Obama '08?

And the real issues are what, snood? As far as I can tell, the real issues seem to me a guy murdered a bunch of innocent people. Generally one of the first things people do upon learning about something as horrific as this, is to look for a possible motive. I guess you can choose to see no significance at all in some of the things that are becoming known, but I happen to think they may be telling us something about a possible motive.

Here is another tidbit of information, indicating another one of my guesses may be at least a possibility, which apparently people like snood or Monterey Jack would totally dismiss as of no consequence or interest at all in regard to the shooter at Fort Hood:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/06/national/main5553466.shtml

SHOCKER: Ft. Hood Shooter's Former Imam had Terrorist Ties Through ISNA and Muslim World League

Hasan attended prayers regularly when he lived outside Washington, often in his Army uniform, said Faizul Khan, a former imam at a mosque Hasan attended in Silver Spring, Md. He said Hasan Malik was a lifelong Muslim.

Faizul Khan is not just some Imam. He is on the board of directors of ISNA, the Islamic Society of North America. ISNA's links to terrorist are extensive and well known.....The Islamic Society of North America is a Wahhabi Islamist group co-created by Sami Al Arian, of the Palestinian Arab terrorist group, Islamic Jihad.

okie, When have you ever been close to the mark?

CI:
Wasn't going to dignify Okie's response with an answer. He/she twists everything I say, so I guess "blaming" Democrats is his game, forgetting that the Democrats HE is referring to became Republicans after 1964, but he won't research THAT! Wonder why? DixieCrats didn't want to be identified with the Civil Rights legislation they voted AGAINST, so they jumped ship on LBJ, the greatest President of the 20th Century. It's the whining John Boehner's and their hard-nosed "tea-baggers", "birthers" and other assorted "wing-nuts" we have to contend with!

People forget that Rev. Wright was a Viet Nam Veteran himself, when racism was rampant in the military. No one knows to this day WHY we were there! It was Eisenhower who pursuaded JFK to send troops over there because the French, who had been there for decades, finally pulled out of there. Obama has found himself in a quagmire, whether to send more troops over as LBJ did and is conflicted, as he NEVER voted for these wars!

It is not extreme at all, but instead, mainstream. It is a realization of cause and effect.



Yes, I do. I think most Americans do.

Do you honestly think that 9/11 had nothing to do with our actions? That the US did nothing at all which lead to 9/11 happening? That we didn't meddle in the Middle East at all? That we didn't spend money to influence their society in a variety of unsavory ways? That our culture didn't slice and dice theirs to pieces over the last 60 years or so?

If you truly believe that the US had nothing to do with the Middle East, and that Bin Laden woke up one day and decided he wanted to attack us for no reason whatsoever, then you are a fool, Okie, and one who doesn't know a damn thing about history.



Woah there - I don't believe they deserved to die, either, and never said that they did. However, examining the reasons behind their death isn't the same thing as saying they deserved it.



Who said anything about sympathy? You are projecting a bunch of **** that I didn't say onto me. Why?



It's not 'blame America first.' That's where you bunch have always been wrong. It's 'include America in the blame.' And why not? We are not so special that our actions do not have negative consequences.

Look, you're always fond of knocking the US government. According to you, they can't run anything right, can't do a damn thing right really, and the whole thing is alleged by you to be corrupt at one time or another. So, why is it that you have so little faith in domestic affairs of the US government, and so MUCH faith in the foreign affairs? A more balanced opinion would say that we sometimes screw up domestically and sometimes in foreign affairs; and some of our actions in the 70's, 80's and 90's set the stage for 9/11 to happen.

You're so caught up on Fault and Blame and Sympathy and a bunch of other **** which I neither said nor care about, that you haven't bothered to examine the situation for simple cause and effect. It doesn't bother me that you look to demonize me; there's nothing new about that here. However, it doesn't accurately reflect my position at all.

