US Elections 2008 - II

[Shambhu]

"To many, Gillespie among them, Obama's problem is that he has never made explicit what, beyond symbolism, his election would do for black America. Now, he is rejecting Wright's racial agenda without having clearly articulated his own."

http://www.newhouse.com/analysis-renewed-w...ack-voters.html

[Guest]

from above article, ths is very strong idea
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Black nationalism, Dawson explained, refers to a way of thinking that "takes race as the fundamental dividing line in the U.S." and the "primary determinant for making political judgments."

It is a collective identity that can hold the most pessimistic view of the prospects for full equality. That pessimism can tumble into what — to whites at any rate — appears paranoid, as in Wright's avowal that the American government is not beyond intentionally inflicting AIDS on the black community.

Black nationalism can manifest itself in attending the Million Man March or in cheering the acquittal of O.J. Simpson, a reaction that Obama, in an interview with ABC's "Nightline" in March, said made him "ashamed for my own community."

Black nationalism can also find expression in places like Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's South Side, where Wright built a huge congregation, including Obama, that identified itself as African-centered and "Unashamedly Black."
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Loury supports Clinton because, he said, Obama's candidacy "is a place where the racial contract is being negotiated and renegotiated," and he simply doesn't want to entrust Obama with that power.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[acharya]

Sec. of State Rice: U.S. Has "Birth Defect" About Race

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that the United States still has trouble dealing with race because of a national "birth defect" that denied blacks the same opportunities as whites when the country was founded.

And Rice, while declining to comment on the current presidential campaign, said it was important for Democratic presidential contender Sen. Barack Obama to give his recent speech on race "for a whole lot of reasons."

"Black Americans were a founding population," she said. "Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together -- Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That's not a very pretty reality of our founding."

As a result, Miss Rice told editors and reporters at The Washington Times, "descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that. That particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today," she said.

On the one hand, she told the Times, race in the U.S. "continues to have effects" on public discussions and "the deepest thoughts that people hold." On the other, "enormous progress" has been made, which allowed her to become the nation's chief diplomat.

"What I would like understood as a black American is that black Americans loved and had faith in this country even when this country didn't love and have faith in them -- and that's our legacy," she said.

[dhu]

Mudy,

I will have to disagree with you here. Those are simply the white man's arguments against blacks (which blame the victim). Liberation theology is intended to control and domesticate the native/black rage from within the christian framework, <i>but it does not negate the valid sources of rage. </i> By contrast, in Asia, liberation theology is exported as a weapon to neocolonize and transform noncombative jati structures into the racist structures of the west.

[Guest]

<b>Columbia County Republican Party </b> came up with this video for GE. Enjoy it.

[Guest]

dhu,
In current time, injecting Black Nationalism may create problem in US.
I don't have much knowledge in this area. I have done some reading, but I want to read Cosby views and Cone.
Discussion in Club 700 or Black Church is no different. Question is whether to have David Duke's disciple or Wright's disciple in White House is scary.
I think US needs centrist leader, both extreme are dangerous.

Here is one discussion
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><i>Look folks. The experience of black people in America is not the experience of white folks or folks of any other race for that matter. I was pulled over by the highway patrol recently for no reason. I had to file a report against the police department and I won. There is institutional racism in America as well as an equally strong institutional sexism.

As far as I don't want him in my church but I want him as my president is not really contradictory. Obama worships with these citizens for 16 years and then throws them all under the bus. On the bigger issue Obama carries the hopes of black people with him, but he could care less about black people or anyone else for that matter. That is the tragedy</i>.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Shambhu]

Help! I'm having a heh-heh attack!

BTW BO could well get the nomination. And then I look forward to
a. non-stop naivite
b. many more speeches disowning many more noxious the people and principles. Long *after* the said people or principles have been nurtured and fostered, and we all feel the effects*and* call BO into account.
(PS This is not an ad for the Real Estate company Long and Fosters)

May 02, 2008
The 'Race' Speech Revisited
By Charles Krauthammer

"I can no more disown him [Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown my white grandmother."

