Title: Obama Speech: 'A More Perfect Union' (youtube) Source:
http://www.youtube.com URL Source:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWe7wTVbLUU Published:Mar 18, 2008 Author:Barack Obama Post Date:2008-03-18 13:41:02 by robin Keywords:None Views:566 Comments:54
Obama Speech: 'A More Perfect Union' (~37 minutes)
Barack Obama speaks in Philadelphia, PA at Constitution Center, on matters not just of race and recent remarks but of the fundamental path by which America can work together to pursue a better future.
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#1. To: Brian S, aristeides, iconoclast, Elliott Jackalope, Arator, christine, Jethro Tull, Cynicom (#0)
ping
'Individuals should not take responsibility for their own defense. Thats what the police are for. ... If I oppose individuals defending themselves, I have to support police defending them. I have to support a police state.' Alan Dershowitz
#2. To: nolu_chan, ghostdogtxn, Dakmar, mirage (#0)
ping
'Individuals should not take responsibility for their own defense. Thats what the police are for. ... If I oppose individuals defending themselves, I have to support police defending them. I have to support a police state.' Alan Dershowitz
'Individuals should not take responsibility for their own defense. Thats what the police are for. ... If I oppose individuals defending themselves, I have to support police defending them. I have to support a police state.' Alan Dershowitz
I made it about five minutes into this. The world is on fire and he has time to all this time to talk about being black. Sorry, but it's not good enough.
Are you aware of the firestorm of smears that he has been through in the past two weeks, all focused on race?
Had he not given this speech, his campaign would have suffered.
He said beforehand that the speech would be about race, in an effort to directly deal with the recent attacks.
'Individuals should not take responsibility for their own defense. Thats what the police are for. ... If I oppose individuals defending themselves, I have to support police defending them. I have to support a police state.' Alan Dershowitz
I have long been disgusted by his church, so I haven't looked at the "firestorms" as an issue. I'm actually more critical of his association with Saul Alinsky.
His church or the former paster, Rev Jeremiah Wright?
This speech was given to address his remarks. And Obama did so extremely well.
'Individuals should not take responsibility for their own defense. Thats what the police are for. ... If I oppose individuals defending themselves, I have to support police defending them. I have to support a police state.' Alan Dershowitz
The church. I didn't focus on the preacher very much. I do recognize why black Americans might congregate together that way. His years of attendance there are a strong indication of the kind of chip I'd rather not see being carried into the White house on the shoulders of the president.
His years of attendance there are a strong indication of the kind of chip I'd rather not see being carried into the White house on the shoulders of the president.
He discusses that too. Basically, he said the generation that Rev. Jeremiah Wright belongs to has this chip, they experienced forced segregation.
This speech displays Obama's lack of a chip, but his understanding of why some African-Americans do.
'Individuals should not take responsibility for their own defense. Thats what the police are for. ... If I oppose individuals defending themselves, I have to support police defending them. I have to support a police state.' Alan Dershowitz
I made it about five minutes into this. The world is on fire and he has time to all this time to talk about being black. Sorry, but it's not good enough.
It is the last speech in the world he would have wished to make.
He was forced to.
Probably the only man on earth who could have done it so magnificently.
Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things. T. S. Eliot
I'm actually more critical of his association with Saul Alinsky.
Of note, Barack Obama was born August 4, 1961. Saul Alinsky died June 12, 1972 while Obama was only 10 years old. The link between Hillary Clinton and Alinsky appears stronger than what has been shown about Obama.
If you like Alinsky, you will love Hillary D. Rodham's 92-page thesis about him. The text concludes with:
If the ideals Alinsky espouses were actualized, the result would be social revolution. Ironically, this is not a disjunctive projection if considered in the tradition of Western democratic theory. In the first chapter it was pointed out that Alinsky is regarded by many as the proponent of a dangerous socio/political philosophy. As such, he has been feared - just as Eugene Debs or Walt Whitman or Martin Luther King has been feared, because each embraced the most radical of political faiths -- democracy.
Let's face it. If you don't love that, you must be anti-democracy and reject the faith of democracy -- you must be a heretic to the Clinton faith. arrrrgh.
