BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: CarolC
Date: 04 Feb 09 - 12:51 AM

That general store in Plains is great. The giant peanut is pretty cool, too.


What our stolen election has to do with Chavez and Venezuela is that electronic voting machines can't be trusted anywhere. Not even here.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Riginslinger
Date: 04 Feb 09 - 08:59 AM

Particularly not here, where we hire electronic technicians from India.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Sawzaw
Date: 07 Feb 09 - 10:59 PM

Mr Chávez has often said that "the revolution is peaceful, but armed." Violence and intimidation of opponents by the security forces and by armed civilian groups (some openly linked to the government) have increased. Students campaigning against the constitutional change have faced harassment and arrest.

Opposition politicians elected as mayors and state governors last November have found it hard to exercise power. In Caracas the new mayor, Antonio Ledezma, has suffered an occupation of the city hall and other buildings by armed chavistas. The government has refused to intervene, saying that the occupations are a response to Mr Ledezma's refusal to renew the contracts of thousands of workers hired by his chavista predecessor. Elsewhere, incoming opposition administrations have also found equipment and offices purloined.

The most disturbing incident was the sacking of Caracas's main synagogue on January 30th by more than a dozen armed men. They vandalised religious objects, painted anti-Jewish and pro-Palestinian slogans on walls, and stole computer hard drives containing a database of the Jewish community. Officials condemned the attack and blamed the opposition. But it says that the government has been fostering a climate of hostility against Jews. Mr Chávez cut diplomatic ties with Israel in response to its attack on Gaza last month.

Days earlier a group of armed chavista radicals had attacked the Ateneo de Caracas, one of the capital's most important cultural centres. Complaining that it was being used for "ultra-rightist" activities, they hurled tear-gas grenades and fired shots. They held scores of people at gunpoint for hours, stole their mobile phones and vandalised the premises. The assault was lead by Lina Ron, a prominent member of Mr Chávez's referendum campaign. None of the assailants has been arrested or questioned. As if to dispel any doubt that the invasion of the Ateneo had the government's support, the next day the finance ministry ordered the eviction of the cultural centre from the state-owned buildings it has occupied since the 1980s.

Ironically, the Ateneo provided Mr Chávez with a platform when he entered politics after leading an unsuccessful military coup against a democratic government in the 1990s. The incident highlights his regime's increasingly authoritarian bent. "The first thing totalitarian regimes do is to attack institutions where different schools of thought and ideologies come together," said Carmen Ramia, the Ateneo's director.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Sawzaw
Date: 08 Feb 09 - 02:34 PM

"electronic voting machines can't be trusted anywhere. Not even here"

You imply that American elections are rigged by voting machines but Venezuelan elections are not rigged even though they use voting machines.

Which is it?

Was the last election rigged? How about 2006?

If voting machines can't be trusted anywhere, how do you know that the 2006 and 2008 elections weren't rigged?

"O'Dell last fall penned a letter pledging his commitment 'to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President.'"

Still wrong, He said he was committed. Even so, did he do it? Was he capable? It seems to me that he was politically committed, campaign wise and fund raising wise, and didn't realize has bad it looked because of his Diebold position.

After all he admitted it was a "huge mistake". That seems to suffice for Democrats who "screwed up" even when it can be proven that they did something wrong but others are guilty as charged without due process like the kind that is demanded for terrorists.

NYT: "Mr. O'Dell drew criticism of his company in August when he sent an invitation to a fund-raising party that said, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." He said he had not written it himself, though he declined to say who had, and intended only to sign a party invitation."

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Riginslinger
Date: 09 Feb 09 - 11:34 AM

Voting is too important to be trusted to electronic voting machines.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Riginslinger
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 09:49 PM

Jimmy Carter is my all time American hero. It pained me, somewhat, to see him make the case that so much of the opposition to President Obama's efforts were driven by racism.
                I'm certain that he really feels that way, or he wouldn't have said it. I find it frustrating that one can voice opposition to the administrations proposals and be labeled a racist. I suspect some of Carter's views are influenced by his age and the reality that he grew up in the South in a different time.
                Still, if he says it, it makes me want to explore the situation further.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: bobad
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 09:57 PM

White House rejects racism claim

US President Barack Obama does not believe current criticism of his policies is based on the colour of his skin, the White House has said.

