Obama '08?

"Changing their attitudes?" Where have you been living this past century? Where do you dream up these ideas from?

okie said the 911 families should set the parameters for mosque building in NYC then denied that he said that.

Well, a coalition that includes members of 911 families have spoken. The coalition disagrees with the American right.

The planned mosque and Islamic center blocks from ground zero got a new boost Wednesday from a coalition of supporters that includes families of Sept. 11 victims.

New York Neighbors for American Values rallied for the first time at a municipal building near ground zero.

"I lost a 23-year-old son, a paramedic who gave his life saving Americans and their values," Talat Hamdani said, and supporting the Islamic center and mosque "has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with standing up for our human rights, including freedom of religion."

Among the nearly 2,800 people killed when the World Trade Center was attacked in 2001 were more than 30 Muslims, she noted.

Opponents of the Islamic center project argue it's insensitive to the families and memories of Sept. 11 victims to build a mosque so close. Supporters cite freedom of religion.

The new coalition was started by members of 40 civic and religious organizations that "spontaneously called each other, because we had the feeling that something very negative was happening," said Susan Lerner, executive director of the New York office of the watchdog group Common Cause.

The controversy was triggered by "irresponsible politicians" using it as an election issue, she said. Names mentioned at the rally included former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican, and the highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Gingrich has suggested that building the mosque near ground zero is akin to putting a Nazi sign "next to the Holocaust Museum." Reid has broken ranks with President Barack Obama by saying he thinks the mosque should be built elsewhere.

Coalition members are now contacting officials, asking them to support the project as a reflection of religious freedom and diversity, and the rejection of "crude stereotypes meant to frighten and divide us."

They plan a candlelight vigil near ground zero on Sept. 10, the eve of the ninth Sept. 11 anniversary.

"This is not just about Muslims; this is about who we are as Americans," said Lerner, adding that to oppose the Islamic center is "a slippery slope. There will always be people who are offended standing next to people who are different from others."

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of New York's Shalom Center, said the project will show the world a form of Islam that espouses peace — not the Islam of the terrorists.

"It is right; it is wise to build it," he told hundreds of people gathered under the arches of Manhattan's Municipal Building, a short walk from ground zero.

Several coalition members noted that the mosque site's developer, Sharif el-Gamal, modeled it after the Jewish Community Center on Manhattan's Upper West Side. It serves anyone who wishes to participate, they said, and so will the Muslim center near ground zero.

Here is an essay written by a close friend on glenn beck, his poison chalk and the disgraceful march he has planned. Oh, she is an award winning teacher who holds a Ph.D. in American history from one of America's leading universities. Upon reading that statement, okie immediately decided he knows more than she does:


Beck v. King?

Since your choice of date begs the comparison, let’s start with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Yes, this Saturday is the anniversary of the occasion during which King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. The real inheritors of the Civil Rights Movement are quick to point out that you have no right to his day, much less his legacy. The event in question, however, was not “I Have a Dream Day” but the March on Washington (write that down, please: “March on Washington”). It was originally billed a march “for jobs and freedom,” but became an opportunity instead to pressure Congress to pass the Kennedy administration’s recently introduced civil rights legislation that would, among other things, outlaw de jure segregation in the South. The main organizer of the march was a union man, A. Philip Randolph, and he had proposed the march for the first time in 1941 (write down “union” please). The 1941 march was intended to protest racial discrimination in the defense industries and segregation in the armed forces (ya know, at the time when we were fighting actual Nazis, not the bugaboos of your fun-house-mirror history).

Why A. Philip Randolph matters to you: Comparisons of you to Dr. King distort not only his legacy but also the legacy of the Movement as a whole. Neither marches were proposed as mere platforms for solitary ideologues. The 1963 March emerged from the coordinated efforts of dozens, if not hundreds, of activist, civil and religious organizations. (While sometimes led by them, social movements are neither made nor sustained by ideologues. Mobs, on the other hand, quite often are.) Neither marches were funded by large think-tanks or multi-media conglomerates.

You are not holding a social protest this weekend; you (glenn beck) are holding a rally for your fans, your ego, and the large corporations who are the real beneficiaries of your efforts, not the ordinary (white) Americans for whom you claim to speak. While you are certainly no match for Dr. King—a sincere spiritual leader who opposed racism, war and poverty—the true insult to this history is that you mistake your fans for activists and organizers.

“Wake Up America!’

