Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree on much of what you wrote.
My views tend toward the Humanist / World view / Agnostic.
http://www.humanisterna.se/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=48
I do not believe you have to be Christian to be civil, loving, respectful of one's neighbor and especially moral. Even the bible says, that those without law are a law unto themselves, and that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them. I think Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and the other founding fathers had it right regarding the separation of church and state balanced with the right to practice ANY or NO religion.
I am sure you have seen kids who are raised in a strict fundamentalist setting go wild at times when their parents or teachers aren't around to supervise them. The difference between claim and conduct is not guaranteed just because one claims to be Christian. Helpfulness out of concern for another is not morally the same as helpfulness for payment = a heavenly reward. We know that truth telling out of respect for accuracy is not morally the same as truth telling for fear of being caught in a lie. In short, simply to equate "good" behavior with morality doesn't make sense.
As for protecting our borders and culture, I agree that we need to have secure borders - but most of those people coming over for years have been Christians, albeit, Catholics who in many ways are more religious than those born here. We just need tougher border enforcement, sanctions for firms that hire illegal immigrants, and a way for employers to verify that job applicants are here legally - so they can pay taxes that help support the entire system. It might make our prices a bit higher at the market, but in the end....
As for your statement, People won't love their neighbor if they can't trust them. I say, people no matter who they are, have to earn my trust. I give them the benefit of the doubt until they show who they really are.
Besides, didn't Jesus teach that we have to love strangers, and even love our enemies? Sometimes it seems like modern Christians are trying to imitate the Pharisees instead of loving strangers. They have a peculiar obsession about keeping the Law and a strange inability to show hospitality to those with whom they disagree.
They can quote the Law of Moses but they do not seem to know the meaning of the Greek word philoxenia ("loving strangers"). They can quote the Levitical Holiness Code but they do not seem to know the meaning of hospitality. They can tell young Christians that the Old Testament law still applies but they do not seem to know what it truly means to "love strangers."
Some of the above are quotes I found, and have helped me put into words what I believe and feel.
I agree with you, that we need education. An educated society is a more civil, hospitable, ethical and moral one. Otherwise we will repeat history and like Rome, revert to "the mob".
Hey if the guy can prove he is no Jimmy Carter to me, then I will gladly vote for him. That is why I liked Huckabee. He had a Christian mission far beyond being president and he wasnt a Washington insider. I agree with you that we need desperately change in Washington. Go learn about Rhome and you will see where we are headed. History repeats itself.
I agree with alot of the article, but where we differ is we cant rely on a love your neighbor government without the basis of his approach being Christianity. His party stands for a pure separation of church and state, but you have to be a moral society to express love to others. Ours is not. Therefore you must position your government to protect its borders, language and culture, or your just over run with more corrupt people in a Godless society. The economy cannot handle the strain.
Furthermore, if your argument is that his philosophy makes him smarter and more loving, then you have to have the citizens educated or they will never embrace his concept. They wont understand it. People wont love their neighbor if they cant trust them.
LOL - Obama, and The Bible trumps the constitution/Huckabee? You gotta be kidding.
I have my money on Obama and Jim Webb from Virginia. Maybe a veteran with Sec of the Navy experience will help quell the "Obama has no backbone on National Defense" crowd.
Kinda leaning toward Rev. Al Sharpton. That might be the Ticket.
Well written IMHO, OP ed piece from the NY times
June 8, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
One Historic Night, Two Americas
By FRANK RICH
WHEN Barack Obama achieved his historic victory on Tuesday night, the battle was joined between two Americas. Not John Edwards’s two Americas, divided between rich and poor. Not the Americas split by race, gender, party or ideology. What looms instead is an epic showdown between two wildly different visions of the country, from the ground up.
On one side stands Mr. Obama’s resolutely cheerful embrace of the future. His vision is inseparable from his identity, both as a rookie with a slim Washington résumé and as a black American whose triumph was regarded as improbable by voters of all races only months ago. On the other is John McCain’s promise of a wise warrior’s vigilant conservation of the past. His vision, too, is inseparable from his identity — as a government lifer who has spent his entire career in service, whether in the Navy or Washington.
Given the dividing line separating the two Americas of 2008, a ticket uniting Mr. McCain and Hillary Clinton might actually be a better fit than the Obama-Clinton “dream ticket,” despite their differences on the issues. Never was this more evident than Tuesday night, when Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain both completely misread a one-of-a-kind historical moment as they tried to cling to the prerogatives of the 20th century’s old guard.
All presidential candidates, Mr. Obama certainly included, are egomaniacs. But Washington’s faith in hierarchical status adds a thick layer of pomposity to politicians who linger there too long. Mrs. Clinton referred to herself by the first-person pronoun 64 times in her speech, and Mr. McCain did so 60 times in his. Mr. Obama settled for 30.
Remarkably, neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. McCain had the grace to offer a salute to Mr. Obama’s epochal political breakthrough, which reverberated so powerfully across the country and throughout the world. By being so small and ungenerous, they made him look taller. Their inability to pivot even briefly from partisan self-interest could not be a more telling symptom of the dysfunctional Washington culture Mr. Obama aspires to mend.
Yet even as the two establishment candidates huffed and puffed to assert their authority, they seemed terrified by Mr. Obama’s insurgency, as if it were the plague in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death.” Mrs. Clinton held her nonconcession speech in a Manhattan bunker, banishing cellphone reception and television monitors carrying the news of Mr. Obama’s clinching of the nomination. Mr. McCain, laboring under the misapprehension that he was wittily skewering his opponent, compulsively invoked the Obama-patented mantra of “change” 33 times in his speech.
Mr. McCain only reminded voters that he, like Mrs. Clinton, thinks that change is nothing more than a marketing gimmick. He has no idea what it means. “No matter who wins this election, the direction of this country is going to change dramatically,” he said on Tuesday. He then grimly regurgitated Goldwater and Reagan government-bashing talking points from the 1960s and ’70s even as he presumed to accuse Mr. Obama of looking “to the 1960s and ’70s for answers.”