It was responding to comments by former President Jimmy Carter that much of the vitriol against Mr Obama's health and spending plans was "based on racism".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8260109.stm

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: heric
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 10:06 PM

Carter has the damnedest way of speaking obvious yet outrageous truths, consequences be damned.

What he said has been lurking in the recesses of my mind. But I would never have said it for so many reasons. You can't have a debate of any substance when, as is so common on mudcat, people can read your mind, so they can dismiss your words on that basis. Shouting racism at any disagreement immediately ends the discussion and probably hardens the one labeled.

How awful to contemplate that electing the first black President could be destructive to race relations, even when already we know too well that racism exists.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 10:06 PM

The major difference THESE days, is that many who voice "opposition to the administrations proposals " have learned not to say overtly racist things out loud in public!

The days of Lester Maddox and Orval Faubus and George Wallace are gone....in that the N word gets you censured. Today's 'conservative activists' stir up as much.....probably more... rancor & twisted facts by being subtle and just 'insinuating' stuff that plays to what they are all thinking.

Jimmy Carter knows what he is talking about.............

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Arkie
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 10:45 PM

Racism is far from dead in America and I can understand an unwillingness to blame opposition to Obama on racism, but for a large number of the loudmouth opposition it is true. It is because of their racism that they accept so many of the outrageous, unsupported claims made by the Fox fools and others. Playing to peoples hatreds and fears is not new. However, racism is not the only factor.   The sinister elements now in control of the Republican party have used a multitude of fears and prejudices to divide the American people.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: katlaughing
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 10:47 PM

I agree, Bill and I still pay attention when Jimmy Carter speaks. He is a very wise man who has lived long and well with much knowledge.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 10:51 PM

Carter is a national hemmroid !
quote Rush Limaugh today.

Carter is not just wrong he is ignorant!
Quote Micheal Steele today

Carter was the worst President ever with the worst economy in history,   except for the last 4 years.
Quote Rep. Strategist on CNN today

------------------

Thinly veiled racism from the right??

I think it has never been thicker.

These proud southerners will tell you its not about racism. These guys would say that Planet of the Apes was about Socialist monkeys hunting down Charlton Heston and his soft spoken girl friend.

When a member of the sons of the Confederacy yells YOU LIE at the President and then says it was really about illegal aliens, but I'm all for legal aliens, I was an immigration attorney!

Mr. Wilson (Whose first name is not even Joe) we checked. You were a Real Estate Attorney your whole life and no one in the bar or in immigration law has ever heard of you ever having an immigration case.   



At Palin campaign stops we heard
"He's a terrorist, he pals around wioth terrorists, KILL HIM!"


Yep racism happens. Mostly among the less educated. Law enforcement has its special racist clicks.





It is against Congressional rules to call the President a liar, or a hypocrite. Suprisingly anything else that is not scatalogical is OK.

I am proud that President Carter is willing and able to speak clearly and simply.
He is a man so honest that he admitted lusting in his heart, so I trust him in knowing what is in the heart of people most anxious to call Obama a Hitler or call him a liar and then claim they haven;t a racist bone in their body.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: heric
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 10:56 PM

Actually kat, so the record is clear - you just agreed with rigingslinger, me, Bill and Arkie.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 11:26 PM

It occurs to me that the President may well believe - and needs to - that the current opposition does not stem from racism- and for a very good reason: If a great deal of it *does* come in reaction to the color of his skin, what's he going to do about it? Far better to continue on as he is doing and hope that those people will eventually recognize the futility of wishing away his presidency. And his skin.

