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

Thu Oct 23 12:23:47 EDT 2008

Black sheep, extremist. All the same thing.

I think I'm more and more ready to take some vacation time, and go 
flying and talk politics with people that have "been there, done dat"

Brad Haslett wrote:
> Ben,
>
> Forgive me in advance for a rambling response to your "real American" issue.
>
> A few years ago my boys and my best friend were driving home from a
> weekend on the CoraShen and took the scenic route.  We got trapped in
> a traffic jam in Grand Junction, Tennessee (population 600?) because
> of an auto accident.  A woman came running to our car and asked if we
> had a fire extinguisher.  Out of curiosity, we piled out of the van
> and walked to the scene of the accident.  There was a seriously
> injured, and seriously fat woman dying in a car with the engine
> burning.  The locals were worried about the fire.  A policeman was
> sitting in his car on the scene, talking on the radio.  I immediately
> sent my boys back to the van to retrieve all the towels and blankets
> we'd just removed from the boat.  The woman was too fat to pull
> through the broken windows.  The doors were stuck closed.  Out of a
> crowd of 50, there was one large muscular black man who asked me "what
> should we do?".  "Pull that GODDAMNED  door open!"  The "jaws of life"
> couldn't have done it quicker.  We pulled the lady out of the car
> (pulling her pants off in the process) and drug her to safety. My boys
> showed with the blankets and towels - we applied the towels to the
> parts that were bleeding the most, covered her with the blanket for
> some dignity, and quickly split the scene when the ambulance showed.
> The locals continued to watch.
>
> My sons peppered me with a hundred questions on the journey home.
> "Dad, why didn't the cop pull the lady out of the car?"  "Dad, why did
> every one stand around and watch?"  "Dad ------?"
>
> "Boys, people are sheeple!"  "We are herd animals, you pay a price for
> being the Black Sheep of the herd".
>
> Where is this going you ask?  Ben, you put your faith in the MSM and
> the herd.  So did the Germans in 1933 and the Chinese in 1949.
>
> Call me the Black Sheep of 'da list".
>
> I've been called worse.
>
> Brad
>
> On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 2:29 PM, Ben Cittadino <bcittadino at dcs-law.com> 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
>>>> --
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>>>> Sent from the Rhodes 22 mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>       
>> --
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>> Sent from the Rhodes 22 mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
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