Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com. Obama could undermine race grievance
It has come to my attention that African-Americans are not uniformly enthusiastic about the candidacy of Barack Obama. I learned this first from a New York Times article yesterday, under the headline “Blacks Debate Civil Rights Risk in Obama’s Rise,” and secondarily from a black-oriented Web site, The Root. The concern is not political or ideological. It’s that with Obama’s success, white people might conclude that “eradicating racial discrimination and ensuring equal opportunity have largely been done,” as the Times summarized it. “There is the danger that we declare victory,” a sociologist at Howard University was quoted as saying, expressing the fear that “poor blacks will be increasingly blamed for their troubles.” Meaning, there will be a general feeling that if one man, Barack Obama, can become president, surely poorer men of similar hue can at least hold a steady job and refrain from gangbanging. They will no longer have the excuse of racism. “What black folks fear is that a monumental success for one black man might simultaneously become a setback for the whole race,” according to Lawrence Bobo, professor of sociology and African-American studies at Harvard University, who claims not to share the fear himself. It was he who wrote the seminal essay in this field for The Root (www.theroot.com), which I found fascinating. The fear that it expressed seemed to be that racial grievance might no longer be viable if Obama succeeds. If one black (or mixed-race) person can become president, how can other black people credibly claim they are shackled by racism? How can they demand special breaks? “Our concern is that we’ll get lost in the shuffle,” said a black talkshow host in Pittsburgh, voicing hesitation about equality. You might think — or I might think, as a white person — that the rise to the top of a mixed-race person would be a great victory in the long struggle for racial justice, but I never thought about the flip side. I never thought about the comfort and security of racial grievance. And please notice I said “mixed race,” unlike the Times and unlike the African-American thinkers quoted above, who uniformly refer to Obama as black. I don’t know why they do. With a black father and a white mother, what makes him black rather than white? Apparently in order to be white, you have to be pure white. If you’re part black, then you’re black. That was the old plantation classification, and African-American academics cling to it, along with the exquisitely race-conscious New York Times. Not me. I say mixed. I’d be happier saying just human. But if we must inject race into the discussion, I’m going to be accurate.
I watched the convention last night. I was not impressed with 'the wife's' speech at all. It came across as pure fluff. Actually, it was like watching the Cosby Show.
I am not a fan of Ted Kennedy...but he gave a great speech for his party! And of course the party gave him an early eulogy with a tribute to him. And yes, even though we all know he is terminal, I still thought that was tacky.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Okay, so I watched Hillary's speech last night. It was like she was still campaigning for herself. No big whoop!
And then I really punished myself and watched X-president Bill tonight. And may I say...an excellent speech. HE got the democratic point across. (not that I agree with them) But then again Billy has ALWAYS been a great speaker.
Michelle Obama clearly was not enthused with the Clintons. They had the camera on her quite often during both of the Clinton's speeches.
Then there was Biden. Talk about a bleeding heart liberal! His son introduced him with such a tear jerking story that men and women alike were crying REAL tears!
Well, the dems are boosting about how a black man (obama) has achieved the American dream through hard work and perserverience. So now I guess we can abolish 'affirmative action' and dissolve the 'NAACP'. Right?
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Wednesday could be the most important day of the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
Wednesday’s events are sandwiched between the bread and butter of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s Tuesday speech endorsing the rival who bested her, and presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama’s Thursday acceptance speech.
But in this sandwich, Wednesday could be when America’s voters will find whether Mr. Obama and today’s Democratic Party have the beef to deserve election this November.
In the U.S. Constitution, the presidency is an office of secondary importance, despite the imperial trappings it has taken on in recent decades.
Article I gives Congress absolute control of the government’s purse strings and the ability unilaterally to create laws even in defiance of a presidential veto.
The real power of the president under our Constitution is in foreign policy, and in particular in the president’s war-making powers as commander in chief largely relinquished to the White House by a cowardly Congress. No American war since World War II has been authorized by a constitutionally-required congressional declaration of war.
Wednesday’s Democratic National Convention theme is foreign policy. One of the day’s featured speakers is Mr. Obama’s chosen running-mate Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware. Another is former President Bill Clinton.
Biden was selected to plug the gaping foreign policy hole in Barack Obama’s thin job resume, and to provide “adult supervision” for inexperienced Obama in case voters risk America’s future by giving the most powerful job in the world to this young affirmative-action candidate.
Mr. Biden has been a U.S. senator from Delaware since 1973 — 35 years — and is widely liked on both sides of the aisle. He is currently chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee. Like most other Democratic senators, he voted for President George W. Bush’s military incursion into Iraq and ouster of dictator Saddam Hussein.
