What they have come to learn is 'hope, change etc.' was mostly campaign rhetoric and they are bitter over being duped.
I am not sure Obama lied to the American people though, no doubt, he cleverly structured his campaign to take advantage of voter discomfort with GW, Iraq etc. The effect is the same as if he purposefully lied and many think he did and continue to do so.
As we also know, Obama was ably assisted by a fawning, adoring press that chose to provide him cover. They portrayed him as the saviour of our nation, the political rock star who burst upon the scene who could do no wrong because he was intelligent, spoke well and, being black, his election would serve as testimony to the fact we had finally put the contentious matter of race to rest.
All worthy attributes and aspirations but when put to the test something happened. Cracks have begun to develop and the Roman Campaign Columns have begun to crumble.
We now learn, Obama's radical background and associations, his lack of administrative ability and far left ,off the chart, ideological thinking does not accord with the values of Main Stream America. Consequently, a backlash has developed manifested by his plunging popularity and approval and the Tsunami effect on many of his own Party's stalwarts who have chosen to retire on their enormous self- voted Federal pensions.
Even though Democrats may retain Kennedy's Senate Seat, they are being sorely put to the test, and their hapless candidate had to call upon Obama to the rescue, as she fends off the nation's anger.
Obama has mostly himself to blame. He wasted his enormous supply of good will because:
a) He turned his radical agenda over to an even more radical and arrogant Senate and House leadership.
b) He and this leadership have publicly broken virtually every campaign pledge that committed with respect to 'change, openness etc.'
c) After being elected, Obama set about blaming his predicament on his predecessor and that played well for a while but then the buck resisted being moved. More to the point, Obama did so in continual ways that eventually wore thin and reflected more on him than on GW.
d) He and his Party have imposed upon our nation an endless sea of red ink while disregarding the 'wee' people's wishes, most specifically, with respect to choice over their own health care.
e) Unwilling to face the reality of the backlash over health care he continues pressing forward with a brand of Populism that pits group against group - I have repeatedly alluded to Obama's 'Pinata' style of leadership. He seems to have a pathologic need to set up and punch at straw men.
f) Obama's priorities seem driven by a zealous ideology to finish FDR's unfinished effort to alter our Republic and make it a more socially dependent one than either our forefathers intended or most Americans want.
Is allowing unions to escape the health care tax ,which all other citizens and non-union workers must pay, an example of the Liberal's idea of 'government mandated fairness?"
For all of these reasons and many more I have not listed, we now have a president struggling to keep his head above water as the tide of discontent rises.
What all of this says to me is what Obama learned at the feet of his radical mentors has made him into our nation's tormentor!
Can Obama learn and, above all, can Obama change? Chew on that and decide for
yourself. (See 1 below.)
Liberals have a way of turning everything into hate. (See 2 below.)
Like the song Sinatra used to sing, true Conservatives continue to ask "Who Can I Turn To?" (See 2a below.)
Taliban attack Kabul. (See 3 below.)
One could say the Haitian tragedy coming on the eve of MLK Day is prophetic. It might even serve as a reminder of this great man and his awesome deeds and accomplishments. The article below contrasts King's thoughts with Ghandi's when it comes to Israel.
I never had the honor of meeting King. I was privileged to attend the dinner hosted by the City of Atlanta, honoring King as the Nobel Recipient. (Contrast King's actual accomplishments with Obama's prospective ones.)
Were King alive to day, I believe he would be pleased with the accomplishments we have made in Civil Rights but he would also tell us we must do more in the area of education and income disparity. I can only speculate on what he would say about the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars but I believe he would understand and support our need to fight radical Muslim terrorism.
The article below might give some insight as to his view of the Middle East.
In any event, I wish King were here among us because we would benefit from his soaring speeches and leadership. He had a dream, he did not live to see it completed and that should be our mission because it is a decent and worthy dream.
King will always remain one of my heroes though I did not agree with every position he took and realize, as a person, he had some character flaws which served to prove he too was human.(See 4 below.)
What I have been writing and warning about must have some credibility or Mass. would not be at the epi-center that it is. (See 5 below.)
Dick
1)Obama's fateful choice: After a rough first year, he can learn like Kennedy or fail like Carter
By Sean Wilentz
Only a year ago, the buzzword about Barack Obama was "transformational." Americans had supposedly elected another Lincoln to the White House; no, another FDR, or maybe a liberal Reagan. Nobody's talking that way anymore. Obama's actual achievements so far have been piecemeal at best.
