|
Post by gailkate on Mar 10, 2008 23:55:03 GMT -5
This thread will be for bits and pieces that don't deserve a thread of their own.
You folks outside of MN may not know that today the chief competitor for the Senate seat Al Franken wants has dropped out. He was backed by 90% of the old-guard Dems in the state and is personnally wealthy, but I guess he couldn't top money coming in from across the country. (Yes, lots from Hollywood.)
|
|
|
Post by joew on Mar 10, 2008 23:57:09 GMT -5
So if Franken wins, will he represent Minnesota or Hollywood?
|
|
|
Post by slb2 on Mar 11, 2008 0:16:11 GMT -5
Franken still faces professor Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer in the race for the nomination, but the peace activist has not raised the kind of money Franken and Ciresi amassed in their campaign coffers.
I've heard good, good things about Nelson-Pallmeyer, but he'd never beat Coleman, he doesn't have the strength. Now Franken, he'd better trounce Colebushman.
|
|
|
Post by michael on Mar 11, 2008 0:18:20 GMT -5
Alex, I'll take Political Potluck for $20.00 Answer: NY Gov. Eliot Spitzer (Democrat) Question: Who is working on his qualification to become a future President? Mike
|
|
rmn
Sleepy Member
Posts: 75
|
Post by rmn on Mar 11, 2008 13:31:35 GMT -5
Boy, did this clown collect on some bad Karma. Indeed, the bigger they are...
As I watched the news last night, I envisioned his unfortunate wife grabbing the microphone and beating him upside his head. My heart goes out to her and the three girls.
R
|
|
|
Post by liriodendron on Mar 11, 2008 14:52:27 GMT -5
As I watched the news last night, I envisioned his unfortunate wife grabbing the microphone and beating him upside his head. I think I'd envision her aiming a bit lower. I'd wish a nasty STD on him, too, if it didn't mean that he might have exposed her to one. I hope she divorces his sorry ass and takes him to the cleaners. Not that I have any deep feeling on this subject.
|
|
|
Post by brutus on Mar 11, 2008 17:35:16 GMT -5
So then, Lirio, would you please tell us how you REALLY feel??? ~B~
|
|
|
Post by michael on Mar 11, 2008 17:45:11 GMT -5
So then, Lirio, would you please tell us how you REALLY feel??? ~B~ I’m feeling that her real thoughts might have the man wondering where his rocky mountain oysters disappeared too. Mike
|
|
|
Post by brutus on Mar 11, 2008 20:36:52 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by doctork on Mar 12, 2008 19:25:52 GMT -5
Ordinarily, I'd say this is the business of the people of New York State regarding their governor, and then a personal matter for Spitzer and his family.
But this is the guy who as NY Attorney General moralized endlessly and self-righteously about the ethics of Wall Street, and how he, The Hero, was going to Do The Right Thing by personally taking the bad guys down. What goes around comes around.
Yeah, I'd definitely aim the mic well below the belt if I were the wife, but then, I'm not in her shoes so what do I know.
"They say" before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. Then if there is backlash, you'll be a mile away, and you'll have their shoes.
|
|
|
Post by michael on Mar 12, 2008 19:42:21 GMT -5
Was Eliot Spitzer the driving force behind Martha Stewart being charged, convicted and being sent to prison? If so, I think he should spend a little time walking a mile in her shoes! Maybe he already did -- that kinky jerk pervert! Mike
|
|
|
Post by gailkate on Mar 14, 2008 9:43:00 GMT -5
|
|
rmn
Sleepy Member
Posts: 75
|
Post by rmn on Mar 14, 2008 13:34:40 GMT -5
I was shaken by the words of Obama's now-retired preacher, Jeremiah Wright. Little sense in printing them here, as everyone must have seen or heard something about this in the last couple days. One can't help but wonder how close Obama is to this man. True enough, he's said several times that he's divorced himself from the truly hateful rhetoric, but he wasn't specific.
My question relates to President Obama and the figures he intends to surround him, the men and women he will appoint to cabinet positions.
Frankly, this is one concerned American.
|
|
|
Post by Gracie on Mar 14, 2008 13:43:32 GMT -5
I was lying in bed watching the early news this morning, and let me tell you, that clip of that preacher saying THOSE words got me bolt upright. I was horrified.
This is another concerned American.
I've never been able to put my finger on what it is, exactly, that I don't like about Obama and I still can't. I just know I don't have a good feeling about him in the White House (not that its current occupant has had me dancing for joy, believe me...I have one of those countdown the days of this final year calendar in my kitchen, replete with his malapropisms and stupidities, and oh, they are legion, as in 'how many hands have I shaked?')
Sad thing, though, is that there isn't anyone currently in the race that I do feel really good about. I hate that it seems to have spiraled downward from voting for the candidate you liked and trusted to one that might not be all you wanted but was of your party, to one who was the lesser of two evils, no matter the party, to now.....vote for THIS one because God help us if THAT one gets in.
|
|
|
Post by slb2 on Mar 14, 2008 14:00:29 GMT -5
If I google Jeremiah, will I find out what he said? I don't do TV and haven't hardly listened to the radio today. (I'm suppose to be working, which is what our good Jane is doing right now, I'll bet.)
|
|
|
Post by slb2 on Mar 14, 2008 14:09:42 GMT -5
This is what I found. What does this contain that frightens others?
