To illustrate the point, let's look at a particularly boobish statement made by one of my pro-Obama readers:
"He [Obama] is for more of an open government than Hillary..."By what standard?
Let's look at the Bill Clinton administration. We shall operate under the presumption that his example might provide a few pointers as to what a Hillary presidency would be like.
Clinton passed Executive Order 12891, which created the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. As a result, his Energy department released a massive number of amazing documents concerning the government's radiation and nuclear experiments.
Those documents were all online. Cutting edge search technology (for the time) made it fairly easy for researchers to zero in on the information they wanted.
I recall that site well. I could not believe what I was seeing. Names. Dates. Few redaction marks.
We are talking about tons of material, covering topics which had long been considered very hush-hush. I had long wanted to see this stuff -- and now, here it was.
The origin and development of EMP weaponry...
The use of unmanned aircraft to spread toxic radiation...
Early nuclear disasters...
Reagan didn't declassify these documents. Carter didn't. Bush I didn't.
Bush II RE-classified all of it, including documents that I had downloaded (which I wish I still had). That Department of Energy "treasure trove" site no longer exists. (Added note: Actually, it seems to have migrated here. But I can no longer access the actual documents. Can you?)
And what about the Freedom of Information Act? FOIA enthusiasts never had it so good as in the Clinton years. The headlines for the Wikipedia entry on FOIA tell the story...
6. Reagan's Executive Order limiting the FOIAHow dare anyone accuse Clinton of not advocating an open government? As Martin Anderson used to say: "In politics, the question is always 'Compared to what?'" Compared to any other presidency, Bill Clinton's was by far the most transparent.
7. Expansion of the FOIA during the Clinton Administration
8. The Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments of 1996
9. Bush's Executive Order limiting the FOIA
Moreover, his policy of transparency came at some political cost. As few progressives now recall, his foes routinely charged him with revealing too many of America's secrets. That DOE website, in particular, came in for heavy criticism from the Limbaugh crowd.
Alas, all of that history is now forgotten. As memory fades, reality itself becomes the province of fantasists and fanatics.
Fundamentalists do as fundamentalists do. They keep repeating charges without bothering to cite examples: 'There's a conspiracy of secular humanists.' 'Obama Bin Laden wants to turn America Muslim.' 'Satanists are sacrificing children.' 'Larry Silverstein admitted that he demolished Building 7' 'The 1990s were the Nightmare Years.'
I can argue with people who hold differing political opinions -- but how can one argue with religious zealots?
ADDED NOTE: The JFK Assassination Record Review Act was also passed during the Clinton years.
Correction: Gary Buell reminds me that the JFK Act passed in the waning days of the Bush I administration. Bush was directed to nominate a Board within 90 days, but did not. Clinton nominated the board which settled on a very broad definition of the term "Assassination-related record."
60 comments:
here are Human Radiation Experiment docs:
http://www.hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/ohre/
and here
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/radiation/
Also-they are in the archives if you can recall what the original url was-or trace it back. I have that link somewhere on my old computer if you want it- just leave a reply here and I will dig it up.
I don't really want to get caught up in this debate, but I will suggest that one of the reasons Hillary is accused of being against open government is because she has has not released some of her personal financial records (ie taxes). But I would also support you with this argument about Bill- the Human Radiation Experiments hearings was an amazing step towards empowering the people to know their history.
take care
kc
Thanks. But I can't access the actual documents. Can anyone else?
The Clinton Administration declassified nearly a BILLION documents. They fought government secrecy as zealously as the Bush Gang promote it.
The Anti-Obama witch hunt continues. Hey Joe, if you are you are really for open discussion, full disclosure and all that crap why is it you try so hard to shut people down who don't buy into your beliefs( ie. controlled demolition=bad, Obama=Bad, Hillary=Good)
Actually The JFK Assassination Record Review Act was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush although Clinton did appoint the members.
You know, I was going to delete this comment -- but let's allow it to stay.
A CD believer is also an Obama-worshipper. Sounds about right!
(But don't get the idea that I won't delete any future anonymous or pro-tranny posts.)
Gary, that's true. Bush was supposed to nominate a board within 90 days, and he didn't. The Board did not offer its sweeping definition of term "Assassination Record" until well into the Clinton administration.
http://www.hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/ohre/
> click ROADMAP TO THE PROJECT
> click (at left) Declassified Documents
or scroll to Declassified Documents where it reads:
"These once classified documents provide information on human radiation experiments during the early days of the Cold War. Users are able to view images of the original documents, replete with classification stamps, hand-written notes, and other marginalia."
the links work
Not for me, H. I hit "Search HREX Archive" and I get nada.
