Debbie Wasserman Schultz Still Sandbagging Taddeo

by DavidNYC

Tue Aug 05, 2008 at 08:55:26 AM PDT

Today I will join friends at a cookout and later watch fireworks in celebration of Independence Day.  I will enjoy the company of my friends and marvel at the beauty of the fireworks, but my feelings on this day will be tempered as they always are on July 4th.  I love my country and deeply believe in the principles that this nation was founded upon, but as a Black American (I'm a child of the seventies, I'll always be "black") I can't quite muster the full blown rah rah spirit of the day.  My ancestors were not free and were deliberately left out as part of a deal to placate the colonies from the South.  I understand intellectually why it was done, but it does not lessen the legacy of pain and social neglect, wrought by the decision, and it still resonates today.  Through great sacrifice and struggle by people of all races & creeds, things have changed tremendously in this country.  A Black man has a real chance of becoming President of the United States. Still, we have not quite "gotten there".  We also are at a turning point when it comes to the founding principles of the country.  It seems that we may be willing as a people to give up all that was fought for out of ignorance and fear.For the past four years at this time I read a speech given by Frederick Douglass that inspires me to keep fighting for what I believe in and reminds me that it is possible to love your country and still hold her accountable. 

The full text of the speech is posted blow.  Please take the time to read it as its still relevant today.

I have to give props here to Meteorblades at Daily Kos.  It seems that I am not the only person who reads Douglass' speech.  Thanks for giving me the courage to post this blog.

In 1852, the leading citizens of Rochester asked Frederick Douglass to give a speech as part of their Fourth of July celebrations.  Douglass accepted their invitation.  In his speech, however, Douglass delivered a scathing atack onthe hypocrisy of a natin celebrating freedom and independence, while, within its borders, nearly 4 million humans were being kept as slaves.

Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap as an hart."

But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you, that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation (Babylon) whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin.

Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!"

To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.

My subject, then, fellow citizens, is "American Slavery." I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing here, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July.

Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity, which is outraged, in the name of liberty, which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery -- the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate - I will not excuse." I will use the severest language I can command, and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slave-holder, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother Abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more and denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slave-holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to like punishment.

What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments, forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read and write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then I will argue with you that the slave is a man!

For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that we are engaged in all the enterprises common to other men -- digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave -- we are called upon to prove that we are men?

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? How should I look today in the presence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What! Am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? No - I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may - I cannot. The time for such argument is past.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.

What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Frederick Douglass - July 4, 1852

 

By: Mark Morford
 
Friday, June 6, 2008
 
I find I'm having this weird little debate with colleagues, readers, liberals and moderates and deeply depressed Republicans and spiritually amped people of all stripes and, in particular, with those who seem confused, angry, nonplussed, as they all ask me the same thing: What's the big deal about Obama?
 
I, of course, have an answer. Sort of. It goes likes this:
 
Barack Obama ain't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.
 
This is what I find myself offering up in response to the whiners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional karmic antennae, to all those who just don't understand all this chatter about Obama's aura and MLK/JFK-like vibe, and, therefore, even if they're liberals, they're refusing to vote for him because they just aren't feeling that deeper connection or, worse, they actively dislike Obama, believing him to be a slick and dangerous pawn of some sort of sinister machine they can't quite define.
 
To them I say, all right, you want to know what it is? The appeal, the draw, the ethereal thing that keeps drawing millions of people in from all over the world, that keeps opening up and firing into new channels of the culture normally unaffected by politics? No, it's not merely youthful vigor or handsomeness or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn't have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a high-vibration integrity.
 
Dismiss it all you like, but I've heard from far too many smart, spiritually attuned people who've been blown away by Obama's presence - not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence - to say it's just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile, soul-sucking lobbyist whores with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord.
 
Here's where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) I know identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of calmly enlightened being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of connecting with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a high order, and they reignite the soul.
 
The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually empty stage as national politics. This is why Obama is so rare. And this is why he is so often compared to JFK and Martin Luther King Jr., to those leaders in our culture whose compelling vibrations still resonate throughout our short history.
 