Mr. Obama is a liberal, but it’s not your boomer parents’ liberalism that is at the heart of his appeal. He never rattles off a Clinton laundry list of big federal programs; he supports abortion rights and gay civil rights with a sunny bonhomie that makes the right’s cultural scolds look like rabid mastodons. He is not refighting either side of the domestic civil war over Vietnam that exploded in his hometown of Chicago 40 years ago this summer, long before he arrived there.
He has never deviated from his much-quoted formulation in “The Audacity of Hope,” where he described himself as aloof from “the psychodrama of the baby boom generation” with its “old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago.” His vocabulary is so different from that of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain that they often find it as baffling as a foreign language, even as they try to rip it off.
The selling point of Mr. Obama’s vision of change is not doctrinaire liberalism or Bush-bashing but an inclusiveness that he believes can start to relieve Washington’s gridlock much as it animated his campaign. Some of that inclusiveness is racial, ethnic and generational, in the casual, what’s-the-big-deal manner of post-boomer Americans already swimming in our country’s rapidly expanding demographic pool. Some of it is post-partisan: he acknowledges that Republicans, Ronald Reagan included, can have ideas.
Opponents who dismiss this as wussy naïveté do so at their own risk. They at once call attention to the expiring shelf life of their own Clinton-Bush-vintage panaceas and lull themselves into underestimating Mr. Obama’s political killer instincts.
The Obama forces out-organized the most ruthless machine in Democratic politics because the medium of their campaign mirrored its inclusive message. They empowered adherents in every state rather than depending on a Beltway campaign hierarchy whose mercenary chief strategist kept his day job as chief executive for a corporate P.R. giant. Such viral organization and fund-raising is a seamless fit with bottom-up democracy as it is increasingly practiced in the Facebook-YouTube era, not merely by Americans and not merely by the young.
You could learn a ton about the Clinton campaign’s cultural tone-deafness from its stodgy generic Web site. A similar torpor afflicts JohnMcCain.com, which last week gave its graphics a face-lift that unabashedly mimics BarackObama.com and devoted prime home page real estate to hawking “McCain Golf Gear.” (No joke.) The blogs, video and social networking are static and sparse, the apt reflection of a candidate who repeatedly invokes “I” as he boasts of his humility.
Mr. Obama’s deep-rooted worldliness — in philosophy as well as itinerant background — is his other crucial departure from the McCain template. As more and more Americans feel the pain of spiraling gas prices and lost jobs, they are also coming to recognize, as Mr. Obama does, that the globally reviled American image forged by an endless war in Iraq and its accompanying torture scandals is inflicting economic as well as foreign-policy havoc.
Six out of 10 Americans do want their president to talk to Iran’s president, according to the most-recent Gallup poll. Americans are sick of a national identity defined by arrogant saber-rattling abroad and manipulative fear-mongering at home. Mr. Obama closed his speech on Tuesday by telling Americans they “don’t deserve” another election “that’s governed by fear.” Of the three candidates, he was the only one who did not mention 9/11 that night.
Mr. Obama isn’t flawless. But it’s hard to see him hitching up with Mrs. Clinton, who would contradict his message, unite the right, and pass along her husband’s still unpacked post-presidency baggage. A larger trap for Mr. Obama is his cockiness. His own tendency to preen and to coast could be encouraged by recent events rocking the Straight Talk Express: Mr. McCain is so far proving an exceptionally clumsy candidate prone to accentuating everything that’s out-of-touch about his American vision.
Mr. McCain’s speech in a New Orleans suburb on Tuesday night spawned a cottage industry of ridicule, even among Republicans. The halting delivery, sickly green backdrop and spastic, inappropriate smiles, presumably mandated by some consultant hoping to mask his anger, left the impression that Mr. McCain isn’t yet ready for prime-time radio.
But the substance was even worse than the theatrics. Incredibly, Mr. McCain attacked Mr. Obama for being insufficiently bipartisan while speaking to the most conspicuously partisan audience you can assemble in today’s America: a small, nearly all-white crowd that seconded his attack lines with boorish choruses of boos. On TV, the audience came across as a country-club membership riled by a change in the Sunday brunch menu.
Equally curious was Mr. McCain’s decision to stage this event in Louisiana, a state that is truly safe for the G.O.P. and that he’d last visited less than six weeks earlier. Perhaps he did so because Louisiana’s governor, the 36-year-old Indian-American Bobby Jindal, is the only highly placed nonwhite Republican he could find to lend his campaign an ersatz dash of diversity and youth.
Or perhaps he thought that if he once more returned to the scene of President Bush’s Katrina crime to (belatedly) slam that federal failure, it would fool voters into forgetting his cheerleading for Mr. Bush’s Iraq obsession and economic policies. This time it proved a levee too far. The day after his speech Mr. McCain was caught on the stump misstating and exaggerating his own do-little record after Katrina. Soon the Internet was alight with documentation of what he actually did on the day the hurricane hit land: a let-us-eat-cake photo op with Mr. Bush celebrating his birthday in Arizona.
Anything can happen in politics, and there are five months to go. But Tuesday night’s McCain pratfall — three weeks in the planning by his campaign, according to Fox News — should be a clear indication that Mr. Obama must accept Mr. McCain’s invitation to weekly debates at once. Tomorrow if possible, and, yes, bring on the green!
Mr. Obama must also heed Mr. McCain’s directive that he visit Iraq — as long as he avoids Baghdad markets and hits other foreign capitals on route. When the world gets a firsthand look at the new America Mr. Obama offers as an alternative to Mr. McCain’s truculent stay-the-course, the public pandemonium may make J.F.K.’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” visit to the Berlin Wall look like a warm-up act.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Do you feel Obama has a chance to win now that you saw the West Virginia outcome? I see Obama getting crushed in the general election. I will tell you this, if he had any backbone on national defense and he picked a non-institutional running mate for VP, I would vote for him. John Edwards is an ambulance chaser imho, and Hillary, is well Hillary. There are lots of whites who will not vote for Obama, both Democrat and Independent. It is not right, but West Virginia showed that it is just the way it is. Nice board btw... Obama/Huckabee now that would be a ticket worth voting for. Obama/Lieberman would be even better.