Tonight on Jim Lehrer's Newshour, they discussed it. One, a self-labeled libertarian, made the point that he doubts that racism has much to do with it, because most of those people screaming and shouting at those public meetings privately admit liking the President personally but say they are afraid of where our country is going.

Me, I tend to believe that there are people in this country who just cannot believe that we have a BLACK president. Kind of like I felt about dubya bush, maybe. I knew all along that Baby Bush couldn't help being what he was but I had a visceral reaction to him. They might say the same about President Barack Hussein Obama.

Remember back when Reagan (I believe) commented that it was "nice to see all those American names in the Win column (I am paraphrasing)?

To those afore-mentioned people, the President just doesn't sound American.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: meself
Date: 17 Sep 09 - 12:48 AM

It's important to bear in mind that Carter, at least as I understood it, was not saying that ALL the opposition to Obama is based in racism - he was talking about the extremely vitriolic stuff. And Carter is saying what I for one have suspected - how else do you explain such hysterical antipathy to someone who is trying to improve health care? Even if he were completely misguided - it's not like he's trying to start a new war, or intrude on basic human rights ....

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Alice
Date: 17 Sep 09 - 01:17 PM

I was reading comments on a news article on the 'net yesterday, and someone referred to the president as a "chimpanzee". Of course racism in this country is rising to the surface because the president is black. BUT, no president wants distractions, and this is a distraction. Presidents want the headlines to be quotes from their speeches, not distracting things like cutting brush on vacation or racist protest signs.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 17 Sep 09 - 03:44 PM

Racism is being fueled by demagogues like Mark Williams, spokesman for the Tea Party demonstrators.
In previous speeches, he called Obama 'an Indonesian Muslim turned "welfare thug." He has referred to Omama as "racist in chief."
CNN gave much time to this ----.

See Sept. 16 NY Times, Timothy Egan blog, "Working Class Zero,"

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: gnu
Date: 17 Sep 09 - 03:51 PM

A true hero and statesman, as much as one can be.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Sawzaw
Date: 17 Sep 09 - 11:36 PM

President....Highest Rating...Lowest Rating
Harry Truman.......87%.............23%
Dwight Eisenhower..79%.............48%
John F. Kennedy....83%.............56%
Lyndon Johnson.....79%.............35%
Richard Nixon......67%.............24%
Gerald Ford........71%.............37%
Jimmy Carter.......75%.............28%
Ronald Reagan......68%.............35%
George H.W. Bush...89%.............29%
Bill Clinton.......73%.............37%
George W. Bush.....90%.............29%

Source: Can West News Service: CNN.

Please note that GWB was rated 1% higher that Carter at his lowest point and 15% higher that Carter at his peak which was higher than any other president on the list.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Sawzaw
Date: 18 Sep 09 - 12:41 AM

Historians will treat him well:

Why did things get so bad under Carter? And that's a long story. The fundamental reason, however, is he made mistake after mistake, blinded by the leftist rhetoric his party adopted after the infamous '72 Democratic Convention, when the so-called New Left seized control.

In office, Carter adopted the Keynesian economics of the time, buying into the theory that there was a reverse "trade-off" between inflation and unemployment an idea that proved spectacularly wrong. The U.S. became mired in "stagflation," with both inflation and unemployment rising sharply.

As things grew worse, Carter sharply boosted government spending. When that didn't work, he blamed the American people. "I think it's inevitable that there will be a lower standard of living than what everybody had always anticipated," he told advisers in 1979. "The only trend is downward. But it's impossible to get people to face up to this."

Those remarks were followed by his now-famous "malaise" speech in which he unveiled six proposals — including import quotas, windfall profits taxes and increased spending on alternative fuels — to combat higher oil prices charged by OPEC. Nothing about tax cuts. Nothing about finding more energy. In short, he told Americans to consume less, but pay more.

"We have learned that 'more' is not necessarily 'better,' and that even our great nation has its recognized limits," Carter said, borrowing heavily from the "limits to growth" movement that swept liberal intellectual circles in the '70s.