Are you rolling your eyes and scoffing? Fine by me. But you gotta wonder why the JFK legacy has lasted so long, is so vital to our national identity? Yes, the assassination canonized his legend. The Kennedy family is our version of royalty. But there is something more. Those attuned to energies beyond the shallow, literal meanings of things say JFK wasn't assassinated for any typical reason you can name. It's because he was just this kind of high-vibration being, a peacemaker, at odds with the war machine, the CIA, the dark side. And it killed him.
 
Now, Obama. The next step. Another try. And perhaps Bush, who laid waste to the land and embarrassed the country and pummeled our national spirit into disenchanted pulp, has helped set the stage for an even larger and more fascinating stage of evolution in which we are finally truly ready for another Lightworker to step up.
 
I'm not arguing some sort of total revolution, a big happy global group hug with Obama as some sort of happy hippie camp counselor. I'm not saying the man's going to swoop in like a superhero messiah and stop all wars and make the flowers grow and birds sing and solve world hunger and bring puppies to schoolchildren.
 
I'm certainly not saying he's perfect, that his presidency will be free of compromise or fat-cat insiders or a great ugly heaps of politics as usual. While Obama's certainly an entire universe away from George W. Bush in terms of quality, integrity, intelligence and, overall, inspirational energy - well, so is your dog. It isn't hard to stand far above and beyond the worst president in American history.
 
But there simply is no denying that extra kick. As one reader put it, in a way, it's not even about Obama, per se. There's a vast amount of positive energy that's been held back by the armies of BushCo darkness, and this energy has now found a a lightning rod, and is now effortlessly self-organizing around Obama's candidacy. People and emotions and ideas of high and positive vibration are automatically drawn to him, because it is clear he is of the same material. It's exactly like how Bush was a magnet for the low vibrations of fear and war and oppression and aggression, but, you know, completely reversed. And different. And far, far better.
 
Think that's all a bunch of tofu-sucking New Age BS and Obama is really a dangerously elitist political salesman whose inexperience will lead us further into darkness because, when you're talking national politics, nothing, really, ever changes? I understand. I get it. I often believe it myself. Not this time.
 
Mark Morford's column appears Wednesdays and Fridays on SFGate.com and in Datebook. E-mail him at mmorford@sfgate.com.

Wicker: I didn't mean to insult blacks, I meant to insult gays

Written by: Kenneth Quinnell on May 14, 2008 2:51 AM

Linked to groups: Florida DFA, Democracy for Florida, Democracy for America Miami-Dade (DFAM), DFA Tallahassee

If you remember, a while back a Pastor Hayes Wicker of Naples had this to say about gay marriage:

This is a tremendous social crisis, greater even than the issue of slavery.

Not surprisingly, a lot of people, such as myself had some problems with that statement.

Wicker, for some reason, took umbrage at the outrage against his hate speech. Here's what he said in a letter to the editor:

Recently, couples from diverse denominations gathered to celebrate marriage in the Chapel of First Baptist Church, where I have served as pastor for 16 years. It was particularly part of the statewide support of seniors for Constitutional Amendment #2, which has been placed on the November 4th ballot. We renewed the vows of “holy matrimony” and affirmed that marriage is “the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife” the bedrock institution upon which the family and civil society are built.

Unsupported hyperbole and introductory remarks. Nothing too bad yet.

At that event, I made several remarks regarding the grave dangers facing America if the institution of marriage is redefined and cast aside.

A few years back, George Carlin had a routine where he described that when listening to someone speak you can say to yourself, "he sounds reasonably okay," which is how Wicker started out. Then, all of a sudden, the person will say something that will lead you to the realization that the person is "full of shit." This is that moment in Wicker's letter. See, the root of this type of thing is that Wicker and people like him don't like gay people. For whatever reason, maybe it's hatred of anyone who is "different," maybe it's a nonsensical "gross-out" type of thing, maybe it's closeted fears about one's own sexuality, whatever. The point is that people like Wicker can't just come out and say they don't like gay people, so they mask their hatred in reasonable-sounding langauge. They're still full of shit.

