We have spoken to your mother. We know everything.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
Daycare Fight Club: At Church, Of Course
A church’s day-care center that is under investigation started counseling Tuesday for parents of preschoolers who claim their former teachers made them fight during class.
Brian Swain, administrator at Central United Methodist Church, said counseling will also be offered to the 3- and 4-year-olds in the class where the fighting happened earlier this summer.
The two teachers — whose names haven’t been released — are under investigation by the Fayetteville Police Department and the Arkansas Department of Human Services.
The investigation continued Tuesday. No charges have been filed.
Swain said the two female teachers — one who was employed for six years and the other for 18 months — told church leaders they tried to stop the fighting in their classroom. The church launched an investigation and contacted authorities after the claims last week, Swain said.
“The teachers’ version of the story was that the children were the ones who introduced [the fighting ] into the classroom as a game,” Swain said. “They said they tried to stop it and that they in no way condone it, but the children’s version is a completely different story. There’s certainly compelling evidence from where the children are coming from.” The teachers were fired Friday after being confronted with the claims of making children fight while the rest of the class watched, according to the Human Services Department.
Police said the teachers told the children to keep the fighting secret from their parents. Some children had bruises, police said.
The fighting happened in one of the seven daily preschool classes at Central’s Center for Children.
The claims did not involve a Tuesday and Thursday program for preschoolers or the summer and after-school programs for elementary students.
Parents who brought their children to the day care Tuesday said they have faith in the church and the investigation by state and local authorities.
Some said they knew little or nothing about the matter. Some cited an Aug. 22 letter the church gave to parents that said a teacher was accused of inappropriate behavior.
The letter said the behavior was not sexual and that an investigation was under way.
“The letter we got was pretty vague, and it left me wanting to know more,” parent Nathan Wells said Tuesday. “My plan was to let the dust settle and then have a meeting with administrators to find out what really happened.” Another parent, Brooks Lee, said he trusts church officials and feels secure having his child in the preschool.
“My wife read the letter, but we’re not worried about it,” Lee said. “We’ve been pleased with the day-care program here for over two years.” A father who wouldn’t give his name said parents whose kids were made to fight are banding together.
“My kid was impacted significantly,” he said. “I’d venture to say he’s having trouble recognizing authority figures right now.” The church day care has been in operation for about 30 years, and there are no other complaints on record with the Department of Human Services, which licenses the day care.
The church Tuesday issued a second letter to parents that said it is working to regain their trust and is taking corrective steps. The church is implementing extra training for teachers and may install video cameras in classrooms.
The letter said a third teacher who was involved no longer works at the day care. Swain later said the teacher resigned in July to move out of the area.
He said that besides counseling, the church will offer to teach children a technique called “The Peace Table” that deals with conflict resolution.
Obama’s Freudian Slip
"If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from," Barack Obama declared last night.
Talk about projection.
Accepting the Democratic Party's presidential nomination before a crowd of roughly 80,000, Obama made a forceful case for change by arguing that the United States is far worse off at home and abroad than it was eight years ago and therefore, the nation must adopt new policies -- his polices.
Over the course of the speech, Obama attacked Johm McCain for being too much like President Bush.
"The record is clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush ninety percent of the time," Obama said.
He portrayed McCain as being out of touch with the plight of average Americans.
"It's not because John McCain doesn't care," Obama said. "It's because John McCain doesn't get it."
He criticized McCain for not doing more to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil.
"Washington's been talking about our oil addiction for the last thirty years, and John McCain has been there for 26 of them…" Obama told the crowd. "And today, we import triple the amount of oil as the day that Senator McCain took office."
Even though Obama suggested that McCain has been in Washington too long, he chose Joe Biden as his running mate, who has been there far longer.
Obama also blasted McCain for being all bluster.
"If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that's his choice -- but it is not the change we need," Obama said.
While Obama launched an all-out assault on McCain and called for change, his nearly 4,700-word speech included just 79 words that could even vaguely be construed as him pointing to a record of actually bringing about change.
"I believe that as hard as it will be, the change we need is coming," Obama forecasted, dipping into his vast reservoir of inexperience. "Because I've seen it. Because I've lived it. I've seen it in Illinois, when we provided health care to more children and moved more families from welfare to work. I've seen it in Washington, when we worked across party lines to open up government and hold lobbyists more accountable, to give better care for our veterans and keep nuclear weapons out of terrorist hands."
Not only did Obama find little to say about his actual record, but in order to inoculate himself from accusations of embellishment, he had to qualify his statement by speaking of himself as a passive observer ("I've seen it") and collectivizing the achievements ("we worked").
With this speech, it has now become abundantly clear that Obama won't make a serious attempt to argue that he has any real accomplishments. Instead, his campaign is banking on the fact that the desire for change is so deep, and the contempt for President Bush so fierce, that merely linking McCain to the administration and representing something different will be enough to put him over the top.
He could be right. As weak as a candidate as John Kerry was in 2004, he came just 18 electoral votes shy of becoming president at a time when the Republican brand name was in much better shape than it is now.
Obama was able to ride the change theme to victory in the Democratic primaries, even though he started out as the heavy underdog, so he has no reason to believe that it won't work for him in the general election.
But next week, Republicans will have an opportunity to fight back, and they will have plenty of material. Unlike Obama, McCain does have a record to run on.
When Dreams Become Nightmares
When Delores Napper first read Irving Wallace's novel The Man as a young black woman in 1965, the story envisioning the trials and tribulations of the America's first black president fascinated her in the way "What if?" books in which the Axis wins World War II or Napoleon emerges triumphant from Waterloo fascinate some history buffs -- an intriguing imaginative exercise, but far removed from reality. In fact, even Wallace had not been so bold in fiction as to depict a black man winning election to the office. His character, Douglass Dilman, is installed in the Oval Office by an "unexpected accident and the law of succession."
The idea stuck with Napper, nibbled at the edges of her mind, always. When she came across a painting by Georgia artist Joel Gresham of a black man sitting on a bench reading a newspaper headlined America Elects Its First Black President a quarter-century later in 1990, she snapped it up and hung it in her foyer. The piece was a conversation starter, but by the beginning of 2008, not coincidentally coinciding with the rise of Barack Obama, the conversation was freighted with a whole lot more meaning.
This week Napper and her husband were on the mall in downtown Denver selling prints, postcards, magnets, and T-shirts emblazoned with the image of Gresham's painting to the DNC attendees steadily transmogrifying into ravenous consumers of anything Obama-mania related. Business was brisk, egged on, perhaps, by Napper loudly trumpeting the fact that 25 percent of the proceeds would be donated to the campaign of the freshman senator from Illinois, whom, she'll proudly tell you, she traveled to Mississippi, North Carolina, and Alabama to campaign for.
"I thought this would always be a dream," Napper said. "I thought this painting would be passed down for generations before it could be something real. But those people who stood up in front of their neighbors in Iowa and spoke up for a black man, well..." she trails off for a few moments. "Maybe I didn't know how much things had changed. But those folks healed me. After Iowa, it felt like a healing bomb had gone off over all those old racial wounds." Napper shakes her head as if she still cannot believe what has come to pass. (With Hillary and Bill, that makes at least three.) Unsurprisingly, Iowa delegates received free posters.
IT CAN BE DIFFICULT TO remember during an election in which there is an overt political effort to cast any effective criticism of Barack Obama as racially motivated and, thus, out of bounds, that there is likewise a powerful, authentically emotional reaction to Obama's nomination in the black community existing both outside of and beyond politics. It is important to acknowledge the monumental nature of what has occurred and how it has touched millions of Americans.
Juan Williams didn't choke up after Michelle Obama's speech on behalf of the Democratic Party, just as Delores Napper wasn't on the streets of Denver selling prints out of an outsized devotion to a politics. In Denver the atmosphere among black delegates was eons removed from that of the DNC convention in 2004, the difference between being a (albeit powerful) special interest group and having achieved some true ownership over the proceedings. Recall, it was only four years ago lava lamp Al Sharpton charged during a primary debate that while blacks "helped take [the Democratic Party] to the dance" that same party would "leave with right-wingers, you leave with people that you say are swing voters, you leave with people that are antithetical to our history and antithetical to our interests."
In 2008 black voters still went home with somebody else, but this time it was another black man with less baggage, more substance and fewer tracksuits. This has been a time of rapid change.
YES, THIS IS A MOMENT worth celebrating, even if it cannot be in the way those who seek to exploit it for political gain/cover would prefer -- i.e. Republicans not contesting the election, no matter how unsavory Barack Obama's policies are to them, in order to absolve themselves of the taint of racism. "To the rest of the world, a rejection of the promise [Obama] represents wouldn't just be an odd choice by the United States," Jacob Weisberg, for example, writes in Slate, conveniently raising his own electoral preference to morally inviolable status. "It would be taken for what it would be: sign and symptom of a nation's historical decline."
To not vote for Obama, then, is to vote for the destruction of the republic. And these are the people who think the Swift Boaters were too harsh? "If he loses by two or three percent then I would certainly say that the racial issue was a major factor," Jimmy Carter recently told USA Today, effectively turning any Obama loss into an indictment of the United States as racist.
One presumes Carter would not be saying the same thing if Condi Rice were the Republican nominee right now. Nor if Joe Lieberman were the Republicans' vice-presidential nominee would he likely appreciate all criticism being deflected with cries of "anti-Semitism!"
