You gotta laugh. Campaign managers replaced, mismanaged money, spouse comment
blunders, negative campaigning, etc....People are grasping at straws at this point..
--- In Dems2008@yahoogroups.com, Gabrielle Latham <gabrielled2003@...> wrote:
>
> How many times is some going to post this trash so called news?
>
> "(Systems Operator)" <harry@...> wrote:
>
> Permalink: http://pnews.org/ArT/ZuLu/BadH.shtml
>
> Worm Hole - Crypt
>
> So Many Historical Inaccuracies
>
> Historian Sean Wilentz (on January 26, 2008) wrote: "In recent weeks, some of
> the presidential candidates and their surrogates have been evoking history more
> insistently than ever. Not surprisingly, those evocations often have been
> flimsy and faulty."
>
> "The latest maiming of the historical record and elementary historical logic
> has come over Martin Luther King, Jr., Lyndon B. Johnson - and the presidential
> primaries of 2008. The media echo chamber is now booming with charges that
> Senator Hillary Clinton has disparaged Dr. King, praised President Johnson in
> his stead, and thereby distorted the history of the civil rights movement. It
> is the latest evidence, say the talking heads, that Clinton is running a subtly
> racist campaign - or, as the theology and African-American studies professor
> Michael Eric Dyson worded it on MSNBC, that she is carrying a message with an
> "an implicit racial subtext." (Sean Wilentz - from an essay in the New Republic
> - http://www.tnr.com)
>
> "Ben Smith of Politico was among the first to stir things up, charging that
> remarks by Clinton on MLK and LBJ offered "an odd example for the argument
> between rhetoric and action" that Clinton has been making in her contest with
> Senator Barack Obama." (ibid)
>
> By the time the charge reached Maureen Dowd's column in The New York Times on
> Wednesday, it had morphed into a false claim that Clinton actually compared
> herself to Johnson - a comparison Dowd claimed she never thought "any living
> Democrat" would do in trying to win the New Hampshire primary. (Dowd had 1968
> and Vietnam on her mind, which, unfortunately, was not the matter in dispute:
> civil rights.)" (ibid)
>
> "Now, Representative James E. Clyburn, the most prominent African-American
> elected official from South Carolina, has picked up the ever-changing story and
> implicitly accused Senator Clinton of denigrating Dr. King and the civil rights
> movement. "We have to be very, very careful about how we speak about that era
> in American politics," Clyburn told The New York Times." (ibid)
>
> So - let us very, very carefully look at that historical record. In a pair of
> television interviews earlier this week, Clinton made the uncontroversial
> historical observation that Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement
> put their lives on the line for racial equality, and that President Johnson
> enacted civil rights legislation. Her point was simple: Although great social
> changes require social movements that create hope and force crises, elected
> officials, presidents above all, are also required in order to turn those hopes
> into laws. It was, plainly, a rejoinder to the accusations by Obama that
> Clinton has sneered at "hope." Clinton was also rebutting Obama's simplistic
> assertions about "hope" and the American Revolution, the abolition of slavery,
> and the end of Jim Crow." (ibid)
>
> The historical record is crystal clear about this, and no responsible historian
> seriously contests it. Without Frederick Douglass and the abolitionists, black
> and white (not to mention restive slaves), there would have been no agitation
> to end slavery, even after the Civil War began. But without Douglass's ally in
> the White House, the sympathetic, deeply anti-slavery but highly pragmatic
> Abraham Lincoln, there could not have been an Emancipation Proclamation or a
> Thirteenth Amendment. Likewise, without King and his movement, there would have
> been no civil rights revolution. But without the Texas liberal and
> wheeler-dealer Lyndon Johnson, and his predecessor John F. Kennedy, there would
> have been no Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Voting Rights Act of 1965." (ibid)
>
> "Hope, in other words, is necessary to bring about change - but it is never
> enough. Change also requires effective leadership inside government. It's not a
> matter of either/or (that is, either King or Johnson), but a matter of
> both/and." (ibid)
>
