Last Night's Reagan "Love Fest" of Republican Presidential Candidates - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

host · 05-04-2007, 08:06 AM

Does "running on Reagan" equal "running on empty"?

Quote:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...&type=politics

(05-04) 06:02 PDT Simi Valley, Calif. (AP) --

Ten Republican presidential candidates wanting to succeed President Bush embraced a more popular president, conservative icon Ronald Reagan, at every turn in their first debate of the 2008 race.

"Ronald Reagan was a president of strength," Mitt Romney intoned. "Ronald Reagan used to say, we spend money like a drunken sailor," said John McCain. And Rudy Giuliani praised "that Ronald Reagan optimism."

The world, however, is far different today than it was some 25 years ago when the nation's 40th president relaxed at his retreat in the rolling hills of southern California.

Iraq and terrorism now are top issues, support for Bush is at a low point and Republican hopefuls find themselves trying to prove to the party's base that they're conservative enough to be the GOP nominee — on social matters as well as the economic and security issues Reagan championed.

The three leading candidates — Giuliani, McCain and Romney — and their seven lesser-known rivals attempted to do just that Thursday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. They debated for 90 minutes in the shadow of the late president's Air Force One suspended from above and before Reagan's widow, Nancy, who sat in the front row of the audience.

They stressed the importance of persisting in Iraq and defeating terrorists, called for lower taxes and a muscular defense, and supported spending restraint.

<b>One by one, they invoked Reagan 19 times. In contrast, Bush's name was barely uttered; the president's job approval rating languishes in the 30s.
</b>
"They went out of the their way on multiple occasions, no matter the question, to associate themselves with Reagan," said Mitchell McKinney, a political communication professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia. "They tried their best to not be explicitly bashing or attacking Bush. Most of them tried, in some way, to take a pass on that."

Republican operatives agreed that the debate did nothing to shake up the crowded GOP field.

They said Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, McCain, a four-term Arizona senator, and Romney, the ex-Massachusetts governor, remained the strongest contenders, with the most money and the best approval ratings in the polls more than eight months before the first 2008 national convention delegates are selected.

"Clearly the top three looked quite presidential," said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster.

Scott Reed, who ran Bob Dole's 1996 campaign, added: "McCain showed a little energy. Romney showed he's very polished. And Giuliani started to clear up some of his issues with the base of the party."

Each largely stuck to their talking points — and often reverted to their stump speeches — as they sought to present themselves as the most conservative candidate in the pack, and a worthy heir to the political legacy of Reagan.

The former actor and California governor took office in 1981 when the world was absorbed by the Cold War, and good versus evil was defined by countries that aligned with the United States and those that stood with the Soviet Union — "the evil empire" in Reagan's lexicon. The arms race and the ever-present threat of nuclear war overshadowed social issues like abortion. Stem cell research didn't exist. There was no public debate about gay marriage or the so-called right to die.

Fast forward to the 2008 presidential race.

The candidates expressed resolve in winning the war in Iraq and defeating terrorists across the world. They also had to answer for their positions on a range of social issues, including abortion, stem-cell research and evolution.

"Nobody wants to talk about social issues for more than 11 seconds," said Rich Galen, a GOP strategist. "But they had to talk about what they were asked about."

McCain is the only top-tier contender who has a career-long record of opposing abortion, a position that resonates with a wide swath of GOP political activists who support the overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion.

With a record of supporting abortion rights, Giuliani was the only candidate who said "it would be OK" if the Supreme Court upholds the landmark ruling. "It would be OK to repeal it. It would be OK also if a strict constructionist viewed it as precedent," he said.

His rivals agreed that it would be a great day if the court overturns the landmark ruling.

Romney, for his part, acknowledged he had reversed course on the subject and said his position had once effectively been "pro-choice."

"I changed my mind," Romney said, adding that Reagan did the same.

But Giuliani, who said he personally hates abortion, hedged when asked about his current position.

"I think the court has to make that decision and then the country can deal with it," he said. "We're a federalist system of government and states can make their own decisions."

Most of the contenders said they opposed legislation making federal funds available for a wider range of embryonic stem cell research. The technique necessarily involves the destruction of a human embryo, and is opposed by many anti-abortion conservatives as a result.

There are exceptions, though, including Reagan's widow, Nancy. Also, public opinion polls show overwhelming support for the research, which doctors say holds promise for treatment or even cures of numerous diseases.

McCain was the only one to unambiguously say he supports expanded federal research into embryonic stem cells.

Giuliani's response was open to interpretation. He said he supports it "as long as we're not creating life in order to destroy it," then added he would back funding for research along the lines of legislation pending in Congress. However, the bill he cited does not increase federal support for research on embryonic stem cells. Rather, it deals with adult stem cells.

The field split on another issue, with Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo raising their hands when asked who did not believe in evolution.

Other participants included former Govs. Jim Gilmore of Virginia and Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin; and Reps. Duncan Hunter of California and Ron Paul of Texas.

Missing were three Republicans still weighing whether to run — Fred Thompson, the actor and former Tennessee senator; Newt Gingrich, the ex-House speaker from Georgia, and Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

Will any of these republican candidates be able to top the "statement" that Reagan made, especially considering the current bid for the presidency, by rival party candidate, black US Senator (D-IL), when Reagan opened his campaign for the presidency by speaking at a county fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi and advocating for "states rights"? Reagan made his Neshoba County, Mississippi appearance, just 17 years after this:

Quote:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=1962220
Truth and Reconciliation in Neshoba County
Mississippi Region Grapples with Legacy of Civil Rights Murders

Arecia Steele
Marisa Penaloza, NPR

Arecia Steele, 73, reflects on changes in Neshoba: "I used to hear my granddaddy talk about how to hang them up on the limb. Thank you, Jesus, you don't find that no more."

Summer of 1964

Read historical newspaper accounts related to the Neshoba murders, from 'The Neshoba Democrat':
June 25, 1964: 'Missing auto of trio found by FBI Tuesday'

July 16, 1964: Search Continues for Missing Rights Workers (front-page story)

July 16, 1964: Families Sue Sheriff, Deputy for 'Terroristic Acts'

Aug. 6, 1964: Bodies of Missing Trio Found

All Things Considered, June 17, 2004 · This month marks the 40th anniversary of one of Mississippi's most notorious civil rights murder cases. On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers, in Mississippi for "freedom summer," were killed after traveling to Neshoba County to investigate the burning of Mt. Zion, a black church. No one has ever been charged with murder in the case, even though federal agents identified a local group of Ku Klux Klansmen as the killers.

Most of the suspects are now dead, but some still live in town -- most notably, Edgar Ray Killen, the alleged leader of the Klan klavern that chased down the civil rights workers, took them to a quiet county road and shot them. For years, the history of Neshoba County's racial violence was hushed up -- not taught in schools, or talked about in upstanding white families.

But as NPR's Debbie Elliott reports, a task force of black and white citizens in Philadelphia, Miss., the Neshoba County seat, is trying to come to grips with the community's legacy. The group wants to publicly apologize and is calling for those responsible to be brought to justice.....

Quote:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/remem...eagan_6-7.html

.....Domestic policy

GWEN IFILL: Roger, let's talk about his domestic policy. Pick up where Michael left off and say how did this Reaganism translate into domestic policy in a way that still reverberates today.

WilkinsROGER WILKINS: Well, Reagan was an incredible combination of a person who was very optimistic, upbeat, but underneath there were some really ugly parts of his politics.

He was, I said once before on this program, he capitalized on anti-black populism by going to Philadelphia and Mississippi , for example, in the beginning of his campaign in 1980.

Nobody had ever heard of Philadelphia and Mississippi outside of Mississippi , except as the place where three civil rights workers had been lynched – in 1964 – he said I believe in states rights.

Everybody knew what that meant. He went to Stone Mountain , Georgia , where the Ku Klux Klan used to burn its crosses, and he said Jefferson Davis is a hero of mine.

He was rebuked by the Atlanta newspapers – they said we don't need that any more here. He went to Charlotte, North Carolina one of the most successful busing for integration programs in the country and he said I'm against busing and again the Charlotte papers rebuked him. And the impact of that plus his attacks on welfare women, welfare queens in Cadillacs, for example. And his call for cutting the government. He didn't cut the government; the military bloomed in his time. But programs for poor people day diminished entirely and America became a less civilized and less decent place. .....

Quote:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=1962220

............Goldwater said he supported the white Southern position on civil rights, which was that each and every state had a sovereign right to control its laws. The Arizona Republican argued that each American has the right to decide whom to hire, whom to do business with and whom to welcome in his or her restaurant. The senator was right at home with Southern politicians who called the Civil Rights Act an attack on "the Southern way of life."

To overcome the forces arrayed against the bill, Johnson needed every bit of his political skill and every bit of emotional aftermath from the previous November's assassination of President John F. Kennedy. But once the bill had passed, Johnson told confidants that Democrats might have lost the South to Republicans for years to come. He was exactly right.

Today the South is solidly Republican. In every presidential election since 1964 -- save the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976 -- Dixie has been the heart of GOP presidential politics. The white Southern vote was key to the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, and President George W. Bush was elected in 2000 because he carried every Southern state.

Ronald Reagan was key to the South's transition to Republican politics. Goldwater got the ball rolling, but Reagan was at his side from the very beginning. During the 1964 campaign, Reagan gave speeches in support of Goldwater and spoke out for what he called individual rights -- read that also as states' rights. Reagan also and portrayed any opposition as support for totalitarianism -- read that as communism.

In 1976, Reagan sought the Republican nomination against the incumbent President Gerald Ford. Reagan's campaign was on the ropes until the primaries hit the Southern states, where he won his first key victory in North Carolina. Throughout the South that spring and summer, Reagan portrayed himself as Goldwater's heir while criticizing Ford as a captive of Eastern establishment Republicans fixated on forced integration.

Reagan lost the nomination to Ford in 1976. But when the former California governor ran for the presidency again in 1980, he began his campaign with a controversial appearance in Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers had been brutally killed. It was at that sore spot on the racial map that Reagan revived talk about states' rights and curbing the power of the federal government.

To many it sounded like code for announcing himself as the candidate for white segregationists. After he defeated President Carter, a native Southerner, Reagan led an administration that seemed to cater to Southerners still angry over the passage of the Civil Rights Act after 16 years. The Reagan team condemned busing for school integration, opposed affirmative action and even threatened to veto a proposed extension of the Voting Rights Act (the sequel to the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed a year later and focused on election participation). President Reagan also tried to allow Bob Jones University, a segregated Southern school, to reclaim federal tax credits that had long been denied to racially discriminatory institutions.

The genial Californian Republican denied there was any racism implicit in those policies. Even when he was characterizing poor women as welfare queens driving around in pink Cadillacs, he said it was a merely matter of encouraging people to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. The America he seemed to envision had no need to deal with racial divisions, and he said his only desire was to encourage self-sufficiency for all Americans and to reduce all Americans' dependence on government programs.

<b>Today it is hard to believe that Reagan had such success using the Civil Rights Act as a whipping boy.</b> The Civil Rights Act is now so widely accepted that it doesn't attract controversy in any region of the country -- including the South. There is no debate about the right of black people, Hispanics or Asians to stay in a hotel, shop in a store or to apply for a job without fear of racial discrimination......

Why is it "hard to believe"....and what has changed since 1980?
Can any Reagan supporters seriously argue with this description of the man?:

Quote:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0617-06.htm
Published on Wednesday, June 16, 2004 by the Free Press / Columbus, Ohio
Ronald Reagan: A Legacy of Crack and Cheese
by Bob Fitrakis

........Caught up in the Goldwater conservative movement, Reagan realized that he could deliver the right-wing reactionary script better than the much more intellectual Senator from Arizona. Thus, in 1966, Reagan took his highly-honed hokum and became the ultimate shill for the far right. As the New Republic pointed out during his 1966 campaign for Governor of California, “Reagan is anti-labor, anti-Negro, anti-intellectual, anti-planning, anti-20th century.” Reagan campaigned against the civil rights movement, the peace movement, the student rights movement and the Great Society. In his fantasy world, Reagan equated giant price-fixing corporations with small town entrepreneurs. As every long-hair in the late 60s knew, Ronald Reagan was “the drugstore truck-drivin’ man, the head of the Ku Klux Klan.” He said if the students at Berkeley wanted a bloodbath, he would give them one. James Rector was shot dead soon after.

The real legacy of Reagan can be found in Philadelphia, Mississippi where he announced his candidacy for the Presidency in 1980. Previously, the most important political event in Philadelphia had been the deaths of civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Cheney in 1964. Reagan appeared, sans hood, to talk in those well-known racist code words about “state’s rights.” This was no mistake or misunderstanding. Reagan was signaling the right-wing movement that he would carry their racist agenda. Remember in 1984, his political operatives accused Walter Mondale of being “a San Francisco-style Democrat.”

Reagan reached out and embraced the racist apartheid government of South Africa through his policy of so- called “constructive engagement.” Reagan’s solution to the de-industrialization of America was to build the prison industrial complex. His centerpiece was a racist so-called “War on Drugs” while his friends in the CIA used narcotics peddlers as “assets.” And then Reagan’s El Salvadorian Contra buddies began bringing in crack. ..........

As I see it....the contrast could not be more glaring. On the democratic side, youthful Barak Obama is a top contender in the 2008 presidential race, and on the republican side, a clump of ole white men met in racist and divisive Reagan's "palace" in Simi valley to wrap themselves around his name and his legacy?

.....And isn't that what the chasm in America today is all about? A "new south" controlled politically by white republicans (Governor of Mississippi is Haley Barbour, former RNC chairman....in a state with the highest percentage black population and the lowest per capita income, in the country....) vs. democratic party dominated, rust belt and the coasts?

Besides lower taxes and higher deficits, unending war on terror, no plan to deal with massive underinsurance of middle and lower income Americans, and a lack of appeal.....embracing of Reagan could fairly be called a divisive signal, to many minorities and to the majority of northern voters, even without the revelation of an apparent republican transformation of the US DOJ from an agency that protected civil rights and access of all Americans to the polls, to an agency with a mission now to do just the opposite, what do any of these republican canididates offer, that passes for leadership into the second decade of the 21st century?

Bill O'Rights · 05-04-2007, 08:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

One by one, they invoked Reagan 19 times. In contrast, Bush's name was barely uttered; the president's job approval rating languishes in the 30s.

