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

To: Sully- who wrote (17706)	2/8/2006 3:03:24 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

King Funeral Turned Into Bush Bashing Event (VIDEO) Expose the Left Rev” Joseph Lowery preached some anti-Bush, anti-War rhetoric today: <<< LOWERY: We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew and we knew that there were weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance, poverty abound, for war billions more, but no more for the poor. >>> Only liberals can get away with using the funeral of the wife of a civil rights leader to preach your Bush hate and anti-War rhetoric, and only liberals would do so. UPDATE: Jimmy Carter blasts Bush’s terrorist surveillance program. exposetheleft.com DOWNLOAD – .WMV exposetheleft.net DOWNLOAD – .MP4 exposetheleft.net exposetheleft.com en.wikipedia.org

To: Sully- who wrote (17706)	2/8/2006 3:17:39 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Wellstoning the King Funeral The Anchoress Check out Chris Muir’s cartoon today! daybydaycartoon.com Oh, come on, you’re not really surprised, are you, that Coretta Scott King’s funeral got political? I’m not. I remember this: Sen Paul Wellstone Memorial i4.photobucket.com After President Bush praised Dr. King, things went downhill, apparently. Video is available here. Really, what was so surprising? I remember Jimmeh Cartah, and his lovely wife Roslyn, saying of his successor, Ronald Reagan, “anything would be better than what we have in the White House, now!” I remember him having no good words for Bush 41 or Clinton, and certainly not for Bush 43. Jimmeh Cartah never has a good word for anyone but himself, or a third world dictator, and he has never managed to behave in a classy manner - not when he can do the easier, trashier thing and get his accolades from the usual suspects, and lots of coverage. He’s a miserable human being, a man threatened by killer bunnies - the very FIRST of the media whores to completely buy into the hype surrounding him (”a brilliant naval engineer…”) and lose, utterly lose, his mind and his moral compass when the headlines and magazine covers went away. /b> In this, he joins Al Gore, John Kerry, Cindy Sheehan and (sadly) John McCain. I’ve come to the conclusion that people who buy their own hype, who believe the press when the press over-does the gushing in order to push their own ideas, are weak-minded, or perhaps simply not very smart. He can build all the houses he wants - any former president who will accept a “peace prize” given to him explicitly to (as the Nobel board admitted) “kick the current president in the legs” is unworthy of his office, or the esteem a former president is normally due. The man is inappropriate at all times. Sigmund Carl and Alfred have what he really needs. My best friend, who was watching the funeral, called me up and said, “exactly when did the Democrats utterly revise history and co-opt the civil rights movement? Why does the world forget that it was Democrat Bull Connor putting the hoses and the dogs on the marchers, and the Republicans standing up for civil rights? Why doesn’t anyone mention that Bobby Kennedy was wiretapping King?” History got revised because of the US press, and two men - Lyndon Johnson (the Great Society) and Bobby Kennedy, who did indeed wiretap Dr. King in an attempt to ruin him. But Bobby Kennedy went to the poor in Appalachia, and he went to the poor in the South, and he ended every speech with “now, let’s sing the song,” and joined hands and sang “We Shall Overcome,” and it moved people to see a man born into unimaginable privilege find common cause with the under-represented. It made it easy to forget that he’d tried to get dirt on Dr. King. I remember it like it was yesterday. Kennedy then single-handedly and forever put the “Democrats=Civil Rights” equation together when he, upon hearing of the assassination of Martin Luther King, extemporaneously and movingly called for calm and gave tribute to King. You can read or listen to the speech here. americanrhetoric.com In the issue of Civil Rights, I think it’s pointless to carry on about revised history. It’s done. The warp of history and the woof of of hype will never be untangled. Let it be. People believe what they want to believe, anyway, as we see daily. At my friend’s urging I turned on the television to see the service. I got there in time to see Bill Clinton work the room masterfully while Hillary did her bobble-head thing. I noticed that she practically stood on top of him while he spoke - insuring that she would be in every camera shot, but he stepped aside and allowed her full/solo camera access as she spoke - and it must be said that her speech, remarkably twangy, as it always is when she speaks before a predomiantly black audience - was plodding, uninspired, robotic and flat. You could not escape the comparison of the electricity that filled the room while Bill Clinton spoke, and the steadily diminishing energy that presented itself as she droned. And I couldn’t help but smile as I listened to her talk about (paraphrased) “each person’s personal relationship with the one God…” The sort of stuff that gets President Bush creamed if he says it. But then again, she - and Democrats in general - are also allowed to campaign in churches, and Republicans can’t do that either, so…shrug. There you go. I also noticed, in the brief few seconds that I watched Chris Matthews before shutting off the set, that Jonathan Alter was already spinning the Wellstone Memorialiness of the event and trying to turn it into a “speaking truth to power” meme. Whatever. No, none of it was surprising. It was not surprising that President Bush went, knowing - as he had to know - that a few opportunists and insecure old men would try to take their shots in an attempt to ingratiate the rabble and make the news shows. It was not surprising that both President Bushes spoke with class and humility. It was not surprising that Bill Clinton got the room rocking, and got just a little dramatic, as ever, appealing to the emotions -and he does it very well. It was not surprising that Hillary stood there nodding before plodding. It wasn’t even surprising to me that Hillary got to speak last - in essence giving her the “keynote” spot. In a crowd for whom everything is political and everything is calculated, that was completely predictable. I wasn’t surprised to see that she didn’t seem to be wearing her new, three-carat rock for the occasion, either. There’s a time for that, but not today. It is not surprising that this will be spun into something. And it will largely be forgotten in about three days. So, the left has three days, now to solidify the impressions it wants America to take away from this, which is - of course - “Democrats good. Care for the little guy. Bush bad. Hates blacks.” The Right has three days to remind people that Democrats can’t ever behave like grown-ups or stop throwing rhetorical molotov cocktails. They still think it’s 1969. Hey, they want to keep running against George W. Bush, why stop them? theanchoressonline.com news.yahoo.com sfgate.com

