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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (17195)	1/17/2006 10:50:13 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Heh! Heh! Cotton Picking Mind Editorial Cartoon From Cox & Forkum coxandforkum.com

To: Sully- who wrote (17195)	1/18/2006 10:58:36 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

RED MEAT ON A HOLIDAY NEW YORK POST Editorial January 18, 2006 The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was, arguably, the premier political orator of his time. No wonder, then, that so many aspire to his towering rhetorical standards each year on the day set aside to honor him — and that so few reach it. Sen. Hillary Clinton is no exception. Throwing aside her carefully crafted "moderate" image, the New York senator told her mostly black audience at Canaan Baptist Church Monday that the Republicans have run the U.S. House "like a plantation — and you know what I'm talking about." For those who — understandably — had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, Clinton explained: The House, she said, "has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument." Most historians would point out that the biggest problem on the plantations didn't exactly involve freedom of speech, but that's beside the point. Quite apart from the naked race-baiting, Clinton's allegation is wrong on the merits. The House is no less — and no more — a deliberative body today than it was during all those decades when the Democrats ran it. Still, there was no surprise when Al Sharpton declared that Hillary sounded pretty much like "what a lot of us have been saying for a long time." Sure does — light on facts, heavy on race: Al Sharpton at his most base. Then there was Al Gore. The former vice president wasn't concerned so much with racial matters as he marked Dr. King's birthday with a broadside against President Bush's conduct of the War on Terror. The fellow who was all but a hanging chad or two removed from being in charge of that war himself — now there's a scary thought — even hinted at possible impeachment. "A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government," intoned Gore to a wildly anti-Bush crowd in Washington. (Hmmm, as The Rev might — but won't — put it, sounds like what a lot of us were saying back when Hillary's husband was prez.) Of course, Gore did make the point that the terrorist threat "is all too real," that the president has "an inherent power conferred by the Constitution . . . to take unilateral action to protect the nation" — and that this power can't be "precisely define[d] in legalistic terms." So why, then, is he saying that Bush has been "breaking the law repeatedly and persistently" by conducting warrantless electronic surveillance — especially when the Clinton-Gore administration did the same thing with even more intrusive physical searches? We're not sure when or why celebrating Dr. King's birthday became an occasion for frenzied GOP-bashing. But such rhetorical overkill cheapens the holiday for which so many fought and demeans a great man's memory. nypost.com

To: Sully- who wrote (17195)	1/18/2006 11:05:50 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

BUSH GIVES HILL HELL By DEBORAH ORIN NEW YORK POST January 18, 2006 WASHINGTON — In a rare attack, President Bush's spokesman yesterday said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was "out of bounds" when she used the racially charged term "plantation" to blast Republican leaders in Congress. Clinton sparked a storm by using Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday on Monday to tell a Harlem church audience that the Republican-led House of Representatives is "run like a plantation — and you know what I'm talking about." White House press secretary Scott McClellan rarely raps Clinton, but the 2008 election seemed to be on the horizon when he blasted her remarks and rapped her husband's vice president, Al Gore, for "hypocrisy [that] knows no bounds." He then linked Sen. Clinton and Gore, saying: "I think we know one tends to like or enjoy grabbing headlines. The other one sounds like the political season may be starting early." He refused to say which zinger was aimed at Gore and which at Sen. Clinton, who also charged at the Harlem event that the Bush administration "will go down in history as one of the worst that has ever governed our country." A growing number of Republicans yesterday said Clinton went over the line and some demanded an apology. Rep. Vito Fossella (R-S.I.) said, "I think it's outrageous. It clearly crosses the line. At a minimum it's deserving of an apology to those she equated with racists — the members of the House. "It undermines the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King and it minimizes the scourge of slavery by equating slave masters with duly elected members of Congress." Former Republican National chairman Rich Bond said: "She has no standing to offer any moral judgments. You know what the White House was like under her husband — you know what I mean. And if you don't, remember Monica Lewinsky." Clinton faced reporters in Midtown last night and said she did not regret what she said. "I've said that before and I believe that it is an accurate description of the kind of top-down way that the House of Representatives is run," she said. Then she blasted the House GOP again. "I hope that people will start thinking about the consequences of having such an incredibly destructive leadership," she said. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a potential Clinton 2008 rival, said of Clinton's remarks about Republicans: "I don't think that's a good description, I really don't." House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) — presumably the prime target of Clinton's crack — said: "If she's trying to be racist, I think that's unfortunate, but I'm not going to comment on that." The NAACP and Urban League both declined comment on Clinton's remarks. Additional reporting by Geoff Earle and Stephanie Gaskell deborah.orin@nypost.com nypost.com

To: Sully- who wrote (17195)	1/18/2006 12:03:22 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