Well...they were at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

trickyy · 05-04-2007, 09:32 AM

i think reagan was better than a large number of republicans
and he is the most successful republican president since ... (?) ... so they would do well to invoke him

one part of the debate i found interesting was the number of candidates who did not "believe in" evolution
about half of them did not

besides ron paul, none of them had the guts to address the current administration in more than a few words

and abortion seems to be one of the top three priorities in their debate
republican candidates have said the same thing for decades now, and they will probably continue so long as there is a "sucker vote"

aceventura3 · 05-04-2007, 11:25 AM

The debate was a waste of time, there was no substance and nothing new presented. The big looser was MSNBC and Chris Mathews. This was their opportunity to shine and they blew it. The questions focused on religion, abortion, and the past rather than the future. They should not even call these events debates. we would have been better served if they simply gave each canidate 9 minutes to present their best pitch for the office of Prsident.

I generally feel the same about the Democratic Party debate as well.

Just my $.02, not interested in debating things like evolution, silly hypotheticals about Isreal bombing Iran, or changing our Constitution so the Govenator can run for President.

loquitur · 05-04-2007, 11:53 AM

I'm not sure what evolution even has to do with anything at the presidential level. Although, the idea that someone running for president is a creationist is kinda frightening.

aceventura3 · 05-04-2007, 12:10 PM

It was done in a way (show of hands) for a gotcha moment. Most people equate the question to - did God create man (purposeful) or did man evolve (accidental)? I think thoughtful people who "don't beleive in evolution" have a nuanced position.

I remember the Deocratic Party debate where they asked everyone by show of hands if they ever lived in a household with a gun. What is the point of that? My, gradma had a gun, therfore I am...what?!?

trickyy · 05-04-2007, 12:40 PM

the debates are quite useless, although i guess it gets the candidates in the news for a day

giuliani had perhaps the hardest question -- sunni-shiite difference. most people don't know that one, yet to fumble would have been a disaster.

robot_parade · 05-04-2007, 03:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by trickyy

the debates are quite useless, although i guess it gets the candidates in the news for a day

giuliani had perhaps the hardest question -- sunni-shiite difference. most people don't know that one, yet to fumble would have been a disaster.

This is a *hard* question? For someone who is running for president? When we expect him to find a successful resolution to Bush's War?

We're doomed.

dksuddeth · 05-04-2007, 03:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

As I see it....the contrast could not be more glaring. On the democratic side, youthful Barak Obama is a top contender in the 2008 presidential race, and on the republican side, [Ba clump of ole white men met in racist and divisive Reagan's "palace"[/B] in Simi valley to wrap themselves around his name and his legacy?

Is this a clue as to who you will be voting for?

host · 05-04-2007, 09:06 PM

No, dksuddeth.... I am not endorsing Obama. If today was primary election day, I would probably vote for John Edwards, although I think Obama's chances of being the democratic nominee are greater than Edwards are.

I've spent time in the area where Edwards comes from....the north western South Carolina hill country. It's an area that is the home of Bob Jones U., and it used to be a center of textile and other light manufacturing. That has been replaced by recent recruitment of more centralized job providers, a BMW assembly plant, for example.

South Carolina is one of the 5 poorest states, and I think that even though Edwards has come a long way away from where he grew up, there is enough of his roots still in him to make him seem real to me.

If I had to vote for a republican, I am most impressed with some of Ron Paul's positions, with the exception of his libertarian opinions. Overall, I view Paul to be too extreme to ever be a serious contender, but I don't expect him to deliver a secret speech at a meeting of CNP for their endorsement, and he seems to be the only real personality in the republican field.

In 1992, Bill Clinton seemed "real" to me.....as Jimmy Carter did. Hillary seems too contrived, as does Obama. I'd vote for Gore if he decided to run.

I'm turned off most by candidates and politicians who ignore economic reality, and who respond to the best interests of the moneyed ten percent and the corporations that they invest in, at the expense of the rest of us.

I cannot vote for politicians who pander to segregationist sentiments while feigning that they are not aware that they are doing that.

Etarip · 05-05-2007, 12:41 AM

I think everyone can agree on the winner of this debate.... Zombie Reagan.

samcol · 05-06-2007, 06:20 AM

I thought Ron Paul was outstaing because he doesn't go along with the Republican talking points like the other candidates, similiar to Gravel in the Democratic debates.

seretogis · 05-06-2007, 07:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by samcol

I thought Ron Paul was outstaing because he doesn't go along with the Republican talking points like the other candidates, similiar to Gravel in the Democratic debates.

It's a shame that the only Republican candidate worthy of invoking Reagan's name doesn't have a chance at getting the nomination.

dc_dux · 05-06-2007, 09:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by seretogis

It's a shame that the only Republican candidate worthy of invoking Reagan's name doesn't have a chance at getting the nomination.

The Reagan myth lives on.

Reagan was one the biggest spenders in recent history.

Quote:

As president, Reagan increased government spending through the roof. Federal spending totaled $590 billion in fiscal year 1980; by 1988, Reagan’s last year, it rose to $1.14 trillion. Under Reagan, the national debt climbed from less than $800 billion to more than $2 trillion. Although some people like to attribute this to "defense spending," that’s largely a myth, and irrelevant to the question of sheer government size, anyway.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory40.html

Why do you think ROn Paul would ever invoke Reagan's name?

roachboy · 05-06-2007, 09:44 AM

ronald reagan <=> chauncey gardener
the null set.
back in those days reactionary ideology was the new borax-o. you were encouraged by the white guy in the cowboy hat to watch the following segment. yet another simple-minded morality play staged yet again in the hollywood wild wild west. this is the world and everything in it. after the simple-minded morality play, the white guy in the cowboy hat come on again and let you know that there was nothing to worry about, you can just toss your pesky stained reality into the wash and out it will come all white white white. next week you watch the same show at the same time on the same channel and nothing will have changed. because there is no change. there is no history. there is only repetition.

reagan the empty, pivot for the new conservatism, the one that prefers retreat into myth to confrontation with complexity...training funding and arming fascist paramilitaries in central and south america was easy peasy because in western films such places do not exist, they are all "over the border" outside the frame...military expeditures as a way to prop up the economy was easy peasy because you call it fiscal responsibility every week you call it fiscal responsibility and hey the dude wearing the cowboy hat wouldnt lie to you, now would he? the wholesale distortion of reality that lay behind the claim that reagan "won the cold war" is no problem in detergentland because the coldwar slots directly into the hollywood construction of the massacres that constitute the history of the west as the showdown between white boys in white hats against white boys in black hats, us vs them, the hero vs the villian, good vs evil.

gil scott-heron had reagan nailed: "nostalgia, the good old days when the movies were in balck and white and so was everything else."

it's funny watching conservatives continue to wrap themselves in the flag with the huge zero on it, the legacy of ronald reagan, the null set incarnate. it kinda makes me think of the titanic, but maybe that's because i am in a good mood this morning.

samcol · 05-06-2007, 10:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

The Reagan myth lives on.

Reagan was one the biggest spenders in recent history.

Why do you think ROn Paul would ever invoke Reagan's name?

Ya, I don't understand the whole Reagan worship by Republican's these days. They need to go back a few more decades and probably centuries to find a president who held the same beliefs as Paul.

tecoyah · 05-06-2007, 10:35 AM

Reagan was a REAL cowboy....now they gots Cleatus.

Hell even I was a Republican for Reagan....Now I keep trying to figure out a four letter word I can make out of republican.

Too Bad Neocon is six letters

host · 05-06-2007, 12:42 PM

I'm sure that, from the grave...Mr. Reagan, the man who shit on the contribution of the 3 civil rights workers <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/01/07/mississippi.rights/index.html">(working for equal voting rights....)</a> murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi, by kicking off his 1980 presidential campaign at the fair, there....telling an almost exclusively white audience that he advocated for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States'_rights#States.27_rights_as_.22code_word.22">"states rights"</a>....is smiling approvingly about Schlozman's "performance", the DOJ backing of his "Jim Crow" voter suppression and partisan smear tactics, and the republican party operatives (Karl Rove) who designed and prioritized the "strategy".....and of course.....the republican presidential hopefuls, who converged on his "palace" the other night, to wrap themselves around his memory. Reagan....the former president who would be remembered by a huge and empty presidential library, if they hadn't stuffed it with air force I......

Quote:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/wa...us_in_firings/

Missouri attorney a focus in firings
<b>Senate bypassed in appointment of Schlozman</b>

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | May 6, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Todd Graves brought just four misdemeanor voter fraud indictments during his five years as the US attorney for western Missouri -- even though some of his fellow Republicans in the closely divided state wanted stricter oversight of Democratic efforts to sign up new voters.

Then, in March 2006, Graves was replaced by a new US attorney -- one who had no prosecutorial experience and bypassed Senate confirmation. Bradley Schlozman moved aggressively where Graves had not, announcing felony indictments of four workers for a liberal activist group on voter registration fraud charges less than a week before the 2006 election.

Republicans, who had been pushing for restrictive new voting laws, applauded. But critics said Schlozman violated a department policy to wait until after an election to bring voter fraud indictments if the case could affect the outcome, either by becoming a campaign issue or by scaring legitimate voters into staying home.

Schlozman is emerging as a focal point of the investigation into the firing of eight US attorneys last year -- and as a symbol of broader complaints that the Bush administration has misused its stewardship of law enforcement to give Republicans an electoral edge.

No stranger to election law controversy, Schlozman previously spent three years as a political appointee in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, where he supervised the voting rights section.

There, he came into conflict with veteran staff over his decisions to approve a Texas redistricting plan and a Georgia photo-ID voting law, both of which benefited Republicans. He also hired many new career lawyers with strong conservative credentials, in what critics say was an attempt to reduce enforcement of laws designed to eliminate obstacles to voting by minorities.

"Schlozman was reshaping the Civil Rights Division," said Joe Rich , who was chief of the voting rights section until taking a buyout in 2005, in an interview. "Schlozman didn't know anything about voting law. . . . All he knew is he wanted to be sure that the Republicans were going to win."

Schlozman declined to be interviewed. In a statement, Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd denied that the timing of the election-eve indictments violated department rules and said politics has played no role in Civil Rights Division hiring decisions.

"Political orientation is not a criterion solicited or considered in the hiring process," Boyd said in an e-mailed response.

But the complaints about Schlozman dovetail with other allegations of political bias at the Justice Department. Last week, the department was forced to acknowledge that a key player in the US attorney firings, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's former White House liaison Monica Goodling , is under internal investigation for allegedly taking party affiliation into account when hiring career assistant US attorneys, contrary to federal law.

Schlozman -- a replacement US attorney with a controversial hiring record of his own -- might be asked to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, at the request of Missouri's new Democratic senator, Claire McCaskill.

A native of Kansas, Schlozman graduated from George Washington University law school in 1996, clerked for three years, and worked as a lawyer for two more. In November 2001 he became an aide in the office of the deputy attorney general.

At the time, the Bush administration was starting to take a greater interest in voting laws because of the photo-finish 2000 election. Control of Congress and the White House was turning on a handful of votes in battleground states -- and thus on issues such as districting maps and turnout rates among party loyalists.

Republicans claimed that ineligible voters were a major problem and pushed for laws to require photo IDs. Democrats said there was no evidence of widespread fraud and that such requirements suppress turnout among legitimate voters who are poor or disabled, and thus less likely to have driver's licenses.

The Justice Department's voting rights section referees disputes over the fairness of state election requirements. Under federal civil rights law, the section must sign off on redistricting maps and new voting laws in Southern states to ensure that changes will not reduce minority voting power.

Schlozman stepped into this fray in May 2003, when he was promoted to deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division. He supervised several sections, including voting rights. In the fall 2005, he was promoted to acting head of the division.

Schlozman and his team soon came into conflict with veteran voting rights specialists. Career staff committees recommended rejecting a Texas redistricting map in 2003 and a Georgia photo ID voting law in 2005, saying they would dilute minority voting power. In both cases, the career veterans were overruled. But courts later said the map and the ID law were illegal.

Bob Kengle , a former deputy voting rights chief who left in 2005, said Schlozman also pushed the section to divert more resources into lawsuits forcing states to purge questionable voters from their rolls. One such lawsuit was against Missouri, where he later became US attorney. A court threw the Missouri lawsuit out this year.

Schlozman also moved to take control of hiring for the voting rights section, taking advantage of a new policy that gave political appointees more control. Under Schlozman, the profile of the career attorneys hired by the section underwent a dramatic transformation.

Half of the 14 career lawyers hired under Schlozman were members of the conservative Federalist Society or the Republican National Lawyers Association, up from none among the eight career hires in the previous two years, according to a review of resumes. <b>The average US News & World Report ranking of the law school attended by new career lawyers plunged from 15 to 65.</b>

Critics said candidates were being hired more for their political views than legal credentials. David Becker , a former voting rights division trial attorney, said that Schlozman's hiring of politically driven conservatives to protect minority voting rights created a "wolf guarding the henhouse situation."

Quote:

http://www.answers.com/topic/hatch-act-1
Hatch Act

Enacted in 1939, the Hatch Act (5 U.S.C.A. 7324) curbs the political activities of employees in federal, state, and local governments. The law's goal is to enforce political neutrality among civil servants: the act prohibits them from holding public office, influencing elections, participating in or managing political campaigns, and exerting undue influence on government hiring.....

Asked to respond on behalf of Schlozman, the Justice Department said it considers job applicants with a wide variety of backgrounds and insisted that politics has played no role in hiring decisions.

After the 2004 election, administration officials quietly began drawing up a list of US attorneys to replace. Considerations included their perceived loyalty to Bush and a desire by White House political adviser Karl Rove to increase voter fraud prosecutions, documents and testimony have shown. Most of the proposed firings were for US attorneys in states with closely divided elections.

Among those later fired was David Iglesias , from the battleground state of New Mexico, where many of his fellow Republicans had demanded more aggressive voter fraud probes. Iglesias has accused his critics of making the "reprehensible" suggestion that law enforcement decisions should be made on political grounds.

Missouri is another closely divided state. According to McClatchy Newspapers, Graves appeared on a January 2006 list of prosecutors who would be given a chance to resign to save face. He abruptly resigned in March 2006. Gonzales quickly installed Schlozman as Grave's replacement, bypassing Senate confirmation under new law that had been slipped into the Patriot Act.

That summer, the liberal activist group ACORN paid workers $8 an hour to sign up new voters in poor neighborhoods around the country. Later, ACORN's Kansas City chapter discovered that several workers filled out registration forms fraudulently instead of finding real people to sign up. ACORN fired the workers and alerted law enforcement.

Schlozman moved fast, so fast that his office got one of the names on the indictments wrong. He announced the indictments of four former ACORN workers on Nov. 1, 2006, warning that "this national investigation is very much ongoing." Missouri Republicans seized on the indictments to blast Democrats in the campaign endgame.

Critics later accused Schlozman of violating the Justice Department's own rules. A 1995 Justice election crime manual says "federal prosecutors . . . should be extremely careful not to conduct overt investigations <b>during the preelection period" to avoid "chilling legitimate voting and campaign activities" and causing "the investigation itself to become a campaign issue."