But as for being the purported adult on the Obama-Biden ticket, Biden is in some ways as childish for his age, 65, as Obama, 47, is mature for his.
Joe Biden has always exhibited a smug sense of superiority. When caught plagiarizing an article at Syracuse College of Law, Biden successfully pleaded with the faculty not to expel him.
“If I had intended to cheat,” The New York Times in 1987 recounted him saying, “would I have been so stupid?”
Biden has tried to cheat “smarter.” He boasted that he graduated in the top half of his Syracuse Law class; in fact, Biden graduated 76th in a class of 85.
Biden helped lead the “borking” of Robert Bork, the brilliant legal scholar whose nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court let him be judged by Biden, a member of the Senator Judiciary Committee. Biden ridiculed, but failed to destroy, Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. In both cases Biden behaved like an infantile idiot attacking giants whose shoes he was unworthy to lick.
Almost being expelled from law school for cheating did not end Biden’s crookedness. During his 1988 run for the presidency, Biden plagiarized a speech by British Labour politician Neil Kinnock that described his coal-miner father. Biden’s father was a used car salesman.
After Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis distributed videotape of Kinnock and Biden’s plagiarism, Biden quit the race.
Biden ran for president again in 2008, winning 9,000 votes nationwide to Hillary Clinton’s 18 million votes. Despite this public repudiation, however, Biden soon might sit a heartbeat away from the presidency — and thereby, God forbid, become president by an act of fate, or of Satan.
How competent is Joseph Biden at foreign policy? He has proposed carving Iraq into three autonomous regions, much as Julius Caesar did with Gaul two millennia ago. (His plan oddly parallels what this columnist had earlier proposed, but I doubt he plagiarized me.)
Such partition policies historically have led to the relentless frictions of North and South Korea, North and South Vietnam, East and West Germany, and the like. But legislators like carving countries up, apparently because doing so is the way lawmakers reach split-the-differences compromises. Genuine political leaders, by contrast, are more like Solomon and recognize that caring people do not want their babies cut in half.
Nobody has ever suspected Joe Biden of having Solomonic wisdom.
In 1979 Biden backed Democratic President Jimmy Carter in helping topple our ally the Shah of Iran, who was replaced by a now-soon-to-be-nuclear-armed Islamist radical regime that foments global terrorism.
At the 2004 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Biden told its mostly-foreign audience that Americans “don’t have much of a democracy ourselves.”
But at least Biden is a pro-working-class, no? No. Biden represents the giant corporations and banks chartered in Delaware, and he helped them tighten bankruptcy rules for credit card debt on middle class Americans. His son Hunter Biden’s law firm was being paid $1.8 million to lobby Congress by some of these same special interests, according to the Aug. 25 USA Today.
Biden successfully urged President Bill Clinton to use U.S. military force, without prior congressional approval, on the side of Muslim Kosovars against Christian Serbs in the Balkans.
And now Russia justifies its invasion of Georgia, a small U.S. ally, by pointing to the Clinton-Biden policy in Kosovo.
Will any reporter remind viewers that President Clinton used U.S. troops to oust a pro-American government in Haiti in order to install defrocked priest and madman Jean-Bertrand Aristide in power? Or that Clinton’s anointed Aristide had described Cuba’s Marxist dictator Fidel Castro as his “greatest hero.”
Will any reporter remind viewers Wednesday night that the so-called “prosperity” of the Clinton era came from President Ronald Reagan’s “peace dividend” from defeating the Soviet Union and ending the Cold War?
Clinton’s “prosperity” came from gutting America’s military and intelligence capabilities and from his spending spree, a wild party, with the $125 billion per year stripped from our national defenses. And 9/11 happened because Clinton indecision and profligacy blinded our intelligence capabilities.
But on Wednesday the liberal media will again tell Americans that Joe Biden and Bill Clinton are divine, and brain-dead Democrats will applaud.