The beat goes on: Leonard Greene, in the New York Post, fumes -- before the debates, before the conventions, before most Americans truly weigh their choices -- that Obama "should be picking out a desk for the Oval Office," but can't because, "Many white Americans -- Democrats included -- are no happier about a black president than they are about a black supervisor on their jobs, or a black family moving in next door." (You could say such rhetoric is presumptuous, but that is one of an apparently endless number of racial code words.) David Gergen, adding fuel to the fire, rails improbably, "As a native of the south, I can tell you, when you see this Charlton Heston ad, 'The One,' that's code for, 'He's uppity, he ought to stay in his place.' Everybody gets that who is from a southern background."
EVERYBODY? MAYBE EVERYBODY who wants to get that -- especially if, say, it lets you feel like a grandstanding crusader for justice during yet another of your interminable television appearances -- gets that, but the truth is for all the talk of Republicans trying to turn Obama into 'the other,' it is this type of bluster from the left that truly threatens Obama with that status. Why shouldn't he be required to walk through the same flames as every other presidential candidate? deliberating citizens will ask themselves. Why am I a racist if I have some questions about this freshman senator?
To be unable to criticize or question Obama's candidacy or policies out of fear of rhetorical retribution is something that will almost certainly brand him as The Other. And it is not racism to note there are wide swaths of this nation comfortable enough in their own skin to not simply be bullied into voting for a candidate because a gaggle of reporters and liberal bloggers are saying "...or else." I know this, in no small part, because I am from New Hampshire, a start obscenely smeared as racist for not going along with the commentariat last January.
Letting Barack Obama make his case and rise or fall on the merits is more in line with the spirit of equality than demeaning the entire nation as hateful, backwards and cruel for not choosing as you've chosen. Obama supporters expect Hillary Clinton to be satisfied with her accomplishments without branding Democrats as sexists, so Democrats can do the rest of us the favor of not branding us racists if their candidate loses. To behave so would be unfair. Outside rabidly partisan left-wing circles this is understood.
"I won't lose my happiness, though I want so very badly for him to win," Delores Napper answered when I asked her how she would feel if Obama were to lose the general election after coming this far. "It's been done, done, done. The healing is so deep, so wonderful, it can't be taken back."
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Sanity Squad Podcast
So as to ensure your entire summer has not been squandered on mindless and meaningless activities, join us for a special podcast this evening at 8:00 PM, EST.
The Sanity Squad podcast with Dick Meyer of PBS and CBS News and author of WHY WE HATE US: American Discontent in the New Millennium, will be broadcast tonight. If you can manage to tear yourself away from the Democratic Convention, listen live; if you are riveted to the goings on in Denver, simply click on the link below at your leisure and listen in for what should prove to be a most enlightening discussion.
Click on the blogtalkradio button to join Shrinkwrapped, Dr. Sanity, and ourselves tonight from 8:00-9:00 or call in with your own question (646)716-9116.
The podcast can be accessed here. Our scintillating conversation and the collective wit and wisodom of the Sanity Squad will leave reeling and demanding more.
In these days of political intrigue and drama at home and abroad, we are only too pleased to serve the nation.
Listen in at 8:00 PM.HOW TO START EACH DAY WITH A POSITIVE OUTLOOK
1. Open a new file in your computer.
2. Name it 'Barack Obama'.
3. Send it to the Recycle Bin.
4. Empty the Recycle Bin.
5. Your PC will ask you: 'Do you really want to get rid of 'Barack Obama?'
6. Firmly Click 'Yes.'
7. Feel better?
Tomorrow we'll do Nancy Pelosi!
2. Name it 'Barack Obama'.
3. Send it to the Recycle Bin.
4. Empty the Recycle Bin.
5. Your PC will ask you: 'Do you really want to get rid of 'Barack Obama?'
6. Firmly Click 'Yes.'
7. Feel better?
Tomorrow we'll do Nancy Pelosi!
Bernard Henri-Levy: Russia Is Brazen, Europe Is Weak
The future of Russia's excursion in Georgia remains to be determined. But some conclusions can already be drawn:
- Russian power is extraordinarily brutal in the post-Soviet era, as we have already seen in Chechnya. This brutality has been confirmed -- although on a smaller scale -- in the spectacle of the Russian army occupying a sovereign country, moving through it as it pleases, advancing and retreating at will, and casually destroying the military and civilian infrastructures of a young democracy as an astonished world watches. Today it is Georgia. Tomorrow will it be Ukraine? Or, in the name of the same solidarity with the supposedly persecuted Russian-speaking populations, will it be the Baltic countries? Or Poland?
- The new Russia is indifferent to international protests, admonishments and warnings. The Cold War had its rules, its codes. It was a time when signs were carefully deciphered. There was a kind of half-warrior, half-pacifist hermeneutics in play, during which we spent our time reacting to what philosopher Michel Serres called "the signal fires and foghorns" of the adversary. In this new-look Cold War, there are no more signals. No more codes. Instead, Russia offers a permanently obscene gesture to "messages" we know will have absolutely no effect. Was it not at the same moment Condoleezza Rice was in Tbilisi that Vladimir Putin, with a cynicism and aplomb that would have been unthinkable in yesterday's world, chose to advance his troops as far as Kaspi, only 30 kilometers from the capital?
- Russia has no shame when it comes to twisting principles and ideals. It brandishes the "precedent" of Kosovo -- as if there could be anything in common between the case of a Serbian province hounded, battered and broken by ethnic purification which lasted for decades, and the situation of Ossetia, victim of a "genocide" that, according to the latest news (a report by Human Rights Watch) consists of 47 deaths. And look how they turn to their profit -- as well as that of the same Russian-speaking minorities they want to bring back into the bosom of the Empire -- the argument of the "duty to intervene" that might justify the exactions, in Gori and elsewhere, of the Russian army and its militias. This is a fine, grand principle dear to the French foreign minister and a few others. How daring! Well, Mr. Putin dared, Mr. Putin thought about it and did it.
- European -- and in this instance French -- diplomacy is weak. We expect a great democracy to condemn and sanction the aggressor, without nuance. But in effect the opposite was done. The party that was attacked was the one sanctioned. The weak, not the strong, was made to yield. Just as 15 years ago in Dayton, Bosnian leader Alija Izetbegovic was forced to sign, with a heavy heart, the agreement laying out the dismemberment of his country. Mikheil Saakhashvili, the Georgian president, was also forced to ratify a document that the Russians speak of as the "Medvedev document." Not a word in it mentions the territorial integrity of the country.
Then there are the famous "additional security clauses" acknowledging the Russian army's right to be stationed there and to patrol, as scandalous in principle as they are vague in their modalities of application. Has the world turned upside down? This must be a dream.
- Western public opinion fell with disconcerting facility for the thesis advanced -- from the very first day -- by the Kremlin's propaganda machine. We know now that the Russian army had been hard at work on its war preparations since before Aug. 8. We know that it massed at the "border" between Georgia and Ossetia a considerable military and paramilitary logistical presence. We know the Russians had methodically repaired the railroad tracks that the troop-transport trains were to take, and we know that at least 150 tanks went through the Roky tunnel separating the two Ossetias the morning of Aug. 8. In other words, no one can ignore the fact that President Saakhashvili only decided to act when he no longer had a choice, and war had already come. In spite of this accumulation of facts that should have been blindingly obvious to all scrupulous, good-faith observers, many in the media rushed as one man toward the thesis of the Georgians as instigators, as irresponsible provocateurs of the war.
We must re-examine all of this. We must analyze in greater depth the mechanisms of a blindness that may, if we are not careful, perpetuate the Western "decline in courage" denounced in his time by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, but which we thought belonged to the past. Reason, if not honor, demands that we go to the rescue of Europe in Tbilisi.
PJ O'Rourke On Faith And Physics
Science and Spirit:
Is faith compatible with science? Does science take faith into account? Should scientists keep religious faith in mind while they do their scientific theorizing, their scientific experimenting, their scientific... But here I begin to lose faith in my ability to ask the question. I have some idea what God does. I have no idea what scientists do. My entire store of information about scientific activity comes from what I've seen in the movies. There, scientists used to be represented as men in white coats busy with incomprehensible jumbles of glass tubing connected to foaming beakers and bubbling test tubes. Now, scientists are represented as men (and women) in white coats busy with incomprehensible jumbles of numbers on computer screens. All I can really tell you about science is that its set designers aren't as good as they used to be.
I look up science in Webster's--"possession of knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding"--and find myself possessed of no greater knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding.
Let me resort to the usual practice of the ignoramus and give up on philosophical inquiry and just proclaim an opinion: Science requires more faith than God.
I came to that conclusion in my high school physics class (a course that was required, by the way). The physics teacher had just explained how electricity makes a refrigerator work. I raised my hand.
Me: "Electricity is energy."
Physics teacher: "Yes."
Me: "Energy is heat."
Physics teacher: "Yes, heat is one way to measure energy."
Me: "A refrigerator is cold."
I graduated only because the physics teacher suddenly remembered that he was also the summer school physics teacher and that if I flunked I'd be back in his class in July.
Faith depends upon belief in things that cannot be proved, and I can prove that more people flunk physics than flunk Sunday School.
"But science can be proved," a scientist would say. "The whole point of science is experimental proof." Yet we non-scientists have to take that experimental proof on faith because we don't know what the scientists are talking about. This makes science a matter of faith in men while religion, of course, is a matter of faith in God, and if you've got to choose...
Personally, I don't think you do. Science and religion both assert the same thing: that the universe operates according to rules and that those rules can be discerned. Albeit this does make it easier to believe in God than, for instance, organic chemistry. Just the fact of rules implies a rule maker while just the fact of mixing nitro with glycerin and causing an explosion does not imply a Ph.D.