To: Sully- who wrote (17706)	2/9/2006 1:11:46 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

CARTER: STILL NO CLUE NEW YORK POST Editorial February 8, 2006 Jimmy Carter may or may not have been the worst president of the 20th century — history will have the final word on that — but his disgraceful performance yesterday at Coretta Scott King's funeral marks him as the most shameless. Maybe of all time. There is, after all, a time and place for everything — but not for Carter. In a reprehensible (albeit typical) display of tone-deafness, the former president used the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King's widow to score cheap points against President Bush. (He wasn't alone in that regard, more of which in a bit.) Carter warmed up by conjuring the outlandish conspiracy theories that still linger from Hurricane Katrina: <<< "We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi who are most devastated by Katrina to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans." >>> Then he segued on to the Bush administration. In what could only be taken as a direct attack on Bush's electronic surveillance of suspected terrorists — a program Carter has repeatedly denounced as "illegal" — the ex-prez said of Mrs. King and her slain husband, Martin Luther King, "they became the targets of secret government wiretapping and other surveillance." True enough — though Carter couldn't quite bring himself to note that the wire-tapping was conducted under Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, and was originally ordered by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, all Democrats. And, frankly, had Carter made better use of electronic surveillance back in his day, 52 Americans might have been spared 444 days of Iranian captivity. (Indeed, the world might well have been spared the Iranian revolution — and the current nuclear crisis — had Carter been up to the job.) There was a time when former presidents did not publicly attack their successors, but that respect long ago went by the wayside as far as Carter, America's national scold, is concerned. But to level such attacks at Mrs. King's funeral demeaned the occasion as well as the woman who was being honored by four presidents. Sadly, Carter wasn't alone in mistaking Mrs. King's funeral for a Democratic pep rally. Rev. Joseph Lowery, who once upon a time was a figure of some note among Dr. King's colleagues, was even more pointed in his hectoring. <<< "We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there," he said. "But Coretta knew and we knew that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war, billions more, but no more for the poor." >>> To be sure, Mrs. King probably would have agreed with the sentiments — though she was far too gracious to openly insult a president of the United States to his face. Not Jimmy Carter. No clue. No class. Some things never change. nypost.com