"In investigating election fraud matters, the Justice Department must refrain from any conduct which has the possibility of affecting the election itself," the manual states, adding in underlining that "most, if not all, investigation of alleged election crime must await the end of the election to which the allegation relates."</b>

The department said Schlozman's office got permission from headquarters for the election-eve indictments. <h3>It added that the department interprets the policy as having an unwritten exception</h3> for voter registration fraud, because investigators need not interview voters for such cases.

On Nov. 7, 2006, Missouri voters narrowly elected Democrat McCaskill over the Republican senator, James Talent . The victory proved essential to the Democrats' new one-vote Senate majority.

<b>Last week, McCaskill told NPR that she'd like Schlozman to testify before Congress: "What this all indicates is that more questions need to be asked, and more answers under oath need to be given."</b>

As the controversy over the US attorney firings started building, the Bush administration picked someone else to be western Missouri's US attorney. Unlike with Schlozman, the administration first sent the nominee to the Senate for confirmation.

In April, when his replacement was confirmed, Schlozman got a new job. He now works in the Justice Department office that supervises all 93 US attorneys, where he is handling sentencing matters and cybercrime.

Quote:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/why-I-left/
Why I Left the Civil Rights Division

by Bob Kengle

samcol · 05-06-2007, 04:58 PM

Quote:

Highest Positive, Lowest Negative

In the MSNBC.com rating window of 72,419 votes at 8:10 PM EDT, Friday, May 4, Ron Paul not only had the highest positive rating:

32% Paul
30% Romney
26% Giuliani
21% McCain
14% Huckabee
9% Brownback
9% Tancredo
8% Hunter
8% Thompson
6% Gilmore

...but he also had the lowest negative rating:

29% Paul
35% Romney
37% Huckabee
40% Giuliani
42% McCain
43% Gilmore
43% Hunter
45% Thompson
45% Tancredo
46% Brownback

He won the MSNBC debate poll and still is barely getting any coverage. There are many reasons for Liberals and Conservatives alike to support this guy.

host · 05-06-2007, 06:33 PM

Reagan's "Noble War" credo, influenced 28 percent of this country to learn no lesson from US insertion into the civil war in Vietnam, and...if the simplistic, jingoist nonsense on this site is any indicator......

Quote:

http://www.wewintheylose.com/
<b>When it came to defeating the Soviets, Ronald Reagan made it simple: "We win, they lose." Now more than ever, the defeatists in Congress must hear that same message. America will never surrender.</b>

To: Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House
Harry Reid, U.S. Senate Democrat Leader

Congress has passed and President Bush has vetoed H.R. 1591, the Iraq Surrender Act of 2007.

This legislation, which you worked to pass, sets a timetable for surrender. It pulls the rug out from under our troops. That is shameful and wrong.

Your actions have already emboldened the enemy. Violent jihadists now know that the elected leadership of Congress would undermine the troops by holding their funding hostage to demands for surrender. .......

Bill Frist isn't smart enough to be a doctor, just as he wasn't wise enough to be a senator.....

....and page two of http://www.wewintheylose.com/bloggers.php features the site owned by Council for National Policy "leaders" <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=Stuart+Epperson+and+Edward+Atsinger+III.+council&btnG=Search">Stuart Epperson and Edward Atsinger III.</a>

Quote:

Blogs referring the most signatures:

1. hughhewitt.townhall.com 1329

The republican presidential hopefuls, featuring the legacy of Reagan, have been driven back 20 years, into a tiny, tiny, li'l "universe", thanks to the republican candidate in the past two campaigns, George W. Bush. Even the rigged DOJ won't be able to suppress enough opposition votes next year, to push Rudy, or Mitt, or McCain to a victory at the polls....

This new site is apparently an "encore" to the fizzled, "victory" garden:

Quote:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...cus/index.html
UPDATE: Diana Powe, a periodic (and always excellent) commenter here, and a long-time police officer in Texas, sent the following e-mail to Tucker Carlson:

Dear Mr. Carlson;

Please let me join the number of others who have suggested to you that you do a follow-up story to the complete collapse of the silly Victory Caucus over the first few days of its existence. The lazy meme in much of the mainstream media is that there is some sort of radical anti-war left that is preventing the recognition of the mainstream of people who crave victory in Iraq.

Apparently, the fringe includes me, a 30-year serving Texas police officer, my oldest brother, Col. Marc B. Powe (USA ret.) who served two tours in Viet Nam, was a military attache in Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war and was in the Pentagon itself on 09/11, my brother, Christopher L. Powe, who was an artilleryman in Viet Nam, and my brother, Stephen F. Powe, who was a distinguished military graduate from Texas A&M University and served as an Army infantry officer in the mid-1970s.

We are widely recognized for being completely out of the mainstream of political and social thought as you can easily imagine.

Perhaps a follow-up story could contrast the "pump-and-dump" traffic figures at the Victory Caucus website with the steadily increasing majority of Americans across all political lines who tell mainstream pollsters that they want our involvement in Iraq to end soon.

Diana J. Powe

Richardson, Texas

....and speaking of "tiny"....the republican presidential debate was sponsored by MSNBC and politico.com. Shouldn't we know a little more about politico?

Sho'nuff.....politico.com is closely tied to Reagan, Bush's uncle, the criminally convicted money laundering Riggs Bank, and the former Chilean dictator, Pinochet !

Quote:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...ing/index.html
Glenn Greenwald
Friday May 4, 2007 13:08 EST
Who funds and runs the Politico?

(Updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV)

In the middle of an article by The Politico's Mike Allen regarding last night's GOP presidential debate, one finds this paragraph:.....

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0070214-2.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
February 14, 2007

Press Conference by the President

.....Michael. Michael, who do you work for? (Laughter.)

Q Mr. President, I work for Politico.com.

THE PRESIDENT: Pardon me? Politico.com?

Q Yes, sir. Today. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: You want a moment to explain to the American people exactly what -- (laughter.)

Q Mr. President, thank you for the question. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Quit being so evasive.

Q You should read it.

THE PRESIDENT: Is it good? You like it? ....

djtestudo · 05-06-2007, 08:11 PM

I must have missed where "state's rights" became a synonym for "racism".

host · 05-06-2007, 11:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by djtestudo

I must have missed where "state's rights" became a synonym for "racism".

The problem is that Reagan then, and republicans running for president, still to this day, have no sense of what it was like to live in the segregated south. Reagan showed no empathy and he exhibited no higher principle than to say or do anything to attract the votes of southern whites, many of who were conservative christians.

Reagan backed Goldwater in 1964, including Goldwater's opposition to the Civil Rights act, passed that year. Reagan had no interest in ending racial segregation, he stood in the way of ending it by any other method than decisions by individual states. That worked great.....even with Federal intervention, Georgia public schools, for example, remained segregated until summer, 1969.

Reagan came to NC at least twice, and criticized, both times, a school busing program in Charlotte that was seen locally as a success.....

You will see more evidence that the current republican administration has dismantled the DOJ civil rights enforcement division and the "wall" between civil service hiring and staffing, and the politically appointed employees, and have embarked on a mission that included exempting US Attorney appointees from senate oversight, in order to make prosecution of a non-existant voter "fraud problem", a top priority, with a clear intent to keep registration of voters and voting, itself....to a minimum when those registering or voting are deemed to be likely to vote against republicans.....

They're doing this because they recognize that they offer no platform to entice anyone not already aligned with their politics/policies to vote for their candidates.
It's criminal, and it needs to be exposed as what it is.....racist, classist, anti-constitutional, anti American:

Quote:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/polit...gan90_2-6.html
THE REAGAN LEGACY

February 6, 2001

....I also think he had a brilliant political strategy. It was really quite simple. There was conservatism, tax cuts, anticommunism -- the kind of a Goldwater conservatism. Then he brought in his persona kind of a nostalgia for the pre-60s America, which sat very well with a lot of conservatives, and then he also brought with him a lot of antiblack populism, which is very popular, worked for him, kept his party together but I think was quite bad for the country.

JIM LEHRER: Antiblack populism what do you mean?

ROGER WILKINS: Well, every once in a while Reagan would just send out these laser beam signals that were crystal clear. His first speech in his campaign in 1980 was in Philadelphia, Mississippi, which nobody outside of Mississippi had ever heard of except for one thing and that was that three civil rights workers were killed there in 1964. Reagan said then I'm for states rights. If you say I'm for states rights in Mississippi, everybody knows what you're talking about. Some years later he went to Atlanta and he said Jefferson Davis is a hero of mine. Everybody knows what you're talking about then, too. He went to Charlotte, North Carolina, where the first federal court ordered the first bussing remedy and he said, I'm against bussing. So....

JIM LEHRER: So your point is that he believed this -- he wasn't in it for political reasons or he was --

ROGER WILKINS: I think he believed it. He opposed the Martin Luther King holiday, yeah. I think these were things... they worked for him.....

Quote:

http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu...-20-CBS-7.html
CBS Evening News for Monday, Apr 20, 1981
Headline: Charlotte / Busing
Abstract: (Studio) Report introduced
REPORTER: Dan Rather

(Charlotte, North Carolina) Success of busing for school desegregation here examined. [November 11, 1980, Ronald REAGAN - calls busing a failure.] Beginning of busing concept for United States recalled occurring here; details given. [1971 school board member Jane SCOTT - thinks city was committed to making it work.] [Civil rights attorney Julius CHAMBERS - praises leaders] Current situation outlined; carryover of busing into integration of neighborhoods noted. [William POE - thinks city has adjusted well.] Poe's opposition to busing 10 years ago recalled. [POE - praises program.] Continued hope of antibusing proponents discussed. [Senator Jesse HELMS - calls busing a folly.] [Dr. Carlton WATKINS - responds.]
REPORTER: Ed Rabel (WBTV file film)

Quote:

http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archive...84/100884a.htm
Remarks at a Reagan-Bush Rally in Charlotte, North Carolina

October 8, 1984
The President. Thank you all very much.

Audience. Reagan! Reagan! Reagan! ......

....They favor busing that takes innocent children out of the neighborhood school and makes them pawns in a social experiment that nobody wants. We've found out it failed. I don't call that compassion....

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2004Jun8.html
Schisms From Administration Lingered for Years

By Eric Pianin and Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page A01

......No group may have chafed more at Reagan's policies and views than African Americans, who assailed the president for opposing racial quotas and for seeking to obtain a tax credit for Bob Jones University, a segregated southern school.

"For many Americans, this was a time best forgotten," said Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP and a longtime civil rights activist. "He was a polarizing figure in black America. He was hostile to the generally accepted remedies for discrimination. His appointments were of people as equally hostile. I can't think of any Reagan policy that African Americans would embrace."

The former actor and California governor offended blacks when he kicked off his 1980 general election campaign by promoting "states rights" -- once southern code for segregation -- in Philadelphia, Miss., scene of the murder of three civil rights workers 16 years before. Early in his first term, Reagan ordered some of his toughest budget cuts in Medicaid, food stamps, aid to families with dependent children and other "means tested" programs that were critical to large numbers of lower-income black families. Until a public protest forced Reagan to back away, his Agriculture Department sought to cut the school lunch program and redefine ketchup and relish as vegetables.

Reagan had vowed to protect the "social safety net" of programs for the poor, the disabled and the elderly when he unveiled his economic recovery plan on Feb. 18, 1981. But two years later, White House budget director David A. Stockman said in an interview that the safety-net assurances were "just a spur-of-the-moment thing that the press office wanted to put out."

Isabel V. Sawhill, who oversaw a project examining the economic and social consequences of Reagan policies for the Urban Institute, said Reagan took office when major economic forces were producing growing income inequality. Although Reagan's policies were not the cause of income disparities between rich and poor, she said, they contributed to the trend through "tax cuts that were very tilted to the more affluent" and "cuts in programs for the less well off. Those did contribute to growing inequality."

There were other controversies:

Reagan fired 13,000 air traffic controllers in 1981 after they staged a work stoppage, and he appointed members of the National Labor Relations Board who were hostile to union organizing. His interior secretary, James G. Watt, and senior Environmental Protection Agency officials infuriated environmentalists by assaulting safeguards and aggressively attempting to open public lands in the West to private developers. Reagan, during his 1980 campaign, blamed trees for emitting 93 percent of the nation's nitrogen oxide pollution -- giving rise to jokes about "killer trees."

The combination of a huge "supply-side" tax cut, a historic military buildup and a painful two-year recession produced huge budget deficits and a near tripling of the national debt that haunted the country and policymakers for years and drained resources from social programs. And the administration showed indifference to an emerging AIDS crisis in the early 1980s. By the time Reagan delivered his first speech on the epidemic in May 1988 -- about eight months before he left office -- the disease had been diagnosed in more than 36,000 Americans, and 20,849 had died.

"Reaganomics" failed to reduce the deficit, but the combined policies of the administration and the Federal Reserve Board helped usher in the longest peacetime economic expansion since the end of World War II -- a nearly eight-year boom that made many people rich and left a pleasant "morning in America" memory in the minds of millions of voters.....

Quote:

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstra...A80894DA484D81
ABROAD AT HOME; SHUCKS, IT'S ONLY THE LAW; [Op-Ed]
Lewis, Anthony. New York Times. Jan 21, 1982. pg. A.23

A three-judge Federal court, in an opinion by a distinguished judge, decides an important question of Federal law. The Supreme Court affirms the decision. Other courts follow it. The Federal Government incorporates it in rules, and three Presidents enforce them over a 10-year period.

Then a new President reverses the rules. He explains to a press conference that he did so because they had ''no basis in the law.'' That is what President Reagan said at his press conference Tuesday by way of explaining his decision to give tax exemptions to schools and colleges that discriminate against black Americans. The only thing more amazing than his explanation was the reaction of the reporters in the room. Nobody laughed.

Presidents say a good many foolish things, and I have heard them for 30 years. But I do not think I have heard anything more preposterous, lame, cynical or outrageous than what Ronald Reagan had to say about ''the law'' and racist schools.

''The Internal Revenue Service had actually formed a social law and was enforcing that social law,'' Mr. Reagan said. He was speaking of the I.R.S. rules, adopted during the Nixon Administration, against tax exemptions for discriminatory schools and colleges.

But the I.R.S. framed those rules in light of court decisions saying what the law was. The leading decision was by the late Harold Leventhal, the highly respected judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington. He concluded: ''Racially discriminatory private schools are not entitled to the Federal tax exemption for charitable, educational institutions.''

Mr. Reagan denied that any racism was involved. He said he was opposed to discrimination ''at every fiber of my being.'' But there is no doubt that racism was the moving force in the attempt to reverse the rules against tax exemp-tions. Southern institutions that exclude or segregate blacks, notably some connected with fundamentalist churches, have been the voices demanding the change.

