14 October 2008
14 October 2008
WHY PAY ATTENTION IN HISTORY CLASS…?
0846 by Jeff HessIn 27 days, on 9 November, I and Have Coffee Will Write will celebrate our 4th bloggiversary. I hadn’t given the date much thought until yesterday when I was reading about our current financial wake-up call, what has happened in the America during the past four years and remembered something I wrote at the conclusion of my very first post.
In September 1920, a bomb exploded at the corner of Broad and Wall streets, the center of New York City’s financial district, killing more than 30 people and injuring hundreds more. If the bombing had occurred the year before, Americans might have interpreted it as part of a plot to overthrow the government. Now the United States seemed to be determined not to give way to panic. One newspaper reported:
“The public is merely shocked, not terrorized, much less converted to the merits of anarchism. Business and life as usual. Society, government, industry functioning precisely as if nothing had happened.” Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 18, 1920.
Did you have the same experience I did? Did you realize that all you had to do was change “Red” to “Terrorist” and move the dates to 2001-2002 to make it seem like a wrap-up story from your local newspaper? Did it make you a little uneasy to read about American citizens locked up without warrants or access to legal representation?
I focused there on the connection between Reds and Terrorists, but if we can look back at the business and financial policies of the Republican administrations of Warren Harding (1921-23), Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929) and Herbert Hoover (1929-33) we get the same sense of we’ve been here before.
If the flailing administration of Republican President Herbert Hoover followed on the heels of the near criminal neglect of Republican presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, can our nation afford today, in 2008 to even consider making Republican presidential candidate John McCain a Hoover to President George Bush’s Harding/Coolidge?
Vote on 4 November for the sane, reasoned, principled and thoughtful economic vision of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama: The Change We Need.
14 October 2008
WHAT THEY SAID…
0818 by Jeff HessTurns out America at its best looks precisely like Barack Obama. Diverse. Intelligent. Thoughtful. Hopeful. Part Irish. Part African. Part many things, overcoming all things.
13 October 2008
13 October 2008
ANOTHER McCAIN/PALIN RACIST BIGOT CAPTURED…
1647 by Jeff Hess[Update, 1647 — Ta-Nehisi Coates sums it up nicely:
I wasn’t going to post about this guy with the Obama monkey-doll. Then I watched the video again, and noticed something. There is nothing troubling about one lone racist nut in a crowd. What’s troubling is the crowd.
Dig how they just look on and smile uncomfortably. No one confronts him. This is the banality of evil, no? It isn’t the guy doing the deed. Its the enablers who give comfort and haven to spew his hatred. On one level, I’m thankful for them.
Anyone, who wants to now say that an Obama election proves that racism is dead will have to contend with this last week. And it isn’t the nuts that this person must contend with—it’s the crowds, the crowds who silently, and sometimes not so silently, just stand by and let it happen. They are all, to a man, cowards.
That’s cowards! Cowards! Cowards!]
You’ll remember this racist bigot from yesterday when I shared the CBS video of him realizing that this irrational hatred was about to be broadcast on the national airwaves and unsuccessfully trying to ditch his pathetic stuffed animal by passing the prop off to an innocent little boy.
Well before he was embarrassed and fearful of being outed as a racist bigot, he was proud of his white supremacy bull shit prop, and MorrillMajority got him on tape.
13 October 2008
WHAT THEY SAID…
1546 by Jeff HessTo recap: anti-war protesters had an anti-war sign, Obama supporters booed McCain, and a heckler called McCain a liar. Yeah, that’s pretty much the same as calling Obama a terrorist, a socialist, an Arab, and comparing him to a stuffed monkey.
13 October 2008
MUCKING OUT THE BLOGPILE…
1430 by Jeff Hess
I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is The Mother, The Child, The School Board And The Psychic.
13 October 2008
12 October 2008
WHAT THEY SAID…
1741 by Jeff HessMaybe if I were born elsewhere, I”d be telling jokes about hick West Virginians too, or at least laughing along. As a West Virginian, however, I”m troubled by the simplistic media coverage of racism in my state-a topic that conflicts me more deeply than I can adequately express. Statistics I can cite suggest that voters here don’t display any more racism than voters elsewhere. On the other hand, I”m horrified by the racism that I know is here because I see it. Our longtime United States Senator served as a member of the Klu Klux Klan as a young man. Some of our primary voters brazenly, even proudly, articulated their racism on national television.
Even certain family members and friends exhibit bad behavior. Take the friend who once told me, quite matter-of-factly, that despite his general open-mindedness his first thought when he sees a mixed-race couple is, “Dumb nigger lover.”
