From: ProgessiveAccountabilty.org
McCain Claim: McCain Defended Opposition Of Federal MLK Holiday By Saying He Supported Arizona’s State Holiday. During a press availability in Panama City, Florida, John McCain said, “I have supported hundreds of pieces of legislation, which would help Americans obtain an equal opportunity in America. I am proud of that record, from fighting for the recognition of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday in my state to sponsoring specific legislation that would prevent discrimination in any shape or form in America today.” [McCain Press Availability In Panama City, Florida, 8/1/08]
Obama Just Not A Good Negro
By: Ernest Harris
I'm about at the end of my rope as it relates to giving certain people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to how they respond to and treat Barack Obama and his family.
By "certain people" I am referring to the mainstream media (MSM) and to be frank, conservatives, most of whom are white, but by no means is this category limited only to whites. And by the way, I include some Hillary supporters and other Democrats in this category as well, because I don't for a minute believe just being in the Democratic Party makes one truly liberal or progressive.
But I have tried for quite some time in this campaign, and even before, as it relates to other situations in my lifetime, to give people the benefit of the doubt, to offer potential excuses for behavior that is so undeniably indicative of at minimum a double standard for how minorities are treated as compared to whites, and at worst, outright racism, and I do hesitate most of the time to use that word.
What has become very clear to me in the aftermath of Obama's historic trip to the Middle East and Europe is that the root of the opposition to, and extremely palpable dislike for Obama (and Michelle), is that he is just not behaving like the good negro that is expected of him. He has stepped out of his "place," beyond his station, into a position that was not agreed to and chosen for him by others. In short, he is being "uppity," that ultimate charge leveled at blacks for generations when they dared try to equate themselves with those who they should know are better than them.
Just look at some of the things that have been said, loudly and quietly, about Obama since this trip, which clearly pushed some of these people over the edge. In report after report, comment after comment, you could hear the grumblings. Obama was acting like a rock star; Obama was already acting like he was President; Obama was presumptuous; the trip and his talking in front of large crowds are symptomatic of Obama's hubris, his arrogance.
It was truly strange. Here you had an American man who was welcomed with open arms, indeed with great excitement about a new era that he just might represent, and many on the right (and some in his own party) were acting like he did something wrong. The double standard that couldn't be missed was that John McCain had essentially taken the same trip, and more, since he also went to Mexico and Colombia. And not once do I recall the MSM, or even the Democrats, questioning his right to go and the value of such a trip. Not once. But Obama goes and is greeted with much more excitement (an understatement) and he has to defend the trip. Outrageous. It is like Obama said himself at the Unity Conference this weekend in Chicago, it's like he is being punished for doing the trip better than McCain could. And for being more popular.
But you see, I don't ultimately think it is about whether or not Obama did it better or not. It is increasingly clear that this is about the fact that seeing a Black man (at least one who identifies as such in his case) in front of that crowd in Germany, seeing him with those heads of state, in a role as possible leader of the free world, was just too much. True colors are just starting to bleed through. We could see it coming with some people even before this trip. There were comments that Barack and Michelle were trying to act like the Black Kennedy's and there was, and still is of course, the much talked about charge that they are elitists. This charge has always been the most curious. It has come mostly, though not entirely, from Republicans who elected a current President who comes from generations of money and truly elite circles. How much more elite can a person be when their father was a President? Even McCain and his wife fit the definition of elite better, his father a Navy Admiral and his wife from one of the wealthiest families in the country. The Obama's, by all accounts, are from working class homes with no one in their families in a position to have "given" them anything they got. And yet it is the Obama's who are called elite.
No, they are not elitist. They are just minorities who are above and beyond what certain people are used to seeing, are better than what certain people are comfortable accepting since they do force the undeniable realization that they are indeed anybody's equal. And that just seems to be too much for some people to handle.