Wow - no posts on the John Edwards endorsement? A long time coming, but very important IMO.
When Edwards and Obama first took the stage in the debates, I was thinking dream ticket. Edwards brings the support of a segment that has been voting Hillary. Let's put the two together -an unbeatable choice in November, again IMO.
Sorry to rain on your West Virginia parade Hillary! ; )
My wife and I are off to the Hawaii state convention at the end of the month. Will report any news when we return.
Best to all - Aloha!
I found this to be a balanced outlook on the whole Wright / Obama "controversy". Interestingly, written by a Catholic Priest.
No need for us to choose between Obama, Wright
May 4, 2008
Recommend (8)
BY THE REV. MICHAEL L. PFLEGER
This has been a sad week for me. I have watched two friends whom I respect, admire and have a deep love for torn apart by pundits and editorialists, talking heads and political strategists!
It has been sad because both men, Sen. Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, love America, are passionate about its future and desire at their very core the best for this country and for each and every one of its citizens. I must also say that I find it quite hypocritical that conservative preachers and commentators who have identified themselves as the protectors and respecters of life are consistently silent on the issues of gun violence, poverty, lack of health care, poor education and the effects of racism and classism that are continually killing life in our inner cities. Yet when other voices identify these issues, they're called angry and unpatriotic.
There has been a strong desire and demand to make people take a side, draw a line in the sand and make a choice between Wright and Obama. I personally believe this is evil and unfair.
First of all, I don't understand why Obama and Wright are suddenly being held accountable and responsible for whatever the other says. This is not being done in either of the campaigns of Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain. So the question must be asked: What's the hidden strategy as to why this is being done to Obama and Wright?
Second, why are they seemingly being forced to not only be held accountable for each other, but to speak for and sound like each other? They are different persons, different personalities and have different purposes.
Finally, I understand, appreciate and believe we need both!
Obama has spent the past two years and years earlier in his political life presenting America a vision of hope. Hope as to who we can be, how we can be inclusive and different, how we can do politics differently, and how we can build a new and better America. This vision of hope has set a fire of enthusiasm, excitement and involvement across this country.
Wright, as a gifted preacher in the prophetic tradition, has spent his ministry identifying the sins, problems and stumbling blocks of racism, sexism, classism, poverty, inequality and the downright lies that must be acknowledged and eradicated if we are to build a new and better America. He has given hope to masses of people who have come to feel invisible in America.
We need a voice of hope that points us to a vision, and we need a prophetic voice that makes us uncomfortable and forces us to acknowledge our sins. Obama and Wright are, I believe, seeking the same thing, what the scriptures may call "a new heaven and a new Earth." Why are we trying to force them to drive down the same street in order to get there rather than being more preoccupied with arriving to the place of new beginnings and grateful to all the different voices that take us there? The true audacity of hope comes when it seems everything looks hopeless. Both Obama and Wright are calling us to hope -- but from their different vantage points.
I challenge us all not to get caught up in the trick to choose one or the other. Rather, let us be committed to the new day and the new beginning for America. And let us be appreciative and thankful for all the different and necessary voices who call us to get there! The truth is, we need Obama, and we need Wright, and if we are serious about wanting a new America, we cannot afford to throw either one of them under the bus!
The Rev. Michael Pfleger, a Catholic priest, is pastor of the Faith Community of St. Sabina in Chicago.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/931164,CST-EDT-open04.article
Obama greeted by largest crowd of his campaign
April 18, 2008 10:14 PM EST | AP
Democratic president hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., speaks to the crowd gathered on Independence Mall in Philadelphia, Friday, April 18, 2008. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
PHILADELPHIA — Barack Obama was greeted by the largest crowd of his campaign Friday night in Philadelphia. Some 35,000 people jammed into Independence Park to see the Democratic presidential candidate, four days before this state's crucial April 22 primary.
Frank Friel, director of security at the Independence Visitor Center, made the official estimate.
The crowd exceed the 30,000 who greeted Obama and Oprah Winfrey in December in Columbia, S.C.
Obama told the crowd the United States is at a crucial moment in its history, much like what the founding fathers faced in Philadelphia.
"It was over 200 years ago that a group of patriots gathered in this city to do something that no one in the world believed they could do," Obama said. "After years of a government that didn't listen to them, or speak for them, or represent their hopes and their dreams, a few humble colonists came to Philadelphia to declare their independence from the tyranny of the British throne."
The Illinois senator called Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton a "tenacious" opponent but said it was time to move beyond the politics of the 1990s.
"Her message comes down to this: We can't really change the say-anything, do-anything, special interest-driven game in Washington, so we might as well choose a candidate who really knows how to play it," Obama said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/18/obama-greeted-by-largest-_n_97524.html
Sen. Hillary Clinton drew sharp disagreements with Sen. Barack Obama late Friday for comments he made suggesting that job loss and economic woes had compelled people in Pennsylvania to bitterness, "guns or religion or antipathy, or anti-immigrant sentiment."
"Pennsylvanians," she declared, "don't need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families."
The line was cutting and drew applause from the crowd. And it demonstrates that the Clinton campaign feels it has a political winner if not an issue that could dominate the news cycle for several days.
"If we start acting like Americans," Clinton continued, "and role up our sleeves we can make sure that America's best years are ahead of us."
Clinton's reaction came just hours after the Huffington Post first reported on Obama's statement on small-town resentment. She was beaten to the punch by Sen. John McCain, who chastised Obama not for lacking an optimistic tone, but for deploying "liberal elitist" rhetoric.