12 October 2008
12 October 2008
MUCKING OUT THE BLOGPILE…
1430 by Jeff HessI’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is Unthinkable Futures.
12 October 2008
12 October 2008
TOLEDO BLADE PICKS OBAMA OVER McCAIN…
1023 by Jeff HessFrom the Toledo Blade:
Like the choice 76 years ago, next month”s election is one in which voters have the power to cast aside the failed, greed-driven principles of governance and economics that have led to the current downturn and return to an equilibrium in which hard work is again rewarded by a decent standard of living for the average American.
To be sure, the path to recovery won”t be easy for the next president. There are ominous signs that the economy will continue to falter before confidence can be restored in the financial system. The leadership required to contain and reorder the economic mess created by eight years of heedless deregulation will have to be both inspired and inspiring.
Which led the paper’s editorial board to conclude:
We believe the person best equipped by temperament and intellect to firmly grasp the reins of government and guide it safely forward in these uncertain times is Barack Obama.
And of Republican presidential candidate John McCain?
Sen. John McCain, by nature, has shown himself to be incapable of providing the American people with an optimistic vision of the future. Firmly rooted in the failed politics and policies of the past, he cannot guide us on a path he does not see.
12 October 2008
I COULD SEE THIS COMING…
0858 by Jeff HessMemo to John McCain:
The Moment We Cease to Be ‘Scared’ of Obama as President of the United States is the moment many of us cease to be particularly interested in getting you elected in his place.
Despite your advice that we shouldn’t be scared of Obama as President, I remain very, very troubled by the idea of a President Barack Obama, as do millions of other Americans. If you have any interest in actually becoming President rather than just going through the motions of a campaign, you’d better do whatever you can to keep it that way.
For the most part, you have a chance in this race at all for one reason: you are not Barack Obama. Very few people love you–or even like you. For a great many of us, our support for your candidacy has little, if anything, to do with any wonderful things we expect you to do if you’re elected President In fact, if you’re elected, we’ll no doubt have to spend a whole bunch of our time over the next four years trying to prevent you from doing much. Our support of your candidacy arises, rather, out of the really shitty things we reasonably expect Barack Obama and his socialist allies to do to our country if he’s elected.
The moment Barack Obama becomes an acceptable option in this election, you’re pretty much finished. If you have any hopes of winning, you’d do well to keep that in mind and act accordingly.
In a perverse corruption of President Franklin Roosevelt’s inaugural speech it is clear that all the Republicans have is fear itself.
12 October 2008
GOD BLESS YOU SISTER…
0839 by Jeff HessFrom the BBC:
A 106-year-old American nun living in a convent in Rome could well be the oldest person to vote in the 2008 US Presidential election.
Sister Cecilia Gaudette, who last voted for President Eisenhower in 1952, has registered to vote and says she will vote for Democrat Barack Obama.
Although hard of hearing, she keeps herself informed by reading newspapers and watching TV at the convent.
“I’m encouraged by Senator Obama,” she says.
“I’ve never met him, but he seems to be a good man with a good private life. That’s the first thing. Then he must be able to govern,” she adds.
Can’t you just imagine the Republicans trying to figure out how to challenge her ballot?
12 October 2008
KEEP THE CAMERAS POINTED, PEOPLE… IT WORKS…
0754 by Jeff Hess12 October 2008
WHAT THEY SAID…
0749 by Jeff HessThere are no black faces high in the McCain hierarchy to object to these tactics. There hasn”t been a single black Republican governor, senator or House member in six years.
This is a campaign where Palin can repeatedly declare that Alaska is “a microcosm of America” without anyone even wondering how that might be so for a state whose tiny black and Hispanic populations are each roughly one-third the national average.
There are indeed so few people of color at McCain events that a black senior writer from The Tallahassee Democrat was mistakenly ejected by the Secret Service from a campaign rally in Panama City in August, even though he was standing with other reporters and showed his credentials. His only apparent infraction was to look glaringly out of place.
12 October 2008
12 October 2008
“HE’S STILL GOT MUSLIM IN HIM…”
0716 by Jeff HessYesterday I said that we haven’t seen the end of this. The nudge, nudge, wink, wink factor is in full play here. I think McCain’s supporters believed that he is lying to the camera, but that they all know the truth.
Via Josh Marshall…
12 October 2008
WHAT THEY SAID…
0707 by Jeff HessRacism is a luxury that, at this point, a lot of white voters can ill-afford. I think a crucial number of them know that.