In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky says: "Here I propose to present an arrangement of certain facts and general concepts of change, a step toward a science of revolution." He builds on the tactical principles of Machiavelli: "The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-nots on how to take it away."
Rules for Radicals is concerned with the acquisition of power: "my aim here is to suggest how to organize for power: how to get it and how to use it." This is not to be done with assistance to the poor, nor even by organizing the poor to demand assistance: "...[E]ven if all the low-income parts of our population were organized... it would not be powerful enough to get significant, basic, needed changes."
Alinsky advises the organizer to target the middle class, rather than the poor: "Organization for action will now and in the decade ahead center upon America's white middle class. That is where the power is."
Alinsky is interested in the middle class solely for its usefulness: "Our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values and the way of life of the middle class. They have stigmatized it as materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized and corrupt. They are right; but we must begin from where we are if we are to build power for change, and the power and the people are in the middle class majority."
The article is thin on providing any significant link between Obama and Alinsky. Examples:
Community organizing, for Clinton principally an academic exercise, was more complex for Obama when he arrived in Chicago in 1985 to work with the Developing Communities Project, an offshoot of the Alinsky network. His experience became an emotional and visceral exploration of the roots of urban African American decay and his own identity.
In time, Obama helped build and guide a small network of grass-roots groups that agitated for better playgrounds, improvements in trash pickup and the removal of asbestos from public housing. The city opened a jobs office in the tumbledown community as the lights were going out in nearby factories. ...
He continued to teach the Alinsky philosophy, although he told the New Republic recently that "Alinsky understated the degree to which people's hopes and dreams and their ideals and their values were just as important in organizing as people's self-interest."
Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a friend of Obama's, sees another difference. "If you read Alinsky's teachings, there are times he's confrontational. I have not seen that in Barack. He's always looking for ways to connect."
A 1995 article identifies the "Developing Communities Project" as a campaign funded by Catholic churches. It does not sound like Obama was up to anything very radical.
Lawyer, teacher, philanthropist, and author Barack Obama doesn't need another career. But he's entering politics to get back to his true passion--community organization.
By Hank De Zutter December 8, 1995
[excerpt]
Here in Chicago, Obama worked as lead organizer for the Developing Communities Project, a campaign funded by south-side Catholic churches to counteract the dislocation and massive unemployment caused by the closing and downsizing of southeast Chicago steel plants.
From 1984 to '88 Obama built an organization in Roseland and the nearby Altgeld Gardens public housing complex that mobilized hundreds of citizens. Obama says the campaign experienced "modest successes" in winning residents a place at the table where a job-training facility was launched, asbestos and lead paint were negotiated out of the local schools, and community interests were guarded in the development of the area's landfills.
I do recognize why black Americans might congregate together that way.
The history of it is that Blacks originally congregated that way because the Methodist Episcopal churches where they went in the 1780s deemed them undesirable and chose to segregate them. Some were pulled off their knees and ordered to the back of the church. They left that church as a group and formed the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. After a series of lawsuits, they gained a victory in court against opposition, obtained a charter from the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, built a church, and opened in 1794.
Segregation and discrimination persisted for a while.
Who can blame Obamaphiles for being desperate? Until he makes a speech alerting his elite backers that he's not beholden to them, I'll have no illusions.
Until he makes a speech alerting his elite backers that he's not beholden to them, I'll have no illusions.
Which of the following folk have ever received such a challenge?
According to a variety of sources, the following presidential candidates are either members of one of the groups or have strong ties: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, John McCain, John Edwards, Fred Thompson, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson.
Mike Huckabee, though not a member, spoke to the CFR in September. Since then, his political star has risen to the point that he has become a top-tier candidate.
So often throughout recent history it has been the case.
Ever since Democrat Adlai Stevenson challenged Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, the odds have significantly favored those with membership in the elite groups.
In 1960, both John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon were members.
In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson was not a member. Neither was his opponent, Barry Goldwater. But Johnson had already staffed his administration with plenty of insiders.
In 1968, it was Nixon versus club member Hubert H. Humphrey.
In 1972, it was Nixon again against Democratic Party CFR member George McGovern.
In 1976, it was CFR Republican Gerald Ford losing to CFR Democrat Jimmy Carter.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan was not a member, but his running mate, George H.W. Bush, was. So were both of his opponents Carter and independent John Anderson. Assuming office, however, Reagan quickly named 313 CFR members to his team.
