4um: Bye Bye Barry

Title: Bye Bye Barry
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Published: Aug 20, 2008
Author: Joel S. Hirschhorn
Post Date: 2008-08-20 15:55:42 by statusquobuster
Keywords: Barack Obama, John McCain, plutocracy
Views: 3838
Comments: 108

The final results are in on this historic November day. Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars he raised, Barack Obama has lost the 2008 presidential election. American voters have boldly spoken truth to arrogance. Turned out that all those pre-election opinion polls that showed Obama’s inability to get over 50 percent support were prescient. Much of the public was never comfortable with Obama, though he clearly was so comfortable acting like he already was president.

Hillary and Bill Clinton are probably drinking champagne and having the sweetest time since Bill won his first presidential election. Hillary must now bite her lip repeatedly and resist saying publicly that “I told you so!” Hillary in 2012 will reveal that she learned her lessons well.

All that Obama audacity of arrogance from the smiling, glib politician finally died the death it so richly deserved. Too many pundits will blame his loss on his blackness and racist voters. But the larger truth is that sufficient voters saw through the many lies and deceptions. Obama always had a hard time giving a simple, short straight answer to tough questions. He was always mentally calculating exactly how to game his answers so that he would achieve all the benefits he had his eyes on. He was simply too damn presumptuous and too smart for his own good. In the end, Americans do not want the smartest person in the presidency or endless nuancing. They want someone they can easily understand and trust, despite their skepticism. There were many reasons not to trust the calculating Obama to do anything he promised to do or, for some people, to fear he might.

And now the bloviating pundits will also blame third party presidential candidates for siphoning votes from Obama, as if Americans have no right to exercise their political freedom and vote for someone they honestly think has the best policy positions and would most help restore American democracy.

Jon Stewart and other late-night comics will feast on these election results, as they should. I can’t wait to hear jokes about Obama’s wife becoming a more vocal and militant critic of the good old USA, now that she has proof positive that so many Americans are stupid white racists.

Of course, now the nation must suffer through the ineptness, confusion and dementia-like dullness of the living-in-the-past John McCain, tough-talking but brain dead. Will the McCain presidency look like an extension of the incredible terrible George W. Bush White House? Of course.

Still living off a once-true characterization as a maverick, McCain must now surround himself with people who actually are smart and knowledgeable about myriad issues. Should be no problem finding enough lobbyists. Pundits will start speculating that McCain will be lucky just to stay alive for four years, but thankfully his vice-president seems more capable. One thing for sure: the power plutocracy that really runs the country will have little trouble pulling the strings behind the scenes and keep the puppet McCain dancing to tunes written by corporate interests.

Ralph Nader summed up this way: “A large fraction of Americans know that we need a Jeffersonian political revolution to fix our corrupt system. They were not fooled by the Obama rhetoric about change, not from someone that has been a product of and servant for the two-party plutocracy. Yes, all the votes for me and the other third-party presidential candidates spelled the difference between Obama winning and losing. Our voters correctly protested against the corrupt two-party system. They did not elect McCain. Only those who voted for McCain elected him, and that is something they must live with as they watch a McCain administration continue dismantling American democracy and budget-busting global warmongering.”

Cynthia McKinney wisely noted that “It is time to stop saying God bless America, and begin repeating God save America. The good news is that we will build even greater public support for a true political revolution during the McCain presidency. All too often things must get much worse before they can get better. They will get worse.”

As to Obama, half-jokingly he said: “I may come back as a third-party candidate.” Or did that reflect a calculation that Democrats had learned their lesson? As to all the screaming from the left that the Republicans stole this election also, Obama immediately said “John won it fair and square.” Thanks Barry, exactly what I expected from a phony change agent.

Barack Obama is going to win the general election and be the next president of the United States. Too bad so many are too cynical and dismiss his canidacy, but he is the real thing, and nobody is wringing their hands yet or grinding their teeth who work in his campaign.

Further, he will prove he is worth his salt as president within the first one hundred days of his presidency.

Well, we all have our opinions on this election year, don't we? Personally, I never drink soda pop. I avoid it's empty calories. I know Obama has substance and the right stuff for the job.

Crow is going to be a popular food staple for many in here after he takes office and starts his presidency.

By Gemma Meyer (Gemma Meyer is the pseudonym of a South African journalist. She and her husband, a former conservative member of parliament, still reside in South Africa.)