Representative Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, wrote the President urging him to act and got back his memo with a marginal note by Mr. Reagan saying ''I think we should''; Mr. Lott sent that to high Justice Department and Treasury officials. Another active figure was Senator Strom Thurmond, Republican of South Carolina, a trustee of Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C. Bob Jones and Goldsboro Christian Schools had tax cases that were the particular spur.

The President said his action had been ''misinterpreted.'' He did not really want to give tax exemptions to racist schools, he said. All along he had just wanted Congress to pass a statute with explicit language forbidding the exemptions, so ''that will be the law of the land.''

If you can believe that, you can believe anything. The Republican Party platform of 1980 called for an end to the tax rules ''against independent schools.'' Can anyone suppose that the platform drafters wanted Congress to put the rules into a statute? Is that what Trent Lott had in mind when he wrote Mr. Reagan and got his encour-aging reply? Yes, and goldfish can fly.

Even if Mr. Reagan's call for Congressional action were not the afterthought it so obviously was, it would have grave defects. What the President is actually doing is this: taking a long-settled area of the law, reversing it by executive fiat and then inviting Congress to restore the status quo.

The effect of such a tactic is to reverse the burden of changing the law - and that is a heavy burden under our system. Even if a majority in Congress wants a certain statute, there are many ways in committee and on the floor to prevent its enactment. And this is not the only case in which the Reagan Administration is using the tactic, ''interpreting'' long-established law effectively out of existence while saying blandly that Congress can act if it wishes.

The lawlessness of the whole affair is breathtaking. A President on his own motion upsets a decade of law. Then he says he will continue to apply the long-understood rules for a while in case Congress acts - but will go ahead and grant tax exemptions to the two institutions whose cases the Supreme Court had been about to decide, Bob Jones and Goldsboro Christian.

Tax exemptions were not the only legal subject treated in terms of fantasy at th is press conference. Mr. Reagan also sought to justify his big new c ampaign against leaks of information on Government policy by say ing, ''It is against the law for anyone to release this information.' ' No it isn't - not in the United States. Presidents cantry to silenc e their subordinates. But except for particular sensitive mat erial, there is no ''law'' forbidding disclosure of Government in formation.

If Richard Nixon had misrepresented the law in the same way, there would have been instant outrage. But Ronald Reagan gives us his aw shucks look, and we forgive him. There is just that nagging thought: is it really ''conservative'' to play fast and loose with the law?

Quote:

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstra...AB0894DA484D81
REAGAN TAX EXEMPTION BILL ASSAILED
STUART TAYLOR Jr., Special to the New York Times. Feb 2, 1982. pg. A.18

The prospects of President Reagan's bill to deny tax exemptions to segregationist private schools were described as ''uncertain'' today by Senate Republicans and Democrats.

Before skeptical members of the Finance Committee, Deputy Attorney General Edward C. Schmults and Treasury Department officials urged approval of the proposed legislation. They contended that if Congress did not act, the Administration's interpretation of existing tax laws would force the Government to grant exemptions to schools that discriminate racially.

Copies of internal Justice and Treasury Department documents released late today by the Finance Committee disclosed that such an interpretation was a reversal of a position Mr. Schmults had supported in December.

At news conferences before the hearing, rep resentatives of ''Christian right'' schools called Mr. Reagan a ''hypocrite'' for proposing the legislation, while civil rights leaders and liberals in Congress asserted that the Administration' s tax law interpretationwas based on a bogus legal analysis. Policy Changed Jan. 8

The Administration decided Jan. 8 to grant the exemptions to private schools that practiced racial discrimination, revoking an 11-year-old policy initiated by the Nixon Administration. The move was immediately criticized by civil rights leaders and members of both parties in Congress, and four days later Mr. Reagan said he would rescind the change and submit a bill to bar such tax exemptions.

Senator Bob Dole, Republican of Kansas, chairman of the Finance Committee, expressed puzzlement over the Administration's handling of the issue, and agreed with a statement by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York, who said, ''The fate of this legislation is uncertain.''

The Administration proposal is opposed both by conservatives, who say segregationist schools should be granted tax exemptions, and by liberals and moderates, including Mr. Moynihan, who point to Federal court rulings that they say have established the illegality of the exemptions.

Mr. Dole said tax exemptions should be denied to segregated schools, but said he was not sure legislation was needed. Mississippi Lawmaker Writes

In testimony before the committee, Mr. Schmults acknowledged that he had acted on the issue after receiving a Reagan notation on a letter from Representative Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi.

In the Dec. 15 letter to Mr. Lott, which was released by the Finance Committee this afternoon, Mr. Schmults wrote that the Justice Department planned to argue in the Supreme Court that segregated schools were not legally entitled to tax exemptions.

The official's le tter stressed that this position had been consistently followed by four Administrations since 1970 and ''has been approved by two United States Courts of Appeals in three separate laws uits.''

<b>But Mr. Schmults received a letter dated Dec. 21 from Mr. Lott that stated, ''The position you report may well be out of line with the President's policy.'' Reagan Memomorandum Attached

Attached was a copy of the ''Presidential Log of Selected House Mail,'' on which Mr. Reagan had written, ''I think we should,'' next to a reference to Representative Lott's request for the Administration to ''intervene'' in the Supreme Court case. </b> Deputy Treasury Secretary R.T. McNamara received a similar letter from Mr. Lott.

The case concerned Bob Jones University in South Carolina and Goldsboro Christian Schools in North Carolina. Today, Mr. Schmults contended that the Justice Department's subsequent advice to the Treasury Department and the revenue service that segregationist schools were legally entitled to tax exemptions ''was made solely on the basis of objective legal analysis.''

The attacks on the Administration's position have continued. William Billings, President of the National Christian Action Coalition, called Mr. Reagan's proposal, ''The most dangerous piece of legislation ever considered affecting religious freedom,'' and vowed ''an all-out effort'' to defeat it.

Mr. Billings said his group was opposed to racial discrimination, but he contended that the Administration's bill would interfere with ''sincerely held religious beliefs.''

host · 12-23-2007, 11:27 AM

I suspected "states rights" was "code" for republican "race baiting" campaign strategy and for eroding a woman's right to choose. What else should one think, considering Reagan's infamous 1980 Neshoba County Fair "performance", and now, this:

Quote:

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll...85/1148/AUTO01
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
EPA: California, other states can't impose their own emissions standards on autos
David Shepardson / Detroit News Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency today denied a waiver that would have allowed California and at least a dozen other states to impose their own stricter vehicle tailpipe emissions standards under the Clean Air Act.

<h3>"The Bush administration is moving forward with a clear national solution -- not a confusing patchwork of state rules</h3> -- to reduce America's climate footprint from vehicles," EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson said in a statement.

The decision is a victory of sorts for auto makers, who opposed state-by-state regulations.

In November, California sued to force the Environmental Protection Agency to rule whether the state can put its strict vehicle tailpipe emissions standards into effect.

<h3>Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said the state would "sue again and sue again and sue again"</h3> in order to get approval to put in place tough new fuel economy regulations.

"It's all common sense," the governor said of the regulation, saying it was necessary to force new clean technology

California Attorney General Jerry Brown said the suit was necessary to "start pushing Detroit to do the innovations we all know they can do."

California needs a waiver under the Clean Air Act to enact its plan to reduce vehicle greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2016 -- which would require a 43.7 mile per gallon average for passenger cars -- and boost vehicle efficiency by more than 30 percent. A total of 12 states have adopted California's rules, which are set to gradually take effect starting in 2009.

The state of California gave EPA notice in May that it would file suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. to demand a decision if the agency didn't rule within six months.

Schwarzenegger earlier this year told automakers and Detroit to "get off your butt."

"The fact of the matter is what I'm saying is, Arnold to Michigan: Get off your butt. Get off your butt and join us," he said at a speech at Georgetown University.

"What we are doing is we are pushing (automakers) to make changes, to make the changes so they can sell their cars in California," he said. "And we all know -- let's be honest -- that if they don't change, someone will. The Japanese will. The Chinese will. The South Koreans will. The Germans will."

Since 1975, the EPA has never refused California a waiver to implement its own tougher air quality regulations, and approved nearly 50 of

them click to show

ottopilot · 12-23-2007, 04:03 PM

roachboy · 12-23-2007, 04:37 PM

so what you're saying, otto, is the fact that in the past racism ran across party divisions means that now, faced with concrete republican proposals that would serve little purpose beyond playing to, reinforcing and extending good ole amurican racism that we can say nothing? or that contemporary republican recuperation of the discourse of the reconstruction period is of no consequence?

or is what you're saying that everyone who is not republican is a democrat and the democrats--your construction/version--cannot say anything about racism because there were prominent racist democrats in the past....

and you act as though this is all shocking news----i mean, it really isn't shocking information--this is all old information--what's curious is the way you try to use it. "you can't say anything" seems to be your argument. "sure racism exists, but you can't say anything about it."

or, better:

"the republicans may be using race as a mobilization tool now, but in the past democrats did that too, so shut up about it."

along the way, you assert the conservative canard of "reverse racism" as if it is other than an entirely ideological proposition.

nice going, otto.
way to foster an ecumenical conversation.

ottopilot · 12-23-2007, 05:39 PM

roachboy · 12-23-2007, 05:56 PM

otto:

first off, the "things you didnt say" in your post resulted in speculations (trying to figure out what you were trying to say) because you didnt actually spell out your argument. all the "so what you are saying is..." statements were basically trying to figure out what you were on about.

one of the other ways to look at the op was/is to think about the relations that *might* persist between the ways in which southeastern states used the discourse of "states rights" in the reconstruction period (and after) and their usages now.

this doesn't have to be a party-line issue.

the other possible issue--whether your "racism is racism" claim means anything outside the narrow world of ward connerly and so forth---is another matter. that one would probably be more predictably partisan, were you to push that way--but feel free to do as you like if you want to continue an interaction. personally, i have no committment either way--ball's in your court.

so if you want to reframe and have a conversation, then fine--but in the last post from you, you didnt go anywhere near that direction, preferring instead to do a "yeah well you're a democrat and your party has had racists involved with it too"---which bizarrely enough could be read as conceding the point that host is making while at the same time trying to disable the position from which he makes that point.

o yeah---for what it's worth, i dont particularly identify with the democratic party---i understand myself politically as well to the left of them---and that's one of many reasons why i found the approach you took in no. 24 to be so odd---i could see you trying to stuff people into a little box and then attack the box.

i cant speak for host as to his relation to the democratic party, but i suspect that it's not all that different. just saying.

Ustwo · 12-23-2007, 06:36 PM

Please, when host starts to attack the democrats let me know. I do recall him saying someone like John Edwards could save me from the American version of Chavez.

Just because you and host are communists or close enough, it doesn't mean you don't have an obvious bias against republicans in favor of the democrats. Since there is no point in discussing communist party politics in the US, they are a non-issue, its obvious someone would show how the 'other side' (the far far left isn't a side worth speaking of, no one takes them seriously) is guilty of the same type of crime host is trying to pin on republicans.

host obviously has 'issues' with the republicans, so there is nothing odd about throwing back the history he chooses to forget. You would think someone with so much google power, wouldn't need to be reminded.

ottopilot · 12-23-2007, 06:54 PM

dc_dux · 12-23-2007, 07:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Just because you and host are communists or close enough, it doesn't mean you don't have an obvious bias against republicans in favor of the democrats. Since there is no point in discussing communist party politics in the US, they are a non-issue, its obvious someone would show how the 'other side' (the far far left isn't a side worth speaking of, no one takes them seriously) is guilty of the same type of crime host is trying to pin on republicans.

host obviously has 'issues' with the republicans, so there is nothing odd about throwing back the history he chooses to forget. You would think someone with so much google power, wouldn't need to be reminded.

Just as there is no point in discussing communitst party politics in the US, there is no point in discussing the politics of the 1960s or earlier.

The politics of Reagan is an issue because the Republican candidates have chosen to align themselves with such policies. (any of today's Dems looking back at the the Southern Democrats of the 60s as role models?)

The fact remains that for the last 8 years, the Republicans, under an implicit Karl Rove strategy in key states, have had a de facto policy of suppressing minority voters. One only need review the policies and practices of the DoJ Civil Rights Division and its unwillingness to investigate and prosecute charges of voter suppression in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio (or the acts of Republican governors or secretaries of state in FL, OH...)

roachboy · 12-23-2007, 07:02 PM

1.

actually, ustwo, i'm not cp.
sorry to disappoint.
i know way too much about the histories of various communist parties to ever be one.
i know that requires a type of thinking about questions of left politics that go beyond the cartoon level, so am not expecting you to follow.

just stop with the tedious tedious redbaiting, will you?
it's like oklahoma 1964 in here with you sometimes.
and you sound like the reverend billy james hargis.
i dont think this is something you'd want, if you knew who this guy was.

but hey, maybe you do.

2.

i'm not speaking for host. i was considering taking down the remark above.

3.

i dont have a "biais against republicans"
i opppose them politically.
i oppose you politically.

there is nothing accidental about it, nothing that follows from any systemic distortions that i am not aware of: i am perfectly well aware of what i oppose about conservative politics and why--and i can spell out why i oppose conservative politics, and do it in some detail--and i can lay out the premises from which i operate, and can lay out the ideological premise from which you operate (this is different from your personal committments...)

so if you want to actually have a discussion about the interaction between the discourse of states rights by the contemporary right and racist politics, then let's do that.
maybe we can agree that racism is a problem.
maybe we can agree that certain kinds of politics tend to direct attention toward racism, and that other types obfuscate the problem.

but you wont know until you change tack in the way you post.

seriously, ustwo--i know enough to know that after this long if i were to just keep on posting the same thing in the same language all the time, i'd get bored.
i get bored reading the same things in the same language all the time.
dont you get bored?

at this point, i know perfectly well and you know perfectly well that unless each of us tries to do something different with our language in these posts that things will quickly and inevitably land in the usual stalemate.

if that's what you are looking for, then i suppose you've got it.

but personally, this bores me stupid.

host · 12-23-2007, 10:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Please, when host starts to attack the democrats let me know. I do recall him saying someone like John Edwards could save me from the American version of Chavez.

Just because you and host are communists or close enough, it doesn't mean you don't have an obvious bias against republicans in favor of the democrats. Since there is no point in discussing communist party politics in the US, they are a non-issue, its obvious someone would show how the 'other side' (the far far left isn't a side worth speaking of, no one takes them seriously) is guilty of the same type of crime host is trying to pin on republicans.

host obviously has 'issues' with the republicans, so there is nothing odd about throwing back the history he chooses to forget. You would think someone with so much google power, wouldn't need to be reminded.

Ustwo, does "WHAT ENDS UP HAPPENING, AS A RESULT, the effect, OF YOUR POLITICS", your advocacy, get a good, hard, look from you, now and then?