> "Behind this argument over Clinton's comments lies a false, mythic view of the
> 1960s in which the civil rights movement supposedly pushed Johnson and the
> Democrats to support civil rights against their own will. In fact, the movement
> and the elected officials were distinct but complementary elements in the civil
> rights politics that changed America." (ibid)
>
> Civil rights protests mounted gradually after 1945. By the spring of 1963, amid
> the protests in Birmingham, Alabama, a civil rights revolution was plainly
> underway, undertaken by ordinary black Americans who had outrun their own
> leadership (including Dr. King), let alone the federal government. President
> Kennedy, who had to work with a conservative Congress dominated by Southern
> senators, had initially been cool to civil rights legislation, lest it doom his
> entire presidency. But he finally embraced the cause in a momentous speech to
> the nation on June 11, 1963, which became a prelude for a major civil rights
> act to come." (ibid)
>
> Kennedy's speechwriter, Theodore Sorensen, describes the June 11 address as a
> turning point in the history of civil rights politics as well as in JFK's
> presidency. Kennedy knew well, Sorensen observes, "that it would make other
> legislation impossible ... and he knew how much was riding on it, politically
> and historically. He knew all of that." Lyndon Johnson, perhaps as much as any
> politician of the time, understood the political and historical stakes just as
> well. As Senate Majority Leader, he had pushed through the Congress, in 1957,
> the first piece of civil rights legislation since the Reconstruction era."
> (ibid)
>
> "Picking up the murdered Kennedy's mantle, Johnson used his mastery of
> congressional politics to push through the momentous Civil Rights Act in 1964.
> A year later, Johnson responded to the movement's battles in Selma, Alabama, by
> proposing and shepherding through to enactment the equally momentous Voting
> Rights Bill of 1965. And in June of that year, Johnson's famous commencement
> speech at Howard University launched what he called "the more profound stage of
> the battle for civil rights," which laid the foundation for affirmative action
> in hiring." (ibid)
>
> In all of these instances, Johnson responded with political courage as well as
> sincere conviction about racial equality, but, like Kennedy (and, for that
> matter, Lincoln) before him, he also needed events to create a climate when his
> political skills could be applied. Johnson's relations with Martin Luther King
> were often tense, and the two men parted ways in 1967 over King's opposition to
> the Vietnam War. On the fundamental issues of civil rights reform, though,
> Johnson and King were in close contact and worked together as allies. And when
> Johnson, in his speech to Congress on voting rights in 1965, quoted and
> embraced the civil rights battle cry - "We Shall Overcome" - Dr. King openly
> wept. He called Johnson at the White House. "It is ironic, Mr. President," said
> King, "that after a century, a southern white President would help lead the way
> toward the salvation of the Negro."" (ibid)
>
> "Martin Luther King led the movement; Lyndon B. Johnson supported that
> movement, played the politics, guided the legislation, and signed it into law.
> Both were indispensable to the civil rights successes of the 1960s. To
> acknowledge both denigrates neither man. Describing such an acknowledgement as
> a denigration of Dr. King is, at best, bad history. At worst, it is a
> manipulative and inflammatory racial appeal concerning a crucial era in
> American history - an era that needs very, very careful consideration indeed.
> Either way, the current heated rhetoric demonstrates that the utopia of
> post-racial politics has hardly arrived." (Sean Wilentz)
> American Idol
>
> Professor Wilentz says the misuse of history has been largely the facts about
> the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the GOP contest has at times looked like an
> "American Idol"-style competition over who can deliver the most convincing
> imitation of Reagan." He tells us the GOP debate on Jan 5 Reagan's name was
> mentioned 34 times but what was said was thin on historical accuracy.
>
> But he also says, "[T]he more grievous grievous abuses of history, though, have
> come from the Democrats, and particularly from the Barack Obama side, including
> his many avid supporters in the media and the academy."
