The Right is wrong
My 10 year old daughter came home from school last week, and while she sat with me eating her after-school snack asked me;
“Is President Obama a racist?” she said.
“No, honey, where’d you hear that?” I said.
“Well, [so and so] said that in class to me today and I just wanted to know,” she said.
“Did the person tell you where they had heard such a thing, honey?” I asked.
“Yeah, [their] grandpa said it,” my daughter replied. “He heard it on TV.”
My daughter and I had a discussion on what is racism, its source in ignorance, and how it’s just plain wrong. We also talked about the TV and radio shows which spread intolerance and bigotry for profit and political gain. My daughter’s eyes glazed over a little, and I said;
“Thanks for letting me know what’s up with you! Go play with your friends!”
Well, I never thought it could happen but, there is obviously no lowest depth of putrid vile chicanery that the far right wing racists will go to block anything that President Obama is up to keep his promise of change in America. Now they’re indoctrinating racism into 10 year old school children.
The current chief perpetrators are Glenn Beck and the Fox Network.
Since Beck’s comment, there has been an effort to have Beck’s sponsors stop advertising on his show but, that’s not far enough for what these folks have done.
The Fox Network condones Glenn Beck’s racist statements with every day that Glenn Beck spews his vitriol and the boycott should be directed at all Fox advertisers until this filth is gone.
But, Michelle Malkin and Rush Limbaugh jump into the fire, also! The folks that spread the filth of racism do not deserve our economic support. I will not buy products advertised on the Fox Network, or any network or show which advertises or runs Michelle Malkin or Rush Limbaugh (not that Rush is a problem, I don’t have erectile dysfunction, premature balding or a need to evade personal liability by incorporating in Nevada!).
Meanwhile, a current attempt by President Obama to have a teaching moment with students is attacked as “indoctrination in Obama’s socialist agenda.”
Let’s make this clear, there have been other Presidential addresses directly to students. The Presidents which have done this before are Ronald Reagan in 1981, George H.W. Bush in 1991, and George W. Bush in 2002. Each presented their personal political views on America and the direction the country should go in their speeches.
There is only one reason to go off the deep end against an innocuous address by President Obama for children to “work hard, stay in school and succeed,” it is racism. It is the racism upon which the Republican Party in America has thrived since the 1880’s.
Some 10 per cent of the electorate is still fussing and fuming over the 2008 election; still believing President Obama is a Muslim; still believing President Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii or the United States; still believing that healthcare reform will have “death panels’ and will “pull the plug on grandma;” still calls President Obama a “Marxist Communist” or a “socialist” who “pals around with terrorists,” who wants to take away all your stuff; and, still believes that it’s wrong for a person who is black to be President of the United States.
What’s wrong here is the right.
Does the author think blacks incapable of racism?
Scarlet : At no point does he say people with black skin are not capable of racism.
If you are accusing someone of racism by all means do so without a song and dance. Let me make it easier.
Do you think Obama is a racist?
Well, my 9 year old and 9 and 6 year old nieces came running to me from the bus stop one day before the elections asking me if Obama was a baby killer. Does Obama kill little babies? This is why they asked me. I was shocked that parents would say such a thing to little children.
Why would that shock you when parents bring their toddlers to Anti-Choice demonstrations and have them carry posters of discarded fetuses? The Right is not only Wrong, they have no sense of boundaries or appropriateness, either.
The link for the Glenn Beck and Fox boycott is:
http://colorofchange.org/beck/passalong.html?id=2192-1071106
Apparently, now Beck has decided to fight the boycott by attacking the group which started it, not retracting his racist remarks.
Mark : This is more common than you think, one of my die hard feminist friends and I were walking in to eat when a little girl around 6 or 7 stopped us and started preaching the evils of abortion while giving us a pamphlet. My friend fed back, “but that will kill mommies!” the little girl then had a confused look and went back and told her mom. Her look was priceless shock, we were not bothered again and as my friend said, “you send your message through your friends, I will send a message back through your kids”.
Do I think Obama is a racist? Well, I do not think he would erect a structure on someone’s front lawn and set it on fire. Do I think that he harbors biases which cause him to engage in a more subtle form of racism? Yes. I’ve got major, major problems with his association with Reverend Wright. Obama also assumed the police officer to be racist in the Harvard law professor incident, as revealed by his rash remarks. Obama’s endorsement of Sotomayor and the concept of racial identity politics fosters racism and causes me to opine that he is a racist.