Here's some of it, for you to consider, it's a link to a current thread authored by half of a young disabled couple, living in two of the poorest states, who can't consider marriage because US medicare and SS disability regs would cut off their benefits....lifeline...safety net.....wipe them out...if they exhibited how healthy they actually are, by the act of getting married:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...re#post2367691

Meanwhile, the fiscal "pitbulls" you love to see winning elections, piss away all the "savings" from screwing the unfortunates described above,by these decisions:

Quote:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/...24military.php
Billions in aid to Pakistan was wasted, officials assert
By DAVID ROHDE, CARLOTTA GALL, ERIC SCHMITT AND DAVID E. SANGER
The money the U.S. spent to bolster the Pakistani military effort against militants has been diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India, not Al Qaeda or the Taliban, officials said....

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004964.php
State Dept Document from 2005 Shows Fraud in Blackwater's Iraq Contract
By Spencer Ackerman - December 21, 2007, 11:40AM

....Yet despite its own internal watchdog's finding of fraudulence in Blackwater's Iraq contract, months later, the State Department re-signed a deal with the company to provide security for U.S. diplomats.

I object to the political-economic system you fully support because of what is described in the preceding examples of contradictions and because:

Quote:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...lism_wages.htm

....There is absolutely nothing in capitalist (neoclassical) economic theory that even attempts to compensate employees by the "real" contribution made. Capitalist economic theory dictates that wages are determined by labor markets, so how much each employee gets paid is not determined by their contribution, but rather by the market value of their labor. There is no way to determine who is really responsible for the value created. The market value of each employee's labor is determined basically by how much other people in the market are willing to sell their labor for....

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...ww#post2146562

In 1916, a labor organizer named Jane Street developed a system in Denver that attempted to raise the wages and working conditions of domestic help. It seems that she recognized the validity of the ideas in [the text above the preceding link]

If you want to label me with something that will allow you to marginalize or dismiss what is in my posts (you're proabaly at that point, already), read the examples that I've assembled to represent "my politics", and decide, if you haven't already, whether I'm a "commie", or an "extreme left" looney, and decide if that allows total, or only partial dismissal of my POV.

My politics are counter to yours. I show you why, in nearly every post. When do you show me, or anyone else, anything? You've offrered a few "minority reports" from scientists with opinions related to climate change, but beyond that???????

host's political sampler:

Quote:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=128489
In the Climate of the Bush "Politics of Fear", Democrat Leaders Our Eyes & Ears?

Ranking Democratic Senate Intel Committee member Sen. Jay Rockefeller
"knew something about this", but he said nothing....he should have been our "eyes and ears". Now he is chairman of that Senate Committee. Where are the unreleased parts of the 2004 Intel commitee report on the ways the white house handled Iraq pre-invasion intelligence he had promised to make public?

Ranking Democrat on the house intel. committee until Jan., 2007, Jane Harman, says she vaguely "Knew about it", and "wrote a letter".

Was this enough to meet her obligation to be "our eyers and ears"?

A main white house effort the last four years was <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5411688">to militarize the management of formerly civilian headed intelligence agencies</a>. In addition to key democrats on the two intel committees turing "a blind eye", wasn't it a good idea, in terms of serving the interests of "the people", to appoint civilians to head these agencies? Aren't the largest intel. agencies, DIA, etc., already managed by the military?

Why did democrats vote to approve these appointments by the president of military officers to head key intelligence agencies?

Should defendants in criminal cases in the US receive new trials now that Mike Hayden admits that "evidence" uised against them was "coerced" from third parties by CIA personnel using "techniques" that made them fearful enough to destroy videotaped evidence of?,,,

<h3>....I think that democrats who enabled the crimes of the Bush administration to be obstructed or covered up, should be prosecuted</h3> along with those who ordered and obeyed orders to commit crimes....abuse of prisoners, withholding of evidence from defense lawyers, and destruction of evidence are a few.

Do you think that the CIA videotapes could have been destroyed if Rockefeller and Harman were adequately representing "the rest of us"? Do you think that they have committed crimes by not objecting to a coverup and destruction of evidence? Weren't they aware that Moussaui was on trial and evidence used against him came from coerced interrogations?

Do "the politics of fear", created as a smokescreen and an excuse by the Bush/Cheney for their abuses of human rights, in any way exonerate Rockefeller and Harman?

Quote:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...45&postcount=6
http://davidsirota.com/index.php/200...e-the-players/

The People Party vs. The Money Party: Here Are the Players...

Quote:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...&postcount=100
http://davidsirota.com/index.php/200...ad-of-broders/
posted 12/6/2006 by David Sirota

Note to Dems: Put Voters Ahead of Broders

Quote:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=113564
"Reds" on DVD after 25 years....and what about those "centrist" politics of yours ???
My questions and supporting research here are aimed at folks who think of themselves as in "the middle" politically. If you really are a "centrist", why do you think that Harvard educated journalist John Reed, labor organizer and union founder William Haywood, and later, local NAACP leader Robert Franklin Williams, were hounded out of the US by government authorities, while folks who thought of themselves as "centrists", looked on in silence, or simply ignored the government oppression, and voted for Hoover, Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushes? Do you see our political history of the last 100 years, or your own political POV, for that matter.....more "off center", after reading some or all of this OP?

It has been 25 years since the release of Warren Beatty's film, a 3 hour, "epic" motion picture; titled "Reds", the story of American journalist, John Reed, author of the book "Ten Days that Shook the World", was released in 1981. The "Reds" DVD was not released until late last year. John Reed died in Moscow from a typhoid epidemic in 1920. His body is interred near Lenin's, in a Kremlin wall....

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...67#post2345131
Comparing Ron Paul to the "Serious" Candidates
A while back, I did a thread here about the career and political views of Huey P. Long. No one responded. History says that Roosevelt was the prime populist mover of the 30's. The SSA.gov history pages say otherwise.

What is it that makes a politician "mainstream"? What is it that makes people view themselves as "centrists", middle of the road? Is it necessary for a "serious" candidate for US president to have been right, on major issues on his resume, much of the time, once in a while, or doesn't matter?...

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...8&postcount=14
How many congressional investigations, and the information that has come to us, as a result of them, has voting "Green", brought us?

IMO, politics is the art of the possible, and unlike voting republican, voting democrat is, at least, a compromise. I see no democrats, even under investigation in any significant degree, especially for selling out their constituents, or...in the cases of Cunningham, Foggo, Wade, Wilkes, and in the associated investigation of Jerry Lewis....our military spending potential.

The democrats are not perfect....far from it....but their "big" '90's "scandals"...the last time that they held real congressional power, resulted in Dan Rostenkowski's convictions for abusing the postal funds at his office's disposal, and Speaker Jim Wright's "crimes":....

...The only hope to level the wealth disparity we are experiencing is to tax more like Sweden and France do....the alternative is the disappearance of the middle class, and a higher concentration of wealth in possession of the top ten percent than the current 70 percent of total US wealth that the 2004 Fed report says that they control.

pan comments on the elderly losing their homes to property taxes. Since 2001, the political majority in DC declared a tax holiday on the wealthiest, resulting in less domestic spending that shifts the tax burden to local entities that raise money, in lieu of federal revenue sharing that was no longer collected....to local property taxes.

My concern is about a coming wave of impoverished elderly baby boomers vs. 75 percent of total wealth in the hands of the top ten percent, and then, by 2030..... eighty percent of all wealth in the hands of the top ten percent.

I don't have much sympathy for elderly folks who have experienced home value appreciation that they could have cashed out in the last few years, at two to ten times what they originally paid for their homes. They still can lock in the profit, via reverse mortgage arrangements.

The real estate price run up shifted the wealth, not away from those approaching their elder years....who already owned homes that then rose dramatically in value in many areas since the late '90's.....but away from younger people...young families entering the home market for the first time...paying the high prices to those who already owned at a much lower basis.

Read the Huey P. Long thread that I posted several months ago. The solution now is the same as it ever was...... a wealth tax. Voting "green", and bashing
democrats who are saints, compared to republicans, is not "an art of the possible", strategy.

We need to address the wealth distribution problem....it is not going away....and it will, if the trend continue....make the US look and feel more like
Mexico looks and feels today, than like Canada.....

Quote:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...ight=huey+long

Is America's Response to Death of NOLA & Pat Robertsonized Fed Gov,another Huey Long?

Quote:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...ww#post2279440
.....In 1916. the IWW, aka "Wobblies", successfully increased the day wage for housemaids by organizing the maids, to a degree, coordinating responses to ads for employment placed by wealthy matrons....scripting the applicants to ask for a uniform amount of pay....significantly higher than the existing rate....and providing a comfortable HQ for maids to meet and share their experiences in gaining hire wages with stricter parameters of what they would or would not do, related to their job descriptions....(see "Jane Street" Denver housemaids....)

My point is that our economic "system" would be "pecked" apart, either by the holders if capital buying the political influence and organization to keep those who sell their labor, or their independently produced products from organizing to a degree that they are able to present uniform price and other conditions on the capitalists, in exchange for their product or service (labor).

The "system" broke down in the late 1920's, unitl 1939, when the solution, as always....was war.......

Ottopilot, <h3>Which political act in our timeline was grossly out of synch, against the 30 year progression?:</h3>

My objection to your argument is that it ignores progression in race relations:
1948: Truman desegregates military
1957: Eisenhower orders federal troops to use armed force to integrate school
1964: Civil Rights legislation passed
1965: Voting Rights legisaltion passed
1980: Regan wins nomination at republican convention, next stop, Neshoba Cty fair to stress commitment to "States Rights" to all white audience in state with higest per capita black population....

<h3>Ottopilot, this is the apologist, David Brooks at work, doing Reagan image repair, 27 years later.....why?</h3>

I reacted to the ridiculous "anit states rights, Bush EPA decsion in California, but the following is the poster for the hypocrisy that contradicts the "states rights", republican mantra:

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/op...=1&oref=slogin
November 9, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
<h3>History and Calumny</h3>
By DAVID BROOKS

Today, I’m going to write about a slur. It’s a distortion that’s been around for a while, but has spread like a weed over the past few months. It was concocted for partisan reasons: to flatter the prejudices of one side, to demonize the other and to simplify a complicated reality into a political nursery tale.

The distortion concerns a speech Ronald Reagan gave during the 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., which is where three civil rights workers had been murdered 16 years earlier. An increasing number of left-wing commentators assert that Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign with a states’ rights speech in Philadelphia to send a signal to white racists that he was on their side. The speech is taken as proof that the Republican majority was built on racism.

The truth is more complicated.

In reality, Reagan strategists decided to spend the week following the 1980 Republican convention courting African-American votes. Reagan delivered a major address at the Urban League, visited Vernon Jordan in the hospital where he was recovering from gunshot wounds, toured the South Bronx and traveled to Chicago to meet with the editorial boards of Ebony and Jet magazines.

Lou Cannon of The Washington Post reported at the time that this schedule reflected a shift in Republican strategy. Some inside the campaign wanted to move away from the Southern strategy used by Nixon, believing there were more votes available in the northern suburbs and among working-class urban voters.

But there was another event going on that week, the Neshoba County Fair, seven miles southwest of Philadelphia. The Neshoba County Fair was a major political rallying spot in Mississippi (Michael Dukakis would campaign there in 1988). Mississippi was a state that Republican strategists hoped to pick up. They’d recently done well in the upper South, but they still lagged in the Deep South, where racial tensions had been strongest. Jimmy Carter had carried Mississippi in 1976 by 14,000 votes.

So the decision was made to go to Neshoba. Exactly who made the decision is unclear. The campaign was famously disorganized, and Cannon reported: “The Reagan campaign’s hand had been forced to some degree by local announcement that he would go to the fair.” Reagan’s pollster Richard Wirthlin urged him not to go, but Reagan angrily countered that once the commitment had been made, he couldn’t back out.

The Reaganites then had an internal debate over whether to do the Urban League speech and then go to the fair, or to do the fair first. They decided to do the fair first, believing it would send the wrong message to go straight from the Urban League to Philadelphia, Miss.

Reagan’s speech at the fair was short and cheerful, and can be heard at: http://www.onlinemadison.com/ftp/rea...ganneshoba.mp3. He told several jokes, and remarked: “I know speaking to this crowd, I’m speaking to a crowd that’s 90 percent Democrat.”

He spoke mostly about inflation and the economy, but in the middle of a section on schools, he said this: “Programs like education and others should be turned back to the states and local communities with the tax sources to fund them. I believe in states’ rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can at the community level and the private level.”

The use of the phrase “states’ rights” didn’t spark any reaction in the crowd, but it led the coverage in The Times and The Post the next day.

Reagan flew to New York and delivered his address to the Urban League, in which he unveiled an urban agenda, including enterprise zones and an increase in the minimum wage. He was received warmly, but not effusively. Much of the commentary that week was about whether Reagan’s outreach to black voters would work.

You can look back on this history in many ways. It’s callous, at least, to use the phrase “states’ rights” in any context in Philadelphia. Reagan could have done something wonderful if he’d mentioned civil rights at the fair. He didn’t. And it’s obviously true that race played a role in the G.O.P.’s ascent.

Still, the agitprop version of this week — that Reagan opened his campaign with an appeal to racism — is a distortion, as honest investigators ranging from Bruce Bartlett, who worked for the Reagan administration and is the author of “Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy,” to Kevin Drum, who writes for Washington Monthly, have concluded.

But still the slur spreads. It’s spread by people who, before making one of the most heinous charges imaginable, couldn’t even take 10 minutes to look at the evidence. It posits that there was a master conspiracy to play on the alleged Klan-like prejudices of American voters, when there is no evidence of that conspiracy. And, of course, in a partisan age there are always people eager to believe this stuff.

<h3>Ottopilot, did Brooks explain it all away? Read on:</h3>

Quote:

http://www.slate.com/id/2177252/fr/flyout
chatterbox
Decoding David Brooks
Psst! His latest column is an attack on Times colleague Paul Krugman.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Friday, Nov. 9, 2007, at 7:29 PM ET

There is an unwritten rule at the New York Times that forbids its op-ed columnists to attack one another in print. It's a holdover from a much stuffier era in the paper's history, and one can appreciate the sentiment behind it. An op-ed page whose columnists routinely denounced one another would create the impression of a newspaper more interested in arguing with itself than in engaging the world outside its walls. The example most frequently cited is the Village Voice of the 1960s and 1970s. A more contemporary example would be the blogosphere.