Now that I know your Technish -
First I also hit "Search HREX Archive" and also got nada.
Then I hit "ROADMAP TO THE PROJECT" (it's on the far left of the same list as "Search HREX Archive") and got in.
"He [Obama] is for more of an open government than Hillary..."
By what standard?
This is too easy! Of course, BHO is probably advocating for HRC to release her records as First Lady, as well as her income tax records. Neither of which HRC is doing just yet, although she's promised to release her tax returns if or once she becomes the nominee. Despite my position that I've always defended the Clintons against their attackers over the years, her critics certainly have the best argument when they claim that it would be slightly late to do so only after the nomination has been won, and awarded.
Beyond this easy stuff, let's get more serious.
The story I've read is that many of the moves for secrecy that the Clinton administration engaged in (yes, despite the openness it displayed about FORMER US policies, it tended to be rather secretive about its own policies), moves that they did not prevail in, eventually, moves that created signficant doubt in the body politic when done (only to find not much of anything there when these things were released), were mostly or all moves done at the instigation of HRC's advocacy that it be done that way.
It started fairly early on with the composition of her privately held health care task force. Oddly, that was one for which her position was entirely sound, hinging upon the question of whether the First Lady was a government employee or not. (She said yes, her critics said no and sued, she and the Clinton administration lost at first under the horrific rulings of Royce Lamberth, and then an appeals court ruled that the FL was indeed a government position.)
However, over and over again, according to stories I've read, HRC stood on the ramparts and demanded that WJC not release this or that requested bit of information concerning his administration. This led to the suspicion that since nobody insists on hiding things that are innocent or exculpatory, matters must be quite the opposite.
Usually, as in the case of the Clintoncare gatherings, these refusals were couched in terms of executive privilege. Of course, the FL cannot invoke that privilege, but the information I've seen implicates HRC as the primary actor in the high councils of the WH who advocated that position be taken by the POTUS, and made it happen.
Could these stories have been false, or manufactured? Sure, but logically, it would have been Clinton administration insiders who would have been involved in throwing her under the bus that way. And, despite the famed Clinton response team, to my knowledge, the Clinton administration had never knocked down such stories. In fact, they may have floated them, as a way to exculpate WJC, who genuinely DID seem to prefer a more open style.
...sofla
H: Way ahead of you. Already tried that.
What you want is the "declassified documents" link on this page:
http://www.hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/ohre/roadmap/declass/index.html
Press the button. STILL nothing!
sofla, personal tax records are a different matter. There are Obama records that have been hard to get. More on that later.
Second...name a presidency that was MORE transparent that Clinton's.
C'mon. You're not even making things tough on me.
So I am tilted toward Obama and I keep an open-mind about the whole controlled demolition concept for 9/11. I didn't claim I believed it was true. You sound more like the fundamentalist witchdoctor Joe.
Set in your beliefs, and shouting down anyone who disagrees with or questions your opinion.
IF Bill Clinton's was THE MOST TRANSPARENT of all presidencies to date, that bears not at all on whether BHO wants and stands for more open government than HRC does, even IF we attribute all of WJC's instincts for transparent government in the daylight to HRC. BHO could want more transparency still, even than the most transparent presidency to date.
But I'm suggesting that whatever WJC's instincts or desires and follow through for open government, even HE got stuck with a very early claim of executive privilege, and according to my reading, BECAUSE HRC had the opposite instincts and desires.
Name ONE OTHER administration's use of such secrecy to hide the deliberations and even membership of a task force that was putting together its single most high profile policy initiative.
The Dick Cheney energy task force, you say? Sure, but that makes my point rather well all by itself.
I happen to agree that the Clinton administration's use of executive privilege for the impeachment matter was correct, and necessary. But to hide the health care reform task force's membership and deliberations? In its first year in office? Can you tell me a single comparable example in all of the modern presidency's history, with the exception of the single most secretive administration ever (the current one)?
...sofla
Hillary was asked a question in one of the debates about some things that Bill had said (implication was that her Presidency would be a shared Presidency with Bill)and she responded:
"Hillary: I’m Running, Not Bill"
AND
"At the end of the day it is my name on the ballot,” she said, adding, “At the end of the day, it’s a lonely job in the White House and it’s the president of the United States that makes the decisions and that’s what I am being entrusted to do.”