Obama's remarks, which came at a San Francisco fundraiser, were as follows:
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Clinton addressed the Obama statement without prompting. Telling the crowd that, "it is being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are bitter," the New Yorker immediately sought to draw a contrast.
"Well, that is not my experience," she said. "As I travel around Pennsylvania I meet people who are resilient, optimistic, positive, who are rolling up their sleeves. They are working hard every day for a better future for themselves and their children"
UPDATE: McCain spokesman Steve Schmidt had this to say on Obama's remarks:
"It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking," Schmidt said. "It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans."
UPDATE: The Obama camp has released the following statement, responding to John McCain, via spokesman Tommy Vietor:
"Senator Obama has said many times in this campaign that Americans are understandably upset with their leaders in Washington for saying anything to win elections while failing to stand up to the special interests and fight for an economic agenda that will bring jobs and opportunity back to struggling communities. And if John McCain wants a debate about who's out of touch with the American people, we can start by talking about the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans that he once said offended his conscience but now wants to make permanent."
Later, Obama responded in person at an event in Indiana:
"When I go around and I talk to people there is frustration and there is anger and there is bitterness. And what's worse is when people are expressing their anger then politicians try to say what are you angry about? This just happened - I want to make a point here today.
"I was in San Francisco talking to a group at a fundraiser and somebody asked how're you going to get votes in Pennsylvania? What's going on there? We hear that's its hard for some working class people to get behind you're campaign. I said, "Well look, they're frustrated and for good reason. Because for the last 25 years they've seen jobs shipped overseas. They've seen their economies collapse. They have lost their jobs. They have lost their pensions. They have lost their healthcare.
"And for 25, 30 years Democrats and Republicans have come before them and said we're going to make your community better. We're going to make it right and nothing ever happens. And of course they're bitter. Of course they're frustrated. You would be too. In fact many of you are. Because the same thing has happened here in Indiana. The same thing happened across the border in Decatur. The same thing has happened all across the country. Nobody is looking out for you. Nobody is thinking about you. And so people end up- they don't vote on economic issues because they don't expect anybody's going to help them. So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don't believe they can count on Washington. So I made this statement-- so, here's what rich. Senator Clinton says 'No, I don't think that people are bitter in Pennsylvania. You know, I think Barack's being condescending.' John McCain says, 'Oh, how could he say that? How could he say people are bitter? You know, he's obviously out of touch with people.'
"Out of touch? Out of touch? I mean, John McCain--it took him three tries to finally figure out that the home foreclosure crisis was a problem and to come up with a plan for it, and he's saying I'm out of touch? Senator Clinton voted for a credit card-sponsored bankruptcy bill that made it harder for people to get out of debt after taking money from the financial services companies, and she says I'm out of touch? No, I'm in touch. I know exactly what's going on. I know what's going on in Pennsylvania. I know what's going on in Indiana. I know what's going on in Illinois. People are fed-up. They're angry and they're frustrated and they're bitter. And they want to see a change in Washington and that's why I'm running for President of the United States of America."
UPDATE: The Clinton campaign emailed around harsh comments from two Republican pundits:
Grover Norquist: 'That sentence will lose him the election... He just announced to rural America: I don't like you.' "Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist who leads an influential weekly meeting of conservatives, went as far as to argue that Obama's line would cost Democrats the White House. 'That sentence will lose him the election,' Norquist told ABC News. 'He just announced to rural America: 'I don't like you.'" [abcnews.com, 4/11/08]
Republican strategist Ed Rollins: Q: "On a scale of 1 to 10 how damaging is this?" Rollins: 'Ten.' [CNN, Lou Dobbs, 4/11/08]
The Obama campaign, meanwhile, emailed out a CNN segment where Gloria Borger, Jack Cafferty, and Jeffrey Toobin all defended the comments:
BLITZER: All right, Gloria, he's already being hammered by Hillary Clinton and John McCain for that matter for supposedly being an elitist and speaking ill of the people of Pennsylvania by suggesting that the economic problems there are causing them to become bitter and buying guns and becoming xenophobic and all of that. What do you think? Is this a real issue out there?
GLORIA BORGER: Well, Hillary Clinton said today, you know, I don't see bitter people out there, I see struggling people or whatever it is, but she said the people aren't bitter. But I think the people are angry – and maybe Obama's terminology was in artful but I think he's expressing a sentiment of mad-as-hell-voters, not going to take it anymore, that we've seen throughout this election. And that's why perhaps voters are saying over and over again that they want to change. So I think Hillary Clinton is trying to make him into the elite candidate but he's talking about people being angry.
BLITZER: All right, and Hillary Clinton responded to the Obama comments this way; Jeff. Let me play her little sound bite.
HRC: It's being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are bitter. Well, that's not my experience. As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive, who are rolling up their sleeves. They're working hard every day for a better future for themselves and their children. Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them.
BLITZER: All right, Jeff. What do you think?
JEFF TOOBIN: I think that is so ridiculous. I mean that is not at all what Barack Obama said. I just think this is an example of how a campaign between the two of them can be purely destructive. And not elevate either candidate. I mean, Hillary Clinton is clearly distorting what Obama said. And by the way, what Obama said is factually accurate. It's been true throughout history that people who have economic problems lash out against various others. I mean, I just think it is an embarrassing for the Clinton campaign to hang on this as if it's some sort of gaffe by Obama.
BLITZER: It's not just the Clinton campaign, Jack it's also the McCain campaign. They issued a statement saying it's a remarkable statement and extremely revealing it shows an elitism towards and condescension towards hard working Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking. It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans.
JACK CAFFERTY: Really? And this is from John McCain?
BLITZER: No, this is from Steve Schmidt a senior adviser for John McCain.