Back to our lesson: Among those in attendance at the 1963 March on Washington was the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced “Snick”) which came into existence to coordinate the sit-ins that spread across the South like wildfire in 1960. Then chairman of this radically egalitarian organization was John Lewis, a participant in both the sit-ins and Freedom Rides. He was slated to deliver the most strident speech of the day, entitled “Wake Up America!” SNCC organizers, including Lewis, found the Kennedy administration’s bill inadequate on multiple fronts. They argued that it would not be enforced in the South given white supremacists’ lock on Southern politics, courts and law enforcement, that it would not protect civil rights workers from violence, and that it did not address issues of economic justice and poverty. Lewis’s proposed conclusion to the speech captures SNCC’s growing militancy and impatience: “We will march through the South, through the Heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did. We shall pursue our own ‘scorched earth’ policy and burn Jim Crow to the ground—nonviolently.”

Why John Lewis Matters to You: Georgia Congressman John Lewis’s life’s work—both then and since—demonstrates that that proposed closing to the speech was rhetorical flair, not a literal threat to burn down the white South. The other Movement leaders around him, however, recognized how easily that could be read otherwise, and, fearful of violence in their name, demanded its removal. That demonstrates sincerity of leadership and purpose. It recognizes that incendiary language can motivate the fringe of any group (regardless of partisanship or ideological bent) to commit heinous acts against innocent people, and, in the process, thus threaten the moral mandate of the movement as a whole. In contrast, the mandate of your so-called “movement” is neither morality nor justice, but vengeance and race-baiting. Your choice of “Restore” implies that you’re taking (white) America back from the various people you and your megaphoned brethren have repeatedly attacked since Obama took office—black people, Mexican immigrants, and now all Muslims. You are courting domestic terrorism for political gain and profit.

That means that your true predecessor is Alabama Governor George Wallace, not Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. So, Glenn, write these four names on your chalkboard: Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley. These girls were killed in the basement of Birmingham’s 16th St. Baptist Church on September 15, 1963, shortly before their Sunday school class was to begin. True, the Klan planted the bomb. But the blood was ever on Wallace’s hands.

Oppression v. Victimization

Another Movement anniversary also approaches. Fannie Lou Hamer, a timekeeper on a Mississippi plantation, tried to register to vote at a courthouse in Indianola, Mississippi on August 31, 1962. The white plantation owner threw her off the land and shortly thereafter she formally joined the Movement. In June of 1963 she and other activists were arrested for attempting to use a whites-only restaurant and washroom at a bus station in Winona, Mississippi. They were arrested, taken to the county jail, and then summarily beaten and sexually assaulted by white police. The Movement is a sickening chronicle of pervasive white violence, much of it committed by white police—of mass arrests, beatings, church burnings, of children being hosed down sidewalks, of pieces of unidentified black bodies being found in rivers, of endless small humiliations—ketchup over one’s head at a lunch counter—to the unimaginably large but very real fear of lynching. In the face of this Movement activists trained one another to remain peaceful and respectful; they also quelled their fears by singing songs together, songs that had sustained their slave ancestors. This Movement culture undergirded the myriad campaigns sprouting across the nation—food drives, creating schools, activist training camps, voter registration drives, the sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, letter writing campaigns, Freedom Summer, fundraising efforts, legislative proposals, legal battles, targeted boycotts at public and private facilities, and so on.

Why Fannie Lou Hamer Matters to You: Glenn, you and your beloved Tea Partiers love to claim yourselves oppressed. But you are actually the victims of your own delusions. Who has been fired, arrested, beaten, hosed down the street, bitten by police dogs, or murdered since your “Movement” began? Aside from public temper tantrums with misspelled signs, for what and against whom are your “protests?” Consider, for example, the origins of the “Tea Party.” It began in opposition to raised taxes at a time when all but the rich got a tax cut. Gun rallies—on the anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing no less—have occurred when no gun control legislation is pending. Your followers persist in demonstrably and laughably false claims, including my two favorites: that our Christian President who was raised by a white mother and grandmother is really a closeted Muslim who hates white people and that the mandated purchase of private insurance is really the government gearing up to gas grandma. If Movement organizers were truly your predecessors, they would have arrived at the 1963 March on Washington spitting on white people and carrying signs that read, “Stop Race Mixing.”

You also claim to be opposed to foreign terrorists as you criminalize 1.4 billion Muslims. Glenn, the Civil Rights Movement displayed the barbarity of Southern white racism to the world in order to end it. In contrast, you write Al Qaeda’s propaganda for them by begging for a Clash of Civilizations.

Hall High School

One last story. Many would recognize Little Rock, Arkansas’s Central High School as a key location in Movement history. Dwight Eisenhower, after all, sent troops to the school in the fall of 1957 to ensure that nine black children could enter after Governor Orval Faubus defied the court order to integrate. Many remember the white mobs outside the school who accosted lone student Elizabeth Eckford. Few remember Hall High School.