My point is as I mentioned before, we are not talking about Bill or his Presidency unless you are willing to admit that Hillary lied in that comment.
If Bill was running, the debates between him and Obama would have been something to see.
On the subject of tax returns both Hillary and McCain have been vague and not fort-coming and frankly it does raise red flags. She would not even release the list of her "Earmarks" even after Obama released his and asked her to do the same. When Hillary dared Obama to sign on to some "Bill" she was sponsoring to stop Bush from committing the US in Iraq permamnently, he did so promptly.
Hillary has committed to release of her tax forms. McCain has not. If there were anything monstrous there (as opposed to the usual sniping over molehills made mountainous) we would not see that stuff at all.
Obama's commitment to openness? How do you know? Obama is a Rorschach blot for you guys. You read into him what you want to see.
We'll be talking about HIS secrets soon.
I never saw any reason why the health care panel should not have conducted its work in private. If anything, they were too public at the time. It's not as though the member's names were kept secret. And it is not as though I disliked the results.
You're doing it again! Heretofore, the only people who caterwauled about the allegedly secret nature of Clinton's health care plan were far-rightists -- the ones who wanted to convince the world that the Clintons were evil socialists out to bring about One World Gummint. Can you make an argument that does crib from the Scaife playbook?
I meant to say "does NOT crib." Sorry.
By the way, sof...the task force met in 1993. The Clinton administration released all records concerning its workings in 1994. I know of know document that spoke of anything dirty or underhanded occurring.
And you're categorizing that alongside Cheney's energy task force, where he let Big Energy make policy, and STILL refuses to release any documents?
Reprehensible.
You are so blinded by Clinton-hate that you can no longer describe the real world. I'll say it again: Anti-CLintonism is a RELIGION.
I suggest that you stop reading political blogs and start looking for sites devoted to faith and the supernatural.
Huh? Actually the page is
http://www.hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/ohre/roadmap/declass/index.html
I checked the links to all the docs (7 or 8), and they work
One more thing, sof. I'm writing so much partially because you pissed me off, but also to make a larger point: Anti-Clintonian lefties invariably draw from the "findings" of the hard right.
As I said, the Health Care panel documents did come out. Here is an example (from Judicial Watch) of a passage that is supposedly SHOCKING:
"A June 18, 1993 internal Memorandum entitled, “A Critique of Our Plan,” authored by someone with the initials “P.S.,” makes the startling admission that critics of Hillary’s health care reform plan were correct: “I can think of parallels in wartime, but I have trouble coming up with a precedent in our peacetime history for such broad and centralized control over a sector of the economy…Is the public really ready for this?... none of us knows whether we can make it work well or at all…”"
Like, duh. Of COURSE true health care reform would be the biggest thing since wartime. Anything less just would not be health care reform.
Now, sof, you are either for reform or you are not. If you are not, please leave this site. Your natural home is Wizbang or Drudge or some place of that sort.
But if you ARE for reform, then why are you parroting the arguments of those who wanted no such thing?
If you read the Judicial Watch site, the reason for privacy becomes clear. They didn't want the Right Wing Hate Machine examining every jot and tittle of every blue-sky idea that every committee member might have profferred. Because -- as we all know -- the JW crowd (and Limbaugh, and Scaife, and all the rest) wanted to take those jots and tittles and transform them into something beyond recognition.
Insanely, you lefties blame the Clintons for not delivering health care reform, yet you do not blame the right for opposing it. More than that. You think that the Clinton team should have operated in an environment that made their job even TOUGHER.
Absurd!
This takes you to the first doc listed and the first page of the doc's 5 pages:
http://www.hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/ohre/roadmap/declass/0707061/index.html
maybe I have security clearance and you don't
H...
No no no no.
THOSE documents aren't the issue.
Look, you did not that site in the old days. I was there often.
They had thousands and thousands of documents available.
They're gone now.
Those seven or eight documents up front are cherry-picked. They don't mean a thing.
H, I meant to write: "You did not VISIT that site in the old days."
Since you made this a full post, I'll respond here.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/#transparent-democracy
This is linked directly off of his main page under Issues>Technology.