With public anger growing and his own polls lagging, Carter started wearing sweaters and encouraging us to turn down the thermostat. But his big spending didn't work. The resulting budget deficit, 12 times bigger than the one President Nixon left, gave him a serious public relations problem.

On this score, Carter might have escaped his own malaise if he had cut taxes to get the economy going again. But even with marginal income tax rates at a hefty 70%, he accepted the common wisdom that a tax cut would boost inflation and lower government revenue. He was dead wrong.

As noted in "The Commanding Heights," a leading economic history of the last century, "Carter's attempts to follow Keynes' formula and spend his way out of trouble were going nowhere."

Eventually (but grudgingly), Carter did agree to slash the tax rate on capital gains to 28% from 40%. But that didn't kick in until 1979. By then it was too late to help him politically.

See any similarities to the current administration here?

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Bobert
Date: 18 Sep 09 - 07:51 AM

Thank God for Jimmy Carter... Being an elder statesman he has the luxary of speaking the truth...

I also live in the South... No one knows better than enlightened white people just how the ballgames go in the South... And as for the "N" word being out of vougue??? It ain't... It is alive and well...

Yes, there's ton's of racism in the South today... Probably more than there was 30 years ago... Folks ain't making the money they used to so they are nervous and ignorant... Bad combination...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 18 Sep 09 - 08:40 AM

Note to Liberals: It's Not About Race


By Jim Sleeper
Sunday, September 20, 2009

Jimmy Carter is a southerner who grew up witnessing Jim Crow segregation in all its forms, so when he told NBC News that he believes "an overwhelming portion" of the public animosity directed at President Obama recently is "based on the fact that he is a black man," many Americans listened. But pointing at racism as the chief source of rage is a trap into which liberals have fallen too often, for reasons we'd better face quickly.

Racism is only one of many factors driving the backlash against the president in town hall meetings and in demonstrations on Capitol Hill. Obama has been right to discount it, because a white president would feel some scorching heat, too. Just hours before Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) interrupted Obama's address to a joint session of Congress with his brazen "You lie!" shout, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court welcomed arguments against restricting business-corporate funding of "Hillary: The Movie" -- a relic of rage on the presidential primary campaign trail that presaged what Hillary Rodham Clinton would be enduring now were she, not Obama, in the White House.

But sexism isn't the main factor, either; recall the swift-boating of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) during the 2004 campaign and the unending conservative rage against former president Bill Clinton. Republican House leader John A. Boehner got close to the truth when he told ABC News last spring that people he met at "taxpayer protests" are "scared to death . . . about the future . . . and the facts that the American dream may not be alive for their kids and grandkids."

Boehner lacks credible answers for these Americans, who are viscerally and legitimately afraid that they'll never again make $28 an hour, afford health insurance or own a home after losing the one they're in. It's the absence of honest answers, more than racism, that's turned out people brandishing signs that liken Obama to Hitler and demanding, with stupefying illogic, that government keep its hands off their Medicaid. Are liberals going to deliver the answers the other side does not -- or will they be sidetracked, yet again, by their constant preoccupation with identity politics.

Fear and rage that ran far deeper than race were palpable at the 2008 Republican National Convention, where Sen. John McCain -- who, to his credit, refused to trade on racism in his campaign -- found himself coping anyway with a large contingent of young delegates whose repertoire of political expression consisted mainly of shouting "Yoo Es Ay! Yoo Es Ay! Yoo Es Ay!"

No matter how subtle, subdued or dignified McCain's appeals to patriotism in his acceptance speech, the chorus grew so loud and insistent that at times it seemed an eruption of the GOP's militaristic id, and even the war-hero candidate looked annoyed.

Yet it would be a mistake to feel disdain for these guys, for their buffoonish chanting was only one side of them, and not necessarily the dominant one. They haven't curdled into fascists, as some on the left seemed to think. More likely, the thwarted decency in them is trying to find a political home, a sense of civic standing that is slipping away.

