican Party.  You know, the thing about the internet and social networking sights is the crazies have a way to force people to pay attention to them.  The fact that whoever is running the RNC Facebook page wasn’t monitoring close enough to shut these photos down is a little disturbing… its almost like nobody is monitoring what is going on with how the Republicans are communicating with the public these days.  Just saying.

This is the Official First Family Portrait, taken by Annie Leibovitz. Doesn’t it just melt your heart. I love them to pieces…

Michelle looks fab, as usual. I liked the iPod question.

I can hardly believe it was almost a year ago that Obama was elected President.  You can dispute many things about President Obama, but looking back you can't dispute that his candidacy and the 2008 elections were a revolution in that they involved a large and diverse cross section of people and introduced a whole new generation to the power of voting and their ability to enact political change.  

On November 3rd, the anniversary of the election of President Obama, HBO will premier the documentary By the People: The Election of Barack Obama.  Check the trailer.  This little kid cracks me up!  That's exactly how I was feeling whenever I tried to talk to people about Obama and they just didn't get it.  

It will be nice to relive this epic time.  The documentary airs on November 3rd at 9pm on HBO.

S Dot Tell'Em