He may be on the brink of signing a health-care reform bill, but it leaves many of his supporters underwhelmed. The economic picture, wrenched by the financial crisis that began in 2008, still looks uncertain, and for the unemployed it looks bleak. The White House has announced a new policy on Afghanistan, but it remains unclear exactly what that policy is, even inside Obama's own Pentagon.
The President himself has conceded that the country "has every right to be deflated" after his first year. Now that his polling numbers have fallen to Earth — from mid-60% approval a year ago to just below 50% approval today — Obama looks less like a political messiah and more a victim of unrealistic expectations raised, in part, by his own personality-focused election campaign.
In his own first year, Lincoln rallied the Union and took the first halting steps toward emancipation. FDR initiated key programs of the New Deal. Reagan completed the sweeping tax reform that was the cornerstone of his conservative domestic policy. Obama's presidency is taking longer to get on track. Or maybe it was a mistake all along to project wildly about Obama's "transformational" presidency before he had served a single day on the job.
Regardless, his performance ought to be held to a less exalted standard. Setting aside the important racial symbolism, Obama's first year may be most usefully compared with those of two Presidents of the modern era with very different historical standing: John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter. Like Obama, Kennedy and Carter were Democrats elected as agents of change after eight years of Republican control of the White House. Like him, they were youthful telegenic favorites of the press corps who promised a break with the tired politics of the past. Although they faced different situations at home and abroad, all three shared certain challenges.
In terms of his accomplishments and achievements, how has Obama fared compared with Kennedy and Carter, both of whom intended to translate bold plans into action — only to run smack into brutal reality?
And, more important, does it look as if the President will go on to succeed from here? Does his first year suggest that he will be like Kennedy, who smartly took responsibility for failures, learned from mistakes and set the stage for a political comeback? Or does Obama's first year suggest that he will follow Carter in never getting a handle on things and having a presidency that ends abysmally?
On the first test — the achievement test — Obama rates roughly in line with Kennedy and Carter.
Given his party's margins controlling the Congress and the long "to do" list with which he entered the White House Obama has faced criticism for not accomplishing more. With regard to health care reform in particular, the President's detractors charge that he ought to have obtained a far more sweeping bill than now seems likely.
Yet both Kennedy and Carter enjoyed even larger Democratic majorities than Obama does — and neither enjoyed smooth sailing in his first year. Kennedy found most of his early agenda, including health-care reform and an aid-to-education bill, hopelessly stalled because so much power on Capitol Hill belonged to conservative senior Democrats. Only after his assassination and the crushing Democratic victories in 1964 did the New Frontier's domestic hopes bear fruit as Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society.
Carter, for his part, antagonized the Democratic Congress by attempting to cut what he considered wasteful pork-barrel appropriations. Taking energy policy as his signature issue – calling it "the moral equivalent of war" – Carter managed to get an energy bill through the House by the end of his first summer, only to see it get bottled up in the Senate. By the end of the year, Carter's other domestic priorities, including welfare reform and tax reform, seemed to be going nowhere.
In foreign policy, Obama stands accused of muddling his stance on some crucial positions he took during the campaign, including the internments at Guantanamo and negotiating with the radical leadership in Tehran. In the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict, Obama demanded Israel cease all settlements on the West Bank and when rebuked failed to have a Plan B.
Yet Obama has certainly fared better than Kennedy, whose first year consisted of one foreign policy fiasco after another: the Bay of Pigs disaster, a shaky Vienna summit with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, and crisis over the building of the Berlin Wall. By contrast, Carter's early, slow progress in arms-limitation talks, and partial successes in Middle East diplomacy (resulting in the Camp David accords in 1978), looked almost triumphant. Yet Carter also spent the last day of 1977 in Tehran, where he elaborately toasted the Shah of Iran at a state dinner, and ironically helped set the stage for the foreign policy debacle that would eventually ruin his presidency.
Comparisons with the freshman years of Kennedy and Carter thus offer some solace to Obama.
But now what? As he rounds the bend into year two, this is Obama's choice: Learn from his missteps, publicly take personal responsibility for them, and correct course like Kennedy or flail like Carter, who ultimately proved unable to master the presidency.
