Well Damn! Somebody finally SAID IT!!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) " President Barack Obama's spokesman publicly disagreed with former President Jimmy Carter on Wednesday over Carter's contention that some conservative opposition to Obama is based on race.

"The president does not think it is based on the color of his skin," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters

but he seems never to have twisted any arms.

Mr Obama won the presidency by persuading white Americans that he bore them no grudge; that he was a “bargainer”, not a fighter. Mr Carter appears not to have grasped the importance of the distinction.


The former President may be right that many whites still regard an African-American in the White House with disbelief if not dismay. But he is mistaken if he thinks that pointing this out will help Mr Obama or his agenda.

As the presentation of a draft healthcare Bill showed yesterday, bipartisan support remains critically important to Mr Obama if he wants to deliver on his promise of “change we can believe in”. If his critics are all tarred with the brush of racism, he will lose any hope of their support in Congress, with grave knock-on effects for next year’s mid-term elections and the 2012 White House race.

Mr Carter’s remarks risk making his successor look weak. Worse than that for Mr Obama, they risk making him look like another President Carter, remembered above all for serving only one term.

The Health Care package landed with ZERO Republican support, I think completely because of the way the DEM's bungled the Wilson affair, largely at the behest of the Black Caucus brain trust.

What was she saying about the mother? Does she have an issue with the mother? I'm just curious.

What issues do you have with the current proposed health plan? Again, just curious.

But, if health care were looked at like a service industry - like education or social work- and the providers were in those jobs because they cared about their patients and had an interest in providing that specific service to fellow citizens - there'd be more and better care provided to a larger percentage of citizens at lower cost.

Obama disagrees with Jimmy Carter on race issue

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's spokesman publicly disagreed with former President Jimmy Carter on Wednesday over Carter's contention that some conservative opposition to Obama is based on race.

"The president does not think it is based on the color of his skin," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.

Carter injected race into Obama's struggle for a healthcare overhaul after South Carolina Republican Representative Joe Wilson shouted "You lie" at Obama during a healthcare speech in Congress last week and thousands of conservatives rallied opposition to Obama at demonstrations in Washington.

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man," Carter told NBC News.

He said this "racism inclination still exists. And I think it's bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It's an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply."

Carter's remark drew the condemnation of Michael Steele, the first African-American to become chairman of the Republican National Committee.

"President Carter is flat out wrong. This isn't about race. It is about policy," he said in a statement. "This is a pathetic distraction by Democrats to shift attention away from the president's wildly unpopular government-run healthcare plan that the American people simply oppose."

Obama, America's first black president, was steering clear of the issue, weeks after he injected himself into a debate about race in Massachusetts after black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested at his own home on suspicion of breaking into it.

After Obama created an uproar by saying that Cambridge, Massachusetts, police had acted stupidly in the case, he later expressed regret for the tone of his remarks and had the professor and police officer to the White House for a beer in what was dubbed a "beer summit."

Gibbs said the uproar among Obama's opponents was more likely a reaction to some of the decisions Obama had made to help the U.S. economy, such as bank and auto bailouts.

"We understand that people have disagreements with some of the decisions that we've made," he said.

That's because Joe's outburst was based on the color of illegal immigrant's skin (IMO).

Obama, America's first black president, was steering clear of the issue, weeks after he injected himself into a debate about race in Massachusetts after black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested at his own home on suspicion of breaking into it.

The news item quoted by McGentrix also states this:

Quote:

Obama, America's first black president, was steering clear of the issue, weeks after he injected himself into a debate about race in Massachusetts after black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested at his own home on suspicion of breaking into it.

It seems to me that President Obama wants to ignore the possible racism in Congressman Wilson's disrespectful behavior. President Carter is trying to be honest based on what he knows as a Southerner.

The news item quoted by McGentrix also states this:

Quote:

Obama, America's first black president, was steering clear of the issue, weeks after he injected himself into a debate about race in Massachusetts after black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested at his own home on suspicion of breaking into it.

It seems to me that President Obama wants to ignore the possible racism in Congressman Wilson's disrespectful behavior. President Carter is trying to be honest based on what he knows as a Southerner.

In President Carter's recent book about Israel and the Palestinians, there was the thought that Israel has become an apartheid nation.

Quote:

In President Carter's recent book about Israel and the Palestinians, there was the thought that Israel has become an apartheid nation.

I would guess that you think he is wrong about that? The fact that you use the term "people of European descent" in a comment on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is interesting in itself.

Yes, because the problems with the Palestinians evolved after the 1967 War, and Israel found itself in the situation of being a landlord.

You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I go running several times a week. My favorite route, because it’s so flat, is from the Lincoln Memorial to the U.S. Capitol and back. I was there last Saturday and found myself plodding through tens of thousands of anti-government “tea party” protesters.

They were carrying “Don’t Tread on Me” flags, “End the Fed” placards and signs condemning big government, Barack Obama, socialist health care and various elite institutions.

Then, as I got to where the Smithsonian museums start, I came across another rally, the Black Family Reunion Celebration. Several thousand people had gathered to celebrate African-American culture. I noticed that the mostly white tea party protesters were mingling in with the mostly black family reunion celebrants. The tea party people were buying lunch from the family reunion food stands. They had joined the audience of a rap concert.

Because sociology is more important than fitness, I stopped to watch the interaction. These two groups were from opposite ends of the political and cultural spectrum. They’d both been energized by eloquent speakers. Yet I couldn’t discern any tension between them. It was just different groups of people milling about like at any park or sports arena.

And yet we live in a nation in which some people see every conflict through the prism of race. So over the past few days, many people, from Jimmy Carter on down, have argued that the hostility to President Obama is driven by racism. Some have argued that tea party slogans like “I Want My Country Back” are code words for white supremacy. Others say incivility on Capitol Hill is magnified by Obama’s dark skin.

Well, I don’t have a machine for peering into the souls of Obama’s critics, so I can’t measure how much racism is in there. But my impression is that race is largely beside the point. There are other, equally important strains in American history that are far more germane to the current conflicts.

The Favor Jimmy Carter Did Us All

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, September 18, 2009

What I wrote last year about candidate Barack Obama -- that to win he had to be seen as "the least-aggrieved black man in America" -- may be even more relevant now. To lead this diverse and fractious nation effectively, the president has to negotiate racial issues with delicacy, caution and tact. He has to give even his most vocal critics the benefit of the doubt.

But I don't. So I can say in plain language that Jimmy Carter was right in essence, but wrong in degree. It seems clear to me that some -- but not "an overwhelming portion," as Carter claimed -- of the "intensely demonstrated animosity" toward Obama is indeed "based on the fact that he is a black man."

Obama disagrees. "The president does not believe that criticism comes based on the color of his skin," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday. Obama is the most garrulous president in many years, but when a reporter asked him about Carter's remarks, he had not a word to say.

Nor do many other leading Democrats -- outside of the Congressional Black Caucus -- want to touch this explosive subject. As a matter of political strategy, I don't blame them. The minute you observe that some of Obama's critics seem to be motivated by race, the critics howl that they're all being smeared as "racists" simply because they disagree with Obama's policies. This is not true