And now, according to Politco.com, McCain's new strategy is to go even further and try to make stick the notion that Obama is simply "not American enough." Which, no matter how you slice that, ultimately is code for he doesn't look like what an "American" should look like. It'll be interesting to see how far he gets with this one. But I have no doubt that there are many out there who deep down believe dark skin is not representative of 'America," at least not for our highest leader. It is clear, that no matter what Obama did, said, or does, he will never be acceptable, not because of his liberal positions, because we have had liberals run for office before, and because we saw and still see with some Hillary supporters, even being liberal is not enough. No, he will never be acceptable to this segment of our society simply because of his skin color. Political disagreements are not uncommon and are expected. But what we are seeing cannot be explained simply as partisan discourse.
There really is no other way to explain this double standard in treatment and response, this constant cry that Obama is presumptuous, arrogant, elitist and any number of other nicer ways to say he is not behaving as a good minority should, which is done by accepting only what is given, and by not daring to overshadow or overstep the white man, or woman as he did in Hillary's case.
He is just not supposed to be where he is and doing what he is doing. Ultimately that is one change too far and too fast for those in our society who cling to the old ways and outdated concepts of societal and world order.
Earnest Harris is an award-winning writer. He has written for The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Dallas Morning News, New York Newsday, and Hispanic magazine among others. He was also a political columnist with The Austin American-Statesman and the host of talk radio shows in Austin, Texas and St, Louis, Missouri. Currently he is primarily focused on the entertainment industry where he works as a writer, producer and director in Los Angeles. He and his wife oversee their own production company, Marlo Productions. Their latest movie, "A Simple Promise" was just released on DVD and two others are slated to go into production this year.
Vietnam War Speechwriter says:
Here We Go Again
By: Noel Koch
On the first Saturday of each new month during the summer a group of Vietnam Veterans gather at the Vietnam Memorial in the early morning hours to wash The Wall. It is an act of homage, honoring our Brothers and Sisters. We are joined by a local service group, Civil Air Patrol Cadets, recruited to continue the work after we are gone. Each person has his or her motives for coming together in that hallowed place. For me, it is an act of contrition.
From 1971 through 1974 I served in the White House as a Special Assistant to the President. Part of my role involved the crafting of speeches arguing the case for staying the course in Vietnam. These speeches represented, in the aggregate, a monument to specious reasoning and a misapprehension of the imperatives of great power. President Nixon did not coin the phrase "I am not going to be the first president to lose a war." That self-regarding sentiment came from President Lyndon Johnson.
Still, President Nixon adopted it, and the popular wisdom of foreign policy "thinkers" reaching back to the 50s dressed it in the more presentable language of global realpolitik. If the communists took Indochina, Thailand would fall, then Burma and on across the Asian sub-continent. Jingoists, confused over which way the dominoes might fall, and never reluctant to send other people's sons and daughters to war, warned that if the communists weren't stopped in Southeast Asia we would be fighting them in the streets of San Francisco.
Establishment gray beards joined the chattering classes to insist that if the US withdrew from Vietnam, the US would lose its credibility, would cease to be a great power, its word never again to be trusted by its allies and others who looked to us for leadership in the struggle against global tyranny. It was all, as Neil Sheehan, writing about John Paul Vann, called it: "a bright shining lie." And the worst lie of all, in repeated appeals to the grieving hearts of our fellow citizens, was that we could only redeem the lives of our fallen by "winning" the war. Braced by that lie, we sacrificed more.
At length, President Nixon, the grand master of realpolitik, began the necessary process of extracting America from Vietnam. The fears we promoted in the speeches I and others wrote and promoted proved baseless. Inevitably, the angers set loose by our misadventure in Vietnam persisted for years.
In the end, it was John McCain, brutalized as a prisoner of war, who completed his Vietnam service by leading the fight to lance the boil of bitterness that disfigured the face of America in the aftermath of the war. It was John McCain, much honored for his wartime heroism, who brought further honor upon himself by standing for reconciliation with an old foe. Implicit in McCain's healing leadership was the understanding that our withdrawal from Vietnam, where our nation lost a war but our warriors never lost a battle, did not disgrace the memory of the more than 58,000 who died there.