When Wright said 'the Chickens came home to roost on 9/11,' he was absolutely right. The US for too long has acted in a neo-imperialist manner in our foreign affairs and we have pretended that our geographic isolation and large military will protect us from any retaliation. The lesson of terrorism is that these things will no longer protect us in the future. It forces a re-balancing of our idea of protection, vulnerability and strength. It wakes us up to something our defense experts have been warning would happen for a long time. It isn't about blame, or that people deserved to die; it's a realization that our modern world has different political and military balances than the one you came from, Okie.

This is a reality-based assessment of the situation, unlike your purely ideological one.

Cycloptichorn

Cyclo, I like your use of the word "projection" when it comes to okie's opinions. He seems to be able to see into the future that most stay away from, and also expand on what we didn't say.

Good word.

Pathetic post, cyclops. You essentially are making the argument that a victim of a crime caused the criminal to do it. A murderer had a reason to hate somebody.

Look, hatred looks for justification, not valid reasons for their hatred. You have a culture that teaches hatred. That is the reason, that is where the chickens came home from, they came home to the hatred that has been taught in a culture, thats what happened. And you are just as pathetic as the Reverend Wright, just as bigoted and just as hate filled as he is, if you agree with the man.

I really don't have much more use for you or your opinions, not much, cyclops, you are bordering on being a traitor to your own country.

LBJ the greatest president of the 20th century? You have totally and absolutely gone bonkers. If you wish to care about racism that you love to accuse people of here, LBJ has been documented as a staunch racist by some of the people that knew him best, before he decided to buy your votes by giving you welfare through his Great Society initiative, which is probably one of the biggest factors in the destruction of the black family and inner cities of America.

Okie,
You need a psychiatrist!

teeny, okie is past the psychiatrist stage; too late!

What you need is some education on LBJ. Here, read this quote of LBJ's, which pretty proves my assertion about LBJ. When he said to give them a little something, his Great Society was part of that later, teeny. They did it for your votes, teeny, and it has worked good, except for those that are waking up and deciding to leave the plantation.

"These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again."

--Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D., Texas), 1957

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110011033

Fact is, here is a little history of quotes from the Democratic Party from this website: http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110011033

Blacks "are inferior to the whites in the endowments of both of body and mind."
--Thomas Jefferson, 1787
Co-founder of the Democratic Party (along with Andrew Jackson)
President, 1801-09

"I hold that the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding states between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good--a positive good."
--Sen. John C. Calhoun (D., S.C.), 1837
Vice President, 1825-32
His statue stands in the U.S. Capitol.

If blacks were given the right to vote, that would "place every splay-footed, bandy-shanked, hump-backed, thick-lipped, flat-nosed, woolly-headed, ebon-colored Negro in the country upon an equality with the poor white man."
--Rep. Andrew Johnson, (D., Tenn.), 1844
President, 1865-69

"Resolved, That the Democratic Party will resist all attempts at renewing, in Congress or out of it, the agitation of the slavery question, under whatever shape or color the attempt may be made."

--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1852

Blacks are "a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race."
--Chief Justice Roger Taney, Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1856
Appointed Attorney General by Andrew Jackson in 1831
Appointed Secretary of the Treasury by Andrew Jackson in 1833
Appointed to the Supreme Court by Andrew Jackson in 1836

"Resolved, That claiming fellowship with, and desiring the co-operation of all who regard the preservation of the Union under the Constitution as the paramount issue--and repudiating all sectional parties and platforms concerning domestic slavery, which seek to embroil the States and incite to treason and armed resistance to law in the Territories; and whose avowed purposes, if consummated, must end in civil war and disunion, the American Democracy recognize and adopt the principles contained in the organic laws establishing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska as embodying the only sound and safe solution of the 'slavery question' upon which the great national idea of the people of this whole country can repose in its determined conservatism of the Union--NON-INTERFERENCE BY CONGRESS WITH SLAVERY IN STATE AND TERRITORY, OR IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA" (emphasis in original).
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1856

"I hold that a Negro is not and never ought to be a citizen of the United States. I hold that this government was made on the white basis; made by the white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and should be administered by white men and none others."--Sen. Stephen A. Douglas (D., Ill.), 1858
Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, 1860