In 1984, another CFR member, Walter Mondale, was nominated by the Democratic Party to challenge Reagan.
In 1988, CFR member Bush took on CFR member Michael Dukakis.
In 1992, Bush was challenged by an obscure governor from Arkansas, Bill Clinton, who won the "trifecta" by being a member of the CFR, Trlateral Commission and Bilderberg Group. He was also a Rhodes scholar another favored credential of the worldwide elite.
In 1996, Clinton was challenged by CFR member Bob Dole.
In 2000, CFR member Al Gore ran against non-member George W. Bush, but his running mate, Dick Cheney, was.
In 2004, Bush was challenged by CFR member John Kerry.
www.alipac.us/article2888.html
The CFR most certainly has more influence than any of us would desire, or put up with if we could help it.
(From my post to another thread.)
Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things. T. S. Eliot
it has everything to do with the worst administration in all of American history.
You're fooling yourself if you think this wasn't a collusion designed way before the BushCheneyInc administration. Clinton's in it as was Reagan in starting the ball rolling. To think/believe that somehow Obama is outside the mix is foolish. Look at the democrats. Once they got the majority, they've given BushCheneyInc EVERYTHING. You're operating under an illusion if you think Obama is not one of theirs.
Of note, Barack Obama was born August 4, 1961. Saul Alinsky died June 12, 1972 while Obama was only 10 years old. The link between Hillary Clinton and Alinsky appears stronger than what has been shown about Obama.
Thanks, it's always good to have a source and the correct facts. There has been a lot of deliberately erroneous/false info used against him.
And most often, when a correction is made, it is never acknowledged.
'Individuals should not take responsibility for their own defense. Thats what the police are for. ... If I oppose individuals defending themselves, I have to support police defending them. I have to support a police state.' Alan Dershowitz
We're be in serious trouble all right and it has everything to do with the worst administration in all of American history.
If there is no official justice handed out to Cheney and the Bush family and friends, someday, when more of their evil is more widely known, I think justice will find it's way to all of them.
'Individuals should not take responsibility for their own defense. Thats what the police are for. ... If I oppose individuals defending themselves, I have to support police defending them. I have to support a police state.' Alan Dershowitz
You're operating under an illusion if you think Obama is not one of theirs.
It was the establishment that initially operated under the illusion that JFK was one of theirs.
It turned out, he wasn't.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
Does no one remember that forced segregation only ended a few decades ago? There are old people who remember the separate drinking fountains, separate restrooms, not being allowed to sit at the counter of a cafe and being denied service altogether. And of course separate schools (Brown vs Board of Education) and told to sit at the back of the bus (Rosa Parks).
As Obama said in his speech, (which a few here are refusing to read or watch), Sunday morning is the most segregated day of the week.
In CA, there are Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese and Samoan churches, where the entire service is in their native tongue. The language makes for a reasonable excuse. But that's not why Blacks had to start their own churches.
Jimmy Carter's church was all White. There was one old Black man who liked to point it out by standing outside Carter's church. He did embarrass Carter too. As I recall, they finally said he was welcome to join them. Imagine what a warm experience that would have been for him.
In my family tree, in 1785 in KY, a few of my ancestors started a Baptist church that included 4 free Blacks. In the church minutes there was discussion about allowing them founding member status. A compromise was made, they would be allowed to be founding members, but they're names would not be mentioned. It's the Boone's Creek Baptist church.
I am a direct descendent of the Shortridges and Scholls. From what I can see in the photos of the current congregation, it is entirely white.
On my maternal side of my family tree, there was also tolerance and far more foundings of Baptist Churches starting in 1787, in VA, to Carter valley TN, to MO and then CA. They started only Baptist churches and were present at the first Southern Baptist convention. Because of their Christian faith, they rose above the intolerance around them (but not to the degree of allowing integration or true equality until more recently).
You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
How does that Catholic saying go, give us a child until he is 7? Something like that. But that also works for other types of training as well.
'Individuals should not take responsibility for their own defense. Thats what the police are for. ... If I oppose individuals defending themselves, I have to support police defending them. I have to support a police state.' Alan Dershowitz
How does that Catholic saying go, give us a child until he is 7? Something like that.
"Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man." -- Jesuit motto usually (but questionably) attributed to St. Francis Xavier, 1506-1552
'Individuals should not take responsibility for their own defense. Thats what the police are for. ... If I oppose individuals defending themselves, I have to support police defending them. I have to support a police state.' Alan Dershowitz
Does no one remember that forced segregation only ended a few decades ago?
Not only did segregation exist, it was sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court as Constitutional [Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)] which was not overturned until Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) held that "separate but equal" was inherently UNequal.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The first Federal naturalization law limited naturalization to free white persons. Chinese remained explicitly excluded, by law, until 1943.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), opinion by Mr. Justice Holmes,
It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 , 25 S. Ct. 358, 3 Ann. Cas. 765. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
The famous quote refers to then Virginia state law which authorized forced sterilization if it was shown than there were three generations of imbeciles in the family. The state court had found that Carrie Buck's mother Emma was an imbecile, that Carrie herself was an imbecile, and that her daughter Vivian was an imbecile. Carrie was forcibly sterilized on October 19, 1927.
Little Vivian was given to the care of a family named Dobbs who enrolled her in school. Vivian, the third generation to be declared an imbecile to justify the sterilization of her mother, earned a place on the honor roll.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The Tuskeegee Experiment continued until 1972 when the Public Health Service as very publically busted by the press.
For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis. These men, for the most part illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama, were never told what disease they were suffering from or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for bad blood, their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all. The data for the experiment was to be collected from autopsies of the men, and they were thus deliberately left to degenerate under the ravages of tertiary syphilis -- which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death. As I see it, one of the doctors involved explained, we have no further interest in these patients until they die.
...
By the end of the experiment, 28 of the men had died directly of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis.
...
The story finally broke in the Washington Star on July 25, 1972, in an article by Jean Heller of the Associated Press. Her source was Peter Buxtun, a former PHS venereal disease interviewer and one of the few whistle blowers over the years. The PHS, however, remained unrepentant, claiming the men had been volunteers and were always happy to see the doctors, and an Alabama state health officer who had been involved claimed somebody is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.
Under the glare of publicity, the government ended their experiment, and for the first time provided the men with effective medical treatment for syphilis.
'Individuals should not take responsibility for their own defense. Thats what the police are for. ... If I oppose individuals defending themselves, I have to support police defending them. I have to support a police state.' Alan Dershowitz
Are you sure you want to to toss the word "raving" around, buck?
Don't make me laugh! I can't give Hillary Clinton a pass for her former associations with Saul Alinsky, so why should I give BHO a pass for the same? Face it, we're in deep trouble. You're quibbling over which poison we ingest.
Seventeen years later, another young honor student was offered a job as an organizer in Chicago. By then, Alinsky had died, but a group of his disciples hired Barack Obama, a 23-year-old Columbia University graduate, to organize black residents on the South Side, while learning and applying Alinsky's philosophy of street-level democracy. The recruiter called the $13,000-a-year job "very romantic, until you do it."
There is nothing in your linked source showing any association between Obama and Alinsky, or even showing that they were ever on the same continent. As noted in my #15, to you, Alinsky died when Obama was ten years old.
Can you provide any quote where Obama so much as said anything about Alinsky?
There was no association with the corpse of Alinsky.
The article fails to state anything to substantiate that Obama either learned or applied any Alinsky philosophy. Specifically, what are you complaining that Obama said or did?
The article states,
In time, Obama helped build and guide a small network of grass-roots groups that agitated for better playgrounds, improvements in trash pickup and the removal of asbestos from public housing. The city opened a jobs office in the tumbledown community as the lights were going out in nearby factories.
Are you endorsing Obama or just pointing out that some attacks on him are unfair?
Just pointing out some attacks are unfair, unfounded, just plain silly, or possibly true but lacking sufficient factual foundation. Such attacks have been made against all three major candidates, not just Obama.
Such things just divert attention from real issues such as the war and the economy and such.
The character of the candidates is fair game, but for personal attacks on the candidates, I would prefer that it be based on something the candidate said or did, rather than trying to link him or her to something said or done by someone else by some vague connection a la Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
A master of the attention-getting rhetorical flourish, Alinsky once pressed Eastman Kodak to hire more black workers, saying the only thing the company had done about race was introduce color film. Yet he practiced "a method that sounds more radical than it actually was," said Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin, who called Alinsky "a tactician more than he was an ideologist."