I did a google search for Hillary Open Government on google and this is what I found.
http://www.sunshineweek.org/files/clintonsurvey.pdf
Which is linked off of here:
http://www.sunshineweek.org/sunshineweek/candidates
An impressive arrangement of words, but if I'm to understand how Hillary interprets actions vs. words correctly, this just a series of words until she releases her tax information and the documents outlining her activities during the very administration whose freedom of information you site.
Meanwhile Obama co-sponsored the Verbatim Record Bill, and his web-site lists specifics in far greater detail than the Hillary questionnaire.
Bonus points to her for responding to the sunshine week survey.
(The corresponding search for Obama turns up his visit to Google which references his PDF on Technology and Innovation which can be found here http://obama.3cdn.net/780e0e91ccb6cdbf6e_6udymvin7.pdf)
You've hinted at getting into the secretiveness of Obama and I'm eager to hear it.
I don't know anything about what sort of bias sunshineweek.org has but it but the opinion seems to favor Obama over Hillary for the same reasons I do.
If you want to sway my opinion then I'm going to have to ask you to source something in your favor.
I can't find anything as specific about open government on the Hillary website.
I find your assumption that HRC would be for open government because of the WJC administration to be unnerving.
That's like saying there was no difference between poppy and W. We know that not to be true.
Additionally, poking around on Clintons web-site there is this under Issues>An Innovation Agenda
"Ensure that e-science initiatives are adequately funded. ... The potential of e-science is great. For example, researchers could one day model climate change by constructing scale simulations of the Earth’s systems..."
Which is almost as maddening as the W. State of the Union address where W. pledged a 1.5b handout to the big 3 to do Hydrogen Fuel Cell "research" when he could have driven away from his speech in a GM van fueled by hydrogen.
Who does she owe a favor to in the climate modeling business?
Even under crippled funding from W. NASA already does what Hillary hopes to one day see.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/modeling/
Anyway, that's a total snarky aside.
To wrap up, I'd like to say that I laid out what my perception and my feelings were, clearly labeling them as nothing more and nothing less.
I resent that you called me a liar for that.
I'm looking forward to your response.
Zach, I feel no obligation to sway your opinion. If I wanted to argue with someone on a one-to-one basis, I would hang out in bars.
Your links to Obama's words are not relevant to me, since I do not accept the theory of his honesty. I hold him directly responsible for the "Hillary-the-racist" smear campaign.
"I find your assumption that HRC would be for open government because of the WJC administration to be unnerving.
That's like saying there was no difference between poppy and W. We know that not to be true."
Actually, I suppose that argument can be made. This is one of the few truly interesting arguments I've seen lately.
I know of some centrists who voted for W because they presumed that he would be more like his father. They were disappointed, to say the least.
(Not that Poppy was a peach -- I think he was one of the lousiest presidents ever. But even he, bum that he was, would not have gone to war in Iraq under these circumstances.)
I do not expect Hillary to agree with everything Bill did. But we have come to know these people well over the years, and I think that there won't be any surprises.
Frankly, it's hard for me to imagine Hillary Clinton ever doing ANYTHING surprising or wholly unpredictable. That personality trait, frankly, is one of the things I don't like about her.
By comparison, the rivalry between fathers and sons is often a strange and unpredictable thing.
Forgive me for musing philosophically here -- the tone of your piece was far more business-like -- but the thought just struck me: In all these years, I still do not really know George W. Bush!
By what I mean: I do not know if his religion is feigned or heartfelt. I don't know if he is as feeble-minded as some think. I don't know if he still smokes or drinks. I don't know if he is given to passionate rages or if he is eerily calm in his day to day life. I don't even know whether or not he has ceded large chunks of his administration to Cheney.
So I guess my real answer is that I don't think that the Poppy/Dubya relationship provides much of a template for the Clinton/Clinton relationship, or for any other relationship.
I feel as though I came to know (please note that I said "know," not "like") Bill, Hillary, GHWB, and even RR and Carter and Ford and, God help us, the Trickster.
But Dubya -- he remains, for me, the Unknown President. Sui generis.
I will speak to some of your other points later, but I think your "climate modeling' insinuation is inane and paranoid.
Congrats again, Joe - Barry noticed yesterday that one of your readers intimated that the fusses about 'racism' and 'sexism' actually have prevented (or pre-empted) any serious discussions about race itself, and then he announced he would speak to the issue of race today.
Come to think of it, it was probably your prominent news mag cover graphic with Barry that triggered his response.