"Resolved, That the enactments of the State Legislatures to defeat the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, are hostile in character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in their effect."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1860

"The Almighty has fixed the distinction of the races; the Almighty has made the black man inferior, and, sir, by no legislation, by no military power, can you wipe out this distinction."
--Rep. Fernando Wood (D., N.Y.), 1865
Mayor of New York City, 1855-58, 1860-62

"My fellow citizens, I have said that the contest before us was one for the restoration of our government; it is also one for the restoration of our race. It is to prevent the people of our race from being exiled from their homes--exiled from the government which they formed and created for themselves and for their children, and to prevent them from being driven out of the country or trodden under foot by an inferior and barbarous race."
--Francis P. Blair Jr., accepting the Democratic nomination for Vice President, 1868
Democratic Senator from Missouri, 1869-72
His statue stands in the U.S. Capitol.

"Instead of restoring the Union, it [the Republican Party] has, so far as in its power, dissolved it, and subjected ten states, in time of profound peace, to military despotism and Negro supremacy."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1868

"While the tendency of the white race is upward, the tendency of the colored race is downward."
--Sen. Thomas Hendricks (D., Ind.), 1869
Democratic nominee for Vice President, 1876
Vice President, 1885

"We, the delegates of the Democratic party of the United States . . . demand such modification of the treaty with the Chinese Empire, or such legislation within constitutional limitations, as shall prevent further importation or immigration of the Mongolian race."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1876

"No more Chinese immigration, except for travel, education, and foreign commerce, and that even carefully guarded."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1880

"American civilization demands that against the immigration or importation of Mongolians to these shores our gates be closed."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1884

"We favor the continuance and strict enforcement of the Chinese exclusion law, and its application to the same classes of all Asiatic races."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1900

"The repeal of the fifteenth amendment, one of the greatest blunders and therefore one of the greatest crimes in political history, is a consummation to be devoutly wished for."
--Rep. John Sharpe Williams (D., Miss.), 1903
House Minority Leader, 1903-08

"Republicanism means Negro equality, while the Democratic Party means that the white man is supreme. That is why we Southerners are all Democrats."
--Sen. Ben Tillman (D., S.C.), 1906
Chairman, Committee on Naval Affairs, 1913-19

"We are opposed to the admission of Asiatic immigrants who can not be amalgamated with our population, or whose presence among us would raise a race issue and involve us in diplomatic controversies with Oriental powers."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1908

"I am opposed to the practice of having colored policemen in the District [of Columbia]. It is a source of danger by constantly engendering racial friction, and is offensive to thousands of Southern white people who make their homes here."

--Sen. Hoke Smith (D., Ga.), 1912
Appointed Secretary of the Interior by Grover Cleveland in 1893

"The South is serious with regard to its attitude to the Negro in politics. The South understands this subject, and its policy is unalterable and uncompromising. We desire no concessions. We seek no sops. We grasp no shadows on this subject. We take no risks. We abhor a Northern policy of catering to the Negro in politics just as we abhor a Northern policy of social equality."

--Josephus Daniels, editor, Raleigh News & Observer, 1912
Appointed Secretary of the Navy by Woodrow Wilson in 1913
Appointed Ambassador to Mexico by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933
USS Josephus Daniels named for him by the Johnson Administration in 1965

"The Negro as a race, in all the ages of the world, has never shown sustained power of self-development. He is not endowed with the creative faculty. . . . He has never created for himself any civilization. . . . He has never had any civilization except that which has been inculcated by a superior race. And it is a lamentable fact that his civilization lasts only so long as he is in the hands of the white man who inculcates it. When left to himself he has universally gone back to the barbarism of the jungle."
--Sen. James Vardaman (D., Miss.), 1914
Chairman, Committee on Natural Resources, 1913-19

"This is a white man's country, and will always remain a white man's country."
--Rep. James F. Byrnes (D., S.C.), 1919
Appointed to the Supreme Court by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941
Appointed Secretary of State by Harry S. Truman in 1945

"Slavery among the whites was an improvement over independence in Africa. The very progress that the blacks have made, when--and only when--brought into contact with the whites, ought to be a sufficient argument in support of white supremacy--it ought to be sufficient to convince even the blacks themselves."
--William Jennings Bryan, 1923
Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, 1896, 1900 and 1908
Appointed Secretary of State by Woodrow Wilson in 1913
His statue stands in the U.S. Capitol.