CAFFERTY: Look, Jeff's right. They call it the rust belt for a reason. The great jobs and the economic prosperity left that part of the country two or three decades ago. The people are frustrated. The people have no economic opportunity. What happens to folks like that in the Middle East, you ask? Well, take a look. They go to places like al Qaeda training camps. I mean, there's nothing new here. And what Barack Obama was suggesting is not that the people of Pennsylvania are to blame for any of it. It's that the jerks in Washington, D.C., as represented by the ten years of the Bushes and the Clintons and the McCains who have lied to and misled these people for all of this time while they shipped the jobs over seas and signed phony trade deals like NAFTA are to blame for the deteriorating economic conditions among America's middle class. I mean, I'm a college dropout and I can read the damn thing and figure it out.
BORGER: You know, in this case the Hillary Clinton campaign and the John McCain campaign have the same goal and that is to portray Obama as this sort of (inaudible) elitist who doesn't understand the real working class people or independent voters. And so they're both on the same side on this one and it's obvious why.
BLITZER: Go ahead, Jeff.
TOOBIN: I just think it's remarkable that Barack Obama, this guy who grew up in a single-family household with no money, who lived in Indonesia, who came from very modest upbringings, somehow he's the elitist? That's really a pretty extraordinary sort of contortion of his background. I mean.
BORGER: It's that Harvard, Yale thing.
CAFFERTY: He did not make $109 million in the last eight year did he?
BORGER: Right.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/11/clinton-mccain-respond-to_n_96318.html
I loved this diary I found on Daily Kos..
Obama Encounter in Salem, OR: Wow!
by mamabigdog
Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 10:00:12 PM PDT
I met Barack Obama today. Today was the 10th anniversary of our marriage, and rather than go out to a fancy restaurant for dinner, we decided to take our kids to witness history in the making. My family (Husband, Daughter-16, Daughter-14) and I attended the event in Salem, OR today, arriving at about 8:30A for the announced 11:30 doors open time.
The wind blew a cold 40 degrees, and it threatened to rain. We watched the TSA screeners arrive, along with bomb-sniffing dogs that were taken up and down the now long line into the Salem Armory. From the front of the line, a cheer rose as the gates were finally opened at 11:30A, as promised.
The TSA searched us thoroughly. I was even wanded. Into the Armory we went, searching out the closest seats we could. We ended up several rows back, but within 50 feet of the stage. Finally, Earl Blumenauer, our beloved bow-tie wearing US Representative came out to introduce Obama. Earl gave a very nice speech, the details of which I can’t recall due to what came next.
* mamabigdog's diary :: ::
Obama took the stage to a cheering, hooting and hollering standing ovation. He spoke on every topic- the economy, Iraq, foreign diplomatic policy, education, health care, energy, jobs, veteran’s affairs, etc. He was clear, unwavering and gave specifics for achieving these goals. Obama then took questions from the audience for about 30 minutes. At one point, and 74 year-old man stood up to tell Barack that he was now blind- color blind, specifically due to the speech he gave this week. Another woman asked him to give her talking points for her Democratic friends still on the fence about Obama v. Clinton. He gladly obliged.
"Senator Clinton is smart, she is capable and she is tenacious. She would be a vast improvement over the status quo... she’s gotten caught up in the conventional thinking in Washington. When I get that phone call at 3 in the morning, do what a good president should do, which is to get the facts, to talk with your advisers, to gather good intelligence and then to exercise good judgment. Senator Clinton, all too often I think, all too often over the last five years on foreign policy debates, has calibrated her responses based on politics instead of good judgment. That’s what happened on Iraq.
Now, here’s the condensed version of the difference on both domestic and foreign policy. It’s a question of leadership. I believe that it’s not enough just to change political parties. We have to change the culture, and part of changing the culture is recognizing that the special interests, the lobbyists, the insurance companies, the banks, the drug companies, HMO’s, they have come to dictate the agenda in Washington. The only way you break out of that so that ordinary people’s voices are heard is if you stop taking money from PACs and lobbyists like I have- she still does- and you recognize that they’re a problem- she doesn’t.
If you believe in transparency and accountability, which is why I passed the toughest ethics reform legislation since Watergate last year- this is not an issue she’s ever worked on because she doesn’t think it’s a priority- I passed laws to post on the internet a searchable database of every dollar of federal spending out there. Your tax money will continue to be wasted until you know when a "Bridge to Nowhere" is being built. She doesn’t believe in transparency and hasn’t even released her earmarks just like she hasn’t released her income tax returns. She doesn’t believe, I think, in bottom-up democracy, and if you don’t believe in that, then you’re not going to change Washington. You’ll tinker around the edges, but you’re not going to bring about the kind of changes the American people are desperate for. That’s why you should vote for Barack Obama."
Obama then got a question on immigration reform from the farm worker's union, PCUN, and stuck to his guns, not pandering to a much-needed demographic:
From the Statesman-Journal:
"He pledged that if elected president, he would seek a comprehensive approach to resolving immigration issues by insisting on secure borders and cracking down on employers who hire undocumented workers. "We have used this issue as a political football instead of solving the problem," he said in response to a question by a farmworker. He said undocumented immigrants should learn English, pay penalties, and be part of a path to legal presence and citizenship."
At the close of the questions, Obama made a few final remarks and closed the show to resounding applause and shouts of support. I made a beeline for the state barrier with my daughters, hoping for a handshake. I got a lot more.
As Obama worked his way down the line, he efficiently glad-handed, smiled and thanked supporters for coming. When he got to us, my youngest shook his hand and thanked him for running. He said, "You’re very welcome." I was next- I reached out to shake his hand saying, "Senator Obama, please talk more about the economy and the mortgage crisis. My mother is losing her home to foreclosure." Obama stopped in front of me, still holding my hand. "What is the situation, how did it happen?" he asked. "She is moving in with us," I responded, "She got into a bad loan, high rates, and couldn’t keep going when the economy tanked." He asked, "Have you been able to get any help locally?" "No." I said. Obama then talked about a number of non-profit organizations that could assist with the situation, and wished us luck in getting things settled. And he thanked me for coming out today. All the while, he held my hand, looked me right in the eye, and really listened. It was really amazing. I was teary-eyed and a bit shell-shocked when it was over.