Here's how Kennedy tacked in the winds of history. By immediately shouldering accountability for the Bay of Pigs invasion – calling himself "the responsible officer of the government" — Kennedy stood tall amid embarrassing defeat. By firing the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Richard Bissell, and replacing him with John McCone, he established firm control of his own intelligence service.
Thus reinforced, and having taken Khrushchev's measure, Kennedy was able to exercise the cool-headed combination of forcefulness and restraint that saw the world through the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. JFK also came to understand the urgency of civil rights reform and gained enough political momentum to propose and push for the legislation that was enacted after his death.
As a result, Kennedy and his party actually improved their political positions during his second year, enough so that the Democrats sustained only minor losses in the House and actually increased their Senate majority during the midterm elections in 1962.
By contrast, Carter essentially hunkered down — never adequately adapting his approach to dealing with Congress. When his energy reform efforts continued to stall, he appeared to blame the country (in his notorious "malaise" speech) and seemed to panic by summarily demanding resignation letters from his entire cabinet.
In foreign affairs, despite his noble vaunting of human rights, he could never extract himself from the mess caused by the crackup of the geo-political system engineered by Richard Nixon and Nixon's secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, notably in Iran. Democrats suffered huge losses in 1978.
It is not yet clear where Obama is headed. It will all depend on how he assesses his own performance, and what he makes of that assessment. Either he will identify shortcomings, take responsibility whether or not he believes he is to blame, and make the necessary changes. Or he will grow increasingly frustrated and obstinate and miss the critical opportunity to grow in office.
So far, unlike JFK, he has displayed a hesitance to take responsibility, most recently regarding the foiled terrorist attack over Detroit. This has exacerbated the tensions within his administration that have left the White House bickering, through press leaks, with the Pentagon over fundamental strategy in Afghanistan.
It remains to be seen what lessons the President has learned from his tribulations over health care, and how he will apply them in the future.
Now is the moment for Obama to take a long, hard look in the mirror.
At the end of 1961, President Kennedy learned from his aide Theodore Sorenson that a number of reporters were planning to write books about his first year in office. "Who would want to read a book about disasters?" Kennedy replied mordantly.
Obama's first year has been nowhere near as bad. But he has yet to show that he has handled the learning curve so that his presidency will be remembered more like JFK's than like Jimmy Carter's.
Wilentz is a professor of history at Princeton University and author of "The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln" and "The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008."
2)The Great Hate of the Left
By Wendi Lynn G
The left has long accused the right of being compassionless hatemongers. We stand for law and order, but they call it fascist oppression. We attend Tea Party rallies to express passionate opposition to the radical agenda and policies of the Obama administration, and we are called hateful racists. Our accusers forget that our president is also half-white, and further, that we couldn't care less either way -- race has long been a non-issue for us.
We attend town hall meetings to make it clear that we oppose a health care bill the Democrats insist on forcing down our throats, and they call us a hateful, angry mob. All passionate opposition to their point of view, even on the faces of smiling Tea Party participants, is considered angry hate. Because conservatives do not show compassion in the same way that liberals do, liberals say that conservatives have no compassion at all.
The way the left spins the truth about the right is deception at its finest. It is no wonder there is so much confusion about the truth in politics! The truth is that looking at conservatives through liberal-colored glasses makes for a complete distortion.
- Why is it considered "hate" to oppose the left but considered "civil rights" to oppose the right?
- Why do the left see government interference and control as compassionate liberation while conservatives see personal empowerment and responsibility as truly compassionate and liberating?
- Why is the Fairness Doctrine fair only if it shuts down the voices of conservatives?
- Why do the left call themselves pro-choice when the only thing they choose to endorse is to kill an unborn or partially born baby?
- Why can the left be harshly partisan when a conservative president sits in office, but when a far-left president sits in office, they want us all to come together? (And if we don't, we are hatemongers.)
Why are those on the left permitted to do and say appalling things that would destroy anyone on the right? Such hypocrisy is infuriating because it masks the truth that the hate is really a projection of the misery and hate within their own hearts.
However, every once in a while, we are provided a perfect teachable opportunity to expose the truth, as was the case during the recent health scare of Rush Limbaugh, in which the left exposed themselves in full regalia. Shameful and beneath any American was the hate displayed not fifteen minutes after it was reported that Rush was taken to the hospital in serious condition. There was a flood of responses in online commentary -- so many praying for his recovery, and disgustingly, some for his demise.