[T]here isn't a day that goes by without Democrats effectively using the race card against their opponents in every political debate ranging from education to border security to the courts. It's time for conservatives, Republicans in Washington and minorities with half a brain to call their bluff. Stand up. Defend your honor. Don't let it pass. You know what I'm talkin' about? The "D" stands for demagogue by Michelle Malkin townhall.com Jan 18, 2006 The freaks come out at night. The demagogues came out on Martin Luther King Day. Democrat N.Y. Sen. Hillary Clinton, perhaps looking to distract attention from those pesky Code Pink protesters who've been dogging her over the Iraq war, commemorated the holiday by pulling a reverse Sister Souljah at race hustler Al Sharpton's pulpit in Harlem. The Canaan Baptist Church welcomed her pandering with what the Associated Press described as "thunderous applause." When a Democrat politician stumps at a church, you see, it's "minority outreach." When a Republican politician stumps at a church, it's a theocratic outrage. Asked to explain the difference between Democrats and Republicans, Hillary's response oozed with righteous flava (did Bill "Our first black president" Clinton help her practice?): <<< "For the last five years, we've had no. Power. At All. And that makes a big difference, because when you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation. And you know what I'm talkin' about. It has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary point of view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument, to be heard. The Senate's not that bad. But it's been difficult. It's been difficult." >>> Yes, Hillary, we're living in the antebellum South all over again. Forget the existence of the raucus Congressional Black Caucus. Pay no attention to the ubiquitous Rep. Charlie Rangel on cable television and radio airwaves. Look past the mainstream status bestowed on the fanatical black separatist Louis Farrakhan, most recently honored as Black Entertainment Television.com's person of the year. And ignore the true ideological plantation mentality that punishes every prominent conservative minority dissenter who strays from leftist orthodoxy. What racial demagogic stunt will Hillary sink to next? Cornrows and a cameo on Bush-bashing rapper Kanye West's next album? Go on, girl. Go ahead. Get down. While Hillary wallowed in Farrakhan-esque rhetoric about Republican slavemasters oppressing black people's right to be heard, Democrat New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin paid tribute to civil rights and the fight for equality by freely mouthing off about his racial dream -- a dream for a divinely ordained "chocolate" New Orleans: <<< "I don't care what people are saying [in predominantly white] Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day. This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be." >>> Asked by a local reporter for WDSU-TV in New Orleans to explain his remarks, Nagin sniffed condescendingly: <<< "Do you know anything about chocolate? How do you make chocolate? You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk, and it becomes a delicious drink. That's the chocolate I'm talkin' about." >>> Nagin reminds me of something else on the Dairy Queen menu: Nuts. But watch as the media swallow his weasel rationalizations whole. These calculated moments of Democrat demagoguery illuminate liberalism's three-decade-old moral bankruptcy on issues of race. From the party's smearing of Clarence Thomas to the bigoted attacks on Condoleezza Rice and Maryland GOP Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, to its opposition to school choice for inner-city students and denigration of California businessman Ward Connerly's campaign against government racial preferences, to its latest desperate attempts to blame racism for Hurricane Katrina and to portray Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito as a red-necked bigot, the Left has offered nothing but slime and obstructionism. Yet, there isn't a day that goes by without Democrats effectively using the race card against their opponents in every political debate ranging from education to border security to the courts. It's time for conservatives, Republicans in Washington and minorities with half a brain to call their bluff. Stand up. Defend your honor. Don't let it pass. You know what I'm talkin' about? Michelle Malkin is a syndicated columnist and maintains her weblog at michellemalkin.com. Copyright © 2006 Creators Syndicate, Inc. townhall.com

To: Sully- who wrote (17195)	1/18/2006 12:13:02 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

