[Rhodes22-list] POLITICAL-Maureen Dowd (NYTimes) on Gen. Powell's Obama Pick

[Herb Parsons]

Ben,

Is it your assertion that the Democratic operatives have behaved 
differently?

Ben Cittadino wrote:
> Andrew,
>
> The answer is ..........................Patrick Henry of "give me liberty or
> give me death fame".
>
> Brad,
>
> When Powell (or I for that matter) reference the negative tactics of the
> Republican party or McCain operatives, you can be sure of one thing.  We are
> not talking about you or John McCain personally.
> We are talking about the people behind the scenes stoking the fires of
> religious and racial division.  When some lady gets up at a rally and tells
> John McCain that Obama is an Arab and that is why she can't support him
> there is a reason she got in the front row.  When the Sheriff got up and
> introduced Gov. Palin by referring to Barak HUSSEIN Obama there is a reason
> he got that opportunity.  When Gov. Palin talks about "real Americans" she
> is sure not including me.
>
> If the McCain campaign behaved as you have behaved during this entire debate
> I would have no beef with them. But, they have not behaved well and that was
> what General Powell and other centrist Republicans can't stomach.
>
> Best,
> Ben C.
>
> Brad Haslett-2 wrote:
>   
>> Ben,
>>
>> First, let's pay our respects to Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, a fallen
>> American hero and the family who raised him as such. He and they
>> deserve our praise for their sacrifice.
>>
>> While other's were reading stories in the New York Times and the
>> Washington Post about the  "failed" policies of George W Bush and his
>> Secretary of State, Colin Powell, I ate my cornflakes reading Micheal
>> Yon and other military bloggers who put faces and names to the
>> statistics. Turns out, Yon and his fellow bloggers actually on the
>> battlefield had the better perspective than the AP stringers holed-up
>> in the Green Zone.
>>
>> Do I care if Obama is a Muslim?  No!  I seriously doubt that Kareem
>> was indoctrinated with "God Damn America" or "Allah Damn America"
>> weekly in his mosque for twenty years.  I've met and socialize with
>> too many good and patriotic American Muslims to believe otherwise.  If
>> your Mosque, Church, Temple, Synagogue, etc. spews these vitriolic
>> hateful statements on a regular basis, I DO question your values.
>>
>> Was Obama "embarrassed" by the Muslim women who were excluded in the
>> Detroit area?  Bullshit!  He's embarrassed by getting caught. Obama
>> has played the race card his whole career.  Has everyone forgotten the
>> "we need more white people" moment in the campaign?
>>
>> BTW, my sincere condolences to the Obama family for the health issues
>> of his "typical white women" grandma who is apparently near death.
>>
>> Brad
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 11:07 AM, Ben Cittadino <bcittadino at dcs-law.com>
>> wrote:
>>     
>>> Gentle Readers;
>>>
>>> I read this over my corn flakes today.  There isn't alot that brings a
>>> tear
>>> to my eye, but I gotta tell ya' I highly recommend this column to anyone
>>> who
>>> thinks they might be "on the fence" about this election.
>>>
>>> Ms. Dowd is usually not my "cup of tea". She is often too sarcastic and
>>> caustic for my taste.  She nailed it with this one.
>>>
>>> See the following:
>>>
>>> Moved by a Crescent
>>>
>>> By MAUREEN DOWD
>>> Published: October 21, 2008
>>> Colin Powell had been bugged by many things in his party's campaign this
>>> fall: the insidious merging of rumors that Barack Obama was Muslim with
>>> intimations that he was a terrorist sympathizer; the assertion that Sarah
>>> Palin was ready to be president; the uniformed sheriff who introduced
>>> Governor Palin by sneering about Barack Hussein Obama; the scorn with
>>> which
>>> Republicans spit out the words "community organizer"; the Republicans'
>>> argument that using taxes to "spread the wealth" was socialist when the
>>> purpose of taxes is to spread the wealth; Palin's insidious notion that
>>> small towns in states that went for W. were "the real America."
>>>
>>> But what sent him over the edge and made him realize he had to speak out
>>> was
>>> when he opened his New Yorker three weeks ago and saw a picture of a
>>> mother
>>> pressing her head against the gravestone of her son, a 20-year-old
>>> soldier
>>> who had been killed in Iraq. On the headstone were engraved his name,
>>> Kareem
>>> Rashad Sultan Khan, his awards — the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star — and
>>> a
>>> crescent and a star to denote his Islamic faith.
>>>
