Birthers

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Certainly racism was institutionalized in the South, and small wonder. It is nonsense, however to say that the South had the worst problems with racism.

I think Martin Luther King stated that the most vile racism he ever encountered, he encountered in Chicago.

And of course, it's the Boston Celtics who were the last to racially integrate their baseball team.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Would Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid call back their fellow Members of Congress from their vacations to enact a project as left-wing-nutty as the Schiavo case was right-wing-nutty? I can't see it happening. Indeed, I can't even see what that project might be.

Well that goes to show you that just because you can't think of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The October surprise conspiracy theory was batshit insane and 243 house Democrats passed a resolution to investigate it.

Quote:

Or for a different example: Take Republican House leader Tom Delay, stating that the Columbine massacre was the direct consequence of teaching children evolution. Can you think of a correspondingly left-wing-nutty pronouncement?

Off the top of my head Cynthia McKinney's claim that the government executed 5,000 males during Katrina and dumped them in swamps fits the bill nicely.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:
No surprise that this attitude is most prevalent in the area of America which historically had the worst problems with racism; and it's equally unsurprising that the South continues to wane as a political force in American politics, given their failure to adjust to the changing face of our country.

I wish you would think before you peddle horseshit like this. One of the earliest, and worst, riots in the history of the United States was the anti-conscription riot in New York, commonly known as the draft riot, and which took place over several days in 1863. The human targets of the rioters were blacks, who were beaten severely, or beaten to death in the streets--and several of them lynched. Race riots were common in Cincinnati, Ohio in the post-war years, being the largest city in the "border" area, where freed slaves came looking for work. The Urban League was formed in 1909, after a prominent and notorious lynching--in Springfield, Illinois.

I suppose it's a question of opinion - is the worse place one in which racism and racial polarization are so ingrained as to be institutionalized, or one in which periodic sharp and hot bursts of racist behavior tend to manifest?

Nevertheless, I will concede that the phrase 'worst problems with racism' was poorly written, and I should have more specifically said 'institutionalized racism,' as you point out.

Cycloptichorn

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@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

Thomas wrote:
Or for a different example: Take Republican House leader Tom Delay, stating that the Columbine massacre was the direct consequence of teaching children evolution. Can you think of a correspondingly left-wing-nutty pronouncement?

Off the top of my head Cynthia McKinney's claim that the government executed 5,000 males during Katrina and dumped them in swamps fits the bill nicely.

This almost supports Thomas' theory, as McKinney can hardly be seen as equal to the House majority leader.

Cycloptichorn

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Setanta wrote:
Certainly racism was institutionalized in the South, and small wonder. It is nonsense, however to say that the South had the worst problems with racism.

I think Martin Luther King stated that the most vile racism he ever encountered, he encountered in Chicago.

And of course, it's the Boston Celtics who were the last to racially integrate their baseball team.

I am not sure if professional sports says anything about North versus South. Professional sports teams before 1950 were almost solely in Northeastern and Midwestern states.

(also, of course, the Celtics do not play baseball Smile

)

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@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

Well that goes to show you that just because you can't think of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The October surprise conspiracy theory was batshit insane and 243 house Democrats passed a resolution to investigate it.

They passed a resolution to investigate it. They didn't pass legislation to do anything about it. Presumably the investigation revealed that the conspiracy theory was bat **** crazy, and the Democratic sponsors of the investigation considered this a valid reason to drop the subject.

Robet Gentel wrote:

Off the top of my head Cynthia McKinney's claim that the government executed 5,000 males during Katrina and dumped them in swamps fits the bill nicely.

Fair enough. Now, in your judgment, how likely is it that Nancy Pelosi would adopt that pronouncement as her own?

1 Reply

@wandeljw,

wandeljw wrote:

also, of course, the Celtics do not play baseball

My bad. I meant the Red Sox of course.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

1 Reply

@roger,

In my defense, I have to confess I'm a baseball snob. I don't think there ever has been a real baseball team since the Brooklyn Dodgers cut and ran.

