How Clinton Courted Racists in Pennsylvania

DAVE LINDORFF
Counterpunch
Saturday, April 26, 2008

Time for a discussion on … not race, but racism.

One of the clear observations that can be made about the ugly Democratic presidential primary just held in Pennsylvania is that it was marred by racism.

The winning candidate, Hillary Clinton, who bested Barack Obama by just over 9 percent of the vote after a six-week campaign, made a determined effort to court the white, working class voters in Pennsylvania’s midsection and in the heavily ethnic northeastern part of the state, and she succeeded. According to exit polls, for example, white men voted 57 percent for Clinton and 43 percent for Obama. White women went 68 percent for Clinton and 32 percent for Obama. White Catholics, a particular target of the Clinton campaign, went 70 percent for Clinton and 30 percent for Obama—her biggest margin of any grouping.

Most of Clinton’s white voters came from the overwhelmingly white rural parts of the state and the ethnic northeast and far west. The evidence: Obama won the urban vote by 60 percent to 40 percent.

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Clinton began her focus on the white vote in earnest during the South Carolina primary, when husband Bill famously equated Obama’s campaign with that of an earlier black presidential campaigner, Jesse Jackson. The linkage was immediately spotted as a clever way of labeling Obama as a “black” candidate, since Jackson has always been a lightning rod for white voters because of his active support for such touchy issues as affirmative action and fair housing laws.

She also made much during the Pennsylvania campaign of Obama’s membership in a black church in Chicago, and of his relationship with the church’s black liberation preacher, Jeremiah Wright (adding that she “would have left” such a church herself).

As I said, it was an ugly campaign, in which Clinton and her surrogates went out of their way to parse and divide the Democratic electorate, and to tear down her opponent in ways that could do lasting damage, should he win the nomination in August and have to go head to head against Republican John McCain.

Now, Clinton backers are trying to rebut the charge of racism in Clinton’s campaign and among those who voted for her, arguing that the 90 percent of Pennsylvania’s blacks who voted for Obama are equally racist. As one correspondent on the website Democrats.com put it, “I'm not sure how this works. I've seen splashed all over the media how we Clinton supporters are racists because a percentage of people said that race was important in their decision. And yet, 9 out of 10 blacks voted for Obama. I haven't seen numbers (if they were asked at all) indicating what percentage of blacks were influenced by race when voting for Obama. Who are the real racists? We are not allowed to say. And the media is afraid to ask.”

Another individual, commenting on one of my columns, wrote, “It is ridiculous to suggest that white people who don’t vote for Obama must be racist. It is not whites who are most heavily influenced by race in this election. On the contrary, it is the black electorate who have shown a tendency to cast a race-based vote. How else do you account for Obama receiving 90% of the black vote? If 90% of whites voted for Clinton, you’d scream racism. Why aren’t you similarly critical of blacks?”

Let’s examine this claim critically, though.

Yes it is true that 90 percent of blacks who voted in Pennsylvania cast their ballots for Obama, the black (half-black, actually) candidate. But remember, these are people who for all their adult lives have been voting for white candidates for president. It cannot be said that they do not or will not vote for whites; only that given the opportunity to vote for a black candidate, they did so.

In Clinton’s case, certainly most of those who voted for her did so not because she was white, but because of other reasons (not least because she is a woman—Clinton won 59 percent of the female vote). But clearly some of her support came from whites—men and women—who, as Clinton Pennsylvania mentor Gov. Ed Rendell said, “will not vote for a black candidate.”

And there in stark terms is the answer. There are white voters in the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania—a lot of them, in fact—who are simply racists. They will not vote for a black candidate for president. Period.

That is a far different thing from a black voter who votes for a black candidate, or a Catholic voter who votes for a Catholic candidate. Identity politics is not racism. A black voter might rationally feel that a person of color in the presidency could better understand the issues confronting the voter in question, just as a woman voter might think a woman candidate could better understand her issues. That does not make the black voter a racist any more than it makes the woman voter a man hater.

But the white voter who will not vote for a black candidate is something different, just as a man who will not vote for a woman candidate is something different. These are bigots or sexists.

Now clearly no candidate can be blamed if bigots simply happen to vote for them, but Clinton, in this campaign, is guilty of deliberately seeking the votes of bigots. Her use of the Rev. Wright to smear Obama, her choice of lily-white extras for her campaign ads, all speak to this obscene strategy.

It was, as I said, an ugly primary.

And you wonder Why Ammerica is the Way it is!!!!

Church Sign Outrage: Pastor Questions Obama’s Faith With Link to Osama


You see this less in the North, but in the South ignorance is at a all time how and of course, why wouldn't a man who been a Christian over 20 years, not a Muslim....This is plain laughable......I have nothing further to say....

Daily Motion
Tuesday, April 22, 2008

"I have a feeling he might be Islamic; therefore, he doesn't recognize Christ."

church sign
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US jets drop bombs on Sadr City

Press TV
Monday, April 21, 2008

US warplanes have dropped bombs on east Baghdad district of Sadr City where hundreds of civilians have already been killed in air strikes.

Residents said low flying jets dropped bombs in sectors 22 and 24 of Sadr City, around midnight (2100 GMT Sunday).

About two hours later, according to witnesses, helicopters fired missiles at four targets in Sadr City.

The populated slum area has frequently been pounded by US aircraft or artillery. Many civilians have been killed and wounded as a result of the attacks.

Netanyahu Says 9/11 Was Good For Israel

Former Israeli PM and right wing Zionist lauds attacks while Iranian leader's comments serve as straw man

Steve Watson Infowars.net Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Former Israeli Prime Minister and current leader of the opposition Benjamin Netanyahu has stated during a speech that the 9/11 attacks were a good thing for Israel.