Your ad hominem 'arguments' against my [cough] entirely correct position are unwarranted and troubling. (Is it some kind of boilerplate you use on all your disputants, or simply a sly example of the behavior of others you find objectionable, to show us how it feels when you're similarly attacked? In any case, you know how wrong that tactic is when it's used against you, so why would you use it yourself?)
I am not a Hillary hater, or a BC hater, whatsoever. However, both have inarguably made missteps in their actions and statements from time to time, and occasionally, even the typically moronic right wing talking points are correct. (Hard to believe, I know, but stay with me here.)
What was wrong with holding secret health care reform meetings was the 1972 law that forbade those actions, since that openness in government reform required any such policy group involving non-Federal employees to hold public hearings and make public disclosures of its working documents, membership, etc.
And, in this case, the right wing and/or simply critics or opponents of the Clintons (none of which categories apply to me, btw, pace JQC) were entirely correct. It wasn't the self-congratulatory right wing media chorus telling themselves they were correct. It was rather THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION ITSELF, which made all the public disclosures required by that law and asked for by their opponents, but only after they were taken to court and sued for this information production required by the law by a physicians' lobbying group.
So, among the first things the Clinton administration did was to violate a government openness reform law, and in a matter most closely associated with HRC. Given the admitted brilliance of mind of WJC, HRC, her factotum on that board, Ira Magaziner, and etc., I do not find it credible to suppose that they could not accurately read that law and determine it REQUIRED their health care reform group to be public, given its composition including private parties from industry who were not governmental employees.
Additionally, in defending its secrecy and attempting to maintain it, and not disclose what was required by law, HRC's chief deputy on the task force and close long-term friend Mr. Magaziner made such egregiously false statements that the task force's participants were wholly federal employees that Judge Lamberth awarded the plaintiffs some $285,000 in attorneys' fees.
While the appeals court overturned that award, it did not find Magaziner's testimony under oath to be truthful, nor that the task force only included federal employees, because neither was the case. Rather, they simply determined that the threshhold holding that the false testimony was perjurious was unproven.
I recognize the probable strategic importance of keeping that task force deliberations secret. I do not have a big problem with that action.
However, YOU have praised the Clinton administration, and derivatively, HRC, as champions of governmental transparency and openness.
Yet here is a case showing that among their very first actions was a violation of exactly such a **21**-year-old LAW forbidding their actions in this regard.
If this is a right wing talking point, it is also a fact, and the former doesn't change the latter truth. And that action, which I have properly characterized, bespeaks something other than a firm commitment to government transparency, which, if it were true, would apply even to cases where the law was not so explicit in requiring it. Here, even in the face of a law requiring disclosures, the Clinton decision was to flout that law, and I see no other credible explanation for what occurred here.
...sofla
Obama's response to the unwarranted hostile and venomous reactions from many commentators and blogers and of course all of you puny self rightous pundits who do not have a clue about the resident racism that swells its ugly head of steam every opportunity there is.. see below
"We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country," Obama said. "But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow."
Obama said anger over those injustices often find voice in black churches on Sunday mornings. "The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning," he said.
Obama argued that the anger often distracts from solving real problems and bringing change. But he said it also exists in some segments of the white community that feels blacks are often given an unfair advantage through affirmative action.
"If we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American," Obama said, drawing a rare burst of applause in a somber address.
Obama said one of the tasks of his campaign to be the first black president is "to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America.
Well spoken dontch think?
On the subject of transparency, Obama's speech today can be viewed as if not proof of his intent but at least a sign of his future behavior.
BUT....
I would characterize the speech as "Un-Petty"
Obama's speech was powerful. There is no getting around it.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obama_Wright_comments_were_profoundly_distorted_0318.html
He did not shy away from the problem facing him, and instead took to it, head on.
It's hard not to admire someone who can take the unparalleled (in my fairly long experience; as much, if not as long, as Hillary ever took) hostility his campaign, and his beloved pastor, have taken in the past week, and turn it into such a beautifully accepted opportunity.
This is not the first time I have seen the man do this, turning a strife-filled moment into a real chance to reflect, understand, and overcome.
And this is the kind of demeanor that makes me trust someone with the fragile state of our union, and the world.
You can strut and fret all you wish, Joseph, about the "petty" details against Obama, and if I'd a mind to I know I could match you point for point against Hillary.