Hall High School was the newly built school in the wealthy white neighborhood in Little Rock, intended as a place of refuge for wealthy white students upon Central’s eventual integration. While this in no way excuses the rabidity of white resistance in Little Rock, what’s forgotten from the Little Rock tale (and subsequent stories about the racial roots of parochial schools and vouchers) is that, for many white middle class and working class parents, integration meant downward mobility for their children, as the white rich kids took the teachers, the resources and the prestige with them. Orval Faubus, and other white racial demagogues like him, redirected these white folks’ class resentments using their hatred of black people.


Why Hall High Matters to You: This should be obvious: it’s the same as it ever was. Those in the Tea Party do have real grievances that are being misdiagnosed and then redirected onto race. The misdiagnosis: The closest you and your followers have come to any coherent ideology is anti-government libertarianism— the reigning ideology inside the beltway since Reagan (including Clinton) and outside the beltway (thus far) from the bats*** crazy Randians. The suffering of your fans is very real, but it is the product of free market ideology and the policies (or a-policies or anti-policies) that have flowed from it: the destruction and dissolution of unions, the export of our manufacturing sector overseas, the cuts to social services, the privatization of public jobs, and the wholesale collapse of government as a regulatory check on corporate malfeasance and greed. All of these changes have resulted from the increasing corporate dominance of our media, our political campaign process, the legislative process and the courts. Tea Partiers do not, and perhaps forever will not, recognize that all of these changes have also disproportionately affected people of color. Instead, they line up behind the beneficiaries of these changes, believing that those more vulnerable than them are to blame for their suffering.

So, it’s time to stop calling you and your ilk a movement. The end result here is that your fans will support more political candidates who preach that the government cannot work and cannot be trusted and will prove themselves right upon taking office by further dismantling it. As that unfolds, your followers will undoubtedly continue to decry fascism and theocracy as they support turning the U.S. into precisely both. This is the tragedy of things—that every day is opposite day.

And, that, at last, brings me to my final point.

You’re Brilliant, Glenn Beck

The above history lesson operates on the assumption that you have been sincere in your choice of date. And this is where credit is due to you and where many of your detractors get things wrong. While I think you a fool, and a very dangerous one at that, you and your talk-radio/Fox Blowhard Brigade are brilliant propagandists. White conservative claims to King’s legacy are pure cynicism, providing both political fuel and political cover.

Your adversaries consistently operate within the terms you set for a given debate, including reducing this to being just about Dr. King himself instead of the Movement of which he was a part. You rightly outrage those who are the legitimate beneficiaries of the Movement, particularly contemporary civil rights organizations and black political actors who continue the struggle against white racism. Yet, any and all black outrage serves as simple and immediate proof of your collective white victimization. Anyone who cries, “How Dare You Claim Yourself King’s Legacy!?!” reinforces your narrative that you are now the oppressed racial group in America, that your freedoms are under attack, and that therefore Dr. King belongs to you because he stood for “colorblindness.” Thus, at the same time that progressive outrage fuels your devotees, it also insulates them from charges of racism. The outrage is a, if not the, key ingredient in your recipe of misplaced self-righteousness. That is the point that your adversaries too often miss; these kinds of claims to Dr. King afford white demagogues like you the opportunity to repackage age-old racist ideas as some would-be opposition to the white racism of the Movement era itself. (Yes, even open racists among you will often claim a break with the racists of the past.)

Lastly, the ceaseless framing of “Is this story really about racism?” –in which your adversaries willfully participate instead of challenging the assumptions of the question itself—can occupy hours and hours of air time, distracting your followers from learning about the real causes of the economic and environmental catastrophes unfolding around them. Amidst the renewed bluster with each successive news story, you win, whether sincere or not. That political brilliance renders matters of the historical record (as, say, what appears above) besides the point. So bravo to you, because your adversaries—who are the legitimate heirs to Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement—play right into your hands.

Dr. Laura

So, Glenn Beck, here endeth the lesson. And, like most history lessons, it includes a homework assignment. Your chalkboard should have some arrows connecting The March on Washington to some Movement heroes and finally to the often forgotten Hall High. Please draw a final arrow to Dr. Laura Schlesinger. In light of recent events, would she be an apt addition to your “Restore America” charade? Why or why not?

I’ll give you time to think on it; you have a busy weekend ahead. Happy March on Washington Day.

Please don't post the exact same thing on multiple threads. This is the sort of stuff I usually yell at Ican or Okie for doing.

Cycloptichorn

There are things that need to be repeated, Cy. I'm glad it was posted here. Had it not been, I would have missed it.

I was going to say something similar; that everybody doesn't always visit the two (or more threads) the same article or idea is posted.

I feel that different people post on different threads.

Besides, voting down my posts is the only exercise some here will have today.

In the 20th century, the USA rescued and saved the lives of hundreds of million people throughout the world. In that same period, communists mass murdered over 100 million civilians.