Liberal democrats, including Obama, enjoy support from a large block of minority voters. Al Gore going down south and assuming the personna of Reverend Al is racism. Snippets of Obama’s speeches, including the one where he subtly flipped the bird while taking about Bush, constitute racial pandering.
I do not think that liberal democrats inspire or empower their electorate. I think that liberal democrats are more worried about getting votes and keeping a voting block than they are about empowering anyone.
If one cannot attribute part of the cause of the healthcare crisis to illegal aliens without being called a racist, then I don’t understand how you can accuse doctors, the numeric majority of whom are white, of assaulting patients by doing unnecessary surgeries without being a racist. If one view is racist, so is the other.
Of the problems I have with Obama, his racially biased views are not tops on my list. In my mind, he is far from any great uniter.
Hmmmmmmm, Obama’s a racist, liberals just want minority votes, not empowerment of any others, blah, blah!
What is this blather about flipping off Bush. W did it live on TV, and Dick Cheney used the f bomb on the floor of the US Senate!
http://video.google.com/videosearch?sourceid=navclient&rlz=1T4DKUS_enUS250US251&q=%22Bush%20Flips%20off%20media%22&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wv#
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56lZHG_xQAA
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5289848/
Heck, Nelson Rockefeller did it, too!
Scarlett, your white sheet is showing!
Scarlet : Your post makes me curious. How do you think Obama’s policy will affect you?
Well, I’m taking it one day at a time. I don’t think he is going to get his agenda pushed through. Congressional democrats aren’t going to commit hari kari for this guy.
If he does get it done? I guess I’ll have to figure out “The Formula” and the likely duration of the Ponzi scheme.
At some point, I should stop working so hard because I’m just being made a chump and am no longer working for the benefit of my family. At some point I should sell my home because I’m simply going to be taxed out of it. When should I stop being a responsible person? Should I teach my children that only a fool goes $350,000 into debt to become a union doctor for the State making $85,000 per year? Shouldn’t my children be lifeguards, poets, or artists? Maybe they can find part time work planting flowers. They should do whatever makes them the most relaxed and tranquil. The State will provide the rest.
Historian, Alexander Tyler, said “A democracy can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury.”
As observed in the article in the link below:
“The one thing that keeps the cycle operating is the mistaken belief that such collapse can never happen. There will be a very rude awakening one of these days. One to which everyone who fails to understand the connection between endless entitlements and that economic collapse will be fully entitled to, especially those pandering politicians who brought it about in the first place. ”
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?15ba16ea-e2fa-49e2-bfb0-03a852e4c86c
Scarlet : You said you don’t think he is going to get his ‘agenda’ pushed through. What IS his agenda?
Scarlet Letter writes:—”Historian, Alexander Tyler, said “A democracy can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury.”
Well, let’s see—the Republicans used that formula only in the form of tax cuts, which has led us to a situation in which not only the government but many major institutions that ought to have been regulated by said government damn near collapsed into ruin. The future tax burden G.W. has left to pay for his eight years of tax-cut and spend policies is phenomenal—oh, but that’ll be someone else’s problem, I suppose.
The problem with your position is the either-or thinking involved. It can only ever be a choice of A or B? That’s a false premise. The Right has you frightened into believing that the Big Bad Boogeyman Liberal is gonna come in and take all your freedoms away—but the Republicans have done one better by doing all they can to guarantee you can have all the freedom you now can’t afford to pay for.
You obviously haven’t actually listened to one damn thing Obama has said in the last two years—instead you’ve listened to what certain pundits have told you he’s said. I suggest cleaning your ears out and paying attention.
Oh, and I’ve been seeing that quote from Alexander Tyler popping up a lot recently, and as usual it’s being spread by people who apparently don’t study history. Tyler was a Scot and he died in 1813. His chief contribution was a treatise on translation theory, which encapsulated the chief problem and responsibility of the historian in translating older works.
This quote, so “liberally” use by the Right, cannot be reliably attributed to him, but has been used since the 1940’s in support of industrialization and pertaining to political support of industry.