Barack Obama has a half-brother in Africa living in a hut surrounded by a hostile environment. Cindy McCain has two half-sisters she sort of forgot she had. It is hard for people brought up in the ideal “Leave It To Beaver” household to understand the dynamics that mold those not so fortunate. Given the number of unwed mothers and marriage failure, the Barack Obamas and Cindy McCains of this country are the majority. One would hope Barack would invite his African half-brother to his inauguration and that Cindy give her half-sisters a call. Adolf Hitler had a mother and father, he was no model citizen. Winston Churchill’s father had issues and he did not turn out so bad (Winston, that is!) Abe Lincoln had a rough time of it as a kid. Bill Clinton ... well, Bill got overwhelmed; he did become president but his inner conflicts got the best of him. Alexander Hamilton, a “bastard,” did not turn out so bad. Nixon, he came from a Christian home and look how he turned out. It is difficult enough being perfect when one comes from the model family. When one is less fortunate in the people who chose to bring “him” into this world, being perfect becomes an impossible task. The perfect ones who made no mistakes in their life because their parents and grandparents were perfect, need to extend Christian charity to those of us who were not favored with perfect families. Barack Obama is “guilty’” of the same infraction as John McCain: Neither is specific as to what they plan on doing to sort America out. EDMOND DAY Rotterdam
Obama: I’ll fix ‘broken politics’Candidate, running mate to hit the trail BY DAVID ESPO AND ROBERT FURLOW The Associated Press
DENVER — Surrounded by an enormous, adoring crowd, Barack Obama promised a clean break from the “broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush” Thursday night as he embarked on the final lap of his audacious bid to become the nation’s first black president. “America, now is not the time for small plans,” the 47-year-old Illinois senator told an estimated 84,000 people packed into Invesco Field, a huge football stadium at the base of the Rocky Mountains. He vowed to cut taxes for nearly all working-class families, end the war in Iraq and break America’s d e p e n d e n c e on Mideast oil within a decade. By contrast, he said, “John Mc-Cain has voted with President Bush 90 percent of the time,” a scathing indictment of his Republican rival — on health care, education, the economy and more. Polls indicate a close race between Obama and McCain, the Arizona senator who stands between him and a place in history. On a night 45 years after Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a Dream Speech,” Obama made no overt mention of his own race. “I realize that I am not the likeliest candidate for this office. I don’t fit the typical pedigree” of a presidential candidate was as close as he came to the long-smoldering issue that may well determine the outcome of the election. Campaigning as an advocate of a new kind of politics, he suggested at least some common ground was possible on abortion, gun control, immigration and gay marriage. Obama delivered his 44-minute nominating acceptance speech in an unrivaled convention setting, before a crowd of unrivaled size — the filled stadium, the camera flashes in the night, the madefor-television backdrop that suggested the White House, and the thousands of convention delegates seated around the podium in an enormous semicircle. Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joseph Biden. of Delaware, leave their convention city today for Pennsylvania, first stop on an eight-week sprint to Election Day. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia spoke first of the anniversary of King’s memorable speech. “Tonight we are gathered here in this magnificent stadium in Den- ver because we still have a dream,” said the Georgia lawmaker, who marched with King, supported Obama’s primary rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, then switched under pressure from younger black leaders in his home state and elsewhere. Obama’s aides were interested in a different historical parallel from King — Obama was the first to deliver an outdoor convention acceptance speech since John F. Kennedy did so at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1960. In his speech, Obama pledged to jettison Bush’s economic policy — and replace it with his own designed to help hard-pressed families. “I will cut taxes for 95 percent of all working families. Because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class,” he said. The speech didn’t mention it, but Obama has called for raising taxes on upper-income Americans to help pay for expanded health care and other domestic programs. He did not say precisely what he meant by breaking the country’s dependence on Mideast oil, only that Washington has been talking about doing it for 30 years “and John Mc-Cain has been there for 26 of them.” His pledge to end the war in Iraq responsibly was straight from his daily campaign speeches. “I will rebuild our military to meet future conflicts. But I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons,” he added. As he does so often while campaigning, Obama also paid tribute to McCain’s heroism — the 72-year-old Arizona senator was a prisoner of war in Vietnam — then assailed him. “Sen. McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush was right more than 90 percent of the time?” Former Vice President Al Gore picked up on the same theme. “If you like the Bush-Cheney approach, John McCain’s your man. If you want change, then vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden,” he declared.