The trouble with the Times prohibition is that every now and then one op-ed contributor takes a whack at another op-ed contributor without actually spelling things out. I plead guilty, when I was an assistant editor on the page a quarter-century ago, to publishing an unacknowledged but quite deliberate parody of James Reston, then still a Times columnist and long past his prime, by the writer Alex Heard. We headlined the piece, "The Time Is Today," and Alex filled it with hilarious banalities and important-sounding assertions that had no meaning at all. Alex's only precaution was to omit from the piece, at my instruction, any overt references to Reston. Mine was to keep mum within the Times building about what made the piece funny.

The problem, as you can well imagine, was that we couldn't let readers in on the joke. If they got it at all, it was as a generic parody of op-ed pomposity. As a consequence, the fine craftsmanship of Alex's comic achievement went unheralded.

I remembered that hard lesson while reading <h3>David Brooks' column, "History and Calumny,"</h3> in the Nov. 9 New York Times. "Today I'm going to write about a slur," Brooks begins. Although this "distortion" has been around for many years, it has "spread like a weed over the past few months." It is "spread by people who, before making one of the most heinous charges imaginable, couldn't even take 10 minutes to look at the evidence."

People? Who are these people? Brooks doesn't say. He scrupulously cites three written sources—a 1980 Washington Post story by Lou Cannon; a June <a href="http://www2.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_06/004116.php">2004 post</a> by Kevin Drum on the Washington Monthly's Web site; and an Oct. 2007 <a href="http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/bookclub/2007/oct/30/reagan_neshoba_and_the_politics_of_race">post</a> by Bruce Bartlett on the Talking Points Memo Web site—but these are all accounts refuting the dastardly smear. These are the good guys. Who are the bad guys? Calumny doesn't spread itself. What wascally wabbit is wesponsible? Brooks won't say.

It's Paul Krugman.

The hideous libel Brooks refers to is an anecdote about the 1980 presidential election. Ronald Reagan, the eventual victor, kicked off his campaign as the Republican presidential nominee in Philadelphia, Miss., where 16 years earlier civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were <a href="http://www.abanet.org/irr/hr/spring00humanrights/chaney.html">murdered</a>. In the speech, candidate Reagan said, "I believe in states' rights," the legal principle on which white segregationists had based their resistance to federal laws and court decisions upholding the civil rights of African Americans.

Brooks says the anecdote is a slur because the decision for Reagan to speak in Philadelphia, Miss., immediately after the convention was made on the fly, and not part of a deliberate plan, and because Reagan mentioned states' rights only fleetingly in a speech that was "mostly about inflation and the economy." (To listen to it, click <a href="http://www.neshobademocrat.com/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=297&ArticleID=13920&TM=65091.34">here</a>.) Brooks further argues that the campaign was faced with a decision to send Reagan to Philadelphia either before or after sending him to speak to the Urban League, and that it figured sending him after would make it seem as though Reagan were telling white segregationists that no matter what he was compelled to tell a black audience, he was on their side. This last argument strikes me as more an argument for Krugman's position rather than against it, since it demonstrates that the Reagan campaign was fully aware of the ghastly symbolism inherent in the Philadelphia appearance. Indeed, by the time Brooks is done conceding that it was "callous" for Reagan to mention states' rights in that locale, and that Reagan "could have done something wonderful if he'd mentioned civil rights" in the speech, and that "it's obviously true that race played a role in the GOP's ascent," Brooks' "slur" seems no more than extremely mild exaggeration.

Reagan's Philadelphia speech is often cited as evidence that Reagan's electoral success in 1980 was based partly on appeals to Southern white racism. But you'd be hard-pressed to find any prominent national commentator who cites this example as often as Krugman. In his new book, The <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Conscience-Liberal-Paul-Krugman/dp/0393060691/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-8989300-6291135?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194707218&sr=1-1">Conscience of a Liberal</a>, Krugman tells the story on Page 12, retells it on Page 65, tells it a third time on Page 178, refers back to it on Page 183, and alludes more vaguely to it at least a couple of times more. In his column, Krugman has related the incident at least four times, including once this past Aug. 24 (<a href="http://select.nytimes.com/2007/08/24/opinion/24krugman.html?n=Top/Opinion/Editorials%20and%20Op-Ed/Op-Ed/Columnists/Paul%20Krugman">"Seeking Willie Horton"</a>) and once this past Sept. 24 (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/opinion/24krugman.html?n=Top/Opinion/Editorials%20and%20Op-Ed/Op-Ed/Columnists/Paul%20Krugman">"Politics in Black and White"</a>). "This is a guy," Krugman was quoted telling the Portland Oregonian on Oct. 28, "who launched a presidential campaign from Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil-rights workers were killed."

The Reagan story forms the centerpiece of Krugman's argument in The Conscience of a Liberal that race, far more than economics or foreign policy or "values," is what gave Republicans an electoral majority for most of the past 40 years. At the end of his calumny column, when Brooks elaborates on the "slur," it sounds an awful lot as though he's really talking about Krugman's book: "It posits that there was a master conspiracy to play on the alleged Klan-like prejudices of American voters, when there is no evidence of that conspiracy."

I asked Brooks: Have you read The Conscience of a Liberal? "I can't confirm or deny it," he answered.

Possibly Brooks had payback in mind. In a July 20 column (<a href="http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/20/opinion/20krugman.html?n=Top/Opinion/Editorials%20and%20Op-Ed/Op-Ed/Columnists/Paul%20Krugman">"All the President's Enablers"</a>), Krugman referred to a "coordinated public relations offensive" in which the White House was using "reliably friendly pundits—amazingly, they still exist—to put out the word that President Bush is as upbeat and confident as ever." Three days earlier, in a column titled <a href="http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/opinion/17brooks.html?n=Top/Opinion/Editorials%20and%20Op-Ed/Op-Ed/Columnists/David%20Brooks">"Heroes and History,"</a> Brooks had written of Bush, "Far from being worn down by the past few years, Bush seems empowered. His self-confidence is the most remarkable feature of his presidency."

Incidentally, my quick Nexis search turned up one other prominent columnist who writes frequently about Reagan's 1980 speech in Philadelphia, Miss.: Bob Herbert, yet another colleague of Brooks' on the Times op-ed page. (See <a href="http://select.nytimes.com/2005/10/06/opinion/06herbert.html">here</a>, <a href="http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/opinion/28herbert.html">here</a>, and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/opinion/25herbert.html">here</a>.) But I think Brooks mainly had Krugman on the brain.

Update, Nov. 11: Krugman <a href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/10/innocent-mistakes/">hits back</a> at Brooks in his New York Times blog, "The Conscience of a Liberal":

So there's a campaign on to exonerate Ronald Reagan from the charge that he deliberately made use of Nixon's Southern strategy. When he went to Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1980, the town where the civil rights workers had been murdered, and declared that "I believe in states' rights," he didn't mean to signal support for white racists. It was all just an innocent mistake.

Krugman goes on to cite other, similar "mistakes": Reagan's use of the term "young buck" in 1976 to describe a young male African American on food stamps; Reagan's declaration in 1980 that the Voting Rights Act had been "humiliating to the south" (his Justice Department would later figure out that it was, more urgently, an electoral boon for congressional Republicans); Reagan's insane (and ultimately unsuccessful) attempt in 1982 to preserve the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University, which banned interracial dating; Reagan's firing of three members of the Civil Rights Commission in 1983; and Reagan's opposition to making Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday.

I would add to this litany the country-club-Republican moment when Nancy Reagan, during a 1980 speech in Chicago, expressed <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=lbLi0krb7yUC&pg=PA324&lpg=PA324&dq=nancy+reagan+%2522white+faces%2522+looking+out&source=web&ots=7mqnbINrok&sig=lCftocWEpOTM9-reZQzKKdXN568">pleasure</a> at "looking out over all these beautiful white faces." Oops!

Krugman doesn't name Brooks, of course, as the perpetrator of this "campaign to exonerate Ronald Reagan." But I'm pretty sure he isn't talking about L. Brent Bozell III, whose <a href="http://www.mediaresearch.org/BozellColumns/newscolumn/2004/col20040616.asp">fulimination</a> over the alleged injustice to the Gipper went ignored at the time of Reagan's death.

Update, Nov. 13: Today Bob Herbert <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/opinion/13herbert.html?_r=1&oref=slogin">entered the fray</a> on Krugman's side. He began by writing, "Let's set the record straight on Ronald Reagan's kickoff in 1980." Like Brooks, Herbert didn't say who created this faulty record, but of course he meant Brooks:

Reagan apologists have every right to be ashamed of that appearance by their hero, but they have no right to change the meaning of it, which was unmistakable. Commentators have been trying of late to put this appearance by Reagan into a racially benign context.

That won't wash.

Brooks is in desperate need of reinforcements, but he won't have much luck recruiting Gail Collins, Nicholas Kristof, Tom Friedman, Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, or Roger Cohen. Maybe William Safire can be lured back from retirement? Though, even Safire might consider Brooks' case too weak to defend. Just as Kaiser Wilhelm II at the start of the Great War abruptly shifted the field of battle from Serbia to Belgium, Gen. Brooks might find it necessary to invade the Weekly Standard, which under ordinary circumstances probably would prefer to remain neutral. War is hell!

Update, Nov. 19: The skirmishing continues. On Nov. 18 Lou Cannon, who covered Reagan for the Washington Post and subsequently authored multiple Reagan biographies, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/opinion/18cannon.html">weighs in</a> on Brooks' side. Cannon writes that it's a "myth" that Reagan "defeated President Jimmy Carter in 1980 by a coded appeal to white-supremacist voters." The "core of this myth" is that Reagan pandered to white racists in his Philadelphia, Miss., speech. True, he used the expression "states' rights," but Reagan "had been talking this way for two decades as part of his pitch that the federal government had become too powerful."

Well, yes and no.

It's true that Reagan had long advocated devolving responsibilities of the federal government to the state and local level. But Joseph Crespino, in his book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0691122091/ref=sib_dp_srch_pop?v=search-inside&keywords=states%27+rights+and+Reagan&go.x=9&go.y=3">In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution</a>, writes that the speech Reagan gave that day was not his standard stump speech, and that "reporters following Reagan could not remember him using the term ["state's rights"] before...." (Crespino, an assistant professor of history at Emory University, offers his own two cents on the Brooks-Krugman smackdown here.)

Cannon writes that Reagan was no racist, which, as Krugman points out in his <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/opinion/19krugman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin">Nov. 19</a> column, is neither here nor there. (You don't have to be a racist to pander to racist voters.) Cannon also argues that the Philadelphia speech hurt Reagan more than it helped him because it cost him votes from moderates in Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania "without bolstering his standing among conservative Southern whites." If true, that merely demonstrates that Reagan's pander to white racists backfired, not that Reagan never pandered in the first place.

In his <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/opinion/19krugman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin">Nov. 19</a> column, Krugman recycles some of the points he made about Reagan and race last week on his blog. He also restates one of the more provocative points in his book, The Conscience of A Liberal: The defection of white males from the Democratic party in recent decades was not a national phenomenon, but rather a southern one. Krugman cites a <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/kansasqjps06.pdf">study</a> by Larry Bartels, a political scientist at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School, showing that in 1952 and 2004, the proportion of non-southern white men lacking college degrees who voted Democratic was virtually unchanged (40 percent and 39 percent, respectively). To be fully persuaded on this point, I'd need to see how non-southern white men voted during the years in between.

Unrelated-but-interesting point: Bartels' study would seem to refute Thomas Frank's thesis in What's The Matter With Kansas that the white working class is economically populist but conservative on "values" issues. In fact, writes Bartels, the opposite is true: It is more tolerant on issues like abortion and gay marriage than the Republicans are, but less tolerant on issues like raising taxes on the rich than Democrats are. That might explain why the economic populism favored by Democratic political consultant Bob Shrum failed in the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004.]
Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.

Quote:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...52C1A9619C8B63
To the Editor:

The racial appeal in Ronald Reagan's visit to the Neshoba County Fair in 1980 is unambiguous. It was part of a Republican strategy to win white Democratic converts. <h3>Consider a letter that Michael Retzer, the Mississippi national committeeman, wrote in December 1979 to the Republican National Committee.</h3>

The national committee was polling state leaders for venues where the Republican nominee might speak, and Mr. Retzer pointed to the Neshoba County Fair as ideal for winning what he called ''George Wallace-inclined voters.''

This was not just a Southern strategy. Throughout his career, Mr. Reagan benefited from divisive appeals to whites who resented efforts to reverse historic patterns of racial discrimination.

He did it in 1966 when he campaigned for the California governorship by denouncing open housing laws. He did it in 1976 by attacking welfare in subtly racist terms. And he clearly did it in Neshoba County in 1980. Joseph Crespino

Atlanta, Nov. 14, 2007

The writer teaches history at Emory University and is the author of ''In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution.''

For the "what's the matter?, It's just politics" republicans, Mike Rezner's popularity with the Bush administration is as it should be:

Quote:

http://www.magnoliareport.com/Report65.htm
Magnolia Political Report #65
August 15, 2005
************************
.....
Do they sell Big Macs in Tanzania?

Former Mississippi Republican Party Chairman, Mike Retzer, has been appointed ambassador to Tanzania by President George W. Bush. The African nation is a plum appointment. Mount Kilimanjaro, the Serengeti National Wildlife Refuge, Lake Victoria and some great beaches are all located within the east African nation.

Retzer chaired the state GOP in the late 70’s and early 80’s and again from 1996 through 2001. He’s held the post of National Committeeman for the state GOP since 2001. In 2000, Retzer chaired the Bush campaign in five Southern states. He became Treasurer of the Republican National Committee in 2003.

scout · 12-24-2007, 02:02 AM

It appears that Otto and Ustwo have indeed struck a very raw nerve. Tsk tsk shame on you two. You both should know by now you do as the liberals say not as they do. The only history permissible in a debate is history they approve and they don't like to be reminded of past transgressions of the Democratic Party. I suspect by the time this thread is over you both will have learned your lesson!

The_Jazz · 12-24-2007, 06:14 AM

matthew330:I just deleted your post here:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...99#post2368499

I think you were just trying to be funny, which is why I'm not using the official warning system, but comments like yours add nothing to the conversation and only serve to ratchet up the level of animosity.

If you're going to be a part of the conversation, please be a part of it. If you're only going to add snide little comments, please do that outside Politics.

I'm posting this in the thread as well, as required by the Politics sticky.

ottopilot · 12-24-2007, 06:22 AM

dc_dux · 12-24-2007, 07:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ottopilot

....Are you saying that cronyism may actually exist? Oh my? Again...balance my friend...that's a rock in a glass house.

Otto....there is cronyism and then there is CRONYISM.

Can you point to any other recent administration that has appointed over 100 former industry lobbyists/industry execs/industry advocates to positions where they regulate their former industry.....where the foxes are now guarding the glass hen house?

Here are some examples:

host · 12-24-2007, 08:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ottopilot

....are you saying that cronyism may actually exist? Oh my? Again...balance my friend...that's a rock in a glass house.

