Letters to the Editor
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Their Tawdry Politics
After watching the Clintons and their political machine in action the past 10 days, one wants to take a long bath in or be hosed down with some powerful disinfectant to try to shower off the dirty residue that soils your soul after seeing them in action. Everyone is the enemy, if it’s not a surging Obama it’s always the other 50 plus percent of America who aren’t hoodwinked by their self-serving charade. It would be entertaining if it were not so dishearteningly and transparently phony to see Hillary Clinton give a political speech in an African American Church when she’s really about as religious as the anti-religious bigot Bill Maher. The self-serving Clinton pandering is obvious due to her racial double standards on religion’s place in politics, she embraces it when African Americans who usually vote democrat and preferably vote Clinton are her target audience, but religion in politics is pooh poohed if not downright derided when other Christians, who look more like Hillary and Bill, and are more likely to vote Republican are concerned. Conversely, one gets the sense that Obama, who’s father comes from a secular Kenya where the majority Christian and minority Muslim populations usually live and let live quite well together, when foreign radicals like the ones who blew up the US Embassy in Nairobi aren’t stirring up the secular pot, could cross over and reach out to the religious base in the Republican party, something the spiteful and patronizing Hillary Clinton will never be able to do.
The Clinton's attempted to tar Obama as being as low life a politician as they are. If they succeeded in doing this it was only amongst the rabid Clinton minions, as most objective viewers saw Obama retain the high ground in this "debate".
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whitecat
okay, I understand your point (it's me the same anonymous) but some of us who are looking find that Obama is similar to Bill Clinton in his approach and his politics--except that he is (in his voting record at least) more liberal--but in his appeal, like Mr. Clinton--he reaches a lot of people.
If people get worked up and resentful over this nonsense we could go backwards in this country--Clinton is right. I don't think even the Clintons think that Obama would make the country go backwards. If the republicans won though I worry that we will not get out of Iraq and economically we will keep going backwards. For the first time in 100 years the standard of living in the United States is lower than it is in Great Britain and when you factor in health care and the cost of education, America is becoming a land of a lack of opportunity--for anyone who isn't born into wealth or who doesn't stumble into celebrity.
Try to keep it all in perspective. Obama is a smart guy who's studied Clinton's politics (bill) and has made them a part of his philosophy. I don't think they really hate eachother. It's ok to have your favorite horse, but we're routing for the whole stable here--whoever wins in the general election I think most of us agree will create more opportunities for health and prosperity than what we have right now. That would be progress.
peace.
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Brinksmanship
Clinton's MLK/LBJ analogy was intended as brinkmanship. It's possible to deny that it was anything other than a factual reference--a president had to sign the Civil Rights Act into law. In that case, why not make the factual statement that a president had to sign the Civil Rights Act into law? What was Clinton's point?
It is brinkmanship to suggest that a president, who happened to be white, is necessary to realize the dreams of a civil rights activist, who happened to be black. But could it have been any other way in 1964? There is simply no way to make a statement like this without raising the question of interpretation: does this mean that in 2006, Clinton has to be the president who realizes Obama's dream?
Denying the potential for the range of interpretations of Clinton's statement is wrongheaded and empirically wrong, to say the least. The statement resists the imposition of a "merely factual" interpretation; the onus of proof that the factual interpretation is the unitary canonical interpretation rests with those who maintain it.
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LBJ realized Ralph Nader's dream in 1966
If race had nthing to do with Clinton's assertion, and the entire semantic content of Clinton's statement reduces to "a president is needed to sign legislation into law" such that the slightest connotation of race is necessarily a stretch that must be assigned to the imaginations of persons whose reading comprehension must be called into question, then what do we make of the are numerous examples that could have been offered of presidents signing legislation into law that have nothing to do with race? Why weren't any of these offered?
For example, the National Traffic and Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 could have been offered as an example. It took a president, Lyndon Johnson, to sign the National Traffic and Vehicle Safety Act into law in 1966, thereby realizing Ralph Nader's dream of automobile safety.
I submit that reading race into such a statement would indeed be a stretch. Insisting that race cannot be read into the statement that Clinton made, when there were other examples available that Clinton could have used, is fairly called a stretch.
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Arlo Figg refuses to answe questions and knows nothing about Kenya
It's another day and I've just been reading all the posts at lunch-time. Last evening I asked Arlo Figg very straightforward questions about Senator Obama. He has not responded but continues to lambast the Clintons, for reasons best known to himself/herself. It's fairly easy to guess his motivation and his picture of an idyllic Kenya where everybody is living in harmony is so wrong that I could not give any credibility to anything he writes after that.
Just after Christmas 2007, the results of the Kenyan election were violently disputed between the Kikuyi and Luo tribes. People were burned to death in a church, many were made homeless, particularly women and children who feared for their lives. Fortunately, there is a lull now because of international pressure. The opposition leader, Raila Odinga, is still not happy. Speaking of President Kibaki, the opposition claim that, although there were secret ballots, Kibaki stole the election. I've just checked this in my local paper to ensure that I'm giving you the facts. This refers to Nairobi on l5th January 2008 "In Nairobi's Mathare slum yesterday. a crowd gathered outside a house that had caught fire due to an electrical fault and started chanting pro-Odinga slogans when journalists were spotted.
Members of Mr Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe who tried to pass through the crowd were kicked and punched".
Arlo Figg, you either haven't a clue about what's happening outside your own neighbourhood or you are misrepresenting what has been happening in Kenya. You have no problem with saying that Kenya is secular although I don't know that, not having read the Kenyan Constitution. Yet you have the nerve to paint a rosy picture of blissful harmony in Kenya although the tribal tensions within the country have erupted as recently as the last month. The former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan is scheduled to visit Nairobi to try to calm the situation but his illness has delayed the visit. Go and check all of this on CNN or any other broadcaster that has reliable foreign correspondents.
Well, Mr./Ms. Figg please continue with your fabrications but don't expect anyone who is well-informed to believe them and I note that you are still unwilling to answer questions on Barack Obama. Never mind. If he is chosen as "The One", the Republicans will follow the trail with all the eagerness of sniffer-dogs. I must get on with my day now.