But why would I want to do that? I admire Hillary, and prefer her strengths, as I prefer Obama's. And that pettiness is not at all what I want this campaign to be about. And I don't think either one of them wants it to be about that pettiness, either.
Because if we keep it in the trenches, we'll never be able to take the opportunity to work together when we need to do just that the most, in the run up to November. Because that's when we absolutely must convince enough Americans to vote this evil monster of a presidency and party out of our lives, no matter which of these two fine candidates wins the nomination.
I had always thought this was what you wanted, as well, and why you felt so strongly against the 'progs' and their insanity (a sentiment I shared).
Could I really have been so wrong about you?
Did you hear The Speech? Andrew Sullivan is agog. The pundits are parsing.
IMO it was a disaster. He even dissed his own grandmother!
"I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."
I was wondering, when are you going to prove that it was in fact Obama who killed Vince Foster ?
Nah, Obama murdered Donald Young.
Obama's speech has just catapulted him into the White/Black House..as Hilary looks up to see what and who was that guy flying over her head just now.
Your words Cannon, will die like yesterdays grape leaves (sour), but that speech will be studied and copied and imitated forevermore. He was not just addressing and sharing the idealism of all the people of color in this still racist population, but he was talking about you and me and yes even Joe 6 pack, if Joe ( not you, your cousin Joe Ya know), ever listens to it.
Obama took the slings and arrows of what people like you and the opposition party tried to turn into a slam dunk negative and parried and thrust it right back straight into the guts of the extreme minority (like you and Hilary et al) that clings to baseless racist notions about their own brothas and sistahs citizens.
Hooray! Now the big problem is to keep him from being assassinated by the hate mongers and the current “establishment” plunderers and political freeloaders (Hilary, Lieberman and a host of others), groveling for handouts from the multi national (ie fascist) money grubbers, deviates, hypocrites, sanctimonious syncophants, and plain old Nazis.
At least Hilary will no longer be faced with having her secret and carefully hidden finances looked at, because the racist race is now over, and she can return to her penthouse and and watch this “raanbow” nation stand tall again, red and yellow black and white, they are precious in God’s sight. Right?
Ouch. Obama in his speech just gave a mighty backhanded bitch slap to the Establishment types and the Powers That Be who thought they had him smeared as a racist.
Again. Ouch.
Barry's oratory and rhetoric pale next to Jesse's great speech at the 1988 Democratic Convention. You should look at or listen to it again.
Barry's ending anecdote about 'Ashley' reminded me that Jesse fathered a daughter out of wedlock, named Ashley, that tanked his political career.
Okay, Hillary baby, valedictorian and Wellsley commencement speaker (first ever by a student!), show us your stuff...
SIcne I wrote such a long reply to kc just now, I don't really have the time to address the other points. At any rate, I don't need to say much.
As I have made clear previously, I never thought that Obama was a great orator. He's pretty good and I am sure he'll get better.
He addressed the Wright issue only because polls had him losing support quickly.
He did not apologize for Jesse Jackson Jr.'s scurrilous behavior.
He did not apologize for the fact that HIS campaign (not Hillary's) has injected race into this election.
So I am hardly persuaded. And I do not consider him honest.
AFAIK in (Double Dactyl)
Bamboozled Bamboozled
Hillary’s my racist
lesbians in blackface
…shot in foot again
Maaaameeee how I love ya (how I love ya)
madness like Nietzsche said
individually
is rarely the case.
Abbie! Drum! Mandingo!
Baeak halcyon V.
Bill’s real transparency
Madness Nietzsche said, in
political parties
is the rule. Get set for
President McCain
AFAIK in Double Dactyl
Bamboozled Bamboozled
Hillary’s my racist
lesbians in blackface
…shot in foot again
Maaaameeee how I love ya (how I love ya)
madness like Nietzsche said
individually
is rarely the case.
Abbie! Drum! Mandingo!
Barak's halcyon V.
Bill’s real transparency
Madness Nietzsche said, in
political parties
is the rule. Get set for
President McCain
Since Jessica Lange got her deserved Oscar a few years after the film was completed, I figure Cannonfire will win a top prize in a year or two.
"Since Jessica Lange got her deserved Oscar a few years after the film was completed, I figure Cannonfire will win a top prize in a year or two."
Your nose is brown Aitch
anonymous is a pathetic coward.