"Hillary is married to Bill, and Bill has been good to us. No he ain't! Bill did us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty." January 2008
• "Hillary ain't never been called a nigger. Hillary has never had a people defined as a non-person." January 2008
• "When [Obama's] enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli" to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, "a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell." January 2008
• "Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run, Jesse Jackson, and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body." 2006
• "In the 21st century, white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01. White America and the western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just 'disappeared' as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns." 2005
• "The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people... God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme." 2003
• "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost." 2001
• "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye." 2001
• "The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for over 40 years now. Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community and wake up Americans concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism." Unknown
|
|
rmn
Sleepy Member
Posts: 75
|
Post by rmn on Mar 14, 2008 15:58:08 GMT -5
My first impulse was to ask if you were serious with the question, slb2. Assuming you are serious, I'll respond in short. These are hateful, bigoted remarks. Many Americans I'm familiar with take issue with those who wish God to damn America.
The many Jews I've known would take issue with Wright labeling Judaism as a "gutter religion." Not one of the quotes you've found, slb2.
The United Nations says that Israel has a right to its land. What is Wright talking about?
We never batted an eye as we dropped atomic bombs in WWII?
Not only is this retired pastor a bigoted ass, he's patently mistaken on any number of issues.
Frankly, slb2, I find your question incomprehensible.
R
|
|
|
Post by slb2 on Mar 14, 2008 16:46:24 GMT -5
All I know about Jeremiah are the quotes I posted. And I agree with much of the sentiments voiced. Maybe it has something to do with the lecture I attended this morning where Tim Wise spoke and he said some of the same things or sentiments of Jeremiah Wright. I'm not endorsing anyone or swallowing the whole mellon that Wise or Wright presents, but I am saying that there is truth on both sides.
|
|
|
Post by gailkate on Mar 14, 2008 17:52:54 GMT -5
It's hard for us to hear such bitterness. We think of ourselves as redeemed from the terrible sins of the past, but we haven't walked in blacks' shoes, haven't struggled out of the ghetto or felt how easy it would be to slip in. I think it's a shame that this man has been given such a broad audience, but it also hurts me to listen to the hate-filled ravings on white talk shows.
I'm not worried about Obama drawing his friends and advisors from such firebrands. Recall that the African American response at first was that he wasn't black enough. I think his Cabinet and agency heads will be drawn from the Senate and his Harvard Law classmates.
NBC just said Obama will be on Keith Olbermann's show tonight, apparently to respond to the uproar surrounding Wright's words. I'm going to watch and hope for some clarification. That's 7pm (Central time) on MSNBC.
|
|
|
Post by gailkate on Mar 14, 2008 18:45:31 GMT -5
David Brooks, my favorite conservative columnist, just said that Obama gave an excellent statement regarding Wright today. I hope I get to hear it in full.
|
|
|
Post by joew on Mar 14, 2008 20:59:58 GMT -5
He was reasonable on Olbermann.
|
|
|
Post by gailkate on Mar 14, 2008 23:21:11 GMT -5
I thought so, too, Joe. I thought he made a couple of good points. First, he rejected what the man said, but not the man, comparing him to an uncle who might say things you really disagree with but he's still part of the family. One of my aunts actually called blacks Schwartzes. (Of course, she was only an aunt by marriage, but we were stuck with her.)
The second point was the differences between generations. Some of us here have the dubious advantage of having seen the firehoses turned on peaceful marchers, even police dogs set on them. We saw the hate and fury on George Wallace's face. To the majority of this country, including Obama, that's history, kind of the way we know about the horror of Hiroshima but didn't really experience it.
|
|
|
Post by gailkate on Mar 18, 2008 10:25:12 GMT -5
Obama is now speaking - eloquently and soberly. If you have a chance to hear it, take the time.
|
|
|
Post by rogesgallery on Mar 18, 2008 11:01:59 GMT -5
Hi all. Jerimiah seems to me to be a typical racial equality campaigner.
As scary as his statements may sound, taken out of context they aren't all that different from other American offshoot ministers. I seem to remember some of MLK's oratory being pretty scathing. That was what it took to drag black people out of the back of the bus and onto the white mans playing field. MLK unwittinly enlisted the black church ministers as point men in the struggle for racial equality. The struggle for racial equality is not over and will not be over until a majority of the minority feels they have an equal share and treatment within our system. They will make that decision, not the white population who have not suffered discrimination.
We have not yet reached racial equality and a simple statistical demographics search will prove that.