Take the above line, for instance. There is no attempt to "cast aside" marriage, except maybe by Republicans like Vito Fosella and Rush Limbaugh. In fact, attempts to legalize gay marriage not only don't "cast aside" marriage, they seek to make marriage stronger. And while gay marriage would change the definition of marriage, it would be a change for the better. And it's not like that definition has any sacred quality to it. It's a definition that was made up by human beings and human beings can easily change that definition. Wicker goes on:

Opponents to marriage have strategically seized upon those remarks in an attempt to take the focus off the issue of marriage and the danger of permitting the U.S. Courts to reconstruct this most basic human institution.

By definition, people who want more people to be able to get married aren't "opponents" of marriage. To say that is to assume that nobody that reads what you write is more intelligent than a three-year-old. Clearly, if you want more marriage, you are a supporter of marriage. And if one was an opponent of marriage, why would they be trying to take the focus off marriage? Wouldn't they want the focus on the thing they are trying to destroy? Did he even read this letter before he sent it in? And the courts already have the power to define what rights exist and what words like marriage mean. This was written into the original Constitution and affirmed in Marbury v. Madison. The Madison in that case, by the way, was James Madison, the guy who wrote the Constitution, so it's pretty clear that he agreed with the ability of the courts to do this.

I also noted: “If marriage and the home deteriorates, the culture and society will be dissolved."

Gay marriage will not dissolve our culture or society. How do I know? Because we already have gay marriage in Massachusetts. We're still around. Other countries have legalized gay marriage, none of them has dissolved. Heck, if George W. Bush can't destroy America after eight years of actively trying, gay marriage has no chance.

"From the very beginning, according to nature, history, tradition, and the Word of God, marriage has been between a man and a woman.”

No matter how many times hatemongers repeate this idea, it's still not true. First off, marriage existed long before the Bible, so it wasn't defined by the Christian tradition. Second, and more importantly, the most dominant form of marriage throughout most of history was polygamy. You know Big-Love-one-man-and-as-many-women-as-he-can-get kind of marriage. In much of the world, that was way more prevalent than one-man and one-woman marriage. And, in fact, if you haven't read your Bible lately, there's a whole lot of polygamy in the Old Testament, in particular, and God's just fine with it. Another passage in the book says something about leaving judgment up to God. And if one is a Christian, Jesus made it quite clear what his priorities were. He never mentioned homosexuality. He did, however, mention helping the poor hundreds of times. So, if your community, Pastor Wicker, has any poor people and you are focusing instead on gay people, then you probably need a refresher course in your own religion.

In my remarks I mentioned slavery because it was the defining issue of social justice from the Founding era until the end of the Civil War and even into the 1960’s.

Notice how the post-Civil War period is somewhat of an afterthought to the Pastor -- "even into the 1960's." It's already clear that Wicker knows little to nothing about history, but this makes it even more clear. For most of the era between the end of the Civil War and when the former slaves died, little changed for them. Because of things like sharecropping, Jim Crow, peonage, the prison-work system, etc., most "freed" slaves never knew freedom.

My remarks were not intended to diminish the crucial importance of eliminating slavery and all forms of racism from American culture.

Intended or not, they did. And what is left unsaid here, is that your remarks were intended to diminish gay Americans and meant to increase bigotry towards gay people in American culture. You can't get away anymore with directly attacking black people, so you're moving on to a new group of people to hate.

I am deeply sorry for any hurt that my statement may have caused to anyone affected by the evil stain of slavery.

And totally don't care about the hurt that your statement caused anyone affected by the evil stain of homophobia.

As a Christian, I deeply deplore hatred in all its forms and urge love for all people.

Except, of course, for gay people. That kind of hatred, he loves. A lot.

Radically reconstructing the institution of marriage could readily become the defining issue of social justice in the 21st century, especially if such a radical change occurs through the abuse of power by activist judges.