Alinsky, unimpressed by dogma, believed in coalitions linked by clear-eyed calculations of self-interest. He focused on concrete local issues: bus routes, public housing, jobs. To him, the fashionable cry of the 1960s that power comes from the barrel of a gun was "absurd." To mark his differences with the bomb-throwers, he subtitled his second book "A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals."
The road to perdition .... Bush/Clinton/Bush/McClinton
I'm not quibbling at all ... just trying to figure out how/why a seemingly intelligent man can go rabid over non-violent neighborhood organizers?
They may be an irritant to the comfortable but ignoring them and the social problems they feel called to address only lead to their replacement by a more extreme strain.
The road to perdition .... Bush/Clinton/Bush/McClinton
I'm not quibbling at all ... just trying to figure out how/why a seemingly intelligent man can go rabid over non-violent neighborhood organizers? Barack may cause some indigestion but the other two are the real deal for continuing the death by poison path we are on.
Neighbor organizers may be an irritant to the comfortable but ignoring them and the social problems they feel called to address only lead to their replacement by a more extreme strain.
The road to perdition .... Bush/Clinton/Bush/McClinton
Yet he practiced "a method that sounds more radical than it actually was," said Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin, who called Alinsky "a tactician more than he was an ideologist."
The guy teaches "radical tradition" at Georgetown. You figure out which way he leans, I don't have time.
The guy teaches "radical tradition" at Georgetown. You figure out which way he leans, I don't have time.
Hit and run smear artists rarely take a lot of "time".
Bio Michael Kazin is a Professor in the Department of History. He is an expert in U.S. politics and social movements, 19th and 20th centuries and is currently working on a history of the American left, to be published by Knopf. His most recent book is "A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan."
Prior to his position at Georgetown, Kazin served as Assistant Professor to Professor of History at the American University. In 1996, he served as John Adams Chair in American Studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He also served as Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University and as adjunct professor at San Francisco State University, University of California at Santa Cruz, and San Francisco City College.
Kazin has received the following academic honors:Guggenheim Fellowship, 2004; Senior Faculty Research Fellowship, Georgetown University, 2002-3; Research Fellowship, The Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, 1998-9; Fellowship for University Teachers, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1998-9; Distinguished Lecturer in History and American Studies, Fulbright Program, Japan, July-August, 1997; John Adams Chair in American Studies, Distinguished Lectureship, Fulbright Program, Spring 1996; Senior Fellowship, Commonwealth Center, College of William and Mary, 1990-91; Post-Doctoral Fellowship, National Museum of American History (Smithsonian Institution), 1988-9; and the Herbert Gutman Award (for best book in American history published by University of Illinois Press), 1988.
He has written: A Godly Hero, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (co-author, Maurice Isserman), Oxford University Press, 1999 (paperback, 2000). Second edition, 2003. Named one of best books of 2000 by Washington Post; The Populist Persuasion: An American History, Basic Books, 1995 (paperback, 1996). Revised paperback edition, Cornell University Press, 1998; and Barons of Labor: The San Francisco Building Trades and Union Power in the Progressive Era, University of Illinois Press, 1987 (paperback, 1989).
Education
* Ph.D. (1983) Stanford University, History * M.A. (1975) Portland State University, History * B.A. (1972) Harvard University, Social Studies
I'm sure you can pick a little cut and paste out of there to smear Dr. Kazin with, given your aptitude of a retarded sparrow picking shit away from grain. But the guy sounds like a left leaning populist to me.
How 'bout posting your own resume while your at it.
The road to perdition .... Bush/Clinton/Bush/McClinton
I'm slowly but surely getting the impression that, in your view, anybody but Rotary members are subversives .... and some of them may be suspect.
The Rotarians helped create UNESCO and was even involved in the UN's founding. But then again, maybe you only supported Ron Paul because he was anti-war. I supported him because he wanted us out of the UN. If he had said we should use the UN to avoid war, I wouldn't have supported him at all.
Just because you want to vote doesn't mean there is someone worth voting for. That kind of wishful thinking is for children.