One must remember that in 1813 no one knew if our democracy would work. It was brand new and still working out the kinks. There were members of the Founding Fathers who were highly suspicious of democracy.
I suggest going back to primary sources if you’re intent on making arguments based on quotes from supposedly impartial sources and find out if the attribution is correct—just as in the present, people ought to get Obama’s quotes correct as well. Otherwise you just look ill-informed and occasionally stupid.
Scarlet:
Obama doesn’t impress me as a racist. Yes I know and freely acknowledge that racism is not the exclusive domain of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
So you have a problem with his association with Reverend Wright. And while those who oppose Obama as a person claim they are judging him by the company he keeps, You should first ask yourself if Wright is representative of the company Obama keeps or is he more on the fringe of Obama’s acquaintances?. I have many conservative friends who are racist, who are against Obama only because he is of mixed race and can’t see beyond that, yet they have never managed to see things their way.
Now in the case of the Harvard professor, the initial reports of the incident were spun as a case of racial profiling. Based on the same initial reports, most Americans thought it was just that, until details of the incident were released several hours later. Having access to the same information as the rest of the country, he jumped to the same conclusion as many other people did across the nation.
Obama is one of the very few politicians in recent years that is an inspiration to his constituents. As for empowerment, that come from within each of us and cannot be bestowed by anyone else.
The healthcare crisis is actually the healthcare insurance crisis. A large part of the problem had developed as a result of the same de regulatory fervor that brought us the collapse of the housing bubble and the subsequent sag in the economy. The blame lies within a system of health care finance that finds a financial incentive in the denial of care to the sickest and therefore the most expensive cases. Undocumented aliens generally avoid anything that will get them deported, and that includes signing up for insurance. Additionally, the employers of illegal aliens work them off the books for substandard pay and no benefits. Blaming the health care system’s problems on illegal immigrants is non sequitur.
Scarlet, You are a chump. You have allowed yourself to be seduced by the selfish agenda of the ultra wealthy, who believe that the laws should not apply to them but to everyone else (including you) so that they may ignore what is right, what is moral, and what is just.
You’re a chum because you think that the insurance premiums You and your employer have paid over the years will be there when you get sick, just like millions for seriously ill people who have been twisted out of their coverage by application of some arcane and insane clause buried deep within the health care policy.
for Niklaus. You write that I have been “seduced by the selfish agenda of the ultra wealthy.” Ah, if only we could share a brewski at the “Teachable Moment Tavern.” You harbor class bias against conservatives. My political views were formed at Thanksgiving dinners, unceremoniously served on a ping pong table in a South County basement. Of my four grandparents, only one finished high school. Of my parents, one finished college; the other raised me as a single parent. At the age of 92, my sole surviving grandmother is a self-pay resident of a very nice nuring home. The source of her income? Social security in part, but more significantly personal savings that were amassed over a lifetime of manual factory work, savings, and doing without. (Medicare does not pay long term care). Those who have grown up in families who survived the Depression simply have a different perspective about the role of government in our lives. I’m fourth generation working mother. Not a dime of my six figure education was funded by a Pell grant; I have paid it back in full over more than a decade.
Obama described his philosophy to Joe the Plumber: we have to redistribute the wealth. That is socialism. Obama’s agenda is to support the base, to grow the base, and to defeat the political opposition. This is not inspiring. Those of us who are not dreamers saw it coming.
As his religious advisor for twenty years, Reverend Wright was not on his fringe! In any event, being a a fringe member of Wright’s church is not acceptable.
As to healthcare, what is the plan? Is there an outline of the plan? Is there an analysis of the challenges? Is there a study of strategies that have worked at the state level? None of these things exist.
Well, is that incompetence or purpose? Is there no plan because it doesn’t matter what the plan says? Is this the Alinsky strategy to overwhelm the system until it breaks down?
What is Obama’s position on:
1) Tort reform; defensive medicine drives up costs as to frivilous suits
Advertising for prescription drugs needs to stop. Too many people think they can be fat, take a pill to not be fat, and take another pill to be a constant stud man. This is too expensive.
2) Declaration of soverign immunity such that the federal government cannot be sued by citizens alleging medical malpractice by physicians covered by the Rural Access to Healthcare Clinics Act (Clinton).
3) Making medical debts undischargeable in bankruptcy, thereby giving citizens an incentive to carry insurance. Student loans are not dischargeable in bankrputcy.