In addition to his ignorance of history, the Pastor shows a clear misunderstanding of basic English words such as "radical" and "reconstruct." If gay people are allowed to get married, the effect on other marriages is nonexistent. And, checking back with that Bible the pastor claims to love so much, I'll wager that the real defining social justice issue of the 21st century is still poverty.

Even a brief study of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas reveals the dangers of judicial activism to the institution of marriage and to the most basic civil rights of association, free speech and religious liberty.

To come to this ridiculous conclusion, one would have to do a really, really brief study of Lawrence v. Texas. That or be a graduate of the Liberty College law school. It's clear that since Lawrence v. Texas was decided, that marriage, freedom of association, freedom of speech and religious liberty haven't been affected one iota. The law that Wicker favors -- a constitutional ban on gay marriage -- goes much further towards violating these rights. The Constitution doesn't grant a right for straight people to get married. It grants the right to citizens. It also grants the right for you to associate (which includes legal association, such as marriage) with whomever you choose. And what about religions that support gay marriage, wouldn't Wicker's favored law be discriminatory towards those religions? (The answer is yes).

In his dissenting opinion, Justice Scalia rightly indicated that this ruling now defines personhood on the basis of sexuality and has enormous implications for marriage and the home.

The same Scalia who is a big fan of the orgy? (Again, the answer is yes). What are these "enormous implications" we always hear about? They've been talked about so much I wonder what they are? they certainly can't be the other things that Wicker talked about in this letter, since you'd have to be really, really dumb to think that gay marriage would hurt straight marriage, so I wonder what he's really talking about? Maybe the big implication would be that it would be harder for hatemongers to practice their hate?

As in some other countries, those who hold to traditional marriage could be prosecuted for “hate speech” if they publicly speak out.

Ah, I was right. All he really cares about is protecting his right to be a bigot. And, again based on history, "traditional" marriage would be polygamy. Also, I'd suggest that the Pastor look up the legal definition of "hate speech," since it differs with what he is saying here.

Destroying the institution of marriage will affect every person of every race, every family, every local community and state, every school district, legislature, courtroom, classroom and board room in America. Such a watershed issue cannot be diminished in its significance.

Again, there will be no destruction. And even if there were, it certainly wouldn't affect every person. It wouldn't affect nonmarried people much at all. And it wouldn't affect anyone who really loved their spouse, since that love would really kind of go beyond a ceremony or piece of paper or contract. True love is in the heart and in the mind, not in the Pastor's strange definitions of words. And it's incredibly clear that gay marriage would have no effect on school districts, legislatures, courtrooms, classrooms or boardrooms. In fact, there isn't even any form of stretched logic to validate that claim. It's just plain nonsense. You can, it must be said, diminish the significance of a watershed issue by engaging in nonsensical, inflated hyperbole.

It is incumbent on the people of Florida and every state to do all they can to make a clear constitutional statement of intention in support of the traditional definition of marriage as the union of only a man and woman.

Actually, no such thing is incumbent, particularly, since that isn't the traditional definition of marriage. Besides, such a state law would clearly conflict with the United States Constitution, so pursuing this is a waste of time and resources that could go towards better things. Like that whole "helping out the poor" thing. If you didn't notice, Pastor, the economy sucks and people are really in real trouble. Not fantasyland trouble based on things that are actually already illegal in Florida.

While we offer love to all, may true patriots and lovers of truth never turn a deaf ear or blind eye to evil as once happened during those years of slavery.

Again, the Pastor is having problem with basic definitions here. The word "all" would include gay people. "Never," as in "never turn a deaf ear or blind eye," would include bigotry towards gay people. History has shown, though, that people who call themselves true patriots almost never are. And, really, does anyone "love" the truth? The truth quite frequently hurts. And it quite frequently sucks. Like the truth that Pastor Hayes Wicker and his supporters are hatemongers who are seeking to advance their own radical political agenda by attempting to marginalize gay American citizens.

Is Sean Hannity a Blatant Racist?