My oldest was next. She shook his hand, and asked, "Senator Obama, what do you plan to do about the situation in Darfur and the refugees in Chad?" His response was immediate and unwavering. "We need to get conflagration troops on the ground, and a no-fly zone over the camps in Chad." Then he shook her hand again. I was so proud of my girls! They officially granted Obama "Rock Star" status on the spot.
We were delighted, giddy and in awe of what just happened. We ran back to the others in our group and recounted the exchanges. We’d just talked with and shook the hand of our next president! Our group made plans to meet at a local restaurant for a late lunch, and after buying a few campaign buttons, off we went.
At the restaurant, we all talked about the rally, our personal encounter with Obama, and were overheard by a table of diners nearby. Two elderly men came up to us to talk about what we’d witnessed. One told us, "He made me see that his being black doesn’t matter. After his speech this week, I see that now. And that’s not a small thing- I’m a redneck, and proud of it. And a republican too, but he’s got my vote. He reminds me of John F. Kennedy." He recalled McCain’s involvement in the Keating Five scandal, saying he could never forgive McCain for violating seniors like him during that time. "Anybody who tells you to vote for McCain, you remind them of the Keating Five. He can’t be trusted." The other gentleman said he was also a republican, but was considering changing his registration to vote for Obama in the primary.
I’ve never witnessed the kind of excitement and energy about a candidate from so many people- to the point that strangers stop to join the discussion with you. We are thrilled to have the experience we did today as a family with Barack. We will never forget it.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080408145546AAR7Fkk
And Paul Volcker (former director of the reserve) endorsed him - so I don't think Barack is in Ron Paul's camp regarding the Fed Reserve.
Thanks! I had not read the comments yet until you posted your reply. I have been catching up on some of the other links on that page. Lots of good info - especially the Top 7 Clinton lies to voters.
My dad is a Pediatrician
How cool was that? You go Derrick! I LOVED that clip!!!!
http://thinkonthesethings.wordpress.com/2008/02/06/video-interviewer-picks-the-wrong-obama-supporter-to-try-to-railroad/
Even though my mamma was pissed I was chewing gum
http://thinkonthesethings.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/video-obama-supporter-derrick-responds-to-his-video/
Thanks for posting these. The comments at the bottom say it all!
Me too. Good clip! Here's some more.
In the first, a hostile, baiting reporter tries to get the best of some poor kid holding an Obama sign outside a rally in Texas. Because the kid is young and black, you just know the reporter figures he has an easy mark for supporting the Clinton campaign's assertion that all Obama supporters are naive and uninformed on real, substantive issues. He in for a surprise.
http://thinkonthesethings.wordpress.com/2008/02/06/video-interviewer-picks-the-wrong-obama-supporter-to-try-to-railroad/
In the second clip, Derrick introduces himself and makes a few additional points. BRAVO.
http://thinkonthesethings.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/video-obama-supporter-derrick-responds-to-his-video/
These two clips have even attracted the attention of The Economist, which wrote:
ONE of the most interesting political videos on YouTube features a young Obama supporter, Derrick Ashong. A camera-wielding interviewer collars Mr Ashong in the street and starts to pepper him with questions. The interviewer assumes that his victim’s casual appearance—he is wearing a baseball hat, a shell necklace and is chewing gum—betokens an equally casual approach to politics. “Do you have any specifics?” he demands aggressively. “What are their policies?” Mr Ashong delivers a series of carefully argued replies that could form the basis of an editorial in a serious newspaper. The interviewer is increasingly abashed. But, having delivered his defence of Barack Obama, Mr Ashong concludes the interview by saying “I’m independent. I’m not a Democrat. I might vote for McCain.”
I'm surprised there aren't more posts on this board.
I received this email from the Obama campaign yesterday and thought it was terrific. It really moved me.
I'm glad somebody enjoyed it LOL.
That video was a trip! LMAO thru the entire thing, Obama has a white momma! Too rich.
I don't think that the pulpit in a church is any place for politics whatsoever, but it's been going on in the Christian right for years now with no punitive damages toward their tax exempt status.
Obama Assesses Race in America
Full address of Senator Barack Obama on race in America.
(Video: MSNBC)
http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=4104d9c83acfb43a3d072fee0e13fbdc80b87d96
Obama chooses reconciliation over rancor
Experts say 'nonpartisan' speech on race is almost without precedent.
By Janny Scott, March. 19, 2008
It was an extraordinary moment — the first black candidate with a good chance at becoming a presidential nominee, in a country in which racial distrust runs deep and often unspoken, embarking at a critical juncture in his campaign upon what may be the most significant public discussion of race in decades.
In a speech whose frankness about race many historians said could be likened only to speeches by Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln, Senator Barack Obama, speaking across the street from where the Constitution was written, traced the country’s race problem back to not simply the country’s "original sin of slavery" but the protections for it embedded in the Constitution.
Yet the speech was also hopeful, patriotic, quintessentially American — delivered against a blue backdrop and a phalanx of stars and stripes. Obama invoked the fundamental values of equality of opportunity, fairness, social justice. He confronted race head-on, then reached beyond it to talk sympathetically about the experiences of the white working class and the plight of workers stripped of jobs and pensions.
Story continues below ↓advertisement
"As far as I know, he’s the first politician since the Civil War to recognize how deeply embedded slavery and race have been in our Constitution," said Paul Finkelman, a professor at Albany Law School who has written extensively about slavery, race and the Constitution. "That's a profoundly important thing to say. But what's important about the way he said it is he doesn't use this as a springboard for anger or for frustration. He doesn't say, 'O.K., slavery was bad, therefore people are owed something.' This is not a reparations speech. This is a speech about saying it's time for the nation to do better, to form a more perfect union."