I'm also given to understand that the rules of science begin to bend and even break at the extremes of the universe's scale. Down where everything is subatomic-sized, things tend to be a bit random with mesons, leptons, quarks, brilligs, slithy toves, etc., subjected to Strong Force, Weak Force, Force of Habit, and so on. Meanwhile, in the farthest reaches of outer space, matter, antimatter, dark matter, and whatsamatter are tripping over string theory and falling into black holes. God is not like that. He's famously there in the details, and He is the big picture.
In one way, however, faith in science does come easier than faith in God--if fear is any gauge of how real we believe a thing is. To judge by human behavior, people are not trembling before the Almighty much. But many of those same people are scared silly by science. They are frightened by a climate stuck in the microwave of technological advances, frightened by genetic modifications that may--who knows?--cross cabbages with kings and produce a Prince Charles, and naturally they are frightened by the clouds of mushrooms being grown in the science cellars of Iran and North Korea.
One sympathizes with science's faithful. The apocalyptic power of God has existed forever, and He's been restrained about using it, despite provocation. The apocalyptic power of science has existed only since 1945, and the A-bomb has been tried twice already.
"Fear of God" is most often manifested today in the public's alarm that religious zealots will try to destroy the world. Providentially, God has made the zealots as incapable of using reason, logic, and the other tools of science as I am. Religious zealots can't blow up the world the way scientists can. The zealots must secure the faith of the scientists. But the scientists don't know what the zealots are talking about. Is faith compatible with science? Not completely--and that's a blessing.
Rethinking Sex Education
Washington Times: (h/t: reader VK)
Those damn kids. There they go again - children having children. We've told them about condoms and oral contraceptives, but clearly they haven't heard, so we'd better ramp up our efforts one more time. We need more money in the classrooms to educate them and convince teachers to step up to the plate. Doctors, too must be on board- to coerce, immunize and write prescriptions - so that we don't have to deal with the reoccurring problem of kids having kids.
We have two disturbing dynamics evidenced in all of these discussions. First, boys are approached as out-of-control sex maniacs devoid of emotions or even a minute semblance of self-control. Second, boys infer through an educator's subtle inflection (or through a not so subtle magazine cover) that they really don't matter any way in the big scheme of things. After all, pregnancy is a girl's problem. Jamie Lynn and baby grace magazine pages, not her baby's dad. Why? Is it because boys are irresponsible deadbeats? Absolutely not. They are purposely discarded by those who view them as unnecessary. Many adult mothers don't need them to help raise children, so why should teen mothers? While sex educators and physicians (I am both of these) frantically regroup and try to figure out a better tactic with these crazy kids, perhaps we should look in a completely different direction. Could it be that we, not the kids, are the ones who aren't getting things right? Ouch.
When the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that teen pregnancy was once again on the rise, it is telling that the announcement came out shortly after Jamie Lynn Spears and baby appeared on the cover of US magazine. Some (myself included) blame Hollywood for the glamorization of teen pregnancy, championing it to bored and confused girls as a ready solution to many of life's ills. After all, swollen bellies bring attention - usually in the form of oohs and ahhs - if not a bit of pity. The problem is, young girls don't care which type of attention follows, they just relish whatever they can get, because most know too well, that life without it is far too painful to bear.
In my early years of treating teen girls, my colleagues in major medical centers used to joke about putting birth control in the drinking water. We were the ones, we believed, who could offer real solutions. Syringes loaded with Depo-Provera, convincing arguments about the efficacy of condoms and oral contraceptives were only a small portion of our fully loaded armamentarium.
And we've also enjoyed the enthusiastic efforts of well-meaning teachers and sex educators in the schools. They, the ones who really understand teens, march into classrooms and high-school gymnasiums with the fervor of missionaries intent on convincing kids that, really, sex is absolutely normal during the teen years and affords little risk if handled "responsibly." They have to tell kids this; after all, that's how we all lived.
Take a closer look at the girls in Gloucester, Mass. (who, by the way, all used boys/men to meet their own ends.) These girls were educated about birth control, safe sex, even safer sex. Still, scads got themselves pregnant. They wanted to become pregnant. Was it for attention? Sure, but that was simply the beginning. These girls were creating families. Communities. Little girls wanted other little girls and boys to keep them company and to give them a reason to wake up in the morning. Let's not miss the deeper picture here. They, like all the other children having babies, got pregnant, not because they knew too little about birth control, but because they - like millions of their peers - were painfully lonely and bored.
And why is this generation of kids so lonely? Because we have left them alone. We work and play, pursue our dreams, make certain to carve out time for relaxation and frantically condense all of these into 18 critical years. We must, we believe, because none of us wants to postpone pleasure.
It is high time that we adults face the music. We can no longer allow two critical mistakes to continue. First, we must stop the denigration of boys everywhere. They matter. Their thoughts, opinions and everything masculine about them matters tremendously. It isn't just the girls and babies who count. Second, we cannot continue to allow kids to raise themselves while we live life around them, hoping that a few conversations about safer sex will suffice to keep them from having babies. We must give them more of our time and ourselves. Because if we continue to allow them to drift in their loneliness, we all lose.
Hugo Chavez gives 'Red Ken' Livingstone a job
Ken Livingstone has got himself a nice little earner - from his old friend and fellow socialist, Hugo Chavez. The Venezuelan president has invited him to work as a consultant on policing, urban planning and transport in the country's notoriously badly-run capital, Caracas, in the run-up to local elections in November.
"I believe that Caracas will become a first-world city in 20 years," Livingstone told reporters on a surprise visit to Venezuela. "I have a very extensive network of contacts both domestically and internationally which I will be calling on to assist in this."
It is two years since Livingstone and Chavez first attempted an arrangement between the two capitals with a deal to supply London with cheap fuel for its bus fleet in return for advice on city management. When Boris Johnson became Mayor in May, he made the cancellation of this agreement one of his first priorities, at the cost of £7m in compensation.
Yesterday, the mayor's office said of Livingstone's new arrangement: "Boris Johnson made it clear during his election campaign that he did not want to be on the payroll of Hugo Chavez and did not believe a poor South American country should be subsidising one of the wealthiest cities in the world.
"Ken Livingstone is free, as a private individual, to offer his advice and services to whomever he wants."
Asked by journalists in Caracas what he was being paid, Livingstone said: "It depends to what extent we will be tapping into our individual resources. The whole cost of this trip has been paid for by the government of Venezuela and as an unemployed citizen I would not be able to pay for my own fare otherwise."
Is This What It Means to Be a Democrat?
Once in a while, not often, you stumble across a statement or quote from some person of prominence that startles, cuts through the fog, and smashes your mind against the wall of reality, a reality that you really did not want to acknowledge.
I had this sensation while reading a recent blog entry on Huffingtonpost.com by the truly creative, often hilarious, screenwriter (Sleepless in Seattle), Nora Ephron.
Ephron was commenting on her favorite part of Hillary Clinton's speech at the Democratic Convention in which the Senator "admonished her followers not to put their affection for her over the issues...When she reproved them for thinking for even a moment that her historic thrilling campaign was more important that the real campaign to defeat the Republicans."
"Where any of her followers could have gotten the idea doesn't seem to have crossed her mind," said Ephron. "The fish stinks from the head."
Ephron deftly skewers the Clintons' "narcissism...which perfumed every bit of Hillary's campaign." She thought Hillary's funniest line was "Were you in it for me[?]"
All of this was great fun to read and classic Nora Ephron. But at the end of this piece, Ephron slams Hillary Clinton for "never once mentioning choice."
"She never once said the truth, which is that any Hillary supporter who doesn't understand this issue alone is the reason to vote for Obama has no business pretending to be a Democrat," blogs Ephron.
So it's all about abortion. It is this issue "alone" (italics added) that is the moral imperative for voting for Barack Obama. Forget about Iraq, gas prices, the environment, health care. Focus on 1.2 million abortions per year.
Ephron represents a segment of the Democratic Party that seems to view abortion as the alpha and omega of American politics. Is this what it means to be a Democrat in 2008? Forget about those traditional Labor Democrats, urban Catholics, Baptists and other traditional constituencies, many of them strong supporters of Senator Clinton in the primary elections.
Imagine: Hillary Clinton squishy on abortion!
AS I SAID, Nora Ephron's austere reductionism, in calling abortion the major determinant in voting for Barack Obama, is startling. It is also a measure of the intensity of a focused, dedicated wing of the Democratic Party that has managed to pull this venerable political institution far to the left on an issue as fundamental to human liberty as is the right to life.
Having grown up urban, Catholic, and an Irish-German Republican (my paternal grandfather became a Republican during the New Deal years), most of my social circle, and a fair bit of my family, were all Democrats. Most of them were and are appalled by the nation's abandonment of unborn children. Many were active in grassroots efforts to protect the unborn, both politically and through the provision of moral and material support. They may not have had much use for skinflint Republicans, at least non-relations, but abortion was beyond the Pale.
But times, as they say, change. Or at least some politicians do. Once pro-life Democrats such as Ted Kennedy, Dick Gephardt and, yes, Al Gore, all succumbed to the Zeitgeist of extreme reaches of the Democratic Party.
There remain a few stalwart congressmen and women in the party who defend the unborn and a hardy remnant called Democrats for Life of America. Nora Ephron believes they have "no business pretending to be a Democrat."
Here's hoping they don't much care what she thinks.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Only In New York: Man Runs Over Pedestrian, Sues City For 'Not Taking Care Of Car'
In the annals of shameless lawsuits, this one takes the cake.
A Coney Island businessman is suing the city for damaging the Bentley he was driving when he killed a Brooklyn dad in a hit-and-run accident.
Harry Shasho, who pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, says the NYPD failed to safeguard the battered black 2005 Bentley GT luxury sedan that was impounded as evidence of the fatal crash. He's asking for at least $190,000.