Funny how Obama supporters like this on don't know how to leave the old politics behind. If I was Obama I would be annoyed by the likes of you
I have a question for all those Obama supporters:If Obama was a member of Wright's congregation for 20 years and close to him personally, and had no idea that Wright was ranting against whites and the USA-how observant does that make him? Do you want someone who is oblivious to what is going on around him a your president?
Or could it be that he has lied himself into a corner?
Oh, and I suppose he had no idea that his wife was ashamed to be an American until recently.
John from WV, I'm just a Democrat, and will support the nominee. But in answer to your question, Obama acknowledged that Wright had said things in his sermons that he did not agree with, and the he felt were just flat-out wrong. If you had actually read or listened, you would know that. He actually spent a good deal of time on this point.
But on to the real reason I'm commenting here. Got this from Scott Horton's site, and it pretty much puts it in perspective, in my opinion:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/03/hbc-90002671
The Silly Season is Here
A good number of my readers note that I am not terribly into the presidential election process. That is so. It’s not that I don’t think this process is important. To the contrary, this decision is vitally important to America and to the world. On the other hand, I am not happy with the saturation coverage that the election campaign receives in our media and in the blogosphere. It quickly assumes the dignity and perspective of a carnival show, and the most absurd side shows quickly get blown up into matters of utmost hyperbole. I’ll just note three points of hyperventilation from the last two weeks:
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John McCain has been endorsed by megachurch pastor John Hagee, a man with known anti-Catholic sentiments. McCain apparently committed an outrage by accepting Hagee’s endorsement, and failing to distance himself sufficiently from Hagee’s socio-theological perspectives.
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Geraldine Ferraro, a former Democratic vice presidential candidate, suggested that the candidacy of Barack Obama was in its essence an affirmative-action campaign, and that Obama got great benefit from being an African-American in the election process. Hillary Clinton evidently failed sufficiently to distance herself from Ferraro and allowed her to continue with some vaguely defined relationship with the Clinton campaign for too many days after she made her offensive remarks.
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Barack Obama attends a church in Chicago whose pastor has made a number of speeches which express tolerance for Black Muslim groups and which express resentment against white society. Obama apparently continues to be a member of his church, and while he has criticized this pastor, he apparently has not done so with sufficient vigor.
To me, it is amazing that such matters occupy hours of air time and fill pages of print media. In fact, the coverage of these issues seems obsessive-compulsive, and the level of on-air venting related to them leaps off the faux-rage meter. Let’s get serious. The nation faces extremely grim issues right now. I’d put these two right at the top:
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what to do about a looming recession, with financial institutions teetering in a way we have not seen since World War II, as our currency collapses and the world gives our economy a resounding vote of no-confidence;
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how to deal with a conflict in Iraq which is draining enormous resources (helping to provoke the nation’s economic woes in fact) and for which there are no neat or obvious solutions.
I suppose that it’s fair to talk about the candidates’ religious convictions and the social and political implications of those convictions. In fact, the media are even free to talk about the social and political convictions of people who are ministers to the presidential candidates. But we should really pause and ask—what, exactly, is the purpose of this dialogue? It goes to one of the great fortes of the American media: its ability to sensationalize things that truly don’t matter and to ignore things that do.
So I am driven to make an observation that is likely to be very unpopular with my readers. I believe that going through the entire cohort of candidates with which this race began, there were three who were obviously suited to be presidential candidates. These three have different gifts and different shortcomings. None of them has won my complete confidence or support, but each of them has won my respect. They are the three candidates to which the people, in their wisdom, have reduced the field: John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. This field of candidates does a better job of representing America and the aspirations of its people than any final group of candidates in my lifetime. Any of them will be a dramatic improvement over the current occupant of the White House. And each of them deserves our respect and admiration for going through the electoral meatgrinder that the American genius has devised for straining candidates.
I’ll go one further step. I actually like each of these candidates.
As the crazy season progresses, we will be told that each of these candidates is the devil incarnate, or some other embodiment of pure evil. Each will have his or her integrity, motives and prior conduct tested, and inevitably most of the tests will be tendentious and unfair. Appeals will be made to us, to the voters, to act on the basis of fear, hatred and rank prejudice. The right reaction from the electorate is to resist these efforts to dirty our electoral process, to respect the basic human dignity and dedication to service of the candidates, and to keep our eyes fixed on the major issues before the country and the suitability of the candidates to cope with those issues.
The silly season is upon us. But we, the audience, need to resist being drawn into it. We can have an election process that is worthy of us as a people and of our institutions. The broadcast and print media have little interest in that, of course, but public opinion can and should serve as a discipline, and the media needs to be on the other side of the rod.