Broad Coalition
Obama's address came more than a year into a campaign conceived and conducted to appear to transcend the issue of race, to try to build a broad coalition of racial and ethnic groups favoring change. In the issues he has emphasized and the language he has used, as well as in the way he has presented himself, he has worked to elude pigeonholing as a black politician.
He has been criticized as "not black enough" and "too black," he acknowledged Tuesday. In recent months, the issue of race has stirred up the smooth surface of his campaign and become a source of tension between him and his opponent, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. In the past week, videotaped snippets of the incendiary race rhetoric of Obama's longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., seemed on the verge of tainting Obama with the stereotype he had carefully avoided: angry black politician.
He faced a choice: Having already denounced Wright's ferocious charges about white America, he could try to distance himself from the man who drew him to Christianity, married him and baptized his two children. Or he could try to explain what appeared to many to be the contradiction between Wright's world view and the one Obama had professed as his own.
To some extent, he did both.
In a setting that bespoke the presidential, he began with the personal: He invoked his own biography as the son of a black Kenyan man and a white American woman, grandson of a World War II veteran and a bomber assembly line worker, husband of a black American who carries "the blood of slaves and slave owners." Seared into his genetic makeup, he said, is "the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts — that out of many, we are truly one."
He condemned Wright’s remarks as divisive but at the same time embraced him as family, "as imperfect as he may be." He traced the roots of black church preaching deep into "the bitterness and bias" of the black experience. He offered a primer on the link between today's racial disparities and the system of legalized discrimination that prevented blacks from owning property, joining unions, becoming police officers and firefighters, and accumulating wealth to pass on to future generations.
"For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away," Obama said. "Nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table." And occasionally, he said, "in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews."
Obama addresses 'White Anger'
He acknowledged white anger, too — over things like affirmative action and forced school busing — but urged both sides to address the subject to find a way forward.
"Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now," Obama said. He said the controversies over the past couple of weeks "reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through — a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American."
Historians and others described the speech's candidness on race as almost without precedent. John Hope Franklin, a Duke University historian who led an advisory commission on race relations set up by President Bill Clinton, said Obama pointed out how easily the question of race can be distorted in this country, "which has three centuries of experience with it and yet we act like this is something new."
Julian Bond, the longtime civil rights activist, said the speech moved him to tears. Orlando Patterson, a professor of sociology at Harvard, said he believed the speech would "go down as one of the great, magnificent and moving speeches in the American political tradition."
"I hear so many people saying we want a national conversation on race but it’s never quite worked," he said. "He was able to do this in one speech. But he was able to do it in a nonpartisan way in that he saw both sides."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23702758/
'A More Perfect Union'
Full transcript of Obama's speech on race as prepared for delivery.
March. 18, 2008
PHILADELPHIA - "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Story continues below ↓advertisement
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters….And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Story continues below ↓advertisement
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their world view in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative - notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
Story continues below ↓advertisement
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today - a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."
"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23690567/
It's a ruse, IMO, to convince MI/PA voters (especially blacks) that it's o.k. for them to vote for HRC. On one hand HRC says only she and McCain are qualified to be president...on the other hand she indicates Obama is qualified to be a heartbeat away from being president. Huh?
Will MI/PA voters recognize HRC's motive? Time will tell.
Clintons push a Hillary/Obama
ticket By Thomas Ferraro
41 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hillary and Bill Clinton are again teaming up on Barack Obama -- this time saying the first-term U.S. lawmaker, whom they have derided as inexperienced, would be a strong running mate on a Democratic presidential ticket headed by the former first lady.
ADVERTISEMENT
In talking up a joint ticket, the Clintons may be seeking the upper hand, attempting to put her in consideration for the top of the ticket when she so far has failed to win the votes necessary to assure that she would face Republican presidential candidate John McCain in the November election.
The maneuver may also be aimed at countering an image in voters' minds of Obama as presidential material and at helping restore an aura of inevitability as the party's nominee that Clinton had early in the campaign but lost.
"The Clintons are in a difficult position," said Dennis Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University in Iowa, who has tracked the presidential race.
"If she wins the Democratic presidential nomination, she would need Obama's supporters. But she needs to be careful. If this talk of him on the ticket is seen as a cynical maneuver, it could backfire and hurt her," Goldford said.
Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, an Obama backer, mocked the idea.
"It may be the first time in history that the person who is running number two would offer the person running number one the number two position," Daschle told "Meet the Press."
Obama leads Clinton, a fellow Democratic senator, in a bruising race for their party's presidential nomination, but neither is likely to reach the 2,025 delegates needed to become the nominee in the remaining state-by-state contests.
As Democratic leaders worry about the damage that could be done if neither has a clear lead by the August nominating convention, the party is also trying to decide what to do about election results from Michigan and Florida that do not count because of a dispute over when they were held.
The Clintons have charged that Obama, a charismatic lawmaker from Illinois, lacks the experience to handle an international crisis as president.
But since Clinton, a two-term senator from New York, won primary elections in Ohio and Texas, she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have touted Obama as a possible running mate.
When asked about the possibility last week, Obama said he was focused on winning the nomination. "I think it is very premature to start talking about a joint ticket," Obama said.
His campaign said on Sunday it was not commenting on Clinton's calls for a joint ticket beyond what the Illinois senator had already said.
'UNSTOPPABLE FORCE'?
Sen. John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who has endorsed Obama, derided the suggestion. "The first threshold question about a vice president is, are you prepared to be president?" Kerry told CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday.
"So on the one end, they are saying he's not prepared to be president. On the other hand, they're saying maybe he ought to be vice president," Kerry said.
Campaigning on Saturday, in Mississippi, the former president was quoted as saying his wife and Obama would be a dynamic duo, "an almost unstoppable force."
The candidate implied last week she and Obama may end up on the same ticket, with her on top.
Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell, a Democratic who has sought to rally support for Clinton in his state's April 22 primary, backed the idea of Clinton and Obama teaming up. "It would be a great ticket," Rendell told NBC's "Meet the Press."