>
> He said the comparisons between Obama and past presidents by the Obama campaign
> and his supporters, including some Republicans including New York Times
> columnist Nicholas Kristof who made the comparison with Lincoln saying he
> served only one term in the House before he was elected president in 1860.
>
> "These comparisons distort the past beyond recognition. By the time he ran for
> president, JFK had served three terms in the House and twice won election to
> the Senate, where he was an active member of the Foreign Relations Committee.
> In total, he had held elective office in Washington for 14 years. Before that,
> he was, of course, a decorated veteran of World War II, having fought with
> valor in the South Pacific. Kennedy, the son of a U.S. ambassador to Britain,
> had closely studied foreign affairs, which led to his first book, "Why England
> Slept," as well as to a postwar stint in journalism." (Wilentz)
>
> "This record is not comparable to Obama's eight years in the Illinois
> Legislature, his work as a community organizer and his single election to the
> Senate in 2004 -- an election he won against a late entrant, right-wing
> Republican Alan Keyes, in a state where the GOP was in severe disarray." (ibid)
>
> "The Lincoln comparison is equally tortured. Yes, Lincoln spent only two years
> in the House after winning election in 1846. Yet his deep involvement in state
> and national politics began in 1832, the same year he was elected a captain in
> the Illinois militia -- and 28 years before he ran for president. He then
> served as leader of the Illinois Whig Party and served his
> far-from-undistinguished term in Congress courageously leading opposition to
> the Mexican War." (ibid)
>
> "After returning home, he became one of the leading railroad lawyers in the
> country, emerged as an outspoken antislavery leader of Illinois' Republican
> Party -- and then, in 1858, ran unsuccessfully for the Senate and engaged with
> Stephen A. Douglas in the nation's most important debates over slavery before
> the Civil War. It behooves the champions of any candidate to think carefully
> when citing similarities to Lincoln's record. In this case, the comparison is
> absurd." (Wilentz)
> Obama is no JFK
>
> Not all the Kennedy's support Obama. Bobby Kennedy's children, Kathleen Kennedy
> Townsend, Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Kerry Kennedy all declared their support for
> Hillary Clinton. They said, "Like our father, Hillary has devoted her life to
> embracing and including those on the bottom rung of society's ladder."
>
> Ted Kennedy said Obama is like JFK. How could Ted Kennedy be so wrong about
> history? Maybe he is just too old or maybe he has much he would like to forget?
>
> Sean Wilentz Princeton professor Sean Wilentz and author of The Rise of
> American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, said, Obama is no JFK: "By the time
> he ran for president, JFK had served three terms in the House and twice won
> election to the Senate...Before that, he was, of course, a decorated veteran of
> World War II, having fought with valor in the South Pacific."
>
> Hillary Clinton has challenged Barack Obama to a debate a week. She wants to
> debate him one to one, so that everyone can really see the differences and make
> their judgment on facts, not speculation or false allegations from the Obama
> campaign. Obama has so far refused.
> Fantasy Based Reporting and History
>
> "Spreading bad history is no way to make history." (Sean Wilentz,
> professor of history at Princeton University author of "The Rise of American
> Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln," among other books)
>
> In war, truth is the first casualty - but in politics, it appears that the
> first victim is history. (Wilentz)
>
> "Every now and then in American politics, normally balanced people get swept up
> by delusions of greatness about a presidential candidate, based on an emotional
> attachment to the candidate's oratory or image. The youthful William Jennings
> Bryan brought down the house and swept up the nomination with his famous "Cross
> of Gold" speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1896--only to be
> crushed by the dreary William McKinley in November." (Sean Wilentz, The New
> Republic - "The Delusional Style in American Punditry" - Dec 19, 2007)
>
> (Sean Wilentz is also a contributing editor at The New Republic, and the author
> of The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (Norton))
>
> "Political journalists have never been immune to the delusional style. But
> editorialists and pundits are supposed to be skeptical experts..." (Wilentz)
>
> Unfortunately that hasn't been the case. Who can miss it? Watching the way this
> election is covered is so revealing about the nature of political punditry.