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@wandeljw,

wandeljw wrote:

I am not sure if professional sports says anything about North versus South. Professional sports teams before 1950 were almost solely in Northeastern and Midwestern states.

To address the subsance of your argument: Maybe not, but that's the argument I always hear whenever I submit any evidence suggesting that racism may be an even bigger problem in the North than it is in the South. I remember a thread a few years ago where I relayed an article from the Economist. It reported about a study investigating the settlement patterns of American cities, and found that the most segregated American cities where all in the North these days.

Most people who responded to my post then were Yankees downplaying the findings: "It's just one study", "It's just one indicator", yadda yadda yadda. The pattern has repeated itself several times since then. My working hypothesis now is that 40 years after Martin Luther King, Yankees are pretty much as likely to be racists as Southerners are. Without much basis in reality, however, they are still much more likely to have a chip on their shoulder about Southerners being racist, but not them.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

They passed a resolution to investigate it. They didn't pass legislation to do anything about it. Presumably the investigation revealed that the conspiracy theory was bat **** crazy, and the Democratic sponsors of the investigation considered this a valid reason to drop the subject.

Well it was some pretty ridiculous stuff about Bush flying around to secret meetings with Iran to ensure that hostages were not released till after the election.

If the Republicans all voted to investigate something like that about Obama you'd call it crazy. Hell this whole thread is about some fringe righties who won't let go of the nationality angle to legally eliminate Obama, the October surprise deal theory is much more outlandish than Obama being born outside the US.

If the 243 Republicans voted to "investigate" Obama's nationality would you similarly not find fault with it?

Quote:

Fair enough. Now, in your judgment, how likely is it that Nancy Pelosi would adopt that pronouncement as her own?

Thomas, what you did was cherry pick crazy from the right and then ask me to give you examples of crazy from specific lefties. I'd ignored it for a reason that I thought should be obvious to you, but if you really want me to address Pelosi specifically that's fine. I can find comparable stupidity to your original Delay compariso but Cynthia is probably the craziest politician in America in America right now, so I doubt I can find anyone of either persuasion to compare her to.

Delay made a strange connection between Columbine and the education system teaching evolution. His argument was that by teaching kids that we are "glorified apes" it devalues life. It's essentially a "godless school" argument that many religious folk have about America. Not being religious it's understandably silly to you but you should probably note that all the lefties tow that religious line to a lesser extent and pay lip service to the same core myths.

Taking advantage of the massacre to make anti-evolution points was pretty outlandish. But no, I do not put a political stretch like that past a Pelosi. After all just this year she argued that funding contraception is an important economic stimulus due to the current economy because it "reduces costs" to the state. I think it should be obvious how nonsensical the argument that family planning is a valid form of short-term economic stimulus is. It was nothing but pork for Planned Parenthood which was suffering under in the crisis and had just made big layoffs. That is a constituency she needed and she made a ridiculous connection to the economy for it. Politicians often make stupid connections between their pet issues and recent events (e.g. Reid saying the California wildfires are partially caused by global warming) and I don't think a Pelosi is above such a thing.

Now I admit that her example is a bit more corrupt than kooky but again, you cherry picked the requirements. I've come up with kooky on the left but your requirements are that I find kooky within only several specific lefties that you've selected, and that's a pretty restrictive requirement.

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

If the 243 Republicans voted to "investigate" Obama's nationality would you similarly not find fault with it?

I probably would, but the cases are not parallel.

First, exposing a conspiracy between the Republican party and Iran would have depended on documents that weren't available to the public. Obama's birth certificate is, by contrast. So is an ad announcing his birth in at least one Hawaiian newspaper. The Birther's case, then, can trivially be refuted by going to a library and checking out a particular newspaper from a particular day. That is not true for the alleged conspiracy between Iran and the Republican party.