The victim's loved ones are outraged.
"He's not a human being, he's an animal with no conscience," fumed Linda Ruberto, the longtime girlfriend of victim Louis (Pete) Couch, who was killed as he crossed Ocean Parkway.
"Suing the city when you've killed somebody is disgusting," she said. "It's immoral."
"Mr. Shasho has shown greater concern for the condition of his vehicle than the condition of the victim it left behind," added lawyer Stavros Sitinas of Wingate, Russotti & Shapiro, who represented Couch's son in a suit against Shasho that was settled last year.
Shasho, 38, who owns a fancy Coney Island car detailing shop, struck Couch and left the scene without stopping Oct. 1, 2005. He later surrendered to cops and was sentenced to five years' probation and community service.
Couch was intoxicated at the time of the accident, which could have played a role in Shasho's seemingly lenient sentence.
Shasho says the Bentley was in "excellent condition ... with no noticeable defects or damage" when he turned himself in, according to the suit filed in Brooklyn Federal Court.
The police report tells a different story.
It describes the car as crumpled and the windshield "depressed and fractured" by the violent impact with Couch that left his body parts strewn across the street.
The suit seeks damages from the city, the NYPD and the Brooklyn district attorney's office.
It accuses the NYPD of failing to properly care for vehicles, "particularly those which require special care and treatment due to value, style [and] model." Noticeably missing from the suit is any mention of why Shasho was arrested. It doesn't even mention Couch, 54, an assistant manager at a Duane Reade drugstore.
Shasho owns 212 Motoring, a shop that tricks out luxury autos with elaborate sound systems and detailing. Former Knicks forward Jerome Williams is his partner in the business.
Reached by the Daily News, Shasho denied filing a lawsuit and hung up. Shasho's lawyer refused to comment.
So Much For 'Change': Barack Obama And Hunter Biden Doing Business The Old Fashioned Way
Excerpted from WAPO investigation:
...An analysis for The Washington Post by Taxpayers for Common Sense of Hunter Biden's firm's lobbying business found that its clients collected $2.7 million in earmarks in the last fiscal year.
One of those clients was St. Xavier University, a four-year, 5,600-student institution run by the Roman Catholic Sisters of Mercy in Orland Park, Ill. Steve Murphy, vice president for university advancement, said Hunter Biden approached him in 2005 offering to secure congressional earmarks.
Hunter Biden and his colleague, Eric Schwerin, told Murphy they were "working with a number of clients, institutions like yours, and we would like to help you identify earmarks, federal support and grants."
Murphy said he found Biden's parentage a selling point. Murphy then accompanied Biden to the offices of the Illinois delegation, including Obama's.
Obama requested $1.4 million for St. Xavier, including $900,000 to establish an early-childhood teacher training center "to meet the demand in the southwest Chicago metropolitan area," according to a news release on the Web site of Obama's Senate office. Obama requested the early-childhood money in both 2006 and 2007. (Was any of that money headed for the Ayers-Annenberg program?- SC&A)
Obama also in June 2007 sought $500,000 for a skills laboratory for St. Xavier's nursing school, which has one of the largest nursing programs in the state.
In the end, Obama's $1.4 million in requests resulted in $192,000 for the nursing facility.
Murphy said that a big selling point was the diversity of the nursing students, who often ended up working in communities where nurses were in shortage.
"Two years ago, we graduated more African American and Hispanic nurses than any private college in the state of Illinois," Murphy said. "I'm not at all apologetic that we asked for federal support for huge health-care needs of this growing community."
Since Hunter Biden signed St. Xavier as a client in December 2005, the firm has earned $320,000 from the university.
In 2006, Obama also asked for $2 million for a cancer research treatment center at Chicago's Thorek Memorial Hospital, according to an Obama letter requesting the money posted on Obama's campaign Web site. Hunter Biden was the registered lobbyist and his firm was paid $120,000 for representing Thorek, which has not received funding.
Obama's spokesman also acknowledged lobbying for Mercy Hospital, another client of Hunter Biden.
In addition to his work for universities, Hunter Biden has done consulting work for MBNA, the largest employer in Delaware.
From 2001 to 2005, Hunter was paid an undisclosed amount by the credit card giant, which has since been purchased by Bank of America. It has been widely reported that he received $100,000 a year.
At the time, Sen. Biden led a successful, high-profile battle in the Senate for a bankruptcy bill that ultimately benefited credit card companies. The law makes it more difficult for people to file for personal bankruptcy protection under Chapter 7.
"He was a crucial supporter of the law in that he paved the way for other Democrats to support it," said Travis Plunkett, legislative director of the Consumer Foundation of America, a consumer group that opposed the bill. "Senator Biden provided a lot of political cover for the credit card industry because they wanted to show that the proposal had bipartisan support. He aggressively undermined the opposition to the bill."
Over the past two decades, MBNA employees have given more than $200,000 to Biden's Senate campaigns, more than workers from any other company.
Wade said Hunter Biden was hired by MBNA after working as a Commerce Department lawyer on Internet privacy and online commerce issues. "Hunter consulted for five years as an expert on these very same issues at a time of enormous expansion in online banking," Wade said. "He was never a lobbyist for MBNA, and his work had absolutely nothing to do with the bankruptcy bill. Zero. Nothing."
Hunter Biden also lobbied for Napster, the music-sharing Web site that ran afoul of intellectual-property laws. Sen. Biden at the time was a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees laws governing intellectual-property rights.
Wade said Hunter Biden is careful not to approach his father when lobbying. Wade said the younger Biden does not share in revenue of other partners, so he does not directly benefit from their activities.
When he introduced him as his running mate, Obama said of Biden: "He has brought change to Washington, but Washington hasn't changed him." But Republicans quickly attacked Biden's connections to lobbyists.
"While Barack Obama decries Washington insiders and says that he detests lobbyists, Joe Biden is the model Washington insider with numerous connections to lobbyists and special interests," Republican National Committee spokesman Danny Diaz said.
Wade defended Biden, saying he has been "as strong a supporter of ethics reform as the Senate has ever known, and his office follows all ethics laws right down to the letter."
Obama Linked To $3.4 Million Earmark For Biden's Son
CBS:
Sen. Barack Obama sought more than $3.4 million in congressional earmarks for clients of the lobbyist son of his Democratic running mate, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, records show. Obama succeeded in getting $192,000 for one of the clients, St. Xavier University in suburban Chicago.
Obama's campaign has taken a hard stance against the world of lobbying in the nation's capital. Obama said he limits his own efforts to get money for pet projects -- a process known as earmarking -- to those that benefit the public. He has posted his earmark requests on his presidential campaign Web site to encourage transparency.
Since Obama announced his selection of Biden on Saturday, attention has focused on Biden's lobbying connections as well as his son's lobbying activities. R. Hunter Biden is one of many relatives of members of Congress who work as lobbyists.
The younger Biden started his career as a lobbyist in 2001 and has registered to represent about 21 clients that have brought in $3.5 million to his Washington firm, according to lobbying disclosure forms.
Sen. Biden has collected more than $6.9 million in campaign contributions from lobbyists and lawyers since 1989, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
A spokesman for the Obama campaign said that Hunter Biden himself has never lobbied his father. Another lobbyist in the firm successfully sought an earmark from the senator for the University of Delaware. But Hunter did not work on the account, the spokesman said.
Campaign spokesman David Wade also said Hunter Biden never appealed directly to Obama.
"Hunter Biden met with the Obama Senate office, not with Senator Obama," Wade said. "It's hardly surprising that a Senator from Illinois would fight for investments in Mercy Hospital, Thorek Hospital and St. Xavier University right in Illinois, or that he'd be joined in that effort by a Republican colleague, Representative Judy Biggert."
Hunter Biden, a 38-year-old Georgetown graduate and Yale-trained lawyer, is a name partner in the firm Oldaker, Biden & Belair, founded by William Oldaker, an election lawyer and lobbyist who worked on Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's 1980 presidential campaign and has been a fundraiser and campaign adviser for Sen. Biden.
An analysis for The Washington Post by Taxpayers for Common Sense of Hunter Biden's firm's lobbying business found that its clients collected $2.7 million in earmarks in the last fiscal year.
One of those clients was St. Xavier University, a four-year, 5,600-student institution run by the Roman Catholic Sisters of Mercy in Orland Park, Ill. Steve Murphy, vice president for university advancement, said Hunter Biden approached him in 2005 offering to secure congressional earmarks.
Hunter Biden and his colleague, Eric Schwerin, told Murphy they were "working with a number of clients, institutions like yours, and we would like to help you identify earmarks, federal support and grants."
Murphy said he found Biden's parentage a selling point. Murphy then accompanied Biden to the offices of the Illinois delegation, including Obama's.
Obama requested $1.4 million for St. Xavier, including $900,000 to establish an early-childhood teacher training center "to meet the demand in the southwest Chicago metropolita area," according to a news release on the Web site of Obama's Senate office. Obama requested the early-childhood money in both 2006 and 2007.
Obama also in June 2007 sought $500,000 for a skills laboratory for St. Xavier's nursing school, which has one of the largest nursing programs in the state.
In the end, Obama's $1.4 million in requests resulted in $192,000 for the nursing facility.
Murphy said that a big selling point was the diversity of the nursing students, who often ended up working in communities where nurses were in shortage.
"Two years ago, we graduated more African American and Hispanic nurses than any private college in the state of Illinois," Murphy said. "I'm not at all apologetic that we asked for federal support for huge health-care needs of this growing community."
Since Hunter Biden signed St. Xavier as a client in December 2005, the firm has earned $320,000 from the university.
