And he too is a Chicken Hawk.

With all due respect, JTT, this thread is about something entirely different. If you want to discuss with me the various prevarications and postures made during the Viet Nam Era, start a new thread. You'll be surprised to find some agreement between us.

But this thread is about whether Mitt Romney can continue to claim that although he longed to be, his words, in Viet Nam, he somehow couldn't find a way to do it as about a million of his fellow countrymen and women had done.

His Church was fully in favor of our incursion into, not only Viet Nam, but also into Laos and Cambodia, yet he used 31 months of divinity study deferment to (Golly, how did this happen?) allow him to miss at least four shots at being drafted. Not bad, Rev. Mitten.

I'd be willing to give him a pass if he had said he was opposed to the war, but he wasn't. (Until his dad saw the light, then suddenly at age 23, and after spending three years in France under deferment, so did Mitt.)

Here he is protesting: Protesting FOR the draft all while getting his ass out of harm's way.

Joe(What a weasel.)Nation

I do not know if your antipathy to Romney's deferment is based on your political position for the current President, or you actually begrudge Romney his deferment, or you find his rhetoric now sort of not "ringing true" to you, or some other reason I cannot fathom? Regardless, it is a big country, and we didn't need one person's service to lose that conflict.

As long as you have some feelings about Romney's rhetoric, in context of his deferment, could you admit that there are those that would have preferred that the current President reflect an individual whose family, on both sides (maternal/paternal), have more time in this country than our current President. Like FDR was patrician, since his family had a history in the U.S. And, many other Presidents also; perhaps, all. So, it might just be more than incongruous, used as a euphemism, that our current President's father went back to Kenya. Like I know we don't have a monarchy; however, to have family that went back to their country of origin makes me wonder why our political system couldn't find an African-American President that could at least say that his family suffered under slavery. In other words, our President is Black, but really cut from a different cloth, so to speak, than African-Americans that are patriotic Americans, regardless of the slavery that existed. Sort of like a "no pain" version of being an African-American. So, perhaps, there is something there also that doesn't ring true about our current President being African-American, as it is commonly understood?

Foofie (the king doesn't have a new suit on)

I merely corrected a long and storied canard, Joe - that the US has been involved in wars, when all they have been is illegal invasions of other people's lands.

I'm done. The canard has been exposed. Carry on.

Holy Cow, Foofie~ did you think this up by yourself? No. You did not. I read something similar three days ago on some right wing blog about Obama's black DNA not being the DNA of slaves. umm,, phhhfffftt.

So now you have so little belief in the core strengths of this nation as to question whether someone who is a first generation American can be patriotic enough to serve this, his own, country. Shame on you for disparaging the millions and millions of the children of immigrants to these shores, including my own mother and, I might add, Mitt Romney's father, , George, who seemed to be able to serve this nation despite having a father who was born and raised in a foreign country. (and able to run an auto company too. wowsie)

You must not know much about immigration over the past 100 years, several million Africans have come to the USA. (In the 70's it seemed half of them were in New York driving Yellow Cabs, now it's people from the UAE and Yemen,) All those Africans who stayed became African-Americans, including some of those who came from South Africa who look as if they were born and raised in Sweden. So much for African-American slave DNA.

You don't know anything about patriotism either, any social scientist could tell you that the highest ranks of the voting populace contain the newly arrived, newly minted citizens and that their children were much more likely to vote than children of people who had citizen history going back eight or nine or ten generations.

Really, shame on you. You have no idea what America is all about.

Joe(breathing free)Nation

As opposed to what? A family that fled the US because they didn't like the laws and then only came back when the country they fled to had a revolution and they felt threatened there?


To argue that Romney's family goes back to the origins of the country ignores the fact that they lived in Mexico for a number of years because they didn't want to abide by US law. You can't rationally argue that Romney's family have spent more time in this country then Obama's unless you want to argue that living in Mexico is the same as living in the US.