I so wish I could support Barack Obama. It would be great — truly magnificent — to elect a black president of the United States. Watching the convention coverage on Monday night, I was moved by my friend Juan Williams’ almost tearful reaction to Michelle Obama’s address. He shook his head in amazement that an African-American woman was in the position she was. And it moved me to see how moved he was. I wish I could send Michelle Obama — so attractive, so poised, so stylish — a cyber hug. I’d wager that millions of other Americans, like me, would love to see someone like her as First Lady. Or at least I would love to support the person Michelle Obama has conjured for us this week — successful working-class girl who worked hard, upheld traditional values, and was rewarded by a great nation. But in her case, as in Barack Obama’s case, there is just too much artifice and not enough reality here. Their true history keeps intruding — and their true views remain opaque. Mrs. Obama went to Princeton. Her solipsistic senior thesis (1985) concerned the plight of blacks at Princeton. She complained that the college’s “Afro-American studies” program was “one of the smallest and most understaffed departments in the university.” She further complained that only one major university-recognized group on campus was “designed specifically for the intellectual and social interests of blacks and other third world students.” Third World? Is that how she sees herself and other black Americans? That suggests a pretty advanced level of alienation — not the happy daughter of Chicago she served up Monday night. Michelle Obama was introduced to most Americans when she said that “for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country” because her country seemed to be in the process of nominating her husband for president. It’s hard to imagine a deep patriot mouthing those words under any circumstances, but even if we assume that her statement did not reflect her real views, there are plenty of other red flags that wave all over Michelle and Barack Obama’s life. When Michelle Obama spoke to church groups, according to a profile in the New Yorker, she would take to the podium and proclaim, “On behalf of my church home and my pastor, Reverend Wright, I bring greetings.” The campaign now suggests that the Obamas, who chose the Rev. Wright to perform their wedding and baptize their children, were never really in the pews that often. But no matter how infrequently they attended, they were certain to have heard the kind of racist, bitter, anti-American rants that the Rev. Wright has perfected. Mrs. Obama says she didn’t always agree with the Rev. Wright. OK. But her own riff on American life, delivered time and again on the stump, is grim. Here is the New Yorker description: “Obama begins with a broad assessment of life in America in 2008, and life is not good: we’re a divided country, we’re a country that is ‘just downright mean,’ we are ‘guided by fear,’ we’re a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents. ‘We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day,’ she said, as heads bobbed in the pews. ‘Folks are just jammed up, and it’s gotten worse over my lifetime. And, doggone it, I’m young. Forty-four!’” Now highlighting problems and looking for solutions does not make you unpatriotic. But Mrs. Obama does seem to have more than her share of whines for a woman who attended Princeton and Harvard Law and was able to snag jobs at the most prestigious firms. “You’re looking at a young couple that’s just a few years out of debt,” Obama told one audience. “See, because, we went to those good schools, and we didn’t have trust funds. I’m still waiting for Barack’s trust fund.” Does she really think this a great country? Asked if she worried about her husband being assassinated, Mrs. Obama said “as a black man, Barack could be shot going to the gas station,” as if this were 1950 Alabama. “The life that I’m talking about that most people are living has gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl.” She opened her home to William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. She sat in the Rev. Wright’s church for 20 years. She told the Democratic convention that she loves America. Is that the real Michelle Obama? Or was it the woman who hoped her husband could deliver this country because “our souls are broken in this nation.” Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist.
Biden received 5 deferments before being declared medically ineligible for Vietnam
By RANDALL CHASE | Associated Press Writer 1:32 PM EDT, August 31, 2008
DOVER, Del. (AP) _ Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden received five student draft deferments during the Vietnam War, the same number of deferments received by Vice President Dick Cheney, and later was disqualified from service because of asthma as a teenager.
Officials with Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's campaign released Biden's Selective Service records at the request of The Associated Press. Less detailed records were available from a National Archives facility in Philadelphia.
According to the documents, Biden, 65, received several deferments while he was an undergraduate at the University of Delaware and later as a law student at Syracuse University. A month after undergoing a physical exam in April 1968, Biden received a Selective Service classification of 1-Y, meaning he was available for service only in the event of national emergency.
"As a result of a physical exam on April 5, 1968, Joe Biden was classified 1-Y and disqualified from service because of asthma as a teenager," said David Wade, a campaign spokesman.
In "Promises to Keep," a memoir that was published last year and became an instant best-seller after he was tapped as Obama's running mate, Biden never mentions his asthma, recounting an active childhood, work as a lifeguard and football exploits in high school.
The Obama campaign pointed to media interviews from 1987, when Biden was making his first bid for the presidency, that mention his asthma.
Military service and questions about which presidential ticket would be stronger on national security are intertwined in the presidential race. Republican John McCain, a former Navy pilot who spent 5½ years in a Vietnamese prison, has argued that he has stronger background to be commander in chief. Democratic nominee Barack Obama counters that McCain would continue a wrong-headed foreign policy from the Bush administration.
Biden has had extensive experience with national security issues in the Senate. McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, has been Alaska governor for two years and before that was a small-town mayor.
Biden's five student deferments equal the number given to Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been quoted as saying he had "other priorities" than military service in the 1960s.