God and New Orleans by Linda Chavez Townhall.com Jan 18, 2006 Imagine for a moment that Salt Lake City was hit by a massive earthquake that toppled buildings, destroyed infrastructure and made the city unlivable for months. Much of the city's population fled, many never to return. Then imagine that the mayor began wistfully extolling the virtues of his town in barely veiled racial euphemisms. "Salt Lake City has always been a plain vanilla town," he says, at first only before audiences he thinks will warm to the message. Then, as the city starts to rebuild, the mayor hints that he's not thrilled that many of the jobs to rebuild the city are going to Latinos and blacks, many of whom did not live in Salt Lake before disaster struck. Before long, the mayor gets bolder in his appeals. "It's time for us to rebuild Salt Lake City -- the one that should be a vanilla Salt Lake," he says. "I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are, this city will be vanilla at the end of the day. This city will be a majority white city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have Salt Lake City any other way. It wouldn't be Salt Lake City." Are you squirming yet? I certainly would be. And if this fictional scenario played out in real life with the mayor actively discouraging non-whites from moving into Salt Lake City, the feds would be on the case. Housing discrimination is against the law -- it has been since Congress passed the Fair Housing Act of 1968. A city official who made clear his intention to keep his city white would not only incur the wrath of the federal government, but he'd likely be hounded from office by the media. So why is it that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin -- whose comments I've paraphrased above, substituting "vanilla" for "chocolate" and Salt Lake City for New Orleans -- can get away with such blatantly racist claptrap? Most major newspapers buried the mayor's comments, if they reported them at all, and those national news programs that played them did so largely without commentary. I can't imagine a white mayor praising the racial purity of a white community getting similar treatment. For all his appeals to black solidarity, the irony is that Ray Nagin wouldn't be mayor of New Orleans were it not for whites. Nagin won election as a political novice in 2002 because white voters overwhelmingly cast their ballots for him. According to Ed Renwick, the director of Loyola University's Institute of Politics, Nagin won about 90 percent of whites' votes, but less than half of blacks'. Perhaps he thinks he can curry favor with New Orleans' African-American community by appealing to race. But those who were stuck for days in the Convention Center during Hurricane Katrina may not soon forget that their mayor let them down. He was slow to order an evacuation when Katrina was bearing down on the coast, refused offers of help to move people out of the city before the storm hit, and let city workers -- including many police and firefighters -- flee rather than stay to keep order in the city. He had no clue how to marshal New Orleans' own resources to help in the rescue, letting school buses that could have been used to transport people out of the city be inundated by rising flood waters. And in the first few days of the tragedy, he was hunkered down out of sight, except for a strange call-in to a radio show where he rambled on about everyone else's but his own failure to provide leadership. The best thing Ray Nagin could do for New Orleans would be to announce he's withdrawing from the mayor's race. Instead, he makes racist appeals and then pretends he didn't mean what he said. When asked about his comments by a local reporter Nagin said, <<< "Do you know anything about chocolate? How do you make chocolate? You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk, and it becomes a delicious drink. That's the chocolate I'm talking about." >>> Yes, and vanilla comes from a brown bean, but no one would believe that a mayor who talked about making sure his city stayed "vanilla" was promoting racial integration. Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a Townhall.com partner organization. Copyright © 2006 Creators Syndicate, Inc. townhall.com

To: Sully- who wrote (17195)	1/20/2006 1:05:36 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

NO MISTAKE John Podhoretz NEW YORK Post Opinion January 20, 2006 'PLANTATION' LINE WILL SERVE HILL WELL TO judge from the insta- commentary, Hillary Clinton made a big mistake on Monday by comparing the House of Representatives to a "plantation." The cable chat shows had a field day analyzing the throwaway remark, all told devoting several hours across four networks to it. In a Daily News column, Michael Goodwin said Hillary's effort to appear both moderate and liberal is beginning to wear on her. "All this zig-zagging from left to right and back again on abortion, health care and national defense is supposed to make her look like a centrist," Goodwin wrote. "It's just making her look confused." Or, as superblogger Mickey Kaus writes, "Telling an African-American audience 'You know what I'm talking about' re-emphasizes the absurd equation of the life of a slave with the life of a member of the House of Representatives making $165,000 plus perks, minimizing if not trivializing the evil of the former." Hillary's remarks were, indeed, absurd and offensive for exactly the reasons Kaus cites. And her ideological zig-zagging doesn't win her points as a serious thinker for exactly the reasons Goodwin cites. But these criticisms miss the mark politically. Hillary Clinton is playing a long game — a game for 2008 — and when viewed in that context, what she did and said was very canny. Saying that the Republican-run House of Representatives is "run like a plantation" won't do her any damage with any Democratic political constituency. The emotion that unites Democrats more than any other is visceral loathing of Republicans — the president especially, but with House Republicans certainly gaining on him. And while one might think African-American primary voters would be offended at Hillary's trivialization of the hardships of slavery, something tells me they won't be. Using slavery references as a political tool is standard practice for black politicians and activists. Al Sharpton, Clinton's host on Monday, referred to the centrist Democratic Leadership Council as "slave masters" in a 2003 speech. Jesse Jackson said the New Orleans Convention Center looked "like the hull of a slave ship" after Hurricane Katrina. New York City Councilman Charles Barron, writing in opposition to the construction of an Ikea furniture store in Brooklyn, said corporate America "sees our communities as huge plantations where there is labor. And since they can't do slave labor, they pay slave wages." (Using slavery in this disgusting way isn't entirely a leftist Democratic game. In 2004, the ridiculous Republican extremist Alan Keyes said his political rival Barack Obama possessed a "slave master's mentality" because Obama was pro-choice.) By adopting the cheap but resonant rhetoric of African-American politicians, Hillary Clinton may have offended the sensibilities of professional political watchers, who prefer to referee a clean game. But she wasn't speaking to them. Hillary was trying to send a message to a key Democratic constituency that she speaks their language and shares their view that the Republican political leadership is motivated by racism. She played the race card on Monday because she was being grilled about her votes in favor of the Iraq war and subsequent defense appropriations. It was her way of making clear to her audience that, despite her hawkish votes, she was really one of them in spirit and in her heart of hearts. It was a coded message for a key Democratic audience, and it got through. There is no potential 2008 candidate among the Democrats who has any chance of speaking more directly to or garnering more support from blacks than Hillary Clinton (and don't say Barack Obama, because it's too soon for him to run). And the Democratic National Committee has for years promulgated an implicit quota system basically ensuring that African-Americans make up about 25 percent of the delegates at the convention. So, while latte leftists may be feeling disaffected from Hillary because of her vote in favor of the war, she can afford to suffer their indifference and hostility if she has the minority vote locked up. The "plantation" remark is of no enduring significance except that it will leave an impression — not among most Americans, but among African-American primary voters and delegates. And that will only help Hillary. We should all make such mistakes. E-mail: podhoretz@nypost.com nypost.com