(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan in Chicago and Bill Trott in Washington, editing by Cynthia Osterman and Lori Santos)
http://www.dyestatcal.com/results/trk2006/April/22FredFaucett/Summary.htm
I wasn't here in 2000, but I am know 2004 was Democrat - Kucinich. I am pretty sure the islands have voted Democrat for most of the past elections. Good question.
Nice going!
I've been to Hawaii 2x, but never to Maui.
How did Hawaii vote in the presidential elections 2000, 2004 - Repub or Dem?
Yes, our group of volunteers island wide on Maui, Lanai and Molokai really came together and accomplished a lot! Upcountry Maui, one of the smaller areas actually had twice the amount of voters turn out than more densely populated areas like Lanai, Kihei/Wailea and Wailuku.
In 2004, 489 people voted in the Maui County Caucuses and presidential preference poll. This year the figure was 5513!! That's more than 11 times as many caucus participants. We did all of that in 10 short days! We have a core group now of supporters and new folks that will turn out to support Obama in the general election WHEN he gets the democratic nomination.
Our theme, Hawaii Matters resonated with quite a few people.
I don't have the numbers from Oahu or the other islands yet, but will post if anyone is interested.
It was evident that Clinton supporters had little or no support other than Chelsea showing up and attempting to dance a little hula.
Hey, thanks. Sounds like Hawaii is showing the same enthusiasm we are seeing across the USA - lots of interest in this election!
Obama's results show far 70% percent was reflected in our 11th district.
In 2004 -less than 100 people showed up in our precinct. This year we had over 1000. Took so long that 200 or more people left early before voting.
REsults in 11th district:
Obama 650
Clinton 197
Kucinich 2
Edwards 1
We are fired up here! LOL
Aloha
Keep us posted.
Aloha! Just noticed this board on Ihub.
My wife and I are volunteers on Maui. She's district coordinator and I am a precinct captain. We have been working hard the past 10 days phone banking, sign waving, door to door canvassing, lunch rally with Maya (Barack;s sister), fund raisers etc., whew!
Our caucus starts in about 4 hours. Response has been very positive with most Hawaiians. It's just the old democratics, Inouye, and a few others that are Clinton hold outs. In spite of what the popular vote reveals, they will probably ignore and still vote their superdelegate votes to Hillary. Damn them! LOL
Hoping to be a delegate to our state convention, and would love to go to the National, but there are a lot of other folks who have been working longer and harder than we have.
We are fired up here!
Go Obama!
Geez.......the guy at work was on to something wasn't he!
Michelle Obama appeared on Larry King's program last night; she was her usual graceful self...even when King threw in a surprise question. King said there are rumors in DC that the Repubs are considering Condi Rice for VP and wanted to know what she thought of that; Michelle initially appeared to be taken off guard and responded that she hadn't heard the rumor.
Prediction markets now see Obama defeating Clinton
Mon Feb 11, 12:54 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Traders wagering on the outcome of the U.S. presidential vote were overwhelmingly betting on Monday that Illinois Sen. Barack Obama will defeat former first lady Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination and ultimately win the presidency.
ADVERTISEMENT
Obama, whose campaign swept four state Democratic presidential contests against Clinton over the weekend, was trading at about 70 on Monday on the Dublin, Ireland-based Intrade predictions market, meaning traders gave him a 70 percent chance of being the Democrats' presidential candidate in the November election.
Clinton, who replaced her campaign manager in a staff shake-up, was selling at about 30, meaning traders gave her a 30 percent chance of winning the Democratic nomination, data on the Intrade web site showed.
Traders on the Iowa Electronic Markets, a nonprofit exchange run by researchers at the University of Iowa, had similar expectations, giving Obama a 70 percent chance of winning the nomination and Clinton about a 27 percent chance.
Researchers who study political forecasting markets say their predictive power is comparable to opinion polls. Contracts are generally structured so prices can be read as the percentage likelihood of a candidate winning the race.
Arizona Sen. John McCain was the overwhelming favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination, with Intrade traders giving him nearly a 95 percent chance of winning.
His rival Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, was given only about a 2.5 percent chance of winning, despite winning two of three state contests over the weekend. The two Republican candidates were given similar chances by traders on the Iowa exchange.
Intrade traders gave Obama a 46 percent chance of winning the presidency, versus 33 percent for McCain and 20 percent for Clinton.
As recently as January 1 traders were giving Clinton about a 70 percent chance of winning the Democratic nomination. But expectations about Clinton's candidacy tumbled after the first of the year, dropping below 30 percent after she lost the Iowa presidential contest to Obama.
Her New Hampshire victory surprised the forecasting markets and she recovered to trade between 55 and 70 until the days after February 5, when nearly half the U.S. states chose presidential candidates. Since then expectations have been falling and Clinton has lost several state contests to Obama.
I don't see that as a good ticket - Sen Obama would best be served with a (slightly) mature person with international experience/knowledge of the "game" in DC. Originally I thought Sen Jim Webb (D-VA) would make a good running mate, but I've backed away from that. Webb is a former Sect'y of Navy, but he and Obama are almost identical in Wash DC experience, (there's an art to getting your bills through the House/ Senate).
While Obama would add to a Clinton ticket I don't see how Hillary would add anything to Obama as he will get her votes anyway. She would gin up the base of the conservatives so I would hope that Obama could add something more than what Hillary could bring. I believe Wesley Clarke would add much more to his ticket.
I'm all for it !!!
I WOULD LOVE TO SEE AN OBAMA AN CLINTON TICKET, IT IS TIME FOR A CHANGE!!!!!
Followers
|
1
|
Posters
|
|
Posts (Today)
|
0
|
Posts (Total)
|
93
|
Created
|
02/05/08
|
Type
|
Premium
|
Moderator Sail'nNord | |||
Assistants |
Volume | |
Day Range: | |
Bid Price | |
Ask Price | |
Last Trade Time: |