Ministers are seldom limited by political correctness. There is some truth in his rhetoric and I have heard white activists make very much the same statements albeit without the passion of the pulpit or the ebonic accents.
|
|
|
Post by rogesgallery on Mar 18, 2008 11:08:45 GMT -5
In reply to Mikes potluck passion:
Governor Spitzer!? Eliot Spitzher out. March 17, 2008
It has long been known that a certain measure of self-rewarding autonomous hypocrisy is unavoidable in the lives of the exceptionally powerful. It is not confined to gender nor is it species specific. It happens among horses, dogs, monkeys and fish and can be historically observed in human female as well as male examples.
Although immoral behavior becomes especially offensive when perpetrated by an individual sworn to uphold and adjudicate the entire range of morals of a large body of humanity, the fact is that said individual may have been using a shoehorn to fit his moral brackets into the moral boundaries of greater society—yet he took the job anyway. Could this be an inherent foible in a calculable percentage of those who seek positions of power or just an atavistic aberration?
In human relations we generally rate these moral lapses by a societal model of flexible standards which, individually, we may or may not live up to, or even subscribe to. Much like shuffling a deck of cards made up of the full range of human activities, the morality card sometimes ends up on the top of the deck and sometimes at the bottom. To animals we grant autonomy, since we don't recognize a common moral standard in the world of the beasts, unless of course, we have domesticated them. In which case they are expected to live up to our public standards regardless of what they see, smell, or feel in their direct observations of our actions (see no evil, sniff no evil.)
Then there are the inexplicable instances of of those personalities whose moral or ethical failings are but an insubstantial specter imbedded in their over-riding legacy. JFK is the most obvious, but not the only example of this. Against all revelations as to his personal moral depravations, made even worse for his strong Catholic background and well-documented antics in the White House, he is still memorialized as a paragon of American values. The difference between him and other transgressors—his shocking public demise.
Regardless of his lofty(Not in my back yard!) visions for the state of New York Eliot Spitzer and his multi millions will now slink slowly out of the limelight, and into a dimly lit stall with so many other psychogenic power players, that it seems senseless to begin naming them. And from the ashes will rise a new star—Kristen/Ashley Dupré.
Well look at it this way Spitzer: It could have ended with Ashley's depraved boyfriend publicly shooting you in a fit jealous rage. You might have retained a legacy in the confusion wrought by such a monumental media moment. Who knows? The American public is fickle when it comes to Karmic Tragedy.
I have to wonder... how many powerful men are now openly deriding Spitzer for his iniquity, and quietly cursing his inattention to detail—his letting the cathouse out of the bag so to speak.
|
|
|
Post by gailkate on Mar 18, 2008 14:50:05 GMT -5
I'm sure Obama's entire speech will be on his website soon, maybe on youtube. It is really worth the time, because he goes beyond explaining his relationship with Wright to talking solid truths about race in America today. He talks about all the bitterness, including whites who feel none of the past was their doing, and the need to move on.
One great example: He describes his white grandmother, who loved him and helped raise him but who said things about blacks that made him cringe. "I could no more disown Rev. Wright than I could disown my white grandmother."
(Great line about the cathouse, roges.)
|
|
|
Post by michael on Mar 18, 2008 17:24:08 GMT -5
Replies, I've had a few But then again, To few to mention
Anyway...
Elliot’s inability to ride out the storm and emerge on the other side of the low pressure zone as weakened but still in power is no mystery. 1) The man rose to power as a crusader of moral righteousness. This gives him no wiggle room when things go sour. 2) He has no charm or charisma – he’s an unlikable, unattractive guy. Nobody is going to consider him an irrepressible rascal. None of his cronies (if he even has any) are going to slap him on the back, give him a wink and offer him a cigar in the back room of the old boys club. No doubt, many on both sides of the fence (moral & criminal) enjoyed his downfall.
Epithet for Elliot: A political loser.
Mike
|
|
|
Post by joew on Mar 18, 2008 21:35:34 GMT -5
But when Wright said that the United States invented AIDS as one more way to oppress blacks, he was lying. And it was a lie which furthers division and foments hatred toward whites. And when he said that America would never let a black man become President, it showed that he does not really understand the attitudes of most white people. He is stuck in a time warp and does not realize how far white America has come from the 1950's and 60's.
|
|
|
Post by gailkate on Mar 18, 2008 23:41:22 GMT -5
I hope you get to hear the whole speech, Joe. I don't think Obama would argue with you, he just thinks it's natural in that generation. I've been thinking of parallels to "South Pacific." It came out in the late '50s, right? when I saw it, I enjoyed the music, but the plot was completely unmoving. Nellie couldn't marry her true love because he had 2 mixed race kids? What's that about?
Some day, the importance of black and white in this country may be just as distant and incomprehensible as Nellie's conflict was to me. I pray I see it, but it might not happen in our lifetime.
|
|
|
Post by michael on Mar 26, 2008 1:42:09 GMT -5
This just in from Southfield, Michigan!
Jack Kevorkian (yes, Dr. Death) plans to run for Congress as an independent. If elected his priority would be promoting the little-known 9th amendment.
I questioned everyone I know to see if they knew what the 9th amendment was. No one knew! So, I guess Jack may be on to something.
Mike
|
|