Written by Guest Blogger: David Reiter on Apr 28, 2008 7:06 PM

I was listening to Sean Hannity on the way home form work today, who was working hard to link Reverend Wright to Senator Obama as one in the same. As usual, he played many selected sound bites, and tried to elicit as much negative reaction from the audience as possible. I would imagine that his core audience responds as desired, or he would not continue to repeat the strategy and linkage as much as possible.

What struck me most about what I heard today was Hannity's attempt to incite racial hatred. The underlying tone was not as much about the linkage to Obama as much as it was to divide blacks and whites. Whether this was his strategy, or a glimpse into his own fears and hatreds--I don't know.

I was trying to figure out if he was a moron, or just thinks his audience are morons, and I believe it was the latter. It was the way he paused after saying an inciting remark, no matter how ridiculous it was. I concluded 2 things: 1) Sean hannity is racist, and 2) he believes that his core audience is just as racist as he is. It was amazing to me how many times he could play a snippet of material from Reverend Wright, and link it to how somehow the black community are not Americans.

It was astonishing to see how many times he would repeat the general mantra of 'guilt by association.' The very things our Constitution guarantees in the Bill of Rights, he proclaims as unpatriotic: Freedom of expression, and no guilt by association. To totally elide over the fact that there is a general context and perspective to what the Reverend is saying, and sum up his comments as 'unpatriotic' shows just how out of touch he is. When Reverend Wright correctly points out that we sold Iraq chemical weapons that were used against his own people, Hannity proclaims it as an unpatriotic statement. When the Reverend points out the specific reasons why global public opinion of America has deteriorated over the last decade, Hannity almost calls it treason. When the Reverend points out the slavery and oppression he and his grandfathers experienced in this country, Hannity calls him ungrateful--as if the Reverend doesn't have the right to voice his opinion about the struggles he endured and witnessed in his lifetime.

Finally, Hannity attempts to link all of Reverend Wright's opinions to Obama's, as if they were one in the same. "If you are wondering where Barrack Obama stands on the issue," Hannity squeals, "just listen to Reverend Wright." As if people parrot whatever their religious leaders think and say...as if people don't have a mind of their own...as if political leaders don't associate with a wide array of personalities and opinions by the very nature of their representation of all people...they are one in the same. I have never heard anything so ridiculous in my life.

If Hannity's listeners do not think for themselves...if they do not know anyone that thinks differently than themselves, or if they do and say exactly what their religious leaders say---shame on them all. But I do not think his listeners are as stupid as Hannity thinks they are. Political leaders like Barrack Obama must and do associate themselves with all sorts of people because they represent all sorts of people. They represent the person convicted of murder and suggest punitive guidelines, just as much as they represent the business leader and suggest government incentives to help grow their business--they represent the individual trying to get by on minimum wage just as much as they represent the wealthy investor looking for tax loopholes--they represent Christian leaders, Muslim leaders, Jewish leaders, Mormon leaders, or any other religious leaders....and are therefore associated with them all. Did anyone confront the GOP Mormon Presidential candidate about his beliefs, and how 'un-American' they were? After all, they were his beliefs and not that of his religious leader, right? Am I missing something here?

So why does anyone care about Obama's association with one associate out of thousands that he has? Because he was his own pastor? How many people reading this follow and believe 100% of what your pastor tells you? Don't many of us like our religious leaders for the passion more so than the content of their sermons? Isn't passion more closely related to faith than opinions?

Once we get through the soundbites, and many more like Hannity blatantly espouse their brand of ditortions of truth, hatred and racism, perhaps people will begin to open their eyes to what the Republican Party stands for and whom in the media is their mouthpiece. Thanks for showing us your true colors Sean Hannity--in your lingo, your true color is: 'a Red'...or is it 'Pink-o'?

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

Some straight-talkin' maverick, this John McCain -- a pol who's dependent on one of the GOP's most familiar gunslinger-lobbyists whose peculiar political ethics once helped design and construct the party's modern seek-and-destroy machine. 