People used to say that South Africa was 20 years behind the rest of the Western world. Television, for example, came late to South Africa (but so did pornography and the gay rights movement).

Today, however, South Africa may be the grim model of the future Western world, for events in America reveal trends chillingly similar to those that destroyed our country.

America's structures are Western. Your Congress, your lobbying groups, your free speech, and the way ordinary Americans either get involved or ignore politics are peculiarly Western, not the way most of the world operates. But the fact that only about a third of Americans deem it important to vote is horrifying in light of how close you are to losing your Western character.

Writing letters to the press, manning stands at county fairs, hosting fund-raising dinners, attending rallies, setting up conferences, writing your Congressman - that is what you know, and what you are comfortable with. Those are the political methods you've created for yourselves to keep your country on track and to ensure political accountability.

But woe to you if - or more likely, when - the rules change. White Americans may soon find themselves unable or unwilling to stand up to challenge the new political methods that will be the inevitable result of the ethnic metamorphosis now taking place in America. Unable to cope with the new rules of the game - violence, mob riots, intimidation through accusations of racism, demands for proportionality based on racial numbers, and all the other social and political weapons used by the have-nots to bludgeon treasure and power from the haves - Americans, like others before them, will no doubt cave in. They will compromise away their independence and ultimately their way of life.

That is exactly what happened in South Africa. I know, because I was there and I saw it happen.

Faced with revolution in the streets, strikes, civil unrest and the sheer terror and murder practiced by Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC), the white government simply capitulated in order to achieve "peace."

Westerners need peace. They need order and stability. They are builders and planners. But what we got was the peace of the grave for our society.

The Third World is different - different peoples with different pasts and different cultures. Yet Westerners continue to mistake the psychology of the Third World and its peoples. Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe are perfect examples of those mistakes. Sierra Leone is in perpetual civil war, and Zimbabwe - once the thriving, stable Rhodesia - is looting the very people (the white men) who feed the country. Yet Westerners do not admit that the same kind of savagery could come to America when enough immigrants of the right type assert themselves. The fact is, Americans are sitting ducks for Third World exploitation of the Western conscience of compassion.

Those in the West who forced South Africa to surrender to the ANC and its leaders did not consider Africa to be the dangerous, corrupt, and savage place it is now in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Those Western politicians now have a similar problem looming on their own doorsteps: the demand for power and treasure from the non-Western peoples inside the realm.

It is already too late for South Africa, but not for America if enough people strengthen their spine and take on the race terrorists, the armies of the "politically correct" and, most dangerous of all, the craven politicians who believe "compassionate conservatism" will buy them a few more votes, a few more days of peace.

White South Africans, you should remember, have been in that part of Africa for the same amount of time whites have inhabited North America; yet ultimately South Africans voted for their own suicide. We are not so very different from you.

We lost our country through skillful propaganda, pressure from abroad (not least from the U.S.A.), unrelenting charges of "oppression" and "racism," and the shrewd assessment by African tyrants that the white man has many Achilles' heels, the most significant of which are his compassion, his belief in the "equality of man," and his "love your neighbor" philosophy - none of which are part of the Third World's history.

The mainline churches played a big role in the demise of Western influence throughout Africa, too; especially in South Africa. Today's tyrants were yesterday's mission-school proteges. Many dictators in Africa were men of the cloth. They knew their clerical collars would deflect criticism and obfuscate their real aims, which had nothing whatever to do with the "brotherhood of man."

Other tyrants, like the infamous Idi Amin, were trained and schooled by the whites themselves, at Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard. After receiving the best from the West, they unleashed a resentful bloodlust against their benefactors.

From what I have seen and read thus far, I fear Americans will capitulate just as we did. Americans are, generally, a soft lot. They don't want to quarrel or obstruct the claims of those who believe they were wronged. They like peace and quiet, and they want to compromise and be nice.

A television program that aired in South Africa showed a town meeting somewhere in Southern California where people met to complain about falling standards in the schools. Whites who politely spoke at the meeting clearly resented the influx of Mexican immigrants into their community. When a handful of Chicanos at the back of the hall shouted and waved their hands at them, the whites simply shrunk back into their seats rather than tell the noisemakers to shut up. They didn't want to quarrel.

In America, the courts are still the final arbiters of society's laws. But what will happen when your future majority refuses to abide by court rulings - as in Zimbabwe. What will happen when the new majority says the judges are racists, and that they refuse to acknowledge "white man's justice"? What will happen when the courts are filled with their people, or their sympathizers? In California, Proposition 187 has already been overturned.