In 2006, Obama also asked for $2 million for a cancer research treatment center at Chicago's Thorek Memorial Hospital, according to an Obama letter requesting the money posted on Obama's campaign Web site. Hunter Biden was the registered lobbyist and his firm was paid $120,000 for representing Thorek, which has not received funding.
Obama's spokesman also acknowledged lobbying for Mercy Hospital, another client of Hunter Biden.
In addition to his work for universities, Hunter Biden has done consulting work for MBNA, the largest employer in Delaware.
From 2001 to 2005, Hunter was paid an undisclosed amount by the credit card giant, which has since been purchased by Bank of America. It has been widely reported that he received $100,000 a year.
At the time, Sen. Biden led a successful, high-profile battle in the Senate for a bankruptcy bill that ultimately benefited credit card companies. The law makes it more difficult for people to file for personal bankruptcy protection under Chapter 7.
"He was a crucial supporter of the law in that he paved the way for other Democrats to support it," said Travis Plunkett, legislative director of the Consumer Foundation of America, a consumer group that opposed the bill. "Senator Biden provided a lot of political cover for the credit card industry because they wanted to show that the proposal had bipartisan support. He aggressively undermined the opposition to the bill."
Over the past two decades, MBNA employees have given more than $200,000 to Biden's Senate campaigns, more than workers from any other company.
Wade said Hunter Biden was hired by MBNA after working as a Commerce Department lawyer on Internet privacy and online commerce issues. "Hunter consulted for five years as an expert on these very same issues at a time of enormous expansion in online banking," Wade said. "He was never a lobbyist for MBNA, and his work had absolutely nothing to do with the bankruptcy bill. Zero. Nothing."
Hunter Biden also lobbied for Napster, the music-sharing Web site that ran afoul of intellectual-property laws. Sen. Biden at the time was a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees laws governing intellectual-property rights.
Wade said Hunter Biden is careful not to approach his father when lobbying. Wade said the younger Biden does not share in revenue of other partners, so he does not directly benefit from their activities.
When he introduced him as his running mate, Obama said of Biden: "He has brought change to Washington, but Washington hasn't changed him." But Republicans quickly attacked Biden's connections to lobbyists.
"While Barack Obama decries Washington insiders and says that he detests lobbyists, Joe Biden is the model Washington insider with numerous connections to lobbyists and special interests," Republican National Committee spokesman Danny Diaz said.
Wade defended Biden, saying he has been "as strong a supporter of ethics reform as the Senate has ever known, and his office follows all ethics laws right down to the letter."
Bill Ayers: Unrepentant LYING Terrorist
In that Fox interview that Rich linked to, Ayers preposterously claimed that he and his fellow Weather Underground terrorists did not really intend to harm any people — the fact that no one was killed in their 20 or so bombings was, he said, "by design"; they only wanted to cause property damage:
Between October 1969 and September 1973, the Weather Underground claimed credit for some twenty bombings across the country, in which no one was harmed — save the three cell members who perished in a Greenwich Village townhouse in March 1970, when one of their creations detonated prematurely. Ayers claimed the fact that no other individuals were killed as a result of the Weathermen’s actions was “by design.”
In his autobiography, Fugitive Days: A Memoir, Ayers recalled, he posed the question: “How far are you willing to take that step into what I consider the abyss of violence? And we really never did, except for that moment in the townhouse.… I actually think destroying property in the face of that kind of catastrophe is so — restrained. And I don’t see it as a big deal.
Right.
First of all, "that moment in the townhouse" he's talking about happened in 1970. Three of his confederates, including his then girlfriend Diana Oughton, were accidentally killed when the explosive they were building to Ayers specifications (Ayers was a bomb designer) went off during construction. As noted in Ayers' Discover the Networks profile, the explosive had been a nail bomb. Back when Ayers was being more honest about his intentions, he admitted that the purpose of that bomb had been to murder United States soldiers:
That bomb had been intended for detonation at a dance that was to be attended by army soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Hundreds of lives could have been lost had the plan been successfully executed. Ayers attested that the bomb would have done serious damage, "tearing through windows and walls and, yes, people too."
In fact, Ayers was a founder of the Weatherman terror group and he defined its purpose as carrying out murder. Again, from Discover the Networks:
Characterizing Weatherman as "an American Red Army," Ayers summed up the organization's ideology as follows: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, Kill your parents."
Now he wants you to think they just wanted to break a few dishes. But in his book Fugitive Days, in which he boasts that he "participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972," he says of the day that he bombed the Pentagon: "Everything was absolutely ideal. ... The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them."
And he wasn't singular. As I noted back in April in this article about Obama's motley collection of radical friends, at the Weatherman “War Council” meeting in 1969, Ayers' fellow terrorist and now-wife, Bernadine Dohrn, famously gushed over the barbaric Manson Family murders of the pregnant actress Sharon Tate, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, and three others: “Dig it! First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach! Wild!” And as Jonah recalled yesterday, "In appreciation, her Weather Underground cell made a threefingered 'fork' gesture its official salute." They weren't talking about scratching up the wall-paper.
A Weatherman affiliate group which called itself "the Family" colluded with the Black Liberation Army in the 1981 Brinks robbery in which two police officers and an armed guard were murdered. (Obama would like people to believe all this terrorist activity ended in 1969 when he was eight years old. In fact, it continued well into the eighties.) Afterwards, like Ayers and Dohrn, their friend and fellow terrorist Susan Rosenberg became a fugitive.
On November 29, 1984, Rosenberg and a co-conspirator, Timothy Blunk, were finally apprehended in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. At the time, they were actively planning an unspeakable bombing campaign that would have put at risk the lives of countless innocent people. They also possessed twelve assorted guns (including an Uzi 9 mm. semi-automatic rifle and an Ithaca twelve-gauge shotgun with its barrel sawed off), nearly 200 sticks of dynamite, more than 100 sticks of DuPont Trovex (a high explosive), a wide array of blasting agents and caps, batteries, and switches for explosive devices. Arrayed in disguises and offering multiple false identities to arresting officers, the pair also maintained hundreds of false identification documents, including FBI and DEA badges.
When she was sentenced to 58 years' imprisonment in 1985, the only remorse Rosenberg expressed was over the fact that she and Blunk had allowed themselves to be captured rather than fighting it out with the police. Bernadine Dohrn was jailed for contempt when she refused to testify against Rosenberg. Not to worry, though. On his last day in office, the last Democrat president, Bill Clinton, pardoned Rosenberg — commuting her 58-year sentence to time-served.
These savages wanted to kill massively. That they killed only a few people owes to our luck and their incompetence, not design. They and the Democrat politicians who now befriend and serve them can rationalize that all they want. But those are the facts.
Buying Water From Canada: For One Province, It Is A $65 Billion A Year Harvest
A Quebec think-tank with a blue-chip business board of directors has waded into one of the most controversial issues in Canadian politics by coming out in favour of bulk water exports.
“Large-scale exports of fresh water would be a wealth-creating idea for Quebec and for Canada as a whole,” the Montreal Economic Institute said Wednesday. “It is urgent to look seriously at developing our blue gold.”
Indeed, Quebec could generate $65-billion a year in gross revenue if it were to export 10 per cent of the one trillion cubic metres of “renewable fresh water” available to it each year, according to an MEI research paper, which was prepared by Marcel Boyer, the organization's chief economist and vice-president.
That's based on a price equal to 65 cents a cubic metre that it currently costs to desalinate sea water, which, the paper said, will ultimately determine the commercial value of fresh water and profitability of the spending on infrastructure that would be required.
Even if the province were to charge a royalty of just 10 per cent on such exports, this would bring it $6.5-billion a year in income, the paper said, about five times the dividend currently paid by Hydro-Québec.
The MEI released its research paper at a time when the debate about water is again on the boil.
Just last Wednesday, the Canadian Press revealed that Environment Canada had warned in a draft internal report last December that the country's supplies of fresh water are not as plentiful as once thought and that shortages threaten to pinch the economy and pit provinces against each other.
As well, the city of London, Ont., recently voted to ban sales of bottled water in city buildings, arenas, community centres and possibly even golf courses.
The wider issue of bulk water exports from Canada has cropped up regularly in the past 40 years, with a number of schemes proposed by various companies over the years. All have met with controversy and all have been shot down.
However, Liberal leader Stéphane Dion alleged a year ago – provoking denials from the federal government – that there have been secret talks between Ottawa and Washington about water sales to the United States, areas of which are growing increasingly parched.
As well, a research paper commissioned by the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto and released last September warned that Canada remains vulnerable to such diversions of its water, despite repeated assurances to the contrary from the federal government.
The Ottawa-based Council of Canadians, headed by Maude Barlow, has campaigned vigorously against what it calls the commoditization and commercialization of fresh water.
The council's national water campaigner, Meera Karunananthan, took issue with the MEI's research paper.
“I think it's absurd to suggest that you can potentially export such large quantities of water ... out of Quebec for that not to have an environmental impact,” she said in a telephone interview, stressing that, “It will have an environmental impact.”
She noted that it contradicted the Environment Canada draft report, which Canadian Press obtained under the Access to Information Act.
Ms. Karunananthan also expressed concern that the institute might be able to influence Quebec Premier Jean Charest, who, she said, “expressed an interest in bulk-water exports several years ago.”
Mr. Boyer was not immediately available for comment. He was taking part in a lunch-time debate on water in Montreal organized by the MEI.
The institute bills itself as an independent, non-partisan, non-profit body that takes part in public policy debates in Quebec and Canada “by suggesting wealth-generating reforms, primarily on matters of taxation, regulation, health care and education.”