> There is very little neutrality and the way the campaign is being covered is
> harmful to democracy. They don't even try to hide their partiality. Hatred for
> the Clinton's has been obvious, most especially in on cable, CNN, MSNBC and
> even DemocracyNow. Even the outspoken Keith Obermann has been laudatory toward
> Barack Obama. Their "enthusiasm" for change has clouded their judgment. They
> have even been complicit in the cover-up of what some investigations have
> exposed in Obama's background and his connection to the Islamists in Kenya.
> Wilentz writes that this kind of reporting is not discerning, but it is,
>
> "in fact nothing more than enthusiasm, based on feelings and projections that
> are unattached to verifiable rational explanation or the public record." (ibid)
>
> We are reminded that the same style was demonstrated by the media in the lead
> up to the last presidency, with George W. Bush, and criticized by progressives
> later. The same intuitive style devoid of facts was to no small degree
> responsible for the favorability of George W. Bush in 2000.
>
> "Bush had a thin record on domestic matters as governor of Texas, no record
> whatsoever on foreign policy, and things to hide about his past, none of it
> mattered. As president, he has asked the American people to trust him because
> of his faith in himself and his God-given instincts--what he calls his "gut."
> For years, the Washington press corps was bowled over by such self-assurance.
> Having decided that the wonkish, reasonable Al Gore was boring and inauthentic,
> reporters covered Bush as a centered man with superb intuition." (ibid)
>
> And that all sounds familiar for what is happening now. Obama has a thin record
> and no foreign policy experience. He has never traveled in Europe. He tells
> everyone who wants change to vote for him but change is still a nebulous idea
> with him and when he does explain his plans they are wanting, flawed and
> extremely conservative as he has been as a freshman in the senate. And it
> doesn't hurt the Democrats that he is a Black man.
>
> Professor Wilentz points out the delusional style of the Boston Globe which
> endorsed Obama "because he is biracial and grew up in "multi-ethnic
> cultures"--adequate substitutes, by the editorial's lights, for serious
> background and expertise in foreign affairs. Obama, according to the Globe, has
> engaged in "a search for identity" and taken "a roots pilgrimage to Kenya," all
> of which supposedly displays a "level of introspection, honesty, and maturity"
> that the newspaper longs for in a president. "Obama's story is America's
> story," the Globe intoned--a sentence that comes as close as any distinguished
> newspaper ever has to perfect emptiness." (Sean Wilentz)
>
> "The pundits have vaunted good vibes and gut-thinking as the crucial
> qualifications for the nation's highest office. They have turned the delusional
> style into a rallying cry--in support, at least for the moment, of the
> candidacy of Barack Obama and his allegedly superior intuition." (Sean Wilentz)
>
> "There are many possible explanations for this latest outbreak of the
> delusional style. An ever-intensifying cult of celebrity personality-worship,
> the more sentimental the better, may finally have overwhelmed precincts of
> political commentary. (Obama's sidekick, Oprah Winfrey, is, after all, the
> reigning master of that cult.) Democrats may simply be so battered after what
> the Globe calls "seven desolating years" that they are looking for a man on a
> white horse to deliver them from despair--and so they have invented one."
> (ibid)
>
> Baract Obama made the assertion applauding a Republican partisan accounting of
> the Reagan and post-Reagan years which are at odds with history. Obama declared
> the Republicans has been the "party of ideas" since the Reagan presidency.
>
> As Wilentz writes in his article in The New Republic, Obama was wrong to hold
> the Republicans up as an example of transformation which historically has been
> discredited, that he was in fact presenting as political gospel "the old (and
> long discredited) right-wing bromides repackaged as the "Contract with America"
> in 1994, the Republican attack on Medicare that led to the government shutdown
> a year later, the endless recycling of supply-side economics (especially
> ironic, given the current meltdown), and the other ideological agendas pushed
> by Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, have made the GOP
> the party of intellectual daring and innovation." (ibid)
>
> Sean Wilentz states, "Historians cannot expect all politicians and their
> supporters to know as much about American history as, say, John F. Kennedy, who
> won the Pulitzer Prize for a work of history. But it is reasonable to expect
> respect for the basic facts -- and not contribute to cheapening the historical
> currency." (ibid)
>
> We are also being told to "forget experience" and rely on Obama's instincts.