What will you do when the future non-white majority decides to change the names of streets and cities? What will you do when they no longer want to use money that carries the portraits of old, dead white "racists" and slave owners? Will you cave in, like you did on flying the Confederate flag? What about the national anthem? Your official language?

Don't laugh. When the "majority" took over in South Africa, the first targets were our national symbols.

In another generation, America may well face what Africa is now experiencing - invasions of private land by the "have-nots;" the decline in health care quality; roads and buildings in disrepair; the banishment of your history from the education of the young; the revolutionization of your justice system.

In South Africa today, only 9 percent of murderers end up in jail. Court dockets are regularly purchased and simply disappear. Magistrates can be bribed as can the prison authorities, making escapes commonplace. Vehicle and airplane licenses are regularly purchased, and forged school and university certificates are routine.

What would you think of the ritual slaughter of animals in your neighbor's backyard? How do you clean up the blood and entrails that litter your suburban streets? How do you feel about the practice of witchcraft, in which the parts of young girls and boys are needed for "medicinal" purposes? How do you react to the burning of witches?

Don't imagine that government officials caught with their fingers in the till will be punished. Excuses - like the need to overcome generations of white racism - will be found to exonerate the guilty.

In fact, known criminals will be voted into office because of a racial solidarity among the majority that doesn't exist among the whites. When Ian Smith of the old Rhodesia tried to stand up to the world, white South African politicians were among the Westerners pressuring him to surrender.

When Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe murders his political opponents, ignores unfavorable court decisions, terrorizes the population and siphons off millions from the state treasury for himself and his friends, South Africa's new President Thabo Mbeki holds his hand and declares his support. That just happened a few weeks ago.

Your tax dollars will go to those who don't earn and don't pay. In South Africa, organizations that used to have access to state funds such as old age homes, the arts, and veterans' services, are simply abandoned.

What will happen is that Western structures in America will be either destroyed from without, or transformed from within, used to suit the goals of the new rulers. And they will reign either through terror, as in Zimbabwe today, or exert other corrupt pressures to obtain, or buy votes. Once power is in the hands of aliens, don't expect loyalty or devotion to principle from those whose jobs are at stake. One of the most surprising and tragic components of the disaster in South Africa is how many previously anti-ANC whites simply moved to the other side.

Once you lose social, cultural, and political dominance, there is no getting it back again.

Unfortunately, your habits and values work against you. You cannot fight terror and street mobs with letters to your Congressmen. You cannot fight accusations of racism with prayer meetings. You cannot appeal to the goodness of your fellow man when the fellow man despises you for your weaknesses and hacks off the arms and legs of his political opponents.

To survive, Americans must never lose the power they now enjoy to people from alien cultures. Above all, don't put yourselves to the test of fighting only when your backs are against the wall. You will probably fail.

Millions around the world want your good life. But make no mistake: They care not for the high-minded ideals of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, and your Constitution. What they want are your posessions, your power, and your status.

And they already know that their allies among you, the "human rights activists," the skillful lawyers and the left-wing politicians will fight for them, and not for you. They will exploit your compassion and your Christian charity, and your good will.

They have studied you, Mr. and Mrs. America, and they know your weaknesses well.

I support the Government of SA, and I remain a strong and committed supporter of the ANC.

I also keep the current laments about alien cultures strongly in the context of remembering what happened to the majority that existed here before Europeans invaded these continents. I still have revulsion and disgust at the Trail of Tears, the Sand Creek, Wounded Knee, Pequot and other massacres by our culture.

Simply put, I know too much to buy the hate and cultural myopia and shortsightedness of that piece. That is just the way it is.

South Africa's Joe Slovo dies; ANC leader had `warm jewish heart'

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

01-09-1995

South Africa's Joe Slovo dies; ANC leader had `warm Jewish heart'.

South African President Nelson Mandela declared next Sunday a day of national mourning for Housing Minister Joe Slovo, who died Jan. 5 at the age of 68.

He had been suffering from bone marrow cancer for some time.

Born Yossel Mashal Slovo in Obelei, Lithuania, he was a longtime Communist who devoted his life to the fight for full racial equality in South Africa.

He was the first white to be elected to the executive of the African National Congress and was one of two Jews to become part of the Cabinet after Mandela won the country's first all-race elections last April.