"Anyone who has traveled to the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results. . . . The argument works both ways. I know a great many cultivated, highly educated and delightful Japanese. They have all told me that they would feel the same repugnance and objection to have thousands of Americans settle in Japan and intermarry with the Japanese as I would feel in having large numbers of Japanese coming over here and intermarry with the American population. In this question, then, of Japanese exclusion from the United States it is necessary only to advance the true reason--the undesirability of mixing the blood of the two peoples. . . . The Japanese people and the American people are both opposed to intermarriage of the two races--there can be no quarrel there."
--Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1925
President, 1933-45

"This passport which you have given me is a symbol to me of the passport which you have given me before. I do not feel that it would be out of place to state to you here on this occasion that I know that without the support of the members of this organization I would not have been called, even by my enemies, the 'Junior Senator from Alabama.' "
--Hugo Black, accepting a life membership in the Ku Klux Klan upon his election to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat from Alabama, 1926
Appointed to the Supreme Court by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937

"Mr. President, the crime of lynching . . . is not of sufficient importance to justify this legislation."
--Sen. Claude Pepper (D., Fla.), 1938
Spoken while engaged in a six-hour speech against the antilynching bill

"I am a former Kleagle [recruiter] of the Ku Klux Klan in Raleigh County. . . . The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia. It is necessary that the order be promoted immediately and in every state in the union."

--Robert C. Byrd, 1946
Democratic Senator from West Virginia, 1959-present
Senate Majority Leader, 1977-80 and 1987-88
Senate President Pro Tempore, 1989-95, 2001-03, 2007-present
His portrait stands in the U.S. Capitol.

President Truman's civil rights program "is a farce and a sham--an effort to set up a police state in the guise of liberty. I am opposed to that program. I have voted against the so-called poll tax repeal bill. . .. I have voted against the so-called anti-lynching bill."
--Rep. Lyndon B. Johnson (D., Texas), 1948
U.S. Senator, 1949-61
Senate Majority Leader, 1955-61
President, 1963-69

"There is no warrant for the curious notion that Christianity favors the involuntary commingling of the races in social institutions. Although He knew both Jews and Samaritans and the relations existing between them, Christ did not advocate that courts or legislative bodies should compel them to mix socially against their will."

--Sen. Sam Ervin (D., N.C.), 1955
Chairman, Committee on Government Operations, 1971-75

"The decline and fall of the Roman empire came after years of intermarriage with other races. Spain was toppled as a world power as a result of the amalgamation of the races. . . . Certainly history shows that nations composed of a mongrel race lose their strength and become weak, lazy and indifferent."
--Herman E. Talmadge, 1955
Democratic Senator from Georgia, 1957-81
Chairman, Committee on Agriculture, 1971-81

"These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again."
--Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D., Texas), 1957

"I have never seen very many white people who felt they were being imposed upon or being subjected to any second-class citizenship if they were directed to a waiting room or to any other public facility to wait or to eat with other white people. Only the Negroes, of all the races which are in this land, publicly proclaim they are being mistreated, imposed upon, and declared second-class citizens because they must go to public facilities with members of their own race."
--Sen. Richard B. Russell Jr. (D., Ga.), 1961
The Russell Senate Office Building is named for him.

"I did not lie awake at night worrying about the problems of Negroes."
--Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, 1961
Kennedy later authorized wiretapping the phones and bugging the hotel rooms of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"I'm not going to use the federal government's authority deliberately to circumvent the natural inclination of people to live in ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods. . . . I have nothing against a community that's made up of people who are Polish or Czechoslovakian or French-Canadian or blacks who are trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods."--Jimmy Carter, 1976
President, 1977-81
Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, 2002

"The Confederate Memorial has had a special place in my life for many years. . . . There were many, many times that I found myself drawn to this deeply inspiring memorial, to contemplate the sacrifices of others, several of whom were my ancestors, whose enormous suffering and collective gallantry are to this day still misunderstood by most Americans."