> Where was his instincts with his friend of 17 years, Tony Rezko, who is now in
> jail - and the low cost housing unions his friend left in such disaray he had
> to walk away from them and people were left without heat during the winter and
> Obama never noticed - or the extra lot for his $1.6 million mansion which Rezko
> sold to Obama hundreds of thousands of dollars below cost. And what did Rezko
> get for it? He got something. You can depend on it. Did Obama look the other
> way on purpose? Whatever is ultimately revealed it demonstrates a lack of good
> judgment at the very least and at the worst it implicates Obama in Rezko's
> illegalities.
>
> Hank Roth
> Links
>
> More at http://www.tnr.com
>
> Also see the Crypt
> http://inyourface.info/crypt/
>
> And The Worm Hole
> http://pnews.org.
>
> Permalink: http://pnews.org/ArT/ZuLu/BadH.shtml
>
> Today is Sunday February 10, 2008
> G 0 l e m D e s i g n s
> On the Internet since 1982
> (I have been doing it longer - and I do it better)
> Worm Hole (Links/NaWikis) - The Crypt (Views and News) - Hank Roth (Bio)
> This article has been viewed 615 times
>
> ==================================================
> The Crypt - http://inyourface.info/crypt/
> The Worm Hole - http://up-yours.us/
> PNEWS - http://pnews.org/ - Progressive News/Views
> since 1982 - oldest progressive forum on the InterNUT
>
=======================================================
>
> Hank Roth
>
> HANK ROTH, LL.B (Bachelor of Laws Degree) - Veteran: served in the White House
> (WHACA) for the President of the U.S. and in the War Room for the Chiefs of
> Staff at the Pentagon (JCS) and alternate (AJCS) in Md, at alternate White
> House at Camp Crystal (Mt Weather) and Camp David, COMZREAR in Orleans, France
> and as a Voice Security Cryptologist - (Vietnam and Yom Kipper) - and DI at Ft.
> Jackson. Also Past Commander Jewish War Veterans (Post 780) and social justice
> peace/activist over 40 years - (87) member of Veterans for Peace - American
> Legion - SE Disarmament Representative of the New Jewish Agenda -- Army MARS
> (AA4LV-K4EVY) - U.S. Peace Council - Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice -
> (charter member) Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) - On the interNUT since
> 1982 - (student member) Association Computing Machinery (ACM) - War Resisters
> League (WRL) - ACLU - CP - SANE - ZOA - Hashomer Hatzair - Pax Christi - Pledge
> of Resistance - Reporter (also typesetter/proof reader) - founder Chavarim
> Peace Network on ham radio (from late 60s) - founder of pnews-l {"Progressive
> News/Views" since 1982} - Writer/Reviewer: National Jewish Spectator -
> Playwright: Raleigh Ensemble Players - Editor/Publisher of Am Yisrael - Real
> Estate Dev/Broker (Fl and NC - 70-80s) - Bookseller NC and Fl (80s and 90s) -
> Real Estate Broker (90s) - Asst. Area Mgr for 1990 Census (Eastern NC) -
> Delegate to Rainbow Coalition Convention for Jessie Jackson. And, I supported
> Ralph Nader in 2000.
> ---BIO: http://pnews.org/bio/
>
>
>
>
>
> Gabrielle (Gabe to my friends)
> Do not enter into a battle of wits with an unarmed person.
>
> Join with me on Facebook to pledge your vote to Barack Obama
>
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/view_cause/60533?recruiter_id=13266649&h=shu
>
> Click below to make a donation to Barack
> Help me reach the goal!
>
http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/texasgabe
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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