"His death is a tremendous loss to our whole country. He was a man who, until recently, was vilified by a section of the people who saw him virtually as the devil incarnate," said Ronnie Kasrils, deputy minister of defense and now the only remaining Jew in the South African Cabinet.

"Now he has emerged as virtually as hero for all in his record and contribution in transforming our country. This is what Slovo was about.

"His struggle was to overthrow racism in this country and to create a truly democratic society. The transformation that has occurred in South Africa has won the support of overwhelming numbers of our people - whites as well as blacks. Slovo was one of the chief architects of that change," said Kasrils.

ANC Secretary-General Cyril Ramaphosa announced that a state funeral for Slovo would be held Jan. 15 at the Avalon Cemetery in the black township of Soweto.

Although Slovo was a proclaimed atheist and Communist, he never denied his Judaism.

In an interview about a year ago in the South African cultural journal Jewish Affairs, Slovo said, "I'm not defensive at all about being a Jew. I'm quite proud of it. And I regard anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish cultural activities on the same basis as racism in this country.

"I regard myself as from Jewish extraction and coming from a group with a very rich history and culture. And part of that history and culture has impacted on my own choice of a way of life," he said.

South African Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris, who has been invited to participate at a multifaith memorial meeting for Slovo at the Orlando Stadium in Soweto, said the late civil rights leader had a "very warm Jewish heart."

While Slovo had no connection with the official Jewish community, Harris said, he had close Jewish ties and used to read the poet Shalom Aleichem in the original Yiddish.

"Joe Slovo was a contradiction - a Marxist-Leninist-Communist who nevertheless always put the well-being of the people first. He was therefore able, on the demise of Communism in Eastern Europe, to foster what he called democratic socialism," said Harris.

"Although in the formal sense Joe Slovo was not a good Jew, he will go down in history as a great human being."

Slovo emigrated form Lithuania to South Africa with his family when he was 8 years old.

Attracted to the credo of universal human equality, he joined the communist Party of South Africa at the age of 16.

The Communists were the first official party in South Africa to welcome black members. Slovo was chairman of the party at the time of his death.

During World War II, he served as a radio operator in Egypt and Italy. After the war, he studied for a degree in law at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he met fellow law student Nelson Mandela.

He graduated with distinction and went into practice in Johannesburg.

In 1949 he married Ruth First, daughter of Julius First, a founding member of the Communist Party. Because of their political beliefs, they were later banned by the government from attending meetings or having their statements quoted in the press.

In 1950, after the government passed the Suppression of Communism Act, the party dissolved, but went underground in 1953 as the South Africa Communist Party.

In 1961, Slovo took part in the formation of Umkhonto we Sisze, the armed wing of the African National Congress. He was a member of its national high command.

Slovo, Mandela and more than 150 others were charged with treason in December 1956 for supporting the Freedom Charter, which called for full democracy in the country, regardless of race.

Slovo was both a defendant and a member of the defense team during the trial, which ended with the acquittal of all the defendants.

After the apartheid government banned the ANC in 1960, Slovo, along with Mandela and others, launched a campaign of sabotage against strategic government installations.

After Mandela was arrested in 1963, Slovo fled into exile and served as chief of staff of the ANC's armed wing.

During the next 14 years, he lived in Tanzania, Angola, Zambia and England.

His first wife, Ruth, was killed by a letter bomb in 1982 in Maputo, Mozambique. He later remarried.

There years later, Slovo became the first white elected to the national executive of the ANC.

Under an amnesty for political exiles in 1990, Slovo returned to South Africa. That same year, Mandela was released from prison, and he and Slovo became involved in negotiations end apartheid.

After the ANC made the pledge to hold peaceful negotiations with the ruling National Party, Slovo proposed a crucial plan - know as the "Sunset Clause" - allowing for power-sharing in South Africa.

The agreement broke a deadlock in the negotiations with the government and led to the country's first all-race elections in April 1994. Mandela's victory in that election officially ended apartheid and brought the ANC to power.

Slovo was fourth on the ANC's list of parliamentary candidates in the elections. As minister of housing, he pursued the goal of providing affordable housing for everyone.

His last public appearance was at the ANC's national conference in December 1994, where he received from Mandela his party's highest honor, the Isithwalandwe/Seaparankoe ("He Who Wears the Leopard's Skin") award.

"What I did, I did without any regrets," he said upon receiving the award. "I decided long ago that there is only one target, and that target is to remove the racist regime and obtain power for the people."