-- Barack Obama, Philadelphia, March 18

Guess it's time to disown Granny, if Obama's famous Philadelphia "race" speech is to be believed. Of course, the speech was not just believed. It was hailed, celebrated, canonized as the greatest pronouncement on race in America since Lincoln at Cooper Union. A New York Times columnist said it "should be required reading in classrooms across the country." College seniors and first-graders, suggested the excitable Chris Matthews.

Apparently there's been a curriculum change. On Tuesday, the good senator begged to extend and revise his previous remarks on race. Moral equivalence between Grandma and Wright is now, as the Nixon administration used to say, inoperative. Poor Geraldine Ferraro, thrice lashed by Obama in Philadelphia as the white equivalent of Wright's raving racism, is off the hook.

These equivalences having been revealed as the cheap rhetorical tricks they always were, Obama has now decided that the man he simply could not banish because he had become part of Obama himself is, mirabile dictu, surgically excised.

At a news conference in North Carolina, Obama explained why he finally decided to do the deed. Apparently, Wright's latest comments -- Obama cited three in particular -- were so shockingly "divisive and destructive" that he had to renounce the man, not just the words.

What were Obama's three citations? Wright's claim that AIDS was invented by the U.S. government to commit genocide. His praise of Louis Farrakhan as a great man. And his blaming Sept. 11 on American "terrorism."

But these comments are not new. These were precisely the outrages that prompted the initial furor when the Wright tapes emerged seven weeks ago. Obama decided to cut off Wright not because Wright's words or character or views had suddenly changed. The only thing that changed was the venue in which Wright chose to display them -- live on national TV at the National Press Club. That unfortunate choice destroyed Obama's Philadelphia pretense that this "endless loop" of sermon excerpts being shown on "television sets and YouTube" had been taken out of context.

Obama's Philadelphia oration was an exercise in contextualization. In one particularly egregious play on white guilt, Obama had the audacity to suggest that whites should be ashamed that they were ever surprised by Wright's remarks: "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 of American life occurs on Sunday morning."

That was then. On Tuesday, Obama declared that he himself was surprised at Wright's outrages. But hadn't Obama told us that surprise about Wright is a result of white ignorance of black churches brought on by America's history of segregated services? How then to explain Obama's own presumed ignorance? Surely he too was not sitting in those segregated white churches on those fateful Sundays when he conveniently missed all of Wright's racist rants.

Obama's turning surprise about Wright into something to be counted against whites-- one of the more clever devices in that shameful, brilliantly executed, 5,000-word intellectual fraud in Philadelphia -- now stands discredited by Obama's own admission of surprise. But Obama's liberal acolytes are not daunted. They were taken in by the first great statement on race: the Annunciation, the Chosen One comes to heal us in Philly. They now are taken in by the second: the Renunciation.

Obama's newest attempt to save himself after Wright's latest poisonous performance is now declared the new final word on the subject. Therefore, any future ads linking Obama and Wright are preemptively declared out of bounds, illegitimate, indeed "race-baiting" (a New York Times editorial, April 30).

On what grounds? This 20-year association with Wright calls into question everything about Obama: his truthfulness in his serially adjusted stories of what he knew and when he knew it; his judgment in choosing as his mentor, pastor and great friend a man he just now realizes is a purveyor of racial hatred; and the central premise of his campaign, that he is the bringer of a "new politics," rising above the old Washington ways of expediency. It's hard to think of an act more blatantly expedient than renouncing Wright when his show, once done from the press club instead of the pulpit, could no longer be "contextualized" as something whites could not understand and only Obama could explain in all its complexity.