Its 14-member board of directors is drawn mostly from corporate Quebec and includes Canam Inc. chairman and chief executive officer Marcel Dutil, RBC Capital Markets vice-chairman Jean-Pierre Ouellet, Reitmans (Canada) Ltd. president Jeremy Reitman, and former National Bank of Canada president Léon Courville.
The MEI's research paper acknowledges that water exports are a contentious issue, but argues that ways around the controversy should be found.
“Water clearly is a resource that is essential to life, and turning it into a business may arouse fears that it could one day be overexploited,” the paper says. “But these fears can be calmed if a legal and regulatory framework is established. Regardless of the fuss, it is not necessary to prohibit trade in water.”
What is more, it says, determining a competitive price for water could be a “major incentive” for its “more efficient and economical” use both in areas where it is abundant and regions where it is scarce.
The things Hillary didn't say: Deja vu, all over again
In terms of accomplishing what it needed to accomplish, sure, Hillary Clinton's speech was a home run, a grand slam, a tape-measure shot across Waveland Avenue (look that up, and without a link!).
But I can't help but feel the same feeling I've felt watching lots of her speeches, and believe me, I have. It could have been a lot more.
I strove to watch this thing from the point of view of one of her supporters – the one in five of her primary-season voters – who not only did not vote for but actively does not like Barack Obama. Who are these people?
They may be immature politically. And they are. I have made my views on that clear. But they aren't stupid. They know John McCain has pledged to put anti-abortion judges on the bench. They know John McCain has moved to the right on taxes and drilling and loads of things. They are well aware of all the logical and rational reasons that they shouldn't be flirting with voting for John McCain, but they're thinking about it anyway.
Did this speech persuade them? I'm honestly not sure. For all her general avowals in Obama's behalf, there were a few specific things she did not do in the speech.
First, she didn't vouch at all for Obama's character. She didn't say anything like, "I have served in the Senate with this man, and I competed with him on the campaign trail for nearly two years. And as heated as things got sometimes, I can tell you that he is a person of profound judgment and decency and heft who will be a great leader," or something along those lines. Establishing that she had some degree of personal affinity for the nominee would have hit the Pumas in the breadbasket. She chose not to do it.
Second, she didn't say anything about Obama's ability as commander-in-cief. I'd argue she was under a special obligation to do this, at the very moment when McCain is running an ad using her famous quote from February in which she said that she and McCain brought a lifetime of experience to the job of leading America in the world, while Obama had a speech he gave in 2002. I honestly thought that she would reference that ad specifically and say something like, "Well, I'm Hillary Clinton, and I do not approve that message."
Imagine the applause. But she left all that hanging. And indeed the statement the McCain campaign issued immediately after the speech drove this point home, pointing out that Clinton had said nothing about Obama's ability to be the commander-in-chief. And I have to think the omission was conscious.
Third, it was interesting to me how she articulated the stakes of people opposing Obama. "I want you to ask yourselves," she said. "Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for" various unfortunate citizens she'd discussed previously. That was the traditional "invisible people" trope she used often during the primaries.
Well, that was her trope, but it wasn't Obama's, and it just struck me as an odd way to make the argument for why any Democrat just has to vote Democratic instead of voting Republican. You have to vote Democratic because you don't believe in starting hideous wars of choice; because you care what the rest of the world thinks of us; because you don't want to let one of America's great cities die from incompetence and neglect; because you honor and cherish the constitution; because you believe that government agencies should do what they are professionally assigned to do, and not conduct ideological witch hunts; because you want a government that answers to the people and doesn't manipulate them and strike fear into them.
Clinton instead cited: jobs going overseas, oil company profits and the need to build a green economy. Look, these are important things. But they are focused-grouped things, and they are at this point practically throw-away lines. She did not, to my thinking, drill down to the kinds of specifics that would punch liberal women (and some men) – the people who are here in Denver and were raptly watching – in the stomach and make them understand, "Wow, maybe I really am being kinda stupid here."
She also didn't really attack McCain very hard. George Bush's name was mentioned just once. About one-eighth of the speech was devoted to McCain. And she just didn't say that Obama is ready for the Oval Office, which is a big part of her backers' opposition to him.
She's getting great reviews tonight, as I'm writing, and I can understand why. Cable television will probably quiet down on the disunity meme for a while. There were plenty of positive sound bites.
But I will bet anyone my mortgage: in one or two weeks, some polls will come out, and the TV pundits will marvel, "So that barn-burning Hillary Clinton speech didn't create party unity after all." She left too much unsaid tonight. And the unity, I still think, will come, but it will come in October. And it will come more because of him than her. But in the short term, she did at least manage to change a negative narrative – at least for 24 hours, until her husband speaks, which is the next drama.
Hillary Clinton pledges support to the party: An ominous message for Obama
In the end, it was scarcely a declaration of support for Barack Obama at all. Hillary Clinton may have mentioned his name ten times - and uttered the mandatory words ("he is my candidate") - but her pledge of undying commitment was to her party.
It was necessary, she said, to get a Democrat back in the White House and (by implication) he is the Democrat we've got. She said virtually nothing about Obama's capacity to lead the nation.
In effect, she expressed the hope that he would follow her programme and priorities in office. She followed the script of the Convention which is that John McCain would be "four more years" of the Bush administration but she preceded it with the words, "John McCain is my colleague and my friend" which made the dismissal of him sound hollow.
Hillary's real objective in this speech seemed to be to secure her place as a figure in the history of the fight for women's rights. That role, she seemed to suggest, transcended the petty business of running for the presidency.
Perhaps most ominously for the Obama camp, her peroration repeated the refrain, "Keep going, keep going, don't ever stop. We're Americans - we're not big on quitting."
This lady is not for quitting either. This speech was about her and her future. And it was a showstopper.
The Queen Of Grief
The Obama campaign has asked Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to shut her mouth, but in as nice a way as they possibly can. That isn't to say they aren't mad about her recent activities.
"It's like 'Thanks, madam speaker, you've done quite enough. Please move along,'" says one Obama adviser. "She got us stuck on three different issues that we wanted no part of. She's no master strategist, no matter what she may believe. You may see more of her, but if her mouth is open, what comes out won't be anything that our campaign wants anything to do with."
According to several House Democrat leadership staffers, Pelosi grew increasingly angry several months ago that she was not being given a strategic role in directing the Democrat convention or being actively sought out by the Obama campaign for advice. "She made a point that she was queen of the far left, which was the group that really helped Obama get to where he was," says Democrat leadership staffer, adding, "She didn't call herself a queen, but you get the point, and so did the Obama people."
Now Pelosi's big mouth has ensnared Obama in Catholic abortion issues, and campaign issues from four years ago that he wanted no part of and wasn't a part of just a week ago. Further, Pelosi's continued gaffes on the subject have renewed examination of Pelosi's poor standing in the Catholic Church. Given her position and votes on abortion and birth-control issues, she is not in good standing with the Catholic Church, despite what she may herself believe.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
COMMENTARY: Does Michelle Obama deserve to be America's First Lady?
Michelle Obama may have wowed her fellow Democrats with her poised and impassioned speech to the Democratic National Convention on Monday night.
But she left much to be done in what has become the central obstacle to Barack Obama's winning the presidency: reassuring the country that she and her family understand ordinary Americans.
The first task for Mrs Obama was to shed a reputation for acerbity and bitterness which has clung to her since the early months of the year.
Michelle Obama, wife of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama
She has yet to live down her remark that her husband's campaign marked the first time in her adult life when she was 'proud of my country'.
Critics have labelled her yet another haughty liberal, ungrateful for her opportunities and dismissive of anyone who disagrees with her.
If she could only be proud of America when her husband was vying for the Presidency, did she really deserve to be First Lady?
She said she shared an understanding of the American dream with 'people who work the day shift, kiss their kids goodnight, and head out for the night shift'. She was tearful as she spoke of how she and her husband were driven by 'a simple belief that the world as it is just won't do'.
Her message of triumph against the odds and her smooth delivery was worthy of the Obamas' close friend and supporter Oprah Winfrey.
Michelle with daughters Sasha, 7, and Malia, 10 at the Democratic Convention
But what was left out was just as telling: Any mention by name of the universities she attended, Princeton and Harvard, and her highly paid career as a corporate lawyer.
The last thing the Obama campaign wants is for the couple to come across as 'Clinton Lite', another over-educated pair of liberal lawyers planning to run the White House as a team. Last night's speech was part of a broader strategy to counter the perception that Obama is an elitist.
During the primary race against Hillary Clinton, Obama struggled to win over blue-collar and middleclass white voters. His Kenyan father, his upbringing by a single mother in Hawaii and his Ivy-League education seemed odd to voters who prefer a more conventional story for their politicians. John McCain's war hero-turned-politician was instantly recognisable.
Michelle Obama's speech, which rooted her in the black working-class of Chicago, was intended to anchor her husband in a tale of hard work, honesty and upward mobility through education.
Chat show host Oprah Winfrey is a supporter of Barack Obama
When Barack appeared on a large video screen at the end of the speech, he was sitting with a white family in that whitest of places, Kansas City, Missouri.
He has given up the stadium speeches which marked his primary campaign. He tells voters how he and his wife struggled to pay off their student loans and fretted about childcare.
It is an attempt to make a distinction between the self-made Obamas and Republican candidate John McCain, and his wife who inherited a large fortune.
Last week's poll by U.S.A Today newspaper found 52 per cent of voters believed the candidates' spouses were important in deciding who to vote for. In a tight contest the performance of Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain will be critical.
For a candidate who remains as mysterious as Obama, Michelle's role will be vital. Hence the effort which has gone into softening her image - appearing on magazine covers, and discussing everything from shopping for toilet paper to raising her daughters Malia, ten, and Sasha, seven.