Israel's Ma'ariv newspaper reported that Netanyahu, leader of the Likud party, told an assembly at Bar Ilan university:

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq."

Thousands of dead Americans and millions more slaughtered Iraqis, along with a war torn and divided country is beneficial to Israel, according to Mr Netanyahu.

The newspaper also reported he later added that the events "swung American public opinion in our favor."

In a display of utter disrespect, the staunch Zionist is reported to have made the comments at the conference on the division of Jerusalem as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians.

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Netanyahu's comments echo a previous statement he made on the very day of 9/11, as reported in the New York Times, September 12th:

Asked tonight what the attack meant for relations between the United States and Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, replied: “It's very good.”

Then he edited himself: “Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.”

Netanyahu has strong ties with leading American Neoconservatives such as PNAC signatory Richard Perle, former Pentagon official Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, former Middle East Adviser to US Vice President Dick Cheney.

In 2002 these men, as representatives of right wing think tank The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, authored a paper entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, for the purpose of advising Netanyahu on how to "engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism."

The document urged Israel to aggressively seek the downfall of their Arab neighbors by exploiting the inherent tensions within and among the Arab States. The first step was the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

The paper suggested that “Israel will not only contain its foes; it will transcend them,” postulating that a war with Iraq would destabilize the entire Middle East, allowing governments in Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and other countries to be replaced.

In other developments today, the Iranian leader President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has once again questioned the official version of events surrounding 9/11.

"Four or five years ago, a suspicious event occurred in New York. A building collapsed and they said that 3,000 people had been killed but never published their names," Ahmadinejad is reported to have said.

In a speech broadcast live on state television, Ahmadinejad called the attack a pretext that was used to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.

Though it remains to be seen whether Ahmadinejad's comments have once again been mistranslated or taken out of context, it is expected that they will be seized upon by those seeking to demonize the 9/11 truth movement, which has recently gained increased publicity via endorsements from notable public figures such as former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura and legendary American singer Willie Nelson.

Unlike Ahmadinejad, activists within the 9/11 truth movement have never questioned the death toll resulting from the attacks, which is a patently ludicrous thing to do, and have worked closely with first responders groups, such as the Feal Good Foundation, and victims families groups, such as the Coalition of 9/11 Families, in order to push for a new investigation.

Pentagon seeks authority to train and equip foreign militaries

Thom Shanker
IHT
Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged Congress on Tuesday to grant the Pentagon permanent authority to train and equip foreign militaries, a task previously administered by the State Department, and to raise the annual budget for the effort to $750 million, a 250 percent increase.

Gates said that rapidly building up the armed forces of friendly nations to combat terrorism within their borders was "a vital and enduring military requirement" — and one that should be managed by the Defense Department.

Representative Ike Skelton, the Missouri Democrat who is the Armed Services Committee chairman, voiced apprehension over "what appears to be the migration of State Department activities to the Department of Defense."

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But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who testified with Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, expressed full support for plans to make the Defense Department the lead agency for what is known as the Global Train and Equip Program, which emphasizes rapid assistance.

The State Department also would benefit under a parallel proposal that would double the budget, to $200 million, for a program aimed at assigning civilian experts to work overseas alongside — or instead of — the military. That joint Pentagon-State Department effort would be led by the State Department.

Full article here.

Secret DOJ Memo Says Fourth Amendment Has "No Application" After 9/11

Disclosure of classified documents reveal total dismissal of U.S. Constitution

Steve Watson Infowars.net Thursday, April 3, 2008

The American Civil Liberties Union has uncovered details pertaining to a secret Justice Department memo from October 2001 that reveals the Bush administration effectively suspended the Fourth Amendment where domestic counter terrorism operations are concerned.

The ACLU reports that the memo states the "Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations." after 9/11. In other words, the DOJ gave the White House a green light to effectively shelve Constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures in the wake of the terror attacks.

The memo was written by then deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo, also the co-author of the PATRIOT Act and author of the now notorious torture memos.

It is almost certain that Yoo's memo was written to provide a legal basis for the NSA, a military intelligence agency, to begin its warrantless wiretapping program, which was initiated in the same month.

Just days after the memo's delivery to the White House, Dick Cheney and other administration officials briefed four House and Senate leaders on the NSA's secret terrorist surveillance program for the first time.

The existence of the 2001 memo came to light via a newly declassified March 2003 document from the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) entitled Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States, which makes reference to the previous memo.

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The ACLU reports that this second memo takes the erosion of the Constitution beyond the Fourth Amendment and makes the case that the central due process guarantee of the Fifth Amendment, the protection against deprivation of life, liberty and property, can also be bypassed by the President.

"This memo makes a mockery of the Constitution and the rule of law," said Amrit Singh, a staff attorney with the ACLU. "That it was issued by the Justice Department, whose job it is to uphold the law, makes it even more unconscionable."

The March 2003 document was declassified by the Pentagon in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the ACLU pertaining to the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody abroad.

In a footnote of the document it is written "Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations", referring to a document titled Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States."

"The recent disclosures underscore the Bush administration's extraordinarily sweeping conception of executive power," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU's National Security Project. "The administration's lawyers believe the president should be permitted to violate statutory law, to violate international treaties, and even to violate the Fourth Amendment inside the U.S. They believe that the president should be above the law."

The AP reports that the Justice Department has refused to say if and when the legal opinion expressed in the two newly discovered memos was overturned internally, meaning that it could still be considered legally acceptable to forgo constitutional protections on the President's say so.

The ACLU has challenged the withholding of the October 2001 memo and the issue is pending before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

These two new memos provide more sections in the vast jigsaw of legislation that when pieced together makes up the complete overturning by the current administration of the protections provided to American citizens by the Constitution .