It is one thing to hate someone. However, for Americans, it crosses the line when that hate makes one wish for the harm or demise of another. To pray for anyone to die, let alone with such brazen arrogance and glee, is appalling and breathtaking.
As usual, I saw no compassion from a left who hail themselves as the "leaders of compassion for all people." I saw more hypocrisy from the left, who railed in hyperbolic outrage against anyone on the right who didn't grieve with them over the loss of Senator Ted Kennedy. Reading their hateful commentary made me wonder if these people all graduated from the Alan Grayson School of the Shameful and Ignorant.
Where are Nancy Pelosi's crocodile tears now? Where is her heart-wrenching concern for "this kind of rhetoric" -- the kind that creates a climate in which violence takes place (from the left, might I remind her)? Where is the co-called "nonpartisan" outrage at such behavior, the kind that screams from every biased mainstream media outlet when a clever and homemade Tea Party sign disagrees with the Obama administration? Why are they not also being called out on their legitimate hate behavior and language?
The truth is that no matter how passionately we oppose the policies of President Obama, no matter how fervently we want to remove Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid from office, and no matter how angry we are about being ignored by Congress and the Obama administration, no true conservative would ever, ever wish for the harm, illness, or death of any of them! It is unconscionable to even think it, let alone to say it, even in jest.
For a people who constantly talk about restoring our best values, I daresay they need to take a good look in the mirror -- and then consider that they should be first in line for that handout. Praying for anyone to die is beneath any American. Those whose hate would compel them to wish another person to die desperately need the grace of God for a heart and a conscience, as they are already reprobate and half-dead themselves. For all of their prayers for death, they need our prayers for life so much more.
Wendi is a writer and the Northern California Deputy for RagingElephants.org.
2a)Fabian Conservatism
By Bruce Walker
Conservatives, who constitute the overwhelming majority of Americans, are angry with the Republican Party leadership and how politics has been played since Ronald Reagan left office. Often Republican nominees have seemed to copy Bill Clinton's "triangulation" -- strategically placing themselves as the arbitrators between conservatives and leftists. Sen. John McCain luxuriated for years in fawning media coverage of his "independence" from conservatives. George H. Bush, as soon as the Gipper was gone, promised to move us to a "kinder, gentler" -- more moderate -- America. Specter and Jeffords switched parties at critical times. Who trusts Republican leaders? Not serious conservatives, who have been burned so many times.
The question, though, is what to do? Many conservatives have long seemed to harbor the attitude that without a revolution now, we are doomed. That assumes that we must transform America in the next couple of years, and that we will have the opportunity to do so.
The present sorry state of our country did not begin with Obama or Clinton or even LBJ. The cure for the plague of Leftism will come in steps. Conservatives who want every good reform implemented now will become sad, demoralized, and bitter. There is no need for that. We must instead become "Fabian Conservatives."
The left moved the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave into the Land of the Taxed and the Home of the Slave by adopting Fabian Socialism. There is a reason today why Obama is not pushing for an absolute revolution like Lenin or Hitler sought: Obama practices Fabian Socialism. He works to erode our liberties step by step. He tries to create constituencies who may not be socialist themselves, but who will become addicted to some program in the socialist agenda. This is what conservatives should do. We should give clusters of Americans a new vested interest in those three pillars of conservatism: federalism with robust states' rights, small and limited government at all levels, and the influence of Judeo-Christian moral values in all our institutions.
Fabian Conservatism means always moving to the right when we can and never supporting the left, but it also means that the transformation of America will come in increments. Fabian Conservatism means sometimes finding strange bedfellows (making common cause with leftists who have a particular ax to grind).
Here is an example of that: Vermonters have formed a secessionist ticket of state government candidates. These folks want to withdraw from America because our nation is not Marxist enough. Conservatives ought to believe strongly in states' rights, so we should agree with these radical Vermonters on this principle: The citizens of states, rather than the majority of Americans, ought to have the right to decide how the state is governed. States' Rights, in fact, is an ideal agenda for conservatives selectively pulling leftists into ad hoc support for our goals. Socialist Vermonters and conservative Utahans both have an interest in having their own citizens exercise primary policy power in their states.