To: Sully- who wrote (17706)	2/9/2006 2:32:06 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Political Funerals And Partisanship By Captain Ed on National Politics Captain's Quarters My concern is when we use national moments to reflect and to mourn and to be respectful and we turn them into political diatribes, you know, against the president or, you know, against the Democrats or whatever. It’s just disrespectful; and that’s not what the family wanted, that’s not what the nation wants to see. That doesn’t help heal people. That doesn’t help bring people to a better place. It just exacerbates wounds and makes things more, I guess, poisonous, if you will. And, it just left a bad taste in my mouth and I was hoping for better than what I saw. -- Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, Tony Snow Show, 2/8/06 Many in the blogosphere have begun to debate the Coretta Scott King funeral, with some on the right arguing -- as I did earlier -- that it turned into another partisan exploitation in the same manner as the Paul Wellstone memorial here in Minnesota four years ago. Others on the left argue that the memorial for Mrs. King was appropriate, given the political life she led, and that President Bush's appearance at the event was political. In a way, both sides are right about this. Bush and his family attended the King funeral at least in part because not attending would have been a political mistake. Bill and Hillary Clinton attended because both had come to know Mrs. King pretty well, but also because all living ex-Presidents were invited. (Gerald Ford is still too ill to travel, I believe.) The King family themselves made this a political event by making the memorial so public -- and it was entirely appropriate to do so. After all, she fought a long struggle for civil rights as well as her husband, and she had to carry the banner for him after his assassination as well as raise her family. Not honoring her political life would have been outrageous. However, the difference is the partisanship on display, mostly by Jimmy Carter and Reverend Lowery. Politics and partisanship are two different things, although some apparently cannot divorce one from the other. It is entirely possible to have a political event and handle it on a non-partisan basis. Bush attended the funeral, as one CQ commenter stated, as the representative of the nation. That was a moment for all to come together to honor Mrs. King and her achievements, all of which are political, and by avoiding partisanship make them a gift to all Americans. Instead, Rev. Lowery decided to make snide jokes about WMD, and Carter made barely-veiled allusions to the NSA program he opposes. Both men have ample standing and media access to make those arguments at other times. In this venue, however, the President did not represent himself or his agenda but spoke on behalf of the entire nation. He did what the other speakers should have done: he avoided talking about himself and instead focused on Mrs. King. The other two gentlemen used her death to score petty partisan points and should be ashamed of themselves. (Unlike others in the blogosphere, though, I can't fault Bill Clinton, whose only "crime" was to make a joke about his wife's ambitions for the White House; previous speakers had used humor, and the joke was at no one's expense.) Perhaps in the future, when statesmen and stateswomen pass away, the politicians they leave behind will learn to put aside their partisanship for a few hours and allow us to focus on the achievements of the deceased, rather than the agendas of the present. captainsquartersblog.com

To: Sully- who wrote (17706)	2/10/2006 1:59:27 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

[I]f you're looking for accountability from the left for the inexcusable behavior of its leaders, get a Hubble telescope. It's not that they don't have the courage to discipline their own. It's that they agree with them, applaud them and encourage them to give it to us even harder next time. They have a higher calling. A Higher Calling Posted by David Limbaugh Is nothing sacred to the left anymore other than a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy? Does the left's "morally superior" ideology entitle them to abandon their manners at will? Are there any adults left among them who are willing to police their misbehavior? Were former president Jimmy Carter's and Rev. Joseph Lowery's cheap shots at President Bush at the Coretta Scott King funeral aberrations, or were they typical of the classless behavior increasingly exhibited by liberal icons? Well, consider the merciless berating of Judge Samuel Alito by Sen. Ted Kennedy and his Democratic colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee to the point of driving Mrs. Alito to leave the chambers in tears. Consider the phony allegations of corruption and bigotry driving their cavalier lecturing of this decent man, who responded, like President Bush at the King funeral, with graciousness, dignity, class and restraint. And consider that no Democrat even gently suggested to his highness, Sen. Kennedy, that he was way out of line, both in form and substance. No, this paragon of pomposity gets a complete pass from the left for the jaw-dropping hypocrisy he displays every time he has the singular audacity to lecture anyone about anything. He's entitled to lifetime immunity for his presumably good intentions in having promoted the failed policies of liberalism during his entire public life. Sadly, there is recurring evidence that to liberals, one's political predilections trump everything else so that if you stand for the right things, you are virtually exempt from scrutiny. Conversely, if you stand for the wrong things, you are fair game for any type of verbal abuse, no matter the circumstances or the intended solemnity of the occasion. If you are reputed to be a conservative, particularly one with influence who will stand in the way of the liberal agenda, a special kind of contempt is reserved for you. And, by definition, you cannot be mistreated because people who stand for the things you stand against are not worthy of respectful treatment. As a conservative public figure, you are especially vulnerable to attacks from the left when cameras are in proximity because, whether or not the ordinary rules of decorum for events like funerals require an extra measure of politeness, no opportunity can be missed to proselytize to a mass audience. The religious fervor of the left, in its high evangelical mode of spreading the gospel of liberalism, can be seen in its willingness to ignore the facts in furtherance of advancing its dogma. It didn't matter that Judge Alito repeatedly provided a convincing explanation for the innocuousness of his failure to recuse himself in a case involving Vanguard, a company in which he had a relatively insignificant financial interest. It didn't matter that he convincingly testified that he was unaware of certain alleged bigoted attitudes of an organization he was supposedly affiliated with in college. Kennedy and his colleagues were impervious to the actual facts. What mattered to them was that Alito was a conservative, and therefore, even if he was not guilty of those particular ethical infractions, he might as well have been because, to them, conservatives have a dark heart. This is precisely the same mindset that militated against Kennedy's colleagues reprimanding him for playing fast and loose with the facts and for treating the eminently decent and respectable Judge Alito indecently and disrespectfully. It's precisely the same mindset that led reverends Jimmy Carter and Joseph Lowery to take race-baiting, wiretapping and WMD digs at President Bush during the King funeral. Bush hatred is so pervasive that liberal eyebrows were not even raised when the "No Iraqi WMD" mantra was invoked at the event. And, it's the same kind of mindset that prompted liberal commentator Bob Beckel to tell radio talk-show host Sean Hannity that not only were Carter's remarks not inappropriate (sorry for the triple negative), but civil-rights advocates would have been surprised and rightly disappointed if he hadn't made them. And Beckel is one of the intellectually honest liberals! In case you harbor the fantasy that the mainstream media or liberal blogs will give Carter the brush back, think again. The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz detailed how the media largely ignored Carter's jabs at Bush and quoted a number of liberal blogs expressing outrage at conservative outrage over the Carter outrage. How dare we suggest to them any limits on their licentiousness? Why, that's totalitarian censorship! So, if you're looking for accountability from the left for the inexcusable behavior of its leaders, get a Hubble telescope. It's not that they don't have the courage to discipline their own. It's that they agree with them, applaud them and encourage them to give it to us even harder next time. They have a higher calling. davidlimbaugh.com