Bush in the 21st century rescued and saved the lives of hundreds of thousands civilians, and the jihadist nut cases have mass murdered tens of thousands civilians.

What has Obama and the jihadist nutcase done in 2009 and thereafter?

You take vacuous and fatuous to new heights, Ican.

War criminals don't get a gimme because others have done good, just as dirty cops don't get a pass just because there are good, decent, honest cops. No one deserves a by because they can point out someone else more murderous.

Of course no ONE deserves a by for the murders (i.e., intentional killings) THEY have perpetrated, because they can point out someone else more murderous.

BUT MILLIONS OF AMERICANS, past and present, deserve recognition and appreciation for the tremendous GOOD they have done for the human race AND for having not murdered anyone.

What about the Americans who have killed in self-defense and/or in defense of others? They too deserve recognition and appreciation.

What about those Americans, who while attempting to defend the lives of others, inadvertently killed non-murderers? At worst they are guilty of incompetence.

What about those people, Americans as well as non-Americans, who have intentionally murdered out of anger, for personal gain, or for what they believe to be a guarantee of entry into paradise? They are the ones who deserve our condemnation.

So stop bigoted accusations against ALL of a group for evil supported by or perpetrated by SOME of that group.

Fatuous again, Ican. There has never been any accountability for the large number of war criminals in the USA. Many walk around free today.

For the heaping on of recognition and appreciation, the USA knows few equals. It's downright sickening.

Just consider that one aberration that sits in South Dakota. What a god awful thing to do to a beautiful mountain. There was actually talk of carving Reagan's visage into that piece of rock.

How many times are you going to lie about that, pom? I never said that, period, do you have that straight yet, or are you still going to persist in lying about it? This is but one example of your silly and frankly wrong posts.

And how many have given their last drop of blood for helping another live or gain freedom in other countries, places like the Pacific, Europe, the shores of Normandy, Korea, lots of places? Even in Vietnam, the Vietnamese now mostly love Americans for what we did there. In fact, I personally attended a seminar or meeting in California with other Vietnam vets, where Vietnamese also attended and gave emotional speeches of thanks with tears in their eyes. Libs can question this, I don't care, it is the absolute truth, ican. One vet that gave a little talk there had taken a vacation to Vietnam and said that although you will never read this or see this anywhere in the media, it is his opinion now that we did not lose the war there.

Your one-sided perception of reality proves your own ignorance. You've already proved your ignorance many times before; why must you continue to reprove it over and over again?

So in your reality, no Americans died on the shores of Normandy? What reality do you live in, ci, I am curious about that?

Not that reality matters to you, but among the thousands of Americans that invaded the shores of Normandy was my wife's uncle, who by the hand of fate still lives by the way.

That's not the issue, Okie. Largely, that's a huge canard that's been repeated so often many Americans think it's true. And it is true, in small part, but the evil deeds, the brutal suppression of innocents the world over is too big, too widespread a truth to be swept away with these simplistic fairy tales.

It's how far far too many innocents have given their last drop of blood solely to line the pockets of a greedy America. This has been going on for more than a hundred years. The USA didn't fight to free Cuba, the Philippines, etc from the grip of the Spanish. If that were true, they wouldn't have installed brutal dictators.

They fought to replace the Spanish with US companies, so that the exploitation could continue with the money flowing into US hands.

Do you think Smedley Butler, "at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history " was lying when he said his whole career as a Marine was as a "high class thug" for US big business. He was, he said, "a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism". He was right in the thick of things and he knew that all these "wars" weren't to save oppressed people, they were to oppress people to allow American capitalists to profit.

How old are you, sixty, sixty five? When are you going to stop mouthing empty platitudes and face up to the truth?

Many died in Europe; WTF has that got to do with anything you're trying to support?

It's simply another piece of the propaganda, CI. Of course there were many US military personnel who died but it's always addressed as though they are the only ones who suffered and died.

As a percentage of population the numbers are not that large [which doesn't render the individual sacrifice as any less].

"The US had the lowest casualty rates of the major powers in WWII".

http://www.angelfire.com/ct/ww2europe/stats.html

Why is there never any talk of Russia's tremendous sacrifice, 13.6 million military compared to 295 thousand American, 7.7 million civilian Russia deaths compared to zero for the USA.

Source:

http://ww2bodycount.netfirms.com/

===============

Another source,

http://www.angelfire.com/ct/ww2europe/stats.html

gives


USA 407K [m] 6k [c]

Russia 12 million [m] 17 million [c]

[m] = military [c] = civilian

There are more people in the world who are not murderers than who are. Why would you single out people for not having murdered anyone? Should we all stand up and applaud ourselves?