If disgrace is to be assigned, it rests not with those who served, but with those who misused their service. The fighters of Vietnam, after all, defending their homeland, were only the instrument of our losses. It was America's misguided leadership that was the agent of those losses.
So, it is a sorrow now to hear John McCain, in pursuit of the White House, accusing Senator Barack Obama of dishonoring the sacrifices of American soldiers by calling for the withdrawal of US forces from a conflict promoted, as was Vietnam, by deceiving the American people. It is inexplicable, as the war in Iraq itself is inexplicable, that Senator McCain should charge that Barack Obama "is willing to lose a war in order to win the presidency." Buried near the surface of that discreditable allegation is the insistence that America must put still more of its best at risk in order to redeem those it has already lost.
The Senator insists we must win in Iraq. Yet, after a war that has lasted longer than World War II, and after the loss of more than 4,000 American lives, a definition of "winning" has still to be offered by the authors of this fiasco and their supporters. Senator Obama's fitness to be Commander-in-Chief is reaffirmed by his determination to end this folly, despite attacks on his motives and his patriotism. It was that determination that has served to persuade Iraq that it must now put its own house in order. And that is as close to "winning" as we are going to get in this war.
It is often said, and correctly, that Iraq is a very different war from Vietnam, but this much they have in common: American lives were wasted in Vietnam and they are being wasted in Iraq. However much American blood is shed in that sour soil, it will not be sweetened sufficiently to nurture up the seeds of democracy. (huff post)
Noel Koch is a member of the steering committee of Vets For Obama. Visit their official site or join them on Facebook.
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Group Pushing 'Hillary For VP'
VoteBoth Closes Down
Nedra Pickler
WASHINGTON — An effort to urge Barack Obama to pick former rival Hillary Rodham Clinton as his running mate is shutting down under the assumption she is not a contender for the No. 2 spot.
The two former Clinton staffers who started the group Vote Both say Obama's decision to offer Clinton a prime-time speaking role at the Democratic Party nominating convention and other signals suggest Obama will not chose her.
"Because it seems that Senator Obama has made his decision to offer the slot on the ticket to another candidate, we believe that continuing to ask him to pick Hillary is no longer helpful to our party's chances of winning in November," Adam Parkhomenko and Sam Arora wrote in an e-mail they planned to send Thursday to the 40,000-plus supporters who signed onto their online petition.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton said the campaign won't comment on the vice presidential search and hasn't finalized the convention speaking program. Obama and Clinton advisers have said Clinton is likely to speak on the convention's second night, Aug. 26, which is the 88th anniversary of the ratification of the amendment giving the women the right to vote.
Parkhomenko and Arora have a combined 10 years experience working for Clinton. Most recently Arora was a press aide to her presidential campaign and Parkhomenko was executive assistant to former Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, who is now chief of staff for Obama's yet-to-be named vice presidential nominee.
In an interview, Arora was coy about what makes them so confident Clinton won't be chosen.
"All indications we have from people close to Senator Clinton and Senator Obama are that Hillary is not on the short list," Arora said. "We're looking at how we can _ if we can _ use Vote Both to help him because we want a Democrat in the White House."
Obama said this week that he wants a running mate who will help him change how business has been conducted in Washington _ seen by many as an indication that he won't pick Clinton.
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Gulf Report:
Purpose of Mideast Negotiations Is To Help McCain
According to a press release sent out by Time, this Friday's edition of the magazine will reportedly include a article that describes how Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is deeply involved in an effort to "clean up [President] Bush's foreign policy legacy."
But one newspaper in the Persian Gulf believes the negotiations are tailored for the benefit of John McCain during the fall election season. In a Thursday editorial entitled "Negotiations for the Sake of Rice," the UAE's Al-Khaleej writes that leaders in the United States, Israel and the Palestinian Territories all know that no breakthroughs can be expected in President Bush's last few months in office.
"But since the attention is focused on helping the Republican candidate John McCain in the presidential election in November, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will increase her pressures in an attempt to change some positions and facts, and sign a document - a mere document - that would be regarded as an accomplishment," the paper claims, adding that the negotiations are "pointless." (Huff Post)
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