Conservatives should also push hard for federal legislation that outlaws gerrymandering in congressional and in state legislative districts. We should do this even though redistricting after the 2010 elections may slightly favor Republicans. Why? Historically, gerrymandered districts have not only been used to keep artificial Democrat majorities in the House, but also to protect nearly all congressmen -- Democrat or Republican -- from losing reelection. Gerrymandered districts are part of the Incumbency Protection Plan of Washington. States can stop gerrymandering, but most have not. Why not push for an end to it at the federal level?
Why not push now for a restoration of the federal income tax deduction for medical expenses? This was effectively removed for millions of Americans when the threshold of expenses before deductions was raised to amounts above 7.5% of Adjusted Gross Income in the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Allowing all medical expenses, including insurance, to be tax-deductible would allow ordinary Americans to be able to select and buy their own medical services with no government involvement. Many millions of Americans would immediately and significantly benefit from this change, which would have the federal government subsidize through tax deductions privately chosen medical expenses. Hospitals, drug companies, doctors, and many other providers would like this -- there is no deduction unless medical costs are paid -- and once put back in the tax code, it would be hard to take out.
These and other proposals need to create an automatic constituency who will continue to support the reform in the future. If we had now strong federal safeguards of states' rights, fair legislative district boundaries, a flowering of faith-based solutions to social problems, and a restoration of the medical tax deduction, each reform would begin an institutional reformation of America in the direction of limited and local government and private choice in medical care -- not revolutionary changes, but rather, evolutionary changes.
We, the overwhelming majority, can reclaim America, but not in one great battle or bloody revolution. What we want instead is to be a powerful current of water, always moving America to the right, making some changes regularly and never permitting them to be lost. We must become Fabian Conservatives.
Bruce Walker is the author of two books: Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie and The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity.
3)Dozens of Taliban suicide bombers, gunmen storm Kabul
Kabul is wreathed in smoke and flame after at least ten suicide bombers backed by gunmen attacked the defense, justice, education and foreign ministries and the national bank. Rockets also landed near the presidential palace as Hamid Karzai was swearing in his new cabinet ministers. The attack was a setback to Barack Obama's new Afghan strategy, US commanders' belief that the military situation was beginning to stabilize and Karzai's third effort to form a government.
Taliban gunmen also ran through a Kabul shopping center tossing grenades and a blast was reported at a cinema. The Serena Hotel, frequented by foreigners, blazed as the Afghan National Army and police struggled for control. According to first reports, military and intelligence officers died in the assault, although only three people were reported dead and 30 injured. Afghan forces killed five insurgents at the shopping center.
Taliban of Afghanistan claims 20 of their number mounted the assault on the capital.
Military sources report many more would have been involved in order to keep up coordinated assaults on at least six locations for several hours, while also incurring fatalities.
4)Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Zionism
By Abraham Cooper, Harold Brackman and Yitzchok Adlerstein
Two ironies dominate the way we remember Martin Luther King. One pertains to all white Americans, the other to Jews.
Many of us think "us and them." We respectfully acknowledge the special place that Rev. King has in the place hearts of our black fellow-citizens, because of his pivotal role in shepherding the Civil Rights movement in its most crucial years. In truth, however, all Americans—blacks, but especially whites — owe more to Rev. King's leadership in those turbulent years. Looking back in at the decades of inequality, we should recognize how lucky we are that America's inner voice harkened to his message and method. For any society riven by deep divisions of race is a potential tinderbox. Largely because of Rev. King's preaching of non-violence, an America that could have exploded, instead was generally kept at a slow simmer, and change came without a greater degree of violence, loss of lives and property.
In eschewing violence, Rev. King faithfully distilled and applied to the lessons of Gandhi. Regarding the Jewish people, Rev. King's record was 180 degrees opposite to the Father of modern India. Reacting in real-time to Nazi persecution of German Jews in 1938, Gandhi wrote, "If I were a Jew…I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest Gentile German might, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment…Suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy … the calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews …But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy."
Gandhi also rejected the Jewish people's continuity and legitimacy in the Holy Land, even in the midst of the Holocaust, when Jews had no other place to go but the gas chambers. "The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me….Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French….The Jews should meet the Arabs, make friends with them and not depend on British aid or American aid, They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs…They can offer … themselves to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them."