My reasoning, in my own little brain, came from the thought (a cartoon light bulb glowed bright over my head) that back in 2008, there were political pundits that were saying that the African-American community was questioning whether, "Obama was Black enough?" At the time I thought that reflected the fact that he was half-white in parentage, and whether someone like that, and perhaps raised also by a white grandmother, was going to be concerned about the African-American concerns as much as many African-Americans are concerned.

Now, with that light bulb switched on over my head, I began thinking that "is he Black enough?" (back in 2008) may have just been the Black colloquial way of expressing an unconscious feeling that Obama the candidate might not REALLY SHARE THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN E-X-P-E-R-I-E-N-C-E? Meaning, that if one's Black ancestry did not suffer under slavery, and then Jim Crow in the South, and the ghettoized life in the northern urban centers, then should that Black man really be thought of as "an African-American 'brother.'"

And, I as a secular Jew whose family came here from Czarist Russia in the latter half of the nineteenth century, am quite comfortable with the country having become a superpower under the hegemony of WASP America. So, there is no shame on me if I would prefer a President, white or Black, that has the panache, if you will, of a family that came here (and stayed here) at least earlier than my own. And, it is more than panache, it is the opinion, that I came to in the military, that if one's family came here prior to 1850 (when the country was basically WASP and Black slaves in the south, or freed slaves in the north) one had no question that they were A-M-E-R-I-C-A-N. However, when I spoke to "ethnics" whose family came here post 1850, I would get an answer that they were patriotic Americans of a certain descent. My point being that WASP's do not have to have that "personal narrative" to FEEL AMERICAN. Ethnics often do, in my opinion. So, I would rather have someone commanding our armed forces that can only define him or herself as American. I just do not prefer "hyphens" in my president's identity. As a private citizen that degree of choice is my civil right. No shame on me. I do not care for the "Jewish mother" guilt trip schtick (which you might be doing unconsciously).

Like I was too young to vote for Kennedy, but based on my feelings, I would not have voted for him because he did not marry an American woman. I prefer my presidents to have generations in this country. I do not care how many immigrants the statue in New York harbor has welcomed. I do not believe that assimilation is like instant grits; in my opinion, it takes generations to shed the possible emotional baggage of other continents, especially Europe (as a Jew I have my belief that only Protestant America can be comfortable with affording Jews equal opportunity).

Please preach to the choir, I am from another mindset.

Mejico es un pais en norteamerica.

jeez, there's a lot of foofiness in that post.

I don't think you really understand the black experience, foof...

I cannot give credence to your dismissive style of posting. Back up your thoughts.

U.S. = norteamerica?

Romney gets a pass because Mexico is in our hemisphere?

I don't think we can play together nicely, foof.

you have a wonderful day...

You are correct. We will never bond over our political visions. I prefer the U.S. to remain a bastion of WASP American Exceptionalism. It reflects my feelings that Catholic Europe just made Jews too expendable, and I am concerned that that willingness to accept Jews as expendable is something inherent in Catholicism. That is the truth; like it or not.

Obama's wife and daughters are the descendants of slavery. Doesn't that give his family some "panache"?
I wonder if foof has some comments on Kennedy, going back to his roots mere moments before his assassination?

Except when you want to argue Mexico is a bastion of American Exceptionalism?

so Canajuns can run for the American presidency now?

awesomeness

I need a new c.v.

New York State isn't in the United States?

there's something wrong with your map

DUH What about Kennedy??

Jacqueline Lee Bouvier was born in Southampton, New York, to Wall Street stock broker John Vernou Bouvier III (also known as 'Black Jack Bouvier') and Janet Norton Lee.

Now what, Mr. Foofie......have the Hamptons been removed from the USA??. I must alert the riders on the weekend jitney. http://hamptonjitney.com/cgi-bin/nav.cgi?page=home.html

Joe(they'll need a visa)Nation

So, you are voting for Obama then? Because his family on his mother's side goes back to the mid 1800s. While Romney's family was NOT in the US but fled to Mexico to avoid US laws from about 1895 to 1912.

He wasn't a wasp though.. only an irish catholic. We already know what racist thoughts old foof has towards that group..

foofie has already established that Mexico is part of the US...

welcome to the circus.