It is a maddening fact for Democrats that true American aristocrat President Bush managed to appear down-to-earth in his two election campaigns.
Yet the Obamas, a black couple who did genuinely work their way up the system, are struggling to rid themselves of the elitist tag.
Michelle did some sterling work at the convention, but the Obamas' challenge remains a huge one.
'A horrible truth is beginning to dawn on the Democrats- Obama is a weak candidate'
The Democratic party will whip up some euphoria in Denver this week. But a dark cloud of anxiety hovers over the party convention.
A horrible truth is beginning to dawn on the Democrats. Barack Obama is not the “once in a generation” political genius they thought they had discovered. On the contrary, he is a weak candidate for the presidency.
With a feeble economy, an unpopular war and the Republicans in disarray, the Democrats should win the presidential election in a canter. But Mr Obama, the Democratic nominee, is neck and neck with John McCain, his Republican rival. For sure, Mr Obama has some real assets – intelligence, grace, good looks, star quality. But history suggests that he is a very risky candidate.
Since 1968, the Democrats have won just three out of 10 presidential races. Their two successful candidates – Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton – were both white, centrist governors from the southern US. Whenever the Democrats nominated a liberal from outside the South – George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry – they lost.
Mr Obama is a northerner. He is a liberal. He is a former college professor. And he is black. A bold choice, under the circumstances.
Mr Obama’s unusual personal history – the son of a black Kenyan and a white American, brought up partly in Indonesia – allowed him to write a fascinating, introspective autobiography, Dreams from My Father. But his life story may seem a little exotic to most American voters. Mr McCain’s early life could easily be made into a Hollywood movie.Mr Obama’s youth is more of an off-Broadway play.
Mr McCain can tell tales of heroism as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Mr Obama was a student at elite universities on a voyage of self-discovery. He writes: “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists ... We discussed neo-colonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy.” Even allowing for the self-mocking tone, this is not exactly mainstream America.
It is clear that Mr Obama lacks experience. But that, in itself, need not be a bar to the White House. The same was true of other Democrats who won the presidency – John Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton.
Race, however, is a bigger problem. So far, the fact that Mr Obama is an African-American may actually have helped him. As Shelby Steele, an academic, writes: “When you can credibly run for the presidency only two years out of the Illinois state legislature ... then something in the society is drawing you forward.”
But Democratic primaries – with a high proportion of black and white liberal voters – are one thing. A general election is quite another matter. And notoriously, even in the Democratic contest, Mr Obama struggled to pick up the votes of the white working class in key states such as Pennsylvania. A recent New York Times poll hinted at just how high a barrier Mr Obama may have to hurdle. Whilst only 5 per cent of American voters said they would not vote for a black candidate, 27 per cent said they thought the US was not yet ready for a black president.
Mr Obama has campaigned as a candidate who happens to be black, rather than as a black candidate. In doing so, he has offered white voters the reassurance that he is not one of those African-Americans who talks endlessly about race and tries to make them feel bad. On the contrary, voting for Mr Obama can make you feel good about yourself and about race relations in America.
So there was a certain, cynical brilliance in the McCain campaign’s accusation that it is Mr Obama who is “playing the race card”. This challenged the idea that Mr Obama is a “post-racial” candidate – and it played to white resentments about what some regard as special treatment for black people. The New York Times poll showed that 26 per cent of American whites believe they have been the victim of discrimination.
The special sensitivity of the racial issue places the Obama campaign in a dilemma when it comes to responding to attacks. It is conventional wisdom among Democrats that previous candidates – in particular, Mr Dukakis and Mr Kerry – lost because they were too slow to respond to negative campaigning by the Republicans.
But if the Obama campaign suspects the Republicans of appealing to racism, they will have to think twice about levelling the accusation. Any such charge will be leapt upon by a controversy-hungry media – placing race at the centre of the election campaign. And that can only help the McCain campaign.
Of course, Mr McCain has his own vulnerabilities. He is about to turn 72 – and some opinion polls suggest that voters are even more reluctant to vote for a pensioner than they are to vote for a black person. His inability to remember how many houses he owns suggests that he is either extraordinarily rich or slightly senile – neither idea is helpful to his cause.
The structural factors that the Democrats think favour them this year certainly exist. Americans are in a morose mood about the economy and the country in general. The unpopularity of President George W. Bush will act as a drag on Republicans. Mr Obama has raised an awful lot of money, run a skilful campaign that beat the formidable Clinton machine and has an army of highly enthusiastic supporters.
But he is still a very vulnerable candidate. Can he lose? Yes he can.
UNC-Chapel Hill Terrorist Get 33 Years For Attempted Murder
SMH:
A former student from Iran was sentenced to up to 33 years in prison for plowing his sport utility vehicle into a crowd at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in a self-professed bid to avenge Muslim deaths overseas.
Mohammed Taheri-Azar, 25, pleaded guilty earlier this month to nine counts of attempted murder for the March 2006 attack at a popular outdoor gathering spot known as The Pit.
One person had a head injury and several were cut and bruised from jumping out of the SUV's path, but no one stayed in the hospital overnight, Orange County District Attorney James Woodall said.
Taheri-Azar is a naturalised citizen from Iran who grew up near Charlotte and graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill.
Victim Karen Harman said in court on Tuesday that when she saw a Jeep coming toward her, she assumed it was headed to The Pit to do work.
"But the driver hit the gas, and I mean, he hit the gas. In the next instant, I was on the ground, clutching my knee in pain," she said.
The original charges were consolidated into two counts of attempted murder for sentencing purposes. Taheri-Azar was sentenced to between 13 and 16 years in prison on each count.
The guilty plea comes after a tumultuous court process. Taheri-Azar initially tried to represent himself, then tried to fire his lawyer. After an outburst in court in 2007, a judge ordered a mental evaluation.
Authorities said Taheri-Azar was travelling between 16-48kph when he drove onto campus and through The Pit.
Afterward, he waited in his vehicle for police for about 15 minutes and told them he was the man they were looking for. Police found a letter in his apartment that he had written them because he thought he would be killed during the attack.
The letter said he wanted revenge for the deaths of Muslims overseas that he said were caused by the US He has said he rented a Jeep Cherokee because it was better equipped for what he planned to do.
Obama's Dilemma
The National Post:
Yesterday in Denver, the Democrats kicked off their 45th national convention, where Senator Barack Obama will officially become the party's presidential nominee. When it comes time for Mr. Obama to deliver his acceptance speech before 70,000 people at Invesco Field on Thursday, he will have the challenge -- and it is certainly no small one-- of seeming to be two things at once: the overwhelming enthusiastic choice of a united party and someone with depth and substance--not just a celebrity with a huge, unthinking following.
On one hand, Mr. Obama must show that, after a bitter primary battle, he has brought Hillary Clinton's supporters around to his cause. On the other hand, speaking in a football stadium filled to capacity with cheering fans won't make it easy for him to rebut the criticisms coming from Republican John McCain's camp (not to mention right-wing commentators, such as Rush Limbaugh) that he is an empty messiah figure, good at generating adulation but not ready to lead the country.
Is there a solution? On some levels, Mr. Obama's choice of Senator Joe Biden as a running mate may help. If you happen to believe that Mr. Obama is more style than substance -- and this, thanks to Mr. McCain's TV ad, is a notion that seems to have struck a chord with Americans -- then you will probably be comforted by the idea of having a veteran pol like Mr. Biden on side. If you believe that Ms. Clinton should have been the nominee, you were probably not going to be swayed by Mr. Obama's choice of anyone but the former first lady anyway.
Things are far from settled for Mr. Obama. Even if he can pull off a delicate balancing act this week (and avoid being dragged down by bitter Clinton supporters), he's going to have to convince Americans that they can trust him to see them through the United State's growing foreign policy and economic problems. His wishy-washy reaction to Russia's military incursion in to Georgia did not serve him well in that regard, underscoring instead the reality-deprived nature of most of his solutions. Mr. McCain, in contrast, came across as hard-nosed and pragmatic.
On the economic front, Mr. Obama has been confusing: waffling on free trade and sounding like a protectionist one day and David Ricardo the next. Even though Mr. McCain has admitted he "doesn't really understand economics," he has at least been more decisive than his opponent, consistently favouring free trade (though many Republicans will never forgive him for voting against President George W. Bush's tax cuts).
On the whole, the Democrats' "saviour" is running just slightly ahead of Mr. McCain in what should, by most accounts, have been a cakewalk for the Democrats. Unless Mr. Obama can address these problems in the next several days, people who thought winning the 2008 election would be child's play for the Democratic Party will be in for a surprise.
Apology For Slavery? Not From The Democrats
That didn't take long.
News flash: the Democrats will not be wasting any time at their Denver Convention apologizing for slavery -- or segregation either. They aren't even ashamed enough to apologize for giving a double thumbs-up to lynching African-Americans.
Tennessee Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen, the sponsor of the recently passed House Resolution that voiced an apology for slavery and segregation on behalf of the U.S. government, says he will not be pushing for an apology on any of these issues from his fellow Democrats. He labeled the idea a "red herring."
On a recent appearance on the Comcast Network's "It's Your Call with Lynn Doyle" (shown on CN8) with, among others, your humble correspondent, Congressman Cohen was going on with great delight about the kumbaya-ness of his recently passed House Resolution. A voice vote. Democrats and Republicans together. Just wonderful, don't ya know? Until, that is, I pointed out to the considerable television audience that the terrible things cited in his resolution were relentlessly championed for almost two centuries by his own political party. Cohen lists them specifically in his Resolution as follows: "racism, lynchings, disenfranchisement, Black Codes, and racial segregation laws that imposed a rigid system of officially sanctioned racial segregation in virtually all areas of life."