And now, such individuals are looking for someone or something to blame. With encouragement from Rush Limbaugh and some Republican leaders, they're taking the path of least resistance and blaming an easy mark -- a government they can vote out of office, a leader who looks unfamiliar -- rather than the immense, private bureaucracies they're beholden to, can't touch at the polls and will find even harder to resist if the John Roberts court voids restrictions on corporate "free speech" in campaigns.

Some of them listen to Limbaugh while commuting to work or driving anxiously from one job interview to another, and they recycle his wisdom as their own at the bar, the family dinner table or the diner in western Massachusetts where I sometimes have breakfast. Racism, sexism, Islam, "big government" -- anything will serve, if it spares them having to face being had by the unaccountable powers and riptides that are destroying their dreams.

Wilson's "conduct was asinine, but I think it would be asinine no matter what the color of the president," said Dick Harpootlian, who, far from being Wilson's apologist, is the former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. Condemning racism in this context, as President Carter and many well-meaning liberals do, won't deflect the demagoguery and folly that foreclose bold new strategies in the provision and regulation of capital, health care, energy and defense.

The mistake of crying racism is especially tempting to upscale, influential liberals who, no less than protesters on the right, are ducking the true causes of dispossession, fear and rage: the premises and practices of financial capital, predatory consumer marketing and a national-security state boondoggling.

Liberals who've done well by those practices aren't always serious about redressing their inequities and disruptions. But they can't bring themselves to defend them very wholeheartedly, either. So they grasp at symbolic gestures against racism that short-circuit political currents for necessary change as surely as Rush does.

Remember the moralistic passion plays over the dubious black church "arson epidemic"? Or the supposed "ethnic cleansing" in congressional redistricting in which black incumbents actually won in majority-white districts? That politics of "anti-racist" paroxysm eclipsed the real challenges, which have only worsened since then.

Carter is hardly wrong to condemn racism when he sees it in the protests. But to blame racism for an "overwhelming portion" of the fear and rage rising around us would be to consign legitimately frightened and angry people to demagogues and shut out real change. That would be a strategic blunder, and ultimately a moral one, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: DougR
Date: 18 Sep 09 - 12:43 PM

Riginslinger: nobody died and appointed Jimmy Carter anything, much less spokesman for the United States. Jimmy Carter is an embarrassment who should retire to his peanut farm and raise peanuts.

For an excellent appraisal of Jimmy Carter, read today's editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

Disagreeing with the policies of a president is NOT racist.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Sep 09 - 07:22 PM

If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Riginslinger
Date: 18 Sep 09 - 10:19 PM

"Riginslinger: nobody died and appointed Jimmy Carter anything, much less spokesman for the United States. Jimmy Carter is an embarrassment who should retire to his peanut farm and raise peanuts."

                I hadn't considered most of the push-back against Obama to be racist until I heard Jimmy Carter say it. There is no person walking around of the face of the planet who I respect more than Jimmy Carter. I realize he grew up in the South when racism was really violent, but he's had time to adjust to that.
                What I'm saying is if Jimmy Carter says it's racist, I'm willing to re-evalutate the facts on the ground.
                That's my opinion. I don't care if anybody else buys into it or not.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Sep 09 - 11:17 AM

Do you really think that the posters with Obama in whiteface aren't racist, Doug? Hand on heart?

No one is suggesting that everyone opposed to Obama's policies is racist. Maybe even not all those waving those posters. But there is a term "fellow travellers" which comes to mind.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: pdq
Date: 19 Sep 09 - 11:30 AM

"No one is suggesting that everyone opposed to Obama's policies is racist. ~ McWrath

Like Hell. That is exactly what they are saying.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Alice
Date: 19 Sep 09 - 11:35 AM

"they" are saying? Who are "they"? Neither Carter nor anyone I've heard discuss this issue has said all opposition is racist.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: kendall
Date: 19 Sep 09 - 12:14 PM

The problem with Carter is he is telling it like it is and we don't want to hear it.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Sep 09 - 01:25 PM

I agree, Kendall. I have relatives and friends in the South and there is no way that most of them would support any program proposed by a black man. They hope that he fails, and that a white conservative will carry the next election.