Then, as now, that machine delivered precious little straight talk and the only thing "maverick" about it was how ethically low it was willing to operate. And one of its co-designers was Charlie Black, whose most recent association with Mr. McCain is summarized here [1] by the New York Times:

When Senator John McCain’s campaign was collapsing last summer, it was Charlie Black who set the comeback strategy.  When conservative opposition threatened to derail Mr. McCain just as he was surging again this winter, it was Charlie Black who called prominent conservatives to secure their backing. And when Mr. McCain was finally the last man standing, it was Charlie Black who engineered the campaign’s takeover of the Republican National Committee.

All pretty straightforward stuff; nothing untoward there, for sure. But when one travels farther into Mr. Black's past, it is then that his surname begins to take on a bit more symbolic meaning -- for instance, "he cut his teeth on Jesse Helms's campaigns." Given the context, the trope should have been altered to read, "fangs."

But it was this passage from the Times that especially caught my attention and provided, perhaps, a historical preview of what the nation is in for throughout the general election:

In 1975, Mr. Black and two other young conservatives, Roger Stone and Terry Dolan, founded the National Conservative Political Action Committee, which set a new standard for negative advertising with its campaigns against six liberal senators in 1980, portraying them as 'baby killers' for their support of abortion rights, cozy with Castro and soft on national defense.

A new standard? I'd love to know how many times, after researching the squalid history of "Nickpack," as it was commonly called, that the Times' reporter wrote "a new low," only to have her editor rewrite it in less subjective, less accurate language. Because the early cogs in the New Right's attack machine didn't operate any lower than those of Messrs. Black, Stone and Dolan's.

Most of the money they raised for Nickpack in the late 1970s and early '80s was funneled by direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie, who has since gone completely crazy and attacks pretty much everyone, whether left or right. Throughout 1979 and the first half of 1980 alone, for instance, Black, Stone and Dolan raked in more than $4 million of Viguerie-cash to conduct the negative campaign referenced above by the Times -- a campaign that Nickpack's chairman, Dolan, succinctly described to the Washington Post as one of simply "bugging the hell out of" their liberal opponents.

How did they do it? By lying, that's how. Against one of the six Democratic senators, for instance, Nickpack ran ads accusing him of "giving $75 million of taxpayers' money in aid to revolutionary government in Nicaragua" -- aid the senator had, in fact, voted against. It assailed another in TV ads for being able to "legally spend as much of his own money [on his campaign] as he wants -- and he's got millions" -- even though, as the Post pointedly corrected the record at the time, the candidate "had applied for matching funds and is therefore limited to spending $50,000 of his own money."

There were other famous examples of Nickpack's outright lies and distortions, yet no public corrections had any effect on its tactics. At the direction of Messrs. Black, Stone and Dolan, it went right ahead and continued blasting the airwaves with fraudulent garbage. And the results were instructive for the New Right. Of the six liberal senators targeted -- Frank Church, George McGovern, Alan Cranston, John Culver, Birch Bayh and Tom Eagleton -- four lost their seats: Church, McGovern, Culver and Bayh. A new public relations era for the GOP was dawning, one as wretchedly effective in operation as its red-baiting of the late 1940s and early 50s.

In a moment of irresistible if not injudicious public pride over all the damage he and his partners Black and Stone were doing to respectable politics, Nickpack's Chairman Dolan blurted this, in 1980, to the Post:

Groups like ours are potentially very dangerous to the political process. We could be a menace, yes. Ten independent expenditure groups, for example, could amass this great amount of money and defeat the point of accountability in politics. We could say whatever we want about an opponent of a Senator Smith and the senator wouldn’t have to say anything. A group like ours could lie through its teeth and the candidate it helps stays clean.

Which was, of course, precisely what the "group like" his was doing and which, along with right-wing others, turned the "potential" of "defeat[ing] the point of accountability in politics" into a grossly successful 30-year run.

And who was there all along, helping to plot the GOP's crooked course? Why, straight-talkin' John McCain's top adviser, Charlie Black.

Brace yourself.

Source URL:  http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/articles/carpenter/049