Turns out the Wright show was not that complex after all. Everyone understands it now. Even Obama.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/..._revisited.html

[Guest]

Enjoy yesterday's Steven Colbert. Keep coffee away from keyboard <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport...?videoId=167412

[ramana]

Krauthammer is hardly an objective critic. Still Obama's rise has let the Black movement find their vocie. It is unpleasant but it is authentic. Look at what Condoleeza Rice has said. Its easy to take a stand against Obama by quoting antediluvian op-ed writers but what we are seeing is the slow move of the black movement to find it voice. Till now it was masked by the greatness of MLK's speeches and affirmative action after the Civil Rights movement or the stridency of the Black Muslims. Blacks are no longer satisfied to be treated as museum pieces they want to be an integral part of the american political process. If Obama is silenced by the crooks like Krauthammer dont blame them for turnng to the Islamic brotherhood.

[Shambhu]

I know he is not an objective critic, the first time I had posted his article a couple of days ago I said I did not care for him, but even then..
this article is one among a flood of recent articles questioning BO. Krauthammer is someone who will lay out the whole argument as against BO as it will be seen in Fall. It is harder defending against such arguments than the arguments we see against HRC (sniper fire etc).

If a candidate is elected in spite of major flaws, it will seem more and more transparent as time goes on that he has just been pushed in there by the 90%+ black vote, and then the division will be racial. If BO is denied due to his own associations with Wright, Ayers etc..there will no doubt be riots but people will understand in the long run.

I was listening to a radio program (black host) where he was trying to convince a black lady caller that she should stick to the party (Dems) even if BO is not the nominee. She wanted to stay home if BO was not the nominee. Host said staying home is a vote for McC, and said McC was way worse than HRC. Lady said "I just dont know..it will take a lot of convincing for me to go out and vote".

So basically I think things will be OK if HRC is the candidate, though a fraction of the black vote will be lost.

Many black people are having second thoughts about BO. So the die hard black obama voters will see that some --maybe 20%-- in their own community voted HRC over BO, and there will not be much more than temporary tempers..

I don't think Islamic brotherhood has a chance here...if the pulling down is done by Krauthammer only..yes; but since the pulling down will be by the public including some blacks--no.

IMO.

[Shambhu]

May 2, 2008
<b>Former DNC chairs: Hillary would beat McCain today — Obama wouldn't</b>
Posted: 01:15 PM ET
(CNN) – Seven former Democratic National Committee chairs who support Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, and the family of one who is deceased, released a letter Friday arguing that she is the candidate best-equipped to beat John McCain in November.

The letter was signed by former party leaders Kenneth Curtis, Charles Manatt, Debra DeLee, Don Fowler, Steve Grossman, Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell, and Clinton adviser Terry McAuliffe. It was also signed by the family of the late Ron Brown, who served in the Clinton administration.

They write that “if the election were held today, Hillary would beat Senator McCain, but Senator Obama would lose to the presumptive GOP nominee.”


“Hillary has run one of the most formidable campaigns in the history of our Party,” the chairs wrote, listing Clinton’s primary season victories. “Her base of support includes women, Hispanics, seniors, Catholics, middle and low income Americans, and rural, suburban and urban voters. That’s a formidable coalition tailor-made for victory in a November general election.

“…We encourage you to continue to fully consider Hillary Clinton and the fact that she is qualified and accomplished. Too much is at stake for us not to consider deeply the choice we must make for our Party and our country.”

The letter comes hours after Barack Obama’s campaign announced the endorsement of Paul Kirk, the second former DNC chair to endorse his presidential bid in two days. Kirk had been described as an Obama supporter in some campaign reports, but had not publicly stated his endorsement of the Illinois senator.

From: CNN Associate Political Editor Rebecca Sinderbrand
Filed under: Hillary Clinton
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/...-obama-wouldnt/

[Shambhu]

http://www.dontvoteobama.net/?gclid=CKm2p7...CFQKhlgod8kdyhQ

I clicked on this site for the 1st time today. This is the kind of dirt that the GOP will spew on BO. And I dont think its all made up.

HRC's biggest frustration, I heard 2 weeks ago from a HRC insider on TV, was that she could not go all out on BO, since he is a fellow Dem. The gloves come off in Fall if BO is the nominee.