4) Create fair,standardized advertising principles for insurance companies and have the FTC enforce them.
5) Eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts, cut funding for NPR, trim pork, and instead have an endowment for those devastated by medical costs. Encourage charitable contributions to the fund.
6) The federal government needs to deal with illegal immigration; the problem is bankrupting the states
7) Turn to the states to develop affordable high risk insurance pools
9) Ways to enhance competition should be explored
11) Create a national reward fund for those who detect and report waste and abuse in federal programs; publicize the availability of qui tam suits; create huge bounties.
12) Encourage citizens to prepare living wills.
13) Expand the availability of drugs available without prescription
14) Reinstate WPA programs and require those on public assistance and welfare to work in the health care industry
Now Joe “You Lie” Wilson, (R-SC) has remade his “apapology” which never was any apology. This wack job thinks his racism will still float the boat in South Carolina.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/09/joe-wilson-youtube-i-will-not-be-muzzled.php
See also,
http://dangerousintersection.org/2009/04/27/republicans-are-crap-weasels/
Interesting that the “racism” word is being flung around so casually these days, typically in an attempt to discredit anyone who disagrees with Obama’s policies or who calls his credibility into question. With over-use, won’t the “racism” word will be sucked of its meaning entirely? If that happens, won’t we be a color blind society? Would that be good, or bad, for society in general or for liberals in particular?
Joe Wilson lost control of his temper. As a positive by-product of his outburst, he drew attention to a susbstantive issue which, in and of itself, has the power to break the country economically: if health care is a moral right, do we provide it to illegal aliens?
I wrote a very long post in response to prior questions asked of me which has not been posted, by the way.
Scarlett Letter: Your earlier comment got caught up in spam. I’ve now approved it.
Scarlet Letter writes:—”You harbor class bias against conservatives.”
That’s a common misattribution. Conservatism hasn’t actually got much to do with it. There is a problem with huge concentrations of wealth that use any convenient ideology to defend the right to maintain that wealth at the expense of the common good. It’s a canard that everyone has bought into, that conservatism equals money. Traditional conservatives, who no longer prevail within the Republican Party, would have been apalled at the degree to which a cadre of super-rich corporations—which are not people, but institutions—manipulate the system to the benefit of the institution to the detriment of the economy and the individual. We need to stop thinking that just because someone is wealthy, they are necessarily conservative, and just because someone is conservative they are a natural ally of Corporatism.
Scarlett Letter writes:—”5) Eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts, cut funding for NPR, trim pork, and instead have an endowment for those devastated by medical costs. Encourage charitable contributions to the fund.”
That’s an interesting one. You don’t like the arts? As to NPR, it is possibly the fairest news source on the radio—why cut it?
You know, back in the 50s, Enrico Fermi was giving a bunch of congressional visitors to his Fermilab a tour and one of them asked about the amount of federal money that went into and what it contributed to national defense. His answer? “Nothing…except to make the country worth defending.”
Also:—”Advertising for prescription drugs needs to stop. Too many people think they can be fat, take a pill to not be fat, and take another pill to be a constant stud man. This is too expensive.”
Now, I agree with this whole-heartedly. This is an absolutely craven practice. Consumers don’t have the knowledge on average to know what’s best for them medically and television advertising makes it even harder for medical professionals to serve their patients.
But isn’t this a free speech issue? Just askin’…
And:—”9) Ways to enhance competition should be explored”
I hear this a lot. The chief barrier to competition is corporate collusion and the rampant practice of corporate merger and take-over. You want to ramp up competition, bar any and all mergers, hostile take-overs, and beef up anti-trust agencies and fine price-fixing. The creeping monopolization of health care may be the biggest boost to prices, but we don’t hear about that because we all worship The Market.
Finally:—”14) Reinstate WPA programs and require those on public assistance and welfare to work in the health care industry”
But you want to cut the NEA…
And in what capacity would you have people with no training to work in health care?
I don’t altogether disagree with the sentiment here—I have no problem with the notion that if you draw welfare, you should be required to do some public service for it. But such programs under FDR were found unConstitutional, partly because it was claimed that the government became a de facto direct competitor to private companies.
So you’re willing to that, though, but not have a public option health insurance program. I see inconsistencies.