On another topic... This is exactly what it means

Host (and all TFPers) I truly wish you and yours all the best for the Holidays. Turn on some Bing Crosby, have some eggnog, be with someone you love, and refrain from Google for a day or two. Enjoy the season and have a very merry Christmas.

otto

otto, T'was the night before christmas....Reagan's admirers were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads:

Quote:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q...g0MTg2NTdlNzk=
November 20, 2007 7:00 AM

Reagan, No Racist
Racing through the record.

By Deroy Murdock

.....Especially with the White House at stake, Leftist hacks like Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert will keep trying to smear Ronald Reagan as a racist. The obvious implication is that those of us who love America’s 40th president also are either racists or self-hating blacks.

These annoyingly immortal, liberal fantasies are just a steaming pile of lies.

— Deroy Murdock is a New York-based columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution.

Quote:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...23&postcount=2

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Pol...ophy/HL380.cfm
Imagine, if you will, a future wherein the media willfully support the foreign policy objectives of the United States. A time when the left can no longer rely on the media to promote its socialist agenda to the public. A time when someone, somewhere in the media can be counted on to extol the virtues of morality without qualifications. When Betty Friedan no longer qualifies for "Person of the Week" honors. <h3>When Ronald Reagan is cited not as the "Man of the Year," but the "Man of the Century."</h3>

The news and entertainment media will continue to effect the cultural health of America. If we succeed in our mission to restore political balance to this institution, future generations win benefit and thank us. It's worth fighting for, now.

L. Brent Bozell, III is Chairman of the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Virginia.

He spoke on January 21, 1992 at The Heritage Foundation in the Resource Bank series of lectures

Quote:

http://www.mediaresearch.org/bozellc...ol19990930.asp
Time's Slanted Century Polls
by L. Brent Bozell III
September 30, 1999

......I mean choosing “Endangered Earth”, as they did in 1989. Or their pick for Man of the Decade in 1990, when they might have selected Ronald Reagan, whose domestic policies gave our country its biggest peacetime economic expansion in history while his foreign policy drove the Soviet Union into the trashcan of history. Somehow the Gipper didn’t qualify; the award went to that other grand success story, Mikhail Gorbachev.

Now Time’s at it again. Visit their website to see their nominations for the Man of the Century. It won’t tell you too much about the most important people these past hundred years but it will tell you boatloads about Time magazine..........

....when out on the lawn, there arose such a clatter, they continued to dream of sugar plums, oblivious to their "man of the century's" actual record:

Here's a segment of a speech of a recent chairman of BofA, from that company's website. Could he be a "leftist".....???

Quote:

http://newsroom.bankofamerica.com/in...eches&item=138
Remarks at the Governor's Emerging Issues Forum

Hugh L. McColl, Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bank of America

Remarks at the Governor's Emerging Issues Forum
Hugh L. McColl, Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bank of America
“What Is, and What We Hope For”
February 24, 2000
Raleigh, North Carolina

...Finally, I'd like to say a few words about why diversity matters ... and how racial discord continues to haunt our children's educational experience.

I believe public school desegregation was the single most important step we've taken in this century to help our children. Almost immediately after we integrated our schools, the Southern economy took off like a wildfire in the wind. I believe integration made the difference. Integration -- and the diversity it began to nourish -- became a source of economic, cultural and community strength.

That said, our experience with desegregation has not been entirely without struggles, missteps and bad feelings......

....In Charlotte, we recently reopened these wounds in our court case on busing. In that case, some argued that the benefits of neighborhood schools now outweigh the benefits of racially diverse classrooms. Others argued that de facto "separate but equal" schools are inherently unjust, and that busing should continue. No one argues that neighborhood schools are inherently bad. Nor does anyone argue that diversity is inherently bad. But we seem resigned to the idea that we can't have both.

This is what I want to know: if diversity is such a great thing, why do we put the burden on our children to achieve it? Why should a seven-year-old sit on a bus for 45 minutes to go to school in the name of diversity when the adults in her life won't buy a home in a racially or economically diverse neighborhood? Is diversity more important for children than for adults?

These are questions we must ask ourselves, and, frankly, I don't think the economic excuse holds water. Sure, our neighbors at the very bottom of the ladder have limited choices about where to live. <h3>But the rest of us segregate ourselves at every income level.</h3>

My own judgment is that diversity is vitally important, and that <h3>we should continue busing as long as it is the only way to achieve diverse schools.</h3> But I also believe that when adults choose to self-segregate based on race, our rhetoric rings hollow, and we reveal ourselves to be less enlightened than we think.....

Back in 1984, here was "Ron the uniter", declaring the exact opposite of what BofA CEO McColl said, above:

Quote:

http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archive...84/100884a.htm
Remarks at a Reagan-Bush Rally in Charlotte, North Carolina

October 8, 1984
The President. Thank you all very much.

Audience. Reagan! Reagan! Reagan! ......

....They favor busing that takes innocent children out of the neighborhood school and makes them pawns in a social experiment that

nobody wants. We've found out it failed. I don't call that compassion....

Quote:

http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu...-20-CBS-7.html
CBS Evening News for Monday, Apr 20, 1981
Headline: Charlotte / Busing
Abstract: (Studio) Report introduced
REPORTER: Dan Rather

(Charlotte, North Carolina) Success of busing for school desegregation here examined. <h3>[November 11, 1980, Ronald REAGAN - calls

busing a failure.]</h3> Beginning of busing concept for United States recalled occurring here; details given. [1971 school board member

Jane SCOTT - thinks city was committed to making it work.] [Civil rights attorney Julius CHAMBERS - praises leaders] Current

situation outlined; carryover of busing into integration of neighborhoods noted. [William POE - thinks city has adjusted well.]

Poe's opposition to busing 10 years ago recalled. [POE - praises program.] Continued hope of antibusing proponents discussed.

[Senator Jesse HELMS - calls busing a folly.] [Dr. Carlton WATKINS - responds.]
REPORTER: Ed Rabel (WBTV file film)

Quote:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...57C0A964958260
Busing Is Abandoned Even in Charlotte

By PETER APPLEBOME,
Published: April 15, 1992

...Charlotte, or the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, as the city-county district is known, holds a distinctive place in American public education. During two decades when court-ordered busing was fiercely opposed in many places, this was a community that took enormous pride in the racial harmony and integrated schools that its busing produced.

Dead Silence for Reagan

"I remember when Ronald Reagan made a speech here and described busing as a social experiment that has not worked, and he was met with dead silence," said Jay M. Robinson, the school superintendent from 1976-86. "What happened in Charlotte became a matter of community pride." ...

Quote:

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,951327,00.html
Monday, Oct. 22, 1984
Charms and Maledictions
By LANCE MORROW

After Louisville, a national pageant takes on new possibilities

Searching for a street-level reading of the nation 's political mood, and the nuances of its shifts, Senior Writer Lance Morrow traveled with the Reagan and Mondale campaigns for 2½ weeks, before and after the presidential debate. His report:

...It was not merely that Mondale was something of a lusterless and dispiriting alternative to a personally popular sitting President in a period of peace and economic recovery. A more mysterious and complex process was occurring in the American psyche. Americans considered Mondale with a merciless objectivity. But many of them came to absorb Ronald Reagan in an entirely different and subjective manner. They internalized him. In recent months, Reagan found his way onto a different plane of the American mind, a mythic plane. He became not just a politician, not just a President, but very nearly an American apotheosis. The Gipper as Sun King.

A dispassionate witness may say that it was all done with mirrors and manipulation, with artfully patriotic rhetoric and Olympic imagery, the Wizard of Oz working the illusion machine. But that does not entirely do credit to the phenomenon. In an extraordinary way, Reagan came in some subconscious realms to be not just the leader of America but the embodiment of it. "America is back," he announced with a bright, triumphant eye. Back from where? Back from Viet Nam, perhaps, and Watergate and the sexual revolution and all the other tarnishing historical uncleannesses that deprived America of her virtue and innocence.

Partly by accident of timing, partly by a kind of simple genius of his being, Reagan managed to return to Americans something extremely precious to them: a sense of their own virtue. Reagan-completely American, uncomplicated, forward-looking, honest, self-deprecating- became American innocence in a 73-year-old body. (The American sense of innocence and virtue does not always strike the world as a shining and benign quality, of course.)

Whatever the reasons, the campaign of 1984 did not stack up exactly as an equitable contest. Until last week, Reagan's aura purchased him surprising immunities. The polls showed a majority of Americans disagreeing with him on specific issues but planning to vote for him anyway.

Not long ago, Reagan went to Bowling Green State University for a political appearance that looked and sounded like every Big Ten pep rally of the past 20 years compacted into an instant. Reagan's helicopter, deus ex machina again, fluttered down onto the grass outside, visible to the waiting crowd through a great window, and the students erupted in an ear-splitting roar, waving their Greek fraternity letters on placards. REBUILDING AN AMERICA THAT ONCE WAS, said one sign. <h3>The young these days seem prone to a kind of aching nostalgia for some American prehistory that they cannot quite define, but sense in Reagan. The chant of "We Want Ron!" elided into the Olympic chant, "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" To some extent, they were merely exuberant kids making noise, but their identification with, their passion for, a 73-year-old President was startling.</h3> And so was their equation of the man with the nation he leads. Who would have thought that an aged movie actor would be, for so many of the young, the man for the '80s? ....

The day after the Louisville debate, the White House "spinners" were hard at work on the press plane, on the buses. The President was heading to Charlotte, N.C., for an appearance with Senator Jesse Helms and then to Baltimore. The spinners, a patrol of top White House staff members, have the task of chatting with the press and trying to get a favorable spin on stories. They were working that day at damage control.

The debate was a sudden deflation. One could hear the air rushing into the vacuum. Now Reagan seemed flat and disconcerted and, weirdly, somehow a stranger to himself. <h3>In Charlotte, a city that takes pride in having made its busing program a model for the rest of the country, Reagan denounced the practice of busing and was greeted with silence.</h3> The Baltimore event was curiously disheveled. Reagan was there to unveil a statue of Christopher Columbus at the Inner Harbor. The crowd was dotted with protesters ("No More Years! No More Years!") and anti-Reagan signs (DEAD MARINES FOR REAGAN.) Back on the press bus, Donaldson bellowed to his constituency: "Big Mo ain't here today!" ...

...and just to be sure he had his way, ole Ron appointed to the federal bench, a lawyer named Robert Potter, on record as a critic of busing. Potter, at no one's request, took the law into his own hands:

Quote:

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.c...95bc5ee207d189
Case key to magnet schools' future

By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
April 20, 1999

...Presiding over the trial will be Senior U.S. District Judge Robert Potter, a Reagan appointee.

A public opponent of busing before his appointment to the bench, Potter unsettled black parents
during a court hearing last month. He said, on his own initiative, that he would consider releasing
the school system from all court supervision if he found that the lingering effects of segregation
are gone. His announcement was unusual because none of the parties had requested such action. ....

Quote:

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8479694.html
The Boston Globe
Date:
April 14, 1998
Author:
Michael Grunwald, Globe Staff
More results for:
"charlotte reopens book" on court ordered busing

See more articles from The Boston Globe

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- This is not just the city where court-ordered busing began. Charlotte is also known as the city that made court-ordered busing work.

When Boston's busing wars were raging, students from Charlotte came north to spread the word that peaceful integration was possible. In a federal study of the nation's 125 largest school systems, Charlotte-Mecklenberg was rated the most integrated. When President Reagan attacked busing during a campaign speech in Charlotte, his own supporters responded with stony silence. The next day, the Charlotte Observer replied with an editorial titled "You Were Wrong, Mr. President," calling school desegregation the city's "proudest achievement."

But history may be turning in its tracks. Last month, a federal judge here reopened Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg Board of Education, the landmark desegregation case that launched the nation's busing experiment. Now the city where race-based busing was ruled the law of the land may become the city where race-based busing is ruled illegal, even though the mixing of black and white schoolchildren has evolved into a point of civic pride here, as knitted into Charlotte's fabric as banking or auto racing.

"It's an extraordinary situation," said Harvard education professor Gary Orfield, the author of "Dismantling Desegregation." "The Charlotte schools became a national model for desegregation after the courts forced them to do it. Now the courts might come in and say they can't do it anymore."

The danger, critics like Orfield say, is that the end of busing and other race-based assignment policies may mean a return to segregated schools. But in the new legal landscape, as the Supreme Court tilts toward color-blindness and away from race-conscious policies on issues like affirmative action and congressional redistricting, many school boards are finally being released from strict federal desegregation orders. The Charlotte-Mecklenberg school board does not even want to be released from the Swann order, but it might not have a choice.

The lawsuit that could stop the buses was filed by Bill Capacchione, a white parent and neighborhood school activist who asserts that his daughter Cristina was denied admission to a Charlotte magnet school because of unconstitutional race-based assignment policies. Similar cases are under way in Boston, over Boston Latin School, and in several other cities, but specialists say Charlotte may be the national test once again. Role reversal

One reason is that the case has landed before Judge Robert Potter, a conservative Reagan appointee and former anti-busing activist who drew up a petition protesting the Swann ruling nearly 30 years ago. (The petition attracted more than 10,000 signatures in two days.) At a preliminary hearing last month, Potter stunned the schools' attorneys by reopening the Swann case even though no one had asked him to do so. And he quickly put the onus on the school board to come up with a compelling reason why it still needs a court order to run a discrimination-free system.

For a case brimming with ironies, none is more telling than this role reversal: In the legal and racial climate of the '90s, it is now the longtime desegregationists in Charlotte who clamor for local control of schools and grumble about activist judges. And it is their opponents who simply point to the law, to the Constitution, to the direction set by the Supreme Court....

racism? Ron? Nooooo, it can't be....it's just a leftist smear.... <h3>and visions of sugar plums danced in our heads....</h3>

I just spotted your next post, otto....here you go:

Quote:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...04&btnG=Search

Published on Sunday, May 23, 2004 by the Denver Post
When Advocates Become Regulators
President Bush has installed more than 100 top officials who were once lobbyists, attorneys or spokespeople for the industries they oversee.

by Anne C. Mulkern

otto, why all the references to "google"...and searches? Do you have an aversion to the actual record? As long as the information posted can be verified, how does who posts it, and the process of searching for it, come into your opinion about it? If something is posted that is credible and verifiable, even if it contradicts a common belief, does it matter if it is posted on 12/24, or on 10/31? If the preponderance of evidence indicates that Ronald Reagan was a divisive, race baiter, and not "the man of the century", shouldn't that be told, especially when David Brooks is using his highly visible NY Times "pulpit" to communicate the opposite of the Reagan record?