--James Webb, 1990
Now a Democratic Senator from Virginia

"Everybody likes to go to Geneva. I used to do it for the Law of the Sea conferences and you'd find these potentates from down in Africa, you know, rather than eating each other, they'd just come up and get a good square meal in Geneva."
--Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D., S.C.) 1993
Chairman, Commerce Committee, 1987-95 and 2001-03
Candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, 1984

"I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia [Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a former Ku Klux Klan recruiter] that he would have been a great senator at any moment. . . . He would have been right during the great conflict of civil war in this nation."
--Sen. Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.), 2004
Chairman, Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs
Candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, 2008

•"You cannot go into a Dunkin' Donuts or a 7-Eleven unless you have a slight Indian accent."
•"My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state has the eighth largest black population in the country. My state is anything [but] a Northeastern liberal state."


•"I mean, you got the first mainstream African American [Barack Obama] who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice looking guy."
•"There's less than 1% of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than 4% or 5% that is, are minorities. What is it in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you're dealing with."
Sen. Joseph Biden Jr., (D., Del.), 2006-07
Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary, 1987-95
Chairman, Committee on Foreign Relations
Candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, 2008

Bonus quote:
"It has of late become the custom of the men of the South to speak with entire candor of the settled and deliberate policy of suppressing the negro vote. They have been forced to choose between a policy of manifest injustice toward the blacks and the horrors of negro rule. They chose to disfranchise the negroes. That was manifestly the lesser of two evils. . . . The Republican Party committed a great public crime when it gave the right of suffrage to the blacks. . . . So long as the Fifteenth Amendment stands, the menace of the rule of the blacks will impend, and the safeguards against it must be maintained."

--Editorial, "The Political Future of the South," New York Times, May 10, 1900)

Excerpt from Johnson on The Great Society:
"The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.

The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community."

Another quote:
“Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.”

Was it not a contest between machine power (North) and muscle power (South)?

Once machines began to dominate the economy the emancipation of slaves was inevitable. Otherwise the South would have used slaves to run machines and wiped the North out.

It's the economy.

It seems to me that the emancipation of cheap labour in other areas of the world is the next project.

LBJ might have been a great president were it not for his lying us into a major war in Nam. He participated in the Tonkin Gulf Resolution fraud, which ultimately resulted in the slaughter of over three million people.

He escalated Vietnam as a trade-off for his social programs. As you probably know, Johnson was the ultimate dealmaker. Unfortunately, Vietnam led to his unraveling.

Sometimes they do have reasons, and sometimes people's actions cause crimes. Yes.


Bull ******* ****. You are picking the most simplistic 'solution,' the one that leaves the US blameless no matter what our actions are. It's a ridiculous and childish opinion you are holding. Grow up and enter the real world, Okie - things aren't as black-and-white as you posit here.



That's uncalled for. You know I don't hate this country. I just don't lie to myself about our actions or the effects that they have, the way that you do.

You didn't respond to my point - hell, you didn't respond to any of them, really - but specifically, about you hating Domestic Governance but totally loving Foreign Governance. How can you have so much trust in one group and so little in the other, when they are the SAME PEOPLE taking action? I suspect you have no good answer for this.

Cycloptichorn

That is of course the definitions given by LBJ and Democrats, but the truth is far different. If good intentions are equal to results, then those words might have had some grain of truth, but unfortunately the road to failure is often paved by good intentions because if the road is going in the wrong direction, it will not arrive at the right destination. It is often too easy for politicians to shout lofty words of good intentions from the housetops, simply for the purpose of getting votes, but the truth is that poverty, broken families, crime, and drug use have all proliferated in the inner cities and black communities since LBJ's Great Society initiatives. Many people have documented this, and I would suggest to teeny to brush up on some history in this regard.