Six million dead Jews later, Rev. King had an approach to Jewish survival and destiny diametrically opposed to Gandhi. He consistently spoke up in defense of the Jewish state, including this declaration soon before his death: "I see Israel, and never mind saying it, as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can almost be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality."
King, like so many other trailblazing Black leaders, was a true believing Zionist with roots in the long mutual history of Zionism in black as well as white. The story begins over a century ago with Edward Wilmot, born into a free black family on Charlotte-Amalie, capitol of St. Thomas, Danish Virgin Islands, in 1832. Proud of his African ancestry Blyden also prized his close cultural ties with Jews, beginning with members of Amelie's 400-strong Jewish community whose Yom Kippur services he watched from outside the congregation to which belonged a future rabbi, David Cardoze, who taught his young friend the rudiments of Hebrew. Unable to obtain a theological education in the racist pre-Civil War U.S., Blyden was sent by the American Colonization Society to Liberia, the American "Black to Africa" experiment that in 1847 became an independent nation. Devoting the rest of life to Africa as an educator, publicist, and diplomat, Blyden traveled widely including an 1866 trip to Jerusalem about which he wrote in From West Africa to Palestine (1873).
By the 1890s, Blyden was ready for the message of Theodore Herzl's new Zionist movement. In 1898, two years after the publication of Herzl's Der Judenstaat (1896), Blyden embraced "that wonderful movement called Zionism" as a model for the Pan African movement that today recognizes him as its godfather. By 1912, when Byden died, leadership of the Pan African movement to liberate the so-called "Dark Continent" from colonialism had shift to an African American, W. E. B. Du Bois.
Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 1868, Du Bois was educated at Harvard and German universities where he absorbed the patina of "polite" anti-Semitism he outgrew while working with such Jewish cofounders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as Joel and Arthur Spingarn and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise. By 1919 when he journeyed to Paris to head the first Pan African Congress, Du Bois was wedded to the position that "The African movement must mean to us what the Zionist movement must mean to the Jews . . . [The] amelioration of the lot of Africa . . . [must also] ameliorate the conditions of colored peoples throughout the world." Despite Du Bois fierce disagreements with Jamaica-born Marcus J. Garvey, who headed a mass "Back to Africa" movement in Harlem in the 1920s that veered toward conflict with the NAACP's liberal Jewish supporters, Du Bois agreed with the self-styled "Black Moses" about Zionism as a paradigm for black progress. Du Bois' and Garvey's pro-Zionism also extended to many of the "Black Hebrew" congregations founded during the interwar years that continued to flourish up through Israel's creation in 1948.
After the declaration of "Black Power" in 1965, MLK's friendship toward Jews and Israel was challenged by radical Black Nationalists like Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) of the Black Panther Party who looked as a role model to the martyred Malcolm X. Conveniently forgotten, however, is what Malcolm X said in 1964, before his assassination by fanatical followers of Elijah Muhammed of the Nation of Islam: "Pan Africanism will do for the people of African descent all over the world, the same that Zionism has done for Jews all over the world."
"Black Zionism" in the three decades since didn't disappear but went underground to periodically reemerge. Repenting his own history of anti-Israel outbursts, a maturing Jesse Jackson, before the World Jewish Congress in 1990, reaffirmed MLK's acceptance of Zionism as "the liberation movement" of the Jewish people. Randall Robinson, founding president of Trans-Africa, has also repeatedly stated that African Americans and Africans can learn much from the history of the Zionist movement.
Gandhi was wrong about the destiny of the Jewish people. Rev. King got it right. May his embrace of Zionism — based on a rich tradition from those who preceded him — continue to speak to both Jews and black Americans, and all the peacemakers inspired by his unmatched example.
5)Political Punch: Power, pop, and probings
By Jake Tapper
Political operatives say the Senate race in Massachusetts between Democratic state attorney general Martha Coakley and Republican state senator Scott Brown is too close to call. But the fact that President Obama felt the need to fly to the Bay State to campaign for a Democrat in one of the most Democratic states in the nation speaks volumes about the ugly climate for Democratic candidates.
Coakley has run an imperfect campaign and has had a rough couple weeks. But, as one senior White House official acknowledged to me, "in Massachusetts, even after a rough couple weeks the Democrat should be ahead." Polls have Coakley and Brown neck and neck.