Hillary gave a yes vote to authorize Bush's war against the wrong country all so should could appease a misled public. Millions have died due to these people who gave Bush authorization.
Fuck all of you hypocrites.
Achmark, I actually did listen to Obama and in this situation I don't think that acknowledgement is enough. Anybody can say anything but their actions usually reveal their true sentiment. And there was no action to distance himself from this guy for 20 years. It was only when the media caught wind of Wright and his raving that Obama took any action. Yes, I will vote for him if he is the Dem. candidate and just close my eyes and hope that he will be a better President than McCain (I am not sure that will be the case)would have been. Just so you know , I really don't like McCain.
Anon, you are the hypocrite.
How many times must I say it? The authorization allowed the military to go in only if Saddam did not allow inspections. But he did.
In 2004, Barack Obama did not denounce the basis of the war. Bill Clinton did.
Hip thyself, hypocrite.
I'll say it again: Other bloggers ask for names and email addresses. I am not out of line in asking for commenters to put some sort of signature on their words.
John in WV, if your attention to detail is as weak when hearing a speech as it is when you copy a name (ahmaryk, please), then what you missed in Obama's words is understandable.
What I heard him say is that these words are not all, and in fact only a small portion, of Wright's sermons.
It's easy to stick with someone for two decades when the largest portion of their work is loving and giving. Obama's point was that he was not about to disown this good man for these few comments, which are not representative of his fullest measure.
If you've never entered a black church, then you can be forgiven for not grasping this subtlety. But Obama even made that very point; black churches often become the venting grounds for the centuries of suffering these people still encounter. (If you've never been, I highly recommend it, it is exilerating.)
And if you don't think that continued racial suffering is true, then you're living an isolated life. Racism and bias and prejudice are everywhere rampant and alive in this country, some places more than others, but it is not erased and it is not a nonissue for these people.
No doubt Obama has himself suffered at various points in his life the sting of such racism, but he learned to ignore it, which is admirable. The fact that he can do this, however, does not condemn those who are unable, for whatever reasons, the most likely reason being that they have suffered sharper stings and deeper wounds than he ever has.
But what made Obama's speech so powerful was the fact that he also lent understanding to those out there who have also suffered the fallout of class discrimination along with blacks, without the racism, but see blacks being given special treatment (a la affirmative action), and it ticks them off and they become bitter, blaming the blacks, seeing them as "lucky." This was at the heart of Ferraro's comments, and Obama had responded earlier to those statements that he could understand why people might feel that way.
And this was his point, and his challenge to all of us: We really all must strive to understand each other's suffering. This is the Christian message he apparently learned from Wright, the one that is not getting air play these days.
Please take care to listen and see carefully, John, through innocent and loving eyes. So many people in this world have suffered horribly, and you can't know just how or how much. But we must all assume that tenderness and pain lurk beneath bravado and bitterness. The slightest thing, a misspelled name or distorted comment, has the potential to hurt and alienate, even destroy, the best among us, the best connections among us.
And why would anyone ever want to do such a thing to anyone? We need all the connections we can get. We need unity.
anon, if you piss me off enough, you are gone for good.
ahmaryk...
"But what made Obama's speech so powerful..."
Powerful? I used to pay good money to see Antonioni movies, and yet Slowbama had me yawning. I can't believe that we may have to spend four years listening to the guy. His inaugural address will end as his farewell address beings.
"This was at the heart of Ferraro's comments..."
No it wasn't. The more I think about it, I suspect that Ferraro was, in a very stupid way, trying to make a point that I have made: You can openly sell a doll of Hillary dressed as a Doinatrix, but you can't sell a doll of Obama dressed as a minstrel.
By the way, I have been to black churches. Only a couple of times, but they were probably the only ecclesiastical experiences that I ever semi-enjoyed. There was fire in the verbiage, but I heard nothing like Wright.
I've also heard Farrakhan on the radio. Full speeches. Fascinating. I don't agree with him (and I doubt that he would ever care whether I agree), but I must admit -- that guy is an AMAZING speaker. Farrakhan was more circumspect than Wright is.
See my latest post for my response to Obama's Big Speech.
ahmaryk, You'r right. What I missed in Obama's speech was about as important as getting your name right. We are taking up too much space on this gentleman's blog and getting nowhere so I quit.
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