To: Sully- who wrote (17706)	2/10/2006 2:23:49 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Barney Frank Stands By Katrina “Ethnic Cleansing” On Behalf Of Bush Remark (VIDEO) By Ian on Liberal Hate Expose the Left Rep. Barney Frank (D – MA) appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews this afternoon to discuss his remark that the Bush administration committed “ethnic cleansing by inaction” to Hurricane Katrina. Frank stands by the remark he made on Wednesday at a Katrina hearing in Congress without any word from the main stream media. Could you imagine the reaction if this was the Clinton administration and a Republican said something as racist as he did? Just imagine. DOWNLOAD – .WMV exposetheleft.net exposetheleft.com news.google.com

To: Sully- who wrote (17706)	2/10/2006 2:40:29 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Classless Acts Lee Harris TCS Daily Mark Antony in his famous funeral oration in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar says that he came not to praise Caesar, but to bury him. This week, at the funeral for the widow of Dr. Martin Luther King, two of the speakers, Jimmy Carter and Rev. Joseph Lowery, might have opened their remarks by saying that they came not to bury Coretta Scott King, but to bash Bush, which is exactly what they proceeded to do. They exploited a solemn occasion in order to take cheap pot shots at the President, keenly aware that their remarks would be broadcast around the world, and into many American classrooms. Of course, both Carter and Lowery were also aware that the target of their attack, George W. Bush, was sitting right behind them. Had he not been present on the occasion, their Bush-bashing would have only been an affront to good taste. But because Bush had come there to honor the memory of Coretta Scott King, and not to engage in a debate with his political opponents, the attacks on him crossed the boundaries of mere bad taste, and became low blows. They were deliberately attacking a man who they knew could not, under the circumstances, defend himself against their assault. Their aim was quite obvious -- to embarrass and humiliate Bush in the full knowledge that there was not a thing Bush could decently do about it. The President, for example, could not do what most people, including myself, would have done. He could not jump up and simply walk out -- that would have created a scandal. Therefore, he had no choice but to sit there and take it. He was hopelessly trapped, and was entirely at the mercy of his assailants -- and they knew it. He had to behave like the President, even when a former President, Mr. Carter, was behaving like a cad. Carter, for example, used the opportunity to insinuate that Bush's "domestic spying" was like the spying done by the FBI on Dr. King. Carter commiserated with the King family for having been subjected to such an ordeal at the hands of their government, and, by implication, he also commiserated with those Americans who had been subjected to Bush's domestic surveillance. But does this analogy honor the memory of Dr. King and his movement? Let's make a simple thought experiment to find out. Suppose al-Qaeda had decided to air its grievances against the United States by holding a massive peaceful "sit in" at the Twin Towers on 9/11. Suppose Islamic terrorists, instead of blowing up innocent human beings, had vowed only to use civil disobedience. Suppose Osama bin Laden, like Dr. King, had struggled with all his might to keep his organization from turning to bloodshed and violence. Would Bush have felt the need to launch a domestic surveillance program on such a pacifistic movement? Maybe; maybe not. But the fact that al-Qaeda embraces violence and celebrates terrorism -- doesn't this small detail destroy the basis of Carter's analogy? If you can equate bin Laden with Martin Luther King, and al-Qaeda to King's non-violent movement, then, by all means, go ahead and draw the same analogy that Mr. Carter drew about Bush's domestic surveillance program. If, on the other hand, you cannot equate the two, then Carter's analogy becomes at best ridiculous and at worst obscene. The Soviets under Stalin were famous for their "show" trials -- trials that were put on not in order to judge a man's innocence or guilt -- since the verdict of "guilty" was always a foregone conclusion -- but simply as an exercise in propaganda. Bush critics have managed to devise a new ploy -- a "show" funeral, in which, instead of properly honoring the memory of the dead, the occasion is deliberately exploited for its propaganda value. Shame on them. Lee Harris is author of Civilization and Its Enemies. tcsdaily.com