Second, the context was different: Your example happened only a few years after the Iran-Contra affair, in which a conspiracy theory that sounded similarly crazy on its face, had turned out to be true. This conspiracy, too, had been between the Reagan administration and Iran. That did give the Democrats probable cause to investigate the possibility of another conspiracy between the same actors. So, if there had been a correspondingly crazy, confirmed conspiracy theory about the Clinton administration, I wouldn't have much of a problem with a committee investigating Obama's birth certificate.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Now I admit that her example is a bit more corrupt than kooky but again, you cherry picked the requirements. I've come up with kooky on the left but your requirements are that I find kooky within only several specific lefties that you've selected, and that's a pretty restrictive requirement.

Well, my main thesis was that even if both parties might be kind of similar in their idiot fringes, their establishments go to very different lengths in catering to the idiot fringe. I also found it hard to identify leftist agendas comparably idiotic to the ones I see on the right, but that's a side show. (Thanks for identifying them for me.) As for Pelosi picking up comparable left-wing-lunacy, I admit this is the first time I'm hearing about adoption as a short-term stimulus to the economy. Can you give me a link?

As for cherry-picking the requirement, the relevance of Tom Delay was that he was a very powerful driver of the Republican Establishment. (Third in status after the president I believe.) Nancy Pelosi is his equivalent today, but if you can find similar kookiness among similarly powerful Democratic leaders, that's fine with me.

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I am traveling and using a mobile browser incapable of copying and pasting, so I can't provide a link but if you search for "george pelosi contraceptive" you should be able to find the video of the interview where she defends her insertion of family planning funding into the stimulus package by explaining that it saves the government money.

If you've lifted the Pelosi requirement then I'll use Howard Dean as a prominent Democrat who courted a lunatic fringe. Again I can't provide a quote easily except by memory but he said that he wanted the Democrats to also be the (paraphrased) "party of the guys in pickup trucks with confederate flags." No link handy but I believe he said it during his campaign for president and it should be easy to find.

If you want a sound stereotype try this one: on TV the right wing ideologues are stuffy blowhards, while the leftie ideologues are mostly comedian blowhards. I don't know any funny conservative talking heads, finding one of those is a far better political Easter egg hunt.

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@Robert Gentel,

I just noticed that on this small screen I missed the first half of your post. It is simply not true that the location of birth is a simple matter of public record, I have very close aquaintences with US birth certificates (not forged) that incorrectly state country of birth and father, I know of other cases for otherwise legitimately obtained birth certificates in other countries have even the year wrong. I myself have a very basic error in mine, but I am not willing to discuss it publically.

I don't think Obama's has any such illegitimacy, but I think it is more, not less, difficult to ascertain than that the October Surprise logistics just was bogus. I can dig up the specifics next week at a computer if you'd like.

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

What wrong with family planning being supported in a health care program?

It always amuses me that as males, we could get Viagra cover but the ladies could not get birth control pills cover.

As the women had said if men could get pregnancy there would be free birth control and abortions offer on every street corner.

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

It is simply not true that the location of birth is a simple matter of public record, I have very close aquaintences with US birth certificates (not forged) that incorrectly state country of birth and father, I know of other cases for otherwise legitimately obtained birth certificates in other countries have even the year wrong. I myself have a very basic error in mine, but I am not willing to discuss it publically.
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It was not that many generations ago that most births happen at home and the birth record was contain in the family bible.

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@BillRM,

Nothing is wrong with funding it but defending it as economic stimulus for this crisis the way Pelosi did was as intellectually vacous as Delay's moral panic argument.

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I just heard a commentator on MSNBC say that the right is hurting itself a lot with its town-hall activities, birthers, tea-baggers, etc. I hope this is true. Do you agree?

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@Advocate,

Yes, because elections are won in the middle. The republicans have the right 20-30% locked up. The democrats have the left 20-30% locked up. It's the middle that decides the election and when the middle sees all of this, a large number are not going to want to associate themselves with the fringe. The dems are looking like the party of wanting to do something right now.

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@engineer,

The behaviors of the right wing is such lately that all they would need to do is to begin wearing brown shirts.

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