To: Sully- who wrote (17195)	1/23/2006 2:25:00 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

[T]o use the plantation analogy properly, Hillary and the Democrats don't want to free the slaves. They love Uncle Sam's Plantation. They just want to run it. The plantation that Hillary loves by Star Parker townhall.com Jan 23, 2006 Mudslinging by leading Democrats, usually taking form these days as trying to brand Republicans as racists, confirms what I have been writing about for a number of years: the Democratic Party is running on an empty tank. Bankrupt of ideas, the only thing they have to offer is slamming the opposition and playing the race card. The latest case in point is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's Martin Luther King Day pandering to a black audience in Harlem, telling them that Republicans run the House of Representatives "like a plantation and you know what I am talking about." According to Mrs. Clinton, Republicans have been managing the House "in a way that nobody with a contrary view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument, to be heard." Have Republicans really cornered the political market in Washington, as Mrs. Clinton claims here, and beaten their poor opposition into impotence? If this is indeed the case, how is it that the first major initiative advanced by a confident and freshly re-elected President Bush, reform of Social Security, has disappeared into a mist of memories? The answer, of course, is that the initiative hit a Democratic wall of opposition. How about the first major domestic initiative advanced in the first Bush term, No Child Left Behind? The act underwent major surgery in Congress as result of compromise with Democrats. A key, perhaps the most important, aspect of education reform that the act contained, school choice, was amputated. How about the President's faith-based initiative program? As result of not being able to pass the thing in Congress, the president proceeded administratively and just started setting up offices in the various government departments. What about the marriage amendment? Where did that disappear to? Mrs. Clinton's portrait of the Republican stranglehold on the Congress is obviously a smokescreen for the fact that the Democrats do indeed wield a lot of power. The issue isn't whether they have it, but rather how they choose to use it. I challenge anyone reading these words to identify a single idea or initiative addressing any serious problems like health care, education, retirement or anything else, that any Democrat has put forward. There's a reason you're drawing a blank. There are none. Every new and creative initiative, the kind of innovations that would overwhelming help blacks and the poor _ private retirement accounts, health savings accounts, school choice _ have been Republican initiatives. Democrats have used power for obstruction and to preserve big government status quo. This gets around to the question of Hillary's "plantation" accusation. I wrote a book called "Uncle Sam's Plantation." I used the plantation analogy because the bigger government is, the less control individuals have over their own lives and the more dependent they are on the decisions that others, i.e., politicians, make for them. For poor folks, reliance on government builds a culture of dependency that often never ends. It is generally appreciated today the damage that the welfare state caused in poor, mostly black, communities. We've got kids from poor families all over the country today trapped in pathetic, failing inner city public schools. Yet in a nation which prides itself on being free, we refuse to allow competition and allow parents to choose where to send their kid to school. This defines a big government plantation. Mrs. Clinton analogizing the House of Representatives to a plantation is absurd. No one is forced to be there. Members are elected every two years. What Mrs. Clinton doesn't like is that Americans keep re-electing Republicans and putting them in control. And this means more initiatives to try and reduce the big government plantation that Hillary in fact loves. Recall that her answer to health care was to essentially nationalize it. Rather than government-run "Hillary care," low income folks need health savings accounts that would give them the same tax breaks that big corporations have. Could Republicans be doing a better job? Sure. But the Democratic Party would help if it became a real opposition party with ideas and alternatives. If Democrats really wanted to push for the interests of those struggling to make it, they'd be pushing to give these folks more, not less, control over their lives. But, to use the plantation analogy properly, Hillary and the Democrats don't want to free the slaves. They love Uncle Sam's Plantation. They just want to run it. Star Parker is President of Coalition on Urban Renewal & Education. You can contact her here. Copyright © 2006 Star Parker townhall.com