At the rally in Boston for Coakley yesterday, President Obama said a few things worth paying attention to:
1) Feigned Nonchalance:
The president said of Brown: "I don't know him, he may be a perfectly nice guy. I don't know his record, but I don't know whether he's been fighting for you up until now."
But he also revealed some fairly intimate knowledge of Brown and the race: "He voted with the Republicans 96 percent of the time," the president said of Brown's time in the Massachusetts legislature. "Ninety-six percent of the time." He took on one of Brown's best lines during the campaign, when he pushed back on a debate question about sitting in "Teddy Kennedy's seat" and said it's "the people's seat."
"There's been a lot said in this race that this is not the Kennedy seat it's the people's seat," President Obama said. "And let me tell you that the first person who would agree with that is Teddy Kennedy."
And he went after one of Brown's signature shticks, his old pickup truck, used to convey Everyman appeal. "You've got to look under the hood," President Obama said. "Forget the truck. Everybody can buy a truck."
Clearly President Obama -- as he should -- is well aware of Brown's record.
2) Health Care Reform? What Health Care Reform?:
Last week President Obama attempted to reassure House Democrats that health care reform would be a political winner.
“If Republicans want to campaign against what we've done by standing up for the status quo and for insurance companies over American families and businesses, that is a fight I want to have," he said. "I'll be out there waging a great campaign from one end of the country to the other, telling Americans with insurance or without what they stand to gain about the arsenal of consumer protections; about the long-awaited stability that they're going to begin to experience. And I'm going to tell them that I am proud we are putting the future of America before the politics of the moment -- the next generation before the next election.”
But in Boston -- a fairly hospitable "one end of the country" -- the president did not directly mention the health care reform legislation, opposition to which Brown has made one of the signatures of his campaign. He talked about Coakley being on the side of the people, and Brown on the side of the insurance industry, but there was no direct reference to Brown being the key vote against passage of the health care reform bill.
This was an obvious sign that the White House knows just how unpopular the legislation currently is, regardless of what the president told House Democrats last week.
3) I Feel Your Anger:
The president acknowledged voter anger in a more stark way than I can recall him ever doing. (And again: this is in Massachusetts!)
"The anger there is real," a White House official told me, and it's replicated all over the country.
"People are frustrated and they're angry, and they have every right to be," President Obama said, "I understand. Because progress is slow, and no matter how much progress we make, it can’t come fast enough for the people who need help right now, today."
He went on to paint Brown and the GOP as exploiting that "pain and anger to score a few political points. There are always folks who think that the best way to solve these problems are to demonize others. And, unfortunately, we're seeing some of that politics in Massachusetts today.
"You know, we always knew that change was going to be hard. And what we also understood -- I understood this the minute I was sworn into office -- was that there were going to be some who stood on the sidelines, who were protectors of the big banks, and protectors of the big insurance companies, protectors of the big drug companies, who would say, 'You know what, we can take advantage of this crisis -- because it's going to be so bad, even though we helped initiate these policies, there's going to be a sleight of hand here because we're going to let Democrats take responsibility. We're going to let them make the tough choices. We're going to let them rescue the economy. And then we can tap into that anger and that frustration.'
"It's the oldest play in the book," the president said.
It’s not that the White House has been unaware of how ugly the 2010 midterms could be for Democrats. But however this race turns out, the closeness of the Coakley-Brown race is an ominous sign for Democrats.
4) Planning for a Brown Win:
This was unsaid at the rally, but one other thing worth noting is that the White House is obviously preparing a strategy for health care reform in case Coakley loses.
As we reported previously, the White House would want the House pass the Senate bill, so the Senate doesn’t have to vote any more on the matter in the new post-supermajority Senate with Scott Brown.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has told the White House that she’s skeptical the House would pass that legislation, given the stark differences in some areas, but Senate Democrats and White House officials would push hard the notion that the bills are 90 percent similar and not doing so would be allowing the insurance companies to win. House Democrats would want Senate Democrats force the bill through by bypassing normal Senate rules and passing the legislation through the "reconciliation" process -- requiring only 50 votes. That would even allow some moderates to peel away.
But White House officials note that reconciliation is only for budget matters so the most popular parts of the bill involving insurance reforms -- banning the denial of coverage based on pre-existing conditions, for instance -- would not be part of that bill.
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