>>> "I stared at it for an hour," he told me. "Who could debate that this kid
>>> lying in Arlington with Christian and Jewish and nondenominational
>>> buddies
>>> was not a fine American?"
>>>
>>> Khan was an all-American kid. A 2005 graduate of Southern Regional High
>>> School in Manahawkin, N.J., he loved the Dallas Cowboys and playing video
>>> games with his 12-year-old stepsister, Aliya.
>>>
>>> His obituary in The Star-Ledger of Newark said that he had sent his
>>> family
>>> back pictures of himself playing soccer with Iraqi children and hugging a
>>> smiling young Iraqi boy.
>>>
>>> His father said Kareem had been eager to enlist since he was 14 and was
>>> outraged by the 9/11 attacks. "His Muslim faith did not make him not want
>>> to
>>> go," Feroze Khan, told The Gannett News Service after his son died. "He
>>> looked at it that he's American and he has a job to do."
>>>
>>> In a gratifying "have you no sense of decency, Sir and Madam?" moment,
>>> Colin
>>> Powell went on "Meet the Press" on Sunday and talked about Khan, and the
>>> unseemly ways John McCain and Palin have been polarizing the country to
>>> try
>>> to get elected. It was a tonic to hear someone push back so clearly on
>>> ugly
>>> innuendo.
>>>
>>> Even the Obama campaign has shied away from Muslims. The candidate has
>>> gone
>>> to synagogues but no mosques, and the campaign was embarrassed when it
>>> turned out that two young women in headscarves had not been allowed to
>>> stand
>>> behind Obama during a speech in Detroit because aides did not want them
>>> in
>>> the TV shot.
>>>
>>> The former secretary of state has dealt with prejudice in his life, in
>>> and
>>> out of the Army, and he is keenly aware of how many millions of Muslims
>>> around the world are being offended by the slimy tenor of the race
>>> against
>>> Obama.
>>>
>>> He told Tom Brokaw that he was troubled by what other Republicans, not
>>> McCain, had said: " 'Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.' Well,
>>> the
>>> correct answer is, he is not a Muslim. He's a Christian. He's always been
>>> a
>>> Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there
>>> something
>>> wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no. That's not
>>> America. Is something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid
>>> believing that he or she could be president?"
>>>
>>> Powell got a note from Feroze Khan this week thanking him for telling the
>>> world that Muslim-Americans are as good as any others. But he also
>>> received
>>> more e-mails insisting that Obama is a Muslim and one calling him
>>> "unconstitutional and unbiblical" for daring to support a socialist. He
>>> got
>>> a mass e-mail from a man wanting to spread the word that Obama was
>>> reading a
>>> book about the end of America written by a fellow Muslim.
>>>
>>> "Holy cow!" Powell thought. Upon checking Amazon.com, he saw that it was
>>> a
>>> reference to Fareed Zakaria, a Muslim who writes a Newsweek column and
>>> hosts
>>> a CNN foreign affairs show. His latest book is "The Post-American World."
>>>
>>> Powell is dismissive of those, like Rush Limbaugh, who say he made his
>>> endorsement based on race. And he's offended by those who suggest that
>>> his
>>> appearance Sunday was an expiation for Iraq, speaking up strongly now
>>> about
>>> what he thinks the world needs because he failed to do so then.
>>>
>>> Even though he watched W. in 2000 make the argument that his lack of
>>> foreign
>>> policy experience would be offset by the fact that he was surrounded by
>>> pros
>>> — Powell himself was one of the regents brought in to guide the bumptious
>>> Texas dauphin — Powell makes that same argument now for Obama.
>>>
>>> "Experience is helpful," he says, "but it is judgment that matters."
>>>
>>>
>>> All I can add is God Bless Colin Powell and God Bless America.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Ben Cittadino s/v Susan Kay, Highlands NJ
>>> --
>>> View this message in context:
>>> http://www.nabble.com/POLITICAL-Maureen-Dowd-%28NYTimes%29-on-Gen.-Powell%27s-Obama-Pick-tp20114212p20114212.html
>>> Sent from the Rhodes 22 mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>>
>>>
>>> __________________________________________________
>>> To subscribe/unsubscribe or for help with using the mailing list go to
>>> http://www.rhodes22.org/list
>>> __________________________________________________
>>>
>>>       
>> __________________________________________________
>> To subscribe/unsubscribe or for help with using the mailing list go to
>> http://www.rhodes22.org/list
>> __________________________________________________
>>
>>
>>     
>
>