According to records AP obtained from the National Archives, Biden registered Feb. 15, 1961, with the Selective Service, when he was an 18-year-old student at Archmere Academy in Wilmington. The archives documents do not include any information about his classification or physical exam.
Documents provided by the Obama campaign indicate Biden received a classification questionnaire in October 1963, when he was enrolled at the University of Delaware, and received his first 2-S student deferment a month later. Additional deferments were granted in roughly 12-month intervals, the last coming in January 1968, shortly before he graduated from law school at Syracuse University.
Then in April 1968, when he was 25, Biden was disqualified from service due to asthma.
Ex-Dem Chair Apologizes for Hurricane Remark August 31, 2008 5:55 PM
ABC News' Teddy Davis Reports: Former DNC Chairman Don Fowler apologized on Sunday for joking in a private conversation that the timing of Hurricane Gustav demonstrates that God is on the side of the Democrats.
"If this offended anybody, I personally apologize," Fowler told ABC News. "It was a mistake, and it was a satirical statement made in jest. And one that I clearly don't believe."
Fowler was secretly recorded by the person sitting behind him while flying from Denver, Colo., to Charlotte, N.C., following the Democratic National Convention. His conversation with Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., was anonymously posted to YouTube and highlighted by RedState.com, a conservative blog.
"One doesn't anticipate that one's private conversation will be surreptitiously taped by some right-wing nutcase," said Fowler. "But that's the nature of what we're dealing with."
Fowler, a superdelegate who endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2007, was caught on tape saying: "The hurricane’s going to hit New Orleans about the time they start. The timing is -- at least it appears now that it’ll be there Monday. That just demonstrates that God’s on our side. [Laughter] Everything’s cool."
McCain and RNC officials announced on Sunday that they will suspend most of the convention program for Monday, including speeches by President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Republicans will only take up essential business when their convention gets underway on Monday and will not hear primetime speeches.
Fowler said his remark was "facetious" and a "satirical comment" on the late Rev. Jerry Falwell.
Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Falwell told "The 700 Club," "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"
Falwell, who later apologized, said he viewed the attacks as God's judgment on America for "throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked."
Fowler sought to contrast his religious views with those expressed by the late Rev. Falwell before his death.
"I believe in a benevolent God," said Fowler. "I'm a religious person. It was a facetious statement, some might even say satirical, play off of what Falwell said."
"If it offended anybody. I'm sorry for that," said Fowler. "I don’t think anybody in America wishes for something bad to happen to New Orleans. I certainly don't."
After the video surfaced on RedState.com, Fowler, the former DNC chairman and Spratt, the South Carolina Democratic congressman with whom he was talking, were pilloried by the chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party.
"The outrageous behavior of two of the Obama campaign's highest profile supporters in the south is despicable, a cynical politicization of life and death," said Katon Dawson, the chairman of the South Carolina G.O.P. "I call on Barack Obama to immediately denounce Fowler and Spratt and demand sincere apologies from these members of the Democratic leadership."
Fowler was unnerved by the experience but he said that he does not think that people should be prohibited from taping such conversations.
"I have to say that I am a free speech advocate and would not suggest that people should be prohibited from taping such conversations," said Fowler. "But nevertheless it seems to be a bit extreme to tape a private conversation like that."
"One doesn't anticipate that one's private conversation will be surreptitiously taped by some right-wing nutcase," said Fowler. "But that's the nature of what we're dealing with."
First he blames the 'right-wing nutcase'.
Quoted Text
Fowler sought to contrast his religious views with those expressed by the late Rev. Falwell before his death. "I believe in a benevolent God," said Fowler. "I'm a religious person. It was a facetious statement, some might even say satirical, play off of what Falwell said."
Then he aligns himself with Rev. Falwell like he is blaming Falwell. No accountability or personal responsibility. Sorry folks, but that is what the dems practice and preach!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
I personally liked that he called him a "nutcase" ... if that were me, I'd be owning a piece of Fowler real-estate right about now.
'NUTCASE'....now that's what I call a class act!!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
[/quote]"I have to say that I am a free speech advocate and would not suggest that people should be prohibited from taping such conversations," said Fowler. "But nevertheless it seems to be a bit extreme to tape a private conversation like that."[quote]
First Class Plane Ticket: $500 SkyMall Purchases: $100 Making deplorable comments, being filmed legally and attempting to bend freedom of speech in such a way to appear a victim: PRICELESS
And Sal, nothing illegal about this situation...the conversation took place in an area that couldn't have been MORE public!!!!
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