This is unfortunate, but true. Carter knows his territory.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Sep 09 - 01:37 PM

Carter didn't say it, and no one in this thread has said it. So who are "they", pdq?

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: meself
Date: 19 Sep 09 - 01:52 PM

Why do I have the feeling that we're never going to find out?

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: pdq
Date: 19 Sep 09 - 02:48 PM

Jimmy Carter's outburst is part of a calculated strategy to silence all opposition to Obama's health care bill.

The DNC called out its biggest "gun" because the poll numbers on ObamaCare dropped to 42% public support. Not only that, the people who favor the plan tend to be the least informed about its actual contents.

Carter was called out to defend Bill Clinton in the impeachment back in 1998. He read DNC talking points along with Di Feinstein and a few other select Democratic Party faithful. Then and now, its called "circle the wagons" and nothing more.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: DougR
Date: 19 Sep 09 - 02:49 PM

McGrath: Of course racism is not dead in the United States! I agree that some people are racists and will never vote for a person of color probably for ANY public office.

To have a former president declare, however, that in his opinion, many of those who oppose Obama do so on the basis of race does not further the cause. It only fans the flames.

By the way, Kevin, how many people of color have served as PM in Great Britain?

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Stringsinger
Date: 19 Sep 09 - 03:27 PM

Israel and the US have something in common. A deluded minority is attempting to overthrow a sane government.

Carter has always been a beacon of sanity even when he has made tactical errors such as sending helicopters to rescue the Iranian hostages from the Iranian leaders whereby
Reagan made his deals.

Unfortunately, the American public will not listen to intelligent leaders like Carter.

The Republican Noise Machine fuels violence and lies.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Sep 09 - 03:29 PM

None, and we haven't had any Catholics either. But then under our system the Prime Minister isn't elected in a national vote.

But the kind of thing that's been going on, what with those posters of Obama in whiteface, and the orchestrated hate, would be strictly British Nazi Party stuff here.

Maybe what Carter said there might have been imprudent - "fans the flames" - but does that make it untrue? If it is true, the right person to have denounced it would have been someone who was politically opposed to Obama, but even more opposed to racism.

During your election one of the moments that is most memorable was when John McCain publicly stood up against the hate talk by some of his supporters, and it was very inpressive. He recognised that what was going on there was disgracing America, wanted no part in it, and wanted to stop it.

Are there any signs of leading and respected Republicans doing the same thing now?

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Alice
Date: 19 Sep 09 - 03:35 PM

Some people think Timothy McVeigh was a hero.

Yes, it would be great if a leader on the right would denounce the crazy and violent talk. By the way, Carter used the word "fringe". He was talking about extremists... but it only takes one to commit a violent deed.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Alice
Date: 19 Sep 09 - 03:50 PM

White Supremacist groups have been hating the federal government long before Obama became president. Now they are riled even more. The Secret Service reports that threats against Obama are 4 times more than what they were against Bush.

from eyeonhate.com

"Vehemently anti-government and viciously anti-racist, Mahon referred to Timothy McVeigh as a martyr for the cause and stated:

"Timothy McVeigh is my hero. Wish we had a thousand more like him. He took action."