....and, what about "states rights", why is Bush's EPA suddenly denying California an option of stricter environmental standards?

ottopilot · 12-24-2007, 08:18 AM

dc_dux · 12-24-2007, 08:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ottopilot

may I use equivalencies from government, judicial, religious leaders, unions, special interests, political parties, or from any other position of influence or power?

Sure you can, if you can demonstrate how those persons or their former industry clients had a direct financial interest in the outcome of their regulatory actions.

Or perhaps you compare these two glass houses, re: Inspectors General whose jobs are to safeguard and protect the public interest from waste, fraud and abuse in the Executive branch departments/agencies.

Whereas President Clinton typically appointed nonpartisan career public servants as IGs, President Bush has repeatedly chosen individuals with Republican political backgrounds. Over 60% of the IGs appointed by President Bush had prior political experience, such as service in a Republican White House or on a Republican congressional staff, while fewer than 20% had prior audit experience. In contrast, over 60% of the IGs appointed by President Clinton had prior audit experience, while fewer than 25% had prior political experience.

Congressional report on politicization of Inspectors General (pdf)

Are these glass houses the same to you?

* * * * *

Until then, Merry Christmas, but you know it will never be a truly Merry Christmas for the Reaganites until this happens:

http://bobmccarty.com/2007/12/05/rea...n-mt-rushmore/

ottopilot · 12-24-2007, 08:39 AM

05-04-2007, 11:25 AM	#4 (permalink)
aceventura3 Junkie Location: Ventura County	The debate was a waste of time, there was no substance and nothing new presented. The big looser was MSNBC and Chris Mathews. This was their opportunity to shine and they blew it. The questions focused on religion, abortion, and the past rather than the future. They should not even call these events debates. we would have been better served if they simply gave each canidate 9 minutes to present their best pitch for the office of Prsident. I generally feel the same about the Democratic Party debate as well. Just my $.02, not interested in debating things like evolution, silly hypotheticals about Isreal bombing Iran, or changing our Constitution so the Govenator can run for President. __________________ "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch." "It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion." "If you live among wolves you have to act like one." "A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

05-04-2007, 12:10 PM	#6 (permalink)
aceventura3 Junkie Location: Ventura County	It was done in a way (show of hands) for a gotcha moment. Most people equate the question to - did God create man (purposeful) or did man evolve (accidental)? I think thoughtful people who "don't beleive in evolution" have a nuanced position. I remember the Deocratic Party debate where they asked everyone by show of hands if they ever lived in a household with a gun. What is the point of that? My, gradma had a gun, therfore I am...what?!? __________________ "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch." "It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion." "If you live among wolves you have to act like one." "A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

05-06-2007, 06:20 AM	#12 (permalink)
samcol Junkie Location: Indiana	I thought Ron Paul was outstaing because he doesn't go along with the Republican talking points like the other candidates, similiar to Gravel in the Democratic debates. __________________ It's time for the president to hand over his nobel peace prize.

05-06-2007, 09:44 AM	#15 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	ronald reagan <=> chauncey gardener the null set. back in those days reactionary ideology was the new borax-o. you were encouraged by the white guy in the cowboy hat to watch the following segment. yet another simple-minded morality play staged yet again in the hollywood wild wild west. this is the world and everything in it. after the simple-minded morality play, the white guy in the cowboy hat come on again and let you know that there was nothing to worry about, you can just toss your pesky stained reality into the wash and out it will come all white white white. next week you watch the same show at the same time on the same channel and nothing will have changed. because there is no change. there is no history. there is only repetition. reagan the empty, pivot for the new conservatism, the one that prefers retreat into myth to confrontation with complexity...training funding and arming fascist paramilitaries in central and south america was easy peasy because in western films such places do not exist, they are all "over the border" outside the frame...military expeditures as a way to prop up the economy was easy peasy because you call it fiscal responsibility every week you call it fiscal responsibility and hey the dude wearing the cowboy hat wouldnt lie to you, now would he? the wholesale distortion of reality that lay behind the claim that reagan "won the cold war" is no problem in detergentland because the coldwar slots directly into the hollywood construction of the massacres that constitute the history of the west as the showdown between white boys in white hats against white boys in black hats, us vs them, the hero vs the villian, good vs evil. gil scott-heron had reagan nailed: "nostalgia, the good old days when the movies were in balck and white and so was everything else." it's funny watching conservatives continue to wrap themselves in the flag with the huge zero on it, the legacy of ronald reagan, the null set incarnate. it kinda makes me think of the titanic, but maybe that's because i am in a good mood this morning. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 05-06-2007 at 09:47 AM..

05-06-2007, 08:11 PM	#21 (permalink)
djtestudo Baltimoron Location: Beeeeeautiful Bel Air, MD	I must have missed where "state's rights" became a synonym for "racism". __________________ "Final thought: I just rented Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. Frankly, it was the worst sports movie I've ever seen." --Peter Schmuck, The (Baltimore) Sun

05-04-2007, 09:32 AM	#3 (permalink)
trickyy ►	i think reagan was better than a large number of republicans and he is the most successful republican president since ... (?) ... so they would do well to invoke him one part of the debate i found interesting was the number of candidates who did not "believe in" evolution about half of them did not besides ron paul, none of them had the guts to address the current administration in more than a few words and abortion seems to be one of the top three priorities in their debate republican candidates have said the same thing for decades now, and they will probably continue so long as there is a "sucker vote"

05-04-2007, 11:53 AM	#5 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	I'm not sure what evolution even has to do with anything at the presidential level. Although, the idea that someone running for president is a creationist is kinda frightening.

05-04-2007, 12:40 PM	#7 (permalink)
trickyy ►	the debates are quite useless, although i guess it gets the candidates in the news for a day giuliani had perhaps the hardest question -- sunni-shiite difference. most people don't know that one, yet to fumble would have been a disaster.

05-04-2007, 09:06 PM	#10 (permalink)
host Banned	No, dksuddeth.... I am not endorsing Obama. If today was primary election day, I would probably vote for John Edwards, although I think Obama's chances of being the democratic nominee are greater than Edwards are. I've spent time in the area where Edwards comes from....the north western South Carolina hill country. It's an area that is the home of Bob Jones U., and it used to be a center of textile and other light manufacturing. That has been replaced by recent recruitment of more centralized job providers, a BMW assembly plant, for example. South Carolina is one of the 5 poorest states, and I think that even though Edwards has come a long way away from where he grew up, there is enough of his roots still in him to make him seem real to me. If I had to vote for a republican, I am most impressed with some of Ron Paul's positions, with the exception of his libertarian opinions. Overall, I view Paul to be too extreme to ever be a serious contender, but I don't expect him to deliver a secret speech at a meeting of CNP for their endorsement, and he seems to be the only real personality in the republican field. In 1992, Bill Clinton seemed "real" to me.....as Jimmy Carter did. Hillary seems too contrived, as does Obama. I'd vote for Gore if he decided to run. I'm turned off most by candidates and politicians who ignore economic reality, and who respond to the best interests of the moneyed ten percent and the corporations that they invest in, at the expense of the rest of us. I cannot vote for politicians who pander to segregationist sentiments while feigning that they are not aware that they are doing that.

05-05-2007, 12:41 AM	#11 (permalink)
Etarip Tilted	I think everyone can agree on the winner of this debate.... Zombie Reagan.

05-06-2007, 10:35 AM	#17 (permalink)
tecoyah Illusionary	Reagan was a REAL cowboy....now they gots Cleatus. Hell even I was a Republican for Reagan....Now I keep trying to figure out a four letter word I can make out of republican. Too Bad Neocon is six letters

12-23-2007, 04:03 PM	#24 (permalink)
ottopilot let me be clear Location: Waddy Peytona	edit __________________ "It rubs the lotion on Buffy, Jodi and Mr. French's skin" - Uncle Bill from Buffalo Last edited by ottopilot; 12-26-2007 at 11:45 AM..

12-23-2007, 04:37 PM	#25 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	so what you're saying, otto, is the fact that in the past racism ran across party divisions means that now, faced with concrete republican proposals that would serve little purpose beyond playing to, reinforcing and extending good ole amurican racism that we can say nothing? or that contemporary republican recuperation of the discourse of the reconstruction period is of no consequence? or is what you're saying that everyone who is not republican is a democrat and the democrats--your construction/version--cannot say anything about racism because there were prominent racist democrats in the past.... and you act as though this is all shocking news----i mean, it really isn't shocking information--this is all old information--what's curious is the way you try to use it. "you can't say anything" seems to be your argument. "sure racism exists, but you can't say anything about it." or, better: "the republicans may be using race as a mobilization tool now, but in the past democrats did that too, so shut up about it." along the way, you assert the conservative canard of "reverse racism" as if it is other than an entirely ideological proposition. nice going, otto. way to foster an ecumenical conversation. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 12-23-2007 at 04:41 PM..

12-23-2007, 05:39 PM	#26 (permalink)
ottopilot let me be clear Location: Waddy Peytona	edit __________________ "It rubs the lotion on Buffy, Jodi and Mr. French's skin" - Uncle Bill from Buffalo Last edited by ottopilot; 12-26-2007 at 11:44 AM..

12-23-2007, 05:56 PM	#27 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	otto: first off, the "things you didnt say" in your post resulted in speculations (trying to figure out what you were trying to say) because you didnt actually spell out your argument. all the "so what you are saying is..." statements were basically trying to figure out what you were on about. one of the other ways to look at the op was/is to think about the relations that might persist between the ways in which southeastern states used the discourse of "states rights" in the reconstruction period (and after) and their usages now. this doesn't have to be a party-line issue. the other possible issue--whether your "racism is racism" claim means anything outside the narrow world of ward connerly and so forth---is another matter. that one would probably be more predictably partisan, were you to push that way--but feel free to do as you like if you want to continue an interaction. personally, i have no committment either way--ball's in your court. so if you want to reframe and have a conversation, then fine--but in the last post from you, you didnt go anywhere near that direction, preferring instead to do a "yeah well you're a democrat and your party has had racists involved with it too"---which bizarrely enough could be read as conceding the point that host is making while at the same time trying to disable the position from which he makes that point. o yeah---for what it's worth, i dont particularly identify with the democratic party---i understand myself politically as well to the left of them---and that's one of many reasons why i found the approach you took in no. 24 to be so odd---i could see you trying to stuff people into a little box and then attack the box. i cant speak for host as to his relation to the democratic party, but i suspect that it's not all that different. just saying. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

12-23-2007, 06:36 PM	#28 (permalink)
Ustwo Pissing in the cornflakes	Please, when host starts to attack the democrats let me know. I do recall him saying someone like John Edwards could save me from the American version of Chavez. Just because you and host are communists or close enough, it doesn't mean you don't have an obvious bias against republicans in favor of the democrats. Since there is no point in discussing communist party politics in the US, they are a non-issue, its obvious someone would show how the 'other side' (the far far left isn't a side worth speaking of, no one takes them seriously) is guilty of the same type of crime host is trying to pin on republicans. host obviously has 'issues' with the republicans, so there is nothing odd about throwing back the history he chooses to forget. You would think someone with so much google power, wouldn't need to be reminded. __________________ Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

12-23-2007, 06:54 PM	#29 (permalink)
ottopilot let me be clear Location: Waddy Peytona	edit __________________ "It rubs the lotion on Buffy, Jodi and Mr. French's skin" - Uncle Bill from Buffalo Last edited by ottopilot; 12-26-2007 at 11:44 AM..

12-23-2007, 07:02 PM	#31 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	1. actually, ustwo, i'm not cp. sorry to disappoint. i know way too much about the histories of various communist parties to ever be one. i know that requires a type of thinking about questions of left politics that go beyond the cartoon level, so am not expecting you to follow. just stop with the tedious tedious redbaiting, will you? it's like oklahoma 1964 in here with you sometimes. and you sound like the reverend billy james hargis. i dont think this is something you'd want, if you knew who this guy was. but hey, maybe you do. 2. i'm not speaking for host. i was considering taking down the remark above. 3. i dont have a "biais against republicans" i opppose them politically. i oppose you politically. there is nothing accidental about it, nothing that follows from any systemic distortions that i am not aware of: i am perfectly well aware of what i oppose about conservative politics and why--and i can spell out why i oppose conservative politics, and do it in some detail--and i can lay out the premises from which i operate, and can lay out the ideological premise from which you operate (this is different from your personal committments...) so if you want to actually have a discussion about the interaction between the discourse of states rights by the contemporary right and racist politics, then let's do that. maybe we can agree that racism is a problem. maybe we can agree that certain kinds of politics tend to direct attention toward racism, and that other types obfuscate the problem. but you wont know until you change tack in the way you post. seriously, ustwo--i know enough to know that after this long if i were to just keep on posting the same thing in the same language all the time, i'd get bored. i get bored reading the same things in the same language all the time. dont you get bored? at this point, i know perfectly well and you know perfectly well that unless each of us tries to do something different with our language in these posts that things will quickly and inevitably land in the usual stalemate. if that's what you are looking for, then i suppose you've got it. but personally, this bores me stupid. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

12-24-2007, 02:02 AM	#33 (permalink)
scout Psycho	It appears that Otto and Ustwo have indeed struck a very raw nerve. Tsk tsk shame on you two. You both should know by now you do as the liberals say not as they do. The only history permissible in a debate is history they approve and they don't like to be reminded of past transgressions of the Democratic Party. I suspect by the time this thread is over you both will have learned your lesson!

12-24-2007, 06:14 AM	#34 (permalink)
The_Jazz Asshole Administrator Location: Chicago	matthew330:I just deleted your post here: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...99#post2368499 I think you were just trying to be funny, which is why I'm not using the official warning system, but comments like yours add nothing to the conversation and only serve to ratchet up the level of animosity. If you're going to be a part of the conversation, please be a part of it. If you're only going to add snide little comments, please do that outside Politics. I'm posting this in the thread as well, as required by the Politics sticky. __________________ "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin "There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush "We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

12-24-2007, 06:22 AM	#35 (permalink)
ottopilot let me be clear Location: Waddy Peytona	edit __________________ "It rubs the lotion on Buffy, Jodi and Mr. French's skin" - Uncle Bill from Buffalo Last edited by ottopilot; 12-26-2007 at 11:43 AM..

12-24-2007, 08:18 AM	#38 (permalink)
ottopilot let me be clear Location: Waddy Peytona	edit __________________ "It rubs the lotion on Buffy, Jodi and Mr. French's skin" - Uncle Bill from Buffalo Last edited by ottopilot; 12-26-2007 at 11:42 AM..

12-24-2007, 08:39 AM	#40 (permalink)
ottopilot let me be clear Location: Waddy Peytona	edit __________________ "It rubs the lotion on Buffy, Jodi and Mr. French's skin" - Uncle Bill from Buffalo Last edited by ottopilot; 12-26-2007 at 11:41 AM..