To: Sully- who wrote (17706)	2/13/2006 7:45:42 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Turning a funeral pulpit into a political soapbox by Star Parker townhall.com Feb 13, 2006 It's sad to say but it must be said. It should be clear to anyone who watched the tasteless politicization of Coretta Scott King's funeral by a black minister and by a former president why the black community remains, after all these years, as troubled as it is. Children of the civil rights movement of the '60s are grandparents today. Babies born after the Civil Rights Act are now parents. Yet, despite the passing of generations, not only do many of the problems in the black community persist, but by many important measures, we're much worse off than we were 50 years ago. Why do things go on with so little change? Why do they get worse? One big reason, as the Rev. Joseph Lowery so aptly demonstrated at Mrs. King's funeral, is that those who have exercised leadership in our community since those days in the 1960s, those whom black citizens have listened to and heeded, have never understood, or never wanted to understand, when it's time to turn off the politics and the show business. Is the pulpit at a funeral, any funeral, the place to be talking about the politics of the war in Iraq? Aside from the question of propriety, what about the message? "For war, billions more, but no more for the poor?" Does Lowery really believe that blacks are suffering today because they are not getting enough government money? As I, and others, have pointed out, time and again, incomes of intact black families, those with a married father and mother living at home with their children, are in line with those of all Americans. The glaring pockets of poverty in the black community are in the broken families, the single parent homes. The incidence of these broken families is three times higher today than they were in the 1960's when Lowery was marching with Dr. King. If personal responsibility, and really trying to solve problems, were Lowery's game, he'd be trying to understand what happened. If he thought about it, and wanted to be honest about it, he might appreciate that because he and his colleagues couldn't get off the soapbox after the work was done in 1965, just as he couldn't get off the soapbox at Mrs. King's funeral, they helped lead a community that was breaking out of the shackles of oppression into a new slavery of dependence. These black leaders helped build a culture built on the assumption that freedom and justice was always one new government program away. The behavioral problems that have besieged our community since the 1960s _ family collapse, promiscuity, drugs, crime, disrespect for education _ directly result from this. I'm sure Lowery must have some way to blame President Bush for the fact that although blacks constitute 13.5 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 47 percent of the million Americans with HIV infection. Or to point to Republicans as the cause of HIV/AIDS rates being 19 times higher among black women than among white women and seven times higher among black men than among white men. Surely Lowery must believe that if the United States didn't invade Iraq, black women today would not be aborting as many babies as they are birthing. Certainly, in the good reverend's mind, if it weren't for Republicans, the majority of black men would marry the women they impregnate and seven out of 10 black children wouldn't be in homes without fathers. President Carter also did his part to get the word out about what the problems are in black America. <<< "We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, those who were most devastated by Katrina, to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans." >>> I guess it must have been a freak of nature that opened the door for Condoleezza Rice to emerge out of the backwaters of Alabama to become provost of Stanford University and make her way to become our secretary of state. The good news is that as I travel around the country, I have a sense that increasing numbers of blacks are getting the message that they don't need government. They're discovering that opportunity in America is there for everyone. But that success reflects the values that individuals, regardless of color, adopt today and the choices they make. It's sad that today blacks still have to hear from a minister who worked with Dr. King and from a former president of the United States that they suffer because America is racist and because the government doesn't spend enough money. But, as was once said, we shall overcome. Star Parker is President of Coalition on Urban Renewal & Education. You can contact her here. Copyright © 2006 Star Parker townhall.com