Well, now. That's a pretty good list of evil to accuse someone of when asking for an apology. And I had used the word "evil" in my opening remarks with what I assumed was the Congressman's agreement. So, I did the obvious, wondering aloud whether Cohen had any plans to get a similar apology from his fellow Democrats since it was they who were in fact responsible for the racist history he listed.
With the Congressman in his Memphis district and myself in a Philadelphia studio, the Congressman broke into the discussion the moment we returned from a commercial break to challenge me indignantly. The very idea of asking Democrats to apologize for their support for slavery and segregation and, well, all the rest he had personally cited in his House Resolution, was now a "red herring." Worse, he said when the point was picked up by another guest, Horace Cooper of the conservative American Civil Rights Union, to demand any sort of apology from the people who did these things was a "rabbit trail." In other words, a request for Democrats to apologize for their considerably racist history would go nowhere.
Would the Democrats be considering an apology at their Denver Convention, I asked sweetly? I brought up the fact that the Democratic National Committee had eliminated from the "Party History" section of their website 52 years worth of history from 1848 until the beginning of the 20th century. The site, presided over by and prominently featuring DNC Chairman Howard Dean, deliberately skips over no-big deal moments like the Civil War and the Democrats' opposition to such small things as the 13th Amendment to the Constitution banning slavery. It also skips mention of the opposition by Democrats to the 14th and 15th Amendments overriding the Dred Scott decision to provide both legal and voting rights for black Americans. There is nary a whisper of the fact that Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875, legislation that was actually enacted but effectively eviscerated by Democrats until re-enacted in 1964 and 1965 -- a hundred years later. I also pointed out to Congressman Cohen that the Democrats had spent 165 years from the party founding in 1800 to about 1965 benefiting politically, socially and financially from support for both slavery and segregation, establishing Jim Crow laws and refusing to support anti-lynching legislation. Wasn't all of this worthy of a formal apology from the Democrats on the eve of nominating the first African-American in history for the presidency?
Congressman Cohen was not a happy camper. As mentioned, at the very beginning of the show he had seemed to agree with me that slavery was "evil" and "a crime against humanity." But the man who personally wrote an entire House Resolution word for word insisting it was important that: "Whereas the story of the enslavement and de jure segregation of African-Americans and the dehumanizing atrocities committed against them should not be purged from or minimized in the telling of American history" -- that man disappeared right on live television. Congressman Cohen was suddenly seized with a need to purge and minimize his own party's very distinctive, very lengthy, unbelievably violent and deeply disturbing history when it came to the accurate telling of American history.
As to his Resolution's pledge that, "Whereas an apology for centuries of brutal dehumanization and injustices cannot erase the past, but confession of the wrongs committed can speed racial healing and reconciliation and help Americans confront the ghosts of their past," Congressman Cohen was suddenly in no mood whatsoever for any kind of on-the record confession leading to racial healing in the Democratic platform, much less an apology from his party of racial culprits. Stung by the realization his resolution was backfiring on his own party, on live TV no less, out came the spluttering talk of a "red herring" and a "rabbit trail." He also responded by heatedly (if wrongly) asserting that Alabama Governor George Wallace, a Democrat, was a Republican.
Cohen's on-air refusal to insist on a formal apology from the Denver Democrats (or any other Democrats anywhere) is, this week of Barack Obama's nomination, not simply one more TV soundbite. It goes straight to the heart of the way Democrats -- or as I call them "the Party of Race" -- will be dealing with the race issue this fall -- and beyond.
Once again, let me recommend my former Reagan colleague Bruce Bartlett's outstanding chronology of the Democrats' historical behavior on racial issues, Wrong On Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past. It is a great primer on both the history and psychology behind the Democrats for those who, were they just listening to Congressman Cohen, would think that the history of race in American politics began with the 1960s. Since the Congressman himself appears to think this, I personally recommend Mr. Bartlett's book to him.
HERE'S WHY COHEN'S refusal to have the Democrats formally apologize for their unbelievably vivid history of racial hatred is important. It simply is not possible to spend almost 200 years playing the worst kind of race-baiting politics -- enthusiastically issuing official party pronouncements supporting slavery, making segregation the norm in everyday American life and benefiting, as mentioned, politically, socially and financially from the fact -- and not adapt the politics of race as a permanent feature of the party's political psychology.
Playing the race card, as we say these days, is at the very core of the modern Democrats and the way they address any number of issues. They do it all day, every day -- playing off blacks against whites, whites against blacks, blacks against Asians, Latinos against whites and blacks and on and on in every conceivable combination. Here are but a few examples from just this year of how the Party of Race employs its inheritance of racial politics:
* January 26 -- Former President Bill Clinton, campaigning in South Carolina for wife Hillary, dismisses an impending Obama win in the South Carolina Democratic primary by playing the race card and implying that Obama is nothing more than a black candidate with no mainstream support. The Clinton quote: "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88.... Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here."
* March 13 -- The remarks of Obama pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, begin to surface. They include (but famously are not limited to) a reference to America as "white America, the U.S. of KKKA," mocks Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as racial sellouts, calling them "Clarence Colon" and "Con-damn-nesia."
* June 15 -- The New York Post reports exclusively that the Reverend Al Sharpton's National Action Network charity (NAN) is being investigated by the Brooklyn US Attorney's office. The story says Sharpton, a past candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, is accused of threatening CEOs of some 50 companies with negative racial publicity or consumer boycotts if they do not hire him as a consultant on race relations or write checks to NAN. The Post says Anheuser-Busch has made a "six-figure" contribution to Sharpton, Colgate-Palmolive has given $50,000, and "Macy's and Pfizer have contributed thousands" to Sharpton's charity.
* June 20 -- Senator Barack Obama invokes both racism and sexism as he campaigns, saying of Republicans: "We know what kind of campaign they're going to run. They're going to try to make you afraid," Obama said at the fundraiser. "They're going to try to make you afraid of me. He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black? He's got a feisty wife."
* July 13 -- A federal government investigation of Princeton University is revealed.
Reason? An allegation that Princeton University (not run by any known outlaw clique of on-the-record conservative Republicans) discriminates against Asian-American applicants by accepting black and Hispanic students with lower entrance scores. Princeton officials deny the charge.
* July 16-- Fox News reveals that the Reverend Jesse Jackson is caught on videotape whispering to a fellow TV guest that "Barack...he's talking down to black people...telling n-----s how to behave." All of America watches as Jackson also says he wants to cut Obama's "nuts" off, making a quick cutting motion with his right hand. Jackson had previously called for a boycott of a newly released DVD of the Seinfeld TV shows in response to Seinfeld cast member Michael Richards' use of the "N-word" in a comedy routine.
* July 31 -- Senator Barack Obama says Republicans will campaign against him by saying he ""doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."
* August 15 - "If you look at folks of color, even women, they're more successful in the Democratic Party than they are in the white, uh, excuse me, in the Republican Party..." said DNC Chairman Howard Dean in an interview on NPR. A DNC spokesperson later said Dean "misspoke."
* October , 2005 -- This one goes back to the post-Katrina days in New Orleans. The speaker is the Democratic Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin. He was addressing the fears of local black contractors: "I can plainly see in your eyes that you want to know, 'How do I take advantage of this incredible opportunity?' How do I make sure New Orleans is not overrun with Mexicans?"
* Last, but certainly not least, is the rejection of Congressman Cohen himself, the only white man in the House who represents a majority black district, by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). In the words of Caucus member Congressman William Lacy Clay, a black Missouri Democrat: "Quite simply, Rep. Cohen will have to accept what the rest of the country will have to accept -- there has been an unofficial Congressional White Caucus for over 200 years, and now it's our turn to say who can join 'the club.' He does not, and cannot, meet the membership criteria, unless he can change his skin color. Primarily, we are concerned with the needs and concerns of the black population, and we will not allow white America to infringe on those objectives."
If you like your racism straight up, Bull Connor, that sterling member of both the Ku Klux Klan and the Democratic National Committee, could not have said it better than Congressman Clay to Congressman Cohen. It is Connor, of course, who is infamous in history for turning police dogs and fire hoses on civil rights protesters in Birmingham, Alabama, where he was not only a leading Democrat but the Public Safety Commissioner. Interestingly, Mr. Cooper of the ACRU brought up this issue of being barred from the CBC to Cohen on air during the Doyle show. Cohen fell silent and chose not to respond.
THE HARD FACT of political life in America is -- and if Congressman Cohen and his party get their way it will apparently always be -- that Democrats cannot help themselves when it comes to playing the race card. They have played it every day of their party's existence. It could be 1808 or 1908 or 2008. It could be the deepest parts of Alabama or the middle of Harlem. The topic could be Mexicans getting contracts to rebuild New Orleans or a white membership in the Black Caucus. It can surface with Jesse Jackson as he waits for a television interview, Al Sharpton as he allegedly shakes down major corporations, or Barack Obama as he works the presidential campaign trail. In every and all instances the bottom line for Democrats is always the same: race, race and race again. How to make it pay off financially, how to gain from it politically, how to scare with it or how to ruin someone's career with it.
Congressman Cohen calls the idea of an apology for all of this kind of thing a "red herring." What is a "red herring"? It's Democrat-speak for having absolutely no intention of officially apologizing for slavery, segregation, lynching or their addiction to race-baiting politics. It is also the Democrats' way of seeing to it that America never reaches the goal of Dr. Martin Luther King, a color-blind America where Americans are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Ever.
Why?
As always, they have too much to gain.