He also referred to the bombng [sic] as "a fine thing" and stated further "I hate the government with a perfect hatred. If I had a nuclear bomb, I'd put it in a truck and drive right up to the Capitol Building in Washington and blow it all up, me included." Believing that any and all methods are legitimate when it comes to saving your nation, Mahon was the perfect friend for Timothy McVeigh."
Domestic Terrorism 101 http://www.eyeonhate.com/mcveigh/mcveigh6.html

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Alice
Date: 19 Sep 09 - 03:52 PM

I think that "anti-racist" was a misnomer for Mahon.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 Sep 09 - 05:56 PM

"By the way, Kevin, how many people of color have served as PM in Great Britain?" DougR

Good grief, DR. That sounds an awful lot like a racist poke.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: kendall
Date: 19 Sep 09 - 09:15 PM

If wiping out a day care center is an act of heroism, what planet does this Mahon live on?

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 20 Sep 09 - 07:37 PM

From the website of the (very conservatve) Daily Telegraph Barack Obama, Joe Wilson & race:

..".why discussing race is so difficult: it is impossible to say that some people are/may be racist without conservatives jumping up and down and claiming that the same applies to everyone in the group under discussion (in this case Obama's protesting opponents).

Expat says: "Mr. Spillius' underlying message is clear. If you protest ANYTHING Obama proposes, it's not because you question the policy, it's because cannot get beyond the fact that the President of the United States is black."

That is not what I am saying. My "underlying message" is that a minority of people have trouble accepting a black president; that racism exists endures in the South; that the questioning of Obama's legitimacy as president and the unhinged hostility - not to mention dubious placards - shown by some protestors is rooted in those factors. That, in turn, de-legitimises what that minority has to say. It does not detract from the genuine anger and bewilderment at the president's big government agenda - but let's save that argument for another day. This seems irredeemably uncontroversial to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: kendall
Date: 21 Sep 09 - 06:11 AM

The president is as white as he is black. So what? Will these Neanderthals ever come out of the dark ages?

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: GUEST,Chris B (Born Again Scouser)
Date: 21 Sep 09 - 09:35 AM

It's a pity, but Jimmy Carter probably will never receive the credit he is due during his lifetime. Carter was probably the first US president (certainly during my lifetime) to even make a token effort to try and get Americans to think like people who shared the world with other countries instead of people who were entitled to rule it. I think he was one of the unluckiest presidents of the 20th Century, coming at a time when the game was finally up for the Shah. That didn't stop him coming up with the Camp David Agreement, which created opportunities for peace in the middle east that have sadly been squandered since by both Arabs and Israelis.

For my money, I think a lot of Americans were kidding themselves last November when they thought that voting for a black man was somehow going to redeem America. It didn't and it won't. Race is still the crucial fault-line in American society and it is the fault-line along which American society will inevitably break apart.

If you want to make money in North America, invest in tents. The Canadians are going to need them for the refugees before long.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: Greg F.
Date: 21 Sep 09 - 09:37 PM

Jimmy Carter is an embarrassment who should retire to his peanut farm and raise peanuts.

You're projecting again, Douggie. He's nothing like the embarrassment to the U.S. that YOU are.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: kendall
Date: 22 Sep 09 - 06:20 AM

Now, play nice.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Sep 09 - 07:19 PM

Are there any signs of leading and respected Republicans doing the same thing now?

So do I take it that the answer to that is "No"? It wasn't a rhetorical question. In fact I'd rather assumed that there must be some decent people around in the ranks of the opposition who would be disgusted at some of the things that have been going on, and would feel they had a duty to speak out aboutb it. What price patriotism?

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: DougR
Date: 23 Sep 09 - 01:27 AM

Ebbie: You can't be serious. You think my questioning why critics of your country are so critical of the US because of perceived racial bias, have not had a person of color as their country's leader? Give me a break.

Or maybe you have joined (or perhaps have always been)a sympathizer of those (including our president)who believes the ills of the world are caused by our country.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: kendall
Date: 23 Sep 09 - 07:38 AM

Doug, you are overstating here. No one I have ever met thinks the USA has caused all of the world's problems. But anyone who thinks we have done nothing but good is deluded.

Subject: RE: BS: Lucky to have Jimmy Carter
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Sep 09 - 08:25 AM

Sometimes people only hear what they want to hear. Even when no one actually says it.